Cabrini Blog Post #5

I have always been a big proponent of social media to promote items, especially school functions.  Mobile devices have become an extension of the body and being a high school teacher, 99% of our students have cell phones.  These students cannot go mere minutes without checking to see who is texting them, snapchatting them, or just looking through pictures on Instagram.  The change in results would be astounding if these students identified the true potential of these devices for educational good.  How does this translate to a school platform and communicating school concepts to the constituents?  Actually quite easily!  With all of these various social media platforms at our fingertips, it is easy to rapidly find information on a person, restaurant, event, etc.; schools should be no different.  There are a lot of concerns over extremely rare situations of teachers abusing their power and communicating with students through social media, so a lot of districts have strong restrictions on the social media platforms which can interact with the student population.  In my district, it is not permitted to have any communication with students through non-phone call communication.  It is an archaic plan but designed to prevent situations like those that arise on the news every so often about a teacher-student relationship. 

As an administrator, I would exploit the use of social media to promote the school happenings.  People want to see and hear about the good things occurring in our public schools.  Through the use of a few key people, a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can be established and events can be shared.  Many districts use Twitter to tweet out all of their sports scores, Facebook to share stories and pictures, YouTube to share longer composed videos, why not utilize this outreach ability to get to thousands of members of the community.  This must be heavily regulated however and one small mistake could leave a major blemish on the district.  It is all too often we hear about a celebrity posting something on Twitter before they had time to truly think about what they meant to say.  Before they had the chance take it down there were screenshots of the message and it is permanently linked to that individual.  As a school district, you are expected to be better than that, to be above that, and so only key individuals or one individual should have access to these platforms to post.  One of the other ends of the spectrum to address is individuals who wish to make their personal vendettas known.  Commenting anonymously on these platforms can be major trouble so limiting commenting is something that should be addressed. 

Social media is a very powerful tool and can be used to share information about upcoming events, school happenings, highlighting individual success, but it must also be done in a controlled manner.  There are issues with individuals and their pictures being posted and one poor decision when posting can ruin a reputation.  With great power comes great responsibility.