Have you heard of "social reading"? Generally, reading is something that we do as individuals but it can easily become a social activity. Reading aloud to a class or a small group, sharing our thoughts about a particular book with a friend, participating in a Bookclub - these are all examples of social reading. Increasingly, however, social reading is taking place online via social media and #bookstagram is becoming quite the thing. There are any number of social media bookclubs available, catering to a wide variety of audiences and interests (check out these virtual bookclubs). The advantages of virtual bookclubs are many:
And of course, there's advantages for authors and publishers as well. Essentially, it's free marketing and the more times a particular book or author is mentioned, the more likely it is that social media users will buy that book (according to Kate Hoy from Penguin Random House). As for disadvantages, there is the obvious lack of face-to-face interaction that you have with traditional bookclubs. Given the importance of social media in the lives of our students, online "bookclubs" could provide new ways for us, as teacher librarians, to promote reading in our schools. So how can we do this?
Most of the mentions of online bookclubs that I found relate to adults. And I'm not sure that an online bookclub (in the style of a traditional bookclub - reading a book a month then sharing your thoughts) would be particularly appealing to our students, at least not at my school. But certainly, we could use social media to generate interest in books. Some teacher librarians do this type of thing already with "unboxing" videos. Anyway, these are some of my ideas for using Instagram/Twitter to promote books to my students:
I have not implemented any of these ideas just yet. But this is something I'm certainly going to be looking into doing. I'd love to hear how you are using social media to promote reading in your school. Please share your ideas in the comments.
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As a teacher-librarian (TL) I feel privileged to have so many opportunities to engage or connect with students on the topics that interest them. Given the content-heavy and assessment-orientated nature of our curriculum, this is something that I often didn’t feel I had enough time to do as a classroom teacher. These conversations are usually quite short: a quick chat as I issue out a book, a comment or two as I offer a recommendation or a brief discussion about a particular series. Even so, these moments are opportunities to connect with students in a casual way where the conversation has nothing to do with schoolwork and the student is free to discuss whatever interests them in a non-judgemental way.
I recently had one such interesting conversation with a student about social media. The student (let’s call them Sam) was borrowing several books from a popular young adult series and we were discussing our favourite characters. Proudly, Sam mentioned that they had been communicating via social media with one of the “characters” – well, the actor who played this character in the movie adaptation – and that the actor had actually responded! Alarm bells started ringing in my head. In my experience, getting responses from authors and actors on social media is quite rare and yet, this student was having entire conversations with this person. Sam continued talking, “…and do you know what their [screen] name is on social media? It’s [character name] is a god!” The alarm bells in my head reached a crescendo. Sure, some actors could be conceited but I didn’t think any of them were so narcissistic as to proclaim themselves as gods. “Sam, are you sure this is the real person?” I asked. The response was immediate. “Yes, of course - it’s their photo on the profile!” Sam’s naïve confidence astonished me. “But Sam, anyone can use photos from the Internet and people do create fake profiles. This probably isn’t the real person.” Confusion. “I suppose…” Concerned, I continued, “Just be careful what you post online. Don’t give away any personal information.” By the end of our conversation, Sam was having doubts as to the identity of the person they’d been talking to and promised to be careful. Even so, I was concerned enough to mention the conversation to another member of staff, who followed up with Sam and their parents. It’s easy to assume that, as “digital natives”, our students are competent users of social media. And while, technically, that is true – they do know how to operate on social media platforms (and how do so effectively, just consider the advent of Instragram influencers) – this is very different to being able to evaluate the content they see. Are students able to identify which posts are sponsored and which are not? (Try this for yourself here – I scored 8.5 out of 11). Are they able to identify misinformation, bias and fake news? (Test your fake news detecting skills here) Do they interact with others online in a safe and responsible way? Given the prevalence and unfortunate success of online scams (e.g. catfishing and online dating scams), it’s clear that even adults struggle to evaluate information they encounter via social media or interactions they have online. I don't think that banning social media is the answer. There’s no evidence that such a ban would be effective and social media does have the potential to be a force for good. But clearly we need to educate our young people on how to use social media ethically and responsibly and in a way that is healthy. The big question is how do we do this? |
AuthorHi, I'm Kelly. I'm a teacher-librarian at a Queensland high school with an interest in the lives of the young people I work with and the issues affecting them. ArchivesCategories
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