Friend Request for JFK

What would historical figures post to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? In light of connected educator month, try to infuse your curriculum with a social media flavor.

As Mark Zuckerberg states, "By giving people the power to share, we're making the world more transparent."


Strive to create a transparency within the historical context framework. Having students create social media "accounts" or "profiles" for historical figures allows them to work on the following skills:

• Compare and contrast sharing of information from a historical and a current perspective
• Analyze what information is necessary to share with a public audience
• Discuss privacy from a historical and current perspective
• Analyze whether or not the transparency of the internet is beneficial
• Write about how the historical figure's life would differ if he or she were to post to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter
• Compare the use of radio to the use of social media in politics
• Create analogies of current social media tools to their historic counterparts (think blogs to newspapers)

Imagine the possibilities of leveraging the trend in social media to engage students with the ways in which we share personal information. A million conversations around privacy could surface really allowing you to teach students digital citizenship skills.

Check out a few templates below (thank you remixing culture of the present and the future):

• PPT template or the Google Presentation version, kids can save as their own to modify and the rubric here (from someone awesome!)

• Word document of a blank Facebook profile template

• Instagram template PDF and Jpegs. Print and draw photos or simply add your own photo over the top. 

• Blank Twitter PDF template from history tech