OTAN News
Using Social Media to Find and Share Best Practices
As educators, we are always thinking about ways to improve our practice. We go to meetings, attend face-to-face and online professional development events such as conferences and webinars, and read and research the latest and greatest. In recent years, educators have turned to social media as another resource to find and share best practices with others locally and globally.
In the article NPC 2019: 7 best practices principals picked up from social media, three middle school principals attending the 2019 National Principals Conference presented a number of ideas that they had gotten from their peers via social media, mostly from Twitter. Notably, the principals agreed that social media is a great way to connect with other principals and administrators who understand the demands of the position and create relationships with others outside of schools and districts in which they all work. Over the years, they have shared the ideas they have gained from social media with their teaching staffs to improve performance in a number of areas of the school, including:
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Professional Development – The principals have learned about different PD efforts that other schools are using with staff, including pineapple charts, teachers using a percentage of their PD time for their passion areas and ideas, and having students leading faculty PD sessions.
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Giving Feedback – The principals got the idea for teachers and administrators to post QR codes on their doors so that people could give them feedback at any time.
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Giving Students a Voice – The principals and their teachers use polls delivered through the school’s social media and learning management systems to get to know students and provide opportunities for students to weigh in with their ideas on any number of topics. They also said that Twitter chats are useful to learn about and discuss ways schools give students a voice (in addition to other educational topics) with others from around the world.
Although many people are wary of social media, there are ways to tailor it to be a powerful professional development tool. If you would like some ideas about social media in adult education, contact us at support@otan.us or call us at 916-228-2580.
Article: NPC 2019: 7 best practices principals picked up from social media from Education Dive