Social Media Literacies:

Image Source

Attention: What Rheingold states in his 2010 article about the need for students "to learn to turn on the high-beam light of focused attention when necessary" is much more amplified today than it was when he wrote it. He talks about different professors finding the need to limit their students from using the internet because they saw levels of distraction that were out of control. Since then, technology has only advanced and it's become very hard for anyone to argue that it does not have a place in education. Although I agree that it is distracting for students to have their phones and laptops in front of them when they are supposed to be listening to a lecture, it is a given that anyone that grew up with a smart phone is going to have the urge to use the internet whenever possible. Rather than having to completely ban technology or letting students have free reign of their phones in class, many effective teachers find ways to captivate their students' attention utilizing technology to make their class interactive, and hopefully scratch that technology addiction itch enough to prevent students from needing to check their Snap Chat every two minutes. In my classroom, I try to do a mix of tasks that require technology and tasks that require thinking and collaboration without technology. When it is time to do some instruction I make them put their Chromebooks out of sight so they are not as distracted. 

Howard Rheingold's 2010 article "Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies" lays out five key literacies for people to understand when it comes to using social media. These were attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness, and critical consumption. It seems like 2010 was so long ago, but each of these skills have become essential for navigating through this technological world, whether it is surviving in a work place or recognizing misinformation. I will expand on how I feel each of these are even more relevant today below.



One of my favorite programs as a teacher is Hapara, which allows the teacher to control what students are doing on their Chromebooks while they are in class. Teachers can see what websites students have open, and even close out tabs that they deem inappropriate at the time. I must admit I love watch a student's reaction from across the room as I repeatedly close out their game of Snake. The best feature on Hapara is called "focused browsing," which lets the teacher open a specific website for students for a certain amount of time. This is the only way to guarantee that students are not surfing the web every time you look away. Even though technology usage will continue to grow and develop faster than we can imagine, so will the tools that we have as educators to assist with keeping students focused on their learning.

Participation: Although important for developing social skills and learning networks, participation is not a literacy that I would blindly encourage without first teaching people how to do so in an appropriate way. The news has been littered in stories of people destroying their careers after offensive social media posts were discovered. Teenagers, and some politicians, tend to make posts without thinking about the consequences, so it's important they understand the repercussions for acting like an idiot on the internet.

Collaboration & Network Awareness: The amount of options students have to interact with one another inside and outside of school could not be counted on one set of fingers and toes. This level of constant connectivity can have many negative side effects, but in terms of collaboration, we are getting really creative in ways to make our world feel a little smaller. One project I worked on this year was to set up virtual e-pals with classrooms in other parts of the world, and through the website Twice CapSpace I was able to connect with teachers in Alaska and Houston, and our students were able to share videos about their culture through a shared classroom on SeeSaw. The best connection we made was when a teacher that formerly worked in Dubai set us up with a classroom in her previous school. Our students sent videos back and forth, and it was pretty amazing to think about how easy it was to connect these children from across the world.

Critical Consumption: FAKE NEWS! The phrase sends shivers down my spine, as this subject is something that I fear most about the future. It seems that the spread of misinformation has allowed people to blur the lines of fact and fiction. The news is polarizing, and many people don't care about what is true as long as it goes along with what they believe. What scares me is technology that allows people to create videos that look and sound exactly like a person, and making them say whatever they want. The problem with this is now people will have a scapegoat even if they are caught on tape doing something illegal, being able to say that the video was doctored. This article on The Guardian explains how people are able to do this, and gives examples of how it was done on videos with Barack Obama and Donald Trump.