Week 8: Leadership in the Digital Age

This title of this course is "Technology and Leadership" and it was this course’s title as well as my love of and affinity for technology that caused me to select this course to take as an elective.  After having gone through the course, I realize that my top takeaways from this course from Britt and all of my peers in this course is that at the end of the day; it is all about people.  It is about managing leadership, people, society and culture by being an effective change agent.  I can’t say that I learned significantly more about technology in the past eight weeks or how to use technology more effectively in my leadership role – and I say this without intending any offense - I say it because that is what my assumption was that this course was about.

Instead, I learned much more valuable lessons and strategies from my peers’ leadership styles and perspectives and realized just how many of us are facing the same questions and problems surrounding technology and leadership within our varied jobs and institutions.

Britt and Patrick Gross gave me an ‘a-ha’ moment when they mentioned that technology and leadership is ultimately about societal and cultural change. It's not that I was completely ignorant and unaware of this element; but I don't think I gave it the proper gravitas that it deserved.

You can have the best leaders in the world and the latest technology; but if these leaders are unable to effectively integrate the latest technology in a way that is accepted by the people and the culture of their respective domains and institutions; then nothing will be accomplished but a successful failure.  Successful failures are just expensive dead ends that aren't good for anyone involved, in my opinion.  There is tremendous potential in new technology, but unless it is wielded wisely and well, most of it will amount to no more than a costly, faddish fling with distracting devices (Hess & Saxberg, 2014).

My leadership has already changed as a result of this course and like many of my past courses in this Ed.D program; I have learned much and have adapted much of what I learn into my day-to-day role as a leader in my institution.  I am in the midst of evaluating an  iPad pilot proposed by our academic dean and have been caught in a crazy tug-of-war between several top level leaders who have been intoxicated by technology and  in their technologically induced drunken haze; they are not seeing or thinking clearly.  This course has given me new perspectives and words and strategies that I didn't have just 8 weeks ago to help sober up the technologically drunk and to keep them from drowning and losing focus.

If we lose focus and focus only on technology and how we can implement technology, then we lose sight of the key element – which is the people.  It is the people who will be affected by the technology. The people, the culture of the institution and even society at large must be a part of our focus.   From the IT staff to the institution’s lowest end-users; everyone is affected when new technology is introduced or implemented. After all, technology always seems to be ripe with promise, but experiences using new technologies often have left end-users exasperated and wary (Hess & Saxberg, 2014).

As we go into the future as leaders, we must also learn to think like an engineer – a process engineer of sorts if you will.  Engineers in any field operate by identifying problems to be solved, designing smart solutions consistent with the relevant science, and figuring out how to make those solutions feasible (Hess & Saxberg, 2014).  Leaders are change agents.  Leaders are innovators, planners, problem-solvers, strategists and forward thinkers.  Leaders must help to engineer the changes that are necessary and a lot of this is accomplished only by being aware.

Another good point brought out in this course is to not only BEWARE but to BE AWARE.  So as I wrap up this post and this course; I realize that another takeaway for me is just that – to Be Aware.  Be mindful, be involved as a leader and as a member of your institution.  I don't believe you can be an effective change agent or leader unless you really are aware of what is going on at all levels, from the front lines to the top tiers - it does pay to simply 'Be Aware'.

I have taken away so much more from this course than I initially imagined and it truly has been one of my best learning experiences in this program.  I sincerely believe that this course should be a core course in the program (and I don’t share that opinion about all of the core courses that we currently are required to take).

Thank you, Dr. Britt Watwood and to all my peers and future leaders in this class for all that you have shared and have taught me in the past 8 weeks.  It has been awesome and I will definitely miss the great topics and discussions.

Pat

References:

Hess, F. M., & Saxberg, B. (2014). Breakthrough leadership in the digital age: using learning science to reboot schooling. London: Corwin.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1452255490/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1452255490&linkCode=as2&tag=aeor-20

Week 7: Adapting to Technology

I love this infographic courtesy of Novell and Avalaunch Media.  I think it provides a pretty good summation of the evolution of enterprise technology and can be applied more broadly to the evolution of technology in general.

In looking at the graphic, I can place my entrance onto the internet via AOL (America Online) - 1983 - the year after I graduated high school.  AOL was really the Facebook of the 1980's and 1990's.  It was a one stop social media powerhouse that catapulted the masses into the digital age.  For me, CompuServe and AOL was my ticket out of Lincoln, Nebraska and into the World Wide Web.  Although my main email is now my gmail account - I still have my AOL email account to this day.

A lot of people wonder how I became so tech savvy and to be perfectly honest, it isn't from any concentrated effort on my part; it is from simply upgrading and adapting to new technology as it evolved.  From my perspective, technology has always been – and always has been changing, evolving and moving forward.

I am one of those ‘geeky’ people who embrace new technology as it becomes available.  The latest iPhone, iPad, tablet, phablet, schmablet, whatever the new device or term might be – I love to have the latest tech. Interestingly enough, a big part of my job is evaluate technology for my institution.  To research, assess and implement technology into our educational processes and curriculum.  In the seven years I have been at my institution; I have implemented numerous LMS systems, lecture capture, computer-based testing, online course evaluation and curriculum management, web-conferencing, web 2.0, html 5, virtual learning modules and social media.

As capabilities of technology are expected to continue growing exponentially, it is certain that the future of business will increasingly efficient, streamlined, and will move at a faster pace. This is particularly true of information sharing as new avenues open everyday that allow more people to share more information, like recommendations and software, everyday (Hendricks, 2013).

This has always been the case for me – from portable 8 tracks players to Sony Walkman’s that played cassette tapes to the Apple iPod – I have been a rider on the technology train for as long as I can remember and ‘that’ has been the key to my successful adaptation and integration of technology into my life.

I think that this same ideology can – and actually must – now be incorporated into our roles as leaders.  If a leader doesn't stay current with the technology of the day; in a very short span of time, it will be very difficult to keep up or to catch up and the danger of going from tech innovator to tech dinosaur will be a distinct possibility (Hendricks, 2013).

I do think that we are in a very distinct transitional period of leadership that will affect how the adaptation of technology will move forward consisting mainly of three groups of individuals.

The first group are those leaders who are still lingering from the Silent Generation (1925 - 1946) who seem to struggle a bit more with the integration of technology into the fabric of day-to-day life and business.

The second group are those leaders like myself who are from the generation of the Baby Boom (1946-1964), who, for the most part, have grown up in the age of technology and tend to embrace technology.

The third group made up of Generation X, Millenials and so on are those who have grown up with technology so I think they will become leaders who are comfortable with technology and will have the least issues with adaptation.

I realize that these are very broad generalizations but I think that the role of the leaders belonging to the second group will be key players in helping to create processes to stay current and to adapt to emerging technologies as we go forward into the future.

Adopting new technologies is often coupled with a brief period of increased costs and a steep learning curve; however, it is imperative that all entrepreneurs learn to adapt. New devices will be released that old cold would not work on, but instead of holding onto the past, take the time to step into the future (Hendricks, 2013).

References:

Hendricks, D. (2013, September 24). Benefits Of Adapting To The Newest Enterprise Technology. Forbes.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhendricks/2013/09/24/benefits-of-adapting-to-the-newest-enterprise-technology/

Week 6: Misuse of the Web in the Workplace

At my institution, we use the web and internet resources heavily in all areas.  As such, this topic is one that comes around regularly at my institution and one that has discussed ad nauseum with no resolution.
Before I set about sharing my opinion, the definition of ‘web misuse’ should be somewhat defined.

At my institution, the following types of websites have been defined as ‘web misuse’ at some point or another:

• Adult Websites – Pornography
• Bit Torrent sites – peer-to-peer file sharing
• Music Streaming – Pandora, Spotify, 
• Social Network sites-facebook, twitter etc.,
• Video sharing websites – YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo etc.,
• Wikis-wikipedia, mediawiki, medpedia, etc;,

What has happened, time and again, is that by trying to control or limit access to websites that the institution didn't want its employees visiting; it also effectively limited access to many of the websites used for one or more of our institutional mission (and client) groups:  Academics, Clinical Services and Research.

Over time, administrators, clinicians, faculty, staff, students and researchers in our intuition showed the benefits of all of the aforementioned limited-access and restricted websites.

What the institution saved on non-work related bandwidth costs, it paid out much more in paying for filtering and monitoring software and all of its related costs (such as data storage).

Employee access to the Internet has become just as much part of a business' day-to-day activities as having a phone on every desk, sometimes even more so. The proliferation of email and the vast amount of information held on the Web has made this tool a vital part of the communication and information gathering process for modern day employees (Grant, 2000).

I personally don’t think that censorship and restriction is effective in any arena and the more content that is censored and restricted; the more people will try to access it.  If you make web content freely available, within reason; I think that the majority of employees won’t abuse the access.  Also, since employees are working more during their ‘off’ or ‘free’ time in this increasingly networked world, it should be allowed.
If you think about telecommuters, they have all the access to any websites in the world from the privacy of their home and if they have increased productivity and performance, then why is it believed that allowing the same type of access will decrease productivity and performance in a structured, physical workplace?

Dozens of studies analyzed by scholars at Penn State show that telecommuting actually boosts productivity, performance, job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction. It positively affects relationships with supervisors and reduces turnover, stress and work-family conflict. It does so largely by giving people increased control over their work (O’Leary, 2013).

I think that by treating personnel as responsible adults and allowing for some personal web time during work hours will help offset the hours at home that they put in doing work.  This is the situation that I have witnessed with my own staff and the level of tension and stress is low, the productivity and morale are high and there is not any rampant misuse of the web.

One of my peers runs a very strict department; rule-laden and full of punitive measures.  Her staff are openly miserable and they make no bones about the fact that they do not do one thing more than is required in their job roles.  Morale is low and turnover is high.

It is worth noting, however, that there is a downside to restricting employees to purely work related Internet and email activities. A report by the International Labour Organisation predicted that cases of depression and stress in the workplace will increase dramatically over the next few years as technology developments raise the employee's workload. If this is to be the case, then letting workers have a certain amount of time to deal with personal communication and look at sites of personal interest may help to alleviate some of that stress (Grant, 2000).

According to Wiener, for human beings to flourish they must be free to engage in creative and flexible actions and thereby maximize their full potential as intelligent, decision-making beings in charge of their own lives. This is the purpose of a human life (Bynum, 2008).

I think that as effective leaders in an increasingly networked and flattening world; we must not restrict or censor our personnel’s access to the web.  We must integrate this access into our work environments and to provide guidelines to maintain balance for our personnel to remain productive and take responsibility as professionals in their job roles.

I truly believe it is much easier to boost morale and job performance in a positive, open environment as opposed to a closed and restrictive one.  When your personnel are invested and acknowledged In their roles, there will be little secondary gain for them to misuse the web while they are on the job.

Pat

References:

Bynum, Terrell, “Computer and Information Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/ethics-computer/&gt;.

Grant, P. (2000, November). Solution: Internet misuse at work. ComputerWeekly.com, Retrieved from http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Solution-Internet-misuse-at-work

O'Leary, M. B. (2013, March 15). Telecommuting can boost productivity and job performance. US News and World Report, Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/03/15/telecommuting-can-boost-productivity-and-job-performance

Week 5: Networked Workers

I oversee the Academic Technology unit at my institution and we are responsible for implementing and supporting technology and academic applications.  We administrate and deliver high-stakes, secure, computer-based exams; create learning modules, web conferencing, administer lecture capture, the learning management system and the medical school curriculum management system and database.  We also do work on grants and other projects that have an academic technology element to them and have help to create podcasts, vodcasts, online continuing medical education and even an online virtual patient module.  In short - we are all about using technology and being networked.

When a new staff member joins my unit they are issued:

• 1 laptop – PC or MacBook depending on their preference.
• 1 39 inch screen and a docking station for their desk.
• 1 iPad
•  1 iPhone
• $200 voucher for apps, software etc.

     

While we all have our own offices, I and my staff are rarely in our office suite since we handle services across the Stratford campus which is comprised of 4 main buildings and several of us go between the Stratford and Glassboro campuses (30 minutes’ drive apart geographically) on a regular basis due to meetings etc.

We are in almost constant communication via text, email and phone in the course of a single day and while we do not officially ‘have’ to work beyond our 37.5 hours per week; all of my staff believes that being salaried, exempt personnel; means that we work beyond those 37.5 hours.

We are all pretty much in the regular habit of scanning our email, working and providing support to our customers on nights and weekends.  So we are definitely among the group of workers who are armed with the technological tools that can keep them connected to their jobs outside of normal working hours (Madden & Jones, 2008). 

Yesterday afternoon, due to a faulty transformer, the building that my office and the main classrooms are housed in had to be closed because it had no functional ventilation system, no elevators and reduced lighting.  We had a major exam scheduled however, and so we just relocated the class to another building with power and functioning Wi-Fi and my team and I were able to administer the exam as planned. 

So on the one hand, loss of power and Wi-Fi caused our academic building to shut down but the fact that our exam files are remotely hosted and administered meant that we could really have given the high stakes secure exam anywhere – even in a coffee shop – as long as we had access to the internet and Wi-Fi.

The opportunities or benefits of having a networked and connected staff are:

• Flexibility in work location.
• Cloud computing.
• Ability to respond almost immediately to customers’ issues. 
• Able to resolve 99% of our customers’ issues remotely.
• Streamlining of workflow and processes.
• Enhanced productivity because my staff do work beyond their 9-5 hours regularly.

      The challenges or cons of having a networked and connected staff are:

  

•  Cost of equipment and data plans.
• Must have staff who are tech-savvy.
• Must have staff who can be managed remotely.
• Will not work with staff who are of an '8 and skate' mentality.

      As a unit, we actually have more recognition and visibility even though we aren’t actually sitting at our desks all day – in fact, we are more visible because we aren’t sitting in our offices all day.

Having a unit with networked personnel provides opportunities for us to expand our services and to create new services for our customers’ as they start to engage in using technology and becoming more networked as well.  

For some of my fellow managers, the downside to the freely available internet access is that their personnel jump on social networks and waste company time at their desks.  I personally don’t care if they access the internet, but I have not found that to be an issue with my staff and as networked as they are; they do not frequent social networking or the internet during the course of their work day very much at all.  

During the power outage, our mail server went down and I actually asked my staff to jump on Facebook to facilitate the transfer of several zipped files – which we were able to do very easily.

In contrast to my very visible, agile, quick response unit; the Educational Media Services unit is not networked at all and they actually operate in quite the opposite way; their office suite is the hub for them and they require clients to come to their location for equipment check-out and to engage them in the various services that they offer.  

In my opinion, it is an inefficient, pre-networked era system.

Since I and my team are so visible within my institution and have developed a great service reputation, the CIO asked me to come up with a plan to change the Educational Media Services unit to function in much the same way.  This request from the CIO led me to write a proposal to my CIO to have the current Educational Media Services unit integrated into my unit. 

The proposal was reviewed and approved, and on 1 July 2014 after the current manager there retires; I will integrate that department into Academic Technology and get them aligned to a networked way of operating.

For me, being able to be networked has allowed me to lead my team from any location globally and it has definitely raised my unit’s institutional profile and reputation of service to our customers.  I have not yet experienced very many challenges within my job function brought about by the internet – except for non-access to it.  

The internet and being networked is what makes my team run and run successfully.

References:

Madden, M., & Jones, S. (2008). Networked workers.Pwe Research Internet Project, Retrieved from 

     http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/09/24/networked-workers/

Week 4: The Changing Nature of Work

The nature of work is absolutely changing and evolving due to the web.  A study by McKinsey & Company found that:

“The Internet's impact on global growth is rising rapidly. The Internet accounted for 21 percent of GDP growth over the last five years among the developed countries MGI studied, a sharp acceleration from the 10 percent contribution over 15 years. Most of the economic value created by the Internet falls outside of the technology sector, with 75 percent of the benefits captured by companies in more traditional industries. The Internet is also a catalyst for job creation. Among 4,800 small and medium-size enterprises surveyed, the Internet created 2.6 jobs for each lost to technology-related efficiencies.”

 In fact, if I think about my own job, it is in academic technology which didn't really exist even a decade ago; but as we go into the future, more and more; my job would not exist at all without the internet.  In my position, I am responsible for all of the institutional websites, capturing lectures and streaming them out to students, managing courses and course materials a host of other duties and projects that are dependent on the web to fully function.

The impact of the internet is huge in my workplace and it became very apparent during a network outage how dependent we are on it to do our day-to-day jobs.  So much of our work has been transitioned from our physical brick and mortar offices to the web – for example using cloud based document archives to sharing and collaborating via Dropbox, to having conferences and meetings via Skype, AdobeConnect and WebEx. When the network went down; we literally had to send our teams home to work from home where they had access to the internet.  

It was interesting for me to see how much of my team’s work could be accomplished via the internet and I have always been an advocate for telecommuting.  In fact, we probably work harder, longer and more efficiently – and communicate more often amongst ourselves when we are not in the same suite and relying on the internet to work.

One of our big projects this year has been to implement a medical school curriculum management tool called One45.  Everything about this implementation has been via the internet and 100% web-based.  

For me and my team, using web-based tools such as Dropbox, WebEx, Skype allows us to work from anywhere.  While I do try to discourage my team from working on holiday; we all seem to do so and we’ve had times where one of us was in Japan, another in South Africa and the rest scattered between their homes and over six campuses all working together synchronously on a project. 

This would have been IMPOSSIBLE without the internet and the various web-based tools that we rely on regularly to do our work.

In his talk, Shirky focuses on the power of community rather than technology, exploring the capabilities of open-source communities and as I define open source code or content as code or content that is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers or collaborators improve upon the code or content and share the changes within the community. 

In my leadership role, I try to be as transparent and as open as I can, especially if something will directly affect my team – and I get a lot of flak from my senior leadership because of my attempts to be transparent and open.   

There are times though, that being open and transparent with my team could result in a lot of discord and so even I pick and choose what I decide to share with them and that makes me selectively open and transparent despite my own best intentions. 

While I think that Shirky is presenting a great twist on the idea of utopia, I don’t believe that any government – even the most democratic – is anywhere close to being transparent or ‘open’.  I don’t think leadership as we know it in our governments and corporations is not optimized to be ‘open’ and I’m not sure that leadership and open is possible.  But it is a great goal to strive towards.  

The world, both physical and virtual are in a state of change and in many ways is being re-mapped.  Whether we like it or not, Pandora's virtual box has been opened and there is no going back...

A Visualization of the Internet

References:

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/internet_matters

Week 3: Knowledge Management or Information Control?

Nancy Dixon states that to her, the goal of Knowledge Management (KM) is to make use of collective knowledge in an organization. She also believes that we have been learning KM since early in the 90s.  I think that KM is as old as human civilization and is a part of our nature to create, collect, protect and disseminate knowledge. 

I work at a medical school and over the years there have been many complaints by students at how much of medicine is based on words with Greek and Latin origins.

The oldest written sources of western medicine are the Hippocratic writings from the 5th and 4th centuries bc, which cover all aspects of medicine at that time and contain numerous medical terms. This was the beginning of the Greek era of the language of medicine, which lasted even after the Roman conquest, since the Romans, who had no similar medical tradition, imported Greek medicine (Wulff, 2004).

When you expand how knowledge was managed from the beginnings of civilization, you find that often Latin, Greek and Even Arabic were used by the educated and the learned individuals of society.  It was one of the first forms of KM in my opinion.  Think of the Catholic services and how for centuries, Latin was used as the language of the Catholic Church.  The use of Latin was a type of KM, in my opinion.

The following is taken from THE CATECHISM EXPLAINED Spirago - Clarke 1899.

Latin is well adapted for the services of the Church, because it is both venerable and mysterious. It is venerable on account of its origin and its antiquity; it is the language in which the praises of God resounded from the lips of Christians during the first centuries. It is a sublime and solemn thought that the holy sacrifice is now offered in the same language, nay, with the very same words as it was offered in times long past in the obscurity of the Catacombs. There is also an element of mystery about the Latin tongue; it is a dead language, not understood by the people. The use of an unknown tongue conveys to the mind of the vulgar that something is going on upon the altar which is past their comprehension, that a mystery is being enacted. 

In the first centuries of Christianity a curtain used to be drawn during the time from the Sanctus to the communion, to conceal the altar from the sight of the worshippers. This is now no longer done, but the use of an unknown tongue has something of the same effect, by inspiring the awe into the minds of the common people. It is a striking fact that Israelites and pagans made use, in the worship of the Deity, of a language with which the multitude were not conversant. The Israelites made use of the ancient Hebrew, the language of the patriarchs; we do not find Our Lord or the apostles censuring this practice. The Greek Church, both orthodox and schismatic, employs the old form of the Greek language for divine service not that spoken at present. The same language is in use in the Russian (so-called orthodox) Church, not the vernacular, which is a Slavonic dialect.

The use of Latin is a means of maintaining unity in the Church, as well as uniformity in her services.

For the use of one and the same language in Catholic churches all over the surface of the globe, is a connecting link binding them to Rome, and making one nations which are separated by diversity of tongues. Latin, as the language of the Church, unites all nations, making them members of God's family, of Christ's kingdom. The altar on earth is a type of the heavenly Jerusalem where a great multitude of all peoples and tongues stand around the throne, praising God. If Latin were not the official language of the Church, deliberations and discussions among bishops assembled at the councils, the mutual exchange of opinions between theologians would be impossible. Moreover, the use of Latin, the language of ancient Rome, is a constant reminder of our dependence on the Holy Roman Church; it recalls to our minds involuntarily the fact that thence, from the Mother Church, the first missionaries came who brought the faith to our shores. 

The use of a dead language is a safeguard against many evils; it is not subject to change, but remains the same to all time. Languages in daily use undergo a continual process of change; words drop out, or their meaning is altered as years go on. If a living language were employed in divine worship heresies and errors would inevitably creep into the Church, and sacred words would be employed in an irreverent or mocking manner by the unbeliever. This is prevented by the use of Latin, at any rate as far as the unlearned are concerned. Yet the Church is far from desiring to keep the people in ignorance of the meaning of her religious services; the decrees of the Council of Trent (22, 8), strictly enjoin upon priests to explain frequently the mysteries and ceremonies of the Mass to the children in schools, and to adults from the pulpit. 

What is interesting about this is that while the Council of Trent enjoined the clergy to explain the Mass to the masses, it was still a use of KM in that the organizational representatives did the filtering of the information.

The Catholic Church is a great example of effective KM because they certainly did:

• Leveraged Explicit Knowledge – the Church certainly captured documented knowledge and created a collections from it – and one of their main priorities was connecting people to content. 
• Leveraged Experiential Knowledge – the Church still focuses on connecting people to people and to give rise to communities and social networks.
• Leveraged Collective Knowledge –the Church decides who is in the conversation and they certainly connect the followers to the decision makers.

When you then come back to the present day, we are in a major era of information access by a significant amount of the common populace – I daresay more than at any other time in history was there the access to so much information by so many.  In this era, KM is definitely much more challenging and organizations must be much more cognizant of how easily and quickly information is shared, broadcast and published.

In my organization, to be honest, much of the information that I collect is not from official sources but from the many gaps that exist within the organizational structure and the lack of effective KM throughout the organization.  I find that  the institution’s lack of transparency doesn't matter because the KM is not effective and important news takes about 48 hours to filter from the top down into general institutional knowledge.

It seems the more important something is to keep from common knowledge – the quicker it becomes common knowledge.  I personally think that knowledge and information should be available and shared; I think censorship and information control is wrong.  Of course, knowledge management need not be negative and controlling but I don’t know of any cases where it isn't a form of control.

After reading this week’s material, I also had to wonder if true KM is possible – it seems that from the beginning of civilization – people have been trying to contain knowledge but where there is knowledge; there are always those who want to access it and inevitably the knowledge is obtained and then shared and disseminated.

The challenge of KM and where KM needs to go then is still exactly as Nancy Dixon has described:

• The movement from seeing learning as an individual’s task which is necessarily conducted in private to increasingly seeing learning as something that must take place in public. That there is benefit not only in the product of “having learned” but in the process of learning as well, because that is where new knowledge is created.
• The movement from a need to know to greater transparency. A recognition that knowledge cannot be segmented or walled off from those who are attempting to address the organization’s difficult issues – that everything is connected.
• The movement from seeing management as controlling what content people have access to, to users control of the content that is critical to their needs.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

For those of you who like to send eCards, JibJab  http://www.jibjab.com/  is a great site to use to send some fun static and video cards.  Here is one that I did for Saint Patrick's Day:



For the most part, JibJab is really easy - just get a good headshot of yourself and then cut it out as an oval and upload to JibJab for use in their products.  Many are free - some are $1.99 or so but they are also downloadable to your computer or iPhone.

The trick to getting a good face on JibJab is to create a transparent PNG file.  This is easily done in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (or any program that allows you to create and save in the transparent .PNG format.)  Creating images with transparent backgrounds lets you put images on any type of backgrounds and not have a white (or other colored) square around the image.  For example:

This bit of transparency is what creates (in my opinion) a much more professional looking presentation be it silly animated cards or PowerPoint.  Here is another eCard I created for a friend of mine's birthday card and you can see how the transparent PNG works in this example.

http://www.jibjab.com/view/Fa-KlLXhQ0utOEadwRfOFQ

In any case, have a great St. Patrick's Day (if you observe it) and if you are out and about this Sunday and/or Monday; be sure to celebrate responsibly and safely.

Ciao for now!!

Pat

Week 2: Tool Review: Animoto

The tool that I am reviewing today is called Animoto. 

The website URL for Animoto is: http://animoto.com/

Animoto is basically a slide show creator that allows you to upload your images, add text and music (either from the stock music available or by uploading your own music) and then quickly produce a video slideshow that you can download and/or link to a variety of sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

You also have a choice to copy and paste the code to embed the finished video into a web page.  It is very easy and pretty intuitive.  Here is a quick intro video about Animoto:



Here is a quick 'how-to' on creating a video with Animoto:



Here is a screenshot of the options you have once your video is ready for viewing.

As an example, this quick slideshow on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was literally created as fast as I uploaded the eight images, added the text and selected a stock music track.

This option is a link to the video that displays some Animoto branding:

http://animoto.com/play/e6Mv8GYlISQLbSfA8OaiFQ

However, you do have the option at the higher membership levels to check the ‘hide’ Animoto branding in which case your finished video would look like:

http://video214.com/play/e6Mv8GYlISQLbSfA8OaiFQ/s/dark

There are currently two pricing models – personal and business.

Under personal plans there are three membership levels:

• LITE – Free – (create 30 second videos, web quality)
• PLUS - $5 monthly or $30 annually – (create up to 10 minute videos, web quality)
• PRO - $39 monthly or $249 annually – (create up to 20 minute videos, HD quality)

Under business plans there are two levels:

• PRO – identical plan as PRO personal.
• PRO PREMIUM - $499 annually - (create up to 20 minute videos, HD quality

PRO PREMIUM also has more music choices, phone support and other features.

Animoto is very easy to use, has a minimal learning curve and once you get the hang of it, you can churn out relatively professional quality video slideshows without knowing any video editing or production.

Real Life Example:

This past summer in the Ed.D orientation; at the end of the day, each table was given the assignment of doing a presentation for the following morning.  For whatever reason, no one could really get together in my group to work on the presentation that night so we talked over a brief concept and all agreed to provide a number of photos for the presentation that we would email to the point person who would then compile them in Animoto. 

Here is the result of that assignment and it was all done virtually and all the images compiled into Animoto and output as a video file that we output to a USB drive and uploaded to YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPqcRQ3ma2k&feature=youtu.be

For a slapped together, on-the-fly, last minute presentation – it turned out good enough to make the presentation polished and professional.

In my day-to-day job as an academic IT director, I have used it to make announcements, brief how-to videos and have helped our Admissions and Marketing departments to create brief video tours, promotion of student events and department or faculty/clinician promotional segments that were then emailed out, distributed via various social media networks like Twitter and Facebook  or embedded into web pages.

• Education Examples: http://animoto.com/pro/education
• Business Examples: http://animoto.com/business

The tool as good as it is for what it does, is a one trick pony of sorts – and it is limited by its ease-of-use design.  The only true elements in your control are the images you upload into the presentation and the music tracks chosen or uploaded.

You then select a template and music before creating the final video.  There is very little true customization available and if you need to do more than a video slideshow; then this tool is not going to be very helpful or effective.

All that said – I have Animoto in my toolbox and have used it more times at the 11th hour than I would probably care to admit.

Week 1: The World is Spiky-ish - Discussion

In reading both perspectives, I came away thinking that both authors were right in terms of how they presented their views. 

In my reality, I think that the world is much more spiky than flat and even in the small microcosm that is my day-to-day work and home life; the world is definitely spiky.  Hierarchies are by their very nature spiky.  

Processes and policies and bureaucracies are all spikes in a spiky world to me.  There is very little flatness to be found.

I believe that Richard Florida’s assertion that location matters, is absolutely on point.  If you look at the tech world globally, activity and areas of importance are absolutely concentrated in a few locations.  Take a look at just a few of the Fortune 1000 companies that exist in the Silicon Valley of California:  Apple, Adobe, Cisco, eBay, Facebook, Google, Pixar, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Intuit, Nvidia, Oracle, Symantec and Western Digital.  

These are but a few of thousands of companies that are located in the Silicon Valley.  I would daresay that there is not another cluster of such tech magnitude anywhere else on this earth.

I think that it is easier to aspire to be a software programmer in Silicon Valley if you physically live in the United States.  For someone who is poor with access to few resources in India, China, Mexico, Africa or another like country; being a software programmer may not be an option. I realize that this is a perception of mine and it is possible that my perception does not mirror reality.To believe wholeheartedly in the flat world perspective; it would mean that not long ago, if you were a poor individual in a third-world country; it would have meant that you couldn't have aspired to make the next great software system. I think that it is easier to aspire to be a software programmer in Silicon Valley if you physically live in the United States.   For someone who is poor with access to few resources in India, China, Mexico, Africa or another like country; being a software programmer may not be an option. I realize that this is a perception of mine and it is possible that my perception does not mirror reality.

To believe wholeheartedly in the flat world perspective; it would mean that not long ago, if you were a poor individual in a third-world country; it would have meant that you couldn't have aspired to make the next great operating system.
  
Friedman’s idea of having ubiquitous connectivity via broadband, cellphones, and so on—that ‘flattens’ the world, this flatness can achieve much the same effect as proximity in the spiky view and that poor individual in a third world country should be able to achieve their aspirations no matter where they are located.  With this, I disagree.

I believe that until there is a global network that truly connects all areas and peoples and all areas and peoples have the same access to this network; the world just cannot be flat; and in all honesty, I believe as I stated earlier that both perspectives are correct.  There are indeed areas of the world that are flat and those areas that are spiky – which then brings me back around to the world being spiky.  
To believe the world is flat, I think the entire world has to be flat; whereas if any part of the flat world has a spike – then the world as a whole is spiky.

Do You Have A Hero?

So tonight, I sat through the Oscar telecast. The night had three interesting speeches; one by Jared Leto and one by Cate Blanchett which were both interesting, but after winning for his role as Ron Woodroof in the film Dallas Buyer’s Club, Matthew McConaughey's acceptance speech was the most interesting, I thought.  He made the following points:

1. He said that "every day", he needs someone to look up to, something to look forward to and someone to chase.

2. First he thanked God and said that God is who he looks up to every day.

3. He thanked his family, who he said he looks forward to every day and who he wants most to "make proud".

4. And finally, his 'hero' and the person he chases - is himself; 10 years into the future. He knows he will never catch up to his idealized self, but he wants to keep chasing his 'hero', his 10 years in the future self as a way to stay motivated.

5. To end his speech he said “Amen,”  ”Alright, Alright, Alright” and “Keep on Livin’.”

It was a speech that gave me pause and I had to think about it a bit.  It was an interesting concept to me to have a unknown future self as one's own hero for today.  

In thinking about heroes, I don't really have a hero and have never really had a hero that I looked up to or emulated.  I wonder if most people have heroes and if so, who they are and why.

I think I'll think about why I don't have a hero...