Topic: Leadership Issues
I attended ISTE 2010 last week. Overall, it was a great experience for me both personally and professionally. However, the main conference got off to a rocky start when a feeding frenzy hit Twitter and other social networks during the opening keynote.
The behavior of many of the backchannel participants was appalling. I have no issue with constructive criticism, but many of the comments were way over the top. What I'm finding interesting now is that some of these folks are on the defensive, justifying their behavior by basically saying the speaker 'made' them behave that way...for example, if he had done more research on his audience or if his slides were better, people wouldn't have bashed him.
I cannot fathom this type of thinking and suspect that most of these educators would be on the warpath if their students used a backchannel in this same way.
I was going to write more, but have found some thoughtful discussion about what happened in other blog posts. So, rather than reinvent the wheel, I'm adding links here. Bottom line, the speaker deserves many apologies!
How a Bad Presentation Can Help You
