Reflecting on Rachel’s 25th birthday post last week, I’m going to feel old with this opening anecdote, but here goes…
A few years ago, when I was about 31, I was at a meeting with faculty for a graduate program. I offered up examples of how we were reworking some of our existing course tools to give them elements of social media. Before I got too far, I was stopped in my tracks: “Our students are not teenagers,” they chided me, “Our students are working professionals.”
So in honor of all of you “working professionals”, in honor of the rest of the misunderstood, I give you…
3 Social Media Assumptions Not to Make
(because we all know what happens when you assume)
- Twitter is dead. Maybe not. People may just not understand how to use it right away. I got my account in February 2007 and didn’t do much with it until March of 2008. My use looked like this or sounded like this discussion on TWIT (~1:18:00-1:25:00).
- Social media is all about narcissistic people who want to talk about themselves. Not exactly. It all depends on how people use the tools. Most people will not reach a certain level of success without giving back to the community and having a dialog.
- Everyone is just like you. No, people use technology in different ways and for different reasons. They may use different tools. They may embrace change more or less readily than you.
Image adapted from Fail 7900 by timcaynes.
The content of this post is licensed: ©2009 All Rights Reserved
About the author
Nikki is a multimedia specialist with Penn State's World Campus Learning Design unit, creating and editing multimedia for online courses.
Previously, she was technology training coordinator with the Penn State University Libraries, responsible for technology training offered in the Libraries' 20+ departments and 30+ library locations.
Over the years, she's been she served as an interim associate director of instructional technology and multimedia, a programmer, a database specialist, a Microsoft Certified Master Instructor, a continuing education instructor for seniors and adults with disabilities, and a high school English and communications technology teacher.
Her interests are in the areas where technology, training, and communication intersect. She holds degrees in both computer science and in education. She is also an insomniac and an extreme extrovert with an indiscriminate love of language (including expletives).
This post was written by Nikki Massaro Kauffman - who has written 42 posts on .eduGuru
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