Social media has taken over everyone’s life , and seems to be the way to communicate with others nowadays. People post pictures, news, their latest activities, text information, or just about anything they think at that moment.

At school, social media can be used, if used appropriately at all times, which is difficult to do when talking about “students using social media”. At our school, we were just talking about that with our 6th graders today. They post things without even thinking about what the consequences of putting something out in public. It could be something hurtful to others, or information that could be use inappropriately by others. You can tell students to think about consequences, but will they be able to do that? Will or can 6th grader think of the all possible consequences of posting something out there?

Schools can encourage the use a certain social media programs with an educational purpose and with high control of it. Students are motivated to work when social media is involved in an assignment, and it’s a great tool to communicate among students and teachers, but all programs should be used with responsibility.

Often, when social media is used inappropriately outside school, is becomes a problem also inside the school, and that ‘s when schools start banning this usage, in and out of the classroom. Like anything, social media usage has to be done appropriately and with responsibility, and that is the difficult part for students, and sometimes even for adults.

This week we had the visit of teachers and students from Shinonome Junior High, our partner school in Japan, and shared wonderful moments. One of those was a visit to the Nature Research Center in Raleigh; I wanted to share with them what our students are doing now, being citizen scientists. So we went on a tour of the Nature Research Center labs, where we met with all the Students Discover scientists and mentors. It felt so good being back there….remembering a great summer.

Our 8 middle school students, 8 Shinonome Junior High Student, two Shinonome teachers, and us (two teachers from Exploris) listened to all what the scientist had to say about their projects, showing us materials used for their projects, technology involved, and  pictures, as they shared their excitement about being scientists. All the students listened carefully, asked questions, and looked through microscopes. They couldn’t believe some of the things they heard, like having mites in our faces. They wanted to put trap cameras in their house backyards to check  out which mammals go around their house at night.

I think this was a great opportunity for this students to realize they can also do “real science” in the classroom.