New Media: Balancing Distraction and Information

With class projects being assigned and SATs and college applications looming, there is sometimes only one thing on a high school student’s mind: distraction.

Distractions are an inevitable part of a high school student’s life. With friends, football games, school dances and parties, it is often difficult to focus on English papers and calculus tests. Now, as Facebook surpasses 500 million users and cell phones bring instant internet and communication to students wherever they are, it seems as though a whole new world of distractions has opened up for those seeking to put off doing homework a little longer.

Kinsey Clark, a student at Clarke Central High School and editor-in-chief of Odyssey Newsmagazine, said visiting sites such as Facebook is a regular part of her daily routine.

“I generally have Facebook up while I'm doing other things on my computer,” she said. “I'm probably online the site for an average of 5 or 6 hours a day, but I actually use the site at sporadic moments that add up to an hour or two every night.”

While she tries not to let Facebook distract her when she’s doing schoolwork, Clarke said her cell phone and other websites can become distractions.

“If someone calls or texts me, I'll stop what I'm doing to talk to them, regardless of what work I'm doing,” she said.

Social networking sites are blocked from the Clarke Central and Cedar Shoals High School computers. Cell phones, however, have become an increasingly prevalent distraction for students during school hours. Though rules and consequences regarding cell phone usage are strict, David Ragsdale, an English teacher at Clarke Central, said cell phone related discipline issues are very common in the classroom.

“Cell phones are a chronic distraction at Central,” he said. “They were far more rare ten years ago, but at this point, regardless of socio-economic status, students have them and use them whenever and wherever possible.”

Though cell phones and certain websites have heavy restrictions in Clarke County, some school organizations use social media to their advantage. Ragsdale said some teachers have used blogs in their classes in the past, but with the increased amount of firewalls placed on social networking sites, many have stopped using them. The Clarke Central yearbook, however, used Facebook last year to make announcements, and Odyssey Newsmagazine has a Facebook page as well as a Twitter account.

Clarke Central is not unique in its use of social media for limited educational purposes. Recent research has shown that more teachers in K-12 schools have begun to use cell phones and social media as educational tools in the classroom. A 2009 PBS survey found a “strong interest of K–12 teachers in digital media and social networking.” The report said 15 percent of teachers valued blogs as an educational resource, up from 11 percent in 2008. Fourteen percent of teachers valued Facebook, Wiki and other social media communities.

Scott Shamp, director of the New Media Institute at the University, said he thinks social media can have a place in the high school classroom, as long as it is used in a structured format.

“With half a billion people on Facebook, we have to find a way of harnessing its energy,” he said.

Shamp said with the rise of new media comes a fundamental change in the way people communicate. Whenever a new form of communication is introduced, there are those who resist the change and insist on sticking by the old methods.

“This is a new way that people are interacting,” he said. “We can’t fight it.”

Currently, social media is not completely integrated into the K-12 education system. It remains a challenge for students to balance the distraction aspect of social media with the aspect that can be a useful information and communication tool. Though Facebook and other sites can be a distraction for Kinsey Clark, she said she has also used social media to help plan study sessions or get help with an assignment. She said when studying or working on homework, students need to set restrictions for themselves.

“You just have to know that what you're doing is more important that someone's status or their most recent photo album and continuously remind yourself of that,” she said.

Sources:

Kinsey Clark kclark@odysseynewsmagazine.net

David Ragsdale ragsdaled@clarke.k12.ga.us

Scott Shamp sshamp@grady.uga.edu

PBS Study http://www.pbs.org/teachers/_files/pdf/annual-pbs-survey-report.pdf