I have blogged about Twitter before, and it’s beginning to have some real value for me. I now “follow” a number of news and information sources such as CNN and NPR, along with several of my favorite tv and radio broadcasts such as the Bob Edwards Show, The Diane Rehm Show, and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

I still rely on online newspapers to keep me up-to-date, and just today I read an interesting article in the New York Times, which included some demographics about tweeters and other micro-bloggers. This article, along with a recent Beatblogging.org post, had new information that was released in a report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. This latest Pew report studied the use of Twitter and social media services with micro-blogging features.

According to the latest Pew report, 11 percent of U.S. adults update their status online. Although there are various social networking sites with micro-blogging features, Twitter is the most popular and best known of the dedicated sites.  As for me, I  am more likely to update my status, or to micro-blog, on Facebook, which seems to have become my personal social network of choice. There my online circle of friends grows more organically and expands more rapidly than on Twitter. Facebook seems to have more connectivity features and applications than LinkedIn, where I am networked primarily with folks from my professional world.

As social networking continues to grow, I expect to follow more online news and information services and programs on Twitter.  I’m sure I will discover more social networking sites related to my personal and professional interests. These days I just can’t seem to get offline.

As CIO, I have always been involved in SUNY Cortland’s NCATE accreditation process. We are currently laying the groundwork for our reaccreditation, scheduled for April 2011 when the BOE (Board of Examiners) will be on campus. It seems like a long way off, but preparations have begun in earnest. One year prior to the campus visit, each program is required to submit a SPA (Specialized Program Association) report that details how each curriculum meets specified standards. The SPA report must include evidence that programs are of high quality and produce successful graduates.

As a member of Cortland’s NCATE Steering Committee, I have been trying to establish some consistent means of assessment that can be used by various programs, each with its own standards. Today several of us had a conference call with TaskStream, the company that has developed the e-portfolio system used in several academic departments. We learned about TaskStream’s Accountability Management System (AMS), which together with the Learning Achievement Tools (LAT) can be customized to create the data we need to support the SPA documents.  Sounds like a foreign language? Well, maybe. But we all seem to understand each other and are feeling confident that we’ve got the tools we need.

Library bibliographers, in concert with our technology trainer, will work with academic departments to deploy the Task Stream e-portfolio system to collect data that maps to the accreditation standards on which we are evaluated.  It’s all about knowing which technologies to use for which processes, and we seem to have a plan. Lots to do in the next two years!