My First Post

Hello digital world! My name is Elizabeth but to the 950 students I see a week, I’m known as Miss James. I currently teach S.T.E.A.M. for the elementary (kindergarten to fifth grade) students in my district. For those of you who are unfamiliar with S.T.E.A.M. it stands for science, technology, engineering, art and math.  A typical day for me is seeing a couple classes of all six grades and teaching them a fun and creative project that explores the concepts of science, technology, engineering and math.

Aside from teaching, I am pursuing my master’s degree in art education with a K-12 Licensure from the University of Akron. I graduated from Baldwin Wallace University with a bachelor’s of science in early childhood education with the 4-5 endorsement. Changing my major eight times before becoming an education major actually prepared me to teach S.T.E.A.M. My previous majors included forensic science, digital media, an art minor, and a couple others. The main three I listed provided me with introductory classes in forensic science, two-dimensional design, drawing and computer science, all of which I adapt and include in many of my lessons.

Beyond a classroom, you can find me on the soccer field. I coach U-10 girls’ soccer, mostly year round. When I’m not coaching, I’m playing on my own adult league. I am very passionate about soccer. It has been a part of my life since the young age of 3. I hope to instill the same love for the sport in all of my girls through coaching them. I would love to see them continue their soccer journey through high school and even beyond.

Now that you know a little bit about me, let’s talk about social media in the classroom and outside the classroom. First I will tell you about the social media I use. As of now, I don’t use much social media in my class but I find Weebly and Google Classroom to be great tools that enhance my teaching and parent communication. Weebly is a blog site that many educators use. I use it as a way to keep my parents informed of what their children are doing in my class and to give parents an opportunity to volunteer their time to help with different special events. I also use Weebly as a landing site for my students, so they can find different links we use in class, without having to type in a long URL.

Google classroom is another great tool that I use in my classroom. Now that I have netbooks instead of Chromebooks, I will admit I do not use it as much as I did last year. It is hard for elementary students to type in their full email rather than just their username, a requirement of a Netbook over a Chromebook.

In my personal life, I am constant user of Pinterest and Snapchat. I also have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, I use these sparingly. Pinterest gives me so many ideas, from classroom management, to lessons and even what to make for dinner. It has such a variety that I can always find something new to add to my board. Snapchat I enjoy because I live a great distance from many of my friends and family, this app lets us see each other briefly without having to block out a chunk of time for a video chat.

Now, let’s go back to social media in the classroom. At 25, I am not far removed from the teenagers in high school today. I also grew up while technology was beginning to take over the world. I remember when the original social media of Myspace came out and AOL Instant Messenger. As a teenager, many of my social interactions with my peers would end with a conversation about either our away statuses on “AIM” (AOL Instant messenger) or what we saw someone post on Myspace. After reading “A Teenager’s View on Social Media” from the blog Backchannel, I have found that teenagers still have the same mindset about social media, they just have more options. Coming from an elementary teacher’s perspective, what the author says about his peers using Instagram above everything else is also true about elementary aged students. I hear many of my students talking about their Instagram accounts. another popular account for them, according to the author, is Snapchat.

As an educator, I feel that it is important to be familiar with social media. Being informed about the different apps and websites available increases my app database but also helps me to monitor appropriate conversations and content in my classroom. In another blogpost, “My FavoriteTeacher’s Use Social Media: A Student Perspective” written by Katie Benmar from the blog Education Week, she talks about how her attention is much better on a teacher who uses SMART Boards or allows them to use their social media in class to enhance their learning, because chances are if they are not paying attention they are already on their social media anyway. I agree with this statement. I have a very short attention span, I can easily lose focus and get caught up in something else, unless I have a task or am watching something that is attention grabbing, like a new technology. The only downfall of using my own social media in class as a student would be that with my short attention span I could easily get distracted by the other things that are not related to the lesson showing up in my newsfeed. I feel that many students can relate to this problem, so instead of enhancing a lesson with social media, it has actually made the students even more distracted.

I feel that when using social media it needs to be a school specific or class specific source, rather than using a personal account. With a strictly school account, it limits the distractions for students and also provides a safer learning environment. Of course, there are still going to be students who abuse their privilege of using social media in class, this is where knowing about the social media your class is using is beneficial.