tonya oaks smith

It’s been a month since the David Galper keynote debacle at HighEdWeb 09. In the interest of full disclosure, I was there and participated in the backchannel debate over the lecture we were getting from the creator of the defunct Ruckus music service.

I say lecture because that’s exactly what it was. Galper talked at us, not with us. About our business - the business of using technology in higher education.

If he’d simply looked at the HighEdWeb online community’s site, he would have gained insight into what we were doing in Milwaukee. He would have adjusted his talk accordingly. He probably wouldn’t have mentioned that the young people today like making personalized T-shirts and IMing and getting personalized e-mails. The overwhelming sentiment during that portion of the lecture was “Duh?!?! Now teach me something new.”

All that business in Milwaukee might have been water under the bridge if not for a post on technology in yesterday’s online version of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Is there so little to talk about in the world of technology and academia that blogging about an event from a month ago is even relevant?

The phenomenon - or whatever it is - of carrying on a dialogue with speakers via Twitter is not a new thing. Technology has enabled us to do it since the service was invented in 2006. The best speakers  use the back channel to improve and enrich their acts of talk. The worst ignore it - thinking they know better than their audience what is valuable and needed. They’re wrong.

In The Skillful Teacher, a great book from Stephen D. Brookfield,  teaching is called “the educational equivalent of white-water rafting. Periods of calm are interspersed with sudden frenetic turbulence. Tranquility co-exists with excitement, reflection with action” (2006). Every time we deliver a talk to a group - whether it’s a conference keynote or project presentation  - is the opportunity to teach. It’s an exhilarating chance to impact someone’s life.

But not if you won’t go with the flow, as Brookfield advocates. Not if you’re not willing to learn about your audience and yourself in the process. That’s the essence of being an educator - sharing, reflecting, and then absorbing the feedback that your students pass along.

I hope Galper - and other potential teachers - learn from the “twit-slaughter.” The impact for presenters should not be to fear the tweeting masses, lest you “risk mobilizing a scrum of digital-spitball-slinging snark-masters” (Parry, 2009). Instead, we should listen, determine what the message should be, and then be willing to listen more. Create a feedback loop. That’s what Twitter does so well, if we’re willing to use it as a real-time assessment tool and act on the admittedly anecdotal evidence it provides.

Lest readers think I’m freeing all the #heweb09 attendees from blame, I’m not. I simply believe that our reaction was an overwhelming outcry against the disrespect we felt coming from Galper. He did not view us as participants in the dialogue; maybe he underestimated our knowledge or our willingness to talk back.

Whatever the case, as Vietnamese activist Thich Nhat Hanh says, “In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.” So, as listeners and learners we must be willing to adapt as well. This epsiode, as well as others in all walks of life, will probably bring us to some sort of agreement about what is acceptable to communicate via Twitter. We’ll talk about communication rules like overlapping conversations and boundaries.

But we shouldn’t shut off the conversation totally. The communication should continue to be a cultural practice - reflexive and self-conscious in its formation (Mirivel, 2009). Our ability to learn and grow is based in part on our willingness to participate actively in the experience.

HighEdWeb was a group of people gathered in Milwaukee for just that. They bring their enthusiasm for learning and technology to bear on universities and colleges each day, and they shouldn’t be chastised for that enthusiasm.