Sunday, October 3, 2010
South Milwaukee School District Professional Development Day
On Monday, my school district, South Milwaukee School District, had a professional development day. The first part of the day was a break-out session where teachers attended two inservice meetings of their own choice. I checked out an inservice on Adobe Photoshop. The inservice contained information on how to upload photos from various sources and how to do some basic editing. I hope to some day utilize student photos within lab reports. The second inservice that I attended was on social networking. We discussed how prevalent social networking is and its lasting power. The inservice demonstrated a variety of social networking sites and discussed safety issues and school use. Currently our school district blocks all social networking sites but has started to allow a few select teachers to utilize facebook to connect with students and relay information. After the inservice I met with some co-workers and discussed the possibility of starting our own facebook page for our chemistry students. We discussed the pros and cons and we also compared it to the wiki which we currently have. I look forward to seeing how our school district decides to integrate social networking.
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In our district, students are blocked from social networks, but teachers are not. We are encouraged though to not use the social networks during class periods and only use them before or after school or during lunch periods. I personally don't "friend" current students and when they ask if I would I tell them "No. I don't need to know what you are doing and you don't need to know what I am doing." Have you looked into using Moodle or edmodo instead of a Facebook page for your Chem class? Edmodo looks very similar to Facebook, but I believe you have much more control over it. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteYou may want to look at SocialNetworking in Schools: Incentives for Participation
ReplyDeleteI would also consider changing your background or them - this is very hard to read when it is a link
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