If I’m being honest, the power of social media scares me. Especially when you see how much children know and do on websites.
Do not get me wrong, the power that social media has is also fantastic. It means that pupils can connect and learn through several different web sites.
I keep going back and forth with whether I want to have two separate social media accounts for the personal me and the professional me or whether I will just monitor my one account. At the moment, I think that it would be more work if you had two different social media accounts. However, having one social media account for personal and professional purposes has its challenges.
I think the best way to marry the professional and the personal you on social media is to consistently monitor your privacy settings and make sure that you do not post anything that can get you into trouble at a later date. I am quite private with my social media accounts already and have my Twitter and Facebook page very private and I have to accept people that ask to follow me or see my page. I think my Facebook will always be for my friends and family only where I will be very careful with anything I post on that page and have it so that pupils cannot find me. Twitter is a little different. I don’t use Twitter a lot but I feel like it can be good for following educational hashtags that you might want your pupils to see. I think having a school Twitter page is a great idea as the pupils can then all follow it and post things onto it, as well as the teachers. If the teachers have a page with a different name that cannot be traced to them then the pupils would never know who is posting what.
Social media can be seen in positive and negative lights. I feel like using it within the classroom and engaging with pupils on it for educational purposes is an excellent use of the sites. However, I think that we also need to make sure that we are educating our pupils on the dangers of social media without making them scared to use