Social Ed.

It goes without saying that, in a knowledge economy, one of your most important competitive advantages is what you know. However, considering how fast things changes, what you know can get old really fast.

So what do you do?

Most people have neither the money nor the time to take all the courses they need to keep up. Even if they did, what they learn in too many courses is obsolete by the time the course is finished (year-long social media courses for example).

Internet to the rescue – again

Luckily, we have the internet where great free learning opportunities abound. Here are the top five I recommend to get your learn on:

1) Podcasts – there are free podcasts available on just about any topic you want to learn.  Many of them are in iTunes where you can subscribe to them and download the latest episodes by simply plugging in your mp3 player and launching iTunes.

2) Q&A sites – sites like Quora or LinkedIn (which has a Q&A section) allow you to ask questions and get answers from the community of users.

3) RSS readers – RSS readers like Google Reader are “old school” technology by today’s hyperspace standards but their value is still solid. They give you quick, one-stop access to the latest posts on the websites and blogs of your choice. They are a huge time saver.

4) Twitter – applications like TweetDeck and Hootsuite, let you create columns where you can follow groups of people, certain hashtags (codes for tagging and sorting content) and other options. So, if you’re in to, say, venomous snakes that eat other venomous snakes, you can create a column showing only tweets about that.

5) Join or create your own online book club – are you reading all the books you know you should? No. You’re not. Is there a book club in your city that reads the books that you need to read? If not, don’t worry: book clubs have gone global. Look for one online and, if you don’t find one, create it. I recently joined the For Immediate Release Book Club that meets online about once a month for a discussion with the author about marketing/communications books: and has it got me reading!

How do you learn online?

Tags: Education
Posted in Education | No Comments »

I attended another great Social Media Breakfast Ottawa today on social media’s impact on the music industry. The speaker, Stephen Bleeker, spoke from experience. He owns a local music store, CD Warehouse, started back when CDs were cool and his family owns one of the city’s oldest and most respected audio stores.

Bleeker knows music and he knows how to talk about it. His talk focused on the impact of social media on the three main groups involved in making and selling music: fans, artists and the music industry.

Enjoy.

p.s. He ended his talk with a very cool, short video called The Evolution of Music - Statistics which is, not surprisingly, a fun music video starring music industry stats.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (29.0MB)

Tags: music
Posted in Music | 2 Comments »

As I read communications measurement guru Katie Paine’s book, Measure What Matters, I’m wondering how it applies to education.

The book focuses almost exclusively on business which leaves me wondering about education equivalents of things like customers, sales and “ROI” (Return on investment).

Also, measuring social media success in education poses the same challenge as measuring it anywhere else: success depends on so many things, it’s almost impossible to know what, if any, part social media played. For example, if you start using social media in your school and test scores go up a year later, how do you know what role social media played? As much as it would make things easier, you can’t create a control group of social media have-not kids, so what do you do?

(Then again, this is the same problem you have measuring any strategy you try, but you still try them. So why have a double standard for social media? Fear of the unknown is often the real reason behind not doing things.)

Another challenge with measuring the impact of social media in schools is the fact that getting results with social media takes time – but teachers only have kids for one year. Then there’s the need to do baseline measurements before starting social media initiatives so you can see if they change anything.  Studies take time, cutting in to the already short school year.

Even if you convince decision makers to try social media by showing them how the tools can help achieve the school objectives, you then have to say, “Oh, and by the way, some of the objectives these tools will help you achieve, you don’t know you have yet,” (i.e. helping kids become adept problem-solvers through online collaboration).

So where do you start?

I would argue you start by identifying clear, measurable objectives in key areas like student achievement, teacher learning and school reputation. These should be “bottom line” objectives, like increased sales are for business. These could be the following:

Student achievement -  increased test and assessment scores

Teacher learning - # of new learning strategies tried in the classroom, # of courses taken, increased student test and assessment scores

School reputation – increase in positive mentions in traditional and social media

The next step is to encourage all staff to be on the look out for social media tools that can help achieve the objectives. It’s important that all staff be encouraged to help create a culture of innovation and that it not be seen as the specialty of a few.

Finally, try things, measure results, adjust and try again.

Have the you got some first hand experience measuring results? As Obama would say, “Please take 5 minutes to share, right now?”

Tags: Measurement
Posted in Measurement | No Comments »

You wouldn’t buy anything without reading customer reviews so why should people buy your courses without reading student reviews?

Way back in 2009, social media rock star, Mitch Joel, blogged that Customer Reviews Matter More Than You Think - and I have no reason to think the importance of reviews has gone anywhere but up.

The success of sites like Amazon demonstrates the power of customer reviews. However, my very unscientific study leads me to conclude customer reviews have been embraced by those selling products far more than by those selling services - including courses. Have you ever seen a school, lawyer or dentist’s site with customer reviews?

It seems to me that there is a huge opportunity here because we live in a culture where it’s damn hard to find out if training courses are any good. Who hasn’t been on a course that was a complete waste of time?

Schools need to realize that most word of mouth is positive and even bad reviews can increase sales.

The first schools to screw up the courage to put student reviews on their site will blaze a trail all the way to the bank.

Tags: Reviews
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Two things have really got me thinking about measurement these days. I’m reading measurement guru Katie Paine’s book Measure What Matters and I’ve been exploring the power of Google Analytics.

The more I learn the more I feel both excited – and nervous. I’m excited by how measuring tells you if your communications and marketing efforts are effective. I’m nervous because it lets clients see if the advice I’m giving them actually works.

Most communicators never feel this fear because most organizations don’t measure effectively. I am often asked to review communications plans with objectives like, “Demonstrate leadership of organization X on issue Y with the Canadian public.” Vague objectives like this are accepted when people have no intention of thoroughly measuring and evaluating whether their program actually worked. If they had such intentions, they’d acknowledge that measuring anything that targets “the Canadian public” is a massive task most organizations can’t or won’t do. They would also concede that measuring that you have “demonstrated” something with any group is hard.

Objectives should focus on measuring a change in something specific with a specific audience, of a size the organization actually has the resources to measure, within a specific time frame. This results in objectives like, “Measure the increase of online mentions of program x, among stakeholders, from [start date] to [finish date].”

Then you do a baseline study to see how many mentions there are, do your program, and then measure the number of mentions after you’re done.

Payne lists, and refutes, the main excuses organizations give for not measuring:

1)   Measurement equals punishment

2)   Measurement will only create more work

3)   Measurement is expensive

4)   You can’t measure the ROI , so why bother?

5)   Measurement is strictly quantitative

6)   Measurement is something you do when a program is over

7)   People feel they know what’s happening and don’t need research.

Payne shows with examples that, as opposed to the negative results people fear, having the courage to measure most often leads to better results, cost savings and career advancement.

If any of the excuses above sound familiar, I’d recommend picking up a copy of Paine’s book. Your competitors or critics may already be reading it.

Tags: Measurement
Posted in Measurement | 1 Comment »

This week I sat down with a smart guy to learn about Google AdWords. This guy has done lots of Pay-Per-Click campaigns, often using Google AdWords, and had answered all my previous questions so I considered him qualified.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I  came away with five key “Must Dos”.

 1)   Geolocate your keywords – Google AdWords lets222 you choose the area in which your ad will show, down to the city, so your ad will only show to local clients.

2)   Link your ad to the relevant page on your website not your homepage – If you sell cheese fondue kits and have a page on your site where you sell them, make sure the ad that shows when someone searches for “cheese fondue kits” links to that page.

3)   Put the benefit in the your ad not the service – So if you own a dance studio, instead of, “Beautiful renovated studio. Certified teachers”, put “Learn to Salsa like a pro in 6 weeks.”

4)    Set goals  – Google AdWords help defines “goals” as:

• a page viewed by the visitor once they have completed a desired action;
• a specified number of pages viewed by the visitor on the website; or
• a session longer or shorter than a specific time range.

There are three types of goals:

• A URL Destination goal triggers a conversion (i.e. successful completion of the goal) when a visitor views the specified page on your site.
• A Time on Site goal triggers a conversion when a visitor spends more or less time on your site than the threshold you have specified.
• A Pages/Visit goal triggers a conversion when a visitor views more pages or fewer pages than the threshold you have specified.

Once you set goals, you can find out which content on your site is leading to the most goal conversions.

5) Test, test, test – Change things up and see what effect it has. Google AdWords lets you do split tests where you can test two pieces of content, like two ads, by sending half your traffic to each one and seeing which performs best.

Got other ideas for the top 5 five? Share, share, share…

Tags: Google AdWords, Pay-Per-Click
Posted in AdWords, Pay-Per-Click | 1 Comment »

Ok, so we weren’t actually  test driving cars at this morning’s Social Media Breakfast Ottawa - but we did see other people having tons of fun doing it.

It was part of Mitsubishi’s Live Drive project where they wired up a car and let people test drive it over the net. The Live Drive was one of the Tomorrow Awards Winter 2011 winners. The awards are billed as “the first international award show dedicated to discovering, showcasing and awarding advertising creativity that pushes new technological boundaries.” Tomorrow Awards General Manager, Sean MacPhedran, shared several winners’ stories with the SMB Ottawa crowd, including the very cool, Pay With A Tweet that lets people buy real things by tweeting about it. When I asked if there were any winners from the education sector he cited Summer 2011 winner, Skype in the Classroom (the awards aren’t all about ads).

Enjoy.

p.s. The audio starts a few minutes in to MacPhedran’s talk as our first snowfall in town made me a little late this morn.  Also, apologies for the iTunes ad at the beginning that my audio host, Libsyn, adds automatically.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (34.1MB)

Tags: Advertising, Skype, Tomorrow Awards
Posted in Advertising, Skype | 1 Comment »

About a week and half ago my 7-yr-old came home all excited, “Dad! Can I use your computer to do mathletics?” At first, I thought he said “athletics” and that, perhaps, his class had learned about calisthenics that day and he wanted to put on some hoppin’ YouTube music to do some exercises. However, I soon understood that his awesome teacher had introduced the class to the Mathletics online math site. The site lets kids race other kids around the world to see who can answer a series of questions the fastest. The winner gets credits they can “spend” on accessories for their Mathletics avatar.

How excited was my kid? Since last week he has played Mathletics every day and has answered nearly 4000 questions. He has played against kids from Australia, the UK, Qatar, South Africa and Pakistan. (We’re thinking the site is Australian since most of the players are from there and the woman’s voice that says, “Want to play again?” after you finish a game sounds like Crocodile Dundee’s wife).

Kids can play games using different math skills (addition, subtraction, division, etc) and with different levels for each skill. Level 1 is addition with answers no bigger than 10. The site is pretty and pretty easy to use.

The problem is that, with addition at least, the jump between Level 1 and Level 2 is so great that my kid got discouraged and continues to play Level 1 where he now kicks butt, gets lots of credits but isn’t learning much. A site with more gradual change between levels would keep him moving up.

Another issue is that the site costs. My kids’ class only has it because his principal won a subscription.

If anyone knows of a free site that has more gradual levels – you know what to do (and if you don’t, I mean leave a comment ;-))

Tags: Gaming, Math
Posted in Gaming, Math | No Comments »

Today’s Social Media Breakfast Ottawa 25 featured IBM’s social media guy, Delaney Turner, making the case that, despite some popular misconceptions, IBM “gets” social media. He gives concrete examples of what the company is doing inside and outside the firewall.

If you’re trying to do social media in a large organization Delaney provides some nice, actionable ideas.

Enjoy.

Note: Delaney opened his talk with an IBM promo video that sounds like a rock show drum solo.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.2MB)

Tags: #smbottawa, IBM
Posted in Social Media Breakfast | 1 Comment »

Saturday, October 15 people who care about education will gather at Toronto’s York University for Edcamp Toronto. The unconference is billed as “an exciting new approach to professional dialogue and learning…dedicated to expanding and extending…conversations about schooling and education in the 21st century.” The EdCamp Toronto website (not to be confused with the EdCamp Toronto wiki or the EdCamp Toronto page on the EdCamp wiki) says the event is participant-driven; relying on the expertise, experiences and enthusiasm of all those who register.

The current post on the EdCamp Toronto website, EdCamp Toronto:Come Find Your Passion,Come Raise Your Voice! , gives 10 reasons to attend. The list highlights the participant driven nature of unconferences and I’d like to add one more reason to attend and one suggestion on how to attend.

Attend because, if you know what you want, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get it. This is due to the unconference Law of Two Feet that says, if you’re not getting what you need out of a session, get up, get out and go to another one – or start your own in the hall. People won’t be offended – they’ll be doing the same thing themselves.

I’ve been to several social media unconferences and participants often say some of their best learning happened during impromptu hall sessions.

My advice on how to attend is simple - volunteer.

Unconferences are free partly because they’re volunteer driven and volunteering has a couple of key benefits:

• it gives you an inside look at how an unconference is run; and
• it lets you connect with other volunteers on a deeper level than if you were both just attending. And since volunteers are, by definition, dooers, you’ll be connecting with people likely to put their learning into action.

EdCamp Toronto is about education in general - not just technology and education - so there are sessions that are explicitly about technology and many that aren’t. But what’s neat about that is, those who go to the tech sessions can then share what they learn in the non-tech sessions. After all, idea is to find the best solutions to educational problems - whether the solution is high-tech or low tech. Still, here are some of the suggested tech-ed topics currently listed:

• How can we use technology to generate and focus discussion in the classroom?
• Building the Classroom for Tomorrow
• Gaming in schools
• Data literacy
• Digital access
• Gaming isn’t for education, education is for gaming
• Analyzing the effects of social media in school
• 21c. learning technology in education. Google Docs??
• Putting a 21st century learning classroom together (planning for successful implementation)
• Technological innovation to improve the quality of education
• Social Networks - Where is the Balance?
• Assistive Technology
• Web 2.0 tools and 2nd language instruction
• Stop Motion Animation with Frames.
• Using Technology to Motivate Boy Writers
• How can we help students learn effective uses of communications technology?
• Incorporating collaborative tech tools in the class
• Literacy and digital media: how reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic is changing to incorporate more technology; and how learning is changing because of it

Go get your learn on.

Tags: EdCamp, EdCampTO, unconference
Posted in Unconference | 2 Comments »