This week we have discussed social networking in the classroom as well as digital citizenship.  From this week’s lesson there are some things that I learned, some things that have been clarified and some things that I would like to pursue to learn more.

One of the main focuses this week was digital citizenship.  Before this week I had heard of digital citizenship, but never really understood exactly what it meant.  I now know that digital citizenship is considered, “the norms of behavior with regard to technology use.” (Ribble, 2004) In the article written by Ribble, digital citizenship is broken down into nine areas.  Etiquette, communication, education, access, commerce, responsibility, rights, safety, and security are the areas that should be monitored and taught to students to make them better digital citizens. 

The other topic discussed this week was social networking.  Although I was familiar with different social networking sites for personal use, I was not overly familiar with social networks for educational use.  In order to learn more about social networks used in the classroom I talked to many friends who are teachers as well as researched the topic online.  The highest recommended educational social networking site was Edmodo.  That one seemed to be the most common and the most used.  When looking at Edmodo, I found the site to be very user-friendly and the video tutorial answered many of my questions about the site. I liked that it is a free option for educators to use in the classroom and it seemed safe as well.  I also researched Schoology and My Big Campus.  Both of those looked like good options as well, but My Big Campus is a paid site that you have to buy the license to use.  Schoology looks very similar to Edmodo and seemed like another viable option.

I enjoyed learning about the ways that teachers can use social networking sites. These sites can be used for teachers to post and grade assignments as well as students to get resources, turn in assignments and even take quizzes.  Teachers can post classroom prompts to start a discussion that can be held on the sites through a blog type network.  Most of the educational sites have safety filters that will filter out any questionable posts from students.  Most of these educational sites are created to look similar to the ever popular Face Book, so that students will feel comfortable navigating through the pages. 

This week’s topic was also interesting for me because it relates to my current position as a marketing director.  One of my main goals for 2014 is to include social networking and other digital marketing into our company’s marketing campaigns.  So during this process of searching educational social networks, I also got a look at how some other social networks work outside of some of the big ones like Face Book, Twitter, Google +, etc.  I plan to continue to research a variety of social networks to find which ones will be the best fit for our company. 

There are so many different uses for social networks in the classrooms. There are also so many different social network options from which a teacher can choose.  Whatever decision is made, it is important for the teacher to remember to keep the nine elements of digital citizenship in mind when giving students access to online networks.  If used wisely, social networks are excellent tools to implement in the classroom in order to expand the 21^st century teaching opportunities. 

Bibliography

Ribble, M. S. (2004). Digital Citizenship. Retrieved January 26, 2014, from Addressing Appropriate Technology Behavior: http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/uploads/1stLL.pdf