Yesterday I enjoyed presenting my edSocialMedia preso, Social Media: What you NEED to know & what you NEED to do, to the folks at the Western Boarding Schools Association. It began with a wide view of the benefits of social media and then focused on examples of how boarding schools are using social media to improve communications with constituents.

If you want to checkout my preso, I uploaded it to slideshare and embedded it below. Feel free to drop me an email with any questions.

Many thanks to the WBSA. I had a great time working with the association.

Big news!! I posted my first episode of the edSocialMedia Podcast yesterday (An Inside Look at EdTechTalk’s 21st Century Learning Series).

This series differs from AQ’s Boarding School Podcast in that it focuses on social media and education- from marketing to academic integration. It’s intended for you; school professionals. I hope you’ll make it part of your podcast rotation.

My first show features a conversation with the hosts of EdTechTalk’s 21’st Century Learning- Alex Ragone, Collegiate School; Arvind Grover, The Hewitt School; and Vinnie Vrotny, North Shore Country Day School.

Alex, Arvind and Vinnie took me through the evolution of the show and talked about their growth as podcasters. It’s definitely worth a listen if you’re thinking about starting your own series- they shared a number of great stories & tips.

Have you visited edSocialMedia? If you haven’t, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read through this fast growing online ‘blogazine’ that focuses on the role of social media in independent schools.

AdmissionsQuest’s involvement with ‘edSocMe’ has grown over the past week from a regular old consumer of their work to a full fledged contributor (my first post, “YouTube, Vimeo or Both?” went live last night) and site co-sponsor along with the folks at Proof Group.

It’s one of the few web properties that dedicates its page real estate to all thing social media & prep schools and I’m thrilled to associate AQ with the site. The current list of contributors include Steve Ritchie, Ernest Koe, Antonio Viva and Alex Ragone.

Give it a look if you’re thinking about social media & education. You’ll be glad you did.

I’m a fan of Twitter. I get it. I use it. It’s a tremendous way to remain connected. But when I talk about Twitter with schools during my social media workshop, more often than not, my question, “Are you on Twitter?” receives a chorus of blank stares.

Expecting this, I launch into a conversation that explores the ways that this free service can strengthen a school’s connection with its constituents- from admission to development. By the end, the wheels are churning and folks are racing to sign up.

I’m always on the lookout for resources that can help make ‘explaining’ the basics of the service easier and this week David Pogue of the New York Times offers this witty, yet straight forward explanation of the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of Twitter.

If by the end you decide you want to try it out, jump over to Twitter’s sign up form to get going. Oh, and, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, I’d love to for us to start a conversation.

To celebrate the launch of our new Canadian boarding school directory, I hosted a webinar to introduce AdmissionsQuest to our Canadian admission/communications colleagues.

We talked about how AQ engages in social media- from blogging to podcasting- and why it has allowed us to better connect with our constituents. The webinar also explored how AQ’s tools for schools and parents share the theme of greater sharing & connections.

In case you missed it, I recorded the walkthrough and posted it to our Vimeo boarding school channel. You can view it below as well. It’s about 35 minutes and you’ll hear a few short delays in audio while I took questions.

Let me know if you’d like to learn more about our approach or if you’re interested in bringing AQ to campus to talk about social media in more detail. We recently ran our Social Media 101 workshop at Asheville School & Westover School and (not toot our own horn!) received great feedback & reviews. I’d love to do the same for you.

The idea of receiving a random, out of nowhere alumni/development solicitation request sends chills up my spine. Perhaps it’s due to a family member’s experience with an institution that sent an out of the blue letter asking for a five figure gift. Let me give you a bit of background…

The organization conducted no advance work, nada, nothing. Not even a courtesy phone call to cultivate the relationship. Compounding this was that the institution had fallen out of touch for a number of years prior to the arrival of the letter.

My relative said, “couldn’t they have taken a bit of time to drive an hour and take me to lunch in order to bring me up-to-speed and share their vision?” Sounds reasonable, but it wasn’t done and they lost a constituent largely in part to poor communications skills.

Look, falling out of touch happens easily- I’m the first to admit that I’ve lost contact with friends through the years. In the past we chalked it up to the classic tale of too much to do, too little time. Thankfully social media provides all of us with simple, efficient ways to remain connected.

Social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc offer easily used tools to keep folks bound on near daily basis. More importantly they allow you to build meaningful relationships- that in many instances extend well beyond the context of your school. Connected, interested, knowledgeable constituents trump any out of the blue donation request. You can solicit out of blue; but when you do, you’ll likely find that people are more willing to contribute because they feel emotionally connected.

Brad J Ward of SquaredPeg, Bulter University & BlueFuego captured this notion particularly well in his post, Friendraise before you Fundraise,  that explored how social media facilitates a two-way relationship between a school and its alums:

… I’m excited about all of these tools on the web that help facilitate friendships. Nearly every time someone on Facebook or Twitter asks for donations towards a cause, whether it’s a Polar Bear Plunge, March of Dimes, etc. I’ll usually give $5 or $10.  Why? Because I have a relationship with that person and I’d like to help them out. The amount might be small, but the friendship facilitated it.

And what would happen if my Alma Mater asked for a small donation on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn after we’d been ‘friends’ and adding value to each other for a few months?  I’d donate.

I’m right there with him.

Photo credit: TheAlienessGiselaGiardino²³

Yesterday I wrote a piece wondering- out loud- about exploring and considering every option before cutting/laying off faculty. Since then I heard a National Public Radio (NPR) about Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI). Known as the hippy MBA, Gifford Pinchot, Bainbridge’s founder and president describes this school’s M.O. this way- “devoted to bringing sustainability and social justice into the business curriculum.”(NPR)

Practicing what they preach, BGI set about making $1 million of budget cuts in a fully transparent matter.  

As Pinchot told NPR: “Everybody knew what we were up against…and by getting everybody to work together on the three most desirable choices, which were cut out-of-pocket expenses, cut programs or increase revenue — that’s a great place to harness everybody’s energy.” (NPR)

Faculty involved, each department reviewed its own budget with faculty struggling to put aside personal fears and look at the larger picture. The faculty review found half a million dollars in cuts- not enough to cover the shortfall. Across the board pay cuts still didn’t create the needed savings.  Elimination of positions and layoffs came.

“Sally Metcalf, who had worked at the school less than a year, says she knew her job on the accreditation team was on the line:  ‘It was a very uncomfortable thing to do. Because I felt as if I’m coming into this room and cutting myself out of a job.’” (NPR)

So much good in such a painful story- people fighting and working to sacrifice and make difficult decisions- with imperfect resolution.

“When the group reconvened, they had collectively found more than a half-million dollars in cuts.

They had saved some jobs. But the budget was still short. Next up was pay cuts: 10 percent for managers, and 20 percent for top officers. That was the last step before layoffs.

All afternoon, the school ombudsman met with employees about staffing needs. Finally, the task force settled on eight people to lay off — a quarter of the staff. ” (NPR)

So why write about in this space. These levels of honesty, transparency, and sacrifice  stand as examples for schools as they confront income shortfalls. The solutions- tough as they might be- lay in full involvement of all school constituencies sacrificing together openly and honestly.

It’s crazy to think that boarding schools might come out of these kinds of situations as more creative, flexible, and stronger institutions with keener senses of who they are and what they do.

Wondering how the three go together? Last week I guided the administrative team at Asheville School through AQ’s Social Media Workshop. The day’s designed to introduce school’s to the world of social media and the many benefits in participating in the conversation.

My good friend Antonio Viva, Associate Head of School at Worcester Academy, was kind enough to carve out time for a Skype video conference with the Asheville team to talk about integrating social media into the classroom- specifically the WA Mash.

Interested in hearing what he had to say? Checkout the recording below. Antonio was kind enough to record and post the session to his Vimeo account:

A Conversation About Social Media in Education from Antonio Viva on Vimeo.

Editor’s Note: Brian Fisher, one of the lead bloggers for AQ’s Boarding School Blog, contributed this post. Moving forward I will regularly feature guest contributors under the ‘Peter Baron’ banner.

Stories of boarding school budget cuts and layoffs have been moving through the tight knit school grapevine and in some cases published in the paper “Emma Willard trimming $1.5M from budget by 2011“ give us great pause. We know these people and these are our schools.

With shrinking endowments, reduced endowment income, potentially smaller pools of full pay applicants, and increasing financial aid need, no piece of a boarding school budget lives free from cost cutting pressures. Here in our office we’re just like everyone else. How can we be more economical and what can we do to decrease our costs- all while maintaining and improving our services?

If the anecdotes and published stories that we’re hearing are accurate- and we believe they are- boarding school heads and trustees seem to have turned quickly toward cutting faculty as quick way to reduce costs. It’s easy to see why. Faculty salaries and positions are tangible and their cost savings quickly accountable.

Around the office- prompted by some reading- we found ourselves debating out loud whether, or not, layoffs are indeed the best way for schools to reduce costs. We began with the notion that boarding school is a living, breathing organism/community that, while required to live within its means, must also remain as healthy as possible for its current and future students.

Can schools look at ways other than layoffs to reduce costs- cost reduction methods that might keep the school fabric/community more healthy in the long-run?

Wage cuts?
Voluntary wage cuts?
Pension contribution cuts?
Travel reductions?
Publication reductions?
Supply cuts?
Energy conservation?
Hiring freeze?

Across the board wage reductions and company wide spending cuts affect more people, but, keeping employees- even at reduced rate- might be a strategy better suited to a boarding school community that a layoffs. Group sacrifice and effort can build mission loyalty. Most importantly, in a boarding school, a good, well seasoned, faculty who understand and want to live among teenagers, is a school’s single greatest asset.

As Craig Reider, Director of Human Resources at Global Tungsten & Powders (Towanda, Pa.) told the New York Times: “We have a very skilled and competent work force and the last thing we want to do is lose them when we’re assuming this economy is going to come back.”

OK, I’ll admit it, I’m a tech gadget guy so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that I’m fired up about my new Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ28K. It’s a huge step up from my old point-and-shoot, but in terms of cost it wasn’t nearly expensive as a full blown SLR.

For my purposes (and I imagine for many schools), the ability to zoom 18x- using a Leica lens mind you- and its 10.1 megapixels makes taking a lame, fuzzy photo almost impossible. Perhaps someday I’ll go the route of Nikon D90 since I love how it shoots up to 5 minutes of HD video, but for now the Lumix provides a nice balance of cost, size and picture quality.

Besides, I have a feeling the MinoHD Flip video camera is in my future. Antonio Viva brought his to TABS and I was stunned by it’s size. I kid you not when I say this thing is as tall as a credit card. It’s tiny. Throws any concern of carrying multiple devices right out the window.

Here’s my first round of photos taken with my shiny new Lumix from last week’s The Association of Boarding Schools conference:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.