Hayley, Alysha, and I have created this lesson for our Genius Hour Project. It is a Grade 6 math lesson on estimation and uses Flipgrid to help strengthen collaboration and connectedness in our classrooms.
Essential Links:
Let us know what you think in the comments below!
A powerful comment on a blog post, Flipgrid video, or tweet adds to the conversation. This could include posing questions to the creator or other commenters, adding opposing viewpoints, or providing alternate perspectives on the content.
If I were teaching my students how to comment on social media posts, we would first have a discussion about empathy and tact. I would remind my students that they don’t have to agree with what they see online, but they can disagree without insulting the original poster or other commenters.
Criteria for comments would include a phrase to show understanding of the content in the post about which they are commenting. For example, comments could begin with phrases such as “You said in your post…” “I agree with you about…” etc. By encouraging this summary, students have to take the time to think and process what was in the original post, which would, hopefully, lead to a more positive comment. Criteria would also include posing a question, something they are wondering about, or alternate perspective that would keep the conversation moving forward. Comments would also need to be positively phrased, and not hurtful.
In order to be leaders through comments on social media, students need to first have enough knowledge about the topic being discussed. Through research and classroom lessons, students can gain perspectives and hopefully see multiple sides to the issues being discussed online. Having empathy for the original poster will help students comment positively.
Before discussing commenting with my students, I think it would be necessary to have a conversation about abusive commenting and trolls. Through that discussion, I would remind my students that it is easier to leave rude or abusive comments online than it is to say these things to somebody in person. We’d have a conversation about why people feel more emboldened to be mean online, and talk about the fact that behind every screen name is a human who has feelings. Without empathy, students can’t be leaders online.
For our EDCI 338 class, my partner, Hayley, and I adapted this lesson from Media Smarts to address the issue of bystanders in cyberbullying. To see our plan, click here.
Chapter One of Jennifer Casa-Todd’s book “Social LEADia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership” addresses many assumptions educators have about using Social Media in the classroom.
Something that was confirmed for me in this chapter was that technology can open doors and offer opportunities to students who may otherwise not be able to participate fully. Casa-Todd states that “online spaces can provide avenues for leadership that [shy students] could never achieve in a classroom setting.” I work in a middle school, primarily with Grade 6 students. At this age, many students are concerned about their self-image and how they are seen by their peers. I have several students who almost never feel comfortable to share their ideas during class discussions or who offer to be a spokesperson of their small group.
My students recently completed a science project in which they were tasked to design an experiment or demonstration to prove one of Newton’s Laws of Motion. They were able to share their work however they wished. Most students created a Google Slides presentation and spoke to their project in front of the class, but one team made a video to show each step of their process and their thoughts along the way. The two students in that group are quite shy and often very quiet in class. They said more in the 5 minute video than I had heard them say in the 5 months prior in class. As the class watched the video, we got to see the personalities of these two members of our classroom and share in their success. By using technology, these students were able to feel more comfortable to take risks in their learning.
Something that I learned from “Social LEADia” was the phrase “social media gap.” Casa-Todd describes the social media gap by saying that students who have been taught how to use social media have an advantage over those who haven’t in the professional world. She goes on to say that “businesses are having to train their employees how to use social media effectively.” This seems obvious now, but didn’t occur to me before reading this chapter. If we want our students to have every advantage in the workplace, social media and digital literacy skills will need to be explicitly taught and developed.
Something that makes me think differently is Casa-Todd’s mention of parents. She counters the argument that many parents feel uncomfortable with their children using social media in school by suggesting that educators “invite parents to join the learning process and actually become empowered to use social media with their children.” I hadn’t thought of connecting the social media I could use in the classroom with my students’ parents, but that is a consideration that I will think on moving forward. This could be an opportunity for our classroom discussions and topics to move beyond our walls and into the community, which could make learning more meaningful for my students.
So, what are your thoughts on the chapter?
References:
Casa-Todd, J. (2017). Social Leadia: Moving Students From Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership. Retrieved from [Google Slides] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1l26DBgpkIDeOncHY9ySI-GGs1ZNYJNxi1SYDuLrQdaY/edit#slide=id.p
Social Media in the Workplace [Digital Image]. Retrieved from https://www.signalmind.com/blog/post/social-media-in-the-workplace-valuable-tool-or-liability