Bullying today takes place in many different places. One of the hardest places to monitor is what goes on outside of the school walls, but still affects our school's community. Cyber-bullying takes place with younger and younger kids. A recent example is a YouTube video that two sixth graders put together called "Top Six Ways to Kill Piper." But Cyber-bullying happens in ways we cannot always see.
What kinds of policies does your school have in regards to cyber-bullying? How has cyber-bullying affected your school?
Articles of Interest:
Cyber-bullies post video showing six ways to kill their classmate
No charges in ‘ways to kill’ classmate YouTube video
STOP Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying.org
Monday, May 25, 2009
TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
If you are not using an application, you should definitely consider a desktop application. It allows you to make Twitter more useful with columns that you can customize toward your needs. For instance if you wanted to see who was tweeting about your school you can set up a search about your school and it will be constantly searching within the application.
I wanted to share my experience with two twitter Desktop Applications: Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck. Both applications are very similar in the face that they are layed out horizontally. The people you are following are in one column, there is another column for direct messages, another for Replies and so on. Both applications are great, but there are some key advantages of Seesmic for a school.
Seesmic Desktop is a great alternative and provides a couple key enhancements that would help with day to day tweeting. The first is that it allows you to monitor multiple twitter accounts, so you can deal with your personal one and your work one in one place. This saves so much time! It's also great because someone you are following on one account might have something you want to share on the other account and it's easy to do that. Another advantage of this application is that it integrates with Facebook much better than TweetDeck. It allows you to see the full message and TweetDeck cuts off the messages.
Try these applications out:
Seesmic Desktop
TweetDeck
You will need Adobe® AIR® in order to run these programs.
I wanted to share my experience with two twitter Desktop Applications: Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck. Both applications are very similar in the face that they are layed out horizontally. The people you are following are in one column, there is another column for direct messages, another for Replies and so on. Both applications are great, but there are some key advantages of Seesmic for a school.
Seesmic Desktop is a great alternative and provides a couple key enhancements that would help with day to day tweeting. The first is that it allows you to monitor multiple twitter accounts, so you can deal with your personal one and your work one in one place. This saves so much time! It's also great because someone you are following on one account might have something you want to share on the other account and it's easy to do that. Another advantage of this application is that it integrates with Facebook much better than TweetDeck. It allows you to see the full message and TweetDeck cuts off the messages.
Try these applications out:
Seesmic Desktop
TweetDeck
You will need Adobe® AIR® in order to run these programs.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Using Social Media Tools to Listen In
Using social media is not only about creating content. It's about listening. It's important for schools or organizations to listen in on the discussions taking place online. Hearing the messages out there can help development of your schools online profile and help you figure out how your messages might transmit (even if it is something you do not begin). Listening in on the conversations taking place can help to generate content or even guide the messages we send out. You might find that there are conversations outside of your normal methods of transmission that you might want to participate.
It's important to remember that monitoring is not about controlling the messages out there, but rather about making use of what is being said. Sometimes the best marketing comes from those one-line messages such as "I miss XXX school."
Conversations may not just take place across one type of social media, but rather in six different venues. It can be overwhelming, but there are a number of tools that you can set up to search to find out what is being said and most of the tools are free.
It's important to remember that monitoring is not about controlling the messages out there, but rather about making use of what is being said. Sometimes the best marketing comes from those one-line messages such as "I miss XXX school."
Conversations may not just take place across one type of social media, but rather in six different venues. It can be overwhelming, but there are a number of tools that you can set up to search to find out what is being said and most of the tools are free.
- Free Social Media Monitoring Tools (Very Comprehensive)
- Free Social Media Monitoring Tools Blog Entry
- Social Media Monitoring Tools: 26 Free Online Reputation Tools
- 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
- 19 Free Social Media Tools for Your Dashboard
- Best Buzz Tracking and Social Media Monitoring Tools Comparison Table
Monday, May 18, 2009
Questions for Discussion
Does your school have a formalized marketing plan for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogs, etc.?
Do you have long-term and short term goals?
How does your plan fit into the strategic goals of the rest of the school?
Do you have long-term and short term goals?
How does your plan fit into the strategic goals of the rest of the school?
Friday, May 15, 2009
Adding Twitter to Your Facebook Fan Page
My husband has just started twittering for his school. He was trying to figure out how to get his tweets to show up on his fan page in a way that would display nicely. I had tried before, but had been unsucessful. He was definitely persistent and found a great solution.
A lot of schools have used Socializer or the RSS Feed to get their Tweets onto the Facebook. A better solution is a Facebook Application called Involver Fan Page. It automatically adds your tweets to your Facebook Fan Page under a Tab called Twitter. It even creates a link to your twitter account. I was even able to sucessfully connect the same Tweet with two different fan pages.
A lot of schools have used Socializer or the RSS Feed to get their Tweets onto the Facebook. A better solution is a Facebook Application called Involver Fan Page. It automatically adds your tweets to your Facebook Fan Page under a Tab called Twitter. It even creates a link to your twitter account. I was even able to sucessfully connect the same Tweet with two different fan pages.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
How to Unfriend People on Facebook
Over the last couple days I got a couple of people who asked about how to unfriend a person on Facebook.
The first question I always ask is why do you want to unfriend that person? Is it because you just don't want to read all of their millions of status messages? You can simply hide those messages from other people seeing them.
I ask that question because I think it's important to think about the ramifications of unfriending someone. As a school or even as a teacher, I think it is important to think about what unfriending might mean to that person. By unfriending them are you cutting off your relationship with them forever?
They do not get a notification that you are no longer friends. But they can no longer look at your profile and if they would like to request your friendship again they are unable to do that. You have to re-friend them.
If you want to limit what they see of your profile with out cutting them off, you can always limit their access to what they can see by using the limited profile or friend lists option.
How to Unfriend
If you decide to unfriend them go to the top of your screen and click on All Friends.
Next down to the friend you want to get rid of and press the X next to their name.
Resources
The first question I always ask is why do you want to unfriend that person? Is it because you just don't want to read all of their millions of status messages? You can simply hide those messages from other people seeing them.
I ask that question because I think it's important to think about the ramifications of unfriending someone. As a school or even as a teacher, I think it is important to think about what unfriending might mean to that person. By unfriending them are you cutting off your relationship with them forever?
They do not get a notification that you are no longer friends. But they can no longer look at your profile and if they would like to request your friendship again they are unable to do that. You have to re-friend them.
If you want to limit what they see of your profile with out cutting them off, you can always limit their access to what they can see by using the limited profile or friend lists option.
How to Unfriend
If you decide to unfriend them go to the top of your screen and click on All Friends.
Resources
Monday, May 11, 2009
Facebook: Hiding Messages on your Feed
Since the update of the latest Facebook design, I have seen and talked to a number of people who are frustrated and overwhelmed by the feeds.
A user experiences:
A teacher who is friends with former students was frustrated with their constant status changes and the excessive use of profanity in their status messages. She wanted to maintain the relationship with them, but didn't want to see their away messages and didn't know how to get rid of them without "un-friending" that person.
Often when individuals post to their facebook account, they do not think about who is necessarily reading on the other end. When our facebook friends post things they are not necessarily thinking about who is looking at that picture. This holds true even for a personal account. You might only intend for your friends to see you drinking or wearing an interesting outfit, but perhaps their 9 year-old son or daughter walks in while they are browsing through the pictures.
Within a school, your teachers might have similar experiences to the teacher above. Or even your school presence might have that same experience. A student who is your facebook friend might posts a picture of something you would rather not see or creates so many messages that your feed is inundated.
It's very easy to maintain that relationship, but not see their feeds.
How to Hide Feeds
Facebook Resources
A user experiences:
A teacher who is friends with former students was frustrated with their constant status changes and the excessive use of profanity in their status messages. She wanted to maintain the relationship with them, but didn't want to see their away messages and didn't know how to get rid of them without "un-friending" that person.
Often when individuals post to their facebook account, they do not think about who is necessarily reading on the other end. When our facebook friends post things they are not necessarily thinking about who is looking at that picture. This holds true even for a personal account. You might only intend for your friends to see you drinking or wearing an interesting outfit, but perhaps their 9 year-old son or daughter walks in while they are browsing through the pictures.
Within a school, your teachers might have similar experiences to the teacher above. Or even your school presence might have that same experience. A student who is your facebook friend might posts a picture of something you would rather not see or creates so many messages that your feed is inundated.
It's very easy to maintain that relationship, but not see their feeds.
How to Hide Feeds
- Take your mouse and drag it over the status message and a little button will appear that says Hide.
- Click on Hide and then Hide Person's Name.
- And then their feeds will no longer appear in your News Feeds.
- If you make a mistake or want to see who you have hidden, you can scroll to the bottom of the feed and click "Edit Options."
Facebook Resources
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