Kalimatna’s Social Media Platform

Over the last few weeks, the Kalimatna team has been working on our presence in the wonderful world of social media. We created a page on the TYO blog where you can read more about our initiative, we began documenting our journey on flickr, and we created a Twitter feed!

While the overall goal of our project is to create a by‐youth, for‐youth multimedia kit to introduce the culture of Nablus to the world, our equally significant secondary goal is to engage an international audience in our journey. Entrez Twitter!

Twitter will allow us to share information about our work in Nablus with people beyond the city’s limits. We hope not only to imbue the image of Nablus with thoughtful and positive insights, but also to draw our audience closer to us, hold their attention and garner their support in order to improve our kit through intercultural and peer dialogue.

Kalimatna’s twitter feed will share news about our work, our journey, ourselves—our 140 character mini bios are already up–and our beloved city Nablus!

Please tweet with us @kalimatna to share your ideas about our work, our tweets and what you would like to learn about the culture and history of Nablus!

-Kalimatna Initiative

To Tweet or not to Tweet? Tweeple we love (and you should too!)

Early childhood education initiatives and policies have gained impressive momentum over the last year. Scientific and educational researchers along with the Obama administration deserve much credit for imbuing the importance of early childhood experiences and education into mainstream media.  This blog has already published several posts to that effect including research on the importance of play, the need for early childhood education in the face of poverty and stress and the opportunity to merge early childhood education initiatives with new approaches to international development.

With such thrilling happenings taking place in DC and worldwide, TYO uses the Internet (most recently Twitter) to keep in touch and up-to-date. We listen and participate to learn more about ECE policies, valuable classroom lessons, encouraging stories and moving programs and activities around the world.  This constant exchange of information and ideas allows us to do our jobs better, to seek out positive resolutions to situations that stump us and to ask for feedback on how we are doing.  It is an exciting time for educators; it is an exciting time for parents; it is a critical time for children and students.  The global classroom is upon us and everyday through the help of our peers we are working our way not to the head of the class but to a seat at the Harkness table of learning.

Here are four Tweeple we have particularly enjoyed this summer:

@UrbanEducation This user tweets to educate advocates and educators devoted to urban youth and teaching in urban school districts. If you are interested in hip-hop and jazz suggestions for the Monday workday, ideas on how to ease students’ transitions from their neighborhood to the classroom environment, articles on teaching urban youth and the downright enthusiastic and inspirational voice of an educator who has been there and done that, follow this user! Urban Education can also be found at this blog.

@NAEYC The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is the world’s largest organization working for the benefit of all young children.  NAEYC focuses particularly on ensuring quality education for all children from birth through age 8. NAEYC is incredibly conversational—tweeting daily questions to its followers, offering links with beneficial resources for early childhood professionals, and highlighting new and informative tweeple on the scene.  Find more resources on their blog.

@FSSimon The ultimate 2.0 advocate from the National Association of Child Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA), Fran uses Twitter, Facebook and blogs on the Child Care Aware Parent Network blog to circulate resources, participate in conversations, and mobilize and empower parents and professionals around key educational issues. Reply to her and you will always get a response!

@TeachStrategies and @cateheroman Formally, Teaching Strategies offers curriculum assessment, professional development, and family connection resources to programs serving children from birth to age 6. On Twitter, @TeachStrategies offers all of the above and exceptionally comprehensive updates on early learning inroads from Oregon to Florida. Vice President of Curriculum and Assessment Cate Heroman’s tweets passion-infused tips on how to help your child or student become a successful learner.

Thank you all for your efforts!

-Chelsey

TYO is tweeting!

Today is a huge day in TYO’s social media evolution: we started tweeting! Over the last few months, full-time staff and volunteers have been working on TYO’s presence in the rapidly expanding world of social media. We feel good about our blog, thanks to local and international staff and volunteers, and even if we didn’t meet the requirements for a Vanity URL, our Facebook page is coming along nicely. (Check ‘em out and see for yourself!) The next frontier to conquer was clearly Twitter!

After all, one of our primary goals is to build bridges: sharing information about our work in Nablus with people beyond Nablus, and bringing insight and information from the outside world to improve our work here. Many underprivileged communities are isolated by various barriers, but this is particularly true of the communities we work with in Nablus, which are cut off from the rest of the West Bank, Israel and Jordan by physical barriers.

TYO’s twitter account will share news from TYO and our areas of work: early childhood development, psychosocial programming, community development, youth empowerment, social entrepreneurialism.

Why not follow us to find out more? And please tweet us @tomorrowsyouth to share your ideas about our work, our tweets, and how you’d like to help!