Whether you are developing a learning activity to a group of students, attempting to recruit volunteers to a project or advertising an online event to the wider Internet, you need to think about how you market your event. Even if you are a teacher with a 'captive' audience of students, you want to be able to 'sell' your learning activity or event so that students engage with it. And don't forget the 1% rule that was mentioned in the week: "August 9th What is online facilitation?" - whilst you may get the full attention and engagement of one person, there will be other 'lurkers' who do not engage with you.
Other questions you need to consider when you are marketing your event are:
- Is this activity or event in an open or closed environment? Do I need to target my marketing to specific people or use the Internet to spread as far and as wide as I can?
- What networks do I need to develop and what communities do I need to access in order to market my event/activity?
- How can I leverage or make the most of the serendipitous nature of the Internet?
- Will the event/activity/project be free or does it have a cost involved?
- What tools shall I use - free or proprietary tools?
- Will the speakers/participants incur a cost?
- How will I support people to access the technology before the event/activity?
- How can I market my event to and support people who have minimal access to computers and the Internet?
- Is there a place for integrating the cell phone?
- How can I put information online in a format that can be printed cheaply for people who have limited Internet access.
Twitter is a great tool for developing synchronous networks, accessing serendipitous events and disseminating information.
1. Set up Twitter account - click here for more information.
2 Add your Twitter user name to the course "Participants" page.
- Find the rest of the class participants on Twitter and start to follow each other.
3. Attend one of the two class meetings in Twitter. The meetings will be facilitated by Sarah Stewart. One meeting will be on Thursday 16th 20.00 hours New Zealand World Clock. The second opportunity to attend will be on Friday 17th September at 12.30 hours New Zealand World Clock. Sarah will send out information about how to do this nearer the time. Two of the questions that will be discussed are:
- What do you need to do develop an effective online network that you can use for your online facilitation?
- What tips can you share about online networking that will help us improve our online facilitation skills?
1. Look at this presentation by Jane Hart: Some cool tools for a hot topic. Social learning 2010.
2. Read this wiki page Online tools for collaborationand Using Web 2.0 tools.
3. Read this article: 5 Ways to Orchestrate Serendipity by Rachel Happe, 2009.
4. Reflect on your experience of using Twitter in your blog.
- What worked well?
- What did not go so well?
- What skills or resources do you need to network and facilitate meetings using Twitter?
- How do you see yourself using Twitter in the future, if at all, for online facilitation?
No comments:
Post a Comment