1 Collaboration and Communication Applications: Opportunities and Threats Samma Ajavon-Romer Use this template to plan and submit your work for the collaboration and communication app assignment. In this assignment you were to investigate and gain experience in the use of two collaborative/communication apps for personal, pedagogical, and/or professional purposes providing evidence of engagement with at least two other individuals. Choose from apps such as Marco Polo, VoiceThreads, #GroupMe, Hangouts, etc. App # 1-Marco Polo Description The creators of Marco Polo call the app a “video walkie-talkie.” Messages are sent promptly and are accessible for the other user to see and react to nearly immediately, if that’s what you need. But you don’t really talk in real time. Instead, you take turns clearing out recordings for each other. This takes much of the stress, commitment, and challenges out of conventional video chatting. Some families sates that it healps them keep in touch. The app has many fun features, including filters that can change the sound of your voice. You can also draw and write on videos to personalize them. Video conversations are stored in your conversations and users in a group can rewatch videos sent in the past. Unlike a lot of other video apps, there is no text chat or direct message (DM) option ("Marco Polo app: What is it? Is it safe?," 2020). Warnings: Teachers and parents should be aware of if used by school-aged children are the sharing of contacts. As soon as you download the app, it asks you to share your contacts. This feature causes some concerns. The Marco Polo App requires access to all of your phone’s contacts. Once you upload your contacts to an app/company, you can never get them back("Marco Polo app: What is it? Is it safe?," 2020). The app having access to all of your contacts can make the users and their conctacts very susceptible to spam. Safeguards that should be in place if used for teaching and learning are reviewing and teaching students about what’s appropriate to send in a video or chat message. Remind students that their classmates have the ability to screen shot their videos and reshare it on their channel. Safeguards that should be in place if used for teaching and learning are as follow: Review what’s appropriate to send in a video and chat message. Provide students with a reminder that classmates have the ability to screen shot their videos and can reshare it on other channels. Limit students activities within the app to only instructional purposes Encorage parents to monitor students’ Marco Polo’s activity and contact lists weekly. 2 Ongoing reinforcement of teaching kids what’s appropriate to share will go a long way in preventing worrisome behavior. Link to the app: https://www.marcopolo.me App # 2-Snapchat Description: Snapchat is a mobile messaging application utilized to share photographs, recordings, content, and drawings. It’s free to download the app and free to send messages utilizing it. It has gotten to be popular in an awfully short amount of time, particularly with youthful individuals. There's one highlight that makes Snapchat diverse from other forms of texting and photo sharing: the messages vanish from the recipient’s phone after a number of seconds. Snapchat functions consist of private, person-to-person photo sharing, but you can now use it for a range of different tasks, including sending short videos, live video chatting, messaging, creating Bitmoji avatars, and sharing a chronological “story” that’s broadcasted to all your followers. There’s even a designated “Discovery” area that showcases short-form content from major publishers like Buzzfeed (Pocket-lint, 2020). Other functions of Snapchat concist of storing media in private storage area, adding filters, live locations. Warnings. Snap Chat uses a feature known as Snap Map which allows anyone with a browser to head to the page, zoom in and click on any location around the world to see what people are snapping about in that area. This Snap Map showcases live videos that could potentially be violent and tramatizing to young viewers. Despite the wranings, young people continue to engage with social media apps. Punyanunt-Carter et al. (2017) suggests, “a great deal of scholarly research has provided insight into the ways in which social media, including but not limited to Snapchat, meet the needs of the social media users” (p.34). The warnings that teachers and parents should be aware of sexting, snapcash, and media oversharing. Using Snapchat, users are able to share videos and photos to various other users. Issues regarding sexting became a major warning for snap chat users. Parents should be concern about their children sharing nudes or sexually explicit pictures. Patchin, et al. (2019) writes, “most commonly, the term has been used to describe incidents where teenagers take nude or semi-nude (e.g., topless) photographs of themselves and distribute those images to others via cell phone messaging” (p. 25). The use and misuse of social media, smartphones, and other connected devices by young people remains a prominent area of concern among adults. Safeguards that should be in place if used for teaching and learning are the creation of a plan for classroom usage. For example, educators should make a list of questions that they can answer before implementing snapchat. Educators should answer the following questions: 1. Will I add students, parents or others in the school community back as friends? 3 2. 3. 4. 5. What are your goals for using Snapchat? What’s your tone going to be? How will you draw a clear line between your personal and professional lives? Will the communication be one way or two way? Teachers will need to leverage the snapchat usage in their classrooms, making sure that they have control over most of students’ usage in the classrooms. Agosto et al. (2016) writes, instead of dismissing the entire social media world as frivolous and dangerous, providing teens with a balanced view shows them that you respect their desire to interact online and that you trust in their ability to become responsible users” (p.44). Link to the app: https://www.snapchat.com App # 3-Google Hangout Description. is a communications platform developed by Google that helps users to start and join in different communication channels like instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls. They can also save expenses and time on travel with Hangout's face-to-face functionality for online meetings and conferences. Google Hangouts works with your Google account, allowing you to communicate with your Google contacts through text messages, video chats and voice calls. A great thing about Google Hangouts is if you’re on the go, you can start a Hangouts session on your computer, and seamlessly continue it on your mobile device (What Google Hangout, n.d.). Warnings: Google Hangout has a lot privacy and security concerns. Though it does encrypt hangout conversations, it doesn't use end-to-end encryption instead, messages are encrypted in transit. Once they are on a server, Google has complete access to them. (Google meet security, n.d.). Although these are potential warnings, Google Meet privacy disclosure claims that users has access to their own data. According to (Google meet security, n.d), “control over your data— Meet adheres to the same robust privacy commitments and data protections as the rest of Google Cloud’s enterprise services. Parents and Teachers need to be aware of video call bombing, and hacking. During video bombing, strangers automatically joins your chat room without being invited. It could be anyone hacking your google hangout. Safeguards: Safeguards that should be in place if used for teaching and learning are close monitoring of students’ during live lessons or meetings. Review the videos in the google privacy and security center prior to implementation. Have parents sign a consent form for students’ usage. Use only school channels to communicate with both staff and students. As always, staff shouldn't communicate with parents or pupils outside school channels (e.g., they shouldn't talk to parents using their personal Facebook accounts, or contact pupils using their personal email addresses or phone numbers (Google meet security & privacy for admins, n.d.). Link to the app: https://www.hangouts.google.com 4 App # 4-Tik Tok Description: TikTok is a social networking app sharing user-generated recordings, generally of individuals lip-synching to prevalent tunes. It was initially called musically People can make and transfer their own recordings where they lip-synch, sing, move, or have conversations. The Tik Tok App functions shows you suggested recordings, as well as recordings from other app users you follow. In terms of making recordings, the app works a bit like Snapchat. You record recordings by holding down a big red button, and but unlike snapcaht, you'll be able alter them a later on. Briefly describe the app and its functions. Warnings. Tik Tok leaglly collects and exposes young kids personal information. This practice makes children very accessible to poetential sexual predetors. By using this app, undergage children will be able to see, and receive text messages from adults. Stathopoulou et al. (2020)suggests,“Each new version of these mobile apps brings innovative features making them more convenient and affordable” (p.4). In addition, the warnings teachers should be aware of if school age students uses this app are the constant alerts, exposure to inappropriate contents, explicit lyrics to songs, lack of academic focus, and lost of instructional time. Corby et al.(2019) writes, “ In an attempt to get down with the kids, I have downloaded the TikTok app and I have been alarmed by the number of scantily dressed, school-aged females, lip-synching and dancing provocatively around their bedrooms” (p. 3). Like all things social media, a degree of caution needs to be taken. If school age students are using this app, parents should be warned that the account is automatically made public, anyone can send comments and direct messages, anyone can do a duet, and strangers can have contact with their children. It might be beneficial for policymakers to concentrate their efforts on increasing mobile app users’awareness of potential privacy threats and their belief that they can protect their mobile privacy (Kernis et al., 2019). Safeguards: When used for teaching and learning the safeguards that needs to be in place are changing users accounts from public to private, set restrictions for users’ usage on the app, restrict in app purchases. Stathopoulou et al. (2020)suggests, “Of course, even the most careful educators can’t prevent misuse of social media” ( p. 5).There is no sense in trying to fight against social media, educators should focus its power on improving educational outcomes. Link to the app: https://www.tiktok.com/en/ App # 5-Whats App Description. Dove (2020) explained, “WhatsApp is a text and voice messaging app that launched in 2009. It’s become incredibly popular since then, in no small thanks to its features and flexibility. As a free service, WhatsApp allows for messages and calls on both desktop and mobile devices” (p.3). The Whats App is higly favored because it is completely free, doesn’t have a lot of advertisments, and easy to use. 5 Whats App functions concsist of free reliable messaging, allows users to keep in touch with groups of people, users can speak freely to people and other countries, and their contacts can be synced via phone, tablet, or pc. Warnings that teachers and parents should be aware of are the deletion of messages, Instagram and Facebook intergration, and privacy issues. Conversations between users can be easily deleted. Due to the mergers of facebook and Instagram, content from those platforms can display in the user’s Whats App without needing access. Parents and Teachers should closely monitor school-age children’s activity within the app. Safeguards that should be in place if used for teaching and learning are the creation of a school safe profile, instructions on how to block people, instructions on how to report scam messages, instructions on how to delete accidental messages. Even though somebody would need your child’s phone number to add them as a contact, as an extra security measure we suggest altering their profile settings to control who can see their profile photo and status ("Online safety: WhatsApp," 2019). Link to the app: https://www.whatsapp.com Link to Blog: https://sacoriromer.wixsite.com/website Include the link to your findings (Insert link) https://www.tes.com/news/teachers-guide-tiktok https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-whatsapp/ https://www.whatsapp.com/features/ https://support.google.com/a/answer/7582940?hl=en https://www.bark.us/blog/marco-polo-monitoring/ 6 References Agosto, D. E., & Abbas, J. (2016). Simple Tips for Helping Students Become Safer, Smarter Social Media Users. Knowledge Quest, 44(4), 42–47. A teacher’s guide to TikTok. (n.d.). Tes. Retrieved June 7, 2020, from https://www.tes.com/news/teachers-guide-tiktok Dove, J. (2020, May 19). What is WhatsApp? Here's everything you need to know. Digital Trends. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-whatsapp/ Features. (n.d.). WhatsApp.com. https://www.whatsapp.com/features/ Google meet security & privacy for admins. (n.d.). Google Help. https://support.google.com/a/answer/7582940?hl=en Google meet security & privacy for admins. (n.d.). Google Help. https://schoolleaders.thekeysupport.com/covid-19/safeguard-and-support-pupils/safeguardingwhile-teaching/remote-teaching-safeguarding-pupils-and-staff/#section-0 Indu. (2018). Implications of social media (Facebook and Whats App) among the students of Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak. Indian Journal of Health & Wellbeing, 9(1), 50–52. Marco Polo app: What is it? Is it safe? (2020, May 28). Bark. https://www.bark.us/blog/marcopolo-monitoring/ Online safety: WhatsApp. (2019, February 26). Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership. https://www.wirralsafeguarding.co.uk/news/online-safety-whatsapp/ 7 Patchin, J. W. 1. patchinj@uwec. ed., & Hinduja, S. (2019). The Nature and Extent of Sexting Among a National Sample of Middle and High School Students in the U.S. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(8), 2333–2343. https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1007/s10508-019-1449-y Pocket-lint. (2020, April 6). How does Snapchat work and what's the point? Retrieved from https://www.pocket-lint.com/apps/news/snapchat/131313-what-is-snapchat-how-does-it-workand-what-is-it-used-for Punyanunt-Carter, N. M., De La Cruz, J. J., & Wrench, J. S. (2017). Investigating the relationships among college students’ satisfaction, addiction, needs, communication apprehension, motives, and uses & gratifications with Snapchat. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 870–875. https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1016/j.chb.2017.06.034 Stathopoulou, A., Loukeris, D., Karabatzaki, Z., Politi, E., Salapata, Y., & Drigas, A. (2020). Evaluation of Mobile Apps Effectiveness in Children with Autism Social Training via Digital Social Stories. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, 3, 4–18. https://doiorg.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.3991/ijim.v14i03.10281 What is the Marco Polo app and is it safe? (2020, May 12). Smart Social. https://smartsocial.com/marco-polo-app-guide/ What Google hangouts is and how to start talking today. (2017, April 25). TechBoomers.com. https://techboomers.com/t/what-is-google-hangouts Wottrich, V. M., van Reijmersdal, E. A., & Smit, E. G. (2019). App Users Unwittingly in the Spotlight: A Model of Privacy Protection in Mobile Apps. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 53(3), 1056–1083.
