TSMRI presents ‘Social Media Presence’ workshop to student teachers
By Monét Gerald –
On Thursday, Feb. 7, Miranda Fillips and Bree Kingston, interns at the Texas Social Media Research Institute, presented a workshop to 18 agricultural science and family and consumer science pre-service teachers who will begin their student teaching experience all across Texas on Monday.
Student Teachers hear about how to utilize social media appropriately.
(Photo courtesy of Bree Kingston)
The workshop was titled “Social Media Presence” and taught the student teachers about the importance of being professional when posting on their social media networks. Sometimes, people can post so inappropriate status’ or photos in the hopes of gaining more followers or likes, when they could just buy Insta followers or Facebook likes instead.
The pre-service teachers learned statistics behind the reasons many employers have turned away applicants or fired employees due to posts on their accounts, including negative comments about co-workers, and inappropriate pictures, such as employees drinking alcohol.
Pre-service educators were introduced to applications such as Facebook’s “Simple Wash” and also were asked to search for themselves on Google.
One student was surprised when pictures she thought were deleted from her social media profiles could be pulled up on Google Images. Many of the participants also asked for a second set of eyes to go through their pictures to ensure what they had posted in the past was suitable to leave on their profiles.
The student teachers were on their smart devices throughout the presentation searching their social media profiles for anything that could be misconstrued. The profiles were relatively “clean” and only needed minor adjustments.
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Part of the TSMRI’s mission is to educate people on how to properly use different social media platforms. If you or your organization is interested in learning more about these types of workshops, please email us at texassocialmediaresearch@gmail.com or find us on Twitter @TSMRI or Facebook.
