Social Media & Students

Image property of techlearning.com

For this final post of this course, we will be discussing Social Media and Students.  This is a topic that has been discussed throughout this course.  Our first priority as parents and teachers is to join forces to teach our children the right way with the “do’s and don’ts” or the “basics” to get a head in life.  Technology and how one interacts with it is a huge part of not only our students but the rest of our lives.  There are careers that our students must be tech savvy in order to compete in the world that we live in today.  Throughout this course, we have talked about the importance for our students to become digital citizens.  By teaching our students about being digital citizens and being safe online, we as educators can expand their use of social media and technology in a positive way in and outside the classroom.  For my consent letter, I had students learning how to keep an online journal using Blogger.  I felt that Blogger was the best way for students to get use to using not only the computer but also this social media outlet in a positive and expressive way.

According to the article, 3 Ways Savvy Teens Can Showcase Themselves Using Social Media, students can use social-media outlets to showcase their academic work, athletic pursuits, and community-service projects.  Students can use social media as a business opportunity. With social media outlet LinkedIn, students can build a strong resume for college recruits to look at what types of activities and community services that they do in and outside of school. Twitter offers some of the same attributes as LinkedIn in terms of building a strong resume.  Twitter also allows students to follow positive people such as their local library, favorite college or hobby.  YouTube can allow students to keep a V-Blog (video blog) about topics that they like to talk about.  Some students use YouTube to promote their athletic skills for college sport recruitment.  Some students have made YouTube into a business based on how many subscribers follow their channel. 

Students can actually make money off of their YouTube channel. For example, Isaac Carlson has a YouTube channel named, Wotso Videos.  Carlson discusses fun theory topics for fun people based on movies from Disney, Pixar and Dream Works.  Carlson hosted these fun videos has been doing this since high school and through college.  He has a total of 350,000 subscribers and over 80 million views.  Carlson also uses other social media outlets to promote his YouTube channel.  I am not sure of how much money Carlson makes but, I heard that he makes a nice “little” living off of what he does on YouTube.  Some students have even done, “How To” videos to promote their services or web series.  I did not know that people can make money off of YouTube and that it is a big thing among students and adults. YouTube has a section on their site called, Earn Money With YouTube - Creator Academy YouTube.  This section of YouTube has tutorials about how people can actually make money off of their YouTube channels.  I feel that if we as educators teach students how to promote not only themselves but also their talents through social media, then social media will not be seen as a bad thing.  I think that students should learn how to brand themselves through social media.  Creatively branding your passion and talents through social media in a positive way will be the new wave in terms of students in the United States bridging the technology gap with the rest of the world.  As a matter of fact, I am going to use what I learned in this class to promote my hobbies and what I like to do and try to brand what I do in my librarianship.

References

Trautman, Stephanie (2017). 3 Ways Savvy Teens Can Showcase Themselves Using Social Media. Common Sense Education. Retrieved on February 25, 2019 at https://www.commonsense.org/education/blog/3-ways-savvy-teens-can-showcase-themselves-using-social-media?utm_content=buffer6c7ad&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Linetsky, Timothy (2019). How to Earn Money on YouTube. Wiki How. Retrieved on February 25, 2019 at https://www.wikihow.com/Earn-Money-on-YouTube

(2019) Earn Money With YouTube - Creator Academy YouTube. YouTube. Retrieved on February 25, 2019 at https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/lesson/revenue-basics