By- Erika Semprun
There’s only a couple of weeks left of summer vacation, and teachers across the globe are coming up with new ideas to engage students in the upcoming curriculum. What better way to captivate students than to incorporate social media into weekly lessons?
While social media in the classroom is something of a new phenomenon, there’s no doubt that when used right, technology in the classroom is beneficial for both students and educators!
Ready to integrate media into your lesson plan? Keep reading to learn some useful tips!
1. Create Social Media Accounts to Communicate Outside the Classroom
Opening a Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook page to communicate with students outside the classroom is a great tool! As a teacher, you can use these accounts to post reminders, assignment guidelines, answer questions, and take polls for upcoming lesson ideas. Students can answer each other’s questions and even share notes! Connecting on social media is quick and easy and by using one, cohesive channel, the chances of miscommunication or misunderstandings decrease immensely!
2. Use Social Media to Access Current Stories or News Relevant to Upcoming Assignments
By using different types of social media, educators can stay up to date on current events related to upcoming lessons. Incorporating trending topics into class discussions through news outlets or even Twitter hashtags is a great tool to keep students engaged and make sure they participate!
3. Create or Share Clips Related to Class Concepts
Although many students are auditory learners, this isn’t always the case. Graphics and charts are a good tool to educate students of all ages, but short clips are much more efficient! While not every teacher or student may have the resources to film a video related to class concepts, anyone can find a short clip on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. Most social media sites, especially YouTube, have a wide variety of short videos related to thousands of topics. Clips are excellent instruments for teaching new topics, addressing difficult concepts, or just providing additional resources!
4. Use Sites to Create Trivia Quizzes to Test Class Understanding
While there are dozens of sites on the web that allow educators and students to make their own quizzes, one of the most efficient tools for doing this is Kahoot!, a fun tool that gives the traditional quiz a fun twist. This site allows any individual to make an account and create short quizzes related to any topic. The individual can come up with their own questions and include any answer choices they please. Then, others on the web can join the site and participate as well. Kahoot! also provides feedback on each individual and reveals the understanding of the group as a whole. With Kahoot!, teachers are able to see how well students understand the curriculum and students learn what concepts they need to work on.
Now that we’ve discussed these tips, you’re ready to integrate social media into your lesson plan!
