Boycetown iPad Class: Social Media Challenge

Today's blog challenge was interesting, and timed perfectly. It was "How has social media changed your classroom? Personally? Professionally? With students? Families?"

WELL, allow me to enlighten you as to the brass tacks of my students and their relationship with me! Last week we were having another discussion about digital citizenship and I was sharing my twitter (@boycem3) page with them so they could see it. (a few of them did not even know what Twitter was) and one of my darlings said, "Hey Mrs. Boyce, I saw that you had an instagram account."

I replied with "why yes, I do. (also boycem3) " His quick fire response was..."and you only have one picture and it was taken 17 MONTHS ago!!" (obviously a cardinal sin...)

He then proceeded to challenge me to make it a class account and then further extended the challenge to take at least one picture a day until the end of school. Talk about being shown up by a ten year old. Well, not me. I immediately accepted the challenge and we hashed out the requirements as a class.

1. Must take one picture every day until the end of school
2. Must be about school or for the students in class.
3. Multiple pictures in one day will not count toward upcoming days
(tried to negotiate this one today since I took like 40 pictures of our field trip)
4. Must tag children in it if they have an account.
5. Must save all pictures taken to our shared google drive account for any students who do not have access to instagram (about half of my students)

Their job...sit back and hold me accountable.

As you all know, when trying to take on something new...it is tough. So blogging once a day AND getting photos into Instagram has been daunting (good thing I am in the DAUNTLESS faction!)
So my job for the last 27 days of school? BLOG, and CLICK!! BLOG and CLICK!! BLOG and CLICK!! Here are a few from the last two days.

This is a shot of them yesterday listening to make a list of sounds they could hear outside our classroom door. They are in the process of writing a poetry book, and sound poems (or list poems) are one of them.

The caption on Instagram said "they are like Easter Eggs on hidden in the grass." Aren't they sweet looking?

We also ended up writing a haiku poem to this...

Like eggs in the grass
Hidden on Easter morning
Each student listens

Here are a few of today's field trip and their captions....