Katie Bedke

I can’t believe the time has come for my final blog posting for EDTECH 543: Social Network Learning.  Social media doesn’t seem to be going anywhere or slowing down and knew this course would be valuable to me as an educator and professional.  Through this course, I really started to think about how I can leverage social media in my classroom and in my own life (personal and professional).   I was also pushed to do things that were a little outside my comfort zone or regular activity.  Prior to this course, I was not a part of the Twitter world and rarely posted in my other social networks for professional purposes.  So sending out tweets was a completely new experience.  I discovered that Twitter is a great tool for professional development which I will continue to use and will also incorporate into my classroom activities.  Before, I also really didn’t belong or participate in many professional communities.  So joining and participating in new communities was a big step for me,

From my experience, social media use in schools is somewhat nonexistent. Most schools and districts block these tools to be used with school technology.   However, the majority of people (adults and students) all utilize social media.  Why are we not leveraging these tools in our classrooms?  I can see the perspectives of administrators or parents that are worried about what students will come across or be exposed to. But I wonder if by not using social media and teaching students how to properly use and understand the power it has- are we doing a disservice or making things worse?   Areas that are allowing the use of social media are no ticing more student engagement, ability to connect to more content and ideas and promote collaboration.  This weeks assignment was to create a social media policy for a district, school or classroom.  I chose to come up with a social media policy for my own class mainly so I could apply this for use in learning management systems that offer a so