Student-Friendly Social Media Guidelines Make a Great Bulletin Board

Innovative educator Samantha Stouber uses the NYCDOE student-friendly social media guidelines as part of her efforts to teach digital literacy to her students. The guidelines provide a roadmap for to use digital media effectively.  For parents and staff there are guides. For students, the guidelines are in infographic format. As a reminder, Stouber printed out the guidelines and infographic to create this great visually teen-pleasing bulletin board.  

Need some attractive reminders for your class? Visit the social media guidelines infographics and print them out for your classroom.

Here are some close up pictures of the board:
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10 Guidelines for #EdTech Companies + Social Media - It's All About Relationships

Social media has changed how vendors do business. It is no longer one way communication. Instead with social media, like never before, there is now two-way communication allowing companies to have conversations with their customers. Those who are doing so effectively. Those who are doing so effectively, grow customer loyalty and respect.  Those who are not doing it well, will be perceived as out-of-touch and will move further toward irrelevance. 
Those who serve our schools should be expected to engage with educators via social media. Simply providing products is no longer enough. Educators want to have relationships with the people behind the products. Some ed tech partners are doing a terrific job of this with robust online communities where the people behind the resource are there to support educators in relevant ways. What's more, educators are able to connect with others using their product.  

Here are some do's and don'ts when businesses do get in the business of using social media with educators. 
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Conversation topics for educators in the age of social media

Used effectively, social media can provide one of the most meaningful and powerful learning platforms available. Yet, in many cases, we don't have conversations about recommended practices and practices that teachers may want to reconsider. These conversations are important if we want to support others in dipping their toes (or diving) into these waters.   Below are some conversation starters about social media use. These may be helpful for educators to discuss and consider how teachers are engaging where you work. As you review this list, know that this is not the same old do's and don'ts list. Times are changing. Out with "don't talk to strangers" and in with "considering ways to help students in engage responsibly with strangers online to build their learning network." Take a look at the advice below. Do you agree? Disagree? Why? What's missing?

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Fear is not an option when it comes to social media in schools

By Chris Casal + Lisa Nielsen

Cross posted at http://thecasalos.blogspot.com

Innovative educators know first hand that social media like Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Instagram can be a powerful tool for teaching, learning, leading, and strengthening the home-school connection. In many cases though, others may need to be brought on board. Especially when parents are expressing concerns and unsure of how a platform can be used successfully.

It is the job of innovative educators to ensure parents, colleagues, and administrators know how to embrace the power of social media and also how to address their concerns.  

Here are suggestions for parents, teachers, and administrators in schools embracing social media.  

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Connect to the Common Core with Resources Students Commonly Turn to For Learning

If you know the Common Core Standards you know that “The need to conduct research and to produce and consume media is embedded into every aspect of today’s curriculum. In like fashion, research and media skills and understandings are embedded throughout the Standards rather than treated in a separate section.” Common Core Learning Standards for  ELA & Literacy, Key Design Considerations

Innovative educators know that when used in the right way, social networks and other online technologies are great tools to conduct such research and gain knowledge. Not only do they leverage resources students already know and love, but they can also encourage learning in a way that is less restrictive and more open and natural.  For example, collaboration in an online group creates relationships “in which people from often widely divergent cultures and who represent diverse experiences and perspectives learn and work together” as called for in the Common Core Standards.  

Think of how access to personal learning networks created via places like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Hangout can expose students and teachers to “other perspectives and cultures through reading and listening, and they are able to communicate effectively with people of varied backgrounds.” Think about how these groups require members to “evaluate other points of view critically and constructively,” as is also called for in the Standards.

Unlike when we were in school, our students have access to the internet which has democratized the ability to access, evaluate, organize, and make meaning of what is found. With all this information however, comes a new issue:

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The New “Talk.” When Your Teen Wants to Tweet.

Editor's note: If you're an innovative educator in secondary school, you are likely to have parents ask for your expert advice on teens and social media. You can give them this article directly or use it to get some ideas about how to best approach the conversation.


If you are a parent of a teen, you already have a lot of experience working with your child(ren) to help them figure out how to engage safely and responsibly in the world. You've thought about which (or if) school is the best, which clubs they should join, which friends they should hang out with, which groups they should be a part of, and when and where they can go and hang out safely.

When your child becomes a teen there will be some new places for you to think about your child being a part of. That is because at 13 your child legally old enough to join popular social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and more.

The good news is you are prepared to do this. You have experience in making sure your child is engaging safely and responsibly in environments that are beneficial. What you've done in the physical world is exactly what you should do online.

When the time comes, be prepared to "discuss" not "tell" your child how to remain safe and responsible online. It is likely they already know what to do if someone writes something that makes them, or someone they know, feel uncomfortable.  For example, you can block or report them to the space. Also discuss what to do if they find someone is making someone else uncomfortable.

Here are some things to think about when, or ideally before, that day comes.

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It's #SoMe - Great #BacktoSchool Activity for Digital Citizenship

Like it or not, today's students are not just citizens. They are "digital" citizens. This means that educators need to spend time with students on ensuring they know how to be responsible online.  

In NYC schools we have social media guidelines created by students and teachers to guide this work. You can see them at schools.nyc.gov/socialmedia. We also support educators and parents with professional development. The professional development includes a fun back-to-school activity called, "It's #SoMe." (Note: #SoMe is the hashtag for social media.)

Here's how the activity works.  
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Don't blame social media if your students are distracted

Editor’s note: This guest post from Chris Casal started as a comment on “Filtering social media in schools because it’s a ‘distraction’” which appeared on Scott McCleod’s Dangerously Irrelevant blog.

Social media is no different than pencil and paper. I doodled a lot in the margins of my physics book. It wasn’t Twitter and Facebook that made me doodle but I doodled nonetheless.

Social media can serve as the new platform for distraction but not a new cause for it. Doodles, passing notes, sleeping in class, all of the “analog” forms of distraction, have just morphed into branded platforms.

The difference? Sleeping in class never led to anything. On the other hand, connecting & engaging on social media might. The doodler who grew up to be a graphic designer may have been distracted in class but is now earning a living born out of that distraction. Maybe the students tweeting in class will develop the next great media platform.

Social media has no intent. It can be used for evil, but it has far more potential for good. Second graders in my school composed 100 tweets for the 100th day of school in @MsGlembocki’s class. Things they loved, learned, and experienced in 100 days. They did the full writing process, including paper drafts, and then used class iPads to publish their tweets. It was amazing to see 30 second graders engaged the entire day in a writing process that covered both traditional methods & social media. They got instant feedback on their writing from around the world. Not a distraction in the least.

@MsKertesz, 4th grade ICT, used Twitter to connect with a class in Liverpool, England. They had weekly Skype sessions, did cross-pond spelling bees, and collaborated on Prezis.

These are just two examples of how social media is used in my building in very positive ways. Our students are excited about the prospect of their own accounts when they get to the appropriate age. I am confident that when they do have their own accounts they will use them as productively and positively as our teachers have.

Nothing beats a good model.

It shouldn’t be blocked. It should be used. Distraction exists no matter what. Don’t censor a whole medium in fear of distraction.

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To read more ways we use social media at my school visit http://thecasalos.blogspot.com/search/label/twitter

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10 Ways Social Media Can Improve Writing in Your Classroom

Guest Post by Vicki Davis

Editor’s note:  Vicki Davis just wrote a new book called, Reinventing Writing. I asked her if she could contribute a post to The Innovative Educator explaining specifically how social media has reinvented writing. This is that post.  

As hall of fame baseball player, Babe Ruth said, “Yesterday’s home runs won’t win tomorrow’s games.” To level up writing, we need to take advantage of the out-of-the park features and capabilities that social media inspired concepts give writing instruction.

Most of us know how it feels to write an exciting Facebook status update or a powerful tweet. Without delay, we know the impact of our words as they are retweeted, commented on, and liked (or ignored.) With this in mind, it stands to reason that students want a response too. Paper essays that are only seen by the teacher with a wastebasket as their final destiny are a needless waste of time and potential. Writing can be so much more exciting and it isn’t that hard to do.

Notably, social media is impacting writing in the classroom in ten powerful ways. You don’t have to be on social media (or even like it)  to feel the lift social media concepts can give writing in your classroom, as I share in my new book  Reinventing Writing released just this month.

10 Ways Social Media Has Reinvented Writing and Tips to Benefit Students

Social Media Impact #1 - Connect with an Audience.

Research shows that audience improves student writing effort and work. It makes sense, writers want meaning.

Tip: Use methods like Quadblogging,  #comments4kids, or encouraging parents to comment and view student work to help promote audience of your students’ public work.

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