A Teacher’s Guide to Social Media

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.

Advertisement

Freerice.com – Feeding the Hungry, One Question at a Time

Teaching basic vocabulary and math skills to today’s students can be challenging at times, and remediation for students who are struggling can be overwhelming.  One extremely valuable tool available for teachers and students is Freerice.com, a non-profit website that supports the World Food Program.

Answer a question right, and rice is donated to hungry people. It’s a win-win.

Freerice is a web-based trivia game that has two goals:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Many different subjects of questions are available, most of which being leveled to accommodate any level of learner.

While this charitable idea on its own is ingenious, it creates an intrinsic reward to those who participate that is very addictive – students always are wanting to answer more questions to keep donating more rice.  Additionally, teachers can create accounts for their students and have them join class groups, where goals can be set and class tallies of rice can be made to see how much rice the entire class has donated over time.

Many different subjects are available to answer questions on, including English vocabulary, basic math skills, geography skills, and foreign languages, with more subjects being added continuously.  What’s more, many of the subjects have the option to change the level of difficulty as you are answering questions, which allows you to individualize this for each student based on his/her needs.

If the content is too easy for the student, the site will gradually increase their level as they answer questions.  If the questions prove to be more challenging, it will alter the difficulty as well.  This is a godsend for teachers who instruct groups of students at varying learning levels, tailoring the activity to meet the needs of all students.