Kimmel Farm Elementary School includes the teaching of social media in its school improvement plan.

In a world where three out of four teens have a cell phone, and roughly the same number have used a social networking website, it’s imperative that schools not only develop social media guidelines for their students and staff but also teach students about safe and responsible social media use, said a pair of education leaders.

Steven Anderson, instructional technologist for North Carolina’s Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools (WSFCS), and Sam Walker, a technology facilitator at the district’s Kimmel Farm Elementary School, presented a session called “Understanding and Creating Social Media Guidelines for Educators” during ASCD’s 67^th annual conference March 25.

Anderson and Walker are leaders in bringing social media into the classroom and teaching students how to use social media safely and ethically. Under their guidance, Kimmel Farm reportedly became the first school in North Carolina to include the teaching of social media in its school improvement plan.

One element of the plan reads: “Create a school environment where faculty are educated and can educate students in 21^st-century literacy and best practices in the uses of social media, and Web 2.0 tools, in a globally connected world.”

See also:

Social media savvy: The new digital divide?

How to avoid committing social media gaffes

More reports from ASCD’s 67th annual conference 

Anderson and Walker cited results from a Pew Center survey that suggest three out of four students ages 12-17 now own a cell phone, and 73 percent of teens who are online say they’ve used a social networking site. “They’re not almost there; they’re already there,” the pair said, arguing that schools need to meet students where they are and give them the skills they need to navigate social media safely and effectively.

“The reality is kids live in these spaces, but when they come to the school door, we say no,” Anderson said.

He said more videos are posted to YouTube in 60 days than NBC, ABC, and CBS have produced in 60 years combined—and yet many schools prevent students from accessing this information. WSFCS administrators just gave teachers permission to use YouTube in their classrooms, and Anderson and Walker shared messages from teachers in the district who’d thanked them for helping to make this change happen.

Though Anderson and Walker urged schools to integrate social media into their lessons, they acknowledged educators’ concerns and said school leaders need to articulate clear social media policies to guide both students and teachers.

The policies in place at Kimmel Farm include:

Principal Compass is a cloud-based program that helps increase leadership effectiveness for K-12 principals and their teams.

The educational leadership organization ASCD (formerly known as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) has teamed up with Pearson to launch a new online school leadership program, called Principal Compass.

Created in collaboration with education researcher Robert Marzano and his Marzano Research Laboratory, Principal Compass is a cloud-based program that helps increase leadership effectiveness for K-12 principals and their teams, ASCD said. The organization announced the new tool during its 67^th annual conference in Philadelphia March 25.

Using technology developed at Johns Hopkins University, Principal Compass reportedly is the only integrated and scalable online professional development tool aligned with Marzano’s framework for principal growth and development. The evidence-based rubric focuses on five domains of competency, ASCD said:

• Data-driven focus on student achievement

• Continual improvement of instruction

• Guaranteed and viable curriculum

• Cooperation and collaboration

• School climate

The program offers targeted professional development, including self-paced online modules, on-site coaching and team professional development, access to more than 3,000 classroom and practitioner videos, self-assessment data that are benchmarked against competencies for effective school leadership, progress monitoring, and recommendations for additional resources.

“We know that in order to deliver sustained student achievement and schoolwide success, districts must depend upon—and cultivate—highly effective educators,” Marzano said. “[High-] quality professional development that is individualized and tied to proven strategies for team building and leadership, as seen in Principal Compass, when used well can impact performance and grow student achievement at the school and district level.”

The leadership effectiveness system in Principal Compass is fully integrated into Pearson’s Teacher Compass Suite platform, where the self-assessment and improvement data will be available in tandem with teacher observation data and online, on-demand professional development resources, the company said.

For more news from ASCD’s 67th annual conference, click here.

ASCD celebrates the Outstanding Young Educator Award's 10th year.

At ASCD’s 67th Annual Conference and Exhibit Show in Philadelphia, Pa., Matt McClure, superintendent of Cross County Schools in Cherry Valley, Ark., and Liliana Aguas, a teacher at Leconte Elementary School in Berkeley, Calif., were announced as winners of the association’s prestigious 2012 Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA).

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the OYEA program. ASCD created the OYEA program in 2002 to recognize creative and committed teachers and administrators under the age of 40 who are making a difference in children’s lives. A panel of diverse education professionals selected McClure and Aguas as the 2012 OYEA winners from a large pool of candidates nominated by educators across the globe.

The winners will each receive a $10,000 cash award and an ASCD Institutional membership. ASCD’s OYEA program provides winners and a cadre of honorees with opportunities for leadership skill building, professional development, networking, and best-practice sharing with one another and the ASCD community.

As superintendent of Cross County Schools, Matt McClure has tackled the challenges of a rural school district and instituted an effective school turnaround program focused on the whole child. During his time as superintendent, McClure led a school revitalization process that effectively improved student achievement by turning around all the schools in his district from School Improvement Status to successful schools that focus on teaching standards that are relevant to students and have a real-world connection. In addition to improving district academics, McClure has instituted daily physical fitness classes, homework help, student tutoring, and enrichment activities that keep learning fun and students engaged.

During his time as superintendent, McClure also opened Arkansas’s first New Tech school and oversaw the opening of a medical facility on a school campus built to serve both students and community members. The Arkansas Department of Education has recognized McClure’s district as a Coordinated School Health district, and each weekend schools send home backpacks full of healthy foods to families in need. The district also offers an after-school program with cooking classes so the students can prepare and serve healthy snacks.

“I’m honored and grateful to be recognized for the tremendous work being done by the faculty and staff of my school district to meet the needs of the whole child,” said McClure. “Furthermore, we understand that we must prepare our students to be critical thinkers, in an environment that is safe and nurturing while forcing them to apply their content knowledge to solve real world problems.  ASCD’s focus on the whole child is perfectly aligned to our mission of insuring all of our students are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind to compete in an ever changing flat world economy.”

ASCD will announce the 2012 Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA) winners during the annual conference.

ASCD is pleased to announce their 67th Annual Conference and Exhibit Show, “A Collective Call to Action,” will be held in Philadelphia, Pa., March 24–26.

Reed Timmer, Discovery Education’s chief meteorologist and star of Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers series, headlines the conference’s opening general session on March 24 with a powerful presentation, “The Science of Extreme Storm Chasing.”  Discovery Education, provider of high-quality, curriculum-based digital content to U.S. schools, is a lead partner for the 2012 Annual Conference and Exhibit Show.  Also during this session, ASCD will announce the 2012 Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA) winners. The OYEA program recognizes education leaders under the age of 40 for making a profound difference in the lives of their students.

Other conference highlights include Harvard professor and best-selling author Atul Gawande’s March 25 general session, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.” During this informative session, Gawande will share a systematic approach to accomplishing and measuring primary goals and will offer educators strategies for balancing mandates, standards, and reform-based assessments. Following this presentation, ASCD will announce the 2012 Vision in Action award-winning school, recognized for schoolwide efforts to ensure that each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Year after year, several thousand educators representing a diverse range of professional roles, countries, and experience levels; leading education experts; hundreds of exhibitors; and journalists and education bloggers turn to ASCD’s Annual Conference and Exhibit Show for an unrivaled, world-class professional development experience. Over the three conference days, attendees will:

• Explore bold, new directions in designing and sustaining dynamic learning environments.
• Discover proven ways to expand great expectations and opportunities for all learners.
• Hear about effective models for redesigning schools for 21st century success.

This year’s conference will include a virtual streaming component intended for off-site attendees and educators interested in viewing select conference sessions live over the Internet or watching them in our archive at a later date. In addition, all nonmembers attending ASCD’s 2012 Annual Conference and Exhibit Show will receive a yearlong complimentary ASCD Basic membership.

On the evening of March 24, ASCD EDge® will sponsor a casual networking opportunity for educators who have turned to social media, specifically Twitter, for professional growth. This ASCD Tweet Up will bring together ASCD authors, important leaders of the online education revolution, the @ASCD Twitter team, attendees who contribute to and follow the Annual Conference conversation online, and those simply interested in expanding their understanding of Twitter as a professional networking and learning tool. The official Twitter hashtag of ASCD’s 2012 Annual Conference is #ascd12.

To preview the event lineup or to register, visit the Annual Conference and Exhibit Show website. To learn more about ASCD and the benefits associated with becoming an ASCD member, visit www.ascd.org.