Social Media in Western Mass - Online Impact 2010

On Thursday we hosted Online Impact 2010 in the Technology Park at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC). This was the second Online Impact event held at STCC - we had the first one in June 2009. Both events focused on the use of social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to reach out to customers and prospects. We had an excellent half-day of panels and workshop sessions that focused on social media tips and tactics - here's a list of the workshops along with the presenters:

Twitter and Blogging 101 - Gordon F Snyder Jr (my session!), National Center for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT Center) at STCC
LinkedIn 101: Getting Started & Avoiding Mistakes Tom Lewis, NeedleMine
Integrating Social Media into Your Website Jason Turcotte, Turcotte Design
LinkedIn 201: LinkedIn for Busy Professionals - Getting Results in 10 Minutes/Day Christine Pilch, Grow My Company
Market like the big brands do: How to build a Facebook Fan Page for your local business Mary Fallon and Amanda Gauthier, Garvey Communication Associates, Inc.
Twitter: Where's the ROI? Morriss Partee, Everything CU
The YouTube Effect: What you need to know about online video and the future of the Internet Dave Sweeney, The Communications Department
If We Can Do It, So Can You: Using Social Media in Organizations of All Shapes and Sizes Brad Blake, Director of New Media and Online Strategy, Massachusetts Office of the Governor and David Cavell, Communications and Speechwriter, Massachusetts Office of the Governor
Social Media in Education: An Education Essential Kelly Galanis, Westfield State College
Becoming A Digital Bigfoot: Five quick moves to enhance your digital footprint and gain a competitive advantage! John Garvey, Garvey Communication Associates, Inc.

We also ran a couple of great panels, both moderated by Dave Sweeney from The Communications Department:

Panel 1: Social Media from the Front Lines

Ed Carroll – WGGB abc40
Craig Swimm – WMAS 94.7
Kelly Galanis – Westfield State College
Gordon Snyder – National Center for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT Center) at STCC

Panel 2: Integration

John Garvey – Garvey Communication Associates
Tom Lewis – NeedleMine
Morriss Partee – Everything CU
Christine Pilch – Grow My Company

We had 90 attendees with over 25 people on the waiting list. The event - presenters, attendees, facilities - all excellent. Kelly Galanis (aka RedHeadedDivaK on Twitter) has put up a nice video shot by WGGB on YouTube:

Special thanks to Dave Sweeney from The Communications Department and John Garvey from Garvey Communications for their efforts in setting this up and also special thanks to STCC President (and blogger) Ira Rubenzahl for allowing us to host this event at the College.

With my work I get around the country fairly frequently and have to say - there is some of the strongest excitement, knowledge, experience, dedication and commitment I’ve experienced right here in Western Massachusetts. This event certainly strengthened these impressions. A great day with great people - Western Massachusetts is a very special place to live and work.

We're looking forward to the next Online Impact event!!

A Vision of Students Today at Kansas State University

A colleague sent along a link to a video created by Kansas State University Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Michael Weschin and 200 of his students. Michael and his 200 students used Google Docs to collaborate on a document that summarizes some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Content from the document was then used to create the video:



The 4 minute and 44 second video has had over 2.5 million views since posted in October 2007. According to Michael:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. So you are welcome to download it, share it, even change it, just as long as you give me some credit and you don't sell it or use it to sell anything.

It's excellent.

Recruiting and Retaining Students Using Web 2.0 Apps - Some Examples

CNET News has published an interesting slideshow showing how different Colleges are using Web 2.0 applications to entice and engage students. Here's a brief summary of some of the examples:

At Dartmouth:

- Undergraduate students are required to use wikis and blogs in a film studies and

comparative literature course.
- A neurology-neuropathology class at Dartmouth Medical School used wikis to
research and create case studies.
- To learn library research and analytical writing skills, Dartmouth freshmen are using
wikis to create encyclopedic entries on topics like "African American Music and Voice"
for their required expository writing class.

At Texas A and M:

- iTunes University is being used as a public relations tool to reach perspective students.
- Professors are making short 3-minute videos describing their background, interests
and classes they teach.

At Seton Hall:

- Potential freshman are sent a log-in and password along with acceptance materials -
this is done before students have formally accepted an invitation to attend. The linked
site includes information on campus life, summer reading assignments, orientation
information and the ability to contact potential roommates and others in their major.
- Prior to the invitation to attend students get a web-based Seton Hall email account.

Yes - these are all big name schools but take a look - iTunes University is free! In addition, the Dartmouth links are especially interesting because they are using the blooging and wiki features/functionality of the Blackboard learning management system (LMS). If you are not an academic, LMS's are essentially online classroom portals providing discussion forums, assessment, lecture content, etc. At first look Blackboard version 7 includes limited blog and wiki functionality - it does provide RSS feed functionality for blogs. Like many of the academics that read this blog, our campus has upgraded over the summer to version 7 - we'll be giving it a good look this fall.

CafeScribe: Textbooks 2.0

Fourteen40, a Salt Lake company that derives it's name from the year 1440 when Gutenberg invented the printing press, has released (in beta) CaféScribe, an e-book marketplace and social network for students. CafeScribe is much more than just a bunch of PDF's students pay for and pull off the web. Provided are some interesting and useful tools including the ability to share notes with others and organize digital books based on things like subject matter along with other tools like digital color-coded color-coded highlighters.

The social networking component is most interesting - to give you an idea of how it works - here's some details from the CafeScribe website:

Upload and share any of your PDFs with your friends or classmates.

Share notes with others who are reading the same stuff. Academics call it "collaborative learning", we call it "divide and conquer" Why not share notes and figure out what is most important more quickly?

Rank others on how well they take notes. Find the genius note taker for your classes

The ability for students to form virtual study groups on their own campuses and across other campuses is very appealing for both the traditional classroom and distance delivery,

Even though CafeScribe is currently in beta you can still register on the website and start using it. This may be an interesting way for faculty to distribute documents for student collaboration. I'm going to experiment with it this fall with my students.

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Listen to Mike Q and my latest podcast "Niche Search" linked here.