The Next Step

One of the best things to come out of our school’s social network experiment is happening right now. Literally, its happening in front of me as I write. I’m sitting in the student union watching a small group of my student’s creating posters to hang around school. They are trying to raise money for a couple animal organizations. And, and, they organized their fundraising group through our network.

A couple weeks ago one of our 4 face-to-face instructors created an assignment where students use Google Sites to organize research, store information, and publish a final research paper. Just getting another teacher at our school to use a Web 2.0 tool is exciting in itself, but what came next is really cool.

One of her students, who is also in an online course I teach, contacted me on Yahoo IM and asked, “hey, Mr. Plough, how would I go about raising money to donate to an animal organization I care about?” We talked for a little bit, figured out what she was interested in doing, and then I said, “why don’t you use the social network to promote your ideas and see what happens.”

It’s been two weeks and here is what has happened so far:

• she organized a group of students who want to work together to raise money for 2 animal support organizations
• they created a logo for their group called “All for Animals”
• they developed a sales strategy involving selling lanyards for a small amount that would give 50 cents out of every dollar back to charity, the remaining money would go to keeping their “business” operating
• they organized an e-recycle/garbage buyback program at our school which earns money for their charity
• they are creating posters, cards, and flyers to help them promote the e-recycle and lanyard sales programs
• they are planning a “pet festival” at a local are park with bands and pet vendors with all proceeds going to the same 2 animal charities

When I look forward to what I want to see out of our social network next year as we expand it from a pilot program to a school-wide program, its things like this that top my list.

Today is a good day.

photo courtesy of Flickr user: ChinchillaVilla