Syllabus: Social Media Literacies
High School Level
Seed Version Compiled By: Howard Rheingold
Note on using this syllabus:
As an instructor of undergraduate and graduate students at University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, I created a syllabus for the benefit of other college/university level instructors. I created a copy of the original syllabus for modification to use with high school students (probably juniors or seniors). I will rely on actual high school teachers to help me modify this source document. Please feel free to use, modify, and share this syllabus in your own way. Reorder the modules, add or subtract required or recommended texts and learning activities. Use your own assessment methods. If you wish to help improve this seed document, contact howard@rheingold.com and I will add you as a commenter and/or editor.
This syllabus is based on my 2012 book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, as a textbook. I set out to write the book as an educational instrument. As I explain in the introductory chapter, (which is downloadable free of charge), I have concluded, after thirty years as an online participant, observer, and teacher, that social media literacies are a critical uncertainty in the issue of whether digital media improve or erode human individual capacities and collective culture. Just as in the eras following the invention of the alphabet and printing press, literate populations become the driving force that shape new media. What we know now matters in shaping the ways people will use and misuse social media for decades to come.
The 21st century depends on a critical mass of people who understand basic scientific literacy, media literacy, information literacy, in addition to the literacies I cover in my book and in this syllabus. I use “literacy” in the sense of a skill that includes not only the individual ability to decode and encode in a medium, but also the social ability to use the medium effectively in concert with others. I didn’t write the book as a syllabus, but as a logical ordering of the five social media literacies of attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and network awareness: attention is the starting place for all media use; crap detection is necessary for effective participation; knowledge of individual participation is by its nature enmeshed with collaborative communications that take place through networked publics. When composing the syllabus, I duplicated much of this progression, but chose texts that can offer analytic tools, explanatory frameworks, and competing perspectives -- the basic building blocks for teachers to use. For high school communities, “Critical consumption online” or “critical consumption of social media” could substitute for “crap detection” as a label. The methods are identical, although many resources most appropriate for high school students must exist to replace texts in the original, college-level version.
Course Description:
Today’s personal, social, political, economic worlds are all affected by digital media and networked publics. Viral videos, uprisings from Tahrir to #OWS, free search engines, abundant inaccuracy and sophisticated disinformation online, indelible and searchable digital footprints, laptops in lecture halls and smartphones at the dinner table, twenty-something social media billionaires, massive online university courses -- it’s hard to find an aspect of daily life around the world that is not being transformed by the tweets, blogs, wikis, apps, movements, likes and plusses, tags, text messages, and comments two billion Internet users and six billion mobile phone users emit. New individual and collaborative skills are emerging. This course introduces students to both the literature about and direct experience of these new literacies: research foundations and practical methods to control attention, attitudes and tools necessary for critical consumption of information, best practices of individual digital participation and collective participatory culture, the use of collaborative media and methodologies, and the application of network know-how to life online.
Learning Outcomes:
Diligent students will:
- Cultivate an ability to discern, analyze, and manage the way they deploy their attention.
- Learn to use social media tools for collaborative work.
- Understand the need for critical consumption of information.
- Understand and practice appropriate online behavior.
- Hone their ability to find the answer to any question with the right kind of search.
- Train their thinking to assess the accuracy of the answers they find online.
- Learn the modes, consequences, some of the responsibilities and dangers of different kinds of digital participation, from curation to blogging.
- Distinguish the characteristics and methods, advantages and pitfalls, of virtual communities, smart mobs, collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, social production and wiki collaboration.
- Recognize the ways the structure and dynamics of networks affect the behaviors of populations, the elements of applying of social network analysis to online culture, the steps necessary to cultivate personal learning networks.
- Become familiar with competing perspectives on social media practices and their effects; learn how to make analytic arguments regarding key debates around the use of social media.
Ongoing Assignments
Select a mix of these as continuous activities. Students have been strongly socialized to do the homework for each class the night before it is due -- a method that doesn’t work when discourse, not a discrete product like a term paper, is the goal. They hang out on Facebook every night. They need to hang out on their blog, in the class forum, on the wiki at least several nights a week.
Online forums:
Students are expected to contribute at least one substantial post to the forum each week - and more than one post per week is encouraged. Good forum conversation is a communication art on its own. Be sure you know how to use the forum software, understand these guidelines to discussion board participation, and understand how forum posts will be evaluated. Reading the texts precedes and is necessary for forum discussions , since the common theme of the online discussions will be the previous week's readings and in-class discussions. For examples of “substantial” comment threads, try this one about online identity or (perhaps ironically) this long thread commenting on Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or this thread about “the dark side of digital backchannels.” This is a good example of a comment that disagrees with the author of the original post but respectfully adds a valid point that the original post did not consider.
Lexicon teams:
Each week, a team of students will edit a wiki to collaboratively identify and define key words and phrases from that week’s readings and class discussion. During the next class session, led by the lexicon team, the entire class will discuss, and if necessary, improve the definitions.
Key questions about readings:
At the beginning of each class meeting, each student will turn in a legibly signed 3 X 5 or 5 X 8 card with one substantial question that the student is prepared to address for each reading in the syllabus. An ongoing record of lexicon work will aggregate on the course wiki.
Mindmapping teams:
For each of the readings assigned for each week, a team of two students will present a mindmap toward the end of each class meeting, showing the most important top level, second level, and third level concepts and/or practices from that week’s readings. See this introduction to mindmapping to understand how it can be done.
This suggested exercise can be useful: Each member of the team should write down (independently) on Post-it notes as many important points to remember about the readings that they can come up with in a few minutes. One idea, concept, issue, fact, per note. Put all the notes up on a wall, then try to cluster those that seem related. Then ask why they seem related For clusters, see if you can come up for a descriptive name for the cluster in one or a few words. The descriptive name for the cluster becomes a top-level node in the mindmap and the notes in the cluster can orbit around it. If there is a strong hierarchical structure to the collection of notes, look at how to branch and sub-branch a tree -- what is the top level, the second level, the third level of the hierarchy? Most subjects are not naturally strongly hierarchical, but are a mix of network-like lateral connections and hierarchical nodes that have subnodes that have subnodes. This exercise is meant to generate a sketch. The next step is to refine it.
Mindmaps can be hand-drawn and scanned, then projected, or constructed online with one of many available mindmapping applications and embedded then projected -- or they can be drawn on the whiteboard. The goal is to engage the entire class in trying to sketch a systemic map of each week’s subject matter. For example, these are mindmaps that student teams did of the entire set of readings for each class session of a different course (http://socialmediaclassroom.com/host/vircom) by the same instructor as this course: http://howardrheingoldsteachingnotes.posterous.com/student-mindmaps-from-social-mediavirtual-com
Real-time note-taking teams
During class sessions, teams of four take notes using a real-time note-taking service such as Etherpad, PrimaryPad or Google Docs, handing off to another team every half hour, publishing their notes to the class wiki after the end of the class session.
Real-time Backchannel
During certain sessions, students will use Hotseat to engage in parallel, relevant online discussion in real time through the web, Facebook, Twitter, or Facebook.
E-book teams:
Each week, a team of four students works between meetings of class sessions to update an enhanced e-book that includes the Etherpad notes, lexicon entries, and mindmaps for that week, with graphics, text, and live links. In addition, e-book teams develop a wiki page on best practices and procedures.
Collaborative projects:
Using any combination of collaborative tools (social bookmarking, forums, blogs and comments, wikis, mindmapping or concept mapping), propose and agree upon a project that can be accomplished by 4 person project teams within the term of the course, to be presented on or after the last class meeting. Collaboration teams should agree upon and post a detailed outline of their project, an abstract that includes the problem they are trying to solve or issue they are trying to probe, a division of labor, a log of the conversation and decision-making that went into constructing and executing the project, and a final presentation. Each team should design its own assessment rubric by editing a wiki page to show all the features of an excellent project.
Use your imagination, think big, and most of all, work on projects you find meaningful in relation to your own lives online - do not attempt methodologically complete research. Think of your projects as "probes." Ask a good question. See what you can find, make meaning of, and teach to others about your question. When making a presentation, you can use any interactive multimedia presentation medium OTHER than PowerPoint. Here is a list of interactive multimedia presentation resources and here is a list of mindmapping tools that can also be used for this purpose. Keep in mind that this is a collaboration in which you not only divide labor but help each other learn -- specify which team member is responsible for each part of the project, make clear how the parts fit together, and make a positive effort to make connections between the parts. An ideal collaboration is more than the sum of individual contributions. You need, therefore, to make your collaborative dialogue explicit. Use the comment thread attached to your project wiki page to explicitly make connections between parts and make clear how they fit together.
Expectations
- Readings are substantial; each student is expected to come to class prepared to answer questions about all of the week’s assigned readings.
- Students are expected to devote a minimum of five hours each week to the readings and assignments from this course.
- Active participation is required in discussions during class meetings and in the online forum between class meetings.
- Bibliographies, footnotes, and/or lists of sources are required when quoting or referring to another’s work in assigned papers. Son of Citation Machine can help: use MLA style.
Schedule/Texts
Texts:
Howard Rheingold, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, MIT Press, 2012.
Before Session One
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Introduction: “Why you need digital know-how -- why we all need it.” pp i-ix. (textbook)
- Welcome from the instructor: How a collaborative, cooperative, learning community works -- and the kind of active learning it requires.
Session One: Attention, Multitasking, Mindfulness, Metacognition
Required:
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter One: “Attention! Why and how to control your mind’s most powerful instrument,” pp 35-70.
Recommended:
Session One Metacognition/Mindfulness Learning Activities
- Daily online mindfulness practice: Put a sticker, card, post-it on your desk and laptop. Whenever it catches your attention, note what you were just paying attention to. Were you breathing normally or holding your breath? At the end of a week, reflect on your blog about this practice.
Session Two: Infotention
- Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Two: “Infotention: Attention to Information,” pp 96-111.
Session Two Infotention Learning Activities
- Reflect on this process, and how you coordinate your attentional strategies and information tools. One blog post on this reflection required, although co-learners are encouraged to blog as often as they desire.
- Participate in the forum discussion about what it all means. At least one cogent forum post that helps create a culture of conversation.
Session Three: Crap Detection
Required:
- Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Two: “Crap Detection 101: how to find what you need to know, and how to decide if it’s true,” pp 77-96.
- Scott Rosenberg, “In the Context of Web Context: How to Check Out Any Web Page,” Wordyard Blog, September 14, 2010, http://www.wordyard.com/2010/09/14/in-the-context-of-web-context-how-to-check-out-any-web-page.
Recommended:
Session Three Crap Detection Learning Activities
- Select a current issue or topic that is in the news and which also has the potential for evidence-based sources (e.g., scientific claims, factual claims that can be supported or cast into doubt by the use of research or polling). Select web sources that you would be consider to be very good, only partially trustworthy, and probably untrustworthy. Write a blog post describing the process you used and the evidence for your evaluation.
- Identify two websites that are either cloaked, astroturf, misinformational, a hoax, or otherwise misinformational. Use sites that are not already listed here.
- View the videos and answer the questions posed on Source Check. Reflect on the process in your blog.
- Map your “information horizon” by listing all the sources, including people, tools, and texts, you would go to in order to find answers to different kinds of questions. For example, you are diagnosed with a serious disease, you want to start a business, you want to write a literature review of the scientific and/or scholarly publications about a particular area. Example categories for an information horizon map would be friends, social networks, colleagues, subject matter experts (how do you find them?), books, web pages, research publications, search engine queries, reference librarians, bibliographies, databases, direct observation and experiment, reflection. How do you seek, evaluate, consult these resources? How does the process change as it continues? Try to make a visual representation, a sketch combining features of flow charts and mind maps to illustrate how your process of inquiry proceeds.
Session Four: The Power Law of Participation
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Three: “Participation Power,” pp 111-147.
Recommended
Session Four Participation Learning Activities
- Keep a social media diary of one typical weekday & evening and one typical weekend day and evening, hour by hour. Note, whenever possible the intent of messages, the intended audience, when recording your own entries. Write a blog post of at least 500 words: characterize the kind of social media participation that you take part in or witness. Argue for or against the assertion that these activities are evidence of a “participatory” culture. Furnish examples to support your characterization.
Session Five: Curation
- Robin Good, “Real-time News Curation, Newsmastering, and Newsradars: The Complete Guide, Parts 1–6,” MasterNewMedia.com, September 7, 2010, Blog posts.
Session Five Curation Learning Activities
- Use the social bookmarking tab here in the Social Media Classroom to find, tag, and select descriptive snippets for 2-3 resources related to this course.
- Create a Diigo account, find and tag a dozen sites related to the theory and/or practice of curation. Highlight the key passages in one of the texts and post a link to the highlighted text under Social Bookmarks in the Social Media Classroom.
- Create a Scoop.it account and curate a specific topic related to one of the main literacies in this course (attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, network know how.) For example, here are Howard's infotention links, Scoop.it style. Be highly selective and make your criteria for selection clear: If you could only recommend 20 resources for someone who seeks to understand one of these subjects, which resources would you recommend, and why do you think they are authoritative?
Session Six: Collective Intelligence and Crowdsourcing
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Four: “Social-digital know-how: The arts and sciences of Collective Action,” pp 147-167.
Recommended
Session Six: Collective Intelligence and Crowdsourcing learning activities
- Find a Wikipedia entry with a rich history of interaction and dispute on the Talk page -- substantial discussion of significant issues (attribution, significance, sourcing, etc.) rather than simply extensive discussion. Describe the process by which Wikipedians argued over the entry, the reasons for disputes, what methods they used to resolve conflicts, and describe the outcome (so far). Read about Wikipedia Sociology. Why do you think the group of Wikipedians who edited and talked about the Wikipedia page you selected reached a resolution of their dispute ?
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words about an example of collective intelligence and/or crowdsourcing you find online. What was the objective, was it accomplished, why would you call it example of collective intelligence and/or crowdsourcing, what social or technological affordances contributed to its success, would you consider the outcome beneficial or destructive?
Session Seven: Virtual Community and Social Production
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Four: “Social-digital know-how: The arts and sciences of Collective Action,” pp 168-190.
Session Seven: Virtual community and Social Production learning activities
- Observe a network or virtual community and infer the norms. Create a document outlining how to participate.
- Reflect in your blog on the growth, struggles, benefits, advantages and disadvantages of working together online as a virtual learning community to this point.
Session Eight: Understanding Networks
Required:
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Five: “Social has a shape: Why networks matter,” pp 191-214.
- John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Advent of Netwar (Revisited),” in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, RAND corporation, 2001, (PDF).
Recommended:
Session Eight Understanding Networks learning activities
The Oracle of Bacon
Session Nine: Smart Mobs
Required:
Recommended:
Session Nine Understanding Networks learning activities
The Oracle of Bacon
Session Ten: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Five: “Social has a shape: Why networks matter,” pp 215-230.
- Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4) (August 2007): 1143. Reader
Recommended:
Session Ten: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks learning activities
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words describing the steps you’ve taken and/or plan to take to cultivate and harvest knowledge capital and/or social capital from your personal learning network. Make deadlines for yourself in your plans.
- Add an example to the forum discussion about examples of social capital online.
- Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?
Session Eleven: Remix, Participatory Culture, and Ethics of Digital Use
Required:
Recommended:
Session Eleven: Remix, Participatory Culture, and Ethics of Digital Use
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words describing the steps you’ve taken and/or plan to take to cultivate and harvest knowledge capital and/or social capital from your personal learning network. Make deadlines for yourself in your plans.
- Add an example to the forum discussion about examples of social capital online.
- Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?
Session Ten: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Five: “Social has a shape: Why networks matter,” pp 215-230.
- Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4) (August 2007): 1143. Reader
Recommended:
Session Ten: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks learning activities
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words describing the steps you’ve taken and/or plan to take to cultivate and harvest knowledge capital and/or social capital from your personal learning network. Make deadlines for yourself in your plans.
- Add an example to the forum discussion about examples of social capital online.
- Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?
Session Eleven: Remix, Participatory Culture, and Ethics of Digital Use
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Five: “Social has a shape: Why networks matter,” pp 215-230.
- Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4) (August 2007): 1143. Reader
Recommended:
Session Eleven: Remix, Participatory Culture, and Ethics of Digital Use
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words describing the steps you’ve taken and/or plan to take to cultivate and harvest knowledge capital and/or social capital from your personal learning network. Make deadlines for yourself in your plans.
- Add an example to the forum discussion about examples of social capital online.
- Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?
Session Ten: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Five: “Social has a shape: Why networks matter,” pp 215-230.
- Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4) (August 2007): 1143. Reader
Recommended:
Session Ten: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks learning activities
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words describing the steps you’ve taken and/or plan to take to cultivate and harvest knowledge capital and/or social capital from your personal learning network. Make deadlines for yourself in your plans.
- Add an example to the forum discussion about examples of social capital online.
- Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?
Session Eleven: Remix, Participatory Culture, and Ethics of Digital Use
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Five: “Social has a shape: Why networks matter,” pp 215-230.
- Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4) (August 2007): 1143. Reader
Recommended:
Session Eleven Learning Activities: Remix, Participatory Culture, and Ethics of Digital Use
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words describing the steps you’ve taken and/or plan to take to cultivate and harvest knowledge capital and/or social capital from your personal learning network. Make deadlines for yourself in your plans.
- Add an example to the forum discussion about examples of social capital online.
- Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?
Session Twelve: Digital Citizenship
Required
- Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Five: “Social has a shape: Why networks matter,” pp 215-230.
- Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, and Cliff Lampe, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(4) (August 2007): 1143. Reader
Recommended:
Session Twelve Learning Activities: Digital Citizenship
- Write a blog post of at least 400 words describing the steps you’ve taken and/or plan to take to cultivate and harvest knowledge capital and/or social capital from your personal learning network. Make deadlines for yourself in your plans.
- Add an example to the forum discussion about examples of social capital online.
- Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?