Using Social Media for Instruction

Recently the Metro Nashville Public Schools decided to gradually allow access on their wi-fi network to Twitter and YouTube. It's a significant change for the Nashville schools because they've blocked students from accessing many social media sites, including Facebook, when using the school's wi-fi system. The restrictions will be lifted first in high schools and then in middle schools. The change is driven by teachers who plan on using more social media to improve instruction. This decision reflects the growing recognition that social media is a powerful tool to access instructional tools and resources. The policy change will also be accompanied by lessons about the appropriate use of the Internet and social media. You can get the details of the change in this article from The Tennessean, the local Nashville newspaper.

I'd enjoy hearing from you about the use of social media for instruction in your school.

Twitter and Other Social Media for Instruction

One of the fastest growing trends in education is to encourage students to bring, and use, their own technology---smart Phones, tablets, laptops. Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs are underway across the country. The most notable challenge with these programs is that students know far more than most teachers about how to use the devices for tasks. Often educators focus on the misuse of technology but the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that most students use their devices appropriately. That's let many schools to encourage teachers to incorporate technology and various forms of social media as a way to both motivate and engage students. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently showcased the efforts in several Wisconsin schools to use Twitter and other social media, once banned, for instruction.

It's a rapidly growing trend and recognizes the powerful ways technology can transform teaching and learning. Howard Johnston and I wrote about the trend and how social media can be used with 21st century learners to improve their academic experience. Our book, The School Leader's Guide to Social Media, is available from Routledge Education, at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

I'd enjoy hearing from you about how your teachers are using technology and social media to improve instruction.

A New Social Operating System

I'm fascinated by the way technology and social media have transformed the way we communicate, nurture and sustain relationships and expand our learning. That interest made Networked: The New Social Operating System by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman a good read. Rainie is Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, major researchers on social media trends, and Wellman is a Professor at the University of Toronto.

Many worry that this new environment isolates people. But Rainie and Wellman suggest that social media actually expands our connections and creates larger, loosely connected circles of friends and colleagues. These networks expand our opportunity to learn, solve problems, seek advice, and become familiar with new ideas. It frees us from the natural limitations imposed by physical proximity.

Of course expanded networks require that we enhance, or even develop, skills to develop networks, maintain connections with others and balance what can be multiple, occasionally overlapping, networks. In my case I've limited my Facebook network to friends and family. I use my Twitter account to expand my professional contacts and my professional learning. LinkedIn is used to network with professional colleagues and others who share similar interests or backgrounds.

I'd enjoy hearing from you about your use of social media and how it's transformed your personal and professional life.

Blogs for School Leaders

There are incredible resources available on some of the blogs designed for principals. Here are some of my favorites.

Get Organized!

http://frankbuck.blogspot.com/

Devoted to making life easier through organization and time management this blog is written by Frank Buck author of

Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders.

A Principal’s Reflections

http://ericsheninger.com/esheninger/blogs

NASSP Digital Principal of the Year and Principal of New Milford (NJ) High School shares his ideas about using technology to improve student learning.

Connected Principals

http://connectedprincipals.com/

This site provides a forum for principals to ask questions, share ideas. Each principal has a different experience but the goal is to share best practices and engage in professional learning

Education Week Blogs

http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/blogs/index.html

Education Week has a whole collection of blogs including leadership, technology, parents and community, charters and school choice, and rural education. They’re updated regularly and are great resources for staying up-to-date.

Even after several years of using the Internet I continue to be amazed at the rich array of resources available online. I hope you find these resources helpful and invite you to share useful resources you’ve found online.

Twitter and the School Leader

I've had a Twitter account for a couple of years but don't ever tweet. That's because I use my account almost exclusively to stay up-to-date on information that improves my work. I'm linked to some of my favorite professional organizations and favorite authors and presenters like Barbara Blackburn and Todd Whitaker. Recently, Todd (@Todd Whitaker), a well known speaker, said "Every school leader should be on Twitter. it is the very best free professional development you'll ever find." He's right. Twitter links me to some of the best ideas available for school leaders and allows me, if I choose, to share ideas and get feedback.

On Twitter you can follow other principals, check in on the latest news from groups like ASCD, eSchoolNews, NASSP, NAESP and others. Through Twitter you can link to their posts and lots of useful information.

Besides your own professional learning Twitter can be used to share information about your school. Separate from your personal account, your school can have a corporate Twitter account. That allows you greater control over the message and the image. Almost every day I learn about how school leaders use Twitter for communication. Here are some examples.

• Share educational news and articles about your school
• Tweet photos and brief biographies about new teachers
• Share information about school closings due to weather
• Post short videos of school concerts or drama presentations
• Announce school events and meetings
• Share the lunch menu
• Post school sports scores and results

I found that the most difficult decision was to establish my account. After a few days I found that I returned regularly to check out what my favorites were sharing. I'd enjoy hearing from you about how you use Twitter and other forms of social media for your own professional learning or for communication.

Dealing with Rumors Spawned by Social Media

Social media is a powerful communication tool but one of its detriment is the ability to spawn rumors. Rumors spread quickly via texts, Twitter or Facebook and can quickly overwhelm a school's ability to respond. Often they take on a life of their own and, accurate or not, require some sort of response. Many school leaders are uncertain about how to respond or how to use communication tools to put the rumors to rest. The National School Public Relations Association asked that question to a group of principals and found some interesting approaches.

• It is important to get timely and accurate information to key audiences quickly. Always make a cognitive, rather than emotional, response to rumors. Just the facts.
• Assure students, families and communities that you are aware of the rumor, are investigating, and will deal with it so that you maintain a safe school environment.
• Ask for specific details about any rumors that people may have heard. This will help with your assessment and response.
• Communicate quickly when a situation happens and notify parents and community rapidly. Don't let the message, and associated rumors, get spread by neighbors of the school, by students or others.
• Create a "Fact Check" site on your school's website and let people know that is where they can either go for information or to post a rumor and get a response.
• Recognize the importance of redundant dissemination of information. Everyone doesn't get their information from the same source and today social media is one of the primary sources of information for many people.

I'd enjoy hearing from you about how you deal with rumors and how you respond to the ideas from the National School Public Relations Association.

A Principal's Blog - Brag About Your School

One of a principal's most important roles is to advocate for their school. That includes sharing information with staff, students, families and community. Communication occurs in many ways but increasingly various forms of social media technology are used to spread the "good news" about your school.  One tool is a blog, basically a website that functions as an online journal. What's good about a blog is that you can control the content and make it what you want.

Partrick Larkin, 2012 NASSP Digital Principal, identified reasons for beginning a blog. Principals are generally pretty proud of their school. They want to share newsworthy things about students and co-curricular activities. They have great teachers who are doing great things in their classroom. And they want to improve communication with both families and community.  Once you begin your blog you can add a link from your school's website and you can share it with teachers and other staff. Here's a link to Larkin's article about how to get started. And here are some other examples of blogs maintained by school leaders.

• A Principal's Reflections - Eric Sheninger, New Milford HS (NJ) - http://esheninger.blogspot.com
• Learning in Burlington - Patrick Larkin, Burlington (MA) - http://LearningInBurlington.blogspot.com

I'd enjoy learning from you about how you communicate with families and community and what you think about starting a principal's blog.

BYOT - Bring Your Own Technology

Many schools have begun to encourage students to bring their mobile phone or tablet to school so that they can use it during class to access instructional resources, participate in online discussions and interact with curricular materials. It's called "BYOT - Bring Your Own Technology" and a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 73% of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers have students use the technology in class to complete assignments. Dan Domenech of the American Association of School Administrators reports that about 25% of schools now allow phones. George Fornero, a Chicago area superintendent described his districts rationale. "The kids taught us a lesson. They're still going to bring their phones anyway, so let's allow them to use them in a constructive way." More detail about these initiatives is available from a recent USA Today article.

 I'd enjoy learning from you about whether your school welcomes student use of phones and tablets on campus.

Power of the Tweet - Building a Virtual PLN

A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is one way to stay collected with trends and issues in your field and to work, and share, collaboratively. Social media is a great way to create and maintain your PLN. PLN's are really useful because you can connect with those individuals and groups that best meet your needs. The benefits include

• access to useful resources and information;
• ability to search for new tools and innovative practices;
• thoughtful suggestions and critique of your ideas;
• helping you to think more deeply about your work;
• meeting professional contacts for job growth.

A virtual PLN can be created using social media like Twitter. A recent article by Tom Murray, Director of Technology and Cyber Education for the Quakertown School District in Bucks County, PA describes the benefits of a virtual PLN using Twitter.

Howard Johnston and I describe how to create and maintain a PLN in our book The School Leader's Guide to Social Media from Eye on Education. We'd enjoy learning about how you use PLN's to improve your work.

Favorite Social Media Tools

Social media technology continues to transform how teachers, students and leaders do their work. We're amazed at the creative tools that have emerged to support our work individually and with one another. Here are a few of our latest finds.

Popplet - http://popplet.com

This tool allows you to gather and organize ideas much like a concept map. It allows you to examine resources from different sources and organize an assignment or presentation. You can invite others in your group to add to the web/map. 

Educreations - www.educreations.com 

This tool allows you to create amazing presentations on a recordable whiteboard. It captures your voice and handwriting to produce short video lessons that you can share online. Created as an iPad app they're working on an app for Android devices. Public lessons can be embedded on blogs or websites. Ron uses it all the time in his online courses.

Idea Sketch - http://www.nosleep.net/ 

This app allows you to draw diagrams and create mind maps, concept maps or flow charts. There is an option to convert from text or to text if desired. It's a great tool for brainstorming and illustrating concepts. Apps are available for iOS and Windows devices.

We also want to include a tool that's been around for a while but just keeps getting better.

Prezi - www.prezi.com 

This presentation tool allows you to organize and share ideas on a large whiteboard. A wide selection of templates makes it easy to get started. Once you begin you'll find Prezi easy to adapt to a whole variety of presentation needs. It allows you to embed photos, audio, video and links to all sorts of information on the web. 

We hope you enjoy trying out these social media tools and would enjoy hearing from you about other's you've discovered.

Using Facebook with Students

Social media has become an useful instructional tool and is used by more and more teachers to interact with their students and by principals to communicate with families and community. A recent report found that more than 70% of Americans have an account.

But there are legitimate concerns about how teachers and other employees use Facebook and other forms of social media with their students. In a recent post, Lisa Nielson provided five best practices for teachers when they use Facebook with students. At the top of the list is the importance of maintaining a professional demeanor and not mixing your personal site with your professional one. Nielson says, "You can create a page or group that students can "like" or "join" without being one another's friend or seeing one another's feed." That's really important. Nielson's other tips are equally useful.

In The School Leader's Guide to Social Media Howard Johnston and I share other ideas about how teachers can use social media like Facebook to improve instruction and how school leaders can use social media to improve communication. We'd welcome your thoughts about the use of social media in schools. 

Social Media: Policy Trends

Social media is a term used to describe a lot of things. For many of us we associate it with Facebook or Twitter and we never think about the countless other ways we use social media technology in our professional and personal lives. Our most commonly used social media device is our phone, often called a "smart phone." Cell phones are no longer used for just making calls. They are now used for locating things on the Internet, sending short messages to friends or family, watching television shows or even movies, reading books, and locating a good restaurant or a nearby coffee shop. In other words, for many of us, our social media device (our cell phone) has become indispensable.

I work a lot with principals, superintendents and people who aspire to those roles. When I mention social media they often describe the perils of its availability and use in their schools. But more recently the tone of these conversations is changing from "how do I ban them" to "how do we use them effectively." That's a monumental shift and recognizes that social media technology and social media devices are just not going away. Some schools have adopted BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies that encourage students to bring and use their social media devices for instructional activities.

As a school leader how do you manage social media technology among your students and your employees. What sort of policy might you consider? What type of policy would be appropriate given the prevalence of social media devices and the powerful tools that social media provides for communication, collaboration, and teaching and learning?

One of my favorite online journals is THE Journal, a publication about current and emerging issues involving technology. Ruth Reynard wrote a really insightful article discussing current policy trends that try to control social media. She offers really useful ideas about how to shape policy so that social media is used appropriately and not in a harmful way.

In The School Leader's Guide to Social Media Howard Johnston and I discuss many of the same issues and provide examples of tools and strategies for using social media in schools. We'd really enjoy hearing from you about how social media is shaping your school and its instructional program.

Power of Social Media to Transform Work of Principals

My friend and colleague Dr. J. Howard Johnston from the University of South Florida was recently interviewed by School Leadership Briefing, an audio journal for school administrators, about the power of social media to transform the work of a school leader. Howard and I are the author of the School Leader's Guide to Social Media recently published by Eye on Education. 

Here's the link to the interview. This discussion focuses on how social media provides  school leaders with new tools that can enhance communication with their school community, improve instruction and student learning, and increase productivity. Most importantly, it describes why school leaders neglect social media at their own peril. As Howard says, "the conversation about your school is going on right now. You can choose to be part of the conversation or not. But you're not going to stop the discussion."

I think you'll find the discussion fascinating and would welcome your thoughts about the benefits and challenges of social media at your school. 

School Leader's Guide to Social Media

The explosion in use of social media has impacted schools. While many focus on some of the negatives associated with its use, there is growing evidence that social media is transforming the way students learn and interact with others in the educational environment. Like all innovations, social media technology comes with challenges. But my co-author and I have learned from principals that social media has transformed the way students interact with one another and with the world around them. These changes have a profound impact on what schools can and must do to provide an effective education for twenty-first century students.

Because social media has tremendous potential to change the way we communicate, learn and teach, we believe there is a moral and ethical obligations to teach students how to use this technology effectively, ethically, and for the greater good.

In response to this belief J. Howard Johnston and I wrote a book for school leaders that provides a useful introduction to the world of social media in schools and offers useful strategies and tools that they can immediately use in their schools. It is available from Eye on Education (www.eyeoneducation.com) and is available in e-book format as well as in a soft cover edition.

We'd enjoy hearing from you about social media and how it has impacted your school.

A "Wiki" - Useful Planning and Meeting Tool

I must admit that I am a relative novice with social media but I'm an energetic learner and am always looking for tools that can help with some of the management tasks required of principals. Recently I've begun to use a "Wiki" for some of my classes and when I work with groups. Wiki is most often associated with Wikipedia but that is just one form of a wiki. A wiki is a website where any member can edit contributes, like projects that several people share, or for suggesting agenda items for a meeting. Some teachers use wikis in classrooms. While there are many uses, some use a wiki as a tool to have students share their work and gather feedback from others.

I created my classroom wikis at www.wikispaces.com, a site that allows you to create free wikis. They are easy to create and a useful place for a committee or other group to maintain their agendas, minutes and any documents related to the work. You can limit access to the site so that only members can contribute.

I've found wikis to be useful and would enjoy hearing from you about your experience with wikis or other social media tools used by principals.

Advocacy and Emerging Technology

Principals and other school leaders are advocates. They are always advocating for their schools and ways to improve the educational experience of their students. Advocacy can be an effective way to press for change. It is also an important part of our democratic system and allows ordinary people to shape and influence policy at all levels.

Technology has changed the way we advocate, the way we share information about our schools. A recent story in the NY Times discussed how parents increasingly crave timely information about their children's schools. While traditional media will remain part of any advocacy plan, emerging technology is increasingly used by schools to communicate with parents. Many schools have created Facebook pages and Twitter accounts as a tool to quickly share information with families and others about their school and its successes.

Here are some things you might want to consider as you assess your use of technology to advocate for your school.

• How often is your school website updated? Is the information current and easily accessible to families?
• Does your website include information about your vision for your school?
• Does the website provide information that families can use to become involved in the education of their children?
• Does your school have a presence on social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook)?
• If so, what sort of messages and information do you share? Doe you use it regularly to communicate?
• Do families and community know your school has a presence on these sites?

As I work with my friend Howard Johnston to finish our book on social media we are looking for examples of principals using emerging technology to advocate for their school. We'd enjoy hearing from you about your successes and your challenges.

Social Media and You

Over the last year I've become acutely aware of the power of social media to improve the educational experience of students and to transform the way schools interact and communicate with families and community. My good friend, Howard Johnston, and I are writing a book that will serve as a principal's guide to the use of social media in their school.

We're very aware of both the use and abuse of social media, of concerns about cyberbullying and other forms of harassment. But we've also grown attentive to the ways that principals use Facebook and Twitter to share information about their school and to keep families informed about school accomplishments and events.

Both of us have read, and recommend, a book by Charlene Li titled Open Leadership. It's a powerful book and describes the way social technology has created a more transparent environment, one in which leaders must behave quite differently.

As Howard and I continue to work on the book we would enjoy hearing from you about both the issues and concerns you have with social media, and the way you and your teachers use it to improve classroom instruction. We look forward to hearing from you.

Dealing with Social Media in Schools

A recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 73% of teens use social-networking sites. Most of us are aware of the explosive growth of popular sites like MySpace and Facebook. Social media provide a way for students to socialize and meet new people. But there are also problems associated with social networking. The anonymity of the Internet combined with the impulsivity of youth leads to making poor choices about what is said and what is shared. The growing problem of using technology to bully (cyberbullying) others has led to serious consequences for some students.

I recently wrote a Research Brief on "Social Media" that discusses the issue and provides links to resources that principals can use to reduce the negative effects of social networking. You may want to take a look at the strategies recommended for schools.

As with most technology, there is a positive side and many schools have begun to use social media to improve communication with families and community, to improve instruction, and to access curricular resources. Many of these ideas are also included in the brief.

I would enjoy hearing from you about the challenges, as well as the benefits, you face in using social media.