by Scott McLeod | Nov 19, 2009 | Communication, Higher Education, Leadership and Vision, News and Events, Pre-Service Preparation |
I gave a bad presentation yesterday. It wasn’t bad because I had poor content or delivery. It was a bad presentation because I didn’t sufficiently account for the needs and understandings of my audience. Let me explain…
I’m in Anaheim, California for the annual conference of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), which is the primary association for educational leadership faculty members at large research institutions. In other words, UCEA is the organization for professors that prepare school principals and superintendents. I currently serve as UCEA’s Associate Director for Communications. I’ve been helping UCEA transition from a very static, fairly unhelpful web site to a more robust online presence. This past year we transitioned UCEA to Squarespace and now I am helping them take advantage of its interactive tools and other social media such as Twitter and podcasting.
Yesterday morning I was scheduled to give a presentation to UCEA’s Executive Committee (EC). The EC is the governing body for the larger organization and is made up of 10 faculty from a number of different postsecondary institutions. You can see my presentation below. I shared various statistics and information about the UCEA web site, Twitter channel, and BlogTalkRadio podcast series.
The members of the EC were fine until I got to the recommendations. Then I lost them (at least that’s when I think I lost them). The problem was that I’ve been working with Dr. Michelle Young, UCEA’s Executive Director, and she gets what we’re trying to do. But the EC hasn’t heard from me in a while and to them I might as well have been speaking in tongues. As a group, their level of technology understanding was much lower than Michelle’s, perhaps because I’ve been answering her questions as we’ve gone along.
It was my fault. I know that I need to tailor my presentations to the level of my audience. I’ve done that well in the past – including with the EC – but I forgot my audience this time. The end result was a dissatisfying experience for both them and me. Although some of them said to me later that I did a good job, I know they were being polite.
So now I have to remedy the situation. For some that will mean individual follow-up conversations just to clarify or touch base. For others a series of explanatory e-mail updates will suffice. And I’ll need to roll up my sleeves with a few and start walking them through the same questions and answers that Michelle and I already have navigated. In the end it will be fine, but now I’ve created more work for myself – work I could have avoided if I’d done what I should have yesterday.
I gave a bad presentation yesterday. Lesson learned. Reminder received. Time to adjust, compensate, and move forward…
by Scott McLeod | Nov 3, 2009 | 21st Century Skills, Communication, News and Events, Our Changing World, Tech Tools |
WHO TV (Des Moines) aired a special report, Are we too connected?, on last night’s news broadcast. Among others, they interviewed me and Dr. Michael Bugeja, Professor and Director of Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication.
I have interacted with Michael a couple of times. He’s a very good guy and a fun guy to talk with, but he’s also a nationally-visible technology critic who is interviewed often by the media. His technology skepticism is probably understandable given that his entire profession is struggling to reinvent itself because of the impacts of these new digital tools, but it’s also at least a little ironic given that he utilizes multiple web sites to publicize his work. He and I often fall on opposite sides of technology issues. I really need to read his book, Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age.
Here are a few quotes from the special report:
All this really does is send a message that someone somewhere else is more important than the place we are and the person we're with. [Bugeja]
That's not a loss of connection, that's a gain of connection compared to where we were before the technologies existed. [McLeod]
There's a time and a place in society for all manner of communication. Former platforms define those areas with real boundaries. But this has no boundaries. It blurs the boundary between home and work, between school and home, between church, temple, mosque and school. It blurs everything. Why? Because it's programmed for revenue generation. ‘We want to make money off you at any time of the day.’ [Bugeja]
Happy reading!
by Scott McLeod | Aug 10, 2009 | 21st Century Skills, Communication, Our Changing World, Research and Evaluation |
The New York Times reports today on a study of MySpace users from the United Kingdom. Here is a quote from the article:
The MySpace study asked social networking users between the ages of 14 and 21 (aka "Generation Y") questions about their interactions both on social networks and in their real life, too. Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology. This group also felt that their online friends knew more about them, and so, in a sense, were closer than offline friends because they all knew what was going on in each other's lives.
Outside of the social networking sites, the survey respondents overwhelmingly felt ill-at-ease in social groups. A whopping 72% said they felt "left out" and didn't think they fit into any particular group. More than four-fifths (82%) said they moved between four or more different groups of friends in an effort to find acceptance.
So is this…
- Proof that Internet naysayers are correct that the Web is eroding young people’s ability to communicate effectively face-to-face?, or
- Proof that Internet advocates are correct that young people are breaking free of local, geographical constraints to find affinity groups that matter to them?
In other words, are these results something about which to be concerned or to celebrate? Both? Neither? Thoughts?
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by Scott McLeod | Aug 8, 2009 | Communication, Leadership and Vision, Our Changing World, Safety and Security, Tech Tools |
Tom Whitby had an interesting idea: create a Twitter account for a school administrator that was pre-loaded with 50 people to follow.
Beth Still liked the idea and blogged about it. I have some hesitancy, however, about the concept, despite Tom and Beth’s good intentions and despite my inclinations to help administrators by making this social media stuff easy for them [and, yes, I’m now officially changing my mind about item #5 in the hyperlinked post]. Here’s the comment that I left on Beth’s blog:
Although I empathize with the sentiment behind this idea, I confess I have some hesitancy about it. Unlike being handing an iPod loaded with podcasts, which involves no identity infringement, I think most folks would prefer to handle their own online identities. Choice of whether or not to join an online service – or even specific online account usernames and/or Twitter IDs – is critical, I believe, for online identity formation (e.g., I wish I had a common username across services instead of being mcleod in some places, scottmcleod in others, and something else in yet others; I choose to use some online services but not others). What you choose for others may not necessarily be how they’d like to be represented. Also, third parties will begin treating those individuals’ online identities as authentic and representative, despite the fact that you, not they, created them. Your representation may or may not be accurate or fair to the person who has an online identity that supposedly represents her but instead represents your perceptions of her. It’s already tough enough trying to get a handle on the variety of ways in which we can be represented online without our permission. Despite the extremely good intentions here, I’m not sure I’d agree that this is a good thing to do.
The essential question here is whether it’s okay to create an online service account in someone else’s name, regardless of how good your intentions are. Beth says that she would let her administrator fill in his own profile. But she already would have made the account…
If you have thoughts on this, please leave them over at Beth’s post. It should be a good conversation!
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by Scott McLeod | Jul 9, 2009 | Communication, Learning and Teaching, Miscellaneous, Research and Evaluation, Safety and Security |
I tweeted:
And Barry Dahl replied:
Barry’s right and I’m wrong. I failed my own information literacy test. Why? Because even though I had access to (and linked to) the original report, I didn’t critically consume it the way I should have. Instead I relied on this report from CNN:
And because I did, I made an incorrect statement that then got retweeted by others. Shame on CNN for being misleading and/or inaccurate, but shame on me too for not doing my homework the way I should have. Just because CNN is a traditional, reputable news organization doesn’t mean that I don’t need to be a critical consumer of the information it provides.
Thanks, Barry.
by Scott McLeod | Jun 25, 2009 | Communication, Miscellaneous |
I walked out of a 2–hour workshop last week. I actually really wanted to know the information that was to be presented, but the workshop facilitator did such a terrible job that I left after 35 minutes. My graduate assistant said the next day, “I heard you walked out on that workshop.” I replied, “Did you hear anything else about it?” She said, “Yeah, I heard it was pretty bad.”
I find myself having less and less patience for people who waste my time in unproductive meetings, boring presentations, workshops that don’t meet my needs, and so on. Even when I’m extremely interested in the topic, a facilitator’s structure and/or delivery can ruin it for me. I don’t leave right away. I try to stay mentally engaged and I give the facilitator a chance to right the ship. But if it’s clearly a lost cause, I’m usually out of there (if I can’t leave, then I start quietly checking my e-mail / surfing the Web).
I have worked very hard over the past few years to ramp up my presentation skills, both in terms of content and delivery. I try to apply that learning to the various aspects of my life, whether it be teaching, consulting, or just holding meetings. I ask myself questions like “Do we really need this meeting or activity?” and “What is my audience doing at this stage?” and “How are my students or participants feeling right about now?” In other words, I try my utmost to think intentionally and purposefully about the impact of what I do on others’ valuable time. Is it too much to expect others to do the same?
But, Scott, it’s rude to walk out on someone (or check your e-mail). Not any more rude than it is to fail to deliver a learning experience that meets the group’s needs rather than your own. It’s one thing to waste your own time. It’s another to waste the time of five to twenty to hundreds of others. Shame on you.
But, Scott, aren’t you worried about your reputation? I’m willing to stand up for quality presentations, meetings, and learning experiences. I think that collectively we would be better off if more of us left more often. We’re captive to our own ‘politeness’ (if that’s what we want to call it) and we suffer countless wasted hours as a result. If folks walk out of one of my presentations, that lets me know that their needs aren’t being met. Rather than taking it personally, I’m glad that they’re going somewhere else that is a better fit for them. If walk-outs happen in large numbers or on a frequent basis, that lets me know that I need to something differently.
But, Scott, maybe the facilitator didn’t know how to do any better. So? How is that my problem? Why shouldn’t the responsibility be on presenters, facilitators, and instructors to do a better job? Why should they get to waste our time rather than improve their skills? What’s their impetus for change if we passively acquiesce to their ineptitude?
P-12 students usually don’t have the chance to walk out of poor learning experiences (wouldn’t it be interesting if we gave every student a red ‘I’m disengaged’ card that she could lay on her desk every time she was turned off or tuned out?). But we adults do if we’re brave enough to stand up for quality learning experiences. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not investing my walk-out last week with any huge societal significance. But larger battles start one principled stand at a time… Care to join me?
Photo credit: Not my cat, but cute enough.
P.S. On a related note, my proposal submission to address the issue of bad academic PowerPoint got rejected by the reviewers for the annual educational leadership professors conference. Ugh.
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by Scott McLeod | May 30, 2009 | Communication |
Mark Ramsey notes that your web site / blog visitors ask two primary questions:
- Why should I come at all?
- Why should I come back?
Whether you’re a corporation, government, non-profit agency, school, or university, these two questions apply to everything you’re doing online. And many, many institutions can’t answer these questions very well.
I had an interaction recently with a health care publicist who said, “But they NEED to know our information. It’s very important. It could even SAVE LIVES.” She didn’t like it when I echoed Seth Godin: “It doesn’t matter. It’s not about you. It’s about them. If they don’t see the meaningfulness and relevance of what you’re offering, it’s your fault, not theirs.”
Time to change your communication, marketing, and stakeholder engagement strategies. Or get used to people ignoring you. Your choice.
Picture credit: Y’all come back now
by Scott McLeod | May 29, 2009 | Blogging, Communication, Leadership and Vision, Our Changing World |
Back in February I noted that parents are using online tools to push back on their local school districts. Embodying the themes expressed in Clay Shirky’s excellent book, Here Comes Everybody, parents and other stakeholders are using blogs, online discussion boards, e-mail listservs, YouTube channels, and other social media tools to organize, advocate, criticize, support, and otherwise express their opinions about their local school systems.
Here are some examples:
Also see the parent reviews at GreatSchools (here’s an example from Dallas, Texas) and the New York City school reviews at InsideSchools (here’s an example).
I’m looking for some more examples of parents (or others) blogging about their local school organization. Not an occasional post (as I am wont to do) but rather dedicated communication channels such as the ones above. If you know of any, please share them in the comments area? Thanks!
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by Scott McLeod | May 25, 2009 | Communication, News and Events, Tech Tools |
Continuing the theme of my last post, how great would it be if every school, district, or university Twitter feed was in one place? The aggregated posts would give us a sense of what each level of schooling thought was worth publicizing. I’m guessing that we’d also discover lots of interesting information that is typicallly hidden from the view of most of us…
Schools Twibe:
Districts Twibe:
Universities Twibe:
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by Scott McLeod | May 25, 2009 | Communication, News and Events, Tech Tools |
After a recent presentation here in Iowa that included some discussion of Twitter, a superintendent came up to me and said, “Okay, I’m in. But how will I find people that I want to follow?” That fantastic question led me to create the Iowa Administrators group at Twibes:
While I was at it, I also created the Iowa Teachers group at Twibes:
Shari Barnhart, Technology Coordinator for the Oskaloosa Schools, then created the Iowa Technology Coordinators group at Twibes:
So what we have here is a burgeoning effort to create spaces where Iowa educators can find others in the state who are on Twitter, see what they’re saying, and sign up to follow them. Maybe there’s a better way to do this but for now I think this has some promise, particularly if folks are willing to sign up and pass this along to others. I believe there are some great conversation and resource-sharing possibilities if most of the Iowa educators on Twitter are following each other.
