Resources

Guest on Luminaris Podcast

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 30, 2015 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

Click to access the podcast on the Luminaris site.

I was honored to be asked to be a guest on episode 07 of the Luminaris Podcast, hosted by Mark Hofer.

We spoke about the opportunities for “Connecting with others around teaching and learning,” through 50 podcast interviews on Teaching in Higher Ed.

The Luminaris Podcast host, Mark Hofer, is an Associate Professor of Education at William and Mary. We both listen to each others' podcasts, so it felt like we already knew each other as we had our dialog. Mark is a great interviewer, though I'm also looking forward to switching roles in the future. He's already agreed to be on an upcoming episode of Teaching in Higher Ed.

If you haven't been listening to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast for too long, I speak with Mark about some of my favorite episodes on his podcast. He includes links in his post for the episode, in case you want to go back and catch some of the older shows.

Mark is also active on Twitter and worth following.

New tools page added

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 2, 2015 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

I added a new page to the Teaching in Higher Ed site. My hope is that the tools page is constantly changing, as I have new productivity or educational technology tools that I add into the mix.

In the meantime, check out the newly-added tools page.

[reminder]What are some of the essential tools that you use in your teaching or personal productivity?[/reminder]

Turbo-charge your summer

By Bonni Stachowiak | May 26, 2015 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

It's official. I'm on summer break. I'm also healthy enough to be back to exercising and hanging out with the kids.

My mind is full of all the things I would like to do during the break to make the 2015-2016 academic year better than this past one. I had a good time teaching, but just felt like I was running to keep up the entire time. People say that's normal with two small children at home, but I yearn for a bit more preparation to occur before diving back in again.

In the meantime, I do want to recharge my batteries and capitalize on the opportunities to try and learn new things. Here are a few actions I've taken in the past to try to turbo-charge my summer that have worked well:

Share a meal with someone in a different discipline

One of the many things I'm grateful for about getting to do the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast is all of the experts I get to talk to in such different disciplines than mine. At first, I was incredibly intimidated to speak with some who I only had the most shallow understanding of what they teach. However, I'm glad I pressed on, as I've found I'm learning far more than I bargained for when the podcast began.

If you're not able to get together for lunch or dinner, perhaps try the next best thing.

Listen to a podcast in an entirely different discipline than yours

Doug McKee recommended the Very Bad Wizards podcast to me a few months ago. It is a dialog between Tamler Sommers (a philosopher) and David Pizarro (a psychologist). They describe themselves as people who “share a love for ethics, pop culture, and cognitive science.” They also are quite funny and crass (in the best way possible).

I've enjoyed being challenged by the few episodes I've listened to so far. One recommendation I would have for those of you who really want to maximize your learning is to review the show notes for an episode before you listen to it and read the articles they post before listening.

Watch something purely for the fun of it

As I mentioned on episode #049, I spent another week in May with a cold. There's something seriously wrong when you can't keep yourself healthier than the people who stick things they find on the ground in their mouths on a regular basis. One upside to being ill was the excuse to binge watch House of Cards, a Netflix original series.

Now I'm going to want to listen to some of Slate's podcasts about House of Cards, as I understand they have some experts come and and compare real-world politics with the fictitious politics in House of Cards.

[reminder]How will you be maximizing any time off you have to turbo-charge your summer? [/reminder]

Share a take-away and a recommendation

By Bonni Stachowiak | April 14, 2015 | 2 Comments | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

I'm preparing to record episode 50 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast and I need your help.

Share a take-away and a recommendation for episode 50

Please call our podcast voicemail line and leave a message for the show. Share a take-away you've had from any of the episodes this past year and give one recommendation you have for other members of the Teaching in Higher Ed community.

949-38-LEARN

1-949-385-3276

I will use as many of your messages as I can on episode 50 and we can all look forward to rediscovering some of the lessons from the show so far.

Top Ten Most Downloaded Episodes

(as of 4/14/15; the download counts fluctuate greatly, as new people discover the show)

#023: How to engage students in the classroom and online (guest: Jay Howard)
#015: How to get students to participate in a discussion (guest: Stephen Brookfield)
#034: Practical productivity in academia (guest: Natalie Houston)
#037: Developing critical thinking skills (guest: Tine Reimers)
#018: How technology is changing higher education (guest: Audrey Watters)
#036: What the best college teachers do (guest: Ken Bain)
#041: What to do before you act on all you've captured (co-host: Dave Stachowiak)
#028: How to see what we've been missing (guest: Cathy Davidson)
#030: Teaching naked (guest: Jose Bowen)
#032: Lower your stress with a better approach to capture (co-host: Dave Stachowiak)

Plugging in to Teaching in Higher Ed

By Bonni Stachowiak | November 18, 2014 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

A few episodes ago, I recommended the podcast called Serial.

It is the first podcast that I have heard described as one you're going to want to binge-watch. The good news is that there haven't been that many episodes released yet, so you have plenty of time to catch up with the rest of us obsessed fans.

Lest you think that there's no practical value to listening as a professor, there are plenty of lessons in there about effective storytelling.

If you are just checking out the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast and blog, you won't likely experience quite as much suspense as you will if you listen to Serial. However, we have had some great guests agree to come on the show and share their wisdom.

Top five podcast episodes

Role immersion games in the higher ed classroom with Dr. Marc Carnes (author of Minds on Fire)
How to move a course online and other community questions with cohosts Bonni & Dave Stachowiak
How to get students to participate in discussion with Dr. Stephen Brookfield
Back to school episode with Dr. Sandie Morgan
How technology is changing education with Audrey Watters

Five essential blog posts

While the following blog posts aren't necessarily ranked via objective criteria, such as hits, they stand out as essential reads to those looking to better their teaching:

If you have just joined the community, the resources listed above are a great place to start. I hope you'll join the conversation happening in the comments section of each episode and blog post.

Help students answer the dreaded career question

By Bonni Stachowiak | November 11, 2014 | 2 Comments | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

Advising season just ended at our institution.

We are fortunate in that we have a dedicated advisor for our major, so I don't wind up investing too much time in the process of helping students map out their classes.

Conversations during these two weeks tend to focus on careers and the selection of a major.

Students often have stress around this process because they don't know what they want to do. This lack of vocational clarity is a source of concern, despite the number of times we stress that most people don't wind up doing what they majored in during college.

One question I've started asking students is:

What are times that you have felt the most alive in the last few weeks?

My intention is to help them identify times that they have been in a state of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. He coined the term and describes it as:

…being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.

Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow was recommended by Dr. James Lang on episode 19 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

LifeHacker has some other good advice for students on how to discover their career path. There are even some who are trying to make finding a career more like playing a video game.

The other area I strive to get students thinking about is developing competencies versus identifying specific desired jobs.

One resource is the labor department's o*net website. They map specific jobs to the skills that are needed to perform well in that type of a role. They also identify what kinds of experience and education people typically have in a given position.

There's also something to be said for learning how to cultivate one's own happiness. For this quest, we can turn to quite a young source. Logan LaPlante is 13 years old and says he wants to be happy when he grows. up.

All of these questions can be tough and I don't pretend to have any easy answers. Even this New York Times best selling author was unable to get a job at The Container Store, despite her love for organization and excitement at the prospect of greeting others with a similar passion (and her desperate need for health benefits, as she fights breast cancer).

Instead of having the answers, maybe our job is to ask more questions?

[reminder]How do you help your students answer the question of what they're going to do after college?[/reminder]

Not a good week for gender equality

By Bonni Stachowiak | October 14, 2014 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

I had the honor of interviewing Audrey Watters last week, for episode 18 of Teaching in Higher Ed. She cautions readers on her blog that she's the sometimes EdTech's Kassandra. She neglected to mention that conversations with her can get stuck in a person's mind and rattle around in there a lot.

A few minutes prior to recording with Audrey, I had more than a few chuckles listening to Aziz Ansari define and discuss feminism on The Late Show with David Letterman. I wound up sharing about the clip during the recommendations portion of the show. It was one of those hopeful minutes when it seems like we might be moving to a better place when it comes to equality.

Let's just say that the week did not turn out to be a very good week for gender equality.

Audrey writes about the week in the last paragraph of her weekly update.

#gamergate rages on, as more female gamers have had credible threats of violence made against them, because of their speaking out on sexism. Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella decided that women should rely on karma for achieving equitable compensation.

I'm grateful for the way in which Audrey challenges us to do better on a number of fronts in her writing. It is arguably part of her personal brand to make us uncomfortable as we identify ways in which we are contributors to the problem.

Lest you think that this issue is only being discussed by a small minority of self-declared rabble-rousers, you should know that David Sparks, the host of The Mac Power Users podcast crafted a post on the subject, hoping to start a dialog with his community.

Anyone who thinks that this isn't an issue beyond the tech world might find the State of the Women in America report revealing.

About a month ago, I was speaking to a different Teaching in Higher Ed podcast guest about his recommendations for future topics or guests. He suggested a professor/researcher to speak on the subject of race in higher ed. I'm leaving the specific name of the person who was suggested out of this post, since I haven't reached out to the individual yet.

It was particularly timely, since the topic kept popping up on my list of potential podcast episodes. However, the whole subject of racial and gender equality can leave me feeling completely inadequate.

The number of times I've not handled it well when students have used gender or racial stereotypes overwhelms me. It is hard to know where to begin. Such a fundamental shift of perspective has to take place in order for students to recognize the flaws in their heuristics and it isn't a mental change that can be forced upon them.

Despite feeling completely inadequate, we all must persist toward doing the hard work it takes to bring us to a new day. We must not be silent (as emphasized so well in this TED talk with Jackson Katz).

I haven't ever written a post on this topic before. I know that it raises far more questions than it provides answers. However, just like David Sparks, I can continue the dialog and invite us all to challenge each other to do more to squelch the voices that would suggest anything other than equality.

[reminder]What do we need to be doing more of as educators in higher education to move toward greater gender equality? How do we work to transform the minds of students who come from an entirely different perspective when it comes to women being equal to men?[/reminder]

A book, a mention and an update

By Bonni Stachowiak | September 16, 2014 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

It has been quite a week.

A Book

I finished reading Cathy Davidson's Now You See It: How Technology and Brain Science will Transform Schools and Businesses in the 21st Century.

I'm not sure whether I benefitted more from the discoveries she offered that will inform my teaching, or the knowledge I gained about the brain as it relates to my own life.

She writes:

What better gift could we give our children than to learn to enjoy as they grapple, to aspire higher when they stumble, to find satisfaction as the challenges become ever greater? As the adage goes, the person who loves to work never has to.

I hope that there will continue to be more emphasis placed in our educational systems on cultivating grit in our students and on helping them develop more self control.

Dr. Davidson also emphasized how much it matters what we pay attention to and how much we are capable of missing. She shared about this experiment in which viewers are asked to count how many times a basketball is passed between players wearing white shirts.

The instructions given by the researchers do not mention that there will also be a gorilla coming through the scene, a fact which the majority of people miss when participating in the research.

The gorilla example keeps coming back throughout the book, as Davidson weaves through how technology is impacting the attention of students in schools and the attention of individuals in the professional realm.

Now You See It is absolutely worth a read.

A Mention

My second item of note this past week was that I was mentioned by a couple of my favorite podcasters: The Mac Power Users (David Sparks and Katie Floyd). They aired an entire episode on Tech in Education and asked educators to weigh in with our favorites on Twitter.

I couldn't do the subject justice in 140 characters, so I wrote a page on my top ten tech tools for education that they mentioned on the show. It was exciting to get to be a small part of a show that has taught me so much over the past couple of years, since I started listening.

An Update

In the most recent episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, I told a story about the student who didn't ever want me to use his name in class again and was so full of anger. I wound up seeing him a couple of days ago and it was like encountering an entirely different person.

The anger was no longer apparent, being replaced by a nice smile and a warm greeting. I need to make sure that I remember times like this, so that I never forget how transformative the college years can be for our students.

A Request

I'm excited about the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode that will be airing Thursday. Dr. Stephen Brookfield offers such great insight into how we can all get our students more engaged in discussions.

Would you consider recommending Teaching in Higher Ed to one of your colleagues or friends in higher ed, or writing a review on iTunes/Stitcher, so more people have a chance to discover the show? As the community continues to grow, it makes it more possible to bring on guests like the ones we have had on lately.

Thanks for being a part of Teaching in Higher Ed.

Free program that reminds you to take stretch breaks from your lengthy computer work

By Bonni Stachowiak | January 3, 2011 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

I’ve met a number of faculty who suffer from some type of health issues related to the too many years they have spent working long days at computers. The role of a faculty member at a teaching-oriented institution can mean a little less time in front of a monitor than in our corporate days, but there still remains the necessary work on a computer to be done.

I found a little program called Workrave that reminds you to take little breaks and even suggests some stretches you might do during your mini breaks.

http://www.workrave.org/

From their website: “Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit.”

You can customize how often you’re prompted to take what they call micro-pauses and longer rest breaks. You determine how long these breaks should be and can always skip them if they wind up arriving on your screen at an inopportune time.

Workrave has worked well for me, though I did find two issues with the program:

1. When running iTunes, it would sometimes cause the music to distort when Workrave was running in the background.

2. I did find that I got in the habit of dismissing the break reminders, somewhat negating the benefits of the program. This was my own lack of discipline, however, and nothing to do with any limitations in the application.

Overall, I highly recommend Workrave as a great way to keep healthy while working in a position that requires computer work.

What to Consider When Deciding Which iPad Model to Buy

By Bonni Stachowiak | July 10, 2010 | 2 Comments | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

You’ve decided to purchase an iPad. Now you just need to figure out which of the many models to buy…

CHOICES

In terms of the various iPad models, there are two broad categories of choice: storage capacity and data access capabilities:

STORAGE

Apple offers three storage capacity options on the iPad. 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. When you consider your storage needs, consider those media options that you want to have available to you, when you’re not connected to a wireless network (like the ones at your university, as well as all good coffee shops) or to the data plans offered through AT&T (additional monthly charges apply, as you’ll read about later). I tend to like to be able to carry a lot of data with me: music, books, movies, podcasts, as well as applications/programs (which take up space, too). In my case, I chose a 64GB iPad, though recognize that the top-of-the-line iPad costs about what a full-fledged laptop would, so make sure it is really what you need before you go to the expense.

DATA ACCESS CAPABILITIES

The next consideration is how your iPad will access data that isn’t stored on it locally. All models of iPads can access data over a wireless (wifi) network. Your university almost certainly has universal wifi coverage across the campus, though prior to making your purchase, be sure to check with your IT department to ensure that there aren’t any restrictions to connecting to the wifi access with an iPad. I’ve read about a few universities that don’t allow iPads to hook up, but most do.

The other way that some models of iPads can access data is via a 3G data plan, paid monthly. The 3G has to do with how fast it transfers data (the cutting edge speed right now is 4G, but iPads and iPhones aren’t up to that speed just yet). The data plan is the monthly cost that will come from AT&T for you to have the access.

The upside

The great thing about the iPad data plans from AT&T is that you don’t have to pay for the plan those months you don’t need it. For example, if you knew that you wouldn’t need a data plan during the year, because you would access your wifi network at home, at your local coffee shop, and on campus, then you could skip nine months or so of the data plan. If you enjoyed travelling during the summer and wanted to avoid paying $10 a day for hotel wireless coverage, you could sign up for one of two data plans available from AT&T just on the months that you wanted it. It would be great if they would do that for iPhone data plans, which don’t even offer roll-over data plans for the months when you don’t need to transfer as much.

Because of this option to use data plans only in the months you need them, I think the additional $150 for a Wi-Fi + 3G iPad is the only way to go. Yes, $150 isn’t cheap, but without paying that additional amount, you won’t ever be able to use your iPad when you’re outside of a wireless network. The only people who would be smart to go the less-expensive route would be those people who have another means for gaining wifi coverage while on the road, a service/equipment offered by some cell phone companies. A few of your options, such as the Novatel Wireless MiFi card from Verizon or Sprint are described in this article. For me, I’ve got the 3G coverage when I need it (mostly when I travel), but skip the monthly fees most months of the academic year.

When I’m on the road, I often use my gadgets for entertainment, particularly now my iPad, so I go for the $25 data plan when I need it. For an extra $10, I get eight times as much data transfer capability… and if I exceed that amount in a month, I can just pay another $25 for additional capacity. The iPad also gives you a warning when you’ve reached 80% and 90% of your data plan, so you can back off if you want to avoid running out or having to buy more.

MINDMAP: Peter Senge's Disciplines of the Learning Organization as described in The Fifth Discipline

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

One of two of the most profound books I read while earning my MA in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University was Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline.

This mindmap captures the essential elements of the five disciplines of a learning organization.

On FLICKR:

MINDMAP: Peter Senge’s Disciplines of the Learning Organization as described in The Fifth Discipline

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

One of two of the most profound books I read while earning my MA in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University was Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline.

This mindmap captures the essential elements of the five disciplines of a learning organization.

On FLICKR:

eLearning: An Easy Target

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that, “Video Lectures May Slightly Hurt Student Performance.” After reading the article, I was prepared to invest considerable time debating the validity of the research being described. However, one of the commenters said what I wanted to convey much more concisely:

–nordicexpat

This certainly seems one of those times when the tool is being blamed, when in fact it wasn’t designed for the goal being attempted. This issue of blaming the tool recently came up in an article in the NY Times entitled, “We Have Met the Enemy and He is Powerpoint.” Fortunately, Harvard’s Peter Norvig made a compelling retort in his response: “A Tool Only as Good as the User.”

I’ve been reading a superbly-relevant and fantastic book by Ruth Clark: Evidence-Based Training Methods

If only every faculty member teaching in an online environment would read her book. For that matter, those who teach entirely in the classroom would be able to increase their abilities to facilitate learning by exploring Clark’s findings.

In fact, I suspect if the Chronicle commenter, nordicexpat, had seen Clark’s book prior to posting, s/he would have narrowed the prescription down to this one single book.

Yes, online learning has far to go before it is embraced by higher education as an effective learning delivery method, and rightfully so… However, the boring lectures being delivered in classrooms across the country that do not help students reach their learning goals deserve to be under the microscope as well.

Use www.picnik.com for quick-and-easy photo editing

By Bonni Stachowiak | June 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

I’m surprised how time-consuming it still is to crop and resize photos in most photo editing applications. That’s why I’m constantly turning to a free, web-based application called www.picnik.com for most of my photo-editing needs. I like it so much that I paid the nominal fee to go pro, so I can connect to more than one service (like Facebook and Flickr.com, for example) to do editing of photos that I’ve stored there.

The ease of resizing and cropping photos is just the beginning with www.picnik.com, however. You can also create collages, add text to photos, create frames (my favorite is the Polaroid effect), get rid of red-eye, and even remove blemishes. I’m only naming a small selection of the features that are available to you on Picnik.

Having an easy-to-use photo editor will help you as you seek to have more visually-appealing PowerPoints, as well as when you’re asked to edit your faculty web page. I hardly ever find myself opening up my more robust photo editing tools, except when I want to remove the background from a photo, for example.

Here’s to www.picnik.com – and becoming more effective, visual communicators.

For students: Networking 101

By Bonni Stachowiak | May 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

One of the most neglected skills in college is the ability to build relationships. While you're studying about microorganisms, the antient Greeks, and the Revolutionary War, sometimes the ability to connect on a meaningful level with others gets forgotten.

Here are a few tips on what is called ‘networking' in business, an important skill to master, regardless of your chosen field of study.

BEFORE

Before you start networking, it is critical to have thought hard about your personal brand and what you most intend to communicate to others. McNally & Speak (2003) write:

“Your [personal] brand takes shape as a result of your ability to make what you do distinctive, relevant, and consistent.”

They have a great way of helping you think about what you want to project by developing a personal brand model.

Roles

You begin by identifying the different roles that you play for others in your life.

Standards

This part of the exercise is where you consider how you deliver your roles. These are like your standards of service. What level of performance can others expect from you? Keep in mind that one of the best ways to build a brand is to be distinct – so think about how you are unique in what you deliver to others.

Style

Last, consider how you interact with others. Since a brand ultimately comes down to a relationship a company (or a person) has with a customer (or a person with whom they interact), the way we will relate to others becomes an important aspect of our personal brand.

I suggest that before you attend that networking event, job interview, or your friend's college graduation party, that you reflect on these three elements of your personal brand. You can consider buying Be Your Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd to go through their exercises and to solidify your approach, or just get out a piece of paper and begin by writing down your roles, standards and style.

While working on my doctorate, one of our professors, Vance Caesar, had us go through this exercise. Below is what I came up with as I considered my on roles, standards and style.

Final preparations

The only other thing you need to do to prepare is to be sure you have a professional way for people to remember you and to keep in touch. If you are working, of course all you need to do is to be sure to tuck a bunch of business cards in your wallet/purse. If you are focused entirely on school or your job is not one where business cards are produced, have some business cards printed that list your contact information. One of the least inexpensive ways to do this is to use a business card template and to print them yourself, using pre-perforated paper products from an office supply store. I also recommend Vista Print, as they frequently have great deals on professionally printed business cards and you can use their templates, if you prefer them over the ones that come with your Word Processing program. The two most important things to remember in this process are:

Keep your business card design simple and professional (less is more; no graphics, unless they are simple shapes that add to the professional look-and-feel)
Make sure your email address is professional and contains your first and last name (e.g. john.towers@gmail.com). Gmail still ranks as the best free email application, so consider getting an account, if you don't already have one.

DURING

While you're at the event, capitalize on the opportunity to connect. Arrive well before the ‘main event,' if you are there to see a speaker or to attend a meeting. When you meet someone new:

State your name clearly and slowly – it can be tough for people to remember names. You can help by saying your name clearly and slowly and by pausing between your first and last names, so the listener knows where your first name ends and your last name begins. Practice this a few times out loud right now. It may feel silly (especially if you've decided to read this blog while in public), but the listener will never notice you are doing this and will have a greater likelihood of remembering your name.
Give a firm handshake and maintain eye contact – you know what it is like to have a wimpy handshake. Don't give that same feeling to others. Ask three separate people you trust to shake your hand and give you feedback on what you're communicating in that simple gesture.
Ask at least three questions to your new contact – the appropriate question to ask can vary considerably, depending on where you are. If you're at a party, a natural conversation starter would be ‘how did you come to know [our host]?” If you are at a professional association, you could ask the person about how they have been involved in the organization and if they have any recommendations for new members. Between the questions, you will of course want to be able to have something to contribute to the conversation, so your lifelong quest for learning will payoff in this sense, too. Ferrazzi (2005) writes in Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time:

“Just remember not to monopolize the conversation or go into long-winded stories. Share your passion, but don't preach it.”

Consider signing up for Ferrazi's tip of the week to keep you current on building relationships for professional success and personal happiness. You will find these additional student-specific tips from Ferrazi useful as you navigate building relationships throughout school.

AFTER

Ferrazi (2005) reminds us that:

“If 80% of success is, as Woody Allen once said, showing up, then 80% of building and maintaining relationships is just staying in touch.”

With all the juggling of priorities that we're expected to do these days, we can tend to prioritize higher those pieces of data that hit us most recently. If you want to form a relationship with someone, you will need to follow up after a first meeting in more than one of the following ways:

Send an email with a resource they might benefit from, based on your conversation
Call to say it was nice meeting them and to thank them for the advice they gave
Follow up with a hand-written thank you note, particularly if you met one-on-one
Find out when their birthday is (not at your first encounter, but as the relationship progresses) and call them to wish them a happy birthday on their special day
Forward a timely news story, related to their career or industry

It comes down to being authentic. Helping others achieve their dreams as you pursue yours… If your personal mission involves more than just meeting your own needs, you will no doubt be naturally gifted networker as you seek to change the world.

For students: How to be a lifelong learner

By Bonni Stachowiak | May 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

I know many of you who are graduating. It is a time for celebration, but also a time of fear and anxiety. There are your concerns over what to choose as a career and what life will be like after college. The good news is that you could have very well written your last academic paper (unless you elect to attend graduate school). The bad news is that it will take more work now to maintain a posture of lifelong learning.

Here are five ways to ensure that learning never stops, even after graduation day:

Listen to podcasts in the car during your commute. I’m still amazed at how much new knowledge can be acquired during the drive to and from work. My favorites are APM’s Marketplace (business news) and Marketplace Money (financial literacy), Slate’s Daily Podcast (political gabfest, cultural gabfest, and the green lantern’s environmental stories), and Tony Campolo’s Podcast (sermons, talks and radio programs from the author, professor and speaker). I also listen to Creating a Family (talk about adoption and infertility) and just subscribed to The Chronicle of Higher Education's podcasts.

Get to know your local public library. I remember loving the library as a kid and making good use of Chapman’s library while I was there in the early 90s. Somehow I forgot how wonderful the library is as an adult. I rediscovered it a couple years back and love the opportunity to explore all that our local libraries have to offer. If you live in South Orange County and haven't visited the Mission Viejo Library, you're missing out on a wonderful part of our community. Your public library likely has the following all for free: DVDs, audio books you can listen to on your iPod, CD player or computer, magazines, newspapers, movie nights, author visits, and even a used bookstore to either donate to or support.

Find a mentor. We can sit back to wait until we find a person who gives us good advice, or we can be proactive and set up a mentoring relationship ourselves. Ask someone to mentor you and then set up regular times to get together to discuss your goals and challenges. Take the next step from there and set up a personal board of directors, where you have someone who you can ask questions about your personal finances (your CFO), another who you can talk to about branding yourself (your VP of marketing), and an individual who you consult when it comes time to negotiate salary at your new job (your VP of sales).

Set up RSS feeds for customized news updates. RSS stands for really simple syndication. Instead of having to read every industry publication or website, you can customize the news you receive and discipline yourself to spend a little time every day staying up to speed with what is going on in the world, in your industry, and in your area of expertise. Common Craft can get you up and running with RSS feeds in no time.

Friend learning organizations on Twitter. While Twitter is becoming widely known as the place to catch up with the latest on John Mayer or Ashton Kutcher, it is also a great place to keep up with learning. The Wall Street Journal has a bunch of useful topics including: WSJWallet (personal finance), WSJBusiness, WSJManagement, WSJCareers, and WSJ. Subscribe to our Innovate Learning Twitter feed and we’ll sift through the masses and bring you the best in leadership and personal effectiveness.

Let us know how you remain a lifelong learner in the comments.

For students: Five smart ways to manage your money

By Bonni Stachowiak | May 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

You can't watch the news today without some mention of the economic crisis. You may be experiencing financial troubles of your own. Here are five smart ways to manage your money, instead of letting it manage you.

Know where you are. The easiest way to assess where you are is to use technology to help you track your money. We recently switched to the free online service www.mint.com and can't recommend it enough. How do they make their money? By recommending financial products that you would benefit from, based on your current situation (such as offering a credit card with a lower interest rate than what you're paying).
Think about the future. Now that you know where you are, contemplate where you want to be… What are your long-term goals and how much money will it take to get there? CNN has a number of online calculators to help you figure out what it will take to achieve your long-term goals.
Plan for the unexpected. It sounds like an oxymoron. How do you plan for things you aren't expecting? While we don't know whether our emergency will be a car accident, or a leaky toilet, there are always bound to be things that come up that we haven't budgeted for. Experts recommend six to nine months of liquid assets designated for emergencies. If you don't have any emergency funds, start today by putting a little aside at a time and you'll be surprised how quickly it will add up.
Give [up] a little. If you add up how much your daily Starbucks costs, or your lunches out, you'll see that the little things quickly wind up as big expenses. Prioritize your spending and give up a few little things and reap the rewards of savings. Your coffee habit may be costing upwards of $2,000 a year that you could be putting toward meeting your long-term goals.
Re-think what is important. When birthdays and special occassions come along, consider writing a heartfelt letter instead of purchasing a gift. Your words will be much more meaningful than whatever the gift you would buy might symbolize and you can start having deeper relationships that are based on more than traditional exchanges. I've started writing a list of things I'm thankful for about a particular person when it is his or her birthday. My list is as long as the number of years they've been on the earth.

If you only have time for one of the five, get started with www.mint.com. After that, you can come back and tackle two through five, based on what is most relevant to you and your current financial condition.

Let us know what other personal finance tips you have in the comments.

Keeping Up to Speed

By Bonni Stachowiak | May 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

It is definitely getting harder to keep up… with our industries, research, teaching techniques, political affiliations, books-of-interest, and whatever else aligns with our passions and goals.

I use RSS feeds to stay up-to-speed on what most interests me. In my case, I use Outlook 2007 on my primary computer and it has RSS Feed capability built right in. You just look for the orange RSS feed indicator on your favorite site or blog and it will automatically add the feed inside of Outlook with two clicks of your mouse.

It doesn't make your in-box crowded, because the RSS Feeds are kept in a separate folder (see graphic above for an example straight out of my RSS feeds). You get to decide when you'll invest the time to catching up on your various feeds.

If you don't have Outlook, there are plenty of other free feed tools. Google Reader is one of the best ones out there and it links with your Gmail Account, Google Calendar, custom Google homepage and whatever other apps you use from Google.

Think it will be too hard to learn?

With Common Craft's video: RSS in Plain English, it couldn't be easier
(and they're pretty darn funny, too).

Let’s Get Visual

By Bonni Stachowiak | May 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment | Twitter Facebook Google+Email

Commentary about the ineffective uses of PowerPoint are ubiquitous. What is often left unsaid is what techniques and tools should be used in its place. I recently read and highly recommend ‘The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures'.”

One of my lectures in my Introduction to Business class on financial statements uses nothing but the whiteboard. I compare and contrast a business' use of a balance sheet, a statement of cash flows and an income statement with an individual's use of these three common financial statements. While I love using PowerPoint effectively and other means of communicating ideas visually, sometimes there's nothing like an old-fashioned white board to get your ideas across.

Dan Roam gives even us non-artists a means for communicating visually. He has a whole system of how to go about doing this, but it does provide for you to pick and choose which techniques you'll use and add to your ability to convey your point using pictures. His message is written to business people, but educators can easily apply his ideas to our environment.

Let's Get Visual