Social Media Guidelines Editor's Note: Check out the series of "How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School" articles that Steven Anderson wrote for Edutopia in May 2012, or download the full version as a PDF. Look what happens on the Internet in one minute. More and more, social media is becoming a part of our daily lives. But it isn't just adults who are moving more of their lives to online spaces. And it isn't just teens. This data is staggering. The Age of Personalization Being involved in social media allows adults, teens and kids connect with each other, learn with each other and grow together. We live in an age of personalization. Yet when many of our students reach the schoolhouse door, it's like the Internet and social media don't exist. The list goes on and on and on. A 21st Century School Improvement Plan One of the schools I work with wanted to change that direction. It began in the 2010-2011 school year. There were many parts to our goal. Best Practices vs.
Is your school’s “digital citizenship” practice a pass or fail? cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Walmart Corporate This past week, I worked with a small group of educators on becoming a “Networked Educator“, and we had some great conversations about how social media is changing a lot of what we do in schools. Within the group, there were about four teachers from one high school, who came to learn together and asked questions about how they could move their school to the “next level” in how they are sharing and learning with not only each other, but students as well. They told me that felt that they were in some ways behind as a school, but they were making progress. One of the ways that they felt they were making progress was by having a school Twitter account to share what is happening at with their community. They didn’t like it at all. We looked at both students and many of the tweets were sexist, derogatory, and just outright offensive. Do I ever swear? Do I ever swear on Twitter? #Fail 1.
Siphoning the Fumes of Teen Culture: How to Co-opt Students’ Favorite Social Media Tools In 1763, a royal decree was issued from Great Britain to the North American colonists: Do not?do not!?expand west of the Appalachian Mountains. The colonists resented the proclamation, inferring that the British were trying to contain them along the Atlantic Seaboard where control and taxation could be more easily imposed. The King believed his proclamation to be motivated by good intentions, protecting colonists from instigating any more costly wars with Native Americans, for one. But nothing could stop the westward expansion fever. In 2011, social media is the new frontier. What is Social Media? Social media refers to the online tools that promote easy transmission of ideas and conversations. "This means that I don't define YouTube videos as social media. Social media can contain conversations long and short, critical or casual, studied or whimsical. Doing the "Social" Part of Social Media Requires Intellectual Dexterity Comparing Old Media and New Media 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
How (And Why) Teachers Should Blog So how do I get techno-nervous teachers at my school to read my blog, write their own blogs and encourage their students to write one too? It seems that in order to ease them into this phenomena of blogs and their promise of expanding ones creativity, writing and collaboration skills, I might need to disguise it as journaling. Language Arts and Reading specialists will love that! Fortunately for teachers, blogs are surprisingly easy to use. As an educational tool, blogs may be integrated in a multi-faceted manner to accommodate all learners. If safety is a concern, try KidBlog . I think the best way to expose our teachers to the latest and greatest collaborative environment of blogging is to show them how blogs can benefit them personally with a hands-on professional development opportunity. Want to learn more?
Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens 21st Century Literacy | In Print Turning Students into Good Digital Citizens Schools have always been charged with the task of producing good citizens. By John K. In today's world of near-ubiquitous connectivity, in which ordinary people have almost instantaneous access to unlimited stores of information and the ability to interact with anyone, anywhere, anytime, what does it mean to be an effective citizen? Ask a K-12 educator these questions and chances are the answers will have something to do with teaching proper behavior and setting appropriate prohibitions. But some educators, particularly those who think about this issue in higher education, will say that digital citizenship has less to do with safety and civility than participation in the worldwide online conversation--participation that requires a set of relatively sophisticated skills. "We do have a sense of what [digital communication] skills should be," Kahne says.
The ultimate guide to getting started with blogging! -Edublogs ? education blogs for teachers, students and schools In case you missed it, we just wrapped up our first Teacher Challenge series – 30 days to kick start your blogging! Hundreds of educators from around the globe participated in 8 challenges over the course of four weeks. Together with mentors, bloggers of all experience levels had the opportunity to really step up their game. And if you missed out, it is never too late to work through the challenges at your own pace! Here are the beginner and advanced challenges in their entirety: Activity 1 – Getting StartedBeginner – Advanced – Discussion Question Activity 2 – Writing Effective PostsBeginner – Advanced – Discussion Question Activity 3 – Working With Pages Beginner – Advanced – Discussion Question Activity 4 – Avatars & Blogging Etiquette Beginner – Advanced – Discussion Question Activity 5 – Working With ImagesBeginner – Advanced – Discussion Question Activity 6 – Embedding Media Beginner – Advanced – Discussion Question Activity 7 – Widgets and SidebarsBeginner – Advanced – Discussion Question
How to tune in to your wired teen (CNN) -- Meet the "digital natives." They are the teens and tweens who flock to MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites. Facebook attracted 30.6 million U.S. visitors during September. With ages barely into the double digits, these "digital natives" are growing up with the Internet. Actual public spaces -- the parks and playgrounds their parents enjoyed as children -- are being replaced by the virtual spaces of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, social networking Web sites, instant messenger platforms and video-music swapping sites. Sure, the "digital native" is a stereotype, but it's one that might sound familiar to many parents and educators puzzled by the social habits of this young and wired generation. According to Anastasia Goodstein, author of "Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online" and blogger for Ypulse.com, theirs is a virtual space wherein they play games, experiment with self-expression, and socialize with friends. Don't Miss
5 Presentation Tools To Captivate Every Student Creating a presentation that keeps a captive audience engaged is tough. Creating a presentation that keeps distracted students engaged is a much harder task again. Whether your are demonstrating to a class or presenting at a conference, keeping an audience focused on your content is more challenging than it used to be. Children and adult audience members alike, now have glowing distractions in their pockets and are expecting the instant gratification that comes from the Internet generation. Here are a few tools that will help you enthrall your audience and keep your presentations on the entertaining side of educational: SlideRocket is a hosted web app designed to take presentations to the next level with graphical prowess and multimedia integration. Although the content of your presentation is of course the most important part, small visual improvements can have a big effect on audience engagement and participation. www.sliderocket.com
Welcome to WiredSafety Free Technology for Teachers Facebook Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom Infographic: 5 Ways You Can Lose a Job on Facebook If you thought you could "be yourself" on Facebook, as opposed to the more free-for-all Twitter or LinkedIn, you may want to reconsider. If you thought you could "be yourself" on Facebook, as opposed to the public free-for-all of Twitter or the buttoned-down professional circles of LinkedIn, you may want to reconsider. This June, the Federal Trade Commission approved the creation of a "Social Intelligence Report" that lets private companies archive your social media activities for up to seven years, for "compliance" reasons. All this is confirmed in the infographic below, created by MindFlash and based on a 2009 survey from CareerBuilder. To be on the safe side, crank up your privacy settings on Facebook to the maximum, because these companies can only pull content you've made public. Credit: MindFlash (click to enlarge)