I viewed several school libraries on Facebook. One school made posts about grants they received. The library received die cuts, microphones, plush book characters, and chairs. There was a great picture of kindergartners using their new donations of BeeBots in a sequencing activity. There were "likes", but not comments. Another school, wanted to win a contest to have Jan Brett come and visit their school. I saw a couple of schools advertise their upcoming book fair. One school posted the 10 books that could win the 2017 Newbery Medal. This would be a great post because it would get the students and teachers motivated to read these books. Another, school showed pictures of a book art workshop. That post did receive comments because others would like to try the same activity. Advantages of using Facebook to promote the library is that the community knows what fun activities like the book fairs, book parades, book awards, and contests. Companies that donate to the library would like to see their companies recognized for their contributions to schools. The disadvantages would be that a parent might not want their child's picture on Facebook and you could have a negative comment. When I searched, it looked like some librarians have their school and personal account mixed and this is not appropriate.
Twitter would be a more useful way to communicate. I had the pleasure of reading some of the posts of leaders in the educational arena. Linda Braun's post was about the YALSA. I learned about the guidelines of creating a teen space in a library. I love that it is encouraged for teens to give input, there is music and games, electronic resources, accessibility for students with disabilities, and allowing food and drink.I know my college aged son loves to go to the library with coffee and work math problems on a dry erase board. He wants a comfortable place to read and study. Tony Vincent's post had a great app called Office Lens. Office Lens is used to take pictures of slides during conferences. I can't wait to try that during my next staff development class! Buffy Hamlton had an amazing post that showed how the cover for "The Sun Is Also A Star" was made using string art https://youtu.be/hk32xz7mRJY . The Daring Librarian has a great post for Black History Month. This link blog.flocabulary.com/black-history-month/ … has great information for teachers so they can create lessons and show videos to their students. Jim Lerman has many technology tips. I liked his digital storytelling wheel with apps @lyseo http://sco.lt/82uyyv . These apps would help students with higher order thinking. Kathy Schrock's posts show that she is interested in sketchnoting. There is wonderful podcast of Mike Rhode demonstrating how to do sketchnoting. For the word loyalty, he draws a dog and tells about it and then for deception is draws the missing ball game that is played a the park (I better remember it from the game show Price is Right). http://rohdesign.com/weblog/2015/8/26/the-sketchnote-podcast-season-1.html
My school district is Cypress Fairbanks ISD in Houston, Texas. CFISD has a website with links to each school library. Our school library has reading lists, ebooks, on-line resouirces, research tips, lists of award winning books, and a link to public libraries. Our school does not use Facebook or Twitter to promote the library.
Shannon, I enjoyed reading your post about Facebook used for an elementary school setting. Your point about posting pictures of children on Facebook is a good one. I have wondered about this same thing, not just with Facebook but with all social media. Perhaps there is some waiver that school have students sign to release permission to post photos. I do think that Facebook is a great way to let parents and the community know about book fairs/parades/awards/contests.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is a great communication tool for the parents and the community. I know that there is an AUP that parents sign at the beginning of the year which gives permission for pictures to be posted, however, I don't know how careful people are about sticking to those, which is a big problem. I know that any child in foster care can not have their photo posted. I know at my school there are several students that are in foster care, but as the librarian, I don't know who they are. I don't have access to the AUP to see who is cleared to have their picture posted. If I am going to post any pictures of students, I send home a permission slip for the event requesting that their child's photo be used on the web. I would rather have too many permission slips saying yes their child's picture can be posted, than posting a picture and having a parent upset saying they didn't want their child's picture posted.
ReplyDeleteI think librarians should create a permission slip to be sent home at the beginning of the year. This way librarians can notify parents what type of social media website they will be using. This permission slip can be attached to the check out permission slip provided at the beginning of the year.
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