TOH LER XUAN Class: 3/4
To: Mdm Shanti, Principal of Riverside Secondary School
From: Toh Ler Xuan, Chairperson of Student Council, Riverside Secondary School
Date: 08 May 2019
On behalf of the students in Riverside Secondary School, I would like to propose incorporating social media during lessons. After conducting a survey amongst my schoolmates on how their school experiences are like, I discovered that that they feel that lessons can be made more engaging and interactive with the use of social media platforms. Therefore, I think that incorporating social media during lessons would be an amazing idea and I hope you can be convinced of this idea too.
Social media has both advantages and disadvantages. While popular opinion is that social media brings about undesirable consequences to its users, another school of thought believes that social media does bring about benefits. Firstly, social media can be used for platform-building. Students can develop an online presence amongst the class or even the school. This can then allow students to build on the skills they are passionate about, for example, coding. Secondly, social media can strengthen friendship amongst the students. When students have healthy friendships, they do not only feel accepted for who they are but will also feel empowered and connected to the world. Social media makes students more confident and outgoing about sharing their ideas. Lastly, social media reduces feelings of isolation. This makes students become individualistic and more extroverted and have higher self-esteem. Students would be able to develop stronger social skills due to social media use.
I think that social media should be incorporated during History and Science lessons. During lessons, teachers can use the idea of knowledge building to introduce the topic to the students. For example, teachers can use social media to allow students to upload their concepts of the topic, and allow the students to take a look at each other’s posts, by building on to each other’s’ ideas. As History is very content-heavy, the different factors can be divided amongst the class such that students will be able to learn from one another. This also promotes self-directed learning which will help the students in their tertiary education.
While the school incorporates social media, it need not be used for every single lesson. This way, the teacher will have time to look through the progress of online learning and review it back to the class on the same week. This will ensure that the class is always on track.
It is also important to ensure that students are responsible users in learning using social media. Students should not post anything that will hurt others physically, mentally or emotionally. Students should not post anything that is not related to the topic. Students should always make sure the work done is up to the best of their abilities. Should any of the mentioned happens, the right of learning using social media will be stripped off the students.
I am positive that incorporating social media in class will make lessons more engaging and fun for the students. I hope that you will consider this proposal favourably. Thank you.
Writers by the River 