Kids Utilizing the Power of Networking- Awesome!

I haven’t posted in over a week- I’ve been beyond busy writing papers for school. but I had to take a moment to share this story. Yesterday, my team had the opportunity to take our 8th graders to a live taping of the television show “Know Your Heritage“. It’s basically a show that tests kids’ knowledge of cultural heritage in a game show format.

We didn’t find out about the taping until literally the last minute, but decided to give the kids the permission slips anyway. We were concerned because they have a habit of forgetting to bring things back signed, and we only had one day to pull this all together. Also, we knew that if too many of them showed up without a permission slip at school today, we wouldn’t be able to go at all since no one would be available on such short notice to provide coverage for too many kids.

So, despite the last-minute nature of this venture, we handed out the slips and told the kids we’d only be able to go if we had 100% of the show up with it signed. To our surprise, the entire 8th grade class showed up (with the exception of 3), ready to go, slips in hand this morning. A casual conversation with my girls revealed the reason- they put it on facebook.

Not only did they put it on facebook, they sent out several text messages to the entire class, warning that they would have to stay in school ( and what middle school doesn’t want to spend the day at a television show taping when they’re supposed to be in school)? I laughed and shared this with the rest of my team but the lesson was very real. When it comes down to it, the kids’ needed wanted it to happen and it did- with just a little help from technology and social networking!