Introductory Social Media Workshop

Posted on June 18, 2013 by admin

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Making Friends with Social Media:

An Introductory Workshop

with Jim Martinez & Jan Wootten

Two Sessions: Friday, July 26, 6:30-­8:30pm and Saturday, July 27, 1:00-­3:30pm

99 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor (between 29 & 30th Sts.) Fee: $65.00

This playful, two-­‐session workshop will help you advance your skills at using social media and other online platforms to make news, make friends and build community. Jim and Jan create a relaxed, imaginative learning environment where people at all levels of technological know-­‐how can collaborate, become less intimidated and more inventive. Note: A laptop or smart phone is required. Access to a digital or video camera, tablet and/or microphone will contribute to a richer multimedia experience.

Jim Martinez, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at the New York Institute of Technology and author of A Performatory Approach to Teaching, Learning and Technology. He teaches in a variety of educational and professional settings and has 20 years experience as a corporate technology consultant. Jim received his M.A. in Education from Lehman College, CUNY, completed his doctorate at The Graduate Center and pursued his post-­‐doctoral studies at the Institute.

Janet Wootten, M.Phil., is a public affairs and communications professional. A member of the Institute’s board of directors, she leads web and social media initiatives for the Institute’s psychology and educational programs. She received an M.Phil. in developmental psychology from Columbia University, Teachers College.

To register, contact Melissa Meyer at 212.941.8906 mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org or go to: http://www.eastsideinstitute.org/calendar.html

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Volunteerism

Posted on April 4, 2013 by kayla

Volunteering and Collaboration
Volunteering is what ordinary people do to solve everyday problems in their communities. Volunteering can be the most effective and sustainable approach to solving chronic community problem that defy the best efforts of government agencies or the private sector. When you decide to volunteer you are self-selecting into a situation that you recognize as being of interest and worth the time and effort you plan to contribute. In this way volunteering is collaborating with others.  There are many wonderful non-profit organizations in New York City that do a wonderful work with volunteers and make the volunteering experience meaningful and memorable.  This happens when the skills that a volunteer brings to the situation are recognized and valued in a new way. There are also many public and community institutions like public schools that could benefit from making use of volunteers but often face significant barriers to engaging volunteers.
It’s useful then, to spend a few moments covering the elements of a good volunteering situation.

  • The organization has a volunteer coordinator – this is always a good sign that the organization is prepared to schedule the participation of volunteers and find the right opportunity for the volunteers.
  • The organization has some clear needs – most organizations that actively recruit volunteers can express a clear community need that is being addressed by this organization. When you volunteer at a community-based organization you are making a commitment because you believe in the mission of the organization and you are willing to support that mission with your time and effort.
  • The organization provides an opportunity for skill development – Volunteering has boomed in recent years for many reasons: 1) it is a demonstration of civic mindedness 2) the volunteer becomes immersed in the mission of the organization, 3) the volunteer is engaged in an activity that requires a specific skill set, 4) volunteers who show up regularly to an institution demonstrate self-motivation, these are all of the same characteristics that employers look for.
  • An inviting atmosphere – When you walk into the institution that you plan to volunteer at note your initial impression of the place. Are people smiling at you and welcoming you? Are the people who are being served by the institution being related to in positive ways.  When you walked out of the place do you feel positive about the things you saw, heard and felt. It’s your time and effort (your life) that you are spending in the place, were you made to feel that your participation would be valued? This is really the heart of a good collaboration and a good volunteering experience.
  • You have a clear reason for being at that particular institution – Volunteering at non-profit sites is very different than volunteering or doing unpaid internships at for profit organizations. You should be clear about what your expectations are and what the institution’s expectations are.

Remember when you volunteer or collaborative, the goal is to learn how to give and in giving we learn something about ourselves and the world.

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My workshop, Collaboration 3.0, took place on Saturday, June 9 at the East Side Institute‘s offices at 99 Madison Avenue New York City. There were 15 attendees the youngest being 16 years old and the oldest being senior citizens. Participants came from international locations such as Canada and from other states such as New Jersey and Massachusetts. The attendees were diverse in every sense of the word. There were former Wall Street executives, educators, students, theater folk, and long-time community organizers. The goal of the workshop was to support and organize participants to use their personal Internet and communications technologies in collaborative ways. The organizing task of the group was to playfully create an environment where a social media campaign promoting the Performing The World Conference could be developed.

 

In order to prepare to take on the task part of the workshop involved playing a few improvisational performance games to help develop the group and create environment where giving and receiving help around technological issues was re-created in the following way: The group was asked to set aside, for the purpose of our activity, their prior relationships and feelings about giving and receiving help, and try out getting or giving help without using a deficit view of the person being helped. In other words, I asked everyone to view helping as supporting the capacity of others to do more than they could do on their own. The 2nd notion that I asked the group to challenge was that of digital natives versus digital immigrants, the highly publicized generational gap between young people born in an Internet culture and those of us born prior to the 1990s. I argued that such distinctions were not useful in developing a group. These distinctions discourage supporting individuals that are labeled “immigrants”  from having ownership of the fact that human beings use all sorts of technologies to create culture and that prior cultures and technologies can, in fact, be found in the ones that we use today. The digital natives and digital immigrants dichotomy denies our history as tool makers and creators of culture.  Finally, I presented some of the characteristics that social media campaigns had in common with viral videos and located those characteristics within the social therapeutic performatory framework. In short, things that go viral tend to be creative, playful, unexpected and easily shareable performances. With those ideas in hand participants went about the business of friending each other, tweeting about the workshop, creating new accounts and discovering new social media apps for their smart phones, tablets and laptops.

 

After about an hour of work in collaborative groups, where everyone was helping and talking to everyone else, three groups presented their ideas on ways that individuals could support a social media campaign for the PTW conference in New York City.  Interestingly enough, the young people felt that a face-to-face word-of-mouth campaign was as important as an Internet-based social media campaign, something that I think the seasoned community organizers in the room appreciated. Other ideas included regular tweeting in recruiting in personal networks, organizing the digital media from past conferences and making that available on the social networks, and scheduling informational conference calls that you could recommend to your personal networks for more information.

 

We ended the afternoon with some time for group reflection and participants spoke about how the performance games and made them feel uncomfortable and somehow despite the discomfort they were able to enjoy and get out a lot out of the group activity. Other participants echoed the sentiments and added that the anxiety and humiliation related to needing help with technology was something that they still experienced, and yet it was noted that those emotions did not stop individuals from participating. There was also some discussion on how common understandings of help i.e. as a deficit needing to be addressed, constrained both those needing help and potential helpers in different contexts such as work and school. We ended on a positive note recognizing that the activity of creating learning environments and organizing others to participate in them with us is helpful in creating new possibilities in the environments that we work, learn, and play in.

 

Posted on June 15, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment

I like TED talks for the same reason that I liked Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, Carl Sagan, National Geographic and Popular Science. TV and magazines provided easy access to scientific information, descriptions, sounds and images from nature and around the world packaged into something that was accessible to ordinary folks. These very engaging programs and magazines provided ordinary adults and children with learning experiences that were immediate, self-selected and real.

I don’t mind that TED talks are 20 minute long lectures. I think that comparing a TED talk to a college lecture or a formal seminar is a categorical error. I don’t think that the short time span speaks poorly of our ability to pay attention and I don’t think that it takes away from appreciating the effort that it takes to learn how to do science or engineering or any of the other disciplines that are covered in TED talks.   A TED Talk usually leaves you wanting more, and that’s a good thing if you are interested in spreading new ideas.

In my view, what TED talks do is provide the general public with an opportunity to engage, in an entertaining way, with topics that they might not have otherwise been aware of had it not been for the ease of access that the Internet and a shareable hyperlink provide. While critics may argue that not all TED talks are of equal scientific rigor, what is important to recognize is that people are inspired by TED Talks to the extent that they aspire to give one themselves.

Think about what it takes to give a really good TED Talk. At minimum you have to be well rehearsed, engaging, and you need to have a pretty good handle on the subject matter. Finally, you need to understand how your topic may be interesting to a live TED audience and an Internet audience. While TED Talks may be brief, most TED speakers have spent their adult lives achieving mastery in their subject areas and more than a few of hours preparing to give the actual talk. If the talk inspires ordinary folks to commit to a field of study where they can engage in inquiry, critical thought and innovation so that they can give their own TED Talk…well that would worthy of a TED talk itself.

A TED talk is nothing less than the creation of a learning environment that happens in a particular time and place and is available at any time independently of a place, to millions if not billions of audience participants. The 20 minutes worth of content is reusable, shareable, mashable and inviting of creative imitation. An alternative activity to lamenting short attention spans and the threat to traditional ways of sharing knowledge, might include turning our attention to educational policies that hamper innovation in educational institutions, a hot topic on the TED talk circuit.

 

Posted on June 13, 2012 by admin | Leave a comment