Bonner Coordinator Juliet Carrington spoke with Serve 2.0 Intern Austin Almaguer about how Guilford is using social media tools
AA: How and why did you start using social media tools to build awareness and support?
JC: We had attempted to use ning and the wiki, but I think the implementation of the Bonner Center For Community Learning Facebook Group as well as using the flip cameras this summer was extremely helpful.
AA: Which social media tools have been most successful? Why?
JC: I think that facebook has been the most successful due to its popularity by he majority of college students, as well as its growing popularity with college professors and other people in high academic, management, and job related positions. in terms of posting videos that we recorded from the flip cams, creating events to draw out more people to various educational events, and even posting pictures from the various things that we do as bonners has been very enlightening to many students who were not as aware of bonner beforehand.
AA: What is one example of how you used a specific tool (or tools) to organize around immigration issues? How did it impact the community?
JC: This summer we held a poetry camp for children from two of our committed service sites that tutor and mentor refugee children. The children not only did poetry, but slam poetry, dance, and music. As the children began writing and throughout the whole 5 weeks of the summer camp, we were not only able to record their growth as writers and performers, but see how as we gave them various outlets of creative expression and let their voices be heard, how their esteems were also transformed. At the end of the summer we had a performance from the children in the auditorium at Guilford College and with all of the video footage recorded, we are hoping to create a documentary to educate the greater community about the struggles and issues that these children face as being refugee children.
AA: What advice would you give to campuses looking to use social media tools for similar purposes?
JC: As Bonners, we are continuously putting on panels and other forms of educational events to motivate others to join us in the work that we do-"the more we know, the more we owe." But with the various social media tools that we have available to us, we have to work towards finding more innovative, intriguing, and creative ways of educating others. By using flip cams we can make videos that can be posted on youtube, facebook, etc. By using facebook we can share pictures with our friends, writing notes about the various communities we are working with and the issues that they are up against and tag people. I think that there is a lot that we can do and it is important to find people within your Bonner Program who are committed to working on cultivating different ways to educate others through the use of technology and other media outlets. It is already very time consuming (but rewarding) doing the things that we do as a Bonner and the Serve 2.0 project is another time commitment in itself.
Bonner Coordinators at UNM spoke with Serve 2.0 Intern Austin Almaguer about how UNM is using video
AA: How and why did you start using social media tools to build awareness?
UNM: Social media is very interesting. I believe that social media can be interpreted in two ways. One is the ability to create a viral video of a cat playing a piano. This though is unorthodox but true. This video didn’t just simply make millions of hits online, but had become a staple of pop culture. This video alone made people laugh, change the way people view comedy, making people more engaged in the simple things in life, and make these people wonder how they themselves can create their own piano cat. On the other side of the coin, you have videos that demonstrate a need. Such needs are agricultural sustainability, water rights, homelessness, education, recruitment, and community based research. These needs are showcased in the social media pieces we have created. We took a dive into establishing a story, learned the true aspect of film making like the pre-production, storyboard, filming, and post-production phases, utilized these tools in the internet to publish out work and present it to the world.
AA: Which social media tools have been most successful in raising awareness? Why?
UNM: A few of our social media tools that have brought some awareness is those that touch base over the educational system in our city. There are two films that were recently produced that have touched base on two approaches over the poor education that our kids and peers are facing. One approach is audience based at a local level. This film demonstrated the need of better schooling and teacher to student ratio. Due to its interviews with students, instructors, councilors, and principals, these short films created are raw human aspect. They also questioned if our kids and youth prepared of the future and what is really going on in our classrooms? The other film touches base at a state wide level. The film demonstrates the issue of graduation and high school dropout. This issue is growing fast in the state of New Mexico. So much has been done to try and correct the issues around the poor graduation rate, but the approach to fixing the issue is not working. These two films helped bring awareness over a major issue of education happening at a very local and state level in New Mexico.
AA: What is one example of how you used a specific tool (or tools) to promote awareness? How did it impact the community?
UNM: One major means of promoting our projects is by youtube. Youtube has been a great tool with having our work published in the internet. Having that tool really helps with sending the information or the social media pieces we have created to different people. Just recently we have adapted to using facebook; with our facebook page we can network with our corps members and other partners. Which also allow us to link the videos from youtube and posting them on facebook allows the promotion of our work and the issues/needs that have been occurring within our community. Facebook and our social media will create a new awareness with a new population which is a youth and college audience.
AA: What advice would you give to campuses looking to use social media tools for developing awareness?
UNM: Advice we can share to all campuses that are interested in working with social media is to have a strong foundation over two subjects. These two subjects are a strong backbone to the technology and process of film making and knowing the essence of storytelling. These two are critical because one must be very aware and educated over the equipment to make the piece worth to watch and know how to edit some of the items as needed. Knowing how to tell a good story will keep the audience engaged and willing to watch a film from beginning to end. Though none of our projects could have been possible without the passion our members demonstrated to their needs. Their passion is what made their videos more meaningful and insightful because they were the ones living in the areas that their issues are from.