Death by PowerPoint

16. July 2007 · 4 comments · Categories: Communication, Leadership, Productivity

Guy Kawasaki has a great year-old post I just stumbled onto [Ten Things to Learn this School Year]. Among my favorite morsels of advice:

How to survive a meeting that’s poorly run. Unfortunately, it could be a while before you run meetings. Until then, you’ll be a hapless victim of them, so adopt these three practices to survive. First, assume that most of what you’ll hear is pure, petty, ass-covering bull shiitake, and it’s part of the game. This will prevent you from going crazy. Second, focus on what you want to accomplish in the meeting and ignore everything else. Once you get what you want, take yourself “out of your body,” sit back, and enjoy the show. Third, vow to yourself that someday you’ll start a company, and your meetings won’t work like this.
How to use PowerPoint. I’ve seen the PowerPoint slides of professors—it’s no wonder that most people can’t use PowerPoint to sell hybrid cars when gas is $10/gallon. Maybe professors are thinking: “This is a one-hour class, I can cover one slide per minute, so I need sixty slides. Oh, and I’ve written all this text already in my textbook, so I’ll just copy and paste my twelve-point manuscript into the presentation.” Perhaps the tenure system causes this kind of problem. In the real world, this is no tenure so you need to limit yourself to ten slides, twenty minutes, and a thirty-point font—assuming that you want to get what you want.

Both things I fully intend to keep in mind as I start my new job in a week.

[via 43 Folders]

Friday Fun: A visual history of Apple

13. July 2007 · Write a comment · Categories: Hardware, Off Topic, Technology

OK, so I’m an Apple fanatic. Not a fan boy, mind you, but I do have an affinity for technology that works well and is designed well. I stumbled on this really incredible visual history of Apple products in a couple of different places online and wanted to share it here for my fellow Apple geeks.

Apple Evolution

Click the image to see it in its full-sized glory. Enjoy!

[Source: Apple Evolution at the Portfolio of Edwin Tofslie]

To blog or not to blog

13. July 2007 · 1 comment · Categories: blogging

Rodin’s “The Thinker”I’ve been tagged by Mike over at EdLeaderWeb who started his own “to blog or not to blog” meme as part of a presentation he’s doing on blogging for some folks in his district. Mike and I used to work in the same district back in South Florida and, like me, he left the Sunshine State in search of affordable housing…

Mike’s a good guy, a great administrator, and his blog is off to a great start!

Anyway – Mike asks some good questions about blogging so I thought I’d join the fray.

  1. Explain the benefits you receive from blogging. For me, blogging has been a great way to get ideas out of my head and bounce them back and forth with colleagues I otherwise never would have met. I’ve struck up some great friendships with teachers, administrators, and non-educators as well. I would venture to say that my views on many issues have changed drastically from when I started my blog back in January.
  2. Name two or three of your favorite education blogs. This is hard because there are so many great ones. Honestly, it’s tough to keep up with them in my reader. But if I had time for only a few, I’d have to say:
    • dy/dan – Dan Meyer is a math teacher in California. We’ve actually exchanged email on quite a few occasions. I’ve said this before, but he’s the math teacher I wish I’d been.
    • LeaderTalk – Naturally. I’m a contributer over there, but I feel very humble to be in the company of such great educators.
    • Dangerously Irrelevent – For me, this is the first blog on education, technology, and leadership that I really read regularly. Scott McLeod was also good enough to spend about an hour on the phone with me in January as I was in the process of deciding on a path for my doctorate.
  3. What tip or tips would you give someone new to blogging? Honestly? Don’t take yourself too seriously. You’re putting yourself out there so don’t be too upset if someone disagrees with you. It’s also important to keep in mind that you’re a professional and you should avoid putting something in your blog that you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying to the superintendent. That’s not to say you can’t ever disagree, but keep it professional. I’ll also add that for a long time I felt the only “worthy” blog posts were lengthy theses. But keeping it short can sometimes be a good thing, too. And don’t be afraid to blog about whatever floats your boat. It’s your

Good luck, Mike! And to anyone reading at Mike’s training session, I hope you’ll consider starting a blog even if you keep it private. It’s a great way to keep a journal of your professional growth and development.

First day jitters

12. July 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: Communication, Education, Leadership

king penguins and another[Cross-posted on LeaderTalk.]

If I had to choose a theme for this summer, it would be “Moving Up and Moving On.” It seems that many of us, myself included, are either moving up the ladder or moving on to new opportunities. My May post on LT focused on getting yourself settled into your new digs, but I wanted to take some time to focus on meeting your new colleagues and staff for the first time. After all, the old adage is that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

  • Remember that you’ve already got the job. The first time you meet your new staff is not the time to regale them with your resume, how you did it at your old job, or all those war stories you’ve been squirreling away. Presumably, you were hired because you have something to offer. They get that. And the one’s that don’t aren’t going to be impressed by your stories anyway. There may even be someone on your staff who applied for the position that you were ultimately hired for, so it pays to be humble. When in doubt, it’s probably better to say less than more. As someone wiser than me once said, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
  • Focus on the other person or people. Be a good listener. Most likely, the staff is very anxious to meet you. Let them know that you’re there for them by focusing individual conversations on what they do. How do they contribute to the school or district? What do they teach? How long have they worked there? Those who have been there a while can be a great source of the history and traditions of the organization.
  • Master the name game. This is probably the most challenging one for me as I am awful at remembering names. The best advice I can give you is to use the name of your colleague as often as possible in your first conversation with them. At my last school, I snagged a copy of the previous year’s annual. If you’re really crafty, you can cut out the pictures of the faculty and staff — usually arranged alphabetically — and make yourself a “cheat sheet” by pasting the pictures back together by departments.
  • Match your speaking style to your audience. Sure, sure, you’ve got your fancy-dancy advanced degree and the shingle in your office to prove it. The trouble is, if you try to hard to demonstrate your intelligence by flaunting your sesquipedalian stylings, you’ll end up turning some people off.
  • Watch your language! Your body language, that is. Check out this post and this one from The Positivity Blog. How you stand or sit when you’re speaking to someone can often say more than the words coming out of your mouth.
  • Appearance counts. The same thing goes for your duds. If you’ve got a room full of jeans and t-shirts people, strutting in wearing your best three-piece suit is probably unnecessary. Standards for appropriate dress vary greatly in every school I’ve ever worked in, but that’s something you’ll have to get a feel for before the big day arrives and you have to stand before your new staff. Of course you have to find some middle ground here as coming across too polished can be intimidating as well.
  • Be careful with humor. If you’re not a funny person, don’t try too hard. Please. I don’t know who’s more uncomfortable – the new boss who tries to crack wise and fails miserably in front of a room full of faculty and staff, or the faculty and staff sitting there in silence trying to determine whether what you just said was supposed to be funny. Sarcasm, by the way, is almost never appropriate.

So, in closing, let me say, “Good luck!” to those of you who have started or are preparing to start new positions for the 2007-2008 school year. I’m sure there are many more pointers that I’m missing so please feel free to add them here in the comments. For me, these are some of the things I try to keep in mind so that my actions communicate to the staff that I am there for them.

And if anyone from my new school is reading, I can’t wait to meet you! It’s going to be a great year!

Image: “king penguins and another” by takuya miyamoto*

Summer DIY round-up

08. July 2007 · 4 comments · Categories: Productivity

Small Saw, Large ShelfAh, summer. Many of us are enjoying some much-needed time off to regroup before we head back to work. Many of us – myself included – are tackling some of the things we just don’t have time for during the school year. Whether it’s that home improvement project you’ve been putting off, spending time with the family, or just bumming around the backyard, I hope your summer is going well.

To that end, here are a few articles I’ve run across this summer that I wanted to pass on to you. Perhaps, if you’re feeling ambitious, you can tackle one or two of them.

  • $28 wall-sized whiteboard – As a teacher, I never had enough whiteboard space. Unfortunately, my administrators always had “other” budget priorities that took precedence. Man, do I wish I’d thought of making one of these babies. Even now, as a visual thinker, I’m thinking one of these would look nice in my new office. Maybe I’ll go 4×4 instead of a full sheet. And think of how finished it would look with some trim all the way around.
  • Get uncluttered – First of all, if you’re not reading 43folders, add it to your reader today. With some inspiration from Unclutterer, Merlin Mann wages his personal “war on clutter.” There are several other posts in the series, but this one seemed the most relevant to those of us packing up our offices to move elsewhere.
  • Use Gmail as an online harddrive – So you still haven’t registered for a Gmail account because you’ve already got enough email addresses to keep track of, right? Even if you don’t need another email account, don’t overlook the fact that Gmail currently provides its users with almost 3 gigabytes of free storage. This Lifehacker article discusses two solutions (one for Mac, one for Windows) that allow you to turn all that storage into an online hard disk. Think of the possibilities if you use a different computer at work and would like to access some files once you get home.

So what are you still reading for? Get to work!

Photo Credit: Small Saw, Large Shelf by Stephanie Booth

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