I am excited to present at the Maryland Association of Elementary School Principals conference later this month. The focus of my session is on how social media can be used to enhance adult and student learning. If you’re a social media regular, this is a message that you are more than likely familiar with. However, we still have a large number of educators and leaders who are hesitant to capitalize on social media for the benefit of their schools.


I think this hesitancy comes from a lack of confidence with technology and worries about the potential negatives of social media. If we are to harness the possibilities of social media, we are going to have to get over those feelings of inadequacy. No one is truly a social media expert. Technology and social media are changing and growing at such a rapid pace that no one can really keep up.

Motivation also seems to be a factor keeping educators from using social media. Is it really worth the effort to use social media in our schools? Will using social media improve academic achievement? I think the answer to those questions can be found in a meta-analysis conducted by Waters, Marzano, and McNulty in 2003. This study is often cited in journals and papers that examine the relationship between leadership behaviors and student achievement.


Waters, Marzano, and McNulty looked at 30 years of educational research and uncovered the leadership qualities that lead to improved academic achievement. Here are a few of the qualities and behaviors they identified:

-A willingness to actively engage the status quo
-Quality contact and interactions with teachers and students
-Establishment of clear goals while keeping those goals in the forefront of the school’s attention
-Fostering of shared beliefs and a sense of community

Ultimately, school leaders are responsible for raising student achievement. When developing school improvement plans, teachers and principals must ask whether their initiatives will lead to improved student performance. Each school must be confident in choosing what to include and what to exclude from their plans. Will the four behaviors above lead to improved student achievement? The research suggests so.

Can these behaviors be enhanced by using social media? If I am a school leader who capitalizes on social media, can I better engage the status quo? Will social media improve my interactions with teachers, students, and parents? Would social media be an effective way to keep my school’s goals in the forefront of everyone’s attention? Can social media help me foster shared beliefs and a sense of community cooperation?

Educators tend to have strong feelings about where their priorities should be spent. What if the answer to each question above is yes? School leaders owe their students, teachers, and parents the opportunity to at least explore the potential of social media. Perhaps George Couros said it best in his blog, The Principal of Change:
“There can no longer be an “opt out” clause when dealing with technology in our schools, especially from our administrators. We need to prepare our kids to live in this world now and in the future. Change may feel hard, but it is part of learning. We expect it from our kids, we need to expect it from ourselves. This is not optional anymore.”

You can follow Chris on Twitter @principal64.