Effective Use of Social Media in Education During COVID-19, Thesis of Financial Accounting

Download Effective Use of Social Media in Education During COVID-19 and more Thesis Financial Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATION 1 C464 Presentation Plan: Social Media and Education Assessment 1-1 Introduction to Communication Applications-C464 Abstract Effective use of social media in the classroom can create a tie that binds together student interest with modern educational platforms. A variety of individuals have utilized technology to their advantage for numerous years but have largely ignored the rapidly growing control of social media and the presence that it takes up in classrooms. However, if educators were willing to utilize this tool it would become a powerful motivator for student learning instead of a severe hinderance. It helps to bridge the growing communication gap that exists today in classrooms where there already exists an ever growing and ever-present demand to embrace technology and online curriculum in the face of COVID-19. PRESENTATION PLAN: SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATION 2 Presentation Plan: Social Media and Education COVID-19 is an epidemic that has caused over 500,000 deaths and has infected over 12.5 million individuals. Due to the rapid spread of this plague after it’s introduction to the world in late 2019 many countries across the globe shut-down their schools. This pandemic caused wide- spread fear across the globe leading over 1.3 billion students to be unable to return to school in the month of March 2020 alone (Li & Lalani, 2020). A large majority of educators, therefore, were not prepared for the transition that would come with it as now this meant the collective majority of students would be learning from home either with packets or through online assignments and video meetings. However, due to limited teacher interaction with the use of social media platforms like zoom to engage with their students many educators fell flat at educating their classes for the three months all public schools were closed in the United States of America. This, in turn, led many politicians and parents to questioning if educators should even be paid for those months school was ‘cancelled’ and had led to further questioning if teacher funding should be pulled for the 2020-2021 school year. This would be detrimental to the United States education system as a whole, but it does illustrate why teachers being acquainted with online forms of communication and education are important. If more teachers had been familiar with how to organize their classrooms utilizing online tools, then the transition to online or home-based education could have been nearly seamless and limited the amount of lost education many feel they received during the 2019-2020 school year. PRESENTATION PLAN: SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATION 5 each student in their class for individual 15-minute sessions to discuss the students life in quarantine as well as discuss what the student feels their next steps for learning should be as well as what they are struggling with (Boyes, 2020). This helps the student to continue feeling engaged in the class even though they are isolated, and it builds a stronger student-teacher relationship that can be the foundation better academic performance. Furthermore, outside of individual sessions educators need to take the time to hold a meeting once a week for each class that they have wherein the students can talk with their teachers and their peers for at least an hour to further ensure strong social connections and make sure students are not falling behind (Boyes, 2020). Once an educator has an understanding of those topics they can begin to formulate miniature workshops to discuss educational items such as how to summarize a book, how to divide fractions, demonstrating new art techniques, or forming an in-depth discussion on the proper use of PEMDAS to help students in the areas in which they are struggling with since quarantine (Boyes, 2020). However, it is important for the educator to not pressure the students to take these workshops since the students will not all struggle with the same thing, and a student who is uninterested in the topic will interrupt the workshop (Boyes, 2020). Finally, after educators have taken the time to understand how online learning has to be different from in person learning due to mental limitations and distractions as well as understanding the various forms of communication they can use in an online classroom it is time to discuss how educators can combine physical and online assessments. As illustrated previously, online assessments can take place in the form online workshops, but there are other forms of online assignments as well. Assignments that students may have online could be tests, quizzes, submitting an essay, submitting a power-point presentation, engaging in interaction presentations the teacher has created for them, or something as simple as uploading a video of themselves PRESENTATION PLAN: SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATION 6 discussing a topic assigned to them for class (Kaup, Jain, Shivalli, Padney, & Kaup, 2020). However, if a student participates in only those online learning forums, they are bound to grow bored, listless, and they will engage in other activities they feel are more rewarding such as watching a show they’re interested in or playing a videogame (Kaup, Jain, Shivalli, Padney, & Kaup, 2020). Those online assignments, while very important, do not actively engage a student the same way that physical work does, and it limits a student’s interactions with the physical world in a manner they are not accustomed to. Therefore, educators should also create task sheets that help a student to balance their academic, social, and family tasks to ensure the student stays actively engaged and does not slack off in the work they’re required to do (Boyes, 2020). Task sheets can hold a variety of tasks such as creating an art piece with leaves, reading a story, recording a video of oneself changing the words to a song or poem and reciting it, making a wind chime from recycled materials, cleaning up after dinner, making their bed, spelling their name in the mud, or writing letters to the classmates that they miss and have been unable to see for weeks or months (Boyes, 2020). The importance of a task sheet is to combine elements of their educational tasks with physical activities to help a student stay on track just as it is done in a traditional classroom. Often times science teachers will hold labs or take their students on a hike to interact with the natural world instead of reciting what is in their textbook over and over again, because students also learn through physical interaction just as much as they do through demonstration and explanation (Boyes, 2020). Mixed media in classrooms are important for students educational and mental development, but it is often ignored in online classrooms leading to a vast dissatisfaction in one’s quality of education. Educators during COVID-19 either attempted to focus on fully online classrooms or having students complete physical task sheets PRESENTATION PLAN: SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATION 7 instead of combining the two which meant that half the students were overworked while half the students felt as though they learned nothing. In summation, given the technological capabilities the world possesses today any transition needed from in-person to online learning should be seamless if educators are willing to create a space in their classroom for both forms of education. This, in turn, would have prevented the downfall of education that was experienced by the national disaster, known also as the pandemic COVID-19, that impacted over 1.3 billion students world-wide. In today’s political climate, particularly in the United States of America, politicians are making broad statements that educators may not be paid for the 2020-2021 school year if schools close again due to the novel coronavirus, but if parents and politicians alike can see a dramatic increase in the quality of education from online and physical forms then the argument of laying off teachers essentially goes away. Individuals want to see results of the education that students are receiving, and to do so educators have to successfully implement online and in person tasks in the event this virus shuts down public spaces again. Using social media sites like Zoom, Facebook, Prezi, YouTube, most attachments to Google (Google Classroom, Google Hangout, Gmail) and many more can allow teachers to create virtual lesson plans, interact with their students one-on-one or in group settings, create mini-workshops that focus on tasks students struggle with, create tests and actual assignments that can be submitted in real time to their educator and actually be graded, and increase student teacher interaction during a pandemic. If educators are willing to correctly formulate online lesson plans that consider student focus and mental development, then a movement in combining physical classrooms and online classrooms can become a reality that benefits all individuals. If educators can create an online classroom and implement it successfully then natural disasters have less of a chance of impacting school function long-term,