Tag Archives: communication

Developing a ning… #tcea2010

Posted on by • Posted in Conferences • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

Live blogged: Please excuse spelling errors or awkward phrasing!

This session was presented by Elizabeth Perrin and Amanda Jost from Houston ISD, Educational Technology department.

Communication is a huge challenge for a district the size of Houston ISD (200,000+ students) and they were looking for a way to create a network of collaborators. Some options considered were: email, listserv, wiki, blog, ning, skype and video conferencing.

Why a ning? A ning was chosen due to cost (free with ads), personal presence of members (social aspect), voice, multi-dimensional (can do much more than just a wiki or blog – it is a true social network that is targeted to specific groups), easy to use, can be private/secure.

Amanda did graduate research on using a ning to create a valuable professional learning community with teachers in the the district. Background research told her that members needed direction and motivation to participate in the ning. Members would come when the site was first launched for the novelty, but need motivation to keep visiting.

In order to increase usage, the facilitators redesigned the ning, used it to provide links to new resources, discussed issues, and made site visits to campuses. Usage stats show that people used the ning when something was posted. Email reminders and other members posting encouraged ning visits. Lack of participation by members discourages use.

Recommendations for building a ning:

Design – keep it simple and user friendly. Have a prominent spot for announcements, district news links, videos, forum. Have personal pages for members to post photos and other info. Members can have personal communications, chatting, uploading of files.

Resources – Keep resources organized, accurate and updated. Provide RSS feeds for news, district resources, links to safety resources and web 2.0 tools. Ask members what they want.

Gathering feedback – Plan for feedback in advance: how will you get it and what will you do with it? HISD uses Google Analytics, questionnaires and their own observations.

Promoting the ning – Talk about the ning whenever you get a chance!

Things to think about:

Determine what you will post. Have a clear purpose for the ning. Enlist the support of your IT department in keeping the ning open and not blocked by your filter. Post a usage policy for the Ning: what can be posted and who can join.

Maintenance – answer unanswered posts. Review the ning daily and check membership at least yearly. Check how the ning looks to members and how it works in various browsers. Work at developing the ning but give it time to grow.

Future plans – Looking for ways to deepen discussions on the ning.

handouts posted at amandaj.wikispaces.com

IMG00334

Survival skill #5

Posted on by • Posted in Teaching & Learning • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

from The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

The Fifth Survival Skill: Effective Oral and Written Communication

Communication skills are a major factor highlighted in dozens of studies over the years that focus on students’ lack of preparation for both college and the workplace, and these skills are only going to become more important as teams are increasingly composed of individuals from diverse cultures. The ability to express one’s views clearly in a democracy and to communicate effectively across cultures is an important citizenship skill as well. …

When I asked Rob Gordon [former director of the American Politics Program at West Point] what advice he had for teachers today, he was emphatic: “Teach them to write! Effective communication is key in everything we do – people need to learn to communicate effectively with each other and with external communities. Even enlisted men need to communicate effectively via e-mail. … I saw the importance of this in Iraq when I went back in January of 2004. When we asked a brigade commander what he’d learned, he talked about the importance of relying on soldiers who understood not only what they were seeing on screens that showed near real-time combatant movements but also how to interpret and communicate what they saw.”

Mike Summers [vice president for Global Talent Management at Dell Computers] also spoke forcefully on this issue: “We are routinely surprised at the difficulty some young people have in communicating: verbal skills, written skills, presentation skills. They have difficulty being clear and concise; it’s hard for them to create focus, energy, and passion around the points they want to make.” …

Listening to Summers’s comments as a former English teacher myself, I was surprised by the list of skills he thought important: not only the ability to communicate one’s thoughts clearly and concisely but also the ability to create focus, energy and passion. Summers and other leaders from various companies were not necessarily complaining about young people’s poor grammar, punctuation or spelling – the things we spend so much time teaching and testing in our schools. While it’s obviously important to write and speak correctly, the complaines I heard most frequently were about fuzzy thinking and the lack of writing with a real voice.

This is important information for teachers and librarians. What is disheartening, though, is that standardized tests don’t typically test this kind of writing and teachers have very little time to teach it. Any ideas for giving students opportunities to practice this kind of communication?

Image citation: IMG_5505-2 by Phototrope.