Managing Expectations: Advice from Louis CK

I hate to admit it, but I had never heard of this comedian, Louis CK. This YouTube clip entitled "Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy" from Late Night with Conan O'Brien is hilarious.  After you finishing laughing, think about the implications of his jokes: the psychological expectations that are becoming standard about the speed of interactions. … [Read more...]

Hang in There Jack: A Case Study in Cross-Platform Digital Storytelling

Why would someone use television ads, billboards, and print to drive people to online and social media sites? 1) For the right audience, social media has lots of advantages, speed of dissemination, trust, interaction, expectations, collaboration, and emotional investment in user-generated content, engagement, curiosity, or 2) you are trying to look very hip and don’t care if it motivates action. The ‘Hang in there Jack’ campaign is one very effective example. It successfully crosses from traditional media to the Internet (Hangintherejack.com) and social media applications such as Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter and invites a relationship with the user by encouraging user-generated content via different avenues: comments, videos, text messages, and snail mail get well cards. By doing this, it shifts the focus of the advertising message from the company (Jack in the Box, Inc.) to the user. Jack is now the vehicle for dissemination not the primary message. The hand-off from … [Read more...]

Innovation in Education: Students May be Required to Think

An Associated Press article in the Herald Dispatch article today says "Governor says Ohio schools need new focus." The news brief says: Concepts such as problem solving, critical thinking, cultural awareness and media literacy would overtake memorization and pencil-and-paper tests in an educational overhaul trumpeted by Gov. Ted Strickland. Strickland’s education aims in his two-year budget proposal would not only change how schools are funded, but also how students are taught. Ohio’s curriculum would be infused with so-called “21st Century Skills,” a buzz phrase in the education world whose framework has been implemented in 10 states and in individual schools across the country. The goal is to move students away from the memorization and regurgitation of facts and instead require them to apply their knowledge in problem-solving situations, often with the use of technology. American students have been performing poorly on problem-solving skills in comparison to … [Read more...]

Gossip Girl as a Parenting Tool

In a brief Q&A (2/22/09) in USA Today Weekend by advice columnist Dennie Hughes, she quotes me saying it’s okay to indulge in celebrity gossip. I think most people tend to dismiss gossip as pretty shallow stuff, in spite of what we read at the dentist's office. And that might be true, except for the fact that the essence of the gossip experience lies in both the shared experience and all the other information that is exchanged when we gossip about anything. That information is all about connecting with others, defining and sharing our own identity, and exploring our place in society. You can dissect personality, culture, good fortune, effort, connection, and human success and frailty, not to mention plumage, at a safe distance. Gossip provides the laboratory for investigation. Research from around the world shows that soap opera plots and characters successfully introduce subjects that are outside the boundaries of normal discourse or go against cultural norms in ways … [Read more...]