Nancy Smith Grad Studies 2019-12-11 04:57:00
Summary of Major Digital Project
For my major digital project for EC&I 831, I completed Option A: to undertake a major digital project that involves the integration/development of open educational resources related to my practice.
Specifically, I worked on creating a parent education initiative on social media.

The response was overwhelmingly supportive (63 post reactions, and 48 comments). My friends and family encouraged me to share the knowledge that I have as a practitioner and social media educator and apply it to help parents.
My focus was on speaking at schools, education conferences and for parent groups. I had a business coach who was encouraging me to find ways to “monetize my knowledge” and that there were great opportunities to reach a large audience and profit from this. This advice never resonated with me. It wasn’t the reason I was motivated to do this project, nor did the advice align with my values.
So, when our professor Dr. Alec Couros challenged us with creating a major digital project, I thought it was a good opportunity to leverage the work I had done and build out more resources that would be free/open to all.
I used the materials I wrote and researched for my book as the core content for my project.
I shared my project idea with our class in this blogpost on September 24: https://nancysmithgrad.blogspot.com/2019/09/for-my-final-project-eci831.html
A few weeks later, I wrote this blog as an update on my progress:
https://nancysmithgrad.blogspot.com/2019/10/update-on-my-final-project-october-2019.html
I realized I had no idea where to start. So, I created a list and determined the priorities I would need to learn to complete.
1. I would need to learn how to use the website platform Squarespace so I could add pages to my website and build out the content
Phase 1: build out content for my existing book. I spent over 10 months writing and researching the material, so it is important to leverage this. Specifically, I will:
– record audio version to be uploaded as either an audiobook or podcast (still in research mode to determine which I will do)
I was eager to learn about podcasting, and it was beneficial that this timing coincided with the week in our course where we were reviewing tools & technology that could help build open education content. Several students, including myself, wrote blogs about the app Anchor.fm
Here is the audiobook/podcast series https://anchor.fm/socialcitizens
Here is the blog post update after I completed my podcast series:
My November update https://nancysmithgrad.blogspot.com/2019/11/final-project-update-november-4-2019.html
Realizing my goal of learning how to add to my website proved to be more challenging than I anticipated. I found some resources online that I used including on Lynda.com, Youtube and Udemy. And I was successful in building out the framework and content of the site.
I have added new pages, and have continued to work on content but must admit this did not get close to my goal for completion.
I guess the good news is, now I know how to do it, and I can continue to make progress and add to it every month.
I am pleased with the efforts I made on my Facebook page – during the timeline of this project I shared 27 facebook posts – and my Facebook analytics show that my content reached over 1,400 people across North America. I am always amazed at how social media can help share your message!
In summary, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to share my ideas/opinions/knowledge with these resources that are open for anyone to access.