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This article on Resource Link, September 21, 2011, captures the learning environments we wish to bring to businesses, nonprofits, and membership associations. "Social Media - what do you need to know? In the 21st century, learning networks are richer than ever before. Social media, including tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow connections with professionals to be developed in offline and online worlds in new and exciting ways. No longer are we limited geographically. Social media allows us to connect not only to those we know, but also to those who we don't know, but who share our passions, our interests and our profession. Despite never having met in the physical sense, it is now possible to share links, comment on educational research, debate, collaborate and create new knowledge with individuals no matter where they are working." Another excerpt: So….Social Media and Professional Learning Communities? What is the connection? A school which is a professional learning community focuses upon removing the walls between classrooms (metaphorically, in all cases, physically in some!), encouraging collaboration, dialogue, ready access to colleagues and an openness to challenge understandings and current 'accepted' knowledge. Excerpt: Roberts and Pruitt, in their book Schools as Professional Learning Communities (p3, 2009) quote research that suggests that the major obstacle for schools who wish to develop as learning communities is the provision of resources such as time to collaborate, leadership support, information and ready access to colleagues. Social Media is not the total answer; but in schools where money and time are in short demand (and which school isn't in this situation?), they can go part of the way in meeting these needs. 1. social media providing to time to collaborate 2. social media providing leadership support 3. social media providing information 4. social media providing access to colleagues

Article in U.S. News & World Report on physicians using social media, January 1, 2013. About one in four U.S. doctors uses social media daily to scan or explore medical information, according to a new study. The survey of nearly 500 cancer specialists (oncologists) and primary-care doctors also found that 14 percent contribute new information via social media each day, said the researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore. Sixty-one percent of the doctors said they use social media once a week or more to look for information, and 46 percent said they contribute new information once a week or more, according to the study, which appeared recently in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. More than half of the respondents said they use only physician-only communities and only 7 percent said they use Twitter.

Article published 10/3/12 in Medical Economics by Brandon Glenn. "Nearly one-fourth of physicians use social media on a daily basis to scan or explore medical information, according to a recently published study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. The researchers behind the study set out to examine physicians' level of social media usage for the purpose of exchanging advice, ideas, reports, and scientific discoveries with other physicians. The study was based on emailed survey responses from 485 primary care physicians (PCPs) and oncologists, and it had a response rate of 28%. They found that, whereas just 24% of physicians use social media to "scan or explore" on a daily basis for those reasons, that number jumps to 61% when measured on a weekly basis. Physicians who use social media to "contribute," rather than merely scan information, stood at 14% daily and 46% weekly. "

Blog from Nonprofit Tech for Good 1/5/15 10 processes to turn into goals for the year including: Write LinkedIn Recommendations and endorsements; Add cause awareness days; experiment with at least one new social network; download and study nonprofit mobile apps; refresh your social media training; experiment with crowdfunding; host or participate in a tweet chat; create a social media fundraising success spreadsheet; take an Adobe Photoshop class; take regular breaks from technology

From Nonprofit Tech for Good blog, 1/11/14 Interesting to see how this list meshes with the list from 2015 from the business and not for profit side. Top of the list is mobilizing online communications and fundraising campaigns. Although not free and costly to small not for profits, social media and responsive designs for websites, blogs, and e-newsletters will become common. Flat design - making sure everything is optimal for mobile is crucial. Donate buttons on social media sites. Google Wallet will be integrated into Google+ pages. Already on YouTube Channels that participate in YouTube's nonprofit program. Live reporting on social media of org events, maturation of mobile fundraising apps, and increased employment opportunities in new media jobs in the nonprofit sector are the other 2014 trends.

An amazing project that utilizes gaming, social media, digital badging, and virtual worlds as methods to promote digital literacy to youth in high risk areas. These after-school programs are designed to "Global Kids believes that youth be not merely critical consumers but active producers of digital media". Kids produce games on social issues impacting them (such as neighborhood violence or racial intolerance) that are designed to teach others about not just about the issue but how it feels to be impacted by the issue.

The Global Kids definition of leadership is very in tune with what we have been trying to convey, I think. Here is there goal statement: "The Global Kids Online Leadership Program (OLP) integrates international and public policy issues into digital media programs to encourage digital literacy and technical competency, foster global awareness, promote civic participation and develop 21st Century skills. OLP was created in 2000 to bring new media into Global Kids' after school programs, introduce these programs into online communities, and explore how the combination of the two could develop 21st Century Learning Skills. Through programs utilizing video games, virtual worlds, social media, and other forms of participatory media, youth involved in our programs now have the opportunity to have their voices heard and make a global impact in ways that were previously unimaginable."

Interview by Andrew Leonard, February 22, 2014, with danah boyd on Salon on findings from her new book--It's Complicated: the social lives of networked teens. The "why" they hangout and their actual skill levels excerpts are below. "What exactly is it that teens are trying to do with social media? They're looking for a space to hang out. When we grew up it was the mall or cafes or a variety of other physically grounded spaces. Teens today don't have access to those kinds of spaces and what they've done is they've turned to social media to regain some kind of access to public life. These new "networked publics" - places like Twitter and Facebook - are spaces that are created by digital technologies but they are really about people - the broad network of people that teens have learned to negotiate and socialize around." Teens seem to embrace these new "networked publics" very rapidly, but one chapter of your book annihilates the notion that teens are somehow "digitally native" - that they somehow understand these new technologies more readily or more naturally than their forebears. Teenagers are much more willing to experiment with these technologies to service their end goals - their social goals. There is no doubt about that.. Teens are always much more willing to just try things out. But just because they are willing to try things out doesn't mean that they understand how it works. That doesn't mean that they are inherently technologically sophisticated or understand technology in the ways that are often implied by "digital native."

article in Amednews (American Medical News) in September 26, 2011 by Pamela Lewis Dolan. Data already old but interesting. "However, although physicians appear to be embracing social media, they are still feeling their way around it. According to QuantiaMD, 87% of physicians make personal use of social media, but a lesser amount, 67%, use it professionally. And one thing that hasn't changed during those 18 months is the lack of patient-physician communication on social media. One-third of the QuantiaMD survey respondents said they had received a friend request from a patient on Facebook. Three-quarters of the physicians declined those invitations."

video (18 minutes) by Clay Johnson, February 2012, hyping his book The Information Diet. Goes to food analogies again and again--pizza tastes better than broccoli--and abundance of entertainment, affirmation, and fear is secret pact between customer and media producers online. What is it that people want? What we tell them through our clicks and searches is that we want to be right acc: to Johnson. AP story--poll economic worries pose new snag for Obama. On Fox news, it says that Obama has big problem with white women. They changed headline and reduced story by 600 words, taking out everything positive about his work. They know that readers will read something negative about president. "Opinion tastes better than news." How AOL should make its editorial decisions--they want to spend no more than $84 on a piece of content. How they decide: traffic potential (using SEO to find out what people are searching for--no one is searching for Pentagon Papers or broccoli); bottom of list is editorial integrity because it is market inefficiency. Believes that we are living in land of info abundance where we want to be affirmed, not told the truth. SEOs complete the inquiry to present tabloid types of info that attract us and distract us and misinform us. Our clicks lead to poor information diets, a disease. Make a whole news movement, a slow news movement, demand that media change. We as readers need to upgrade. information over-consumption, not overload enable infoveganism--eat food, not too much, real food at bottom of food chain. 2. Use source material--show your work. 3. Let me pay you for ad free experience. 4. Content is not a commodity (for news producers)

blog post by Clive Andrews at NixonMcInnes, creating meaning in business. 9/26/2013 on using immediacy of messages being shared on social media to make operational choices.

Connected Learning, a new research-driven initiative was introduced at the Digital Media and Learning Conference 2012. This blog post by Jackie Gerstein discusses its essence and includes TED video of Henry Jenkins and separate video of Mimi Ito. See excerpt on core values and principals of connected learning: At the core of connected learning are three values: Equity - when educational opportunity is available and accessible to all young people, it elevates the world we all live in. Full Participation - learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute. Social connection - learning is meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity (http://connectedlearning.tv/connected-learning-principles). This initiative is being driven by the following design principles: Shared purpose - Connected learning environments are populated with adults and peers who share interests and are contributing to a common purpose. Today's social media and web-based communities provide exceptional opportunities for learners, parents, caring adults, teachers, and peers in diverse and specialized areas of interest to engage in shared projects and inquiry. Cross-generational learning and connection thrives when centered on common interests and goals. Production-centered - Connected learning environments are designed around production, providing tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media. Learning that comes from actively creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing, fosters skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and productive contributions to today's rapidly changing work and political conditions. Openly networked - Connected learning environments are designed around networks that link together institutions and groups across various sectors, including popula

From ReferralCandy.com on the difference between social networks and social media. Examines the history of using these terms: prior to 2010, social network was more widely used. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter were just trying to connect people together. However, after 2010 both FB and Twitter started to become news and resource sources and the emphasis changed from connections to content. An example from Twitter: Used to ask - What are you doing? Now ask - what is happening?

article by Martin Dewhurst and Paul Willmott, September 2014 on new leadership skills required in age of new information technologies Machines force executives and senior leaders to: 1. open up their companies through crowdsourcing and social platforms within and across organizational boundaries 2. create data sets worthy of the most intelligent machines 3. "let go" in ways that run counter to a century of OD 4. executives...able to make the biggest difference through the human touch. ...questions they frame, their vigor in attaching exceptional circumstances highlighted by increasingly intelligent algorithms ... tolerating ambiguity and focusing on the "softer" side of management to engage the organization and build its capacity for self-renewal. 5. turbocharged data-analytics strategy, a new top-team mind-set, fresh talent approaches, and a concerted effort to break down information silos...transcend number crunching..."weak signals" from social media and other sources also contain powerful insights and should be part of the data-creation process. 6. ...early movers will probably gain insights of unstructured data, such as email discussions between representatives or discussion threads in social media. 7. ...dashboards don't create themselves. Senior executives must find and set the software parameters needed to determine, for instance, which data gets prioritized and which gets flagged for escalation. 8. ...odds of sinking under the weight of even quite valuable insights grow as well. Answer: democratizing it: encouraging and expecting the organization to manage itself without bringing decisions upward. ...business units and functions will be able to make more and better decisions on their own. 9. 8 will happen even as the CEO begins to morph into a "chief experimentation officer," who draws from acute observance of early signals to bolster a company's ability to experiment at scale. 10. need to "let go" will be more significant and the discomfort of s

great post by Susanna Gebauer on freelancers using social media, from September 18, 2014.

Very interesting assessment of Twitter users in comparison to general public. They seem to be younger, more Democratic (redundant?) than general population. . . but only 13% of adults said they ever use Twitter or read Twitter messages. So there is a small saturation rate. " In the Pew Research Center's 2012 biennial news consumption survey, just 13% of adults said they ever use Twitter or read Twitter messages; only 3% said they regularly or sometimes tweet or retweet news or news headlines on Twitter. Twitter users are not representative of the public. Most notably, Twitter users are considerably younger than the general public and more likely to be Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. In the 2012 news consumption survey, half (50%) of adults who said they posted news on Twitter were younger than 30, compared with 23% of all adults. And 57% of those who posted news on Twitter were either Democrats or leaned Democratic, compared with 46% of the general public. (Another recent Pew Research Center survey provides even more detail on who uses Twitter and other social media.)"

Resources from a presentation by Amy Gahran, mobile/digital media consultant and contributor to the Knight Digital Media Center at USC Annenberg website, 4.3.2013

Harold Jarche continues to rock my world! October 21, 2013 How do we keep an informed citizenry when we are already choosing TV news sources that affirm our existing points of view? His post began to worry me until I saw that it was ultimately a plug for his PKM workshop. Excerpt: With the consolidation of web media companies, where many, and soon, most of us will be getting our information, it will be increasingly important to build diversity into our own personal and professional learning networks. This may get difficult as more mainstream sites amalgamate their feeds and sources into something similar to Googlezon. Therefore, in this emerging network era, we will need to connect to other people, not centralized information sources, for our own sense-making. Diversity of people in our networks will ensure diversity of thought. This is something that even web media companies cannot control, as long as we maintain control over who we connect to.

This is ladonna coy's website. Note her offer of the social media path ebook AFTER you register. The Slideshare that she uploaded for memorable presentations brought me here; her presentation had very good points. I like her "Free Range Learning and Development in a Networked, New Media World" tagline. Think we should ask her to consider writing a blog for WLS.

Great post on Resource Link, October 19, 2011, on value of twitter to professional learning community building. Found it via my Twitterers. Research has identified six 'common patterns of participation' for users of Twitter: Sharing Knowledge and Resources - sharing links to blogs, images or video clips of interest. Monitoring Educational New Sources - sourcing professional readings and research Digitally Attending Important Conferences - sharing thoughts and reflections from professional development sessions or conferences. Encouraging Reflection - engaging in a reflective conversation with others Gathering Instant Feedback - turning to Twitter as the first point of call when needing answers about their practice Mentoring Colleagues - turning to Twitter to find a digital mentor for yourself or a peer. (From Ferriter, W. M., Ramsden, J. T., & Sheninger, E. C. (2011). Communicating and Connecting with Social Media. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press.) How to get started: 1. Set up a Twitter account 2. Find people to follow 3. Learn some hashtags #_____ 4. Manage your posts

Allyson Kapin writes about nonprofits taking advantage of online social media, December 31, 2015.  Includes new ones such as Medium, Periscope.