Social Media Week, the world’s largest conference focused on emerging trends in social media, in conjunction with open learning platform Skillshare, will launch The School of Emerging Media & Technology come this September. Their mission? To tackle a growing skills shortage that organizations face today.
This marks the first accredited school utilizing Skillshare platform and will provide a way for leaders in social media to provide education and training to professionals whose daily jobs and activities require a basic-to-advanced understanding of the emerging tools, technologies and best practices that are driving change in their industry.
“Due to the speed of technological advancement we’ve seen in recent years, it has not been possible to educate people quickly enough to enable them to adapt to the change that this has created.” said Toby Daniels, founder and executive director of Social Media Week. “Through this initiative we aim to address this problem at scale and with the full force of the Skillshare platform and our incredible community of social media leaders and practitioners.”
Commenting on the launch, Stephanie Agresta, EVP, Managing Director of Social Media at Weber Shandwick and Board member for SMAC said: “beyond the benefits we all get from gathering at conferences – there is a need for more structured and disciplined learning in social media. It’s a space that changes daily, so in order to educate the next generation of practitioners, we need initiatives like this that share knowledge and best practices in our industry.”
The School will initially launch in the US, with plans to expand internationally in 2013. In the coming months Social Media Week will work with Skillshare and a number of leading practitioners and advisors to design the initial program of classes and courses, catering to a diverse range of needs and skill level.
As an open learning platform, Skillshare makes it easy for anyone to apply to become a teacher and provides a way to evaluate teacher performance through recommendations and endorsements.
“We’re really excited to be teaming up with Social Media Week on bridging a real-world skills gap that exists in the media industry today.” said Michael Karnjanaprakorn, co-founder & CEO of Skillshare. “We’re hoping The School of Emerging Media & Technology will give students all across the country access to real-world skills they can apply to their own professional development and immediately contribute back to the workforce”.
Learn more here: http://socialmediaweek.org/school/
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