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As a director of technology I wanted to look at a final project that could influence both the students and teachers as well as parents. My project is a social media education program for all three of these groups. Let’s start with the parent piece.

I believe parents will benefit from understanding both how their children use social media and how they themselves can use social media. I plan to work with our very active parent association to coordinate morning sessions where parents can learn about how students here at the International School of Stavanger use social media. We’ll cover the biggies: Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and whatever else seems appropriate.

The second part of the parent program will be about helping parents get personally connected via social media. Our school overall has been undertaking a major initiative this year to own our social media presence. By showing parents how to use social media in a lab-style environment we will actually have a double win. Firstly we will win parents over with this type of “free education” session. Second, we will be creating patrons who can benefit from the social media the school is using to connect with the greater community.

Now on to the teacher piece. The parents and students are easier because in our community many parents will participate when open events are announced and the students, well the students are in class where we have greater control of the content they are exposed to. But the teachers are busy teaching and keeping the school running so in many cases they are the hardest to connect with. I plan to get 40 minutes in an all-school meeting where I can get the entire staff and faculty on Twitter. Before this meeting I plan to promote Twitter via email and in whatever meetings I can get into so that there is some kind of foundation for the “Twitter Creation” meeting. I’ll use our Technology Champions and those people that already have and use Twitter accounts to help during this time.

Once I get the teachers on Twitter then I will continue to connect them with each other, then lead them into their own PLNs. Of course there are many many facets of social media that they need to learn, but the scope of this project with the teachers will be limited to Twitter unless there is a demand for more training from a particular set of teachers.

My focus with students will be in the 8th – 12th grades as they are the grades that will be 13 years or older, which allows them to create the accounts necessary to learn and practice using social media. My goals with the students will be to move their view of social media from just connecting with friends and entertainment to a broader understanding of how they can share with the world. I have an idea to begin in the art department as those students would have obvious content (media) to share. I know that every subject area will have something to share in the end but the art department will be where I plan to begin.

I am unsure whether I will ask students to create personal or school Twitter accounts. I know that especially in Norway there are certain legal implications of each option. If you have any ideas on this please comment below.

So my final #coetail5 project is pretty ambitious but I am very excited about the impact it can have on our school and the greater community. I’ll touch base again later when I have made some movement on the various parts of this project.