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Week 7 Reflection

 This week really established the differences of secondary and higher education in terms of classroom social media use. I think social media is an excellent tool to use in higher education as these learners are more equipped to use it and can motivate themselves to learn from it rather than getting distracted. Middle and high schoolers, on the other hand, run a much higher risk of distractibility when using social media and there is a lot more room for legal trouble when using social media in a secondary classroom. 

I have worked at a couple of middle schools and a high school in the last decade. Every single school had "tea" pages where the students went to spread rumors and say nasty things about other students and staff. Every school also usually has multiple fight pages as well where students go to post their "world star" style fight videos, often the ones that have taken place on campus. 

This is a mess every. single. time. Especially when parents stumble on these pages as at the end of the day, there is not a ton the school can do other than report the page and hope it gets taken down. On occasion, students get caught and they get in a ton of trouble, and it often follows them throughout their school career, especially if parents want to press charges against those students. 

Even when trying to use social media in an educational way, secondary learners can easily be distracted or post inappropriately, and it can be hard for teachers to monitor in the same way they can a program made specifically for education. 

These are not problems that self-regulated learners in higher education have to face. I think in secondary, learners can be taught how to use social media effectively and ethically via programs like Padlet, Beanstack, Class Dojo, etc. These things can be transferred to using social media in higher education, especially since we are dealing with generations of digital natives that use most of these social media platforms in their own time. 


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