Students at Oak Hills are having a blast with our new Twitter account! Our newly created @OakHillsLib twitter account is their opportunity to share their learning with the world! It may not be immediately obvious why this is a good idea, but there are several great outcomes to having students tweet for @OakHillsLib.
1. Students think it is cool. This may not seem like a great reason, but any educator knows that when students think something is cool, they are likely to engage!
2. Students get to practice social media under the watchful eye of a teacher! So we have great conversations about what is good to share and what is not good to share. It is social media with training wheels! (Thanks to George Couros for talking about this at the MN TIES conference!) This practice at social media is laying the ground work for their own social media future!
3. Students learn the benefit of interactions from people around the globe! Students see their classroom expand to include students and teachers from all over the world. As their classroom expands they begin to see that social media is more than selfies and cat videos, they can actually share their voice and learn from others. They can practice being global citizens!
Our twitter account is still small, but students are thrilled with each new follower and like!