Education Technologies

Given the problems that many of us have in getting education institutions to recognise the inherent worth in web 2.0 technologies and loosening up the network security polices to allow access to them, this report might help in presentations to senior management.

I’ve copied the announcement below:

Awareness Unveils 2008 Report on Trends and Best Practices in Adopting Web 2.0

Awareness has announced the release of the second in a series of reports on
enterprise social media, “Trends and Best Practices in Adopting Web 2.0
in 2008.” To download the free report, click here.

The report indicates that community initiatives and requirements continue
to evolve, highlighted by an increased focus on the deeper and broader
integration of Web 2.0 technologies with other complementary enterprise
systems and enabling broader community participation from both internal
and external audiences.

The report details many interesting developments in the corporate adoption of social media over the last year, including:

• Employers are starting to allow social media participation more freely in their
  organizations: The number of organizations that allow social networking for business purposes has increased dramatically to 69 percent in 2008—up from 37 percent last year;
• Employers are finding the benefits of using social media: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent are using it to increase consumer engagement;
• Seventy-five percent of employees are already using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for business purposes, up 15 percent from 2007;
• Use of internal-facing communities is on the rise with six percent of organizations already reporting they deployed internal-facing communities, while 33 percent indicate their organization plans to implement internal-facing social media initiatives;
• Similarly, external-facing communities are increasing: 27 percent of respondents
  said their companies were planning to deploy external-facing communities while only 13 percent indicated their organizations already have external-facing communities;
• Online communities directed at specific interests and groups of people allow for more targeted marketing techniques and better results so for this reason 37 percent of organizations have specific areas of focus for their communities.

To learn more about the trends and best practices of social media marketing and Web 2.0 adoption, the Awareness report is available for free download here.