Journal #3 The Case For Social Media in Schools

Journal #3 The Case For Social Media in Schools

Kessler, S. (2010, September). The Case For Social Media in Schools. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/#m_2BAuC71Gqt.

Summary: In this article, the author advocates that social media should be used in schools and supports her point from different aspects. First, she pointed out since the Internet and social media are the trends of our life, more and more people are going to use them. So we don’t need to go against them. And also she uses some examples to demonstrate that engaging in the social media will increase student’s motivation of learning and collaboration, and then result to their better performances in schools. Furthermore she thinks that there are ways to control the students’ access to the distracted websites, for example kidblog.org, so we can decrease the potential harm from the Internet to students. Lastly, she argues that although the cellphone is banned in the most of schools, it is a good way for kids to communicate either to parents or to teachers.

Question 1: Will the engagement in social media increase students’ performance in study?

I think every sword has two blades. In one aspect, if students use social media in a proper way, for example, like us, use the blog to present their points of view of the topics related to their courses, it will definitely be helpful to their study. However, if they just make small talks or play through social media, such as post pictures to show off in their Facebook, it seems that their involvement will not contribute to their performance at all. So in my opinion, students’ use of social media should be under the supervision of the parents or schools, and also under the control of the software or system. If they can make good use of the social resources, it will a play positive role in their studies.

Question 2: Can we monitor and control students’ activities in the social media?

There are some software that can monitor and track users’ activities. For example, in the Windows’ system or Mac’s system, we all can set the limitation of web access and time restriction of the machine. And also, as the author mentioned, in the kidblog.org, it will monitor and approve everything that kids post online. But how about Facebook? How about Twitter? Those popular social media, what do they do in the controlling? I don’t think there are very effective ways to restrict students’ activity in them, except that their guardians can also join  in their circles, and know what the kids’ are publishing. But the guardian can’t get all their activity information, it’s far from monitoring.  I think maybe this is the reason that many parents and schools are still ban their kids from those social media.