Salerno Showcase Young Minds Online Projects
Young Minds Online Final Showcase in Salerno
Last week Transition Year students in Salerno Secondary School in Salthill Galway presented their final projects at a showcase in the school.
The final showcase was facilitated by TY teachers Mr. Fogarty and Ms. Waterstone. The 50 TY’s presented the findings of their 7-month course to first, second and third years.
Over the past seven months the girls in Salerno have developed a best practice Social Media Use Policy for themselves, their peers and their school; developed, launched and executed an Anti-Cyberbullying Campaign, learned skills in Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Web Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Direct Marketing.
They learned to protect and manage their Online Reputation when engaging in online activity; they also developed a course for parents in social media and completed a study of Social Media Use among students in Salerno.
The students broke up into groups of 8/9 and took on a module of study from the Young Minds Online Course. Below we share the findings from each group with you.
Anti-Social Media Behaviour
The final showcase began with a film viewing, the girls from the Anti-Social Media Behaviour group invited the schools first years to watch a film called ‘Cyberbully’, which tells the story of a teenage girl who is bullied online. The girls told us that they wanted to show the film to the first years because it is a different way to approach the topic of bullying online and it might have an impact on some of them because it shows the process of cyber bullying and the consequences. The film got a great response from the younger students, and there was even some tears. This same group also made a presentation later in the day about the work they did to set up an anti-bullying campaign called Safebook in their school.
Survey of Social Media Use
The next group to showcase their work was the Survey of Social Media Use group. This group wanted to find out how students in Salerno use Social Media, Is social media popular? Are new social networks replacing Facebook? To do this the girls chose to survey first and sixth years, they thought the difference between new students in the school and finishing students might be interesting.
Their aims were to find out:
- What social media is most popular with the students?
- How safe students are with their privacy?
- Compare use between 1st and 6th years.
Here are some of the results:
Social Media Use Policy
This group had to develop their own Social Media Use Policy around areas such as privacy, emotions, geo-tags, language, sharing, images, videos etc. To do this the girls researched these areas in detail and from their research developed their own Social Media Policy offering tips to stay safe online and highlight the dangers of being careless online.
The girls from this group hoped that after the showcase they would have encouraged the younger students in Salerno to follow the Social Media Policy they put in place in their school throughout the course of Young Minds Online so that they can create and keep a safe environment online.
Managing Online Reputation
This group showcased what they learned about protection and management of their personal reputation when engaging in online activity. The girls presented the importance of best practice online by showcasing an experiment they carried out to see if best practice online is as important as it is said to be. They created two different Facebook accounts, one of the accounts practiced best practice online and the other worst practice online. The accounts added the same people and had the same profile picture but, despite these similarities were very different accounts. In conclusion more people ‘friended’ and liked the profile practicing best practice and less on the account practicing worst practice online.
the girls also held a quiz after their presentation, asking students questions about online reputation.
Young Heads on Old Shoulders
This group showcased a guide they developed for parents on social media. As parents weren’t able to attend the showcase on the day the students from this group presented their guide to the schools second and third years and asked them to pass on what they learned to their parents. They presentation will also be available to parents on the Salerno School website.
The presentation covers topics such as:
- What is Facebook, Twitter, Instragrame, YouTube, Snapchat?
- How to set up an account on each social network.
- Privacy settings.
- Best practice online and guidelines.
Developing Digital Footprint of Salerno
This group were given the task of updating Salerno.ie, and the schools social media. In their presentation they spoke about the skills they learned to carry out these tasks during the course of Young Minds Online. Seven months ago Salerno Secondary School had practically no digital footprint but thanks to the girls in this group the Salerno’s digital footprint has deepened.
The girls used Facebook and Twitter to post notices and reminders about events in the school like, sports events or colours day’s. One of the highlights of their presentation was showing a video made by Salerno students for the schools YouTube account which has now reached over 21,000 hits.
Young Minds Online in Leinster House
Following the successful showcase Joanne was delighted to meet Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn in Leinster House this week to discuss the potential of Young Minds Online in training students, teachers and parents all over the country about best practice online.
Jillian O’Toole,
University of Limerick,
Digital Marketing Intern,
Digital Training Institute.