Attention district administrators: why should you consider a social media / networking strategy to supplement your standard virtual learning program?

First, let’s talk about the goals of a virtual learning program.  Ultimately the primary goal is student achievement. Quite often other supplementary goals come into play, such as being able to provide access to educational resources that students could not otherwise receive, because of geography, disability, or lack of local instructional expertise.

There are four ways the implementation of a social media strategy can help a virtual learning program.  The first is that you can more easily establish and maintain connections between and among students and teachers via a social media program.  By supporting multiple modes of access, outreach, information dissemination, and community-building, you’re more likely to keep students involved, engaged, and aware.

The second helpful effect is that students can more effectively collaborate with teachers, mentors, and other students.   Interactive tools and techniques like virtual whiteboards, real-time document sharing, instant messaging, and project repositories can all help teamwork, participation, and ultimately course effectiveness.

Improved communication is the next benefit.  Virtual learning programs have relied heavily in the past on e-mail distribution lists – aka “listservs”.  We can now add blogs, wikis, threaded discussion boards, Twitter, SMS notifications, and voice-enabled applications to the mix of techniques that we can use to keep communication clear and continuous.

Finally, a good social media strategy will leverage supplemental resources out on the web that are relevant to the coursework.   Government, news, and non-profit websites, YouTube, university programs, online library resources – everything may have a place in a well-designed curriculum.  Students are already comfortable traversing the breadth and depth of Web 2.0 information overload, and a good virtual learning program should work with students in new ways.

Andy Carvin, the Social Media Strategist for NPR, has a presentation up on SlideShare titled Social Networking and Education.  He lists a couple challenges, including (a) that students don’t necessarily expect social networking to be educational, and (b) the focus/filtering problem – keeping things on topic and effective.

Now let’s take a look at some of the representative ways that schools are using Web 2.0 social media and social networking resources to supplement their educational efforts.

Facebook:

Anchorage School District uses Facebook to post memos, photos, event information, and more to their “fans”, and they try to encourage discussion.  Their social media philosophy appears to tend toward the marketing side, as evidenced in the following link share:

LinkedIn:

Troy School District in Michigan uses LinkedIn groups’ bulletin-board or “News” functionality, but not very effectively:

Few pageviews and zero discussions, even with school starting up in just over a week.  It should come as no surprise that the primary education-related use of LinkedIn is by alumni groups.

Twitter:

Samantha Morra has a presentation titled Introduction to Twitter for Educators up on SlideShare.  She positions Twitter as a push mechanism; a way to distribute information.  See the following slide:

For my money, this emphasis misses one of the best features of twitter – the two-way public conversation.

A current search for “school district” on Twitter doesn’t bring up many results.  My empirical observation is that districts aren’t leveraging Twitter in a big way for virtual learning purposes.

Non-Twitter Microblogging Alternatives:

One big concern that districts may have with Twitter is the public nature of the conversation, and the attendant privacy issues.  To resolve these issues, districts may consider so-called “private microblogging platforms”, such as Yammer, which is a SaaS offering, or Laconi.ca, which is the technical platform underneath the so-called “Twitter clone” Identi.ca.

Privately-Developed Portals / Wikis

Examples are Ning.com, hosted SharePoint, WetPaint, etc.   All give you the ability to restrict membership to invitation-only, but the feature sets vary widely, as do the technical/administrative requirements.  Some offerings are free; others charge a flat or per-user fee.

Pros: private, invitation only. Cons: requires administrative time to set up.

Listservs / E-mail discussion lists:

Pros: Proven, reliable, private, invitation-only.  Cons: asynchronous. Old media.

Instant Messaging:

Pros:  Immediate connection.  Video available with newer systems.  Whiteboard.  Invitation only.  Can do group chats.

Cons: Fragmented universe of IM protocols – AIM, Yahoo, GChat/Jabber, Windows Live, etc. Information overload?  There are sometimes limits to how many participants there can be in a single group chat.

YouTube:

Teachers can post course video.  Cons: public.  The more likely use of YouTube in a primary education setting is as a video encyclopedia, with teachers linking to appropriate and relevent material.  PBS, for example, has their own YouTube channel.

SlideShare:

Gives teachers the ability to post slide presentations for consumption by their students.  Cons: public.

Given all these resources, it’s wise for educators and administrators to start to evaluate how to include the Social Web in their virtual learning programs.

The Social Media Club Seattle is holding a networking event on Tuesday, January 20th that you might be interested in attending.

The theme is Resolve to Reconnect.  I think this theme has something to do with both the New Year as well as the recent reconstitution of the group after some period of relative dormancy.

Tickets can be purchased for $15 at their EventBrite page.  It’s really $7.50 per ticket, because with a ticket purchase, you can bring a friend – grab someone else to come along!

Interested in the Social Media Club Seattle?

Facebook group: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=41266930517

Twitter: http://twitter.com/SMCSeattle

Wiki: http://socialmediaclub.pbwiki.com/Seattle

Saw this announcement on my tweetstream yesterday:

I followed up with Jessica Randazza and here’s what she had to say:

We want to be a low-key networking group for professionals in all realms of communications. Down the line maybe [branch out into] professional learning and a philanthropic tie.  We’re waiting to see where our members want to take it.

Sounds interesting.  If you’re free on the 22nd, you should drop by the Alibi Room and meet some interesting people!

Here’s a list of interesting stories, blog posts, and articles that have come across my tweetstream in the past day or two:

I’m a big fan of Marina Martin.  If you’ve lately been spending a lot of time thinking about 2009, as I have, you’ll want to read The Ultimate Guide to New Year’s Resolutions.

A good article on entrepreneurship by author and entrepreneur Norm Brodsky. Norm emphasizes the, you know, business part of running a business. (h/t @ryancarson)

The Social Media Club Seattle is having a “reconnect” event on Tuesday, January 9th.  Tickets are $15, but if you register online, you get a two-for-one deal. Looks interesting – I’m going to go network and make some new friends.

An interesting article about the honey trade, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  Have you heard of the term “honey laundering”? You have now! This was a five-month investigation.  Too bad WaPo didn’t spend this much time investigating WMD claims. (h/t @alisoncook)

Top Media & Marketing Innovations of 2008, as judged by Ad Week.  Warning: this is one of those articles with 17 pages that you have to click through.  I think this technique was invented, or at least perfected, by Forbes Magazine. (h/t @patrickbyers)

Twitter Friends Network Browser.  This is interesting, even if I don’t quite understand the UI metaphors.  What exactly is dragging supposed to let you learn?

“Why Journalism Schools Should Get Rid of PR” – by Bob Conrad. Provacative! Do you agree? (h/t @scotthepburn)

Are you a football fan? Real football, not the padded-up grabass they play in the U.S.  If so, you’ll enjoy this Yousport video of a Barca fan doing some amazing dribbling.

Here’s a treat – Merlin Mann’s 6-part audio series “How to Blog”.  My advice: listen to smart people; get smarter as a result. (h/t @conniecrosby).

From @jdlasica via @briansolis and @daniellemorrill, here’s a compilation of 2009 social media events around the U.S.  I’m fairly surprised that there are no international events listed.

In perusing this list, I was also directed to this list of 2009 tech events compiled by Robert Scoble.  This list is broader in scope than just social media events but doesn’t look as far into the future.

Peter Kim (http://www.beingpeterkim.com) has a new eBook containing 2009 Social Media predictions from about a dozen leading lights in the social media industry.  Here are my quick opinions of each contributors’ predictions forthwith:

David Armano: I disagree with the corporate focus of his prediction.  I believe that the big social media stories of 2009 will be about connecting people to people, not marketing.  Good writer though.  GRADE: B-

Rohit Bhargava: I think his 2008/2009 distinction should be more like 2005/2009, but he’s grasped the trends and communicates them well. GRADE: B

Pete Blackshaw: I like everything he’s written here, although I dislike the gratuitous echo-chamber Scoble reference.  He’s right on about the intimacy-emotion-conversation connection. GRADE: B+

Chris Brogan: My bet is that CB is about two to three years early for his predictions to bear the most fruit. GRADE: C

Todd Defren: Too much focus on the corporation, and no, B2B won’t get it in 2009. GRADE: C-

Jason Falls: Points for the use of the word “turd” in a thoughtful essay, which shows just the sort of rebel ass-kickingness we need in our social media experts.  I don’t think Google will buy Twitter, though. GRADE: C+

Ann Handley: Speaking of kick-ass, Ann uses that term in her FIRST SENTENCE.  Kick ass! Interestingly, she’s the only one to mention journalism and news at all – which I personally think will be huge story in the upcoming year. GRADE: B+

Joseph Jaffe: I can only take exception with his first prediction, about metrics – but for some reason he gets under my collar.  Maybe it’s the use of the word “rather” in the first section.  Or the fact that he throws out the strawman “Just when you thought search was saturating or mainstreaming” … is he verbing adjectives here? GRADE: C+

Charlene Li: By far the best piece in the book.  “Everyone’s a Marketer” and “Shopping Goes Social” are spot-on. GRADE: A

Ben McConnell: Crunch it up and put it in the round file.  And who in the world wears a vinyl blazer? GRADE: F

Scott Monty: Banal, safe, and already obsolete predictions.  Oh, look, he’s with Ford Motor Company! GRADE: D

Jeremiah Owyang: Social shopping – a good choice, if you’re only going to pick one. GRADE: B

Andy Sernovitz: Wrong on all three counts – in tough times, price trumps costly customer service; companies still won’t get it, short of a few prize examples that consultants use to land gigs; and … well, read his (short) piece. GRADE: D

Greg Verdino: Wrong on Obama, right on social graph shrinkage and LBS (location-based services).  Disintermediation?  Meh.  I think it’s just as likely that agencies start to “get it” and actually gain traction in the social media space. GRADE: C+

Overall: only one mention of location-based services.  One mention of news/journalism.  One mention of greentech.  Those seem like underrepresented categories when talking 2009 social media predictions.  I don’t think that’s an accident, though, given the makeup of the “band” – lots of PR/Marketing/Branding/consultant types, who probably try to make a living by getting corporations to pay for their services.  Call this the utilitarian analysis of the prediction market.   GRADE: B-