Social Media in the Classroom (Twitter & Facebook)

There can be both negative and positive outcomes for using social media in the classroom.  When it comes to Facebook and Twitter, I think both can be very useful in the classroom depending on how you use them.  I have personally used Facebook to complete many group projects.  I love using the group chat which allows you to talk to everyone in it, lets you see who has read the messages, and even lets you share documents and pictures. I also really like the groups page which is very helpful for study groups and things like clubs/organizations.  I have personally have used them for a Japanese exchange group (pictures bellow).  The groups page also lets you post pictures and send attachments.  The group pages go even further and let you make polls, make events, and it even lets you make it public, unless you want to keep it private.  I find these group pages very beneficial and it makes it very easy to keep in contact with people.  I am not really familiar with twitter for me to say how it can or cannot be used in the classroom.  I do have an account, but I was never able to use it enough to really know its features.  However, one thing I was able to learn through my sister (a big user of twitter) was that teachers and administrates use it to give announcement and other school news.  Most twitter accounts through the school are used to congratulate school teams, advertise school events, and to give important updates, such as school getting cancelled due to bad weather. The biggest issue with both twitter and Facebook is that it can give access to students (and perhaps the teacher) to each others personal life that some may not want to share.  To solve this, teachers in the past have asked students to make a what they call a "Professional" Facebook or Twitter account (my sister did this through her high school sociology class).  By making this professional account, students where able to use Facebook/Twitter freely with their classmates without over stepping any boundaries.  In my future classroom, if I could find another tool aside from social media, I would probably would try to use said tool depending and school and district policies.  If Social media is not frown upon and allowed to be used in the district and the school, I would definitely try and use the Facebook group pages to keep classes connected as well as use the a Twitter account to keep everyone updated.

 Example of a Facebook Group page: