Social media’s place in education
The popularity of social media has grown at an almost unbelievable rate since the trend began. Facebook now has 845 million monthly users, and social networking accounts for 1 out of every 6 minutes spent online. Looking at these figures, it comes as no surprise to learn that social media sites are becoming more and more common in education. Dubbed ‘Educational Networking’, teachers are using these social media sites to engage their students in a way that is relevant and interesting to them. Many schools have their own twitter accounts to deliver information and update their students quickly, and Youtube has become a valuable resource for educational video content.
There is no doubt that social media sites are being used proactively to help children learn, but is it really a good idea to be encouraging children to engage in social networking from a young age when the risk of being exposed to inappropriate content is still very prominent?
To prevent young children accessing them, most social media sites require the user to be over a certain age, but this week Children’s Minister, Tim Loughton, noted that some parents are helping their children set-up under-age profiles on Facebook. An argument could be made that by doing it this way the parents know what their children are doing and who they are interacting with, but are they going to be able to stop them being exposed to inappropriate material on their smartphone/at a friend’s house/at school?
This week on Twitter, a TV character’s parody account encouraged followers to tweet a sexually graphic image of themselves, and with over 270,000 followers, Twitter soon became bombarded with images that are, to put it lightly, not suitable for a younger audience. Even more shocking is that these images could be accessed by students in Schools that allowed the use of twitter.
Also, not too long ago, YouTube suffered an attack of inappropriate videos being uploaded. Seemingly harmless children’s videos cut to pornography half way through and with 60 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, it is near impossible to moderate.
Using social media sites in the classroom can be invaluable in helping children learn, but staff must understand the threats associated with them, and also be aware of the tools, such as Web and Media Filters, that can be used to reduce the risk of exposing their students to inappropriate material.
Find out more about keeping children safe on the Web by downloading our whitepapers:
Internet Safety and Responsible Use – Emerging Threats in Education
Ten Steps to Keeping Children Safe Online
Also, tweet us @bloxx and let us know your thoughts about the use of social media in education
I like this post, questions about social media in schools have started to rise significantly over the past few months.
I’ll keep this relatively short due to time of evening, and the fact I could go on and on.
With anything “e-safety” there are 4 elements that must be entwined - policy, liability, technology and education. An integral part of all of those is responsibility. We as parents or as schools have that responsibility, and if we know something is happening we have a duty of care to do something about it. In the context of social media and e-safety we can do one of 2 things: bury our heads in the sand and hope nothing happens, or tackle it by , even if that is a class of U13’s. At least then it is in a controlled environment of learning and e,powerment
By Alan at 10:33 pm on May 9, 2012
Sorry about the double post, i clicked send before I was supposed to.
I like this post, questions about social media in schools have started to rise significantly over the past few months.
I’ll keep this relatively short due to time of evening, and the fact I could go on and on.
With anything “e-safety” there are 4 elements that must be entwined - policy, liability, technology and education. An integral part of all of those is responsibility. We as parents or as schools have that responsibility, and if we know something is happening we have a duty of care to do something about it. In the context of social media and e-safety we can do one of 2 things: bury our heads in the sand and hope nothing happens, or tackle it, even if that is a class of U13’s. At least then it is in a controlled environment of learning and empowerment.
We don’t learn to drive by sitting in the instructors office, we learn the risks and risk assessment by “doing” in a controlled manner so that eventually we can be “let loose” on our own.
e-Safety is all about risk and behaviour. Teach the risk, empower good behaviour, use technology (filtering etc) to back up school policy and liability.
By Alan at 10:39 pm on May 9, 2012
Completely agree that there has to be recognition from Schools and parents that the Web can be used for malicious activity and children may intentionally or unintentionally view inappropriate content.
Great analogy about learning by doing. It’s our - whether we’re teachers or parents - responsibility to educate children on how to use the Web safely and intelligently, and not to deprive them from using it and benefiting from the invaluable resources available just because it carries certain risks.
By Cameron at 11:11 am on May 10, 2012