Media in the classroom can be an interesting topic for students and teachers. Some schools require limited access to such social media's as facebook, twitter or youtube. When researching how to incorporate media and technology in the classroom there are many ideas out there to help. I have found a wonderful web site with 100 inspiring ways to use social media in the classroom. You can view this site by going to http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2010/05/100-inspiring-ways-to-use-social-media-in-the-classroom. Here you can read through the numerous ideas for incorporating fun projects into their social world.
One of the ideas I had not thought of before would be google earth. I have the program at home and enjoy it so bringing that into the classroom would be simple and very instrumental in perhaps a geography lesson. Notoriously popular is facebook, the site mentioned having the students create a character from a book on facebook, using the background information and biography information. Facebook however may not go over well with the principal. Choosing which media resources to use would have to come down to the types of students, and the type of instruction needed to boost learning. I feel children are growing up in a time of technology, and as a future teacher I need to find ways to incorporate media into the curriculum.
An article I found relating to the subject of media in education may help enlighten teachers. You can find the ariticle Here. The article has a quote from a principal stating,"We as schools owe it to the communities to help students become engaged with these types of media," he said. "Our major responsibility is to teach kids to be socially responsible. If we're not doing it in school, who's doing it at home? Most kids are unsupervised when they're on Facebook or YouTube. Who is actually teaching these kids how to use them for learning?" So perhaps he is on to something, if we cannot control the kids when they go home, atleast we can try to teach them the proper ways to use the media tools available to them.
