"We all have personal brands and most of us have already left a digital footprint, whether we like it or not... Social media is changing the way we communicate and the way we are perceived, both positively and negatively. Every time you post a photo, or update your status, you are contributing to your own digital footprint and personal brand."
-Amy Jo Martin

“the emerging digital divide is between those who know how to use social media for individual advantage and collective action, and those who don’t.”
-Howard Rheingold

The objective here is to come to come to grips with the mechanics, practical possibilities, realities, obstacles and current state of Social media to be a productive and effective tool for professional development and student success.

Per the Pew Research Internet & American Life Project
"Social Media Update 2013"
http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/12/30/social-media-update-2013/

"Some 73% of online adults now use a social networking site of some kind"

"42% of online adults now use multiple social networking sites."

“It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional resources.”
- Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO Google

“As more people use social media to tell the story of the future, the wants and needs of more people will be reflected.”
- Simon Mainwaring

“When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place.”
- Mark Zuckerberg

Social Media definitely has had an impact (Arab Spring, WIkiLeaks, Media, etc. ) but certainly not a ubiquitous or universal Revolution or a positive utopia. Social Media addiction, Cyber Bullying and links to other issues have been made. Crucially, not ALL Americans & Not all teens are ON social media. Those that are on tend to form a sort of echo chamber...

"Social networking, which claims to make connections and bring people together, paradoxically exacerbates social divisions and inequalities. ...Three things characterize friendship networks: the same kinds of people come together, they influence one another to think alike, and, once they are in the same place, that very location influences them to become more alike."
-Dr. Charles Kadushin
http://tinyurl.com/socinequity

You need to be firmly aware of the legal boundary lines with any and all social media with students & FERPA...
"Two things to always keep in mind:
1. ...never reveal information about students that might indicate their grades, course enrollments, class schedules, and so on....
2. ...Any document or communication (digital or not) that is considered an educational record for purposes of FERPA is subject to the "inspect and review" privilege by the student.
If you play by these rules, you should be safe and in compliance."
"Is Your Use of Social Media FERPA Compliant?"
-Perry D.Drake
http://tinyurl.com/ferpacheat

Understanding the reality of social media, how do we make a path to reaching the benefits and tapping the potential for positive outcomes for us as teachers, our students learning (and maybe our sanity?).

#1-Understand the setup and mechanics of each network.

#2-Understand associated risks and potential pitfalls of each network.

#3-Come up with a plan to first get ourselves familiar and use as a *personal* development tool.

#4-After being immersed in a network, plan a *specific* role/niche and carefully structured usage and path for our students.

"Facebook is popular across a diverse mix of demographic groups... Facebook also has high levels of engagement among its users: 63% of Facebook users visit the site at least once a day, with 40% doing so multiple times throughout the day. Among those who only use one major social networking platform, 84% say that Facebook is the single site that they frequent. "
-Pew Research
"Social Media Update 2013"

Facebook operates around relationships that you opt into via 3 ways:
1-"Friend" a person
2-"Like" a Page (person, company etc.)
3-Join a Group

As you build your network through these actions, you will build your "newsFeed" pulled from the wall/pages/group posts.

You can then "like", Share or comment on anything in your newsfeed (except for sharing private group posts).
More at:
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/facebook101/3

Due to the "friend" and clear identity based nature of Facebook, and cascading public sharing, it is a problem for FERPA for students...

NC State has even had legal issues when faculty have tried to experiment in this realm before.

So as a Student Success tool, facebook is a bit of a no go zone.

HOWEVER, as a personal Pro development resource it works!

"Pinterest holds particular appeal to female users (women are four times as likely as men to be Pinterest users), "
Among those who use just one social networking site...4% use Pinterest."
-Pew Research
"Social Media Update 2013"

Pinterest operates around "pins" of images usually linked to webpages. You can build relationships that you opt into via 3 ways:
1-"Follow" a person (all their boards)
2-"Follow" a Board (specific topic person, company etc.)
3-Re-Pin anothers' Pin

As you build your network through these actions, you will build your "newsFeed" pulled from Pins and boards and interests you have opted into.

You can then comment or repin anything in your newsfeed as well as "pin" images or webpages onto your boards.
More at:
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/pinterest101/2

"Twitter and Instagram have particular appeal to younger adults, urban dwellers, and non-whites. And there is substantial overlap between Twitter and Instagram user bases... Instagram and Twitter have a significantly smaller number of users than Facebook does, but users of these sites also tend to visit them frequently... 46% of Twitter users are daily visitors (with 29% visiting multiple times per day). Among those who use just one social networking site...2% each say that Instagram or Twitter is their sole social networking site."
-Pew Research
"Social Media Update 2013"

Twitter operates around text "tweets" of 144 character. You can build relationships that you opt into via 3 ways:
1-"Follow" a person/organization
2-Use a common "hashtag" beginning with the "#" symbol to tweet search for tweets on a particular topic

As you build your network through following others, you will build your "newsFeed" pulled from Pins and boards and interests you have opted into.

You can then comment or repin anything in your newsfeed as well as "pin" images or webpages onto your boards.
More at:
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/pinterest101/2

Most are thrown off initially by the foreign looking informal syntax of Twitter (all of course aimed at maximizing the 144 character limit per Tweet)... here is a quick cheat sheet:

* "RT" (circling arrows icon)= Re-Tweet - re-posting somebody else's tweet to your stream.

* "@...." = Twitter username

* "#...." = "Hashtag" searchable topic to add to related tweets from others.

* "Favorite(d)" (Star icon) - Twitter equivalent of a "like" button.

Before we can employ the potential of these tools for student success, we need to know the possibilities, ends and outs of the mechanics and LIVE in them.

A great initial application (other than for fun or hobbies) is to utilize these social tools to form your own Personal Professional Network to build your own living dynamic collective wisdom "guru."

The need for modern college faculty to develop ourselves as teaching professionals is critical. Luckily, there are a multitude (perhaps too many!) resources freely available to us!

Academia, scholars, writers, nonprofit research organizations and publishers have embraced published and sharing best practices digitally.

The lowest common denominator is public web sites which have web addresses that can be copied and pasted and shared across any of the social media.

Likewise, images, infographics, videos etc. are freely available for each subject area. Disseminating and sharing any of this great material to inform our work to improve student success is not an issue regardless of where we live or if we are a 1 person department.

However, the trick is to work at developing a rich and finely tuned social network to sort thought leaders and innovators in your field of teaching vs. trolls or spammers...

" There’s no such thing as information overload, he writes. It’s all a matter of conscious consumption... We struggle to keep track of all the information that approaches us, making it hard for most info bits to be properly digested...The result is ... we are constantly exposed to real-time interactive media, we develop attention fatigue and a poor sense of time... The info-vegan way out would be to work on the will power—an executive function that can be trained—with the goal of increasing one’s attention span. "

Have a filtering/filing system to tag and categorize sources to be able to search them on demand will help you focus and retain an on demand library of the best nuggets you mine from the Interwebs.

PINTEREST
Use other media to find helpful online resources & "Pin" them.
**HOWEVER** make sure to create and use consistent #Hashtags in the "Description" of each new pin. You can then search pins with your #hashtag. Likewise organize your boards.
See: http://tinyurl.com/pinteresthash

EVERNOTE - www.evernote.com/
Evernote is a great free tool with cloud synch across devices and browser and email plugins to send webpages, notes, emails to Evernote "notebooks" that you can also add custom tags to.

There is a long history of epic fails of instructors who have thrown a random social media piece into their courses to be "hip" or "cool" with "the kids."

Yet the potential for not only enhancing faculty-student & student-student interaction, to say nothing of engaging with online experts and resources around the world makes for rich potential for being a success tool.

As such we must devote some thought and careful consideration to where there is potential for social media in our classes to truly "move the needle" for student success...

"It is not cool to be on the same platform as your parents and teachers"
-Geert Lovink

Despite broad brush age-based generalities (which do not reflect economic realities or disparities) not all "the kids" LOVE or even enjoy technology.

In fact the motivations for most social media users is purely social (data per Pew Internet & American life)

We must keep this firmly in mind in designing a social media project for class and understand we will need to be able to articulate the specific aims and goals for social media usage.

Tip#1 - Have a clear (FERPA compliant!) focus to your social media use with class. State this and remind students often!

Tip #2- Do not assume anything, esp the "Oh they just know how to use these things!" -- Find and embed links to tutorials for all printed and online directions:
Pinterest Help Center: https://help.pinterest.com/en
Twitter Help Center:
https://support.twitter.com/

Tip #3- Make sure you are deeply comfortable with the tool!

Tip #4- Plan time to monitor and engage students (within FERPA boundaries) posts on Pinterest or Twitter.

Social media assignments -- especially for credit --while have many potential upsides -- may cause pushback - as such what are resources or Plan B?

1-Required assignments may be too high of a burden for those with irregular or no regular internet access. Is there an alternate assignment offline or for those with patchy Internet? Or do you simply push the availability of libraries or campus labs?
http://tinyurl.com/bm9kdoc

2-Privacy/other conscientious objectors -- there are some who may refuse to setup an account on either Twitter or Pinterest -- even under an alias... Is there an alternative for them or could they view the tweetstream/boards/pins and write a paper??

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

With student reluctance to spontaneously engage in interaction the rigid formality of walled off Discussion forums and a growing trend to an open world full of free access to experts and top tier resources online, social media may well be the final frontier of class discussion.

The tools, laws and best practices are in a state of flux and likely will always be. The thing is to get out there, get your feet wet for yourself, find the promising "blue water" for your classes and start experimenting in focused ways. Have fun!

The eLi department is here to consult, help or help find best practices for you.

We are also on social media so you can use us as a testbed!