Last Friday, about 70 Duke faculty and staff attended a two-hour workshop on how best to use social media tools in the classroom and beyond. The workshop was hosted by Duke’s Office of News & Communications (ONC), which holds a number of training sessions during the year for the Duke community, including ones covering such topics as how to write and publish Op-Ed articles or how to conduct interviews with the media.

Last week’s program began with David Jarmul, ONC’s Associate Vice President of News and Communications, welcoming participants to the workshop and setting the scene for the morning.

For the first hour of the workshop, I led a panel of five Duke faculty and staff members who have been using social media tools. Jennifer Ahern-Dodson, Mark Anthony Neal, David Schanzer, Tawnee Milko and Peter Ubel all did an amazing job describing their experiences with tools like blogging, Twitter and Facebook, including what has and hasn’t worked for them and how they’ve incorporated social media into their classes. Here is a link to all of the sites and examples we shared during the first hour.

In the second half of the program, workshop attendees divided into two groups. I led a discussion among people familiar with social media about how they can more effectively use blogs, Twitter and other tools and reviewed accepted best practices. Here is a link to my Prezi outline.

Jonathan Lee, ONC’s social and digital media fellow, instructed those new to social media on how to set up a Facebook page, Twitter account or blog, among other things. Here is a link to Jonathan’s presentation and a quick handout we prepared on tips and tricks for getting started with these tools.

Attendees live tweeted during the workshop using the hashtag #DukeSocial.

Finally, Jonathan and I are happy to follow up with attendees on any questions or comments they have about the workshop. We also want to do a quick commercial for Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology, whose great folks do regular training sessions on getting started with social media and blogging tools. They also offer free access to Lynda.com online courses (which include TONS of options for learning more about social media) for anyone with a Duke NetID.

We hope to see you at ONC’s next workshop! Stay tuned to Duke Today for information on upcoming opportunities.