EDUC 630 Blog 3

                                         Social Media

Educationally the social media of facebook can be very open to spreading new ideas and in a very large area of people. Most educational institutions use facebook to advertise the day to day goings on at their institution. It becomes a great way to circulate whatb is happening today or yesterday.In conjunction with that, I feel that twitter is a much better forum for educational ideas to be shared and investigated especially in like minded groups that are on the cutting edge of new educational developments. I have found that I like to be on twitter at least twice a week for fourums and teaching sharing of ideas and methods. It is on the cutting edge of what is happening in education. (nfographics are very important to my new learning of technology use in education. Instagram, I believe is the least used in education circles. I have  not used it at all but intend to investigate ideas of using it for education,

As far as church, religious, and Christian school use of social media, the statistics are that 94% of the top churches have twitter and facebook accounts and of those, 80+% of those list those accounts on their homepages. My own church uses facebook extensively to advertise events and show the public the goings on at our church. very real stories and pictures are portrayed with plenty of comments by members and non-members alike. The rate for instagram goes down to 40% on the webpages.I feel tha small churches have not used this social media to their best advantage. Content has to be tailored to each media form as we have agreat opportunity to reach out to many people without large amounts of money spent on advertisement. I found that one program, buzzplant, works closely with churches to teach themhow to effectively use social media and develop smartphone applications to assist missionaries in the field. the prochurch podcast has abook entitled, "By the Numbers" at churchmagpress.com that offers 20 free  media statistics for churches.  For cumminication purposes the social media has the most use, at 46%, compared to knocking on doors at 25%, and radi, Tv and newspapers combined at 29%. So we can see the marketing of Christian institutions is very high in using the social media. I belive religion should be associated highly with technology in any way we can use it.Many churche are connecting accounts and websites using and creating digital relationships with people.

Reference,

www.churchmagpress.com