Article 1

10 Surprising Ways to Use Instagram in the Classroom

by Hannah Hudson

Move over, Facebook! If you teach middle or high schoolers, you know that Instagram is one of the most popular social media channels for teens and tweens today. And while it may not seem like it at first, there are many applications for Instagram in the classroom.

Of course, it's important to protect students' privacy, especially when using a public channel like Instagram. If you're interested in trying any of the ideas below, we recommend creating a classroom account that you set to "private" and carefully vetting any potential followers. You might also try adapting our suggestions to an educational social media platform such as Edmodo. Finally, be sure to check your school's technology policies before you begin.

OK, disclaimer over! Here are 10 awesome ways you can use Instagram in the classroom.

1. Showcase students' work. Snap pictures of students' artwork and other special projects to

share on a private Instagram account only accessible to families and others in your school

community.

2. Feature a student of the week. Invite students to alternate "taking over" your classroom

Instagram account and sharing photos from their daily lives. Then have the featured student

share his or her photos with the class.

3. Capture field trip memories. Invite a student volunteer "archivist" to take photos on your

field trips or during class parties and share them on your Instagram account.

4. Imagine how a famous person in history would use Instagram. Have students browse

historical photos and create a bulletin board or poster display showing Abraham Lincoln's or

Buzz Aldrin's Instagram feed.

5. Imagine what a favorite character would post. Challenge students to find photos that would

appear in Harry Potter's or Katniss Everdeen's Instagram.

6. Share reading recommendations. Invite students to snap photos of their favorite books and

then browse the photos in your feed for more ideas on what to read.

7. Record steps in a science experiment. Watch as a plant unfurls or a chemical compound

slowly changes colors—and keep the changes preserved on Instagram.

8. Go on an ABC scavenger hunt. Challenge kids to find print in the world around them—on

signs, packaging and in the mail.

9. Discover ideas for writing. Tap an "inspiration fairy" to take 10 photos that could serve as a

prompt for writing—an empty bird's nest, a For Sale sign and a broken doll, for instance.

10. Document student progress. Snap photos of student's writing at the beginning and end

of the year. Order inexpensive prints from sites such as Prinstagr.am to show students how

far they have come!

Article 2Engaging Your School Community Through Social MediaNOVEMBER 14, 2014

2.1KSHARES

When I started my career as a school administrator, the closest thing we had to public relations and communications was the biweekly school newsletter that we cranked out in MS Word. Photocopied

newsletters stuffed into backpacks on a Friday afternoon seemed to do the job of communicating with parents. For teachers, memos were placed in cubbyholes in the staff room.

As technology progressed and the schools where I worked got larger, new options became available. The need to better communicate and engage our students, staff, parents, and prospective families became even more essential. Here are a few ways that we at The International School (TIS) have engaged with our community.

School WebsiteSchools are busy places, and parents need a trusted place to find the right information. But information is not enough -- gone are the days of the website being just a digital brochure. Now it needs to facilitate two-way communication. We just updated our website this year to include these key features:

1. It must be mobile friendly. It must work on phones and tablets as well as desktops. No exceptions.2. It must be easy to update, preferably automatically. For example, the information we add into our

Google calendar automatically updates on our website. For static pages, make sure the content stays current.

3. Link your other social media initiatives on your website. Parents should be able to easily find your official Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube profiles from your webpage. Then use your webpage to share the content from those profiles.

4. The hardest but most important part is that your site must provide a sense of your school's culture. People visiting your school website should feel like they are visiting your campus.

FacebookPeter Sutton told me in a workshop that "if you are not telling your school's story on Facebook, someone else is." He was right. When I checked, I found that a student had already set up a Facebook page with our name.

Use Facebook to celebrate the great things happening at the school!

Promote sports, arts, and cultural events. Post blog articles, news items, and announcements.

Publish fundraising goals. Share educational memes.

Should you use Facebook ads? We found good success in promoting our posts. For a minimal cost, it places them into the top of the timelines for your friends and their friends.

Be sure to monitor your posts. Which posts have more views and likes than others? While it isn't a popularity contest, you want to keep track of whether you are actually reaching your audience. Have more than one person as admin, but don't bring in too many people. Make sure they answer comments and direct messages. What happens when you get a bad comment? If it is inappropriate, we delete it. If it challenges or disagrees with us, we use it as an opportunity to educate and inform both the poster and the public. We will follow this with a private message inviting them to come in and discuss the issue. We also fully support Facebook's requirement that users be 13 or older.

Use the Facebook "Insights" tab to learn more about what's been happening with your page. The graphs show the likes, comments, shares, and other useful metrics for planning and strategy.

TwitterOur teachers use Twitter to celebrate what they are doing in their classrooms, ask questions, share resources, and document their learning. It's had a profound effect on our staff. By creating a school hashtag, we are able to thread all of our school-based tweets. I used to think I needed some kind of official Twitter authorization to create a hashtag. You don't. Just make a memorable one that describes

your school, and start using it. Twitter use by our staff grew slowly at first. Then we compiled all of the tweets onto our internal digital daily bulletin using our #TISMacao hashtag, and it allowed non-Twitter users to see all of the posts. Twitter use is growing rapidly now! See this blog article for more details. Also, see how staff members Zack Palmer, Louise Phinney, and Nick Chignall are using Twitter.

We are just starting to explore engaging our parents and local community with Twitter, as well as reaching out to a global audience.

LinkedInAt this point, we use LinkedIn to recruit potential teachers and reach the working members of our TIS families. We follow the major employers in our area and develop our networks within the business community. In addition to posting about major school events, we also share articles related to leadership, corporate social responsibility, and team building. We use it to announce our corporate fundraising, sponsorships, and partnerships. We post much differently on LinkedIn than we do on Facebook.

YouTubeI can guarantee that there are already many videos of your school and students on YouTube. Once again, if you are not telling your story, someone else is. Since you may not be able to police the other videos, you should have an official YouTube channel. Check us out on YouTube!

WeChatA popular platform in Asia, WeChat is the medium TIS uses to connect with our Chinese-speaking families.

BlogsRemember that old newsletter? We don't have it anymore. At first, we switched to a digital PDF version, but then we got rid of that as well. Now our news is a blog, constantly updated -- we post articles and announcements as they are written. Every teacher has his or her own blog. Administrators have blogs, as we try to lead by example. Our next step is to engage further through integrating our blogs with social media.

Overall, our move toward digital engagement has been successful. Our community is much more connected. Our parents stay informed through our website and Facebook. Our teachers interact and share through Twitter, and we continue to seek new ways to engage our community through the tools that are available to us.

How about you? What ways are you engaging your school community? Which issues concern you about social media?

Students reading blog posts and comments.

Photo credit: Howard Stribbell

Article 3

#FOMO leading to higher levels of depression, anxiety for heavy social media usersBy Dijana Damjanovic and Isabel Dayman

Updated 7 Nov 2015, 9:24pm

PHOTO:   The survey explored the impact of social media on wellbeing.   (ABC News: Dijana Damjanovic)

RELATED STORY:   Three simple things needed for a happy life, study finds

RELATED STORY:   Face-to-face contact 'halves depression risk'

MAP:   Australia

The fear of missing out (or FOMO) generated by high levels of social media use can lead to depression and anxiety, according to a new report looking at the way social media impacts wellbeing.

The fifth annual National Stress and Wellbeing in Australia Survey has found Australians are faring worse than they were when the survey began, with higher levels of stress, depression and anxiety being reported.

Study's key findings: 66 per cent of the teenagers wanted to share details online when they were having a

good time (eg updating a Facebook status)

60 per cent said they felt worried when they found out their friends were having fun without them.

51 per cent said they felt anxious if they did not know what their friends were doing.

78 per cent said it was important that they understood their friends' "in jokes".

One in two teenagers feels they are "missing out" on the seemingly perfect lives that others portray through social media, the survey by Australian Psychology Society found.

Teens also feel they are having less "rewarding" experiences than their friends.

Other key findings included teens worrying about friends having fun without them and feeling anxious if they did not know what their friends were doing.

This year was the first time the study explored the impact of social media on behaviour and wellbeing.

Flinders University senior social work lecturer Dr Mubarak Rahamathulla said FOMO was opening the door to more concerning feelings, like anxiety and depression.

"FOMO is a real thing — my research and research all over the world is repeatedly indicating that it is a fact," he said.

"There is a very strong positive correlation between the hours spent on digital technology and higher stress and depression."

Dr Rahamathulla said it was up to parents and policymakers to make sure teenagers were getting enough information about what is and is not "real" in cyber space, as well as methods to cope with the social and emotional pressures of social media.

"[Teenagers] are getting confused between cyber world and real world," he said.

"I think we need, and we have a moral responsibility as a society, to help them to understand how the roles of these two different worlds are working."

Half of all teens on social media before bedThe survey found that social media dominated the lives of many teenagers, with over half (53 per cent) of Australian teens reporting that they used social networking sites for 15 minutes before bed every night.

Sydney student Jessica Sahay, 17, spends over an hour browsing through Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat before she goes to sleep.

She has tried to reduce her usage after feeling worn out from constantly being connected.

"During exams, I tried to reduce the time I spent on social media because it felt quite distracting when you saw what other people were doing," she said.

'Instafamous' teen reveals ugly truth

A Sunshine Coast teen with more than half a million Instagram followers is revealing the ugly truth behind her social media images that display "a perfect life".

Consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier said the way Jessica felt was not a new phenomenon.

"We've always been scared of missing out on the occasional party or seeing friends doing other stuff which you're involved in, but with social media, that feeling has increased in intensity dramatically," Dr Ferrier said.

"So there's always something happening which you're not a part of."

More than half of young respondents in the survey said they had felt worried, jealous and anxious after finding out they had been left out of a gathering through pictures or status updates on social media.

"If I'm not invited to a party or to the beach with my friends and I thought I was close with them and then you see a picture on Snapchat, Facebook or Instagram ... you think to yourself, 'why am I not invited?'" Jessica said.

"You feel a bit jealous and the next time you see them it gets a bit tense but that stuff happens all the time."

The survey found that a fear of missing out does not stop once people enter adulthood, with the survey noting that those aged 18-35 reported the highest feelings of being left out amongst all adults.

Dr Ferrier said that people needed to be aware of the positive and negative impacts of social media.

"It makes it harder for people to feel happy and have gratitude for their own lives and that's quite a debilitating and serious thing," he said.

"We've got an omnipresent force here that's making people feel less satisfied and less happy with their own lives."

Article 4KidsHealth.org

The most-visited sitedevoted to children'shealth and development

Teaching Kids to Be Smart About Social Media

For kids and teens, social media is an essential part of their lives, much the way telephones were important to us at their age.

About 90% of teens have used some form of social media and 75% have a profile on a social networking site, experts say. More than half of all American teens visit social networking sites every day. These numbers are way up from just a few years ago, and there's almost no chance of them ever coming down again.

There are plenty of good things about social media — but also many potential dangers and things that you want your kids and teens to avoid. They don't always make the smartest choices when they post something to a site like Facebook or YouTube, and sometimes this can lead to problems.

So it's important for parents to teach their kids how to use social media wisely.

The Good

Social media can help kids:

stay connected with friends and family volunteer or get involved with a campaign, nonprofit, or charity enhance their creativity through the sharing of ideas, music, and art meet and interact with others who share similar interests

The Bad

The flipside is that social media can be a hub for things like cyberbullying and questionable activities. Without meaning to, kids can easily share more online than they should.

One study showed that 9 out of 10 teens post photos of themselves online or use their real names on their profiles; 8 out of 10 reveal their birthdates and interests; and 7 out of 10 post their school name and the town where they live. Actions like this can make kids easy targets for online predators and others who might want to cause them harm.

These statistics about teens highlight the dangers of social media:

17% of teens say they've been contacted online by someone they didn't know in a way that made them feel scared or uncomfortable

30% of teens say they've received online advertising that was inappropriate for their age

39% of teens admitted to lying about their age to gain access to websites

Concerns and Consequences

In addition to problems like cyberbullying and online predators, kids also can face the possibility of a physical encounter with the wrong person. Many newer apps automatically reveal the poster's location when they're used. This can tell anyone out there exactly where to find the person using the app.

And photos, videos, and comments made online usually can't be taken back once they're posted. Even after a teen thinks something has been deleted, it can be impossible to completely erase it from the Internet.

Posting an inappropriate photo can damage a kid's reputation in ways that may cause problems years later — such as when a potential employer or college admissions officer does a background check. And if a kid sends a mean-spirited tweet as a joke, it could be very hurtful to someone else and even taken as a threat.

Spending too much time on social media can be a downer, too. By seeing how many "friends" others have and viewing pictures of them having fun, kids may feel worse about themselves or feel they don't measure up to their peers.

What Parents Can Do

It's important to be aware of what your kids are doing online, but prying too much can alienate them and damage the trust you've built together. The key is to stay involved in a way that makes your kids understand that you respect their privacy but want to make sure they're safe.

Here are some helpful hints to share with connected kids:

Be nice. Mean behavior is just as unacceptable in the virtual world as it is in the real world. Make it clear that you expect your kids to treat others with respect and courtesy, and to never post hurtful or embarrassing messages about others. And ask them to always tell you about any harassing or bullying messages that others may post.

Think twice before hitting "enter." Remind teens that what they post can be used against them. For example, letting the world know that you're off on vacation or posting your home address gives would-be robbers a chance to strike. Teens also should avoid posting specific locations of parties or events, as well as phone numbers.

Follow the "WWGS?" (What Would Grandma Say?) rule. Teach kids that "once it's out there, you can't get it back." They shouldn't share anything on social media that they wouldn't want their teachers, college admissions officers, future bosses — and yes, grandma — to see.

Use privacy settings. Privacy settings are important, and to highlight their importance, go through the settings together to make sure your kids understand

each one. Also, explain that passwords are there to protect them against things like identity theft and should never be shared with anyone (even a boyfriend, girlfriend, or best friend).

Don't "friend" strangers. "If you don't know them, don't friend them." This is a plain, simple — and safe — rule of thumb.

Make It Official

So, how can you drive these messages home? One way is to make a "social media agreement" with your kids — a real contract they can sign. In it, they can agree to protect their own privacy, consider their reputation, and not give out personal information. Furthermore, they promise to never use technology to hurt anyone else (through bullying or gossip).

In turn, parents agree to respect teens' privacy while making an effort to be part of the social media world (this means you can "friend" and observe them, but don't post embarrassing comments or rants about messy rooms).

Parents also can help keep kids grounded in the real world by putting limits on media use. Keep computers in public areas in the house, avoid laptops and smartphones in bedrooms, and set some rules on the use of technology (such as no cellphones at the dinner table).

And don't forget: Setting a good example through your own virtual behavior can go a long way toward helping your kids use social media safely.

Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD

Date reviewed: August 2014

Note: All information on KidsHealth® is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor.

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