Blogs

Part of my role in OneCommunity's BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) project (called Connect Your Community) is to figure out the curricululm for the participants. Having assisted community technology centers for so many years and seeing how each center seemed to create their own curriculum, I was certain we could keep the cost down by finding bit and pieces of existing curriclulum. I was partially correct. There is A LOT of curriculum available for free, either posted online or for the asking. The challenge we encountered is that some of what we wanted to teach was so new, either the curriculum didn't exist at the level we needed it (for beginners) or what we found was outdated. The easy ones to find were the topics that didn't change much and are super popular - such as Microsoft Word for Beginners or Keyboard Basics. Viruses and Spyware had to be created from scratch, as did Online Identity.

We discovered three libraries with particularly well thought out training materials posted online for new computer users. I contacted them and 2 of the 3 not only gave me permission to revise their materials but also emailed me original files to make the editing much easier. I promised to send them the revisions for their use. (We won't talk about the 3rd library.)

Hibbing Public Library in Minnesota - Provides lesson plans online as PDFs including slide presentations and handouts. All are available under a Creative Commons License.

Indian Prairie Public Library in Illinois - Provides lesson plans online as PDFs including slide presentations, quick reference cards and exercises.

We will be posting all the Connect Your Community training materials with a Creative Commons license. Since the funding is from the federal government (stimulus money), seems like making the materials freely available is the right thing to do.

Below is curriculum to guide social users of social networks into professional use. We've created a Participant Guide, a Facilitaor Guide and a Slide Presentation. All three work together.

We are offering all the materials freely, under a Creative Commons license welcoming others to share or remix our work, with the understanding that Shinydoor will be credited, the materials will not be used for commercial purposes, and the remixed materials will also be made available under the same or similar license.

What have we been up to the past couple of months at ShinyDoor?

Most important - we have a new ShinyDoor partner! Josephine Ann, born June 1, 2010.

Thanks to sponsorship from the Appalachian Regional Commission, Laura taught Facebook classes in Alabama to small businesses.

We created professional social networking curriculum for INROADS.

Angela assisted the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition and the New America Foundation writing a proposal for Broadband Technology Opportunities Project funds.

Angela is assisting OneCommunity and its many partners with implementation of the BTOP funded broadband adoption project Connect Your Community.

I sat down today with Pam Larson, the Director of Mountview Christian Preschool, to talk Facebook. She wanted to set up a presence for the school on the site, and as the happy parent of a preschooler there, I volunteered to help.

Goals
The first step in any good Facebook strategy is to identify who you want to communicate with, and why.

"I know that many of our parents are using Facebook, even more than e-mail," Pam told me. "I want to set up a way to communicate with them there. I'd also like to use it as a way to recruit new students to the school."

Mountview has two goals:
1. To communicate with parents
2. To use the site as a recruiting tool for additional students

Off to a good start - two concise goals.

Group or Page?
As we moved on to implementation steps - actually setting up the Facebook presence - we started to notice that these goals are in conflict.

To communicate with parents, we want to give information. Tell the dates and times of field trips, share detailed curriculum information, give parents activities to try at home. I recommended a group for this. Why? We can make it private, so that only parents can see when the children's field trips will be. Most of the information we will give here is too detailed for non students to care about, not to mention privacy issues regarding giving the location of a class at any given time. Plus, with a group, we can send messages directly to parents' in-boxes.

To recruit, we want to showcase the school. Tell about the great things children are learning, the music they sing each day, the fabulous field trips. We also want to highlight the times for open registration before each session. I recommended a page for this. Why? It's public. Anyone can join and find it in search results. It has a viral effect, since friends of a person who "likes*" the page will be able to see the interactions of that person with the page in their Home Newsfeed. This sparks interest. A page also allows us to measure how people are engaging with our page.

In short, any specific information we want to tell parents, we don't want to open up for public viewing, but if we close the group, no potential parents will be able to see the great things the preschool is involved in.

We realized there was no way to achieve both goals using just a page or a group.

Page and Group
After weighing the pros and cons of focusing on one goal or the other, Pam decided to do both. The information on the two sites will be similar, but timed differently.

Group
We set up a group with membership at the "secret" level to protect privacy. This way, Pam can invite parents and staff to the group, but no one without an invitation will even know the group exists. We also set up a policy about who was allowed to be a member of the group, and added procedures to take people out of the group when they leave the school.

Things Pam can post to the group:

• Upcoming field trip information
• School closings
• Curriculum updates
• School events
• Pictures and videos
• New session registration information

Page
We set up a page to post public information. After the group gets the requisite 25 members, Pam can customize the page URL to post on school communications and the school website.

Things Pam can post to the page:

• Past field trip highlights
• Curriculum highlights
• Past school event highlights
• Pictures that contain no children (such as field trip locations and school facilities)
• New session registration information

Pam committed to spending 10-15 minutes each day updating the sites. Since the information she will be posting is already being created (in the form of flyers home to parents), she will not need to spend additional time coming up with items to post. Posting to Facebook is just an additional small step in an established process. She can put the information on the group, then dilute it for use on the page.

This is a great example of taking something that already exists (parent communications) and re-purposing it for easy online use. Looking for a good preschool? I recommend Mountview! :)

*Note that Facebook has recently changed the terminology on us here. It used to be "fan" a page.

It all started with a backed up drain pipe in my basement. My husband tried snaking the drain but it remained clogged.

Plumber #1: We called Rescue Rooter who snaked the drain ($248) as far as they could (which was not far enough). They sent a camera down (free) and determined our sewer pipe had collapsed. They provided a quote of almost $5K to repair the sewer pipe. The dude from Rescue Rooter seemed more like a sales guy than a plumber guy, plus he had a Chicken Little kind of attitude (don't flush toilet paper!) so we went looking for a 2nd quote. I searched online for sewer repair reviews (of which they are few) and asked my network for referrals (online and off).

Plumber #2:Online searching came up with Calhoun Plumbing. They ran a camera through the pipe ($255), gave us a dvd of the video, determined the sewer line had collapsed and said they would provide an itemized quote within a day. I asked for an off the top of their head quite of estimate and was told $7K.

At this point, I am wondering how much a first born child goes for on the black market. (Kidding. Just kidding.) And we are taking all showers and doing laundry elsewhere as we are afraid to end up with something terrible arising from our basement drain.

Plumber #3: I had been relaying all our drain drama to my networks via Twitter and Facebook. I received multiple suggestions of plumbers. Most of them do not touch sewer repair. One of my Facebook Friends (a previous client) suggested Muetzel Plumbing (which does not have a website). They sent a rep to provide a quote. I told their rep my story, including that I had become distrustful of his industry. He sent a camera through our sewer drain. He then asked me "How do you know you have a collapsed pipe?" I said "It was snaked and then I was told it was collapsed". He said "Did you see the video?" I said "Yes, but I had no idea what I was looking at, plus the 2 videos I have seem looked entirely different." He was not convinced the drain had collapsed. He suggested they run a power wash type of tool called a Jetter through our sewer pipe for $253. I said "do it". Anything to avoid putting my first born on the black market. Can you guess the end of this story? The Muetzel Plumbing power washing tool worked! Turned out it was roots! He then showed me on the video how my drain was clear all the way to the main sewer. He even found a few roots left in the sewer pipe so he ran the power washing tool again! Honorable. FINALLY. A skilled and honorable plumber.

The skilled and honorable plumber was found how? Facebook Friend. Who is actually a colleague. And my network comes through again.