Q.4 On any of the social media that you use - Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp, make group teachers. Initiate a discussion regarding classroom issues and write down a report of what was the topic. What did different people say what your conclusion is?
Course: Critical Thinking and Reflective Practices
Course Code 8611
Topics
Any of the social media that you use - Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp, makes group teachers. Initiate a discussion regarding classroom issues
- Point of view about Social media use
- Twitter Warmer, Twitter search activity, Practice of short forms, Practice of Present Continuous
AIOU Solved Assignment |Semester: Autumn/Spring | B.Ed/Bachelors in Education /Masters in Education / PhD in Education | BEd / MEd / M Phil Education | ASSIGNMENT Course Code 8611| Course: Critical Thinking and Reflective Practices
Answer:
I’m a big fan of social media.
Facebook, Twitter, blogging platforms, and other ‘web 2.0’ sites offer users the
ability to publish their thoughts and exchange ideas with a global audience. In
this article, I will be discussing ways that you can use social media in your
classes and courses.
You can use them in the following ways:
1) Building a class blog, where
students can take turns to write posts on topics of interest. Other
students can then add comments. The teacher will probably need to moderate, as
comment threads can sometimes become heated and if you are representing an
educational institution, this could become a tricky issue.
2) Creating lessons based on blogs. I
once devised a reading task taking four types of blogs- one academic, one on the
life of an ambulance driver, one personal blog, and another on current affairs.
I had students skim-read each blog and answer thematic questions.
They then exchanged their opinions on
each blog and decided which one seemed most interesting. We then had a language
analysis task, with samples of text from each blog. Students examined
differences in style (i.e. formality), lexis, and tone, before focusing on the
personal blog, which used more colloquial language. After a matching task where
some key phrases were identified, students were set the task of writing a blog
entry on something they had done that week.
3) Have students start their own
blogs. For this to work, they will probably need support, as blogging is a
habit that has to be kept up consistently and it takes time to get good at it.
Teachers can do this by examining the discourse features of personal blogs and
producing a structured lesson that enables learners to mimic these features in
their own writing.
Common discourse
features of personal blogs are:
• Short posts
• Informal or colloquial language
• First person perspective
• Contemporary topics
• Taking on the form of a dialogue
with readers (especially in comment threads)
Twitter is a micro-blogging site. Microblogging involves writing very short updates on what you are doing, your ideas,
activities, links to interesting sites, and so on. Twitter limits updates to
140 characters, and these updates are known in the Twitter community as
‘tweets’.
When you join the site, you can
‘follow’ other users’ tweets, which appear in a kind of news feed when you sign
in. They have the option of following you back. There is the same culture of
regular updates as with regular blogging- and some users are very prolific,
tweeting many times per day, while others are less active. The short length of
tweets is linguistically interesting because it forces the writer to be very
concise, and to focus very specifically on the readers’ interests.
Some ideas for using Twitter in a course:
1) Twitter warmer:
Focus on a Twitter feed from a news
source such as the BBC or CNN. In small groups, learners can read one tweet and
try to predict the broader details of the story. They can then exchange ideas
with another group before checking fuller details online.
2) Twitter search activity:
Twitter has a powerful search tool
that allows users to look for specific search items in the ‘Twitter-sphere’.
Learners can be given an item of new vocabulary, for example, and search for
authentic examples of use in real-time. They can then derive the meaning from
context (with appropriate support from the teacher).
3) Practice of short forms- the concise nature of Twitter lends
itself to this.
4) Practice
of the present continuous- the immediacy of Twitter suggests the present continuous,
e.g. ‘writing an article on social media in the EFL classroom’ Facebook and
other social networking sites allow users to make
connections and keep in touch with other users, who become ‘friends’. As there
is the possibility to interact via messaging (both instant and 13 via a form of
email service) and status updates (you say what you are doing), there is the
opportunity for language practice.
Some sites are more or less ‘serious’
than others. LinkedIn, for example, is a social networking site for
professionals and has an appearance and functionality to match. How these
sites can be used in class totally depends on the level to which your class
members are willing to interact with each other in a (relatively) private
space, and how suitable that is.
Some ideas:
1) Create a class group on a social
networking site. Groups are a form of virtual club. If the group has a clearly
defined purpose, which can be defined in class (perhaps as a task making use of
various language items), this will encourage online activity. The teacher can
act as an administrator, suggesting topics for discussion and posting links.
This can become more exciting if members are attracted from outside the class
by class members inviting their friends to join.
2) Your school can create a profile
on the site and students can become friends with the school. Teachers can then
answer students’ questions online and engage in discussions. This will also
have the effect of boosting the school’s profile.
Conclusion Teachers must be aware
that while it’s easy and exciting to put your thoughts all over the web, you
must be aware of the law in the country you are working in. You must also be
particularly careful if you’re working with minors and ensure that no sensitive
information is revealed online. Remind your learners never to share addresses
or location-specific contact details with people online whom they don’t know.
You can help protect them by making blogs password-protected, protecting
Twitter updates, and creating hidden profiles on Facebook.
You should also check terms of use
and privacy statements to make sure you know what the owners of the sites are
doing with any information they collect and to check that the services are
suitable for the age group of your class (Many don’t allow users below the age
of 13).
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