This afternoon we were privileged to spend an hour with the dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The hour flew by. After a very quick introduction, Dean Callahan opened the floor to questions. Our group, who is the opposite of shy, fired away.
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| Dean Callahan addresses a concern from a Reynolds fellow about weighing rising college costs with the benefits of attending a four-year university.
I asked the Dean for his take on whether he had experiences with turning away incoming students based on previous transgressions in their social media use. Surprisingly, he said no. I loved his response. He explained that he wouldn't do that because he believes that it's the university's responsibility to teach about social media use. In fact, Dean Callahan said students learn about social media in their first journalism class as freshman and continue to discuss social media use through sophomore year.
He added that he is unlikely to expel a student from the program because of inappropriate social media use because he supports the First Amendment. While he said it may "annoy" him, he wants students to have free speech.
I followed up my initial question and asked him whether he thought high schools should do more to educate students about proper social media use. (Because I think they should! I would LOVE to teach that class.) He said he thinks high schools could always do more, but recognized that it could be covered in a 40-minute conversation. I have had that conversation with my students, but I don't feel like it sinks in.
Has anyone reading this done anything with social media that you feel has resonated with your students? If so, I'm all ears.
Meghann Peterson
Chanhassen High School
Chanhassen, Minn.
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
An open forum with the dean
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Check out the blog post Inspired to Imagination and Hopefully Action. It's a couple of posts back. It has a really good idea about a media literacy class proposal.
ReplyDeleteAt my school, media literacy is part of the state standards for English. The problem is most of our English teachers don't have the training to teach it. Most don't use social media. There's still a hugh fear factor among teachers toward technology.
I'm hoping I can share what we've learned today with my English department members
I've tried to have the 'smarten up' conversation with my high school seniors. I feel like some of them get it, and for some it will take an event or incident for them to get the message.
ReplyDeleteI LOVED his suggestion of putting up their Facebook account on the overhead. I don't know if your students are different, but I feel like Facebook is on the way out, and Twitter is on the way up. I know some of them would freak out if their Twitter was on display.
Ultimately, they are still kids and will still do immature things, I just hope they stop putting it on display.
Brandon Michaud
Winnacunnet High School
Hampton, N.H.