Creative with ICT - 5.03.2018

Work with ICT in class

The 21st century and social media

One of the 21st century skills is to educate our pupils with ICT. Indeed, we live in a society where technology is more and more used. Therefore, it is important to integrate the ICT in our teaching in order to develop the needed skills for the future of our students. Nowadays, social media is an important way of communicating with others and can be used to develop critical thinking. According to different texts there still is a global achievement gap, which means that there is a gap between what we teach in class and the skills that are expected in society. For that reason, it is not only important to teach the students how to use the ICT but also how to create with ICT to express themselves, communicate, develop creativity and be innovative in order to face our current problems and find solutions.

Creative with social media

Today we had a presentation about using social media in class and the different issues that are related to it. Teachers should use social media to show the students how to act on it and let them know the problems that they could found on it. As I said it before, social media is an important tool today because it leads to critical thinking and allows everyone to be able to share ideas and opinion creating a learning community. Using the social media in class is an active way of learning by using the pre-knowledge and creating new one while sharing it with a whole social community. Is is also an easy way of expressing our thoughts because they can be shared and written quickly.

Some ideas of how to use ICT with the pupils

Blogs

In my opinion creating blogs in class can be a very intersting way for the pupils to write what they want about the topic they want. Indeed, it could be a nice way of getting the students to express themselves on a topic that matters to them and share it to their friends. The pupils could upload some recipes, share stories, handicrafts and talk about important topics that make part of their everyday life. Giving the pupils the freedom to write on a social media in class increases their motivation and will to write which could develop structural and expression skills. The use of blogs could also be a way to bring different generations together and mix different opinions by involving the parents to a students blog project. But one of the most important reason of creating blogs at school is to bring the pupils to be aware of the use and problems that are related to social media. In fact, it is important as a teacher to talk about the role social media has in our society to the students.

Stop bullying !

Another way of using social media in class could be to discuss some fragile topics with the pupils such as bullying, which is very frequent nowadays in schools. Indeed, social media is now used by everyone, even the youngest in school which don't really understand the impact that it can have on people. Hiding behind a phone or a computer is an easy way to insult and harm others without being physically confronted. Because the pupils have this quick and easy access to communicate with others without a real contact, they sometimes can't imagine the emotions and feelings that are related to their actions. This is why, as a teacher it can be very interesting to make them feel what it could be like to be a victim of social media bullying by recording for example a play with the pupils and publish the video on a school platform as a reminder of the consequences behind such actions. Also, it could be possible to create a school platform where students, parents and teachers could interact about this topic giving the freedom to everyone to talk about it without giving an identity and get advices or opinions from others.