Social Media Find Place In Classroom

The article “Social media find a place in classroom” written by Greg Toppo, posted in USA Today, focuses upon the integration of social media within the classroom.  The article touches upon topics such as, the benefits and fears of utilizing social media devices and networking tools and how effective they are in correlation to student learning. 

It is becoming quite common that many educators, schools and communities are promoting the use of social media in the classroom.  One of many educators, in which support and promote these ideas, is principal of New Milford New Jersey, Eric Sheninger.  Principal Sheninger introduced the use of the social networking tool, Facebook to his school in order for him and his teachers to communicate with students and parents.  He allows students to access sites such as Facebook for education and appropriate promotional use.  He even updated the schools web page by replacing the old web page with a school Facebook page.  Principal Sheninger, his teachers, parents and students utilize the school Facebook page more than ever.  This personalized school Facebook page created a place for the students to comment on current events, display their personal work and communicate with the educational community. 

“Being literate in 2011 means being digitally literate,” says Chris Lehnmann.  Rather than banding mobile devices such as, cellular devices, the principal also encourages students to power up their cell phones, in which he refers to as “mobile learning devices” to respond to classroom poles and quizzes.  Like many others, principal Sheninger believes that through incorporating social media devices in a productive educational manner allows for students to learn beyond the confines of school.  He expresses that by using such tools pushes kids to create higher quality work, and pay attention to important issues such as audience, quality research and copyright laws.

Although, there are many benefits in incorporating social media within the classroom, there are still many fears in conjunction with this idea.  One of the largest objections to this idea, is that the use of these social sites will create a negative impact on kids if they are able to access and encounter irrelevant or offensive material.    Many feel that this particular fear is commonly blown out of proportion, due to the fact that kids can access such offensive sites at outside of school.  Although there is no stopping or completely controlling what kids are viewing on the internet, parents and educations can guide and navigate students to use social media in a positive and productive way.  Teachers can do so by focusing on advertising, sharing and discussing meaningful work done with social media.  With the write tools and guidance we can provide more and more learning tools and expand beyond the horizon of traditional classroom learning.