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Social Networking
Twitter is a social networking tool that I have used, but have never really understood
the true potential as a collaboration and professional learning tool for educators. My
experience with it is to periodically post a personalized learning activity my students
are creating or to post a picture from a field trip we had attended earlier that day. I
now understand the great potential twitter has as an excellent professional learning
tool for educators. Twitter allows teachers to be able to participate in on-line chats that
are relevant to what they are looking to find more information on, to find and share
resources on best practices, or even a resource for differentiation strategies geared
toward specific student populations (Solomon and Schrum, 2014). I very much feel this
is an excellent tool for high school students, even more so than middle school, who
tend to already be using it. This tool limits the characters that a user may utilize and
forces them to create a tweet or message that includes only the most important
factors. This would be very useful with ESL students and learners who struggle with
writing as it is not so intimidating to write a much more limited response.
Instagram is another social networking tool that I do want to use more with my
own students. As I teach middle school, most of my students use this as one of
their social networking applications. However, and interesting to note, my
generation tends to use Facebook more often. It is also what I am most
comfortable with and what I primarily use in my personal life to communicate
with friends and family and as a tool for joining groups that I relate to or that I
wish to find more information on. This information can be in regard to travel,
college info for my daughter, or social action.
Digital Divide
The article on Education Equity and the Digital Divide was very interesting and allowed me to see certain aspects of this
concept in greater detail. The middle school that I teach at, Holcomb Bridge Middle School, is currently going through its
third year of 1:1. We are a very diverse Title I school. We have a high percentage of ESL, transient, and students who
qualify for free and reduced lunch. The socio-economic and cultural divide is great, and many of the factors that may
naturally affect a school, fortunately have not affected us due to grants we have received over the past couple of years
since transitioning to 1:1. Our school provides iPads to each student along with a 5GB per month data package provided
by Digital Promise and Verizon. However, and as I am quite aware, there are great discrepancies in digital equity even
among the schools within my county.
The Digital Divide (Gorski, 2005) article was very informative, and the section I found most relevant to my particular
school’s situation was the discussion on multicultural education. I very much agree with the comment that multicultural
education should replace an equality orientation. This concept includes the transfer from a specific one group
domination to a multicultural education that is broader, more contextualized and now fully represents our global society
(Gorski, 2005). As I read through the article, I kept referring to the fact that this was written over ten years ago and it is
still such a hot topic in education and reform. I am concerned that there is so much inequity within schools and school
systems for our students, allowing for unfair advantages. A concept that I often think about and wish would change in
regard to the free and unlimited access to the internet. So many doors and opportunities would be opened if this was
permitted.
Strategies I could utilize to ensure equitable access to digital tools and resources include my actively participating and
become involved in professional learning networks that are geared toward my multi-cultural and diverse learners. The
discussions and resources I could gather from these PLN’s would enable me to keep updated on the newest technologies
for my students and also allow me to collaborate with educators outside of my school and district (Sheninger, 2014).
Furthermore, as I am currently involved on my school’s Personalized Learning Leadership Team, I could promote this
concept with my colleagues within our school’s grade level meetings. At these meetings, I could discuss the benefits of
PLN’s and the various forms they are able to take. The end result would be to give teachers an additional resource while
allowing them the opportunity to become more cognoscente of strategies and tools available for all of their learners.
This, in the end, will help to lessen the digital divide while also ensuring equal access for all of our students.
Gorski, P. (2005). Education equity and the digital divide. AACE Journal, 13(1), 3-45.
Sheninger, E., & Zhao, Y. (2014). Digital leadership: changing paradigms for changing times. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin,
a SAGE company.
Solomon, G. and Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 how-to for educators (2nd ed.). International Society for Technology in
Education.