Social Networking Over the Decades

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:16:11 +0000

Social networking is a relatively new buzzword. I say “relatively” because it’s been around long enough to generate a list as long as my arm of books on the subject. I’ve read ten books on the last month on the subject to broaden my perspective for the course I’m teaching in January about it and I’ve got another stack at my elbow. Many of them give perspectives I wouldn’t otherwise have had, but plenty elicit what I can only consider a DUH! response.

Believe it or not, Social Networking Isn’t New

I didn’t come across the expression “Social Networking” until about three years ago. But I’ve been doing it online for closer to fourteen years. It didn’t start with business or making professional contacts in mind at all. I had upgraded from an Apple IIe¹ to a PC and was given an old 14.4 modem as a gift. I’d heard of online banking and that was my primary motivation for getting online at all.

Now, I’m a science fiction geek, so when I discovered there were message boards for fandoms, I got really excited and dove right on in to a couple. That’s where my own social networking got started. I made a friend who had several fandom and interest overlaps with me. He owned an ISP back in the day. Through our conversations, it became clear to me that the Internet was going to be a very important tool in the years to come. So, I set about to learn. It started with simple HTML, but swiftly expanded to many other webdev technologies, ‘cause, well, I’m a geek.

Social Networking Boosts Your Career

Through this friend, I met some other people and wound up starting a webdev business with them. One of my partners became a very skilled graphic artist, another found he had a serious talent for sales and promotion and we all learned a lot from our business.

Thing is, at the core, I like writing and teaching best. I learned HTML primarily to create a website about how to draft sewing patterns! This was before easy blogging software was out there. I used those skills to create a website dedicated to a social cause, and was pretty much proto-blogging on it. Through that site, I met quite literally hundreds of people – all of whom had their own separate skills and interests.

These online friendships mean that we have our own mutual Baker Street Irregulars of go to for information. If need to know something about video editing, I have a friend in Portland, OR who is a filmmaker. If I need to know something about historical costuming, I have a friend in New Hampshire who can either answer my question or knows the person who does. If I need to know about astronomy, the Marine Corps or fencing, I have a friend in Maryland who can give me the straight dope on all three. If someone needs a clever solution to a tricky problem in a Microsoft application or how to promote a website, someone in my network will probably send them to me.

Notice that I have not once mentioned Facebook, Twitter or any of a dozen social networking websites available. The contacts I speak of were formed while many of the designers of these sites were still in school. This isn’t to denigrate Facebook et al. Quite the contrary. I use sites specifically designed for social networking every single day of my life, and this entry uses blogging software to publish it. I’m all for anything easy to use that speeds communication and connection, and some great tools are available.

Just don’t confuse the tool with the work! Online social networking has been around since ARPANET. The network is just bigger now.

¹Hey, in 1996, all I really needed was something to manage text and keep track of my checkbook. Don’t laugh too hard. Most people these days own far more computer than they actually need or really use.

Ten Tips to Teaching Success

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:43 +0000

Adult education is a fun and rewarding field. Your students are generally more directly motivated. I was lucky enough to be able to get an interview with Peter Vinton, Jr., a computer instructor who specializes in teaching adults.

Prepare
Common wisdom dictates that an instructor should spend three hours in preparation for every hour of teaching. As a computer applications instructor, it should (but probably doesn’t) go without saying that you read the manual and do all of the exercises yourself before you teach the class. But don’t let it stop there. Find real world experiences you can tell stories about — bonus points if you can make them funny. Create handouts with interesting tips.
Be on time (or early)
Nothing puts a student off faster than having the instructor breeze in just as class is to start, shuffling through notes while trying to take off his coat. It gives the impression the instructor is not serious and does not care. If you don’t care, your students won’t care.
Don’t assume all equipment is ready and working.
Glitches happen, tech support sometimes cannot get to the class computers on time. Be in the classroom early to check this out. Even if you think this “isn’t your job”, getting the information across easily and well is. Check and make sure!
Greet the students
While you do not always have the luxury of small classes, the more personable you can be, the better. If the class has fewer than ten people, after you introduce yourself, it’s often a good idea to get your students to introduce themselves and tell you a little about what they expect to get out of the class. You often learn useful things at this stage that will help you throughout your class.
Engage the students’ enthusiasm
Finding places to insert humor is good. If the program has an Easter Egg that uses a technique you’re teaching, for goodness sake, work it into your lecture! If you’ve been able to get a good idea of what the students want to learn, you will find it easier to throw out tidbits for which they are actually hungry!
Allow for serendipity
There’s a reason that the boring professor reading from his notes in a monotone and never answers questions is a humorous cliché. It happens. Don’t you do this. Allow for questions. Allow for tangents. Your job is to make sure the students get the information they need, hopefully in an entertaining manner so it will stick.
Allow for feedback
Don’t be so in love with the sound of your own voice or wrapped up in the cleverness of your preparation that you fail to watch for your students’ reactions. Good teaching is as interactive as a tango.
Keep sidetracking under control
While it’s important to allow for questions, and to go off and explore unplanned avenues a little bit, you probably do have specific material to cover. A good way to control this is to make sure you’re wearing a watch and allow a specified amount of time for the sidetrack. Vinton, who often teaches all-day classes, prefers to limit sidetracks to ten minutes.
Remember that mistakes are learning tools
When you’re teaching software applications, sometimes you mistype, or make some other mistake in your demonstration. Don’t try to cover it up! This is a beautiful opportunity to shake up the students a little and get them more involved in the learning process. Let the mistake stand. As the class to debug the problem. Get them to try to tell you what you did wrong. Trust me, your class will respect you for it.
Admit it if you don’t know something
No-one knows everything. If you’re asked a question and you do not know the answer admit it. Better yet, admit it, then offer to look up the answer. It’s not a bad time to teach the students about the value of the help feature in most computer applications. If you do offer to look up the answer, though, be careful to follow up. You don’t want the students to think you’re blowing them off.

These little tools, when properly applied, can make an adult classroom a fun and profitable place to be.

Peter Vinton Jr. is a faculty and staff instructor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH and an adjunct instructor in Computer Science at Lebanon College, in Lebanon, NH.