Why ASCD EDge?

ASCD recently launched ASCD EDge, a social networking community for educators. Since then, we have received many good questions (see Scott McLeod's recent blog post) from educators and ASCD members: Why create a new social networking platform when so many already exist? Are you abandoning your presence on Twitter or YouTube or Facebook in exchange for this platform? Why should I join and actively participate?

The first question (Why create a new social networking platform?) is one we've wrestled with quite a bit. As many of you know, for years ASCD has been home to a strong and thriving community of educators: our authors, our affiliates, our networks, Emerging Leaders, Educator Advocates, the Whole Child Initiative, our Healthy School Communities, and the list goes on and on. What we realized in the past year, however, was that we didn't have one place for all those different groups of educators to get together online, connect, and share best practices. We decided to build ASCD EDge to be that place. 

But rather than limiting the community to just our experts or paying ASCD members, we wanted to open it up to all educators, who are welcome to join—for free—and begin their own groups and discussions around issues of their choosing. Whereas professional learning networks on sites like Ning usually assist with discussion on specific interests, ASCD EDge allows members to delve deeper on topics while still being part of a larger, more diverse environment. And although external networks have provided opportunities for professional information sharing and networking, they're not robust enough to facilitate integrated virtual professional development for educators supported by ASCD's wealth of resources and expertise.

As far as the second question goes (Are we abandoning the external social media sites?), the answer is no. Like other organizations, we love Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media because they provide great ways to share our messages with the wider world. Creating the ASCD EDge platform in no way halts our efforts on those sites. In fact, we've enabled technology that allows users to simultaneously post on both ASCD EDge and external sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Lastly (Why should I join and actively participate?), for both our ASCD members and community participants, we will continue to personalize ASCD EDge. For example, future updates will enable users to interact in real time. We'd like to integrate job listings, provide alerts on coming education events in members' areas, and connect the experience to users' mobile devices so that they can make updates on the fly and find answers quickly. We also have plans for exclusive ASCD content to be shared on ASCD EDge, such as the current free sample chapters and bonus video material from the forthcoming ASCD book Education Unbound. With 2,000 members in a little over a month, we also hope to grow a community of educators who believe as we do in the power of sharing and communicating best practices online.

We hope you like ASCD EDge. You can create a free profile at http://edge.ascd.org/. As always, let us hear your comments and feedback as we continue to improve the experience.