Dowshan and Andrew showcased the results of classes that they have delivered to GCSE students at Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School in east London and the lessons they have drawn from this experience.

Dr Vicki Obied, the PGCE Course Director was on hand to encourage her students to take advantage of this presentation and workshop – which they all did enthusiastically. We were impressed by the PGCE students’ inquisitiveness regarding the techniques and technologies that were discussed.

There was also a good deal of healthy debate. Of course teachers need to equip their students with the basics of language, maths and core curriculum subjects. However, the reality of the social web has significant impact for young people coming through the education system and entering the work-place. TWKS are determined to ensure that both new and current teachers understand and are conversant with the possibilities they have for opening up learning for the new generation of ‘digital natives’.

Andrew and Dowshan certainly hit a nerve with these trainee teachers as over half reported back to us that the all too brief timetabled session would be beneficial and impact their teaching. There was also a demand for more insight on ‘monitoring, social gaming, privacy, inappropriate classroom use and safety and the use of content’. Again from the feedback, we can see that teachers are keen for specific lesson plans that can be delivered into classrooms.

By and large these are young teachers who are ‘digital natives’ – the same as their students. Despite the potential of digital and social media, Dowshan and Andrew emphasised that these technologies and techniques sit alongside and do not replace traditional methods. As Dowshan said: “A ‘tweet’ can be an ‘extreme précis’ – with the correct use of language and grammar please!”

The traditional principles still must be taught but we must take the time to educate the young about the reality of digital and social media technology. Some say that students today do not need educating in these areas as they are aware of this. But that is like saying that if you are born and live in England – why should we educate you in English language, literature and spoken English. The focus is to use digital and social media to bring the curriculum to life – producing engaging lesson, helping students to understand the true potential of these social tools and take these skills into their professional lives.

Adapted by TWKS Content Team from Lucy Johnson, Digital Suss Blog

Name: Poppy Dinsey

Company: What I Wore Today

Job Role: Founder at WIWT

Follow Poppy on Twitter: @poppyd

What is a usual day for you?

I spend a lot of time doing some kind of interview for press and magazines. My office is in Old Street and I live in West London, so I will either start by having meetings with PR companies or brands directly usually in the Soho area, and then I make my way east to the office. Then we work on site development or promotions that are coming up. I also will try to keep on top of thousands of emails that seem to come in daily!

How did What I Wore Today (WIWT) begin?

It began when I was working in real estate search. I was working in the London tech start-up scene for a good few years before hand and I just started it as a bit of fun I already had other blogs and it was just going to be another blog that I was going to start doing which was me uploading an outfit a day. It was a New Year resolution for 2010. I was in America at the time and it took off quite quickly. I was really surprised by peoples’ responses and the traffic it was getting during the first few weeks and months, so I left my full time job in May 2010 to then focus on trying to build WIWT up full time.

So you already had a good understanding of html and using blogs when you set up WIWT. Have you always been interest in social media?

Yes. I’ve blogged for over 10 years so I grew up with it. My oldest blogs are no longer online they have been built on or bought into by other companies. I’ve blogged for as long as I can remember so it was very normal for me to talk about what I had done and what I was doing offline and online. I remember joining Twitter in 2008 and thinking it was the best things ever and I could see how important it would be for driving traffic to blogs. And as for the Facebook era, I guess I was the perfect age for Facebook as it was when everyone had to have university address in order to join at the start, it seems like a very long time ago now. I was just the perfect age for those tools being released.

What do you see as the next big thing in social media?

I think they’re going to be big privacy backlashes and I think people won’t necessarily just sit back and let it happen. I genuinely invest a lot of time into my Facebook privacy settings but I find it really complicated and I’m someone who runs a website so they do make it as complicated as possible. I think now a lot of people generally in social media want to back things up with offline. I think it will carry on with people being wary of who owns their data and all that privacy stuff.

What is your long-term plan for WIWT?

At the moment we have just been going for about a month. It’s had about a million pages views with about 6,000 outfits uploaded to it. So we’re just going to be growing as much as possible and targeting the UK as well as the global users we have. The traffic is still 70% UK. We want as many people uploading their outfits, as many people as possible shopping from having seen outfits on our site, working really closely with British high streets brands and also offering promotions. And as you see an offline advert, a brand will normally say ‘like this’ on Facebook, ‘follow us’ on Twitter, we also want them to say ‘upload’ or ‘tag us’ on WIWT.

What is the best advice you could give someone who is thinking about setting up a blog, website or brand?

Be very consistent with whatever they choose. If it’s your own personal brand – then invest everything into it in terms of time and do not expect rewards to come from it very quickly. How often you post and what you talk about is what you have to be consistent with it. An audience expects something of you once they subscribe. It can be quite difficult to change it sometimes, for instance when someone is used to tweeting throughout X Factor and then you don’t do it and then start banging on about politics or something then you can lose a lot of followers as they haven’t subscribed to you for that.

To find out more about Poppy Dinsey you can reach her on her linkedin page.

Last week I interviewed Beckie Crane from London & Partners and she told me:

• How she went from being a PA to in events management
• Why mobile marketing could be the next big thing
• Her favourite online campaign

Beckies’s interview can be found here.

Who- Twitter users for business purposes or personal

Tip- Using twitter can be a great source of information for a chosen career or industry. For example, following people who you aspire to work with or build a relationship with. The best way of grouping these individuals or organisations is by creating lists on twitter.

How you do it:

• Log into your Twitter account
• Click on ‘Lists’ and there will be an option to create a list.

• Click the option box where you can create a new list.
• Select a name for the list and choose whether to make it public or private (Public being anyone can see your list, private being only you)

• Click save and you now have a list. You can create up to 20 lists

So what: This is a very useful tip that can help not only get rid of the “noise” and keep your Twitter feed relevant for you but also save you time searching for individuals.

To understand a social media audience you will notice that you can apply many of the principles used to understand a traditional media audience: demography, age, sex. However it is important to understand what  makes social media so “social” and that is the principle of sharing.Five or six years ago we were defined by where we clicked (I went to this website today) but now we are defined by  what we share (Have you seen this? I’ll send it to you via Facebook).

Once you can understand this simple shift in the way users behave, it can be easier to understand your audience. People like to share content. I’m sure you have been sent a video link via email or a social networking site. Traditionally you may have had to text, talk or phone, or send a DVD in the post now you have these social tools to communicate more easily and in most cases more quickly. The same principles apply; we just have to understand the new equipment. As sharing is becoming an important part of understanding your audience, it may be helpful to understand what percentage of influencers is doing most of the sharing. The Information Technology research company – “Gartner” – stated that in a community or audience there are 4 major behaviours:

1. Creators (0-3%) – Create shareable content, communities, upload videos; “I want to own this”
2. Contributors (3-10%) – Review, comment, contribute; “I want to be a part of this”
3. Opportunities (10-20%) – Vote, forward/retweet, Share with others – “Since I’m here”
4. Lurkers (80%) – Click, read, share occasionally, talk; “I’ll reap the rewards.”

These behaviours may strike you as being similar to the level of engagement shown by pupils contributing in class. With this in mind, you may look at explaining the principles of sharing and contributing and ask the students which of the behaviours most fits them when they use digital communications. The key here is to remember that these are just tools and to master tools you need education and practice.

I would love to hear your results from this survey. How many of your students were creators, contributors, opportunists or lurkers? Were you surprised? Could the creators show you any of their work? Could we encourage the lurkers to become slightly more active? What type of content does your class most share?

Note: This article first appeared on Edexcel’s Digital Communication blog.