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Social Media and Education

I recently attended a webinar sponsored by Google presenting many of the tools that are out there for educators. They did emphasize the fact of the growing abuse of social media sites this is why the stated that Twiducate.com and Edmodo.com are two sites where you can build a secure learning area.

Twiducate.com allows you to create an online community for your classroom. They do emphasize the safety factor about social media sites, but in this form teachers are in control of the site. Using this in the classroom creates student engagement. Also, when you have 30+ students in a classroom and you are trying to get everyone to participate, this may be an alternative to track the participation.

Edmodo.com - the interface looks like Facebook, but it is not. One thing cool about this one is students can submit assignments and you can look at the grade book for the status. This allows teachers to track, but also grade items submitted.

Both are FREE and have different features. If I had to select one, I would probably use the Edmodo.com just because of the grading feature. You could look at this as a means of safe and controlled social media for learning.

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