As educators of the 21st century learner our goal is to help our students develop skills to be successful in the workforce. The 4Cs as some professionals refer to the skills our students need to use are critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. Using social media in the school setting can help students utilize and develop the 4Cs. Facebook and Twitter are very commonly used social media outlets that can very easily be brought into the library or classroom.
Facebook is a great forum to publish important happenings around the library and school. The use of the social media page allows users to remotely visit the library and see what is happening. The user is able to like and comment on posts that interest them. One disadvantage of using Facebook is getting the followers. Without followers the user will not see the great information being posted and advertised on the Facebook page. I visited multiple school library pages from elementary, middle and high school libraries. Each school only had around 200 followers. Many school have 400 plus students. To be the most beneficial to the users the page must be liked and followed by the school - parents, staff, and students. I know my children's school did a push in the fall to get parents to join their social media counts by posting the grade level my child was in, then at a certain point the grade level with the most posts won an incentive of some kind. I liked that the school libraries I viewed posted pictures of what happens in the library daily. Pictures of kids doing lessons and their products. Parents posted how they appreciated being able to see their child in action. The libraries also posted information about their clubs they offered and the activities the clubs do over the school year. Funny comics and poems were also posted to grab viewers attention to special programs or reminders like end of the year book turn in. One of the high school pages I visited had links that parents and students could visit - articles about community outreach for teens, NFL Safety Role Model video, helpful hints on using shortcuts on the keyboard, summer jobs and internships around the area. All the libraries also posted books using cover pictures for reading advocacy. I think Facebook can be a helpful tool to use in the library. The hard part will be finding creative ways to get the population of the school to follow the page and use the information that is shared. Also the consistency of posts will encourage followers to keep following your page. If you only post every once in awhile the followers/users will forget and not have value for your information. If you post on a frequent basis, information that is important to the follower, then your page will have a higher level of traffic.
Twitter can be used to link to the libraries Facebook page also. I explored some leaders in ed tech on Twitter recently. I learned that their is a lot of information and strategies out their to be used with students to meet the 4Cs of our 21st century learners. Here are the leading Ed Tech people I explored and what I found to be key aspects of them as resources to applying tech with students.
Kathy Schrock @kathyschrock is an Educational Technologist who has been in the field for many years. She has a blog with ideas she shares, she has a website that she links all her resources from presentations she has done, also has a whole webpage for using apple products and how to support them in teaching. She has multiple resources that connects technology/apps to the Digital Blooms Taxonomy.
Linda Braun @lbraun2000 is a librarian and a teen advocate. She retweets lots of articles from YALSA, Connected Learning Alliance and CASEL. I am not familiar with CASEL so I found out that this organization is a Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. A lot of Linda's posts or tweets were about equitable access for all in learning tech. Check out #ConnectedLearning it is a network of individuals and organization that value equity, access and opportunity for all learners.
David Warlick @dwarlick is an ed teach, explorer and educator among other things in his bio. I did not particularly find much of interest on his twitter page. He seems very political in his tweets. I did like the retweet he did on an article from The Guardian about our education system teaching children to be redundant. My personal belief on using twitter as a professional through your school or library, one needs to be unbiased in their tweets. Just like in the library we need to provide our users with unbiased materials so they can create their own opinions on subjects.
The Daring Librarian was my favorite ed tech person to explore. Gwyneth Jones @GwynethJones is really big on creativity and empowering her students. She tweets a lot about her students in action. She uses her twitter account to share resources and promote programming. One of her tweets was about 16 apps that support the creative process from The Edvocate. I will be learning more about these apps and how I can use them in the library with students and how teachers can use them in the classroom.
Jim Lerman @jimlerman he is focused on new schools for new learning through cultivating creativity. He tweets about creativity with students through Makerspaces and STEM. He is currently really big on Virtual Reality. I really liked the infographic he shared on questioning tips. I also liked a post he made about the changing role of education. Lots of great resources to look at and think about for changing the way I teach and morphing into a 21st Century educator, the site provides lots of tips and strategies.
Twitter is a great place to go follow people who are masters of the trade. Then that allows me to be able to have great resources at my finger tips with out really having to search. Working smarter not harder in today's world. Time is always an issue and if I can capitalize on who is the best of the best then I can have wonderful information at my finger tips in seconds with out having to decide what to search and explore.
As educators of the 21st century learner our goal is to help our students develop skills to be successful in the workforce. The 4Cs as some professionals refer to the skills our students need to use are critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. Using social media in the school setting can help students utilize and develop the 4Cs. Facebook and Twitter are very commonly used social media outlets that can very easily be brought into the library or classroom.
Facebook is a great forum to publish important happenings around the library and school. The use of the social media page allows users to remotely visit the library and see what is happening. The user is able to like and comment on posts that interest them. One disadvantage of using Facebook is getting the followers. Without followers the user will not see the great information being posted and advertised on the Facebook page. I visited multiple school library pages from elementary, middle and high school libraries. Each school only had around 200 followers. Many school have 400 plus students. To be the most beneficial to the users the page must be liked and followed by the school - parents, staff, and students. I know my children's school did a push in the fall to get parents to join their social media counts by posting the grade level my child was in, then at a certain point the grade level with the most posts won an incentive of some kind. I liked that the school libraries I viewed posted pictures of what happens in the library daily. Pictures of kids doing lessons and their products. Parents posted how they appreciated being able to see their child in action. The libraries also posted information about their clubs they offered and the activities the clubs do over the school year. Funny comics and poems were also posted to grab viewers attention to special programs or reminders like end of the year book turn in. One of the high school pages I visited had links that parents and students could visit - articles about community outreach for teens, NFL Safety Role Model video, helpful hints on using shortcuts on the keyboard, summer jobs and internships around the area. All the libraries also posted books using cover pictures for reading advocacy. I think Facebook can be a helpful tool to use in the library. The hard part will be finding creative ways to get the population of the school to follow the page and use the information that is shared. Also the consistency of posts will encourage followers to keep following your page. If you only post every once in awhile the followers/users will forget and not have value for your information. If you post on a frequent basis, information that is important to the follower, then your page will have a higher level of traffic.
Twitter can be used to link to the libraries Facebook page also. I explored some leaders in ed tech on Twitter recently. I learned that their is a lot of information and strategies out their to be used with students to meet the 4Cs of our 21st century learners. Here are the leading Ed Tech people I explored and what I found to be key aspects of them as resources to applying tech with students.
Kathy Schrock @kathyschrock is an Educational Technologist who has been in the field for many years. She has a blog with ideas she shares, she has a website that she links all her resources from presentations she has done, also has a whole webpage for using apple products and how to support them in teaching. She has multiple resources that connects technology/apps to the Digital Blooms Taxonomy.
Linda Braun @lbraun2000 is a librarian and a teen advocate. She retweets lots of articles from YALSA, Connected Learning Alliance and CASEL. I am not familiar with CASEL so I found out that this organization is a Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. A lot of Linda's posts or tweets were about equitable access for all in learning tech. Check out #ConnectedLearning it is a network of individuals and organization that value equity, access and opportunity for all learners.
David Warlick @dwarlick is an ed teach, explorer and educator among other things in his bio. I did not particularly find much of interest on his twitter page. He seems very political in his tweets. I did like the retweet he did on an article from The Guardian about our education system teaching children to be redundant. My personal belief on using twitter as a professional through your school or library, one needs to be unbiased in their tweets. Just like in the library we need to provide our users with unbiased materials so they can create their own opinions on subjects.
The Daring Librarian was my favorite ed tech person to explore. Gwyneth Jones @GwynethJones is really big on creativity and empowering her students. She tweets a lot about her students in action. She uses her twitter account to share resources and promote programming. One of her tweets was about 16 apps that support the creative process from The Edvocate. I will be learning more about these apps and how I can use them in the library with students and how teachers can use them in the classroom.
Jim Lerman @jimlerman he is focused on new schools for new learning through cultivating creativity. He tweets about creativity with students through Makerspaces and STEM. He is currently really big on Virtual Reality. I really liked the infographic he shared on questioning tips. I also liked a post he made about the changing role of education. Lots of great resources to look at and think about for changing the way I teach and morphing into a 21st Century educator, the site provides lots of tips and strategies.
Twitter is a great place to go follow people who are masters of the trade. Then that allows me to be able to have great resources at my finger tips with out really having to search. Working smarter not harder in today's world. Time is always an issue and if I can capitalize on who is the best of the best then I can have wonderful information at my finger tips in seconds with out having to decide what to search and explore.
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