Final, Summative Reflection Activity
In the future, I think social media will continue to evolve in a more efficient and fast way. Even since the major boom of platforms like Instagram and Snapchat in the early 2000s, there have been significant changes in the speed at which a person can access their profiles and how often. I think this will continue to grow as technology becomes increasingly savvy and user friendly. I think that there will also be a growth in learning technologies, however, I do not believe that it will be as significant as personally used social media platforms are. There is still a place for technology and screen-free learning in the classroom that has the potential to be more important than an app on a student’s iPad. From the lens of a teacher, technology usually breaks even with it’s positives and negatives. I have found in students I have worked with and myself that while technology is quick, efficient, minimally wasteful, and versatile, it also prevents the children from practicing life skills such as social collaboration, spelling, and penmanship. Proving that while the costs do not necessarily outweigh the benefits, the benefits do not always outweigh the costs.
For me, I think “the next big thing” in apps will be the idea of online school. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 and the initiation of world-wide quarantines, parents have been struggling to maintain their jobs, homes, children, and now their children’s academic work on top of it all. I think it would be brilliant to have a system of tutors, educators, or specialized employees that could ease the minds of parents and allow for them to have a sort of “teacher” again, increasing the child’s learning and decreasing the parent’s workload. This of course cannot replace school in the child’s life, but it would at least be supplemental if there is to be another wave of COVID-19. In terms of social media, I think that there will be another boom of video apps! Snapchat, Vine, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, you name it, all of them have videos in some way! It is this visual entertainment that entices the viewer to stay on the social media site for longer and spend more time in a recurring fashion. Therefore, I think that the next social media boom will be similar to TikTok recreating ideas from apps like Vine, where people have a profile to post their videos on.
My experience in this course has been great! It has been the perfect balance of learning about social media and its effects on society as well as being able to complete the work at a time that works for my schedule. I have learned a plethora of new information that I can bring into future employment in the classroom as well. Two strong examples of this is knowledge about general blog posting, which I can use to update parents of my students about what is happening in the classroom, and the information about things employers look for on social media, which will help guide me on what to/not to post in the future. I found that the most interesting thing to learn about in this class was how social media started. I had no idea that my definition of “social media” was so millennial! Social media extends far beyond the app of Instagram, in fact, it has been in the process of being made for hundreds of years and no one knew it! Who knew that the telegram could change so much. I have been challenged by the concept of what makes social media valuable since I find myself often deleting the apps from my phone to prevent distraction. I never realized that there could be a disparity between how I could simply choose this luxury and the idea that a child that is not digitally included enough to have that same luxury not to care. The concept of the digital divide really challenged my thinking. I have no suggestions for this course! I loved it. :)
