Social LEADia by Jennifer Casa-Todd

Author:Jennifer Casa-Todd
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-946444-12-7
Publisher: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.
Published: 2017-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.1

The opportunities for incorporating Padlet into your classroom are as endless as your imagination, and although it’s a tool we can use in school, the more flexibly we use it, the more students will see it as a place where they can connect with anyone, for any reason, in their own lives.

Video-Conferencing and Live-Streaming Tools

Skype, YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and Periscope, as well as the other video-conferencing and live-streaming apps and services available, may not initially seem to fall under the umbrella of social media, but they certainly do. After all, these are tools that allow for the creation of information as well as an opportunity to exchange ideas.

You may recall the connection with Norway’s Barbara Anna Zielonka in a global digital storytelling project; I told her that because of time zones, it might be tricky for our students to Skype or use Google Hangouts on Air, in real time. She responded saying not to worry because her students were happy to connect with ours from home.

Barbara said:

Skype sessions are amazing. My students are not used to homework, but when I say that their task is to talk to other students who live abroad in the evening or during the weekend, they are extremely happy. I will ask everyone to download Skype on their computers and share their nicknames with you. It will be fun.

I love everything about her response, but when I shared it with my daughters and their friends who were visiting our house at the time, they were tentative about the idea of connecting with other students from home. One girl actually said, “Wouldn’t that be creepy?” I couldn’t help but think of the fact that in North America, learning with others in another country isn’t something our parents — or even our students — might readily accept as the norm. I wonder if I had asked students to connect with the students from Norway from their homes if I would have had to fill out waivers or get multiple levels of permission, when this is such a commonplace occurrence for them. We can learn much from our friends from Norway on the value of connecting students to one another.

Integrating video-conferencing and live-streaming apps into our classrooms can be an incredible way to bring in authentic learning opportunities, with the ultimate goal of teaching students they can reach out to anyone in the world who could help them solve a problem, at any time in their lives.

Periscope is a live-stream app (available for Apple iOS and Android smartphones) that provides opportunities for digital leadership if you think creatively and positively about the possibilities. When Periscope first came out, a principal approached me asking how we could block it because he was afraid students would use the app for nefarious reasons. While this is definitely possible (as I’ve said before, any and every social media tool can be used that way), once I shared some ideas for how he and his faculty could use Periscope for learning

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