DO WE NEED A NEW SUBJECT?
Nowadays social media has a very important power on society. Nobody can imagine a day without consulting the news that the applications provide, uploading a photo or consulting the ones that others have uploaded. Also, social media has become very popular among young people. Every boy and girl of every age, even the smallest one, have in their hands any type of gadget or technologic device which is connected to the Internet. Although, at the first sight, we don't have any kind of direct teaching through all the subjects in Primary School, which help them do a good and also a proper use of social media.
As teachers, we must not power down our students, they are digital natives, and the new generation of teachers must consider this social media as a new type of resource, which we can develop our students skills.
Social Media has a lot of different uses, but some of them are connecting our students with their closest and farthest world, and also helping them to develop their language skills. For example, apps like blogger or twitter allow students to improve their writing skills, also videos from YouTube or other kind of sources can help to improve students motivation and listening skills.
For this reason, and since it is so present, we wonder if they really should teach a subject on social media in schools. Being born into an era of technology does not imply that everyone knows how to use it, much less correctly.
Thus, we are going to propose a series of advantages and disadvantages from different points of view so that each one can draw their conclusions and reflect on the usefulness of this new subject that is proposed to be introduced in the official primary education curriculum.
ADVANTAGES
On the one hand we find the advantages. We are going to list a few and develop them. In the first place, the consequence that finds the greatest weight speaks of preventing all the dangers that social media provides.
Social Media Subject will be necessary, because all children have in their hand a gadget with internet connection, and for sure, they know how to use it, But do they know how to use it safely? Maybe, a subject that teaches students how to use this social media world correctly will be necessary, showing them all the good and bad facts.
This advantage seems very important to us since in relation to our previous cyberbullying post it can be prevented or reduced.We know that the internet has several dangers and sometimes not knowing them causes us to commit them. For this reason, in this subject we would try to avoid them through knowledge.
DISADVANTAGES
On the other hand, we find the disadvantages. A new subject in a curriculum that has been without a great modification for a long time would imply a great change that would modify the entire curriculum.
We know the ITC subject, and we consider that the concepts covered in it would be similar to the one we propose. Also, not only in this subject but in any of them, social media is used as a resource. For example, when they search for a video, everyone uses the youtube application, even the students. in this way they learn knowledge in other subjects and with a purpose.
Otherwise, there is another problem with introducing this new Social Media subject, because the hours of teaching are limited, and if we introduce this subject we will need to modify all the curriculum changing work times affecting other subjects.