In Germany, we don’t use social media in schools and only partly at universities. But at the workplace it’s becoming more and more popular for everyone. Even in the international context it’s very common and useful. Choo et al. (2006) found that an information culture in companies increases its output and efficiency a lot, if the workers take part actively. But Hargittai et al. (2008) found that some young people aren’t able to keep pace with this digital development or not interested. They don’t take part in social media, don’t know how to use it and decrease their own chance to get a job. Therefore, it’s very important that every young person learn to make use of social media and to deal responsibly with it as well. In my opinion it’s a good idea to teach the application of social media in schools while integrating it into a lessons plan indirectly. I want to think about the use of social media in schools during the grades five to ten. As an example, I would like to think about the use of a Facebook group.
My text structure should be the following. First, I will write about the increasing importance of social media in the working and live context. I will outline the reasons, why every pupil should learn how to use social media. Then I will consider the advantages and disadvantages of social media while using the example of a Facebook group. Afterwards, I will discuss the requirements of implementing a Facebook group for a class and its teacher.
Interesting subject. A few things I’m wondering, how will you handle the situation that if a school decides to teach for example Facebook, but it gets outdated because everyone starts using another social media platform. And I think you could also argue that it is more a job for parents to teach children about specific social media and maybe some general ‘responsible use of internet’ lessons are sufficient; you could go deeper about that. Good that you make choises explicit (like ‘5th to 10th grade); don’t forget to argue these choices in your draft and final paper as well.
To add some (more) literature about social media, this article might be interesting because you could perhaps couple the building blocks Kietzmann et al. describe to the importance to learn it at a young age.
Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business horizons, 54(3), 241-251.
Another article that could be interesting is about the impact the use of social media already has on children from O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson; this article might give you extra arguments in favour of teaching children about social media.
O’Keeffe, G. S., & Clarke-Pearson, K. (2011). The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families. Pediatrics, 127(4), 800-804.
Good luck with writing your draft and final report!
Arthur Verkerke
I agree with your statement that social media becomes more and more important in our lives. School as well as work related activities are often organised via social media platforms like Facebook or linkedin. This increases the need for a proper understanding of these applications. From my point of view it might be a good idea to include the teaching of social media into the school schedules. However, it might be also enough to set up social media workshops or seminars because I have doubts that the teaching content would be enough for one whole school year. Further I agree with Arthur, that social media applications are outdated very fast. While our generation still uses Facebook, younger generations focus already on Instagram, Pinterest and various other newer applications. This might be a difficult factor for the implementation of the newest applications within a school schedule and the finding of a common application, which could be used by the teacher and the students at the same time.
The structure you have presented is very clear and I am looking forward to read the findings of your report.
BR,
Frederik
To begin with, I think your topic is very interesting and also very significant for future generations, because social media and a responsible use of it becomes more and more important.
But I was wondering, why you would choose Facebook, because I think you have to be older than 13 in order to use Facebook. So maybe 5th grade for a Facebook page might be too young. But regarding other social media or older students it will be possible! (at least I do not know about any other age limitations concerning for example Instagram or Twitter)
As Frederik already mentioned, it might be enough to make social media workshops with people from outside the school, which will maybe know more about social media than the teacher.
From the viewpoint of somebody who grew up in the 90’s the idea that future generations will be taught in the use of social media is kind of wild. I still think of social media as a new phenomenon but from the perspective of today’s youth different social media platforms age fast.
Arthur is correct that social media platforms age rapidly and most of them are very dependent on their relative popularity. It is quite possible that the emergence of new social media platforms will plateau at some point since we don’t really need to many platforms providing the same service.
I think the social media education should not focus on the individual social media platforms as much as the usage of them and I don’t mean in the practical sense. What I mean by usage is teaching children the dangers of giving away private information to strangers or the proper conduct in engaging with others on these forums. I think these type of lessons would be more important since they would also prepare the younger generation on how to properly represent themselves in a digital environment in both their professional and private lives. I think the teachers themselves would probably not be able to teach the kids on the practical use of the social media anyway since I think the kids probably already know how to use the media much better than their teachers.
Great. Try to be analytical and critical to social media as well. Another point you might want to consider is the differences between school systems, societies, pedagogical approaches and actual achievements reached by using social media tools, even if the social media is undoubtedly an international and cross-contextual phenomena.