The journey of integrating social media and apps in your classroom
FollowWe developed our 6 steps pedagogy of blended learning as a way to support the integration of social media and apps in lessons. The integration of social media and apps often happens nowadays though the use of tablets. The last few years we co-created with our customers a way of working with tablets using the 6 steps pedagogy of blended learning.
In our journey with schools we train teachers in using social media and apps with their students using this pedagogy based on this 6 steps blended pedagogy. In this article we provide an example as to how this is done.
At the start of the journey, the competence level of teachers concerning social media and ICT is checked by using an online scan and a telephone interview. At the same time we ask our participants their own learning question. What do they want to learn, what will define their level of satisfaction at the end of the course? These learning questions differ from getting to know which apps are available and how can I work with just a few tablets? How do I organise my classroom and how do I measure results using apps?
In the first face-to-face meeting, everybody gets together and defines their own goal for development. Individual as well as collective goals are set, so schools’ general interests are also covered.
The second step is to gather information and make a selection. Participants are facilitated by an APP-discovery session: they will get to know a few apps and start using these on a tablet right away, both as individuals as well as in groups. They also get some insight in how and where to find appropriate apps for their own classrooms. After this face-to-face session, teachers start experimenting in their own classroom. To make sure participants share their enthusiasm and ask questions, a learning platform is available to enable them to keep in touch and help one another. By doing so they use the learning platform to share ideas and to ask questions.
In the next phase participants prepare a lesson based on the 6 steps blended pedagogy and share this with their colleagues using the learning platform. This is called learning interaction: important elements are sharing, working together, learning together and creating together. Of course, after preparing this lesson, the best way to see if it works is to actually use it and watch the reaction of the class. If possible participants of the course observe each other.
After this process of creating and executing a lesson, a meeting is arranged in which experiences are shared by participants. Presentations show what apps and social media have been used and which didactical choices were made. Feedback during this meeting is very important. Based on this last session, a didactical repertoire for the school in total is created.