Instagram, Facebook Pages and Groups, and Twitter-"Information for teachers and students."
- Stevens Kahn
- Feb 12, 2022
- 3 min read
Instagram, Facebook Pages and Groups, and Twitter
Facebook Pages
The school library pages on Facebook post various information that can include everything from proper ways of social distancing to the next book fair. Likewise, many pages were promoting the newest books, events that students could attend with their parents, useful apps, positive messages, entertaining videos, and comic strips. Overall, the pages provided information for all stakeholders to stay involved in the school, school district, campus, and school library as well as to keep the user entertained. There were few comments and sharing of posts, but there were are a large number of followers where you could determine that people were receiving posts in their feeds.
The advantages of having a school library Facebook page are that it provides a place for people to keep current on the library, district, and campus activities. Equally, it can provide a place for people to communicate with the library’s staff. Also, it allows stakeholders to communicate and coordinate with each other. The disadvantage to promoting the school library on Facebook is that there is little interaction between members of the community. The pages do not seem to promote forums or at least the use of Facebook among the public has dwindled so much that most likely people prefer using another type of application to interact or comment. Ergo, since Facebook’s use has gone down so much it should not be used as a sole social media conduit, but it should also not be rejected for its inability to reach users. It’s possible Facebook may not be around in ten or twenty years, but for now, it’s still viable.
Educational technology leaders share a variety of things on their feeds, which include everything from instructional practices, articles, issues in librarianship, positive messages to funny memes. The advantage of Twitter is the huge audience using it, which means current information and more interaction with others. A couple of disadvantages of twitter include a limit on the number of characters you can post and the poor platform for sharing videos or other visible content.
One interesting post was by Jim Lerman @jimlerman regarding five tips for engaging online learning. The five tips are creating interactive lessons, adding movement to the lesson, animating responses, collaborative learning, and brevity and conciseness. This was probably my favorite Twitter feed because of the amount of technology-related information as we as having short links and short messages. Examples of tweets previously mentioned:
The next Twitter feed I read was by Gwyneth Jones @GwynethJones. Her Twitter feed was a little bit overwhelming at first but looking through the articles I started to appreciate the information she provided. There are articles on the increasing push for banning books, links to websites for productive tips and tools, and many posts about issues in librarianship. Examples of tweets:
Kathy Schrock an educational technologist posts things like Anchor by Spotify that allows kids to record audio files to create podcasts for free. Schrock really pushes the use of podcasts as a learning tool and has quite a few posts about this subject. Similarly, she posts things like the lesson process and the use of Venn diagrams.
Linda W. Braun @Ibraun2000, according to her Twitter, is a learning consultant, educator, and teen advocate. She tweets articles on teens' lives during the pandemic and websites with many social issues that are faced by students. Examples of tweets:
One of the main advantages of using Instagram is the ability to share photos and videos. Similarly, the use of visual media helps the information to stand out more and entice the user. For students, it makes learning fun as well as is an excellent learning tool for visual learners. An excellent way for teachers to use Instagram is posting daily reminders, quick video tutorials, or using it as a forum for students to communicate with each other.
Great post! Your thoughts on each Twitter user was very helpful.