Symbaloo and Pinterest

This week for my class, I was working with the social media page, Pinterest.  My Pinterest is used mostly to save craft and home project ideas, but I follow many posts that are related to education.  Lot's of funny posts too.  I have four boards related to education, mostly different resources for Science.

I also created a Symbaloo.  My Symbaloo has lots of Google Links, of course. I plan on adding documents to each of the Google Docs that I use the most.  I now have this as my opening a page when I open up Google Chrome.  I could see the endless other options though.  A Symbaloo could easily house all of the great resources that students could use during the course a unit of study to learn from.  Students could also make their own Symbaloo of the different sites that they would like to use.  It is very visual and easy for students to use.

As I highlight these two tools and reflect on many others, I can't help but think about all of the great tools that students and teachers can use.  Social media websites are definitely among those great tools, but there is much discussion about the level that social media should play in our educational system.  I have seen a school district open to social media and one that blocks and definitely did not encourage social media use.  In my four years in a district that shows digital citizenship is a necessary skill for the 21st century, I have only encountered one or two situations where students inappropriately used social media where it affected the school setting.  I cannot even start to explain all of the great experiences that I have had with parents, students, and other educators on social media.  Of course, I have some rules that I follow to help create a professional presence online.

1.  Use a professional account to interact with students and parents.
2.  Only post pictures of students who have accounts that follow the professional account with that student's permission.
3.  Post only when students are not in the room to show full attention to the students.
4.  All privacy settings are stripped away with no way to direct message or hide any posts from others maintaining complete transparency.
5.  Receive e-mail each time a post is made in case the page is hacked.
6.  Share the username and password with administrators and colleagues if necessary.

Of course, your school district may have other expectations and it is very important to know all of your districts policies related to social media.  Social media is great, but not so great to put your job in jeopardy!