Adam Schoenbart shares ways to bring social media into the high school classroom as a regular part of learning, to help students connect, collaborate, learn, share, promote, quench curiosity, and so much more.
1. Build Community
There’s power in a community of learners. Create a class Twitter account, where you can retweet anything anyone posts in, for, or about the class. (Schoenbart tracks this with the student-created hashtag #SchoenTell.) Right there, the community-building starts.
Article continues below2. Hashtag Your Awesome
Create project hashtags to collect and curate your content and build community (Schoenbart uses his class hashtag as well as tagging his school—#OssiningPride—when posts are related to the school or community.) This provides a link to their Tweets, content, and media so that what they share with the world can be found easily.
3. #JokeoftheDay
Every morning, Schoenbart tells a joke of the day to his classes—the cornier the better. He gets lots of groans, but students love hating on the jokes and it’s a fun way to build community and get ready for learning. He tweets the joke at the end of the school day.
