I have been engaged with social media for over three and a
half years now. As I often reflect on my
journey, I can’t help but think about the early days and months after I first began
to use Twitter and some other tools.
There were many times during this early period that I questioned the
value of the time I was putting in, or the actual impact any of this was having
on teaching, learning, school culture, and leadership. Add in all of the weird looks and ignorant
comments I received, it is a miracle that I made it through the early adoption
stage to full, blown-out social media fanatic.
Image credit: http://www.netstrategies.com/blog/social-media/use-social-media-to-cross-promote
Obviously I stuck with it and my life as a principal has
never been the same. Social media has
become embedded in virtually all facets of my professional practice as an
educational leader. It is so gratifying
to see more educators locally, nationally, and globally begin to experience
what social media has to offer on a professional level. However, as much as I and others tout the
many ways in which social media can improve communications, form a foundation
for positive public relations, increase student engagement, enhance the
teaching and learning process, discover opportunity, and lead to authentic
pathways to grow professionally, I still find that many educators are skeptical
about embracing this dynamic, multi-dimensional tool.
At this point in my career, I cannot picture performing my
duties as a Principal without social media playing some sort of role. I truly believe that it has made me a more
effective school leader by enhancing a variety of skill sets essential to the
position. The network of colleagues and friends
I have developed has now become priceless.
As we prepare to begin another school year, it is important that we
reflect on the impact social media has had and all make a commitment to
encouraging, supporting, and modeling its effective use amongst our staff,
stakeholders, and other educators. I
already know that this is tops on my agenda when we start up school again in
September.
It is my hope that this post will serve as a catalyst for a
greater discussion on how we can empower more educators to embrace social
media, become connected, and utilize this tool to help do what they do more
effective. In recent weeks and months I have seen a dramatic rise of educators in my home state of New Jersey who have embraced social media as a legitimate professional tool. I have also been proud to witness the evolution of the #NJED hash tag and #SatChat. On this Leadership Day 2012 I would like to remind all school leaders and educators that it is never too late to jump on
the bandwagon.
The bandwagon effect is a well documented form of groupthink in behavioral science and has many applications. The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with "the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have already done so".[1] As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence. The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others. Both explanations have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments. For example, social pressure has been used to explain Asch's conformity experiments,[2] and information has been used to explain Sherif's autokinetic experiment.[3]generico
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