Trusting a Student With the District Twitter Account

What if you gave a student in your school access to the district Twitter account? Scary thought isn't it? Or is it? I got the idea from Lincoln Public Schools here in Nebraska. I was perusing my Twitter stream and this tweet caught my attention:

I was immediately intrigued. What a brilliant idea! Too often I hear about how social media should be banned in schools. Some people say that it has no place in the learning environment. I disagree. I think it can be a powerful tool in every classroom if used in the right ways.

I think we ought to do a better job of TEACHING students how to effectively use social media. After all, aren't we in the business of educating students?

Although we spend a considerable amount of time in our district discussing and modeling how to effectively use social media, I struggle to get students to see the value of using social media to share information that is valuable, to collaborate, or how to build a solid PLN that could be of great value to them down the road.

I thought to myself that doing something similar to what @LPSorg did would be a great way to teach our students how to share valuable information using social media. Why not let them share their story via our district's Twitter account?

I asked one of our seniors, Lucas Grossnicklaus (@LUKEsOfHazzard_) if he would share his day via the district Twitter account. I covered some basic ground rules with him and away he went....logged into the @AuroraHuskies Twitter account, telling him to include our district hashtag #aurorahuskies and one that we made up #ahssp (AuroraHighSchoolStudentPerspective) so we could track the tweets as we do this throughout the remainder of the year with other students.