WHY AM I WRITING THIS BLOG SERIES?
Available Resources. Great question! If you Google LinkedIn, you will find barrels of resources that provide tips and tricks for preparing your “profile” and how to do a job search. You can even go to LinkedIn and use their resources to learn how to do everything on the site, as you may already have tried. Having read most of this material to prepare myself for this blog series, I will tell you that those materials are excellent, especially the LinkedIn User Guides.
Why Moi? I have nothing vested in LinkedIn. They don’t know me. All of the Google sources are written by and for the business community, not professors. LinkedIn’s guide is probably prepared by an IT specialist.
Academic Spin. My purpose is not to replicate the available resources, because I couldn’t begin to do that, nor is there any need to reinvent the LinkedIn wheel. My intention is to address the needs of academicians and put an academic spin on certain critical aspects of the site. The profile headings have always been slanted toward business and industry. For example, one of my complaints has been “no place to list my publications” that are central to my credibility.
Guess what, academicians? Faculty crying and yelping paid off. LinkedIn just added sections on Publications, Patents, Certifications, Skills, Languages, and other areas you present in your CV. Do those headings address an academic gap in LinkedIn? You bet. How many of you knew that? Oh, you did. Sorry. I haven’t seen a pub listing by anyone in my network yet. I will be covering those sections in an upcoming blog.
Business Spin for Academicians. Further, I have dealt with the pain of starting a formal speaking business. Some of the wounds related to writing copy for business brochures and to developing and executing marketing strategies are healing, but they may be of value to you before they become infected.
We’re All Consultants. Since my first year at Johns Hopkins, I was told that one of the criteria to determine my value and worth as a professor is the number of requests I receive outside my institution to consult and speak. I was in business and didn’t even know it. Outsiders affirm your expertise; they build your credibility. The number and type of invitations to the White House and Capitol Hill to advise the President and testify before Congress really count when you come up for promotion.
Had I known then what I know now about running a business, my consulting life might have been more productive. If you’re a newbie, some of my tips may be helpful.
My next blog will begin with the Public Profile you display. How different is it from your CV and what you present on your institution’s Website? What professional information is critical for your colleagues, clients, and students to know about you? You have total control over what is presented and who sees it. We will work through the profile step-by-step with an occasional hop or 2.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
I’ve written buckets of blogs and articles on writing and publishing because everyone has to write. Interestingly, there are mistakes you make in writing that no one will ever detect when you speak those same words. For example, when you say: “I’ve finally reached my peek in dog training,” no one knows whether you meant peak, peek, or pique, or whether you know the difference among those forms. No one cares about your spelling or word usage when you speak the sentence. However, if you wrote your statement that way, your readers would know you haven’t reached your peak in word usage!
There are certain word pair and trio blunders that I see frequently in e-mails, blogs, social media posts, listserv responses, journal manuscripts, and student papers. I’m not sure whether the errors are due to spelling, word usage, carelessness, or the writer’s just a knucklehead. Whatever the reason, I thought this Top 10 might be helpful to consider when you proof anything you write. You probably know the meanings. The issue is being sensitive to their use when they pop up in your writing.
TOP 10 WORD USAGE MISTAKES
10. accept---except
9. advice---advise
8. affect---effect
7. alternately---alternatively
6. cite---site---sight
5. compliment---complement
4. dessert---desert
3. e.g.---i.e.
2. insure---ensure
AND THE NUMBER 1 BLUNDER:
1. it’s---its
Do any of these words ring a bell? Guess what? There are 10 more blunders being shipped right now by FedEx as you’re reading this. They will appear in the next blog.
I don’t know about you, but when I type quickly, I sometimes forget the apostrophe in contractions. When we whip out a message, mistakes will happen. As professionals or amateurs, these mistakes can only hurt our reputation and credibility. Be careful with these word combos. If you think of others, let me know.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
Avatar conveyed several messages, some of which have been interpreted as offensive. However, I received one positive key educational message:
All teachers on this planet should probably gather intel on their Net Geners and leverage that intel in their teaching strategies, maybe even teach them English. Teachers can be temporarily transported into the rich, diverse, techy world of their students.
Here are 3 steps to consider in this process:
1. Understand your students: You need to thoroughly understand them and their culture, behaviors, habits, and latest technologies, even iPad, should it take off. To ignore your students’ culture, mindset, and world is unwise. You should really get to know your students one-on-one and as a group. Collect “intel” on their interests, intelligence strengths, learning styles, and the way they think and behave.
2. Leverage their characteristics, behaviors, and habits: Use your “intel” of their characteristics to design and custom tailor your teaching strategies for them. Consider each characteristic and how one or more teaching techniques can draw on their specific interests, intelligences, and learning styles. You should be sensitive to their individual strengths and weaknesses and try to build on the former before helping them to compensate for the latter. Your strategies should involve a one-size-fits-one approach.
3. Teach new content with different strategies: The connections between you and your students and their characteristics and your teaching strategies create a foundation of trust and credibility. Now you can add new content and other strategies to your teaching. Experiment with the latest technologies. Your students are now on board and will eagerly assist you on that journey. Solicit their input. Involve them in decisions in your learner-centered environment.
With or without Avatar, these steps can improve your teaching of this bright-eyed-and–bushy-tailed group of frisky Net Geners you see almost every day. The extraordinary experience of Avatar just punctuated the importance of these thoughts.
For further intel on teaching strategies matched to Net Gener learner characteristics, checkout Articles 2008a and 2009a on my Web under Publications (see link in margin to right).
As always, let me know your thoughts, especially if you are an Avatar fan. Have a fantastic teaching experience this spring!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
