I really enjoyed reading through Module 3 “The Digital Learning Environment.” It helped me to become aware of what practices I’m already engaged in, some new things to try and some things to implement in the classroom.

I’ve realised that about 50% of my social media use is actually for professional learning. I like to hop on and see what friends have been up to and what’s going on in my communities but the majority of the pages I “like” or “follow” directly relate to what I am doing in the classroom. I love to see people’s ideas, what problems they have and what solutions others have for them and to have a place I can go and get direct feedback. This is something I have done naturally without thinking about it.

I have noticed a trend lately that people seem to be displaying better behaviour online too (although defiantly not always!). Perhaps this is the strict guidelines many groups have that don’t tolerate poor behaviour, the types of professionals I’m engaging with, or the many comments I’ve seen stating that there is no point arguing online as it doesn’t seem to get anyone anywhere. I hope this is an actual trend of the internet culture “growing up” a little bit and not just my little bubble. It gives me hope that the behaviour we are teaching and modelling for students is slowly making an impact.

I know I find a lot of benefit from using social media in my learning and I am really keen to think through how I can help students to learn how to do use this for their learning benefit as well. I know that for a while some teachers were letting students “chat” through Microsoft Teams in their classes. Because this was misused by a few students they simply turned the function off for the entire senior school (even teachers could not use it then!). I think this was an easy solution for a stressful time (covid lockdown) but now it needs to be revisited, and properly set up for use with guidelines for responsible behaviour.