7-8 Connected or distracted, informed or misinformed?

Home Plan and prepare Scope and Sequence (F-10) 7-8 Connected or distracted, informed or misinformed?

Unit Connected or distracted, informed or misinformed?

Year level: 7-8 Topic: Interactions and impacts Time: 6-8 hours

The internet facilitates fast and vast communication through a global network of connected devices. We can interact, gather data and information, do our banking, purchase items, view and listen to multimedia and even control devices remotely. Social media has enabled us to communicate and build our social networks as well as share our thoughts on such a mammoth scale. However, with access to this technology comes some pitfalls that users need to be aware of and negotiate their way through. We can collect data to find out trends in social media use in a small sample and compare that data with nationally collected data from a much larger sample size. Infographics combine images, text and numeric data to convey, in a compelling and succinct way, particular messages and information on a chosen topic. These can be published and shared online. Students can also create a basic webpage by modifying HTML and previewing the output.

This unit of work can be integrated with English and provide an opportunity to analyse and explain how language has evolved over time and how technology and the media have influenced language use and forms of communication (ACELY1729).

Topic Overview
PDF DOCX

Topic Unit Map
PDF DOCX

Unit Overview
PDF DOCX

Unit SOLO Taxonomy
PDF DOCX

What is social media and how do your peers/classmates use it?

Australian Curriculum Alignment

Collecting, managing and analysing data (ACTDIP025)
Generating and designing (ACTDIP028)
Collaborating and managing (ACTDIP032)

What's this about?

Social media are digital tools that enable users to create and share content via the internet.

Social media typically have common features which may include: log-in, profile page, followers, personalisation, information updating/posting, like or comments, rating or voting. Information shared may be in the form of a still or moving image, a brief line of text (caption) or simply liking the post.

Collaborative tools enable students to complete a common task. Students work together using a collaborative tool via an internet connection. It can include accessing, modifying, storing and retrieving common data files. Students follow agreed protocols when collaborating online. Discuss a suitable and agreed process of contributing to, modifying or suggested deletion of another student’s piece of work.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used across many applications including social media sites. Automatic face tagging is carried out by an AI recognising images from its database. Natural Language Processing interprets text and speech. It is possible to have an AI application that alerts a user of potential cyber bullying.

Learning tasks

As a learning hook, use an online quiz such as Kahoot.it to engage students in questions about social media such as its date of inception, evolution and history, platforms, benefits/issues and stats related to use. Students could generate their own quiz questions and run them in class.
An alternative learning hook can be to use a game developed by The Office of the eSafety Commissioner where students take on a role in an educational video game The Lost Summer, in which players are confronted with a variety of challenges, including conflicts on social media, cyber-attacks and fake news. Students discuss the dilemmas they faced in the game.
Students could conduct a short online survey to canvas how their peers use social media. Each group could survey the use of one social media platform, and record their information into a shared class document for example OneNote or Google docs.
Ask students to draw the interface of a popular social media platform and label the parts of the site that they consider are common features of a social media platform. Consider the use of icons and emojis as forms of representation.
Evaluate the usefulness of the platform. Invite students to draw an interface of their own social media application and describe its functionality and purpose.

Explore an Artificial Intelligence application that simulates checking text say for example those from a social media post.

Supporting Resources

What Is Social Media? This article provides a useful background to social media.

Kahoot! Kahoot! is a game-based learning and trivia platform that can be used in classrooms. Sign up for free to create, play and share engaging quizzes on any topic. Can be used in browser or via the mobile app.

History of social media infographic Follow this site to view an infographic on the evolution of social media since its creation in the 1970s.

A Chronological History of Social Media The history of social media stretches back much further than you'd think, let's take a quick tour of its rise and rise.

Facilitating Collaborative Learning: 20 Things You Need to Know From the Pros This article provides some suggestions for best practices for collaborative learning.

The Lost Summer This app immerses players in a futuristic environment where they need to exercise personal and social capabilities such as critical thinking, empathy, resilience, respect and responsibility to complete challenges and advance through the game.

Lesson Ideas

Anti-bullying AI Sometimes we write and post things on social media in a hurry. Such posts can hurt people and even make them feel bullied. Wouldn't it be great if an Artificial Intelligence application could check our posts as we write them, and warn us if they were potentially hurtful?