The Importance of Communication -- Football Analogy

Thanks DustPuppy on Flickr for this photo.

On a football team, when the huddle is called and all eleven offensive players gather together, the quarterback announces the play to the entire offensive -- not selective members. The transparency of communicating with all members of the offense at once allows the entire unit to execute the play seamlessly. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if the quarterback only communicated the play to the fullback and/or tailback. How would the linemen know who to block? What  patterns would receivers run? Now imagine the scenario if the quarterback only told the play to the linemen, but not the other members of the offense. Where are the fullback and tailback going? As you can see, the quarterback needs to communicate with all members of the offense in order to execute the simplest play in the playbook. Without communication, nothing productive happens. Within organizations, leaders need to communicate with the entire organization. The leader communicates the vision, mission, and knowledge to the entire team, so that everyone can execute the play together.

But you ask me, "What about when the quarterback improvises?" Glad you asked! The quarterback improvises based off the original play communicated to the entire offense. As the leader on the field, the quarterback needs to react to changes and problems that develop during executing the original play. The quarterback may decide to throw the ball to the wide receiver running the post route, because he sees that the player is open and will be able to score a touchdown; where as, the original intended receiver is double covered. This is a modification to the original play, not a different play. Leaders need to be able to modify and adjust plans as problems occur, but based off the original plan that was communicated to the entire organization. When a plan needs modifying or adjusting, the leader communicates the changes as quickly as possible to the entire organization, so that everyone can execute the new plan seamlessly and without confusion.

Is your organization trying to run a play but the play has only be communicated to certain members of the offense? How can you get all team members executing the play seamlessly?

Using Google Spreadsheets for Meeting Agendas

Do you really want your team to collaborate? Do you want to be able to digitally track your meetings, decisions made, actions assigned, and who and when items will be followed up on? The EdTech Team at Korea International School wanted to have these options. During a meeting Steve (@stevekatz) was introduced to this amazing tool by Rolly (@rollymaiquez) from Chadwick International School. It has revolutionized our team and dramatically increased our productivity. I have created a Template that can be used by any group or team; in addition, the instructions on this post will have you ready to be more productive and more collaborative for your next meeting. After following the link, make sure to create a copy of the template from the File Menu. This will give you your own copy in your Google Drive. PLEASE DON'T EDIT THE ORIGINAL! 

The Template looks like this and you can customize all the features.

You can input your team members with this trick. You can also adjust the Priority/Status list this way. 

MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MERLOT = Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MERLOT is the probably the largest social network for sharing educational resources in higher education. At the time that I am writing this, the site claimed to have 16,566 Materials (learning materials and assignments), and 45,057 members (faculty, students, librarians, and others).

The website is divided into the following sections:

		Learning Materials Browse peer reviewed online learning materials in your discipline.
		Colleagues Find expert colleagues in your discipline.
		Personal Collections View personal collections from people in your discipline.
		Assignments Get assignments you can use with your students.
		Guest Experts Find guest experts in the Virtual Speakers Bureau.

The Learning Materials is probably the most useful. The list is created by users who basically link to material that they have placed on their own websites. I looked at some of the Editor's Choice material, which I found to be quite good. Despite the large number of members and materials, not a whole lot came up when I typed in my discipline of geography, and nothing came up when I typed in my specialization of Tourism.

MERLOT is ike many other things on the web with the categories of Information Technology and Business being most prominent, while the Arts and Social Sciences are least represented. In addition, because the material is linked to off-site webpages, I would be concerned that some material will disappear over time -- a problem that I have regularly had to deal with in my online classes over the years.

That being said, I am a new member of MERLOT and hopefully I will be able to both use and contriute material to it in the future.