Five Essentials to create connected students

This article is a very well written, easy to read article about technology in schools. The author is clearly for the idea of social media in schools and says that it can be handled in a proper manner. The author addresses the fact that some students do not have the technology that schools are requiring and does not really mention what they would do in that situation. They list five essentials for well connected students: A connected author, a connected publisher, a connected conversationalist, a strategic diconnecter and a curious, lifelong pursuer of ingenious solutions. This article really stuck out to me because when I first started reading it I disagreed with the author. I don't believe that every student should require social media at school. I think it is very distracting and that is will veer the learners elsewhere. Although I did disagree at first, I can agree with what the author is saying now. Basically, they say that social media can be used at schools if it is going to be equal among the students and it is all educational. My favorite part of this article was the essential number 2. It is being a connected publisher, and in this section the author discusses that we, as educators, are discouraging students to put their strong academic works on social media sites, even though that is the main goal of going to college, to find a good career. The one place people look for references is online. Blogs, facebook, twitter and tumblr are a few examples of places that people could show their strengths online. The author says that by discouraging this part, students will be more encouraged to put their personal lives on the internet, which can be dangerous. This is so true to me because if people think it is weird posting about academics then they will post stuff about the "norm". This causes the bad things on social media that people constantly bring up. If schools started teaching kids how to do the right things at first then their would not be problems in the long run, or atleast less problems.