Digital Doors was created as a place for me to blog and share resources that I think would be helpful for teachers integrating technology in meaningful ways in their classroom. My goal would be to write a blog post a week, but with my busy schedule, that doesn't happen. I write when I can and rely on nifty tools to help me share what I am finding when I don't have time to write.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Pin It

Widgets

Sharing our Story in 15 Seconds

More and more, schools are seeing Social Media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Instragram as effective tools for communicating and sharing their story with the community.  While in the classroom, we still tend to see Social Media as a distraction and possibly even a danger for our students. Recently, I saw a quote from a student on George Couros' blog that said,



"Social Media is like water. It is all around us, you can let us drown or you can teach us to swim." 
We need to teaching and modeling the proper use of social media so that our students can indeed swim to success.  One way to do this, is to jump in as teachers and schools and use Social Media as a place to put our best foot forward for our community to see.

In her blog Langwitches, Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano has a series of articles on using Social Media in powerful ways in school.  She shares of an exercise she did with educators where they had to create a 15 second video sharing the story of your school.

Challenge: Tell Your School or Classroom Story in 15 Seconds

An Instagram Video is 15 seconds.  I challenge you to share the story of your school or classroom in a 15 second Instagram video and then tag the video with #mvsddigital. This is a positive way for us to brag on the great things happening in our district.  Let's see if we can get at least one video (and hopefully more) from each school in the Mount Vernon District.  You can share your classroom story or your school story.  You can do it all by yourself, or you can enlist some colleagues to team with you. These videos will be posted to our Digital Literacy Google+, Twitter and Facebook pages oh and of course on Instagram.  (Have you liked or joined these groups?)


By the way, I recently had to sit through a 13 minute video telling the story of a district in our state.  Great district, but 13 minutes was too long to hold my interest.  You can get a much bigger bang for your buck if you practice your summarizing skills and keep it short and sweet.

Using Instagram in the Classroom
Social Media FOR Schools

When sharing photos or work of students.  Please be sure to check that their parents have not opted out of publishing student work. 
Pin It Now!

No comments: