Social Media in Education for Beginners Brian Quick, BrianQuick@smsd.org

Twitter! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJZuGhMp560 Twitter puts the world at your (and your students’) fingertips! Twitter is an amazing tool to communicate with your students, student families, peers, and be a part of the greater SMSD and education Twitter community. Your “handle” will be @(your user name). Mine is @QuickSMSD Brief introductions – who you are, grade level, school, and comfort level with social media AND technology.

Let’s Get Started Download the Twitter app – time to sign up or sign in! If you do not have an account, please sit by someone who does who can assist you. Fill in the required information – you will want your user name to be something easy to remember and easy to use. Example: mine is QuickSMSD Add a profile picture that you are cool with students seeing! You can also add a banner picture…or do it later. This personalizes your page. You may set your profile to private, but no one will see your Tweets except people who also have Twitter and follow you. By making it public, parents and students who don’t have Twitter can still see your posts and updates. Check with your school’s policy regarding student privacy before posting pictures and videos of students.

Baby Steps – Following Others Why follow others? Idea sharing, networking, communication with teachers, admin, parents and the community. Following other accounts is essentially like “friending” someone on Facebook. You will then see their account, they will see yours. Click the search bar…search QuickSMSD. You should find my account. Click the follow button (you can unfollow later!). Congrats if that was your first follow! Now, exchange user names with the person next to you, and follow that person. You should get a notification that someone has followed you.

Baby Steps – Direct Messages Click on your new follower’s page. Click the button that looks like a comic strip text box (or text messaging symbol). You may send them a direct message this way. You can only message people you follow, and vice versa. Tweet “at” a person by using @(their handle) in your tweets. This will notify them, and your/their followers will see the tweet.

Baby Steps – Tweet Tweet! Click the “home” button. This is where you will see all the tweets from people you follow (a great place to see tweets from around the district)! Click the “me” button. This is where you can see your profile and everything you have tweeted. Click the tweet button – looks like a feather in a box. You now have the option to tweet! Let us count the ways…

Tweet Varieties You have 140 characters to tweet with. Everyone type a greetings message of some sort and click tweet! Boom! You’ve just tweeted! Nice work. Click “tweet” again! Now I want you to notice some of the options you are given. Let’s look at those and try them out. You can choose a photo from your camera roll you have already taken, or click the “photo” button. You will want to agree to give Twitter access to your camera, camera roll, and microphone as it asks you for these things. You can choose a photo from your camera roll you have already taken, or click the photo button and your camera comes up. Lets all take a picture (selfie or the room) and add a message regarding what you are doing right now – still with 140 characters!

Video! Twitter gives you two cool options for adding video. You can: A) Record a video on your phone or iPad as normal, then upload it by going to the video and clicking upload. If you do this, you will need to edit it for length…it can go longer, but you need to drag the sides of the video to edit it. B) use the video option when you click camera. The cool thing about this is you can essentially edit as you go...you can record multiple clips and then post directly. This is great for quick bursts of information, student interviews, and showing off student work. Let’s add a brief video to our timelines.

Other Cool Options You can actually go LIVE by clicking the live button. Once you record something live, it is then available as a video after you end your live session. Be warned! Live means live! Watch out for putting anything out there you may not want everyone to see (student doesn’t know an answer, discipline, kids acting out, etc). GIFs! Click the GIF button on your tweet to add a fun GIF and a message. The GIF does take up some of your characters. Add a poll! Click the three lines to add a question and end date. Check in! Fun for field trips, high school athletics (show your support), etc. Not essential, but you can make it work for you!

What is the point? Twitter can be used for all sorts of reasons. One of the most substantial is communicating with peers, parents, and students. Here are some ways to make communication easier! #UseHashtags – Hashtags separate Tweets meant to be part of a conversation. These tweets still appear in your followers’ feeds, but you can click the hashtag (a.k.a. pound sign) to see the whole conversation. Let’s try it out! Type a Tweet with a question. When done, type #QuickPD17 and tweet it out. Now, go to your feed and see your post. Click the hashtag #QuickPD17 and you should soon see everyone who is posting to this hashtag. Why is this important?

#Hashtags You can start different hashtags for your different classes to communicate with students. Imagine #QuickEnglish1 #QuickEnglish2 and so forth. English 1 students could click your hashtags and see information only relevant to them…and can respond using that hashtag to ask questions of everyone following that thread. You can also post under the hashtag by clicking it and then tweeting – it adds your hashtag for you. Communicate with peers! Every Monday night at 8:00 you can visit #KSEdChat. This is a weekly discussion held by Kansas teachers about various topics. You can find very specific discussions related to your subject – a great way to find new ideas and share your brilliance with others! Shawnee Mission teachers share with one another using #Team512 and #OurSMSDStory. Occasionally last year’s hashtag gets used, #ProudToBeSMSD. These allow us to show off the great work being done in our classrooms, and connect with peers and school leaders across the district. We can and SHOULD control the messaging about education – let others see what awesome things we are doing in our schools. Remember! No spaces in hashtags! And they do count toward your total character limit.

Tweet @ Me, Bro! If you want to show off your work to a specific audience, you can use the @ user name to Tweet at someone. These tweets are public! Don’t confuse with a private message. For example, if my class does an amazing STEM project and I want to show it off, I would Tweet a picture of it, discuss what I am doing in my Tweet, and then use @RStar512 (which is the Twitter handle of my principal) and @TheSMSD (the school district). They can choose to retweet those, and a larger audience sees the amazing things going on in my classroom.

Twitter Misc. ReTweet – to show support for another tweet, or perhaps a colleague has tweeted out good information (i.e. Student council meeting has been cancelled), you can click ReTweet. This will put that tweet (and the original user) on your wall. Let’s practice. A Quote Tweet is a retweet that allows you to retweet and add information in your own tweet along with it. Let’s do it! Reply – this sends a public message to a user. If a peer tweets an awesome project, you can reply to their tweet by clicking the reply button – something like @QuickSMSD Way to go! Please reply to a friend or to me to make sure we have this down! The heart – this is a like button. Once you like something, it shows up in your likes…this is a great way to save something for later. Like a tweet from a peer.

Review the basics Go to your “me” screen. You see your tweets. If you only want to see the pictures you have posted, click the media tab. If you click the likes tab, you will see everything you’ve liked previously. I am going to show you some ways I use Twitter with my students – but first, any questions regarding the technical side of Twitter?

Some Twitter Ideas Quick Week at a Glance – I record a weekly video each Monday and post it previewing what we will be working on the following week. This allows parents to have an idea of what is going on in Room 206. Student selfie of the day. All of my students are signed off on Skyward allowing me to post pictures of them and their work – so I post selfie with a student (sometimes several) each day. Great way to get kids and parents to check the site! I always write homework on the board – and then post a pic of it at the end of the day. Any parent who checks my Twitter will know exactly what homework I have assigned for that day. Pictures of students at work, and student work. What a great way to show off how hard my students work! Parents said at conferences they really feel like they know what is going on, and what their kids are up to. It makes them feel like part of the class! Videos of students describing (usually in :30) what we are doing at that moment. What better way to describe our work than through the eyes of a student! Reminders about upcoming events, field trips, etc. I usually post 2-6 times per day …it doesn’t have to be overwhelming, it can be fun!

Questions re: Twitter? Any questions? Care to share ideas on being interconnected and using Twitter to better our classrooms?

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