Social Networking in a Leadership Role

From a leadership standpoint, I can see a lot of effective uses of social networking in a school. Social networking is real-time. This means that as educators, we can provide current information on student achievement, meetings, as well as important events and innovative ideas that are happening around the school. As the program leader of mathematics at my school, I sometimes find it difficult to touch base with everybody in my department in a timely manner when I want information to be conveyed. Social networking (be it twitter, schoology, or other) provides me the opportunity to relay any information without having to find face time. In a similar manner, social networking can be used to keep families of our student body aware of school events in an engaging manner. Finally, social networking could be used as a method of offering professional development – an example of which could be hosting a virtual staff meeting. Teachers could watch an informative video on their own timelines, which increases the convenience of these PD opportunities.

Obviously, there are a few caveats when using social networking tools – it is important to plan ahead before embracing social media tools, and it is important to be careful about what exactly is posted online, both for privacy reasons and others.