Social Studies: Social Media and Public Service Announcements

Here is an introduction to lessons at CGK Afterschool.

CGK’s two-month-long project works will be based on the main “Driving Question”.

Here are the Driving Questions for this “Social Studies” lesson.

“How can we leverage social media to help with a public service announcement? Is social media helpful or hurtful?”

We followed this question with fun lessons each week that drew the student’s interest.

Here are the comments of Mr. Dan, the teacher who was in charge of the lessons.

Week 1

Students brainstormed what they thought social media was. Clearly some students were a lot more exposed to social media than other students. To understand the basics of social media we looked at the CGK Facebook and Instagram pages and talked about how they work and what we can do. We discussed why they thought certain content was uploaded and how it helped the image of CGK. Students also looked at Mr Dan`s Instagram account to compare the differences between a company account and a personal account. Students then had to use magnet flash cards in teams to match the amount of monthly users to a social media site. This gave them an idea of the scale of social media. We also lightly talked about possible dangers of social media and will talk more about it next week. After this, students worked individually to make a mock Facebook page for themselves to think about what information they would include online. Instead of presentations students got the chance to watch last year’s sky class English show. They had been requesting to watch it for a while.

Week 2

Students looked at more of the things you can do with social media and discussed. We also looked at the blank Instagram and Facebook account that Mr Dan made for the students to eventually use. We discussed what a campaign is and looked at some campaigns by some big companies that used social media and discussed why they were effective. We also talked about what we shouldn`t upload to social media and what could hurt our friends’ feelings. To help with this, students watched a video about social media bullying and discussed their thoughts and how this could apply to CGK social media. Students then worked on their social media campaign planning booklets until the end of the lesson.

Week 3

Students discussed what they learned the previous lesson and then we talked about the situation with the teams. Too many people chose to do Facebook so we talked together and some students volunteered to change their teams. It was a really mature conversation and I was really proud of how the students handled it. They were really thinking of other people. After deciding the groups and receiving a little guidance students worked in groups to complete their final planning book. With the teachers help students managed to take and upload their profile picture and write a description. Next week students will have to finish off a few things but they can then start to use the ipads to start making and uploading their own content.

Week 4

Students started making their content today and decided on who was doing what through group discussion. Students worked on posters, videos, pictures, and writing about things related to CGK that people who don`t go to CGK might want to know. Despite a few hiccups with the ipad software students managed to communicate and cooperate well making their content.

Week 5

Team Instagram and Team Facebook continued to make content that they then uploaded to their social media account. Most of the content was still CGK related but Team Facebook managed to put out an anti-bullying message supported by a poster.

Week 6

This week we changed things up a bit. Students were introduced to Global Development Goals (GDG). 2 students were aware of a little information about them because they were mentioned in their schools but for most it was the first time they were hearing about them. After discussing what the first 7 goals meant, we tried to apply it to our social media in the form of a public service announcement now the students were familiar with social media through using it on the CGK campaign. We discussed what a public service announcement means and discussed issues such as bullying, discrimination, recycling. However, the students decided that they would like to run a public service announcement campaign for foreigners coming to Japan for the Olympic games. People coming to Japan will be unaware of public manners and won’t know what important signs mean so they wanted to try help people. From this week students were given the choice to switch from Facebook to Instagram or vice versa so they could experience both social media platforms. Team Facebook was split into two groups working on different content for the same theme as team Facebook was very big. Both Facebook and Instagram took different approaches to their work and it was interesting to see what they prioritized.

Week 7 – Heather

Today, some of the groups continued their work while others started some new topics. The Instagram groups continued what they were doing and were able to make progress towards finishing. The pikachu fighting story were not able to finish the story and may need to work towards finding a way to ‘solve’ the fighting. The bullying group was able to finish their second poster, which was a story that they had drawn out. For the FB teams: Two sub teams focused on things that can help people. I shifted one team to something a little easier for class management. They shared things that they liked and then settled on the common topic – Sports they can play inside CGK. They recorded some videos and took photos to share on FB.

Week 8

After a quick recap of what they had done over the weeks students worked together practicing for their group presentation and also on their individual scripts and presented to their parents.

In their presentation, they reflected on what we have talked about social media and described the articles they have posted.

It may still be a little difficult for them to feel that they are creating and managing their own social networking accounts, but they will continue to enjoy posting about the lesson.

We hope that through this lesson, they will get a sense of how connected people are today, to society, and to the world.