Kinsey Clark is logged into Facebook for about six hours per day.
Though the Clarke Central High School student is not actively using the site for that long, she said the site is often open on her computer, regardless of what she is doing. Visiting 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 five or six hours a day, but I actually use the site at sporadic moments that add up to an hour or two every night.”
Social Networking sites were blocked in Clarke Central High School in Fall 2006, said Anisa Jimenez, public relations director for Clarke County schools. Jimenez said the decision was made by a group of teachers and administrators who wanted to keep students focued on their schoolwork.
“It is important that we keep the school day focused on instruction, and those sites are a distraction,” Jimenez said.
Cell phones, too, have strict policies surrounding their usage during school hours. While research has been conducted recently on how open teachers are to using social media in the classroom, for right now, Clarke County is very strict on what web sites are accessible on school computers.
Students still have access to these forms of communication at home, however. While Clark tries not to let Facebook distract her when she’s doing schoolwork, she 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.
Cody Clark (no relation), a student at North Oconee High School, said while he generally doesn’t use Facebook for more than 30 minutes per day, the site can sometimes be a major source of distraction for him.
“It’s definitely distracting,” he said. “Some days I don’t get on at all, but sometimes I’ll get on the computer to do homework and I’ll end up on Facebook. The other night I ended up getting distracted on it until 3 a.m.”
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.”
Despite the heavy restrictions placed on cell phones and certain websites in Clarke County, however, 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.
Though some organizations at Clarke Central use social media to their advantage, Ragsdale said he is worried about social media as a major means of distraction for students.
“The more distractions to taking care of class work that exist, the higher propensity of kids we’ll have who are culturally literate in mediums other than the culture of school,” he said. “We have kids who can LOL, ROFL, and talk to their BFFL, but who can’t spell out those words.”
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.”
Stephen Castille, an English teacher at Cedar Shoals High school, said social media is so rigidly blocked from school computers at Cedar Shoals that teachers sometimes don’t have the chance to use even blogging sites as part of instruction.
“While there very well maybe other outlets to explore outside of the more popular ones, the more difficult it is to access the more well known services, the less likely people are to use any,” he said.
Cody Clark said he thinks social media may have a place in the high school classroom, if used correctly. Currently, North Oconee High School has a blog system called Moodle, which teachers use to post assignments and updates for students. Clark said it’s a balance for him to get on the computer to access Moodle for homework, since he sometimes ends up getting distracted on Facebook, but incorporating school work into social media websites might help some students complete their work.
“If some kids get on Facebook for three to four hours per day, it might be useful to have their homework right there for them to do while they’re on it, he said.”
Currently, social media is not completely integrated into the K-12 education system. 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
Cody Clark ctclark19@aol.com
Stephen Castile castiles@clarke.k12.ga.us
Anisa Jimenez jimenezan@clarke.k12.ga.us
PBS Study http://www.pbs.org/teachers/_files/pdf/annual-pbs-survey-report.pdf
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