Intermedia

Would'ya widget? Gonna Gadget?

In the area of content syndication, widgets and gadgets provide some interesting opportunities for face time with key constituencies or audiences. These mini applications that sit on your desktop provide you with real time access to, well, just about anything from weather to news to the time to the phases of the moon. Take a look at Google's desktop gadgets and Yahoo! widgets to get a sense of what's out there.

Some universities are already in the widgetizing and gadgetizing business. St. Xavier University's calendar widget, the University of Tampa's mail checker, and the University of Texas (hook 'em horns) football and basketball schedules widget are good examples of targeted efforts that provide value to the end user. The keys here are relevancy and consistency. If subscribing to your RSS feed is like dating, downloading your widget/gadget is marriage. For someone to commit valuable desktop space to your message, they really have to believe that you are going to give them something of value and probably entertain them a bit along the way.

So, what else could work? Take prospective students in the application process. You could syndicate information about upcoming dates and deadlines, events and opportunities, and even some links to news and advice for the journey. UT's athletics schedule is a good one for alumni, as would be an arts events calendar, or any other key area in which there is enough content to warrant a space on someone's desktop.

Each of our institutions has what you could call concentric circles of engagement. There are inside circles of folks who are fully engaged and likely would consider your content to be desktop-worthy. Perhaps the next ring would be the RSS loyalists who will make space in their reader, but not so much on the desktop. Another ring out could be the newsletter subscribers, and so on. The point here is on the old content vs. container theme. The more we focus on an interesting, relevant, steady flow of content, the better the chances for engaging with people rather than communicating to them.

Social networking and teens - enough said

"Ninety-six percent of U.S. students ages 9 to 17 who have internet access use social-networking technology to connect with their peers, and one of their most common topics of discussion is education"

Click here for the full story.

Campus streaming

Is live streaming the video equivalent to text blogging? Might just be.

Just as blogs are meant to provide a straightforward, two-way forum for discussion and sharing of ideas, live streaming seems to do the same in the video format. I look at Justin.tv or even Trevor the Mentos Intern and can't help but think that this presents a whole new, deeper level of conversation. But it has to be more than just webcamming.

Justin TV pushed the model by wearing a cam and broadcasting his life -- kind of like the Truman Show. Trevor sits at his desk and does Mentos-ey things, but both provide the ability to chat with them and with other folks who are "tuned in."

So how does this apply to higher ed?

Well, take a professor who is researching a hot topic. Maybe you stream a class and then let folks pose questions and participate in the discussion via the live chat. A theater event can be streamed and those watching can comment with each other about what they're seeing. It expands the viewer base and creates conversation around affinity -- which is what we're trying to do here, right? These two examples would likely be appealing to both prospective students trying to get a real sense of what a class is like and to alumni who not only have the same goal, but might also want to reconnect with an old prof.

The technology is getting simpler -- look at Ustream.tv -- so the pains of entering into this formerly pretty complicated area are getting less. Worth giving it a shot, no?