This week I have my students working on their blogs, and trying to get a grip on who they are and who they want their audience to be. It has been a bit easier for me — for the next couple of months they are MY audience, but in turn, I must be part of THEIR audience.
I've really been enjoying vicariously the 'aha' moments that my students have experienced, and are writing about in the Personal Learning Journals, Twitter, and Blogs. There definitely is strong positive emotion that I have here — we don't really have an English word for it. The emotions expert Paul Ekman calls it naches (or nakhes), which is the yiddish word for the pleasure/glow that someone feels in the accomplishments of their children, or someone they are mentoring. As good a word as any other I can come up with.
Gifford was here this weekend — we had a great time at the HangRhapsody.com concert Saturday, and we had a lot of good conversation. With all of the fundraising for the school he's not had time to keep up with the class, but he is looking forward to participating more and really wants to get into the practice of writing his thoughts in a blog.
I feel privileged to be a part of the BGI community, of Gifford's friendship, and the opportunity to be an Angel of Change in my students lives. We have 8 more weeks and two more intensives together, and I am looking forward to them.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Adjusting Syllabus to Dive Deep
I decided late last week that everyone needed a little more time to put everything they learned so far together. People needed time to learn some of the basics of Scan-Focus-Act, time to absorb what they learned about their personal brand, and they needed time to get to closure on what passion they wanted to blog about.
Looking at the survey from the beginning of the course, I decided to move Participatory Media and Wiki more toward the end of the course. It will mean a more readings in November, but I think it will be worth it.
Even before this change still behind on the wrapping up details of the course plan — I'm trying to match the needs of the students and it has been hard to get ahead. I hope that if I'm asked to repeat next year that it will come together easier next time.
I am pleased with the Personal Learning Journals of my students — many insightful thoughts there, even among those who don't think they are ready to blog yet.
Looking at the survey from the beginning of the course, I decided to move Participatory Media and Wiki more toward the end of the course. It will mean a more readings in November, but I think it will be worth it.
Even before this change still behind on the wrapping up details of the course plan — I'm trying to match the needs of the students and it has been hard to get ahead. I hope that if I'm asked to repeat next year that it will come together easier next time.
I am pleased with the Personal Learning Journals of my students — many insightful thoughts there, even among those who don't think they are ready to blog yet.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The October Intensive
I found preparing for the Intensive quite a bit more difficult then I expected. I have coached both the privacy issues that I planned for Saturday and the Personal Branding exercises for Sunday before, but I discovered that my goals for teaching the class were broader then what I've done before.
My number one goal for the weekend was to be more interactive — the Elluminate sessions, the reading, the activities are far too much of a one-way brain dump for my tastes, in particular compared to my style of coaching. Yet with 21 students, with a broad mix of extroversion/introversion, and huge range in comfort with online skills, I wasn't sure that a traditional class discussion would work. Thus I brushed off an old tool of mine The Braid to see if it could help.
My goals for Saturday were to recap my core lessons from the previous weeks: Shared Language, Scan-Focus-Act, Delicious, and I wanted to do a live demonstration of Google Reader. I also had a couple of students who had not really completed their assignments, so I wanted to make sure they knew their commitments.
Then I had some new Shared Language to attempt to introduce: the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model, and the Time Place Model, and their intersection and how it applied to when and how to use online tools. Then I wanted to start of the discussion of Privacy by introducing the Four Kinds of Privacy: defensive privacy, human-rights privacy, personal privacy, and contextual privacy.
After those basics I really wanted to get out of the way early any fear issues that might keep students from fully participating in the social web. Sunday I was more confident about focusing on Personal Brand and doing a tagging exercise that I've found useful, but I wasn't quite sure how to make Saturday more interactive. There were three issues:
We started Thursday with the Opening Circle, and there was a piece of paper circulating around about how with this number of people everyone only had 50 seconds at best. I thought this was a perfect example of the importance of knowing your Personal Brand.
I was quite pleased with interactive experiences in the CRL (Creativity & Right Livelihood) and LPD (Leadership & Personal Development), so I wanted to do at least as well with my exercises.
Also at CRL was some discussion about Community Agreements, and I realized that this would be a great way to address solving the problem of a supportive environment, to be interactive, and address the difficulties of online etiquette. So I decided to have the first two rounds of The Braid in my session to be on this topic.
At the Marketing session there was a frank discussion about the missing element of iteration in the model for The Modern Marking Process. This is a classic example of a Shared Language development, and I wished for the opportunity to create a new Shared Artifact that would reflect the group's ideas.
At the LPD class students opened letters they wrote to themselves a year ago. I realized this dovetailed perfectly with my ideas about Personal Brand being about the "Future You". I realized that almost every student here was in a transition, either between being a student and a future manager or some other major life change. So I decided to retarget my slides to match this fit.
I didn't hear any of the actual letters to self, but could hear some of the tears and positive support that the students were giving each other. This made me a lot more confident about Sunday's Personal Branding exercise, as I could feel confident that the students would be able to help each other in a constructive fashion.
I also got some advice from other faculty about how to phrase the questions in the last two rounds of The Braid where there would need to be some frank discussion about privacy concerns, and got some good feedback on how to better get positive results from "what is blocking you from" rather then my original phrasing. I also had fun doing my improv game "Amnesia Therapy" with Peggy Taylor and Simon Goland.
I also had some great conversations with my students. Carol Schreitmueller gave me the phrase "The Firehose" which I used repeatedly. Bonnie Wallace and I talked about interactivity and theatre.
By Friday night I realized a major rewrite was in order for my slides, so I didn't drum and didn't get as much sleep as I wanted, but the slides and exercises for Saturday were worth it.
Saturday evening after the dance and games, I realized that I my Personal Brand slides needed more work then I thought. I was confident about the exercise, but I realized my slides were oriented toward my corporate coaching clients, which tend to be more male oriented, or geared towards women having to live in a male-dominant culture. A lot of my slides were about understanding competition, which was less relevant to my students. So another major rewrite and even less sleep, but I was happy with the results.
We didn't quite get to the last couple of slides I wanted to show in the session on choosing keywords for yourself, but I was quite happy with the results of the Sunday session, and I got a lot of feedback from the students that they were happy too. I even got nicely upstaged:
I was also quite happy about the enthusiasm that a number of non-students had for my class. Caleb Bushner is a recent alumni TAing for Marketing, and he has offered to help Amy Hillman TA for my class. Dal Lamagna, the longtime BGI supporter who these elective courses are named after, Gifford Pinchot, the Founder for BGI, and Justin Tilson, a 3-year MBA student who took DLM last year, are all joining my class. I really appreciate their interest, energy and enthusiasm.
My number one goal for the weekend was to be more interactive — the Elluminate sessions, the reading, the activities are far too much of a one-way brain dump for my tastes, in particular compared to my style of coaching. Yet with 21 students, with a broad mix of extroversion/introversion, and huge range in comfort with online skills, I wasn't sure that a traditional class discussion would work. Thus I brushed off an old tool of mine The Braid to see if it could help.
My goals for Saturday were to recap my core lessons from the previous weeks: Shared Language, Scan-Focus-Act, Delicious, and I wanted to do a live demonstration of Google Reader. I also had a couple of students who had not really completed their assignments, so I wanted to make sure they knew their commitments.
Then I had some new Shared Language to attempt to introduce: the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model, and the Time Place Model, and their intersection and how it applied to when and how to use online tools. Then I wanted to start of the discussion of Privacy by introducing the Four Kinds of Privacy: defensive privacy, human-rights privacy, personal privacy, and contextual privacy.
After those basics I really wanted to get out of the way early any fear issues that might keep students from fully participating in the social web. Sunday I was more confident about focusing on Personal Brand and doing a tagging exercise that I've found useful, but I wasn't quite sure how to make Saturday more interactive. There were three issues:
- Our Shared Language process so far was still more of a brain dump and I to be more fully involved.
- I needed to create a supportive environment so that students could talk about their fears.
- I was worried that starting on a negative note, even with the Sunday "fun" stuff coming later starting negative might not be a good start.
We started Thursday with the Opening Circle, and there was a piece of paper circulating around about how with this number of people everyone only had 50 seconds at best. I thought this was a perfect example of the importance of knowing your Personal Brand.
I was quite pleased with interactive experiences in the CRL (Creativity & Right Livelihood) and LPD (Leadership & Personal Development), so I wanted to do at least as well with my exercises.
Also at CRL was some discussion about Community Agreements, and I realized that this would be a great way to address solving the problem of a supportive environment, to be interactive, and address the difficulties of online etiquette. So I decided to have the first two rounds of The Braid in my session to be on this topic.
At the Marketing session there was a frank discussion about the missing element of iteration in the model for The Modern Marking Process. This is a classic example of a Shared Language development, and I wished for the opportunity to create a new Shared Artifact that would reflect the group's ideas.
At the LPD class students opened letters they wrote to themselves a year ago. I realized this dovetailed perfectly with my ideas about Personal Brand being about the "Future You". I realized that almost every student here was in a transition, either between being a student and a future manager or some other major life change. So I decided to retarget my slides to match this fit.
I didn't hear any of the actual letters to self, but could hear some of the tears and positive support that the students were giving each other. This made me a lot more confident about Sunday's Personal Branding exercise, as I could feel confident that the students would be able to help each other in a constructive fashion.
I also got some advice from other faculty about how to phrase the questions in the last two rounds of The Braid where there would need to be some frank discussion about privacy concerns, and got some good feedback on how to better get positive results from "what is blocking you from" rather then my original phrasing. I also had fun doing my improv game "Amnesia Therapy" with Peggy Taylor and Simon Goland.
I also had some great conversations with my students. Carol Schreitmueller gave me the phrase "The Firehose" which I used repeatedly. Bonnie Wallace and I talked about interactivity and theatre.
By Friday night I realized a major rewrite was in order for my slides, so I didn't drum and didn't get as much sleep as I wanted, but the slides and exercises for Saturday were worth it.
Saturday evening after the dance and games, I realized that I my Personal Brand slides needed more work then I thought. I was confident about the exercise, but I realized my slides were oriented toward my corporate coaching clients, which tend to be more male oriented, or geared towards women having to live in a male-dominant culture. A lot of my slides were about understanding competition, which was less relevant to my students. So another major rewrite and even less sleep, but I was happy with the results.
We didn't quite get to the last couple of slides I wanted to show in the session on choosing keywords for yourself, but I was quite happy with the results of the Sunday session, and I got a lot of feedback from the students that they were happy too. I even got nicely upstaged:
I was also quite happy about the enthusiasm that a number of non-students had for my class. Caleb Bushner is a recent alumni TAing for Marketing, and he has offered to help Amy Hillman TA for my class. Dal Lamagna, the longtime BGI supporter who these elective courses are named after, Gifford Pinchot, the Founder for BGI, and Justin Tilson, a 3-year MBA student who took DLM last year, are all joining my class. I really appreciate their interest, energy and enthusiasm.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Week 2 Elluminate B
I worked harder to make this week's Elluminate session a little more interactive. A bit more success — it felt much less sterile as compared to the week before.
My TA Amy experimented with uploading a powerpoint of the slides in advance from a PC to see if that worked any better then last week's screen sharing. The slides worked, but the keynote to powerpoint conversion was poor so I had to go back to screen sharing by the end of the session.
The problem with Elluminate screen sharing for me is that I have two large monitors, use Keynote, and make extensive use of Mac OS X's multiple desktop "Spaces" functionality, which Elluminate just doesn't like very much. I tried a laptop but then I couldn't read the chat very well. The compromise was to print my keynote presentation to PDF, display it in the Preview, turn off tools and sidebar, turn on single page view and automatic resize to window. What that allows me to do is make the presentation window much smaller (which incidentally speeds up the screen sharing), and reposition it so I can see the chat.
I had a few too many slides, but in spite of getting dropped offline for a few minutes at the beginning of the session, I was able to get through all of them in an hour and still have the better interactivity I wanted.
This is the second Elluminate session for this course, whereas I believe all of the other courses have had only one. I know I'm rushing the students a bit, but it will make them better prepared for the intensive.
My TA Amy experimented with uploading a powerpoint of the slides in advance from a PC to see if that worked any better then last week's screen sharing. The slides worked, but the keynote to powerpoint conversion was poor so I had to go back to screen sharing by the end of the session.
The problem with Elluminate screen sharing for me is that I have two large monitors, use Keynote, and make extensive use of Mac OS X's multiple desktop "Spaces" functionality, which Elluminate just doesn't like very much. I tried a laptop but then I couldn't read the chat very well. The compromise was to print my keynote presentation to PDF, display it in the Preview, turn off tools and sidebar, turn on single page view and automatic resize to window. What that allows me to do is make the presentation window much smaller (which incidentally speeds up the screen sharing), and reposition it so I can see the chat.
I had a few too many slides, but in spite of getting dropped offline for a few minutes at the beginning of the session, I was able to get through all of them in an hour and still have the better interactivity I wanted.
This is the second Elluminate session for this course, whereas I believe all of the other courses have had only one. I know I'm rushing the students a bit, but it will make them better prepared for the intensive.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Posted "The Braid" on Life With Alacrity
I was musing about the sterility of the Elluminate session on Monday, when I realized that part of the problem is that our class is in the Judas Number Group Threshold. If the class was smaller we could just all leave on our microphones on, or be more interactive. But given number of people online we could not do that.
This reminded me of The Braid, a process tool I haven't used since I started my blog Life With Alacrity, so I thought it was time to share the Four Table Braid. This idea won't work with Elluminate (though it might be an ideas to experiment someday with the breakout rooms feature), but it might be useful at the Intensive this weekend.
This reminded me of The Braid, a process tool I haven't used since I started my blog Life With Alacrity, so I thought it was time to share the Four Table Braid. This idea won't work with Elluminate (though it might be an ideas to experiment someday with the breakout rooms feature), but it might be useful at the Intensive this weekend.
Preparing for Week 2
I'm being challenged this week to try to teach the world of blogging and the blogosphere in a single presentation and a couple of weekdays for the students to read them before the first BGI Intensive begins. There is lots of material all over the internet on blogs, but it is scattered all over the place, and much of it is very dated. Trying to wean it down to essentials for the students, and then figure out what is important that is missing to place elsewhere in the course has been difficult.
Also a challenge that half the students are relatively new to social media, and there are some basic skills that I want to teach. I wasn't happy with any of the existing web pages on good passwords, so I wrote my own on Password Best Practices. Ideally I think these skills, plus skills like Social Bookmarking should be taught early on to first-year MBA students, allowing this class to focus on more advanced skills.
I also need to write an article on on basic username and personal brand name usage, but the students need to have their personal brand strategy figured out first, which is a discussion during the Intensive.
Also a challenge that half the students are relatively new to social media, and there are some basic skills that I want to teach. I wasn't happy with any of the existing web pages on good passwords, so I wrote my own on Password Best Practices. Ideally I think these skills, plus skills like Social Bookmarking should be taught early on to first-year MBA students, allowing this class to focus on more advanced skills.
I also need to write an article on on basic username and personal brand name usage, but the students need to have their personal brand strategy figured out first, which is a discussion during the Intensive.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
First Elluminate Session
Monday was my first session teaching with the Elluminate eLearning software. I was well prepared for the session with a good concise set of slides introducing the course, my Scan Focus Act approach, Shared Language, and Social Bookmarking, but discovered last minute that my slides were too large to be uploaded to Macintosh version of Elluminate. Ended up showing them in screen sharing mode, which doesn't work great with multiple monitors and Mac OS X's Spaces functionality. However, it seemed to work out OK. Next time I'll try exporting to PowerPoint and have Amy upload it using the PC version of Elluminate.
I've been in quite a few Same-Time Different-Space collaborative environments, but I found Elluminate somewhat sterile. Although most all the students were there there it still felt like I was reading my presentation to a blank screen rather then speaking to an audience. I think it is the lack of continuous audio (you have to "press a button" to speak). I think it made my talk a little stilted, but we'll see. I also need to figure out how to get the students more actively involved — there is a chat backchannel, but it wasn't used extensively.
As I want this course to be open course, another challenge is going to be exporting the Elluminate session as some type of video. There is replay functionality, but it requires Elluminate and a BGI account. I think I may be able to screen record the replay to get the class into a video that I can publish.
I've been in quite a few Same-Time Different-Space collaborative environments, but I found Elluminate somewhat sterile. Although most all the students were there there it still felt like I was reading my presentation to a blank screen rather then speaking to an audience. I think it is the lack of continuous audio (you have to "press a button" to speak). I think it made my talk a little stilted, but we'll see. I also need to figure out how to get the students more actively involved — there is a chat backchannel, but it wasn't used extensively.
As I want this course to be open course, another challenge is going to be exporting the Elluminate session as some type of video. There is replay functionality, but it requires Elluminate and a BGI account. I think I may be able to screen record the replay to get the class into a video that I can publish.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Working on the "Using the Social Web for Social Change" Syllabus
Working on the syllabus for my BGI (Bainbridge Graduate Institute) course on "Using the Social Web for Social Change".
I have a pretty good handle on what I want to teach in the course, but I'm also intimidated by the amount of material I'm asking the students to cover in just 12 weeks. So much of it is going to just be a "survey" of the surface of the field. But it will give them all a good start, and the real important part of the class is the action learning they will be doing with blogs and social media projects.
I'm also uncertain about different pedagogy approaches. My teaching experience is largely as a coach rather then to a class of 25 students. Thus I tend to favor a more interactive approach. I have tried to build that somewhat into the course, but I don't have a good handle on what works and what will not.
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