Chris is a self-effacing man, and just as personable in the flesh as he appears in his various online manifestations, and he laughs off the epithet which has been applied to him as “the most influential person on Twitter” as “just something to do with algorithms”.  Nevertheless, the fact that the algorithms have picked him out as such demonstrates that he must be doing something right with social media. Chris calls Twitter “the Serendipity Engine”, and it is purely due to Twitter that his second ever visit to the UK (the other was to Devon, he’s never been to London) saw him by the banks of the River Don, following a conversation on the micro-blogging platform with Doncaster-based entrepreneur and Chair of Doncaster College governors, Rob Wilmot. Rob persuaded Chris that Doncaster was the place to be to discuss the potential uses of social media in education, and so Chris decamped to this side of the pond to help us explore the issues.

The Social Media in Education Podcamp on Day One was followed on the second morning by a straight lecture from Chris. The Podcamp is Chris’s particular take on the unconference format, sometimes called “barcamp” or “open space”. These kinds of events are self-organised events, where participants are invited to suggest topics for workshops they want to lead, and invite other delegates to join them in parallel sessions.  As with many other such events, a grid was drawn on a noticeboard and a scrum ensued as attendees grabbed the post-it notes and fought for the best slot for their own presentation.

Chris Brogan got the event off to a rousing start with a keynote address, during which he pointed out the example of US Community Colleges which he called “places where hope grows”, and urged the education institutions represented to see themselves in the same light. Social media enables organisations and institutions to develop relationships with their users, and, crucially, with potential users. As he said in his second-day lecture, effective social media use means you can get to know the customer, and build a relationship with them, long before you ever have to sell anything to them. And people are much more likely to buy something from someone they know.  Statistics were quoted which suggest that 60% of the media consumed by today’s young people is made by their peers and not professionals.  Educational bodies can help people learn to create media, and should be aware that this will result in content much more appealing to the people they are trying to reach  than anything they might produce themselves.

From there it was off into some really intense discussions on many different aspects of Social Media in Education, from developing a Social Media Strategy to using iPhone apps in education.

Some common themes ran through the day including:

Frustration with in-house IT Departments: many internal IT managers just don’t get social media, and see it as an additional burden on their staff’s time. Blanket blocking policies are still pretty common in colleges and other public sector networks.

Joining the Conversation: Institutions need to understand the conversational nature of social media, and move away from “broadcast mode” into two-way dialogue with users, learners and potential learners. This can be a difficult shift to manage, and many marketing staff fail to develop the necessary mindset.

Controlling the message: Some institutions find the fact that social media can give a voice to many different people in the organisation to be threatening.  Managers are used to being able to control the messages that come out, but social media makes this a lot harder. Some respond by trying to clamp down, but this is rarely a successful strategy, and it is far more effective to join the conversation, develop a persuasive persona, and win people onto your side.

Staff lack of comfort with social media and digital tools: The digital divide is still very apparent in the education sector, with organisations like FE colleges and adult learning providers staffed with significant numbers of people who have little or no interest in social media, and who struggle to use digital equipment. This is an additional barrier to adoption, beyond management and blocking issues.

Child protection and teacher/student relationships: These inter-connected issues manifested themselves in a number of ways during the discussions. The Podcamp was mainly focussing on post-14 learning, so child protection was perhaps not quite the issue it might otherwise have been, but it is still an important factor. The fact that Facebook, at the time of the Podcamp at least, was holding out against introducing effective child protection measures, has not been a help in persuading teachers and their management that the introduction of social media to the classroom is a responsible step. Many teachers and tutors are also nervous about what social networking means for their relationships with students. Social networking between teachers and students risks opening up the private lives of teachers to the scrutiny of their charges, and means they could be seen to be invading students’ private spaces.

A workshop session on the issues of “Social Media, Digital Identity and Personality” failed to do more than scratch the surface of this complex issue, provided more questions than answers, and perhaps opened up a debate that might extend into a series of events in the future.

Day two was about a more-or-less straight lecture from Chris. It felt like a lecture, because it was held in a lecture theatre, but Chris’s style does not really lend itself to the term “lecture”. Beginning by telling the room that everyone there is, collectively, much more intelligent that he is, is not usually the way most lecturers would begin.  Chris has clearly got his social media “sound bites” well honed, one which struck a real chord was “promote others 12 times to every one time you promote yourself; and be at the shoulder of every deal”. This brought home how much social media is about generosity, and, while it may be tempting to think of the old adage “if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made”, it was a neat way of encapsulating Chris’ point that social media allows organisations to develop real and meaningful relationships with their customers and potential customers, the result of which is that people really want to buy something from them.

For the delegates in Doncaster, there were two aspects of Social Media in Education of interest, that of using Social Media in the marketing and recruitment activities of the organisation, and that of its use in the classroom. Much of the content of Chris’s presentation was more relevant to the former rather than the latter aspect, but there had been much talk about classroom issues in the previous day’s sessions.

Chris urges organisations to “Listen – publish – connect”, the material you put out there must be responsive to your audiences’ needs and desires, and you must use it as a focus for opening and maintaining a dialogue with them.  In the modern era, people expect organisations to be open about what they do, but effective use of social media requires organisations and individuals to practice “publicness”, find their voice, and learn to become comfortable with living large parts of their lives in public. A lot of people think that being open about what they do undermines their competitive advantage, whereas the reality is that it demonstrates you are getting things done, and these days, people suspect those who are secretive about what they do might have something to hide, or at least that they are less than proud of their work.

Another thing that social media allows you to do is to let other people speak about you. Fora such a Facebook Groups and other online profiles encourage users and potential users to share opinions on your organisation. If you are successful in befriending them and showing your generosity online, they are likely to talk about you in positive terms, and testimonials from others are always much more powerful than anything you might say about yourself.

Altogether, this was a fascinating day and a half, a first for Doncaster with such a world-renowned speaker arriving in the town, simply because of an online conversation with Rob Wilmot. In many ways, this was an apt demonstration of how the internet and social media are shrinking the world, and shaping new forms of relationship. There is much work to be done in this area, however, in ensuring both educational institutions and teachers & lecturers are comfortable with social media and able to integrate it into their work. Digital 20/20 and its partners look forward to taking this forward with Doncaster College and many of the organisations and individuals represented at the event.

FITS is a tailored best practice framework designed specifically for IT teams providing service to the school sector. Two courses are now available and are open for booking for August dates:

FITS – ICT Support in Education – Practitioner  £510 + VAT

Content:-Service desk; incident and problem handling; security, change release, patch management and configuration management.

Duration: Two day course. This comprises one and a half days of teaching followed by an examination which takes place at the end of the second day.

This unit will benefit individuals involved in ICT technical support in schools, colleges and universities and may include teaching assistants, technicians, management and supporting consultants.

This course provides 2 credits towards NVQ level 4.

FITS – ICT Support in Education: Advanced/ Managers £710 + VAT 

Content: Service level management, service continuity management, availability and capacity management, performance monitoring, preventative maintenance, print & output management, energy conservation, storage management, directory services administration and financial management.

Duration: Three day course. This comprises two and a half days of teaching followed by an examination which takes place at the end of the third day.

This unit will benefit individuals involved in ICT technical support in schools, colleges and universities and may include senior technicians, management, head teachers and supporting consultants.

This course provides 2 credits towards NVQ level 5.

Location and dates:

Leeds City Learning Centre: 2^nd August and 16^th August

To register on one of the above courses contact WSLIT on 07791 306837 or email wsl.margaret@rocketmail.com to book your place.

If you are interested in finding out more, contact: lindsey.strachan@vital.ac.uk , tel: 07770 731584 or beverley.parker@vital.ac.uk , tel: 07769 234235

Dee Desgranges from Sheffield Council and National adviser on Participation spoke about a number of ways to engage disaffected learners. This was followed by a discussion about the best way to take the NEETs agenda forward. There was general agreement that a Special Interest Group focused on NEETs and e-inclusion issues would be beneficial and there was also interest in the idea of developing a regional Virtual College.

Steve Butler
Operations Director for national delivery of the FITS programme
Margaret Wharton
FITS training provider for Yorkshire & Humberside
Alex Jones
Manager, Sheffield West CLC

Anyone who has worked in a school, college or university will be familiar with the trench warfare which often exists between teacher and technician. The teacher wants to use technology in a particular way and blames the technician for putting up gratuitous obstacles, usually in the name of site security. The technician blames the teacher for making unclear demands in bullying tones.

FITS offers a way past this impasse. The scheme was set up by Becta in 2003 to promote best practice in ICT Service Management. This in turn encourages a greater use of technology in teaching and learning by removing many of the obstacles that inhibit the use of IT.

ITIL, the industry standard course for IT technicians, is 6 times more expensive than FITS and less precisely targeted on the kinds of problems encountered in educational institutions.

FITS is much more focused on education issues: it doesn’t teach you anything irrelevant to the job of IT technician in education.

The course offers level 4 qualification for practitioners, level 5 for managers.

Alex Jones’ presentation is here: http://prezi.com/gsrmlu9wnf79/fits-20052010/

The other aspect of the meeting was looking at the establishment of an elearning network across the city of York to foster sharing of best practices and collaborative activities, and there was strong support for this initiative.

Meanwhile, here is some ammunition that might be useful for those of you seeking funding for e-inclusion projects:

Many of those who stand to benefit the most from the democratising power of the web are yet to engage with technology at all. Of the 10 million Britons who are offline, 4 million are also ‘socially excluded’ – mostly the elderly, the long-term unemployed or families with children.

The Government is committed to tackling digital exclusion and putting an end to the digital divide. On 7 December 2009, the Government published the Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government report. The report recognised the potential to reduce the cost of public services and improve the customer experience by moving the majority of provision online. It also acknowledged 100% online government had to mean 100% online citizens, and Gordon Brown announced £30m for UK online centres to get one million people online for the end of 2012.

The publication of the report follows the Champion for Digital Inclusion, Martha Lane Fox’s, Race Online 2012 initiative which aims to get 4 million of the most disadvantaged people online over the next 3 years.

Digital participation is key to tackling digital exclusion. This was echoed in the Government’s Digital Britain report, published June 2009. The report brings together the economic and social digital agendas, building the case for informal digital skills and inclusion. To ensure that everyone can share in the benefits of Digital Britain, the Government are taking the following steps:

• Three year National Plan to improve Digital Participation
• Programme of Digital Switchover in public services
• A new Digital Inclusion Champion: Martha Lane Fox
• Revised Digital remit for Channel 4 and key role for BBC
• Guaranteed funding for three years for targeted marketing and outreach

This is the background info for another (not Digital 20/20) event on digital inclusion,
“Tackling Social Exclusion Through Technology: Delivering Digital Inclusion” in London on June 23rd: http://www.insidegovernment.co.uk/other/digital-inclusion/#agenda

This forum will offer delegates the opportunity to take the debate beyond the existing legislative framework and have a timely opportunity to discuss how we can work together to drive up digital participation and put an end to the digital divide.

Since these e-inclusion projects tend to exist outside the mainstream of educational provision, often in some isolation, Digital 20/20 would like to provide a forum to share ideas, both online at http://yheinclusion.ning.com/ and in face-to-face sessions.  If you’re interested in joining the e-inclusion group, please email nick.jeans@sero.co.uk