Social Media in the Classroom

As a teacher in a high school I have already developed an opinion about social media in the classroom.  Overall, I see an ability to harness the power and engagement that social media can bring to the classroom.  However, I am not convinced that the positives outweigh the negatives.  I already fight the distraction that social media brings to the room.  I run a fairly open classroom where the use of technology is the norm.  I allow students to access information via their smartphones.  I allow them to use some of the applications that are available to them.  Those are the positives....the negatives come down to one main idea....distraction!!

Students struggle when given permission to use their phones to stay on task. A tweet, a Facebook post, an Instagram photo, or a Vine video all take a level of importance over the work that is supposed to be done.  The students that struggle with ADD or ADHD now have a device in their hands that encourages them to multi-task, to have a short attention span, to seamlessly move from one social media to the next.

I do believe Social Media has a positive side.  However, at this point I am not convinced that the positives outweigh the negative.