Blog Post: Social Media Workshop for Career and Technical Education Schools #in

I recently help present a workshop about how social media can be used in CTE (Career and Technical Education) Schools. I work as a LAN/WAN networking instructor at a Post Secondary school in Northern NJ. One of the biggest issues with Social Media in education and academia is figuring out how to use it effectively. Everyone has a different view on how (and actually whether) it should be used. Administrators are concerned about fraternization and professionalism, many instructors and teachers are unfamiliar with the medium and often question it’s usefulness and students often only see social media as a way to keep up with thier friends and post keg party pics. IT people worry about exposing their network and their students to questionable material and chewing up bandwidth on already stressed school networks. The process is further complicated when you take into account what branch of education you are in. K-12 educators and administrators do not have the same concerns as collegiate educators and adminstrators. There are also varying opinons on what is appropriate for a learning institution.

In the case of CTEs however, we have a unique opportunity, and in some ways an obligation, to use and optimize social media for our students. I put together this Powerpoint for my school’s faculty to introduce social media to the unitiated and to suggest some ways for us to implement social media to help our students start their careers and expand their sphere of learning. I also added some information about PLNs to help instructors. CTE instructors, particularly those who teach technology, have to be on top of the latest technology to make sure the curriculum we teach and the labs that we run are as current as possible and PLNS are a great way to do that. Unfortunately, I’ve found the CTE community to be sparse on the interwebs, but hopefully this will help me find more CTE instructors passionate about social media and what it can do for our students.  I uploaded the presentation to Slideshare and will be updating it from time to time. I also plan to do a follow-up workshop specifically for students in CTE schools. The presentation is pretty broad in scope and should not be particularly confusing or technical for newbies. Any feedback that you have would be more than appreciated. It also features an embedded YouTube video on what a PLN is by @skipvia, which by the was really helpful during the presentation. I hope you find it useful.

Social Networking Workshop

Google Scholar Now With 100% More Blog # in

Really interesting service that I hadn’t heard about until now. It seems that the all powerful Google has a service called Google Scholar, which is essentially a specialized search engine for academic literature. As it so happens, this service had become popular enough to merit it’s own blog. When Google creates a blog site for one of it’s services, it’s usually a pretty good indicator that service is getting some pretty decent traction with its intended audience. The next question is who is using it? Students or teachers? If anyone has used this service of l love to hear your opinion on it.

http://bit.ly/aHBG7y

Marian the Cybrarian ~ These Ain’t Your Father’s Librarians

By Thomas H. Benton ~ The Chronicle of Higher Education

For all the concern expressed about the mminent demise of the college library, there may never have been a time when librarians seemed more vital, forward-thinking—even edgy—than they do now.

http://chronicle.com/article/Marian-the-Cybrarian/65570/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

U of California Resuscitates the Master Plan via @huffingtonpost

by Anya Kamenetz – Huffington Post

Yesterday the University of California made a groundbreaking announcement that has the potential to break the tuition cost crisis and finally deliver the crucial benefits of higher education to millions of Americans and to tens of millions who demand it and deserve it around the world. They are putting $5 to $6 million into a pilot project to create online versions of courses with an eye toward eventually creating completely online degree programs.

More than one in four US college students already take at least one online class. So why is this an important announcement?

Because a public university system is declaring that it will innovate its way out of recession, and even more importantly, that it will not cede the banner of innovation to the for-profit sector that is encroaching more and more on public higher education’s territory. Read Full Story

Blog Post: Education Sector is Failing Security

As our society and information becomes increasingly more digitized we gain a great many benefits from this new availability and portability of information. One of the drawbacks of this progress however is that information becomes more accessible to attack or misappropriation. Most hackers (social engineers really) start off in high school or grammar school because the security there is rather lax. Educational institutions have as much personal information about students as any bank or financial institution. Unfortunately, educational institutions don’t have the same security measures as banks and institutions. As a result, schools and colleges have become a popular hunting ground for hackers, phishers and the like. Here’s a piece from Infosec about some of the shortcomings of the education sector when it comes to security

Education Sector is Failing Security.

Use Howcast to Attain and Retain Information #in #edtech #mobiletech #socialmedia

As a Computer Networking Instructor,and as a teacher in general, I have two main responsibilities to my students and future technicians…giving them the tools to Attain and Retain knowledge and I think Howcast will help me do just that.

I was actually testing out the Android browser Skyfire when I stumbled across this and I thought it was really worth posting. Howcast, for the initiated is a website that hosts only one type of videos. How To videos. They’ve got a wide variety If topics from Arts and Crafts to Multimedia and Technology. I immediately thought of 2 ways I could use this site in class so I decided to look into it further.

First, I went to the Technology section and went to see if I could find anything relevant. I found a video on expanding a wireless network, I’m teaching a networking class And posted it to the class blog. I’ll let my students have a run at it on Monday in lab. I looked for other videos on networking and found a few more I will be using for future labs. I’m also thinking about having the class produce a video as an advanced lab. Viola! 1) I used it as a research resource to attain information and 2) I can use it as a vehicle to retaining knowledge by allowing the students to gain hands on experience by performing a technical task , and reinforcing the lesson by allowing them to explain the task in their own words and relive the experience to help them remember the experience. And it has the added benefit of not being as distracting as YouTube might be. Have a look for yourself.

Response to PLN Request by @tomwhitby I posted the Tweetdoc #in

One of the users I follow on Twitter @tomwhitby (who by the way is a great resource for you to follow) requested that his PLN do a search on #edupd to see what teachers think teachers need in terms of Professional Development. I think you’ll find the the results pretty interesting. I posted the Tweetdoc here PLN Request: http://www.tweetdoc.org/View/2381/PLN-Request

Tweetshare: Teachers’ Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools: 2009 via @tonnet. #edtech http://is.gd/bZpre.

SocialMediaInEdu (@SocialMediaInEd) has shared a Tweet with you:

“tonnet: Teachers’ Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools: 2009 http://is.gd/bZpre“
–http://www.twitter.com/tonnet/status/13579172487

Second Life Provides Real-World Benefits

Second Life Provides Real-World Benefits

Posted using ShareThis

Social Networking Gone Wrong

This is the other side of intertwined Education and technology. Story about a teacher who was undergoing some major psychological stress from dealing with some particularly unruly students. Our increasingly plugged-in society and classrooms leave room for, and in some cases encourages, students to be otherwise engaged when they should be concentrating on the lesson. The victim and other students used their mobile phones to coordinate their efforts to antagonize the assailant. The teacher snapped and attacked the student with a dumbbell. It’s one of those worst case scenarios that is nightmarish for Administrators and often can result in drastic knee-jerk reactions. I.E.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/education/10092626.stm