Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

2.2.11 | It’s one thing for teachers to accept the omnipresence of digital media and social networking in students’ lives and to give them the skills to be safe and savvy users of the technology. It’s another thing to start using Google docs, blogs and online videos as teaching tools and as subjects of analysis and creative outlets.

But it’s a whole different thing to latch onto these new technologies as the most direct and effective way students have ever had to change the world.

This approach requires a belief in and commitment to the digital world that very few people have, except, maybe, the students themselves. It is youth, of course, that have harnessed Facebook and Twitter, for example, to spark and sustain a potential demographic revolution in Egypt and elsewhere.

“Turning Social Media to Social Justice” is the theme of the latest issue of Teaching Tolerance, a free print and online magazine for teachers produced by Southern Poverty Law Center. 

In Camille Jackson’s article about the power of social media, she interviews Pam Rutledge, a psychologist and director of the Media Psychology Resource Center, who urges parents and educators to get over their fears. 

“From my perspective, this new technology is all a very positive thing. Social media has totally changed the communication model,” Rutledge says. “This is so empowering.”

Discussing how social media provides a way for young people to construct their identities, Rutledge adds, “It’s fundamental for teens to want to feel empowered, to have a sense of individual agency, a willingness to learn, to produce.”

And translating that individual agency into making a difference can be even more powerful. In another article, Darlene Koenig reports on many creative uses of social media to create activism in the classroom. For example, Emily Vickery, a technology specialist at Pensacola Catholic High School (PCHS), “emphasizes tolerance-based issues and the idea of digital citizenship”:

One initiative at PCHS is iPod Pals, an outreach program that partners teens with elementary students at nearby St. John the Evangelist School to learn about the faith’s Corporal Works of Mercy. The actions and practices relate to the material needs of others, such as feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and sheltering the homeless. Students in the high school’s technology and production classes first produce podcasts that introduce younger students to women in Africa and South America who are struggling to ensure their economic futures. According to senior A.J. Ricketts, students are assigned different tasks in podcast production, including research, voice work and editing.

The teens then visit St. John’s, with each one partnering with three or four elementary students. The younger children are all given iPods and headphones to listen to the three- to six-minute podcast. These students also take a short quiz on the iPod and discuss the topic of the week. In a culminating activity, the younger students travel to PCHS and take part in producing a final podcast that summarizes what they have learned—from math facts to the concept of charity.

“We also wanted to broaden the students’ perspective of the world,” says Ricketts. “I think they realized that there is more going on in the world than just their local city happenings, and that they have a duty to help others in any way they can—whether that is donating to the local food kitchen or fundraising for the poor on the other side of the globe.”

The same commitment to social justice can be seen in a recent workshop at the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago, where, according to Lolly Bowean of the Chicago Tribune, 150 Chicago-area students met to discuss how to promote civil rights through social media. Hosted by the National Council of La Raza, a Latino national advocacy group, the workshop tried to map out a continuum between the old-fashioned grassroots organizing during the civil rights movement in the second half of the 20th Century and the potential of the new social networks in the 21st Century:

Event speaker Celina Villanueva offered advice on how to turn their time on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube into being about something more powerful than themselves: “Don’t just let it be about posting a picture of yourself, like, ‘OMG I’m so cute,’” Villanueva said. “Facebook and Twitter will never replace voting or marching, but it’s a tool to organize; a way to convince your friends to register to vote or be aware of a cause.”