Group Project: Social Media on Wikipedia

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

Social Medias and Networking site are a part of our world. Adults and children are using them on a daily basis to communicate with friends, relatives, colleagues, and even strangers. Social Media isn’t going anyway anytime soon. “According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, almost ¾ of seventh to twelfth graders have at least one social media profile, and the survey group used social sites more than they played games or watched videos online. Also, you cannot ignore social medias like Facebook have grown to over 500 million users in 7 years, and I haven’t even gone into the details of sites like Myspace, Tagged, MyYearBook, Ning, Hi 5, and LinkedIn. Social media growth is exponential. (Gary, 1). How important is using technology in the classroom in today’s world? It is very important to help students learn and become ready for their futures. Pitler says that the use of technology in the classroom can have a very positive effect on student learning. Scores go up and students will actually learn more as well. His book has many suggestions for teachers and students and also has the seven categories of technologies that would be useful for parents to learn as well as their children so that they could help them when completing homework and assignments using the specific resources. These seven categories are multimedia, web resources, communication software, data collection tools, organizing software, spreadsheets, and word processing applications (Pitler, 2-12). Why should students use technology and what benefits does it give them? This section stated that the emergences of technology based learning environments require parents along with teachers to pay attention to how and what children learn outside of school and the home. Not only can the parents and teachers raise awareness of the new technologies they can also begin to appreciate the range of new skills that kids develop when they get to start using these technologies in school and at home (Collins, 122-123).

Here are five easy tips to ensure students safety from the article, “We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?” by Ronnie Burt. In the article he explains how schools can prepare students to be safe users of the internet as well as how teachers should teach them. #1 is to set clear guidelines. Teacher and the school system has to set clear guidelines for students and parent on the expectation and appropriate behavior of students on blogs and social networking sites used for educational purposes. #2 is whether to use a student's name. Decide if you are going to use codenames, first or last names only. Full names are not suggested unless the blog or social networking site is listed as private. #3 is the use of Photos. Teacher allowing students to use photos of themselves is not suggested. You must have parental consent to post pictures of students for the site anyway. Using photo opens many door for legal issues with the school system and parental concerns. Stay away from the issue to keep students protected. Next #4 is whether to have Public or Private accounts. A private setting will definitely keep the unwanted visitors that may cause harm to your site and students but it limits the global learning aspect from visitors to comment on blogs. This may even limit friends and family from being able to see the work of students. Finally #5 deals with student work and confidentially. Commenting on blogs and social media sites are expected but remember that they are left for others to see and be careful not to put comments that refer to grades and assessing of a students work out in the open. (Burt, 1).

How can parents keep their children safe online when they are using social media and the internet for educational purposes and in their everyday lives? Safe internet use starts with good parental involvement. Parents need to make sure that they set guidelines and that they are involved and guide their child through the online world the same way they would in their everyday lives. Some suggestions this article gives for parents to go by is to create a family agreement for internet use, place the computer in a central and open location, look at the sites your child visits, block offensive sites, encourage your child to tell you if anyone is asking for personal information, talk to your child about potential online dangers, steer them away from chat rooms, and tell them that talking to a stranger on the internet is no different the talking to one in person (Lynn, 3-4). For parents the first thing that they can do to make sure their child is safe is give their student permission to use this technology for school. Most schools send home an acceptable use sheet to sign and parents should be aware of this and make sure that they get one. Parents also need to communicate with teachers about what the teacher is doing to make sure that student privacy is protected. Parents need to make sure they talk to their children about never putting personal information on the blogs and the parents also need to know the process for reporting problems with blog content. Lastly as a parent they need to oversee the student’s blog and then decide what to do with it at the end of the course (Richardson, 46-47).

Some examples of keeping students safe when using social media in education is a high school in Minnesota that wanted to open up a school Facebook page. What the teachers and parents encountered was that Facebook wasn’t the safest place for their children to be, that most social media sites aren’t made with security in mind; they go on communication and ease of use. To use Facebook one only has to be 13, and in the end the school decided to use Google Apps for Education with Google Docs because their main platform is education for kids while keeping them safe. They asked Facebook if they would create a “Facebook App for Education” so that educators could interact and engage with students but Facebook declined to create one. The school has also started using Edmondo which is a way for teachers to safely share the web with their students and can be turned on and off by administrators. Since the parents and teachers did research on the safety of their students they made it possible for the students to use social media in education, but also made sure they were protected. (McGraw, 52).

Schools and teachers aren’t the only people to have to worry about social media and their jobs. Many companies including Delta Air Lines and Google have fired employees for what they wrote about work on their blogs. In 2005, over 8 million adults had blogs. Employers are becoming more aware of the risks of personal blogs and some companies are creating social media policies. A social media policy would give clear guidelines to employees so they know the rules and expectations. For example, IBM unveiled blogging guidelines for its 329,000 employees in May of 2005. The guidelines state that employees should identify themselves (and, when relevant, their roles at IBM) when blogging about IBM, and avoid ethnic slurs and controversial topics like religion (Armour, 1).



REFERENCES:

Armour, S. (2005, June 14). Warning: your clever little blog could get you fired. USA Today.

Burt, Ronnie. "We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?" Edublogs.org November 30, 2010. .

Collins, A. & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Gary, H. "Social Media A safe place for our kids?" Kid Internet Safety Guru.Com. May 4, 2011.

Lynn, K. (2011). Help to Keep Your Children Safe Online. San Diego, CA: Burnaby Now.

McGraw, G. Keeping it Clean: Introducing online Social Media into your educational mission brings you right into a hacker’s bull’s-eye. Can you ensure your learning environment stays safe? THE Journal (technological Horizons in Education). 38.1 (Jan. 2011): p52 (5). (2877 words) School Library Journal.

Pitler, Howard, et al. “Introduction.” Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. ASCD 2007. Pages 1-14.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.