3143. On Using the Internet in the Classroom



If you’re not integrating social media into your class, you’re ignoring one of the most powerful forms of literacy in the world today.
I copied that quote a couple days ago. I’ve got to admit I’m not a digital native, first premise. For I was born in 1969 (!). I was born when computers were being made smaller for the trips to the Moon (!). Up to then a computer might take up a whole room (!).
Anyway I should listen to that quote and I want to.
A second premise should be that we’ve got to boost our students into the social media in the classroom too. Also by taking into account that in some way we teachers should filter the social media contents our students are about to watch in the Web. Because they should focus on the topics to search about.
I was going to write about the consequences of that quote of the beginning of this article, but you may be (for sure!) younger than me and may be integrating your students into the social media. Up to today what I do with my adult students regarding the new technologies is making them look up some word in an online dictionary in their smartphones, and a bit else. What to do then?
By the way I shouldn’t say “new technologies” when most of you readers may be using them since you were conscious as young children. It’d be different if I had kids in my classes – currently I teach grown-ups, except in summer, when I assist at English-language camps for boys. Well, I’ve got to stop here. On next post I’ll try to write a bit more on this issue: social media as the way of getting into modern literacy. / Photo from: www pinterest com. The picture is a nice illustration.

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