EduTek n Social Media Advisor

Have You Explored the Transitory Status Features of Social Networks while Promoting Ur Business?

I am sure to promote your business you’ll all be implementing social media marketing (SMM) along with SEO and SEM. My question is, have you explored the following features?

• Posts in Google business page
• Moments in Twitter
• Story in Facebook, Instagram

The updates through these features are ephemeral in nature but stand out separately.  First let me explain how to create Posts in Google business page.

First visit your Google My Business (GMB) page and notice ‘Posts’ on L.H.S. and click.  If you have created some posts they will appear or you’ll be shown a section to create one as shown below.

 

Click the section ‘Write your post’ and you’ll be shown a webpage as shown below.

Upload your image, give a brief description using relevant keywords and select either an ‘event’ or ‘button’ option.

I am going to show by clicking the ‘button’ option. The various possibilities shown in following figure appear, when you select ‘button’. You can select an option relevant to you and give the required URL. Now preview your post and publish if satisfied.

These posts will show up in Google search as well as in map results. These posts will last for a week and then, usually on 6^th day, you’ll get a notice about it so that you can create a new post. These posts allow you to showcase your products, promote an event and offer a one click path to connect with your prospects / customers.

Similarly Facebook and Instagram have introduded the story feature. You can create your story for your Facebook / Instagram business page in the form of image / video from your smart phone.

If you are interested in learning, how to create FB stories, then click here.

This live stream feature allows you to promote your products / services / events easily. You don’t have to worry about cluttering other person’s news feed. Due to Facebook’s algorithm, you can’t be sure that everytime you post a live video or update your status, that’ll be seen by others. But these stories, simply stand out and if you really create a story that will add value to customer then you stand to gain definitely by exploring this feature.

The same advantage goes with Instagram. Depending on the presence of your target audience you can promote your business in FB or Instagram or or in both.

For someone interested in creating Instagram stories, can click here.

If you are intersted in creating and sharing great Twitter ‘Moments’ on Twitter, you can read my blog post titled ‘Sharing Great Moments on Twitter’ on LinkedIn /Pulse by clicking the hyperlink.

These features will enable you to stand out separately without having to bother about regular feeds where you may or may not be noticed.

Hope you’ll explore these features and succeed in promoting your business.     

 

Teno App, India’s Free to Use Mobile ERP for Schools

I would like to ask all school admins, what is the ERP they are using if they have switched over to complete digitization. If not, they can explore Teno, a free to use mobile ERP for schools. Even if they are already using some, they can still explore the features of Teno and find out how it fares with the existing one.

‘Teno app allows school administrators, teachers and parents to stay connected at all times via real time messaging. Teno has comprehensive features ranging from user control management to multimedia messaging support’.

Teno enables

• Teachers to have one-to-one chat with parents and offer feedback about the student’s performance
• Schools to create class wise groups so that teachers can share important announcements, information with parents
• Schools to share class work / homework in various doc, image and multimedia formats
• Parents to make online fee payment
• Teachers to take attendance so that school admits can get online reports

Interested in knowing how Teno works? Then watch the video given below.

The app can be used on Android, iOS and Windows based phones.

Hope you enjoy using Teno!

Role of Experiential Learning in Evolving Classroom

I had already mentioned about the importance of ‘Experiential Learning’ in my blog post titled ‘Enhancing Learning through various Experiential Learning Strategies’.

Today I wanted to share with you how, The George Washington University (GW) in Washington, D.C., has offered Experiential Learning environments in certain disciplines, that help both students and faculty realize their objectives by considering the needs for flexibility and meeting the pedagogical and learning demands.

Their experiential learning spaces include:

·         Award-winning, 6,300-square-foot School of Nursing's Skills and Simulation Lab

·          Milken Institute School of Public Health

·          Physics SCALE-UP classroom

The following videos depict the key features of above mentioned experiential learning spaces.

Skills and Simulation Lab

 

 

Milken Institute School of Public Health

 

 

While developing these projects, GW has realized the importance of inter disciplinary partnerships between IT department,  Audiovisual engineers and the faculties of concerned dept and has ensured that the faculties vision in realizing the goals and objectives are well understood by technical people.

 There is no doubt that these experiential learning environments would help the concerned professionals realize their goal with ease and ensure better performance.

 

I have also published this article on LinkedIn at http://linkd.in/1waocz9

 

Related articles

8 Reasons Why Experiential Learning Is The Future Of Learning

Campus on Cloud through Quampus

I recently had an opportunity to explore Quampus, a cloud based LMS that allows both learning providers and learners to provide and access the content easily.

For a learning provider, you have to select the category such as Independent Educator / Training Organization / School, College or University etc and register as Knowledge Partner and start developing the course.

You can add any content like SCORM compliant, video, audio, virtual lecture etc. You can create assessments and conduct an examination for your learners and view the report of the same.  

The main advantage of Quampus is that one need not install and host the LMS as it is available as a cloud based service and you can pay as you earn.

If you are offering your course for free then you can join as knowledge partner free of cost!

Thus the main advantages of opting for Quampus are:           

• It can be set up instantly without any capital requirement
• Offers end-to-end solution
• Can be customized
• Offers  an e-commerce enabled site

The following figure depicts the various features of Quampus.

 

Source: Quampus.com

Thus Quampus provides an easy opportunity for all learning providers to offer courses 24 by 7 easily without any initial requirements.

I look forward to receiving viewer’s comments as you explore Quampus on your own!

School Leadership Summit-2014

The free School Leadership Summit online conference will be held on March 27th, 2014.

‘The Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL) and Steve Hargadon are pleased to announce the second annual School Leadership Summit, Thursday, March 27th, 2014. This free world-wide conference will be held online and will be a unique chance to participate in a collaborative global conversation on school leadership with presentations by your peers. It is being co-chaired by Steve Hargadon, whose virtual educational conferences had over 100,000 attendee logins last year.’

The learning revolution’s event calendar can be accessed by clicking here.

Blended Mode of Instruction/Learning Using MOODLE

Source:http://bit.ly/16L41wc 

In this blog post, I am going to first explain what is blended mode of instruction/learning and suggest how you can implement the same using MOODLE, an open source  LMS (Learning Management System).

Blended or hybrid or mixed mode courses are conducted through classes where ‘a portion of the traditional face-to-face (F2F) instruction is replaced by web-based online learning’. Depending on the class, discipline and learning objectives, certain percentage of F2F instruction is replaced by online course work.

A professional organization dedicated to postsecondary online learning, The Sloan Consortium, defines blended learning as a pedagogical approach in a course where 30%-70% of the instruction is delivered online.

Why should the institution opt for imparting knowledge through blended mode?

Blended mode courses

• Encourage collaboration between faculties
• Provide the advantage of engaging an expert faculty and at the same time exploring the advantage of technology
• Provide online and F2F interaction among students, between students and faculties, and between students and devices.

       Therefore, it is essential that faculties are fully equipped to offer courses in blended mode. One of the ways of offering online instruction is using an LMS as it not merely enables you to add courses but allows you to grade the assessments and view the reports of your students.

MOODLE (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free eLearning platform, hence can be downloaded and installed by any institution by visiting the following URL

https://moodle.org/

You can also seek professional help if you find it difficult to install properly.

MOODLE’s philosophy suggests a constructivist and social constructivist approach to education accentuating that learners can contribute to educational experience.

Hence the faculty can easily incorporate following activities using MOODLE

• Adding a new course with desired layout, blocks and enrollment methods
• Adding resources to your course
• Suggesting Web 2.0 and non Web 2.0 based activities
• Creating glossary
• Adding assessments and grading

 

According to Hanover Research. ‘blended learning showed a larger advantage compared to purely face-to-face learning and purely online learning’. I am sure educationists will realize the importance of blended mode of instruction and see that faculties are trained to explore various challenges offered in this mode of instruction.

My earlier blog post related to blended mode of learning is:

Blended Mode of Learning through Educational Technology

 

Recent Updates in Educational Technology and Social Media Marketing

My recent updates in Educational Technology and Social Media Marketing can be viewed by clicking the following links.

1.Educational Technology

2. Social Media Marketing

Complete Guide for Google Drive

Want to know how to create, save, share documents and communicate with others using Google Drive? Then watch the following video.

 

 

New eLearning Specification

All eLearning professionals know that eLearning content has to be SCORM compliant. As the acronym suggests the content has to be easily sharable and reusable irrespective of the LMS that has been chosen to host the content.

With the advent of Web 2.0, learning takes place not merely in LMS but across many places like forums, blogs etc.

In order to capture the learning that has occurred in all these places and beyond, a new learning technology specification, known as Tin Can API has arrived. The activities that occur as part of learning experiences are captured by this Tin Can API.

‘Mobile learning, simulations, virtual worlds, serious games, real-world activities, experiential learning, social learning, offline learning, and collaborative learning are just are some of the things that can now be recognized and communicated well with the Tin Can API’.

When learning occurs due to interactions with other people, by reading content and beyond, the activity is recorded by TIN Can API in Learning Record Store (LRS) and can be shared with other LRSs that can exist inside an LMS or on its own.

 

The following video illustrates how the future of eLearning can be when learning is captured and LRSs are allowed to interact

 

Content will become a part of superset called activities and content creators will henceforth become activity generators and LMS will behave like LRS.

Interesting isn’t it?

More about Tin Can API in my future blog posts.

 

Blended Mode of Learning using MyOpenCampus

I had already blogged about ‘SocialMediaLearning through MyOpenCampus’ at http://bit.ly/g8324F Now MyOpenCampus is available in the new version enabling you to

• Start a discussion, assign users and user groups and send notifications about them to users through email.
• Upload files and share them with users
• Create assessments, assign users to take them, announce the test results after deciding minimum passing %.

This is simpler version of original MOC brought out earlier, enabling you to interact with users of your choice without using Twitter and blog.

Hence when MOC (MyOpenCampus) is integrated with regular F2F teaching, it would allow the faculty more time for presenting the concepts effectively as testing the students’ knowledge, reflection on topics and sharing information can be done through MOC.

Moreover, MOC is user friendly and hence can be used by faculty and students with ease. Help videos are also available as soon as you log into MOC