Social media has become a huge part of everyone's daily life, not only do we use it to be "social" but to enrich our minds with great information. Believe or not, I have not been on Facebook very long, probably for about 3 years and I've had a Twitter account for a couple of years, but I never really "tweet". From these two social media accounts I feel more comfortable using Facebook, I think this is because I have used it longer. Oh, I almost forgot, I also have an Instagram account on which I follow lots of teachers, this summer I got a lot of great ideas for classroom decor from Instagram. Whichever social media you choose to use, you can spend hours navigating through them and easily lose track of time, so as librarians social media is a great tool to reach out to students and pull them into the library and to library websites.
Twitter, one popular social platform that I navigated through a lot this past summer has definitely enriched my life as a future librarian. As I slowly began to use Twitter more and more this summer I found that Twitter is more popular with adults than with young adults. Twitter is great for us adults to interact and learn about things that are popular in our profession, in our case, libraries. This platform is great for interacting with other professionals with only a sentence of two. It gets the message across without taking much of our time to read the "tweets".
This summer I started to follow Cynthia Alaniz @utalaniz who is an elementary school librarian and a blogger. I highly recommend you all follow her. She tweets and retweets great reads, book recommendations she makes to her students, and great library ideas. She was chosen by Todd Nesloney (a principal) as one of the 12 educators worth following.
There are other interesting people I started to follow on Twitter who will help me grow as a future librarian. One of those is Kathy Schrock @kathyschrock is an amazing person to follow, she is huge with technology. As soon as I clicked on her name I found a pinned tweet with a great link that I can use to teach. Since we currently have 10 iPads in our classrooms and this site has pages that provides tips, tricks, resources for teaching and learning with the iPads.
This summer I started to follow Cynthia Alaniz @utalaniz who is an elementary school librarian and a blogger. I highly recommend you all follow her. She tweets and retweets great reads, book recommendations she makes to her students, and great library ideas. She was chosen by Todd Nesloney (a principal) as one of the 12 educators worth following.
Thank you, @TechNinjaTodd, for including me on this list! Also, thank you for being a reader leader! http://www.toddnesloney.com/2017/08/20/12-educators-worth-following/ … #txlchat
There are other interesting people I started to follow on Twitter who will help me grow as a future librarian. One of those is Kathy Schrock @kathyschrock is an amazing person to follow, she is huge with technology. As soon as I clicked on her name I found a pinned tweet with a great link that I can use to teach. Since we currently have 10 iPads in our classrooms and this site has pages that provides tips, tricks, resources for teaching and learning with the iPads.
Pinned Tweet
My edtech Web sites: http://schrockguide.net , http://ipads4teaching.net , http://kathyschrock.net , and http://blog.kathyschrock.net
I am so excited about following these people on Twitter and I definitely know that using Twitter is a great way to stay up to date on current and popular books to have in the library.
What can I say about Facebook that you all don't already know, I found that using Facebook would be a better social platform to draw students in and to grab their attention. Facebook is also a great way to stay in contact with parents, if they follow our school library on Facebook they will definitely see my posts. This social platform is also a great way to stay connected with other libraries, promote services and activities, and post photos of things that are happening in our library. As I searched on Facebook for school libraries I found three great libraries. I went in to the Mission HS library Facebook page and found they post very often, most of their post are on the latest activities happening with the school and the library, they also posted pictures of their first patron of the year on the first day of school. I found this to be awesome because many elementary school libraries don't open their libraries until two weeks after school starts. The latest post Mission HS Library had were many pictures of them celebrating 20 years of the Harry Potter Magic. I found many other libraries, mostly high school libraries. These libraries had many posts in common, posts on their football season, posts of their library activities, and post on popular and new book recommendations. These libraries overall posted often, but I did notice they did not have comments on their post and did have only few likes. Overall I think libraries having Facebook pages is a great idea and I am excited to create one when I become a librarian.
Using these social medias or platforms is a great way to stay connected with patrons, colleagues, and it is an amazing way to grow professionally. I think that there would only be one disadvantage when using Facebook and Twitter from campuses, I have found that there are filters that do not allow access to this social medias, so it would have to be accessed outside the campuses. Overall I am excited to become a librarian and use these social platforms in my library.
What can I say about Facebook that you all don't already know, I found that using Facebook would be a better social platform to draw students in and to grab their attention. Facebook is also a great way to stay in contact with parents, if they follow our school library on Facebook they will definitely see my posts. This social platform is also a great way to stay connected with other libraries, promote services and activities, and post photos of things that are happening in our library. As I searched on Facebook for school libraries I found three great libraries. I went in to the Mission HS library Facebook page and found they post very often, most of their post are on the latest activities happening with the school and the library, they also posted pictures of their first patron of the year on the first day of school. I found this to be awesome because many elementary school libraries don't open their libraries until two weeks after school starts. The latest post Mission HS Library had were many pictures of them celebrating 20 years of the Harry Potter Magic. I found many other libraries, mostly high school libraries. These libraries had many posts in common, posts on their football season, posts of their library activities, and post on popular and new book recommendations. These libraries overall posted often, but I did notice they did not have comments on their post and did have only few likes. Overall I think libraries having Facebook pages is a great idea and I am excited to create one when I become a librarian.
Using these social medias or platforms is a great way to stay connected with patrons, colleagues, and it is an amazing way to grow professionally. I think that there would only be one disadvantage when using Facebook and Twitter from campuses, I have found that there are filters that do not allow access to this social medias, so it would have to be accessed outside the campuses. Overall I am excited to become a librarian and use these social platforms in my library.
