Category: higher ed

#heweb11 #tnt8 and #austintx

higher ed / mobile / techblog / Twitter
27 Oct, 2011
0

Yes that’s a lot of Twitter hashtags but that’s what’s been filling up the past few days for me. I, along with four other folks from W&M Creative Services, travelled to Austin earlier this week to attend HighEdWeb 2011 in Austin, Texas. Tina Coleman and Andrew Bauserman presented on our new events system at W&M, and Joel Pattison and Justin Schoonmaker offered a Photoshop workshop. Our former director Susan Evans (now at mStoner) also presented on creating a Creative Services team.

I presented alongside Doug Gapinski from mStoner about mobile strategy for higher education. The talk was well received on Twitter (tracked via hashtags for each session, ours was #tnt8) and I’m excited that folks were so interested in our topic. HighEdWeb’s magazine Link summarized our talk summarized our talk twice (!) if you’re curious about what we discussed.

I attended a lot of great talks and have some great ideas to bring back to campus. Here are their Twitter hashtag commentary (with a quick-and-dirty archive courtesy of Twitter RSS) and summaries courtesy of Link:

#mmp1 – Creative Services anyone?
#soc2 – Beyond blogging: Create and integrated online student ambassador program
#aps3 – What students want in their mobile application
#tnt4 – Lost in a map: Understanding the direction of your campus map
#soc5 – Engaging your global audience with real-time event coverage (best in track)
#aps9 – The politics of doing higher ed IA (best in track)
#soc10 – E-Expectations 2011: The online expectations of prospective college students and their parents (only saw a small part of this one)
#mmp11 – How to break things really good
#aps12 – One calendar to rule them all
#mmp12 – What colleges can learn from the Insane Clown Posse (best in track)
#tnt3 – Carrying the Banner: Reinventing News on Your University Web Site (best in track and best in conference)

As always this is a great conference with great speakers and networking opportunities, looking forward to HighEdWeb 2012 in Milwaukee!

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Eight Foursquare resources for colleges and universities

Foursquare / higher ed / social media / techblog
20 May, 2011
2

Selected bits of this post are also cross-posted on the W&M Creative Services Blog

While working with William & Mary’s Foursquare presence and from my personal use of Foursquare over the past year or so, I’ve collected a few links I’ve found particularly useful, ranging from explaining what Foursquare is to those unfamiliar with the site, to resources for folks in higher ed in particular:

Foursquare 101 offers an excellent introduction of what Foursquare is and how it works courtesy of the About Foursquare blog (this blog also offers a lot of great info and tips, as well as the latest Foursquare news)
The Foursquare Support site is a good starting point for more specific questions, from how to use Foursquare to etiquette to software issues, all this is info straight from the source.
Official Foursquare for Universities page is the place to start to see how other schools are using Foursquare, benefits to using Foursquare on your campus, and to apply to have your school get a branded page.
Getting started with Foursquare for colleges and universities is a great overview from About Foursquare for what to do to start up your campus’ Foursquare presence.
Here’s why Dave Olsen from WVU thinks Foursquare can help your school
Badges are quite popular on Foursquare and they’ve made a set just for colleges and universities (just make sure that the primary category for each venue is “College/University – <type of venue>,” otherwise checkins at these venues won’t go towards unlocking the college-themed badges).
If you’re looking to flesh out some of your school’s venues with some photos (and you don’t want them to be ones just from your mobile phone), About Foursquare describes a nice way to upload photos from your desktop (a little programming knowledge is required).
Working with all of William & Mary‘s venues I’ve spent a lot of time using a site called tidysquare. It will display, on a map, all the Foursquare venues for a given location, show you possible duplicates, as well as find venues with incomplete information. It’s a great place to start if you’re working to clean up your campus’ venues or just looking for a way to gauge how much of a Foursquare presence has been established in your area.

Super what?

So one of the things I think is really cool (and smart) about Foursquare is that they crowdsource the maintenance of their venues. Folks known as “superusers” are given permission to update and add information to the various venues in an effort to keep the data as accurate as possible. There are three levels of superusers, ranging from 1 (the lowest) to 3 (the highest), and Foursquare just opened things up yesterday so that anyone can apply to become a superuser (as long as you promise to use your powers for good). I had been a “Level 1 Superuser” courtesy of all the work I’ve done with William & Mary’s Foursquare presence but, being the geek I am, I applied to be upgraded yesterday to a Level 2 Superuser. The whole thing really appeals to my super-organized side so I’m excited to appease that and help out the larger Foursquare community at the same time 🙂

So after all that I encourage you to create a Foursquare profile for your school or organization if you don’t have one already, claim venues around your campus, add new venues, offer tips to share some insider knowledge about your area, and find out all the new places this location-based stuff can take you.

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