Statistics

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Research

As educators we are told to follow best practices based on statistics and research. After reading through many of the articles, there was one article that stuck out to me. The article was called Social Media Fact Sheet completed by Pew Research Center. The center began tracking many things about social media, such as how often, age, race, gender and which account gets used the most. This article contains information is mostly relevant to me.  The chart below shows the age ranges that use some form of social media. Something that does not shock me is that the top line represents ages 18-29 and the bottom line is 65 and older. It is obviously clear without this graph who uses social media the most and who doesn't. I would have liked to see the ages of 10-18 though. I feel like this is the age that most teens start using social media and I would be interested to see is they use it the most. 
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Another statistic that stood out to me would be which platform gets used the most. I always hear Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. I would have thought Facebook and Instagram would be the top two. I was sort of right. What shocked me was that YouTube was the highest. Now this shocked me because when I think of YouTube, I think of kids YouTubing how to play a game like Minecraft or a movie that someone might have recorded and people wanted to watch. I never really thought about how YouTube was a Social Media Network, but you can follow people and view their posts. I never actually thought how much I might use YouTube because I do not play games or search for movies. However, things I do YouTube are..."How to hang curtains", "How to teach (insert topic here)", "How to start a snow blower" which was my most recent search! I even search kid songs for my nieces my biggest search is of course "Baby Shark". So as adults we actually do use it a lot. I can see now how YouTube would be at the top of the list, YouTube can be used for many things and at all age levels. 



Another article that stood out to me was by Speak Up called,Ten Things Everyone Should Know about K-12 Students' Digital Learning, 2018. This article stood out to me as an educator and also how it relates to my students. My previous article mentioned how YouTube is the number one platform used by most adults. After reading this infographic, I can see even more why YouTube is on the top. Not only are high school students using this, but I can only                               Photo Credit 
the amount of parents that YouTube Common Core strategies for math to help their elementary education students. I can also agree with the 1/3 that say they learn more from a video than a book. If a student is not interested in something they will struggle to read it, but if there are given a video I can see how it would engage them more. 

Another statistic from this article that stood out to me was numbers 9 and 10. I feel that they both go together. As you can see, 9 mentions how students are using technology to help them develop workplace skills. I LOVE THIS! Technology will never stop growing, I saw how my parents struggled updating their resumes, uploading pictures to the computer, creating PowerPoints for a job etc. If students now do not interact with technology they will also fall behind in their work space. I completely understand why schools have the rules that they have for the school, but I think schools should do number 10 more. Listen to the students to help figure out if we can change our technology agreements to allow students to access more within the school setting. As a teacher, I want students to know that what they are learning 
                  Photo Credit                                 will help them in their future and that everything is a spiral effect. As teachers we want to highlight our students interests and encourage them to explore all options. 

If you have time, read this article about how research supports iPads in the classrooms. 

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 31, 2019 at 8:56 AM

    Hey Amanda,

    A student once told me that only old people use Facebook and that Snapchat and Instagram are where it's at... I told them that I preferred Facebook because of the On This Day feature and he goes- "That's what my mom says." LOL! So, it surprised me to see that Facebook is so far ahead of Snap and Insta... I wonder if that's because the survey started at 18 instead of 13?
    And, your image about kids learning more off of Youtube than in a book, that doesn't surprise me at all... My question- WHAT exactly are they learning? Their idea of getting an education and our version sometimes don't match!
    Thanks for a great post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. NMZumpanoFebruary 5, 2019 at 3:24 PM

    Great post! I liked the statistics you chose to focus on. Technology skills at all levels will absolutely help our students in their future workspace. I echo your thoughts on YouTube, too!

    ReplyDelete
  3. JakeFebruary 5, 2019 at 6:30 PM

    I agree that it's weird to think about YouTube as a social media site after growing up with Myspace and Facebook. It is so much more advanced, and connected, than what I envision social media to be used for. Like you, I am constantly looking up "How To" videos on YouTube to help me get through life. Over the last few years I have saved myself hundreds of dollars by simply watching videos on how to fix and install appliances. It's interesting to think about how much we are able to learn off of YouTube, and then to think of what our students will be like as adults after growing up with the site being such a big part of their lives. Hopefully they are able to take these skills of searching for content and make the most out of them.

    ReplyDelete

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