OllieBray.com

Social Media in Education [Free eBook] - supported by #Bloxx

So much is written in the press about the negative use of technology (in particular social media) and young people. Yet technology and social media has become such an integrated and important part of our lives. We see ‘tweets’ on the television, read facts on Facebook and gather information on Google+.

In the past 24 months social media has toppled governments, helped us rescue flood victims and delivered us both localised and international news in almost real-time.

Social media is both powerful and purposeful yet its full potential is still to be realised in education. How can it be used to transform our classrooms in the same ways that it has transformed many other aspects of our lives?

As you might know I've been doing a lot of work on this recently (partly linked to the SMILE project) and now in partnership with my friends at Bloxx we have turned lots of these blog ramblings into one easy reference guide / eBook.

It is free and you can request a download from here.

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - 2 of 6: Using Social Media in Schools – Whole School Approach

Sponsored by Facebook I did some work recently for the EUN where we looked at the role of Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE). One of the outputs of my contribution to the project was a professional development eLearning course for European Teachers and Head Teachers on the use of Social Media in Schools.

As this part of the course has now finished (and we have gone into the community development phase) I am re-posting a version of the materials here so others can benefit from them.

 

This is part 2 of 6 - Using Social Media in Schools – Whole School Approach

Using Social Media in Schools – Whole School Approach: The Video

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - Video 2 of 6 Using social media in schools - whole school approach. from Ollie Bray on Vimeo.

Using Social Media in Schools – Whole School Approach: The Course Notes and Links

 

1. School Websites

A number of schools and education authorities such as East Lothian in Scotland have really embraced some types of social media (particular blogging) to develop school websites.

Edubuzz (managed by David Gilmour) is a Wordpress Multi User blogging platform that is available for all learners within the education authority (school district). The EduBuzz project has been running for over five years and continues to be a massive success.  Most school in East Lothian are now use edubuzz blogs for school websites and other classroom projects (eg: residential education).

The Executive Director of Education and Children’s Services also has a blog and Twitter account which shows that he is fully supportive of the initiative. Leadership is a very important component of social media adoption in schools.

Some schools such as Preston Lodge High School have over 400 subscribers to their school website blog by email. Effectively this has created a very easy to publish, up-to-date digital newsletter that anyone can sign up to via Google’s Feedburner Service.

At Law Primary School the school web site blog was given as an example of good practice in a recent National School Inspection report by HMIE. This has given other schools confidence to develop a similar models. The sharing of good practice is also a very important component of social media adoption in schools.

 

2. Home School Communication

Some schools have been very progressive in social media adoption and one of the European leaders in this field is Saltash.net Community College in Cornwall, UK.

You only have to look at the Saltash.net home page to see they are forward thinking and pro-active when it comes to social media adoption. This is a school where parents and the wider school community can get up-dates on school news via the Saltash.net twitter account, pupils and staff up-load work, assignments and achievements to the schools YouTube channel (effectively creating a school television station) and you can even ‘like’ the school on their Facebook page.

The school also has a farm animal enclosure and you can visit the pigs and chickens 24/7 via the school webcams. If your lucky enough you can also attend one of the schools live broadcasts via twitcam (an on-line video streaming service). You can even contribute financially to school projects via paypal (an on-line payment service owned by eBay).

Other schools are also making use of live video streaming services such as Qik. For example, Musselburgh Grammar School has broadcast a live music event from the schools drama studio to other classrooms in the school. As the event was not open to the wider community parents and friends of the pupils involved could also join the live broadcast on-line and watch their children perform. The video was also archived for those who could not tune it at the time.

 

3. Setting up School Social Media Accounts

When setting up a social media accounts for your school it is really important not to become reliant on just one person for account management. This may mean that the passwords for accounts are shared across a variety of people. It is also important that social media communication is not seen as being any different to other forms of whole school communication. The Siloing of social media and traditional communication is a known barrier to adoption.

 

4. Mobile Apps

As well as harnessing the power of popular social media services for communication with parents and the schools wider learning community. Some schools, for example Porchester Junior School in Nottingham have also developed a school mobile phone app to help keep young people, parents and wider stakeholders up-to-date with what is going on at the school.

Services such as e4education.co.uk allow you to develop school news website apps in a cost effective way without the need for app development expertise.

 

5. Whole School Policies

The use of Social Media for whole school communication needs to be included within the whole school communications policy and not as part of a separate social media policy.

A key consideration here is to ensure that you have permission from parents to share information on-line about their children (if this is what you are intending to do). If you do not feel comfortable sharing pictures of children working or children first names via your school social media channels then there are still lots of things that you can share about your school on-line (eg: events, key dates, anonymous examples of children’s work, etc..)

Further information on school policies will be covered later in the week.

 

Links for you to explore and reflect on:

• Additional Training Videos for setting up popular Social Media Accounts -

• Wordpress - http://wordpress.org

• Feedburner - http://feedburner.google.com

• Twitcam - http://twitcam.livestream.com

• Qik - http://qik.com/

• E4education http://e4education.co.uk

 

Examples of interesting practice:

• EduBuzz (East Lothian Blogging Platform) - www.edubuzz.org

• PrestonLodge High School - www.prestonlodge.net

• Ormiston Primary School - http://edubuzz.org/ormiston

• Law primary School - http://edubuzz.org/law

• Saltash.net Community School - www.saltash.net

• Porchester Junior School - http://www.porchester.notts.sch.uk

 

 

Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE) - Introduction

Sponsored by Facebook I did some work recently for the EUN where we looked at the role of Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE).

One of the outputs of my contribution to the project was a professional development eLearning course for European Teachers and Head Teachers on the use of Social Media in Schools.

As this part of the course has now finished (and we have gone into the community development phase) I am re-posting a version of the materials here so others can benefit from them. All of these materials are already in the public domain in other places and this is mainly an attempt to aggregate them together into an online handout.

I’ll be posting a video and video notes over the next six days.

These posts will also eventually form part of the Projects, Products and Articles Pages of the olliebray.com site re-fresh.

I will also be picking up on the theme of Social Media in Schools and School Leadership during my Keynote presentation on the 31st October in Edinburgh at the European School Heads Association biannual conference in Edinburgh. 

Further information:

• For more information about SMILE look here.
• For more information on the Facebook funding announcement look here. 
• For more information about the EUN look here.

Social Media and New Technology in Education from @SMWGlasgow [Video]

Social Media Week in Glasgow earlier in the month was all about reflecting on the global impact of social media and its role as a catalyst in driving cultural, political, economic and social change.

Of course I also believe that Social Media has a real place and evolving purpose in education. In particular how social media can be used to develop whole school communication, improve learning and teaching and enhance professional development.

Sponsored by Facebook I did some work recently for the EUN recently where we looked at the role of Social Media in Learning and Education (SMILE). One of the outputs of my work was a professional development eLearning course for European Teachers and Head Teachers on the use of Social Media in Schools.

More on SMILE later in the week but for now I wanted to share with you the talk that I was asked to give at Social Media Week Glasgow. It was called The New Learning Landscape: Social Media and New Technology in Education and was sponsored by Bloxx.

The main points that I covered were:

• Why use social media?
• Cultural Relevance
• Real Time Data
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Data Collection
• Audience
• Professional Development
• It’s not going away

The talk was written up by Delesia Watson and you can read what she thought over on the Glasgow Socila Media Week Blog.

The presentation was also filmed and live streamed, you can watch it here if your interested:

I’ve also add the presentation link to ‘OB TV’ which is an evolving archive of my various talks and presentations from around the web. Its part of the general tidy up to olliebray.com that is going on at the moment. 

Interesting Infographics (3 of 5): Facebook Vs Twitter

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This is part of a series of posts showcasing some interesting infographics that are available on the web. For more information on infographics have a look here and for some of the problems with using infographics graphics have a look here.

Today's infographic is on Facebook Vs Twitter (source)

One has over 500 million users, the other just over 100 million. But who are they and what’s their behavior? What’s their value to a brand? How old are they? What’s their education? How much do they make? Just exactly what does the Facebook vs. Twitter landscape look like? Good questions.

Here is one way of looking at it:

Internet Safety and Responsible Use Training Video for Staff and Parents (@LTScotland)

Over the past few months I have been doing more work around Internet Safety and Responsible Use for Parents and Teachers. Quite a bit of this work involved speaking at conference, running professional development for teachers and engaging with parent focus groups.

The work is very important but it can also be quite repetitive so to try and help this and to reach as many people as possible we recently made three films that covers some of the content that I normally address in various talks.

The videos are available to view on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website and I have embedded the one for teachers and parents below.

I feel it contains the minimum amount of content and information needed for all parents and education professionals.

As well as covering some of the issues regarding Internet Safety and Responsible Use it is designed to try and get people thinking about how do we tackle some of these big issues at home and in school.

As always I would be very keen to find out what you think of the resource as I hope to up-date it on a 6 - 12 monthy basis.

Greenpeace campaign targets Facebooks coal powered data centre [You Tube Video]

Here is a nice little video that might be useful when teaching young people about Internet Safety and Responsible Use. 

It reminds us that although it is free to use many social networking services there is also always a hidden environmental cost.

 

In particular, that large social networks require massive data centers and massive data centre use a lot of energy. The cost of building these data centre and paying the bills is funded by targeted advertising.

Anyway, Greenpeace wants Facebook to,

“drop coal and commit to 100 percent renewable energy, cutting its carbon footprint and helping in the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change”

To help it do this it has created this short (but very clever) animated film that is a bit of a spoof on the upcoming film 'The Social Network'.

Good or Evil: Have We Shared Too Much With Facebook, Google, and Apple?

Focus.com is a good website for visualizing data. I know that most people know this already but I though their recent graphic titled, ‘Good or Evil: Have We Shared Too Much With Facebook, Google, and Apple?’ was interesting.

 

I think it might also be interesting graphic to use as a stimulus for discussion when talking about issues such as privacy with children and young people.

 

It is quite a long graphic! Just keep scrolling down the screen!