Well this was my first semester and EC&I 830 is my second course, I have thoroughly enjoyed all the classes. To be honest I was quite overwhelmed too as a lot of discussion regarding AI and other technologies was completely new to me, I could see my other classmates were way above than me on this, but I tried my best you know. To cope up, to share my thoughts.

I have learned a lot about new educational technologies, and the debate part was just outstanding, I was lucky enough to be paired up with Jessica who made this course more enjoyable and fun.

Here I am sharing the link of our summary video, please have a look.

Thank you and Good bye!

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  Summary of Learning

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Thank you for a wonderful semester. I was both enlightened and challenged, the perfect mix of what a class should be.

This week debate was about “Educators have a responsibility to use technology and social media to promote social justice.” Yes or No?

Jacquie and Amanda took the pro side and Ramsell took the counter side.

First of all, what is meant by social justice?

“Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities” as SDF (2016) represents it.

According to Marx (2019) technology can enhance the user’s identity which results in a more equitable society. The significant role of technology in making schooling available for everyone is non-negligible. The marginalized individuals can take advantage of such formal education. They can be international migrants, women with children and domestic obligations, and people living in rural and remote areas. However, informal education can take place daily by means of mobile phones and computers.

Maiese and Burgess (2003) identify four types of justice: distributive (determining who gets what), procedural (determining how fairly people are treated), retributive (based on punishment for wrong-doing) and restorative (which tries to restore relationships to “rightness.”). Social media can affect all these four.

This kind of literacy can be assigned as a duty to school divisions. As I read in an article, there are two levels that school can target promoting social justice. First, the higher level is the administrative one which is about setting policies to guarantee the equitable distribution of resources and treatment to all students. The other level is the classroom one, through which schools “can be inclusive in their teaching and engage students by teaching multiple perspectives on issues, helping them understand their place in the larger community, and incorporating their lived experiences into the curricula.”

Therefore, Blake (2023) discusses, the task of educators is not only teaching learners academic issues but also make them critical thinkers and lead them to feel so safe to share their ideas and thoughts despite disagreements and oppositions; so that they can bring positive changes and create a better society. So, educators can act as models to literate their learners regarding social media skills and online campaigns to be social activists rather than neutral individuals. Educators can share their own ideas and experiences online to make their learners more courageous and powerful. Although it may foreclose their privacy and lead to more discussions, this is the demanding job of teaching.

Some social justice movements invoked by social media

Lots of protests and changes were not aroused by the traditional posters and word of mouth but by technology and online activities. In September 2022, a revolutionary movement started in Iran, called woman, life, freedom, which was mainly due to the publications and announcements in social networks such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. This Ted Talk describes in details the reasons behind this social movement.

In that movement, teenagers and young people played a key role which emphasizes the online social literacy even more. The following video, published on March, 8 th (International women’s day), is showing a kind of Iranian teenage girls’ social protest spread in social media. They ask for social justice and women’s rights which are banned by their regime.

Moreover, Scherman and Rivera (2021) refer to the social movement of youngsters in Chile who did not even have a social leader as the result of social media and technology. Two main hypothesis form this article: Individuals who use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Whats App are more likely to participate in protests than those who do not use them and that individuals who use social media for political goals are more likely to participate in protests than those who use social media for other purposes. Do you agree with these assumptions?

Which other movements in your region or country owe a big deal to social platforms?

With the advancement of social media and online technology, lots of people share their personal and work experience through these platforms. Educators and parents are not exceptions and they share the students’ and children’s improvements or talents with the others. However, some disagree with this action and regard it as kind of digital footprint for children before they reach their legal ages. This is relevant to the topic we discussed about in one of our challenging topics in EC&I 830. “Do educators and schools have a responsibility to help their students develop a digital footprint?” The summary of our debate is presented in this post.

Here there is a clip of some kids’ ideas about the results of their digital footprints.

Digital footprint includes several issues that can clarify a person’s identity which is effective in his/her future personal and professional .So they should be taught to keep someone’s digital footprint safe. Educators and schools can maneuver on these digital skills to lead to a more responsible, thoughtful and secure society in future.

There are two ways that digital footprint happens ( as Rahima and Jessica mentioned): active and passive one. What parents do about sharing their kids’ experience online can be regarded as a passive one while the academic teaching of digital literacy is regarded as an active one.

The pros of this debate assume that online sharing of parents and educators helps students build a positive online identity. Keegan Korf (2017) as an educator also mentions that “entering education means that all eyes are you and you have to model digital citizenship for your students”. She shares her online personal experience, tackles and worries as a kid dealing with exploring her independence in an online space. That is why the important role of educators as online role models lie.

Moreover, by educators involvement in digital world, children can  “understand the implications, consequences and best practices for engaging with technology and social media is critical to safeguarding their well-being and to developing workplace skills”  according to Dotterer(2016)

On the other hand, others argue that schools and educators are too busy to take the responsibility of educating children about their digital footprint. They may also discuss that they are not well-educated or equipped in online affairs. However, just like other necessary subjects at school, this resent topic can be allocated appropriate energy, budget and planning to minimize the unwanted and devastating effects of children’s digital foot print.

Finally, though everyone is responsible for his/her decisions and actions, the role and effect of a person’s surrounding people such as educators cannot be ignored. As they can be a main and impartial reference for education.

Do you remember the best life-long thing you learned from any of your educators?

The topic of this week is really challenging one because at least all of us can compare our childhood with the one of new generation. It is “Social media is ruining childhood.” To what extent do you agree with it? Coughlan  believes that modern childhood terminates at the age of 12. However, when a for instance 7 year old child doesn’t know how to have fun with his/her peers and prefers sticking to the tablet or phone games, don’t you think it is much sooner than that???

It seemed to me just like an exaggeration before I personally experienced this situation when my five year old daughter looked like this boy holding a football in a gathering of 5 children and that was the point that I got even more worried about the future of next generation.

Social media and technology can harm children physically and psychologically and socially. From the physical aspect, children using the online platforms stick to a place and it results to damages to their parts of body overtime such as skeleton reshapes, vision problems and aches in their hands or obesity, which is very common nowadays. Regarding psychological problems, not only children, but also adults may suffer from cyber-bullying leading to committing suicide in some cases. Depression, anxiety and lack of concentration and self-esteem are other negative side effects of social media. Susan Stutzman describes them here. 

Moreover, visiting inappropriate content or pages can affect children’s mind negatively and lead to precocious puberty. In view of Social aspect, social media makes children isolated from the real world and ends up in children not good at social and communicative skills.

Conversely, the positive aspects of social media on children should not be neglected. This clip lists a few of them. That can be why the new generations look smarter and sharper compared to their age. Moreover, some scholars insist on the positive impact of social media on children’s mind. Nessi (2020) believes that social media not only doesn’t harm children but also creates significant new challenges and exciting opportunities for them.

Also, Eva Amin focuses on the non-conscious teaching aspect of social media and blames how some user apply it rather than the social media in case of harmful effects. Let’s watch her TEDTalk.

In conclusion, while there are several benefits of social media such as providing information, developing the mind capacity and providing new challenges for children, its physical, psychological and social negative impacts on children’s development should not be neglected. Therefore, it is necessary to guide children by digital literacy to help them benefit its advantages without becoming its victim.

We explored our debates in EC & I 830 with this first topic:” Does technology in the classroom enhance learning?” This is a really controversial topic with its advocates as Janeen and Catrina, and protesters as Will and Michael. According to my personal experience as a learner and educator, I am more enchanted by the glamour of today’s tech immersed classes. So before the debate, I was one of the fans of this idea and this is one reason why I attended EC & I 830 class. Fascinatingly, a new aspect in my class was pre-voting and post-voting which can be kind of informative and fun tech aid in classes. After listening to the opposing debaters’ ideas, I hesitated to make a certain “yes” as approving the enhancement of learning by technology.

As an English language educator, I usually got help from the internet to provide audio-visual aids for my classes and also introduced different language learning games and podcasts to my learners for entertaining them or asking them to practice more while at home. Interestingly, most of them got more involved in their learning process, interacted with others more and became to some extent more independent learners. So they could spend as much time as needed for themselves and their learning was more personalized as well.

However, there are always opposing ideas in debates. The opponents of tech in classrooms blame it for being distractive rather than constructive. Learners can be tempted to surf irrelevant pages and waste their time unconsciously.

Dr. Barth (2020) tried using totally virtual teaching and claimed that you should not expect learning through virtual education since learning takes place through scenarios and story-based learning. You can watch his talk here.

In addition, Mary Jo Madda explains two cases of boosting technology in school divisions which ended up in negative results rather than better education. She emphasizes on the role of teacher as the key element for success of learners and highlights the preference of teachers for making technology usage beneficial or not.

Some other scholars such as Wexler (2021) also reject the efficiency of technology in improving learning because although many schools or learning centers     themselves with technological devices, many teachers are reluctant to use it which does not put tech benefits under question but is about teachers’ tech saviness.

Another reason for being against technology usage is the cost it accompanies. Equipping school divisions with suitable tech devices and educating learners how to use them costs an arm and a leg. However, I personally recon that it cannot be regarded as a disadvantage of technology itself.

Moreover, technology can make learners more dependent looking from a different perspective. Many students get addicted to using tech-relevant tools such as message auto-correction and Grammarly rather than reading or doing research about them.

In conclusion, just like any other issues, educational technology (Ed Tech) can be both beneficial and detrimental. What matters is how or when to use it .remember that it can be regarded as a facilitator tool for learning not a substitute. Even if you do not like it, it is going to drown the modern world in itself just like the boom of cars and mobile phones.

Kindly click the link for accessing learning summary.

Don’t forget to play the voice over

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YCNgqSiS5BudAM8On4ucXrYDET2WnzyK/view?usp=drive_web