Liberty was just featured in an
article in Edutopia about our use of twitter to help drive professional
learning for our teachers, communication with our families, and an overall
sense of positivity and possibility in the school. However, the author of the article, Elana
Leoni never took credit for the critical role she played in the development of
our twitter strategy, so I wanted to spend some time explaining our journey and
thanking her for introducing us more fully to this powerful tool.
I have
had a twitter account since spring of 2011.
For the first two and half years of having my account, I think I sent a
total of 150 tweets, posting my 140 character message a few times each month,
and reading the messages of those I was following while waiting in line at
Starbucks. I was a very passive twitter
user, and in doing so, didn’t reap the tremendous benefits that can come from
thoughtful use of this social media tool.
A New Twitter Paradigm
My lackluster use of twitter can
be tracked to two elements a) it was never a priority for me because I didn’t
see the purpose in it and b) I didn’t feel like I had anything valuable to tell
the world. Enter Ms. Leoni who I ran
into at an informal Edcamp session at last year’s South By Southwest Edu. I believe her great gift to both myself and
my school was to systematically unpack why my two holdups around twitter were
wrong. We talked about various ways that
schools had found purpose in twitter usage including letting parents know what
is going on in classrooms, connecting teachers to external resources, building a
learning community, recognizing teachers for their work, and advertising
upcoming events. More importantly, she
helped me overcome my humility, by addressing hold up number two and letting me
know that Liberty was a wonderful school, with outstanding things to share, and
important messages for other urban schools around the country.
Upon
returning from the conference, I utilized the next staff meeting to introduce a
new twitter initiative at Liberty. I
explained to my staff the epiphany that had occurred in Austin and made a pitch
for why this could be important for our students and community. We did a little workshop talking about the
twitter lingo and I helped to ease the fears of some staff members (many of
whom are not digital natives) that twitter functioned in much the same way a
text message worked. Staff members were
encouraged to tweet out great things going on in their classroom and parents
were encouraged to follow the feed to see updates and get a sense of what was
going on at school hour by hour.
Tweets Started To Trickle
The
tweets started in trickles, just a few postings each day. I would try to model the practice by going
into classrooms and telling teachers I just tweeted about the activity I had
just seen or the learning that had just taken place, but they would need to
harness the software to see what I had said.
I would similarly encourage teachers who I knew had accounts to tweet
things from their classroom when I saw spectacular feats of learning. “That was really great use of technology,
make sure to tweet it out so others can see” or “Fantastic small group
activity, make sure to tweet it out so all the other first grade teachers can
apply the same strategy”. What we saw
were teachers learning from another; great activities that were planned in one
class, got posted onto the feed, were seen by teammates, discussed at team
meetings, and ultimately applied in another classroom, with twitter as the vehicle
for this informal learning community practice.
We also targeted the parents to
try to get them in on the action.
Postings in the weekly school newsletter identified this new strategy
and welcomed parents to ‘join the conversation’. Using the Tweetbeam program, we have the
#Liberty64 hasttag on constant loop in the office so all teachers, students,
and parents can see what people are posting throughout the building. We also did a twitter training for parents at
Back To School night and the first PTO meeting to get people acclimated to
basic vocabulary, let them know why they should post, and explain the
connectivity that could be generated by following the feed.
A Current Assessment Of Progress
The
system is far from perfect. I still have
about 1/3 of my teachers who post frequently, a 1/3 of teachers who post once
or twice a week, and 1/3 of teachers who do no post at all. Similarly while we have made a push with
parents, there are truly only a few who have taken advantage of this (yet). But ultimately, this is a free service, that
takes little investment of time, and has the potential for a lot of positive.
I think
just in terms of helping to build a learning community, raising morale, serving
as a communication medium, and connecting good teachers with good ideas to one
another, it has been an overwhelming success.
I assume my story is not unique, and that many individuals working in
the educational space feel the same trepidation I felt at the beginning; who
cares about what goes on at our school, or my classroom on a daily basis (the
answer is, lots of people, imagine if you were a parent and your child was in
your class) and what is the purpose behind tweeting regularly (I hope this blog
post has helped to frame some meaningful purposes). I will leave you with a few practical tips
and strategies to get your system going.
I am looking forward to following your school/classroom hashtags. Happy tweeting!!!
A Few Tips To Get Started
· Leadership Matters- As with most things, leadership
matters. It is hard to encourage others
to tweet if you are not tweeting yourself.
This provides a great opportunity to model the behavior you would like
to see, while also improving moral, and highlighting positive things going on
in your classrooms. You would be
surprised the dividends that is yielded from a tweet about a positive practice
being identified in your school and broadcasted to the world.
· Have Teachers Develop Individual
Twitter Goals-
Our teachers have developed individual twitter goals. This is an initiative that by nature will
need to highly differentiated, particularly if you have a lot of digital
immigrants on your staff. We had the
teachers each set up an annual goal that could range from a plan to tweet out
once a week, or once a day, or perhaps just set up a handle and follow the
conversation. There are so many ways for
people to be involved, both actively and passively. Ultimately, I think initiatives that occur
organically through professional diffusion have the best chance of working.
· What If Your School
System Blocks Twitter?-
It shouldn’t matter, most staff members these days have smart phones that are
on their own wireless plans that do not connect to the filter. Don’t let this fear block you’re ability to
take advantage of this twitter use in your school environment.
· Take Advantage Of Tweetbeam- this is an excellent tool for
any office kiosk or lobby television which you have looping your school
events. It allows you to set the program
to a handle or hashtag and it loops popular tweets in a very visually friendly
interface. There are paid versions for
professional presenters, but in the school context, the free version works very
well.
· Suspend Your Trepidations- this was really present
throughout the blog, but don’t believe that your story is not worth
hearing. Educators are often very humble
and think what they say to the world is not important. Your messages are critical, to your families,
to fellow educators, to policy makers, and your colleagues. Never deny your importance in the educational
conversation and use twitter to let your voice be heard.
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