Theme one: Social media

Students teams have completed working on social media, the first theme of our project. Students were divided in five groups and were given five units - guidelines to follow, material to work and investigate and finally reflect on. Below you may read some of the questions students were faced and the slides they were provided to work with.

• Unit 1: What is social media? In this unit students had to explore some of the popular types of social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and then try to find what are their differences and/or similarities. They were also proposed to watch a couple of recommended videos and write what most surprised them and/or what is their opinion. Finally they were invited to check out http://mystarbucksidea.force.com for some interesting practice ideas and discuss them with their classmates. They all had to share their findings with their Comenius classmates. Here are the slides of Unit 1.

• Unit 2: School policies. Working on this unit students had to find their school website, whether it embraces any types of social media to it and if it hosts webpages in other languages than Greek. In order to get to know their classmates from abroad they were proposed to start at magicteachersthess.blogspot.gr and then try to locate and access their Comenius classmates school websites reporting if these websites provide a good idea of how their school work. They also had to access two educatioanl websites: 1) http://edubuzz.org/about/ and share with their classmates what strikes them most about it and 2) Saltash.net Community College in Cornwall website and discuss why this is a very progressive in social media school. So should or shouldn’t set up a school social media account and which social media account would you suggest for their school and why. Here are the slides of Unit 2.
• Unit 3: Pedagogical aspects. Students were invited to watch a short video on education reform and discuss in which ways it challenges the traditional models of education. Another issue to explore was cultural relevance. Based on the hypothesis that “young people are engaged when they are learning about things or with things that they can relate to or that are relevant to them”, students should give examples of the above statement from their own experience and share them on their blogs. Real-time data is a hot topic in social media so they were invited to share some ways of using Twitter in their classrooms. Collaboration may be achieved by using Google Apps for Education and Google Plus tools to assist with learning and teaching. Finally students were invited to investigate in which ways can blogs and YouTube channels provide an audience for student’s work. Here are the slides of Unit 3.
• Unit 4: Internet safety and responsible use. The main issues discussed in this unit were privacy and digital footprints. Students were invited to comment on the following statements: “Not only pupils, but also teachers need to think before they post” and “Schools should teach pupils how to analyse and evaluate the reliability of online information, how to reference the sources they use, and how to safeguard one’s privacy when using social media”. Here are the slides of Unit 4.
• Unit 5: Challenges to adoption. In this unit students had to consider what is a school social media policy and discuss if it is necessary for their school. They were also invited to work in teams to create a stand-alone policy with things/rules to include, consider some technical challenges of social media adoption and locate which ICT organisations cooperate with schools for Internet safety. Here are the slides of Unit 5.

All conclusions were sent to MAGIC 1 team that has to summarise them and upload them on their blog.

The Dark Side of the Moon

While in Tilburg the Comenius teams followed three interesting workshops. One of them was about the "Dark Side of the Moon", the  French mockumentary by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick. It features some surprising guest appearances, most notably by Donald Rumsfeld, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Vernon Walters, Buzz Aldrin and Stanley Kubrick's widow, Christiane Kubrick.

While watching the documentaire students were invited to complete a work sheet and reflect on what they watched.

Social media networking (part 3)

Today our Comenius team met and discussed some new units to study for social media networking. In particular all five teams (magic1, magic2, etc.) will have to access their corresponding work sheets, watch some videos, answer some questions discuss their findings and share them on our blogs and facebook Comenius group.



The activity sheets corresponding to the 5 units* are the following:

• MAGIC 1: Unit 1. What is Social Media?
• MAGIC 2: Unit 2. School policies
• MAGIC 3: Unit 3. Pedagogical principles
• MAGIC 4: Unit 4. Internet safety and responsible use
• MAGIC 5: Unit 5. Challenges to adoption

As we are getting ready for our trip to the Netherlands, we set our teams to work for our school, city and country presentations.

*Parts of the activity sheets originate from the study of the "Challenges and opportunities for schools and teachers in a digital world. Lessons learned from the 2012 SMILE action research project".

Social media networking (part 2)

The second part of the meeting on the 22nd of October started with the completion of an activity sheet. Students worked in teams again and discussed and wrote down their answers to the following questions:

1. Why do people share the information they put on social media networks?
2. Have you ever felt deceived by anything you have seen or read on these sites?
3. Have you ever had a bad experience because of something you, or someone else, posted on one of these social media networks?  If so, what?
4. What tips would you give to someone who is just starting to use these networks now?

Then we all watched the following first two parts of  an american documentary about teenagers and the Internet and discussed what mostly impressed us.

We ended our meeting by testing the famous Cups song.

Social media networking (part 1)

On Tuesday October the 22nd our team had another meeting. We welcomed our students with an exercise of self esteem in order to realise the importance of both having someone to trust and get support from when needed. We then discussed in teams about friendships in real life and in the digital world. That was a kind of introduction to start working on an online questionnaire about sharing on social media networks.

The questions and students teams answers in word clouds were the following:

 Discuss with your friends and write down as many social media networks as possible.

Which social media networks do you think are the most popular in Greece?

Do you limit the access other people have to certain parts of your profile?

Yes	2	40%
No	3	60%

What part of information do you keep more private?

Who do you limit from your private information?

What sort of personal information do you put on these sites?

Birthday	1	20%
Real friends	2	40%
School progress information	0	0%
Personal affairs	1	20%
Entertainment	0	0%
Gossiping	1	20%
Memories	0	0%
Other	0	0%

How much of the information you find on social media networks do you think is "real"?

1	0	0%
2	0	0%
3	4	80%
4	1	20%
5	0	0%

Have you ever said, posted or done anything on one of these sites that you regret?

Yes	2	40%
No	3	60%

The findings were discussed and shared with all students.