Social Media Reading List

Posted by Mihaela in Education, Social Media on Aug 18th, 2009 | 10 Comments

[update Aug. 20]: This is what the list looks like now:

Anderson, C. (2008). Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. New York: Hyperion Books.

Anderson, C. (2009). Free: The Future of a Radical Price. New York: Hyperion Books.

Blossom, J. (2009). Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives, and Our Future Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Clapperton, G. (2009). This is Social Media: Tweet, blog, link and post your way to business success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Fogg, B. (2007). Mobile persuasion. Stanford: Stanford Captology Media.

Israel, S. (2009). Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods.

Jackson, M., & McKibben, B. (2008). Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Jue, A. L., Marr, J. A., & Kassotakis, M. E. (2009). Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance: Jossey-Bass. (N/A until November 2009)

Locke, C., Searls, D., Weinberger, D., & Levine, J. (1999). The Cluetrain Manifesto.

O’Reilly, T., & Milstein, S. (2009). The Twitter Book. Sebastopol, Ca: O’Reilly Media.

Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U. (2008). Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives Philadelphia: Basic Books.

Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly. New York: Vintage Books.

Qualman, E. (2009). Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Safko, L., & Brake, D. (2009). The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Scoble, R., & Israel, S. (2006). Naked conversations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

Solis, B. (2010). The Social Media Manifesto: The Revolutionary Guide to Build, Manage, and Measure Online Networks in Business Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Surowiecki. (2005). The Wisdom of Crowds: Anchor Books.

Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2008). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio.

Zittrain, J. (2009). The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It: Yale University Press.

Social media & Marketing

Bhargava, R. (2008). Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Brogan, C., & Smith, J. (2009). Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Gillin, P. (2007). The new influencers: A marketer’s guide to the new social media. Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books.

Gillin, P. (2008). Secrets of social media marketing. Fresno, CA: Quill Driver Books.

Halligan, B., Shah, D., & Scott, D. M. (2009). Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Holtz, S., Havens, J. C., & Johnson, L. D. (2008). Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand: Josey-Bass.

Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Livingston, G., & Solis, B. (2007). Now is gone: A primer on new media for executives and entrpreneurs. Laurel, MD: Bartleby Press.

McConnell, B., & Huba, J. (2007). Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message. Chicago: Kaplan Publishing.

Scott, D. M. (2008). The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Scott, D. M. (2008). The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Thomas, M., & Brain, D. (2009). Crowd Surfing: Surviving and Thriving in the Age of Consumer Empowerment. London: A&C Black.

Weber, L. (2009). Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

—

—

[original post:]

I’m putting together a reading list for my graduate seminar (TECH 621 – Research Focus: The Social Internet). I’m trying to get to books that discuss social media principles, and research – not only how-to guides and marketing advice.

Here is the list as it stands right now:

Blossom, J. (2009). Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives, and Our Future Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Clapperton, G. (2009). This is Social Media: Tweet, blog, link and post your way to business success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Gillin, P. (2007). The new influencers: A marketer’s guide to the new social media. Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books.

Halligan, B., Shah, D., & Scott, D. M. (2009). Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Holtz, S., Havens, J. C., & Johnson, L. D. (2008). Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand: Josey-Bass.

Israel, S. (2009). Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods.

Jue, A. L., Marr, J. A., & Kassotakis, M. E. (2009). Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance: Jossey-Bass.

Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Locke, C., Searls, D., Weinberger, D., & Levine, J. (1999). The Cluetrain Manifesto. http://www.cluetrain.com/

O’Reilly, T., & Milstein, S. (2009). The Twitter Book. Sebastopol, Ca: O’Reilly Media.

Qualman, E. (2009). Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Safko, L., & Brake, D. (2009). The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Scoble, R., & Israel, S. (2006). Naked conversations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Scott, D. M. (2009). World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Solis, B. (2010). The Social Media Manifesto: The Revolutionary Guide to Build, Manage, and Measure Online Networks in Business Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Do you have a book I should add to this list? Please let me know!

How to read a research article

Posted by Mihaela in Education, For Students on Aug 12th, 2009 | 4 Comments

Most research articles you find in academic journal follow a similar recipe. If you understand how the article is structured and what to look for in each section, you can read articles much faster. I can get what I want from a research article in 5 minutes or less. When I started grad. school it took me 45-60 minutes to get through a research article and I still didn’t get much out of it. I wish someone had taught me how to read them.

Here are my lessons, based on my experiences. They work for me. I hope they work for you, too. If they don’t, use this as a starting point to figure out your own reading process.

Understanding the anatomy of a research article will also help you write easier.

Title

Usually long and cryptic. Most titles are poorly written. I don’t pay much attention to the title.

Abstract

I read it carefully and look for:

  • purpose of study/research question
  • a hint as to research methods
  • key results

Introduction

I read the introduction looking for the following information:

  • explanation of the problem the study addresses
  • explanation of the larger context of the problem
  • argument about the importance/need/relevance of studying the problem
  • purpose of the study
  • an overview of how the article is structured, and how the next section is organized

Literature review

It may be called something else, or the article may not even have headings – but it should be there somewhere. The literature review should accomplish 2 purposes:

  1. make an argument for the need to conduct this specific study (identify a gap, or a need in previous literature)
  2. present the previous theories, concepts, etc. that this study uses and builds upon

Usually, each paragraph or small section of the literature review covers a body of literature (the best lit. reviews are organized thematically, IMO). When reading the literature review it is important to identify these major themes. They give you a lay of the land.

Imagine the body of literature is a garden. The article you’re reading attempts to plant a new seed in this garden. Before doing so, the authors explain the layout of the garden (vegetables here, flowers there, weeds over there) and they explain why their plant is needed and where it fits in.

When reading the lit. review, you get a feel for this garden. If you are:

  • very familiar with the literature, the lit. review confirms that the authors looked in all the right places and didn’t reinvent the wheel. OK to skim.
  • completely unfamiliar with the literature, this section will be terribly confusing. Don’t worry. All you have to get out of it are the major themes (sections of the garden). You can come back later and examine each individual plant. OK to skim.
  • are trying to learn the literature – read carefully, and mark on the list of references the sources you want to read.

The literature review ends with the research question(s). Find them and highlight them. They are promises that the article should deliver on.

Methods

This section explains the research methods and procedures used for the research study. Read them carefully, make sure they are valid. If the research methods are faulty, the data are not to be trusted. If the research methods are absurdly faulty, stop reading here. Go back to the literature review and the list of references and see if they can help you find better articles on the topic.

Results

In this section, the authors present their data, along with their (statistical or interpretive, etc.) analysis. This is as close as you can get to the raw data. This section, in a quantitative article, should be as free as possible of interpretation. Try your best to understand the results for yourself, so you can create your own interpretation of what they mean. But, if the statistics baffle you AND if you trust the authors, skim this section and move on to:

Discussion

This section explains what the results mean, in the context of the garden (literature review). You should see how the problem from the introduction is solved, how the research questions are answered, and whether the purpose of the study was accomplished. I usually read this section very carefully, because it tells me what the authors think they have accomplished.

Either here or at the end of the conclusion, you will find suggestions for future research. These can be very useful for your own literature review – you can cite the article, if it calls for exactly the research you’re doing. You can use this to support your own argument about the need for your research.

Conclusion

The first part of the conclusion should be a summary of the entire paper. I read it carefully, because the repetition helps me remember what I read. The last part of the conclusion is usually the most difficult part to write, very often fluff, and I don’t feel guilty about skimming or skipping it.

I used to teach this recipe to graduate students and they found it very helpful. I hope you do, too. Please share your own reading and writing tips, and ask me other questions you may have about graduate school.

There are several books that can help you, and the APA style manual has a chapter that explains the structure of APA research papers.

[update:] Barbara Nixon created a slide presentation for this content:

A College Student’s Recipe For Reading Research Articles

View more presentations from Barbara Nixon.

PR students on learning Twitter

Posted by Mihaela in Education, Featured Articles, For Educators, Social Media on May 25th, 2009 | 3 Comments

I place a lot of emphasis on Twitter in my PR courses, but were not sure whether that was such a good idea – from their perspective. So I asked my PR students from the Spring 09 Stakeholder Communication class to respond anonymously to a survey about learning twitter. Their answers are below:

Do you believe it was beneficial for you to learn how to use Twitter? Please explain why or why not.

  • - Yes. Twitter is a good example of a social media tool and the only way to truly know about these tools is to use them. It was good for us to use because it was not too demanding, yet still allowed us to get a feel for how these different tools work.
  • - Yes I do. There are many social norms and things about twitter that I learned from this class and I think its great to show a potential employer that I understand those things. I also think it was great to teach us to be active when you get on twitter because its annoying if you just get on and don’t do anything with it!
  • - Yes. I think that we kind of “jumped onto something” much earlier than a lot of other people. I think it was beneficial because it helped us learn how news can spread really quickly and network with others.
  • - I do believe it was beneficial to learn twitter, especially since it has become so prevalent in today’s society. People ask me what Twitter is and it eels good to know that I can explain it to them because I learned it through class. It’s becoming more and more mainstream everyday and I’ve enjoyed learning how to use it.
  • - Yes. I liked that I already knew what Twitter was all about and how to use it before it became such a hot topic. Since I had already learned about the professional value of Twitter, it prevented me from getting caught up in the hype. I think this is allowing me to be a more constructive Twitter user.
  • - Yes. Not only is Twitter a necessary tool for PR practitioners, but it is becoming mainstream for all people involved in social media. Within a year or so Twitter may be the equivilent of Facebook, and it is important that PR students stay ahead of the trend.

Has Twitter helped you learn in any way? How has it helped (or not)?

  • - Yes it has helped me learn about social media. Basically the general rules of using o twitter are applicable to most social media tools. For example, you have to be consistent with using it- you can’t just create an account and then forget about it. You have to interact with people – not just broadcast random things. Twitter has a culture about it, just like other social media tools – and it is important to be able to tap into the culture of the various tools.
  • - It has helped me learn more about social interaction with PR people. I think urging us to get on to communicate and teaching us to tweet during class helped us learn it. Especially when you told us how to interact with professionals.
  • - yes. When we used it in 301, I thought it was kind of pointless, but I completely see how useful it has been in a PR class. You always have said that social media is becoming more and more important and it really is. You have showed us how jobs are hiring people to just do social media so I think that it has helped us learn to get to know other people and be less shy when it comes to networking and see how a problem can occur very quickly over Twitter, etc.
  • - Yes it has helped. It’s helped me become more comfortable with contacting people I don’t know, expressing myself, learning more about others, and become more connected.
  • - I like being able to connect with people from all over.
  • - Following the conversations of PR professionals has helped me get insight into what their world is like on a day to day basis. It also helped me to make a few connections for myself.

Do you feel you “get” Twitter? What about it do you (not) understand?

  • - I do feel that I get Twitter, but I feel that I am not using to my full capacity. I understand what is valued in the community, but I feel that I don’t always bring that value because I feel I don’t have the time to go out and find the interesting thought provoking news – I feel that I am on more of the receiving end of what’s going on – and that’s fine with me…
  • - I think I “semi” get twitter. I still don’t completely understand retweets and stuff like that. but I understand how to search for things from what you taught us.
  • - Yes very much so.
  • - I do “get” Twitter. I still have a lot to learn, and I need to become better about posting original thoughts and putting more depth into what I saw, but overall I do eel that I “get” it.
  • - It took a while, but I think I get it now. Sometime I think I get it too much because I get so frustrated with the whole fad aspect of it.
  • - I understand Twitter, but I feel like you have to almost become addicted to it to become a full-fledged user. You have to be constantly engaged with someone else in conversation and understand all of the lingo and special tools (i.e. RT, #) to use Twitter to its full potential. Sometimes its unnerving to try to start/join a conversation rather than just give updates on what you’re doing, which most people won’t reply to.

Aything else you’d like to tell me about Twitter in PR classes?

  • - Twitter is good for PR classes. Regardless of what people say. :)
  • - This was great for communication with you as well. I think it helped us be able to interact and I think its great to keep the lines of communication open with you!
  • - I like being able to Twitter about class…during class. It’s nice to be able to bounce ideas off of other classmates.
  • - I would recommend giving students a few contacts outside of the classroom to follow when starting. For instance, offer students the names of PRSSA mentors to follow first who can springboard them into conversations with other professionals.

What has your experience been learning or teaching Twitter?

Learning happens

Posted by Mihaela in Education, Ethics on Apr 14th, 2009 | 1 Comment

I’ve been trying to practice more mindfulness lately and one of the things I’ve noticed as a result is how often informal learning happens. It made me think that we should create more opportunities for that – after all, isn’t a teacher one who creates opportunities for learning?

A few examples:

  • At an informal PRSSA get-together, we were sitting around a table munching on chips & salsa, and students were exchanging interview experiences. People would tell stories, share advice and resources. It hit how much the students were learning about job interviewing during that relaxed, informal conversation.
  • ***
  • When I was a graduate student at Purdue and had first started teaching, other grad. students and I would often get together and “bitch” about students and teaching. I’m now realizing that those bitching sessions were actually learning sessions – we learned a lot from each other about classroom management, assignments, and new exercises to use in our classes.
  • ***
  • I was sitting in my office with a couple of students earlier today talking about a report they have to write about Career Launch Day. One of the students interrupted me to ask “Where did you learn this? How do you know so much?” Compliment aside, I realize her question marked an instance of learning. She was learning something new during our informal conversation.

My previous employer, the University of Dayton, had launched this program to encourage informal interaction between faculty and students. For example, I could host a book club at my house, and the university would pay for pizza. I left UD before I got a chance to take advantage of that program, but I now understand they were on to something: Creating opportunities for informal learning.

The Clemson culture is more formal than UD, where it was usual for faculty to go out to lunch with undergraduate students – so, other than PRSSA meetings, I don’t see many opportunities for informal learning here.

How can educators create more opportunities for informal learning? Or should we? Will students count it as “real” learning? Will administrators?

Even outside academia, I hope we’ll take that second to acknowledge and appreciate when learning happens – many times not at formal lectures and conferences, but on the beach or over a beer…

Do you have any informal learning stories? Care to share?

M.A. in Twitter studies

Posted by Mihaela in Education on Mar 31st, 2009 | Comments Off

My department chair sent me this piece of Higher Ed news about a new social media Master’s program in the U.K.

The article hints to a bit of a debate about the utility and need for such a program. In case there is one, let me throw in my 2 cents: TV watching doesn’t make one an expert in media studies; Same with Twitter and Facebook use. So, as long as the M.A. program doesn’t just teach people how to tweet, it should be an interesting one!

How do you learn?

Posted by Mihaela in Education on Jan 19th, 2009 | 2 Comments

I just love this ad:

Learning how people learn and then customizing education to fit their needs - we need to recognize that learning today might not be what it was back when people looked to the teacher for all information and guidance.

How do you learn? How does learning happen for you, naturally, outside of the requirements of school? Tell me a story of when you wanted to learn something and you learned it. What motivated you? What did you do to learn? How did you learn? Did you learn? Is that knowledge still with you?

Soul Murder (revisiting EDUCATION)

Posted by Mihaela in Education on Oct 22nd, 2008 | 3 Comments

M. Wesch is at it again. His latest blog post revisits his video A Vision of Students Today and the inadequacy of the current education system. He calls it soul murder, referring to this book.

Wesch nails it right on the head when he explains that our education system, rooms included, is designed for a world in which information is scarce.

In this world, the teacher is the provider of information.

This is not the world we live in anymore.

The problem in our world is not access to information: It is access to too much information. Education should solve a new set of problems.

I don’t have THE answer – neither does Wesch, though he’s much closer to it than I am. But I can’t help but think about it most of the time. Here are some thoughts about what education should do to serve students in this day and age:

If the teacher is no longer the provider of information, maybe the teacher should be a guide to (parts of) the information space. A coach.

The teacher’s job becomes (not an exhaustive list):

  • to guide students through advanced, highly targeted search techniques in several (kinds of) information spaces
  • to help students map out the fragmented, multivocal information space; or to provide through schemata for reconciling this pluralirty and fragmentation (postmodernism, anyone?)
  • to help students make judgments about selecting and evaluating information
  • to coach students about synthesizing and organizing these different types of information
  • to teach students the skill of decision making: students should make decisions about the most effective ways to present information – instead of giving them recipes for papers, allow students to make decisions about presenting information
  • to create learning experiences where students use the above techniques to solve real-life problems
  • to adapt teaching style to students’ learning and technology usage styles
  • in short, to coach flexible and nimble thinking, decision making, and adaptable communication/writing skills

What do you think? What are the ways in which the education system is failing? What should education do for students? What should the teacher’s job be?

My job is to kill creativity

Posted by Mihaela in Education, For Educators, For Students on Sep 24th, 2008 | 27 Comments

University professors… are curious forms of life. …They think of their bodies as transport for their heads.

We educate children only from the waist up, focusing on their brain, and that too, only one side of it.

Jillian isn’t sick: She’s a dancer.

If all insects were to disappear from the planet, life on Earth would vanish in 50 years. If all humans were to disappear from the planet, all forms of life would flourish.

These are a few quotes that stood out to me in this brilliant TED talk about education, given by Sir Ken Robinson. If you’re an educator, you owe it to yourself and your students to spend 15 minutes to watch it:

Hello, my name is Mihaela. My job IS to kill creativity.

Here’s how I try to try not to:

I’m very, very cautious, I try to treat it like a fragile and precious rare flower.:

  • I try, as much as I can, knowing I will always fail, to remove fear out of the classroom. But I still have to give grades, so it’s impossible to do away with fear. If you read my blog before, you know fear in education is one important theme on PR Connections.

  • I try to encourage students. I ask them to give themselves a break, not be harsh on themselves. I compliment them a lot. Yesterday I taught strategy. I asked students to create strategies for some case studies. They were hesitant to share, afraid they were wrong. I kept telling them it’s the first ever time they’re doing it, and they only had 20 seconds to think about it. It’s OK if your strategies suck. Guess what, they didn’t. But how many times do we grade students on their first attempt at something? 90%, I’m guessing.
  • I remove students, as much as possible, from modes of writing (research papers) that have conditioned their minds to be numb. I ask them to email or blog assignments instead of writing APA style papers. I ask them to create videos, dance, or perform, their final project. I will be (and I am) a persona non grata in my department for stating this publicly (we live for APA papers, and we do exactly what Sir Ken Robinson says: try to make them all university professors).

But here’s what I think: If you change the medium, you change the way they think. Ask them to write in a new medium, one that they haven’t been conditioned to fear and be constipated about and write like a mindless robot (see Richard Landham on the need to un-teach students how to write) – and guess what: Students’ writing comes to life, you all of a sudden see ideas, thoughtfulness, soul!But many times they choose to write APA style papers. Because it’s too late, because they’re scared to do otherwise, because they can’t think of anything else. So sad.

So, if you’re a teacher or a professor, what do you do to (not) kill creativity?

If you’re a subject of education (and we all were students at some point), teach me: What can I do to protect your creativity, or maybe even encourage it to grow?

[Found video via PROpenMic, thanks to Paul Loop. This post is inspired by the comments I posted on Paul's post.]

WHY do we have to learn this…?!

Posted by Mihaela in Education on Sep 13th, 2008 | 2 Comments

…is the question many students ask themselves and few professors answer (well).

Via Kaye Sweetser’s blog, this NYU student asks the same, and more.

I’m posting below my comment on Kaye’s blog, which turned out to be long enough for a post:

I’m a bit late to this conversation, but can’t help but jump in.

The critical theorist in me is happy this is happening. Alana’s post is an example of tearing down the Golden Wall I wrote about some time back. It’s good that students have a voice. Education is by definition a power imbalance, where students pay to subject themselves to our authority and power. In theory, I say, bring it on!

The professor in me smiles a sad smile: I was once (not very long ago) young and arrogant and thought I knew it all. I hated classes that didn’t teach me real skills for the real world.

It took me years to get over myself and understand that the best classes are not the ones that teach me skills that will be dated in 2-3 years (though you need those, too, to get a job next year) but those that teach me how to think.

Here’s critical theory again: Students expect us to train them to be good employees, servants to the Corporation. They’re lost and disappointed when we teach them how to be free thinkers, free people. That’s called hegemony, I think.

A recent opinion article at Clemson ranked liberal arts courses as the worst, most useless ones. How sadly misguided. [Really, WHY should we have to learn about hegemony?! What a "useless" concept, right?]

Where we profs fail is that we don’t help students understand WHY we do what we do and how it WILL be more useful than teaching button-pushing.

As a prof, I try to teach students not only twitter, but also skills that will be relevant 10-20 years later. They can’t appreciate that now. They need help. They’re too young to think in that time frame. So I take time to explain.

See also my comment on Alana’s post.

[Update, 9/19/2008] Interesting development of NYU story: Professor attempts to ban students from blogging & twittering about class (from MediaShift, via Simon Owens. Excellent blogger relations, Mr. Owens!)

I’m afraid neither party is approaching this problem productively. Both Alana and prof. Quigley have a lot to learn from each other. If they could get over their fears (of each other, of old stuff, of new stuff, of having their egos threatened) and cooperate, the story would have a much happier ending.

This is the comment I posted on the follow-up story [cross-posted]:

This is what I see the big picture of this story to be:

Blogging (and much of social media) bring more transparency, empower the “masses” and threaten authority by bringing down the Golden Wall.

This is happening a lot in business. It’s scary for corporations, and empowering for consumers.

Why shouldn’t it also happen in education?

I am a college prof., I require students to blog and am planning to teach them to live-twitter the class next week.

Yes, I know it’s scary – for me. For the old idea of the “powerful, know-it-all” professor who taught critical thinking and thought it was OK as long as s/he wasn’t the subject of criticism.

I sometimes teach my students critical theory by exposing my own power & authority practices in the classroom.

The world has changed. The education model we use is the same as hundreds of years ago: The professor is the “master.”

Enough is enough. We don’t have to be masters and servants. We can help each other and learn together.

Alana and prof. Quigley have a lot to learn from each other. Why don’t they?

The Golden Wall

Posted by Mihaela in Education, Ethics, For Educators, For Students, Social Media on Jul 24th, 2008 | 4 Comments

I’m reading The Discovery of Heaven, a novel of ideas by Dutch author Harry Mulisch. One of the main characters, Onno, after a stint in politics, meditates on the nature of power.

He claims that power exists because of the Golden Wall that separates the masses (the public) from decision makers. Government, in his example, is a mystery hidden behind this Golden Wall, regarded by the masses (the subject of power) in awe.

Once the Golden Wall falls (or becomes transparent), people see that behind it lies the same mess as outside it. There are people in there, too. Messy people, engaged in messy, imperfect decision making processes. The awe disappears. With it, the power.

What happens actually, with the fall of the Golden Wall, is higher accountability and a more equitable distribution of power. Oh, and the risk of anarchy.

But the Golden Wall must fall.

In the communication professions, social media is tearing huge holes in the Golden Wall. Just like in 1989 Europe, some are celebrating, others are paralyzed with fear.

In education, the Golden Wall stands. Secret meetings behind closed-door decide the curriculum, the professors’ yearly evaluations, tenure, lives, my life.

I talk to my students about squabbles in faculty meetings that result in curriculum changes. I want them to see behind the Golden Wall. To understand how decisions about their education are made. That we’re human, imperfect, and hopefully, possibly, subject to change. I haven’t seen undergraduate students involved in changing the curriculum. Nobody asks them. They don’t push. At Purdue, the Graduate Student Association had a representative sit in on faculty meetings. We did impact the curriculum. We were in, behind the Golden Wall.

In U.S. government, C-SPAN gets us glimpses behind the Golden Wall. But we don’t watch. We’re too busy. It’s too boring. (OK, there are exceptions.)

Look around you. Do you see Golden Walls? Tear them down.

Then come back here and tell the story in the comments section.

« Previous Entries Next Entries »

Recent Posts

Blogroll

Archives

Copyright 2009 PR Connections | Mihaela Vorvoreanu