WEEK 19 - Students and Social Media

This week I wanted to talk about how students communicate on social media. Since I don't communicate with students online, I am in no way an expert. However, with just a few clicks, I was surprisingly enlightened by online student behavior. 

The day we returned from break, I explained the #26acts/@26acts movement in which each class would compete to do 26 random acts of kindness in order to honor the 26 Sandy Hook victims. When I told them that they could hashtag their acts on Twitter, a student asked me if I had a Twitter account. A bit hesitant, I said yes. Then after class I quickly made sure that my actual name wasn't attached to my account (by the way, my Twitter account is @ateacherslife13). As I was monitoring my account, I got curious...

A simple search later, and...

WOW. High school students don't use Facebook; Twitter is how students communicate these days. I didn't want to be creepy by looking up some of my students, but so many kids have their accounts completely public. And many of the things they say on Twitter are things that would never fly in class or at home. 

I used to think that Twitter was only great for celebrities and politicians since it's a way for people to communicate directly without having their message filtered through the media, but what I realized is that Twitter has allowed "popular" students to become mini-celebrities. And some of these kids take it seriously, tweeting over 50 times a day (and many times during class, as I also realized). 

We've all read the stories about people being fired from their jobs or being implicated in crimes because of things they've said online, but I don't think these kids realize how permanent the internet is, and how if they post something online, it's out there forever, somewhere. I know that I surely wouldn't want something I said when I was 15 to come back and bite me somehow.

Maybe we should be teaching netiquette in schools? Kudos to the parents who make their kids lock their Facebook and Twitter accounts. 

My hours for week 19 (keep in mind we only had class 3 days this week):

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sat	12/29/2012	6:45 PM	9:00 PM	2.25
Sun	12/30/2012			0
M	12/31/2012	3:00 PM	5:30 PM	2.5
		6:45 PM	8:15 PM	1.5
T	1/1/2013			0
W	1/2/2013	7:15 AM	6:15 PM	11
Th	1/3/2013	7:45 AM	4:15 PM	8.5
F	1/4/2013	7:45 AM	4:00 PM	8.25
Sat	1/5/2013			0
	Total			34