Social Media & Students

In a previous course, I got a chance to look at how social media can is a useful tool for the classroom. I read an article called The Power of Storytelling, and blogged about it. My thoughts on that article can be found in a previous blog post called "Social Media".

This week I had a similar task to complete. I looked though many different articles, but the one that I was very interested in based on the title was called, Introducing Social Media to Elementary Students. I was interested in finding out a good way to begin to incorporate social media into my fourth grade classroom.

This article, written for edutopia, goes through why young students should be introduced to social media and how to go about doing that. The author, Beth Holland, makes a great point in saying, "Do I really believe that toddlers should have Twitter handles? Not really. But we do need to introduce children to the virtual, social world around them in appropriate and meaningful ways? Definitely."

Holland goes on say that even years ago students were introduced to the "social media" of that time. In that time it was the friendly letter, and now it is social medias. We were taught how to write a friendly letter from such a young age so that when we got older we could write one on our own. She goes on to explain three ways to use social media in an elementary school classroom. They are:

1. Extend the Classroom - use Twitter, class blogs, webcams etc. to share what your class is learning beyond just the four walls of the classroom. Students make connections beyond the class and learn how to write about what their learning.
2. Connected, Empowered Learners - Students can use Twitter or KidBlogs to stay connected to parents outside of school. They feel in charge of what they share and teach to those outside the classroom. 
3. Getting Started: Developing Voice - Create a physical "blog wall" where students "post" using actually paper and pencil. This gets students familiar with the process of posting on Twitter or a blog before they dive into using the social media. 

Image Source 

My Thoughts 

I found this short article very informative. It was great to be able to get some basic examples of how to use social media in an elementary classroom. Learning about social media and schools has been great, but I hadn't quite figured out the best way to incorporate it into my fourth grade room in a productive way. I like the idea of making a class Twitter account and having the kids work in teams or individually to tweet out about what we have learned during the. Also, I was thinking, since I already use ClassDojo, I can try to incorporate more student use of that platform. That website has an entire portion about student portfolios that I haven't explored. The kids can post and share like they would on a blog. I'm really excited to try out some of these ideas in my classroom! 

Media Literacy

What is Media Literacy? 

Media literacy is the next level when it comes to media skills. It is a critical thinking skill. This consists of knowing how to interpret and use what is presented to us on the media. This includes ideas such as being aware of the fact that no media maker tells the whole truth. Also, that people use their background knowledge to interpret what the media says, which is considered the subtext of the media. Having media literacy means that you are aware that everything the media does it done with a purpose and meaning behind it. 

Image Source

Rheingold's "Attention and Other 21st Century Social Media Literacies" 

Howard Rheingold take the idea of media literacy and breaks it down into five main literacies. These literacies are all interconnected and linked together. 

Attention: 

Rheingold's first media literacy is attention. In Rheingold's article, he states, "attention is the fundamental building block for how individuals think, how humans create tools and teach each other to use them, how groups socialize, and how people transform civilizations" (pg. 16). He speaks about how people are multi-taskers when it comes to attention. Students in particular need to be able to focus their attention on many different medias and know when to focus on one specific media. 

Participation: 

Participation has to do with becoming an active citizen of the media rather than a passive citizen. This means that students are working and creating their own media. This might be responding to media that is already available, or creating media of their own on things like Twitter or a Blog. 

Collaboration: 

The third media literacy according to Rheingold is collaboration. This refers to the idea that so much more collaboration is available now that we have more advanced technology. When people collaborate through media they are able to create big change in the world. This is the idea that two heads are better than one. 

Network Awareness: 

Rheingold speaks about his fourth media literacy as something that is much more complicated. This media literacy requires people to be aware of how the networks we participate in may influence the media that we see. We need to be aware that each network might present something in a different way, and that we need to keep in mind what we are sharing with who and with what network. 

Critical Consumption "Crap Detection": 

The final media literacy is "the literacy of trying to figure out what and who is trustworthy - and what and who is not trustworthy - online" (pg. 22). This means that the consumer needs to be able to see through what the media is putting out to find out what the actual truth is, and what is added and is not correct. 

My Thought on Media Literacy

I found all of this information really interesting to learn about this week. It was interesting to read about the five literacies and reflect on whether or not I use them in my daily life. I think that all five are still important. They are all so interconnected that one just naturally leads to the other. 

I think we should teach students about all of the media literacies and how they can apply them to their media experience. In the era of "fake news" that we live in, I think it is really important that we teach the students about the fifth literacy, critical consumption. Students need to be able to identify what in the media is true, what's false, and what is biased. This is not an easy skill to do, but it is something we all have to think about when we consume media. 

I am about to teach a health concept in my class that I actually can connect directly to this. We are going to be discussing how peer pressure is used through the media to persuade us to buy, use, do things. The idea critical consumption is really important in this concept. I'm excited to bring this up to my students in the next few weeks. 

CIPA/COPPA

Technology is such an important part of education these days. With that comes the use of the internet and a variety of programs available on it. Due to the increase in use of the internet educators have to add keeping kids safe on the internet to part of their job description. To help with that two major laws were created. These are the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

What are CIPA and COPPA? 

Both CIPA and COPPA are laws that were first created in 2001 and 1998 respectively. Both laws have since been updated. These laws set out rules and regulations for protecting children in schools when it comes to the internet. COPA requires each school to put in place internet filters to make sure that students are not being exposed to inappropriate things on the internet. It however, does not include anything about social media or mobile devices in the classroom. COPPA states that parents have complete control over what information is collected about their children under the age of 13. There must be parental consent for anything regarding students under 13.  

Under these laws, teachers must keep parents informed of everything their children are using/doing in school. They must also always remember to supervise all students when they are using any device in school. 

Image Source

My Thoughts

In general, I think any law that works to protect students is a good thing. CIPA and COPPA seem like they are doing more good than they are harm. I do however think there could be more. I think that both of these laws are due for an update. CIPA was updated in 2011 and COPPA in 2013. While that doesn't seem like it was that long ago, it really is a lot of time in the technology world. My fourth grade students weren't even in school when these were updated. I think that these laws need to include references to social media as this is such an important part of the modern student's life. 

When I think about the idea of social media rules/regulations for schools not really being in place, this brings up the idea of children under the age of 13. 13 seems like the right age to allow students to being to use social media or other apps, but that's not what happens in real life. Danah Boyd said, "on the internet, every child is 14" and I completely agree with that idea. As a fourth a grade teacher for the last six years, my students are only ten. Although most of them have Instagram or Facebook accounts. If I remember correctly you have to add a birthdate to join Facebook. I am not so sure about Instagram. These apps then seep into the school environment. While I know a law can't possibly police every child to keep them off these apps, I think they really need to lay out to parents the problems that could occur when young kids join. 

How I deal with Internet Safety in my Classroom

I taught for two years  in a BYOD school. Each student brought in their own iPad to use as an instructional tool. To maintain student protection on these devices, each family had to sign a technology agreement at the beginning of the year, the LTE internet had to be turned off, and students had to be on the school wifi. This allowed the iPads to only reach what our internet security allowed. I once had my student using an app that only allowed you to join if you were over 13 years old. For this project I sent home a letter to all parents about why we were using it, what purpose it would serve, and how to set up an account. Parents had to allow their child to participate and help them set up the account. 

Now, I teach at a different school. My classroom has a class set of Chromebooks. Each child has their own log in which keeps their information secure. These Chromebooks are on our district network in order to provide security. My district has implemented the use of a website called Relay. This allows me to see exactly, on one easy screen, what each of my students is doing on their Chromebook. I can monitor, close screens, or freeze screens from my computer. It lets me know when my students are on a website that is unusual. It is a great way to apply the laws of CIPA and COPPA in my classroom. 

Digital Tattoo Take Two

Like a tattoo on your body, which is permanent and visible to the public, there is a such thing as a digital tattoo. A digital tattoo is digital information about yourself that is permanently online. It is information that is easily searchable by anyone who knows how to use Google or a search engine.

In one of my previous courses I did a data mine on myself. I dug around on the internet to find out what information, that I thought was private, was actually available online for the public. I was very shocked by all the information that was out there. My original post and reaction to the data mine can be found here.

Privacy Checkup

This time I decided that I would like to go into each of my social media accounts and take a look at my privacy settings. After seeing all the information that available to the public, I think it is important to go through and make sure your settings are just how you want them. I used the steps found in the article Social Media For Teachers: Privacy and Guidelines  to guide myself while checking privacy.

Facebook

Before going into the privacy settings of my Facebook account, I believed that it was pretty private. I thought that I had myself unsearchable unless you were my friend, and that only people who I have accepted can see what I am posting. 

Here is what I found when I went through Facebook's Privacy Checkup and more specific settings: 

• Posts are only viewable by friends 
• E-mail address were set to private 
• Birthday, hometown viewable to friends 
• Posts I'm tagged in have to be reviewed by me before being posted to my wall 
• Only Friends of Friends can send me a friend request 
• My friends list is private (only I can see who I'm friends with) 
• People were able to look me up using provided phone number

Facebook provided privacy checkup (personal photo) 

The only thing that I was surprised by and wanted to change was the fact about my phone number. I don't have a phone number listed on my account, but my Facebook is linked to my cell phone through the app. I don't want people to be able to look me up just using my phone number because my phone number is a pretty public piece of information. Overall, I was happy with the privacy of my Facebook account. 

Instagram

Next, I decided to look into my Instagram privacy settings. Again, going into this I thought that my Instagram was set as private as it could be. 

Here is what I found:

• My account was set to private 
• The only account linked to my Instagram is my Facebook
• My posts are shared to Facebook, my stories are not shared to Facebook 
• Only my followers can see and reply to my story 
• My followers can share my story 

Instagram privacy setting (personal photo) 

Overall, this is exactly what I expected. I didn't change anything when it comes to privacy for my Instagram. 

Twitter

Finally, I looked into both my personal and professional Twitter accounts. Going into it, I knew that my personal twitter was set to private and my professional was set to public. 

Here is what I found:

• Professional Twitter
• Private
• Tweets are sent without location
• People can find me based on e-mail and phone number
• Others can tag me in photos
• Anyone can send me a direct message
• Personal Twitter
• My tweets are protected (private)
• Others can not tag me in photos
• People can find me based on e-mail and phone number
• I can not receive direct messages from someone unless I follow them

Again, just like Instagram, I was not suprised by my privacy settings. The only thing I changed was that my private account was able to be searched via e-mail or phone number. I made that so it wasn't possible anymore. 

Final Thoughts

For all three personal accounts I have, I am set very much to private. I did this because I don't want people being able to find me outside of personal friends and family. I do not want students or parents to be able to search me on these platforms. It has even been hard for some of my coworkers to find me at first. I feel more safe with my accounts set this way. On the other hand I am okay with my professional account being set to public. Things that I tweet out from that account are meant to be a part of a Professional Learning Community and can only be that way if they are public.

I'm really glad that I went through and did this activity. I think it something that everyone should sit down and do. I think is especially important to do after something on these platforms changes. You never know what the platform change did to your privacy settings.