Final Reflection and Digital Badges

Why Social Media Matters.  I was a bit surprised as I read about the authors and realized they weren’t super young people. I love that they are a bit older, and have embraced technology in the way they have. They have had a lot of success, enough success that they were able to write a great book on their experiences.  I like the idea of using social media for the purpose of improving learning among students as well as teachers.

(this is NOT what the authors looked like, well most of the time anyway!)

I feel like this book is something I will refer to time and again, especially as I have the opportunities to do some training in my building, with teachers who are seasoned, and who may think they are “too old” to get in the game! This is a great

A point they made in the book, that I will remember was to use a blog in the classroom and eventually school-wide, is to track my readership. I did this regularly when I was a very involved blogger, I feel like this is important in a school blog as it will help me get a feel for who is using the blog and in a way gave me an idea of how successful it is, and how much it is being used.

As for Facebook, I loved the ideas they share in the book on ways to engage the readers, introducing staff members, event reminders, details about policy decisions, entertaining, showcasing students, sports updates, also polls, nominations for awards.  I’ve seen some of these things done on Facebook pages for school, this is a great list of ideas to remember and ways to keep it fresh!

I also loved the section on Twitter and good and bad tweets! LOVE it, being really new to the Twitter scene this is super helpful to me! My goal is to have people tweet about what I write on my blog! (someday!)

I like the focus staying on the reasons we are doing the work we are.  We need to keep the goal in mind.  With so many options available to us, it may be tempting to get sidetracked.  We need to really focus on what we are doing and why we are doing it. They refer to the Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS) referring to getting sidetracked to the latest and greatest gadgets. (Like I get distracted on Canva... I LOVE that site!)

I am really excited about all that we have learned, and looking forward to implementing more technology into our school. There is no time like the present! We were all really lucky to have this class and to learn so much about these digital tools! We all need our own digital badges for the experts we have become!

Here is your digital badge.. made with Canva! ;)