1. develop an on-going, WA-based network of professional-staff leaders who foster student engagement through emerging technologies;
2. design, implement and evaluate web-based resources to support this network and to ensure its continuity; and
3. create a new model of leadership for application in the tertiary sector based on applying the cascade/viral model to building leadership capacity.

The project is a collaboration between The University of Western Australia, Murdoch University and Edith Cowan University, although our project team has a wider scope and includes:

• Dr Lisa Cluett (me) – project leader, UWA
• Dr Mark Pegrum – project team, UWA
• Dr Judy Skene – project team, UWA
• Dr Meg Poore – expert evaluator, ANU
• Sue Waters – project mentor, Challenger TAFE and Edublogger
• Dr Stephen Bax – project mentor, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

Prof, Jane Long (PVC-UWA), Prof. Jan Thomas (DVC-Murdoch) and Prof. Ron Oliver (PVC-ECU) provided encouragement, feedback and endorsement which is essential when puttign together such a huge endeavour.  The project doesn’t kick-off until a little way into 2010 so we have some time to get ourselves set-up so we can hit the ground running on day 1!

It has been a long process with the initial expression of interest submitted in April 2009, an invitation to submit a full proposal in May which we then wrote by the July deadline.  We were asked to provide a small clarification in August and then the final news came just a day after we resubmitted the final version on September 24th.

We plan on running an open, interactive and widely communicative project which will have a blog, a twitter feed, a newsletter, a webpage, a Second Life presence and lots and lots of face-to-face networking and community building.  Stay tuned for more in the coming months…

Today’s task?  Start to think about whether all the work I do is being adequately and appropriately reflected online – aka I was intending to check out and then build on my ‘online profile’ as suggested by William Aruda at MarketingProfs.com

So I set up my Google alerts, checked whether my domain name is available (it is – thanks for the link William) and then ventured into calculating my Online ID using this calculator.  I have to say answering the questions was quite entertaining (it all starts with Googling yourself of course) and seemed justifiably self-indulgent.  The end-result was that I was ‘diagnosed’ as being:

Now it’s not that I’m ungrateful – but am I really?  Digitally Distinct? I’m certainly not as broadly and accurately represented online as many people I know (to be honest I’m not as ‘present’ online as virtually everyone I know who works in online-type jobs*).  The graph itself was quite pretty and at least I hadn’t been labelled ‘dissed’, disasterous’ or ‘dabbling’ which could have done considerable damage to my self esteem.  But hang on – if I want to improve my ‘ID’ all I have to do is read chapter 11 of a book that is conveniently available from Amazon – just a click away!

If there is a fine line between online networking and online branding then I think this is it.  Potentially useful in certain fields but I think I’ll just get back to work and see how it goes for now.

*the fact that I just wrote ‘online type jobs’ reveals that I can’t even think of a proper collective term for all my Twitter friends!

It’s cute. It’s easy. It’s lunchtime

Originally sourced from Jason Fitzpatrick at LifeHacker on 25th August 09

1. Idea – To streamline the creation of Facebook photo albums I could somehow copy over the photos our staff have already uploaded to Flickr.  Staff are happy uploadign to flickr (and I only need to train them in one tool), they would only need to upload photos once (keeps workload low) and I can pick and choose from the Flickr albums which photos to show on Facebook (which means I can control the content on the Facebook page)

2. Problem – the applications that allow you to share Flickr photos on Facebook only work when you want to put the photos on your PERSONAL profile.  Whereas I want to load them onto my fan page and I just can’t make it work.

So near yet so far!  The MyFlickr and Flickr2Facebook applications are both easy to use (each have a couple of limitations such as not loading into an album or only allowing you to copy over photos one at a time) but I could cope with that if only they would link to my fan page.

UWA Students on Facebook - on 3rd August 2009

newly launched (pilot stage) UWA Students Facebook fan page.

The aim of the page is the engage potential, prospective and enrolled students of The University of Western Australia in an online community, to present a unified, friendly, online presence and to refer fans to University web material as appropriate.

The Good

• it’s exciting seeing fans find the page and post content.  It’s gone from 60 to 100 to 200+ fans in a very short time.
• many staff ‘get it’ straight away.  These enthused colleagues are a gift
• students appreciate it – never mind research that says Gen Y don’t want institutions in their private Facebook ‘lives’.  Fans from far and wide want a genuine, personalised connection with their uni
• it’s technologically very easy – a Facebook fan page is as easy to run as your own profile page.
• I know I’m on to something.  More on all that later.

The Bad

• The bar is high.  Looking at princeton, Sydney and Stanford can make it seem like I have a long way to go!  I wonder if the anything like the Facebook battle between Texas A&M and Louisiana State could happen in Australia.

The Ugly

• Managing applications on a fan page can be frustrating (depsite my point earlier about the pages being very easy to set up).  There are hundreds to browse, test and use and wrangling teh tab/wall content can be tricky (I mistakenly sent a block of work-related content to all my personal friends.  As least I know better now!)

I’ve already posted a link to my Survival Guide for UWA students on using Facebook and I’m in the process of finalising a guide for staff – unsurprisingly a much longer document!