Twitter as an official form of school district communication.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on November 9, 2009 at 4:58pm

I work for the Prairie South School Division in Saskatchewan. PrairieSouth joined twitter last year and sporadically add tweets. I think it could be far more effective than it is. I thought it a good idea.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on November 9, 2009 at 9:09pm

Absolutely; I joined the twitter stream out of technological curiosity assuming there was little point to rambling remarks about the episodes of my life. Okay, I have been known to tweetphoto a poorly parked truck at the mall (It was abandoned across three spaces and the engine was running!) but I also found it a professional tool.

http://twitter.com/courosa Social Learning Examples (100+ ways to use social media for learning) http://bit.ly/47xdBo

courosa/@mguhlin Have you tried DownThemAll, FF Plugin http://bit.ly/1W9g7v Go to Docs page, select all, DownThemAll.

donnadesroches reading about allowing students to use internet during exams http://bit.ly/46XgKM and listening to Avoiding Plagiarism http://bit.ly/250qlR

About the time our division began tweeting I added an additional twitter account to my classroom communications array. I use it to reinforce the student agenda notes.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Lane on November 10, 2009 at 8:52pm

I work for the Folsom Cordova Unified School District... Earlier this school year they began to use Twitter to communicate with parents, staff, and (I suppose) students. However, they also block it on campus... So I would have to say not everyone is on board. : (

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on November 11, 2009 at 7:00am

I think we need to come to terms with what learning is today and how it happens. Blocking social networking is a traditional response. I work in a classroom with two or more differentiated groups. How natural for my students (or colleagues at a conference) to collaborate and information share during the stream of the lesson. Students whisper and move about the room seeking collaboration. The traditional response is to nail them down and foster solitary effort.

Last night I audited a university session using Elluminate. Here is a recording of the session for those that missed it. http://bit.ly/zxA0f . Participants chatted in the background commenting, asking questions, answering questions, offering links; the instructor seemed to monitor all of this chatter and frequently responded to the participants. It was brilliant.

If I could achieve 1-1 in my classroom and each student had their own laptop (I teach grade four and five), then I would allow Twitter. We need to teach appropriate use of these networks in education. There might be moments to ask the students to put these tools aside and demonstrate what they can do without help. Demonstrating benchmarks is not the same as learning.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Wessel on November 11, 2009 at 6:18am

I work for Lansing School District in Kansas and we are currently using Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is mainly being used as a High School communication tool for upcoming events and results of activities. We currently have 1035 fans to the page (school district of about 2400 students, 800 high school students.) Really has exploded with lots of good feedback. We created a fan page for people to subscribe to. Superintendent is on Board.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on November 11, 2009 at 6:40am

That is great. Time consuming as it may seem, wee need to explore all avenues of communication, not simply select one. So many social networking applications have become interconnected. Twitter and Facebook are very powerful. Tweets and updates can go everywhere these days.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Wessel on November 11, 2009 at 6:58am

Actually is a part of a class that maintains district website through Joomla as well as Facebook and Twitter for communication. We have gotten to some classroom conversations about Digital Citizenship and Online Safety that are very abstract for students. As we have many students that are fans of the page we are also going to post Digital Citizenship information and Online Safety information for students and parents through those sites. Great way to connect and meet students where they are.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on November 11, 2009 at 9:41pm

I say yes it would be useful. Texts, Twitter, Radio, whatever gets the word out. You mentioned resistance to the media earlier. It is understandable but frustrating. We are not pushing fads here, we are finding applications for the new infrastructure of communication in this century. Facebook may be toppled from its eminence by some new application, till it is we need to use it. I bought a Blackberry last year and naturally enough I have noticed the increasing presence of smart phones. I was a long time Palm Pilot user - very much a niche technology, something for the Daytimer people (had that too!). Smart phones are different. Your eleven year old will have a smart phone. We have to do this.

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Permalink Reply by Nick Alvarado on November 20, 2009 at 9:47am

We've just been discussing how to use social media as a high school. What usage policies do we need to present? How often do we update? Who will update and how do we use the page to develop an alumni network, school club network, and communicate with our community? How dangerous is bullying or offensive comments? We're working it all out but having the school secretary update Facebook using twitter, since Facebook is blocked, could bypass a webmaster bottleneck and make it easy to interact with tech savvy students. Here are some links I was able to research via Google:
Thoughts on schools using Facebook:

http://cyberbullying.us/blog/school-facebook-pages.html

Texas/Dallas schools using Facebook/Twitter:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/0...

Mansfield ISD posts a Note on their Fan Page describing appropriate use, not as warning message on front of fan page: http://nextcommunications.blogspot.com/2009/10/facebook-fan-page-ru...

School District Develops Appropriate Use Policy for Teachers: click the links in the article for further details

http://www.edsocialmedia.com/2009/07/why-your-school-or-district-ne...

Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-group-vs-facebook-fan-p...

http://kdi-media.com/facebook-fan-page-versus-facebook-groups/

How to Make an Effective Facebook Fan Page:

http://www.chattygal.com/tech-tools/10-steps-to-creating-the-ultima...

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Permalink Reply by Eric Pingel on November 20, 2009 at 8:55pm

At Pella CSD we use twitter to roll out HS and MS announcements, guidance, and some sporting event info. When secretaries add info to website (Drupal based) it gets auto posted to Pella CSD Twitter account. Just getting around to setting up a fan page in Facebook.

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Permalink Reply by Hayden on November 21, 2009 at 8:24am

Our school district started using Twitter this year and you can read their post here:
http://pvsd.schoolfusion.us/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=120237&a...
Their tweets are here:
http://twitter.com/PV_Schools

The interesting aspect is that it is BLOCKED in our own school district, we are NOT allowed to go to Twitter while at school. Don't you find that odd?
Hayden
Yes, I have twitter and facebook

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Permalink Reply by Katelyn Boddy on November 22, 2009 at 12:56pm

I find it very fascinating that Twitter is becoming so popular. I'm currently a college student studying education in Rochester NY and while I do have a facebook, I have not gotten hooked on Twitter yet. I've signed in and tried to figure it out but at this point, a little confused as to how it would be useful. Would any of you mind if I looked at your school twitters to get an idea? It would be great if I could! Thanks!

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