WebedtecH

I’ve started using Diigo to generate more content for my blog.  Here’s a basic diagram of how it’s working right now:

Once a bookmark is grabbed it can be sent through as a blog posting.  It also shows up as part of my Diigo tag cloud and my Diigo bookmark tag roll.  The blog editor is a little weak, but the overall solution is robust and easy to use.

The Journal has a detailed article about some of the things you can do to get your administrations to buy-in to the concepts and benefits of social networking. Here’s some highlights:

So just to get started, you’ll need to find ways to broach the subject without scaring off stakeholders. That means focusing on the form of social media right for your school; tying a social media program into learning objectives; and finding the right ways to break the ice with administrators, IT/technology directors, and other teachers.

Identifying the social tools that fit with your school’s goals and objectives can go a long way to smoothing the adoption curve. Start with what the students will learn using the tools without identifying the focus on learning the tools themselves.

Just as businesses looking to implement social media solutions need to tie their programs to core  business objectives, classroom teachers, curriculum planners, and administrators looking to implement some type of social media solution need to tie their program to a learning objective. Is there a specific expected schoolwide learning objective that you’re trying to meet? Remember, you can’t effectively tie a social media program to a technology-based learning objective.The goal of a social media program is in simple terms to foster and enhance communication between people and to socialize learning; the technology skills needed by students and staff to execute a program of this nature need already to be in place, and if they’re not, then technology objectives (Netiquette, e-mail literacy, search literacy, basic multimedia literacy, password creation, keyboarding, mousing) need to be completed first.

I couldn’t agree with this more. Before you put the time, effort, and “political capital” into an educational network solution (much more palatable than social network) make sure the people who will be using it have the prerequisite skills necessary to make it work.

A couple of important facts for your next discussion around, “Why should we be teaching our students this stuff?”

Some 54% of enterprise-size organizations use Web 2.0 technologies, as do 74% of companies with fewer than 500 employees, according to a study Web 2.0 technology adoption and the future of social-media initiatives in enterprises.

Blogs are the most-used Web 2.0 technology (87% of respondents), followed by communities, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking.

The most successful are blogs (44% of respondents), communities (42%) and wikis (39%).

96% say all Web 2.0 technologies they’ve used have been successful; 83% reporting no clear failures.

The greatest obstacle to Web 2.0 deployment is limited internal resources.

Some 64% of those using Web 2.0 technologies rely on a combination of internal- and external-facing media/tools.

“The Awareness research found that…28% of organizations with over 500 employees have budgets greater than $50,000 for web 2.0 tools or social media. The top tools planned are blogs and wikis (56%) but many are also planning to deploy online communities,” writes FASTforward’s Bill Ives.

Is there any greater recommendation or reason for a topic to be included in the curriculum of a school than the ability of that curriculum to help students get a better place in tomorrow’s workforce? Isn’t that the argument used all the time? Well…let’s make sure we use our facts to reinforce the need to use these tools with our students…NOW!

Trends in Adopting Web 2.0 for the Enterprise in 2007