Something strange happened recently with my Twitter account and I started following about one hundred people I hadn't been following before. Retrospectively, my account must have been compromised. It was weird as this happened quickly during the day while I was teaching, so my following number jumped out at me as being larger than I remember.
Worlds Collide
In the process I followed some students who had been in my class some years prior who had followed me recently. Immediately I started picking up some uncharacteristic chatter in my feed that had me wondering what exactly was going on. Without digging at all I realized how differently these students use Twitter and I instantly realized the chaotic nature of social networks for young people today. With that in mind, I pondered what we as thoughtful adults could do to help students manage their online interactions. Here are some ideas I came up with:
Start Tweeting Early
In a perfect world, students would learn about how to use social media at a young age in a supervised and safe manner mostly through class accounts set up and monitored by their teacher. This way they could write messages that would eventually be shared with the world, learn about online etiquette and inhabit these spaces together. Once they grew up a bit and were in secondary schools, there wouldn't be the secretive novelty aspect of social networks and the true power of combined knowledge bases could be explored and utilized.
Developing Digital Footprints
This strategy would be reserved for older students towards the end of their secondary education. Preparing for life outside of K-12 would be emphasized and each student would leave high school having a "Googleable" name, various articles and attributes discoverable online; in other words an online resume ready to be molded in whatever shape the student wanted looking towards the next step in their lives. So much of what students do online seems to be secretive and hidden from view, but if we can help students see the value in creating a positive online persona we are setting them up to be more successful. If you speak with a high schooler ask them how much time is spent in study halls or double lunch periods. Chances are they waste an extraordinary amount of time at school. This time would be much better spent blogging about something that interests them, for example, building their network for the future.
