Mod­ern modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and social inter­ac­tion have been of hot debate for many years now. Many crit­ics believe that social net­work­ing sites and mobile tech­nol­ogy act purely as dis­trac­tions and deter­rents to our stu­dents’ edu­ca­tion. Very few of us can deny that social media becomes a dis­trac­tion for any­one who uses it from time to time, but that doesn’t mean that total dis­missal of the phe­nom­e­non is the right route to take. As social media and mobile tech­nol­ogy con­tinue to gain in pop­u­lar­ity and preva­lence among the younger gen­er­a­tion, crit­ics of the medium may need to reeval­u­ate their judg­ment of the per­ceived pest. Social net­work­ing sites such as Face­book and Twit­ter and com­mu­ni­ca­tion modes such as instant mes­sag­ing and tex­ting may hold an impor­tant place in pri­mary edu­ca­tion in years to come. And why shouldn’t they? Stu­dents obvi­ously enjoy inter­act­ing through Face­book, Twit­ter, and text messaging—why not uti­lize that enthu­si­asm within the class­room? Here are three rea­sons to embrace social media and net­work­ing within the classroom.

Social Media Is Here to Stay

We can only deny it for so long. But, the fact of the mat­ter is, social media isn’t going any­where and stu­dents are going to con­tinue using it regard­less of how much we pun­ish them for bring­ing it within our class­rooms. An impor­tant les­son to learn for any par­ent, teacher, or indi­vid­ual is to pick your bat­tles wisely. We are not going to be able to elim­i­nate social net­work­ing sites and social media just because we are ban­ning it from our stu­dents’ class­rooms, so why are we fight­ing it so vehe­mently? With 73 per­cent of teens between 12 to 17 active on social net­work­ing sites, it seems we as edu­ca­tors should respond to that immense and wide­spread inter­est among our youth. Ban­ning social media and cell­phones from our schools is likely more of a waste of time, energy, and resources than it is worth.

Stim­u­lated Engage­ment and New-Found Voice

Once we actu­ally decide to embrace social media and mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy, there are many things that the tech­nol­ogy may have to offer our class­rooms and our stu­dents. Part of the rea­son that social media and social net­work­ing are so pop­u­lar has to do with its pub­lic­ity. Mid­dle school­ers and high school­ers have some­thing impor­tant to gain from being more vis­i­ble to and heard by their peers and men­tors. We as edu­ca­tors and men­tors to our young pupils seek to give them voices and show them their sig­nif­i­cance in a world that can often feel unin­ter­ested in the young per­sons’ inter­ests and con­cerns. Social media and net­work­ing plat­forms pro­vide a won­der­ful way to give young stu­dents a more pub­lic voice. Things like blog­ging and mir­coblog­ging (Twit­ter and Face­book) help stu­dents find greater pur­pose and engage­ment in their work. They feel they are not purely doing an assign­ment for a teacher or a grade—their friends will see it and other peo­ple on the web may see it (in the case of a pub­lic blog). There is a sense of pur­pose and power in this that is extremely impor­tant to find as a teenager in today’s society.

Put Simply—It’s Read­ing and Writing

Social media and mobile technology—Facebook, Twit­ter, blog­ging, instant mes­sag­ing, text messaging—each intrin­si­cally encour­age one of the foun­da­tions of education—reading and writ­ing. Text mes­sag­ing and social media have come under attack many times in the past for encour­ag­ing poor gram­mar and trun­cated lan­guage. Because the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms have char­ac­ter lim­its, users are forced to shorten their dis­cus­sions and limit their lan­guage. How­ever, as many an Eng­lish teacher will attest to, is this brevity really a neg­a­tive thing? Not only are stu­dents who use text mes­sag­ing and social net­work­ing intrin­si­cally using writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion and read­ing skills in their every­day lives, they also gain lessons in con­cise writ­ing and read­ing com­pre­hen­sion through the exer­cise. Eng­lish and lan­guage teach­ers should embrace these plat­forms for writ­ing, read­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion because stu­dents are so attuned and pas­sion­ate about them. Any prac­tice in read­ing and writ­ing is a pos­i­tive thing for young stu­dents and find­ing ways to incor­po­rate a student’s every­day habits into their aca­d­e­mic habit can be a very pos­i­tive thing.

Though as par­ents and edu­ca­tors we may not under­stand social net­work­ing, social media, or mobile tech­nol­ogy, don’t rule out the expla­na­tion that we’re just too old to really get it. We should find ways to embrace the things that our youth are pas­sion­ate about and uti­lize them within edu­ca­tion and acad­e­mia in a way that is pos­i­tive and productive.

By-line:

This guest post is con­tributed by Kath­eryn Rivas, who writes on the top­ics of online uni­ver­si­ties advice.  She wel­comes your com­ments at her email Id: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

Yes­ter­day was Teacher Appre­ci­a­tion Day and if you’re an admin­is­tra­tor, hope­fully you have already taken the time to thank your teach­ers for all of the hard work that they do for stu­dents.  I’d also hope that you don’t save those thank-yous for Teacher’s Appre­ci­a­tion Day only.  In the past three years, I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to meet out­stand­ing teach­ers from around the coun­try.  Prior to that, I was for­tu­nate to learn with many for­ward think­ing col­leagues.   A good ques­tion to con­sider is how to sup­port our best teach­ers with more than a thank-you or cheap trin­ket once a year.  The ideas that I’ve listed below are bor­rowed from schools and edu­ca­tors across the coun­try.  Feel free to leave a com­ment with addi­tional ideas.  I’ve split my list into two cat­e­gories.  The first group of sug­ges­tions is for admin­is­tra­tors, and the sec­ond cat­e­gory is for those of you who are teach­ers look­ing for bet­ter sup­port systems.

Admin­is­tra­tors:

• Pro­vide your best teach­ers with RESOURCES because they can serve as mod­els for other teach­ers.  Resources include not only things, but also time!
• Find ways to help those teach­ers con­tinue to grow.  Send them to con­fer­ences and let them visit other schools.
• Be cre­ative and reward them for their hard work.

Teach­ers:

• Try to develop net­works that will help you con­tinue to grow.  Your net­work may include other teach­ers in the school, but should also include other exem­plary edu­ca­tors from around the globe.  Use social media to con­nect with others.
• If your admin­is­tra­tion isn’t pro­vid­ing you with resources, think cre­atively.  Apply for grants, or go to your PTO if pos­si­ble.  Try to make part­ner­ships with local busi­nesses that are friends of edu­ca­tion. Even a non-supportive admin­is­tra­tion is unlikely to turn down free money or tools.
• Toot your own horn!  Gen­er­ally, most edu­ca­tors are not good at this.  How­ever, if you want your com­mu­nity to sup­port your work, you should show them all of the great things you are doing.

I hope that yes­ter­day was a great day for all of you. More impor­tantly, I hope that each of you have the sup­port sys­tems that allow you to be suc­cess­ful in your school each and every day.

Nick Sauers

I spent the day on Tues­day at the kick­off of Emi­nence, Kentucky’s Frame­work of Inno­va­tion for Rein­vent­ing Edu­ca­tion (F.I.R.E.) ini­tia­tive.  School com­mu­ni­ties often unite behind ath­letic or other extra-curricular activ­i­ties, but are less enthu­si­as­tic about sup­port­ing learn­ing ini­tia­tives. It was awe­some to see the excite­ment gen­er­ated for Emi­nences School on F.I.R.E. ini­tia­tive.  Not only were stu­dents, board mem­bers, and school staff mem­bers at the kick­off event, but also many other indi­vid­u­als who had been involved with the launch of their pro­gram.  Many things from the day were inspir­ing, but the mes­sage from Terry Hol­i­day, who is the Ken­tucky Com­mis­sioner of Edu­ca­tion, was very pow­er­ful.  Com­mis­sioner Hol­i­day may have bor­rowed a line from a pop­u­lar speech with his “Yes we can” theme, and it was enthu­si­as­ti­cally received by the crowd. He noted how many schools said that that they were unable to go 1:1 dur­ing such a dif­fi­cult bud­get time, but Emi­nence said, “yes we can”.  He noted how many schools banned cell phones and social media, but Emi­nence embraced it.  For me, his mes­sage was rel­e­vant to a vast range of top­ics or issues.  In schools, and in life, we often let rules or obsta­cles get in our way of chang­ing our behav­iors or reach­ing a goal.  In schools those obsta­cles may be 45-minute peri­ods, stan­dard­ized test­ing, the bud­get, facil­i­ties, or a host of other things.  Those chal­lenges, how­ever real they are, often become excuses to not make major changes.  I say excuses because in most cases there are exam­ples of schools that have over­come those obsta­cles to improve their learn­ing envi­ron­ment for stu­dents.  One exam­ple of this would be the bud­get chal­lenges that most schools are fac­ing.  I’ve worked with numer­ous schools in Iowa who have gone 1:1, and many oth­ers who have said that they just can’t afford to do it.  Those schools that have gone 1:1 in Iowa don’t have any unique resources that other schools do not have.  In fact, most of them have declin­ing enroll­ments, which is an essen­tial part of bud­gets that are cre­ated on a per pupil basis.  They were able to go 1:1 because they thought it was impor­tant for their stu­dents and they were com­mit­ted to mak­ing it hap­pen.  On Tues­day, there were many exam­ples of how Emi­nence was over­com­ing numer­ous obsta­cles to improve stu­dent learn­ing.  Some exam­ples include:

• They have embraced a “sur­prise and delight” approach to school, and even have included that as some­thing they look for in their walk-throughs. For more infor­ma­tion about sur­prise and delight, con­tact John Nash or visit his dLab web­site.
• Build­ing on the last point, they have thought of cre­ative ways to have pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment. A 9-year old led one train­ing!  On another day, they had their train­ing at a local shop­ping mall.  Another was held at a Starbucks.
• They worked closely with an archi­tect to cre­ate a great envi­ron­ment for stu­dents. In the ele­men­tary, the hall­ways were designed to look like a road and the out­side of each class­room looked like a busi­ness or other com­mu­nity build­ing.  I can imag­ine that the ele­men­tary stu­dents were pretty excited about their school! (This was done at min­i­mal costs.)
• They are imple­ment­ing a 1:1 pro­gram in the high school called ACES.
• One of their school buses has been equipped with Wi-Fi!
• Their class sched­ule includes an amaz­ing list of elec­tives that should be extremely rel­e­vant to stu­dents.  I’m excited to learn more about their syl­labi for each course and will likely post about them in the future.  One of those courses involves stu­dents help­ing to solve prob­lems their com­mu­nity is fac­ing.  Another course, the one that I’m most excited about, will have stu­dents try­ing to cre­ate a large dig­i­tal foot­print around a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion.  They will use social media to spread their mes­sage around the world.
• Stu­dents will col­lab­o­rate with stu­dents from a promi­nent high school in the UK.

These are just some exam­ples of the excit­ing things that they have done.  They also high­light how schools CAN rein­vent them­selves if they truly want to do so!  I hope to fol­low their school closely and write about some of the chal­lenges and suc­cesses that they encounter on their jour­ney.  It is extremely excit­ing to be involved with a school that is very aggres­sively think­ing of cre­ative ways to improve their schools. Emi­nence closed their cel­e­bra­tion with a rap from stu­dent Bran­don Mitchell, and part of his wrap is below.  If you’d like to see the entire set of lyrics, you can find them here.

You know I love those ACES
I ain’t talkin bout the card
But with all these Apple prod­ucts
Got me feel­ing like Steve Jobs

With all these advances
a new era is now enter­ing
Schools are mak­ing progress
time to move into this century

B. E. Ready, B. E. Ready
B. E. Ready… For fire
B. E. Ready, B. E. Ready
B. E. Ready… For fire

Accom­plish the impos­si­ble
Were liv­ing by this code
No bet­ter way to start it
Then with Mac­Book Pros

Assign­ing them to stu­dents
Each and every indi­vid­ual
We take the school and flip it
You can call it the reciprocal

Nick Sauers