Derek Muller of Veritasium, an educational science channel on YouTube, recently posted a 7-minute video exploring the current problems with Facebook. If you and/or your organization spend any time on Facebook, then I encourage you to listen to Muller's video in its entirety. So What? Muller comments, "The beauty of social media is that it's the user who gets to control the content, who they interact with and how." As Facebook increasingly limits what content users see and Read More …
My 2014 Resolutions (#1283)
I rarely participate in the annual ritual of crafting resolutions for the coming year. I did commit to one in 2012. This time, for 2014, I have settled upon three: Participate in worship in at least 10 different communities of faith Write at least 200 blog posts and be more actively engaged on Twitter Read at least 100 books and write reviews for at least 50 So What? New years bring new possibilities. While I expect a fair degree of the unexpected in the months ahead, Read More …
Tweeting at Quality Matters (#1194)
This week I have been in Nashville, TN attending the Quality Matters annual conference. According to their website, Quality Matters "is a leader in quality assurance for online education and has received national recognition for its peer-based approach to continuous improvement in online education and student learning." It is the standard Hodges University has chosen to adopt, and will soon be implementing. As has been the case at all of the professional conferences I have attended Read More …
Taking a Break (#1151)
Time for a Break A great deal has changed in the world of blogging since I started writing on a daily basis nearly three years ago, and much has changed in my own life as well. What Next? Over the next few weeks, I plan to gather input from many sources. I encourage you to leave your thoughts as a reply to this post. More specifically: What about this blog do you find most helpful? What type of content would you be most interested in reading in the future? When you think of Read More …
Sermon Prep (#1142)
Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, recently facilitated a Twitter poll asking pastors to share how long they spend preparing a sermon. The results show that most pastors take between 10-18 hours to prepare each message. More specifically: 70% prep between 10 and 18 hours, 15% prep between 7 and 9 hours, 10% prep for 6 hours or less, and 6% devote 19 hours or more to prepare each message. So What? Sermons vary widely in many respects, Read More …
Social Media Day (#1140)
Today is Mashable's fourth annual Social Media Day. Some 335 different communities will feature meetups. Many more people will contribute to the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #smday. So What? Social media has changed the way we communicate more than we often realize. Take some time today to reflect on your own social media journey from the initial days you explored the possibility of participating through your current involvement. In addition to reflection, I have Read More …
New Twitter Analytics? (#1124)
About twenty-four hours ago, I was elated when I read Seth Fiegerman's Mashable piece relaying big news: Twitter released a robust analytics dashboard to all users. I immediately logged in to my account as directed, and was quite impressed by the data available. In fact, I was so delighted I passed the news of this new feature on to multiple colleagues. Within a few hours (thanks to seeing multiple tweets on the topic appearing in my stream) I realized that this new feature had Read More …
Social Media Shortcomings (#0998)
While I am encouraged to see more and more nonprofits entering the world of social media, I wonder what percentage of these efforts are ineffective primarily because those tasked with overseeing them lack the appropriate training and/or resources. Recently Nonprofit Tech 2.0 posted a list of eleven signs that your nonprofit needs social media training. The list includes: Your avatar is cropped, shrunk, blurry, or too small to make an impact. You are rarely retweeted on Twitter. Read More …
Religious Rockstars on Twitter (#0949)
Christina Chaey recently placed the following people on her list of religious rockstars on Twitter: Pope Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) Joel Osteen (@JoelOsteen) Joyce Meyer (@JoyceMeyer) Jesse Jackson, Sr. (@RevJJackson) Reverend Run (@RevRunWisdom) Rick Warren (@RickWarren) Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (@RabbiShmuley) So What? My immediate response to reading this list was to see how many of the religious Read More …
Winning a Re-Tweet Award (#0893)
Earlier this month I attended the 18th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning. When I checked in at the registration area, I was pleased to see an advertisement for a Twitter contest. The instructions were simple: the tweet using the conference hashtag (#aln12) that received the most retweets would be win the contest. Since I planned to tweet, I kept the flier. With nearly 3,000 people attending the conference, I didn't think I would be a Read More …