Week 4 Reflection

I found this week’s guest speaker particularly interesting, and am very grateful to Jesse Miller to have chatted with us about social media and education. I have a particular interest in this topic because of my own involvement with social media and was glad to be able to ask Jesse some questions about my own social media use and what effect that could have on my career. I appreciated that he was direct in saying that it could cause conflict if I was for example using work hours to use my social media or if I created sensitive content (but I don’t need to worry about either of those). It was nice to know that I do have the right to a private life that cannot be scrutinized by my employer.

A lot of what he discussed I was aware of and agreed with, such as the importance of including digital literacy into the classroom, the different effects of social media depending on how you use it, and that banning cellphones is likely not a good solution in today’s society. However, he did mention a few things that surprised me. For example, I had no idea that teachers could not be photographed holding any alcohol. While I am not a big drinker I do have some pictures (including a paid partnership post) that has wine as the focal point. I realized having pictures of you engaging in lude behavior (shall we say) is not appropriate for a teacher, but I did not realize this rule was so strict. Upon writing this blog post, I have realized that I have lots of pictures holding wine or cocktail glasses but it is not alcohol (I hardly drink and prefer mocktails/ lemonade), but I am wondering if that could also be an issue? It seems difficult to prove it is alcohol but also would be hard for me to prove it isn’t. I really do not want to have to no longer use those glasses because honestly, it just makes me feel fancy.

I found his presentation very engaging for me, especially since the topic is of special interest to me. I think it ties in nicely with our topic of teachers as content creators, especially since many teachers share the resources they made on social media. I also really appreciate how strongly he advocated for the use of social media (within reason) because I do find that many educators steer away from tech and especially social media in the classroom. As Jesse mentioned, I think it is so important to include such topics because we are trying to teach children to be successful in our current society, in which social media and cellphone are ubiquitous. I strongly believe that it is more damaging to try to ignore and avoid the topic of social media in classrooms. I am hopeful that the curriculum does shift to include this more, or that I can find a position in a school that is more open to including these topics.