Living in a social world, as educators, “we need to teach students how to
be effective collaborator in that world, how to interact with people around
them, and how to be engaged” (Smith, 2013).
Besides, eduactors should take advantage of social networking as a
powerful technological tool and make use of it for academic benefit. Doing so will help students change their
perspective in education in a positive way and eduactors will be the
facilitator of this change.
While searching for social networking technologies on the internet and
looking for ways to incorporate the technology into the field of teaching English
as a foreign language, Diigo is the first social networking site I have found
that have features such as “organizing, highlighting, annotating, and sharing
information” (Diigo, 2013). As an English
as a foreign language educator, I would use Diigo to give students feedback
through highlights and annotations on their blog post assignments. I think,
doing so will improve students’ writing skills.
Another thing I would do is, after creating a Diigo account, I would ask
students to join their groups to work on a specific group project. Each student in the group contribute and also
collaborate as a group through a discussion board that they have created for
their group in which they will have group conversations. The URL of the site is http://www.diigo.com
As an educator who is teaching young adults, I know that my students are
familiar and comfortable using facebook in and outside of class. Therefore, for an EFL reading class, I would
create a facebook discussion group and ask students to write short summaries
and reflections online on the readings that they are assigned outside of class.
While the way I incorporate facebook into teaching will be motivating students
to read, I believe shy students will feel more comfortable having discussions
online instead of class. Therefore, “we
shouldn’t discount facebook when it has proven to be a worthwhile classroom tool”
(Walsh, 2010). Additionally, I believe as
Richardson (2010) puts it, while being “a valuable tool for students, Facebook
could provide important context for learning” (p.134).
References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and
other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Smith, F. (2013). How to use social-networking technology for learning. Retrieved from,
Walsh, K. (2010). Facebook as an instructional
technology tool. Retrieved from,
http://www.emergingedtech.com/2010/08/facebook-as-an-instructional-technology-tool/
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