A Teacher’s Guide to Social Media
A great overview of the “dos and don’ts” of social networking for teachers to follow. While most of this article pertains to things to avoid doing yourself on social networks, points number 5 and 6 are geared towards ways to use social networking in positive ways to encourage, motivate, and communicate with your students.
Edmodo is one of many social networks that are intended primarily for student and teacher communication in an online space. Edmodo has adopted a visual style very similar to that of facebook, which would allow students who are familiar with its layout to be more comfortable and engaged in communication and collaboration. Schoology, a hybrid social network/LMS for students and teachers, also has a facebook-esque feel that most users are accustomed to.
As I read through this article, TED Ed was a service that I was not currently familiar with, but extremely excited about upon discovering. I have tried using other services to easily create content for students to access on their own (Learnist, Khan Academy, other services that I have forgotten the names of) but TED-Ed shows great promise.
Like Khan Academy, TED-Ed allows teachers to assign students videos to watch to teach/reinforce concepts and then answer questions demonstrating mastery. However, TED-Ed breaks the mold by allowing teachers to create context specific to what they are teaching, and customize the lesson as they see fit (not to mention that Khan Academy primarily focused on Math concepts).
After reading the article, check both of these services out to see how you could implement them in your own classroom.
EdTechToolkit 