PRACTICE- PROFESSIONAL ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS

PRACTICE - Professional Online Social Networks

Teaching Visual Arts requires a predominate use of visual mostly from the media apart from books and catalogues. The vast amounts of digital resources has grown in the last decade with every possible information being available at our finger tips. This is also equally accessible by the learners and hence a common platform became necessary that could be shared with me and my students. As creative thought can just not only happen in the classroom but in places that are beyond class/school time.

My use of Facebook as a social network for my design student’s remains as the most inspiring and affective form of communication to learn. The exchange of ideas and the timely sharing of resources has been a very significant form of learning in both our learnings. It was beneficial to my learners as they found timely help with ideas outside school hours. As FB is the most common social networking system, it has become easy to reach my learners to pass a quick inspiring idea or concept that they could use in their projects. I also keep my resources ready in the classroom to show the students when they knock the dead ends or are struggling to get creative ideas. The advantage of FB is that most of the artists post their work in their profiles and it is easier to find the images on one platform. And also that there is every possibility for the learners to interact with them directly, which could be a very socially constructive learning as mentioned by Kathy Cassidy’s video (2013). Twitter and snap chat are the other networking platforms my students use but I did not see much use of it as the possibility to share pictures with resources and other contacts was not convenient.

The challenges I see is when our other side of social lives are exposed or are viewable. However, with the provision of setting my privacy restrictions has helped me to control any unnecessary ethical dilemmas. This would also comply with the MOE Code of ethical Practice. To me it has been easier as I use FB mostly for professional purposes and I have a very minimum personal content in it. Unfortunately, our school policy doesn’t permit the use of Facebook until I made numerous request for it to be accessible to the teachers at least. I think there are not many teachers in our school who use FB as a teaching resource in the classroom. Seaman and Tini-Kane (2013), consider this as an innovative pedagogy and think that the use of social media in classrooms will increase in the future but may continue only after some fundamental changes take place in terms of the privacy and integrity submissions.

For me Facebook has been a very useful professional development platform as I connect to my international institutes, artists, organizations and forums. I run two professional online groups and follow around 20 groups on FB.

1.    PAT

2.    MBC Art Maniaks

This had not only connected me too widely with international professionals but has also provided absolutely significant resources to my practice and to my students. There were instances where I even connected my learners to individual artists and designers across the globe. I was able to share their work with my students and this has provided a contemporary insight into the work of others in different cultural contexts. The connections I made through Mindlab and the use of social networking that we as professionals have participated in has a huge positive impact on our professional development. The google plus has also connected us with wider NZ teachers and the learning has been an enriching experience.

Seaman, J., & Tinti-Kane, H. (2013). Social media for teaching and learning. Babson Survey Research Group. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-report.pdf

Kathy, C. (2013) Source: Tvoparents. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno