Establishing a Social Media Presence and Network for the Pennsylvania Earth Science Teachers Association (PAESTA)

In Spring 2011, the Pennsylvania Earth Science Teachers Association (PAESTA) became an official state chapter of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA). Established with funds from the National Science Foundation, PAESTA is focused on advancing, extending, improving, and coordinating all levels of Earth Science education in Pennsylvania. Our goal is to reach earth science educators across Pennsylvania and beyond who are not physically co-located. An early priority of this new organization was to establish a web presence (http://www.paesta.psu.edu/) and to build an online community to support PAESTA activities and members. PAESTA exists as a distributed group made up of educators across Pennsylvania. Many initial members were participants in summer Earth and space science workshops held at Penn State University, which has allowed for face-to-face connections and network building. PAESTA will hold sessions and a reception at the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association annual conference. The work of the group also takes place virtually via the PAESTA organizational website, providing professional development opportunities and Earth Science related teaching resources and links. As PAESTA is still in the very early days of its formation, we are utilizing a variety of social media tools to disseminate information and to promote asynchronous discussions around Earth and space science topics and pedagogy. The site features discussion boards for members and non-members to post comments along a specific topic or theme. For example, each month the PAESTA site features an article from one of the National Science Teacher's Association (NSTA)'s journals and encourages teachers to discuss and apply the pedagogical approach or strategy from the article to their classroom situation. We send email blasts so that members learn about organizational news and professional development opportunities. We also leverage in-person training sessions and conference sessions as a way to build participation and membership in the online PAESTA community. Part of the approach guiding the developing of the virtual community was to provide a number of ways for teachers to access PAESTA content. We needed to find ways to establish a presence in venues where our users regularly go to find information rather than expecting them to visit our website. This includes experiments with a variety of social networking platforms including Facebook and Twitter. We also make use of sites that allow users to collect and share information such as bookmarks (Diigo), citations (Mendeley), and reading lists (Goodreads). Such sites allow us to reach new audiences with an affinity for the content that we are producing who may not otherwise find us. The tension in this approach is in maintaining information and a consistent presence across a variety of platforms. It is too early to tell which social media tools and strategies will be the most effective in creating a sense of community and interactivity among PAESTA members. Monitoring usage statistics and patterns across platforms should assist us in identifying which social media tool(s) will be most effective to continue with the mission of PAESTA.