Go Wild With Social Media In The Classroom! Sort of…

Are you tired of constantly being on the prowl, looking to reprimand students whom you catch using social media during your class time? Unless your school has strict digital device policies, or the ability to block all connectivity to the outside world, it’s an everyday task. However, today I’ve got a couple of tools for you from Classtools.net that your little social media enthusiasts will love! So, let’s take a traditional research paper/PowerPoint (substitution) assignment, and move it into the Modification/Redefinition levels of technology integration.

MJ Cover


Michael's friends

Michael's Wall

This is a great way to captivate your students by assigning them a historical figure, organization, or cause and having them create a “Fake” Facebook page. You require them to research and provide traditional information, such as date of birth, birth place, major accomplishments, and photographs, and allow your students to put the information together in a creative fashion! It’s a wonderful modification of the typical research assignment.

They can create friends and family for their Fakebook profile and a custom timeline/feed containing fake conversations that could have occurred during that specific time period.



Using this tool, students can create status updates and print them for display purposes. When composing the fake tweet, ask your students to consider the following questions:

  1. What are the most important people in this topic?
  2. What was their most important moment within the topic?
  3. What would their comment be about it?
  4. What particular keywords would they use within their comment?
  5. What hashtag could they maybe use at the end of the message?
  6. What nickname did they have / could we invent to use as their username?

Take these tools and engage your students in meaningful ways that interest them in the content you’re presenting. Refer to the SAMR Model to help you progress from traditional to extraordinary!

The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model offers a method of seeing how computer technology might impact teaching and learning. It also shows a progression that adopters of educational technology often follow as they progress through teaching and learning with technology…

SAMR model developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura http://www.hippasus.com

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog, and tell all of your colleagues and friends to do the same (that means share)!

Yours in Tech,

The Social Juggernaut






Categories: HOT, TECH ED

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: