Facebook and Twitter and the school librarian

Checking out Facebook and Twitter in regards to school libraries is really interesting because social media has just completely changed everything about our society, and at the forefront of that change is education and communication with our students.

Facebook definitely seemed to have less presence and significance in the "school library world." I saw posts about summer reading lists, Book Fair promotions, and even library sponsored fundraisers benefiting Santa Fe ISD and the victim's families. Overall, though, these posts seemed to be less frequent and less updated than twitter, with more personalized library information and less news, blogs, and journals related to education. I think the advantage of twitter is that, to me, it can be less cluttered and easier on the eyes- something I think parents appreciate. It's a little more direct and less confusing, and requires less knowledge of "lingo" such as "retweet," "favorite," "subtweet," etc.

I really enjoyed looking through the twitter posts, and Linda W Braun's (@lbraun2000) twitter feed immediately caught my eye with some really neat educational posts, articles, and research. Here are a couple retweets of articles from her that I enjoyed reading through:

This makes me think a lot about interactions w teens, learning environments and learning experiences,  youth voice and leadership, and so much more related to libraries & teens.  Well worth the read. https://t.co/OQi90KkHKD

— Linda W Braun (@lbraun2000) May 28, 2018

This article was super interesting and because I consider myself a fairly emotional person, I loved reading about how emotions are an integral part of learning, what we remember, and how we experience lessons/learning opportunties. Definitely check it out; a great read for any educator!

http://joanganzcooneycenter.org/2018/05/29/new-report-helps-stem-advocates-make-a-stronger-case-for-informal-learning/
I loved this article because I feel that I learn best this way (and I can imagine that most people do), by immersing myself in something enjoyable that teaches or reinforces concrete ideas and concepts. As a parent with a young kiddo, this reinforced great ideas of how to introduce concepts through immersion and informal learning, rather than a more traditional teaching approach.

As I continued to explore twitter and these scholar's twitter logs, I noticed many pros and cons to the Twitter experience in regards to learning, and sharing educational content. Looking at it from the perspective of a librarian gave me a new set of comments and concerns to consider. The advantage of twitter is that it's so easy to share information; with a simple click you can 'retweet' something interesting, pertinent, entertaining, or unique that you want to share with your followers immediately. I also think it seems to be more updated, and posts are more frequent, because that's all it really is: a log of information that is continuous and flowing. Heck, even our politicians are constantly using it! The biggest disadvantage of Twitter is that parents just do not understand it, something about the format and the lingo seems very foreign to older generations. Once you get used to it, though, it really is quite easy and convenient. Another disadvantage is that old information is quite hard to find; the older posts get lost in the clutter and it's more difficult to keep track of past information due to the quick moving nature of information on Twitter.

Overall, my recommendation is that you pick social media that you can commit to and update often.  Make sure to pick something you can monitor, update, and add educational, enjoyable, valuable content to! Whether you delegate this task to someone else, or do it yourself, if it's not updated frequently, it really loses it's value and just becomes more noise in the already crowded world of social media.