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.
2. 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.
