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Social Media

Helping Students Define Primary Source Documents

The primary source document has recently received more and more attention in national and state standards for all education levels.  And for the gifted student, the primary source document can stimulate and challenge a population of students who are sometimes bored by textbooks that regurgitate important sources in pedantic and watered-down language.  Still, incorporating the primary source document into the curriculum can prove to be challenging for teachers charged with this task.  For, you might ask, what “exactly” is a primary...

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Pinterest for educators - Gtec Kids

Pinterest for Educators

The most popular bulletin board for pictures and photographs in social media today is Pinterest. It follows a scrapbook-styled interface designed for communicative sharing, the focal points of each company differ. Pinterest was primarily used for sharing favored material goods and inspired ideas; but now, it is also intended for dispersing educational tools and learning resources. Pinterest for educators helps to easily design online content and craft a set of lessons using this powerful image-based platform. They take a topic...

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Top 10 Recommendations for Social Media Practices - Gtec Kids

Be a Teacher, Not a Friend: Top Ten Recommendations for Social Media Practices

After receiving several requests, I prepared a professional set of guidelines to protect teachers who want to use social media to communicate with their students.  Schools want to ensure that social media practices will not be abused by any teacher and that innocent students will not be harmed by the content posted. When mindfully and prudently used, social media is a great tool.Teachers today may feel they are being subjected to the Orwellian world of “Big Brother,” where every...

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Teach Safe Practices in Social Media - Gtec Kids

The Top 6 Reasons for Schools to Teach Safe Practices in Social Media

 Not so long ago, many schools throughout the nation banned the use of social media on their website portals, finding censorship an easier solution than coping with the new technology. Regardless, social media acquired widespread popularity. And now, many school districts are formulating guidelines for acceptable usage by students and teachers alike.As a strong advocate of using social media in education, I feel that the responsibility becomes more than just guidelines. Districts need to offer training in its proper, safe, and ethical...

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Role-Play in the Classroom with Delicious

Delicious (del.icio.us) is an online social bookmarking platform that stores and categorizes photos, videos, and articles that teachers can use to motivate and engage students. It is part of social media because teachers can see each other’s folders called “stacks” of information and share each other’s postings of links on the web. These links are usually of high quality because teachers have invested time in surfing the internet to make meaningful selections.Many teachers have used Delicious  to share great links with...

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Schools Beware: Facebook Owns Your Words

With on-line communication transforming the world, many education departments across the country have banned social media in schools for protective measures. Now, districts are readdressing these bans and seeking more effective guidelines. As an educator for more than 35 years, I believe it is time to ask ourselves the following questions:How can schools: protect their students? monitor the content of hundreds of teachers’ messages? regulate personal versus professional text messaging and/or posts on Facebook/ Twitter/ YouTube, Flickr, etc.? Previously, school systems banned teacher access to...

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