A recent article by Cathy Swan in the magazine Tech and Learning focused on how social media can be used to transform classrooms.  She provided a number of easy strategies for using social media to engage our students:

Collaborate with students using Google Apps for Education.  Teach students how to work as a team to create ad share documents or slides using Google documents.  Teach students to use the revision history feature to track how students contributed to a project.  The comment feature allows students to provide input.  The chat feature allows them to collaborate in real-time online.

Use all of the features of the online platform.  
At GHS we use School Fusion as our online platform.  Are you using all of the provided features such as homework submittal, quizzes, blogs, announcements, or group emails?  Other available platforms that some of our teachers are using include Edmodo or Blogger for sharing information.

Give students a voice with voicethreadCreate opportunities for students to record their thoughts on book’s they’ve read or presentations they’ve watched.  Art teachers can post art and have students reflect on the assignments.  World language teachers can have students record responses to an image, listen to each other’s recordings and respond to one another.

Engage students in current events with Twitter.Use hashtags to search tweets on current topics.  Use Paper.li for students to create an updated online newspaper.  Encourage yoru students to create a hastag for your class to create a discussion thread about topics you are studying.

Connect with other global classrooms through Epals.Select a language and a student age group and connect with a class in one of 200 countries through Skype, video, or email.

Become a critic with Destiny
The library management system allows students to rate books, post reviews, and share resource lists.  

Publish and critique origianl videos on Youtube.
In Google Apps, students and teachers can create their own personal YouTube channels.  Keep it “unlisted” to make it private.