How important is the web 2.0 for your career in education?

A wee spot of fun last night wound up leading to some really rather interesting results... and one has to ask, given the almost sku-wiff nature of these, if these statistics are really only due to these people's presence on blogs, twitter and all-a-that?

And if it is, what does this mean today? Tomorrow?

Five years from now, or even... twenty years from now?


Watch this:

Graham Stanley = Blogger, Author
Graham Davies = Emeritus Professor of Computer Assisted Language Learning, Tweeter (protected)

Shelly Terrell = Prolific Tweeter, Social Media Consultant, Blogger
Nicky Hockly = Author, EdTech Consultant, Blogger

John Hughes = Blogger, Tweeter, Author
Paul Emmerson = Author, Website

Jason Renshaw = Blogger, Tweeter, Author
Mario Rinvolucri = Author

Jeremy Harmer = Author, Blogger, Tweeter
Earl Stevick = Author

Alex Case = Prolific blogger, Twitter-antagonist, Edu-journalist
Jeremy Harmer = Blogger, Tweeter, Author

Alan Maley = Author
Ken Wilson = Author, Singer, Actor, Blogger, Tweeter

Larry Ferlazzo = Prolific Blogger, Author, Tweeter
Scott Thornubry = Author, Blogger, Tweeter

Scott Thornbury = Author, Blogger, Tweeter
Stephen Krashen = Author

For those of you hitting this page who know who all of these people are, i.e. famous folks in the field of English Language Teaching, were the results shocking or to be expected?

Do you think that being easily found on Google is important to your career?  Today it really may be worth thinking about things like what your digital footprint is like, do you have any kind of social media presence, at all?  Do you currently feel it's a collossal waste of time?

If so you've probably little to worry about however if you're an educational professional who may be checked up on, you know - googled, then you never know... before that next conference someone may well be checking you out because, although your talk sounds good in the blurb, fact is no one really knows you, and as a result choices might now be made that may not have been made B.G...

Perhaps, after glancing at these results, there may be some things to consider:  like is it possible that  someone else may wind up getting that writing job - you know the one you wanted - and it was only because  nowadays they were more well known than you are?  Can they now pull in the bums on the chairs that you can't, because nowadays it seems you only belong to the last decade's group of DELTA students?  :-(

But please don't fuss and panic... all this social media stuff is actually, really, only a few years on and if you ever needed a really good reason to join/set aside some time to become active soon, this might be it, mightn't it!

Karenne

Useful links:

• ELT guide to Twitter
• ELT guide to LinkedIn
• ELT posts on edu-blogging 
• Stuff re Facebook

• Google Fight

•  A really funny posting by Luke Meddings on more or less the same subject but with a different angle.

• Guido Europeaantje's excellent webinar on joining and using Twitter, particularly for newbies.

Disclaimer:  The erratic nature of Google's ranking may well yield different results on different days in different countries.  Different keywords after names will affect search results... Do your own Google-Fight if you don't agree!