I'm really excited to be part of an interesting learning experiment sponsored by NTEN. It's called Be the Media and it's designed to "build a toolkit and instructional guides about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world."

What makes this project interesting is not the content (although that will be good), as much as the process we're using to develop the curriculum as we're experimenting with how to develop a curriculum the networked way. It builds upon Dave Courmier's ideas about rhizomatic education and the community as curriculum that I blogged about a few weeks ago. In fact, Dave has agreed to be a "critical friend" and observe and blog about our knowledge sharing process as we go through the development of the modules

We've set a goal of developing the curriculum in 7 days, with each day focusing on gathering information and ideas from you on a specific aspect of the module. We're starting with Module 1: Why Your Nonprofit Organization Should Be The Media, which will examine why nonprofits should consider incorporating social media as part of their strategic communications and why they should make the shift from passive consumers of web information to content creators.

What we're looking for today are stories, ideas, activities, etc. that make the case for using social media in nonprofits. How do we convince key stakeholder groups that social media strategies are something to pursue?

Leave a comment, write a blog post (tag it with "bethemedia"), drop your thoughts in the wiki or point to a fabulous blog post or article that answers this question. Multimedia (podcasts, videos, screencasts, etc.) and lessons or activities you've used to make the case are also welcome.

You don't have to work with a nonprofit to help with the curriculum--in fact, I believe that we can learn from the experiences of educators and business people who are working to implement social media within their own organizations. By the same token, I think that educators and business people will be able to adapt the curriculum we're putting together for their own uses. So really, this is a project that can benefit everyone.

Help us build a curriculum in 7 days and learn more about how the community is the curriculum.

Be The Media logo (remix of this Flickr photo)