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"Instagram is a hugely popular social network for photo sharing. Though the use of social media in the classroom may have skyrocketed, Twitter and Facebook definitely reign supreme as the key social media tools for schools and teachers. Somehow, despite the widespread popularity of Instagram, few teachers are employing it in the classroom. We've heard from a few of you that your concerns lie in the privacy arena. Since sharing photos that may be of students in your classroom should obviously be a concern - make sure your classroom account is private. You can choose to have a single account for your class, which would be the 'safest' way of approaching these privacy concerns. The teacher should be the only one who can vet followers - and they should only be associated with the class (parents, students, other classes in your school). Using a group hashtag for a particular project or theme is a good way to keep track of what they're doing, eg: #edudemicclassproject14."

"While some school districts have banned the use of social media because of fears of inappropriate use and distracting students, in an unprecedented move, the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) has reached out to students, teachers, and parents as partners to create guidelines for the appropriate use of social media for personal and academic purposes"

"We know how to help kids develop into powerful learners. Now, we just need to make that happen in schools. "A parent of two teen-agers, Will Richardson has spent the last dozen years developing an international reputation as a leading thinker and writer about the intersection of social online learning networks and education. Will has authored four books (with two more on the way), including ""Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere"" (September, 2012) published by TED books and based on his 2013 TEDx talk in Melbourne, Australia. ""Why School?"" is now the #1 best-selling TED book ever. A former public school educator of 22 years, Will is also co-founder of Modern Learner Media and co-publisher of ModernLearners.com which is a site dedicated to helping educational leaders and policy makers develop new contexts for new conversations around education. "

"Instagram is huge. As in 300 million users huge. As in, your students, and probably their parents, are on it. Already, 30 billion photos have been shared on the platform. There's a lot going on there. So while Facebook is dead and buried for the cool kids, and the likes of Snapchat don't really work for an institution, Instagram still has kudos as well as scale. If you want to be reasonably sure that the people you want are on board, then Instagram it is. So should a school use it? Should a school start to use the fastest growing, and already one of the biggest, social media platforms in the world? There's a certain amount of leading-the-witness in the question, but sheer scale doesn't necessarily mean there is educational value. Unless you use it right, of course. So how, and why should you be using Instagram in your school? Here's some suggestions:"

Wesley Fryer is the author of "Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing" (July 2011) and a contributing author of "What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media" (September 2011). Wesley co-authored Chapter 3 of the book, "Podcasts and Webinars," with Steve Dembo. "Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing" is available in 3 eBook formats and as a paperback! Additional resources are on playingwithmedia.com. See and contribute student media examples on share.playingwithmedia.com. Learn about workshop and videoconference opportunities on learn.playingwithmedia.com.

"WINTER GARDEN, Fla. - On the wall of a classroom that is home to the West Orange High School TikTok club, large loopy words are scrawled across a whiteboard: "Wanna be TikTok famous? Join TikTok club." It's working. "There's a lot of TikTok-famous kids at our school," said Amanda DiCastro, who is 14 and a freshman. "Probably 20 people have gotten famous off random things." The school is on a quiet palm-tree-lined street in a town just outside Orlando. A hallway by the principal's office is busy with blue plaques honoring the school's A.P. Scholars. Its choir director, Jeffery Redding, won the 2019 Grammy Music Educator Award. Amanda was referring to a different kind of stardom: on TikTok, a social media app where users post short funny videos, usually set to music, that is enjoying a surge in popularity among teenagers around the world and has been downloaded 1.4 billion times, according to SensorTower. "

"Around five years ago, a colleague suggested I set up a teacher account on Twitter. I was reluctant at first, anxious about the implications of having an open profile as a teacher. Now I am a self-confessed teacher tweep, using Twitter for free CPD, connecting with colleagues around the world, sharing good practice and organising events for teachers. I also have a class Twitter account, which I've used to enable pupils to share their learning with parents, pupils and the world! In this article I will discuss five ways I've used social media to enthuse and motivate my pupils."

"This collection of blogs, articles, and videos aims to help educators deploy social-media tools to develop professionally, connect with parents and communities, and engage students in 21st-century learning."

"Effective leadership is extremely important in any system, but it is even more imperative in schools if we are to provide all learners with a world-class education. This education has to be relevant, meaningful, and applicable. During my tenure as Principal at New Milford High School, we worked tirelessly over the course of four years to transform the culture to one that was primed for student engagement, learning, and achievement.  Through the lens of social media, I was exposed to a whole new world that I did not know existed. My subsequent journey as a connected leader and learner resulted in small, then large, shifts in professional practice that eventually served as catalysts for transformative change. Thus I began to construct an area of practice around digital leadership."

"In much the same way that Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America's college students a decade ago, Yik Yak is now taking their smartphones by storm. Its enormous popularity on campuses has made it the most frequently downloaded anonymous social app in Apple's App Store, easily surpassing competitors like Whisper and Secret. At times, it has been one of the store's 10 most downloaded apps. Like Facebook or Twitter, Yik Yak is a social media network, only without user profiles. It does not sort messages according to friends or followers but by geographic location or, in many cases, by university. Only posts within a 1.5-mile radius appear, making Yik Yak well suited to college campuses. Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board - or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union. It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school. Much of the chatter is harmless. Some of it is not."

"The maker movement and maker education, in my perspective, are such great initiatives - really in line with what student-centric education should be in this era of formal and informal learning. Maker education (often referred to as "Maker Ed") is a new school of educational thought [at least in terms of having an "official" educational label - JG] that focuses on delivering constructivist, project-based learning curriculum and instructional units to students. Maker education spaces can be as large as full high school workshops with high-tech tools, or as small and low-tech as one corner of an elementary classroom. A makerspace isn't just about the tools and equipment, but the sort of learning experience the space provides to students who are making projects. (9 Maker Projects for Beginner Maker Ed Teachers) Social media has helped me gain a more global perspective and become aware of some of the problems associated with the maker movement. The two I discuss in this post are: Maker movement initiatives are often driven by more affluent white males. The maker movement is too often being associated with the tech stuff - Arduinos, Littlebits, Makey-Makeys - stuff that less affluent schools and community programs can afford."

"This is number 6 in my blog series on major learning theories. My plan is to work through the alphabet of psychologists and provide a brief overview of their theories, and how each can be applied in education. In the last post we examined the work of Craik and Lockhart on Levels of Processing theory. In this post, we explore the work of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi on Flow Theory. This is a simplified interpretation of the theory, so if you wish to learn more, please refer to the original work of the theorist. There is an interesting news report on the BBC News website this morning. It is a piece claiming that children who use technology at home are finding that they are not able to concentrate in school. They are not able to focus, claims the report, because 'they're spending so much time on digital games or social media.' Yeah right. It's easy to blame lack of concentration on technology, but what about the quality of the lessons they are attending? The onus is on teachers to make lessons more interesting, and that is what they are trained to do. Part of the solution might be to incorporate these digital games and social media into some of the lessons. Just how can we engage students more effectively? Here's Flow Theory:"

"The new information landscape is a product of algorithmic data collection used by social media platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, news sites, and even our cellphones. Companies use invisible computer codes to track users' interactions in order to personalize their web experiences and influence their buying and viewing behavior, leading to concerns about privacy, accuracy of information, the preservation of shared norms, and authenticity. Data is collected everywhere. Even schools, from elementary schools to higher education institutions, collect data on students through learning management systems (LMS), thrusting schools directly into debates that consider how these companies, like Canvas, protect or use data. While the ethics and impact of algorithmic-driven content on platforms like Facebook or an LMS are murky and just emerging, the Project Information Literacy study raises immediate flags."

"So, what did I do with this new scary K-5 area? I reached out online. I found teachers who were sharing what they were doing in their classes through blogs and social media and podcasts. What I realized the past year is that innovation in an elementary school revolves around many of the same concepts and topics as the secondary levels…but it's not always about technology. That is the biggest misconception we have with innovation in education. Technology doesn't necessarily lead to innovation. Instead, technology often allows for new ways of teaching and learning…but only if used for the right purpose. Here are a few of my favorite ways educators are innovating at the elementary school (with or without technology):"

"Michelle Joyce doesn't shy away from politicized science topics such as climate change. In fact, she works to equip seniors at Palmetto Ridge High School in Naples, Florida with the skills to accurately evaluate those topics on their own. Along with teaching chemistry and physics, she offers a class called "thinking skills" where students solve logic and math puzzles while also enhancing their media literacy. Students go beyond just learning about legitimate sources of information on the internet and delve into just how the information is put together in the first place. But teaching students those critical thinking skills only as they're about to depart for college can be too little too late. "It's a really hard thing to teach within the space of everything else that you need to teach in a classroom," Joyce said. "It's crucial that we teach it as early as we can." The internet has no shortage of dubious information; and the ability to evaluate health and science claims is a subset of media literacy. With the abundance of health/science content students may only see via social media, kids are ill-equipped to discern hype from real science."

"As schools change leadership must as well. With society becoming more and more reliant on technology it is incumbent upon leaders to harness the power of digital technologies in order to create school cultures that are transparent, relevant, meaningful, engaging, and inspiring. In order to set the stage for increasing achievement and to establish a greater sense of community pride for the work being done in our schools, we must begin to change the way we lead. To do this, leaders must understand the origins of fear and misconceptions that often surround the use of technology such as social media and mobile devices."

"Bad News is a website that offers simulations that show visitors how misinformation is spread through social media. Bad News is available in two versions. The regular version is intended for those who are high school age or older. Bad News Junior is appropriate for middle school and older elementary school students. The difference between the two versions is found in the news topics that are used in the simulations. "

"If the most recent U.S. Election has taught us anything it's that we live in an era of fake news and sites. With accusations flying of manipulation of stories, the media and voters, it's truly hard to know if what we read on blogs, social media and other sites is actually the truth or a tale spun to generate clicks. To further compound the problem a recent study from Stanford shows that the vast majority of students can't determine it what they read on websites is true or baloney. The study showed More than two out of three middle-schoolers couldn't see any valid reason to mistrust a post written by a bank executive arguing that young adults need more financial-planning help. And nearly four in 10 high-school students believed, based on the headline, that a photo of deformed daisies on a photo-sharing site provided strong evidence of toxic conditions near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, even though no source or location was given for the photo. With many schools and districts rolling out 1:1 initiatives and a push to digitize learning, helping students understand where their information comes from, and if it is reliable and accurate are critical skills, not just for learning for but life as well."