Obama continues to embrace social networking tools

Published by in distributed-learning, politics, socialnetworking, web 2.0 on September 15th, 2007

Dan Pink’s latest blog post concerns U.S. Presidential hopeful Barack Obama and his use of the Linked In social network to query voters with the following question:

How can the next president better help small business and entrepreneurs thrive?

As of this writing, Senator Obama has received over 1481 replies.
Just as teachers need to embrace blended learning methodologies to provide students with differentiated pathways for learning as well as assessment, politicians (who are smart) need to do the same thing. Senator Obama, in this context, is modeling “best practices” in the political realm with the use of social media for communication. Does a presidential candidate and U.S. senator have time to ask any question in person to over one thousand people and listen to the answer? Unfortunately, no. Neither does a teacher usually have time in a 50 minute classperiod to listen to each student respond to a question requiring reflective thought and discernment.

A presidential candidate, just like a teacher, has more to say to constituents than face to face time can allow. That’s why the use of YouTube by Senator Obama’s campaign also models “best practice” for providing access to asynchronous video clips. Blended learning. Blended politics. The power of social media in motion.

It’s great to see a U.S. senator continuing to embrace the effective use of social media. As educators, we need to follow his lead.

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