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
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