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Some quick background: My criteria for making these decisions when acting in an institutional capacity is different than my criteria for my personal accounts, especially re: Twitter; for my personal account I’m pretty indiscriminate about who I follow, since I believe the value of Twitter is in making connections and self-limiting those connections diminishes that value.

Twitter

My decisions about whom to follow via the NCCL Twitter account are based on two criteria: 1) Who has information relevant to our members? and 2) Who has need of the type of information NCCL provides? These two categories are not mutually exclusive; for instance, Nick Senger, as a Catholic educator, both tweets information pertinent to our members and can be a conduit through which NCCL information can flow to people not directly associated with the organization. So it makes sense to follow him and hope that he follows us (which he does).

Pursuant to the second criteria, this means that I’ve tended to follow anyone in a catechetical ministry in the Church as a way of establishing a connection with NCCL. This includes DREs, self-identified catechists and Catholic school teachers.

The first criterion is a little trickier since it requires a judgment call about the needs and values of our membership. I’ve picked the major catechetical publishers with a Twitter presence as well as groups and individuals that are representative of the broadness of the Church without straying outside the folds, so to speak. Figures such as Sr. Helen Prejean, Fr. Robert Barron or Christopher West, while appealing to different constituencies within NCCL, nevertheless stand firmly (and without major controversy) within the Catholic Church. On the other hand, if Fr. Charles Curran or Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, LC, (General Director of the Legion of Christ) were to start tweeting, I would not follow them, even knowing their appeal to some members of NCCL, due to their controversy within the Church.

My final criterion for Twitter is that anyone associated in a direct way with NCCL (past or current leaders, members) gets an automatic follow. Of course, this assumes I can identify them as being associated with NCCL.

Facebook

Linking fan pages on Facebook is not as integral to the experience as following someone on Twitter. Because of the terminology in use, I’m a little more selective about linking our Facebook fan page with other fan pages. Following someone on Twitter doesn’t have the same connotation as being a “fan” of someone on Facebook; the latter implies a level of approval that isn’t present in the former.

To give a better example of how I handle Facebook, for my diocese’s Facebook fan page I have linked us to groups with whom we have an established institutional relationship (CRS, Catholic Committee on Scouting, NCYC) and the schools and parishes of our diocese. This might be a model for how to handle future Facebook links and other relationships.

Catechizing Digital Natives from Jonathan Sullivan on Vimeo.

Books

• Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey & Urs Gasser
• Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott
• Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning by Marc Pensky

Articles

• Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky (PDF)
• Do They Really Think Differently? by Marc Pensky (PDF)
• How Digital Technology Has Changed the Brain by Don Tapscott
• Life Support: What Young People Need in a Digital Age (PDF)
• Using Technology to Get Teens to Pray by Nick Senger
• Prayer Tools for Netizens by Nick Senger
• 8 Myths about Digital Natives by John Palfrey & Urs Gasser
• Interactive Connections, Issue 1
• Twitter and the transformation of friendship by Ron Dreher
• The Future of Reading: Don’t worry. It might be better than you think by John Green
• Tapscott: Digital natives need tech-rich education by Laura Devaney (free registration required)
• Why no one cares about privacy anymore by Declan McCullagh

Blogs

• Growing in Christ – St. Thomas Aquinas Parish (East Lansing, MI)
• One Catholic Life – Nick Senger
• Catechesis in the Third Millennium – William O’Leary

Media

• TKAMB21: To Kill A Mockingbird Meets the 21st Century
• That Catholic Show
• Don Tapscott Telling the Joe O’Shea Story on NetAtNite with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur (2008-12-17) (MP3 audio file)
• Social Media Week Presentations

Tools

• WordPress
• Flocknote
• Flip Video Cameras
• MyCatholicVoice.com
• Animoto

If you watched the webinar, please leave a comment with your thoughts and reactions!

photo by Steve Woods/stock.xchng

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Books

• The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, et al
• Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson (also available as a free, unabridged audio book)
• Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Nonprofits Impact Culture and Others Don’t by Phil Cooke

Articles

• Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On by Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle
• 3 Easy Things Anyone Can Do to Evangelize Online by Matt Warner
• Jonathan Coulton on why he gives away his music
• Denominationalism: Is There a Future? by Dr. Ed Setzer (audio recording)

Web 2.0 Concepts

• Gratis versus Libre – Wikipedia article on “Free as in Beer” vs “Free as in Speech”
• 1,000 True Fans – Kevin Kelly’s outline of the concept
• Creative Commons
• www.wordle.net – word cloud generator
• The Long Tail – the original article by Chris Anderson
• Social Networking: A Primer for Catholic Teachers and Catechists (video recording)

If you were part of the conversation, please leave a comment with your thoughts and reactions!

Update

I mentioned a free co-op e-book during the Q&A. It’s titled What Matters Now and offers 70 big ideas from 70 big thinkers.

I am writing today on behalf of our diocese’s 11,323 school children to urge that you propose funding for the Illinois Textbook Loan Program in your 2011 budget.

The Textbook Loan Program has provided secular textbooks, learning materials and instructional computer software to public and nonpublic school students since 1975. Although most of the program’s funding goes to public schools, Catholic schools have long depended on this program and have used the benefit to continually update math, science, and reading textbooks, as well as to purchase new instructional software for technology labs. Students cannot learn or succeed without effective and up-to-date learning materials. The Textbook Loan Program has helped ensure those materials are present in all schools.

According to the Illinois State Board of Education’s (ISBE) published analysis, the Textbook Loan program impacts 2.1 million students and 164,000 educators. In Fiscal Year 2009, the program provided 849,214 instructional items to pupils in grades 7 through 12. There are not many grant programs in ISBE’s budget that have had as far-reaching an impact for as long a time. ISBE’s strategic goals cite service to “all students” and “all schools.” Unfortunately, last year’s budget cut the Textbook Loan completely and failed to reflect similar concern.

I understand that the state’s fiscal condition is dire. I understand funding cuts must be endured in these difficult times. However, when a long-standing program with a proven track record faces elimination, Illinois’ entire education system suffers.

Governor Quinn, I urge you to recommend that ISBE’s budget restore funding at the 2007 level of $29.1 million. Such a recommendation recognizes the current fiscal condition of the state but also makes some attempt to meet the state’s obligation to provide sound, up-to-date instructional materials to all children.

Catholic schools provide great savings to the state of Illinois: $1.5 billion annually. We do not deserve to lose the limited state support given back.

Thank you for your attention and support.

Sincerely,

Jonathan F. Sullivan
Director of Catechetical Ministries
Diocese of Springfield in Illinois

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Social Networking – A Primer for Catholic Teachers and Catechists from Jonathan Sullivan on Vimeo.