WebJunction

Susan McBride and I created the Social Web Literacy course at Pierce County Library last fall with the objective of bringing the new world of social networking to our staff.  Because social sites and web 2.0 tools keep changing, we designed the class to evolve along with them.  We manage to keep the class cutting edge without constantly scrapping the agenda or replacing it.  If you are planning such a course, here are a few suggestions to keep in mind:

Build a flexible structure. We prepared for the changing nature of the topic by building change into our syllabus. We kept the teacher's outline to two and a half pages and the students' to a single sheet. We offered a two-page glossary of terms and left our website list online to be accessed and adjusted whenever the need arose.

I once worked at a radio station that had an hourly structure: five minutes of news, three minutes of commercials, three songs, four more commercials, etc. The commercials and songs were basically cartridges —little timed packages to be interchanged. As last week's commercials and hit songs were replaced, we simply tucked new cartridges into their places.  The hourly structure held up, but the hour of radio stayed fresh week in and week out.

Our social web class works on that principle. We start with a YouTube video and an opening monologue. Then we move into class segments (little timed packages) about online polls, wikis, avatars, gaming, tags and tag clouds, personal pages, blogs, RSS feeds, and instant messaging. A big class activity is tucked into the second half. That is our structure. We assign time lengths to each section, have fact sheets and shortcuts at our fingertips, and have a general idea what we'll say and show but we don't restrict ourselves to details. In fact, Susan and I improvise much of the class as we trade off teaching duties every twenty minutes. The outline gives us a solid foundation and keeps the discussion flowing from one topic to the next, but the flexible nature gives us plenty of room to adapt and evolve the class each time we teach it.

So we have our class structure with interchangeable parts. How do we keep the individual parts current? For that Susan and I keep our eyes and ears open.

Keep up on the news. We might read about a political candidate’s MySpace page, or a lawsuit involving YouTube, or a company merger. It doesn't take much to weave such news stories into the general flow of the class. If our students relate to the story we'll keep it for the next class. If the news goes stale, we drop it.

Reading recent books gives background information as well. I personally find the quirky origins of popular sites and tools ideal for entertaining asides during class.

Read the blogs. Blogs are social software, so why wouldn't the teachers of a social web class walk the walk? I have RSS feeds from dozens of popular tech and library blogs. They steer me toward new trends and websites. Once I understand the impact myself, I can decide whether to include it in the class and which class section to clip it to. Many of the websites and videos we show or discuss in class were first encountered in our favorite blogs. Even if I personally don't understand what the fuss is about —Twitter comes to mind —I can sense the excitement about something new in the blogosphere.

Listen to personal stories. We collect new stories each time we teach the class. One student used her newly created Blogger and Flickr accounts when she and her husband travelled to China. Family and friends were able to lend support and follow their progress through an adoption process 5,000 miles away. There are many more stories: the colleagues I have met through Facebook, Flickr, and Ning; the creative expression a coworker finds in Dogster; the rare kite designer a hobbyist discovered through Flickr.  These stories involve people the students know. You can't illustrate the impact of social networking better than that. It demonstrates the power of this cultural trend.

Learn with your students. Finally, admit that the teacher doesn't know everything. If a website changes a bit or an interesting new tool becomes available a teacher should be willing to learn alongside everyone else. It keeps today's class dynamic, and enriches future classes. It's also the best way I know to encourage your students to keep exploring after the class is over. If you continue to get excited discovering something new after you know so much about the social web already, then perhaps they might feel that, too.

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