Raise your hand if you have a social media account.

Yeah… that’s what I thought. Most people have some type of social media account. Almost all of our students have social media. Why not use this to our advantage?

I use social media at school, but I do not use it for my classes, as of yet. Right now, I am the yearbook and prom advisor at my school. I am also the assistant girls swim coach. All of these extracurriculars require me to communicate with students outside of school hours. They require me to send reminders and notifications. The best way to do this with our students is through social media. Students love it, and they will follow anything, especially to stay up-to-date.

I have used social media in my classroom as an assignment before also. Back in my student teaching days, I had students create a Facebook profile for one of the minor characters in Romeo and Juliet. This project was created after we spent time creating a Facebook page for Romeo while reading the play. We created a profile for him, we imagined what types of things he would “like,” and we created statuses for him.

I think the most effective thing I did in this project were the statuses. The status could only be so many words, and it had to correlate to whatever mood Romeo would be in after our reading that day. I also created a small competition for some extra credit out of this: Whoever’s status was chosen for Romeo’s profile won the extra credit. Teaching students to write in condensed words in a tough task, but teaching them to convey a message about a character in 140 characters or less is an even tougher task. Regardless, they were so intrigued by the Facebook aspect and extra credit that they did not care about the difficulty.

Richardson’s book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, talks about using a Facebook as a classroom group discussion. I think this idea is a great idea, but it has been replaced by similar avenues today. For instance, I have a Google Classroom for each of my classes. I can post questions, announcements, and assignments there. It really does have a lot of benefits.

The other tool I use often at school is GroupMe. GroupMe allows me to send messages to students and parents via an app that acts like texting. This app allows me some privacy from my phone number, but it still enables my students and me to communicate and connect with each other. This is a great practice for a tougher class, where students will have many questions. They can GroupMe message an entire group or a single person to connect with and hopefully answer their question. (Don’t believe me about GroupMe? Read this!)

I do, however, struggle to keep up with the newest social media. Kids these days do not want their parents and teachers on the newest social media site. They want it to be cool. Parents and teachers are not cool. My students are not so into Facebook as they are Instagram and Snapchat. Both of these apps I am semi-fluent in, but I struggle to see their use in the classroom. Lately, my students have started dropping a new social media app I have never heard of: Tik Tok. I get that it is a video app, but I am not sure I understand the purpose and inspiration behind the videos. (This article explains the engagement behind Tik Tok a bit more.)

Overall, how do other teachers use social media in their classroom? Are there some teachers who incorporate Tik Tok or Instagram into their classroom? I would love to know more ways to keep my students engaged, even if it means making a Tik Tok video.