The advertising and marketing worlds are far down the road to reaching today’s youth through the Internet; education is not. Morgan Stanley’s March 18, 2008 72-page Internet Trends report only mentions “education” once. You can see the mention in the above image at the the bottom of the box on the left by the blue square where it says “Work, Business, Education.” As the pie chart shows, education is only part of 6% of the “Worldwide Share of Online Time.” The chart also shows that social connections are how 15-24 year-olds are connecting online, in a category of use that did not exist 3 years ago.
For education to reach students via the Net, we would do well to drop in on what the advertising and marketing folks are learning about reaching people online through social networks. The following advice, called Join The Conversation, is from an email newsletter sent this week to subscribers by the Internet marketing firm Bruce Clay, Inc.:
At SMX Social, it was clear that engagement is built into the very fabric of social media. Highly interactive and gaining momentum, social networks are the gathering place for groups of like-minded individuals. If utilized properly, social media presents a golden opportunity for marketers. Of course, it’s the first part that’s tricky. Creating original and engaging linkbait, submitting relevant content to social bookmarking sites, and being present on networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are all challenging and resource-intense projects, but hold the potential for huge returns.
In light of the Morgan Stanley report on Internet trends, marketers can’t afford to stay in the dark as far as social media is concerned. According to the study released last month, Internet users across the globe are spending 16 percent of their online time on social sites, like Facebook and YouTube. In fact, the study said that the combined number of page views for those two sites is higher than Google or Yahoo page views, possibly even combined. What’s remarkable is that the “Social Connections” category wasn’t even on the researcher’s radar three years ago. For quick highlights of the report, check out the story on TechCrunch.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:25 pm
The reasons lie with a head in the sand attitude of school managers who see their hierarchical authority base being eroded. The cult of managerialism crept into NZ schools in the 80’s with the publication of the Picot report. Since that time competition between schools has been has been encouraged to the detriment of collaboration.
School principals are now wholly concerned with compliance issues and see themselves as being responsible for the commmunity profile of the school.
Schools are generally ambivalent about the use of blogs for instance and the first reaction of senior managers is often to discourage staff, refuse to link blogs to the school website (yep most schools stick with the static website and send out paper newsletters that are screwed up to litter the locality. School intranets and platforms to deliver content are available but the justification for their introduction is usually based on irrational fears of the inherent dangers of the internet. Kids need to protected from this monster….keep the internet out and leave us with the responsibility for communication with the community.
The professional development budget is another are heavily gaurded by school management (if we lose all these management responsibiliies what are we here for?}The best professional development can be found on the web by directly contacting those at the cutting edge ( in my case Ewen Macintosh at Learning Teaching Scotland and Derek Robertson at the Consolarium). In other words I can sort out my own PD and have no need be tied down to the usual “literacy” and “numeracy” initiatives
The school systems worlwide preoccupation with assessment is a factor in reducing the amount of time teachers have to address the whole web 2.0 thing.
……….aaaaargh thanks for the opportunity to rant