When I started teaching in 1995 the faculty room was the epicenter of conversation among colleagues. You would walk in, there would be a half pot of 3 hour old bitter coffee, folks grading papers, a water cooler and the drone of a photocopier working diligently in the background. Meetings took place in the library or in classrooms and occasionally we would head out on Friday afternoons for some pool and wings at a local spot in town. I remember clearly that some of the best talks I had were with a colleague named Pat Smith as we sat at the end of a long hallway on “hall duty” during lunch period. Pat was a music teacher who had toured with Barry White during the 70’s and he was a smooth, old school daddio who knew how to make kids and colleagues laugh and he loved music and teaching. He shared stories about touring in the 70’s, his experience as a teacher and he provided insight and mentorship on challenges I was experiencing at the time developing my own, young teaching practice.

Pat is not the only “conversation” I remember from my early years in teaching. There were many others, conversations with students, one conversation with a parent that will remain forever etched in my consciousness and the most transformative, the most revealing about life and society in general with other teachers who on the whole genuinely cared for kids and sought to make the world a better place. Regardless of your career choice, the conversations you have daily with friends, family members and colleagues shape your view of the world and I would contend, the way you ultimately end up interacting with it.

This week it dawned on me that the conversations I am having now are at the core, similar to those I had back in 1995, albeit topics like social media, disruptive classes and wikis were not part of our dialogue. However, the vehicle for having those conversations has systematically changed. On Thursday, I worked from home as Verizon was scheduled to come and install new FiOS service to my house. I had a marketing meeting scheduled for 11:00 am and rather than simply miss the meeting or conference call in, I asked a colleague to log into her Skype account and I as able to attend the meeting as if I were in the room. The body language, facial expressions and “tone” of the meeting were not lost and it gave my wife a real sense of what I do all day. Kim Cofino tweeted this morning about some photos she had posted on Flickr of her students Skype experiences and their ability to have conversations with students from around the world. (Kim is located in Bangkok, Thailand) More importantly, Kim regularly contributes to Twitter and while she may be half a world away from us here stateside, she is as active a contributor to the conversation as if she were sitting in the faculty room across the table drinking 3 hour old bitter coffee.

I am guilty, as I am sure most of us are of not having done a good enough job staying in touch with old friends and colleagues over the years. Email worked well for a while but with Facebook, many of my old friends seem to be reconnected in a way that feels very much like we picked up where we left off. Some of the old jokes are still funny, sharing photos of our kids and posting 3rd grade class pictures from 1979 seems to make the connection feel more real. My Wall conversations are an eclectic mix of current friends, work colleagues, relatives and high school and college friends. And while many of these Facebook friends have never met one another, they are able to organically join the conversation I have been able to initate by posting a funny video, interesting article or whitty attempt at a status update.

Similarly, my professional learning networked has grown to include individuals I have never actually been fortunate enought to meet in person and for a while, I was unsure about how it would work to cultivate a friendship or professional relationship with someone whom I had never meet face to face. The “conversations” I follow are not always addressed directly to me, but by being able to observe and absorb the content, they help shape the way I look at important issues, my thoughts about my teaching practice, and my philosophy and approach as a school leader. The art of conversation is shifting and while social technologies will never replace stopping at your favorite coffee shop with a friend or a pre-dinner glass of wine with a colleague, the ability to engage with each other more regularly has made me appreciate that I have been fortunate to develop a personal network of friends, colleagues and family members that enrich my life daily. So don’t take these digital conversations for granted they are as important and as meaningful as those you have in person.

Consider keeping the conversation going by following me on Twitter!

Photo Credit: eye2eye

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There is no question that the rest of the world will continue to forge ahead with adopting new technology and implementing new marketing and communication strategies well before those of us in the education world will. However, I have spent some time recently thinking and Twittering with friends and colleagues (@steveritchie @ernestkoe @alexragone @AdmissionsQuest ) about how the shift to “social technologies” is going to reshape the way schools work with students, communicate with parents and alumni and forward their mission. Social media technologies function to further the digital conversation and connect groups of people with one another in ways that traditional web based technologies cannot.

So, if you or your school is thinking about how to update your approach to the web, your communication or marketing strategy or looking for new ways to engage teachers in the classroom, here is a humble list that I think is worth giving some thought.

1. Fostering conversation – Whether you use Twitter, set up a Facebook page or group for your school or alumni group, as many schools have, the focus is going to continue to shift away from providing information to fostering conversations. This can be best characterized by President Elect Obama’s decision to post his weekly radio address on YouTube and many have likened it to the old school “fireside” chats. The days of large, cumbersome and difficult to navigate websites are going to go the way of static HTML. Understanding who your major constituents are and tailoring the conversation toward each of their unique needs cannot be accomplished by simply breaking them into distinct silos. Users and members of your school community are going to fall into a variety of categories and will self select based on their primary role or connection to your school. A parent, may be an employee and alum all packaged into one user profile. What they want to know, access or whom they may want to connect with will change throughout the day. Shifting away from using email for extended conversations will give way to tools like Twitter or Yammer where community members can participate in the virtual dialogue based on their individual needs or desires. Our school is in the middle of organizing its second auction, and the co-chairs approached me with an idea to use YouTube to get their message out. We weren’t doing this in 2006 during our last auction.
2. Marketing and Communications Evolution – Steve Ritchie over at Proof Group recently blogged about the link between social media, marketing and communications. He had some kind words to say about our work on WA Mash but his larger point applies to all schools, public or private, universities and non-profits in general. We share the same basic premise that marketing and public relations should find a way to deliver consistently on your message, brand and demonstrate your ability to put your mission into action. Rethinking your communication strategy needs to go beyond electronic newsletters, web updates of sports scores and listing lunch menus. Providing your community with real, authentic and genuine opportunities to engage with one another should be a trend more and more schools move towards.
3. Mobile technology – Making information available and interconnecting it for mobile platforms is going to grow. If you haven’t picked up an iPhone recently you should. The App Store is the real deal and schools like Stanford and others are actively creating applications designed to run exclusively on mobile computing platforms. The Obama campaign was also a good example of this, they launched an iPhone app that kept supporters linked to media files, a full library of the candidate’s platform and information on local events. Schools should try to harness the increasing number of faculty, parents, students and young alums that are plugged into mobile computing devices for communicating everything from sports scores to snow days.
4. Facilitating relationships – Everything from the way we recruit new teachers, to how we market our schools to perspective families and parents, to engaging them with one another once they are a part of our schools will hinge on our ability to harness social media technologies. Beyond the traditional notion of community, connecting students and teachers to peers and colleagues around the world will continue to grow in the face of more educators embracing the power of social networking. I frequently have substantive and thought provoking conversations on Twitter with friends I have never met in person. My Facebook profile contains high school friends, WA alums, professional colleagues, co-workers and college buddies.
5. Resource consolidation – In the past few years, we have experimented with just about every technology and software tool out there. In fact, we have fostered a climate of experimentation and creative exploration. As Associate Head of School and former CIO, I have been fortunate to help shape the environment. Rather than insist on one blogging platform or one web based application over another, faculty have had the ability to explore, create, and decide for themselves. Invariably, the process of “organic change” has created a Darwinian effect in terms of those resources and applications that most folks are gravitating towards. Facebook is popular among our students as it is among our faculty. Close to 30 faculty with Facebook profiles, including a WA Employee Facebook Group. Twitter seems to have the lead over Plurk and Flickr is the photo sharing platform of choice. Vimeo and YouTube are still up for grabs, but Wordpress has taken a very solid footing as the content publishing platform for the majority of users at Worcester Academy. The point is, that getting the majority of your users on one social media platform over any other is critical if your school is going to harness even a portion of the power of social media and school administrators will need to lead by example. Furthermore, with the current economic conditions forcing major universities to cut back on spending and new initiatives, the need to find powerful and low cost technology solutions will give way for many schools to reconsider how they deploy their technology and web based priorities and strategies.

What are your thoughts?

Photo Credit: Erik Stronks

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