Social Media Paper: A Need for A Teacher’s Social Media Toolkit

Over the years, social media has received a negative reputation amongst many professional communities. For some, this is either due to the gossip and rumors that thrive online, or the ever-changing language that eludes generations who haven’t themselves grown up with technology. For others, the disdain is either caused by the sharing of inappropriate pictures and negative posts, or the fake news that can rapidly affect the lives of innocent, everyday people, caught in the wrong scandal. For many teachers, however, it is because students can’t be paid to look away from their phones, which are considered to be everything but educationally relevant. As teachers who instruct “digital natives,” some of whom have had Instagram or YouTube accounts since they were babes, we must be able to effectively incorporate social media, to some degree, into classroom content. In fact, it is paramount that teachers do so, because social media has the power to academically influence, impact, and inspire every student—but only when it is used effectively.

The Oxford Dictionary defines social media as, “websites and applications that allow users to create and share content; view, evaluate and comment on content shared by others; easily exchange messages, images or videos; participate in social networking.” However, according to Smith (2007), an educational aspect needs to be added to this definition. He postulates that social media taking a part in education is unavoidable, and that educators should begin using the term “academic network”, instead of social network. Continuing in his position, Smith states that it is a school’s responsibility to reflect the world in which its students live, and, that for a student to be a fully engaged and collaborative, twenty-first century scholar, they must be taught to use technology in ways that are academically beneficial to them. In fact, research shows that social networks, when used as tools that support academic progress, increase student-to-student, student-to-content, and student-to-instructor interaction, as well as critical thinking, inquiry, and problem solving skills (Bulu, 2016). Unfortunately, the current use of social media in the classroom is nowhere near this untapped potential.

Out of the many factors that play a role in student learning, attention is the one that impacts sensory capacity, arousal level, perceptual set, and past reinforcement the most (Deaton, 2015). In 2013, Duggan and Smith researched the social media habits of a wide range of subjects. Through their study, they found that Twitter and Instagram are two of the most popular social networks for young people; these sites also have the second and third highest level of engagement, both coming closely behind Facebook. This is crucially important to the reasons that a majority of teachers exhibit a bias towards social media engagement in the classroom. Not only are the word limits shorter on these two apps, leading to a greater amount of content being consumed in a lesser amount of time than on Facebook, for example, but they also have been updated to include features that encourage repeated use throughout the day. One instance of this can be seen through Instagram, which recently added a Snap Chat-like feature to their app. Here, users can share “stories” that automatically delete in 24 hours, comment on the stories of others, and use filters to create a variety of situations and settings. In addition to this feature, Instagram also added the option to live stream a story, automatically updating each follower of his or her peer’s instantaneous content.

Its attributes like these that cause students to favor their phones over their class lectures. The constant stimulus, instant gratification, and cool factor that play into social networking makes the apps extraordinarily difficult to ignore. Nevertheless, as the famous adage goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” A recent study in Turkey identified social media engagement in the classroom as the major component in the increase of collaborative learning (Bozanta, 2017). The research went on to show that, when social media is perceived as being useful, it’s also perceived as being easy, and that while students and faculty interaction through social media didn’t have a large effect on collaborative learning, the positive interaction between the students and the overall course engagement increased significantly. In Layman’s terms, social media in the classroom is only as effective as the instructor wants and perceives it to be; without his or her endorsement, it has little to no positive results. Additionally, adding social networking to classroom activity boosts the morale, relationships, and engagement of the class.

Implementing the successful use of social networks may not be as daunting as some teachers believe it to be. Deaton suggests beginning by surveying the social and academic needs of each class in order to identify which platforms would best suit the needs of the students’ unique learning context (2015). She gives the example of a teacher who serves a low socio-economic population accessing whether or not their students have accessibility to technology, and if so, how often. Moreover, if students are unfamiliar with the platform that is being used, a teacher should provide proper training in utilization and digital citizenship, specifically for that network. In addition to these considerations, Deaton also proposes that teachers spend time in selecting the outlet that would be most culturally, developmentally and academically beneficial for the class. While one teacher can decide that blogging and document sharing, such as through Wix or Google Drive, creates the best collaboration between students, another can mark live-communication and video creation, such as on Zoom or YouTube, as being the most favorable (Kilis, 2016). One of the easiest ways to stay attuned to new technologies, while holding on to favorites, is to create a social media toolkit; this would allow for a teacher to keep track of various technologies used in the classroom, the student learning and collaboration outcomes, and how the applications would best be used in the future.

Learning new things can be scary—a sentence that just might be the understatement of the year. However, social media should not be one of those things. While a vast number of educators have listened to its negative reputation, the research demonstrates how a healthy dose of social networking in the classroom can improve a students’ interpersonal, academic and developmental skillset. In the long run, all teachers have the goal of conveying knowledge and information to their students, but it is only the great ones who can do it in a way that their students will understand.

References

Bozanta, A. & Mardikyan, S. (2017). The effects of social media use on collaborative learning: a case of Turkey. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 18(96-110).

Bulu, S., Numanoglu, M., & Keser, H. (2016). Examination of the attitudes of middle school students towards social meda. Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences, 11(43-48).

Deaton, Shannon. (2015). Social learning theory in the age of social media: implications for educational practitioners. Journal of Educational Technology, 12(1-6).

Duggan, M. & Smith, A. Demographics of key social networking platforms. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/12/30/demographics-of-key-social-networking-platforms/

Kilis, S., Gülbahar, Y., & Rapp, C. (2016). Exploration of teaching preferences of instructors’ use of social media. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 19(1-18).

Smith, F. (2007). How to use social-networking technology for learning. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/how-use-social-networking-technology