There are always amazing things happening in schools and classrooms that we just need to share," says Steven Anderson, author of The Tech-Savvy Administrator (ASCD Arias, 2014). But those stories are infinitely more powerful when told by "the people in our buildings who mean the most—our kids."
From 2nd graders taking over classroom Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts, to high school students running school Facebook accounts, a growing number of educators are soliciting students to narrate their stories on social media.
Navigating the minefield around privacy and other concerns, however, can be tricky.
A Leap of Faith, with a Landing Pad
"There's a fear of turning [social media] over to students," notes Anderson. "What if the kids say something inappropriate?
"The comeback for that is, well, what if they don't? What if we don't allow them to have this opportunity and they're missing out?"
When Anderson served as director of instructional technology for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina, students in the sports marketing program ran Mount Tabor High School's athletics account. The teacher in charge had to fight hard to get them access to the password, but once the teens started tweeting "what's happening on the field," most fears were alleviated. Seeing it in practice changes minds.
"Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith," adds Anderson, "but that leap needs to come with a conversation."
To guide discussions about appropriate technology use, the district turned to Common Sense Education's K–12 digital citizenship curriculum. The in-depth lessons are age-appropriate and scaffolded by grade level—built off the reality that "students are growing up digital."
As an early adopter of student-led Twitter in 2012, Kayla Delzer had few resources at her disposal. The Fargo, North Dakota, teacher created @TopDogKids so that her 2nd grade class could share their learning with an authentic audience. She developed a curriculum outlining seven basic rules students need to know before becoming "tweeter of the day."
During the first two weeks of school, the class straps up for a "boot camp" to review the curriculum. Students dress in camouflage (), participate in minilessons and group discussions, help parents set up their own accounts so that they can follow the class online, and ultimately earn a certificate of completion.
One rule they learn: "I will keep my private information private." The students are not allowed to share their birthdays, last names, phone numbers, addresses, or even the school's name. When the class goes on field trips, they avoid tagging the location.
"We have a responsibility to fulfill when it comes to protecting our kids," Delzer emphasizes, and "we have to set them up for a safe environment."
Another rule, "I'm building my digital footprint every day," reinforces that students should "always be proud of the things they post." From an early age, they're crafting personas that will trail them through life, says Delzer. "Even if you delete a tweet, it's still filed with the Library of Congress."
Delzer, who recently moved to 3rd grade and took her Twitter account with her, uses gradual release to ease students into this massive responsibility, "modeling it for them a ton." First, the class reviews posts on Delzer's own Twitter account. "How did I write a tweet? Why is it tweet-worthy?" she asks. Then, they watch her compose tweets on the student-led Twitter account, and pretty soon, they write tweets together. "By the end of the digital citizenship boot camp, I start releasing [the Twitter account] to one or two kids who can handle it" (Delzer has since added Instagram and Snapchat to the mix). Those students then tutor the next ones in line.
Posts are monitored closely at the beginning of the school year, but by October or November, they go up without any oversight. "In my classroom, I never give warnings for kids," Delzer explains. "That's especially true with technology and social media." If a student steps out of line, they know they will be immediately taken out of the rotation.
Avoiding Carrot Tweets
A tweet is deleted only if it lacks substance: Students start the morning with a selfie introduction, then keep it learning focused. As they craft posts on their iPads, students consult a THINK poster displayed in the classroom to critique their messages. Is the post thoughtful, helpful, inspiring, necessary, and kind?
That means "no carrot tweets," Delzer elaborates. "I had a student who took a picture of her carrots for snack and tweeted that out. So we looked at the poster, and I asked, 'Is it thoughtful?' She said, 'Well, it's a complete sentence.' And then we went to the next one, 'Is it helpful?' She said 'no.' We didn't need to go through the rest of the poster before she knew she needed to take it down."
"I'm giving students control to cultivate the brand of our classroom," Delzer acknowledges.
When students go home, parents "have specific examples [of learning] they can ask about because they have been on our pages throughout the day," she adds. "It continues that conversation and the learning that happens in school."
These "snapshots into the school day" resonate more authentically when they come from students, echoes Brendan Schneider, director of advancement at Sewickley Academy, a private K–12 school outside of Pittsburgh. Sewickley started "Instagram Tuesday," where administrators turn the account (@sewickleyacademy) over to one or two seniors after logging them in on the student's device.
"We were hoping the kids could give a window into a day in their life at school," says Schneider. "It's a way for us to get content that we couldn't get otherwise."
Running the account one day a week is a special "senior privilege" for upperclassmen, and, at least initially, it served as "a way to attract kids to the platform." The school jumped to more than 1,000 followers once word got out that students were posting.
"Kids started following the account because they wanted to see if they or their friends were in it."
Although Schneider watches Instagram "a little more closely" on student-run days, he doesn't monitor what's posted. "These are our seniors, our most responsible students. We trust them," he says.
Changing the Narrative
In the La Porte Community School Corporation, juniors and seniors help run Facebook pages for the Indiana district's 11 schools. To counteract the often-negative local news coverage, "we decided to change the narrative and highlight what's going well," says Erin Parker, a journalism teacher at La Porte High School. With encouragement from the principal and superintendent, students in Parker's public relations class team up in pairs to cover a school for the year (one team highlights district news).
Each week, students travel to their assigned school and meet with a teacher liaison who has collected news and story ideas from around the building. The students visit classrooms, do write-ups, take photos and videos, and return to the high school at the end of the day to post them. The goal, says Parker, is to showcase "all of the engaged learning that is going on within the school."
Parker has observed a visible improvement in her students' communication skills. Through the class, they have become more comfortable speaking with the superintendent, principals, and liaisons. "I notice a complete change in their confidence, in the way they speak to adults."
In contrast to Delzer, Parker monitors each post before it goes up. Because Facebook is blocked on the school's computers, she has special access to a different Wi-Fi network. "It creates a traffic jam at my computer because that's the [only place] we can post," says Parker, but it's a manageable inconvenience. "You have to be overcautious. I trust my kids, but I check and triple check before anything goes up."
No Right Way
Empowering students to take ownership of your classroom, school, or district social media accounts—even with plenty of oversight—is an exercise in trust. Anderson suggests that there's no right way to do this. "You use it in a way that's most appropriate for you in your situation."
You can hand over your master account to students, start a dedicated kid account, or have students post on their own social media accounts with a hashtag, but the missed opportunity comes from not involving students at all, says Anderson.
Before launching her classroom account, Delzer created an analog Twitter wall where students summarized what they learned each day on sentence strips and pinned them to a bulletin board. Within a month, however, she realized that exposing her students to a broader audience (parents, the school community, and even authors and education experts) would be more powerful.
"Kids do better work because it's not just going to the teacher, then the recycling bin," she says. "It creates good positive pressure." There's a ripple effect on nonposters, too. "My kids are always doing their best because they want their picture taken and shared [out]."