At the beginning of 2021, the Class Intercom team met to discuss how we could support and encourage teachers. After a difficult year for students, teachers, faculty, and schools across the country, we took notice of the educators that were quickly pivoting in order to continue to provide quality education for their students.
We settled on the Content Generation Award – an opportunity to recognize educators who are going above and beyond using social media to engage their students.
While reviewing all the applications and nominations, we learned a lot about the incredible things educators are doing. Here are our top three takeaways and ideas other educators might want to implement in their own teaching.
It’s OK to use Tik Tok
It’s time you stop resisting Tik Tok and dive in. Teachers are quickly learning the value the platform has for teaching students in a short, concise manner.
Not only are teachers creating one-minute bytes of information on the app, but they are also sharing their own personal experiences with their followers, creating a community that is invested in the mission of the teacher and school.
Encouraging collaboration is priceless
Nothing helps students learn more than discovering the answer themselves. This can most effectively be done by allowing students to collaborate on projects and giving loose guidelines on the medium of the presentation.
Today, so many students are interested in video, podcasts, and other forms of media that they consume. Let them explore and utilize these mediums to communicate their findings.
People are genuinely interested in your story
This might seem like a generic statement, but if social content over the past year has proved anything, it’s that people want to hear your story. While the life of a teacher might seem ordinary to a teacher, an outsider might find the intricate details of a teacher’s life fascinating.
There are so many content creators just doing average things, but they are simultaneously sharing their experiences in an effective, entertaining way.
Educators can especially use irony to their advantage. People view teachers as serious, authoritative figures. If a teacher offers a glimpse of the funny, not-so-glamorous side of being an educator on their TikTok account, it provides a shock factor that makes for good content.
Read about our Content Generation Award winner, runner-up, and finalists here.
