Avoiding technobabble, engaging others
Created by Catherine Howell (University of Cambridge) on January 30, 2007
From David Wilcox comes this timely post on "Home truths about technobabble and social media."
I agree with David that we ed tech-ers can become victims of our own success: caught up in our vision, we can get carried away by our own enthusiasm, and start using language that is alienating to the very people we are trying to engage.
The difficulty is that many of us working in this area are essentially working as trumpet-blarers (we might prefer a metaphor of 'trailblazing', but I think 'trumpet-blaring' is probably more accurate). We're in the business of trying to convince other people that there's something going on, something worth paying attention to, and talking with jargon is - unfortunately - a well-tested strategy for acquiring credibility and demonstrating competence. It's not the only strategy, not by any means, but it's one that - if we're honest - most of us have been known to use. We should all take extra special care that the process of establishing our credentials does not involve silencing others, and does not convince our potential audience that we are interested only in talking to ourselves.
David also refers to a debate promoted by Steve Rubel, as to whether the terms 'social media' and 'user generated content' have any currency left. Steve argues that it's time to ditch the 'social' bit, time to stop arguing for our 'specialness' and our 'distinctiveness', and accept that the landscape has changed - we are all plain old 'media' now. Challenging stuff.
I agree with David that we ed tech-ers can become victims of our own success: caught up in our vision, we can get carried away by our own enthusiasm, and start using language that is alienating to the very people we are trying to engage.
The difficulty is that many of us working in this area are essentially working as trumpet-blarers (we might prefer a metaphor of 'trailblazing', but I think 'trumpet-blaring' is probably more accurate). We're in the business of trying to convince other people that there's something going on, something worth paying attention to, and talking with jargon is - unfortunately - a well-tested strategy for acquiring credibility and demonstrating competence. It's not the only strategy, not by any means, but it's one that - if we're honest - most of us have been known to use. We should all take extra special care that the process of establishing our credentials does not involve silencing others, and does not convince our potential audience that we are interested only in talking to ourselves.
David also refers to a debate promoted by Steve Rubel, as to whether the terms 'social media' and 'user generated content' have any currency left. Steve argues that it's time to ditch the 'social' bit, time to stop arguing for our 'specialness' and our 'distinctiveness', and accept that the landscape has changed - we are all plain old 'media' now. Challenging stuff.
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