How Do You Teach Social Media to Kids? A Proven Project

Hi all you K-12 teachers... and those of you who are just curious.

You know social media is prevalent for our digital native kids.  Do we just hope that parents are teaching our budding society about what social media is... the safety... the ethics?  HECK NO!

As you know, I teach kids.  I grappled with how to teach social media in a relatively short time frame without being the "sage on the stage."  Frankly, my kids know more than me.  So, I make them the teachers.

Here is a project I created and used with 125 fifth grade students per year for the past 4 years.  The kids love it!

This blog is an overview - not a lesson plan.  My model is linked below because I don't have releases from the kids to publish their projects on YouTube.  It's not as great as some of the kid vids, sorry.

TIP:  Always, always model every digital project.  Don't be afraid.  You learn, too.  It's okay for the kids to do better than you.

GRADE LEVELS:  5-8

• Survey Their Knowledge - Create a live survey with the kids in Survey Monkey.  Brainstorm all the social media they can think of: topics and 3 examples of each.  

• Immediacy is critical to motivation.  Launch the survey and have the kids participate during that class period. View the results.  I used a shared folder on the desktop to distribute the link to multiple computers.  

Try out this copy of a real survey made by kids.  I'll publish your results in another blog.  It's completely anonymous.  Only check items if you have personally published; it does not count if you only view other people's work.  Social Media Survey - Try It Out

• Draft a Topic Question:  Group kids by a social media they all have tried and at least one person has published to.  Groups then draft a focus question:
• Easy:  What is ____________?
• Medium:  How or why questions that you know from experience
• Hard:  Requires additional research from authoritative sources

• Plan and Storyboard:  The plan includes a kid-created definition and two details.  Research if necessary. Then the kids storyboard and collect "Free to Use or Share" images via Google Images and record all sources on a Word Document.

• "Flip" Your Instruction:  Using images and voice over, students create an instructional video on their social media topic.   Break the directions into 3 parts and use Camtasia to film the directions.  Groups watch each video and follow the steps.  

• Videos provide instruction "at the point of need."  Groups progress through video production at different rates.  Kids will never remember your whole group instruction when they get to the computer.

• Videos allow students to pause and follow each step, or to re-watch as needed.  

• Videos free the teacher to circulate and help groups.  

• Learning technology from YouTube videos in an important life skill.

• View, Rate, and Celebrate:  Watch all student videos for an overview of social media.  Groups rate each video on content, communication, and creativity via a Kahoot survey on ipads.

That's it.  Enjoy!  One of these days I'll publish all the handouts and videos I made for this project.  Stay tuned to LeaderLibrarian...