Being Socially Savvy in School: An Introduction to Integrating FCCLA into Social Media

Today our own social media guru, Lauren Rhodes, discusses the importance of being technology savvy and connecting your chapter and classroom through social media.

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media; the question is how well do we do it?” – Erik Qualman

Many educators are asking “Why should I use social media? It’s not like I have access to it in the classroom.” To begin, let’s addressing the first question “Why should I use social media?” Social media is not going anywhere. Rather, technology has barely scratched the surface on the possibilities of what social media is capable of. In another five years, the Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites that we have today are going to seem archaic. Now to address the statement “It’s not like I have access to it in the classroom” – it’s only a matter of time. Social media is so rampant and is changing the face of communication as we know it, before long the education system and government will be on board. For example, remember Barack Obama’s Presidential candidacy media campaign. Many prominent advertising professionals credit his campaign’s use of social media as giving him a significant edge in the race to the presidency and as we all know now, Obama is president. Also, many Senators, Congressmen, and government officials have Facebook pages, including President Obama.

What are the benefits for integrating social media into FCCLA? Social media was designed to enhance communication, making it easier to network and to generate interest in a cause. Social media can be used to augment what is being instructed in the classroom and cultivate your FCCLA chapter. Imagine being able to communicate directly with your chapter on a forum that your students interact with on a daily basis. Where you can share conference photos, classroom videos, remind members that a fundraiser is launching tomorrow, and have a video chat with another chapter in real time. For example, using sites like Facebook and Twitter you can communicate, promote, recruit, and network quickly and easily with your chapter, school, other advisers, etc. You can even network professionally and connect with other advisers on sites like LinkedIn and communicate live globally via web chat with Skype.

Over the next few months, I will guide you through six of the top and emerging forms of social media and explain how to incorporate them with FCCLA:

• June - Facebook
• June - Twitter
• August - YouTube
• August - Flickr
• September - LinkedIn
• September – Skype

I’m looking forward to the next few months. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments you are not comfortable posting please contact me at lrhodes@fcclainc.org.