Reflections on Social Media and Networking
OLTD 506: 1.1
My experimentation with social media and social networking, both personally and professionally, has been filtered through my seemingly innate fear of losing control over my personal identity. On top of that, I am fiercely opposed to any outside agency invading my privacy or eroding my right to privacy (remember Big Brother?). So where am I at now? Working in schools when computers were introduced as a tool for learning and then again when the internet was cautiously introduced into our computer labs, I have had to either embrace technology or fight it. I chose to embrace it, but with a sense of caution around the whole notion of cyber safety for my students and my own children. The subsequent years of professional interaction with use of the internet in schools has certainly introduced me to the many woes of social media use by students. Sadly, the majority of our professional and systemic attempts at mitigating these negative impacts and finding ways to educate our students in the positive use of all things net-based were doomed to near failure from the start. We have never been able to stay abreast of emerging technologies and the myriad of applications for its use. To compound the issue, our children have been so taken by the seeming freedoms of the internet that they have committed almost all their free time to exploration of what is available and what they can do with it. This puts them a quantum jump in front of any of us in the education system in spending time to explore and master internet applications. We are always catching up. This could not be more evident than in the use (and misuse) of social media sites and social networking.
While I have had a basic understanding of social media and it's potential for positive use in schools, my struggles for acceptance and a more positive outlook has only recently emerged with my studies in the OLTD program. The explorations i have undertaken as part of the program demands for social media, really became more focused in OLTD 505 and now again in OLTD 506. I am open to the positives I see and have been learning about through the required readings and explorations from these courses, but will need the time to challenge myself to integrate social media into our school pedagogy. I certainly appreciated Julia Hengstler's blog, What Parents Should Know Part 1: Basic Understanding of Social Media and digital Communication, which outlines 5 critical characteristics concerning social media and online presence as a warning to parents. She really outlined all of the concerns I have had over the years about open and unsupervised use of the internet by children. Her comments comparing the digital world to that of a face-to-face interaction also resonate, but make me wonder if I want to accept the risks of incorporating new ways of communicating into my school environment. Like Julia, I also believe that maturity matters and that as students grow and mature, they are likely able to see the benefits of responsible use of social media when telling the world about themselves. Perhaps it is just me not being quite ready to see the individual maturity due to the specter of my past experiences with virtual communication structures.
Hengstler, J. (2013, May 24). What parnts should know part 1: basic understanding of social media and digital communication. https://jhengstler.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/what-parents-should-know-part-1-basic-understanding-of-social-media-digital-communications/
My experimentation with social media and social networking, both personally and professionally, has been filtered through my seemingly innate fear of losing control over my personal identity. On top of that, I am fiercely opposed to any outside agency invading my privacy or eroding my right to privacy (remember Big Brother?). So where am I at now? Working in schools when computers were introduced as a tool for learning and then again when the internet was cautiously introduced into our computer labs, I have had to either embrace technology or fight it. I chose to embrace it, but with a sense of caution around the whole notion of cyber safety for my students and my own children. The subsequent years of professional interaction with use of the internet in schools has certainly introduced me to the many woes of social media use by students. Sadly, the majority of our professional and systemic attempts at mitigating these negative impacts and finding ways to educate our students in the positive use of all things net-based were doomed to near failure from the start. We have never been able to stay abreast of emerging technologies and the myriad of applications for its use. To compound the issue, our children have been so taken by the seeming freedoms of the internet that they have committed almost all their free time to exploration of what is available and what they can do with it. This puts them a quantum jump in front of any of us in the education system in spending time to explore and master internet applications. We are always catching up. This could not be more evident than in the use (and misuse) of social media sites and social networking.
While I have had a basic understanding of social media and it's potential for positive use in schools, my struggles for acceptance and a more positive outlook has only recently emerged with my studies in the OLTD program. The explorations i have undertaken as part of the program demands for social media, really became more focused in OLTD 505 and now again in OLTD 506. I am open to the positives I see and have been learning about through the required readings and explorations from these courses, but will need the time to challenge myself to integrate social media into our school pedagogy. I certainly appreciated Julia Hengstler's blog, What Parents Should Know Part 1: Basic Understanding of Social Media and digital Communication, which outlines 5 critical characteristics concerning social media and online presence as a warning to parents. She really outlined all of the concerns I have had over the years about open and unsupervised use of the internet by children. Her comments comparing the digital world to that of a face-to-face interaction also resonate, but make me wonder if I want to accept the risks of incorporating new ways of communicating into my school environment. Like Julia, I also believe that maturity matters and that as students grow and mature, they are likely able to see the benefits of responsible use of social media when telling the world about themselves. Perhaps it is just me not being quite ready to see the individual maturity due to the specter of my past experiences with virtual communication structures.
Hengstler, J. (2013, May 24). What parnts should know part 1: basic understanding of social media and digital communication. https://jhengstler.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/what-parents-should-know-part-1-basic-understanding-of-social-media-digital-communications/