Social Media and Blogging in Kindergarten. Social media and blogging in kindergarten is where I begin to model explicitly how I get my students and their families connected.
Through social media, my students and their families experience the benefits of being a digital citizen and its positive impact on our learning. I model right on the first day of kindergarten how to tweet and what it looks and sounds like. I start with inviting my parents to follow our classroom on Twitter and/or set up a Twitter account for themselves. When this happens, our conversations begin. I ask parents that I know are familiar with Twitter to tweet at us during the day. Right away, I have an opportunity to model the importance of being a safe, kind and responsible digital citizen.
I also find it meaningful to be explicit about what we are doing when we tweet. Later on I noticed how easy social media has become integrated in kindergarten. Blogging is another platform I use in kindergarten. I am in my fourth year of using Kidblog.
How Teachers Can Best Use Education Technology. I spend a huge amount of my time reading about the top 5 apps for teachers, the best software for collaborative writing, the best web tool for this, that or the other, how to do something that I’ve never heard of but should have and now feel guilty about, so I’m going to Google it and try to drop it into a conversation next time I’m face to face with another teacher, so that I seem on top of the ever-burgeoning world of education technology. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan.
I might even describe myself as being someone close to the cutting edge of what is going on, but the more I read, the more concerned I become about the quality of what is going on in schools. For every success story, there seem to be a couple of examples of really poor practice; schools that have launched a 1:1 initiative that has backfired, or teachers that use web-based-project-based learning as an excuse to sit down and let the kids get on with it. I don’t blame these teachers. The Real World vs School.
My Library. 3 Simple Rules for a Healthy Media Diet. What's a healthy media diet?
A healthy media diet means balancing three things: What kids do, how much time they spend doing it, and making age-appropriate content choices. Now that kids interact with media through personal technologies that increasingly put them in charge of selecting their own entertainment, it's never been more important to maintain oversight. Learning how to have a balanced diet is a critical life skill we have to teach our kids –- as important as eating right, learning to swim, or driving a car. Fortunately, because there are so many choices now, it's gotten easier to find healthy ways to say yes.
Why does it matter? Media and technology run right through the center of our kids' lives. In addition, since media and technology have become the way that kids socialize and communicate, we have to help them learn what is and isn't responsible behavior. How to give your kids a healthy media diet Use media together. Be a role model. Keep an eye on the clock. Connect your classroom to the world. Fablevision_dot_day_handbook.pdf (application/pdf Object)
EduClipper. HootSuite. 3 Simple Rules for a Healthy Media Diet. My Library.