ADB Partners, LLC

Learning is for Everyone (LIFE)™

Amanda Batson — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:38:41 +0000

Learning is for Everyone (LIFE)™ has been my personal and professional motto throughout my career. For more than 35 years, I have been preparing and facilitating professional development. Whether as public school administrator, association executive, or consultant, I have found that professionals who are engaged in learning as an integral part of their careers, create stronger employees and more dynamic teams; they also better serve clients, customers, students, members, taxpayers. Through quality continuing education, adults can be stretched intellectually and affirmed through networking. They can test uncharted territory to see if they want to take a new path.

With the explosion of online tools and resources, there are multiple opportunities for learning. To verify the quality of the online resource, I always recommend three questions: 1) who or what is the source? 2) what is their expertise or purpose in delivering the podcast or video or PDF? 3) does this presentation reflect best practice or is it simply a unique brain twister?

For content quality, look for a source who has education and experience in the topic or issue. Recognize if the purpose is promoting a product or solution; this may not diminish the quality of the content but consume with a cautious eye. Best practice can be reflected if the presentation contains attributes that you have observed in other research, authorities, or established entities, e.g., university or lab or association.

Learning is for everyone — especially from sources with quality content.

Powerful Partnership: Leaders and Learning

Amanda Batson — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:03:08 +0000

Lifelong learning is an inherent part of the successful leader. Leaders who actively learn personally and promote learning as part of the organizational culture transform not only themselves but their companies as well. The CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, recently spoke at the BlogHer Conference ’11. In a post about the keynote address, Leadership Principles That Guide Her, blogger Jessica Miller-Merrill summarized Nooyi’s five leadership principles: the Five C’s.

One “C” was competence. As Nooryi noted and Miller reported, lifelong learning allows the leader to stand out and stay ahead in one’s chosen field. In addition to remaining current, here are three other ways leaders can form the powerful partnership between leadership and learning:

1. Support internal training initiatives. Certainly approving the training budget is imperative but beyond that step, attend your company’s education programs and sessions. You may not be able to stay the entire time but your brief visit or even walk-through sends a powerful message: learning is important to you and therefore the organization. Can’t attend? Include training update on the next or every leadership team meeting agenda.

2. Encourage external professional development. Economic challenges may stretch your company’s travel and registration budget lines but are there ways to maintain active engagement with your field at large? Absolutely. Stretch the external conference option to every other year or select meetings closer to home. Include online courses and webinars in the budget. As part of the education registration approval process, ask the employee how s/he will use the training and require the staff member to report key findings to his/her team. [Caveat emptor: be sure training sources, especially digital, are solid, well-established content experts. There still are those hosted webinars with a large sponsor presenter presence. Unfortunately, the sessions turn into product promotion rather than training.]

3. Participate in relevant associations. Associations can be excellent sources for professional education. In particular, many non-profits established under section 501c3 of the IRS code — generally professional or individual member organizations — are devoted to education purposes. These groups have members from broad cross-sections of a field, industry or profession. Their education programs address best practices as well as hot topics. Establish in your organization’s policies or procedures options for employee participation (yes — including yourself) in such groups. Once again, leaders who support these opportunities clearly convey learning as a priority.

Leaders form a powerful partnership with learning by remaining competent and current; supporting internal training; encouraging external professional development; and participating in relevant associations. Learning must be a core value, especially in tough economic times, because it sustains individuals and organizations.

E-Texts, Maybe?

Amanda Batson — Mon, 30 May 2011 19:04:36 +0000

Recently Tablets, Yes; E-Texts, Maybe caught my attention. Why are e-textbooks in the maybe category?

The article highlighted a study by a major textbook publisher. By the title you can see the gist of the post: tablets are on the rise but students are not sure about digital textbooks. Students responding to the survey may be wondering about e-texts but textbook publishers pursue this hesitation at their peril.

Part of the confusion may arise with the definition of e-textbooks. Many folks think of the e-books sold on Amazon or titles for the Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble. In other words, traditional books — text dominant — converted to PDF or another virtual publishing format come to mind. If current students do not express a preference for digital textbooks, publishers may delay even further their preparations for the inevitable demand for e-texts. These limited views of e-text as just another e-book and not a high priority for learning, miss the mark on several fronts.

1. The digital book market is exploding; in fact, e-book sales increased almost 160% in the first quarter of 2011. In May 2011, Amazon reported that sales of e-books surpassed paper bound volumes. With the explosion of e-books as a preference as well as the increasing reader choices, student preferences for e-texts are not far behind. Textbook publishers must develop e-texts or alternate publishing sources will overtake these huge academic, professional development and training markets.

2. Learning itself is an interactive event. Whether the student is in self-reflection, discussing the question of the day with peers or responding to an instructor, learning is interactive. Textbooks should be interactive not just static pixels or images. Such interactive texts take learning to new levels. Design of these texts, however, will significantly differ from current authoring practices. Writers and publishers must prepare.

3. Whether it is today’s college students or forthcoming generations, they are digital natives and they thrive in their natural state. These young people were born into the Internet world which has expanded exponentially into a screen-filled, mobile, on demand environment. Marc Prensky in his 2001 paper about digital natives contrasts them with digital immigrants. The latter came of age in a pre-digital world. Whether digital native or digital immigrant, these individuals populate not only colleges and universities but the work place. In the work force, they require continuing education. They are current and future members of professional associations. They live digitally. They will seek interactive events and experiences throughout their lives. To meet these demands, publishers and others who provide educational materials must deliver high quality, interactive textbooks, resources and experiences.

Benefits of E-Texts

The beauty of digital textbooks is that they can take interactivity to new levels. A truly interactive textbook builds on the traditional knowledge and research extending the experience through hyperlinks, embedded video, and other rich-media technologies. Teacher editions include guides for communities of practice — perhaps even a CoP established by the publisher in cooperation with subject matter experts across the field.

There are myriad ways that digital can bring textbooks “alive.” To do so, textbook authors and publishers must embrace the vibrant interactive nature of the digital world. So tablets, yes; e-texts, maybe; interactive, definitely!

Meeting in a Minor Key

Amanda Batson — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:54:14 +0000

Social Network by Strategic Public Relations

Earlier this year I attended an international conference and, although there were some digital dynamics, the plan for participant interaction during sessions was quite old-fashioned. It was such a disconnect between ideas and actions. It felt dissonant or like meeting in a minor key.

There was a meeting hub and hashtags were announced which did encourage p2p posts. One session speaker even stated (repeatedly) language for tweets. Amazingly odd. Anyway, for this participant, the forced group interactions in each session became artificial and detracted from substantive f2f and digital interactions.

In today’s meeting space, it is imperative that event sponsors wrap each conference or at least major confabs in a digital surround. This becomes an event-focused social network. The network must be an integral part of the total event planning process. Some organizations try to establish the event network internally which can be daunting. Thus, an industry is emerging: event-focused social network providers.

One of my favorite providers of such services, The Social Collective, recently was acquired by Pathable. There is a non-profit, Meeting Support Institute, established to provide multiple services for event and meeting planners. MSI considers the arena of social networks. Cvent is a related supplier and there are others.

The niche market of event-focused social networks is the face of the future. I hope that even with mergers and acquisitions, the emerging industry remains true to its core. Here are three core values:

Transparency — a conference attendee should be swept into the event network, or have the option to enter, via the sponsor portal. All branding should remain focused on the host organization.

User-friendly — the event social network must be easy to use for the novice and rich for the experienced digital guru.

Anticipatory — tools that are available should enrich the total conference experience — before, during, after. Get the participants early, keep them engaged and sustain the dialogue. Such interaction generates anticipation of future events.

Meetings of the future will be both f2f and virtual. Regardless of the site where one participates — whether at the geographic location or meeting website — attendees will be engaged. Certainly for-profit corporations are operating in these ways. Non-profits also must create meetings in harmony with the digital age.

U.S. Education = Growing Concerns

Amanda Batson — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 22:13:21 +0000

The drumbeat for improvements to American education — especially PK-12 grows louder. From the halls of academia to op ed pages to business leaders, American citizens of all stripes and political persuasions are quite concerned about the state of education. These concerns range from quality as measured by test-driven curriculum and schedules to lack of workforce preparation to school funding. As a professional educator and curriculum architect, my concerns lie in the millions of missed opportunities for student learning and the loss of excellent educators.

A couple of articles that have caught my attention are a January 2011 piece by George F. Will and an article by Diane Ravitch in the March 28/April 4, 2011, edition of Newsweek. Will generally opines from a conservative perspective and his op-ed “Getting American Students to Find the Goal Posts of Success” certainly aligns with a such a stance. For example, even as he describes the dismal performance of American students when compared to their international counterparts, he supports the United States model of states rights as related to education. Will posits such a logical solution for the 50-states high-stakes tests vs national/international measures: maintain state flexibility but reward according to national goals. This sounds quite simple but it is far from it on numerous levels: type of exams, big business of high-stakes testing that has mushroomed since the early 1990′s, transitioning a massive system, etc. Nevertheless, if the United States embraced a widely-recognized, psychometrically sound measure, e.g., the National Assessment of Education Progress , as the one measure of student progress: one clear goal post would be established as both Will and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recommend.

In Obama’s War on Schools, Ravitch, usually on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Will, describes the downward spiral of American student performance due to high-stakes testing. When student performance on such tests becomes the one measure of teacher and school performance, the pressure explodes through the roof to “drill baby drill” — borrowing a phrase from a well-known politician. In this case, the drilling is repeated exercises in test-taking throughout every school year. This use of time is not only wasteful for many students but it greatly reduces resources for the heart of the matter: learning.

Unfortunately, leaders are not looking to experts in education, measurement, child growth and development, social factors and economics. These experts, teachers, administrators and parents are on the sidelines of problem-solving unless they espouse politically popular recommendations: labeling schools as failures based on a house of cards model.

America has thousands of successful public schools. We must showcase these success stories and find ways to replicate. Citizens and elected leaders also must understand that education is extremely complex. It involves multiple factors outside the control of the teacher and the school. Yet public education for every American citizen — regardless of gender, race, ability or socio-economic status — is the bedrock of our democracy.

America desperately needs an education blueprint for today and tomorrow. Such a blueprint is not a static document but one that is designed to educate internationally competitive young people who will be America’s future entrepreneurs, business executives, teachers and parents.

We need a strong non-profit organization or coalition of the willing to step forward. This group must not be beholden to either political party; it must be inclusive and committed to the long-haul of transformative thinking, problem-identification and finally problem-solving. Can your association take on this life-changing, life-sustaining mission? Call me, I am ready to help.

Great Ideas 2011

Amanda Batson — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:27:20 +0000

Earlier this week I attended the ASAE Great Ideas 2011 Conference. Once again I came away with pros & cons of the mainly f2f conference experience. In this case, there definitely were more positive than negative results.

Pros:

1. Fabulous setting with convenient access. The Conference was held at The Broadmoor quite near to the Colorado Springs, CO, Airport.. Certainly top-drawer service across The Broadmoor sprawling properties made the experience enjoyable. This five-star property at the base of Cheyenne Mountain in the foothills of the Rockies is spectacular. The smaller airport was a welcome destination. Vote: thumbs-up.

2. Conference content generally was substantive. Having planned several conferences and hundreds of professional development meetings, I know how challenging it is to hit all the content marks: best practices, cutting edge, political favors, wide ranges of audience experience and expertise, etc. On the whole, content at Great Ideas 2011 provided valuable insights, ideas and tips for work in and with associations.

3. Conference schedule offered multiple networking opportunities. One of the main reasons for attending f2f meetings is the networking, actually shaking the hands of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook colleagues. I was glad to visit the on-site bookstore and have the complimentary shipping service. Through the various types of sessions, breakfasts, breaks, luncheons, receptions, et al, the ASAE planning team receives very high marks for arranging a terrific conference schedule.

Cons? Not really but I do have a major suggestion:

Seamless event-centered wrap-around social media and interactive supports are needed. ASAE has chosen to manage these supports internally yet I wish for a more open, easily accessible, broader array of interactive tools. Maybe I just missed them but it seemed to me that the Great Ideas 2011 social media tools were late coming and limited not open. I want ASAE events to be truly digitally dynamic.

My best experience with wrap-around digital tools was SXSW 2010; even though I could not attend 2011, I am still in the digital loop — especially through Twitter. Those of you who have attended South-By know that from the moment of registration, you are engaged. SXSW reaches out: e-mail, surface delivery, votes on presenters, opt-in features within the SXSW website, opt-out features, scheduling your sessions, interacting with others who are attending the same sessions, scheduling meetings with colleagues, etc, etc. Since associations are all about associating, I highly recommend that ASAE build, expand and maximize event-centered, wrap-around, digital tools.

One of the apparent goals at Great Ideas 2011 was increased attendee participation in sessions. Standing by a flip-chart or around a table chatting briefly with other session participants are not my ideas of 21st century group participation. Keep the small group interactions, if you like, but launch them before conference, continue them during the event and sustain post meeting via virtual engagement. Full-throttle use of digital tools — before, during, after — combined with the traditionally rich content and superb schedule in an amazing setting will make Great Ideas really great.

Learning for a Healthy Life

Amanda Batson — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:50:28 +0000

As you know, dear reader, I am passionate about learning; not just formal settings like public and higher education — although I am an ardent advocate of these learning opportunities but also those moments everyday that call us to improve individually and collectively. To maximize our life journeys, learning must be an integral part.

One of my current favorite sources of learning about life is a magazine in both paper and electronic forms. It is Experience L!fe. This magazine speaks to physical, mental and emotional health in reasonable, practical ways.

The current issue (see cover pic at left) includes an inspiring story about the founder of Life is good; three fairly simple changes in eating habits that can improve your health; strategies for accomplishing your dreams — big and small; and much more. Since the magazine is published by the Life Time Fitness company, you might think it would constantly push memberships. Not so. This publication constantly pushes healthy life. The editor-in-chief recently launched a campaign, which is the magazine’s new tag line, “being healthy is a revolutionary act.”

My world and work are devoted to lifelong learning. I am actively involved with non-profit organizations also devoted to professional and personal development. For me, learning is part and parcel of being healthy.

I hope you are part of the the healthy revolution. If not, join to day. Just like learning is for everyone — so is a healthy life.

170 Million Learn

Amanda Batson — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 23:28:25 +0000

I have thought about the many facets of public television and radio even more than usual with the Congressional drive to cut its funding. Such a curious priority when the actual funds are minimal in the deficit scheme and the impact is positively gigantic in the learning scheme.

With the active support of thousands of citizens, public broadcasting provides education, information, intelligent, thoughtful programming via television and radio. I am extremely proud that the United States government, in other the words, we the people support these services. Whether or not an Austin, Texas, family can afford cable or satellite or internet, they can enjoy classical music from KMFA , a wide range of television programs from KLRU and, of course, news, live music, information and more from KUT.

Public broadcasting is one of the more effective, efficient services provided by the government in partnership with local communities. We must keep funding for these extraordinary experiences. Have you called your Senators and Representative to express your support for public broadcasting? Call today. Ask your elected leaders to keep funding for public broadcasting. America must affirm learning for everyone and these media outlets do just that:

Transform Education: Conversation to Action

Amanda Batson — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:28:45 +0000

There has been a flurry of conversation about education in the United States.

MSNBC News launched Education Nation, an interactive conference with continuing media reports, has focused on various facets: teachers, community colleges, school lunches and health, paying for education. As mentioned in my post by the same title Education Nation, NBC News is committed to this coverage for the long haul. Is our nation committed beyond rhetoric?

Waiting for “Superman” is now showing in selected theatres. According to reviews, the Davis Guggenheim film hinges on tough choices especially related to charter schools. There are tough choices every day in public, charter, private schools across America.

Writers have opined regarding education. Gail Collins wrote “Waiting for Somebody” . Many ideas were spot on. I applaud her comments regarding charter school announcements of student selection. A live lottery with more six-year olds present who are losers rather than winners is not best practice. Many aspects of life, however, are like a charter school lottery – who chooses their parents or the country of their birth? Nevertheless Collins’ suggestion to communicate selections in other ways is well-founded. Of course, these matters encompass much more than school enrollment.

As the saying goes, “talk is cheap” and certainly talk doesn’t automatically translate into action. There are thousands of studies and analyses of education practices, successes and failures. Organizations and groups advocate their particular sets of solutions.

To convert education conversation into action, we need an Education Blueprint based on solid education architecture We need a national facilitator tapping into the myriad of best practices and successful solutions. The Blueprint must be dynamic, sustainable and flexible. To meet the needs of individuals, communities of all sizes, states and nations, these qualities are non-negotiable. We need a major non-governmental entity to step to the plate.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? MacArthur Foundation? A university?

Our nation and world need a visionary organization to transform the conversation into action. We must create a cohesive set of designs that can be built wherever and whenever quality learning is required.

Who will take the lead?

Education Nation

Amanda Batson — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:19:14 +0000

It is extremely impressive when a major broadcast network commits time, talent, resources to education. NBC News, a division of NBC Universal, has made such a commitment. I am a professional educator with more than 30 years in the field. In my experience, superintendents are the most prominent educators in a community. Principals have the most difficult jobs. Teachers, however, hold the most important positions in any education setting. Teachers took center stage in NBC News recent initiative: Education Nation.

Having watched a segment, Teacher Town Hall, on 26 September 2010, I came away with these thoughts:

Teachers are speakers. The ability to communicate is an inherent requirement for teaching. Whether written or verbal, teachers spoke on air, via e-mail and texting. Several were clear and compelling. Such should be the quality of classroom communications. Other teachers were not quite so confident but they were on a world stage. A new place for teachers.
Passionate advocates. Several speakers addressed their passion for teaching, commitment to students, belief in student ability regardless of socio-economic status and accountability of the profession. Passion is powerful but it is not enough for excellence in the classroom.
“It takes a village.” Borrowing from the African proverb, Secretary Hillary Clinton’s earlier book title and others, education success requires a “village” — active engagement of home, school, community. For some children, school and community will take more prominent roles. By joining together, citizens, educators and family can wrap the fabric of learning around every child.

NBC News has committed to Education Nation as a sustained area of coverage. Reporting from various perspectives — global education, federal and state level governments, school boards, education associations, superintendents, school business officers, administrators, teachers, counselors, parents, higher education, employers and certainly students – will paint a more complete picture of a very complex experience.

Such ongoing investigations will shape the conversation, help find problems and ideally identify solutions. After all “learning is for everyone (LIFE)”