Being Social With Media

Today I'm going to talk about some different social media platforms, their educational uses, and educators that already use it.

Facebook
I looked at school library pages for this section of my assignment.  What I found is that school libraries posted about recent school events, what was happening in the library, promoted work of the students, and had funny library memes.  An advantage to using Facebook is you get to promote your library and your school.  Using a social media platform like Facebook gets the word out about what the library is doing.  So many people have no idea what the library is all about, so this helps garner support for the library and its programs.  A disadvantage would be that Facebook isn’t particularly popular with teens.  They’ve moved on to other platforms, because now all of their parents are on Facebook (which could be a plus too).

Twitter
Here I will share some information about prominent edu-tech tweeters. I tried to embed the Tweets, but for some reason they wouldn't stick. So i included links to them instead.

Kathy Schrock, @kathyshrock,  has a lot of technology / program announcements.    
https://twitter.com/kathyschrock/status/1132240568506048517

Linda braun, @lbraun2000, posts a lot about reaching teens and things that YALSA is doing.
https://twitter.com/lbraun2000/status/1134110801558511621

Alan November, @globalearner, hasn’t posted much in the last year, but what he has posted speak to teachers learning, and getting students interested in learning.
https://twitter.com/globalearner/status/1011253619738447873

Gwyneth Jones(@GwynethJones)’s  tweets tend to be about her school, libraries, a bit of tech, and making libraries a safe place for everyone.
https://twitter.com/GwynethJones/status/1134879580907548672

Jim Lerman, @jimlerman, actually has posts that seem on topic!  All of the tweets I saw were about Google apps, stem, educational technology, and using technology.
https://twitter.com/jimlerman/status/1134880046894800897
 
Instagram

Unlike Facebook, Instagram is still used by a lot of kids.  This is one step in the right direction in just hooking their interest.  You can use Instagram in the classroom in much the way the kids already use it, documentation and sharing.  It can be used as a way to record work they’re doing.  Once it’s shared, it can be graded by the teacher, peer evaluated by the rest of the class, or just appreciated by their families.


All of the above social media platforms can be great ways to communicate and collaborate with others.  Instagram is a great way to share images with others, Twitter short messages, and Facebook gets in touch with the adults of the community.  The main obstacle with any of these, is their acceptance by the school.  Most schools don’t see the educational possibilities of these programs and their only move is to try and shut them out.  So access during school is hard.  Some educators I know don’t want to even try using them for school because they don’t want to spend their own money/data to do it.  So getting educators to spend the time with it and being willing to use it is step one, then step two is getting the district/ school to accept it.  Once we get past those hurdles, it will be a good educational tool.
 




Comments

  1. Jessi BarrJuly 31, 2019 at 10:41 PM

    I agree that it is important to advocate for the use of social media in classroom lessons to increase student engagement. I was weary of bringing Instagram into the library as well, but I now see how powerful it can be when promoting library events.

    ReplyDelete

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