By Anthony Balderrama
CareerBuilder.com writer
[online @ http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/01/28/cb.facebook.boss.friend/index.html]

Facebook's been around for almost five years -- a lifetime in the Internet world -- and by now it has become a mainstay of workers who want to kill a little (or a lot) of time updating their statuses and playing Scrabble.

Hidden deep beneath the site's fun, technological distractions, some people are actually using the site for its intended purpose: networking (social and professional).

You know, touching base and building relationships with people -- all things that used to be done in person with awkward phone calls and cocktail-party pleasantries.

At workplaces, online networking has become an effective way for co-workers within the same building or on different continents to connect. Bosses and employees are also friending each other, which can make balancing personality and professionalism difficult.

There are obvious drawbacks to letting the boss see too much of your non-work self, but do the positives compensate?

[Continue reading online ]

NEA branded its Read Across America (RAA) annual reading motivation and awareness program on Facebook last Friday. The program calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss.

Popularity of the RAA program illustrates just how well social networking tools like Facebook can motivate and engage members to participate in association events.

RAA Goes Viral on Facebook
Over the weekend, over 100 Facebook members invited between 2 and 20 of their "friends" to join the NEA RAA event. When each of these members' friends joins the cause there will be over 1,500 Facebook users who've joined the "NEA RAA Cause." Those members, in turn, will invite their friends to also join the cause, exponentially increasing online commitment and awareness of RAA.

NEA is shooting for at least 10,000 Facebook members to support this year's Read Across America event.

The OD Practitioner [Vol. 40 No. 4 (2008)] recently published a series of three articles related to "OD for the 21st Century (Section IV):"

1. Technology Trends that ODs Must Not Ignore
2. Cyberspace and the OD Profession; Challenges and Opportunities
3. OD Gets Wired

You can access the third article by clicking on the link below. If you are interested in reading the remaining two, please contact me.

“Computer-based technologies and the evolving internet are not just tools. They are attributes of a new world... a new frontier… in which we must move and live. Living in cyberspace requires the marriage of the human and computer…

The human and the internet. Cyber-OD must evolve to address human collaboration within the cyber-realm.”

[Read more... ]

This month we laid the foundation for improvements to performance for our user community.

The Gateway is now running in a state of the art environment that not only improves the speed with which searches are accomplished but, allows us to scale to the demands of our ever growing community of users.

Ragan.com
By Zak Stambor

A behind-the-scenes look at Southwest Airlines’ social media strategy—and how its six-person team manages the workload

Gone are the days of culling an organization's value from a single Web site. Savvy digital natives measure the “Net” worth of any potential organizational relationship by the capacity with which a specific organization provides one or more authentic forums for identifying, connecting, mingling and sounding off. Blogs, microblogs, social networks are all examples of authentic forums.

So how is NEA doing these days with regard to hosting authentic forums for its members to identify, connect, mingle and sound off?

Technically and culturally we have a long way to go. But we’re getting our feet wet. Below are a few examples of early forays into helping our members find themselves and support their efforts to feel like they're among the 3.2 million members ensuring great public schools for every student.

If we give them a voice, what will they say?

Who want's to keep up with what we're saying?

If we ask, will they come?

Who are they?

Baltimore County Public School system rolls out PBwiki to 103,643 students and 8,850 classroom teachers.

They've created a collaborative environment that allows teachers and students to see multiple models of outstanding writing. Prior to using the wiki, teachers who wanted to highlight a well-written student response, needed to first copy it and then, make a transparency. Frequently, the text was illegible in places and because of the amount of work involved and time constraints only one or two student models were displayed.

The county knows from research that the more student models writers see, the more rich and well-written responses we receive. PBwiki provides the means for students to view multiple models 24/7 and as a result, to independently assess and improve their written responses. In addition, the collaborative environment facilitates the development of peer review and editing skills.

[more...]

UNION CITY, CA (KGO) -- These are stressful times for educators from budget cuts to teacher layoffs and schools closing. So the California Teachers Association has come up with a way to keep teachers informed about these developments every minute of the day, by using a new social networking website.

Over 10,000 people across the country are following NEA's Read Across America 2009 on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Active followers are tuning in to Twitter to "listen" as events unfold in Seattle and Portland and can "tweet" what they're doing to help every child in every community celebrate reading. Bellow is a blogger who picked up the NEA RAA Twitter feed and blogged about the project.

Additionally, any of the over 10,000 Facebook NEA RAA supporters who have their own Flickr accounts can upload pictures they take to their own accounts and use a special tag that will allow NEA's RAA to automatically aggregate all photographs into one presentation. This photographic journal is visible across all NEA RAA social media outlets.