Tips for using Facebook in the classroom
Social networking has no place in school! Or is it a place? Let’s try to look at the main social network of the planet as a training tool.
Teenagers spend on social networks is an unimaginable amount of time to use the opportunity to reach their hearts right through their favorite spot in the web it seems a very tempting idea. Of course, the social network retains all of its negative aspects relating to data gathering, information security, content irrelevant, but there must be ways to use her potential in school, to minimize all possible risks.
The education Foundation the UK has prepared a compilation of recommendations for using Facebook for educational purposes. According to this organization, Facebook is, without exaggeration, is the essential educational tool of the XXI century, which cannot be neglected. Such functions Facebook (and almost any other social network) as the user’s feed, the ability to create your community and manage the content, can alter our perceptions about classroom and homework. The special beauty of social networking is that students don’t have to convince them to use: any teenager would be happy to take to Facebook and not even notice how I looked and threw in the General group two documentary video about the Second world war.
So, what can be useful for these recommendations?
- for additional support in the supply of educational material
- for the organization of support for extracurricular work with the learning material
- to stimulate interest in study and knowledge
- to facilitate the communication process between students, teachers and parents
- to develop skills in digital citizenship
The creation of open space to control and self-control
Create a private group on Facebook, it takes a couple of clicks. For example, you can create a group class or flow. Invite participants by e-mail, the teacher in this case can perform the role of administrator of the group, filling it with the necessary links, photos and videos, opening discussion in the comments. The administrator group will always have available information about how many group members viewed each post.
And to prepare for the exam or test, you can create an event page with date and send it to the participants of the event weekly reminders. Please note: page events are generated from the page created by the group, and not the page account.
Homework and preparation for it
When you create a group to work together and prepare for homework, you need to set permissions so that group members can post their publications on the group page and to share necessary links and information with their classmates. For teachers are very useful the possibility of carrying out surveys on the page — so you can conduct a rapid testing.
Communication with parents
Separately, you can create a closed group to notify parents about the latest developments, educational achievements, where you can share a project with children and the results of the test/examinations. A function for uploading files (from computer or using Dropbox sync) you can share already created the tables with statistics.
Project work
News feed page in Facebook can look very dynamic if you use the Milestone feature: adding significant dates in the tape, you can build a chronology of events. It is a wonderful tool for collective work: why not ask the group of guys for the weekend to create a group dedicated to the history of the French revolution or the discovery of the atom?
Of course, Facebook can become the ultimate tool for planning and control over the learning process. But as a tool to boost engagement and children and parents it is truly excellent.