The Social Media Myth

The myth about social media in the classroom is that if you use it, kids will be Tweeting, Facebooking and Snapchatting while you're trying to teach. We still have to focus on the task at hand. Don't mistake social media for socializing. They're different -- just as kids talking as they work in groups or talking while hanging out are different.

You don't even have to bring the most popular social media sites into your classroom. You can use Fakebook or FakeTweet as students work on this form of conversation. Edublogs, Kidblog, Edmodo, and more will let you use social media competencies and writing techniques. Some teachers are even doing "tweets" on post-it notes as exit tickets. You can use mainstream social media, too.

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For those who want to cut the cord with their internet identities, Who Is Hosting This has created a detailed guide that illustrates how you can completely disappear online. It starts with the simple stuff — like how to delete your Facebook accounts — and then gets more extreme. There are ways to falsify un-deletable accounts and even erase search results.

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 'Google Street View is brilliant. It finds us when we're lost, it shows us where we are, it reveals places we'll never get to visit, and so on and so forth. But you know what's even more amazing? The crazy neural network that Street View is built on..'

Sinister or helpful?

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An online activity that provides helpful guidance on how to keep your data and personal information more secure.

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A useful resource for 'body image', gender, role models and the media.

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There are clear benefits for students, teachers and schools who use social media.

Blogging gives students a voice and an audience. Teachers can showcase and provide a context for the work and activity in their classrooms and parents and carers can become engaged in the children's learning.

There are many free and paid for blogging tools. Here we will look at Wordpress.com which offers a free service, is easy to use and provides the teacher with useful administrator tools.