This Tweet Just In! Teachers Starting to Take Advantage of Social Media

Status update! "Social Media could be big for educators. Big!" From tweets to status updates, more and more teachers are building online relationships with educators around the globe and pushing the envelope for innovative collaboration. Sort of like, collaboration 2.0. Some teachers are taking appropriate risks and using social media with their students. Many teachers think social media could be the next big thing in education. Well, there is only one way to find out.

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, recently released a Facebook page with resources a plenty. Other education organizations are quickly turning to Facebook and Twitter as a way of connecting with classroom teachers (ASCD:Assoication for Supervision and Curriculum Development, EducationWeekly, Center for Cognitive Coaching, and TeacherMagazine -just to name a very few). These organizations value online collaboration and see social media as a meaningful way to build capacity within educators across the country. Some big education names, like Marazano, are tweeting too. And yes, even Fairfax County has a Facebook page!

FCPS identifies teacher collaboration as an essential best practice for teachers to be highly effective in the classroom. "Participating in collaborative learning teams (PLC) to analyze data and collaboratively plan for instruction and assessment" is an expectation from the county. Is it fair to assume that the term "PLC" doesn't just mean grade level teams? Is it fair to assume PLC just doesn't mean our individual school communities? Is it fair to assume that PLC can and should encompass any educator, any where, any time? More and more educators that have found value in online collaboration will shout from the top of the school house - "YES, it should!"

These educators, seeing the value in online collaboration, have turned to social media to supplement their school base collaboration. Massive numbers of teachers have joined Twitter, and they're easy to find, too. "Teacher Tuesday" is a neat day to be on Twitter. Educators send out a "tweet" (think of this as a message anyone can see) with several user names of other teachers on Twitter to connect with. Within 48 hours, it is feasible to connect to at least 300 educators. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, you don't care about who is drinking coffee with whom, or who just taught their dog a new trick. That exists, but trust me when I say there is much more to it than that.

It isn't just teachers appearing on Twitter either. Librarians, music, art and physical education teachers are tweeting daily. Even superintendents and Principals have turned to Twitter as a viable collaborative resource. Just a few days ago a superintendent tweeted a link to a PowerPoint he was going to share with principals - he posted the link and welcomed feedback before presenting to his county. Talk about a great collaborative effort. In the end he publicly thanked 23 Twitter users for their help revising his presentation. Some principals tweet daily about their school community, and parents and students are listening.

Below is a "jingged" image from my own personal "Twitter feed". On Twitter, you "follow" users. This means you are able to see their updates and links they choose to post. You receive these posts in a feed similar to your inbox in email. This is just a quick sample of the kinds of resources available.

In just these 4 quick feeds (you can feasibly scroll through 100s in a very short time) there is a link to special education current events, a link to strategies for teaching self control, conversation about using a flip cam in the classroom and a book recommendation. If this were your Twitter account, you could easily click on any link and learn more, or you could reply directly to any of these users to have a deeper conversation about a given topic. And the best part, if something doesn't pertain to you - simply scroll on by. Your "mailbox" doesn't fill up, rather it is a constant live feed.

Here, I have included a "jingged" tweet I recently posted to my "followers." As I am helping teachers and staff in my own school improve our math instruction, I constantly seek out resources from other schools. I received about 10 responses to this question, and got some great ideas for my own school.

Twitter is appearing frequently in classrooms from K-12. Some kindergarten teachers use their twitter account and connect to local community members (firefighters, police officers, dentists, etc) and as a part of their morning meeting they read the feed off the smartboard to hear about the daily work of these community members. Classrooms are tweeting with each other across counties and states in a sort of "pen-pal'ing" kind of fashion, sharing their learning and knowledge. Even further, some teachers have done away with newsletters and tweet from the classroom daily. Parents following these tweets now have unprecedented access to their child's learning.

Facebook, the current social media giant, is exponentially gaining professional clout. Many educators have built education Facebook pages to deepen their online collaboration. School networks of teachers connected through Facebook are quickly becoming the norm. There are both positive and negatives to this trend, but in the end, this media can help strengthen our relationships with our fellow teachers. In addition to the personal life of educators (of which you control how much you share), there is a virtual smorgasboard of educational resources being shared via Facebook: -websites sponsoring student contests, -links to national education news, -links to local education news, -suggestions for online education communities to join, -classroom bulletin board samples, -student technology projects, -education vids (for teachers and students), -new education software demos, -tech integration in the classroom ..... The list continues!

Some educators are starting to connect with their former students via this platform. Some teachers, ignoring their country's "blocking" of Facebook, have built Facebook pages for their classroom, and with the parent's consent, students have joined these pages (parents too). Many counties have similar technology to do this (ie, FCPS and 24/7 Learning), but ask most students and parents (even teachers), and many will contend that these softwares are clunky and don't stimulate students to participate. Those teachers that are currently on Facebook for personal reasons, imagine the power of a Facebook like platform to communicate with your classroom parents and students daily.

Although not in the classroom anymore, I've jumped on this trend and built my own education Facebook page. Here I connect with other educators as well as former students that I have taught (most in their 20's now). In 48 hours I connected with 87 former students! I have loved every minute of it. Now granted, I realize this is new territory and teachers must tread lightly here. But there is power in social media as a supplement to our relationships we build with our students everyday. Right now, education's answer - ignore and block such sites! Although I am not certain, I feel very passionately that ignoring this type of technology isn't the right answer. Educators are creative and innovative. It is time to tap into these resources and celebrate the educational possibilities. What social media software exists to connect teachers and students in a professional, appropriate classroom setting kind of way? I'm confident that whoever figures that out may end up making millions. We'll never know unless we start trying.