#jedchat is coming – and you are it! The first #jedchat synchronous twitter chat for Jewish educators will be held Wednesday, October 26 at 9pmET.

What is #jedchat? In short, it’s professional learning and networking at your fingertips, brought to you by the collaborative team of Akevy Greenblatt (@Akevy613), Dov Emerson (@dovemerson), and Rabbi Meir Wexler (@RabbiWex) via Twitter.

#jedchat is modeled after the successful #edchat collaborative discussions that have taken place on Twitter since 2009. Edchat brings together educators and those interested in education from around the world every Tuesday at 12pmET and 7pmET. Many Jewish educators are active participants in Edchat and the network that has developed around the synchronous conversations.

Inspired by Edchat, #jedchat was created to foster connections and support professional learning for Jewish educators by Jewish educators. Akevy Greenblatt explains:

“We wanted to give Judaic teachers from all backgrounds an open and safe forum to share ideas and learn from each other.”

So put on your thinking kippot and join the inaugural conversation which will center on: What do you want to gain from jedchat? How can we develop a Judaic pln (professional learning network).

Join in the Learning :

• Get ready to participate – got a twitter account? Follow the conversation here. Better yet, add your voice to the conversation by tweeting your ideas. Remember to include #jedchat in your tweet. And don’t forget to save #jedchat under your “Searches” for easy reference. You can also use a filtering tool to better follow the stream of tweets like Tweetdeck (see the #Edchat tutorial here).
• Don’t have a twitter account yet? Set one up – it’ll only take a few minutes. The hardest part will probably be figuring out your Twitter name! Here’s a how-to from Twitter.
• Set your clock for the real time #jedchat on Wednesdays at 9pm ET (you can figure out your local time for the first chat by clicking on the link).
• No need to set your clock. Participants are using the #jedchat tag to extend the conversation and share resources and ideas at any time, as applicable. Think of it as a perpetual global cocktail party.
• Join the jedchat wiki and connect – add your name and twitter name to the participants section, share your ideas for upcoming topics!
• Take a gander at PEJE’s tutorial for tips and techniques for becoming a Twitter power user: You Can Speak the Language of Twitter
• Check out Shelly Terrell’s (@ShellTerrell) tips for participating in a twitter chat based on her experiences with #edchat
• Want more Jewish education goodness? Follow#jed21 and join the conversations!

Most importantly, have fun learning and connecting! #jedchat is all about the people who make the conversation! Will we see you there? What topics would you like to engage with on #jedchat? Take the #jedchat hashtag out for a spin and tweet out your ideas!

Special thanks to Akevy Greenblatt (@Akevy613), Dov Emerson (@dovemerson), and Rabbi Meir Wexler (@RabbiWex)!

photo credit: misspixels on flickr
[cross-posted from jlearn2.0]

1. Focus –  prior to entering the social media arena, zero in on simple and realistic goals.  As opposed to top down planning, it is vital to build personal relationships, be authentic and listen intently to the communal needs.  At Temple Israel in Memphis, we organized heterogeneous focus groups to hear individual thoughts concerning the temple. Based on their insights, a vision was constructed by lay leaders, stating our congregation’s role to connect Jews more deeply to Torah, spiritual fulfillment, community, and tikkun olam.  Using this as the foundation, our temple’s Facebook page, alongside my Rabbi Adam Facebook and Twitter accounts, ultimately connect to our community more deeply and, subsequently, help to drive our attendance, donations, long-term membership, and new member opportunities. While some might disregard this planning stage, successful social media approaches realize the importance of slowing down before speeding up.

2. Grab Attention – getting noticed by our audience is vital to social media success.  In an online world dominated with choices, we need to move away from the predictability.  Too many organizations explain events or communicate information in the exact same way as was done fifty years before – title the event, share the details, expect a crowd.  In the online world, this is not acceptable. Sparking the curiosity of our constituents must be done through innovative and audience centered videos and pictures that personally connect with and elicit an emotional response from our constituency.  Think of the Maccabeats, Yeshiva University’s all-male a cappella group, whose fun, entertaining and unexpected song “Candlelight” became an instant Youtube sensation and now has almost 6 million views.  While by no means the same number of hits, this video from Temple Israel exceeded expectations, generated excitement, and started many conversations about the event.

3. Engage – emotionally invest the community in the organization. One of the best lines of the book is that “to engage, it’s necessary to view yourself (and your effort) as a brand.” In order to do this, we need to tell our stories, which help to define and to build our constituency’s collective memories thus connecting them more deeply to the mission of and take action for the institution.  Answering questions such as what inspires the community, what makes an institutional experience meaningful, and why Jews would want to connect with us gears the online conversation to the community and makes it personal.  In promoting Temple Israel’s Sukkot and Simchat Torah experiences, we redefined them for the community where music became the center.  We ran a fun promotional spot and an online giveaway for autographed CD’s of the artists via Facebook and Twitter. By rethinking the marketing, we have helped our community become more engaged and excited about the experience and the artists.

4. Take action – get the community to act upon your cause by giving their time, money or both.  The most important take away here is to ask for time before money.  Too many Jewish institutions consistently ask for money via membership, programs, events, dinners, etc. and never truly get people vested in the experience.  In order to reverse this trend, it is imperative to actively seek and encourage volunteer participation.  Even though individuals are involved with so many activities, we have to rethink how we invite people to volunteer. Instead of asking them to join time intensive committees, encourage them to work on smaller and tangible projects that value their individual talents, skills and interests. When a group then becomes invested in the organization, social media then becomes a tool for reaching a greater audience and receiving much needed feedback. As one experiments with social media to motivate the community, make it fun and, as our communications director, Isti Bardos, always states, make sure to respond to every message or post for that personal touch helps the audience feel they are actually having a dialogue rather than a monologue.

The Dragonfly Effect provides the tools to captivate an online audience, and then inspire them to actively participate in social change.  The examples and illustrations can help Jewish institutions more fully realize the potential of social media.  By experimenting, having fun and continuing to evaluate results, these four wings can provide Jewish institutions a way to further engage Jews as our world proceeds to advance technologically.

How are you addressing these four wings, and more importantly, how are you getting them to work in congruence with one another?

Rabbi Adam Grossman is the Associated Rabbi of Temple Israel of Memphis.  Rabbi Grossman earned his Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2008,  a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from The Ohio State University and a Master of Education Administration with a Specialization in Jewish Education from Xavier University.  He is an active user of social media, and contributes to Temple Israel’s effective use of online social tools for engagement and building community.  Follow him on Twitter, and find him on Facebook.

As it happens, that’s just how the young nation of Israel agrees to learn the Torah – standing at Sinai, overwhelmed by the presence of the Divine, they collectively intone “na’aseh v’nishma” (Exodus 24:7 – what an appropriately enumerated verse).  Loosely translated, “we will do, and (then) we will hear/understand.”  Or, even more loosely translated, “first we will give this a try, then we’ll have some idea what it’s all about.”  Israel agrees that the Torah is not an intellectual exercise, it is a lived experience.

“Na’aseh v’nishma” is your social media call to action.

Knowing conceptually that it would be useful to connect with other people free of the constraints of time and space is an important step.  But it can’t compare to, for instance, engaging your network on Facebook to help find the modern equivalent of “na’aseh v’nishma.”*  Sensing that social media increases the likelihood of serendipity doesn’t hold a candle to finding your next job through Twitter.  Believing that social media is a key part of your communications strategy is very different from putting that belief into action.

But what about those who need to feel the ROI (or rather, ROE – return on engagement) before diving in?  What about the “lo n’aaseh” (“we will not do”) folks?

On the one hand, there are those who will take on this challenge only because they “have to.”  A friend recently told me about a colleague in her office who, upon taking the job, was cajoled into creating a Facebook account for the first time.  The position involved working heavily with teens, and the person he was replacing realized as he was ending his tenure that he had missed out on opportunities for engagement by avoiding social media – “Facebook” was the advice he passed on to his successor.  The new colleague is seeing early signs of success, meeting the teens in their own space, in their own language.  Another friend had a similar experience:

On the other hand, there are those for whom working in social media may never feel like the right fit.  It may move too frenetically, require too many technical proficiencies, feel too exposing or time consuming, or any number of things.  At the same time, social media is becoming part of the vernacular of our culture. Even the most reluctant of us may have to reexamine our practice in light of new ways of working.  This is a familiar story to some:

Ultimately, you can’t really “get” social media without saying “na’aseh v’nishma” and engaging it as a contact sport.  Facing reluctance is tough – there are always reasons not to do anything!  So if you’re working on a co-worker, easing them into working with and through social technologies, it would be useful to have the following things in mind:

1. Have a plan and a goal. Pick one thing, something that requires little effort, but can reap big rewards.  Choose an internal project to work on in a Facebook group instead of over email, or tweet out questions during conference calls to solicit input from your organization’s followers and fans instead of (or as part of) a newsletter.  Talk about both how things change, and what that means for your work.
2. Blend online and on-land experiences. Reference Facebook in phone calls, share a great question from an email conversation on LinkedIn, bring digital spaces into your in-person conversations.  These online spaces are not something “other,” they are powerful connective tools that can weave worlds – and people – together.
3. Once you get started, remember that these things take time. Look for the bright spots, the places where your colleague is having success (or learning to redefine success).  Focus on those, and encourage growth from there.

With social media, as with so many things, the understanding is in the doing.

Admittedly, this is no easy task.  Success in social media does take an investment of time, energy, thought…much like any meaningful human relationship.  But this is how we learn.  We do, and we do again.  And then we understand.

What was your “na’aseh v’nishma” moment?  When did the “doing” make all the difference? (Share your voice in the comments and one lucky commenter, chosen at random, will receive a free copy of the book “Switch”.)

*The modern equivalent of “na’aseh v’nishma” could arguably be found in cognitive psychology: “effort justification.”  It’s a fancy way of saying that when we work at something, when we dig in and invest ourselves, we understand it better and appreciate it more.  Hat tip to Jay Schreiber and Rabbi Josh Yuter for helping me out on that one.

Thanks to an ongoing collaboration between Darim Online and SYNERGY: UJA-Federation of New York and Synagogues Together, we’re pleased to bring you the next series in our Social Media Boot Camp for New York area synagogues.  All staff and lay leaders from congregations in the UJA Federation of New York catchment area are invited to register for the series free of charge.  Not in the area and interested in learning with us?  Become a member of Darim Online!

Last year’s series focused on the uses of specific social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter. This year, we’ll be focusing on the implications of these social media tools and their impact on society and business, with the goal of evolving your congregation for success in the networked age.  Our 6 webinars will focus on strategy, staffing and leadership as they pertain to the mission, function and sustainability of synagogues.

Join Lisa Colton, founder and president of Darim Online, and special guests, for a tour through Evolving the Synagogue as a Networked Nonprofit, inspired and informed by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s valuable book, The Networked Nonprofit.

October 26, 2011  The Synagogue as a Networked Nonprofit
Given shifts in society, culture and technology, successful organizations are evolving the ways they work to be more nimble, efficient and social.  The synagogue’s origins are as a network — a group of people in a similar area who have similar observances, needs, values, and goals.  Thus, today’s empowered culture is a great opportunity to realign the synagogue’s work with its origins, and to help the organization function more successfully in our networked age.  Join us to learn about the principles outlined in Beth Kanter and Allison Fine’s book The Networked Nonprofit, and to explore case studies of organizations making this shift, from synagogues to local and national nonprofits.  This webinar will set the stage for the next 5 in the series, and will inspire you to think differently about your work.

November 17, 2011  The Skills and Mindset of a Success Community Weaver
Every synagogue seeks to build community among its members and beyond.  A rich and successful community leads to achieving all other aspects of a synagogue’s mission and goals, from education to tikkun olam, membership dues and event participation. One of the most important functions of leadership is to weave and support this community. Today, these responsibilities are often embedded in positions with titles like “Program Director” and “Membership Coordinator”.  Join us to learn about the value of community weaving, the attributes of a successful community weaver, why both staff and board members need to be involved, and why your congregation needs to be in the business of weaving.  Eager to learn more?  Check out June Holly’s blog: http://www.networkweaving.com

January 11, 2012  Staffing Beyond the Accidental Techie
Oftentimes, congregations find someone on staff who’s good with technology, or at least likes to play around and can help out others.  Sometimes this is an educator or preschool director, sometimes it’s the youngest person on staff, sometimes it’s the rabbi!  This is what we call the “accidental techie”.  They weren’t hired to do this, but have fallen into it.  As your congregation is beginning to participate in social media, who has stepped up to lead the effort?  Is that position really the one that should have this responsibility?  Is that the best way for them to spend their time?  And how is everyone on staff empowered to use today’s tools to do their work (like they do with email and the telephone)?  Join us to discuss staffing needs, how to evolve to the right place, and how everyone should have at least some role.

February 9, 2012  Social Giving
How and why is the rise of social media affecting philanthropic giving?  While the fundamentals of development haven’t changed significantly, the ways you go about storytelling, generating enthusiasm and motivating donors has been turned upside down in the last few years.  Accordingly, as a networked nonprofit your approach to marketing a fundraising campaign needs to evolve as well.  Join us to learn about the tools, strategies, and opportunities of social media based fundraising, and learn from interesting case studies in the field.

March 14, 2012  Social Media for Jewish Learning: The Social Sermon
Let’s consider 2 common functions of a synagogue:  Jewish learning, and Shabbat services.  In both cases, the dynamic is based on a hierarchical model, rather than a networked one:  A teacher at the front of the class, and the rabbi talking to the congregation from behind a podium.  Let’s consider how social media tools can help us evolve these dynamics to create conversation, support collaboration, and engage more voices in our community. Join us to learn about The Social Sermon and explore how rabbis and educators can put blogs, Facebook and Twitter to use in some creative ways to discuss the weekly Torah portion and build relationships, participation and engagement in your congregation online and in person.

May 17, 2012  Return on Engagement:  How to Measure the Impact of Your Socializing
ROI ROI ROI.  We’re always hearing about the return on investment of time, energy and dollars.  How do you measure what something is worth?  Reflecting back on our previous 5 topics, we’ll look at how to measure engagement, why it’s essential for your success, and how focusing on it can be the key for evolving your synagogue to thrive in the networked age.

Interested in learning more about how Jewish organizations can function as networked nonprofits?  Join the conversation in our online book group!

In the field of nonprofit technology, we have another term for these sorts of folks:  The Accidental Techie.  As defined by Webster’s Online Dictionary:

In the field of nonprofit technology, an accidental techie is an individual who has gravitated toward responsibility for an organization’s information technology infrastructure, even though his or her professional training or job description did not include tasks of this kind.

In other words, someone’s filling the void, charting new territory, and becoming a resource for others in their organization.

More often than not, we find the accidental techies in synagogues are the educators.  Today in the last of our 6 part webinar series for NATE and JEA educators, we explored why this is often the case (they love learning curves, rather than being intimidated by them; they are willing to try new things and refresh their approach often; the “new rules of the game” walk in their door every year; and they know technology alone isn’t a silver bullet — the SMARTboard doesn’t educate the student, the teacher does), what their colleagues and organizations actually need, and how it feels to occupy this role.

As social media and other technologies are influencing individuals, society, and business, organizations must evolve the way they conduct their work and communicate with their constituents.  Enter technology.  From data management to communications to customer service.  While few will argue about the importance of these tools, most organizations have not actually made the structural changes to support their use.  One important shift is staffing.  Who has these responsibilities written into their job description?  Who is in charge of listening and engaging community members?  When do you need to move from the occasional IT consultant to someone who has expertise in-house?

In today’s webinar, educators shared the roles they are playing — from IT support to providing in-house trainings, from being the communications “nag” to the “technology advocate”. In some cases participants felt they are swimming upstream in a culture that does not yet recognize the importance or need of these tools and applications, nor recognizes the asset they have in a tech-savvy educator.  In other cases, participants felt that their congregation is in fact very appreciative of the expertise they bring, and are so eager to take advantage of it that they don’t have enough time to do their “real” job.

This is a moment of important evolution.  If you are an accidental technie or positive deviant, please know you’re not alone.  It’s so valuable to hear each others stories, to know what’s working well and where you could use some creative ideas and support from your peers.  How are you problem solving, balancing your various responsibilities, gaining respect and appreciation for this additional role you are playing, and ultimately advancing and maturing your organization?

I invite the NATE and JEA participants — and everyone else — to use the comments on this post as a space for sharing, listening, asking and supporting.

Interested in learning more about accidental techies?

Judi Sohn, from the Colorectal Cancer Coalition, writing on the NTEN blog

Robert Weiner, nonprofit technology consultant, writing on the NTEN blog

And now, announcing the 2011-12 cohort!  Drumroll please…

Centropa
Support the work of Centropa’s United States education department and its educators through the use of social media, including curricular resources and professional development.
Team Leader: Lauren Granite, US Education Director

Congregation B’nai Amoona, St. Louis
Create a mission driven vision that takes advantage of social media and other 21^st century technology tools to create strong and meaningful connections with a focus on integrating family education, adult education, and experiential education.
Team Leader: Jennifer Newfeld, Director of Congregational Learning

IKAR, Los Angeles
Create family-based learning activities and interacting with Jewish ideas and values through home-based Judaism that complements students’ face to face learning.
Team Leader: Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal, Director of Education

Jewish Enrichment Center, Chicago
Develop a strategic “networked nonprofit” model of leadership that includes school professionals, parents, and volunteers.
Team Leader: Rebecca Milder, Director

Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, Evanston
Investigate new meanings of community and develop a Shabbat chavurah to support reconnection of the family and expand the ways members connect and communicate Shabbat experiences.
Team Leader: Terri Ginsberg Bernsohn, Religious School Director

Matan
Develop online professional development events for Matan’s Jewish education institutes and support associated communities of learning for leaders and future leaders in Jewish special needs inclusion.
Team Leader: Meredith Polsky, Special Education Coordinator

Temple Beth Abraham, Tarrytown, NY
Create multiple points of community building and engagement for current and potential congregational members with support from social media and personal learning networks.
Team Leader: Pamela Barkley, Director of Education

Temple Judea, Coral Gables, FL
Strengthen communication and engagement with parents and families in a strategic way to build and augment the synagogue’s educational community.
Team Leader: Beth Young, Director of Education

The Weber School, Atlanta
Use social media to provide students with opportunities to develop social and academic relationships with Israeli teenagers with whom they will be visiting during a 5 week Israel component in the middle of the school year.
Team Leader: Rachel Schwartz, Teacher, History and Judaics Departments

University of Washington, Stroum Jewish Studies Program, Seattle
Develop a localized, interactive, and immersive digital ecosystem for Jewish studies students, beginning at the University of Washington and eventually expanding to other universities.
Team Leader: Professor Noam Pianko

These teams  exhibited exceptional enthusiasm, readiness, and vision and we look forward to working with them this year!  We’re thankful to the Covenant Foundation for supporting our work with this cohort.

In addition, as part of this funding, Darim will be presenting a series of webinars over the coming year with a focus on innovation and social media in Jewish education, including guest experts such as David Bryfman.  All Darim Online members are welcome to join these webinars.  Not a member yet?  Sign up here.

Finally, Darim is running a six part webinar series for congregational educators this summer, starting July 5, in conjunction with NATE and JEA.  Learn more and sign up here:  NATE members click here and  JEA members click here

Of course, he learned how to ride a bike.  There was a breakthrough moment when he felt the balance, and another when he realized dad had let go for over 10 feet without telling him.  But getting there was not easy, simple, or predictable.  Building the skills he needed did not happen in a linear progression, and he did not get any positive feedback on his progress for 85% of the learning curve.  Ultimately, he learned how to feel his body and feel the bike, and let go of trying to over-think the endeavor.  Now he’s tearing down dirt paths.

It’s not so different learning to be a networked, social media savvy nonprofit.  Sometimes you try and try and nothing happens.  Sometimes you skin your knees a bit, or get frustrated with the equipment, or feel like you don’t even want to practice anymore.   In the Avi Chai Academy, the Jewish Day Schools have just completed a 3 week match campaign through Facebook Causes.  Everyone struggled, everyone learned. Some had their breakthrough moment, and others did not.  So they’ll keep practicing and soon they’ll find their balance just like Eli eventually did on his bike. And when they do, they’ll recognize all sorts of other possibilities now available to them, like mountain biking, and renting bikes on vacation, and entering a triathlon with a friend.

Learning new things is not comfortable.  We’ve all had plenty of practice studying for tests or memorizing facts, but not all learning happens in this bookish-academic-structured way.  Sometimes learning is more fluid — it’s about developing instincts, or rewriting the rules of engagement or the patterns of working that we’re used to.  Social media is not a memorizing-the-facts sort of learning.  It’s more like the feeling the balance of the bike and understanding your center of gravity and the power of shifting your weight sort of learning.

And as my son can tell you, you can expect to crash and burn at least a hundred times before you have your first ah-ha moment.  And that ah-ha moment is just the beginning, it’s not the end.  It’s just that little burst of confidence that you need to persevere to the next stage of learning.

More important than actually learning how to ride a bike was a life lesson Eli learned about perseverance.  Now he knows that he will face challenges and resistance from time to time in life.  He will feel frustration, and it will occur to him that he should just give up.   But now he also knows that if he just keeps at it, the breakthrough moment will eventually come.  Today he asked me if it’s hard to learn how to ride a unicycle.   Oh boy.

Eli’s first solo ride down the block:

This new initiative provides the opportunity for up to 15 North American day school and yeshiva high schools to work collaboratively to document their work, share resources, and tap into expertise regarding the adoption and integration of online courses.

Participating schools will be eligible to apply for a grant of up to $5000 from the AVI CHAI Foundation to advance their work in this area.

Details, including Network structures, school eligibility and expectations, and a link to the application can be found here.

The deadline for applications is June 17, 2011 and recipients will be announced on or around June 30.

What are you waiting for?  Apply now to be part of the national vanguard of Jewish day high schools integrating online curriculum into general studies!

Not quite ready but want to learn more about online learning? Check out the DigitalJLearning website.

Learn more… and apply – now!!

The short of it:

The program will support innovative Jewish educators in using social media effectively in their work, and assist their organizations in evolving models for success in the digital age.

A Little More About the Program

Darim is seeking to mentor up to 10 Jewish educational organizations, represented by 3-5 person teams, that are engaged in innovation and risk taking and which serve North American Jews. These teams will participate in a year long professional development and coaching experience to advance their work.

The program includes:

• Participation in Darim’s series of monthly skill-building webinars which includes Darim’s overall Learning Network for Educators (teachers, directors of education, rabbis, lay leaders, and others interested in Jewish education);
• Private coaching and consulting with Darim consultants to address strategic and tactical goals, and to help design, implement, and refine a technology-supported project. Teams from each organization will meet with a coach approximately twice a month over the academic year, with additional communications as needed;
• Connection with other members of the Social Media Boot Camp, to learn from each others’ experience and projects through an online community and webinar-based sharing;
• Membership to Darim Online and access to its other Learning Network events and resources.

The long of it, including eligibility, program structure, and a link to the application form, can be found here. The deadline for applications is Monday, May 2, 2011, 11:59pm.

Got a great, innovative, social media-y Jewish education idea? What are you waiting for?

The Social Media Boot Camp for Educators program is made possible through a generous grant by The Covenant Foundation.

And… They’re off!  As you may have heard, the Avi Chai Foundation has gathered a diverse cohort of New York and New Jersey Day Schools to learn about social media tools and strategies, and to support them in developing their own “experiments” to develop their networks, engage with parents and alumni, and ramp up development efforts over the next several months.  After two full workshops, online exchanges and a bit of homework, the teams (2 from each school) are off and running with their project plans.  Or maybe, more accurately we should say that they are playing and experimenting — because this is how we learn.

One thing that I enjoy about this cohort is that they ask great questions. While reading about the four children (Wise, Wicked, Simple and One that does not know how to ask) this year at our Pesach seder, I began thinking about how these archetypes apply to (adult) students of social media.  When teaching about something as new and different as a communications revolution, I see all of these archetypes (and, honestly, I experience all of them myself too).  In the most successful situations, I’ve seen participants progress from one to the next as their openness, comfort, curiosity and enthusiasm grow.  Inspired by the four children in the Haggadah, I offer you four (non-judgemental) archetypes of the social media learner:

The accidental techie comes eager to learn, ready to experiment, and with some solid social media experience under their belt.  They know the tools (largely self-taught), can learn by exploring themselves, and are willing to assume a pioneering role for their organization. Encourage the accidental techie to play a leadership role in the organization, to teach others, and to explain the opportunities and successes taking place that others might miss.  Give them the time and encouragement to continue to explore and innovate online, and make sure they have peers and mentors to support them.

The implementer is concerned with the “how-to” of social media.  This person accepts the responsibility to use the tools in their job, and is developing a skill set to be able to effectively execute this role.  Without an instinctual understanding of social media culture, this person may tend to post only about events, or neglect the need to be listening and engaging online as well as speaking.  An early stage implementer applies the old paradigm social norms to the new paradigm spaces.  An advanced implementer has learned these skills and they are on the verge of becoming instinctual and natural as he or she develops this “fluency” – it’s not unlike learning a language.  Continue to point out to this person the idiosyncrasies that take their work from good to great.

The deer-in-headlights is the one who doesn’t know how to ask.   While  they may be overwhelmed and feel like a fish out of water, this person is curious and listening. This person needs to know that there are no stupid questions – that we are all learning all the time, and that the rate of change is in fact ridiculously fast.  Make sure this participant realizes that they are not alone (most of the room feels this way too!) and help them to feel confidence and success in at least a few places.  Celebrate the small successes, and guide them to focus on a small number of basic tasks in order to develop their own foundation from which they can play and experiment.

The nay-sayer resists acknowledging that communications revolution applies to their work.  They are often heard saying, “We’ve always done it this way and it’s working just fine,” or “Our community doesn’t use these things.”  The nay-sayer is often scared of change (aren’t we all?) and finds it safer and easier to deny the influence of social media tools and culture on their work than to wrestle with the inevitable questions and issues that we all must face. The best way to engage the nay-sayer is to help them see the value of these tools personally (“oh, photos of my grandson on Facebook!  This is great!” or “Wow, someone volunteered to bring snack to the soccer game in 3 minutes – that’s incredible!”) before considering how to apply them to their professional work.

The participants in the Academy are largely the first two archetypes.  They are eager, curious, and are asking deep, meaningful, and profound questions.  Some are “implementer” questions (How can we upload a video of students that we can link to for parents without making it publicly available?); some are more strategic (Should we have multiple Facebook Pages for Lower, Middle and High schools, and another for alumni, or should we consolidate into one Page?); and others are philosophical or ethical (How can we model and teach responsible online behavior for our students when we’re not in control of what people post on our wall? Should we condone use of social media when this can lead to gossip or slander?).  I know that as they begin the implement their projects, the questions will become more frequent and more fascinating.  They are keeping me on my toes, and I love it!

On May 5^th we’ll conduct our third full day workshop.  Their toolboxes will be full, their goals articulated, and coaches holding their hands for the next important phase of this experience – putting it into practice.  As each school team embarks on developing their project, we’ll be learning together, reflecting and revising, and sharing with each other and with you as well.    Stay tuned.  We may have questions for you.

In the meantime, take a moment to reflect on which archetype you are.  What defines your current experience with and feelings about social media either personally or professionally?  What do you need to move from one stage to the next?