10/ 17/25
Jesse Miller: Social Media and Technology
Today in class we had a guest speaker Jesse Miller who talked about personal mobile tech in the classroom and how to navigate professional boundaries. I found his presentation to be very interesting and educational as a future educator as he talked about social media and the effect technology and social media have on the younger generation. He brought up many important questions during the presentation, such as; Is taking away phones at school effective or beneficial for a students learning? In my opinion to answer this question I think in a way it is effective to take phones away if it is distracting students, from my own experiences I found that having my phone nearby makes it more tempting to go on it and I almost always do, also it depends on the age we are dealing with. For younger students like elementary I think phones should not be allowed at all but for older students like middle and high school it should be allowed but put away during instructional time. But overall I think it is beneficial for students to have phones taken away if it gets in the way of their learning. Jesse also talked about a story from UBC on an Instagram account made called UBCdimewatch where they took pictures of people on campus if they found them attractive and would caption it where they found them. This reminded me of when I was in high school and their was an account on Instagram called Belmontbananas where they took pictures of students in the school eating a banana, at first it was funny but looking back it made me realize how much of an invasion of our privacy it was to be photographed eating a banana at school and it being posted for everyone to see. Jesse also talked about digital footprints and how everything we share on the internet is there forever, I thought this was important to know as someone who hopes to apply to jobs working with children and being careful what we post on social media and such as it could be traced back to us, and I think this issue is important to teach to students to be careful and aware of what you are putting out on the internet for the world to see. Jesse brought up an important story about someone who attended a UBC protest for the legalization of marijuana back before it was legalized and was posted on a news article, years later she is now a teacher and when students look their name up that article appears and they know she is a “pot smoker.” This story puts into perspective about how peoples ideas of you can change in the drop of a hat, as I assume once students see this different side of you that they did not know before their entire perspective of you can shift and could potentially lose respect for you or gain it. Overall Jesse Miller’s presentation on social media and technology has brought some interesting points and thoughts about how we should address social media and such to future generations.