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Using social media to grow student engagement

January 26, 2013 By Anne 2 Comments

Gallup's "School Cliff"Though student engagement seems like a tough thing to measure, Gallup recently did, calling it the education version of “the fiscal cliff” so much in the news at the turn of the year. In a survey of 500,000 students in grades 5 through 12, Gallup Education found that, while nearly 80% of elementary students its surveyed “are engaged with school,” that engagement falls to 40% of high school students. “Our educational system sends students and our country’s future over the school cliff every year,” wrote Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup Education earlier this month. The survey used five measurements of engagement: “I have a best friend at school”; “I feel safe in this school”; “My teachers make me feel my schoolwork is important”; “At this school, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day”; and “In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good schoolwork.”

Educators Sylvia Martinez and Jackie Gerstein also blogged about the survey. In different ways, both of them wrote about how making learning participatory is key to student engagement. Sylvia calls for working with students as “participants and co-creators of knowledge.” And Jackie cited other research finding that students are engaged in both meaningful learning and social activism through their social networks outside of school. So she offers a logical solution to low engagement: increase school’s relevance by exploring what’s meaningful and relevant to students using the media they use 24/7. “If one of the goals of education is to help students become responsible citizens, then learners should be given the opportunity, skills, tools, and strategies to be active change agents.”

I completely agree – and civic engagement or social activism is a key element of digital citizenship too (see Slide 2 of this PowerPoint). Active, literate participation in their world, in and with their media accomplishes many things: opportunities to practice citizenship through engagement, not just with content, but with their fellow learners and activists and with their community (from a classroom to a school to local and global interest communities). It increases social intelligence or literacy, which also increases academic success, which prepares them for their futures. In her post, Jackie offers examples of student civic engagement, as have I in many blog posts, linking to many of them in this one about a 12-year-old New Zealander and this one about young change agents leveraging social media here in the US. There are countless examples.

Related links

  • “Literacy for a digital age”
  • An elementary and middle school teacher and her students “Mining Minecraft” for all kinds of learning (as told by the teacher (a series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
  • “Trying out a real career in a virtual world”
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Filed Under: education technology, Research, School & Tech, Social Media, virtual worlds Tagged With: classes, digital citizenship, education cliff, fiscal cliff, Gallup, learning, participatory learning, student engagement, teaching

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    January 26, 2013 at 11:49 am

    […] tough thing to measure, Gallup recently did, calling it the education version of “the Source: Net Family News Bookmark the […]

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2016 TEDx Talk on
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Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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