Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Social Media-A Topic of Conversation

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Of course social media became a topic of conversation at a recent PenSPRA meeting we attended, as it often does!

If you have a Facebook account, consider becoming a fan of “Facebook in Education” to follow other educators and to see how they are incorporating the use of Facebook into their district and organization communication plans. http://www.facebook.com/education

We began incorporating social media into Class Communications’ marketing efforts last fall. Here are some of the top reasons why:

1. It is important to meet people where they are. Professionals are on LinkedIn and many businesses are using Twitter and Facebook. Your students are “hanging out” online – now parents and grandparents are logging on too.

During the first half of 2009, the Facebook users, by age, broke out like this*:
Ages 0-17 –10% of all users
Ages 18-24 – 25% of all users
Ages 25-34 – 25% of all users
Ages 35-54 – 28% of all users
Ages 55+ – 8% of all users
(Even though we are missing 4% here, probably due to the lack of information available, this paints a pretty clear picture!)

2. It is an inexpensive means of reaching people with your message. In most cases – it is FREE.

3. Social media is here to stay (and yes -  it is time consuming)! Many small and non-profit organizations are saying, “we know we need social media, but who has time to post AND monitor?” I sure wish I had an easy answer or a “quick click” to solve this dilemma. There are ways to streamline (i.e., when a post is made to Facebook you can set up your page to auto-upload to Twitter) and it may take some research on your part, a great technology director, and/or some workshops!

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Posted in Education, Facebook, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Social Media’s Future Influence on Education

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Let’s face the facts, the days of searching for information in an encyclopedia are long gone.  To be completely honest, I firmly believe if you were to give a teenager an assignment to locate information in an encyclopedia they wouldn’t even know how to do it.

Computers and the internet have completely changed the way we look for information and social media is going to play an even larger role when it comes to education shortly.

With the world tweeting, Digging, Tumbling, and writing on walls, it’s only a matter of time before a high school teacher or college professor decides to add his/her Twitter address on their syllabus so the students can get a hold of them (that is if they don’t want emails to flood their inbox), creates a class forum for required discussion sessions (which is already happening with Springboard), or gives live video review sessions via Justin.tv or Ustream.

That’s not all, think about how easily students can obtain information using Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon.

I’ll give you a scenario:

You are given an assignment to write a five page paper on the Cuban Missile Crisis.  A simple search for “Cuban Missile Crisis” on Digg brings back 129 results, 38 results on Reddit, and 73 results on Technorati.

By spending less than two minutes online you have 240 possible sources you can browse through for your paper.  Had you gone to the library, you would have found five or six possible sources and it would have taken you anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to locate the information you wanted to use.

Colleges and Universities are taking advantage of the benefits of social media to keep students and faculty informed on campus activities and important news updates.

Alumni associations are utilizing Facebook to keep high school and college alumni up to date with reunions, news, and photos of their past classmates.

All this is just the beginning of an era.  Social media has already influenced millions of people and although a lot of people are still learning about Twitter and Facebook, social media’s potential influence on education can make learning fun again.

As always, your thoughts/comments/linkbacks are always appreciated.

Test Blog.

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Posted in Education, Social Media | 9 Comments »