DD3: Leveraging Social Media and Message Boards

Digital Demo 3 taught me about how I can facilitate a discussion with my real students in the future. I enjoyed this assignment because discussion forums allow students to go back if needed to view the forum and use it as a resource. Digital Demo 3 helped me realize that apps like Facebook and twitter could actually be used in a classroom setting. When I was in high school, all these social media websites were blocked, so students could not access them while at school. Due to this, I never really thought to correlate social media websites with learning. However, after creating a discussion forum on Facebook, I realized that this could be an amazing learning opportunity for my future students. I like the idea of allowing students to go on Facebook to facilitate the discussion because I feel like this motivates them to do the work. Most students enjoy participating in social media websites like Facebook, so when you add a homework assignment to the website they are already going to be signing on to, I feel like it motivates them to have a desire to do the work. They are already signed on, so they might as well complete the assignment before they sign off.

For Digital Demo 3, I decided to create a group named Endangered Species where I post a new place in the world where some endangered species live. I provided the students with a website that contains different species in the place I assigned for the week. For the first week, the assigned place was the Eastern Himalayas. The students would click on the place and choose an endangered animal that they are interested to learn more about. They would answer a few questions about the animal and ask the class a question as well. This is how the discussions will begin every week. I also like this discussion group because students have the opportunity to ask questions by posting even when they are no longer in the classroom setting. This way, they have access to their teacher as well as their classmates all the time, which can be a very helpful resource to them (Click image below for discussion board).