From Nit Wit to Net Wit: 4 Social Networking Rules for Schools

On the heels of yesterday's post about mistakes schools make entering into social networking, I submit the following ideas and suggestions to schools who want to get the most out of the opportunities social networking offers.


1. Don't use it just because it's there.

Having a Facebook page does not demonstrate that you understand a darned thing about 21st century networking. There are over 400 million users on Facebook; welcome to the club.

I hear so often how excited some institutions are because they've set up a "Facebook presence". And I want to tell these people: "Don't you get it? It's not about you being excited about being on Facebook, it's about folks on Facebook being excited about you being there."

The same folks tend to use Facebook (and social media in general) as an analogue to the sorts of communications they made in the pre-digital days. And I want to tell them: "No, no, no! The comments wall of a Facebook Group is not a place to post your press releases. It's a place to make an offer of community and to join in the already happening conversation."

Likewise, I see schools creating Facebook pages because they think that's what 'being hip to social networking' is all about. Fact of the matter is, in many cases a user-defined Ning would work so much better to help the institution achieve its goals.

The key to getting the most out of social networking is in understanding one simple maxim: Don't use it just because it's there. If you find yourself creating a need, then you are doing the wrong thing.

Step back, figure out what it is that you want to do (and be specific, don't just say 'reach more people'), and find the tool that best helps you achieve that goal.

Personal example: For years, I maintained a class blog where I'd post homework assignments and links to further reading. Over the last two years, I've found that I can use Twitter along with Delicious and a wiki more effectively than I was using the blog. I post assignments and maintain conversations about classwork on the former and I archive, brainstorm, and create reference libraries on the latter two. So, I stopped using one totally legitimate technology in favour of using another.

The trick isn't 'using technology'.

The trick is finding the technology that's right for you, whether you are a classroom teacher or a large institution.



2. Don't centralize your Facebook communications.

I'm an alumnus; I'm not really interested in whether or not school's closed next week. I was also a bit of a geek back in high school (go figure), so whether or not the varsity football team is having a winning season really isn't all that interesting to me. I was, however, in the Drama Club; I'd love to know what's happening with the Spring Musical. And I was a member of the Jazz Band; I'd love to know what songs are in the current set list.

Now, if you send information forth from a centralized point, you might get my attention once or twice. Soon, however, I get too bored by the football headlines to bother even reading through whatever other information you may have sent out. You lost me.

I still count as a number in your 'friends' list, but you've effectively lost me.

It didn't have to be this way.

This is social media, after all. So be social. Don't style yourself after the PR that worked back in the days of print. Instead, let the individual departments and programs establish networks with their own alumni and constituents; and let me be a part of whatever network I so choose.

If you are using Facebook for networking, this is an essential understanding.

The football team should have it's own network run by the football team and football alums. The Drama Club should have it's own network -- and not limited to current students, but engaging alumni and local professionals.

Now, it's fine to have a 'school' presence. But by-and-large, that central hub serves mostly as a glorified calendar and business card. It's the micro-networks that do the real job of engaging like-minded folks. To use a popular term: your school is comprised of tribes. The job of a communications director or alumni office, therefore, should not be to 'tell constituents the news', but rather to show them where to find the tribe of their choice.



3. Think outside the Tweet.

Twitter is essentially whatever you want it to be.

As a quick and effective way to send a message or link to your public, it's unparalleled. Just don't let the "What are you doing? / What's happening?" prompts squelch your message; they're just red herrings. What you need to do is make your Tweets work for you. For a main office, I suggest a daily morning Tweet with a highlight and a link to morning announcements. For Athletic Depts, go ahead and Tweet your game schedules, rankings, and links to news coverage of your student athletes. Guidance Depts: Tweet college links, links to sites useful for stress relief, and links to sites where students can get further tutoring or mentoring. Academic Depts: there's no reason why the English Dept isn't Tweeting its reading list or why the Math Dept doesn't Tweet classic problems in Analytic Geometry or Calculus.

Now, the first instinct of many an educator is: But, why?

Well, the short answer is: because Tweeting is one of the most positive things you can do to foster motivation.

Students and Parents will appreciate the daily Tweeted schedule; the Athletic Dept may see a surge in its fan-base as videos of players go viral and schools compete against one another virtually for fans -- particularly in the case of High Schools looking to recruit, a sound Twitter community will bode well towards getting great information and a variety of perspectives out to parents and students. For the Guidance Office, you may well find that students start picking up the ball to create their own tutoring programs and clubs based around academic and social issues discussed via Twitter; and certainly the Departmental Tweets have the potential of fostering communities based around common love for a subject.

The trick here is to allow it to grow naturally. Don't force all of the kids to follow your English department feed; that's a disaster in the making. Rather, let the kids discover their own tribes and use Twitter to let those tribes flourish. Go ahead: create content and send it out there; before long, your constituents will be the ones creating the majority of the content and you'll be the one learning what makes a community a community.



4. Don't be afraid of the 'unofficial'.

Despite the best intentions of a school to 'own' its brand, no institution ever really 'owns' its memory. Schools are comprised of people, and the people themselves are the reality of the school.

Now, those folks in charge of creating a web presence soon will have realized that there exist 'unofficial' versions of your brand all over the place -- in the form of blogs, Tweets, Facebook Groups, and more.

What does an effective communications director do?

Well, he or she points to the best of the 'unofficial' and says: "Check this out."

For those of you choking on that last sentence, consider the example of the band Radiohead. For years, the band has listed (under alt/radiohead sites) 'unofficial' sites created by folks all over the world with one thing in common: a love for Radiohead.

The result?

More love for Radiohead.

People love to be in a community with like-minded people. People love to debate the minutiae of their passions. People long for means to connect.

Translate this into your situation.

Now, I realize most of you aren't rock stars. But you are the people who produce the environment in which most human beings undergo the fundamental changes that make them into young adults.

That's powerful stuff.

Now there will be students who have not liked their school experience. And they may use the Net to express this to the world. And that's fine. Because there are also students who will have loved their experience. And some of them too will use the Net to try to express this to the world. You can think of these constituencies as the Yin and Yang of Net identity.

The trick is to mute neither while pointing folks towards what you think is most valuable.

And hagiography and glowing hyperbole is not always deemed 'most valuable', so make your decisions wisely. The goal here is not to use your links to create the impression of what your school is like, but rather to use your links as a means of being a partner in the creation of a broader digital alumni and school community.

'Unofficial' sites and 'Unofficial' networks are good. It means that there are folks whose experience connects in some way to your place. You then have to decide whether given site or given network provides value to your community.

On Change and Predictability

It's funny, within minutes of publishing my last post, a friend commented:

A little heavy handed on the change business, huh? And predictability? Don't kids need more rather than less than that in their lives? Especially in school?

As to the former: I think (for once) I'm actually not being heavy handed concerning my position on 'change'. The reason I like the WoW comparison is that it gives us the example of change coming in while the game is already on top. In other words, the real 'cataclysm' going on here is that they've got 11 million users who love the game as-is and now they are in effect destroying the very fabric of the world those people love. That takes guts. But by-and-large as I watched the chats play out in the backchannels of Azeroth's cities over the weekend, most folks are thrilled by what's coming; it was a total love-fest for this move.

We as educators have to understand that while we may at times be wary of change, our constituencies -- both students and parents -- are ready for it. For example, I hear over and over the question of how parents will respond to social media in the classroom. And I always respond that after a full year of using blogs, Twitter, and a variety of Web 2.0 tools, I haven't received a single parent complaint. And in fact I have received a handful of thank-yous from parents who want their kids to be using this stuff in an authentic way.

As for 'predictability', I do understand the notion that classrooms need to be a place of stability and safety for students; but I don't think that challenging predictability in any way undermines that. In my own experience, I remember changing the entire format of a term-paper assignment on the spot in front of a class of Juniors because an idea one of them had was much better than the idea I'd worked up over the course of a few days. In another case, I saw a veteran teacher suddenly up and change his course requirements in the middle of a course -- to the benefit in learning of all of the students (you should've seen the projects they accomplished after the upheaval!). I know another teacher who scrubs predictability out of his classroom environment by carrying on twice-a-week lotteries for seating arrangements. Again, this doesn't make the class less stable, rather it fosters more interaction between kids who otherwise wouldn't. And lastly, I caught a teacher over the summer learning everything he could about Twitter after reading about it in TIME; he ended last June totally bummed out on ed tech, but coming back into it this fall post-Twitter, he's pumped and he's starting by having all of his students Tweet.

So I'd say that you've got to be open to spontaneity. That doesn't mean you can just wing it; after all, as any jazz musician will tell you, you've got to bring your A-game to any improvised set. Improvisation is an artform. It needs to be practiced and honed; the artist needs to learn from mistakes and assumptions. But, in the hands of a serious practitioner, improvisation -- and the disruption of predictability -- is a nuanced method of expressing understanding, compassion, and new forms of accessibility.

And I'd argue that these are the things kids need more of in school.

Keeping Things Out in the Open

Got a couple of interesting responses to yesterday's post about starting an RPG/MMOG club at school.

Reader Norman sums up many of them writing:

Just watch your back with RPGs. Keep everything out in the open.

Indeed. That's good advice.

And that's what it's all about: keeping everything "out in the open".

That's why my gradebook is available online. That's why I've got parents in my Twitter feed. That's why all of my students' work -- including all tests, essays, exams, etc. -- that's why all of it is posted on their blogs. That's why I have students post projects and documentation to YouTube and ThisMoment. That's why I'm Ustreaming classes to the school community.

The 21st century classroom is all about keeping everything "out in the open".

And yet, so often, the response I get from teachers and admins is: "Watch your back". As though I'm teaching radical dogma in hushed tones behind closed doors.

My room is open to everybody. The students understand this when they sign up for my courses. The parents give me high-fives and smiles for giving them a window into the daily learning-lives of their children.

Have there been problems with RPGs in schools in the past?

Sure.

But it wasn't because of the RPGs.

It was because of the way schools were set up in the past. Schools themselves were these closed-off secretive fortresses. Parents were often in the dark as to what went on on a daily basis.

Some schools are still like this. And that's got to change.

Because we are living in an age where the technology offers us new ways to open up our teaching to the broader community. It allows for real-time transparency.

Because no teacher should have anything to hide. Indeed teachers should want to keep everything "out in the open".

From the Archives: Hail, hail, rock'n'roll...

Originally posted April 6, 2009


I love rock'n'roll.

The first three albums I ever owned were Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park', the Rolling Stones' 'Hot Rocks', and the Velvet Underground's first recording.

It was a bit later that I came to understand the influence of Chuck Berry on so many of my favorite records and on music in general. And the song that always stuck in my mind when I thought of Chuck Berry was 'School Days' with its tale of classroom boredom, young love fun, and the anthemic 'Hail, hail, rock'n'roll'.

The lyric begins with a description of the common doldrums of first-period. History and math are studied, not out of any love of either subject, but rather because the students are just "hopin' to pass"; and all the while, some bored kid in the back of the class is ignoring exactly the moral that the teacher is trying to teach.

Up in the mornin' and out to school
The teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule
American history and practical math
You study' em hard and hopin' to pass
Workin' your fingers right down to the bone
And the guy behind you won't leave you alone

The next stanza hits on lunchroom life, books, and a teacher's mean looks.

Ring ring goes the bell
The cook in the lunchroom's ready to sell
You're lucky if you can find a seat
You're fortunate if you have time to eat
Back in the classroom open you books
Gee but the teacher don't know
How mean she looks

Finally, after a day of this:

You finally lay your burden down
Close up your books, get out of your seat

The rest of the song has to do with the good stuff of love and dancing and rock'n'roll. It's an amazing song and speaks in a universal way to the matter of 'the things one has to do' vs. 'the things one wants to do'.

And I'm struck, not just by the universality, but also by the description in the first half of the song about the school day itself.

1. High School starts first thing in the morning.
2. The teacher is moralizing.
3. The subjects are studied just for a grade.
4. The teacher is unable to control the class.
5. Circulation, facilities, and time-management are everyday burdens.
6. Students carry books around to classes.
7. The teacher is unaware of the psychology of young people.
8. School is a burden.
9. Education is what goes on hanging with friends after school.

This song was written in 1957. Yet, the description of the school environment looks an awful lot like what I think many of us are all too familiar with. It's as though for some reason despite the fact that we're a far way from 1957, we're still doing so many of the same things and fostering the same kind of environment in school. We might tell ourselves otherwise, but consider:

1. We still start high school earlier than psychologists suggest is beneficial to teenagers.
2. Teachers generally still are seen as hierarchically 'above' the students. The euphemism for this is 'authority'; in many a case, we can question whether this 'authority' is warranted.
3. We give standardized tests and force students into classes where they earn nothing more than a 'grade'.
4. Classroom management is often a concern and in many teachers' classrooms 'discipline' is mission #1 of the 'purpose' of education.
5. 'Use-of-time' as well as quality of facilities are often antiquated notions.
6. We still depend in the public school setting on state books and in the private school setting on parents buying books despite the free availability of so many of the texts (especially in English, History, Foreign Language) in free online formats.
7. While much research has been done on the psychology of teenagers, how many teachers really implement any of it in a scientific way in the classroom?
8. School is still a burden for many many students. We are often surprised to hear kids say that their school years were a waste, but we do little to address that from their point-of-view; instead we hire consultants to tell us what our kids feel like.
9. We still only have the students with us for a minuscule amount of time. So why waste so much of it with things that stifle creativity and turn students into the sorts of folks who got as little from high school as many of us did?

Kids are still kids, but in a really distinct way, there is a different sense of what a 'kid' is today. Kids are -- and have always been -- as much a product of their culture and social interactions as they are a product of anything that goes on in their head while doing our homework assignments; but the expectations being thrust upon them by within and without are something much different in context in this much more immediately public Digital Life. In other words: yes, kids have always been bored in school and kids have always danced and fallen in love; but now, those interactions which fifty years ago occurred on a local and semi-private level are know occurring in the active public yet relatively anonymous environment of cyberspace. So even though kids are kids, 'being a kid' really ain't what it used to be.

What is frustrating is that many folks in education are still in the '1957' mindset. Despite all of their own data and research, they still view schools fundamentally in the way that Chuck Berry described them. And so they treat cyberspace as a soda-pop shop, when in fact it is something very very different -- both in terms of education and social-life.

Just as a final thought, here are some of the other things that were going on in 1957. It's instructive, I think, to look closely at how we consider some things 'ancient' whilst continuing to prop up other things on crutches and canes...

January 3 - Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.
January 6 - Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the 3rd and final time.
January 13 - Wham-O Company produces the first Frisbee.
January 20 - Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States.
March 1 - Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat is published.
April - IBM sells the first compiler for the FORTRAN scientific programming language.
April 12 - Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl, printed in England, is seized by U.S. customs officials on the grounds of obscenity.
May 3 - Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, California.
June 25 - The United Church of Christ is formed.
July 6 - John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the very first time.
July 29 - The International Atomic Energy Agency is established.
August 5 - American Bandstand, a local dance show produced by WFIL-TV in Philadelphia, joins the ABC Television Network.
August 28 - United States Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) sets the record for the longest filibuster with his 24-hour, 18-minute speech railing against a civil rights bill.
September 4 - American Civil Rights Movement - Little Rock Crisis: Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas calls out the US National Guard, to prevent African-American students from enrolling in Central High School in Little Rock.
September 4 - The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel.
September 5 - The first edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road goes on sale.
October 4 - Space Age - Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth.
October 21 - The U.S. military sustains its first combat fatality in Vietnam, Army Capt. Hank Cramer of the 1st Special Forces Group.
October 31 - Toyota begins exporting vehicles to the U.S.
November 13 - Gordon Gould invents the "laser".
December 6 - First U.S. attempt to launch a satellite fails.
December 20 - The Boeing 707 airliner flies for the first time.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

Hail, hail, rock'n'roll...

What Does Internet Blocking Suggest to Students?

Did a little guest blogging at ISTE CONNECTS this afternoon.

Topic: What Does Internet Blocking Suggest to Students?

The idea for the post came to me after a student emailed me this morning about the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In the subject line of the email: Looks like schools aren’t the only place Facebook is blocked.

Where are You?

Here's two screenshots of my school's location via Google Maps. Interested in knowing where all of you teach...

Comment away!