WE RUN A MODULE in social media at Tipperary Institute and when it's successful, students understand the essence of online conversation as viewed through a prism of electronic space (above from Brian Solis). Viewed through a conversation prism, issues such as privacy and civility take on a clear focus.
Because half of my student cohort would fill an entire classroom by themselves, I have a tough job encouraging these third level students to trust online networks like Twitter and Facebook with their lifestreams. The task is made a little challenging when I explain that the principals behind these popular social sites never finished college. But a lot of leading lights in technology never completed a college degree. So I talk about today's throwaway technologies as parts of the conversation prism. I want people to use free and open networks to share what they wish and I hope our social media group can snap, tag and share objects related to localnews, technology, creativity, and travel. If we do it right, we'll be writing rich media pages that attract visitors into the sunny southeast of Ireland.
Major players like Google and Bing, alonside specialised search services like IceRocket will find the things we upload to Flickr, text to Twitter, or share on Friendfeed.
Knowing how to converse online today involves knowing the extent to which content shared with others becomes content released into the wild to unknown aggregators. We're unpacking all those issues by actually emerging in the space. By the middle of April 2010, we'll have a downloadable e-book about our shared adventure and a false wall in the campus where we'll display some private thoughts that were never meant to be on the worldwide web.
