Andi Narvaez: Re-learning PR

Join me here, as I live blog the Fourth Annual “Innovations in Teaching and Learning” Conference at University of Maryland. I’ll be live blogging and tweeting as often as I can with the #ITL_UMD and #SMCEDU hashtags. This is my first live blogging experience so please bear with me. I hope you can participate with your comments and tweets! Below is a little information about the conference but you can click here to learn more and view the program. See you all in a few hours!

Albeit a few days later than I had originally announced due to a few changes to the syllabus, my students have turned in some great social media case studies. But don’t take my word for it!

Each group picked a brand and wrote a case study that illustrates how social media humanizes brands and helps them be a part of the same communication process and the conversations that everyday individuals, like you and I, engage in. Please check out their brief abstracts below and vote for your favorites! The authors of every case study that earns at least three votes will earn 2 extra credit points on their FINAL course grade. My students’ fates are in your hands!

I spent a few days of my COM 107 class talking to my students about social media. My point was to help them see the light and encourage them to get involved in the social media space because, let’s face it, we’re not ahead of the curve anymore. To illustrate, Mashable and TechCrunch are mashing and crunching up dozens of new blog posts on a daily basis, which — correct me if I’m wrong — means we are all technically dropping the ball and having to pick it back up constantly.

I’m happy to announce that I made it to midterms unscathed, for the most part. I’m even more happy to announce that the day I’ve been looking forward to this semester has finally arrived. This week, I will be giving my COMM 107  students a crash course in social media. I’m certain that 99.9 percent of them are on Facebook but, if they are going to enter a world that will have changed dramatically in the four years that they will be in college, they must see that the light is a lot brighter than that.

A post on Mashable today, reposting the news about  Birmingham City University’s new social media graduate program got me thinking about the implications of more universities offering courses in new media, social media and all of the above.

I have a great passion for education and, especially when it comes to communications, I believe there is nothing better than when scholars’ work goes hand-in-hand with that of those who pratice the profession in order to improve best practices.