February 2008 — News
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Social Media: How to 'Sell It' to Your Team
C. What are some of the different kinds of social media?
D. How do you ensure that social media targets core learning objectives?
3. Follow up the session with a Q&A. Be prepared to get questions that relate to district policies that forbid the uses of certain types of social media. To avoid arguments about "forbidden" technologies, constantly refocus the conversation on the fact that there are several types of social media, and the purpose of the presentation was to educate the team overall on what's "out there," rather than to propose a detailed direction.
4. With your department head or principal's approval, pilot a one-tool social media project in your classroom or department to get everyone's feet wet.
5. Assess the pilot project's success, and present learnings, best practices, and lesson plan to the rest of the department. Add a slide to your presentation to show an example of the use of social media in your department or school. When assessing the project, pay careful attention to how student engagement, completion, and abandonment matched past projects. A post-project open-response survey for students is highly recommended.
A sensible next step from here would be to write a multi-classroom or department wide project that involves social media, either in process or presentation. My guess is if you follow these steps, you'll find that social media can quickly become a very valuable new tool for teachers, students, and administrators. The possibilities really are endless.
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About the author: Adam Metz is the director of social media strategies at LaunchSquad (www.launchsquad.com), a San Francisco-based public relations firm. He recently published an eBook on social media, There Is No Secret Sauce, which is available from his social media strategy blog, MetzMash (www.metzmash.com). He can be reached at adammetz (at) gmail dot com.
Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.
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