Do Schools Need Hashtags? What Educators Should Know

In the past months, hashtags have proven to be very useful in helping people find the right topic based on category. The hashtag is defined as the ?#? symbol which marks the topics or keywords in conversations. It was particularly developed by Twitter users to make it more convenient to search for issues and relevant topics. Businesses, casual users and marketers discovered a lot of advantages that come with hashtags -- in addition to finding like-minded individuals in one feed. With the inevitability of technology and social media seeping into the academe, educators should also check out the process and features to avail of the benefits and not get left behind in the tech evolution. Do schools need to develop hashtags for branding or even specific events? With the number of students relying on social media for information nowadays, the move seems indispensable.

Fast and Easy Learning

People today use social media networks via their smart phones, mobile devices and laptops. The importance of hashtags in this sense is that educators can provide useful materials and conduct lessons on the go. The time and place are no longer a big concern because people from different parts of the globe can communicate and share information. Educators can make hashtags to keep their students informed about recent developments. Hashtags are particularly used to focus on a particular subject. Professors and teachers can resort to these as a means of encouraging students to share their views and opinions on various topics. Read more on some of the top hashtags for education. Uploading and sharing information online will take only a few seconds. You can engage with hundreds of people in a few minutes by making use of a hashtag. Be sure to use other relevant features, as well, like retweeting, tagging and tweeting to let as many people know about the trending topic. Educators can talk about specific topics in their field or make a general conversation which covers all the subtopics. Learn more about using hashtags as a teaching tool. Here's how the tweet chat #edchat looks like.

Now see how active #edchat is on Twitter in the past 7 days and what related hashtags are being used.

Advantages for Educators

Educators can benefit from hashtags through many ways. First, they can target a huge number of potential students. Twitter and other social media sites that use hashtags have millions of users from different parts of the world, so it will be quite easy to send the message using the online tools and features. Second, hashtags can guide potential students easily since they only need to search or browse according to category. Third, depending on your particular interests, you can also join conversations and get more information that you can forward to students. Fourth, you get access to useful links and media content online. These will make your lessons and presentations more interesting. Feel free to retweet and share links from other users. Fifth, you don?t have to spend much to communicate with students located in remote places. Based on statistics, tweets with hashtags are twice more likely to be engaged compared to regular tweets. There is also a 21% increase in engagement rate when hashtags are used. However, in the absence of these, engagement rate decreases by 17%. When people follow hashtags, they will more likely share the information with others. Educators can also provide and acquire information about some of the biggest educational institutions, universities, research centers and field experts through hashtags. You can meet some of the biggest names in the industry and find opportunities to further expand your knowledge through advanced studies and lessons online. The corresponding hashtags will provide you with useful links, information and admission tips.