When Ainee Fatima, a high school teacher in Chicago, created a video of herself reacting to students' quiz answers with meme stickers , she had no way of predicting the ripple effect. That simple gesture, which she used to connect with her students and make the tedium of grading a little less boring, went viral. After more than 10 million views and 123,000 retweets in less than three days, Fatima had a ready-made lesson for students on the pitfalls and positives of internet fame. Yes, the interview requests, news articles, TV coverage, and repost offers were full of praise, but what about when people saw your feed as negative? What was worthy of time and attention?
At a time when students (and educators) are tethered to their devices, social media inevitably seeps into the classroom. But teachers report that many students, despite being "digital natives," need guidance to use these platforms beyond entertainment purposes. Rather than seeing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms as a distraction, teachers have found ways to harness them for teaching and learning. It's a delicate balance to strike, a mix of knowing when to leave the tools out in favor of face-to-face communication, when social media will enhance a lesson or provide an inroad for student-teacher connection, and what parameters students will need to navigate online networks in safe, smart, and engaging ways. Three experts share their tactics for incorporating digital tools to expand students' sense of what learning can be.
About the Contributors
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Ai Addyson-Zhang (@aiaddysonzhang) is a digital learning consultant and the founder of Classroom Without Walls. She is an Adobe Education Leader and a former associate professor of communication at Stockton University in New Jersey. Her work focuses on using technology and social media to transform how people teach and learn. She also teaches educators to use social media to build their personal careers and their classroom toolboxes. Follow her Linktree for more strategies or tune into her weekly livestreaming show on LinkedIn, Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube (every Wednesday at 2 p.m. PST).
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Ainee Fatima (@axfxq) is a high school English teacher at East Leyden High School in Chicago. Prior to professionally teaching, Ainee was a performance poet and teaching artist around the Chicago area. Her work has won the recognition of Hillary Clinton, who handpicked her among other young people to challenge stereotypes of Muslims in the United States. She was the first covered Muslim woman to be featured in Seventeen magazine for her poetry.
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Megan Poore is the PhD academic and research skills advisor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. She is the author of Using Social Media in the Classroom (SAGE Publications, 2015). Visit her website, Using Social Media in the Classroom, for more resources.
Why did you first decide to bring social media into the classroom?
Addyson-Zhang: So-called digital natives are savvy in terms of entertainment use, but don't really know how to use social media for networking, learning, personal branding, or career development. In school, we say, "Put away the computer and let's learn." Social media and creative technologies, when used right, can be powerful teaching tools. Yet, nobody trained teachers to teach students this way. Our educational system doesn't encourage it. I think the missing link is teachers—but very few teachers are also practitioners. It is important, especially for those teachers who are teaching social media, to walk the talk. At the same time, school leaders need to encourage teachers to experiment with creative technologies.
I started a livestreaming channel to show my students and educators that they don't have to go to a physical classroom to learn or teach. Social media facilitates self-paced and self-directed learning. I have students, educators, and practitioners from all over the globe join me every week. It's the best classroom I have taught in.
Fatima: I want my students to know that our class will be focusing on how to become an informed digital citizen. Students constantly want to be on their phones anyway; why not use their desire in a way that can benefit their learning? We look at trending news stories and how they're reported on Twitter and on other social media platforms. I try to find blogs and podcasts that relate to what we're discussing in class. We're really focusing on the "Message, Method, and Medium" this year and will be studying how media coverage might affect the upcoming election.
I was inspired to create the meme stickers last year because there was a ridiculous response from a student. I thought to myself, "I wish she could see my face as I'm grading!" I printed out a sticker of a Nick Young meme where he looks absolutely confused and stuck it next to her answer. Students looked at each other's quizzes and discussed the answers they got wrong, all because of the stickers. This was so different from my own experience with getting a quiz or exam back; I always shoved it in my backpack and never looked at it again. I used the viral situation as a teaching moment to show how students can navigate through the desire to become popular online. Many of my students "vlog" or are trying to be the next big thing, so this moment was something that they were actually interested in.
Poore: Social media—which is all about communication—has really helped me strengthen and extend how I communicate with students. I don't just mean in terms of posting assignment instructions or anything didactic like that; I mean it more in the sense of finding the most effective way of "talking" with students. Sometimes it means using real-time chat if we need to push through with solving an immediate problem, but it can also mean posting something to a forum and allowing people to respond at their own pace. Other times it means old-fashioned face-to-face conversations.
Using social media has especially made me think about how to get students to best express their ideas. For example, online platforms such as wikis can be great for group work and shared understanding of a subject. Alternatively, photosharing and visual platforms allow individual students to put materials together in a more creative way that really gets to the heart of how they think about the world.
How can educators make sure students are using platforms safely, appropriately, and for deeper learning?
Addyson-Zhang: The sage-on-the-stage model is over. Teachers are facilitators and need to admit that we do not know everything. Creative technologies allow us to cocreate knowledge with students in a collaborative space ripe for intergenerational and cross-cultural learning. I think that's what makes these platforms so powerful: They allow students to interact with a wide range of students, educators, and professionals from all walks of life.
Fatima: At our school, we have a digital literacy class for all freshmen. The class is designed to better prepare students to navigate the online world and track their digital footprint. We focus on skills such as analysis, comprehension, application, critique, and visualization because students are utilizing them all the time outside of the classroom. It's great to be able to harness these skills in a useful way in academia and day-to-day life. Also, all of our administrators are on Twitter and Instagram. I think this is great because I don't remember being in contact with my own high school principal or even seeing them around school unless it was for an assembly. We even have a district hashtag where all members of the school can show off what is going on within our walls.
How can teachers and students develop a professional and personal online presence?
Addyson-Zhang: I encourage educators to use different channels to humanize who they are and build their personal brand. My students follow me on Instagram, see me at professional conferences, and observe how I make and learn from mistakes. It's a great way to build emotional connection with them, which in turn makes them more interested in learning from me. On the other hand, because students watch my content, I am intentional about what I post. I want my students to understand that social media is not private.
Besides Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, I use live streaming for office hours and course content and encourage students to learn on the go. If students have a question, they can Instagram me, hop on Facebook messenger, or video chat on their schedule.
Fatima: One way is through modeling. I show students my own social media when it's appropriate. I highlight for them the public figures, scholars, and experts that I follow who interest me and the type of content I post. For example, I explain to them how important it is to have a professional photo on websites like LinkedIn when applying for jobs or networking. Second, it's important to be transparent about the dangers of social media and misinformation online. I have a whole unit on misinformation and fake news and teach skills to identify what manipulates people's perceptions of reality, influences politics, promotes advertising, or incites conflict among populations. CommonLit and Newsela are two websites I like to use.
Poore: The digital divide these days isn't about access to hardware. It's about access to knowledge and networks and the ways in which people use technologies to take part in daily social life. Those who will succeed are those who can manage online relationships and who can use social media to build "social capital." That doesn't mean that people should be online 24-7 massaging their profiles (and their egos!) by posting selfies and tweeting what their dog is doing in the backyard. It means, instead, that students need to be taught the limitations of the online environment as well as how to take part in positive social action or appropriately express a political viewpoint, as opposed to spreading misinformation and gossip. We can't just expect students to learn these skills by osmosis, especially if all they are looking at on social media is the equivalent of junk food.
How do you anticipate challenges when doing this work?
Poore: If your teaching and learning isn't planned, you will quickly find yourself pedagogically adrift. What's the intellectual or conceptual purpose? What learning outcomes do you want to assess? How will you cover the set curriculum? There needs to be a pedagogical justification for why you would use one tool over another—just as there should be when you are choosing an essay over an oral presentation. Then, you need to plan for how you want students to use the tool: Will students use their real names or aliases? How frequently should they contribute? How will you deal with poor behavior?
The other big thing is risk management. This often scares teachers away from using social media in the classroom, but it shouldn't. Yes, there's a lot to consider—copyright, privacy, accessibility, cyberbullying, data control, reliability of the service—but with some forethought and a sensible attitude you can develop a risk-management plan that will help keep you, your students, and your institution safe. The thing you absolutely should not do is launch enthusiastically into a class-based social media project without doing your due diligence.
Any specific activities, lessons, or tips you recommend for integrating social media into a curriculum or as a teaching tool?
Addyson-Zhang: I create a Facebook group and a hashtag for every class I teach, and I notice students are more likely to open up in an online learning environment compared to traditional face-to-face classes. Using Facebook Group, students openly share their opinions, have in-depth discussions, and do surveys related to class subject matter. I also use social media to collaborate with different schools and teachers who are teaching similar subjects.
One semester, I did a Twitter activity with two other schools in New Jersey. We created a common hashtag, and each week, students had a specific reflection to share, such as describing the challenges of transitioning from high school to college. Students also use Adobe Spark to do research, term papers, and reflections, which allows them to be creative storytellers and problem solvers. Sharing their work with a broader professional community builds their network and personal brand, which can eventually benefit their professional careers.
Fatima: I use Twitter during our research paper unit. Students summarize their thesis into a tweet. I try to get them to connect online with someone who is an expert in the field or topic they're researching to ask them a question related to the project they are doing. Twitter is also a great tool for class discussions because it allows students who might be shy to still interact with their peers without having to verbally say anything. For example, if a student does not feel comfortable speaking in a classroom, they may post a tweet to contribute to class discussion. We use hashtags to track responses; some students choose to create a student Twitter account separate from their personal one.
Poore: You absolutely must start by defining your broader purposes: What is the intellectual focus of what you are doing? What types of "exchanges" do you want from students? How can students best accomplish this? You might find in answering those three basic questions that using social media is the wrong approach. If it fits, you need to make sure you scaffold your students adequately. Give examples or even model best practice by using the tool yourself. Indeed, you might be a digital native yourself, but that doesn't exempt you from planning how to use social media to its best effect in your teaching and learning.
Editor's note: Responses have been edited lightly for length and clarity. A version of this article also appeared in the November 2019 issue of Education Update.