The Social Media Infused Classroom: Mediated Messages 2.0

I have written a few times about my experiences as a member of the Certified Google Innovator #SWE17 cohort and the ongoing learning as part of #GoogleEI . The focus of my application to the Innovator Academy (and the ongoing thread of my work with students and my colleagues) is the development of media literacy. The importance of media literacy can not be understated. Nor can the value of social media as a teaching, learning, and publishing tool.

In the latest iteration of my Innovator project, Mediated Messages, I have added a section on lesson ideas and launched a Facebook group for building a collaborative community dedicated to expanding our capacities for media literacy instruction. Social media is a multi-faceted education tool; it can be used for personalizing instruction, as a research resource, to foster global engagement, and to provide authentic digital citizenship practice. Here are examples of it being used or practiced in each of these contexts.

For Personalizing
In this previous blog post I wrote about my collaboration with an English teacher creating The Selfie Project. Ultimately, as a corollary to their study of Transcendentalism, the students used the makerspace to create 3D representations of self (we called it, "Yourself, in tangible relief"). The project started with an examination of all of the ways a student's identity can be explored, including through playlists, social media, school pictures, the contents of their bedrooms, and their school data. The lesson steps are here and this is a gallery of pictures of the students and their work

For Research
Understanding "Journalistic Truth" and the impact of digital media on our sources of information is essential to student development of savvy research skills. The journalistic truth slides outline a two-period lesson I co-delivered with an English teacher to the students in the non-fiction writing class.

Finding experts and research or non-profit foundations on social media is another excellent way for students to collect valuable insight and potential interview subjects to inform their inquiry.

For Global Engagement
An educator with a global PLN has the resources to connect students with adults and other students around the world for a sharing of culture and point-of-view. Exposure and interaction builds empathy and collaboration. My favorite experience using social media as a teaching tool happened when I was a social studies teacher working with a group of American Studies students. We were studying the cold war and I happened to have a Tweep who is an educator living in eastern Germany. She joined my class for a twitter chat about life in eastern Germany behind the wall and after the wall came down. We were scheduled to chat for 30 minutes and ended up chatting for the entirety of a 70 minute block period. During that time a few of her teacher colleagues joined the conversation as did her daughter who was a student at university. Now my students had both adults and a peer with whom to share perspectives. Several of my students and Ines' daughter began following each other on Instagram, too. The conversation began as a discussion of cold war life and evolved into a discussion of how do we each learn about the other. It was a rich exchange that far exceeded my expectations when Ines and I were planning it!

Teachers at my school haven't yet warmed to Twitter but they are enjoying Flipgrid in closed, classroom-based exercises. Expanding their grids to include participation outside of our school will be a first step building PLNs.

As anyone in the Google Innovator program knows, my cohort, my coach, and my mentor are unparalleled in their support of my work and the counsel they provide. And it's all happening via social media and Google Hangouts.

For Digital Citizenship Practice
I have an on-going collaboration with the teacher of our school's Digital Literacy course. Together we have launched a class Twitter account that the students use to post reflections on lessons and units and provide insights and guidance about good habits of online conduct. To launch this account we had students use Canva to design channel art. We loaded each of their submissions into a Google Form which we pushed to them in Classroom. Students then voted for their favorite design and that was uploaded to Twitter. Then I taught a brief lesson on Hashtags & the Anatomy of a Tweet. The conclusion of the lesson was each student drafting what the first class tweet should be. Again, we shared the submissions with the class and they chose which would be used as our introduction to the Twitterverse.

A Social Media Think Tank for your students is another way to engage them with social media in the context of your course material; here is an elevator pitch you can use with your students.

And that's not all!

My interest in educational use of social media preceded my acceptance into the Innovator Program and new opportunities to continue my learning in this realm have emerged because of the connections I made there. Here are some of the other irons I have in the fire at the moment:

At ISTE18 I will be co-presenting on using social media in the college search and application processes. From building a brand to researching schools to writing the college essay, there are so many ways students can powerfully use social media.

Public libraries in my area are interested in hosting seminars about media savvy and I have a couple happening this month.

My book is about to be released! I co-authored News Literacy: the keys to combating fake news with my friend and fellow librarian, Michelle Luhtala. It will hit the stands in May 2018! I am very excited about the companion video workshops that are being released in conjunction with the book. Those lessons include outreach into social media communities so that the learning is ongoing.

Media Literacy, Emotional Intelligence, and a Slumber Party

At the Google Innovator Academy we were presented with a rocket ship metaphor: as the academy was ending we each had a rocket ship on a launch pad. How would we fuel it? When might it take off? Into what uncharted areas would we navigate and explore? For a little while now, I have been feeling as though my rocket ship is fueled up and ready for ignition but ground control is waiting on favorable weather conditions to authorize a launch. And the weather has been inclement for way too long. Houston, we have a problem.

To address the problem I have had irons in many fires lately. Or, perhaps a better (still fire-related) metaphor is that I have been striking lots of matches to see which burst into flame.

• I offered an "Appy Hour" at my school for teachers to learn about my Innovator project and join if they were interested. One colleague met with me and invited me to pitch my "social media think tanks" to his Humanities class: 55 ninth graders. 
• My town library is preparing a series of adult seminars on media literacy and a colleague referred them to me as a presenter. I have been working with one of the other participants to prepare a workshop for this event.
• As a result of that public library's interest in the topic of media literacy with adults as the audience, I have contacted other are libraries and will be meeting more adult programming coordinators in discuss workshops for the adults raising digitally engaged teens. The focus will be on media literacy and digital citizenship.
• And the book is heading to print! With my friend and former colleague, Michelle Luhtala (@mluhtala) I wrote a book on media literacy full of lessons and strategies for library media specialists and classroom teachers to use with their students.

Despite these cool opportunities, I am still feeling less effective than I want to be. Media literacy is such an important skill but so little direct attention is paid to it. Content is still King and the content is still being delivered in traditional text forms and digital media (not too mention social media) in the classroom is rare. As schools undertake 1:1 and BYOD initiatives, there are movements in my area to ban cell phones in schools. So I am left looking for small pockets of opportunity and my rocketship feels like it is turning into a package of mentos and a diet coke bottle.

Once again, I am returning to the powerful "How might we..." question stem that Les McBeth (@lesmcbeth) of the Future Design School, used in our design thinking work at the Google Academy. How might we:

• amp up the good? (One teacher is letting me pitch my idea to his class!)
• remove the bad? (Create an optional non-tech school within the school)
• explore the opposite? (Teaching media literacy to adults as well as teens.)
• question an assumption? (Let's teach class virtually through social media!)
• go after adjectives? (Online spaces can be safe and educational.)
• find unexpected resources? (Public libraries!)
• play against the challenge? (Encourage more teachers to engage in social media for learning)
• create an analogy from need or context? (Make school spaces and interaction like social media)
• change the status quo? (Make digital media reliable information for learning and being informed)
• break point of view into pieces? (Address teachers by discipline or by grade level)

And all of this got me thinking about emotional intelligence. If that seems like a stretch, stick with me. Back in December, I attended at Digital Citizenship conference hosted by Connor Regan (@ConnorRegan), a program manager for Google for Education and Be Internet Awesome, where one of the presenters, Kerry Gallagher (@KerryHawk02) from ConnectSafely spoke about the connection between Emotional Intelligence and media literacy when it comes to recognizing and unpacking sensational material and good habits of digital citizenship. Her message resonated with me because increasing mindfulness was an underlying principle of the digital citizenship lessons we created for our ninth graders this year.

How can increased emotional intelligence help us (adults) understand how we respond to student cell phone use? And understand why students are using their phones with the frequency or in the manner that they are? How can learning about emotional intelligence help students understand their digital interactions better? AND, how can increased emotional intelligence help all of us navigate digital media?

To begin finding answers to these questions I am attending the RULER parent training offered by Marc Brackett (@marcbrackett) and his team at Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. This morning I took advantage of having a gaggle of high school seniors hanging at my house after a slumber party to have an informal conversation with them about social media, school, and friends. What they said about Facebook didn't surprise me, and they were nuanced and insightful in their explanations. What they said about SnapChat did surprise me as did the fact that some of them are on Twitter.

Here are some of the highlights regarding Facebook:

• "I didn't join Facebook until I had to set it up for school."
• "You can't do anything at school without Facebook. Sports are there, clubs, and everything. We set up groups for our classes and that is really helpful. We can ask each other questions about assignments and deadlines or just vent about the class."
• "Facebook isn't obsolete because it has a purpose like business. There's no room to be creative. If you post pictures they just get lost in the stream."
• "Who has 60 friends? I don't."
• "Parent presence is there."
• "My nana likes everything that is posted that I’m tagged in."

And about SnapChat:

• "I hate streaks."
• "I never have streaks."
• "Streaks feel like a chore."
• "Sending a Snap is more personal than a text."
• "I use it to actually talk to someone one."

Then I explained that I don't think most teens are addicted to their phones. Rather, I think most teens have an emotional need to be connected to their friends and from the outside that looks like an obsession with their device when in reality the device is the means of friend connection. In response to that they said:

• "People who are always on their phones, it's the whole FOMO thing."
• "That’s what I don’t like about it. I don’t want to know if I wasn’t invited somewhere."
• "People will post just so that people know they are doing something."
• "They just want certain people to know what they are up to."

Admittedly there was nothing scientific about my collection of these perceptions and insights. And I'm not sure yet how I will proceed with this information, but I think there is a lot of room for a Google Innovator in the social media and emotional intelligence spaces.

Slow start and slight pivot

When I packed my bags in Stockholm back in early October to begin the trek home from the Google Innovator Academy (#SWE17) I was experiencing information and idea overload. I was inspired to revolutionize teacher-student relationships and conquer students' digital media illiteracy, and I set a goal for the end of the first quarter of my year-long project that I thought was modest. When I shared the goal with the cohort during one of our final sessions, Becky Evans said, "Wow. That's ambitious." Really? I thought, but didn't say.

My goal: by the end of the quarter I will have recruited at least two teachers to form think tanks in at least one of their classes. Students will be posting regularly and the teachers will have begun to introduce ideas from the think tanks into class which has encouraged student voluntary membership in the think tanks to grow organically.

That's it: two teachers, two classes. I built this Google Site to explain the concept of class-based social media think tanks and shared it with some colleagues. I met with a building administrator to explain the concept and received administrative sanction to roll-out my plan.

In a nutshell, here is what I proposed:

To create a class think tank.

• Invite members of your class to join - everything is voluntary and nothing is graded!
• Choose a social media platform that will work for the group's members: a closed Facebook group, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
• As a team, create a name for yourselves.
• Decide upon a team hashtag (#)
• Invite think tank members to share reflections about what you are doing in class via the social media platform, using your think tank's chosen hashtag. 

In addition I provided a page with ideas for maximizing the positive classroom impact of the good work happening in the think tank and expand how the think tank could be used (scale it up!).

Well, I am now at the 6 week mark. I haven't revolutionized anything. Of the three teachers who initially expressed interest in creating social media think tanks for their classes, only one remains involved in the planning. She has backed pedaled from the idea of a class-based think tank and instead, since she is one of the co-advisers, invited me to pitch the idea to the student council. These colleagues who co-advise the student council are new to those roles this year. One of their goals, developed with the council, is to increase the leadership training and experience of council members. To support that initiative we are going to launch (actually I made the group this morning) a closed Facebook group that will serve as a leadership think tank for the council members and, when the council decides it is time to grow the group, other leaders among the student body will be invited to join.

After I introduced the idea to the students this morning, we brainstormed ways the Facebook group could be used:

• students could read and discuss books about student leadership, books like Social LEADia and By Any Media Necessary.
• when students learn about a conference they can post it in the group
• when students attend a conference they can post notes and ideas gained at the conference in the group
• students who are struggling to gain or motivate followers for an initiative can use the group to share who they gained empathy with, the cause they are addressing, what feedback they got from stakeholders, what methods they have tried, and then get help from their peers.
• TED Talks! Who doesn't love a good TED Talk discussion? Like Derek Sivers on how to start a movement.
• Models of leadership: when students see leadership in action, they can capture it and post it to the think tank so leaders-in-training can dissect what makes an effective leader.

It is a start. I am excited to get started. If all goes well, the leadership think tank will take off. The teachers involved will be excited about the potential of a similar group in their classes and the initiative will grow. We'll see. I am cautiously optimistic.

To teach digital citizenship & literacy, we must be digital neighbors

I was fortunate to be accepted into the Stockholm cohort (#SWE17) of the Google Innovator Academy (#GoogleEI). The focus of my work for my Innovator project is students' digital media literacy (or lack thereof). Based on the SHEG report, Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning, and other reading I have been doing about this topic, I initially thought the focus of my work would be on developing students' capacities for unpacking, critically examining, and making meaning of the myriad of digital texts that flood their social media feeds. Following the protocols the Innovator team outlined for us in advance of attending the Academy, I quickly realized that I had a different -- but related -- issue to tackle before addressing student digital literacy. That is, the lack of social media, and thus digital media not curated by a teacher, that is used or experienced in the classroom. Until teachers embrace social media as a teaching, learning, and communication tool, students will not have an opportunity to be guided in the development of their digital literacy. Thus my project: social media think tanks for any classroom. You can learn more about it at my site: Mediated Messages.

Here is my 90 second elevator pitch:

For many years I have sat through faculty meetings where district lawyers have warned us about our social media presence and connections with students. I suspect that the concerns that inspire those cautionary meetings and the policy that as educators we may not be social media friends with our students will result in push back against my project. Yet, I think it is possible for it to work. In fact, if we really mean we want to teach students positive habits of digital citizenship, then it is essential that we interact with them in digital communities.

My daughter is a field hockey player. Her team, like most other teams of which I am aware, self-organizes in a closed Facebook group. All current team members are invited as are the coaches and parents of current players. Announcements are made in this forum, pictures of games and spirit days are shared here, encouraging messages about upcoming games are offered. I am an active contributor to this group even though I am not Facebook friends with most of the group members.

I am also a member of professional Facebook groups like ALA Think Tank and Future Ready Librarians. Again, I contribute to the discussions that happen in these groups. I learn from the postings made by group members and I am not "friends" with most of the people in that group. The posts I make to my page, that are shared with my friends, are not part of that forum. In that way, I can keep my personal and professional postings and communities separate.

Twitter is another social media platform on which I am rather active. I follow many people and many of them follow me as well. There are many people with whom I engage in discourse via hashtags but we do not follow each other. My habit when it comes to Twitter is only to follow people's professional feeds. I do not use Twitter for personal posting. And, by following a hashtag, I can learn from people who contribute to that hashtag discussion without following their entire feed.

As I see it, the use of closed Facebook groups and hashtags allows teachers and students to interact on social media and still maintain a separation of their personal lives. Further separation can be achieved by the creation of classroom accounts. How ever teachers and administrators choose to structure conversations -- many athletic coaches have already figured it out -- we aren't really teaching digital citizenship or information literacy if we aren't digital neighbors.