EDU4DEI at2 podcast

The podcast discusses the importance of teaching primary school kids about social media. It highlights the benefits and downsides of social media use and emphasizes the need to educate students about using it safely. The podcast recommends practical strategies such as class discussions, using advice sheets, creating checklists, and evaluating social media profiles. It also suggests incorporating classroom rules and behavioral expectations into social media interactions. The podcast concludes by mentioning that future episodes will cover cyberbullying in more detail. Hi everybody, my name is Alice Aunders. I'm a grade 3-4 teacher at Strathmore Primary School. I've created this podcast to hopefully be able to give you stretch for time teachers some ideas about how to best teach your primary school kids about social media use. It's my hope that you find it super useful in gaining some clarification about how educating the kids about their use of social media in the 21st century can actually impact on the quality of teaching and learning experience that occur in your classroom. We know that social media as a form of technology continues to grow and evolve as the years pass. We know that technology and hence social media is hugely beneficial and influential in connecting humans and our lives. It allows for informed feedback, inspires more effective methods, sparks innovation and can result in really meaningful collaboration. It means that teaching and learning takes place non-stop and it can grow more. It is so important to note however that there are potential downsides of students using social media if they are not effectively taught about it. It's for this reason that the podcast will delve into practical strategies that you can use in your classrooms to educate the students about social media. So before we do this however, let's discuss what social media and a social media platform actually is. Social media platforms are internet focused applications that are underpinned by their users actually making and distributing the content. This content may be pictures and video or it could also be purely words. It is of ever importance to teach primary kids about social media as it forms basis of a considerable aspect of their being and existence. In 2018 the EC Safety Commissioner conducted a survey and determined that 80% of 8 to 12 year old children viewed YouTube. I think we'd all agree that that is a huge number and it's a number that wasn't as big in the years previous. Okay so now that we know what social media is, why are we talking about teaching it? The answer is that social media acts as an obstacle for teachers and schools due to it being a space where kids may be vulnerable to monumental dangers such as privacy issues and cyber bullying. However it can provide a space to facilitate interaction and interrelation. Greenhow and Lewin in 2016 noted that studies regarding social media usage within schools has the potential to produce further methods of inquiry learning, connection, teamwork, identity development and result in desired social, psychological and cognitive effects. It is crucial that we as teachers embed in students the abilities they will need to successfully engage with social media in a manner that benefits them and a manner that minimises their chances of being exposed to dangers. So just how do we teach our kids about how to protect their wellbeing? You can engage your students in class discussions that advise kids about how to conduct themselves. You can use cyber safety advice sheets from the Victorian Department of Education and Training to form the hook or the basis of your class discussion and have these displayed on your wall or whiteboard for the students to see while you read through it with them. These advice sheets cover a plethora of aspects regarding social media such as the idea of a digital footprint, meaning whatever you post to the internet can reach all over and stay on the internet forever. You can use these hooks as tools to facilitate discussions about how to avoid posting things on social media that may not be beneficial to the kids themselves or to others. You could facilitate brainstorms about how to prevent these situations from occurring and scaffold the kids' responses as you write on a big poster that's displayed in the classroom for the rest of the year. For example, talk to the kids about how they could or should really ponder what they are going to put into the universe before they click share or before they click send. You could also use strategies that incorporate knowledge and tips regarding internet safety from the Office of Children's E-Safety Commissioner. Advice about remaining safe when interacting with social media could be written on the whiteboard. For example, writing that students should ask a carer to be near them while using a social media app at the beginning of their app usage. You could use questioning methods to have students consider why this might be a helpful tip in ensuring they remain safe online. You could have students work in small groups to use ICT platforms to investigate advice websites such as these and instruct them to collaborate to create presentations about these strategies. You could create other learning opportunities such as fun and engaging quizzes through platforms such as Kahoot to develop student understanding about what to do and what not to do when interacting with digital and social media platforms. I know that in my classroom when I've used Kahoot, the kids have been super engaged and stimulated about the learning because it's quite a fun activity or method of teaching. It may be super smart to create a social media safety checklist to encourage the kids to be wary about whether their social media usage is protecting their privacy, if they know what to do if they observe something that isn't right, and if their own posts are up to standard. You could have discussed these standards previously throughout the learning. You could allow for the kids to contribute to the checklist and scaffold their responses, writing these on the whiteboard as they contribute during a class discussion. The students could then create their own poster of this checklist. Teachers may go on to laminate these and give these back to the kids so they always have a reference point for when they are using these social media platforms. In terms of the actual creation of a social media account or profile, I would advise you to discuss with students what this profile may include or look like. Ask the kids if they think it's better for their privacy and safety if they include more or less information about themselves and their identity. Then you could actually facilitate a discussion about this. You could choose to display some example social media platforms, sorry profiles on a screen or an interactive whiteboard, and ask the students to help you evaluate them. Then you may want to create an example social media profile for yourself, having the students contribute ideas while the profile is being constructed on the screen, and evaluate this as you go. Embedding continuous learning about effective and safe social media usage can positively influence the children's ability to contribute to a participatory digital culture and reap the rewards from collaborative education. The progression of fresh abilities and furthered agency according to Greenhalgh and Lewin. These digital actions that kids are interacting with via social media can be made most beneficial by reminding students about how these actions will be deemed positive to them and others. At the start of the year you may have chosen to engage students about classroom behaviour and build classroom rules that involved how to treat their peers. You could draw on these rules and behavioural expectations and previous anchors you created in order to discuss interacting with others on social media so that education for all parties is enhanced. For example, one of your classroom rules may have been to treat everybody with respect. You could actually get this anchor out, read the rule aloud and then draw the comparison between this rule and social media. So for example you could say, at the beginning of the first term we sat together and made some rules and behavioural expectations about how we wanted to conduct ourselves. These expectations are also important to follow up on when we are engaging with social media. One of our behavioural expectations was to be kind and to treat everybody with respect. We must also treat everybody with respect when interacting with them on social media, whether that relates to the messages we send to them or the things we post. We must never post or send something that would make someone else feel bad or embarrass them. You could also use this opportunity to discuss with kids what they should do if they receive or see something on social media that is hurtful and remind them that they should inform a teacher or their parents. There are many different effective techniques and methods you could employ within your classroom to ensure that your primary kids are well informed about how to most effectively and safely navigate and operate social media. We've covered a plethora of these in today's episode but more will be covered later in the series. Okay, I'll let you go given you're probably about to start your school day but stay tuned for the next episode that elaborates on cyberbullying more specifically. Thanks for listening and happy teaching.