Social Media and the School Librarian - #ISTE13 #SIGMS Please discuss!

Reader Alert: this is a very specific post aimed at media specialists who are members of the SIGMS group of the ISTE 2013 Conference Ning.

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If you are a school librarian who’s attending ISTE this year (wish I could go!), please consider joining the Conference Ning and SIGMS. If you’re already a member, you can join the March Madness discussion! (There’s a small but sweet prize involved if you join the discussion, for you contest lovers. Scroll to the bottom to see what it’s about.)

This is a cross-post of the topic I just submitted to the ISTE SIGMS forum.

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The research confirms what we already knew: social media is very much a part of our students’ lives.

See Commonsense Media - 2012 Infographic:
Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives


Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Tumbler, and YouTube are the top social media networking sites du jour, and teens frequent all of them, to one degree or another.

YALSA recognizes that social media facilitates learning in schools and libraries. Teens & Social Media in School & Public Libraries: A Toolkit for Librarians & Library Workers is a 12-page document that outlines in detail the different ways school librarians can promote the positive uses of school media in the classroom.

But each school community is unique. What may work for one school may not work in another.

Please feel free to answer any or all of the questions below.

What is your role in regard to the use of social media at your school? Are you an advisor? Trainer of teachers? Digital citizenship guide? Embedder of social media lessons in projects? Policy maker? Some or all of these? Other? Are you personally a member of social media circles?

Is there anything in particular that you have discovered in regard to students’ use of social media either at your school or in the greater community that surprises you, inspires you, encourages you, or discourages you?

Do you have advice for media specialists who want to get started incorporating social media in their school and might be having a hard time deciding what exactly is needed?

Feel free to add any thoughts on questions not posed above (a few sentences would suffice and links would be nice but not required), and thanks for sharing!

P. S. You might win this book for participating in this discussion.













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Other March Madness topics:

Topic 1: Visual Literacy and the School Librarian, posted by Maureen Sanders-Brunner
Topic 2: Technology Digital & Income Divides Still Exist, posted by Lisa Perez

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@mauilibrarian2