Safekeeping your Social Media Networks

Accountants, designers, bankers, real estate agents, attorneys, among others keep detailed records that can expand years past. The reason? You never know when you need the information. The accountant wants to make sure that they can answer to a banker or the IRS if the time comes. A designer needs to showcase a creative portfolio of past work to prospective clients. A real estate agent will keep detailed records of economic and housing market trends and sales to build their business. An attorney lives by evidence and record keeping to defend their clients.

As a business owner or professional looking to expand their target audience or personal learning network, one would think safekeeping records, especially your network contacts and communication feeds would be of vital importance. We often think that backing up our computer system is enough. But, we live in a world of social media and not taking the time to backup your social media networks could be compared to not database management system.

While the event of losing your social media network data completely is rare, it is not unheard of losing access your social media networks through hacking or despoiled by a third party. I encourage you to look into two resources that are reasonable cheap:

1) Social Safe (http://www.socialsafe.net/)

Social Safe is an easy to use application not only stores your online social networks but provides the option of exporting your data. SocialSafe supports Facebook and Twitter and will soon include services for LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, WordPress, Blogger, and Foursquare. This service allows you to store your friends list, wall posts and status updates, photos (album and tagged), comments and likes from Facebook, tweets, direct messages, in addition to followers and following on your Twitter profile. While an upgrade from a free account to a professional account may be needed to use all of these service, your social media networks are presented in an easy to use and find diary format.

2) Tweettake (http://www.tweettake.com)

If you are a Twitter lover or just a super cool instructor who has a massive following, this FREE service may be for you. This online application keeps record of your tweets, followers and following, favorites, and direct messages. In no time, Tweetake creates a CSV file holding nearly all the information that Twitter can store. The downside is there is a limit to the amount of information it can hold. So, if you run a business and want to hold onto important social media network information, I would suggest going for the pro services available through Social Safe.

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Resources for Today’s “Techie” Teacher

It’s no surprise that teachers are O V E R W H E L M E D with the amount of social media resources and “techie” tools for the classroom. Today’s teacher can subscribe to countless blogs, vlogs, podcasts, e-newsletters, tweets, facebook pages, RSS feeds, and the like. My last blog talked about a paradigm shift that we are experiencing. The student sitting in a classroom today is not like a student sitting in a classroom 10 years ago. Rather than going to the library to find paper copies of resources needed for a class, students are turning to smartphones, ipads, laptops, itunes, blogs, and other collaborative social media related sites. The teacher has not been asked, but required to morph into a techie-like guru to satisfy this demand among students. The problem is…..where is all the BEST information? Quantity is NOT the problem. Just Google”teacher resources” and in 0.09 seconds, you will have 53,400,000 results, roughly.

Throughout the next few weeks, I will cover QUALITY social media and technology tools teachers can use in their course. Best of all, all of these resources are free.

First, check out the ALA Best Websites for Teaching and Learning by clicking this link: http://bit.ly/5rZcKI

Second, follow me on Twitter @LisaHoule. I give daily updates on the best social media and technology tools instructors can use.

Third, remember to start small. You do not have to incorporate everything….trust me, your students don’t want you to do that! What students want are consistency, assistance from the instructor, application, and interaction. Meaning, keep it simple, offer me help, make it apply to my world, and make it F U N!

Check back next week where I highlight a creative way to use blogging in your class that your students will LOVE!

 
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Paradigm Shift

Creating a learner-centered environment for students is widely accepted among scholars in multiple post-secondary disciplines as common practice in curriculum design. As professors, we have hastily shifted the paradigm of knowledge solely dispensed from elite scholars within the ‘ivory tower’ of higher education by engaging learners through applied-learning and embracing technology as a tool in teaching. This is an exceptional time to be teaching in higher education as traditional paradigms shift to embrace learning that is not feasible solely in closed physical classrooms.

As technology and social media revolutionize education, we are not only serving learners by engaging them in the world but meeting an expectation. Learners expect to use technology in coursework as it is demanded as a common skill set in the corporate environment. Further, learners entering the post secondary classroom are adapt to using technology. Today’s college student is part of the cell phone, video game, Facebook, application, internet, and it’s got an app generation. These traditional college freshman age learners are part of the first generation to be born post-dot-com-bust of the late 90s. This means that this generation of learners grew up learning with technology from the start of their K-12 education.

Embracing this change has not been easy for everyone in higher education. However, the open source education movement is giving teachers options to engage students using technology in the classroom that was not previously available in years past. Technology Gurus’, as I like to refer to (including myself), use social media and technology such as Moodle, Flickr, WordPress, Google, Animoto, TED, among others, to bridge the gap between students and the world they live in.

Open source resources allow teachers to be empowered by showing learners the coursework in a new paradigm: Putting theory into practice to engage students in the world they live in. Do you know that a lay person can watch a class at Harvard or Stanford through podcasts? Did you realize that students can self-publish their projects and essays using blogs, such as WordPress, in addition to professional resources such as Blurb and LuLu? Or, how about following blogs and engage in commentary to learn more about a culture that cannot normally be reached within the walls of a classroom?

Are you interested in the paradigm shift now? Check back next week where I provide valuable resources for teachers to use open source and technology resources to embrace applied-learning and technology as synchronous tools.

 

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