Social Networking (LSSL 5385)

Module 8 Social Networking

Following-

LS Department:

Dr. Terri Lesesne (@ProfessorNana)

Dr. Karin Perry (@kperry)

YA Authors:

Margot Wood (@margotwood)

Andrew Smith (marburyjacl)

Marie Lu (@marie_lu)

T’ChAngie Thomas (@angiecthomas)

Jason Reynolds (@jasonreynolds83)

Classroom Teachers:

Level: Middle School

Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks)

@katsok (on June 5^thfrom the Twitter Starter Pack) 

Publisher:

Candlewick Press (@candlewick)

Penguin Random House (@penguinrandom)

Penguin Books USA (@penguinusa)

Literacy Organization:

YALSA (@YALSA)

School Librarian:

Level: Elementary School

Cynthia Alaniz (@utalaniz)

Level: Middle School

Liz B. (@lizb) (on June 5^thfrom the Twitter Starter Pack)

Started following the above people on May 31^stunless otherwise noted.

Module 8- Social Networking

Reflection Essay

What did I learn?

What did I learn? What didn’t I learn? The world today allows anything and everything to be accessed instantaneously at the click of a button. I could find out the nitty-gritty aspects of their life such as their political, religious, and personal morals, or I could see where they drank their coffee this morning. I was able to get great insight into people who were more tap happy on their Twitter page.

The most political tap happy author I found, Andrew Smith (@marburyjack), was very vocal about how much he was against President Trump and his beliefs. He would constantly retweet or comment on a tweet made by anyone in the Trump family and in a negative way. I am not saying this is bad by any means, I am saying that because Andrew is so vocal, I was able to see what we did or did not have in common when it came to political views.

On the other hand, Jason Reynolds (@jasonreynolds83), chose to keep a lighter tone to his tweets. Jason not only had a hilarious about me, but his tweets were uplifting and celebratory almost every time I opened to his page. 

After tweeting both Andrew Smith and Jason Reynolds, the first one of the two to “like” my tweet was Andrew Smith. I did an experiment by tweeting over fifteen authors about receiving an autographed book of theirs and Andrew Smith was the one who immediately took action to read and respond. In a span of five days, since the initial tweet on May 31^st, he was the only one to respond.

What author did I follow?

            My original author of choice to follow was Marie Lu (@marie_lu) simply because I had never heard of her until purchasing her Warcrossbook this year at a book fair. I wanted to follow someone who I knew nothing about, but came to find out she was not as active on her Twitter as some of the other authors I followed.

            Then it became a toss up between the uplifting, easy spirited Jason Reynolds or the very vocal and multiple award winner Andrew Smith.  I decided to stick with Jason Reynolds for two reasons: he was extremely kind to others and retweeted important and educational information and he tweeted more than Smith did. Reynolds has been on Twitter since March of 2009.

            The thing I immediately caught onto with Reynolds was how raw and bold his tweets were. Reynolds speaks about himself as an author, but he also speaks about himself as a human being. He creates a world where you can see the “real” Reynolds and not a man hiding behind his words. His profile picture and cover photo are both of him, one more dramatic and one more silly, but both with the long dreadlocks and full face of hair.

            Reynolds has over thirty-three thousand followers but only follows around fifteen hundred people. He has tweeted close to sixteen thousand times and liked close to sixteen thousand five hundred tweets. To me, this shows that he is interactive in the Twitter community and actually takes the time to read through people’s words and truly acknowledge them.

Librarian

The librarian I selected at first was a find by me (Cynthia Alaniz @utalaniz), and the second librarian I chose to follow (Liz B. @lizb) was from the Twitter Starter Pack that was sent out. I chose two because Cynthia Alaniz works with elementary students, while Liz B. works with middle school students. Since I work with middle school, I wanted to compare the differences and similarities between the ideas of the two. 

Alaniz has over ten thousand followers and follows over five thousand people. With a total of over thirty thousand tweets, she includes positive commentary from parents and other individuals in the community who referenced books in her library. She shared blog posts, pictures, and books that she is currently reading, including a picture of the book or a glimpse inside the book.

Liz B has almost twelve thousand followers and is following over three thousand people. With far more tweets than Alaniz, sitting at over ninety five thousand, Liz has a different feeling to her Twitter. Since Liz has an older age group to cater to, she adds in more real world Tweets and worldly news. I personally think this is a great idea because kids need to be aware of what is going on in the world. The posts she does make are controlled, with no bad language or derogatory aspects to them, and allow kids to engage in the world.

Teacher

The teacher I selected was from the Twitter starter pack, Katherine Sokolowski. I chose her for a few reasons: I do not follow ma teachers on Twitter and needed to find one that I really felt aligned with my personal goals and values in the classroom and I really enjoyed her last name and easy Twitter handle (@katsok). Sokolowski is located in central Illinois and joined Twitter in 2009. She is a mother to two boys and a teacher.

Sokolowski teaches seventh graders, my new grade level to teach this next year, and I wanted to see what kind of ideas I could get from her since this will be a new experience for me. Sokolowski shares ideas from her book club (#nerdybookclub) and has her own class account (@SagesHoots) for parents and others to see what the class is reading, working on at the time, and adds pictures of her students. I love this idea and would like to try it this next year with my students as well. It would be a fun, interactive, and easy way to show parents what we are doing at a glance while being able to remind students about their homework or classroom needs.

Sokolowski has over eleven thousand followers and is following over two thousand people. She has tweeted over forty three thousand times and liked almost ten thousand posts. Unlike Reynolds, she seems to post more than interact with others. She does retweet quite often, mainly books of interest and quotes of her fancy.

Literacy Organization

The literacy organization I selected was the Young Adult Library Services Association, YALSA (@yalsa). With headquarters located in Chicago, Illinois, YALSA has been a member of the Twitter community since May of 2007. I only found out about YALSA this year from the Master’s program at SHSU.

            A few things I noticed were how active they were on social media. YALSA communicated about upcoming webinars, books of interest, and even ways to keep kids learning and active in reading throughout the summer time.  One tweet, on July 12^th, really sparked my interest. The tweet showed a colorful chart of summer learning ideas that could be done at home or in the community. While a majority of the ideas were reading based, there were a few that were just fun! 

            YALSA follows over four thousand people and is followed by forty four thousand. YALSA has tweeted over seventy one thousand times and liked only one hundred and fifty five posts. 

Links

The links I followed were sparse and few because Twitter doesn’t always do a great job of insisting that people post links. Twitter’s main forefront is showing snippets of ideas instead of the whole post.

I did follow up with a few of T’ChAngie Thomas’ (@angiecthomas) posts and Nicole Yoon’s (@nicoleyoon) posts. I specifically chose to follow theirs because of the two books I read, The Hate U Give by Thomas and The Sun is Also a Starby Yoon, are in the works of becoming movies. I refuse to see a movie before reading the book, and I prefer to make my own ideas of the character’s looks and feelings before seeing someone else’s ideas. Both books, while being extremely different, yet similar at the same time, will make very interesting movies.

I also followed links that led me to books of similar themes and ideas to ones I had already read. If I like a book, I try to read more by that author if they have them available, or I try to find books of a similar nature to delve into.

Shares, Retweets, Comments, and Likes

I shared quite a few author’s posts and author’s retweets with my colleagues because of the passion they put into it. Reynolds did an excellent job on promoting his fellow authors in a respectful and funny way. Smith chose to retweet many tweets about himself, but I still chose to promote them on my Twitter as well. For example, Smith received the Printz Honor award in 2015, yet I still chose to retweet his pinned tweet because of the brilliance of the book and the idea of sharing it with others.

            I went out of my way to like and comment as many times as I could, within reason and usefulness, to the authors and others I followed. I hosted an experiment to try to get the authors to follow me and send me a signed copy of their book of choice so that I could add it to my library and promote it throughout the classroom.  As soon as I started that, I had a few authors and others of note follow me back: Giles Paley-Phillips (@eliistender10) an author of children’s books and, at one point in time, Andrew Smith followed me back after a tweet. I later found out that he unfollowed me and was a little upset that he did so. 

What can it add?

These social networks could serve me well as a school librarian by keeping students and parents informed. Students would be able to access pictures of books’ covers, snippets from their favorite authors, and know which books are in the library, new or old.

Parents would be able to see when book fairs, guest speakers, and book clubs are going on in a quicker way than thumbing through never ending emails and newsletters. While I am not against emails and newsletters, actually quite the opposite of against, I do think that having short, concise messages is beneficial to parents since we are so on the go nowadays. 

I would add weekly updates on to what I, as a librarian, was reading and what the other English Language Arts teachers were reading in their classrooms. I would add in selfies of teachers and the books they are reading to add a glimpse into their personal side and likes. My first year of teaching, I had a selfie board of students and their favorite book. It was a fun way for other students to see what their peers enjoyed and got them talking about books in a new way. It was great to see how lively the students got when they explained their favorite book. For students who didn’t have a favorite book in the beginning of the year, I told them to wait until they found one because they would definitely find one over the course of the year. Even my most stubborn kids eventually put a selfie up on the board, happy to find one book they liked, or even one book that they read fully through. I will never forget one student who accredited me to getting her to read a full book and actually enjoy it.