This page will track great examples of emerging or peripheral media tools that are being used to meet the goals of our network.

 

Ning: The Bonner Network Forum

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Ning is a free, social-networking site. It shares some similarities to Facebook with the ability to create a profile, add friends and send messages. However, this page is more set up to be a forum and a site to dialogue about issues or interests, which is in line with the Bonner Foundation's new issue focus. Participants can create and join groups of their interest that they can also add relevant video, articles, an rss feed for blogs and more. The Bonner Foundation launched their Ning involvement in May 2009. We are looking for each campus to really engage with this site so we can build up our network representation, and continue building issue-based knowledge. Additionally, we are strategizing with how we can use this site to revamp the bonner.org website. 

 

Ning: Groups

 

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Issue	Number of Members	Campus	Number of Members	National	Number of Members
Arts and Culture:	7	Berry Bonner Scholars	1	Bonner Alumni	13
Community and Economic Development	8	Democracy House	16	Bonner AmeriCorps Administrators	23
Criminal Justice and Violence Prevention	5	Earlham College Bonner Scholars	2	Bonner Congress	25
Education	7	Morehouse Bonner Scholars	1	Bonner Community Partners	2
Environment	14	SMC Bonner Leaders	7	Bonner Directors & Coordinators	33
Health and Mental Health	5	Stetson University Bonner Program	1	Bonner Interns	5
Hunger & Homelessness	15			Bonner Senior Interns	23
Immigration and Refugees	6			Bonner Video Project	25
International Issues	13			Impact Conference 2009	25
Poverty Group	6			Jobs and Internships	1
Youth Development	12			NJ AmeriCorps Bonner Recovery Managers Group	6
				NJ Bonner Program	16
				PolicyOptions.org:	26
				Serve 2.0 Group	23
Total Number of Groups:	31
Total Number of Members:	397* (not all unique users)

 

 

 

Most Active Groups: Bonner Senior Intern- with 23 Members, 1 announcement, 3 discussions (2 started by Kelly with a last reply from a member on June 17, 1 comment from Mike)

 

Videos Uploaded: 39

Most Viewed: How a Lie Keeps Joe on the Street (23 views), Skid Row (22 views)

 

Blog Posts: 7 (3 by Bobby)

 

Events: 2 (Deliberative Democracy, New Director's Meeting)

 

Photos: 155

 

Forum: 1 entry-no responses

 

Schools with their own Ning sites:

CSB/SJU Bonner Program: http://csbsjubonners.ning.com/ (6 Members)

Guilford College: Guilford Bonner Love: http://guilfordbonner.ning.com/ (11 Members)

University of Richmond (campus-wide): http://groups.richmond.edu/

 

Twitter

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According to Twitter fan and TCNJ Bonner student, Jared Fattoross: Twitter.com is a site where you essentially place your cell phone number on a texting listserve, and can sent messages out to that listserve without needing to address each individual recipient. It makes your cell phone a Blackberry, for groups without them. The listserve consists of people (only within your group if you'd like), who sign up and choose to "follow" members of that group. The service is free, takes less than 10 minutes to sign up for, and does not require much personal or ANY credit information. The single cost to the user is the price of a text message sent or received (but counts for only a single text either way). Normal rates apply, i.e. Verizon to Verizon or family plan tests would still be free.  For instance, in my chapter of Sigma Pi at TCNJ, I am the community service chair. I have 20-some-odd followers and if I text "Adopt-A-Highway changed to 3pm - tell everyone" to 40412, all 20 people get my text and spread the word. The service has greatly reduced the number of short length e-mails containing quick, yet sometimes important updates.

 

Bonner groups can set up an "all Bonner" listserve, and then also create lists for individual sites teams. This eliminates people receiving irrelevant texts.  The growth of this service is exponential, with only a few followers in the beginning, but expanding rapidly once people start talking it up. My goal for TCNJ Bonner is to sign everyone up on my own though. I made an announcement at our last meeting that I was going to take care of making profiles for everyone, unless they requested to not be a part of the service. Only 3 asked not to be. I have high hopes for Twitter.com making communication more efficient within our organization. Look for updates on how it's going next week!!!

-Jared :)

 

The College of New Jersey

Habitat for Humanity

The Sigma Pi Fraternity

 

Siena College: (Academic Connection)

Mathew Johnson of Siena College is a Professor of Sociology. He utilizes Twitter rather than a traditional course syllabus for students to stay up to date for what they need for their class like readings, topics and assignments.  

 

 

Wiggio

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Sofia Chavez, University of New Mexico:

 www.wiggio.com is a website used to communicate with your groups. you can have several different groups that you are a part of and can communicate to. You can send messages via e-mail, text, voice messages, and just a post it or message on the site itself. You can pick a single person you wantto recieve your message, a few people, or the whole group. Once you set up a group account you e-mail people invitations to join your group. Each person has to set up their own account and add their phone number and other information.

You also have a group calendar where everyone can post events and get reminders on their e-mail or cell phone. If you want to upload a document for everyone to be able to see and download, there is a space for that as well. You can also set up a meeting and the type of meeting you would like to have, in person, conference call, or chat room. If you are wondering what everyone is thinking about a certain topic or would like to get feedback about something you can create a poll which everyone can respond to. Lastly you can share links with the other members, of which you see important or interesting.

The neat thing about this sight is that everyone involved can do all of these things, it is not left up to the creator. its an easy and fast way to communicate to your group and set things up quickly. It is very easy to navigate. the best way to understand all of this is just to create an account and go through it. 

 

 

Other:

 

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Other Profiles of Social Media Usage