Skip to main content

Social Media in Education

Social media is one of the most used resources for how humans communicate with one another. We use it to share joys and sorrows, our political opinions, what we did this weekend, and the big trip we just went on. 


Nonetheless, social media is a way that humans unintentionally “share information that comes from sources they trust without challenging the claims, evidence, or warrants that make up the argument” (Turner & Hicks, 2017, p.94). We share too quickly based on what our close family and friends think about the topic rather than actually looking at the facts and thinking about whether we agree with what is being shared.


Although social media can be negative, it also has multiple benefits that are used daily that users don’t even realize. Dan Lawerence said it best in his book, “it’s impossible to say that all effects of social media on humans and society have been negative” (Lawrence, 2022, p.49). Many advantages of social media include making connections with distant family and friends and building community online that you may not find in your inner circle amongst many other things. 


The MINDFUL acronym used in Turner and Hicks book is made of six different prompts: Monitor, Identify, Note, Determine, Facts, Understand, Leverage. (Turner & Hicks, 2017, p.100-102). Here is an analysis of the following Facebook post using the MINDFUL framework and how it is relevant to the classroom:


 (We Are Teachers, 2024)




MINDFUL Framework:


Monitor - The audience is intended to be teachers but also society as a whole. The post is made by We Are Teachers, an organization that is “in this together, advocating for educator voices to be heard, for better teacher pay and working conditions, and for a more sustainable and inclusive teaching profession” (About We Are Teachers, 2016).


Identify - The purpose of the post is for society to realize and know that teachers aren’t treated as well or respected as much as other professions. The larger inference is that teachers aren’t valued as much as they should be.

 

Note - The author uses evidence based on the day-to-day conversations that teachers have with colleagues and parents compared to what those would look like in a lawyer’s day-to-day conversations. The respect that society gives these higher-paying jobs is not reciprocated in the education world.


Determine - The evidence is not backed by any data. It is only linked with the author's personal experiences and testimonies compared to the author's perceived experience of a lawyer's workday. The author’s mindset reinforces my pre-existing notion that teachers aren’t a very respected profession in society.


Facts - The author does not present any facts or evidence to support their claim. The Facebook post is an opinion post based on the author's feelings about the subject. A study about observing teachers for a day and lawyers for a day could show some evidence that the claim is factually true.


Understand - Readers who are educators, know educators, and who are related to educators could read this post and agree in response. Readers who have no relationship to the education world may view this post as a comedy and an exaggeration. The majority of responses on the post are in agreement with the claim, but some of the comments disregard the claim by saying, “or be grateful for the help you have.”


Leverage - If I share this post as an educator, I would be telling the community around me that I agree with the post fully. To some of my acquaintances, this might open up their eyes or change their minds about the respect that educators should be given. Others might see me sharing the post as “playing a victim” as an educator. My call for action could be to challenge my community to respect educators by showing what hardships we actually go through during our work day. 


In conclusion, the MINDFUL framework can open our eyes, not only as educators but as readers wanting to learn, to identify fact versus opinion and bias in social media posts. As social media continues to grow in popularity, students will be fed information that may not be factual even if they believed it before seeing the interaction. One way students can detect bias is by researching what it looks like and how to spot it.


Social media can be an amazing communication tool, but if not used correctly, it can skew the mindset that you already have based off of a biased or opinionated post without factual evidence to support the claim. 


- Haley 


References

About We Are Teachers. (2016, August 19). We Are Teachers. Retrieved February 28, 2024, from https://www.weareteachers.com/about-weareteachers/

Helping Students Identify Media Bias. (2022, February 15). Landmark School. Retrieved February 28, 2024, from https://www.landmarkschool.org/our-school/landmark-360-blog?id=270683/helping-students-identify-media-bias

Lawrence, D. (2022). Digital Writing: A Guide to Writing for Social Media and the Web. Broadview Press.

Turner, K. H., & Hicks, T. (2017). Argument in the Real World: Teaching Adolescents to Read and Write Digital Texts. Heinemann.

We Are Teachers. (2024, February 24). Facebook. Retrieved February 28, 2024, from https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=768615985298847&set=pb.100064513581458.-2207520000

Comments

  1. April HendersonMarch 7, 2024 at 6:56 PM

    I do not use a lot of social media in my classroom. We have a school Facebook page that we can post information on if we need to. I do use social media for my personal use. But living in a small town I like to keep my personal and professional lives separate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mr. GrayMarch 8, 2024 at 7:30 PM

    You said something similar about social media to what I said, you said that social media can be used for good, and can also be used for bad. We should all practice using social media in a responsible way.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cara PflaumMarch 9, 2024 at 7:48 AM

    This is a great blog post. I like how you shed light upon both the positive and potential negative effects of social media use. Since it is becoming so relevant in our society and professions, we must be educated on how to use it correctly. Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Julia CummingsMarch 10, 2024 at 2:23 PM

    I loved your insight on this topic! Social media is a huge apart of society and its important that we teach how students how to approach it. Turner and Hicks say, Still, we want to make sure that students- in reading and in writing- move past the appeals alone and dig deeper into conversations about the evidence, warrants, and claims being made. (2017, p 86)"

    References:
    Turner, Kristen Hawley, and Troy Hicks. Argument in the Real World: Teaching Adolescents to Read and Write Digital Texts. Heinemann, 2017.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Black Box Dilemma

Image from Forbes Magazine ( What To Expect From A Pre-Interview Coding Challenge , 2017)     Have you ever been scrolling on Facebook wondering why you haven’t seen a post from one of your close friends in a while to then pull up their profile and see that they post almost every day? Have you ever wondered why one of your posts only gets 5 likes on Monday but 50 likes on Friday? Once on vacation in New York City, me and my sister posted photos of our trip almost 10 minutes apart but she received far more interaction on her post than I did. This is due to the black box algorithm that different social media platforms use to decide what posts each user should be seeing. This algorithm used in social media is being noticed more frequently each day by its users. The algorithm “determines what is displayed to you: a process or a set of rules that sorts through the possible posts and displays them in a particular way to you” (Lawrence, 2022, p. 82)....
3 comments
Read more

How Can Students Who Are Digital Writers Enhance Their Work With Imagery?

Whether a student is in elementary school, middle school, high school, or college, they are writing and creating images that communicate what they are writing into an image. In elementary and middle school, they might be making a slideshow project for their civics class. In high school, students may be on the yearbook staff where they have to decide which pictures and which quotes go on which page. College students may be writing a blog for a class like this one, where they are choosing an image that enhances their writing in the post. Students who are digital writers “must also, now, be competent graphic designers” (Lawrence, 2022, p. 108). Being able to find or create images that relate to or enhance your writing so that your audience has something else to relate to that keeps them interested in what you wrote. It is important to remember that humans are “visual creators as much as we are textual creatures” (Lawrence, 2022, p. 109) just like ho...
3 comments
Read more

The Redesigning of Visual Texts

Walt Disney once said, “Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive.” The power of video texts can be used to convey an idea, message, and share information. Video texts “may be the form of digital writing many of us need to learn or convey information in the twenty-first century” (Hicks, 2013, p.104). These video messages come in so many different formats, and are still continuing to develop thanks to modern technology. How Can a Video Text be Prosperous in Use? According to Troy Hicks in his book, Crafting Digital Writing, he suggests important considerations with editing and creating a video text. These include: narration, panning and zooming, repetition, time effects, film effects, transitions, sound effects and music, and captions and texts (Hicks, 2013, p.111). Not using these considerations won’t ensure an ineffective video text, but seriously considering and implementing these tools can promote your video texts so that it may be as successful as po...
3 comments
Read more