Tech Teams
During Term 4 we were finally able to run our 'Tech Teams’ project which was funded by a special grant from the School Focused Youth Service. Twenty-five Year 6 students worked with Kate Wilde from ‘The Human Development Workshop’ on a modified version of our original project, which involved investigating different aspects of social media. At this time, all other Year 6 students were engaged in a classroom based Social Media/Cyber Safety unit.
The sessions covered topics such as:
- Face to face communication – eye contact, attentive listening …
- Positives and negatives of social media
- Different social media platforms
- Personal safety dangers of social media
- Speed at which comments/images can be spread
- Mental health implications of use/misuse of social media
- Impact of online behaviour
- Age restrictions of social media and why they are in place
When asked to comment about the impact of ‘Tech teams’, what they had enjoyed and what they had learnt, the students commented that ‘Tech Teams’ had:
- increased my awareness of the possible dangers
- increased my awareness of the speed that digital information travels and its impact
- made me think twice before posting comments/images
- stopped me from adding random people as ‘friends’
- made me realise how easy it was for people to create fake profiles
- taught me how peer pressure can make you stay in a ‘group chat’, or do/say something that you know you shouldn’t
- made me question how I feel disconnected from my group of friends if they are all on ‘snap chat’ or similar and I’m not – or I haven’t checked my notifications
- how checking your phone/iPad for notifications impacts on your sleep
- alerted me to the dangers of having your phone/iPad in my bedroom at night
- caused me to rethink some of my previous behaviour
- made me think twice about sharing information
- made me question why I want to do this (social media) at a young age
- taught me that the more information is shared, the more chance there is to misuse the information
- shown me that it’s hard to trust what is real
- taught me other strategies to use if I’m angry rather than vent on social media or target someone
- taught me to leave a group chat if it is negative – stay with positive vibes
- explained the negative impact of social media when you compare yourself to others - negative mindset
- increased awareness when using YouTube – looking at videos differently and questioning their authenticity. Are they fake?
- made me realise that comments can lead to bad consequences
- if something is inappropriate, don’t comment or spread it – it just boosts it more and spreads it. Just report it
- made me more cautious.
Students who do not use social media reported that although they agreed with their parents about not using social media before the stated age limit, they now had more understanding of that decision.
We hope this project generated conversations at home around the use of social media, both the positives and negatives and that the increased awareness and caution will contribute to keeping our students safe online.