Teaching Social Media to Extension Professionals
From Extension Collaborative Wiki
- August 11, 2009 at 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. ET, Meet-up of Technology Trainers and anyone else interested in discussing the best way of teaching social media to extension staff in your state. Possible questions to address might include: What kinds of information do you typically cover in discussing social media (i.e. blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc)? Do you devote entire sessions to a single topic (i.e. creating blogs) or do you cover a variety? What kinds of hands on experiences have worked best for your audiences in learning these topics? (for all Extension) This session will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn. Sessions will be broadcast and use your computers speakers for audio, not your phone. Audience interaction will be done using the built-in chat capabilities.
Contents |
Objectives for the discussion on Aug 11:
- Identify ways and why social media is important for Extension professionals (Awareness of Social Media)
- Identify which tools are covered in when discussing social media. Are some more important or prevalent than others?
- Share what's already available in Extension and public sites (like YouTube Common Craft videos such as RSS in Plain English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
- Share Extension examples by asking participants to share them in the chat box
Some Social Media Applications
- Blogs
- Podcasts
- Flickr
- Delicious
- YouTube
- Feed Readers
- Instant Messaging
- Text messaging
- Ning
- Second Life
- Wikis
Methods
- compare to what they've used in the past
- descriptions
- how to use to do your job better
- demonstrate how easy to get started using tool
- Show someone doing 3 easy steps to create a Blog using Blogger. Much easier than people think!
- show examples of what to do with them
- how to multipurpose content/info -- newspaper...
- how to blogging, etc. expands reach
- not just another delivery for what they've always done. Not a substitution, but an additional way.
- important for engagement; describe the difference in engagement and mass delivery
- where to "find time"?
- Facebook groups
Extension examples:
- Some examples are given here: http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Web2
- Delicious social bookmarking Extension-tagged resources for Internet Safety
- Delicious tags: extag, internet-safety, i.e., http://delicious.com/search?p=extag+internetsafety
- Blogging examples
- Agriculture in Van Wert County, Ohio, Andy Kleinschmidt http://agvanwert.wordpress.com/
- CSU Extension Greenhouse Advisor,Steve Newman http://ghadvisor.blogspot.com/
- Twitter examples
- Wyoming Extension Communications http://twitter.com/uwcesedtech/
Ideas
- interest in research results and how to show impact from using SN tools
- Extension examples... how to use with colleagues, and how to use with clientele
- Generally an extension professional can't lean on only one tool. Depends on your communities
- Think about mobile phones to access information... and keep that in mind for anything that goes on the web. ie, PDFs are very hard to read on a phone, as are very formatted web pages
- Best way to deliver content to your clientele. ex: Texas' Applied Research handbook -- only published once a year... info could be published as it's available. Doing along the way allows community to respond as you go!
- Ag Media is very fast at getting info out. Extension needs to find/use new ways to put out info!
- Develop some canned programs (PPT and script) that educators can use in their meetings on how to use technologies. ex: RSS Readers to get agents' blog efficiently.
- Share slides, etc that can be used by others. SlideShare.net with links from Collaborate Wiki
- Beginner's Guide to Social Media for Extension
- Follow up with clientele; create opportunity for clientele to network with each other to share experiences, success/failure, ask questions of each other and agent. May help agents with reporting outcomes because social media can be used to determine behavior adoption.
Hints for improving examples of what people are doing
What can you do with a Google Account? Blogger, Google Docs (docs, spreadsheets, presentation), Google Analytics,
Online, hands-on, collaborative example
Teaching clientele to use technology is as important as using a production practice.
Lunch and Learn - 9 different ways to use Google
Problems/Issues
- Copyright
- Older/Seasoned Agents
- How does social media fit into stakeholder and state reporting systems for program evaluation?
