Sea Change: How Social Media Has ���Flattened the Educational Universe

Evelyn McCormack NSPRA 2011

The Back Channel: ���Today’s Meet

Keep the conversation going at

http://todaysmeet.com/nspraseachange

Today’s Wiki: ���Let’s Keep it Going!

http://socialmediaschoolpr.wikispaces.com

What We’ll Cover in 60 Minutes

• The Power of Social Media/Good, Bad, & Ugly

• Your Tools: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn

• The Second Phase: Connecting Your Social Media Efforts

THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA

THE GOOD...

Joplin Schools Post-Tornado

Facebook was the only method of communication after the tornado

The Bad...

•  “If I stab someone, no one’s going to tell me it’s a knife problem. At the end of the day they’re just tools. How we use them will determine what happens.” -- Peter Shankman, social media consultant for Fortune 500 companies and

NASA.

The Ugly....

THE STATS

Where Are Parents Getting Their School Information?

• According to Ipsos North America’s December 2010 poll:

• 57 percent go to Facebook/Twitter

• 26 percent go to District website

Social Media Tools: ���The Short List

News Out

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

eNewsletters Phone/email alerts

News In

RSS feeds Google alerts

Online subscriptions

Facebook •  1. Created 2004

•  2. 512 million active users; 250 million log on daily

•  3. 100,000 users age 64+

•  4. 310,000 users between 45–63

•  5. 300,000+ businesses now have FB fan pages, including hundreds of school districts

•  6. 100,000+ have FB on mobile devices

•  7. Use to drive traffic back to website, post photos, videos, news, announcements.

•  8. Post on FB should be brief and informal. Make it a conversation.

State Education Departments

Maryland, Kentucky, California, Arizona, Massachusetts, Indiana, Michigan, Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, etc.

PUBLIC EDUCATION OFFICIALS

Oklahoma State Superintendent

School Superintendents of

Alabama

Candidates for 4J School Board in Eugene, Ore.

Lawrence, Kansas

School Districts on FB

Joplin, MO 4,300 followers

Queensbury, NY 948 followers

Guilford County, NC 4,700 followers

Edgemont, NY 450 followers

Add tabs

1,300 fans, 1 year, 6 months

Cross-promote on Facebook

Facebook Insights

Number of page impressions

Apps on Facebook

Twitter on Facebook allows you to post your tweets on Facebook simultaneously.

The Selective Tweets app allows you to selectively post tweets on your FB fan

page using #fb. Free to install on fan pages.

Twitter •  1. Microblogging platform in 140 characters or

less

•  2. Launched 2006

•  3. 106 million registered users

•  4. 65 million tweets per day

•  5. 750 tweets per second

•  6. Use to post news & events, share links & photos

•  7. Drive traffic back to your district website

State Education Depts. on Twitter U.S. Indiana Michigan Ohio Idaho Michigan Kentucky

California Massachusetts Vermont Colorado Texas Education Agency South Carolina Florida West Virginia Arizona

Minnesota Iowa

Alabama Maryland Arkansas Georgia

Illinois

Twitter Apps Post photos on Twitter. Install on your mobile phone.

Seesmic (and other management tools) allows

you to monitor several Twitter & Facebook accounts at the same time. Also allows

you to schedule tweets.

School Districts on Twitter

Garden City, Long Island

SWBOCES

Park Hill, MO

Duval County Schools, FL

Get Listed: Twitter Lists

Lists of tweeters in common – educators, schools, etc., “curated” by one person. Thousands of Twitter Lists exist; to get listed, simply “follow” the list. Great for networking, getting ideas.

@schoolpr/k12schools

@mclobridge/ed-communications

Twitter Terminology

The Twitter Help Center can assist you with terminology like #hashtags, @ symbols, and how Twitter works in general.

hashtags.org allows you to search for hashtags or track conversations based on hashtags. This conversation is about

#nspra11.

Twitter Anatomy

What’s trending/what people are talking about

Suggestions on who you might want to follow

The wall

# of people you follow; your followers

Were you there?

YouTube

-- Video sharing website -- Launched 2005, bought by Google in 2006 -- 2 billion+ viewers a day -- More video uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major

networks created in 60 years ���

YouTube Dublin, CA Schools OneDublin

Sioux City SD Schools SiouxCityCommSchools

Wisconsin Department of Instruction

WisconsinDPI 83,000 video views

Guilford County, NC Schools

GCSchoolsNC 19,000 video views

Build a Channel

1. Turn off comments on your channel and each video after uploading. 2. On profile page, include district logo, mission statement, address, website, contact info. 3. If there is too much concern about YouTube, Vimeo is a free alternative.

Ohio Hi-Point: 70 videos posted

3,600 channel views 12,000 video views

White Plains: 12 videos posted

908 channel views 2,200 video views

The Second Phase: Connecting Our Social Media Efforts

Linke Text Links to social

media

Testimonial videos from alumni

Denver Academy YouTube videos on Facebook

White Plains YouTube tab

Featured Video Rotates

Made with: YouTube for Pages app provided by Involver

White Plains City Schools Facebook Welcome Page made using Involver (free)

Customized Tabs and Apps for Facebook: Third-Party Tools

Sites allow you to add free apps, and have Basic plans that permit

you to add apps to 1 or 2 fan pages, or limit the number of

apps you use.

The Facebook “Like” Button

The FB “like” button allows readers who are on FB to “like” the article.

My decision to “like” a page shows up in my

FB feed

“Like” Button Code

<html>! <head>! <title>My Great Web page</title>! </head>! <body>! <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=YOUR_URL"! scrolling="no" frameborder="0"! style="border:none; width:450px; height:80px"></iframe>! </body>! </html>!

replace with URL of your webpage

Fill in here with a title for your page, ie, SWBOCES grad video

The AddThis Button

AddThis gives you html coding to insert at the

end of information you’ve posted on your

website. People can click on buttons to

generate more traffic. Here’s what it looks

like:

AddThis Choices

Connect Your Accounts...

Go to Account Settings, choose Activity Sharing

Share your activity with your FB, Twitter accounts

Promote Your Social Media

Blended Pages

I Am CPS, the blended social media page of the Cincinnati Public Schools

Blog Feeds

Facebook page link

Twitter Link Featured YouTube Video

At bottom of Ohio Hi-Point website home page. Feeds from all Ohio Hi-Point’s social media sites.

Northfield Mount Hermon’s NMH Book

Flickr photos

NMH blog posts Facebook

Feed

Twitter Feed

YouTube Videos

Beg, Borrow, Steal...

Steal ideas from independent private schools, universities, and charter schools. They’re more proactive on social media than public schools.

Green Charter Schools

EdSocialMedia

YouTube Edu

The New LinkedIn

• 85 percent of human resources people to go LinkedIn first when looking for a job candidate.

• 85 million members

• 200 countries

• LinkedIn now has Jobs, Company pages, Groups, and Questions feature.

LinkedIn: Company Pages

1st person to click on “edit” tab can begin to edit the company page

Other SWBOCES employees in my network

1. Go to Overview page 2. Under Company Pages Admins, choose Designated Users Only 3. Choose“Publish” 4. Add company Twitter & blog feeds to the page

Caveats & Advice • 1. Contact Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to report fake accounts,

spam, inappropriate comments.

• 2. Develop social media strategy/policy, if you don’t have one.

• 3. Write disclaimers/guidelines for use and post them on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube pages.

• 4. Link to disclaimers and guidelines from website home page.

• 5. Conduct public presentation about how district is using social media. Preferably, at a school board meeting & televised district-wide.

• 6. Turn off comments on YouTube channel and each video posted on YouTube.

• 7. Otherwise, be transparent.

“News In” and Monitoring Tools

RSS Feeds & Readers

Sign up for free iGoogle account and get RSS feeds from your fave sites

Category pages

Individual feed boxes, which can be moved around, deleted, moved to another category.

Other Feed Readers

Netvibes

My Yahoo

RSS

Bottom of NY Times home page

NYTimes Education Feed

Look for this symbol

google alerts Sign up to receive email alerts anytime your

district is mentioned on the web.

Alerts summary for ‘White Plains schools’

Enter search term in box, decide frequency, and choose ‘create alert.’

The Future?

They do the work for you.

Email/phone alert companies are now offering Facebook and

Twitter integration to help push out messages, news,

announcements

Great Places to Visit

• Our Wiki

• SchoolMessenger’s Facebook 101 Guide

• Mashable’s Guide to Twitter

• Mashable’s Guide to Facebook

• Facebook in Education Guide

• www.slideshare.net/evelynmccormack

Remember... • Government should be transparent, with

information about agency operations and decisions available to the public online.

• Government should be participatory, tapping the collective expertise of the American public in government decision-making processes.

• Government should be collaborative, using technology to share & cooperate with other agencies, businesses and non-profits, and the public at large.

-- Barack Obama’s Open

Government Directive

Evelyn McCormack 914-592-4203 ext. 3412

emccormack@swboces.org www.schoolcommunications.com

Twitter : @evelynmccormack