I wasn’t surprised to learn that 10,000 had registered for this week’s conference of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. The Anaheim convention center was a beehive of activity, with multiple dozens of breakout sessions and workshops going on simultaneously across multiple sites. More than 50 brave folks got up far too early on Sunday morning to talk with me about new media and its possibilities for K-12 education communications. They were hungry to learn as much as possible. As usual in a session like this, audience comments ranged from, “What exactly is a podcast?” to “Our district produces a podcast that includes video and documents that can be edited and shared.” I agree with those who wrote in their evaluations that they wished that we had half a day, rather than just an hour, to talk about the strengths and limitations of blogs, podcasts, newsfeeds, wikis, social networking and tagging and bookmarking. I hope that folks will take me up on my offer to talk individually over the next weeks and months about their particular situation and what they’d like to accomplish.
Big conference, big appetites
March 19, 2007
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ASCD conference offers lotsa tech
March 6, 2007Next week I’ll talk about new media at the annual conference of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development in Anaheim. The conference offers several sessions on subjects related to communication technology and I wish I could attend all of them. Because my session begins at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday I initially feared speaking to a nearly empty room. But to my delight I’ve found that the topic has attracted interest and the ticketed event filled up some time ago.
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Webinar: Measuring interactive media
January 18, 2007My friend Dan Karleen and I will co-host a webinar April 3, “Measuring the Effectiveness of Interactive Media.” The 90-minute session will include an overview of new media, thinking through communications planning, assessing the success of a new media presence, and evaluating outcomes. We’ll chat with participants during and after the session.
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Talk, talk, talk. . . and listen
December 21, 2006I met Joan Gillman at a recent IABC meeting here in Madison; in addition to her responsibilities at the UW-Madison School of Business (or perhaps as part of them), Joan cohosts, with Jody Glynn Patrick, the radio program of On-Air with In-Business Magazine. I’m set to talk about communications tech stuff on their show January 3.
UW-Madison graduate students participating in an interdisciplinary training program here at WCER attend a series of lunch time talks during the semester. On January 18 I’ll talk with them about using new media to communicate their research results as part of the Graduate Training Brownbag Series.
The Wisconsin Educational Media Association (WEMA) is a professional association of school library media and instructional technology professionals. They’re holding their annual conference in March; the theme is “Cultivating Success: Growing Information Literacy and Technology in Wisconsin.” I look forward to sharing with them about new media, and expect to come back having learned quite a bit.
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) holds its annual meeting this year in Chicago. Its Research Use special interest group works to understand and document how research is used to improve education policy and practice, and to foster improvement of dissemination and use of research findings. Along with Ron Dietel and Janet Angelis I’ll participate in a panel titled “What Works in Communicating Your Research to the World.”
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Share presentations with Slideshare
November 17, 2006I’ve enjoyed discussing the uses of social media in education communications with a variety of groups, most recently as part of a panel on new media for the campus communicators at UW-Madison. I’ve uploaded the presentation to SlideShare for a couple of reasons: to share the presentation with more people, and to show how SlideShare works. My title is “Using social media in education communications.”
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NSBA tech conference; Digital Board winners
November 1, 2006I’m looking forward to leading a roundtable discussion about blogs, podcasts, and other social media next week at the NSBA T+L conference in Dallas.
Conference strands include assessment and evaluation; leadership and vision; learning and teaching; productivity and professional practice; social, legal, and ethical issues; and support, management, and operations.
I expect to meet tons of friendly, knowledgeable people, and I always enjoy touring the vendor exhibits (350 this year, I understand).
By the way, NSBA and The Center for Digital Education have announced the winners of the 2006 Digital School Boards Survey. The Mansfield Independent School District, Board of Trustees in Texas took first place in the category of school boards serving 15,000 or more students. The School Board of Henry County, Va., and Vail School District Governing Board in Arizona tied for first in the category of 2,501 to 15,000 students. Jefferson City Schools Board of Education in Georgia is the first place winner in the category of less than 2,500 students.
The survey examines how school boards and their districts apply information technology to better engage local communities and constituents, and improve service delivery and quality of education to public schools. Survey questions and criteria center on school boards’ online presence, technology applications that allow the public to interact with school board members, access to information such as school board calendars, policies and agendas, and technology advancements in the school board meeting rooms.
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K-12 educators drawn to social media
October 27, 2006I was happy to lead a discussion of social media today in Madison at the annual convention of the Wisconsin Education Association Council. About 30 of us got together for this breakout session to talk about planning for, and evaluating the effectiveness of, blogs, podcasts, and other media in the K-12 world. I happily plugged Will Richardson’s book a number of times as a good place to get started.
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Integrating interactive technologies into PR
October 25, 2006I’m joining several presenters from around the country for the next couple days here in sunny Orlando at a social media conference put together by Academic Impressions. I’ll talk about the whys and wherefores of blogging and the ins and outs of measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of using social media. Other presentations will focus on examining today’s audiences and their communication preferences, crafting messages for key audiences, integrating news feeds and podcasts into a communication strategy, and using social media for internal communications.
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Heading to Ames
October 6, 2006I haven’t been to Ames, Iowa in ten years, so I’m looking forward to a beautiful October drive over there next week. I’ll conduct a couple roundtable sessions on social media at the annual Midwest Regional Middle Level Conference sponsored by the Iowa Association for Middle Level Education. This is the 22nd year they’ve offered this event and they’ve lined up tons of breakout sessions and keynotes by Roger Taylor, Larry Bell, and the NMSA’s Theresa Hinkle.
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Conference: PR and interactive technologies
August 14, 2006Academic Impressions has posted details about its upcoming conference, Integrating Interactive Technologies into Public Relations, set for Oct. 25-27 in Orlando. Among topics discussed will be examining today’s audiences and their communication preferences, crafting key messages, deploying and integrating RSS, podcasting and vodcasting, interactive technologies and internal comm strategies, and several case studies. I’ll lead a session on blogging to increase two-way communication and one on evaluating communication effectiveness. Other presenters will share their experiences communicating for the U of Florida, Thomson Peterson’s, Colgate U, Mansfield U, and The College of New Jersey.
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