Social Media for Michigan Schools

Social Media for Michigan Schools

Porter W. Palmer

What is Social Media?

“At its foundation, social media is a set of technologies and channels targeted at forming and enabling a potentially massive community of participants to productively collaborate.”

Anthony J. Bradley http://blogs.gartner.com/anthony_bradley/2010/01/07/a-new-definition-of-social-media/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Why Use Social Media?

• Cost effective• Encourages participation • Easily accessible• Builds relationships• Control

Social Bookmarking

• Diigo

• Delicious

Diigo

• Web highlighter • Sticky notes• Online bookmarking • Annotation

Delicious

• Online bookmarking• Connect with others• Future is unsure

Why Use Social Bookmarking?

• Internally for team planning• Community outreach• Personal learning

Blogging

• Posterous

• Tumblr

• WordPress

Posterous

• SIMPLE• Easily Accessible• Autoposts (if you want) to– Twitter– Facebook– YouTube– Flickr

If you can send an email, you can Posterous.

• m

http://principalspage.posterous.com/pencil-case-at-school

• n

Why Blog?

• Tell your story• Explain decisions• Build relationships• Demonstrate personality• Model digital citizenship

Micro-Blogging

• Twitter

• Edmodo

Twitter

• Mostly expressive communication– People can reply, but visitors to your

page won’t see it.

• Can be an amazing place to learn

Why Tweet?

• Direct traffic to your website, blog, events calendar…

• Share breaking news• Provide timely updates– Sports scores – Meeting notes

Social Networking

• Ning

• Facebook

Facebook• 2nd most popular website in the US

(Jan 11)• “Create a Page” allows multiple

administrators for that page– more people to post – more people who can monitor

• Choose whether to allow others to post to wall. (They can still comment.)

Why Facebook?

• Showcase student/faculty work• Communicate with students,

parents, alumni (expressive/receptive)

• Share links, videos, pictures• Transparency

Best Practices

• Think before you post– Keep it professional– Remember your role in the

community

• Have a plan• Train your staff• Share expertise• Update regularly

Social Media Guidelines for Schools

Words to live by

You aren’t going to be able to please everyone, but everyone should see that you aim to please.

How Do You Manage?

Write down this link

This presentation as well as links to all the sites mentioned are available here:

http://tinyurl.com/sm4schools