Most recent public comments by Virginia Barr https://nowcomment.com/users/56319 https://nowcomment.com/documents/141908?scroll_to=1374617 https://nowcomment.com/documents/141908?scroll_to=1374617 I agree that social media can be a distraction in the classroom and can possibly affect how students develop socially. If a teacher decides to use social media as a teaching tool, s/he needs to have strong intent behind her/his decision. Teaching students how to use social media to network would be a legitimate reason for a teacher to use it in the classroom. I found your discussion of future trends intriguing because I was not familiar with these trends of private groups using and users creating social learning units. I agree that the trend toward increased transparency is prevalent, and I hope it will increase customers' privacy. We have no idea where social media is heading, especially with the current generation of students growing up surrounded by social media. It will be exciting to see what future generations create. Sat, 20 Jul 2019 23:17:46 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/141908?scroll_to=1374616 https://nowcomment.com/documents/141908?scroll_to=1374616 Social media has great potential to expand students’ awareness of what is happening in schools around the globe by giving them the opportunity to directly communicate with other students studying similar topics. Social media allows students to possibly learn from other students who directly experience whatever they are studying. Dr. Fox’s story about her son connecting with people with knowledge about the types of lizards he was studying comes to mind. I think students using video calls to connect with students at other schools has potential to get ideas flowing and inspire students to collaborate and develop their creativity. As long as students are thinking creatively, there is no way to tell how they will use social media in the future. Perhaps they will write blog posts with interactive aspects that will allow students across the world to contribute to the posts. They might then use the results of those contributions to conduct research projects. Perhaps students will develop a program that allows them to create robots with input from students across the country on how best to design those robots. The possibilities are endless! Teachers need to find educational social media platforms that provide only the most positive services for their students. Bringing the most popular social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other sites, may not be necessary for younger students. These types of social media often lead students down a path of self-deprecation. When social media is used to create a platform where students only post the best aspects of their lives, their friends get a false sense of what their lives are actually like. When students also compare themselves to their peers, celebrities, and online personalities, they give themselves unattainable goals of things they must achieve in order to be cool. This self-deprecating trend does not seem to be going away anytime soon. I believe this type of online presence does not need to be brought into the classroom. Instead, teachers can work to guide their students to use social media in positive ways. Educational blog sites can provide the positive resources of the more popular social media sites without the distractions of pop culture. Teachers can be role models by creating an online presence with a strong awareness of our digital footprint. We can discuss with our students what it means to be good digital citizens, and how they can protect themselves from bullies online. Many parents use social media to post about their children’s lives, often before their children are old enough to decide whether or not they want their stories posted for all of their parents or the whole world to see. Teachers who did not grow up with social media in their lives from the beginning should be especially aware of how the youngest students are affected by its widespread presence. I predict that the trend of parents posting about their children’s lives is a trend that will increase in popularity over time. Teachers can embrace social media as a way to let parents see their children’s successes. However, teachers need to ensure all of the privacy settings are as secure as possible. Even with taking security precautions, they need to be careful about what they post to ensure that everything online has been given approval to be there from parents and administrators. Teachers can guide their students in protecting themselves in the online profiles they create for themselves by encouraging them to think about all of the important people who might see their profiles someday, such as future school administrators and employers. As social media develops over time, teachers will need to continue to assess the various social media sites and applications and weigh the positive possibilities against negative before bringing those resources into their classrooms. Tue, 23 Jul 2019 12:29:58 -0400