web resources for Learn more about the websites your education colleagues are finding indispensable. L
isa: Hey Devin, it’s a new year. Time to come up with a new set of top web- sites for ACSA. You game?
Devin: Absolutely. The landscape has
changed a lot since our “Top 10” in 2010. Lisa: Agreed. There are some cool new
sites that are making my life much easier, but maybe we should start with one of our staples – Facebook.
n Facebook (
facebook.com). Facebook
continues to dominate the web and all edu- cators, particularly those of us in leadership roles, should be aware of just how influen- tial this social network site is in our modern world. According to today’s data, Facebook has grown to more than 800 million users, with half of those logging in on a daily basis. Of those users, more than 300 million use mobile devices for Facebook access. So what are all of these people doing?
Certainly a lot of the activity is sharing of personal information such as family pho- tos and status updates about daily activi- ties. However, Facebook also provides for an increasing amount of professional use,
28 Leadership
with great potential for schools to increase connectedness and to build community. In- spired by the U.S. Department of Education and schools around the country, our district launched a Facebook page last spring with great success (
facebook.com/CarlsbadUni- fiedSchoolDistrict). We are now in the pro- cess of adopting the CSBA board policy and administrative regulations for district-spon- sored social media and working on expand- ing our presence to school sites to comple- ment our district page. For tips, tutorials, and more recommendations for educational use of Facebook, one can always go to the TICAL website and find excellent resources (
www.portical.org).
Lisa: Glad to see my old friend Facebook is
still on our list. What is your take on Twitter? Devin: Still one of my favorites and a regu-
larly used site in our district. n Twitter (
twitter.com). Frankly, Twit-
ter has lost a bit of steam since we initially promoted it in 2010. However, Twitter is still an amazing way to connect and share.
And while it may not be growing as fast as it once was, when you look at the numbers, the volume and rate of data that is exchanged is staggering. For example, it took more than three years to reach the first million tweets, and now we see that number of posts in a given week. Our take on Twitter is that it still has a
valuable role in the educational ecosystem, and the microblogging platform can be an incredibly useful tool. John Roach, superin- tendent in Carlsbad Unified, has been tweet- ing for almost two years now, and we have particularly noticed the benefits during crises where we needed immediate, short bursts of information to go out to the community. We also find that Twitter can be a great way to highlight success and to recognize achieve- ments. Check
www.twitter.com/suptroach for some examples of how it works for us.
Lisa: All of this twittering and facebooking sounds like it could be time-intensive for some
By Lisa Gonzales and Devin Vodicka
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