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I am going to be leading the 5th Sunday combined lesson this month, and the topic is “Using Social Media as Church Members”. It will be only the adults who would be attending PH and RS, so there won’t be any youth attending – which is a good thing, I think, since those two groups need very different presentations about this topic. I probably will end up with 30-45 minutes for the lesson. I would love input from everyone here. My current plan is to talk first, very briefly, about the major types of social media – limited to Facebook, Twitter and blogging.
After that brief introduction, I plan on spending some time showing everyone how to set up a personal blog – using my own and my wife’s blogs as examples.
I then plan on handing out and discussing a summary of simple internet communication / blogging etiquette points – emphasizing, especially, respect, proper fit for group blogs and not preaching to people.
Finally, I want to leave a little time for a Q&A session.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Sounds like the main focus will be blogging then? A bit of caution, maybe it’s just me but blogging doesn’t interest me at all, I might tune out if that were the focus. Truth be told you run the risk of people not interested in social media tuning out anyway. The Q & A will be good, it will allow people to tell you what they are interested in learning about.
Re: etiquette. That’s a tricky one. Maybe have some sample posts (made up, not real) that break etiquette rules and get people to tell you how the sample posts aren’t kosher. This goes for original posts and replies. Trolls, flames, direct personal insults (
:angel: ), etc.I will say that I’m glad you are the one teaching the class.
Edit:
Oh yeah, and for those that are in the older generation that are just venturing out into social media for the first time… the temptation will be to forward and post every humorous thing you come across to all your family and friends. Do not bother doing this. 1) It’s irritating to your friends and family. 2) They already saw it 10 years ago.
Hi Ray, That will probably be a bit of a tough topic given the age ranges of everyone. I would agree with nibbler on covering the blogging though — you might lose some people there if you cover that topic in detail. It takes quite a bit of time and effort to blog successfully.
Were I to do such a lesson, I would probably focus more on using social media to connect with people you would not normally reach. FB has been nice since I have been able to connect with people I knew on my mission — it’s been great! I would also mention how it can be used to support people in their struggles. Like it or not, some people kind of spill their guts out there and sometimes it’s nice to respond with a personal message or maybe even… a phone call or personal visit.
I personally dislike how when commenting on things in a blog or news story or whatever that some people abuse their anonymity by being jerks about what they say (personal attacks, insensitivity, etc.), so a discussion about that would be good.
Good luck!!
Maybe you’re planning to do this, but I would add a word about social media addiction and how it can cloud your sense of reality. One small example: I have a niece who has a problem with FB, texting, and pinterest. Her husband travels a lot for work and she gets lonely/overwhelmed with her kids/house/freelance job. Sometimes she escapes into social media for periods of time to the exclusion of all else, even her children. She’s not doing anything “sinful”, she’s just becomes totally obsessed. Her mom has to step in sometimes and “throw cold water on her” so to speak. She knows it can be a problem, but can’t seem to stop. This example may seem extreme, but I thinks it much more common than people realize. I also think it can happen to anyone. Thanks for your input, everyone. I am crafting the lesson format still, so I appreciate your responses. The topic of social media is vast. As a career teacher, I think your lesson is a bit unfocused as it spans too many topics in the limited time you have. Also, your purpose isn’t clear to me — what do you see as the goal of a lesson social media as it relates to church members?
I feel if we knew the answer to that question, it would drive the content very clearly.
Things that are major points to me are grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. If a post has glaring and obvious errors I tend to discount it. The lesson went really well. Thanks, everyone, for your input. I followed the suggestion to focus more and not try to do so much. I read a few highlights from Elder Ballard’s BYU-HI commencement address in Dec 2007 entitled “Sharing the Gospel Using the Internet”, and we talked about those highlights. We then talked about 12 suggestions for how to communicate properly online – focused specifically on how they relate to sharing the Gospel.
I told everyone upfront that I didn’t have time to explain how to set up a blog but that I would be happy to talk with anyone individually at any point about that. I also told everyone that this wasn’t about a “program” or “the correct way to share the Gospel online” – and that I really liked Elder Ballard’s talk because he didn’t try to tell everyone what they should do. I told them that decision was up to each of them, but that I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I have spent online since he gave his talk almost 7 years ago.
If anyone wants to see the outline of the lesson, I did the same thing in my Sunday School class and have the summary in that thread here. The only addition to it from the 3rd hour that I want to add is the following: When talking about citing sources, the 2nd Counselor in our Stake Presidency (who sees a LOT of things differently than I do but is an absolutely wonderful man) added an important comment. He mentioned how important it is to make sure any quote you forward or reference is accurate. He used an example of a friend who had forwarded a quote via Facebook that was attributed to President Kimball – but that President Kimball actually had not said what was quoted. He mentioned how easy it is to go to lds.org and run a search for any quote to see if it is accurate. I really appreciated that contribution, and I added Snopes.com as a good way to check the accuracy of non-religious things.
Yeah, that’s a big one. A few months back a quote was attributed to Hinckley but he never said it. It appeared veryoften in my FB feed. Of course the worry is that now the quote is floating around out there and it just makes it harder to invalidate. I mentioned it to one of my friends that had posted it and they removed it from their page, it’s important to spread the word.
Glad it went well Ray. I’m sure it was good given your vast experience in this area, plus your balanced view of online participation.
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