What It Should Have Looked Like

  2013/05/18 - 23:00 | , ,
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Admin Research Poster

Last night, I had to attend the Stony Brook Graduate Research Fair and present about the topic of my final paper for my administrative SBL/SDL certificate.  So, I did that.

We were asked to create both a presentation board, and a slideware presentation.  Another teacher from my cohort volunteered to take the presentations and put them all on the same flash drive, and bring them to the evening along with all of the requisite IT to display them.  Which I was more than happy to take advantage of.

Long time readers will know that I don’t take presentations lightly.  While mine was relatively straight-forward, I did spend enough time with it to construct a typically cohesive design.  And then I sent it over to my colleague.

Powerpoint is a stupid program.  If you link multiple presentations together in to one master file, the underlying master of the first presentation will alter all of the rest of them.  And this, of course, is what happened.  Text out of alignment, general spacing issues, superflous transitions; what was shown last night suffered from all of the above and probably more.  Frankly, I couldn’t even look at the thing, once it became clear how mangled it had been.  And lest it seem that I am blaming someone else, let me be clear in acknowledging that the issue was entirely my own creation.  Rather than sending over a native powerpoint file, I should have exported all of the slides as high-resolution images, and sent that over instead.  Really, I should know better.

Luckily, it seemed that I was the only person there who cared.  Which is good for me, and bad for the legions of budding administrators who will be produced by degree programs that never ask them to consider how they are presenting information to other people.

To make up for it, or at least to make me feel better, I have embedded the original presentation above.  Below the presentation, I have posted a pdf of the poster board that I created for anyone who might be interested in such things (you’ll need to magnify to read the text, as the page is 30” by 40”).

On The Sad Interface Between Politicians and Technology

  2013/05/15 - 11:34 | , ,
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This video of Newt Gingrich trying to be philosophical about smart phones is going around currently.  I think Newt is attempting to draw a parallel between modern technological advances and those in the past, but the way in which he does it, combined with the fact that he is decidedly late to the “how cool are smart phones?!?” party makes the resulting video play a lot more like Rip Van Winkle waking up.

Crowdfunding PD: Observations from Weekend 1

  2013/05/05 - 20:02 | , ,
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As you can see below, I decided to try to fund a summer PD program through a crowdfunding mechanism.  The project has been live for ~48 hours now, and at current, it has raised a bit south of 20% of the total that I hope to raise from slightly north of 10 amazing donors.  Not too shabby for a weekend.  The project continues until the end of June, so hopefully I’ll get a whole lot closer to my goal before all is said and done.

Crowdfunding is a strange enterprise and it is a strange time in the history of internet-enabled patronage to be trying to crowdfund.  Originally, crowdfunding was pretty much limited to things and works of art, but it has recently expanded to include things like science research, and people.  Mine was the first professional development crowdfunding initiative that I was aware of when I thought of it, but I’ve since seen that I am not the first teacher to have this idea.  It’s a singular experience, and one that I think I have gotten better at even over the course of this weekend.  So, here are a few observations for the sake of posterity, and in case anyone who has a similar mind ever finds this article when looking for assistance.

  1. Have a good message.  If you aren’t making a tangible product, you’re going to need a good narrative as to why people should spend their money on you.  For me, it’s a long history of creating materials for my students that are made available to the entire world.  You’re going to need something similarly important that prospective funders can feel good about.
  2. Sell, sell, sell yourself.  If you are going to crowdfund, you’ll need to be unashamed in tapping your social network and broadcasting your initiative.  I’m tweeting like a bastard, sending facebook updates, google-plussing, emailing, and all the rest of it with a regularity that I would think would be obnoxious if I didn’t firmly believe that what I’m doing will help my students, school, and colleagues in countless ways.  Don’t be afraid to really push the envelope.  If it’s a good idea, you shouldn’t be ashamed about letting people know about it.
  3. Acknowledge all kindness.  Obviously, you are going to kneel down and thank all benefactors in an ostentatious and public manner (for me, it’s a lot of “thank you” tweets and facebookings).  But you should also be consciously following any  new followers on twitter, retweeting goodness, and generally demonstrating that you are deeply thankful of anyone who even gives you a second look, much less a few bucks.
  4. Stay on top of things.  As donations come in, and all the rest of it, make sure you are keeping accounts.  Are you getting your list of mailing addresses ready for any perks that require it?  Are you making sure that your money managing is staying up to snuff?  That’s your responsibility.  After all, people are trusting you with their money and good will.  You need to show them that you understand how important that kind of trust is.

So, there’s a few lessons.  I imagine this blog will go back to its normal pattern for the next week or so, and then we’ll check back in with the crowdfunding and see where we are.

 

Crowdfunding PD: So Crazy It Just Might Work…

  2013/05/03 - 21:49 | , ,
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I was invited to be a part of the second cohort of BSCS AP Biology Leadership Academy participants this summer!  So that’s cool.  What isn’t so cool is the fact that BSCS doesn’t seem to be able to provide any funding for any of the participants this year.  They encouraged us all to go out and ask for sponsors.

I don’t like doing that so much, so I figured I might try something a little different:  crowd-funding.  Why not see if I can convince a bunch of people to kick in a few bucks to send me to Colorado for the week-long program.  I figure the whole thing should take about $2500 in total to pay for all expenses.  If I can raise even half of that through crowd-funding, I should be good to go.

Here’s the link to the project page on IndieGoGo.  If you have a few bucks to spare, it’s not a bad place to do it.  Or if you just want to share the project with your friends, I won’t stop you.