This term I decided to start blogging with my Social 9 class for my digital learning project. I have had several posts throughout the term about my trials, tribulations, and successes with the project:
I would also like to show off my classroom blog. My posts are pretty boring as they mostly constitute the assignments for the class but some of my students did a really good job and really embraced the process.
I have had an amazing time with this project and intend to continue its use. I feel that, at times, I was really pushing my students to work on the blog in an inorganic way so that I could talk about what we were doing in class for this project. I look forward to being a little less pushy moving forward, using it more as an option for how to submit assignments as opposed to a “YOU MUST DO THIS” as I had a few students who really did not enjoy the process.
I made blogging with this class a part of my Professional Goals I submitted to my division so that I am encouraged (and feel obligated) to continue the project throughout the year. I can’t wait to see where this takes me as I have wanted to start blogging with a class for a long time but could never actually get to the point where it was set up and ready to go.
My Summary of Learning is complete! I used GoAnimate this year and I liked it but I think in terms of sharing it afterward, I prefer Powtoon, which I used for my Summary of Learning for EC&I834 (although that video is a blend of Powtoon and other video editing programs).
Thanks for the great course everyone! I enjoyed learning with and from each of you!
This week I was excited to find and review an application or tool that I had not previously used. I liked a lot of the tools that we talked about but realized that my entire experience with Padlet was to post my intro picture for #eci831 and #eci834 but that I had never truly spent time discovering what the tool was capable of. I was also inspired by my former classmate Megan from #eci834 who retweeted another’s use of Padlet on Twitter. So…here goes.
I created a Padlet on LGBTQ Resources for K-3 as a summary of our module on supporting diverse learners. #sogi123https://t.co/PrcxwkRAHp
When signing up for Padlet there were a few different options: You can sign up for an account with your Google account, your Facebook account, or via email. I like this as I have enough different passwords and usernames to remember, linking this to my Google account is easy and I can (and have) created a Google account that I use primarily for my school-based work and bookmarks so this is very convenient. Add the self-esteem boosting mandatory “click this box” portion of signing up, and who could be upset???
The dashboard is simple and easy to follow. I like that there is a space for Recent activity for if you are sharing your Padlet with others so that you can see any updates that have occurred. Overall, it is exactly what I would expect from such a page to help organize your different pages.
Create
This is where I feel Padlet really shines. They have generic blank templates that you can use and they also have more stylized templates to help you come up with ideas. I right away started with the stylized templates to see what Padlet is capable of. Their premade templates include a Moodboard, Bookmarks, Q&A, Kanban Board, KWL Chart, Video Playlist, Storyboard, Organization chart and a space to request a specific type of template. Each of these has a Preview option to help create ideas of how the tool can be used. After reviewing each and playing with the different styles, I decided to create my own Padlet.
I decided to follow the lines of the example above and create a grid-style Padlet. We are moving to a new unit in my Social 9 class right this week and I thought this may be a great way to collect some resources. I started by choosing a background and coming up with column headings. For now, I chose to be the only one who can edit the Padlet, given my intention of its use. Then I started to collect some (rather random) resources. As soon as I started to input information, I knew that I liked this tool.
I loved that you can provide links, you can watch videos right on the Padlet screen or move to the hosting website, you can drag and drop for reordering items on the board. The tool is very user-friendly and allows for a lot of personalization. I could easily see how I could plan activities and lessons on Padlet and share resources and links easily with my class. I invite you to check out my Padlet and play with the videos and see how easily you can navigate the board!
Strengths
In terms of strengths, I feel that Padlet is a great tool. In fact, I was very happily sharing it with my colleagues today after school and they were excited with how easy it was to use. The easy way to add (or subtract) items from the board, to move them around, and to share with others is great. If you were to collaborate with others, you can easily add to the board from Android and Apple apps on your phone or desktop versions including a Chrome extension and Chrome app. There are paid versions for relatively reasonable prices for educators and for businesses. “Backpack” (school) accounts allow for unlimited students under a teacher account.
The supports for schools are actually quite impressive: they integrate with Google apps and LMS, they have better privacy and security options, and they will even send you a hand-written love letter to thank you! They are also working on analytics and content filtering so it seems they are continuing to develop the platform.
Probably most impressive is their refund policy. I have never seen ANY refund policy that is as customer-centered as this one. You seriously need to check it out. They will do back-refunds and work with you to ensure you are happy if the tool does not meet your needs (or if you just stop using it)!
There is a bit of restriction on the free account in the limit of 4 Padlets and the limit in options but, as it is quite affordable if you are going to use it regularly, I feel that this can be avoided. I guess you could also create multiple accounts but then you would need to remember multiple usernames and passwords and I am not good at that on the best of days…..
Given that a paid teacher account allows for unlimited students, teachers that team teach content or students may be able to collaborate on one account if they wanted or needed to save on costs to the school or teacher wallet, I could not find Terms of Service that said this was not allowed but I may not be correct on this.
Potential
This is something that I think I would use for planning primarily. I can see myself using it much as my demo board is set up, to help guide an inquiry-based unit or project, or to collaborate with other teachers to share resources and links. In talking about sharing in previous posts, I feel that I may have solved my dilemma of how to organize, share, and collaborate with others, I really like the visual but organized flow of this tool. This is a tool that I will be using in the future.
Another fun fact is that there is a plugin for Padlet on WordPress (if you host your own site) where you can embed a Padlet in your post, something that I find very interesting! Now, I think I may be fully convinced: I may just have to get my own domain! (I need to figure out how first though…. anyone know how to go about that?)
Have you ever used Padlet? If so, how did you like it? Would you use it again? If you have a moment to pay around with it, do you agree with my assessment of it? I would love to hear from you!
I want to start my post this week with a true story about how sharing has helped me. I used to carry all of my teaching files back and forth between school and home on an external hard drive. A couple of years ago I arrived at school in January and plugged my trusty drive into my laptop at school to find…..nothing. Nothing at all. I tried not to panic and quickly headed home (a mere 7 blocks) to plug it back into my home computer, I must have just unplugged it without “removing safely” and I would definitely be able to access my files at home still. Unfortunately, I arrived at home and again…nothing. I was ready to cry. I demanded of my husband he was to take my drive to Regina (2 hours away), find a good tech person, and have them recover my files. I specifically remember telling him I didn’t care how much it cost him. I was 2 weeks away from the end of my semester, I was finishing making my final exams, and I did not want to start from scratch. I considered quitting if my files were all gone.
I headed back to school with intense anxiety. I went to my teacher friends and shared my life-shattering morning and that is when my passion for sharing came in handy. I had completely forgotten that at the beginning of the year I had a “sharing party” with several of my colleagues and we had shared all of our teaching files back and forth. I hadn’t lost EVERYTHING, just some of the newer files and some of the edits I had made during the past semester. Even though it wasn’t all of the files I had been looking for to work off of to edit my final exams, I had the majority of what I wanted. Because I was willing to share my resources, it actually came back to help me when I lost everything.
Sharing. It is one of the first social skills that we learn and probably one of the first that we fail at as well. So much of our world and our society is built on the sharing of resources, ideas, and skills, its impossible to imagine our world without it.
Steven Johnson talks about Where Good Ideas Come From, describing the beginning of the Enlightenment which occurred in coffee shops to the development of GPS as a side curiosity of two scientists. Johnson’s talk really appealed to me: I like coffee, I love hanging out in coffee shops, and history is of great interest to me. This is all great but what was most interesting was his opinion that we need to spend time connecting our ideas instead of always just protecting them.
Sharing is my way of life in education. I made a video that describes how I use sharing in my everyday teaching and life.
As mentioned in the video, one of my favourite types of professional development is to sit in a room of educators with a common subject area or group of students and talk. Talk about lesson ideas, behaviour ideas, education ideas. I always leave these sessions feeling energized and excited to go back to my students and implement the ideas that I have gained or shared in creating.
Not everyone is as enthusiastic to share their ideas, many people are afraid that they will be judged or that their work is not “good enough” to be shared with others. This is where Derek Sivers‘ video Obvious to You: Amazing to Others is imperative and meets with Johnson’s talk. If we do not share our ideas with others, even if they are not fully formed yet, we are not able to continue our personal growth and realization. This can be even more difficult in a society where everything that you put online is there forever and searchable. This is why the culture of sharing, adapting, and remixing is important to develop. Many teachers and educators are ready and willing to share and start this revolution, in fact, many of them already have, but there are many who do not know HOW.
Finding a platform to share what I have created is one of my biggest barriers. I have tried many different platforms and have not fully been happy with any of them but, as mentioned in my video, I feel that has more to do with my perceived lack of connection to others and I need to work on ensuring that I am still putting myself out there. I believe that this is also one of the things that is a barrier to creating the culture of sharing online as so many people are not sure HOW to share their work and so they don’t, they end up hoarding it, not because they want to, but because they do not know how to put it out to the online world.
What types of platforms have you used to share your work? Do you find that some platforms are better than others? In what ways can you support your colleagues in learning to share online?
To finish my hard drive dilemma, apparently, they are definitely not made to be hauled around in a teacher bag…they are not that durable. And, The Computer Clinic in Regina saved me and (for a very reasonable price) they were able to retrieve all of my files!
**Sorry this is a little late…I am having issues with my internet this week…ugh.
This week on our blogs, we learned about inserting pictures, giving attribution, and we had a work period to catch up on posts and write an optional “free write post” for those that are all caught up.
We started our pictures lesson with a discussion about copyright and the creative commons. We talked about how everything is copyright by default and discussed why this is the way our society worked. We discussed Napster and I realized how long it has been since Napster was a thing as none of my Grade 9s had even heard of the file-sharing site! We watched the first few minutes of the video of Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich speaking at the Senate Committee and discussed why he felt so passionately about his stance.
Once we had a good idea of copyright and the rules around it, we talked about copyleft and the creative commons. I showed them the different licenses that the creative commons website can help users hold and what each of the different parts means (such as non-commercial, attribution, share-alike) and why some internet users decide to allow others to use their materials. We then went looking for pictures to post!
I had all of my students use Compfight for their images and we learned out to insert an image of their choice into a blog post and use the caption area of the image to put in the photo credit. I also had students define copyright and copyleft on their posts so that I could check for understanding. When I was going over their submitted posts to publish them, however, I found that some had “copy and pasted” a definition of each of these two words into their post….I am going to have to have another conversation about using one’s own work next week, and not copying off of others.
Screenshot of Google Images tools
I also briefly showed my students the search tools on Google Images. On this, you can search for different usage rights on images. I have used this in the past when I find that Compfight is not bringing up what I am looking for but I did stress that Compfight is a little easier as it is better stream-lined (in my opinion) and relatively user-friendly.
Once we were done images, students were able to work on their Current Event, catch up on other posts, or write about something that they were interested in. This gave me time to go around and help some students more one-on-one with using the Edublogs platform and fix up any posts that they either hadn’t submitted or that I would like them to make some edits to. I encouraged my student that, now that we know how to link to other websites and insert pictures with attribution, they should be integrating these skills into their future posts.
This week, we will be starting a research project on First Nations locations in the prairie provinces. They will be required to insert pictures into their posts and link to their sources…I can’t wait to see the results!
When looking at the list of Open Education Resources (OERs) this week, I wanted to take a look at something that I do not have a lot of experience with and that I may actually use in the future, I am all about practicality in assignments where possible.
Banfield1 at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia CommonsI already have some experience with some of the OER repositories such as Khan Academy and TED Ed which I use in the classroom as supplemental support and visuals for my students. Khan Academy has great videos for mathematics where concepts are mapped out and taught in a method that I would use, but often with much better drawings. TED Ed also has great lessons for that “filler time” at the end of a lesson in their puzzles, my students LOVE them, but I find that although many these lessons come complete with Questions, Dig Deeper, and Discuss sections (see link for example), they are often what I refer to as “island lessons” where there is no way to make them all flow together to create a unit of sorts.
I first looked at American Institute of Mathematics. I found that they had quite a few open textbooks available but that most of the content was at a university or college level meaning they are not overly useful for a K-12 educator, outside of some of the Precalculus 30 outcomes. I did look through two of the textbooks, Precalculus and Precalculus – College Algebra – Trigonometry, and found they were not bad but were very wordy, something that I often find students struggle with.
Next was MERLOT, I had never heard of this one and I was drawn to its name for some reason……… I did not like the look of this one, it was not very user-friendly in my opinion as there were a lot of things going on and it was not very easy to tell what type of resource each item was before clicking to open it. Probably the most critical downfall was that most of the math resources I clicked into were applets and interactive, needing Adobe Flash Player, and support for Flash Player is being phased out, my division is not updating our Flash versions any longer.
Then I hit the open jackpot (for math anyways). I took a tour through OpenStax and I loved the layout, it was very easy for me to find an area that contained their math resources. I skimmed through all of their Algebra textbooks, through their Precalculus and the first two Calculus textbooks and, I was impressed.
The textbooks were available in several formats: PDF (with high and low-resolution options), web-based, and print for a small fee.
Textbooks cover content from my Grade 7 to university Calculus, meaning that I could find outcomes from every curriculum hidden in one of the courses!
The PDF was hyperlinked so that you did not have to do the “long scroll of death” to find what you were looking for.
There was a good balance of visuals and text through the textbooks, enough visuals to keep you engaged and to understand concepts but nothing for the sake of an image.
Textbook examples and solutions are well-described, colour-coded to help with understanding, extensive and thorough.
Problem sets contained a comprehensive list of types of questions including word problems, real-life applications, technology applications, review of basics, and the list goes on. This is the part that I was most impressed with by far as often I find that textbooks do not contain enough varied practice for students.
Odd questions have answers provided to help students guide if they are completing the exercises correctly.
At the end of many sections, especially in higher level courses, there were links to Youtube videos which further described certain concepts that may be difficult to comprehend if just reading examples.
Overall, I was very impressed with the diversity of these textbooks and their quality and will 100% be sharing them with my math colleagues for additional exercises and supports for students. My only critique would be that I would like to be able to download portions of the PDFs at a time instead of the whole thing but, all in all, I don’t really think that is a true thing to complain about.
I took a peek at the Physics textbook which seemed good for the above reasons but I do not teach Physics so feel that I was not able to state whether it applies to our curriculum, it is for AP Physics so there may be some units that would apply. The Social Science and Humanities textbook offerings do not align with Saskatchewan curricula so I did not look too far into these.
I love the idea of OERs but unfortunately, our educational system has become very monetized, I am afraid to know how much is spent on textbooks each year in the North American K-12 system. Getting a textbook on the “approved” list for a curriculum is not always the easiest and some of the approved textbooks are less than desirable. What benefits do you see to moving towards OERs in Saskatchewan in our current economic situation? Do you think that they would be a “hard sell” to prove that they are just as valid as textbooks from the “big companies” or do you think that most people would accept them easily?
This week was very exciting in my Social 9 class and for my Learning Project. We have been working on making some handouts in a jigsaw activity and this week students shared them on their blogs (except one group…more on that a little later), we linked our group members’ blogs to our own, and we had a small reflection that was to be posted. I modeled how to link, and how to attach our handouts on my SMART Board and some of my students helped to support their peers one-on-one. Some of my students, such as Sydney, did an amazing job by already linking her summary to various other information in her post, some were still at a beginners level. I shared my reflection on our progress so far to Twitter and the magic happened!
Have left some comments on their first true posts – not the welcome one. Interesting topic re First Nations
I would like to send a HUGE thank you to Sue Wyatt who runs the Student Blogging Challenge on Edublogs as she went in and commented on many of my students’ blogs. Not only that, she asked questions and provided some additional information via links or videos, and she related our knowledge of First Nations culture and history in Canada with that of her home country, Australia. I am honestly not sure who was more excited, my students or myself. This was what I had hoped for when starting blogging with my students and it was happening, and a lot sooner than I had hoped for!
So this week, we replied to comments on our blogs (after a conversation that went Students: “But what do I do if someone asked me a question?”, Me: “Answer it!”), we finished up our first “true posts”, and we started our Current Events assignment for November, which I will be requiring to be posted on the blogs by November 30 (our regular due date). This upcoming week, we will be completing a Location Research Project and learning how to cite our sources for information and for images when blogging as it is different than if they are sourcing in print. We will also be commenting on our peers’ blog posts for this assignment.
I learned a few different things about using Edublogs this week that I wanted to share as well:
Once I have reviewed and published each post, students cannot go back in and edit it. I have the security setting set so that I have to approve all posts and comments before they are “live” and one of my groups was not quite done their handout when I published some of their posts. This is something I will have to keep in mind for the future and will be looking into maybe I just didn’t find the correct button to allow this.
Once I have approved a comment, students were able to respond to comments and they were published without my approval. This is something I am okay with but I will have to ensure I watch the comments while we are still learning how to be appropriate online.
I am so excited with how well this project is going and I am hoping to continue it for the entirety of the year with my class and continue into future years. Outside of my next few planned assignments, I hope to find another class that we can start to interact with. Has anyone done pen pals or blog pals? Is there a specific site that helped you find a buddy-class or do you have any suggestions on how I can get started?
By Ansonlobo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia CommonsThis week, we looked at open education and the culture of sharing. I have always thought of myself as a teacher that would share my content and will eagerly share the resources that I use and create with others that are looking for ideas, support, or a place to start. I will even admit when what I have is awful but at least a starting point for content (cue that one year I taught Science 5 for 2 months at the beginning of my career…I do not recommend ANYONE using what I created then!).
I have played with putting my course material online, I made a few flipped lessons last year, and I believe in using the internet to help support our students in their learning but, I realized as I was watching the videos assigned to us this week that I was more-so paying lip service to the idea of sharing openly than actually actively working toward contributing to open education. I felt a little bit guilty of feeling like I was contributing when I was still very much secluded in my own little world.
By Creative commons (the original CC license symbols), the combined work by Shaddim and is hereby cc-by-4.0 licensed. [Public domain or CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia CommonsLarry Lessig and his work on copyright and copyleft is something that I was aware of as I have previously taken a course from Alec, however, I was very intrigued by his idea that the internet is reviving creativity and the read-write culture. I resonated with his reference to how children and adolescents today are engaging in (re)creativity and how he is pushing for a change in how products are default licensed. To put this in a personal context, I would be a full supporter of copyleft, I encourage those I share my resources with to rework and adapt to their situation or to use “as-is”, whatever they choose. I encourage them to share with the next person down the line as well.
Oh, the possibilities that Ze Frank discussed in his TED talk, My Web Playroom! I think that when I decided to blog with my Social 9 class for my Learning Project, I was envisioning a final outcome that resembled some of the projects that he discusses but, after a few classes, I am not sure we will quite get there. (Maybe if I work with them on this until they graduate, we could make something really unique). The simple requests that he makes to the internet remind of the Post Secret project that was created by Frank Warren (maybe it has something to do with a common name…). Warren encouraged strangers to send him anonymous postcards and posts them on his website. He has published several books of secrets I have always been intrigued by Post Secret and see it fitting into Lessig’s definition of (re)creativity. The community around the project is very supportive (for the most part, darn trolls) and work together to decipher secrets that are submitted in other languages or in codes. I get the feeling of being a part of something bigger when I look at this project, connected to others around the world.
RIP: A Remixer’s Manifesto was a great watch, with some great music. In it, Brett Gaylor challenges the current definition and laws around copyright, gives a history of the intent of copyright and patents (which I was surprised to find out was created to encourage more production of ideas, not to monetize ideas), and there is even a hint that there the cure for many diseases may be just around the corner, but due to a patent, researchers’ hands are tied. He demonstrated that many songs by big musicians are already a remix of something they have heard elsewhere and that the songs his favourite artist, Girl Talk, creates are individual in their own rights.
So how does remixing play into our everyday lives as teachers? I think that Roberta summed it up in the most accurate manner: we ask our students to remix every day and we call it learning. Reading this caused me to pause and think about all of the assignments I give my students, and I couldn’t agree more. Teachers share information with students and, to ensure that their students comprehend, ask them to repeat, retell, and apply the knowledge to other situations. In fact, when looking at Bloom’s Taxonomy, the entire section labelled Synthesis could be renamed “Remix”.
This has left me with a lot to think about, much like Sapna, I like that online and open education supports learning as it tends to be accessible, affordable and flexible. I want to contribute but I need to stop just saying I am contributing and actually do something to help. Maybe that will be my next project….
This week I was able to get my students signed onto their blogs for the first time. After spending a fair amount of time setting up an account and blog address for each student last week, I was excited to get them online and choosing a theme and title for their blog. I handed out my Getting Started with Blogging worksheet, everyone logged into their computers, reached the Edublogs website, were given their usernames and passwords, and only about 2/3 of them were able to log in.
“Mrs. Taylor….I don’t see that…I get this message…it tells me I don’t have permission to access the page…I don’t have permission to edit this page…”
Ugh. I went into my “teacher side” of Edublogs and tried to see what was different for those students than the others that were able to log on, I couldn’t figure it out. I started to get stressed, this is why teachers are afraid to do things online in class: what happens if it doesn’t work? Then what? After fiddling with the system for a few minutes (and luckily the rest of my class were busy picking a theme, a very important task) I gave up and decided to email the Edublogs support team for help.
“Okay, I sent an email for help from the company, hopefully, we will be able to get you online tomorrow or later this week, I just can’t seem to figure this out. If you can’t log in, please find someone who could and follow along so that you can see how the blog works. “
I am a big fan of letting students know that teachers are not perfect and that sometimes we struggle with content or in completing things just as they do. I find that it helps students relate to the teacher and know that it is okay to not be successful the first time, that is how we learn. I am a big fan of teaching and being aware of mindset in the classroom.
Now, I have emailed support for various things on various websites in the past. It is not always the most useful approach and I had the intent of calling after class to see if I could talk to someone who might “fix” my issue a little more immediately. I was happily surprised that Edublogs emailed me back in four minutes. FOUR MINUTES. That has to be an all-time record for me!
Screenshot of email
As you can see, I had tried to delete and re-add the student accounts. That was not successful. I couldn’t believe how fast I received a response. I quickly sent back the usernames and, even though it was the end of class and 1/3 of my students hadn’t been able to log on, I felt it had been a definite win.
Later that day, I received the following email from Sue Waters:
Screenshot of email
I was thrilled. Not only was I able to receive support, it took less than 12 hours to have my issue fixed for me along with the tools to fix it myself if it happened again. I must say, I am happy I chose Edublogs as my platform with this service!
My next class with my Grade 9’s, we were able to all log on (yay!!!), change our blog titles, add category and tag cloud widgets, and make our first post. I modeled the post on my SMARTBoard and all students wrote the same thing but they were excited to get out there and make a post. We even embedded a link to the Saskatchewan Grade 9 Social Studies curriculum page and my students thought it was amazing. (“You can do that? Wow! This is awesome!) This week, I hope to have them finish up the jigsaw activity they have been working on and post their student-made summaries on their blogs.
I also put out a challenge for my students. Each month we complete a current event. I find several new stories and have them answer some questions on the story as a way of interacting with the current headlines and world issues. I have challenged them to complete their Current Event on their blog this month. A few students looked excited so I hope to see some online events!
If you have a moment, check out their blogs, maybe welcome some of my students to the blogging world on their posts or mine, not only will it likely blow their minds someone outside of our classroom commented but I would very much appreciate it!
It seems that there is a new hashtag campaign every day, advocating for this, boycotting that, bringing awareness to some new cause. Some of these campaigns are more successful than others, protests which once took extensive planning can occur in a short span of time and simultaneously around the world (such as the Women’s March or Climate March that occurred earlier this year), images of companies, groups, or individuals can be destroyed or lifted up (such as #boycottUnited, or NASA’s #ayearinspace). But how does one hashtag outlive others, and why are some successful while others never achieve a viral status?
Although there is a history of failed social activism, we are seeing increasing more successful campaigns and social media is becoming the platform of choice for activists to share their story.
Sabina Khan-Ibarra makes several points in her article The Case for Social and Hashtag Activism as to why activists are choosing social media. She acknowledges that social media allows us to reach more people, more quickly in order to share our message, that conversations can happen worldwide instead of in a localized area, that those who are not able to leave the home are able to access the cause, and that social media creates an engaged and interactive audience. Her strongest point, is that social media gives the average person the ability to call out injustices, inaccuracies, and misrepresentations and be heard by a large audience. Although there are many that will just “retweet”, “share”, or “like” a post, these slacktivists are still useful as they are serving as a means to continue to share the message to those who will take action and therefore, we are not losing out on the purpose because those sitting on their couch do nothing but click a button.
In fact, it is the average person’s pleas that are often form the most successful campaigns. Jonathan Moyer’s article describes how campaigns such as #BlackLivesMatter tap into feelings that are already present and prevalent in our society and this is why they are sustainable. When we are looking at issues that touch the general public, we are more likely to go out and say something, to act on our thoughts that would typically only solicit a retweet or a share. When we use social media to try to demean or punish brands for their actions (such as United Airlines) it doesn’t “hit home” in the same way as systemic prejudice.
“[…]people are now faced with real, personal, unavoidable issues that drive them into public spaces to attempt to break down oppressive structures.”
“I argue that those engaging in hashtag activism need an understanding of the political and historical context of the issue(s) they are describing; an awareness of how rhetorical velocity and remix might affect their tweets; and a willingness to include links to reputable news stories in their tweets, in addition to other factors.”
Dadas pushes the need to ensure that activists consider the brevity of hashtags that they will be using to invoke change as well as the ways in which the hashtag and the images used to support their cause can be skewed, such as how #yesallwomen saw a counter #notallmen campaign.
So is it possible to have productive conversations about social justice online? Yes. Following the suggestions of Dadas, the conversation needs to use simple hashtags, and be cognizant of the various political, historical, and social contexts of the topic to ensure that the cause is interpreted in the correct manner. There will be naysayers, just as there are in any social justice conversation, and these need to be addressed in an assertive but conversational manner and backed with research.
Using social media will likely be the activism of the future and I agree with Katia Hildebrandt that:
Our students need us to model how to engage online, to be digital citizens, and to speak for what we believe in. We need to model and teach how to engage in social justice issues to ensure that, when our students are in our shoes, they are equipped to engage in our ever increasingly online world to enact change and share their passions. Otherwise, we are leaving our students ill-equipped to succeed and grow in their future.
Do you agree that teachers need to be engaged in social activism? Is it their responsibility to help our students develop the digital skills they need to enact social change? Do you think the potential risks that educators may encounter when engaging in social justice online are “worth it”? I would love to hear your opinions!
Kara Taylor's Blog 
