What is your status update?
Are you on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Linkedin, Ning, Mightybell, Scoopit, Pinterest, Scribd, Diigo, Mentormob, and WizIQ? If you are not, you should get an account right now so you can be sharing, learning, and ultimately, making a difference in people’s lives around the globe. How can a status update make a difference in the world?

Learning from Optimists
According to Gina Bianchini, the co-founder and ex-CEO of Ning and the current founder and CEO of Mightybell, hope, competency, and drive are key ingredients to making a difference in the world. Gina has been featured on Fortune Magazines 40 under 40, Huffington Posts 10 technology Ultimate Game Changers, and 7×7 magazines Hot 20 list. Gina and Ning have been featured in the New York Times, Fortune, Forbes and Fast Company. She has also appeared on CNBC and CNN.  Watch and listen to Gina Bianchini speak about connecting optimists.

My Status Updates
I’ve been teaching face-to-face in traditional schools for over 3 decades. I broke out of the traditional classroom when the Internet first became public in the mid 80s. I have been spending most of my waking hours for the past 15 years teaching and learning online. I am no longer limited to time and space in communicating information (teaching) and in learning by  teaching others. We all become teachers when we post our status updates. I hope that what I post will help others learn. I use the following social networks for my status update:

• Academia: http://uphoenixwichita.academia.edu/NellieDeutsch
• Diigo: http://www.diigo.com/profile/nelliemuller
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nelliemuller
• Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/115363830845703060820/posts?hl=en
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nelliemuller
• MentorMob: http://www.mentormob.com/people/profile/dr-nellie-deutsch-6024
• Mightybell: https://mightybell.com/experiences/Teaching-Online-in-a-Live-Classroom
• Ning: http://connecting-online.ning.com/profile/nelliemuller
• Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/nelliemuller
• Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/nelliemuller
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/nelliemuller
• WizIQ: http://www.wiziq.com/nelliedeutsch

What social network do you for your status update and how do you share information online?

Sharing & Learning
We are making a difference in people’s lives by sharing information on social networks. But the process doesn’t come naturally to everyone so social networks are helping people learn how to share. Learning to share is a very important aspect of learning for the person posting and for those who read and respond. Social networks are creating a ripple effect that is connecting and bringing people of all cultures together.

Posting on a private discussion board or a closed learning environment such as Moodle, Blackboard, Edumodo, and other university-based learning management or course management systems is limiting. You can blog about your learning experiences and spread the word on social networks for everyone to see, add their comments, and learn.  Connecting with the facilitators or the class members limits your scope and lessons learned.

Learning After Class
For example, if you missed some of the class sessions (online or face-to-face) or the class is now over, you can continue collaborating and learning from people around the globe. You can create a blog using the free programs available, create or join a Ning, or you can share your experiences on Mightybell.  By sharing your experiences on social networks, you open up to a larger audience and learn in the process.

Gina is an optimistic individual who is passionate about learning & sharing. She does all she can to share her ideas and inspire people make a difference in their lifetime . You are invited to join Gina Bianchini in conversation on WizIQ, ask questions, and share your ideas so that others will learn.

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We live in an age where people are constantly plugged in. You can’t go anywhere without seeing people on their smart phones: texting, tweeting, e-mailing, and complaining to all their Facebook friends about the smelly guy that just sat next to them on the train. I often find myself wasting the hours away refreshing my Facebook or Tumblr page the way I used to mindlessly sit in front of the TV all night when I was a little kid. Of course, back then, my mom could switch the channel to PBS or some other educational program, so my brain didn’t rot completely and the hours weren’t totally wasted. So how can we do this with social networking?

Is there a way to sneak in and find a way to make those hours on Facebook productive in an educational setting?

From my experiences, I can answer that question with an emphatic yes! I go to Columbia College Chicago, a liberal arts school whose “Principles for Student Success” include “Form Your Creative Posse!” (a “hip” way of saying collaborate) and “Live What You Love!” True to its progressive and forward-thinking nature, the college has hopped on the Facebook bandwagon and has created not only a page, but an entire application.

Creating an Online Community

After getting accepted to Columbia and creating a school e-mail address, I received an invitation to the app. It was divided into two separate sections: one for incoming students and one for current students. So until a few weeks before classes started, the app I had access to was only used by other new students, just like me, who were both nervous and excited to start at Columbia. Within the app, you had your own profile where you could include information such as your major, hometown, interests, clubs, and even the dorm you were assigned to live in. There were forums where people could post questions and Orientation Leaders (the only current students with access to the app) would answer. It created a really awesome little community where everyone was extremely eager to make new friends and could do so comfortably behind the mask of the computer screen. My best friend started talking to me because we’re both Fiction Writing majors and were going to live in the same building. We were able to make a connection while I was still in Massachusetts and he in Texas. The night he moved in, he messaged me on Facebook (at 2:00am) and we met up in our pajamas and spent the night giggling in the dorm’s social lounge. He’s now an instrumental member of my “creative posse” and the first person to hear the early drafts of my stories.

Reaching Out to Collaborate

Once I started classes and automatically switched to the app that included current students, the newsfeed quickly changed from updates like, “I’m so excited to start classes!” and “Who else going to the Welcome Events?” to “I need models for an upcoming studio shoot!” and “Who wants to be an extra in my zombie movie?” My first semester, I took a class on how to write comic books and needed to find an artist to illustrate the first six pages of my graphic novel. I posted an ad on the Columbia app and found an artist who did the job for $20 and a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

How does Facebook hold up as a Learning Management System?

Though the app was great for the socialization aspect of college and the idea of collaboration, it wasn’t as popular when it came to running classes. There was an option to treat it as a Learning Management System, with built-in pages for each class. I never had a professor who made use of it, but some of my roommates did. They were required to post homework on the Facebook page and respond to each other’s work. There were a few problems with this, the most glaring one being that not everyone has a Facebook page. (Insert gasps and protestations here.) Yes, though Facebook almost seems to be a first world requirement, like a birth certificate or social security card, more and more people (especially hipster art school kids) are ditching it. Many of my friends deleted theirs because it was too big of a distraction. It seems silly to require students to have an account on a website that isn’t inherently educational and could distract them from their studies. On top of that, though the Columbia app profile page is separate from your personal page, it is still connected. Personally, I would feel a little uncomfortable making my page that accessible to other students and teachers. Besides, there are plenty of Learning Management Systems better designed for online teaching. Professors might as well make use of the systems their schools are already paying for instead of using a free website as faulty as Facebook.

So what does it all mean?

Social networking isn’t going away, so we need to figure out the best ways to utilize it for our needs. Though Facebook isn’t a great system for actually educating students, it’s a fantastic way to build community within a school. The importance of community within education should never be underestimated, as students often learn best when they’re surrounded by those they feel comfortable with and challenged by. Through a college’s Facebook app, students are able to connect and collaborate in a way that’s simple, comfortable, and easily accessible.

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Notice I said that every school seems to have an LMS; I can say from experience that many teachers just don’t bother with them. I took 4 classes this last semester and only two of them used my university’s LMS of choice: Blackboard. In one class, I was forced to use Blackboard, because it was an online class. The other class where Blackboard was being used was Geometry. However, I never once used it other than to download the syllabus for the class. My school doesn’t really force the use of Blackboard; many of my friends go to schools that do. Unfortunately for schools, students, maybe even more than teachers, just aren’t using the LMS that is available.

But who can blame the Professors?          

Could Facebook be a better way!!

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