Using Social Media on a School Trip

We have a group of students that are currently in Disneyland performing and learning about music and drama.  I was very impressed to see that one of our parents who is along on the trip mentioned our school Twitter profile (@AustinOBrienHS) to share some photos and to let us know what a great time everyone is having.  Here are some of the tweets that I received:

@AustinOBrienHS at #disneyland twitter.com/EdmontonTouris…

— Robyn(@EdmontonTourist) May 14, 2012

@AustinOBrienHS #disneyland twitter.com/EdmontonTouris…

— Robyn(@EdmontonTourist) May 14, 2012

and my favourite…

@AustinOBrienHS Zyp & Chip at the AOB Concert ensemble #disney #preformingarts twitter.com/EdmontonTouris…

— Robyn(@EdmontonTourist) May 14, 2012

Our Drama teacher hamming it up…as always.
I am always amazed at the many ways that social media can be used in a school environment.

Latest use of Twitter at a High School

At the beginning of this year, I started a Twitter account for my school which I called @AustinOBrienHS. We use it to tweet out information, reminders, activities that are happening at school. Every week, we receive a few new followers. We have been impressed by the results that we have seen so far this year. We are followed by students, staff, alumni and many others.

Today, an interesting thing happened. This is definitely a sign of our digital times. We received the following direct message:

I know that this particular student is one of our student leaders, so I took the tweet seriously. Locker 442 had a large amount of flies flying in and out of it. The student who owned the locker was called down to clean and disinfect the locker…but that is not the point of this post.

There have been posts written about using Twitter in a high school (this one is by my mentor, Bill Ferriter, who inspired me to become involved on Twitter). The tweet (above) was an unexpected but extremely effective and efficient way to send a message to the school administration. The student who sent it obviously felt comfortable sending the information in that way.

This would be proof that we need to meet our students where they are and become involved in social media.

If you are looking for a great book on this topic, I would highly recommend, Communicating and Connecting With Social Media (Essentials for Principals). This is the book that inspired me to create a digital branding for our school.

I look forward to any comments.