Roomful of Educators

Next week I’ll get to present on behalf of the New Hampshire Women in Higher Education Leadership (NHWHEL) at their annual conference.  This year’s conference at Franklin Pierce University is entitled “Leadership and Networking in a Technological World: The impact of Social Media and New Technologies on Communication, Collaboration, and Career Development.”  That’s a lot of words (very nice impact on the SEO too)!

When Heidi Pettigrew called to ask if I’d be interested in being the lunchtime Keynote speaker, I was thrilled but for completely selfish reasons.  Education is a core value for me and the lack of social media education in current curricula has been a real concern of mine over the past few number of years.  When I taught Social Media to Marketing and Business students for Daniel Webster College last year I was shocked at how little the students understood about how to use the tools for career advancement, or even how much of an impact the use of the tools would have on their future.  We all know, that what we don’t know, can and usually does hurt us.  Teaching about the changes in communication and consequence of these changes is imperative.

The NHWHEL conference presents an opportunity for me to tell a roomful of educators and higher ed leadership just exactly what I think is important.  I’ll get to talk about our responsibility to teach students how to thrive in this rapidly changing world, where everything and everyone seems to be connected to something else.  I’ll get to remind them that you can’t educate, really educate, unless you’re listening and learning too.  We’ll get to reflect on the world before Google and imagine teaching and learning, globally, without it.   Then we’ll look into the future, without walls without barriers, to collaborative education.  I’d love to bring your message to that room too.  What do you think is important for these folks to know? Leave a comment, tweet me or drop me a note.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to present at the conference on “Developing Your Institutional Social Media Policy and the 4 P’s”.  The last thing I want is for a wonderful educator to find themselves unprotected or in conflict with their institution regarding the use of social media tools in their classrooms.  The way I see it, one champion when armed with the right questions, can move an organization into a position of strength faster than an army of socmed savvy students.  If we can get the institutions and educational organizations to develop social media plans and policies, then we can give educators freedom to communicate with their students, and empower students to learn, teach, collaborate and pretty much change the world.

If you want to know more about the four P’s you can find plenty in my slideshares or shoot me an email, I’ll almost always do what I can to help.

KTF

-KSL

Tagged as: ...education, ...social media, NHWHEL