The Freshman Fifteen

I hope to post a lot in the coming months before NACCAP. In the mean time, check out these kung fu slippers

A short post today, but I thought I would share some podcasts that I’ve been posting. I put them on YouTube for easy access for those without itunes. You can subscribe to the podcast here.

Click here for the YouTube site. Be my friend if you have an account!

I’ve been using this browser for a while. I’ve heard about it on Attack of the Show! on G4 which is great to watch for a little research tv, plus my friend Flo made their logo.

Flock is a web browser based on Firefox that allows the user to access their facebook, youtube, twitter, flickr etc. while browsing. One of my biggest obstacles as Digital Communication Coordinator is keeping the staff consistently motivated to check their SNS accounts. Flock actually makes me want to upload all those photos that I have sitting around. It makes me want to update my status–letting everyone know that I’m jump starting my car. The more active you are on facebook, the more you show up on your friend pages. They’ll look at your new pictures, they’ll comment, and they’ll ask you questions.

You can also look at media streams and easily message your Facebook friends with web, YouTube, and other Facebook content. It’s really easy to transfer your media from account to account, and you’re able to plug in Wordpress and blogger accounts as well.

You’ll have to just try this out. Here’s the link

Con: no myspace integration… yet

I could assume a lot of things about what you might have available to you in the resources department, but I’ll just start with where I started and hope that I reach a broad audience.

I started with nothing

Ok this isnt true. I had a laptop with video editing software. But that was it. I picked up a cheapo camcorder on Black Friday for 130 and I shot some film. I also used the built-in webcam to tape a How To Apply video using the stuff on my desk. Generally, you’ll want to have a video that’s two to three minutes in length. Post the videos in YouTube to start with and you can put little video windows on your myspace and facebook sites. (more…)

My buddy Erik asked me to tell the tale of how I scored a Macbook Pro for $400.
I’ve recently come upon some sites that would have let me spend a lot less, but still I’m glad about my relatively good bargain. I’ve linked to a great site in the article on  Erik’s site if you want to check out the other bargains you can find on the web. Consumerist ruined me in their article, but that’s what they do.

Thanks for reading.

Before I go deeper into Social Networking, YouTube, podcasting and the like… I thought it would be a good idea to do a little preventative maintenance.

How to Promote

For a while now, I’ve been plugging our different avenues of communication in four ways

• email- it’s good for some things, granted a good percentage of students don’t do email. I’m also pretty cautious of how many times I email students about this stuff. The students who do care may start to delete my emails along with the continental sky points notices if I inundate their inbox with shenanigans. A great way to plug your stuff is to put a limited number of links in the signature of your email. So you’ll automatically notify students in a non-mass email sort of way.
•  Phone Calls- So I’ll talk to a student about what’s going on on the web, but the trick is… telling someone where to find something is a pain if they’re not navigating on the web as you direct them. You can give them urls (pbablogs.com) or locations on a web page (click the blue letters below my left ear on the about me page) but mostly this is just you making yourself feel good about getting the word out. You won’t notice traffic increases this way. I’ll remedy this in the last paragraph.
• Cross Plugging- I should probably come up with a better term… maybe later. So if you’re running a student blog, have a student put a link in their post to a video on YouTube and then plug the PBA podcast at the same time. Niceeee. (That was nice with 4 Es… spell check can’t handle me) Maybe you get crazy hits on your admission site… Throw up some banners linking students to other content.
• Print Publication - Ok so this isn’t something that I’ve tried out, but I hear it works well. Even better, why don’t you print up something like a club flier (uv coated glossy 3×5 card) plugging your site. While your at it… put your IM on your business card.

Resolution- Closing the Black Hole

For your print publications, your phone calls, even your emails… It’s a great idea to have a single site to direct students to and let them experience the fullness of your web presence. It smacks of simplicity, but it’s important that you take all the difficulty out of finding out about your school. Any friction and they’ll give up and miss the cool stuff you’ve been posting. You owe it to your students to make things easy.

What’s more, you could just have all of these resources out there and no one uses them like a library in a national park or something. And your central site could look a lot different than what I have in mind. It could be something as simple as a links page on your admission site, or a whole separate web site. Just put all your stuff in one place.

I’m not a pro at getting heavy traffic and keeping it, so I thought I might link to a post from someone who is.

Tibi over at Lost Art of Blogging gives some tips on Stickifying your blog (making up words here left and right). These are some great tips for student bloggers, but I think they can be applied to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Podcasting.

If anyone knows about a free desktop video capture program for os x, please let me know. I’m working on some podcasts that publicize what my institution is doing online.

::Edit:: Just purchased one for 20 bucks. I got tired of searching.

Putting my money where my title is

Ok so I thought that I could at least start this post from my cell
phone. I wouldn’t suggest using your phone to blog tons of text, but
there are some quick and easy things you can do to create stickiness
(keep people coming back to your web sites).

Most phones are equipped with camera capabilities. Facebook and
wordpress allow a user to post these pictures as you take them. It’s
pretty convenient. Facebook just has great connectivity options in
general… from video messaging to cell phone management. You can set
up your facebook account to text message you when stuff happens.
Facebook texts you when… say, you get a new friend, and you can add
the friend, message them, or reject them just by replying. Very cool.

Check your mobile plan for hidden charges

As we all know, texting isn’t free, and if you’re popular (I wouldn’t
know) you can rack up texting charges. Unlimited texting and data
plans may be pricey, but if you use them they’ll be worth it.

I don’t know of many schools who do this stuff. You could be on the cutting edge
of College Recruiting!

My thumbs hurt. TTYL

One Must Become Nerdy To Achieve Awesomeness

I am always limited by the programs that I have available on my computer. Instead of running out and buying software that I don’t know how to use, I do what I always do… I scoured the internet for free stuff. 

Most sites dedicated to helping noobs with video editing or clothing creation for second life direct readers to open source downloads. Open Source programs sometimes are a pain to install, so be sure to completely read the read me file before installing the software. This has come in handy when I’ve needed to do some photo editing that went outside the realm of what iPhoto could do. I downloaded a program called Gimp, and I’m Photo-shopping away for free. Nice!

What It Means

You can think of Open Source software as a sort of Wikipedia in software form. These programs are being continuously developed by separate developers who donate their contributions for the purpose of making the program more useful/powerful/better-than anything-Microsoft-could-come-up-with/ etc.

A Couple Of Links To Get You Started

This is a blasphemous article in Mashable with 480 open source downloads, though
they’re not listed by platform (OS X, Windows).

Mac users can go here. PC users can go here.

I just received a thank you email from eye4you alliance, the organization that hosted the Second Life college fair on the teen grid. There are a couple of links in the email that I though would be of interest.

Pictures from the fair
An Article by a teen volunteer.
Some thoughts from students who attended the fair

The college fair went well. I wasn’t able to generate any immediate responses (inquiries, apps, etc.) but the interaction with the teen volunteers was great! We talked about college and planning ahead, which is why I do what I do. In one conversation I was helping students from Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and the United Kingdom prepare for college. Even better, they were helping me to get acquainted with Second Life.

Also, there are opportunities to volunteer with eye4you, and in turn they can help me organize and publicize events that my institution hosts.

I’ll say this again–it’s not original, but it needs to be reiterated: there is an untapped market here for online learning. Sure, there are institutions taking advantage, but Second Life has incredible potential for revolutionizing online programs for higher-ed.