Facebook and Twitter in the classroom?

Social media in the classroom is an interesting subject. While I haven’t used it for class instruction, I have used Facebook to communicate with students regarding a Spain trip that I planned. This worked incredibly well for me and gives me hope that my new summer Twitter account will work as well. I plan on using Twitter (still waiting to be approved) as a means of communication in Spanish for my upper level students during the summer. Essentially it would start out as discussions and those wanting to participate could. I think that using social media in the right ways makes complete sense. How cool would it be if my students were reading through Spanish tweets and adding their own thoughts throughout the summer? I highly doubt that they will take the time to watch movies in Spanish or read in Spanish, but if they have regular tweets coming right to their phones the convenience might win out. I think that in order to use social media in the classroom you have to have a strong plan. You shouldn’t go into it without researching exactly what to do, for example- how to make your profile private, how to accept only the followers (aka students) that you want to accept, etc. I think from the viewpoint of the student Twitter and Facebook offers them a convenience that they cannot find with My Big Campus or Moodle. While MBC and Moodle try to be appealing to students, truthfully students don’t spend their free time on them like they do with Facebook and Twitter. Even I am constantly on Facebook. From the administrator viewpoint, I think that teachers should have to communicate exactly how they plan on using the social media tool in the classroom, and they should have to be able to answer the hard questions before being allowed to use said tool. As a high school teacher I don’t deal with students under the age of 13, but I do think that if federal law states that they can not have an account then they shouldn’t have one, plain and simple. As a parent I wouldn’t want my child using social media in the classroom or in general if it was breaking Federal law.

To sum it up I think that these are both great tools for the high school classroom if used correctly and if the work is put in to understand how to use them correctly. If you can’t answer questions like “What will you do to be sure that non-students do not enter into the discussion?” (if your school is concerned with this), then you probably shouldn’t be using them yet.