Education Week - November 27, 2019 - 13

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event in the lead-up to the American
Civil War.
"That can be kind of a dry issue,"
Kozlowsky admitted. But TikTok
helped bring it to life. "It's a chance for
them to be creative. It's a fun way for
students to show what they know."
Kozlowsky is an early adopter to
bringing the latest social media craze
into the classroom. TikTok is a shortform video application, similar to the
now-defunct Vine video platform.
The platform appeals to a wide-variety of ages. But, as many educators can
tell you, it's a hit with tweens and teens.
TikTok is "sort of its own language
and it's the language that teenagers
speak," said Jennifer Berg Gaither,
the school librarian at Baltimore City
College, a public magnet high school
in the city. "It's incredibly popular with
them." Like Kozlowsky, she's enthusiastic about TikTok's potential as a
teaching and engagement tool.
But, even as experts encourage the
trend, they warn that the platform has
the potential to become a big classroom distraction. And, like Snapchat
and Instagram, it could become yet
another forum for bullying. Add to
that ubiquitous student data privacy
considerations, giving educators good
reason to proceed cautiously with the
use of this relatively new social media
platform.

Teaching Tool
Still, teachers see the possibilities of
TikTok.
Earlier this school year, Kathryn
Byars, a 10th grade social studies
teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High
School in Eastvale, Calif., gave her students the option of making TikToks to
compare and contrast different historical trade routes, and to share inventions from the Industrial Revolution.
She sees it as an alternative to other
video platforms.
She thinks with the right structure, including limited time on the
platform and specific assignments, it
can be a way for students to channel
something they already love into a
learning tool. "Instead of fighting it,
I'm finding ways to engage with it in
my classroom."
Other teachers have created their
own TikToks, including Berg Gaither,
who is the extended essay coordinator
for the school's International Baccalaureate program. She helps kids find
materials for a 4,000-word research
paper requirement, the kind of assignment usually given to college students.
She's used the platform to try to make
that daunting process seem more
manageable for students, creating, for
instance, a TikTok that explains how
to do academic citations.
Her colleague, Edwin Perez, a Spanish teacher at Baltimore City College,
said he first gave students the option
of using TikTok to show what they
learned during a visit to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City,
and to point out examples of French
and Spanish language use in signage

around the city. He's now planning
to use the platform to allow his students to create short, scripted videos
in Spanish.
TikTok comes with its fair share of
potential problems. Educators should
be mindful that it could become a bullying tool, said Christine Elgersma, a
senior editor for parent education at
Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that studies the
impact of technology on children and
young people.
On TikTok, you can "duet" with
another person, meaning react to another person's TikTok, Elgersma said.
That will display as something like a
split screen, she explained. And it can
be used for bullying purposes. "People will make fun of someone else's
video," she said. Users can turn off
those features before someone takes
advantage of them, Elgersma said,
which might cut down on the bullying
temptation.
What's more, there are also whole
compilations of TikTok "cringe" videos on YouTube that could be posted
without the original author's consent,
she said. "You might not know that
your TikTok has been shared widely
and perhaps people are laughing at
you, or making fun of you on other
platforms. Obviously, in middle or
high school, that can become a source
of drama." Students could get targeted
and their TikTok accounts could get
spammed with kids making fun of
them, she suggested.
Teachers aren't immune from potential ridicule, either. Elgersma has
seen some educators unknowingly
play bit parts in student TikTok videos.
"I have seen teachers being, I think,
unwittingly filmed and become a part
of a TikTok video," she said.
And like other social media, TikTok
has the potential to be distracting.
"Kids are definitely using this app at
school," she said.
But Elizabeth Thomas, Kozlowsky's
principal, said that, so far, TikTok
hasn't become a classroom management headache.
"I think there are other social media
platforms that have been extremely
difficult to manage," Thomas said.
"But I would not say TikTok has gotten there."

'Very Troubling'
And then there are serious student
data privacy considerations.
"Schools should avoid TikTok like
the plague," said Brad Shear, a parent and lawyer specializing in privacy
and security, who sometimes consults
with school districts. Shear doesn't
think that teachers should compel
their students to sign up for any social
media accounts, including TikTok,
in part because it's unclear what the
companies who run these platforms
ultimately do with the personal data
they collect.
And he's concerned that a funny
-but slightly inappropriate-video
could come back to haunt a student
in the college admissions process, or
with future employers. Shear is also

Getty

TikTok Raises Concerns About Privacy, Bullying

especially worried about TikTok, as
opposed to other social media platforms, because it is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance. Former
TikTok employees have accused
the Chinese government of censoring TikTok posts, including political
content, the Washington Post has
reported. And it's not clear if the Chinese government will ultimately get
access to the personal data of TikTok
users, including students, Shear said.
"I find it very troubling when our
schools are encouraging our kids to
use TikTok," he said. "At the end of
the day, these companies cannot be
trusted" with student data, particularly with the looming prospect of interference by the Chinese government.
Byars said she's aware of those concerns and has cautioned her students
that it's unclear what social media
companies will do with their data. She
and Kozlowsky said they would never
require a student to use TikTok to
complete an assignment-it's always
going to be one of several options for
showing their work.
Perez has a similar strategy. And he
lets students who don't want to sign
up for an app-or don't have a cellphone-work with a classmate who
has an account.

'Truly Scary Things'
Another thing that bothers Elgersma: Younger children on TikTok
will sometimes "try to emulate older
kids and teens." They might lip-sync
to songs with mature or inappropriate
lyrics, dance in provocative ways, or
appear scantily clad.
Teachers, particularly elementary
and middle school teachers, might
want to consider addressing those behaviors and TikTok as part of digital
citizenship lessons, she said. Teachers
should present students with positive
role models on the app and give them
ideas about "how you can have fun
with an app like TikTok without having to make a video that's like, a girl in
a bikini dancing to an R. Kelly song.
There are ways to use it that are ageappropriate."
Berg Gaither realized how tough
that can be when she made a TikTok
video as a bonding experience with
her students. They wanted to try out
their own version of one of the songs

4 Tips About TikTok
The TikTok video-sharing platform is becoming
increasingly popular with tweens and teens, and some
teachers have started using it in their classrooms. What
do educators need to know?

TikTok can be an engaging
way to liven up a lesson.
It's a possible alternative to
other video platforms, one
California educator said.

TikTok has the potential to
become a bullying platform,
in part because users can
comment on each other's
videos, and because some
users post other people's
videos on YouTube for the
express purpose of making
fun of them.

Some privacy advocates
have concerns about
students sharing their data
on any social media platform
because it's unclear what
companies do with it.

Like other social media
platforms, TikTok has a
dark side. Some videos are
highly sexually explicit, or
feature self-harm.

SOURCE: Common Sense Media, Education Week

and dances that she said "millions" of
people had already posted on the platform. It wasn't easy, though, to find
one with school-appropriate lyrics.
"The struggle is real trying to find a
PG song that didn't have the n-word
or the f-word," Berg Gaither said. "It
was very, very hard." And, just like
any other social media app that's
being used by kids, teens, and older
adults, teachers should be aware
that, with TikTok, "there are risks associated, especially [for] vulnerable
kids," Elgersma said. Some adults
will look at the videos, comment on
students' bodies, or offer them money
or other incentives to meet in person.
Students, she said, need to be taught
how to deflect that kind of attention.
TikTok, too, has its dark corners, including adults-only hashtags, which
might flag highly sexualized content,
or self-harm videos.
"There are some truly negative
things and some truly scary things,
and some truly creepy people on

these platforms too," Elgersma said.
"If you're going to use it in class, you
also have to teach kids how to use it
safely outside of class," including how
to make an account private.
Byars talks to her students about
those issues. And she encourages
them not to post the TikToks they do
for her class, and instead put the videos on another platform to be graded
so that their "images and faces"
aren't going out into the social media
sphere.
But she acknowledged that many
students will still have public TikTok
accounts, despite her cautions.
"I don't know if the best way to
challenge that in the classroom is to
say 'never use these things.' Kids are
going to use them anyway," she said.
"So how do we start engaging in the
conversations about the dangers of it
if we're not willing to tell them, 'there
are some positives to this thing that
you're using and that you're spending
all this time on as well?' "

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Education Week - November 27, 2019

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