You live and learn- Posting pics of your young learners ~ ::: English Studio :::

That was one of the first mistakes I made when I started blogging. And I see it again now, but on some colleagues' websites .

In the era of Social Media -Twitter, Facebook and alike it's hard to resist the temptation of publishing stuff like students' pics. They really are an interesting way to show what you do in your institution. Marketing strategies of this sort are so simple to use nowadays. However, this practice ought to be more careful.

I remember I would publish hundreds of images showing my classes -fortunately I have never had any prob- but I admit now that it was a slip. Let's put it down to lack of experience in the online world. Reading this blog post from an expert in ELT from IH Barcelona was an eye opening moment that I really appreciate now.

Looking after students' privacy is crucial and I've been learning how to do it since then.

I guess I have some colleagues using websites to open their classes to the world reading these lines. I hope they find this hint useful for reflection. When I reflected myself on the issue, I think I became a better blogger / web 2.0 user /ELT professional because I understood that ICT and web 2.0 and networking are concepts related to giving, offering and sharing experience.

You can open your class to the world without your students' pics but with your own practice, sharing what you have to give to students, tutors, parents and other colleagues. This is the essence of networking and the role of Social Media. The rest is simply fashionable trend and it will soon be taken over by sth newer / more interesting.

Further to the blog post I mentioned above I tried to work with students' elements to represent them. Honestly, that didn't work so much. It was not so attrative for them. So I went on exploring and I found out that there's nothing better than their own images -but on avatars made by themselves ! There are some great sites for them to make their own images (the way they like).

Related links:

Face your manga (how to)
Avatar makers
Manga
Portrait Maker