David Shibley

Utilizing Social Media in the Social Studies Classroom

About me

Hello, my name is David Shibley. I went to SUNY Oneonta for degrees in Adolescent Education in Social Studies and History. I have always enjoyed using technology to create interactive and engaging lesson plans. As a result, I am pursuing a graduate degree in CDIT at SUNY Albany. I currently work in Gloversville Enlarged School District as a substitute teacher. I have had the pleasure of doing a long term position helping the New York State Teacher of the Year for 2015. During this time, I was able to take our students on a trip to Washington DC. The picture are my students and me. I am the second from the left.

My Topic/Purpose

Social media has had a profound impact on our lives today. We have substantially more access to information thanks to social media. Despite this, most students do not view social media sites as educational tools and schools themselves may ban them because of this. This course is designed to examine the educational benefits of social media in the social studies classroom. In this course participants develop a "social network" for famous historical figures during a section of history as a final project to demonstrate their knowledge of using social media in an educational context. The two primary modes of doing this is through Facebook and Twitter. If those are banned Fakebook is a nice educational alternative. A major note is that the instructor should make sure to enforce any the kind of language used. Some topics may be graphic in nature and as a result this may be best for a Fakebook account.

Objectives

• The learners will be able to discuss and evaluate the strengths of social media in the classroom.
• The learners will be able to facilitate the design of a "Social Network" for their students.
• The learners will be able to design a form of evaluation for the social networks the students create.

Needs Assessment

Instructional Problem Students in high school often have a hard time connecting important individuals, groups and nations together. This will be detrimental to them during their regents exam as that is often the topic of one of the 2 essays questions. Students need to be able to make connections.

Solution Students will create a social network demonstrating their knowledge of a certain group or individual. They will then proceed to create a network with other pages built by other students to show how certain individuals reacted with one another during this time period. This will demonstrate the connections that may be valuable to them later on.

Analysis of the Learner and Context

Learner Analysis The learners will comprise of K-12 teachers primarily in the Social Studies field. The lesson is possible to adopt to different practices, but will be given in the context of a Social Studies perspective. The class will also be examining the power of social media on society today. These are all areas that can relate directly to the Social Studies curriculum. The learners should also have some familiarity with social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The learners will be introduced to alternate site if those are blocked by their school district.

Context of Instruction Students will be taking the class through the wiki page. As a result, the class will be asynchronous and students will be able to start and complete the class at their own progress. They have a number of ways to self reflect on the material they are learning. This can also act as a way to help the learners to prepare to model a similar lesson plan for their students.

Performance Objectives

Once the students have completed this course they will be able to:

• Identify impacts social media has on society today
• Utilize social media pages Twitter, Facebook and Fakebook in the classroom.
• Create a Social Media page dedicated a famous historic individual
• Facilitate students being able to make connections between historical figures and groups by utilizing social media.

Task Analysis

Prerequisites

• Learners should be familiar with the Social Studies Standard and Common Core Standards
• Learners should be able to operate a computer
• Learners should be familiar with operating social media pages(Facebook and Twitter) with basic understanding

References and Resources

Bidwell, A. (2014, January 17). Check Out That Selfie: How to Use Social Media in the Classroom. Retrieved November 15, 2015, from http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/17/check-out-that-selfie-how-to-use-social-media-in-the-classroom

David, V. (2015, February 19). A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom. Retrieved November 15, 2015, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/guidebook-social-media-in-classroom-vicki-davis

Leicht, G., & Goble, D. (2014, October 1). Should teachers be using social media in the classroom? Retrieved November 15, 2015, from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/social-media-valuable-tool-teachers/

Thielman, S. (2015, November 4). Facebook now averages over one billion users a day. Retrieved November 15, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/04/facebook-one-billion-users