The Role of Social Media in Education
The role of social media in education is a timely and highly debated topic amongst my teacher friends and colleagues. It is often a divide between the younger and older generations, the younger seeing benefits of connecting with students and being able to understand their lives a little better where the older generations don’t have a complete understanding of social media and its potential in education. Friesen and Lowe (2012) discuss many of the implications of having a commercially driven social media site in our education system. Is this a good idea, when profit driven website may compromise the online safety of our students? The general consensus is no.
What Friesen and Lowe (2012) do not begin to touch on are the professional boundaries between student and teacher that may be compromised when we “friend” our students on Facebook. I have had friends that have used Facebook and Instagram in their classrooms with varying degrees of success. One colleague of mine found that Facebook worked great about 5 years ago, and not so much anymore. Facebook lost its “coolness” factor when parents, and now even grandparents, have flocked to the site to both connect with their friends and keep tabs on their children. Boyd (2009) discusses this idea in her article “Why Youth (heart) Social Network Sites”. The second that parents (and arguably teachers) become the norm on social media sites they loose their cool factor. I am sure if I asked my students (grade 6 or 7) if they had heard of MySpace or MSN messenger they probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about, both of these were places where teens used to “hang out”. Facebook, is the new MySpace, a place where teens are no longer flocking to in order to connect with friends to the degree they were previously. As Boyd (2009) notes teens who were on MySpace were creating mirror profiles to hide their social interactions from parents. The same is happening on Facebook.
Even if Facebook isn’t the “coolest” of social media sites, there are still aspects of using it in the classroom that are appealing. Facebook would be a fantastic place to communicate with students and their parents. I think that before we jump on the bandwagon of brining social media into the classroom we, as teachers, really need to take a look at how this may blur our professional bourndaries. I have often contemplated creating a “Mrs. Heitz” Facebook page where I can use this to communicate with both students and parents, upload homework and link videos; basically to use it in a very similar manner to my classroom blog. Using Facebook, however, would allow for an easier dialogue between students, parents and myself who rarely use the comment section of the blog. If I could limit my interaction with students (and parents) in this way I think I would not see a problem using Facebook in my classroom. However, if I were to “friend” students (even under my teacher profile), I would be able to see too far into their lives (in my opinion). I would be able to see pictures they post, interactions they have with friends in my class and outside of it. In a way I would be peering into their houses and knowing too much about their personal lives. The same would be true for their parents. The professional boundary between teacher and student would be no more. Sure I can control what they see about my personal life, still, I would know too much about theirs. This is where I feel uncomfortable.
Another aspect of having student “friends” is legal implications that may arise from me “seeing too much”. We all know that students say things on social media that are inappropriate. Quite frankly, I do not want the responsibility of monitoring my students online behavior. This would be overstepping my bounds as a teacher and acting as their parent.
In the last few years there are a number of programs such as Edmodo and Google Classroom that have sprung up that could be a solution to using conventional social media sites in the classroom and do provide excellent ways for students to collaborate online, which is one of the draws of using social media in the classroom to begin with. I would be more comfortable using one of these platforms in my classroom because I would only have to monitor my students interaction on one specific site, where they are less likely to post personal information.
References:
Boyd, d. (2009), “Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life”
Friesen, N. & Lowe, S. (2012). The questionable promise of social media for education: connective learning and the commercial imperative.
HI Anita,
Great observations. I do think, especially in K-12 that some thought needs to be put into social media. That said, at the college I worked at, we decided (the president and I) that instructors were not to connect with students on Facebook until after they graduated. Period. Mainly for the reasons you mention–potential invasion of their privacy and knowing “too much.” We felt it might compromise the instructor-student relationship. That said, there are likely ways of constructively using social media in the classroom (group pages and the like) without complications.
Thanks for your thought provoking post. Similar to your own situation, I have found myself discussing the use of social media and social networking sites and their role in the classroom. There is certainly a tension between face to face interactions and the use of online environments to foster collaborative interactions and conversations. As a parent, I often relish the idea of my teenage son engaging in face to face conversations and stepping away from online environments for a little while. The fact that they are introduced and encouraged within schools is often a struggle for me. Does Twitter, Facebook or Instagram have a place in the educational landscape? Or are they simply something that should remain outside of the classroom?
I believe that if they are to be introduced into a classroom environment, they need to serve a real purpose. Indeed, the New London Group contends that meaningful learning occurs when learning is situated within the cultural context of the learner and prepares them to thrive outside of the classroom walls. (NLG, 1996). Children are often engaged in these platforms and use this as an important means to communicate. If we are to make learning and communicating relevant and meaningful, then maybe utilizing social media as a means to promote dialogue is necessary. Perhaps it is also important to introduce this layer of communication within the school environment so that students learn how to use these platforms responsibly. Your suggestions about how Facebook could function in a school setting are interesting and as you point out, is an easy way to facilitate communication between parents, students and the educator. However, issues of ethics and boundaries that are indicated in your post are also important considerations. I think negotiating these issues are often reasons why teachers simply don’t wish to use social media at all. Carefully vetting social media platforms, their affordances and their weaknesses are important before jumping in with both feet.
This is a great point, Facebook has kind of lost its appeal now that it is so mainstream. It seems that the norm in high schools now the students are using Instagram more often than Facebook. I too believe it would be a valuable asset in many classrooms, even at the elementary level. Although, as mentioned, I think that when you introduce this kind of public social media site to students at the elementary level, care needs to be taken in providing students with the proper tools to navigate social media safely.
That being said I did an assignment a few years back for an English 10 class where they took to twitter to quote shakespeare using the hashtag #jensenenglish, they had to quote and interpret in a short number of words. It was great and didn’t appear to have any negative repercussions in terms of social issues. I did have an extensive lesson on cyber bullying and even had parents sign waivers for this assignment.
So, I think your post is great in that social media needs to be introduced at a young age, but that due care will certainly need to be taken in teaching them “they ways” 🙂