Leading Future Learning 2016

This session will explore the potential for connecting, growing and collaborating with Google Plus. Through the combination of Google Plus, Google Plus Communities and Google Hangouts, schools, administrators and teachers can tap into an expansive network of like minded educators from around the country that are consistently sharing resources.

Link to Google Plus Slide Deck - Hangouts & Communities 

Gary Maestas, Superintendent, Plymouth Public Schools, will begin the presentation with a discussion on how Plymouth Public Schools was dealing and struggling with social media, where we wanted to go with our social media presence, how we decided to open up our network to social media, and finally how we came about developing our social media initiative.

The presentation will continue with Emily Goonan, Media & Communications Specialist for Plymouth Public Schools. Emily will go into the details of our social media initiative and take you into the world of Plymouth’s presence in the “big bad world of social media.” Emily will portray our presence in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Plus.

We will talk about how we stay focused on the positive, how we deal with the negatives, and how we try to stay ahead of the game.

We will also talk about our branding effort -- getting people to know who we are. How we use social media for promoting our brand awareness in trying to reach the young adults, parents, our Plymouth community. How we focus on providing valuable and useful content and making sure our content supports our brand image.
Emily will review tips and tricks educational administrators and staff can use when posting in social media.

We will end with Julia Colby, Plymouth Technology Coordinator, who will talk about our social media guidelines for staff.

Workshop goals include:
Provide an overview of Twitter
Log into Twitter
Create your Professional Learning Network/how to chat
Use hashtags # and mentions @ in a post

Co-Presenter : David Jordan, Assistant Principal, Adams Middle School

A school leader, be they an administrator, team chair, guidance counselor, or teacher, can be a busy person. Between meetings, observations, phone calls, discipline issues, lunch duty, and other day-to-day activities, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything and still have a smile on your face. This session will focus on three main areas: social media, email and document organization, and blogging. The social media component will focus on using twitter, as well as third-party tools like Buffer, Commun.it, and Diigo, as a set of tools to develop, expand, and interact with your PLN. Managing emails and other documents will be addressed by way of using Evernote as a tool to tag, organize, and share pertinent material. Lastly, Wordpress will be discussed as a platform to maintain a professional and informative website and blog.

Best practices in using all of these tools to maintain a handle on these important aspects of communication and follow-through will be discussed. This session will be "hands-on" with the expectation that participants will have devices (ideally an iPad or laptop computer) available to work on and create necessary accounts. Participants will gain access to a website with documentation, support links, and follow-up information to help use these tools after the session has ended and they return to work. Take charge of your online presence with effective practices and workflows!

In our presentation, we will share how we have used social media tools to enhance teaching and learning in our school community, specifically blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

In the past few years, we've seen our social media footprint grow tenfold. Using various tools, we've seen our principals and administrators put the Wakefield Public Schools on the social media map. We have work to do, but are excited about the prospect of incorporating more and more tools to connect with our community.

You'll hear two perspectives: Principal Rich Metropolis will share how he is using social media tools to connect with district stakeholders and share instructional successes, teacher Chris Gosselin will share how he is utilizing various social media tools to connect with his students in and out of the classroom (Twitter, Google Hangouts, blogging.)

This year, we are continuing to expand out footprint in the social media landscape, and look forward to sharing the work we are doing with DESE to bring "Distance Learning Days" to Wakefield in an effort to eliminate making up time at the end of the year due to snow days.

Our workshop will be part "how-to", part sharing and part collaboration. We want to provide a forum for discussion in order to share best practices, new tools and ideas on how to structure roles and responsibilities in-district in regards to the administration of various communication tools.

We'll ask the question: how can social media and social networking cause learning and implement change in a school community? Join us for the discussion!

Co-Presenter: Rich Metropolis, Principal of Wakefield Memorial High School