Social Media for Education Advancement.

I attended the CASE Masterclass conducted by Andy Shaindlin and he has brought out some fantastic points that I would love to share:

Organize without Organization.

Today, Universities and Alumni Associations no longer have monopoly over Alumni Data.

Alumni can organize their own special interest groups and target event invitations to exclusive audiences.

In fact, many students have already started their own Alumni Groups on the different social media platforms, and the birth of Web 2.0 have already enabled Alumni to self organize, self coordinate and self form their own interest groups to network and organize events.

So instead of hindering the self formation of ad hoc alumni groups, Universities should look in to facilitating such phenomena.

The Birth of the Community Manager.

Just like a social media team in a company, the idea of leveraging social media in education advancement is to build a non-marketing voice and build online networks.

As Andy put it: "Internet is not a broadcast medium"

Social platforms (like online networks) are now "listening stations" for organizations.

"Every network has an underlying purpose" and motivations for such network creation. The role of the community manager is to hold the collective vision, create and manage relationships and manage collaborative processes.

In an article by Jeremiah Owyang :"The Four Tenets of the Community Manager", He lists a few good roles the Community Manager should have.

The Four Tenets of the Community Manager
In the following, I’m not going to list out all my findings, but it was clear there were 4 number of Tenets, or beliefs that each role holds. In nearly all the job descriptions, the following beliefs were spelled out as requirements for the role.

1) A Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the customer. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what customers are saying in both the corporate community as well as external websites. Secondly, they engage customers by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private and in public.

2) Brand Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promote events, products and upgrades to customers by using traditional marketing tactics and conversational discussions. As proven as a trusted member of the community (tenet 1) the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offer good products.

3) Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
This tenet, which is both editorial planning and mediation serves the individual well. The community manager should first be very familiar with the tools of communication, from forums, to blogs, to podcasts, to twitter, and then understand the language and jargon that is used in the community. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within the community, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimes removing them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internal stakeholders to identify content, plan, publish, and follow up.

4) Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services Perhaps the most strategic of all tenets, community managers are responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting it to product teams. This may involve formal product requirements methods from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships between product teams and customers. The opportunity to build better products and services through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases, customer communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.

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Basically, a community manager should have big eyes and small mouth.

Perfect Community Manager

And the 2 important questions that the alumni association needs to ask is:

1) For the initiative you want to start -- does the alumni want it?
2) For the service you want to provide (or build) -- is it easier to be accessed elsewhere?

If your organization is interested in engaging Alumni and Students in Social Media, please bear in mind: What works for someone may not work for you. But feel free to consider all the best practices by other organizations around the world.

Good examples
(Facebook)
Stanford University
University of Michigan

(Blog)
University of Texas at Austin

More examples on Mashable article: 10 Ways Universities Share Information Using Social Media

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share!

-- Robin Low

Education and Social Media

A very common excuse given by the education ministries and schools about social media training is "We have social media trainings implemented already." I've talked to many schools and administrators of schools of teenagers aged 14 - 18, and they have replied with the same answer, perfectly in tune. I have however yet to see any results or any physical evidence that the schools are successful, yet they are unwilling to ask for help.

Teaching teenagers how to manage their Digital Footprint

I read a blog by the Innovative educator on "Teaching Kids to Manage their Digital Footprint - 140 Character Conference Panel Discussion"

And I agree with the author about the following:

Teaching kids to manage their Digital Footprint really starts with the adults. Teachers can't teach this effectively if they, themselves have not managed their own digital footprint. It is also important not to confuse managing a digital footprint with being hidden or private. Branding our identities has become more and more important in the digital age and if students and teachers aren't actively managing their digital footprint, then who is? Managing your digital footprint starts with asking questions like: Who are you? What do you stand for? What are your passions and beliefs? The important lesson with managing your digital footprint is that everything we do online should represent who we are and what we stand for and we must have the knowledge that this representation will stick with us potentially forever.

How can we teach students and teachers to celebrate themselves and their beliefs so that their digital footprint represents a picture of someone they are proud to be? I've written about some fun ways to get these conversations going by helping students reflect upon what their digital message says about them. An interesting way to start such a conversation might be with this video which really can get students and their teachers thinking about who they are and what they stand for.

I believe across many countries, this is the same problem. Many teachers who are Gen x (Aged 35 - 45) are themselves not familiar with social media, and they are confused with the terms of digital footprint, social media and web 2.0. Many of these teachers have little concept of blogs and personal branding, and some are even adverse to getting into social media themselves.

How are you going to teach social media safety tips if you do not participate in social media?

I believe pitching social media to the teenagers is one thing, another part of it is to educate the parents. By simply taking responsibility and following your children on Facebook and Twitter, your children would take the little extra steps in monitoring their own language and posts on social media. There are few tools and privacy setting that they previously ignore, and due to parents or teachers following them, they have to start learning how to use them.

This concept of self censorship and monitoring personal online footprints would be ignored by some, as teenagers have yet grasped the benefits of forming networks and learning from people with similar interests. Many of the teenagers will still think they know everything will not care about the things they talk about online.

Role model. I believe studies should be carried out on some of the "Superstars" on social media, and some of the teenager bloggers who have successful leveraged on social media and branded themselves and created a following. Having someone to look up to, teenagers can learn the value and benefits of benefits and how it can elevate one's status.

I personally do not think negative reinforcements work well either. The examples of teenagers getting into trouble with the law after some Facebook comments do not seem to resonate at all, as many of them think "This will not happen to me." There are always laws governing jay-walking, teenage smoking and drinking, however with these laws, it would give these law breaking teenagers a form of excitement and an adrenalin rush, just to "get away with it."

Monitoring social media and Googling your children's name and avatar should be a priority for parents and not just for the schools, and as for the schools, well, everyone should start getting on social media just to be part of this emerging communication channel which would definitely be part of our lives in years to come.

-- Robin Low

Free Education

Social Media has spawned off many great knowledge sharing on the Internet. Today, we can find all sorts of free information, including numerous recipes, How to Guides, reviews and other useful tips.

Many things that we know about in the past like encyclopedias, travel guides, and other information books we used to get may be going extinct as faster and more updated information are available online.

As Blogs and Wikis are becoming more main stream, vast knowledge can be found and searched online. With the progress of Web 2.0, the technology is ripe to share experiences, knowledge and information freely, and I feel getting valuable feedback and comments is very important as it furthers the learning process.

I do put up a lot of information I learn or come across on the Internet on this blog, and I share my presentations as I feel learning too is a 2 way process. No matter how expert you think you are on a particular subject, (Even if you have a PHD) there may be other good opinions you can learn from.

I read this article FreeHarvardEducation.com on Boston.com today and was inspired by the great ideas of sharing lecture notes online and forming study groups and sharing knowledge and information.

Why does education need to be expensive and exclusive?

There is a saying that the rich want to stay rich and powerful, and by making knowledge exclusive, they can prevent others from moving up the social ladder. I agree that Educational resources should be as free as possible, and all with the capacity to learn should not be excluded.

In Singapore, there seem to be an economy for selling "Past Exam Papers" from the different schools, and most of these are not very cheap. I find this process and system rather opportunistic as something like past years exam papers can essentially be free information on the Internet, but the opportunistic companies decide to waste paper and print these past exam papers and sell them for a profit.

Though many may argue that in Social Media, much of the information is unmonitored and there are tons of spam and junk, I still feel that there is a good chance, through twitter and other form of Social Media, a blog with good informational value will still be easily found as people recommend it to their friends.

Thanks to technology, one of the core functions of a university - distributing information through its professors - is no longer entirely in its control. It’s a potentially unsettling development for universities and professors, and it has found its way into court, as professors take on commercial note services and grapple with how much to limit the recording and even filming of their lectures. And as it grows easier to publish online and as more and more people gain ready access to the Web, the issue seems likely to only grow.

Some may say, “it’s very hard to keep control of material that finds its way onto the Web.”

I feel however, a good and strong university, when they provide free lecture notes, will actually enhance their brand image as they show thought leadership. The experience you get and the knowledge you learn when you interact with fellow students and lecturers is much more enriching that the simple lecture notes you receive.

As with a free recipe for cocktails, the best way to taste it is to go to a bar with an experienced bartender, even when you have the exact recipe.

-- Robin Low