Using social
media as a professional
The use of social media has expanded over the last
years, and I think every teenager is engaged to some kind of social network, it
could be Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Flickr or MySpace to mention a
few. To list some common structure all the social medias share I quoted ‘Get
whith it!’:
• ‘Identity: creating an identity or
a personality online
• Communication: with friends online
• Sharing: photographs, videos,
music, information on hobbies and interests’
The digital skills that they get
online will be more – not less engaging with social media (Get with it!) And
they are engaging parents to gain knowledge too because that is the way you
keep your children safe. Would you be able to keep them safe in traffic if you
didn’t know how to behave there? One of the great ways to keep some privacy on
your social media is to keep your profile only available for friends and not
public, and ‘Get with it!’ strongly advice parents with teenagers under 18 to
do so.
Teenagers need to learn how to use
the social media critically, to ask themselves if certain information is
necessary for the world to know. They need to be thought how to act privately
on the social media and how their profile presents themselves. Maybe when you
are 15 a picture in bikini or underwear seems like a good profile picture, but
that picture could, if the private settings hasn’t been done, be open for the
whole world and later when you’re applying for a job a bikini picture isn’t the
best first meeting with a future boss. And that is what people do today, when
they are meeting new people they Google them to see who they really are – so
stay close to who you really are also online.
A thing to be aware of is that
private conversations online, aren’t always private, a good thing to keep in
mind (Get with it!). Another important thing is to keep your password private
(Get with it!) I don’t know have many times I have seen a ‘Face rape’ on
Facebook and been wondering which ‘friends’ does that? Sometimes teenagers find
it easier to humiliate only, because in the moment you’re not face to face with
the person. A lot of bullying is done that way.
All the same privacy goes out for us
– the student teachers. We have to keep our information’s private and only post
appropriate pictures and status updates (Victoria Briggs, 2013). We need to pay
extra attention to be a role model in using social media for the children.
I hear a lot of parents or teachers
who doesn’t want to be a part of social media but my opinion is that it is
extremely important to know what’s going on in that world. It’s hard to defeat
bullying, when you don’t know how it is done online, or to know how your
teenagers present their profile when you don’t follow them.
Bibliography
Victoria Briggs (2013) New teachers [Online] Available at http://newteachers.tes.co.uk/content/be-smart-when-it-comes-using-social-media [Accessed 04
March 2014]
There are so many dangers when using social media and it is our responsibility to teach children how to behave online. However, these dangers shouldn't deter us from using blogs in the classroom. By using a school blog that is password protected, we can share information and complete work online. As long as the children know how to behave and the teacher is aware of what children are writing then it can be beneficial.
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