Teaching Tip #110

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #110

Don’t be a social media hold out.  What are you waiting for?  Your kids aren’t.

This is the opening paragraph of this post - The Perils of Being a Social Media Holdout.

And it is intended for businesses, but it can easily apply to teachers too.

There are conversations taking place about your company or brand 24 hours a day, seven days a week in social media. Are you a part of these conversations? Or are you hoping that if you don't hear them, they don't exist?

And it is intended for businesses, but it can easily apply to teachers too.

Students Tweet and text and Facebook and Snapchat about you.  That's inevitable.  Your part of their lives.  Like it or not.  The only thing you can control is whether they're going to spread positive or negative things about you via social media.

I always tell teachers who shy away from social media that the world sees all the negative stuff that goes on in classrooms (just go to youtube and check out bad teacher or angry teacher or bad teaching and see what comes up).  So why not show the world all the awesome stuff you do.

When a lesson is going great, have your kids take out their phones or iPads or iPods and document it.  Then push it out to social media.  Or do that yourself.  Have a designated 'live Tweeter' for every class period.  Or at least someone you trust to document some of the learning that goes in in the classroom.

I love this point that the article makes - If you don't tell your story, others will tell it for you.

So show the world all the great things that go on it your room.  That way when new students walk in, they know they're going to be blown away by the things you do.  That is far better than having them walk in having no idea what to expect - or worse- knowing all too well just what they're going to get - lecture, notes, questions at the end of the story, and power points that are read verbatim.

That stuff sucks.