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Dave
Fleet shares some suggestions for online monitoring of your
organization’s image, or the buzz around it. He says it’s important that
before you do anything–such as set up a blog, whatever–that you find
out how to track what’s going on out there. I see his suggestions as
part and parcel of establishing your own Global Communications Center
for your school or District. Fleet writes:

Before your organization launches a blog, before you start playing with
Facebook, before you even think about Twitter, you should be listening
to what people are saying about you.

“Google is managing your identity unless you are,” as quoted
by Dean
Shareski in his Going Global, Going Public. “What digital footprints
are existing for you right now? It’s not an ego search but to find what
others are saying about you.” This goes for each of us, but also, for
organizations like schools. But it’s important we go, as Dean and others
share, beyond just tracking our digital footprints, but that of
others’ footprints when they interact with our organizations.

As an edublogger, this is something I learned while setting up my blog
and finding ways to connect with others. However, the tools that are
available now are much more comprehensive than what were available when
I began. A quick look at Dave’s suggestions, and I’m astonished that I’m
using most of these approaches already. What I doubt is happening,
though, is that school districts and schools are doing this…most of
our organizations may very well have a less than active interaction with
news and other people out there. Simply publishing your own television
show isn’t enough when most people thrive online, and most content
endures online more than in a broadcast.

I love this quote (Christian
Grantham as cited in NewAssignment.net) about ending the “passive
relationship with local news” in this blog entry. What catches my
attention is that the same tribulations and troubles students, teachers
and leaders are going through, well, that’s what a lot of folks in the
news industry are going through. You could tweak this paragraph easily
to reflect the angst among educators:

I love working with people who see the importance of the role the net
will play in transforming the way the world gets and interacts with
information. I also love working with veterans of news, and I will
always remember the challenges they face with the changes that are
happening. For some, that change is very difficult. But the fact is, we
are no more in the television and newspaper business than Wal-Mart is in
the trucking business. Our business is no longer the industry that
surrounds distribution – the trucks, the printing press, the reams
of paper, the broadcast towers, the satellite dishes, the lights, the
huge cameras, the buildings, the “live trucks”…

It’s
the final product: information. The market in an on-demand world for
news and information where people have to wait to receive a highly
produced product is steadily shrinking. At the same time, the online
audience for news and information is growing significantly. It’s an
exciting time to be working in a new medium that is transforming the way
we get information.

How has our “business” in education changed? It’s no longer about
textbooks, that’s for sure and canned ideas. It’s about creativity,
communication, collaboration. Even as the market shrinks in the news
world, in the education world, I find this statement to be as true as
it’s ever been in education (BTW, the link below includes a Clay
Shirky moment in video):

If our information was made freely available and became the building
blocks through which other work could be done – we would be the
foundation upon which the news and information world is built upon.
Source:
DigiDave
– Journalism is a Process, Not a Product: Changing the Legal Structure
for Digital Journalism

That education is still the foundation–albeit being switfly eroding–is
because it is firmly entrenched in a “no market” environment.

Dave
points to 4 steps and I’ve included links to some with sample
searches for “mguhlin” in each:

1. Define your keywords
2. Create your searches…some of the tools Dave shares include:
   –GoogleNews
   –GoogleBlogSearch
   -Technorati
   –TwitterSearch
   (Dave mentions Summize, recently acquired by Twitter.com, and
   TweetScan)
   –Blogpulse.com
3. Plug the results into your RSS reader OR
4. Collapse all the results RSS feeds into a service like AideRSS.com
   (I’ve included a list
   of Tools4RSS here)

One additional type of tool that I’d add to Dave’s list includes Social
Bookmarking sites. The idea comes to me from a presentation
Alan November did in China (Learning2.0 Conference) where an audience
member suggested using Del.icio.us as another search tool in lieu or
addition to regular search engines. 3 skills November says aren’t taught
in schools include:

1. Teaching students to deal with massive quantities of information
   (pattern-making, organizing patterns for information)
2. Global Communication skills/global communication, as well as checking
   sources with people on the ground
3. Self-directed, lifelong learning

What’s neat about becoming your own “global communications center” is
that you can teach students these skills as you’re setting up your
classroom web site. Imagine what would have happened if Bob Sprankle and
Darren Kuropatwa had set these tools (if they’d been available) BEFORE
they started blogging with their students. Wouldn’t it have been awesome
to capture the feedback flowing in from all over the world, including
traditional and participatory reporting?

WHAT ABOUT SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES?
It would definitely be
fun to know how many folks are bookmarking what you’re doing, and you
can also subscribe to the RSS feed of results. To accomplish that,
you’ll probably need to use Page2Rss.com–a
tool someone told me about but a week or two ago (speak up if you’re out
there!). Neither Diigo or Delicious, as far as I can see, support RSS
for search results. So, with that caveat in mind, to the list, I’m
adding these two:

• Diigo.com – RSS
  wasn’t available via Page2Rss.com
  since Diigo timed out.
• Del.icio.us – RSS

OTHER TOOLS
A few other tools worth checking out include these:

• IceRocket.com – RSS
• Teoma.com
• Spy …lacks an RSS
  feed but you can get one with Page2RSS (not sure yet how well it
  works). Lets you know what’s going on in Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogs,
  and Google Reader.

Though I had some of these items setup (Technorati, TwitterSearch) I
didn’t have all of them setup. As a result, I discovered some new blog
entries out there–and new blogs I wasn’t reading–writing about what
I’d written. Nice to be in
touch!

GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
You know, I hadn’t ever thought
of myself–or the work the Communications Dept in a school
district–does as Global Communications. But, that is exactly
what we’re doing with Read/Write Web tools. And, that is the challenge
facing districts as well as journalists. We are caught up in a “citizen”
journalism, teacher communicator.

“Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work
literacies such as social media and informal learning?” Good question.
My answer: yes. Because everyone should be. Tucker writes, “my
responsibility is to work on my own sphere of influence, starting with
our online course development team leading by example for our
facilitators.” Christy Tucker, Experiencing
E-Learning
Source: As
commented on and cited by Stephen Downes

How are YOU setting up your Global Communications Center? How are YOU
leading the charge? The answer to this question is a lot easier than
taking this position:

Al Gore said: “We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal
actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift.” He
was talking about global climate change but he might as well have been
talking about our attempts to transition schools into the 21st century…
Source:
Our
Policies have to Shift, Dr. Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant

Compare that approach–abandoning the conceit that isolated personal
actions are going to solve the crisis in education, or journalism–to
this one from Pete
Reilly (EdTech Journeys) with his tale of Gandhi’s decision to not
offer advice unless he was living by it himself.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure