We have all used social media at some point or another (even if it was just talking about it in a conversation) and can understand what a huge impact it has made on society today. In my Algebra 1 classes, I have a "phone box" that students put their cell phones and iPods in at the beginning of each lesson and get them back at the end. When they asked "Why?" (as if they didn't know), I explained that with 29 of them, plus 29 devices, I'm at a 48-1 battle that I will definitely not win. None of the students ever argue to put their phones in because they know as well as I what a distraction it is. Even if students try not to look at their phones, someone tagged them in a post or a picture or they just received a notification from some other social media application. It is never ending! I actually said to one student the other day that "the post will still be there after our lesson" and she said "it will, but it won't be relevant anymore after all that time!" and she was very serious. She also had a point, that to this new generation of social networkers, there is an expiration on everything, and it is not a lot of time. I recently acquired a Twitter account for school (@neuMATHster) and quickly realized that if students did not see my posts within ten minutes, it was likely they weren't going to see them ever. How do they even keep up?! To them, this is a way of life. To me, this is just another chore to maintain, which is why I post about once per week.
Is it our responsibility to step in on the next generation's use of social networking? I don't know. I think it is important to set an example and to inform students of the potential issues that can come from social networking on all these different apps, but I honestly would not know where to start on teaching students to use these educationally. On Twitter, teachers and I will re-tweet educational articles, and I post historically important mathematicians as my "Man Crush Monday" to entertain the students, but other than those brief things, I am still learning, and it seems to be much slower than the students. To be honest, they could probably tell me what educational value social networking has more than I could tell them!
Maura,
ReplyDeleteI applaud you for setting up a Twitter account for school (love the use of MATH as part of your hashtag - very clever!). Your"Man Crush Monday" feature would probably be fascinating to lots of folks outside your school, too. What I most enjoyed reading was your insights about your students. Their feeling that everything must be immediate, their need to read everything in the moment, the fact that posts earlier might not even ever be noticed.....The fact that your student said "...it won't be relevant after all that time!" is very telling.
However I can't help but think about the question of whether students in the NetGeneration really can log in all this information if it's coming at them so quickly. Even if you have them drop their devices in a bucket, how will this generation of students gain the skills required to focus? Or develop the ability to pay attention to learn and absorb information about a topic that is deeper or more complicated than 170 characters?
Probably you are right....it may be that the students are the ones who can best say what is the best educational value of social networking is. However, by the time they had finished writing up their ideas, their attention may have already been turned to something else new that had just been invented!
Good luck. Being a teacher is a hard, hard job!
Lucia
I love the way you're using social media in your classroom. It's a great idea.I also love that you make everyone put their phones in a box. We've been told we're not allowed to do that for liability reasons. I HATE having to deal with students using their devices in class, including twice (two different students) during tests!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Laura! We have been told similar things about phone liability issues but our biggest problem comes when teachers hold it for more than one period. Since their phones are out all the time, at this point I know who has an orange-covered iPhone or who has the pink ice cream cone case on their Samsung. During tests I actually have them place their phones on their desks so I can see that they cannot touch them - I find it harder to manage the phone box during exams (it sounds crazy but it's true) so this works well for me.
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