Newsletter: January 2011

Dan McDowell is the Speaker of the Student Senate in UMass-Boston’s Undergraduate Student Government, contributes to the SGA Collaborative**, and moderates the #SGAChat. Here’s Dan’s advice for students who are new to social media:

I would certainly urge anyone who is just starting to use social media to make it a habit…Social media is an opportunity to make your unique mark, and also lets you build up your identity and provide a potential employer, or any other reviewer, more information that will likely help you move ahead in a selection process.

You can read the full interview** on the Red Rover Blog, follow Dan on Twitter, and check out his blog, One Part Student.

• Tag Yourself: We’ve made changes to the “Tag Yourself” step of the signup process to help new users add more relevant tags, which will help them find people and content they care about with Red Rover. Learn more**.
• Text Messaging: In addition to the recently-launched Text to Join features, now admins and leaders can send a text message to group members through Red Rover.
• Welcome Emails: When new members sign up for Red Rover, they’ll receive a welcome email with tips on getting the most out of the Directory.

Red Rover is designed to move students from online connections to offline engagement, and we’ve received requests to create activities for orientation that use the Red Rover platform to help connect students in person.

With your requests and suggestions in mind, we’ve developed our very first Red Rover Orientation Activity** to help you implement Red Rover at Orientation. Check out the game, and let us know** if you’d like to use it for your upcoming orientations.

The UM Patriots at the University of Michigan take good-natured pranks to a new level of theatricality. In this video, the Orkin Man pays a visit to Computer Programming 101.