Who wants to collaborate in Social Media School?
Greek school, Hebrew School . . . who would like to co-operate in social media school?
This is what I am thinking.
Social media requires us to think about our identity much earlier than, well, when I was growing up.
I think youngsters hitting the job market need a portfolio. I no longer want to see what exams they wrote, and which university they want, or who they studied with, or who examined them. I am not going trawling for party pics on Facebook either.
I want to see what they have done. I want to see how they have explored the world. I want to see how they have organized their ideas. I want to see who they worked with, and why.
In the past, if dad was rich, kids would go to the ‘right school’ and the ‘right university’ and have the ‘right summer experience’ - well certainly having a rich dad helped to to get the right building blocks in place.
Now, I can see what the kid himself or herself has done - partly because on line portfolios are so easy - but mainly because social media allows us much greater freedom to expand our horizons.
Kids want to set their own frontiers. Since the 60’s at least, adolescents have obsessed about their identity: will I be allowed to be “me as I am, not who you want me to be”. And periodically, we revisit the same panic. English corporate poet, David Whyte, quotes Dante on the mid-life crisis: “In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in the dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.”
It is scary too.
Hence the need for a school: attitudes, skills, knowledge, support.
- I would be interested in doing the psychology part: how do I organize my thinking about who I am and what decisions I make?
- People also need content production skills - writing, photography, etc.
- Basic website, programming and hardware skills make life quicker and snappier.
- Social media marketing skills are key to developing an on line identity measured by the feed back loops (have I just solved the metrics conundrum?).
- Project management skills - getting it done through others preferably.
- And networking skills with some basic economics, sociology, law, etc. etc. Some street smarts.
Where are expectations going?
Does anyone think the same way?
Would there be a market for a social media school?
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5 Responses to “Who wants to collaborate in Social Media School?”
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I personally would enjoy that. I’ve seen lots of people do dumb stuff in social media, and I think that it could be prevented. Then again, teens are teens, but now it can stay there forever to haunt them.
Jo, what an interesting idea, let’s begin by organising some bits n’ pieces on the Social Media School Wiki
Before we spend too much time on content, is there a market?
Depends what you mean by ‘a market’ - there is definitely interest. I think the challenge is connecting that interest with resources to pay for education.
There will be a market. It’s the sort of thing that kids won’t know they need till it comes along. Actually they probably do but have no one to fill the gap anyway, so its a good time to launch! Just make sure its marketed well in universities globally/Facebook etc.