I am currently working on a document that can help Parkland School Division share learning across the division through the effective use of hashtags. Parkland School Division has approximately 10,000 students, therefore it is important that we continue to figure out how to best share information through social media in an organized manner.
I am hoping that along with the information below, people will share any suggestions that will help our school division use this social media site in an effective way so we can connect and learn together. Please feel free to use any of the information below with your own schools/organizations.
If you are interested in creating a Twitter account for your school, this article I recently wrote can give you of some ideas on how you can use this tool to build a stronger learning community. I would suggest looking at the “Tweeting for Schools” post.
As this is a comprehensive document, I am going to share it in two parts along with the final Google Document when it is completed. I encourage you to share your thoughts and suggestions on anything that I have shared. These are meant to be guidelines and suggestions within our own school division.
Preamble
As Parkland School Division continues to build its social media presence to connect and learn with stakeholders, we wanted to give some suggestions on how to effectively use Twitter hashtags to connect and share our learning within our organization, as well as within schools. If you have an effective plan in the building, it can alleviate a lot of confusion later on as you try to change procedures in an attempt to be more effective. Here are some ideas that will help bring our learning together.
School/School Division Tweets
Whenever there is a tweet from a school Twitter account, it would be beneficial if it would use not only the hashtag for the school to help develop a presence within its own school community, but it would also be helpful to share the information with Parkland School Division so we can also learn alongside the school, as well as share some of the amazing things that are happening in schools with others in our learning community, as well as globally. Here is an example of a tweet from a school account. I will use Muir Lake School as an example:
Example tweets from @MuirLake:
Thank you to all of the parents that have helped #MuirLake school this year. Glad you could come to the volunteer tea! #psd70
Or to share learning with your school community and all of Parkland School Division:
Great article regarding the #criticalthinking project: My Favorite Liar http://bit.ly/KIu3ls #muirlake #psd70
In the last tweet, you can see the use of 3 hashtags: #criticalthinkingproject, #muirlake, and #psd70. This enables you to share with anyone watching or searching for information under each hashtag which is beneficial to so many people. Sending the same link out simply in an email will never reach the audience that a tweet can. Not only can this be sent out from the @MuirLake account, but it is probable that this will be retweeted by others, including the @psd_70 twitter account. See the example below:
Tweet from @psd_70:
RT @muirlake Great article regarding the #criticalthinking project: My Favorite Liar http://bit.ly/KIu3ls #muirlake #psd70
Although the @MuirLake account is fairly new and has fewer followers, through retweeting and sharing information, it is more likely to get the information out while creating a larger network.
Of course, tweets are always subject to the number of characters that are being used, so if it is not possible to use the school and division hashtag, that is totally acceptable. It is however usually beneficial to try to keep tweets as short as possible. They are more likely to get retweeted if they have 120 characters or less which gives them room for people to retweet with their twitter user handle contained in the tweet.
Thoughts and Considerations
As there are many initiatives within Parkland School Division, we want to be thoughtful in how we can share information with both a large audience, as well as others looking for specific information.
For example, if you wanted to have something that is specific to administrators within the school division, you can simply add to the existing hashtag. #psd70 which could become #psd70_lead. The nice thing about this is that if you use a service such as Tweetdeck, you will see any hashtags that start with the #psd70 or you can choose to specifically follow #psd70_lead. Sending an email to only administrators in the school division would ensure that we could get information out to all of them, but we believe in building capacity and if we share information to other staff in our division that are interested in leadership, they can specifically follow the hashtag #psd70_lead as well. The more we can share, the better we are. With that being said, we want to be thoughtful in the process so that information is easy to find within our own organization.
Here is an example of a tweet:
Social Media For Administrators (Blog Posts) #psd70_lead #cpchat http://t.co/DopFaHF0
This can be done with other initiatives as well, again by adding to the current #psd70 hashtag. Our ‘Critical Thinking’ project hashtag could become #psd70_ct, which makes it easy for all those following the #psd70 hashtag to see the information shared on Critical Thinking, as well as the participants can use other ‘general’ hashtags on the topic to ensure a larger audience sees the information as well. The #CriticalThinking hashtag is one that is highly used and those within our school division would benefit not only from following this hahstag, but sharing to it as well.
Here is another example of a tweet:
Great post for #criticalthinking project. My Favorite Liar | Zen Moments http://t.co/7wlYA3s6 #psd70_ct
As many hashtags can be created through this process, it is important that you have a document that is easily shared and findable to your school division as well as the general public. This can be shared on any school division websites, or more specifically, as a link on your school division Twitter account.
In the next post, I will be sharing the process of developing hashtags for a school to easily organize across classrooms. I will share by the end of the week. I will also be sharing the entire Google Document where the entire article is written.
Twitter is such a powerful tool for connecting and learning. Conferences in other cities can be attended virtually through following a simple hashtag. Links can be shared, while also following conversations that educators are having about certain topics. I really believe that it is always better to be face-to-face, but when we don’t have those opportunities, we can still be opened to a world of learning.
For an example of this, I am going to share links from watching, via Twitter, the IT Summit in Saskatoon that is happening right now. You can actually follow the information and conversation that is happening as it happens over the next few days by searching the #ITSummit12 hashtag on Twitter (whether you have a Twitter account or not). Here are some of the links that I caught from my brother’s keynote this morning.
1. My Favorite Liar – This post starts off with, “One of my favorite professors in college was a self-confessed liar.” An interesting statement about the methods used in this course to keep the attention of students, while also promoting them to challenge ideas and critically think about the information being shared. This is a great skill we need to teach our children as move them away from an education system built upon compliance and subversiveness. Thinking is a skill that can be continuously honed and crafted, and this method helped sharpen the saw for many:
“This was an insidiously brilliant technique to focus our attention – by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements, he transmitted lessons that lasted far beyond the immediate subject matter and taught us to constantly check new statements and claims with what we already accept as fact.”
Definitely an interesting article and something teachers should consider in their classroom.
2. Digital Storytelling (Resources) – This compilation of resources and articles on Digital Storytelling created by Alec Couros is a great way to not only discuss the topic of Digital Storytelling, but it is also a great way to display how a Google Doc can be used to quickly make a webpage to share and link resources. Making a webpage years ago took quite awhile, but with Google Docs, familiarity with Microsoft Word and being able to ‘share’ the document are all you need to get information out that is updated continuously. Some great resources are shared here but it might also spur people on to share or collaborate with others to make their own document.
3. Nine Dangerous Things That You Were Taught in School – Although this article was not shared in the links, I did find it by clicking on the “Creating Innovators” link from the keynote. This short and sweet article would be a great discussion piece for any staff meeting on the continuous changes that are happening in schools. Here is one of the ‘dangers’ that was listed:
There is a very clear, single path to success.
It’s called college. Everyone can join the top 1% if they do well enough in school and ignore the basic math problem inherent in that idea.
One of the final things that I would like to share is this hilarious video on the Video Rental industry and how things have changed significantly. Again, this would be a great discussion piece for educators to talk about some of the out of date practices that are happening in our schools. Check out the video below:
Thanks to Alec for sharing his links with the audience as well as the world. The world is becoming so much smaller and it is amazing how easily we can all learn together.
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by mrsdkrebs
Right now you probably hear as many people talk about how annoyed they are with the term “21st Century Learning” as you will hear people talking about the importance of it. I will have to admit, I am in the “annoyed” camp.
We often talk about these ideals of what “21st Century Learning” will look like but I think we can start with something much simpler. We should start asking, “How do we ourselves best engage in our own learning?”
I was reminded of this the other day while at a conference and the presenter started the session by saying, “I would like to start by asking everyone to put away their mobile devices.” The room was split down the middle with those who were offended by his statement, and those that knew he was joking. Educators as learners would often be offended if we were told the tools or way that we are allowed to learn at any point, yet often many do not flinch at asking their kids to do the same.
How many educators could sit through 4-6 hours of lectures daily, with worksheets, for 180-200 days of the year? I know I can barely sit down for an hour so I am amazed at what I see some kids can do throughout the day. They are bored doing it, yet they will still comply.
The more I go to conferences, I often see many people skipping sessions to talk and connect the material. Could you imagine if kids walked out of class to do the same? Would this be acceptable behaviour in a classroom or school? I have learned that some of my best learning from conferences have not been from the sessions, but through the conversations I have with my colleagues outside in the hallways. In fact, at Connected Canada this month, we are encouraging educators to take in the sessions but providing substantial time for participants to connect and engage with one another in between sessions. The time for conversation and reflections are important to learning.
Now I really do not believe that you can just switch schools to this more “adult” way of learning overnight. People are creatures of habit and many students that are put into these different environments almost crave the conformity and strict rule over their learning that has been the norm. However, maybe it is important for faculties to get together and talk about the way that they like to learn, discuss those goals as a school, how it can connect to the curriculum, and then work together to build a culture that has this more realistic and relevant form of learning. We can talk about the ‘C’s’ of 21st Century Learning, or what organizations need, etc. until we are blue in the face. Let’s start the conversation with some much easier questions.
How do we like to learn? How can we differentiate this in the classroom for our students? How do we make this the norm together?
Thoughts?
Awhile ago, I wrote a post entitled, “What Should A Networked Educational Leader Tweet About?“, which was meant to be a guide to administrators new to Twitter on tweeting and sharing information using this social media tool. It is something that I am hoping all educators can use, but I obviously think that administrators should really understand the important use of social media in schools.
As our own school division and schools all over the world are starting to use organizational Twitter accounts to connect, I wanted to write a post on how a school or educational institution can use Twitter effectively. It is a great way to connect with students, as well as share their message locally and globally.
Here are some ideas to start you with the process:
- School Announcements- This is probably the way Twitter is used most often with school accounts but sometimes it is the only way. Social media is a great way to connect so schools should really go past using this as just a way to tell that their is a dance coming up or school is canceled. With that being said, people are able to actually subscribe to Twitter updates without being on Twitter that will go straight to their phone. To do this, follow the instructions below for any Twitter account using your mobile device:
“By way of SMS on any phone in the United States (this works in Canada as well), you can get alerts from anyone on Twitter. This is true even if you don’t have a Twitter account. All you have to do is text “follow TWITTERNAME” (use the ‘@’ sign as in ‘@gcouros’) to Twitter’s shortcode, 40404, and you will start getting realtime updates. ” Tech Crunch
- Celebrations of Success – Often school are using Twitter to congratulate and commend their teachers, students, and school communities in an open way to share in their success. This is a good way to share publicly the accomplishments of individuals or groups in the school, but I would strongly suggest that you are cautious before you mention names, as well as ask permission from any individuals that you are tweeting about to ensure that they are comfortable with this.
- Sharing classroom/school information – Often when we tweet within Parkland School Division, we share blog posts or links from articles that have to do with schools within the division. This is a great way to share what is happening in our schools not only with the public, but other schools in our division as well. School accounts can also share blog posts from different classroom teachers which helps to build connections across the school community. When I was principal at Forest Green, we would often have parents from different classrooms commenting on blogs that were not specifically from their child’s teacher. This is a great way for parents to connect with teachers before and after their child attends their class and helps to build a strong learning community.To easily set up tweets to classroom blogs within your school, you can use a free service such as TwitterFeed to automatically post tweets on your account’s behalf from blogs that you subscribe to. Before you do this though, make sure that you are comfortable with the blogs that you subscribe to. I trusted the teachers in my school (obviously) that I was never worried about them writing objectionable content, but I would not automatically tweet something from Seth Godin’s blog as I am not sure his content would always be deemed appropriate to a K-6 audience.
- Answering questions and connecting with students/stakeholders – If you are going to have a Twitter account for your school, it is important that someone is monitoring it for mentions to ensure that you are answering those that are perhaps asking for more information. Nothing is more annoying then an organization with a Twitter account that does not respond to its customers, so the same would apply to a school or organization. Depending on the number of followers it may be hard to respond every time your Twitter handle is mentioned, but my rule of thumb would be to look for question marks in your “mentions” and ensure that you are answering questions. A great book on this topic specifically is “Open Leadership” by Charlene Li. It focuses mostly on business practice, but a lot of the information can be applied to educational institutions as well.
- Sharing of Educational Articles – If you are not sharing some of the great articles from around the world that educators are blogging and writing about, you are missing a golden opportunity to help educate and spark discussion with your school community. If we are to share every good article that we read on the Internet in a traditional newsletter it would be too much, but through Twitter, we are able to share quick links and others are able to pick and choose what they choose to read. Marc Prensky says the following:“Involve your students’ parents as much as you can. Try thinking of them as your students as well, that is, as people you are educating.”I would consider parents more “partners” in education and not students, but I do believe in the importance of sharing information and research with not only parents, but students and teachers as well. Do not expect every article you share to be read by everyone but it is essential that we share as much as possible with our learning communities.
With the information above, it is important that you do not take this lightly. If you are not able to regularly update your twitter account or answer questions from those that address you, it may actually look worse then not having an account at all. I also believe it is important to have an organizational account as opposed to a personal account that simply tweets on behalf of the school. This way, if a group of followers becomes dependent upon a single person for the tweets of the organization and they leave the organization, you are left creating a new following to keep people updated about school events. Organizational accounts can be run by multiple people and easily transferred to others.
I’m hoping the information shared here will help schools get started on their Twitter accounts as there are huge benefits to connecting with your school community through this medium. If you can think of any other great ways to use a school Twitter account, I would appreciate you shareing them in the comments and I can update the post to help others. I will be following up this article in the near future on the effective use of hashtags for schools that will help to not only share information, but will help brand your organization as well.
Admittedly, there is a lot of work I would like to continue on with in our organization, but I believe in the importance of open and transparent learning; this is just another area to help push our schools forward.
UPDATE: Here is a great article that I found from Steven Anderson on some of the logistics of setting up a Twitter account for your school.
Twitter in Schools – A Getting Started Guide
If you want to look at some school/school division twitter feeds check out the following:
Whether it is professional or personal, career or relationships, success only comes from hard work. I love the video below that pushes that thought and wanted to share:
I had a great opportunity recently to attend the #140Cuse conference in Syracuse, New York, and learn from some amazing innovators from many different industries. It was a great experience and I am extremely thankful to the organizers who invited me and did an amazing job with the conference.
Below is my talk from the day. It was amazing to be able to share stories about people I have connected with across the world and to honour my dog Kobe.
I hope you enjoy it:
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by o5com‘
For some reason, the word “no” is extremely tough for educators to say. Well to be honest, it is actually very easy when it is proceeded by “I should have said…” while we are caught in a wave of work that is seemingly extremely tough to keep up with. As social media connects us more, requests from others seem to grow as well. I am proud to say that I have been someone who has offered help continuously to those who have asked, but as I have learned to reflect, I am seeing that I have disconnected from many of the things that I love.
You see this in educators all the time. In Canada, extracurricular activities are voluntary and teachers are amazing at giving their own time to provide awesome after-school programming that helps to build the culture and skill-sets of our students. I could not be more thankful for the coaches that spent a significant amount of time with me on the basketball court. In fact, many times I believe that I learned more from my interactions and opportunities from sports then I actually did from school. I learned how to face adversity, deal with challenges, and work effectively in a team. I didn’t learn everything from sports, but I did learn a lot. If it wasn’t for the generous giving of time from many of my coaches, I would not have had that extremely important learning.
Wanting to give the same opportunities to students I taught, I coached for several years and loved every minute of it. I was always so proud of the kids I coached in basketball and football and those long road trips help to build connections that last long after students leave school. One day however, I just felt like I needed a break from coaching for the year. I thought about it deeply, and after long contemplation, I decided to give it another year. As I went through that year, I realized that I didn’t love it anymore. My heart was just not into coaching and although I wanted to provide those same opportunities for our students that I had as a kid, I felt that I was not giving them the same passion that was modeled for me when I played.
The following year, after much deliberation, I prepared myself to say “no” when it was asked if I would coach again. I lost sleep about it. I couldn’t eat (which is EXTREMELY rare!). Then it came and when I was asked, I said no. This was followed by what my friends call the “come ons”; the insistent “come on…you should do it for the kids”, “come on…you love basketball”. The extreme guilt that followed was tough to take but I stuck with my decision. That year, I started my masters and it was probably one of the most enjoyable experiences that I have had. I enjoyed the opportunity to watch from afar yet take some time to pursue some of my own interests. To this day, I still feel guilt about the decision but I know that it wasn’t fair to myself or to the kids, to do something begrudgingly and half-heartedly.
As the requests come in, I have again struggled with the word “no”. Something that I promised myself a few years ago was that I would never do anything that I didn’t love. This year, I stepped away from reffing basketball (my first season totally away from the game since I was 8), I have cut down on teaching classes at the gym (from 7 to 3 a week), and I have taken a step back from some aspects of social media. I have replaced much of that with spending time with my friends, building relationships, and taking my dogs to the park more in a week then I used to in a year. To be honest, I am enjoying every moment of it.
While many teachers have this attitude that they can’t please everyone, but they sure are going to try, they often leave out themselves. Saying ‘no’ to certain things often means saying ‘yes’ to others. Keeping commitments is still a huge priority to me, but above all, doing things with a smile on my face and in my heart seems to be a lot more important as of late 
As I believe educators should have some understanding of what is happening in the world of business, I spend a lot of my time checking out “non-educational” sites that share a lot of what is happening in the world and helps me to continuously look at developing the work I do. A few of the sites that I am going to share today may give you ideas for things that you will be able to do in your classroom. They may not be focused on education, but they can easily be transferred to the focus of learning.
1. The Rise of the Startup Video – I recently fell upon the Simply Zesty site and some of the links are simply for a good laugh, while some of the links really push some of the ideas of what we could be doing in the classroom. The video for “Dollar Shave Club” is quite humorous (all expletives are censored) and actually took a very simple idea, and with strong marketing, received 17,000 subscribers to the service.
One recipe includes humor, web marketing, a borrowed business model, and a heaping dose of creativity. DollarShaveClub.comlaunched last week, and in their first seven days they snagged over 17,000 paid subscribers. Their hilarious marketing video–produced for under $4,500–has been now seen by over 3 million people. (Fast Company)
Is this the type of activity we could be doing with our students? It would be great to have them not only come up with a product, but also develop the advertising to support it. Would this company have achieved the same results without the hilarity of the video and the immediate viral sharing that followed? I doubt it. There are some great skills in communication and entrepreneurialism that could be taught here.
2. Google Reader Bundle of ‘Photo Blogs’ – I am becoming more enamoured with photography blogs (I found some great ones from Tia Henriksen’s Blog) and I wanted to share a bundle of ones that I look at. Visual representation and curation is becoming something more prominent on the web and I think there is some great learning for photographers, both new and old, from these sites, but also a lot of learning that can come from these types of blogs. They not only share visuals, but some of them actually review cameras, iPhone photography sites, while also creating categories for photos to be shared. If you have any interest, please feel free to subscribe to the blog.
3. Major League Baseball Releases It’s Social Media Policy- As tweeting and Facebook become more of the mainstream consciousness, it is interesting to see how different leagues have reacted to both appropriate and inappropriate messaging done by their employees. Major League Baseball, understanding the power that social media has for fans to connect with seemingly untouchable players, braces a more open vision for their players:
While having a Social Media policy is important to protecting the interests of everyone involved in promoting the game, we hope that you will not view this policy as a blanket deterrent to engaging in social media. MLB recognizes the importance of social media as an important way for players to communicate directly with fans. We encourage you to connect with fans through Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Along with MLB’s extensive social media activities, we hope that your efforts on social media will help bring fans closer to the game and have them engaged with baseball, your club and you in a meaningful way.
The article then goes onto list ten prohibitions for their players:
- Players can’t make what can be construed as official club or league statements without permission;
- Players can’t use copyrighted team logos and stuff without permission or tweet confidential or private information about teams or players, their families, etc.;
- Players can’t link to any MLB website or platform from social media without permission;
- No tweets condoning or appearing to condone the use of substances on the MLB banned drug list (which is everything but booze, right?);
- No ripping umpires or questioning their integrity;
- No racial, sexist, homophobic, anti-religious, etc. etc. content;
- No harassment or threats of violence;
- Nothing sexually explicit;
- Nothing otherwise illegal.
Seems pretty simple and straightforward. Do schools have to go much further with their social media policies? Thoughts? Have a great week of learning with our students!
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Clint Hamada
cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by Laurel Fan
There is often a great deal of discussion on the idea that Twitter can be an echo chamber and that we often seek out those who already have the same views we may have. Although I disagree with that idea to some degree, I do believe that we have to be cognizant that we are reaching out to different ideas through social media. If we only hear what we already believe in, how far does that stretch our learning?
Although this idea is somewhat new to me in the realm of social media, it is interesting that I am now starting to wonder if we have been continuously creating an echo chamber in the work that we do at schools. For example, if we are proposing a new idea or initiative, do we ask people to join committees or groups that are vehemently opposed to these ideas, or simply have different viewpoints? How often are we asking people to join us in a room that we know are opposed to our ideas, to help build them together? We can easily dismiss these differing viewpoints as being “late-adopters” or something worse, but is there not value in bringing in these viewpoints?
As I have continued to think about this idea, would it not be better to have buy-in to our ideas moving forward from those that started off opposed? Would that not bring clout to the rest of those staff in our buildings? Would it not make our ideas better and have many feel like there is more ownership as we move forward? Would it also not create a feeling that we are truly listening to all viewpoints, not just those that are most similar to ours?
I would have to admit, as an administrator, I have fallen in this trap unintentionally and probably because it may just seem easier to move forward. As I continue in my own career though, I am continuously craving those opposing viewpoints to help myself move further in my own thinking. I am more attracted to the blog posts that are saying something that challenges my thinking, not summarize it. I think that the time it takes to have these tough conversations, no matter the direction, will save us time in the end. If we have those who oppose it most at the beginning now becoming a part of the solution, I am thinking there would be a much better buy-in factor with a larger number or people.
Have we done this on purpose? Probably not. That being said, we must stand back and look at the way we have brought people (and who we have brought) together to move our schools forward.
Thoughts?
Recent Comments