David Potter
Topic 1: What is Adolescence?
What you feel is the most defining characteristic of adolescents today?
Adolescence is a complex time for people to go through. It is when I boy becomes a man, and a girl becomes a woman. Puberty is raging and life is hard. I think the most defining characteristic of adolescents today is technology. Today technology is everywhere. People have it with them at all times because of cellphones. The most prominent use for technology today is social media. It is where teens going through puberty end up seeing the expectation of what they should look like,where they should be in life, and where they find a lot of information these days. Teens heavily depend on their social media in todays day and age because this is the first generation of students that couldn't see a life without technology. As stated in an article by (WeHaveKids, 2018) it has been found that teens can actually show symptoms similar to drug withdrawal when removed from their social media connections. ​
​
​
How will it influence how I teach?
This characteristic of how adolescents of this day are attasched to social media will influence my teaching by having to accommodate for the use of technology, specifically social media. There have been many negative impacts by social media on education as expressed in Hopkins, 2017. Negative impacts such as loss of information retention, loss of written word, and lack of face to face communications. (Hopkins, 2017) But this can be counteracted by using social media a different way in classrooms like in an article called "How to use Social Media as a Learning Tool" (2015). An example of how to use social media in the classroom is to post their works on the class instagram or for students to post possible projects. A couple techniques that I may use to further my education in Sciences could be:
​
1. Making a facebook group for the students to join called "Physics 30" or something with the course name, to address questions, important topics, or other information. This could be done by peers preferably or by myself.
​
2. Get the students to use their instagram accounts to post pictures of possible science experiments and hashtag them under a class hashtag. This would further their curiosity and interest into the course content and allow them to do their own research into experiments.
​
Social Media can either influence your classroom negatively or positively depending on how you allow it. There are probably alot more sources out there for upcoming teachers and teachers now to do more research into the idea. A few resources are below.
​
References
(2018, January 22). How Does Social Media Affect Teens? Retrieved February 18, 2018, from https://wehavekids.com/parenting/social-network-to-teens
​
(2015, January 12). How to Use Social Media as a Learning Tool. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from http://www.edudemic.com/how-to-use-social-media-as-a-learning-tool-in-the-classroom/
​
Hopkins, B. (2017, November 23). Impact of Social Media on Education. Retrieved from https://www.academiaapps.com/impact-social-media-education/