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=__Using Social Media in the Classroom__= __(Or, [|It's a big internet out there!])__
 * Knowledge is Collaborative**

"In 2008, students taking exams at Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Sydney were allowed to use the internet or iPods and even ‘phone a friend’ on their mobiles, as the school responded to a challenge from Marc Prensky (who coined the term ‘digital natives’) to regard such activities not as cheating, but as ‘using our tools and including the world in our knowledge base’" (//From Blogs to Bombs//, Mark Pegrum 28).

About
On Valentine's Day, 2008, [|Will Richardson] wrote[| a blog post] about the future conversations around reading and writing in regards to the students of the future. He listen eight suggestions of requirements for the students of the future-- that is, the students of today. Richardson suggests students need to be:
 * Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”
 * More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.
 * More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.
 * Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.
 * More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.
 * Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.
 * More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.
 * Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.

What does all this mean? Well, it suggests that the digital world that is all around us is a very important tool for literacy. We must know how to read emails, discern fact from fiction (even on Wikipedia), and relate to others through social networks. This project then, and this wiki, presents a few ways in which social media, specifically, may be used as a teaching tool. After all, as Marshall McLuhan suggested, the medium in which information is conveyed is part of the message-- [|the medium is the message].

Topics
Concerns and Resources Free Writing Handout Parent Permission Form Practical Uses of Social Media in the Classroom Social Media Projects Using Social Media and Roleplay

Useful Links & More Information
"Literary TEDtalk Connections". []. "Wikify Your Course Design". []. "Telescopic Text", []. "Interesting Ways: Crowdsourcing good quality classroom ideas", [].