Fear as a Motivator in High School

"'You smell something, Rabbit?' (sniff, sniff) 'Fear'" -Super Troopers (2001)

In the past few months I've been using a slide on "FOMO" to make a point to teachers that we can't stop our students from using social media by just wagging our finger and telling them to stop. After all, fear is a powerful motivator, and it drives teenage behavior more than we realize. In high schools, fear of a failing grade or not getting into college motivates students to complete their work.  Online, fear of missing out drives teenagers to obsess, gossip, insult and shame one another.

Fear in School

At my school, a lot of my colleagues and I worry that high school is starting to look a lot less like the high schools we attended and a lot more like "pre-college." Increasingly, students see high school as a necessary step to get into a selective college, rather than a place to learn and grow. Students (and parents) are putting more and more pressure on themselves earlier in their academic career to get good grades and complete the extracurricular activities that look good on a college transcript. As a result, they're incredibly motivated by achieving a high GPA, taking AP level courses, and choosing extracurricular activities that colleges will look upon favorably. For example, in a recent report The College Board noted, "the number of students who graduate from high school having taken rigorous AP courses has nearly doubled, and the number of low-income students taking AP has more than quadrupled." The uptick in "rigorous" courses does nothing to quell students' obsession with their GPAs, which in turn are losing meaning thanks to weighting and grade inflation.

The heightened focus on grades, APs, and standardized testing is especially visible in private schools. At these schools, new technology perpetuates students' tendency to see themselves as numbers and compare themselves to others.  Online gradebooks literally attach a number (to the nearest hundredth of a decimal at my school) to every student in every class.  Naviance, used by our college counseling office, literally attaches a GPA and SAT score to each student to compare him or her to past applicants on a scatter plot graph. Inevitably, this means that students work hard in school out of fear of their numbers going down.

The real problem of using fear as a motivator is that it's bad practice for teaching and learning. Students learn best when they're curious, not when they're fearful. Teachers teach best when they use their time prepping interesting classes and meeting with students, not grading. Maturity, self-discovery and retention don't improve at the same rate when students feel fearful in school and when doing school work.

Fear in Social Media

When transitioning from student to teenager our adolescents find themselves motivated by fear.  In this capacity it's not a number on the transcript that they're worried about, but the number of likes on an Instagram, Twitter or Facebook post, or views on a Snapchat story. Our students are addicted to their screens. I've written about this before. Common Sense Media claims that teens spend almost 9 hours (8:56) a day not including school or homework on screens. One of the principal reasons for this is that there's so much happening online--particularly in social media spaces--and teenagers feel pressured to stay up-to-date with what's happening in their communities. That's where the concept of FOMO originates; it's the fear of missing out on something occurring in that space.

Fear is bad for social interactions on- and off-line in the same way it's bad for teaching and learning. FOMO drives teenagers to meticulously document all of their favorite social interactions to prove that they aren't missing out on anything. Inevitably, that means there is a group on the outside that is "missing out" on something. How teenagers respond to these posts defines relationships and social norms. It's why they obsessively check their phones for social updates, why they bully one another online, and it's why they seek affirmation through online interactions. Of course, this happens online and offline. But social media is ever-present and particularly conducive to these problems.  It attaches a number to each post, and it allows others to hide behind their screens when interacting, which leads to posts, comments and editing that compound tough teenager interactions.

Being a teenager is tough enough. Let's work to find ways to limit or remove fear as an emotional state and a motivator to act and interact on and offline.

Facebook, Other Tech Giants Enter Education with "Personalized Learning"

Let the Unbundling of Education Begin!

Personalized learning is having its moment in the spotlight in educational technology. Teachers are consciously trying to help students develop personalized learning networks for learning beyond the classroom (see my effort here). Additionally, tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple are all investing in this sector of education. But they're not working together. As our students spend more and more time on their screens, we need to ensure they're using that time and space for learning. After all, that's what education is all about. What's the best way to do this in education? Whichever tech giant(s) can facilitate learning best online stands to make a pretty penny.

Enter the unbundling of education.

Unbundling is a pretty simple concept: it's the idea that to succeed in business in the 21st century, entrepreneurs are unbundling existing industries and structures to reach more consumers. For example, in the news industry, it's increasingly unlikely that consumers read a newspaper cover to cover--not with the Web, Facebook and Twitter. It's also increasingly unlikely that consumers will listen to an entire CD (who even buys CDs anymore?)--not with Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music. That's because businesses have unbundled these industries and consumers have embraced it. Education is undergoing a similar transformation.

With the web, there are plenty of ways to learn the content needed to excel in school. A student can also "unbundle" education by pursuing his own education online--without blindly following his high school and college mandatory curriculum. Clearly this is happening on the web, but on which tech giant's platform and on whose dime?

Facebook, Amazon and Apple are all trying to reach teachers and students in this quest to unbundle education through personalized online learning. Amazon hopes teachers will sign up for their platform--Amazon Inspire--that helps teachers access and purchase materials to teach. Facebook built an LMS (Learning Management System) for the Summit School District in NJ. Zuckerberg is thoroughly committed to personalized learning, saying the "model just intuitively makes sense.” So, as a philanthropist, he invested in AltSchool which "has a well rounded suite of products" that "facilitates deeply personalized learning."

These companies are assuming that they need to enter the educational technology market in order to get teachers and students to land on their platforms and access their educational materials. But do they really need new structures, platforms, and brands to do this? The platforms already exist and they can and do help students with learning. The problem for these tech companies isn't that they don't have great educational content, it's that they can't entice and keep students in their platforms for learning.  I propose two things. First, tech giants should simplify by inviting students and teachers into their existing platforms and promoting education there. Students and teachers are already familiar with and regularly visit these platforms.

Second, the tech giants need to work with educators to get students learning on their platforms.  For instance Apple has iTunes U--a market for learning a multitude of different subjects through audio (like podcasts) and video. Google's YouTube serves a similar purpose. There are thousands of MOOCs available through EdX, MIT Open Courseware and Udacity (to name a few). And Facebook and Twitter are building up impressive lists of professional organizations that publish educational content on their servers everyday.  But students don't use these resources for learning.  Tech companies need to harness educators' understanding of how to get students to navigate to and engage with these specialized products the way they currently use Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple.

The current approach to #edtech has tech giants meeting education in the middle instead of truly disrupting it (i.e. unbundling through personalized learning). Educators and tech companies need to keep the dialogue moving. It's going to take innovators who can bridge the gap between the tech giants and education to fully achieve disruption. As Zuckerberg said, “I’m used to building products with Facebook that hundreds of millions of people use. For this, you need to know the specific communities and you need to know the teachers and the students.” As an educator, I'm on the ground working to unbundle education through personalized learning networks.

That's why I built this website for my students: socialmediamarketplace.org.


References:
Amazon Unveils Online Education Service for Teachers (NYTimes)
Facebook Helps Develop Software That Puts Students in Charge of Their Lesson Plans (NYTimes)

Teen Social Media Use By the Numbers

On this blog, I've written a lot about teenage social media use, so naturally I click on every study I see that tries to put numbers to teenage screen-time. Below are the numbers I've seen most recently.

In 2016, researchers at Common Sense Media found that teens spend almost 9 hours (8:56) a day not including school or homework consuming media.

In a study as far back as 2010 the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that teens (8-18 years old) are spending approximately 7:38 a day consuming media. The study ranks "total media exposure" for the 11-14 demographic at 11:53, and for the 15-18 demographic at 11:23. Those numbers take into account multitasking, which will often double media exposure through multiple screens. Speaking of multi-tasking, according to Common Sense Media (2016), teens reported that they multitasked at high rates when doing homework: 51% watch TV, 50% use social media, and 60% text. Every scientific study related to multitasking has proven it's inefficient. But teens either 1) don't know how bad it is for performance or 2) don't care enough to stop or 3) can't stop.

In a 2015 researchers at Pew reported that 24% of teens (13-17) admit that they go online "almost constantly." That number increases for the next age group (18-29) where 29% say they go online almost constantly. Additionally, fully 91% of teens access the web daily via a mobile device, which proves the breadth of internet use amongst teens. And 71% of teens are accessing more than one social media site on a consistent basis, which shows the depth of internet use amongst teens.

Clearly the numbers for screen-time and media consumption uncovered by these organizations only seem to be increasing amongst teens--not to mention how that change is affecting their ability to complete homework, sleep, and associate with their family, just to name a few of the major implications of this change in our teens. But as an educator, I'm most interested by these numbers because they prove the importance of both teaching teens how to use their screen-time productively and teaching teens how to be informed consumers of media. Unfortunately, I don't think we're doing a great job with this, and I don't know where this fits into our current curriculum. So it often seems like teens are living in a fundamentally different reality than we (educators) lived in when we were there age. And we're not using our power as mentors and teachers to help them navigate this new world of media and screen ubiquity.

I've advocated previously that we need to create new classes to help students manage their screen time and be informed consumers of media (here and here). But even if schools won't add classes to their current curriculum, perhaps we can spend more time addressing these trends in teen culture in the following disciplines:
English/History: Research, consumption patterns, media literacy, and digital citizenship
Art: creating, posting, and curating online media
Psychology: The brain and computer use, addiction, multitasking & the social psychology behind exporting an image of yourself online.
Health: Heathy habits for screen-time and how to create a healthy online image
Technology: This could serve as a catch-all for a lot of the above. It can also help them use their screen time efficiently.

Check out the essay I published on my medium page for advice on teaching teenagers how to use social media responsibly, professionally and to enhance learning.  

Sources:
Teens Social Media and Technology Overview 2015 - Pew
Common Sense Media 2015: Executive Summary - CSM
Common Sense Media 2016: Executive Summary - CSM
Technology Addiction: Concern, Controversy, and Finding Balance - CSM
The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens - CSM
Generation M2 Media in the Lives of 8-18 year olds: A Kaiser Family Foundation Study (2010) - KFF

OESIS 2016 Talk: New Media and Digital Identity

I presented a "course of the future" at the annual OESIS conference in Boston a few weeks ago and fielded a handful of great questions from educators interested in implementing passion-based learning and personalized learning at their schools. I left the conference very encouraged that educators genuinely want to include more inquiry-based/passion-based instruction in their classes. Most importantly, most of those present seemed to agree that social media is an effective way to do so, which is how I've been teaching my courses for a number of years (both New Media and Digital Identity and my history courses). A majority of the questions I answered were about tactics of implementation. So, I'm posting a recording of this talk so that those who weren't there can still use some of my ideas about injecting passion based learning through social media into our schools. If you're interested in hearing the questions at the end of the talk, there's a link to it at the end of the video. Enjoy!

Teenage Social Norms on Social Media

It's hard to teach in the age of social media; I can only imagine how hard it is to parent in the age of social media. Last week, I was giving a talk to parents on how to talk to your teen about technology. After one of the sessions, a parent came up to me and asked about a story I told about a teenager who removed a post on Instagram because it didn't garner enough likes. She said, "I wish I knew more of those rules my children have on social media. It's hard to help them if I don't understand why they're doing what they're doing." That felt like the making of a blog post, so here goes nothin':

Teenage social norms on social media by application:

GENERAL

• If a new acquaintance follows you, you're supposed to follow back--otherwise, that acquaintance can't blossom into a friendship. 
• If a friend messages you on any of the below mediums, you're supposed to write back. If you don't, it makes for a rocky interaction the next time you see that "friend."
• If anyone tags you on a social media site, you have to like and comment. 
• And if someone plays an inside joke and you know it, you have to interact with that post somehow (like as a minimum). 
• The bottom line is, it's all about the interactions! On many of these apps, a certain amount of likes are necessary for the post to be considered worth it. As I mentioned above, sometimes on Instagram, if a teenager doesn't feel he/she received enough likes on a photo, he/she will remove it.  
• You can only change your profile picture every so often. You don't want to make it look like you're too into yourself, but you also do have to change your profile from time-to-time to really make a statement about who you are. I've also heard that a teenager is supposed to collect more likes on each subsequent profile picture or risk losing hurting his/her status on social media. 
• Birthdays--this is so interesting it should have its own blog post. Allow me to be brief... Because these apps want data on our teens, they all ask for birthday. Many--most notably Facebook--then display a user's birthday to his/her following. Depending on your relationship with the user, you're expected to respond in a certain way. For example, if it's a friend, you can comment on Facebook. If it's a good friend, you should text. And if it's one of your besties, you send a flattering photo collage to Instagram (and Facebook) to show off your friendship with the birthday boy/girl.  

INSTAGRAM

• Likes are EVERYTHING. As I mentioned above, the amount of likes may determine whether the post lives or dies on this platform. The goal is triple digits!
• In the words of one student, "If you have 199 likes you may feel stressed or irritated until you see 200 on your screen."
• Many teens meticulously schedule when they're going to post an image to maximize likes.
• On Instagram, unlike snapchat, you limit your posts. You don't want to "spam" your followers and you want to make sure each time you post, your followers are ready to hit like! 
• Instagram Aesthetic--your aesthetic is essentially your theme. Teens pick something to focus on and only post photos that fit within that theme. That can be the content of the image, the filter, the style of photo, etc. What teens are going for is a pretty landing page when friends or potential friends click on their profile. If you need an example, look at King Kylie. This means that on Instagram, teens are frequently clicking on each other's profiles and evaluating a body of work, not just perusing photos.
• Filters matter. You don't want your photos to look too edited, but you also want them to look good to get likes. It's a challenge, but it's worth all the time and effort if you get likes! Sometimes you get respect by going with #nofilter.

INSTAGRAM #2 (Fake Instagram or "finsta." Note: this is different than your Real Instagram or "rinsta")

• Teens literally create a second Instagram account so that they can break all the rules above. 
• You don't use your real name for this, and you keep the account locked; it's just for close friends and likes don't matter.
• The pictures tend to be less than flattering and sometimes downright inappropriate.
• When I asked a student about "finstas" she responded, "you want people to see what your real life is like, right?" This quotation proves that on "rinsta" your posts are not supposed to reflect your actual life. 
• Nevertheless, teenagers use their "finsta" to like their "rinsta" posts to boost their likes on their real Instagram account.
• I know one girl who made a "finsta" with the sole purpose of posting things that poked fun at her mother.

SNAPCHAT

• Streaks are EVERYTHING. In the words of a student, "the higher the streak, the cooler. [Teens] exchange meaningless pictures... in order to keep the streak going." When I ask students what they're doing on their phone at 8 AM, they tell me they're keeping their streaks. Many teens wake up in the morning and send snaps to keep streaks going. 
• Teens usually don't even view the snaps they receive for the full amount of time they have. That's because they have too many to get through. If someone sends a snap to keep a streak alive, great, you click through to the next one.
• Everyone agrees screenshotting is really uncool, but everyone does it. I once asked a room full of 11th graders how many of them had received a screenshot of someone else's social media post in the last week. More than half of their hands went up.
• What goes on your story has to be carefully crafted and you can't put too many pictures up in a day or your followers will get annoyed. Nevertheless, you can post way more frequently on Snapchat than you can on Instagram. It's feast or famine on Snapchat. If you don't have anything going on, you don't post much to snapchat. If you're doing something cool, you post as much as you can without annoying your followers. But rest assured, even when you're posting a lot, you're also viewing a lot. Teens don't miss a thing on snapchat.  
• If you send someone a photo that you're going to post to your story, it's practically an insult to the person you sent it to. That's because you have to assume that everyone who is on Snapchat is looking at your story!
• There's a feature on snapchat where you can check who is viewing your stories, teens use it... frequently.
• Finally, teens seem to be okay with the fact that when school events occur, they all snapchat each other the same thing.

TWITTER

• I've already written my own opinion on how teens use this app. See here, here and here.
• Twitter Ratio - Teens think they need to have more accounts following them than accounts that they follow. In other words, more people have to care about your tweets than other people's tweets that you care about. 
• For most teens, the point of posting a tweet is to garner favorites. One student said that she felt like "the goal of Twitter for [her] was trying to be funny or clever, and favorites just determined if that goal was met." Favorites are important because they deliver validation, but that makes Retweets even more desirable and affirming. A Retweet is when someone moves your tweet to all of his/her followers too. This validation drives teens to shoot for RTs more so than favorites. Needless to say, when shooting for RTs, teens aren't posting things that would make their parents and teachers proud. 
• In fact, if teenagers used Twitter the way adults do--to share interests and to network--they would stand out. I know one student who uses his Twitter this way and his friends tease him by calling it his "business twitter."
• Because Twitter's stream moves so quickly, it's harder to get lots of RTs and favorites in this medium; and as a result, teens are leaving Twitter in big numbers... but they're still holding on to "Private Twitter"  

TWITTER #2 (Private Twitter or "PT")

• Yes, teens also make two Twitter accounts. The goal of the Private Twitter is much like the "finsta" I mentioned above. You lock your account and only let in a small group of friends (approx. 20-40). In this space, you can tweet anything. 
• Often this space is used for inappropriate comments; you say things here that you can't say on other social media accounts or even things you can't say in real life. These are your unedited opinions. I've heard students say that this is the space where you're "supposed to" argue with your followers. Others derive entertainment just by watching people clash on Private Twitter.
• In fact, Private Twitter accounts are becoming more common amongst teenagers than public twitter accounts. As I mentioned above, I think Twitter is losing its appeal to teenagers, but Private Twitter is not; and--in my opinion--it's bad for their relationships.

FACEBOOK

• Frankly, Facebook is going out of style with teenagers, mostly because their parents are taking over that space. They're running to Instagram and Snapchat. Because of this fact, I'll just leave this category with one bullet: a direct quote from a former student, "I know two people who posted on Facebook what college they decided to go to and didn't even tell their parents because they thought they would have just seen their post."

TEXT

• Believe it or not, text is going out of style with our teenagers too. I've already written about group text--which is not going out of style. You can read that here. Allow me to conclude this category with a quotation from a former student as well: "People are on their social media often enough that you don't have to go ahead and text them... they will see it."

A parting thought: one of the fascinating, fun things about social media is that it's free-flowing and fast-moving. However, every interaction on these applications exists indefinitely. Friends can screenshot posts, they can go back and see old posts, and the applications themselves store every post. Teenagers admit that they "stalk" each other on these networks--poring through old photos and posts to judge/evaluate a peer. That's a scary thought when you think about the norms discussed above and the fact that over the years the norms will change, and the users will continue posting to keep up. That means hundreds (if not thousands) of posts that can be uncovered at any time by friends--old and new--for the rest of a teenager's life.

Start the School Year Differently

On Monday morning, I returned to faculty meetings to begin the school year for the 8th time in my career. With that many opening meetings, I've noticed a fascinating trend: there's legitimate excitement and energy in the room and it always disappears entirely when the first administrator comes up to talk about operating procedures like discipline, honor code, scheduling and grading policy. Upon seeing it an 8th time, I had an epiphany; this is exactly how my first class goes when I force students to go through the course syllabus together.

I have always been told and I have always taught that teachers should embrace energy and excitement and harness it for learning and retention. So why would we start our school year with something that everyone would agree is not a best practice for teaching and learning?

So this year I'm going to purposefully leave out all administrative "stuff" (rules, course content, grading policies, etc.) from the first day. Instead, I'm going to host an activity where students have to think of what they want out of the class. I'll frame the course as broadly as possible and let the students talk about what they want to learn within that broad scope.

For example, in my Contemporary World History class this year, I'm going to post a map of the world, with the US taken out, and tell them that this is your playing field for learning this year. Anything that fits within that framework fits within the course content of "Contemporary World History." Imagine that blank slate for learning. I'm excited to see what the students come up with!

Here are some other questions I'm thinking about asking on day 1:

• 1) In general, what are you excited about for this school year? Why?
• 2) In general, what challenges do you think you'll face this year?
• 3) What did you learn this summer? How does that fit into the broad framework of this course?
• 3A) How will your other interests and/or previous knowledge help you to learn in this course?
• 4) What do you want to learn within the broad framework I provided for this course?  
• 5) Finally, how do you think I should go about teaching this subject in a way that will 1) make it relatable 2) keep you interested and 3) benefit retention and 4) enhance future pursuits

What Students Are Really Learning in High School

I had a student the other day say that the one thing he really learned in high school is how to manage five courses to get the best grades possible. What he means is that he wasn't working hard to learn, he was working hard to manage his courses to get good grades. Another student said, "Legit, my job in school is to get A's... I cry when I get B's." In other words, what students are trying to get out of school is a letter grade, not a learning experience, and that's a problem.

My students admitted this to me in the summer when I teach two new media/technology courses. Why the summer? Because my course hasn't been approved yet for the school year. In these courses, I've basically thrown the idea of "course content" out the window. Technically, I've outsourced it to the students. I teach students how to use the internet and social media as a means to learn the content of their choosing. In other words, I'm teaching passion based learning through social media. I'm empowering students to use the applications they love in ways that allow them to learn the content of their choosing.

In order to get students to embark on this journey of learning, I start with a discussion about the way that their high schools make them learn. That's where I heard the quotes with which I started this blog post. Once they admit they're tired of learning what teachers want them to, I say, "Fine. Prove to me that you can do better on your own." I believe in the curiosity of my students. And I believe that when they set their own goals they will be much more likely to meet them, not to mention they'll retain the information better when they deem it worthwhile.

Always fascinated by technology, teenagers quickly grasp the applications and social media tips and tricks that I teach. The reason I start with the applications themselves is because the moniker "digital natives" is a myth. Teenagers use a lot of applications, but they don't know how to navigate them efficiently or how to use them in the best ways to deliver networked learning. Efficiency is crucial on the web. Not only do I teach students how to use lists on twitter, but I also teach them how to use hotkeys to navigate quickly. Then it's up to the students themselves to add their interests to these applications and learn efficiently.

Next, I teach a few lessons about how the internet works and how it's changing in the 21st century. I cover a group of concepts that I call the "social internet economy." This consists of things like digital publishing, crowdsourcing, branding, SEO, data mining, and slacktivism. Essentially, I'm trying to make sure students understand the world they will inhabit when they get out of college. I'm also making sure that with their learning, they're also publishing something so as to form a digital identity. This pushes students to find a niche in a given interest that they can latch onto before they pick a major and start looking for internships. If they've been following this interest on their own since high school, they'll be so much more prepared to enter the workforce than their peers. Finally with an acute knowledge of the 21st century economy, I trust my students will be prepared to start their own brand (or even business) to help guide them through their young career.

I'm so proud of what my students have produced thanks to this course. They've taken this simple concept and run with it! If I could, I would never go back to teaching content the way I do during the normal year. I've had an epiphany and I hope others will see this the way I do... especially when I propose this as a semester course for next year!

My Golden Age in Teaching

An open letter to young teachers about teaching in a world of social media

Frequently, I have this scary realization that my best teaching days are waning. I'm 29, entering my eighth year of teaching high school students. What I truly enjoy teaching, with every opportunity I can find, is passion-based learning (and digital citizenship) through social media. For many years, I've reached students in their digital space and helped them use it positively, for learning; but with every incoming class, I fear that I'm losing touch with my students and they're losing touch with me in that same space.

As a "young" teacher, students feel comfortable talking to me about things their parents and other teachers just don't understand. And I can astutely explain to "older" teachers (and administrators) how students use their devices and social media pages and what impact that had on their lives. That's because I grew up understanding the digital divide between these "generations."*

I feel particularly lucky that growing up, I didn't have a cell phone until 17 or a smart phone until 24. I experienced high school without social media and I experienced college with only Facebook. When new products/apps arrived, I experimented with them and thought critically about them. This unique timeline has allowed me to understand the strengths and weaknesses of new social media applications with a perspective that younger digital natives don't yet posses.** Because of this pursuit, I can transition between the technophobes and the technophiles--the young and the old, if you will. Let's call educators my age "digital frontiersman"

I think my growth learning about and using social media provides important perspective to an incredibly controversial issue in education. While administrators debate being proactive or reactive with respect to phones and social media, I built a course designed around it. As parents create long lists of things their students can't do on their phones/social media, I've used it to empower passion based learning.

These past few summers teaching my new media course, I've had a particularly enlightening experience helping my students learn online. Nevertheless, I can feel my words having less of an impact on these children. They still agree with what I say about social media and cell phone use, but they don't act the same way they used to. That's because two things are happening at the same time: I'm getting older and losing touch with each class's nuanced understanding of social media, and my students are getting younger and losing touch with life without phones and without social media. While aging is inevitable, I'm not ready to give up the lessons that a digital frontiersman can teach a digital native.

Losing the frontiersman's perspective will corrode the bridge between the digital natives and the older generation. It'll hurt dialogue between individuals and generations and it will create an intergenerational disconnect. As a result, our digital natives will struggle to adapt to the world that existed before social media.

Digital frontiersmen watched social media change the our lives. We were forced to make the connection between the social and the professional. That's why we're better equipped to understand and teach social media (and phone use in general). When digital natives run the classrooms, they'll have to contend with the same issues, but they won't have the same perspective. Without that perspective, I fear students will live in a constantly distracted world and won't adapt to the professional workforce easily.

Let me conclude this post by saying that one does not have to be a "digital frontiersman" to teach social media to teenagers. As long as a teacher establishes himself as someone knowledgeable about the space and knowledgable about how teenagers use that space, he can always teach it.

I also acknowledge that this post contains many are generalizations. Plenty of teachers my age are not using their phones and social media for learning, just like how many older teachers have figured out how teens use social media and are using it themselves for learning/professional development.

I just fear that the impact of my example and my perspective wanes with every year and every incoming class. That's what inspired this post. But it won't stop me from staying up-to-date with what my students are doing online and providing my perspective on how they can learn and understand the world they will inherit after school.

*I do not mean to imply that older means a teacher or parent will not understand tech or social media.
**I don't usually use the term "digital native" because it implies that the the younger generation is good with technology--and most aren't. I use it here to talk about an age range, not a skill set

Teen Troubles with Twitter #3

In my last two installments of this three-part series, I've made a case for why teens don't use Twitter correctly and why that's a problem. In this installment, I intend to address how teens’ use of Twitter has evolved... for the worst.

In my classroom, teenagers use the expression "subtweet me" during discussions if one member of the class has indirectly disagreed with another student. A "subtweet" is when a user writes something about another user without mentioning them by name (or handle). Inherent in every "subtweet" is an insult or disagreement. The word is invoked in class only when one student feels victimized or attacked by another. Their invocation of this word is evidence that teenagers frequently use their Twitter pages for social quips, esoteric discussions, and to enhance their social images often at another student’s expense.

More recently, I have heard students mention "PT" or Private Twitter, where teenagers create a new account and keep their security settings structured so only a close group of friends see their posts. Note: "close" is all relative for teens. Teens intentionally create these accounts and enter this space to speak their minds. Frankly, it's indicative of a wider trend in this country where citizens feel constrained by--and thus seek to avoid--political correctness. The way a teenager acts in school is often very different than how that teen acts on PT. Posting to a Private Twitter isn't like telling a close friend how you really feel; it's telling dozens of friends how you really feel on a platform that stores data permanently. Needless to say, "PT" has perpetuated the denigration of a space that, has tremendous power to people together to share information, which is s shame. PT has also perpetuated the denigration of the discourse between our teenagers online and in-person.

As I've written throughout this series, Twitter is powerful. Teens can use it to learn, create, discuss and inform--whether that’s a school project or a personal learning project. If you told a teacher that an application encourages teens to do just that, she'd jump for joy. But our teenagers are not deriving the educational and developmental benefit that Twitter has to offer. They're "subtweeting" one another or posting secretive confessions and insults to their Private Twitter.

Obviously we're never going to be able to do all we can for our teenagers when it comes to guiding them in their digital and social spaces. But we also can't make progress if we keep turning a blind eye to what teens do on the internet. Schools should be teaching students how to get the most out of social media, and parents should be actively involved in what their children see and post online. We shouldn't simply scold our students about the pitfalls of social media when something bad happens; we need to be proactive. Let's empower our students to use Twitter in ways that benefit rather than harm them.

Teen Troubles with Twitter #2

For whatever reason, writing about teenagers and Twitter has inspired me to post on my blog (which has been largely defunct this year as I've been writing a longform essay on--you guessed it--social media and teens). This is the second part in a three-part series on how we're letting our teens down by not teaching them how to use Twitter.

With 24-7 access to a cellphone, teens check their social media pages all the time. All. The. Time. For that reason, a teen loses social standing if he or she cannot stay up-to-date with the developments in the social (media) world. On Instagram, for example, the vast majority of teens never miss a post. Snapchat has made sharing multimedia content to dozens of friends remarkably simple and completely normal. Call it FOMO, call it narcissism, call it societal pressure, our teens strive to be up-to-date on their social world, all the time.

However, teenagers struggle to keep up with Twitter. Therefore, it has become a secondary or tertiary (or worse) social media site for teens; they're not interested because they feel like they can’t keep up, and it's a shame.

As I've written about previously, Twitter is an awesome forum for learning. We can help our teens learn, create, discuss and inform on Twitter or we can allow them to bully, flirt or troll. If we choose to do the former, we need to teach teens how to use Twitter.

Let's start by dispelling the notion that you have to keep up with your entire Twitter feed. Truthfully, you don't even need to keep up with a majority of your feed. The great thing about Twitter is its free-flowing, fast-moving nature. As long as a user’s following list conveys interesting information, he should feel perfectly content consuming a small number of a tweets at a time. 

We must empower our teenagers to create diverse feeds harnessing the power of passion-based learning. But teens won't consume informational content in a space where they're concerned they can't keep up with every update. It’s too hard to manage.

This problem is compounded by the fact that--as I wrote about in my last post--teens are too worried about their "ratio" to really click follow on things that could deliver quality information.

Finally, teens discourage one another from posting informative content on Twitter. For whatever reason, it's social suicide for most. Twitter is a place for teens to have fun, to laugh, to flirt, and to forget about whatever is happening in their physical lives. Unfortunately, this use results in little learning. Sure, teens tweet and retweet, but little of that use is original content and rarely does it link to anything worthwhile. We must encourage our teens to build a robust digital profile to encourage teens to learn about their passions, create projects and original information, and to inform one another about not just social, but informational content. But in order to do so, we need to shift teen culture on Twitter. In this series called "Teen Troubles with Twitter" I’m hoping to spread the knowledge needed to help mentor our teens on Twitter.

Teen Troubles with Twitter

Teenagers simply don't get Twitter, and it's a problem. It's a problem for Twitter as a business, but more importantly, it's a problem for society at large.

Teenagers invented a social norm on Twitter called the “follower ratio." They worry about following more people than those who are following them back. It's a sign of status to have more people reading your tweets than tweets you're reading. We see this phenomenon on Instagram and Snapchat too. On Snapchat it's slightly different, it's a fear that a teen sends more snaps than he or she receives.

Because of the social status associated with ratios, teenagers are using Twitter incorrectly and it's stunting their intellectual development. I have written about how teenagers can learn tons of valuable information from Twitter. Twitter is an amazing global network that has an endless flow of information to feed any person’s intellectual passion. But the biggest barrier teenagers face to their ability to learn on Twitter is their reluctance to allow their following ratio to balloon. To do so would deflate their social confidence. As a result, teens only receive updates from their friends and accounts dedicated to reaching teens with quotes, gifs and memes. Twitter becomes an echo chamber of social anxiety and pressure. As a result, they'd much rather converse with multimedia on apps like Snapchat, Instagram, or Vine rather than use Twitter for educational purposes.

The only way for teens to learn on Twitter is for them to enter the global space where they can read, form opinions, curate and share content, and create their original work. If we can't get our teens to add stuff like Vox, Slate, Mashable, the New York Times and FiveThirtyEight to their Twitter feeds, we're robbing them of valuable knowledge that they could gain every time they log in.

In addition to following content, we need to guide our teenagers into academic hashtags, as hashtags can be robust learning spaces. Ironically, most teenagers don't even know how to use a hashtag; I'd estimate one tweet in 100 for teenagers actually goes to a hashtag to backchannel something interesting or meaningful to them (and I'm being generous). Instead, teens use hashtags for a throwaway joke on the back-end of a tweet. That Twitter doesn't sound like much fun. I would leave Twitter for other social media apps too if that's all I saw on it too.

That's where we, as mentors, have to step in. There's information on Twitter. There’s a wealth of fascinating subjects about which one can learn on Twitter. There's a tremendous intellectual world out there that can enhance users’ knowledge, creativity, critical thinking, and technological literacy skills. Twitter is not Snapchat, Instagram, or Vine, which are overwhelmingly filled with silly (and time-consuming) photographs and videos.

Teenagers should use some of their social media time learning, and Twitter should be the vehicle through which they do so. Of course, Twitter, needs young users to love its product. Perhaps if the company and its supports can dispel this silly "ratio" issue with teenagers. It will take effort from both the company and teachers, parents and mentors in communities around the country. If we can help students find the accounts and hashtags that deliver learning, we can help Twitter regain its place in society as a democratic, global learning network that we have loved since its inception in 2006--and that helped usher in important events and conversations like the Arab Spring and the Black Lives Matter movement.

We, as a society, are in a similar place we always are with Teens. Teens get too concerned with their social life and it hinders their intellectual development. We can make a change on social media--a place where teenagers want to spend their time. Let's talk to our teens about Twitter, dispel the notion of a "ratio," tap into the great global network and let the learning begin.

Teen Troubles with Texting

On October 12th, Roni Rabin penned an article for the New York Times called "Compulsive Texting Takes Toll on Teens" that highlighted a study arguing that many teens appear to be addicted to texting. In a study of 8th and 11th graders, the study found that 12% of girls and 3% of boys are "compulsive texters." The article also cited a Pew poll from 2012 that found "the median number of texts sent by teens is 60 a day, with older girls having a median of 100 text messages a day and boys a median of 50."

As someone who works with teens every day, I've pin-pointed a leading cause of this problem: it's group chats. That's where a bulk of the texting occurs between our teenagers. And it's absolutely affecting their sleep, their homework and their emotional well-being.

The other day I inquired informally with a group of 11th grade girls who admit that within the last week they've been a part of between 5-8 group chats. A group chat contains multiple recipients, and in general, the more people involved, the more messages sent and received. I work at a 1:1 school where students send and receive messages from their computer too--often during class. In one day, I had one girl project her phone screen as part of a presentation. The messages app on her phone contained 269 unread text messages. In the subsequent period I helped a 9th grader for five minutes on an essay, she received a text while I was typing on her computer from a friend. I noticed it was the 13th text she had received since she last checked them.

I was stunned; these interactions concern me. I can't imagine having 269 unread texts, that would take a year! I can't imagine having 13 text messages waiting for me on my phone... unless I was in a group-chat with a group of close friends. And that's precisely the problem with our teens.

So how do we deal with a problem that's only increasing in its frequency and its affect on our teenagers? In an age where it's so easy to end up in a group-chat and so hard to get out, and even I struggle to resist the allure of a shiny new text message buzzing my phone? "The study of more than 400 8th graders and 11th graders found that many teenage texters had a lot in common with compulsive gamblers, including losing sleep because of texting, problems cutting back on texting and lying to cover up the amount of time they spent texting."

Schools want to address problems of stress, sleep and attention/retention with school-work. So it's in a schools' best interest to acknowledge this problem and think about how to alleviate the problems associated with high volume texting. Fortunately, most teenagers will admit that texting (and multi-taking in general) hurts their studies. Regardless, there's a learning process that needs to happen.

• In schools we need to discuss social norms and dispel those that invite compulsory texting. 
• We can also help equip students with tools that will help them avoid the allure of getting lost in lengthy, timely text-message and message conversations. 
• Educators need to teach the science behind these issues so our students are aware of how much texting hurts their social-emotional well-being. 
• There's a certain amount of follow-up required by the classroom teachers, the learning center, and the school counselors to remind students of the negatives associated with extensive texting. We need to be vigilant and willing to discuss and discipline in ways that enhance healthy habits. 

Finally, It's imperative that we extend this teaching and learning to our parents as their support in this endeavor is imperative for its success.

There's a Hotkey for That: Teaching Efficiency in Computer Use

Let's face it, adults spend a ridiculous amount of time in front of a computer. To prepare students to take on the "real world," it's imperative that we teach them how to work efficiently on their computers.
The quicker students can locate relevant information, share it, or use it (in whatever manner their profession requires), the more effective they will be in their careers. After all, the sooner employees can create something, the more time they have to polish and refine their work in ways that will help it make an impression on its audience. That will help workers build equity, close deals or earn a promotion.

In order to help my students maneuver efficiently and effectively on the computer, I teach my students the art of hotkeys. I teach them the basics like how to copy, paste, print, find, cut and quit. Then, I add more sophisticated maneuvers like how to shuffle through their open apps, open/close a tab in the internet, employ google search operators, cycle through their open tabs, highlight text, and spotlight search.

macworld

I tell the students that every time they don't have to reach for their mouse, they save time. And time is money. Often, they shrug their shoulders and whine about how silly that is--not the statement time is money, they accept that as gospel--they don't care enough about their mouse use to want to learn new hotkeys. So I pitch the importance of hotkeys in two ways.
First, I use math. I have them consider how much time they spend on a computer each day and how much time they spend maneuvering the mouse. Then I show them how much it saves to know how to hotkey (I'll use an example at the front of them room). Afterwards, I have them calculate how much they save in a sitting, a day, a week, a year, a lifetime of computer use! I say, "What would you do with that time? You'll have it, your neighbor who didn't learn these things won't."
Secondly, I use an example. I ask them to remember the last time an adult asked them for help using technology and to remember how frustrating it is to watch them as they slowly open a browser or an app and take forever to ask their question, that--more often than not--they could have answered themselves if they knew how to use Google. Everyone identifies with this example. Then I tell the students that I experience that everyday when I walk behind them as they use their computers in class!

These examples pique students' interest enough to get them to use more hotkeys. The challenge manifests itself in how to get students to keep using hotkeys. I've done this by including them as "extra-credit" questions on my tests. But, the most effective way to get students to improve their hotkey usage is to create peer-pressure amongst those who are getting it, and those who are still reaching for their mouse. I can create that atmosphere in a classroom, but I wish I could do it across an entire grade or an entire school. Imagine how efficient those students would become in completing homework--especially in schools with 1:1 programs where the hotkeys are the same for each student.

In my opinion, this lesson is even more important for teachers than it is for students. In addition to creating a culture for learning hotkeys and efficiency, teachers themselves can limit their screen time and spend more time teaching, mentoring and building relationships with students--and that's the mark of a great teacher.

Mass Media: Igniting Lifelong Learning

The most important thing my students can take away from my class is a drive to always be learning. I want students to continue to read, analyze, critique, share and create. Today, I had that great moment of satisfaction when I realized I had succeeded in molding lifelong learners.

The class:
This summer, I taught a course called Mass Media in which we critiqued and created the media at a 6-week summer program. We kept a campus Instagram, Twitter and Wordpress. We worked hard to find efficient ways to keep up with the news and find media outlets where students could follow their individual passions. The students thrived. They transformed themselves into avid news consumers: critiquing, analyzing, offering opinions, and questioning the media and the news.

In one project, I asked students to record a podcast for our campus blog with the intention of telling the whole story, in laymen's terms, of something newsworthy that we had been following in our media course. One group chose to record a podcast about the presidential race (wordpress). We sensed an interest in the ASP community and followed up with a "community discussion" at lunch where those community members who were interested arrived to discuss the 2016 race (twitter). They came in large numbers!

The lifelong learning:
Unfortunately, this short program concluded a week ago today, but the learning did not stop. I had set up a GroupMe with my class when we were working on our final video project (lots of moving parts!). That GroupMe has buzzed everyday since, almost always with educational content. On Wednesday, one student posted a quiz that gauged which politician best suits the quiz-taker. When most of us in the group received Bernie Sanders, another student suggested we all travel to Manchester, NH to hear him in a town-hall meeting (it's a New Hampshire summer program). So, not only did my students continue to talk news/politics beyond the program, they organized a get-together at Bernie Sanders's version of our "community discussion." One third of the class attended.

As if attending a political rally wasn't enough, the four students who attended back-channeled it for the rest of us. Below are a few screenshots from their discussion.
One of my students even asked Mr. Sanders a question! Imagine that--a junior in high-school asking Bernie Sanders about his stance on ISIS and Iran-Israel.

The significance:
Obviously, I was overjoyed with my students' academic interest. I felt I had ignited this learning, this civic engagement, and this community where intellectual conversation is the norm, which is the opposite of how teenagers use new media these days.

I had a "If you build it, they will come" moment in which I realized that 16-17 year-old kids really do want to learn. They care about news and politics. And they want to talk to each other about it. They needed a place where they felt comfortable doing just that. And it turned out to be a GroupMe from a class that I thought had already come and gone.

I'll let their messages speak for themselves:

Teaching Digital Citizenship

I was struck by this cartoon recently:

It renewed my commitment to think critically about social media and teach my students to do the same. It's so important that today's students be aware of their digital portfolios so that they don't miss educational and career opportunities, as this cartoon so perfectly illustrates. If students effectively cultivate a digital portfolio that expresses their interests and experience, they won't fall into the trap in the cartoon. On the contrary, opportunities will find them through this portfolio. And, what more could we hope for as educators?

Every educator agrees that an intelligently crafted digital portfolio will serve a student well in college admission, graduate school and beyond. Yet, we're not teaching the art of a digital portfolio in schools. A properly polished digital footprint can show schools and employers a student's interest, initiative, hard-work, community outreach and scholarly contribution. Nevertheless, schools continue to tell students to complete and print rigid assignments rather than publish something in which the student is interested.

Not only do we not teach this skill, even worse, we often discourage this with strict social media policies that keep the student's digital life out-of-sight and out-of-mind of the administrators where online activities become even more likely to damage students' digital image.

For a chance to teach teenagers the art of a digital citizenship and help them construct digital portfolio, I capitalize on a progressive summer program that lets me choose my own curriculum. In my media course, I evaluate students on their use of social media. They're required to pursue interests through twitter, Digg, subscription emails, podcasts, social news sites. They're constantly refining what hits their screen so that they consume informational content about their passions. And, I don't grade submitted essays or projects, I give students pointers on how to improve the essays and projects before they publish them.

I teach branding, asking the students to evaluate the sources they're reading and investigate the digital portfolio of our guest speakers, their peers, and their role models. Then, I help them create their own brand and find ways to consume, curate and then create in ways that will sculpt a small profile, even if it's just what they save/favorite on Twitter, Diigo, Evernote or Google Drive.

It is my hope that by the end of the summer the students 1) learn the power of the internet; 2) use it to ensure that interesting, informational content hits their screens for consumption; 3) learn the tools necessary to efficiently consume, post, send and curate information to sculpt a digital portfolio.

If they master this, doors will open for them; they'll be lightyears ahead of the character in the Dilbert cartoon--avoiding an internet presence that eliminates them from contention while gaining a digital profile that will attract academic and employment opportunities.

GenZ and Privacy

Apple

Recently, the technology coordinator and I tried to teach a group of 25 seniors about privacy settings. These are our "Peer Leaders" who were learning this to pass the information along to their freshmen advisees. The school is concerned with predatory accounts friending, following and otherwise infiltrating our students' social networks for unethical, immoral reasons. Though these students are 18 years old, and supposedly "digital natives", it's safe to say they had NO idea how to control their privacy settings and NO idea how much of their data was being mined.

Perhaps Danah Boyd put it best when she wrote that today's media is "public by default, private when necessary." It's in these applications'/websites' best interest to keep profiles open to foster connections and thus mine more data in order to create future revenue. Therefor, it's imperative that we force our students think critically and carefully about which permissions they give to which applications and websites... and why.

Problem:
The peer leaders in this classroom laughed uncomfortably when they uncovered the sheer volume of apps to which they had given access to their location--not to mention the amount of apps to which they had given access to their photographs.

They admitted that they often accepted "friends" whom they had never met in person. Many of them have over 1,000 friends on Facebook, and had never gone back through to remove friends--not to mention remove old posts. And that's just one of their social networks where they've over-connected and over-shared. And, this all permanent, a fact that millennials often forget (including snapchat--just check their terms of service).

Solution:
To address this deficiency, we talked about how to revoke access to applications and websites that were mining their data. We even encouraged them to limit their friend lists and interactions on social networks. Then, we empowered them with a few tools to fight back--ways to track links and ways to pull a predator's IP address if they felt threatened.

Though I felt good about this lesson, I felt far more depressed about how oblivious students were to the inner-workings of social networks and applications.

Unfortunately, we often only teach these lessons after students have already made a mistake or struggled through an online interaction. And, in what capacity are schools going to teach these lessons? We had to hold our seniors out of a meeting period in order to find the time to teach this. I can't think of anything more important to teach the supposed "digital natives."

Fortunately for me, I teach a summer class called Mass Media where this is part of my curriculum. And, I see the same problems with those millennials. The way I've taught this in the past and will again in the future is by teaching data mining. Putting a face on which businesses are mining their data and how they're using this data often spooks them. I hope that my students will tighten up their privacy settings, think twice about posting something publicly, and reject application permissions and  "friend" requests. If this lesson really hits, the students will go back through all their old posts and permissions and start cleaning up their digital resumes. After all, we're only moving towards more online interactions and, paper resumes will be outdated by the time these teens apply for jobs.

Harnessing the Popularity of Instagram in History Class

Last week, I asked students to take to Instagram to demonstrate their understanding of the Great Depression. When they arrived in class on the due date, students opened their homework and walked around the room to look at their classmates’ assignments. They scrutinized each other’s Great Depression Instagram Projects wondering the significance of a number, date, account name or hashtag. I told my students that they’d vote for the most creative project to earn the coveted title “best-in-class” and a spot on the bulletin board in the back of the classroom.

This project transcended multiple disciplines forcing students to creatively answer the prompt applying a variety of knowledge and skills. They learned a new piece of technology, they studied the Great Depression, and they had to tell a story with a platform they use daily.

With a photoshop Instagram template I received from the founder of histograms.com, students could manipulate all aspects of an Instagram post. I taught them photoshop so they could build this project. Then, I asked them to tell a story. They were asked to envision themselves in the 1930s and detail their own troubles, or to make up their own character or scene that proved they understood the challenges facing people during the Great Depression. Students could use an original image (like the one below), they could take one offline, or they could create their own meme!

My students proved their understanding of the Depression by including the date, a location, a career that a character held, the troubles he/she faced, and the social and political events that we covered in class. Students referenced: The Dust Bowl, The Grapes of Wrath, Hoover and Rugged Individualism, FDR and the New Deal, the Bonus Army, Hoovervilles, bread lines, you name it.

While students manipulated photoshop displaying their knowledge of the history, they also exercised their creativity in making their post tell a story. Each project had to have a protagonist, conflict and resolution, or lack thereof (often lackthereof given the unit).

Finally, but most importantly, I built creativity into the rubric for the project. Essentially, I told my students that the ability to think creatively will be helpful throughout their lives.

Because students had to present these projects to their fellow classmates, they felt social pressure to avoid taking the easy route--for instance, pasting Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother into the template with a hashtag about the dust bowl. Instead, students compared and contrasted images, they produced multiple images, they took original photos, and they added onto the template in creative ways to include more information or more images.

When students finished perusing their classmates work, they voted on the best one. This exercise reinforced my push for students to be creative, try something new, build, share and critique. The three winners are going up on the back wall to inspire others when I get to introduce the next class project.

I Teach History Visually

Inherently, teaching history requires a certain amount of information delivery; but every students has his or her own preferred method to receive, recall and interact with that information. Some of my students can pick it all up just by reading the textbook closely (though textbook reading is their least favorite activity); others can listen to a lecture, jot a few notes and later recall it come test time; others still, benefit more when they see visuals attached to a lecture or presentation. In trying to provide the best instruction to all of the above types of learners, I’ve recently reached out to the visual learners in my classroom and it has boosted engagement and retention.

Lenin vs. Stalin in politics and economics

Most teachers jot a few notes on the whiteboard under each topic they want students to learn. Understanding that sites like wikipedia and quizlet easily cover and compile notes on these topics, I’ve moved in a new direction. I reduce the amount of words I write on the whiteboard and instead draw pictures (no matter what I’m teaching). The hope is that these lessons will reach my visual learners for retention and better recollection on unit examinations.

I find that the communal drawing fascinates students who enjoy critiquing and advising my masterpieces

an original cartoon of Andrew Johnson's impeachment

The first great result I discovered in trying visual lessons was unexpected. Because I wasn’t writing the words they needed to know, students had to put these concepts in their own words independently for their notes. Fortunately, I work in a 1:1 classroom so during my drawing, students googled words that they needed to define or events that they needed to understand. Precisely because I wasn’t feeding them the words/notes they needed to have, students began looking up the things I wanted them to learn in the way they look up information outside of class--through Google. This increased their level of engagement with the material. Students used their familiar search engines differently, they took notes differently, and they interacted differently with this unique lesson.

These lessons certainly helped students focus better. They stayed on task on their computer screens. Some googled the information, others wrote what I was saying down, and others pushed their computers out of the way and started drawing their own copy of my image in notebooks. One savvy student drew her own version on a computer application. I posted it, and a photo that I took of the whiteboard, to the class Moodle page hoping it would jog students’ memories before the test. It did.

one student used skitch to record my lesson

Finally, this lesson also forced students to think creatively. From an image, they had to figure out the background information, the major players, and how my own opinion about the history played into my drawing. Simultaneously, students loved questioning why I made the decisions I did. Now that I’ve run this lesson a number of times, I can turn over the teaching to my students. I can now ask them to create a visual to teach their classmates about an historical event, person, or primary source. This assignment requires students to think outside the box, take a risk (especially in sharing their "art"), and take ownership of the teaching and learning.

Holiday Newsletters: Facilitating Learning through Winter Break

On December 19th, my students departed for a two-week vacation, and I was terrified to think they wouldn’t be reading and learning while away from school. The lure of Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine draws students away from the New York Times, The WSJ, NPR, and any other vehicles for learning that a teacher might endorse. This past break, in order to keep them reading and informed while away from school, I sent my students three “holiday newsletters.” These newsletters contained news and opinion pieces on current events in different media formats.

One of my hesitations in crafting these newsletters is that I’m not a professional editor; but, through my own social media I’ve curated quite a list of feeds that keep me up-to-date with the news. I’ve tried to teach students this skill so they can be their own editors, but alas, most teenagers aren’t interested. So instead, through my newsletters, I made it as easy as possible for my students to keep up with current events, hoping to catch a handful of them bored over their lengthy break.

It worked wonders. I didn’t reach nearly every student, but I did reach some. And that’s what matters. A handful of my students took time out of their vacation to see what’s going on outside their bubble. They had a chance to be informed citizens, to choose something that interested them and keep learning

When my students returned from break, we held intellectual discussions that helped them keep up with news from over the break. In some classes these discussions encouraged more of them to go back and read the newsletters; I even had a student who went back to a previous newsletter to hear a 2005 Kenyon graduation talk by David Foster Wallace. She emailed me a week later:

Hopefully, the “holiday newsletters” encouraged the students to consume and to share more academic content.

Backchannel for School Culture: @MKAScreenz, A Delightful Disruption

@MKAScreenz's most popular tweet

This past summer, I taught a class on Twitter, which convinced me that this is a great vehicle to ignite curiosity and develop lifelong learners. In trying to take advantage of that space again, I created an account to promote community events and foster positive dialogue within our community. Truthfully, I wanted to get students away from Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine and back on Twitter. Though I think all social media sites can be a colossal waste of time, Twitter can facilitate passion-based learning in a way that school just can’t (provided students follow the right accounts, which I take on in this website). So I set out to teach students how to constructively use this space. Many students used their social media as a means to interact with others by venting and criticizing individuals and events (away from parents and teachers); I hoped to help them rethink that approach.

I created the account @MKAScreenz after the Dean of Student Life asked me to produce the content on the LCD announcement screens around campus. Instead of just posting the school schedule, I include news updates, promote campus events with hashtags, and slide in the occasional comedic gif to keep the students engaged. The twitter feed has allowed me to connect with the students about campus life. It has given them agency in what they see on the screens, as they email me and tweet me about content. And students I’ve never even met have started to seek me out about ideas that need promoting. It’s fun.

More importantly, @MKAScreenz has had an impact on community involvement, particularly with respect to the “house system” at MKA. A number of years ago, MKA created a house system--much like Harry Potter--as a way to improve campus life. Each house competes in sports, art, music and other activities and points are awarded based on excellence and spirit. In the bio, @MKAScreenz refers to itself as a “house sports enthusiast.” After convincing the school newspaper’s web editor to join me on twitter, the two of us started documenting campus events. Students noticed; I reached 126 followers in two weeks!

@MKAscreenz energized the school. At our house dodgeball competition, MKAScreenz’s tweets garnered 54 favorites and 11 retweets. At another house competition called “minute-to-win-it”, @MKAScreenz received 38 likes for its coverage. Finally, when a visiting author arrived to speak about his book, students clicked favorite 38 times and retweet 8 times on my live-tweets of his lecture which is incredible. Students were positive and engaged, and wanted to share with their friends the contents of a mandatory lecture!

The success of some of these posts spawned spin-offs. I welcomed it. First, the four houses in the house system joined twitter--@HouseStrong, @MonjoKongs, @WaldenFlames and @BradleyBearsxox. In addition to those four accounts, students created @MKAGossipGirl, @MKAProbz, @OverheardatMKA, @MKAlbrary, to name a few. I know the students behind some of these, and others I don’t know. And I that’s okay, I respect their initiative and I’m sure they’ll learn many lessons trying to brand a new campus online personality. With all the interest, community involvement is through the roof at MKA! And, slowly, I’ve been able to turn over the work to the students through hashtags. Though we call today’s students “digital natives” I was shocked to learn most didn’t know the power of hashtags. On Halloween, they learned: We all used #MKAhallo, and together we curated a great snapshot of all the great costumes.

@MKAGossipGirl is one of the most creative spin-offs

Essentially I started a course in brand management, social media, creativity, entrepreneurship, collaboration, and school spirit. I’m thrilled with the results. Students feel more connected to the school community than ever before. Followers connect and contribute to the larger campus community in a positive, meaningful war.

Igniting this forum was half the journey toward my goal of familiarizing students with the benefits of twitter so that they can use it to further their education. I wrote previously about why we should teach Social Media and also how I taught it this past summer. @MKAscreenz has given me the credibility to further pursue this goal at MKA.