Many educators, administrators, and parents would prefer to leave social media out of the curriculum. Social media is scary! Yes, our learners do very scary things on social media which can and have ruined lives. The reason our students continue to make bad choices on social media is because adults are not continually making them reflect on how to do better. We need to allow teachers and students to use social media as an instructional tool, which is why I encourage teachers to do this with digital learning missions in my book, Hacking Digital Learning Strategies: 10 Ways to Launch EdTech Missions.
One of the digital missions encourages students to create fictitious social media profiles for famous historical figures or characters. Kelly Jake Duncan, @JKDNCN, is an inspirational teacher and my go to edtech guru who shared an example of this in the book. Jake assigned students to take on the roles of characters from the book, Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Students created exchanges between the characters with fake Facebook posts, Twitter posts, and text messages – as if the characters existed in the present day. Today, he hosted the #EdtechMissions chat and guided the discussion on how to help students reflect on the impact of social media. Find the archive of the chat below with tips and insights. I invite you to join us for next Sunday’s #EdtechMissions chat (Topic: Remixing the Digital Content of Others Responsibly and Ethically). We meet at 10amET (3pmUTC) to 10:30amET (3:30pmUTC) (click for more time zones). If you are new to Twitter chats then check out, A Quick Start Guide to Participating in a Twitter Chat.
