Blog Post #8--To Post Or Not To Post, That Is The Question

Image Source: (Chris, 2014)

From the start, I was looking forward to this class for a couple of reasons. 

1. I am the social media administrator for all the social media pages at my school.
2. I wanted to see how to get more teachers in my school to step up and dive into social media.
3. I wanted to see how I could use social media in my classroom.

Image Source: (Stux)

Social Media Administrator

Since I work in a small Chicago, Catholic school, there is no funding to pay teachers for extra roles we take on during the school year. I wanted to my wonderful school and put it on the map, so to speak by creating a presence on Facebook. Ten years later, my skills have improved and I continue to look for ways to get my school mentioned on all the major social media platforms. Although I did not walk away from this class with learning better ways to use the social media we have, I am okay with that. What I did learn was that I needed to change the logos that I was using in my email as clickable links to drive traffic to our social media sites. After reading ToS policies more closely, I discovered the branding resources. Now all my links to drive traffic to my school's social media pages meet the terms of the platform for usage.

Taking the Dive into Social Media

Working on the final project for most of the time of this class, I developed a web page to help the teachers in my school with using social media and Google Classroom. Currently, my school has at least five different ways teachers communicate with the families. If I was one of the parents with multiple children in the school, I would be frustrated with having to go to a few different sites just to see the daily homework and/or announcements. With my principal's blessing, she is happy not only did I bring up the idea of moving to a school-wide platform, but I created a manual on a webpage to help us be more tech savvy and considerate to our parents. While I was working on the final project, I began creating screencast videos that can be used by teachers, parents, and students. The problem was, I did not have a place to house them. Then an idea hit me! Since my main goal is to help the teachers in my school use Google Classroom, why not model an example of Classroom's power? I created a Classroom where the teachers in my school will be invited to join. Once that happens, they will have access to resources, links, and my tutorial screencasts. Teachers would also be encouraged to add to the resources as well as use the screencasts to teach their students how to join Classroom or for the parents to sign up to receive Guardian Summaries. The idea is not to give more work to the teachers, but to give them the tools to help them learn about various tech tools.

Using Social Media

As of now, no one in my school is using the major social media platforms with their students. The majority of the students are under the age of 13 and we have an intranet for student use. My plan is to look into how I can use at least one platform with my students next year, but I have not decided on which one. I want to look at my classmates' projects to see how they use social media to get more of a visual understanding of social media's potential in schools. I would also like my students to start blogging. Currently, the eighth grade teacher has her students blog and I can see the students take pride in their work because they know the audience is not just the teacher. Making arrangements to talk about social media and student use with my principal is on my agenda, I just want to make sure I have as much information as I can for that meeting. She is very open to thinking outside of the box, so I am hopeful that we can figure out the best social media tool to use with my school.

For my own use of social media, I think I have been pretty mindful of what I post, whether it is text or images. What I have noticed is that I have been keeping the T.H.I.N.K acronym in the forefront when it comes time to decide whether to post something or not. This is definitely a poster  I want hanging in my classroom.

Image Source: (Galvez, 2012)

Chris. (2014, January 6). Retrieved from https://www.performanceicreate.com/whats-next/

Galvez, T. (2012, March 16). THINK before you. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/togawanderings/6988486459

Stux. (n.d.). Free Image on Pixabay - Social Media, World, Communication. Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://pixabay.com/vectors/social-media-world-communication-1405601/