CEP 956 Fall 2021 - All Forums

isakova2 on Summary post by Abdu and Suha

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 11:46:54 -0500

This week’s reading dealt with the importance of having policies on using social media in the classroom, policies that need to be formulated depending on the research that is conducted by how the stakeholders (learners and teachers) use them and find them to be beneficial in their learning and teaching journeys. After reading through the posts, there are two clear strains that are seen across them.

The first strain talks about how teachers need necessary training in the effective use of social media in their classrooms. Abdu talks about how teachers can use these platforms to not just build “their professional learning but also classroom effectiveness” (Greenhow et al.2019). Betul talks about how “policymakers should concentrate on how to effectively integrate digital technologies in education, instead of restricting technology use because of potential risks.” Suha’s argument in agreement with Betul says that the school and outside world are two distinct entities is problematic because education is, after all, supposed to prepare individuals for their navigation of the outside world. Therefore looking at school not as a subset of the world(Ahn et al., 2011), but in isolation was perhaps not the best idea.” Therefore, policy on the use of social media needs to combine the understanding of how it is beneficial for students as well as teachers, and how teachers need to be equipped with the right skills and tools that enable them to use them effectively in their classrooms.

The second train that comes up in the posts is that of techno-ethics. Jeong talks about how “algorithms that drive the social media are assumed to be value-neutral (Akgun & Greenhow, 2021), because “these algorithms are hidden or opaque to most users (Krutka et al., 2020, p. 5)”. To take this point forward, Suha’s point about the field of techno-ethics being underdeveloped shows how there is a need for more robust academic inquiries in the field. Betul makes a point about the NYT article that talks about how children below the ages cannot legally have accounts on social media platforms, and since this is the case, how can we legally include these platforms in our elementary schools?

Following these two strains, we have come up with a few questions for us to discuss in class:
Questions:
1. What are some of the teacher training ideas that we can implement in order to build their digital literacy skills in the effective use of social media in their classrooms of middle school and above?
2. Many say that some aspects of the social networks are not suitable for children, and therefore there are problems with their application in the formal education process. What features do you think should be considered by designers/developers in order to solve this issue?
3. Since the current social media platforms are developed keeping profit margins in mind, how can we build new social media platforms that will be ethically relevant for use in schools?

isakova2 on W12Q1 Abdu

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 23:11:16 -0500

Undoubtedly, social media become a part of people’s personal, social, and political lives in various aspects (Krutka et al.2019). Therefore, great emphasis is placed on exploring new possibilities of social media for educational purposes. Therefore, great emphasis is placed on exploring new possibilities of social media for educational purposes. Particularly, the role of social media in student learning and teacher learning (Greenhow et al.2019) is more considered. From my point of view, although both approaches are important, more emphasis should be placed on teacher training at the moment. I think in this way for the following reasons: (1) teachers are more opportunities for learning by using social media than youngsters; (2) teachers' mentality is more resistant to problems from social media while the young generation is vulnerable; (3) teachers have more power to enrich students' media literacies than others, but to teach it they will be literate first.
Teachers use SM for a purpose, such as to find online groups of supportive and collaborative colleagues (Greenhow et al.2019). While there are no borders on using SM for teachers, students have several issues. For instance, the majority of school districts block access to such tools and technologies (Ahn et al.), or if we consider this issue broadly, some countries have "non-written" bans for using social media among children. This is due to a lack of media literacy in children, and parents protect their children from various hazards from the network by banning them to use. This leads to the second issue. While there are several obstacles in using social media at schools in terms of the safety of children (such as cyberbullying (Gr), identity impersonation, and other forms of violence on the platforms of social media companies (Ahn et al)) and most of them are vulnerable to suffering, teachers have a strong mentality to overcome such issues.
Since teachers’ social networks and communities influence not only their professional learning but also classroom effectiveness (Greenhow et al.2019), I think that first of all teachers should be taught to use social networks safely in the process of learning, and then with the help of teachers, it could be to form such skills in students. If the focus is on the students first, the result will be slower due to a large number of students. Furthermore, what can a teacher teach a student who is not yet fully aware of the use of social networks in learning?

parkje13 on W12 Q1

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 17:13:17 -0500

Social media has become a part of our everyday lives and it makes so much easier for individuals to share their ideas and participate actively in the public sphere. However, as noted in this week's articles, social media is a double-edged sword and can pose new and more sophisticated threats to democracy. Algorithms that drive the social media are assumed to be value-neutral (Akgun & Greenhow, 2021), because "these algorithms is hidden or opaque to most users (Krutka et al., 2020, p. 5)". But it acts as information gatekeepers, presenting a biased and distorted picture of the public opinion climate (Stark et al., 2020). So I fully agree that the platform designer must design the platform algorithm by specifying the display content (Krutka et al., 2020), and it is necessary to operate and disclose the algorithms under the platform transparently, which will help the consumers to understand and be aware of the operating system of this algorithm. It's not exactly the same context, but recently, there was a problem in one of Korean search engine platform like Google in the U.S. that manipulated an algorithm on a platform to raise the company's product to the top ranking, which caused a big issue. Designers should be aware that deceiving consumers and steering their behavior is a big ethical problem, and I think it should be legislated as a policy to raise awareness.

Christine Greenhow on Suha's Thoughts on W12 Q1

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 07:07:38 -0500

Hi Suha,
In your response, you argue that our efforts on the (educational) policy front should be focused on gathering evidence on the relationship between teaching with social media and its impact on students' learning or students' learning with social media outside of school and its implications for teaching. Such investigation and triangulation could then inform policy considerations, such as acceptable use policies, for the integration of social media in curriculum. This is an excellent point. I think your post as a whole points to the out-of-date nature of our current legislation and policies, yet bringing them up to date should be a top priority. The pandemic drove home the need for better regulation and education concerning technology infrastructure supports for schooling. See my response to Betul for new legislation being proposed to address children's online privacy, which gets at the ethical dimension you raise.

Christine Greenhow on Suha's Thoughts on W12 Q1

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 06:54:11 -0500

According to Greenhow et al. (2019), the are four roles that the use of social media has on education: its potential for facilitating students’ active learning, collaboration, and community connections; its role in fostering teachers’ professional learning through resource exchange, community building, and addressing individualized needs; opportunities to enhance educational research with social media–enabled digital traces, scalability, and digital methods; and the benefits of social media for doing and communicating scholarship. The use of social media gives students more choice and agency in deciding what their learning journey is going to be. This can only happen if the teachers are supported emotionally and financially for this immense flexibility that they want their students to have, and this support has to come from the institution through the relevant professional development. And to match these two points, the educational and ethical research being conducted on social media needs to go beyond just the adverse effects it may have on a student’s learning journey, and instead, focus also on how the social media affordances can be used effectively to enhance it. So far the research that has taken place on social media uses in education have focused either on the students or the teachers but not necessarily the two together in connection, and this triangulation is essential before building educational policies on how social media can be integrated with the curriculum.

However, the issue of technoethics that revolves around the use of social media, especially in K-12 classrooms, and these issues of ethics, and how to tackle them is what Krutka et al. (2019) address. In order to challenge the high profit margins that social media companies have enjoyed over the years, competition needs to be created for them. There need to be more social platforms created that offer better features, especially those that can be used effectively for educational purposes. This was a point I remember Abdu bringing up in one of our discussions in an earlier week. If this were to happen, would the existing social media platforms enjoy the nature of popularity that they have had so far? What is also needed is more regulation on the use of these sites, and Technoethics as a field to be developed in order to understand the new and far-reaching issues cropping up in the use of social media for educational purposes.

Technoethics is essential because its development will in turn, impact the formulation of technology acceptable use policies or AUPs. These AUPs were first systematically studied in the work by Ahn et al. (2011) about a decade ago, when the world of social media was booming and had expanded perhaps in its highest scope since the advent of Web 2.0. This paper was written at a time when the use of social media in classrooms was considered to be highly unethical, more so because it “blurred the lines between the classroom and outside”. However, this idea that the school and outside world are two distinct entities is problematic because education is, after all, supposed to prepare individuals for their navigation of the outside world. Therefore looking at school not as a subset of the world, but in isolation was perhaps not the best idea. This was of course, challenged with time as social media grew in its scope and popularity and ended up becoming thoroughly integrated with almost all aspects of our lived experiences. This was even more true when all of learning shifted online due to the pandemic. The authors of the paper predicted how the initial ethical challenges of the time could be combated by making technology not a sign of privilege, but as a relevant component of the teaching and learning process. By doing so, it would change the light in which digital technology in the education world is seen, and how this is not good to have but need to have.

Christine Greenhow on Policies for Social Media Integration

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 08:38:30 -0500

Hi Betul,
Thank you for your post. I was just reading an Opinion article in The New York Times "What's One of the Most Dangerous Toys for Kids? The Internet" which asserted: "while kids are experiencing this kind of dopamine rush, tech companies — in a drive to maximize engagement and, thus, profits — are collecting their data without their overt consent while also exposing them to adult content and corrosive peer judgment." This article makes the point that our Internet privacy laws corresponding policies are outdated. Like you, I agree that multiple stakeholders should be solicited to help design and get better policies implemented. In fact pending legislation: https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/children_and_teens_online_privacy_protection_act.pdf seeks to update the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (yes, it's over 13 years old) by, according to the NYT, "banning targeted advertising aimed at children and raising the age of internet users whose data cannot be collected without their consent from 12 to 15, among other measures." What do you think about this proposal? Thanks for your post!

demirayb on Policies for Social Media Integration

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 17:24:42 -0500

As Ahn. and colleagues (2011) say policy is one of the factors that affect technology integration in school practices. Even though we consider social media as a resource for student learning most of the time, it can also be beneficial for teachers. For example, Greenhow et al. (2019) say, social media provides various opportunities for professional development and community building among teachers. Because of this, policies should focus on how social media can be incorporated into the professional development of teachers. In this way, this potential of social media can have a legal basis to increase the existing potential and to identify some regulations for using social media with a legitimized framework.
Schools should also enable flexible social media use in teaching and learning process by developing some school policies (Greenhow et al., 2019). Policymakers should concentrate on how to effectively integrate digital technologies in education, instead of restricting technology use because of potential risks. Social media use might be questioned by some stakeholders due to making differentiation between formal and informal learning and in and out-of-school behaviors invisible (Ahn et al., 2011). Thus, policies should be developed to make clear what to expect from using social media inside and outside of schools for student learning.
No matter how carefully policies are developed, social media companies are the ones that direct users to be involved in social media in particular ways, and some of the potential dangers of social media can be eliminated by these companies (Krutka et al., 2020). Therefore, policymakers should negotiate with these companies with research findings and public opinions about how to make social media a safer and beneficial place for all users, especially for students. In my opinion, the most important point in the policy development process is that policy makers should ask opinions and concerns of students, parents, teachers, and administrators to address the needs and expectations of all stakeholders about using digital technologies in learning and teaching.

Christine Greenhow on Suha's Post for Week 10 (Emailed to Me Due to VPN Barrier)

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 06:53:18 -0500

Course: Critical thinking
Grade: 10th grade
Age: 15 yo

Critical thinking is a necessary skill that most fields across the world require of their employees in current times. However, while it may be a skill that different teachers try to hone in their students through the study of varied disciplines, there is a need for focused attention to be given to just teaching critical thinking. And this can be done with the use of Facebook as the platform where the 10th graders can observe different sides to an argument, and use their critical thinking abilities to form their own opinion. While social media may legally be for children above 13 years of age, they start their engagement with it at a much younger age (Weeden et al., 2013). Therefore given that they are already spending a considerable amount of time on social media platforms, these platforms may as well be incorporated into school curriculum as well. This will make the learning content more accessible, relevant and relatable to the students, and their engagement with the platform won’t be related to only entertainment purposes.
Even though legal, children at 15 are still vulnerable to the negative effects of social media, and to ensure that the platforms do not add to the negative experiences of the kids, the teachers play an essential role in guiding these interactions. Their own savviness with the platforms are important, to ensure that the platform is being used for the task at hadn’t as correctly as possible (Weedan et al., 2013). The teacher’s experience and ease with the platform also ensures their full understanding of the student’s experiences, thereby helping their own self-efficacy beliefs about their own teaching (Blonder & Rap, 2015).

Christine Greenhow on Instructor Synthesis

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 18:00:56 -0500

This week’s guided reading question asked you to present “a realistic recommendation [for or against] adding social media to your chosen learning environment and discuss the role of the instructor in implementing this vision.” You chose different student populations: K-12 children (elementary school and high school) and adult professional learners (teachers).

Betul considered the need to teach WITH and ABOUT social media in elementary school. Teaching with social media could foster active learning, students’ collaboration, and increase their community connections (e.g., help develop civic awareness and engage with other students and adults from their communities and different parts of the world). Challenges to this vision include the need to teach online safety. To enact this vision, teachers will need to play various roles: “teacher as learner, teacher in constructivist roles, teacher as change agent” (Bartow, 2014, p. 47).

Jeong considered the incorporation of social media for teachers’ professional development, providing the opportunity to form sustained teacher’ social networks for emotional support. Like Betul she argued that such personalized learning networks (PLNs) can assist teachers in identifying and developing these roles (e.g., teacher as learner, teacher as caring, teacher as change agent etc.) (Bartow, 2014). Like Jeong, Abdu recommended teachers use social media with the purpose of finding, assessing (Trust, 2016) and sharing (Hanraets Et al., 2011) materials, which are important in the own learning process.

Suha recommended using social media to teach critical thinking. Specifically, she envisioned Facebook “as the platform where 10th graders can observe different sides to an argument, and use their critical thinking abilities to form their own opinion... This will make the learning content more accessible, relevant and relatable to the students.” Teachers will themselves need to invest in learning about and being comfortable with the platform to assist students in understanding the potential benefits and drawbacks. This week’s posts raised a number of questions such as:

Questions
How does this week's topic/readings connect with your own research or teaching interests?
What do you see as the biggest threats to facilitating learning with [chosen media] in education?
Do you see any connections between what you read and discussed this week and weeks 1-9 in this course?

demirayb on Teach and Learn with Social Media

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 10:09:20 -0500

Social media is commonly used by people across age groups. Even though there is a certain age limit (13 years old) to create an account on social media platforms, a recent study conducted with 119 children under the age of 13 showed that a high percent of children (70%) has already had social media accounts (Weeden et al., 2013). Therefore, instead of waiting to incorporate social media into teaching until high school because of age restriction, schools should plan teach with and about social media in elementary school. In this way, schools can have a chance to teach about online safety and benefit from affordances of social media in teaching.

Elementary school social studies courses can be a good place for teaching about and with social media because of the three affordances, “fostering active learning, enhancing students’ collaboration, and increasing their community connections” (Greenhow et al., 2019, p. 179). By incorporating social media into their teaching, teachers can support their students to develop civic awareness and engage with other students and adults from their communities and different parts of the world to gain multiple perspectives about global events (Porto, 2016; Mathews, 2016; Montgomery, 2014). Additionally, students can start to learn how to safely use digital media and be aware of potential dangers.

This process is complex (Greenhow et al., 2019) and requires new responsibilities and demands on teachers (Bartow, 2014). Teachers should have many roles, such as “teacher as learner, teacher in constructivist roles, teacher as change agent” (Bartow, 2014, p. 47). Fortunately, social media provides various opportunities to teachers for professional development by not being limited to resources in physical spaces. For example, teachers can meet their individualized development needs that are not addressed in traditional PDs and create connections with teachers around the world with similar educational challenges and concerns through social platforms (Greenhow et al., 2019. Therefore, social media can be beneficial for both students and teachers in their learning process.

isakova2 on W10 Q1 Abdu

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 23:20:23 -0500

1) I stand firm in my opinion on the role of social media in the learning process as an informal source. In this regard, researches show that while the young generation, including students, are using social media mostly to keep online or offline connections(Ellison, 2007), professionals use it for work-related topics(Marcia & Garcia, 2016). Therefore, In my opinion, social media have more potential outcomes in professional development in terms of learning. In other words, professionals, in this case, teachers use social media with the purpose of finding, assessing(Trust, 2016) and sharing(Hanraets Et al., 2011) materials, which are important in the learning process.
Regarding finding sources, the approach of professionals is more specific. In particular, even if they spend several hours a week in informal learning (Marcia & Garcia, 2016) using social media, they know what information or materials they need and therefore do not waste time on trivial things or entertainment.
Turning to the assessment of learning materials, they have experience in comparison and analysis. Therefore, when they use professional development through collaboration (Marcia & Garcia, 2016), such as joining some e-group or participating in training activities, they are able to select appropriate materials and adapt the knowledge(Trust, 2016), which is relative or important to use in his/her school context.
Regarding sharing, teacher professional development through collaboration among equals has been shown to be a key factor for student achievement(Marcia&Garcia, 2016). Due to the affordances of social media, today teachers can share knowledge and learn with other peers who are located far away from each other (Marcia&Garcia, 2016). In addition, in the process of implementing knowledge sharing plays an important role by helping integrate a resource, such as an online website, app, or homework tracking document, into their lessons(Trust, 2016).
2) The role of an instructor/facilitator could be seen as a motivator, network organizer and experimenter while others could be co-facilitators(Marcia & Garcia, 2016). Particularly, in the early phase inviting and motivating (Hanraets Et al., 2011) is important in order to form a learning community(Marcia & Garcia, 2016). In the next stage, the instructor role can be changed to the organizer by providing support and guidance(Trust, 2016) during the networked learning process. Last but not least, the instructor could experiment with whether the organized process is working or not by becoming a member of this community.
Thus, I think, social media can bring more benefit to the students' outcomes by using it purposefully and organized.

parkje13 on W10 Q1_Jeong

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 20:28:22 -0500

Option 1:
1)
I would like to think about teacher professional development program. There have been many attempts to leverage the affordances of social media not only to incorporate into the K-12 classroom for successful teaching, but also to enhance professional developments of teachers. As noted in Greenhow et al.’s (2019) article, the use of social media has the benefits of helping teachers develop their own professional learning and improve their quality of teaching.
Accordingly, as one of the proposals, I would like to incorporate social media in a professional development program in a way that gives teachers the opportunity to form teachers’ social networks. As a former teacher, I believe these networks are essential for the sustained professional development of teachers. Teachers are often confined to their classrooms and have difficulty communicating with other teachers. The affordances of social media provide emotional support by making teacher feel connected to other teachers, as well as develop their own profession by connecting with other experienced teachers (Greenhow et al., 2019). Thus, building communities through social media may enable an integral part of "daily teaching practice (Hanraets et al., 2011, p. 97)".

2)
There are many other challenges that instructors and/or facilitators face when implementing teacher professional development programs (Hanraets et al., 2011). Nevertheless, I believe that one of the roles of the instructor to successfully lead a program using social media is to identify their subject positions (Bartow, 2014) (e.g., teacher as learner, teacher as caring, teacher as change agent etc.) Teachers need to aware of different kinds of positionalities when using social media in their class. Because I think all these subjectivities are linked to one’s own teaching philosophy and beliefs, it would be a good chance for teachers to see the instructors exhibit different subjectivities during the professional development program using social media.

Christine Greenhow on Synthesis of our Critical Thinking about Digital Literacy

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 05:30:42 -0500

Video opening by Abdu

W8 Q1. In reflecting on the readings and your own experiences, the ‘literacies’ that you felt scholar-teachers need to develop to work in modern day environments included:
“Carefully and critically using [consuming] digital media in personal life, incorporating social media into research, using a variety of digital tools in teaching, developing an understanding of cultural and linguistic interactions on social media etc.”
“Digital ways of reading and writing.”
“Digital creation/production”
“Cultural literacy. History has seen a dominance of the English language, and its literacy practices being used to suppress local and regional languages... time spent on the internet by the youth has given them exposure to the linguistic and cultural diversity present across the world.”
“The power to read culture and society” (like digital citizenship) “identifying the social structure within and practicing social justice and ethics.”
“Emotional Literacy...understanding the students’ emotional capacities, seeing how this interacts with their technological surroundings, and using these insights into teaching how to read and write will perhaps prove to be far more fruitful.”
Multi-dimensional scholarship: Discovery, Teaching, Integration, Application but not equally?

QUESTIONS:
(1) How did the literacies you identified as important align with those you are developing (or not developing) in graduate school? What is missing?
(2) How much has changed/stayed the same with respect to the digital literacy issues raised in these articles?
(2) Should these ‘literacies’ be part of teacher education? At what cost?
(3) What does it mean to you to be a ‘public’ scholar or do publicly engaged scholarship in the age of social media?

gangopa5 on W8 Q2

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 09:03:35 -0400

I can speak from India's perspective pertaining to this debate between traditional approaches to teaching, and one that requires the use of technology. For decades now, there has been a divide between the two, where each believes that they are more superior and more effective for learning. However, in my practice as an educator in the country, I have strongly come to see the significance of weaving elements from both approaches, of course, with the relevant agency from the teachers to be fine with this approach. Perhaps we need to break the binary between traditional and digital approaches to teaching and learning, and instead, focus on how we can combine to make an approach that has the best of both worlds, and is therefor, more effective than just either.

gangopa5 on Need for New Ways of Assessment

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 08:59:40 -0400

Assessment in the new digital world is such a complex idea, and thank you for bringing this up in your reflection, Betul. What I wonder with regard to assessment is how important or significant the process of proctoring is going to be in situations where assessments are conducted. How do we build technologies that monitors test takers without infringing on their personal privacy, especially when they take tests from their homes. Or do we do away with it completely, and focus more on building trust with the test-takers? Or should the check for plagiarism be tighter to make sure there haven't been instances of collaborating between test takers amongst themselves?