Anyone reading this is well aware of the power of blogs and of many things social media wise. As I have indicated in the past, the bulk of blogs are self-promoting or self-something or other. I love social media and what you can do with it, both from a selfish point-of-view and from a selfless point-of-view.
So how can it be both egotistical and altruistic? When your passion lends itself to both! I live to teach and I love to teach. I taught for 7 years at the college level and, before that, 3 years at the private high school level. When I was introduced to Flash (way back – last century) I saw it as a way to reach-and-teach more people.
Most education is duller than a cardboard box. I always liked to make my stuff (geology, physics, chemistry, math, etc) come alive. Both for me (teachers get bored too, if they really love to teach that is) and for my students. If that meant dropping sodium metal into a beaker of water (and blowing off a fluorescent light cover and getting a piece in my beard or sitting outside on a nice day under a tree talking about photosynthesis) then that’s what Coach Miller did. “Coach” was from the private school days and while I was okay at soccer (third place Texas state); girls basketball was dismal (for me, the kids had fun and thank God for picture coaching books).
So Flash seemed like a great way to make learning come alive and reach further. Certainly my sorry stick figure people and dogs running around as part of the water cycle Flash animations (respiration does liberate water, minor but still . . . it helps include you in it) were more entertaining than most Earth Science books rote memorization methods. And if you are slightly entertained and can relate to it, even as a stick figure, then you might just remember it a bit more.
Don’t knock the stick figure. After all, in this social networking world this :) means something as does this ^-^.
Back to the jist of the title of this post: social networking is great. Flickr, Blip.tv, Ning networks, Twitter, and more help me get the word out on what I love (feeds the ego) and maybe helps others “reach-and-teach” (altruism). If you are new to marketing via the web, please go read Maki at DoshDosh and learn all kinds of great tips and tools. Most of them free. My latest social marketing addition is via iTunes, it’s free and easy to do.
