Investigating the 21st Century K-16 Social Media Citizenship

Adalheidur Reed

Focusing On Current Unregulated K – 16 Student Social Media Use

What Age’s Are K-16 Students Actively Using Social Media?

AbstractThis Study is aimed at examining social media use in K – 16

students, gauging at what age they initially start using social media, how and from whom they learn to use social media, what types of interactions they engage in (Good, Bad or UGLY!). Further assessing if there are currently any formal “Best Practice” examples for K – 16 students to follow, investigating if the time has come that the government step in with Formal Social Media Education (FSME) and or Standardized Social Media Curriculum (SSMC).

Introduction• To illuminate how far behind our current school system is

in addressing the need for creating and incorporating SSMC a brief history of where social networking started and where it has come is needed.

• The ability to socially interact via a computer mediated discourse is by no means new to our society. In fact, the ability to socially interact using computers has been around since ARPANET was created in 1968. In 1968 ARPANET became the world’s first packet switching network that composed a global internet. (Wikipedia, 2012)

Need For This Study• There are over 901 million active Facebook

users and 400 million Twitter accounts (Wikipedia, 2012) .

• Facebook and Twitter are banned or discouraged in most K -16 classroom environments.

• How many of these users are K – 16 Students?• Who or what is teaching formal best practice?

Results From a Pilot Study Asking Parents Perceptions of Their Children's Social Media UseWhen asked “What type of online social media profile does your child

have?” 92% reported their children used Facebook or 103 out of 112 responding to this item. Only 13% out of the103 respondents reported they used something other than the mainstream social media listed.

# Answer

Response %

1 Facebook

103 92%

2 MySpace

7 6%

3 Twitter

12 11%

4 Yahoo Messenger

12 11%

5 Windows Live

19 17%

6 Skype

33 29%

7 Other

15 13%

How old was your child when their first social media profile was created?

• A total of 82%, or 95 participants out of 116 that responded to this item, had children under the age of 14 when their Social Media Profiles where created.

# Answer

Response %

1 1-5

9 8%

2 6-10

28 24%

3 11-14

68 59%

4 15-18

21 18%

Parents Monitoring?

• When asked “Do you monitor your child-children while they engage in using online social media?” Only 13% answered “Yes Every Step”.

# Answer

Response %

1 Yes Every Step

15 13%

2 Most Of the time

37 33%

3 Pretty Much

34 30%

4 Not Much

25 22%

5 Not At All

1 1%

Total 112 100%

Background on Standardized Social Media Curriculum.

• As Of today’s date August 2012 there is no Standardized Social Media Curriculum (SSMC). Does the current use by students K – 16 warrant the need for SSMC?

• Many High Schools and Junior High Schools ban social media such as Facebook within school walls, claiming that it is distraction. (Wikipedia, 2012)

Theoretical FrameworkVygotsky’s Thought and Language, shows us that

when children learn how to speak it is about learning how to form thoughts into verbal spoken sentences’ for the purpose of communication.

Today’s children are learning how to form thoughts onto social media networks, many times missing inner speech to edit oneself (Vygotsky, 1964)

Theoretical Framework

Hypotheses

Data Gathered

Qualitative & Quantitative

Grounded Theory

Research Questions ProposedThe Main object of this research will be to gauge whether there is currently a

social media Wild Wild West setting for K – 16 students and if so what can be done to foster a better or “Best Practice” social media environment for K – 16 students; which warranted asking the following questions:

 • At What Age do K – 16 students start using social media? • Who or what is monitoring K – 16 minors that are already actively

engaged in the use of social media?• Who, what and how are K – 16 students learning how to use social media?• What are the possible long term, short term damages that can be caused to

K – 16 students from using social media?• How can long or short term social media damage for K – 16 students be

avoided?• Are K – 16 students good social media citizens?

What Do K – 16 Students Know About Privacy

• What types of interaction are K – 16 students participating in while engaging in using social media and is it safe?

• Who is navigating their social media journey?• Who is protecting K- 16 students while they

travel the social media highway?• What, if at all, are their privacy levels set to?

Social Media Background History

• The ability to socially interact via computer mediated discourse has been around for the last 44 years! (Wikipedia, 2012)– ARPANET 1968 / Robert Taylor– USENET 1980 / Tom Triscot and Tom Ellis – Friendster 2002 / Jonathan Abrams– Linkedin 2002 / Hoffman, Blue, Ly, Vaillant, Hower, Guericke,

Beitzel,Eves,McNish, Pujante, and Saccheri– MySpace 2003 / Tom Anderson– Facebook 2004 / Zuckerberg, Moskovitz and Huges– Twitter 2006 / Dorsey, Glass, Williams, Stone– Google+ 2011 / Google Inc.

Social Media Background Today• There are many forms of social media today, ranging from

social networking to professional networking:– Linkedin is a professional network.– Facebook is most known as a social network but can also be

used to network professionally.– Twitter is know as a news media network where you can find

business’s, newspapers, celebrities and friends Tweeting about current events.

– Google+ is the newest of these social medias and is starting to earn a reputation as a network with the best tools for education and business network sharing.

Largest Social Medium is Facebook• Today, 6 years after opening to the general public, there are over

901 million active Facebook users (Wikipedia, 2012). • Where did all these users learn how to use Facebook?• How many of the 901 Million active users are children under 18?• May 2012 CEO of Facebook Mark Zeckerburg thinks that it is

time that the current 13 year old age limit be lifted because children are able to learn from using Facebook (MSNNow, 2012). Now what?

• The main source of interacting and communicating in colleges is Facebook. The tool for finding and researching current and potential future students has become Facebook. (Burgos, 2012)

Is There A “Best Practice”?• Lips (2010) claimed that online learning in the K-12 virtual

classroom can break all barriers caused by race, sex, status or location.

• Schools are attempting to create their own social media websites with little to no buy in from students.

• Will forcing students to use education social media websites like Edmondo play a working role in teaching best practices if they are not being used outside the school walls?

• If a large numbers of students are already engaged in the use of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin, is tomorrow the time to introduce and implement SSMC into K-16 education or was it yesterday?

Pilot Study MethodsPrior to the proposed study three pilot studies where conducted to

examine what types of social media interaction K – 16 students are already engaged in.

• The first pilot study investigated parents perceptions of their K – 12 student social media use. Parents where recruited using social media and an online survey (n = 142). Social media websites used were:– Facebook– Twitter– Linkedin

• The second pilot study investigated social media use from a group of students from a university in North Texas(n = 20).

• The third pilot study investigated student social media use from a university in Iceland and two universities in North Texas (n = 43).

• The total number of participants in all three studies where 206 (N = 206).

Pilot Study Methods• Fall 2011 IRB filled out and approved by The

University of North Texas• Fall 2011 IRB filled out and approved by The

University of Texas Arlington• Spring 2012 IRB filled out and approved by The

University of Iceland.• Spring 2012 IRB filled out and approved by

University of North Texas.

Proposed MethodsProposed methods for gathering quantitative and

qualitative research data:• Update IRB’s from UNT, UTA and UI.• Update and combine survey tools used in pilot

studies.• Recruit participants using– Social Media Networking (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter)– E Mail– Classroom students

• Qualtrics online survey tool used to gather data.

Participants & Setting

Participants are K – 12 parents.

North Texas college students.

Setting is an online survey

administered on the Web to North

Texas college students and K – 12 parents on the World Wide Web.

Proposed Methods Data Collection

K – 16 Students &

Parents

Formal Interviews

Informal Interviews

Through Blogs

Researcher Participation

formal Observation

Researcher participation

informal observation

Ethnographic

Online Qualtrics Survey

Grounded TheoryDiscovering theory through data analysis flipping the hypotheses

process.

Proposed Methods Data Analyzing

Qualitative & Quantitative

Qualtricks

SPSS

Member Checking

NVivo

Transcripts & BlogsEthnographic

Triangulation

Meaning Fields

Deduse

Grounded TheoryDiscovering theory through data analysis flipping the hypotheses

process.

Proposed Timeline

• IRB Filled • IRB Filed• IRB Approved

August - September 2012 –

• Data review update pilot study survey

• Administer survey• Gathering data

October – November 2012 - • Gathering lit review

• Writing dissertation Proposal

• Editing dissertation • Proposing Dissertation.

November – December 2012

Questions