The last nine weeks of the school year 2019 - 2020 consisted of learning and teaching new digital platforms where learning could continue. Many hours were spent creating digital content for asynchronous learning. My main medium for content creation was my Youtube channel Escuelita Dual. Teaching kindergarten, online was a challenge. While not all students participated, I noticed that students who completed their Seesaw assignments had parents helping them through each lesson. As I think of students in upper-grade levels. I wonder if lessons would require so much parental assistance or if they could just participate using social media that they are used to. Let’s look at the possibility of using mainstream sites.
In exploring how social media could be used I looked at three school library Facebook pages, Rayburn Middle School Library, Brandeis High Schoo Libary, and Taft High School Library. Many of their posts had book reviews, author book talks, school and library events, public library events, and repost from professional library journals. I did not see many lessons on Facebook, but I would like to consider that some of the content could potentially be embedded in a lesson.
While much of the content was relevant to the social events at the school, community, and national level, not all content is appropriate for K-12. In order to make it accessible to lower elementary, a lot of the content must be read to them which could be done in the form of a video. Bringing in special guests to speak to students via Facebook live could be a possibility. For upper elementary teachers would have to take the extra step to figure out if the reading level is appropriate for students, and ensure that the content represents multiple points of view so that students could delve deeper into the content.
Perhaps another advantage is that among the many features is the possibility of creating a private classroom page or a private group. In doing so, a class and their parents could enjoy the exclusivity of sharing ideas and comments, photos, videos, and other student work, effectively extending the classroom into cyberspace.
I also explored twitter educator influencers like @kathyshrock, @globalearner, @lbraun2000, @gwynethjones, and @jimlerman. I noticed that these influencers also posted about books and authors, virtual field trips, current librarian and social events such as Black Lives Matter, and gay civil rights. I appreciated the @gynethjones retweet of books that were relevant to the racism that exists in the US and thought about using them as writing assignments and the opportunity for students to explore more books about the topic.
The Twitter platform could be used as a springboard to showcase ideas much like Facebook. Twitter, however, limits the number of characters that can be used to post a message. If a teacher had students respond to a text, students would have to use their summary skills in order to post an assignment or a reply. In addition, the user is bound to “heart” a tweet and retweet within Twitter, whereas Facebook allows for more emotions and the ability to post a link in various places such as messenger, to a group, or a page. In order to post across platforms, it would be necessary to copy the twitter link or go to the original website post to post it the platform of your choice.
Using Twitter for lower and upper elementary would be similar to Facebook. Educators would need to take into account their elementary students’ reading fluency to gauge if students would be able to access posts. By contrast, this could be a platform for middle and high school students as it is somewhat more popular among generation Y. Teachers could potentially post links to articles, videos, and assignments relevant to their content area. Teachers could also delve into topics by using hashtags. Students would have to synthesize information on topics like #Blacklivesmatter or other topics. Twitter will pull up everything related to the topic and students would be able to peruse and take out the most relevant tweets.
Instagram is more of a visual arts media platform. While it could be used in the classroom to post pictures of Social equality and have students comment on them. It really is geared more to campaigns and adds. While its strength is images, the disadvantage is that most videos don’t use sound. I could see this more as a place to post flyers that use a lot of images to grab people’s attention.
For elementary students this would be a perfect medium to post picture prompts so that students could then write their stories. Middle and high school student could post their visual arts assignments or diagrams from their biology classes. The hashtags work very much like the Twitter ones, where you can #Dreamers and over 1.6 million stories pop up.
Using social media in the classroom can be tricky. While the mainstream formats of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great at announcing current events or news and can be easily accessed by many users, it is difficult to truly incorporate them in lessons. Part of the problem is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), parents would have to sign off and publishing their student’s images and work. While some controls could be used such as private rooms, the work is likely to be online forever. Moreover, teachers could not exercise complete control regarding the inappropriate posts. Without strict privacy controls, students could be exposed to cyberbullying or could compromise their identity.
By contrast, there are apps such as Seesaw or Google Classroom that have stricter policies to help keep student’s privacy confidential. However, it is more difficult for students to work collaboratively, logging in (at least for my class) has been a hindrance to access, and the teacher must provide all content; whereas social media sites provide students with content from the outside world immediately. For now, because of privacy issues and the inability to stop potentially harmful material to students, mainstream social media sites would not be the most appropriate tools for the K-12 classroom.
My social media feeds are:
Facebook: Leo’s Library Services https://www.facebook.com/Leos-Library-Services-110503520541952/?modal=admin_todo_tour
References
Adelstein, D. and Barbour, M. K. (2015). The SAGE encyclopedia of education technology: Social media in secondary school settings. SAGE Pubications, Inc.: Thousand Oaks, CA.
Brandeis High School Library. (2020). Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/RayburnLibrary/
Braun, L. Twitter. https://twitter.com/lbraun2000
Jones, G. Twitter. https://twitter.com/GwynethJones
Hudson, H. (2016, August 7). 10 Surprising ways to use Instagram in the classroom. Retrieved https://www.weareteachers.com/10-surprising-ways-to-use-instagram-in-the-classroom-2/
Lerman, J. (2020). Protestors. The 4th Era. https://twitter.com/jimlerman/status/1268940934634496012.
Lerman, J. Twitter. https://twitter.com/jimlerman.
Moreno, L. (2020). Escuelita Dual. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosI15WvDiCo6eDiSEQIepw.
November, A. Twitter. https://twitter.com/globalearner
Rayburn Middle School Library. Facebook. (2020). https://www.facebook.com/RayburnLibrary/.
Schrock, K. Twitter. https://twitter.com/kathyschrock
Taft High School Library. Facebook. (2020). https://www.facebook.com/tafthslibrary/
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