#creativemedea

We've all been there, scanning office resources trying to find the perfect eye-catching visual for an upcoming presentation. These fun options just might save the day!

Prezi put together a list of free graphics resources, and, simply put, they are pretty awesome. From vintage to vector, these graphics are bound to make your next study abroad pre-departure orientation that much more attention-grabbing.

Tip: Some of these resources email you a free packet of photos each week or month, sign up early to start building your graphics resources.

I recently had the opportunity to sit behind the scenes with the facilitators of a live Twitter chat, and I gained some great insight into coordinating a successful online discussion.

One neat tool they used was Haghtagify.me, a website that provides data on hashtag popularity, correlations, and usage patterns.

For example here is a chart of the related hashtags for #studyabroad:

Whether you are preparing a social media post or hosting a live Twitter chat, it helps to know what conversations are already happening around the topic. This information can help you identify common themes for Twitter users that tag #studyabroad in their posts, and can help you discover relevant hashtags for future posts. 

Hashtagify.me also identifies top influencers for each hashtag. Following these users on Twitter can give you a better idea of how they are effectively using these tags in their posts.

So you might be wondering what a 10k race has to do with international education. Well, we seem to find inspiration all over the place, and we love the photo contest being run by the BolderBOULDER 10k race asking participants to submit photos of them wearing their race shirts around the world. Having creative photo contests can help spread out your engagement with students throughout the year, and provide an opportunity for students to share some unique photos. 

http://www.mandysmashups.com/

Happy Friday, all!

If you're a small office, one that also serves international students, you are probably operating some kind of orientation for your new students each fall and spring. Anyone who's thinking about moving their orientation online could possibly benefit from this upcoming professional development webinar offered by NAFSA:

Tuesday, August 6th

3:00-4:00 pm EDT

http://www.nafsa.org/Attend_Events/Webinars/Reenvisioning_Programming_for_International_Student_Orientations/

Engaging young donors (donors in general) can be a challenge, and this article from the Chronicle highlights one way younger donors can become disenchanted by an organization, a poorly updated website: http://chronicle.com/article/Young-Donors-Are-Turned-Off-by/140455/

Study abroad advisers, this one's for you!

We saw that the Cal Poly Orfalea School of Business in San Luis Obispo, CA is using Skype to advise students who may not be on campus, or are currently studying abroad. http://www.cob.calpoly.edu/advising/skype-vising/