Technology is taking us....where?

          This past weekend I went to a conference and we discussed the uses of social media for our church.  The more I sat there I thought this could be completely translated into uses for school.  Then we sat in class on Monday talking about writing styles and I realized that social media was a great way to get kids to write.  Now my mom keeps thinking social media will leave.  Of course her phone is still a flip phone with no data or texting capabilities.  When she went to upgrade her phone I didn't realize they even had those anymore.  But she has what she has.  She writes emails, sits at her computer online most of the day.  Gets on discussion boards which in reality is the same thing.  Her problem comes with the need to have the instant communication at your fingertips.  Traveling with her is rough for my teenage boys who have known no other life than a connection with their friends at all ours of the day.  

          So there is probably a place for it all.  I'm a huge offender.  I have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare and many more.  I thrive with my phone in my hand and need a charger at work and home.  I need that connection to what is going on.  So now the task is to bring it into our classrooms without it taking over.  For this class we have a Pinterest account.  We are linking with people from around the world to find some things about our future classrooms.

          What about writing?  Kids are writing texts to their friends, they are tweeting in a certain amount of characters.  We are building a group of kids who can be concise in their thoughts. So to ask them to write a narrative could be a challenge.  What about our reluctant writers?  Why not give them a prompt where they can give a tweet back to a political statement.  They can give what their Facebook status would be about a certain issue.  We need to embrace kids and know what they are doing so we are at their same level.  Spelling and cursive aren't as important because our thoughts are autocorrected via a tablet or computer.  

          Just some random thoughts anyway.  Some things to think about.  Letting kids know that reading and writing are parts of their everyday world already.  If kids can see this then maybe then can embrace the idea of putting thoughts down in words.