Thank you and See you Again Soon, I hope

Hello, Everyone!

What a pleasure it has been to be a part of this class, Introduction to Social Media.

It's hard to believe we have been together for a full three weeks now. Remember those first few days when we did our introductions? Then we started seeing each other through RSS feeds, Facebook, and LinkedIn, not to mention Angel every day. And think about how much each of us has changed and grown in the past 21 days.

Alex and I were discussing this and we decided since we were always asking you for your reflections and what you had learned, we thought it would be fun to do the same for you.

I'd have to say the learning that had the biggest impact on me was how quickly each and every one of you jumped in, got your feet wet, explored, learned, and then shared your learnings about social media with the rest of us. I am struck by how quickly you embraced and then acted on what you learned. It was truly inspiring. I want you to know that if you ever wondered if your reflections and posts are impacting your instructors, the answer is a resounding YES!

And it's a very good thing you learn so quickly because, you see, we are all in the same boat. Oh, some of us have dabbled and played with social media longer than others, but change and learning will always be a big part of this process. We will never learn it all and thank goodness for that. I think something to keep in mind as we all go forward is to have a sense of wonder, adventure, and curiosity--especially during those times when we're frustrated because we just can't figure out how something works! (Or maybe it's only me who feels that way at times...but I don't think I'm the only one.)

I want to wish you the best as you move forward. I know a number of you are graduating this June so my congratulations. Those of you who will be at Marylhurst University for awhile yet, enjoy.

You may remember on our initial blog post, one of the assignments was to friend Alex and me on Facebook. You may "unfriend" or "defriend" us now if you like, or if you'd like to stay connected, then I support that option to. I'd like that.

It's been a privilege to connect and converse with each and every one of you. Thank you so much.

All my best,
Joanne

Alex's Thanks and Learnings

As you read this, I am not actually at the computer. In fact I am in Chicago right now, at a conference, and thus unable to join you all for the last few days of class. (I hope that you're being nice to Joanne while I am gone!)

Be assured though that I will be reading your reflections once I am back this week. Every one of you in this class has been a pleasure to spend time with, and each of you has brought some great learning and experience to the table. This class was meant to help you to explore the vast realm of Social Media, and through exploration to gain familiarity and understanding of how this landscape of tools can profoundly change the way we communicate with each other.

Even so, I have to admit that Joanne and I have learned almost as much from you as you likely have from us. Discussing this point, we decided that before this class was out, we would thank you for the experience and share what we took away from the class. This post contains my thoughts; Joanne will be posting hers as well.

The biggest thing that I think I have learned from our short time together is just how quickly these mediums can be learned. It was very amusing and heartening to see many of you shift your viewpoints to ones similar to our own, not because we prodded you to these conclusions, but because you "thought your way there."

Another point that came home to me is that, even to someone who is as steeped in Social Media as I, there are huge aspects of this field that are as yet unfamiliar to me. It seems that any given hour researching some Social Media tool or platform leads to yet another new one I had not heard of, or yet another new way of using them.

As we draw to a close, again, I want to thank each and every one of you for the pleasure of being part of our class, and any of you who wish to stay in touch, you know how to do so! (And on a side note, although the class is ending, Social Media is endlessly fascinating to me, and we barely scratched the surface of many topics, so feel free to drop me a message if you want to continue the conversations we have begun.)

Lastly I want to make one "plug:" the Communication Studies department here at Marylhurst has both a facebook page and a new blog called Conversations. I invite you all to become a fan, and subscribe to the blog.

Social Media Project Deadline Reminder

Hello, Everyone!

It's hard to believe our class, Introduction to Social Media is almost over. We have four days left with a couple of assignments due prior to the weekend, so I am sending this quick reminder to you.

Please be sure and post a description of and a link to your social media project by Friday evening, April 23. This deadline is important to meet because your classmates need an apportunity to look it over and comment before the end of the course. We want to be sure there is ample time for them to do so.

As Alex already pointed out, your project doesn't need to be finished. In fact, it will probably always be a work in progress, but you should have something there and ready to go by Friday. (A description of what we're looking for is posted below so if by chance you're just getting started, please read that over.)

Keep in mind that if you're working on your project and have questions, don't hesitate to contact us via Angel Course Mail and we will be happy to help you.

Your thoughts and reflections on this course are also due on Friday so that others have an opportunity to comment on them. Everything else has a deadline of Sunday.

You have all stepped out and embraced social media a great deal over the past two and a half weeks, so we are really looking forward to seeing what you come up with for your projects!

All the best,
Joanne

Week Three Assignments

Welcome to Week 3! This week we will wrap up this course.

Below are the assignments for Week 3 of our course (April 19th – April 25th). Please pay careful attention to the due dates as some assignments are due on Friday, April 23rd!

FIRST – IMPLEMENTING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PROJECT:

This week you will do more implementation of your Social Media Project. Please tell us about your project in the discussion forum on our Angel site.

AND OF COURSE … DISCUSS!

We would like you to discuss your reflections on the class, and also on each other's projects. There is a discussion forum on our Angel course site for this purpose: please post there.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES & ASSIGNMENTS:

1.) Please post a description of and link to your project on Angel. This post is due Friday, April 23rd. If your project is not 100% complete that is okay -- nothing in the Social Media world is ever completely finished! -- but you need to have something up and running by Friday.

Remember, if you are having any trouble or fear you are falling behind, contact myself or Joanne via the Angel Course Mail system.

2.) Please post your thoughts and reflections on the course on Angel. Consider the following as possible discussion points:

How your perceptions of Social Media have changed

What role if any you see for Social Media in your life

What new things you have learned about Social Media in this course

Any other reflections or "aha!" moments you have had during the last three weeks.

Your reflection is due Friday, April 23rd.

3.) Please respond to at least 2 classmates’ projects. Please consider them from various aspects, such as:

Social Media etiquette

Privacy

Developing community

Power and control

Attention (and managing distractions

Digital literacy

Societal impacts

Post your comments on the Discussion Forum in Angel. This assignment is due by Sunday, April 25th

4.) Social Media in 2010

To continue to inform your thinking about social media communications, read 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2010. Post any key take-aways from this article in our Discussion Forum on Angel.

It''s been a fun two weeks and I'm sure that Joanne and I will enjoy this last week just as much! Onwards with projects and discussion!

More about Twitter, and how I use it

There have been a lot of questions about Twitter in the course this week, and many preconceptions have been breaking down or shifting into new learning about the tool and how it is used. I thought that I would share some interesting Twitter related links, and then give a brief rundown of how I use Twitter.

First, anyone wanting a nice little primer on how to participate in Twitter should check out Vadim Lavrusik's "10 Commandments of Twitter Etiquette."

Twitter can be used in a variety of fun ways. One person is using it to post recipes, for example (hat tip to student Susan H. for the story/link.) There are all kinds of different forms of dialogue going on on Twitter, enough that the Library of Congress announced it has acquired the entirety of Twitter's content for its collection. It's amazing stuff.

But why should you use Twitter?

Well first, you don't have to use it any more than you have to use any specific Social Media tool or platform. It can, however, have uses that range from mundane to eccentric to powerful. To help you get a handle on how you could use it, I'm going to describe how I use it.

My first exposure to Twitter was of the insipid ways it is used (warning, a couple of bleeped-out words, but otherwise clean):



Then I went to a conference. Immediate it became evident that there was an entire third of the conference goers on their laptops during the entire time, trading ideas, comments, and reactions to what was going on on stage. Some of it was snarky, some of it was informative. Almost all of it was brilliant. By not being a participant, I was missing out on the very important discussions the audience was having as a result of what was being presented. I ended up spending a lot of time following the discussion over one of the other audience member's shoulders.

(Anyone thinking about creating a Twitter conversation at an event, check out tools like TodaysMeet that create temporary chat rooms based around specific hashtags. Also, though, I caution you to pay attention to the potential downsides, and advise organizers to project the Twitter stream on a wall to prevent them.)

I do now have a Twitter account, and I do post things to it now and then, especially links to things I am working on, or things I find that are interesting that I think those who follow me would enjoy reading. Mostly, though, I use it as a source of information rather than an outlet to disseminate it. I follow numerous individuals in local print media, in the arts, and in the public sector, as well as in areas like transportation, public policy, and ope data, all subjects I have passions for.

Do I spend all day on Twitter? Yes. And no. And this is where, just as with Google Reader, you can find tools that assist you in managing Social Media smartly.

In my case, it's a tool called "twhirl." Twhirl is a small application that sits open on my desktop, and which displays the latest tweets from people I am following. (It also allows me to post if I wish to.) It can run in the background, unobtrusive, and anytime I want to, I can glance from what I am working on to the list and see if anything interesting has shown up.

(Note there are other Twitter desktop applications than Twhirl that are available. Twhirl is just the one I use.)

The way I am using Twitter, then, could be best thought of in the same way as television. Instead of leaving a TV on all day, tuned into a news channel like CNN, I have a Twitter stream "broadcasting" to a small portion of my computer screen most of the day. Just like TV, I only pay significant attention to it when it has something that interests me, and the rest of the time it just runs in the background. And just like TV, sometimes I like some time away and I turn it off. (If I get really busy I might turn it off for a week or so.)

What advantage do I get from this? I get to find out what others are talking about in real time. For example, right now on Twhirl, I see a few tweets that have no interest for me at all, but I also see a post linking to a newly posted story on the Mercury about the future of the Oregon Symphony, links to stories about locating and managing parking in retail areas as well as the latest news on a transit project in Oakland, and a link to some interviews with public officials about open government and web-enabled government.

I built the network of people I follow through the following methods:

Seeking out the accounts of people who attended the conference I attended immediately after the conference, and following them;

Looking at the blogs I read most and finding their Twitter accounts;

Paying attention to recommendations my contacts on Twitter make each Friday, when it is traditional to tweet recommendations of others that you follow (see Friend Friday on the 10 Commandments article);

Looking for Twitter accounts of friends and coworkers;

Searching Twitter for specific organizations or people you find interesting;

Search for hash tags related to subjects you are interested in, and then find people who tweet a lot about them, and follow them.

I know I've run long but I hope that you've gotten something useful out of this about Twitter. Who knows, maybe you can now think of a way you might like to use it.

Ideas for Using LinkedIn

Hi everyone,

When you're setting up your LinkedIn account, you might find some of the suggestions in this LinkedIn article to be helpful.

Have fun!

Week Two Assignments

Here are the assignments for Week 2 of our course (April 12th – April 18th). Like last week, we have posted the assignments in this blog so that you can see how blog posts work and become familiar with navigating a basic blog structure.
Click on the linked items below to complete. Remember: Week 2 assignments need to be completed in Week 2.

FIRST – PLANNING FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PROJECT:

This week we will do the planning and initial implementation for your Social Media Project, so that next week we can all “see” and comment on what you’re doing. Your project may include one of the following:

Plan and create a blog for a specific purpose

Plan and create a Facebook page or group for a specific purpose

Plan and create a LinkedIn page or group for a specific purpose

Plan and create a YouTube channel for a specific purpose

Plan and create a Twitter account for a specific purpose

Combination of some or all of the above

Or propose something else to the instructors that will best meet your needs for learning and using social media.

The project may be for personal, professional, and/or educational purposes. To help you plan your Social Media Project, take a look at these posts on planning for social media:

Engagement Planning

Social Media Strategic Plan

Social Media Policies

Social Media Strategy Framework

NEXT – DISCUSS!

First, we would like you to discuss your reflections on learning from week 1. What are your biggest takeaways? What was new to you? Did your thinking about Social Media change, and if so how and why? Feel free to check in and share where you are in your assignments and what is and is not working for you. There is a discussion forum on our Angel course site for this purpose: please post there.

Also, as with last week, there are specific discussion questions for this week posed in this week’s discussion forum on the Angel course site. Please read the questions and respond to them and other students’ responses throughout the week. The assignments below will help inform our discussion, but you do not need to complete the assignments first. Again, for maximum learning, the discussion should occur throughout the course of the week. Thanks!

LEARNING ACTIVITIES & ASSIGNMENTS:

1) Learn more about Social Bookmarking and Tagging by reading the following FAQs from Delicious, a Social Bookmarking tool:

What is Social Bookmarking?

What is my Network and How do I Use it?

You may also want to refresh your knowledge of Delicious and Social Bookmarking by re-watching last week's video on the subject from CommonCraft.

2) Optional: Create a Delicious account:

Share with the class your username by posting it in the Delicious Discussion Forum in Angel

Create a Network bundle for “CCM366E” and add all classmates and instructors

Throughout the remainder of this course, tag anything and everything meaningful related to this course. The tag you should use is “CCM366E”

3) Read information on Wikipedia about the different kinds of Social Media Websites.

Scroll through some of these sites to see what’s happening, what kinds of social media tools exist, and what folks are doing there. Also, here are two more examples of social media being used to connect people:

UbranMamas (parenting)

CaringBridge (terminal illness)

4) Join and connect with your instructors in LinkedIn.

Also, we recommend joining the “Social Media Today” group on LinkedIn. This group provides a lot of resources and discussion on this topic for your ongoing learning.

Optional: Connect with our classmates and other colleagues in LinkedIn.

5) Continue to add items of interest to your Google Reader RSS stream. For example, Joanne has included a couple of links to social media experts:

Chris Brogan

Mari Smith

And Alex recommends thee Portland related blogs:

Mapes on Politics, an Oregonian blog by Jeff Mapes about regional political happenings.

Portland Architecture, by Brian Libby.

TriMetiquette, a blog about riding and using public transit in the Portland region.

Or search for blogs and other kinds of sites for things that are of interest to you!

6) Continue to implement your Social Media Project — next week we’ll take an initial tour and see what’s happening!

Onward!