Jesse Miller discussed the influence of social media on teachers and students, the importance of boundaries, and how we can navigate what is productive/safe use of media in classrooms. I found his presentation to be very informative, and he brought up a lot of scenarios I wouldn’t have considered having to deal with previously. A point that stuck with me was that he believes that we view a lot of social media tools as taboo, which makes young people feel like they need to use them in secret. Hiding the use of certain websites means that students may not be using them in a safe manner, when they are open about their use we can direct them to safe use. However, as teachers, there are boundaries we need to set with students, which sometimes means telling them you don’t want to know what they’re doing online.
Jesse Miller emphasized that we must follow the policies that our school has set around cell phones and social media. There should be no flexibility/pushing the boundaries of these policies. He brought up how we shouldn’t be using our personal devices to take photos of students because our phones are connected to the cloud and these photos may not just stay on our phones. Even if the photos are taken with consent and are just being used in the classroom setting, once that photo is taken, even if deleted, it still exists on our cloud. Jesse mentioned that if we are provided a phone from the school to use, this would be safe to use for classroom photos.
My favourite part of Jesse Miller’s presentation was when he gave a variety of book recommendations, fiction and non-fiction. As an avid reader who is interested in exploring more about the impacts of technology in our society, I thought this was super valuable! Giving those listening to your presentation an opportunity to explore more and stay interested means there’s more taken away.