Social media is rapidly changing education and school environments, from students’ educational experiences to its use as a communication and information sharing tool for the education profession. Australia has always been one of the fastest growing early adopter markets for new platforms and technologies. Coupled with the National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout, we will see even faster adoption and use. The NBN will provide enhanced infrastructure for delivering rich multimedia experiences and cloud-hosted applications in education. Over the next five years, the use of tablet devices like the iPad will become the norm and the desktop computer will disappear. Understanding what the future will look like from a technology perspective is key to being able to develop the skills to maximise the opportunities it offers. The skills needed for teachers, students and parents in technology are quickly changing. Social media is at the forefront of this, with use and time spent in Australia online increasing significantly every year. Understanding how to collect and share information and observe appropriate online etiquette in safe and secure ways are important concerns for educators, especially with the rapid uptake of social media. The aim of this workshop is to provide a picture of Australia’s current online usage and behaviour, outline broad international trends and their application in education and provide the opportunity to develop a safe and practical understanding of social media technologies that would be valuable in professional practice in education.

1. Social media
workshop –
the big picture
Kathy Phelan and Roger Dunbar

2. Getting online in Australia
50%
of online Australians
80%
of online Australians
access the Internet use social networking
via a mobile device sites (comScore, 2011)
(Nielsen, 2011)
www.smallworldsocial.com 2

3. Education leadership use
Principals and school leaders technology usage on a daily basis - 99%
email, 88% internet and 58% smart phone (Principals Australia Inc., 2011)
Social media tools that are integrated into classroom teaching (Mitchell,
2011)
• YouTube - 53% of teachers
• Email - 50%
• Wikipedia - 31%
• Moodle - 17%
• Bookmarking sites - 8%
• Twitter, Skype & Facebook - 3%
In this study specialist science teachers made up 50% of the total
respondents, with the remainder being generalist teachers, specialists in
other areas, administrators and academics.
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4. Global trends
Technology Infrastructure Content Privacy & Security
Mobile devices Cloud computing Digital curation Data = $$$
www.smallworldsocial.com 4

5. Tablets
The uptake of tablets is rising at a rapid rate.
The desktop computer will be a thing of the past in 4 years.
www.smallworldsocial.com 5

6. Cloud
Cloud computing is
driving this growth, 60%
of server workloads will
be virtualised by 2014.
www.smallworldsocial.com 6

7. Digital curation
Digital curation is being driven by people’s need for self expression and
personalisation.
Hottest examples:
Tumblr – visual blog platform. The fastest growing social media platform
globally, surpassing 10 billion posts and 29 million blogs to date.
Pinterest – content curation platform. Daily users have grown 145% since the
beginning of 2012 with 12 million visitors a month.
Delicious – social bookmarking.
www.smallworldsocial.com 7

8. Privacy and data security
People share where they are, what they are doing and what they
are going to do. This data is valuable, traded in the market as a
commodity.
95% of students in years 7 to 10 use social networking sites
(Monash University, 2011).
www.smallworldsocial.com 8

9. Video: Tumblr meet-up at Federation Square 2011
www.smallworldsocial.com 9

10. Video: Social media technologies changing the world - University 2.0,
Sebastian Thrun at the DLD Conference in Munich (Jan 2012)
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11. But just how useful and hard is it
going to be for me?
Video: Rob Gell - the weather man that predicts a change in the forecast
www.smallworldsocial.com 11

12. What does the future hold?
Interactive TV - put yourself in the narrative
Multiple screens
The rise of the ecosystem and seamless transitions from one ecosystem to another
Consolidation – one-stop shops

13. Q&A
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14. Designing
Organizing
Learning
Roger Dunbar
Stern School of Business
New York University

15. The Process
• Designers divide a task into component parts
• Designers then develop an integration process to link the parts to achieve
a desired outcome
• If an outcome requires predictable action, use rules, routines, standards,
heuristics
• If an outcome requires flexibility, use interaction, meetings, discussions,
liaisons
• The design issue: how to support appropriate predictability and flexibility
in a process
www.smallworldsocial.com.au 2

16. Learning in Organizations
• At one level, organizations are process tools
• At another level, organizational arenas are where people can act out just
about anything
• Managers often assess things with criteria different from those designed
into processes
• How can one deal with multiple assessment criteria?
• Ideal answer: Focus on original design criteria
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17. Managers
• Managers act based on their experience
and education and their interpretations
are based on the categories and structures
they know
• Managerial interpretations are usually
short-term, dealing with current issues
• As interpretations are out-of-line with task
performance, performance will be hurt
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18. Learning in Organizations
• Hierarchical organizations want top-down transparency so that those
at the top feel they are in control
•
• In seeking “their way” top managers work hard and alienate those
further down
• Role-holders may support performance goals e.g., education
performance, but they are keenly aware of hierarchical power, what it
•
is pushing for, and their alienation from it
•
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19. Illustration
• New York has around 1600 schools and 1.2 million students
• In 2002, Joel Klein, a high-level Department of Justice lawyer
(Microsoft),was hired by Mayor Bloomberg to direct reform efforts
Joel hired more lawyers into his top team
• How do you expect a group of lawyers to organize to run a school
system?
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20. • Lawyers
• • Lawyers use the law to define constraints
• Within these constraints, they rationalize how to exploit the situation
to benefit their client and how to defend their client from negative
• reactions in the environment
• • Categorize the school environment
• Principals, teachers, students, parents
• Which group is causing the problems?
www.smallworldsocial.com.au 7

21. A culture based on metrics
• The US uses standard tests in subject areas to assess and compare
student performance
• The US calculates national average scores and state and school
scores in each subject area
• Teachers are assessed based on what their classes achieve relative to
national averages
• Lawyers and their allies want to give teachers financial bonuses as
their students’ scores are better on standard tests
www.smallworldsocial.com.au 8

22. Targeted school principals
• Centralized everything
• Principals were unionized, “bad”.
• Sought to get rid of “bad” principals
• To replace them, a NYC Leadership Academy opened to train new
principals or retrain old principals
• Lots of team-building skills, education process knowledge, flexible
integration skills, etc.
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23. Results
• Massive disruption
• Teachers are unionized - new principals arrive as “chosen ones”
• Administration proposed to pay teachers extra (financial incentives) if
student scores improve. Teacher ratings are published
• Parents are often cut out of the process
• Little change in school scores
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24. The Process
• Designers divide a task into component parts
• Designers then develop an integration process to link the parts
to achieve a desired outcome
• If an outcome requires predictable action, use rules, routines,
standards, heuristics
• If an outcome requires flexibility, use interaction, meetings,
discussions, liaisons
• The design issue: how to support appropriate predictability
and flexibility in a process
www.smallworldsocial.com.au 11