Beautiful Social
Last December, my students and I created the social enterprise Beautiful Social, an organization that transforms learning and allows students to make a difference on a global scale.
Beautiful Social is a simple and effective model for 21st-century digital media education. It enacts a powerful global ethic, where students learn how the Web enables us to embrace our interconnectedness and take ethical action. Through this enterprise we have a sustainable, economical, and effective model for teaching and learning where non-profits receive free assistance and students gain much needed work experience. This model helps both students and organizations grow, while having safer failures and bigger successes. Not only does this model build skills, it creates leaders with a social conscience. Many student’s attitudes about what they want to do after college change dramatically after working with Beautiful Social. They realize that they want to be part of something that makes positive change.
My students co-wrote their mission statement together: “We are students devoted to working with non-profits and social entrepreneurs. We help your organization see the beauty and benefits of the social web (at no cost to you). If you need help building your community through social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook), we invite you to contact us.” Students also produced a Field Guide to help non-profits and social entrepreneurs with their sites.
We receive requests for help both locally and globally. Students attend meetings at organizations or via Skype, create social media strategies, research best practices, consult for the organizations, crowd-source their work, and generate reports. They assign each other homework and actually do it.The rewards, simply put, are beautiful. We now place interns inside organizations and have a lasting impact on how area organizations operate. Students are gaining real experience to add to their resumes and are landing jobs after college based on that experience. Most importantly, virtually every student is demonstrating leadership potential.
In short, this way of learning changes the ways students think about the technology they (already) use. As creators and designers, they see how what we create fosters specific cultural values. They see that what we make is a reflection of our own ethics. Importantly, this model of education facilitates webs of connection: connections that link what students learn in class to their lived experience; connections that transform what they know and are able to do; connections that link self to others; connections where students have a felt experience of being a global citizen. I’m eager to keep working with this innovative model of teaching and learning and to learn from others who express interest in educational models that empower students to foster civic action and social change.
