Field Testing Webinar Tomorrow (Thursday, 9/4)

Hello! We're looking forward to "meeting" you tomorrow on the Field Testing Orientation webinar from 2:30 - 3:30 ET. During this hour we'll give an overview of the lessons and information on the responsibilities of field testers.

To register, contact Joe Ippolito, EDC Sr. Project Director, at jippolito@edc.org

RSVP for the Field Testing Orientation Webinar

Community College instructors: Are you interested in field testing our Social Technology Enabled Professional lessons? Not only will you learn about a tool that can help your students succeed in using social media to grow their businesses, you'll be equipped with a tool that can help them think strategically. And you'll get a $100 stipend.

Read Friday's post below for more info, AND RSVP for our online orientation webinar to learn how to get started by emailing Joe Ippolito, field testing coordinator, at Education Development Center: jippolito@edc.org.

The webinar is this Thursday, 9/4/14, from 2:30 - 3:30 ET.

You can also sign up now to field test at http://go.edc.org/STEPFieldTestRegistration
.

You're invited to Field Test the STEP social media lessons

You are invited to field test one or more exciting new lessons that teach important social media skills within the context of real life, workplace problems. Education Development Center (EDC), with the support of a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technology Education initiative (NSF-ATE), has worked with nationally recognized social media experts and small business owners to craft problem-based learning lessons that focus on building skills that are essential to any Social Technology Enabled Professional (STEP).

At this time we have three comprehensive online lessons that can become part of a classroom curriculum, homework, after school, or unit/culminating project:

• STEP Lesson 1: Using Social Media to Establish and Grow an Online Presence For Your Business
• STEP Lesson 2: Establish a Social Media Network within your Field
• STEP Lesson 3: Knowledge Sharing within your Organization.

Each of these lessons is designed for technical faculty who want to help students learn to use social media to develop a business brand and network. The lessons include step-by-step instructions, informational resources, templates and assessment guidelines in the form of rubrics. The lesson design allows them to be used in the classroom led by an instructor or to be used by students as a self-directed learning exercise with the instructor as a mentor/guide.

A stipend of $100 is available for providing feedback on each lesson (i.e. 1, 2 or 3 lessons), with the requirements that you:

Participate in an orientation webinar for field testers on Thursday, Sept. 4, at 2:30 PM EDT.
Schedule the field test(s) during the Fall, 2014 semester and that the field test(s) is completed no later than December 1, 2014;
Complete a brief on-line survey assessing the field test experience no later than December 7, 2014;
Participate in a brief phone interview about the field test experience after delivering the lesson.

If you would like to field test one of these lessons, please complete the Field Testing and Webinar Registration Form at http://go.edc.org/STEPFieldTestRegistration.

For more information, contact Joe Ippolito at jippolito@edc.org.

We look forward to working with you!

STEP social media lessons present students with workplace activities that build social media skills

Instructors using the new STEP social media lessons present to students real-life workplace activities like this one to build social media skills:

Publish Content by Creating Five Posts on Social Media

To get your business social media sites started, create five posts on your social media platforms. This is how you will communicate with your audience about your business activities, so it is important that you think carefully about the content you will post beforehand. Post content that reflects the selected voice and addresses the target market (e.g., long form, short updates, how-to videos, podcasts, distills, curates, aggregates, case studies, invites community through questions, live chats, first person or third person voice).

If you will be working with a local company/organization, you will need to work out an arrangement regarding social media posting. In some cases, it may be necessary to have your content approved before it is posted online, and in other cases setting your social media accounts to private so that only a select group of people (your classmates and employees at the company/organization you will be working with) can access it will be necessary (in this case, you would be working in a closed online community). Details should be arranged with the company/organization that you are working with.

If you have your own business, you are welcome to do the same (i.e., set your social media accounts to private) until you have received feedback about your online activities. However, you are free to set your social media accounts and online postings to public right away if you wish to do so.

Consider the following tips:

• Posting style will differ across the various social media platforms. For example, Twitter’s 140-character limit will require you to shorten sentences – this is fine and you are encouraged to use abbreviations. On LinkedIn, on the other hand, posts should include full, properly formatted sentences and should be highly professional. 
• When creating your five posts, consider some of the posting guidelines for each social media platform you use (see links below). Especially keep in mind that posting several times per day on Twitter (5+ tweets/day) is customary and expected, while this is not the case on LinkedIn. Facebook and Google+ fall somewhere in the middle – 2-3 posts per day should be enough. While on Twitter you are not always expected to post original content (retweeting other users’ posts that might be relevant to your audience is encouraged), you should be mostly posting original content on Facebook. 
• See this infographic on posting guidelines for several social media platforms (http://www.themainstreetanalyst.com/2013/06/13/social-media-posting-guidelines-for-twitter-facebook-google-and-pinterest-infographic) and consider these pointers for social media engagement (http://mashable.com/2010/05/18/rules-social-media-engagment).