Article Review

For my Article review, I chose the article, “Social Media in the Classroom: For Kindergartners Through High Schoolers”, by author Renee Ramig. This article describes the increasing use of social media in our society and its’ impact on the students in our classroom. It does not discuss the controversy of social media in the classroom, but rather assumes that teachers and schools will and should make use of it the classroom. In fact, the author says that social networking is now the ‘norm’ and schools must reflect that ‘norm’ in their instruction.
The author then dedicates the rest of the article to giving advice and recommendations about how to best implement social media and networking into effective instruction for all students. For the first part of the article, she focuses on elementary students. According to the author, safety is the number one concern at this age. The younger grades should make use of these social networking sites for classroom discussions, whereas the older elementary grades can begin to allow students to have individual accounts.
By middle school and high school, a large majority of students will have used social networking sites, according to Ramig. Therefore, reinforcing the safety rules of social networking is very important at this stage. Also, teachers that make use of social networking at school should “start with a network that only students in your class have access to”, according to Ramig. This is also a great age level for these sites to be used as classroom discussion extenders. Similarly, students can and should post questions about homework and other classroom objectives on these sites.
After discussing the age appropriate assignments, Ramig then states five safety considerations to keep in mind. The first is to talk to the students about privacy and give examples about certain things that should not be shared with others. According Ramig, the second and third reasons are teacher related and focus on making sure teachers only use social networking as part of the education process, which will result in teachers becoming familiar with the technology. The fourth consideration is to understand the privacy laws for your state, as well as their implications. Finally, the last consideration is for teachers to have frequent discussions with the students about the use of these sites if problems do occur.

Reflection
After reading through this article, I found many of the information she presented to be very helpful. I especially liked her safety considerations, as well as the use of social networking for extending school and classroom discussions. I do think that this can be the future of classroom discussions and participation, especially for students that are reluctant to share information in person. However, I am not sure that these ideas and practices will change very much in my classroom. As a third grade teacher, I can state that my students are going to be very limited in what they do as far as social networking goes. For example, my students all access their school email accounts, but most of the messages are not of any relevance. In fact, it is used more as a fun way to talk to someone. Even when used for classroom purposes, students often take a great deal of time to type (since they aren’t great on the keyboard) and do not offer much in the way of written words.
I am a big fan of technology and I do like to integrate it into my room wherever possible. Ideally, I would like to make use of this in my room. However, I think that there are some huge issues with this kind of socializing at my grade level. I know many parents would have some serious concerns, as would some other teachers. If students could do some discussions and assignments through these sites, I can see the relevance, but the sites would have to be only accessible by students at the school. There is no way that we could make use of Facebook or MySpace at the elementary level without serious safety concerns. I can see schools implementing their own social networking sites, such as the School Fusion one that Millard has just put in. I am excited to try this with my class next year once I am trained on how to use it this summer.