6 Ways Social Media is Changing Education Uncategorized Flickr: ivanpw By Sara Bernard “The fact that we as educators even have to have discussions on whether or not social media is good for schools is sad,” writes Steve Johnson, a teacher and Edutopia guest blogger. He’s right — as of July, there were half a billion active Facebook users alone (not counting other social networking sites), and that number grows daily. To that end, here’s a handful of the ways that social media is infiltrating, influencing, overtaking, and game-changing the educational landscape: Galvanizing students: Social media, with its lightning speed and viral powers, is the perfect tool for activism, and students are no exception. Defining boundaries: The fine line between personal and professional lives gets stickier when it involves teachers and students. Redefining parent communication: Social media is both opening and altering the lines of communcation between teachers, parents, and students. Related
How to Keep Kids Engaged in Class Have you ever plunked yourself down in a staff meeting where some of your colleagues were, for lack of a better phrase, not paying attention? Grading homework? Having private conversations? As we know all too well, kids aren't a whole lot different than adults: If they aren't absorbed by what's going on, they'll find something else that interests them. Getting all your students focused, eager, and on task at the beginning of class is challenging enough. Still, unless you manage to capture and keep students' focus, whether at the beginning of or midway through class, the engine of student learning that you are trying to drive simply isn't even in gear. From Dead Time to Active Learning I call this lack of engagement dead time. I have come to feel that dead time is so pernicious that I will do everything I can to prevent even the hint of an outbreak. They call students at Level 4, the lowest level, the work avoiders, and on level 3 are the halfhearted workers. Building Your Arsenal 1. 2. 3.
Think Tank: Fix the workplace, not the workers Many of us interpret our younger colleagues' badgering as some sort of deep-seated emotional neediness – the legacy of cushy childhoods where at breakfast each morning their parents fed them heaping bowls of self-esteem. Alas – and it pains me slightly to admit this – I think we've got it wrong. The question we should be asking isn't "What's the matter with Millennials?" Instead, we ought ask: "What's the matter with the workplace?" Consider a typical 28 year-old. The main – often the only – mechanism for giving her information on how she's doing on the job is the annual performance review. First, it's annual. Second, performance reviews are rarely authentic conversations. So the problem isn't that the Millennials are wrong. Fortunately, it needn't be that way. 1. Formal performance appraisals have their place. If a conversation with yourself seems odd, try it with a few colleagues. 2. Kimley-Horn, a large American engineering firm, takes a peer-to-peer approach. 3.
How to Motivate People: Skip the Bonus and Give Them a Real Project Science has managed to reveal some crazy things that fly in the face of almost every commonly accepted management practice. Here's the latest: Rewards for top performers lead them to worse performance. And if you want to foster innovation, bonuses won't work either. Dan Pink lays all that out in this new video, which illustrates a talk he gave at the RSA (a kind of British version of TED): Wild stuff, and all the more unsettling because of the current mess on Wall Street. The fact that science has also created a new vision for workplace performance--fueled less by management and more by individual goals--is shocking. Pink tackles those themes at length in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Database Error I strive to strike a reasonable balance between reading blogs, books, and peer-reviewed articles. Different topics flair up in popularity (such as web 2.0 and now social media) and then fade. A few concepts have longevity such as “how effective is technology enhanced learning when contrasted with traditional classrooms?”. I’m firmly convinced of the following: 1. Obviously there are numerous questions that need to be addressed in terms of social/relational impact of technology, how individuals connect and create information with participative tools, and so on. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Which questions are you no longer asking about the role of technology in learning?
5 Words You’ll Never Hear on the Campaign Trail In this (and every) election year, I find myself amazed all over again at the phenomenal effort our elected and would-be elected officials put into the denial of their own mistakes. They don’t ever want to fess up to anything, it seems. 5 words you’ll never hear on the campaign trail: “Here’s How I Screwed Up.” I get it; I understand their motives. I understand that leadership in the political arena is, in many ways, different from the day-to-day, up-close-and-personal leadership you and I practice in our places of work. There’s no such thing as a perfect human being, and the minute one tries to appear to be perfect, he or she is automatically suspect. So, how about we all stop trying so hard to market ourselves as flawless? In fact, how’s about we boldly talk about our mistakes and share what we learned from the experience of falling and failing and flailing? Here’s the question: How bold and public are you willing to be with your own valuable screw-ups? How have you screwed up?
Reflection on a presentation: Social Media and Social Network #SoMe Earlier this week I gave the following presentation to a groups of first year Accounting and Finance students: Social Media & Networks: How to survive online (or “your [next] employer is watching you”) and was kindly asked by Pauline Randall of Florizel Media to write up a reflective account of the presentation and what kind of impact it had on the students. Florizel Media – Reflection on a presentation: Social Media and Social Network I hope Pauline doesn’t mind but here is a snippet for you to read, but please read the full reflection using the link above. “What I was not prepared for, when I thought about presenting this, was the students were completely unaware that their activity online could have any bearing on their employability. I also had the event recorded by the Bournemouth University installation of the Echo360 lecture capture system. Click to view recording of the “Social Media and Social Network” Presentation Links and YouTube videos played in the lecture are:
Test Your Creativity: 5 Classic Creative Challenges Fascinated by how brains and creativity work, we frequently share new research on the 99U twitter feed, showing how everything from drinking alcohol, to taking vacations, to moving your eyes from side to side can make you more creative. What’s particularly interesting, however, is that most of these studies rely on just a small group of core creativity tests – and you don’t need any special lab equipment to take them. Below, we’ve collected five of the most commonly used creativity challenges for your self-testing pleasure. While creativity “testing” is far from an exact science, trying your mettle at these challenges could yield insight into when, where, and how you’re most creative. Or maybe it’ll just be fun. 1. Developed by J.P. Hold papers togetherCufflinksEarringsImitation mini-tromboneThing you use to push that emergency restart button on your routerKeeping headphones from getting tangled upBookmark The test measures divergent thinking across four sub-categories: 2. 3. 4. 5.
How willing are companies to take the social media plunge? - Nov. 1, 2010 By Andrew McAfee, contributorNovember 1, 2010: 2:09 PM ET (Management Innovation eXchange) -- Manonamission.blogspot.com has a great collection of corporate mission statements. I recently used its search function to find examples of companies that prominently and publicly state something close to "people are our most important asset." Here's a partial list: Nestlé, Procter & Gamble (PG, Fortune 500), Land O' Lakes, Danaher (DHR, Fortune 500), Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Fortune 500), Valero (VLO, Fortune 500), Performance Food Group, Norfolk Southern (NSC, Fortune 500), and Border's Group (BGP). And here's a group of companies that similarly value "empowerment:" Caremark (CVS, Fortune 500), Sara Lee (SLE, Fortune 500), Heinz (HNZ, Fortune 500), Dow Chemical (DOW, Fortune 500), GE (GE, Fortune 500), and Alcoa (AA, Fortune 500). I don't mean to pick on these companies; they're just particularly clear examples of how all organizations talk about their people. I admit that's a little bulky.
Conference 2011: Key Insights on Idea Execution (Pt. II) More insights on making ideas happen from the 2011 edition of the 99U Conference… Laura Guido-Clark onstage at the 99U Conference. LAURA GUIDO-CLARK /// Principal, Laura Guido-Clark Design At Laura Guido-Clark’s design studio, she focuses on the color, materials, and finish, working with companies like Apple, Dell, DWR to “skin” products. Guido-Clark shared her thoughts on how to “get closer to your DNA” to be true to who you really are, and hone in on the creative projects that will have the most impact. “60% of what I do is about ‘passionate consulting’ and 40% of the time, I focus on my dreams.”Actually setting aside a percentage of your time to work on projects unrelated to your day-job (however much you may love your day-job) will ensure that you accomplish what really matters to you.Spend less time on what to do, and more on how to be.Be mindful about yourself and your actions: Are the things you’re spending your time on consistent with the person you want to be? DR. Why “face-read?”
Harold Jarche ? Network Learning: Working Smarter “In the period ahead of us, more important than advances in computer design will be the advances we can make in our understanding of human information processing – of thinking, problem solving, and decision making…” ~ Herbert Simon, Economics Nobel-prize winner (1968) The World Wide Web is changing how many of us do our work as we become more connected to information and each other. In California, Ray Prock, Jr. (2010) uses a Web-based note system to store messages, manage his financial risk and stay on top of the multiple factors necessary to run a successful dairy farm. For many, however, keeping up isn’t easy. This information overload has a direct impact on workplace learning. We need to re-think workplace learning for a networked society. As the Internet Time Alliance’s Jay Cross says, formal learning can be somewhat effective when things don’t change much and are predictable, but today’s world is the opposite in every way imaginable. Network Learning Seeking: Using Filters Note:
Conference 2011: Key Insights on Idea Execution (Pt. III) More insights on making ideas happen from the 2011 edition of the 99U Conference… Soraya Darabi onstage at the 99U Conference. SORAYA DARABI /// Co-Founder, Foodspotting + Digital Strategist Soraya Darabi cut her teeth at the New York Times, leading the drive to integrate the Gray Lady’s content into the universe of social media. Now, as a co-founder of Foodspotting and digital media consultant, she’s at the leading edge of trends in social media. Take a beta approach to social media.As new platforms come online, we should be willing to experiment with the ones that seem relevant to us. Starlee Kine onstage at the 99U Conference. STARLEE KINE /// Radio Producer & Writer A radio producer for This American Life and a writer, Starlee Kine took the stage and instantly made the audience feel at ease – as one attendee commented, “listening to Starlee Kine is like sitting on a couch with her.” Tony Schwartz onstage at the 99U Conference. TONY SCHWARTZ /// President & CEO, The Energy Project
Is Your Training Path Full of Traffic Lights (Instead of Roads)? Some food for thought: Is your training path full of traffic lights? Before you answer that, check out the following video from Rogert Ebert’s blog for the Chicago Sun Times. The question posed by the video: Does turning off traffic lights speed up traffic? Did you notice the reactions of the locals? I found it remarkable how stunned they were about the ability of motorists to navigate the intersection in an orderly fashion. To bring the traffic metaphor full circle, training traffic lights are all those controls that we or others have put in place over time to streamline the flow of information, to mitigate risk, or they’re simply the artifact of a business that’s changed and an environment that’s failed to keep up with the pace. In training, as in life, sometimes the best solution is to undo the prior solutions and start the journey from a different place. Skeptical?