@FunInTheLibrary - An Instagram Page for Students, Parents, and Educators.

I chose Instagram as the social media tool I wish to utilize for my school library account. I like that it seems to be the social media platform of the moment that appeals to both adults and young people. I wish to be an elementary school librarian, and I know that my son asked for his own Instagram account in about 4th grade. We agreed to it as long as we also had the password and he only followed people he knows in real life or accounts that we approve, we had the password, and he agreed to certain rules we decided on for posting. I also know that most of my children’s friend’s parents have accounts as well. I personally follow my children’s schools’ accounts. In the article Integrating Social Media into Online Education, by Lucas John Jensen, it is pointed out that some students are hesitant to follow educators accounts online because they do not want to mix their online presence with their school life (Jensen, 2019). However, my experience as a parent is that it would actually help my child have a better start to his online identity to be in a space where his teachers and other trusted adults also are. My point in saying that is that I know there are elementary students that would have access to the account, and also many parents. When deciding what the intention of what the account will be, I realized that I am able to create content that will draw in both students, and adults (parents/teachers). I had that in mind when creating my bio:

I wanted the Blog to be a place that includes a lot of communicating what we are doing in the library, so that students can share with their parents, or they can be reminded so that content is reenforced. An example would be of a post about student booktalks I made. My thought is that student’s would be excited to see themselves in a post and to tell their parents about their own booktalks. Parents could learn a little about book talks, and teachers could be inspired to try them in the classroom. Of course, even just posting books and giving my own little blurb as a teacher-led book talk, would be a great way to communicate to parents, students, and teachers about books that are available as well. The article Instagram Now, by Molly Weta, included so many great ideas on how to share books, such as sharing a post that says if you like book A, then you might like book B (Weta, 2016). The article made me realize that it’s a good idea to mix things up to keep things fresh for young users.

I also want the page to be a place for advocacy. An example would be how I added some stories from other informative pages to share about Dyslexia since it is Dyslexia Awareness month in October. I made sure to make some post that were simple and interesting, with pictures for students, and a couple that has more information for the adults.

I also think that simply sharing photos of things going on in the library can be a great way to advocate for the library by creating a visual example of things we need. The example in Make Your Library More Visible, by Jan Wilson, about the school librarian who shared a photo of how busy the library was at 7:10 in the morning which caused the principal to see the need for a monitor to help supervise in the mornings, really stood out to me (Wilson, 2017). I think visual reminders speak louder than words sometimes, which is one of the main reason I chose Instagram as the platform I wanted to use. I can see sharing a photo of a makerspace that is running low on paper and crayons with a caption explaining we need donations, along with an explanation of why we value the makerspace, could really be helpful.

For instruction and collaboration, I made a few posts asking for help from students for ideas for our library. I want students to be involved in the design process of our library logo, and help to decide things like whether they think a maker space idea I have is good or not.

Some other things I think would be important once getting a page like this up and running for real, would be to think about how to get people to follow the page. I would need to think about how to make parents aware. I also need to think about what image I want the library to have. I decided I want it to seem fun and exciting for students. That is why I titled the page @FunInTheLibrary. I would try to live up to this by including fun posts, along with every post that may seemed more geared toward information for the adults. I’d like for the students to be involved with the page, helping me by coming up with ideas for posts, or even having older students ‘take over’ the page for a day. One thing I know I need to work on is understanding more about exactly how Instagram and its algorithm works, to help me reach as many people as possible…my hashtag game also needs some major work!

I’ll make sure to mention that I do not currently work in a school library, so I made a page for a hypothetical school, and utilized my daughter in posing for some pics. In closing, here is her reading to our dog Q.C., and a brief explanation in the caption as to how reading to animals can be beneficial to early readers.

References

Jensen, L. J. (2019). Integrating social media into online education. Library Technology Reports, 55(4), 27–30.

Wetta, M. (2016). Instagram now: engage young users with the image-based social media tool.

School Library Journal. 62(2), 30–34.

Wilson, J. (2017). Make your library more visible. School Library Journal. 63(12), 16–18.