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I ran into a funny little quirk with our Facebook page yesterday afternoon. One of our Fans posted on our wall, “The Bing map on your FB page is ALL WRONG!!! ”

I first this was some sort of spam post that seem so prevalent recently, but after clicking around our page a bit, I noticed that there is a Bing map under the “Info” tab. I hadn’t paid any attention to it before, but I could clearly see that it had us in Groton, VT, not Groton, MA. The address field was correct, and I tried to move the pin to our actual location, but was told that it was to far away from the original. That’s because Groton, VT is 155 miles north of us. I tried to suppress it, but then my “Wall” went away.

@MalloryWood and @ChristineSMC replied over Twitter that the SMC Facebook page had a similar bug, moving my Alma matter a few hundred miles south from the venerable Winooski Park, VT to somewhere in the Nutmeg State.

Checking back today, we are now located in Blanchardsville, MA. This time however, I was able to suppress the map without losing my Wall.

Clearly this is a result of Mr. Zuckerberg’s dropping out of college before he had an opportunity to take Geography 101.

Has anyone else experience something funky like this? Combine this with all of the annoying Osama, embarassed girl, and other SPAM out there and I’m starting to wonder what type of shop Zuck’s running.

@dmolsen had a great post about QR codes the other day. It reminded me that I had been tossing a similar post around in my head for a while and it was time to write it.

I think QR codes are a massive waste of time. They’re over hyped, a pain to use, and just not that interesting. Here three examples of why QR codes are a waste of time, and why I’m sick of hearing about them:

1. Back in January, I came across an article in the alumni magazine of a New England independent school. The article was an alumni profile and highlighted some of the work he was doing for this school specifically the new QR code he had created for the school.

Excited, I pulled out my iPhone. Downloaded a QR app on a slow 3G signal. Snapped a photo of the code and waited for the magic.

The code brought me to the school’s Website. Not a mobile version of the Web site, but the school’s Web site.

2. Riding on a Metro bus in Washington D.C., I saw a QR code on a poster of the bus route. Thinking it would give me a similar map formatted for a mobile phone, I searched through my iPhone apps trying to find the QR code app that I had downloaded back in January. Sifting through folders with my thumb, I finally came across it, and snapped a photo.

It brought me to a mobile site that asked for my comments as to the quality of my Metro experience.

3. We own a Ford and got one of their magazines in the mail the other day. In the market for a new car, I saw a QR code next to a photo of one of the new Ford Explorers, and I tried to give it a shot. Sifting through the folders on my iPhone again, I could not find the QR code app that I had downloaded sixth months ago.

I gave up.

Investing in QR codes at this moment is a total waste resources. Right now the technology isn’t well implemented, does not meet consumer expectations, and the readers is not seamlessly integrated into smartphones. Until I can take my phone, just take a photo, and the be quickly and automatically brought to content that is interesting, useful, and exclusively available through that code, then there’s really no point.

Frankly, I have no idea how education could use these things. Campus maps? Maybe, but only if you’re a huge university with a lot of acreage. Stories about buildings? Not compelling. It is rare case that a building on a college campus is compelling and interesting. Free screen savers or other give-a-ways? Now you’re thinking too highly of yourself and reading your own headlines.

Save your money. Save your time. Save your resources. Skip the QR codes.

I helped our admission office here host a chat for prospective students. We used CoverItLive, and for our first go round, I think it went pretty well.

I looked around for something that was free or really cheap. CoverItLive was free, it looked cool, and it was free. That being said, if the crowd had been the 25-30 I had expected, I don’t know if it would have worked well. Admittedly, I didn’t spend much time playing in the guts of the thing, but I had to approve every comment. It would have been much easier if everyone’s comments were automatically posted, yet I retained the ability to unpost them.

That is assuming the crowd had been the 25-30 I was expecting. I’ll get back to this one.

So we gathered in the admission office with some cookies and milk to say thank you to the 12 prefects who had volunteered their time to be the student chat leaders. I gave them a brief overview at what was going to happen and then switched the room on 15 minutes before the advertised start time. No sooner had I opened the door when comments began flooding in-and I mean flooding. I was clicking away trying to approve comments, set our students up as admins and quickly became overwhelmed. There was consistently a 4 minute gap between when a comment was submitted to when it was posted.

It turns out that we had 710 people log into that chat. My experience had me expecting 30 at the most. For a while I was worried that we would have more prefects then perspective students. We had only sent an email out announcing the chat three days prior. That I guess is the power of reputation.

So the feature that was originally a major pain, turned out to be a life saver. I can only imagine the chaos of an unfiltered chat. It would have been impossible to keep up. For the next one, I think we’re going to have to include some text explaining how the system works, that not all questions will be answered, but we’ll try. The last thing I’d want is for a kid to get frustrated that their question didn’t get answered because the chat room was too crowded. That is so not who we are. We’re a small school where everyone gets attention and I’d hate to leave anyone with a different impression.

If you’d like to get a sense for what it was like, the transcript is still up here. We’re going to be doing another one soon for admitted students. It’s a pretty fun time and we have a blast with the students. I might try to video tape it. I’ll post it here if I do.

I hold a grudge. Sorry I do. I know that I should probably be more forgiving and let things slide, but tough. That’s not me.

I recently got a Facebook friend request from a former co-worker at a past job that I absolutely hated. It was the most miserable place I have ever worked and this person was a part of that dysfunctional culture. There was never any hesitation to toss a coworker under the bus , light a math and watch them burn.

It was two years of hell.

So no. I will not accept your friend request.

I had one of those moments when you smack your palm to your forehead and let out a, “Duh!! It makes perfect sense!”.

I believe it’s called…. an epiphany.

The other day I was trying to figure out why I felt like we were so far behind in terms of technology and especially Web 2.0 stuff. I couldn’t figure out why we were doing things that we moved on from five years ago at the college level-probably longer-actually, way longer.

In part I think it is because our students are minors, and we can’t just let them create freely and post it on the Web site. (*Disclaimer here: I may have told my bosses that I reviewed every post, but I never did and told my bloggers so.  I felt like a.) it would take away from the authenticity and b.) if I reviewed it then it didn’t really belong to my bloggers and they didn’t really have freedom of authorship.)  Being under 18 means that there are release forms to fill out.  Some times the boxes get checked off, some times they don’t.  Keeping track is a major hassle.

Another piece to this is that these are high school students at boarding school. They are highly motivated, hyper-involved and totally scheduled. It’s hard to find an hour in the day (This includes late in the evening because the work day doesn’t end until the students go home for summer break.) to meet as a group. It’s also hard for these kids to separate blogging from just another homework assignment. It should be fun and something they enjoy rather than be viewed as yet another evaluation tool or homework assignment.

The third reason I think we’re behind is because we’re old. I said it.  I believe it. We are old. We meaning us as a school not us as in me and you reading this (Although you may in fact be old, I’m not judging.).  Aside from interns who are with us for just one year, the youngest full-time faculty member was born in 1981. I’m the next youngest at thirty-one(derful). There’s no one, in a professional position, who grew up with a computer. And when I say grew up, I mean they were born and came home to a house that had a computer in it.

I wrote a few years ago that once I hit thirty, I am headed down hill in terms of social media relevancy. Like a pro athlete, once you hit that peak age of 28 or 30, you begin  it.  Fact of life. Deal with it.

Colleges are surrounded by young adults (adults is a key word here). Whether it be students or the entry-level workers they hire. That youth and those youths (using my best Joe Pesci voice here) help to keep their marketing cutting edge. We are not young, and  I don’t think our model allows for it either.  So we’re stuck with me.

What to do?

Keep the fresh perspective.  Attending conferences is one way.  Attending the right conferences is a better way.  Three sessions into HighEdWeb, I know it’s one of those conferences that is a must.  And a key part of that is that it’s High Ed centered.  It a perspective that is outside of where I am, and it’s an area where real innovation happens.

When I get back to campus?

Keep preachin’ brother.  Keep preachin’.

I spent most of last year figuring this place out, building relationships and getting to know the school.  Now it’s time to talk more about social media, how we can use it, and how we can become a leader in social media at the independent school setting.

It’s time to start talking to students and creating a team that can totally be rock stars.  More importantly, a team that wants to be rock stars just to be rock stars.
It’s time to start building from the ground up.  Its time to start talking to other departments and starting conversations about how we can do what we do better; how we can all have a voice and tell people about the cool things we do; how we can brag about the great kids we teach; how we bring everyone together in this wacky place called the Web.