How do you make innovation work when the day job as an educator gets ever busier? Where do you find inspiration and solutions to practical problems on fragmented social networks? Over the past 10 years, our organization has built a growing community of practice on the back of our day-to-day business activities, and we have experimented with moving these activities to social spaces that are run and owned by and for educators. In this presentation, we will share lessons learned from two such transitions: our move to Mastodon, a self-hostable, decentralized social networking platform, and Ghost, an open source blogging platform. During the sessions, we’ll use White’s Visitors/Residents foundational model and a "pre-mortem" evaluation to share our perspectives on the current state of social media and discuss the practical setup on new social platforms and highlight common pitfalls. We think it’s about time to assert your digital identity and reclaim your socials!
Attendees of this session will be able to:- Use federated social networks such as Mastodon for professional development, dissemination and networking;
- Evaluate how engaging with different social networks aligns with their values and competencies;
- Explore belonging and engagement via a visitors/residents model;
- Carry out a ‘pre-mortem’ reflective exercise about social media for professional development;
- Apply lessons learnt and practical know how to their own personal, professional or institutional social media use.
