As the years have gone by, my PLN has been constantly evolving.  At first, it consisted mostly of a handful of blogs, but now, it includes blogs, podcasts, Facebook friends, and Twitter followers.  Keeping track of all of this can be something of a chore, which is why I rely on a collection of software programs to help automate the management of my PLN.  Blog updates are tracked with Google Reader, while I organize my podcasts with Apple’s iTunes.  Facebook and Twitter, though, presented me with quite the challenge until I made some changes to the way I interact with them.

The first change was using the official Facebook and Twitter clients on my Blackberry smartphone to receive immediate notifications of any messages coming to me via these services.  This allows me to immediately reply to those communications no matter where I might be, but it’s less than ideal for keeping caught up on the continuous flood of normal updates and tweets that come in from my friends and followers (i.e., the main reason for including Facebook and Twitter in my PLN).

For several months, I was accessing my Twitter accounts (more on that in a bit) from the web interface.  This was workable, but I lost a good deal of the power of Twitter because I was only getting updates when I was looking at the Twitter webpage and I always had to keep a tab open in my browser for Twitter.  Then, I discovered the subject of this week’s article, TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is an Adobe AIR-based application that allows a user to receive and make Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google Buzz updates from one integrated client.  Using TweetDeck, I can instantly receive new tweets, status updates, mentions, and direct messages, and easily reply or retweet as needed.  The major feature that TweetDeck has over any other Twitter client is the ability to manage multiple accounts.  I currently have two Twitter accounts, one for my personal use and one for the Guild.  TweetDeck lets me see and use both accounts simultaneously.  TweetDeck also offers other useful features such as automatic URL shortening with numerous providers, short URL previewing to avoid accidentally opening malicious links, scheduled tweets, and many, many more.

I haven’t explored the Facebook integration, yet, but I have been very pleased with the Twitter options.  My only complaint, really, about TweetDeck is how much screen real estate it occupies.

As you can see, the TweetDeck interface is very clean, but there isn’t a way to control how much space each of the columns uses.  There also isn’t a way to display the columns in a grid-like fashion, which would allow you to display more information at the expense of vertical scrolling within each “cell”.

The desktop version of TweetDeck is free and available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.  Any computer that can run Adobe’s AIR 2 framework can run TweetDeck.  Unfortunately for Mac users, this means that TweetDeck cannot run on a PowerPC Mac.  The low PC and Linux requirements means that the vast majority of classroom PCs should be able to use the program.  It might also be a good use for an older, “retired” computer.  My solution to the above mentioned screen real estate problem was to setup a dedicated TweetDeck computer using an old PC laptop I salvaged.  I also use that same laptop to access my Google Reader account, so it’s really helped me to streamline how I access my PLN.

TweetDeck is also available for free for iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, and Android users.

Recently, Facebook has come under fire for (more) changes the service has made to its privacy policies and default privacy settings.  The New York Times recently posted a great article that visually shows how Facebook’s privacy policy has grown since 2005.  The short version is that Facebook’s privacy policy has grown from 1004 words (2005) to 5830 words (2010) which is 1300 words more than the U.S. Constitution (without amendments) to put things in perspective.  Flickr’s policy: a mere 384 words.

What I find more troubling, though, are the changes to Facebook’s default privacy settings.  Take a look at matt McKeon’s graphical representation of “The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook“.  Yikes!  The recent default settings expose nearly all of the content you place on Facebook to the entire Internet.

Even worse, Facebook has launched a new “Instant Personalization” pilot program which has default security settings that share information about Facebook users with third-party websites.  This information about your activities on those sites can then be shared with your “friends” who also visit those sites.

With the vast array of privacy settings on Facebook (and the difficulty in accessing some of them) it may be handy to have a tool to check the current status of your settings.  I recently started using “ReclaimPrivacy” to periodically confirm that my privacy settings are locked-down.  Another tool (also free), that I haven’t used, is SaveFace, which sets all of your privacy settings to “Friends Only”.

While some users are making plans to leave Facebook, I’ve decided to stay a while longer, but keep a much closer eye on the changes being made.  The availability of tools like the ones I’ve linked to in this post have made me feel more comfortable with that decision.

Twitter is a great way to share news and information about your school with the world.  Twitter can easily be integrated with your school’s website or even manually updated.  Anyone can learn to use Twitter in under an hour and updates take just a few seconds because of the 140 character limit.  Best of all, Twitter is free.

In the late 1990s it became vital that churches and schools had websites to establish an online identity, but that is no longer enough.  Now, it is crucial that your school have a strong Web 2.0 presence as well.  Twitter is just a small part, though.  Social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc seem to be appearing daily.

Does your school need to make use of all of these?  Probably not, but some consideration should be given to each of them.  Perhaps YouTube would be a good way to share PR and marketing videos with the community or maybe some students or classes could post a series of video Lenten and Advent devotions.  Flickr could be use to share student work with families.  There are an infinite number of possibilities.

What’s important is making it easy for current and potential families and students to find information about your school and to help them understand the ministry being done there.  To paraphrase Scripture, it’s time to be the light of the world and put our schools on a hill so that all can see what is being done there, not for Earthly glory, but for the glory of our Lord and Savior.

Also, we here at the Lutheran Educators’ Guild have begun talking about creating a Lutheran Education-focused podcast.  We’d like to know how many of you listen to podcasts on a regular basis as well as how many of you might be interested in listening to one focused on Lutheran education.  What would you like such a podcast to “look” like and what topics would you want to have discussed?  Please, let us know in comments, on the forum, or via email.

And while you’re here, please create a user account on the main Guild site so you can participate in our new forums.