About Me

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I work full-time as an Early Head Start Home Visitor. I have a Bachelor's in Child Development with a specialization in Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. I have recently graduated with my Master's in Early Childhood Studies specializing in Public Policy and Advocacy. I am currently in a Doctoral Program for Early Childhood. I love working with children and their families. My company encourages and empowers individuals to be more self-reliant; we not only educate children but their families as well.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Using Social Media to Get Connected

My experiences with social media mainly consists of Facebook and LinkedIn.  I have utilized LinkedIn to stay connected to contacts that I have made through my work as well as conferences and trainings. In the beginning I primarily utilized Facebook as a way to stay connected to old friends and family.  After I began my journey into Advocacy I realized I could also use Facebook to link to other advocacy groups.  Occasionally I will use my status updates to share news on funding issues for Head Start and Early Head Start or on other educational issues.  I also share links to organizations such as the Association for Childhood Education International, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and Child Advocacy. 

I believe social media sites like Facebook, Blogs, and LinkedIn are beneficial for effective advocacy.  These sites allow advocates to share their message as well as stay connected with other advocates.

I am interested in hearing how my colleagues utilize social media and if there are sites I have not heard of that I could also utilize.

6 comments:

  1. I could definitely use linkedin more. Your post is a great reminder to me that Facebook and Twitter are not the only ways for me to use social media!

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  2. Toni I read on
    Using Social Media to Get Connected
    by olufemmy about something called delicious social media. I asked for a web address and information on who is open to join. I will share info once I get a reply.

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  3. Toni,
    I believe that social media is a great way to stay connected. However, we must be careful that the information that we gain from some social media is obtained from credible resources. There are so many different types of social media that we can use to our benefit I am mostly fund of Facebook. But I currently do not have a page. I terminated my membership due to spending too much time searching and reconnecting with friends. I think that it is great that some advocacy organizations have connections to facebook.

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  4. Toni,
    I am going to steal your idea of using status updates for advocacy issues. I think I need to practice that at least once a week. I have not started this yet, but I think I will start a group in face book addressing learning gaps and making people aware they still exist and how. I want to check out delicious social media as well from Olufemmy's blog. It sounded kinda interesting.

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  5. Toni,
    I have never tried linkedin before but my husband uses it for job networking .Being a private person, I only go on facebook once in blue moon but now being a child advocate am back on facebook. I need to take stand on issues that concernes children.

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  6. Toni,

    I have been very interested in getting a LinkedIn account but never thought I had much to do on there. Perhaps I should learn more about it, especially if it opens up greater networking opportunities. I think it is important to keep your personal and professional social media lives seperate and it sounds like you have done a really good job at that by using LinkedIn and Facebook. Thanks for the new idea!

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