Times have changed from the way we communicate, learn, do business and even work. In the 21^st century, technology has increased rapidly, and social media has developed everywhere around the world. Nowadays everyone uses some type of social media platform; with Facebook, snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok, it very easy to get glued on one of those platforms. This is why it’s important that educators have some type of knowledge on how use social media and how to incorporate them into their classrooms. For this weekly reading, I read some articles that gave tips on how to use social media with learning. 

In the article called “Social Media and eLearning: How to Improve Formal Learning with Social Media”, I learned it is to your advantage to have a good comprehensive strategy to successfully engage social media into your classroom. Another couple of things that I learned from that article is that it is very important to show your students your rules and expectations that you have for them and avoid strong issues that might cause any problems in your classroom 

Arshavskiy (2018). It is important for educators to know which students are familiar with social media so you can have an idea on who can navigate content. This way you can help the students who are having trouble access media content. Privacy is also a main factor when working with students, not every student is willing to share their opinions, building the trust with the students is crucial Arshavskiy (2018). 

Moving on, the other article that I read was called, “7 Tips to Create Responsive Design for Mobile Learning”. I really enjoyed this article because it gives the reader key points to keep the students interested in the content a teacher is trying to provide. This is all done by selecting friendly mobile layouts, fonts, focusing on keyboard takeaways navigation, which should be a priority, and also text that is an ideal screen size and preview your content Pappas (2018). I think this is important because you want to grasp the student’s interest to the content you’re trying to provide. 

The last thing I found interesting is how the brain works. In the article I read called “3 Cognitive Theories for Transforming Learning”, I learned that the brain uses strategies which makes working from memory more effective. The strategies that the brain uses are rehearsal and chunky. Basically, rehearsal just means repetition of the information and chunky involves breaking down the information into smaller pieces. An example I would like to use for rehearsal is when you are trying to learn a spelling word, saying and writing down the word is simply working on your repetition. When it comes to chucky the example that I want to use is breaking down the spelling words into chunks of groups. For instance, breaking down the word into staircase spelling. Keep in mind that when students are learning, the brain uses three steps which are accretion, tuning, and restructuring. Accretion is when new information is being added to the schema. Tuning is altering existing schema so it can become more consistent with experience, and restructuring is just replacing the old schema to the new schema Spencer (2018). The article, “3 Cognitive Theories for Transforming Learning”, also talks about how instructional designers can use different techniques to enhance learning. Some examples the article mentions are mapping, organizers, comparing new information, and mnemonic devices Spencer (2018). The article also provided me with useful information that I can use for later on. 

All the articles that I read have useful information that will help guide me as an educator in the journey that I am taking. I would still like to learn more on the topics the articles provided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Arskavskiy, M. (2018, April 5). Social Media And eLearning: How To Improve Formal Learning With Social Media. E-Learning Industry.https://elearningindustry.com/improve-formal-learning-with-social-media-social-media-elearning

 

Pappas, C. (2018, December 26). 7 Tips To Create Responsive Design for Mobile Learning. E-Learning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/7-tips-create-responsive-design-mobile-learning

 

 

Spencer, S. V. T. (2018, March 21). 3 cognitive theories for transforming learning. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/transforming-learning-3-cognitive-theories

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