Saturday, September 8, 2007
Me-Publishing
We need to keep K12 online students and teachers in mind as well when we read stories like the following. At RETA, we are experimenting with technologies that allow teachers collaborative, co-creation opportunities and the ability to me-publish. Current tools for experimentation:
RETA Blog
RETA Wiki
Julz wiki - Let's Change the World
NM eTeacher Blog - you're here
NM eTeacher Wiki
The following story is from Elliot Masie's Learning Trends. To subscribe go to
http://www.masie.com/masie/default.cfm?page=techlearntrends
"Me-Publishing" Imperatives: Your employees want an opportunity to"me-publish" their profiles and perspectives at work! Let me share an interesting story from a young employee that I met on an airplane:
This young man had been recently hired by a Fortune 100 company to work in their procurement office. On his first day of work, he asked the HR person conducting orientation where he could publish his profile. This was a perplexing question to the facilitator who responded that his profile was already in their HR system. The new employee replied: "But,
where do I post my profile so that everyone else in the company can see what I am about?"
He kept his profile on Facebook and MySpaces up to date and used these social networking systems every day. So, he just assumed that a big corporation would have a similar system. He wanted to be able to see who had graduated from his college, who shared some of his same interests, even who already knew the massive system he was about to learn. His model
of learning and "belonging" involved a degree of "me-publishing" and social networking. He was amazed that people could work for a 50,000 person company and not be able to self-publish their profiles and experiences.
The HR orientation leader told him he should get used to the fact that big companies didn't foster that type of networking and it could be used to help recruit away some of their best talent. Actually, her response had the same effect. One week later, he resigned and went to a company that gave him the tools and permissions to keep a daily work blog and access to
an internally secure social networking system. By the way, he took a 15% reduction in salary in order to be in a better topography of knowledge sharing.
Don't do this just for your NextGen employees. The age of me-publishing and social networking is upon us and will be leveraged by every generation of our workforce. We can create models that protect the company's interests while deeply fostering the power of the network and the wisdom of crowds."
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5 comments:
Interesting article...I realize social networking is becoming a 'need' for many people. I can see that keeping up with blogs and the like can demand a lot of time out of a daily schedule. People need to be able to prioritize tasks and maintain what is important to them. The growth of social networks shows the need for educators to teach responsible online socializing. We need to start teaching students early safe online habits.
I liked the article also. It would have helped the 1st company from an industrial psychological point of view to have social networking and create a working community that would help create a healthier life psychologically. It would have boosted team moral and perhaps even work productivity. It would also help somebody in a big company and a school be more than just a number; but a real human being in a community.
This young man was lucky to find a forward thinking company that gave him the tools to keep a blog in a secure system. Bet the company was newer and smaller, or the CEO was influenced by someone who was also interested in social networking and its advantages to the company as a whole. Many articles now warn people to take care about what they post because employers often do routine checks of these social networks as part of their background checks when hiring new employees.
OK...I can understand what the article is getting at...AND, I've always considered my self somewhat of a foreward thinker...BUT, I JUST DON'T GET this mentality of wanting to splatter your guts all over the network and let everyone 'see' WHO you are... To me it's a very 'ME' centered mentality...me, me, me, me...look at me, look at what I've done, look at how wonderful I am... YUK!! (Of course, this is just my opinion...!) AND, WHO THE HECK has time to keep all this daily log stuff AND post it...?? AND, who in their right mind would take a cut in pay just to post about themselves???? OH, WELL...it is a new generation...?!!
I disagree that people do social networking to be all about "ME" as the previous poster mentioned. I think that my generation sees social networking as a way to connect and learn new things about our friends and acquaintances. As far as it interfering with productivity, there are a lot of things that you could argue interfere with productivity and many of those things that exsisted long before technology. I think that in our busy lives we don't find the time to get to know people as well as this gives us an opportunity to learn at our own pace. I know as a teacher I really don't get much time to visit and learn about my coworkers- it seems like we all have different preps, duties during all of our breaks, and at the end of the day we are all ready to go home! It might be fun to get to know them virtually to promote a little social interaction when we do get together. Maybe it might encourage us to work together if we have some common thread!
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