Facebook and Twitter: Are You Connecting?

This 1987 throwback AT&T commercial appeals to our desire to be connected to our friends and family. Even though some may believe technology has created a high-tech community that isolates users from social contact with the rest of humanity, it does not change the basic need people have to want to “reach out” and connect with someone. Today, we have the ability to reach out even farther; we have the technology to reach out globally and share information exponentially. School librarians can connect with library patrons and professional learning communities by using Facebook and Twitter. Here is a look at how a few school libraries and educational technology leaders successfully use social media to promote and advocate for their programs.

Facebook:
Facebook is a social network that supports personal, direct connections with a particular group of interested users. As I searched for school libraries on Facebook, I had to scroll down quite a bit to find an American school library with a currently active site. I was pleasantly surprised to find library Facebook pages for a suburban elementary in a school district near my own, as well as a large high school library near the city of  Dallas, Texas.

Crockett Elementary Library, Weatherford, Texas.
Stats: 242 Like This Page; 240 Follow This Page; 16 People Are Talking About This Page

Content: This library posts current information including the following:

• videos of students creating “dubsmashes” and photos of school events.
• Summer Reading Lists 
• Promotion of the Weatherford Library Kick-off Carnival for Summer Spectacular 
• Promotion of next fall’s book club read, Wonder by R.J. Palacio.
• Promotion of the soon to be available Follett Destiny Collections, a program that will allow for collaboration between librarians, teachers, and students to support classroom learning.

  



 Duncanville High School Library, Duncanville, Texas.
Stats: 294 People Like This Page; 284 People Follow This Page; 66 People Checked-in at this location; 9 People Are Talking About This Page

This high school library includes some of the following:

• Video links to local news sites that featured a story about their students. 
• Shared a link to 7 Young Adult Novels for Bookworms of Any Age
•  A promotion for reading aloud to students 
• A Piktochart Inforgraphic of DHS library yearly statistics 
• Promotion of fun activities for Star Wars Day… “May the 4th Be with You!” 
• Shared a link advocating for school librarians
• Anime Club Meeting and activities                 This was such a great library website! 

 

Facebook provides a great opportunity to connect with the school community and promote a library program to interested users who follow your page. For security purposes and to protect the integrity of the content, many schools have library Facebook pages that are closed groups. You must ask to join in order to see the posts, the discussion, or comments. Although closed groups can protect student privacy and make it easier to control content and comments, it creates a limited sphere of influence because it denies access to information by outside users. Pages that allow access to anyone should be carefully monitored by the librarian and frequently checked for comments on posts.

Twitter:

 Twitter is a great way to share short bursts of information in 140 characters or less. It's like a “shout out” to the world. It can provide a quick stream of updates from friends, family, scholars, experts, journalists, and celebrities. It creates an instant global community with people who are interested in following your work or hobbies. It’s a unique blend of texting, instant messaging, and blogging with the ability to tag your content with a #hashtag. Here is what I found when I followed some educational technology experts.
 Kathy Schrock: @kathyschrock

I followed Kathy Schrock, an educational technologist and Ed Tech Presenter from Cape Cod, MA. Kathy shares professional information about technology products, apps, and information about her speaking engagements. She will be traveling to Florida to present at the Florida Educational Technology Conference in January of 2018. She creates a professional dialogue with other technology users asking their opinions about advantages and disadvantages of different apps or products. She will also tweet or retweet information about helpful sites and apps. She provides links to her Discovery Education blog, Kathy's Katch

                                




 Jim Lerman: @jimlerman

Jim Lerman is from Greenwich Village, and describes himself as a parent, learner, teacher, leader, author, speaker, collaborator, networker, focused on new schools for new learning. He has 1,119 followers and has tweeted 18,520 times. His tweets take you to his Cultivating Creativity site on Scoop.it! Here, he posts links to various educational articles from many great sources. I could peruse his collection for days! It’s an amazing resource for both students and educators interested in educational technology. Here are just a few of the interesting resources I found.

                    

From my experiences, I find Twitter to be a resource where people with like-minded interests can connect and share useful information in a short, simplistic format. If you're interested in discovering more about a tweet, links are often embedded that will take you to sites with more content. It’s a great tool for promoting your interests as well as developing your professional skills.