Engaging People via Twitter

Do you want more followers on Twitter? Do you want to engage in real conversations? Read Cindy King's 12 Tips to Engage People on Twitter.

Social Communication

Now that you have experienced Twitter, you may find it interesting to read Aliza Sherman's post, How Social Media is Affecting the Way We Speak and Write. Are we more concise? Do you use different spellings? Are we more revealing?

Teachers and Students Using Social Networking

Doug Johnson did part of a webinar on Constructing New Learning Landscapes and talked about essential conditions. One thing he promoted was the need for networking guidelines for teachers, especially as many of us did not grow up in a networked environment. Take a look at Mankato School District's proposed guidelines for teachers.

Teacher uses of social media professionally

WGBH recently did a study of how teachers currently use social media in a professional context and projected uses in the future. Through these focus groups they found that teachers want to find high quality materials for their lessons. They see three main purposes for social media:

• "Finding appropriate rich media resources, activity ideas, and lesson plans more efficiently.

• Learning from and communicating with other educators.

• Storing, organizing, adapting and sharing rich media resources and related materials in one place."

WGBH Teachers' Domain Pathways Stage II Evaluation: Focus Group Report

Facebook and libraries

Will Richardson put out a question about use of Facebook in K-12 and got no examples. I think in most cases it is blocked and/or there are issues with using it with younger students. David Lee King created a screencast of how public libraries might use Facebook with his library as an example. At the same time there was a recent study that seems to indicate the biggest new group of users of Facebook are over 30, especially those in the 50+ age group.

Do you see a role for Facebook in K-12 education? Do you see Nings as providing some of the same features in a constrained environment? Is it the environment or the connection with friends (including those geographically remote) that is most appealing?

Tips for Teachers

101 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teaching Students about Social Media is really for teachers who need to learn about it themselves. While it is geared to higher education, there are useful resources in Internet safety and managing one's online presence along with links on blogging and using Twitter.

NECC SIGMS Ning

I found using the NECC Ning a bit confusing, but there were a few useful things about the conference. You might want to look at the wiki they created. It has presentations from several leaders in the field. I thought David Loertscher's ideas on the school learning commons to spark some ideas.

http://neccsigms.pbworks.com/