ACSA Adult Education Conferences, September 29-October 1, 2010, Sacramento | Focus +

Connections = Impact

What Does Twitter Have to Do with Adult Ed? And What is It, Anyway?
Sacramento Room
Branka Marceta, Coordinator of Technology Projects, OTAN, Presenter
Thursday, September 30, 2010, 3:00 – 4:15 p.m.
Administrators new to Web 2.0 will discover online tools for social networking and
collaboration such as Twitter, Facebook, Ning, Linked In, Wikis, and Blogs. They will
see how some of their adult education colleagues use these new ways to publicize
and communicate with the target audience. Hands-on activities will demonstrate the
benefit and the ‘cool factor’ today’s modern technology can bring to adult education.

Why would adult schools use these tools?

- Adult learners are already on these networks. Some adult educators are on there,
too.
- There’s a potential to reach untapped audiences.
- This is a new way of marketing.
- With the use of mobile devices these tools provide learning and professional
development “on-the-go”.
- Your reasons here...
- Your reasons here...

TWITTER
Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile
page. Tweets are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message
delivery to their friends list. Users may subscribe to other author tweets—this is
known as following and subscribers are known as followers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

In Education
For professional development – Personal Learning Networks
For teacher/learner interaction – Writing and discussion prompts, research skills
For marketing – Advertising school events and classes

Who’s on Twitter?
OTAN
http://twitter.com/#!/otan

US Dept of Education
http://twitter.com/usedgov

National Coalition for Literacy

http://twitter.com/#!/NCLAdvocacy

OTAN Adult Education List

http://twitter.com/#!/list/otan/adult-education

Branka Marceta, bmarceta@otan.us

ACSA Adult Education Conferences, September 29-October 1, 2010, Sacramento | Focus +
Connections = Impact

FACEBOOK
Facebook is a social networking website. Users can add people as friends and send
them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about
themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or
college.

Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information
and other personal information. Communicating with friends and other users can be
done through private or public messages or a chat feature. Users can also create and
join interest groups and "like pages" (formerly called "fan pages" until April 19, 2010),
some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising.[

To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy
settings and choose who can see what parts of their profile. The website is free to
users and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads. Facebook
requires a user’s name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by
everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as
who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Facebook features
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_markup_language

In Education
For professional development – Personal
Learning Networks
For teacher/learner interaction – Discussion
Boards
For marketing – Advertising school events and
classes

Who’s on Facebook?
Torrance Adult School - Page
http://www.facebook.com/#!/torranceadultschool

Downey Adult Ed – DAS Edu – Friend Page

http://www.facebook.com/#!/das.edu?v=wall

Basset Adult School - Page

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/La-Puente-CA/Bassett-Adult-
School/59269537420?ref=ts

Hemet Adult School - Page

Branka Marceta, bmarceta@otan.us

ACSA Adult Education Conferences, September 29-October 1, 2010, Sacramento | Focus +
Connections = Impact

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hemet-CA/Hemet-Adult-School/70360493391?v=wall

Milpitas Adult Education - Group

http://www.facebook.com/facebook?v=wall#!/group.php?
gid=148067548545737&ref=ts

San Diego Workplace Learning Resource Centers – Page

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/Workplace-Learning-Resource-
Centers/308461087574

Ron Fujihara’s Online Learning Class - Group

http://www.facebook.com/Senseiron#!/group.php?gid=240223841715

NING
Ning competes with social sites like MySpace, Facebook and BigTent by appealing to
people who want to create their own social networks around specific interests with
their own visual design, choice of features and member data. The central feature of
Ning is that anyone can create their own social network for a particular topic or need,
catering to specific membership bases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ning_(website)

In Education
For professional development – Participating in Discussion Groups
For teacher/learner interaction – Keeping in touch, participating in n Discussion
Groups

Who’s on Ning?
ACSA
http://acsa-community.ning.com/

ABE Initiative
http://californiaabe.ning.com/

Started charging so many educators discontinued

using it and are looking for other alternatives such as
http://wiggio.com/ and http://grou.ps/

LinkedIn
LinkedIn (pronounced /ˌlɪŋkt.ˈɪn/) is a business-oriented social networking site.
Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for
professional networking. As of 9 August 2010, LinkedIn had more than 75 million
registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The
site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn

In Education
For professional development – Participating in Discussion Groups

Branka Marceta, bmarceta@otan.us

ACSA Adult Education Conferences, September 29-October 1, 2010, Sacramento | Focus +
Connections = Impact

For teacher/learner interaction – Creating Resumes

Wikis and Blogs

CDE consultants communicating with their regions

Neil Kelly
New Administrator - http://newadultadmin.pbworks.com/
CTE Adult Education - http://cteadulted.pbworks.com/

Mindi Yates
The West LA and San Bernardino Network Site -
http://socaladulted.weebly.com/index.html

Branka Marceta, bmarceta@otan.us