Curricular Focus

             The most frequently asked question from educators who realize Social Media must be addressed is, “how can it enhance curricula?” A satisfactory answer demonstrates Social Media’s potential as a tool for supplementing traditional teaching methods, which was the subject of a previous post. While this is enough to find a pragmatic role for things like blogs and wikis in the classroom, our understanding of the tool itself remains incomplete. For that, educators and students must focus on Social Media as a stand-alone academic subject. Critical analysis of new material as it is produced takes a dedicated plan and a combination English-Ethics Curriculum would guide a course where all enrolled collaborate in an effort to better understand our new tool.

            Qualifying the academic pursuit of Social Media understanding as an English course is appropriate. In essence, students will critically analyze what’s being shared across multiple platforms the same way they would text in a novel. Developing a course load’s worth of assignments and lesson plans was at one point going to be the final product of this blog. That was until I found the work of Beth Phillips, a former grad student at the University of Missouri who completed such a project several months ago. Her curriculum identifies material produced on Social Media and gives it academic respect while recognizing the novel Ethical constructs which present themselves. It alone is enough to demonstrate how substantial a Social Media course can be. The only remaining issue is to decide how it might be tailored to Medford High School, or any high school for that matter. An unexpected assist when making this decision comes from the well established educational bureaucracy.

            If a school is to offer any particular course for students it must demonstrate how that course fulfills existing requirements found at multiple levels: the state, the district, the school, and the department. Each level represents the interests of a particular group responsible for seeing that students are getting what they need. These interests are described in the corresponding mission statements, each drafted by a distinguished group of educators. If a proposal for developing a curriculum for a high school Social Media class can satisfy all the relevant mission statements, it has the potential for moving forward. Using all the different terminology found at each level and adding core principals of the SMLP (equity, collaboration, and innovation), the proposal practically writes itself.

            For a specific example of how this looks, please follow the Google-doc link which details a proposal submitted to Medford High School. While it is currently under review, the process of using mission statement terminology to fill out a proposal while providing a sample curriculum like Ms. Phillips’ is enough to show how an English-Ethics Social Media Course can be added to any high school’s course catalogue. From here it is up to the students and their teacher to make of it what they can. Class time would represent uncharted territory but the guidance of each source in this project so far is leading in the direction of academic innovation.