Meet the Author
Tanya Joosten is Interim Director of the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Learning Technology Center (LTC) where almost 3000 instructors (faculty, academic staff, and TA’s) are supported in their use of digital technologies to facilitate teaching and learning. She has over ten years experience teaching online and blended courses in communications, co-chairs the UWM Online Program Council, is the campus liaison for online and blended programming, is a mentor for the Sloan-C certificate in online teaching, and is the 2013 chair of the Sloan-C Blended conference.
Book Basics
After attending Joosten’s informative, interactive, and inspirational session (“Social Media to Enhance Online Learning“) at the 18th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning, I wasted no time in acquiring a copy of her latest book. Social Media for Educators is a must read for anyone who cares about the educational enterprise. Divided into three sections (“Background,” “Social Media: What Do We Do with it?,” and “Other Considerations in Implementation”), the book is appropriate for those with little or no experience leveraging social media tools to support learning objectives, yet substantive enough to warrant reading by seasoned educators and administrators.
Since social media are “virtual places where people share; everybody and anybody can share anything anywhere anytime,” the possibilities are endless (p.14). This text serves well as your personal guide while you navigate the possibilities, determine the value, and begin using (or alter your usage of) social media in your teaching. Once you begin the journey, the same tools you use to teach become ways of learning and sharing your learning with your colleagues throughout the world.
So What?
Whether you teach online, in a blended environment, and/or face-to-face, social media is increasingly important. Most educators completed their formal education in the BSM (Before Social Media) era. We must model lifelong learning.
- How do you use social media in your current educational endeavors?
- What training and professional development opportunities does your church or ministry group offer to its educators? If you are too small to do so in-house, how do you make use of outside options provided by your denomination and/or those provided for a wider audience?
Tanya Joosten. Social Media for Educators: Strategies and Best Practices (Jossey-Bass, 2012). ISBN: 9781118118283.