Welcome to the "New" Academy -- Prof's who use online tools

So I'm not alone. Ok...I knew that really, but more and more I'm reading about College professors in disciplines other than Business (and there are not many of those either) who are using tools like Twitter and blogging and social networking to connect with their students and to write about their own experiences.

Yes, there are many who are playing around with podcasting at iTunes U, but recent items from the Chronicle of Higher Education have provided some other tidbits.

Like the emergent media Prof. who is now posting video on how he uses Twitter, and then there is today's article from the Chronicle where theologist Dr. Brandon Withrow writes about the pitfalls of faculty writing their own blogs -- who knew? Certainly not I!

It would seem that those of us who are utilizing these new tools may be running into some type of "hiring bias" ... hmmm.... better not tell Prof. John Rogate from here at Champlain -- he's created a whole virtual Champlain College in Second Life.

Bottom line, we are out there and we are experimenting and using these tools for ourselves, to connect with students, and to provide insight in the classroom. We have to. We are educators and we not only need to know about these tools, we need to help our students understand the ramifications of using these tools as well.

Teaching about Social Media in the classroom

It is no secret that I'm a college professor who teaches a series of classes in e-Business Management and Marketing at Champlain College. One of the classes I'm currently teaching is an online course that lasts for five weeks. Online Visibility is the subject. Here's the "official" course description:

Creating online visibility for a business, service or product is becoming more complex as more and more tools become available. Moving outside the realm of advertising and building websites, this course will provide students with hands-on experience in using the web to disseminate information about their product or service in this examination of PR-oriented online tactics. E-mail marketing, RSS feeds, news release distribution, viral marketing, and referrals will all be explored and utilized as students disseminate information utilizing online tools.

One of the key components of the course is setting up blogs so that students can explore the use of RSS Feeds, subscription and the effect of linking and tracking key words in order to measure online visibility.

Students create blogs for their business, organization, business idea and even a hobby. Part of the work is learning how to write for the blog, link, track success, and see what happens when others subscribe and mention their blogs.

So this post, besides setting the context for what we are doing and why, is part of the assignment I gave the class. Today I have successfully signed up for almost everyone's blogs and they are ported into my NetVibes. And now I'm doing part two of the assignment, which is to write about each blog and see what gets picked up!

The first blog to get picked up in my Google News Alert for "Champlain College" was Welton Mountain Tech. This blog emphasizes the challenges facing web security. In one of the posts, the blog linked to Champlain College and mentioned one of our faculty, Gary Kessler.

Another blog in the class features a tribute to the Red Sox -- I believe they are a soccer team, right? This blog, aptly entitled Just another Red Sox Fan, portrays the interests and links that one who follows the Red Sox might care about -- the post that provides links to other sites might be useful to some.

Vermont UnBoxed is a blog that supports a business idea of one of the students to have a website where people can order and learn about vermont-made products. While the website is still an idea, the blog is "real" and this post on a local farm stand is one way to highlight Vermont at its finest.

If you are interested in BMW's then the this blog from our resident BMW Ethusiast provides some questions about where to find parts and the experiences the blogger has had with rebuilding and updating the cars.

Another business idea for creating more opportunities for people to find their favorite movies can be found at K Movies. The idea behind this blog is to link it with a website and drive people to purchase movies. While there isn't a website yet, this experiement will surely reveal some of the opportunities and challenges that come with linking e-commerce to blogs.

The world of Online Education is examined in the Continue Your Education blog from Champlain College's own Division of Continuing Professional Studies. One post highlights some student work at the South End Art Hop from several weeks back!
Another addresses the use of Web Analytics -- and links people to one of our other one credit classes in..Web Analytics!

Advice on Online Visiblity comes in many forms. In How to Acheive Online Visibility for your Business the focus is on advice for highly specialized business to business clients so they can augment their personal selling with a push from the web. It's a tough nut to crack for B2C -- imagine the challenges with B2B! Branding is important no matter what, so this post should resonate with many!

What an amazing array of options -- don't you just love the Blogsphere?

Blog Stopper -- Writing the Dissertation

So it's been a bit longer than I would like since I've posted, and this one is going to be just a quick note.

I'm writing Chapter Four of my dissertation. The topic? Teaching technology applications to college students. Why? Because they aren't as savvy as we thought. Really? Yep! How do I know? Well, I've been teaching them for a awhile and I have completed my study which I conducted in Fall '06. The dissertation is moveing along and I'll have more once I get through both Chapters 4 and 5. When? Um....

Soon...I hope!

Cheers!

Elaine