Jul 16th

Education Strategies – Blogging & Social Media in the Classroom

hi-point journeysHere are two questions to think about:

  1. If social media and blogging were popular when you were a student, and there was a program to teach you how to use these tools, would that have signed up?
  2. Do you think it would have had an impact on your career path?

The Social Learning Lab at Hi-Point

My friend, Shane Haggerty, believes that the impact would have been exponential.

That’s why he’s doing it right now.  At the Ohio Hi-Point Career Center, Shane is teaching a select group of students how to proactively and responsibly use the social web to build their individual presence, and with it, build a presence for the center itself.  Shane is building a human business team.

The student bloggers at Hi-Point Journeys are worth your attention.  The program itself and the students, led by Shane, are challenging the status quo in education.  They’ve built a laboratory to help them experiment with education strategies that leverage social media and the Interwebz.

This video is just over 16 minutes in length, which (by my own standards) is way too long for a single blog post.  However, the trouble is that every time I try to edit it down, I feel like I take away from Shane’s story of this amazing project.

To make it manageable, I can simply suggest the following:

  • Make sure your speakers are turned up
  • Pretend this is a podcast
  • Push play
  • Listen and go about doing what you need to get done

I also want to tip my hat at Oxiem Marketing Technology, as well as Tom Williams and Innogage.

As Shane mentioned, Oxiem is the development partner behind building the web platforms on which these students operate to produce their content.  In my opinion, they are one of the best firms at integrating social media, SEO and web design in Ohio.

Tom comes in with his product, Innoblogs, which plugs into WordPress to create a back-end workflow system to manage collaborative blog teams.  I like it a lot, and accordingly, use it with a few of my own clients.

(I’m writing about these folks because they are doing great work.  For the record, I’m not affiliated with either Oxiem or Innogage, but we do sometimes work on projects together, openly.  Also, Hi-Point is not a client.  Shane is simply leading educators towards social media adoption in the classroom.  And that’s worth talking about.)

What do you think?  Should social media education be taught at the high school level?

nateriggs

I advise mid-sized & large organizations on how to adopt and use social media to market through organizational culture and better serve their clients. I'm also a blended family dad who enjoys music, photography and distance racing. When I'm not writing here, you can find me writing over at the Content Marketing Institute. Like what you've read so far? Then why not subscribe HERE?

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Comments (17)
  • Eckhardt Tiffany

    I love the idea of engaging students in social media and allowing them a platform to blog. There are so many good things that can come out of it! My daughter went to Ohio Hi-Point. I love that they treat the students as customers and really care about what they have to say. Shane is doing a fabulous job helping people in education understand the importance of social media and addressing it in a positive way.

  • http://nateriggs.com nateriggs

    There's sop much students have to learn by blogging. Blogging under the guidance of Shane and the journeys program is a great start!

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  • Bfischer

    Thanks for the kind words Nate. Shane is the type of client every agency hopes to work with. This is definitely a project Oxiem is very proud to be a part of.

    Thanks again!

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  • http://twitter.com/OneJason Jason Velliquette

    Absolutely our youth should be exposed to social media in an educational format. The digital age emerged as us 30-somethings were also finding ourselves. In essence, we both grew up together; we both had room to make mistakes. But now children are growing up in a world where the Internet is as prevalent as radio or television, but now the rules are so very different. Maturity and comprehension are necessary to successfully navigate the challenges of a social media presence and interaction. Shane is giving these kids a gift of empowerment. Hopefully, we'll begin to see this type of programming become as prominent as say… the Internet.

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  • http://www.dogwalkblog.com/ Rufus Dogg

    Liking the social media integration, but thinking it might be a bit “mis-placed.” It might be my English degree talking louder than it should, but blogging is a great tool for students to write every day, even if it is only a few paragraphs and even if it never gets published to the outside world.

    Writing enables students to hone writing skills and frustrate fewer college professors when they get there. There is also a HUGE potential for teaching ethics, critical thinking, story-telling and journalism (instead of just opinion-writing) with blogging. Far too many bloggers have great ideas and expertise, but little ability to communicate. Writing is a skill just like any other; it take practice. We are not born with the skill.

    We may want to stop calling it blogging as well. It is writing, just using a computer instead of a moleskin. But that might just be me.

  • http://nateriggs.com nateriggs

    Writing is writing. Technology is technology. Teaching blogging in high school seems like the best of both worlds…