How to use social media in the classroom

Today’s educators have a love-hate relationship with social media. They recognize that five-year-olds know how to use tablets better than their parents and that many kids have smartphones by the time they are 12. Digital natives live and breathe on social media platforms, sending messages and posting pictures and videos almost constantly. In fact, a recent CNN study on social media and teens found that among the 8th-graders surveyed, the heaviest social media users check their feeds up to 100 times a day.

A new generation of education apps is gaining traction in the classroom by combining the powerful features of social media with a focus on helping teachers. Some of the most successful ones include Seesaw, ClassDojo, and Flipgrid. By analyzing what they do well and how they improve the learning experience, we can get a better sense of what it takes to harness the power of social in education.

3 social media platforms for teachers to try
1. Seesaw uses a social media-like platform to record and organize students’ work; at its center is the concept of a digital portfolio. Students record their work in blog-like posts, and the app organizes their portfolio of work by subject area, project, or class. Students can create posts by adding videos, recording audio notes, and using drawing or caption tools to comment on what they are showing. By encouraging students to comment on the work in their Seesaw portfolio, teachers gain insight into their learning process in a way they could not by simply viewing the finished product.…Read More

No-holds-barred interview: The need for truth in education!

People know Dr. Steve Perry from his education thought leadership, his Capital Preparatory Schools system and his talent to tell his personal stories in education.

Outspoken and often controversial, Dr. Perry’s voice is widely respected by grassroots community members, education experts and even A-list celebrities.

In this no-holds-barred interview, Dr. Perry talks about the teachers’ unions, school choice and the need for an honest discussion in the media about education.…Read More

9 ways Facebook changed how we talk

“I’m gonna tag you in this hideous photo and then unfriend you if you don’t stop oversharing and poking me.” If you said this to someone 10 years ago, they’d look at you like you were speaking Klingon, CNN reports. Nowadays, you just sound like an active user of social media. This is how much Facebook has changed how we talk. In the decade since its birth in February 2004, the social network has introduced numerous terms and phrases to the language of modern life. Most are common words that Facebook refitted with new meanings. Some have stuck, while others have been forgotten. A few have even been recognized by dictionaries as official pieces of the 21st century lexicon.

Here are nine of the most memorable…

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The hottest job skill is…

The Army, NYPD and State Department can’t get enough workers with this job skill, CNN reports. Neither can Fortune 500 companies, hospitals, local courts and schools. What is it? Fluency in a foreign language. Translators and interpreters are expected to be one of the 15 fastest growing occupations in the nation, according to the Department of Labor. Roughly 25,000 jobs are expected to open up for interpreters (who focus on spoken language) and translators (who focus on written language), between 2010 and 2020, the Department of Labor estimates. That represents 42% growth for the field and does not include the military, which is also recruiting ferociously for more people. In the last week alone, roughly 12,000 jobs posted on Indeed.com included the word “bilingual.” Amazon, for example, wants to hire a Brazilian Portuguese translator for its customer service team in Seattle. Apple is hiring technical translators who speak Korean, Mexican Spanish and Chinese…

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eReaders may help people with dyslexia

CNN reports: People with dyslexia may have an easier time reading on an eReader than using traditional paper, a new study published today in the journal PLOS One suggests. Researchers say the idea for the study came out of anecdotal reports they were hearing from dyslexics who said they never read for pleasure before smartphones and eReaders enabled them to start. “They said it was a much more comfortable experience,” said Jenny Thomason, a study author who worked at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education at the time. “We wanted to take a closer look.”

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Study: U.S. mobile web use has doubled since 2009

CNN reports: When your smartphone makes it so easy to connect to the internet, why bother firing up a clunky desktop or laptop computer? Two-thirds of cell-phone owning Americans use their phones to surf the Web and check e-mail, according to the latest study from the Pew internet & American Life Project. That’s double the amount from 2009, when only 31% of people said they used their phones to go online. For a growing segment of people, phones aren’t just a secondary way to check the news or send off a quick e-mail. According to Pew, 21% of phone owners use their devices as their primary way of accessing the internet, more than PCs and tablets…

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Report: Apple will reveal new iPhone next month

Apple will unveil the latest version of its iPhone on September 10, according to a new report, CNN reports. The news comes from All Things D, the Wall Street Journal-affiliated tech blog that has a solid track record for reporting inside Apple information. Apple is believed to be working on a smartwatch and a TV, but neither of those products are expected to be ready for rollout at next month’s event. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Likely to be called either the iPhone 6 or iPhone 5S, the phone’s release date would fit the schedule Apple has established since the first iPhone was released in 2007…

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Apple found to have conspired to raise eBook prices

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Apple conspired to raise the prices of eBooks. The eBook publishers at issue — CBS’s Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Pearson’s Penguin Group, Macmillan and News Corp.’s HarperCollins — settled and didn’t go to trial. Apple held out, and the U.S. Department of Justice brought a civil antitrust suit against the company in 2012. The DOJ alleged that Apple and the publishers engaged in a “conspiracy” to team up against Amazon and fix the price of eBooks — and Apple was the ringleader of the deal…

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Google exec to girls: Tech needs you

Dear Girls of the World, The technology industry needs you, CNN reports. Around the world, people are watching movies on laptops, buying goods online and connecting with friends and family through mobile devices. All of these experiences are powered by technology, created by people just like you. Girls of the world, the tech industry is waiting for you. The skills you learn in your math and sciences classes today are the foundation for building technology that will touch nearly every aspect of our lives in the future — your future…

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High-school teen builds one-man submarine

The submarine’s body may be constructed from drainage pipes and the hatch from a recycled skylight, but according to its 18-year-old inventor, this single-person U-boat can plunge to a depth of 30 feet and has already completed three successful dives, CNN reports. The Nautilus took high school inventor Justin Beckerman just six months and $2,000 to put together — all while keeping on top of his homework. The submarine has ballast tanks to maintain its depth and equilibrium; air vents that bring oxygen down from the surface; a functioning PA and a range of emergency systems including back-up batteries, a siren, strobe lights, a breathing apparatus and a pump to fight leaks…

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‘New tradition’ for Georgia students: Their first racially integrated prom

As Quanesha Wallace remembers, it was around this time last year when the idea first came up at Wilcox County High School, CNN reports. It was nothing big, just chatter about prom, school, what comes next, what they’d change. If things were different, someone said, we’d all go to the same prom. For as long as anyone could remember, students in their South Georgia community went to separate proms, and homecoming dances, too. White students from Wilcox County attend one. Black students, another. They’re private events organized by parents and students, not the school district. Schools have long been desegregated, but in Wilcox County, the dances never changed…

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