Social media in the classroom: too risky?

There are now more than 500 million users on Facebook, half of whom log on every day. Social media has transformed the way that people communicate with their friends, share their experiences and plan their lives but it’s also created new challenges and special problems for schools.

Teachers face the risk that their private lives might be exposed or that students may use the sites inappropriately.

Yet some schools are already harnessing the power of Facebook and Twitter to excite students about education.

We thought we would assess this by considering whether the pros outweigh the cons of using social media sites in education, particularly now that social media is such an integral part of students’ lives.

Twitter gives shy students a voice

Distractions seem to be everywhere, with students of younger and younger ages having access to internet-enabled devices, even when they’re in the classroom. But for many ICT evangelists, mobile technology is not inhibiting students’ focus in class but instead helping to raise engagement and enhance teaching and learning.

Enrique Legaspi, a middle school teacher in Los Angeles is one such proponent. After attending a seminar in San Francisco on the uses of social media, he began to trial examples of real-world best practice within his own classroom.

Facebook privacy: Only 9% of students are 'concerned'

Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past, but they are also taking a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information. Despite taking these privacy-protective actions, teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned.

Wikispaces classroom – simple, social, student engagement

Many teachers approach social media tentatively when it is presented as a classroom resource. The prospect of students contacting you on your personal profile, the lack of control and moderation of messages and issues of online (cyber) bullying are reason enough. But while we ourselves share these concerns and have posted articles helping teachers to use social media safely in the classroom, our attention was drawn to altogether different social media networking space that some of you may already be using to great effect.

Launched in 2005, the social writing workspace Wikispaces Classroom is an online platform developed solely for the education sector that is gaining more and more support from teaching professionals throughout the world, with more than 14 million individual users.

The future of online search

How is the future of the way we use search changing?

Mobile technology is already having a major effect on the way we use search and it’s constantly evolving. Take Google for example: not content with providing us with an online search engine format, they’re planning the release of Google Glass that will allow users to get information instantly about the things they want, without even having to search for it.

But with the rate of change should we be concerned that the information we view as personal is being used to profile us and filter what we see?

The future of search could have more of an impact on us than we think – here’s our guide to what it has in store for us.

How can social media be used in the classroom?

Social media can be a daunting prospect but it doesn’t have to be. In this article we offer a good-practice guide to managing your school Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts.

The use of new communicative technologies remains a topic of wide debate with both arguments for and against.