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Social Media for Schools
By: Marijean Jaggers | 11/12/2007
Interrupted by a barrage of school-related e-mails, I've been thinking of the variety of ways schools could and should embrace social media. Here's why:
E-mail announcements are a disruption and not effective. Recipients tend to read the e-mails (if at all) when they are recieved, not when they're ready to devote attention to them. Messages are sometimes blocked, or the content is irrelevant to the recipient.
A better method is to offer RSS feeds for specific communities from the school's home page. The Football Feed would certainly be popular, but Senior News would eliminate parents of seniors getting extraneous information about underclassmen. Administratively, school blogs save time and money. The administration of e-mail blasts is time consuming and tedious.
Blog posts have the added benefit of being archived and discoverable, eliminating the administration task of collecting and maintaining a cumbersome e-mail list. Missed that note your fifth grader has crumpled at the bottom of her backpack? A post with the information would certainly help Mom and Dad stay on top of school events; and the archive allows readers to go back and review notes they may have missed. Students, parents, educators and administrators will easily find the feeds they're interested in reading and be able to sign up and unsubscribe to the feeds independently. The school will be able to review the success and popularity of individual feeds, making adjustments where necessary.
Add social networking into the school social media plan and you have teachers and administrators joining groups on Facebook, collaborating across districts, counties and states to share best practices and learn from one another. (Younger teachers, fresh from college, are likely already there.) Teachers networking to find new opportunities will form relationships necessary to do so; administrators looking to boost their popularity and name recognition can network with their constituency, building a group of supporters for their ideas and initiatives.
Blogging administrators and school board members provide great benefit by allowing two-way conversation. Blogging technology affords the conversation that most of these individuals will tell you they don't have time to engage in. With a blog, administrators can open a topic, share their thoughts and invite comments. In one efficient online space the administrator allows parents, students, taxpayers and others to provide their questions and opinions, thereby giving the administrator the space to respond, correct false or misguided information and get an accurate sense of how they're doing, professionally. Responding to the question of one in an online format often answers the question of many, giving the administrator back the time they're not able to spend, having individual conversations with all the members of their constituency.
Blogging teachers have been recieving kudos for the communication channel they've opened with students. Posting their experiences with the class helps develop their relationship with students and provides a space for them to post assignments, reminders and other details. The blog replaces the blackboard and is a retrievable resource to which students can refer as often as needed. In addition, students can post their questions for the benefit of the entire class.
Some interesting education blogs:
- Blogging Teachers -- a tool to teach teachers how to blog
- Red Space Rocket
- Cool Cat Teacher Blog
- This Week In Education
- Thoughts On Teaching
- Principal Viewpoint
- C'ville School News
Posted in Social Media, Digital Communications
comments
DBonham says:
Fri, November 30, 2007 at 4:56:pm
The light bulb for me as an educator just came on involving blogs and their instructional value. Let’s play this out in a real world educational scenario.
Jimmy is in a history class and just completed his third revision of his research paper on the impact of building materials and the environment. His paper is well written and he supports his argument with valid research. His teacher grades the report, he recieves his grade and that’s it. Paper is returned, maybe put into a notebook for future reference, but likely to never be seen again.
Second scenario- Jimmy is in the same class yet now posts his first couple drafts to the teacher’s blog. The other students in the class read and provide comment to the submission, further engaging other students, and adding more value to Jimmy’s writing for his final revision. Now the teacher is able to grade the paper (after the interactive, collaborative exercise that- by the way- takes place mostly on a home computer than at school) but the paper is not gone or forgotten. Jimmy’s paper now is viewable by anyone else on the web for them to continue to comment and for future revisions if he so chooses. His paper still has life.
Getting students to own their education with the variety of technological resources is a valid way to increase learning and engagement in our schools. We just need to work out the details…...
Christi says:
Mon, December 03, 2007 at 1:42:pm
Fascinating to see the applicable uses from an educator’s perspective. Thanks for sharing the scenario!
Maya says:
Tue, November 13, 2007 at 9:44:am
Interestingly enough, a university in our region is using a blog to communicate their name change/new brand to students, faculty, alumni and donors. It’s been a great tool in getting information out, keeping up a two-way dialogue and gaining buy-in on the new brand from all interested parties. Definitely worth checking out (http://namechange.umr.edu/).