MD1 Assignment- An Emerged Technology

Social media technologies are a technology that has emerged and continues to emerge. These technologies change and shape learning as well as productivity in the K-12 education environment, but only if we use them. Since K-12 institutions are slow to adopt or implement any form of technology that in itself is a challenge. Challenges faced by using these technologies, is the time it takes for educators to learn how to use them, and then teach their students how to use them. The greatest challenge is finding free or reasonably priced technologies to use in the classroom. Districts do not always promote the use of these technologies. When they finally allow educators to access these technologies through the servers, the technology is not fully discussed or demonstrated. Quite often, educators are the ones searching for these technologies to implement and bring 21^st Century skills to their classroom and schools.

Using social media in education allows students and teachers to collaborate outside of the four walls they are used. Meaningful connections can be made not only within the school, but throughout the district, other states, as well as globally. Personal learning networks are created and learners are empowered. Edmodo is one form of social media that should be explored by all educators. Other social media worth exploring are twitter, Google Hangouts, Skype, and padlet to name a few.

The pitfalls of this technology are that teachers do not know how to use it effectively and are not always willing to learn something new. Likewise, districts do not train educators how to use these technologies or push for the use of these technologies. Districts leaders, school administrators, and educators all need to put forth the effort to learn how to effectively use social media technologies in the classroom. They don’t need to learn all the emerged or emerging social media technologies, but they need to learn how to effectively use, and teach the use of some of them. In March of this year, Edutopia provided several resources to aid educators, administrators, and districts in learning how to use social media the class. Take a look, you may find something worth implementing.