SPRING 2012
Adviser Update
Page 19A
#GreatToolForStudentJournalists
Hashtags and Storify allow school media to connect
with their readers in new and exciting ways
By GARY CLITES
very week on his late night
E
talk show, Jimmy Fallon
announces a hashtag for the
black
P01.V52.I4
our online work is hindered while
we are at school because of the
blockages,” he said. “We couldn’t
even see the ads running on our
site the first few months of school
because Flickr (which hosted
them) was blocked ... I definitely
feel that teachers and students
are left at a disadvantage because
of the lack of access we have to
breaking news and other important events. Students shouldn’t be
denied access to things that are
used as outlets to the world just
because an administrator says
so.”
Using social media to create
a connection between the school
newsroom and students’ smartphones offers an incredible new
opportunity to publication staffs.
While shortsighted school policies that sweep away access to all
social media in school remain in
the way, our staffs need to work
to make the student media an
important part of the new world
of instant communications.
cyan
results became easier with the
launch of Storify (http://storify.
com/) in 2011. An online aggregator of posts on the Internet (not
just Twitter, but Facebook, YouTube, etc.), the site allows you to
easily search for hashtags and
then to organize them into online
postable listings.
Storify is incredibly easy
to use. Go to the site, plug in
a search term (your hashtag),
choose which platforms you wish
to search, and the hashtag posts
appear along the right side of the
interface. You organize them for
use by simply dragging the posts
you like into the active window on
the left and ready them for publication. You can use the posts as
Gary Clites
has been technology columnist for
Adviser Update for over a dozen
years. He served for ݙ\