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Educational Resources from....social media?!

This past week a visitor, Bret Staudt Willet, joined my Teaching with Technology graduate class to discuss using social media as a resource for Teachers. My initial inclination was that using social media as such a tool would certainly be against all research methods I have ever learned. If wikipedia was a bad source, what would reddit or twitter be considered?? Of course having an open mind for new opportunities and resources is necessary to continue improving and changing my techniques.

This week I decided to do some browsing on reddit. I found it to be fascinating and rich with educational related content. Reddit had unique facets and outlets for teachers to discuss educational material whether that be methods, techniques or personal questions.

With reddit, I found it particularly useful that they would classify threads under specific topics (Humor, vent, general discussion, COVID-19...etc.).

The top photo is where reddit took me when I clicked on their Teachers page. It is important to note that there are A LOT of teacher pages, however this one felt to be the most useful or at least with the most serious interactions.

When reading through the post I really enjoyed seeing raw emotion and how teachers truly felt. Throughout a school day it can be difficult to have real conversations about struggles, or methods or administration. Reddit provides anonymity, and a platform for educators to express themselves without have to censor it. One specific post that I felt was relatable for many teachers was under the "vent" column.


If you look at the top left part of the post, there was 387 up votes. With reddit, the more up votes, the more traffic it will bring. However, this can mitigated by having reddit filter "Most Recent" posts which will not use up votes to determine order of post prevalence.

This post was one of the many examples of where I saw teachers express exactly how they feel. What I found great was the feedback that other teachers would give. It felt like I was reading support group dialogue. With so much hate that social media can generate, the love and support for each other was really nice to see.

Before I wrap up my post for this week, I wanted to touch on an aspect that I found possibly useful in the right settings. Many teachers asked very specific questions for how to handle certain situations that occur with students, coworkers and administration. Not that I would encourage teachers to use this as an end-all-be-all. But in the right spots, additional point of views can never hurt when assessing situations that call for it.

Thank you for reading!

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