GCSEs in under 140 characters
Read today about plans in a London school to introduce a Social Media element into their curriculum in the next academic year … to teach young people how to make the most of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, digg and so on to build their career, look for opportunities and maximise the potential benefits from self promotion and a raised understanding of the issues around these networks and tools.
With increasing numbers of Councils, Councillors, Govt Departments and MPs using Twitter (TweetyHall), their own blog sites it really is important that like it or loathe it, there is an understanding of the best way to exploit social media.
It may be that the mainstream media is onboard with a campaign, or an issue, no notice is taken of the online Twitterati community. Risky business it is easy to miss core and ground swell of comment. M&S turned this to their advantage recently having been initially unaware of the busts4justice campaign which started on Facebook complaining about the additional £2 M&S were charging for bigger bras … the campaign group grew to over 14,000 members and M&S were shamed in the media - before they then turned the whole problem to their advantage and admitted they had “boobed” and took away the large bust levvy.
Kellogs had a similar experience with their Michael Phelps campaign and their brand identity suffered badly (check out the thread on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7v8ew/kelloggss_drops_michael_phelps_contract_everyone/ )
Knowing what people are saying online in blogs and on social networking sites is critical to really understand public perception.
There is alot that the Public sector can learn in terms of social media monitoring - and engaging via multiple online platforms. It is no longer enough to simply ‘have a website’ it is important to interact and to understand how to work with these online communities.
As far as learning about social media in school it may that these lessons become even more interactive with many pupils understanding the way the sites work (often more so than their teachers) but then through iterative discussion the broader realisation of ‘life’ benefits. Exciting times …
I also read today that at the end of March 2009, following a review of the UK primary school curriculum, recommendations were put forward to teach children under 11 how to use social networking sites, such as Twitter, as well as blogs, webcams and podcasts. Sir Jim Rose, a former director of inspections at Ofsted, advised young children needed to develop an understanding of different ways to communicate online.
Perhaps local authority social media courses are the way to go …
So - if you haven’t already got a Twitter account - try it … DC10plus network have been ‘out there’ for a few months now and the insights into what is going on not just in the UK but internationally in the digital engagment space have been thought provoking and tremendously useful…
just some of the sites that will be being covered in the new lessons
http://wordpress.org/
http://www.blogger.com/home
http://digg.com/
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.ning.com/
http://delicious.com/
https://www.yammer.com/
http://www.facebook.com
hrrp://www.reddit.com
follow your interests, issues, Twitter account and other searches with Tweetdeck or Twitterfall
and you can always follow us
http://www.twitter.com/dc10plusnetwork
This entry was posted on Monday, June 1, 2009 at 18:12. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a response or trackback from your own site.
1 Response to “GCSEs in under 140 characters”
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cyberdoyle says:
June 1, 2009, 18:24
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I was just thinking that the kids can probably teach the teachers how to do it…