Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

Last weekend I was at the ECIS Administrators’ Conference, an annual event for Directors, Heads of School, Bursars and Administrators in international schools. The theme was, “Keeping Educational Excellence Through the Economic Crisis“, and there was a fair number of ICT focused sessions for these senior leaders to attend during the two and a half days. The first I attended was snappily entitled, “From Brochures Without Words to Monitoring Your School on Twitter.com“, which was mostly about how Twitter might be used as a communication channel with various stakeholders: parents, prospective parents and students, company employees etc. You can catch the presentation here (although the quality is not that great). Unfortunately, unless I missed it, the speakers failed to really explain what Twitter was, and quickly moved into jargon that left the audience rather lost and dumbfounded. The only question, one about how one might ‘control’ the school’s twitter account, illustrated the fact that the point had been missed. That it was not a matter of ‘controlling’ the image of a school online, but of monitoring what was being said on social networking sites about the school and ensuring you were part of the ‘conversation’. Unfortunately, by ’selling’ Twitter as a marketing and communication tool, the speakers gave an unintentional message that it was about positive spin-doctoring.

Much more lively were Jeff Utecht’s three sessions on the web. Jeff is at the International School of Bangkok, and sells himself well via a website, blog, ustream and podcast channels. Jeff is an excellent performer, and word soon got around and he increased his audience from the first to the last session. Two of the presentations, “Creating a School Profile” and “Preparing for the Future” are now available and worth the time to listen to.

Tags: ECIS, Jeff Utecht