Theme one: Social media

Students teams have completed working on social media, the first theme of our project. Students were divided in five groups and were given five units - guidelines to follow, material to work and investigate and finally reflect on. Below you may read some of the questions students were faced and the slides they were provided to work with.

• Unit 1: What is social media? In this unit students had to explore some of the popular types of social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and then try to find what are their differences and/or similarities. They were also proposed to watch a couple of recommended videos and write what most surprised them and/or what is their opinion. Finally they were invited to check out http://mystarbucksidea.force.com for some interesting practice ideas and discuss them with their classmates. They all had to share their findings with their Comenius classmates. Here are the slides of Unit 1.

• Unit 2: School policies. Working on this unit students had to find their school website, whether it embraces any types of social media to it and if it hosts webpages in other languages than Greek. In order to get to know their classmates from abroad they were proposed to start at magicteachersthess.blogspot.gr and then try to locate and access their Comenius classmates school websites reporting if these websites provide a good idea of how their school work. They also had to access two educatioanl websites: 1) http://edubuzz.org/about/ and share with their classmates what strikes them most about it and 2) Saltash.net Community College in Cornwall website and discuss why this is a very progressive in social media school. So should or shouldn’t set up a school social media account and which social media account would you suggest for their school and why. Here are the slides of Unit 2.
• Unit 3: Pedagogical aspects. Students were invited to watch a short video on education reform and discuss in which ways it challenges the traditional models of education. Another issue to explore was cultural relevance. Based on the hypothesis that “young people are engaged when they are learning about things or with things that they can relate to or that are relevant to them”, students should give examples of the above statement from their own experience and share them on their blogs. Real-time data is a hot topic in social media so they were invited to share some ways of using Twitter in their classrooms. Collaboration may be achieved by using Google Apps for Education and Google Plus tools to assist with learning and teaching. Finally students were invited to investigate in which ways can blogs and YouTube channels provide an audience for student’s work. Here are the slides of Unit 3.
• Unit 4: Internet safety and responsible use. The main issues discussed in this unit were privacy and digital footprints. Students were invited to comment on the following statements: “Not only pupils, but also teachers need to think before they post” and “Schools should teach pupils how to analyse and evaluate the reliability of online information, how to reference the sources they use, and how to safeguard one’s privacy when using social media”. Here are the slides of Unit 4.
• Unit 5: Challenges to adoption. In this unit students had to consider what is a school social media policy and discuss if it is necessary for their school. They were also invited to work in teams to create a stand-alone policy with things/rules to include, consider some technical challenges of social media adoption and locate which ICT organisations cooperate with schools for Internet safety. Here are the slides of Unit 5.

All conclusions were sent to MAGIC 1 team that has to summarise them and upload them on their blog.