Hello! My name is Andrew Mahone. I am 28 years old and currently working as a teacher at the Phoenix Alternative School in Akron, OH while attending the University of Akron. I began working in the field of special education 4 years ago at the Kennedy Krieger School in Baltimore, MD as a one to one aide. I loved the work and decided to pursue a Master's Degree in Mod - Intensive Intervention Specialist Licensure.
In my free time, I play the Pokemon Trading Card Game competitively. This hobby is pretty serious! I travel to tournaments all over the country to play. I am a well known player within the community, having won a Regional Championship and placed at the World Championships before. This past year, I finished 7th at the North American International Championships in a field of 1,400. I even run my own YouTube account where I discuss trends and strategy in Pokemon! With all this going on, Its safe to say that I am a very busy person.
I use social media to communicate and I have many social media apps on my phone, including Facebook, Snap Chat, Instagram and Twitter. However, as the years have gone by, I have intentionally distanced myself from social media. Currently, I only use Facebook and Twitter regularly, as they are the best forms of social media for promoting my YouTube channel and communicating with the Pokemon community. About a year ago, I decided to try turning all of my notifications off on all of my social media accounts to see how it would affect my life. I loved it. I felt liberated from the addicting pull of my smart phone, and felt more in tune with the world around me. Although some of my peers expect me to respond on social media in a timely manner, most of them have gotten used to the fact that if they want to contact me, they will have to wait. This has, quite frankly, changed my life. No longer do I feel the need to garner attention online and respond to anyone who wants my attention on a whim. I am an adult with goals to accomplish and things to do! I don't have time to chat meaninglessly or scroll through feeds all day. Instead of scrolling through feeds of my friends thoughts and pictures on social media, I spend most of my free time on the web reading articles that are of interest to me and educational in some way or another.
Maybe this all just means that I am getting old! As I have aged, I have become far less fond of social media. It feels like walking into a crowded mall where a bunch of people I don't really want to hear from are shouting from the top of their lungs. When I do use social media, it is with purpose and intent. I use it to contact specific people with specific purpose. I can't stand the endless scroll of social media, and honestly I think its turning much of our society into zombies.
I think social media as a form of communication and outreach for teachers to continue connecting with and teaching students after school ends is a great idea. Why not post notes from class online so all your students can review them? Why not make yourself available online so your students can ask you a question through Instagram or something about a homework assignment if they need to? I think that social media can be constructive as a communication tool between educators and students, but could also get out of hand. Obviously, students and teachers shouldn't really be chatting it up on social media in a casual way. Conversations should be professional, and teachers would have to maintain professional distance from their students while engaging with them on social media. I also think that phones have the potential to be hugely distracting in the classroom in general, and I am very skeptical of them being incorporated successfully into daily classroom functions without getting out of hand, especially with middle and high school students.
Ultimately, there does not seem to be any stopping social media from taking over the lives of our young people. So much of their internal rewards systems are constructed around attaining likes and attention online. As much as I hope that kids will learn to value real life experiences and endeavors over manufactured digital ones, I don't think there is much I can do about it. Kids will do what they want! As a teacher, I hope to use technology and social media to make myself and my lessons more available with my students, however, I am also very skeptical of where social media is taking us as a society.
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