A lot of people think social media is something you do after school, not during. However, many feel that educators should stop trying to repress the huge amounts of energy young people devote to social media and think about how to use that energy toward getting more out of their classes. Sadly, few schools have formal social media strategies (apart from blocking them on their networks). What they are losing out on is the power of a network or networks between the school, its students, their parents, teachers and the community at large.

Below are 5 ways schools can use social media:

1: Promoting Content:

While it is true that a lot of content generated on social media is ‘noise’, it’s not just so. If you can be selective and build a relevant network of users with whom to share your school’s content, the benefit to your users is tangible. We should discuss how to effectively use social media, instead of assuming everyone on Twitter or Facebook is wasting their own time and others’. Even a small network of schools would make for a large and valuable content base. Imagine if that network also included former students and the schools they went on to attend!

2: Research

How can a social media tool like Twitter or Delicious be any good for research? Twitter can be as powerful an information gathering tool as the highest rated, longest standing RSS feeds, but it does require maintenance and diligence to find the right people to listen to. As with all other research tools, diligent use of social media will return valuable results. Schools can kick this process off by breaking the mould and not penalising students who use social media for research, and instead, rewarding them for using the latest, most updated sources, provided they are indeed quotable sources.

3: Crowdsourcing and Collaboration

Getting an insight into what opinions your crowd truly holds can make or break the success of any effort. Social media tools make interaction with your user base extremely simple. Any online community, be it Facebook, Twitter or a Google group is not only useful, it’s also a tool for active engagement.

Moreover, social media helps students in learning collaboration. Many educators believe that collaboration is the necessary skill for students in the 21^st century; so much so, overseas schools have made it a central part of their curriculum. The list includes Duke University, which uses crowdsourcing to both grade and teach, and countless research published by the Open Innovation Portal, Wharton School, the University of Utah, SOS Classrom in Los Angeles as well as a book by journalist Jeff Howe which is aptly named “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business”.

Teaching collaboration is easily done using Google Docs so when students carry out cooperative learning assignments they don’t have to be in the same space. They can work on the assignment wherever and whenever it’s convenient for them. There may be bigger, better ways of teaching collaboration, but Google Docs is free, easy to use and very popular, which makes it an ideal solution to teach a big idea!

4: Publishing with social tools

Given the advent of soft formats and e-readers, it makes sense to publish articles and research online and push this work through social media channels. This not only adds value to a school’s social media channels, but benefits those following your web presence. Furthermore, this makes the research a lot more accessible, since search engines will be able to pick up any string within it and return it in search results, as well as making it easier to distribute and instantaneous in delivery, as opposed to waiting for a book to be delivered for a few days. This extremely rapid turn around allows for easier collaboration and fresher, more recent sources for research purposes.

5: Personal Brand

All too often, young job hunters feel they have nothing to ‘sell’. This is understandable as for the most part, their CV will be similar to their classmates’. Having a website, blog, portfolio, or Twitter feed serves young people very well, for it allows them to prove their usefulness and expertise within their subjects, as well as launch an online identity for themselves. This allows users (people, who after all may be hiring) to easily identify and connect with your students, giving them a leg-up in the ladder of life! In times-not-so-past, we insisted on ‘outside interests’ being listed in a CV, so as to demonstrate that the person has other areas of knowledge or expertise. An online presence, particularly a well cultivated personal brand, has a similar effect, but stronger, owing to the fact that it is visible to all, and proves that not only does the candidate have strong knowledge of the field showcased, but also a robust web expertise which is, and shall continue to be a key hiring point for job seekers.

In today’s world, schools, more than any other institution, can not afford to be late in embracing change. The world in which their students will be expected to perform shall be different from anything we have ever known, so being proactive and developing teaching that looks to the future is key to being relevant and truly of educational value.

As published on the Sunday Times of Malta, 25th July, 2010 (seen here: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100725/education/five-ways-schools-can-use-social-media-effectively and on ICON’s website here: http://www.icon.com.mt/icon/content.aspx?id=211857)

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