Cancel or continue?

[Wesley Fryer]

I am in a quandary and wonder what you think I should do. I've volunteered to co-teach a 2 part workshop with my wife for adults (mainly targeted at parents) at a local Oklahoma City Church later this month. The title of our workshop is "Internet Safety for Families: The Benefits and Dangers of Social N... As you likely know if you're a regular reader of my blog or listener to my podcast channel, I'm very passionate about our need for ongoing discussions about not only safe Internet use but also the constructive potential of the Internet to help people make positive connections with others, with ideas, share their voice safely on the global stage, etc. My desire to advance an agenda of dialog around these issues was the reason I started the Digital Dialog Ning several months ago.



My quandary is that only four people (by last count) have registered for this workshop. Do you think we should cancel or go ahead and teach this? Our frustration is that this information and these topics are VERY important for families, yet not many people are willing to sign up for a workshop like this. This is a function of how over-programmed and overly busy many of us are in our lives as well as other factors I'm sure. Perhaps we titled and described this workshop poorly as well? I don't know. We tried to offer this last spring at the same church (it's not our church but I know the person who coordinates this adult education series, and she's asked me to teach) but we only had two people register, so we did cancel. We taught this as a six week series at our own church last spring and had 5 or 6 parents attend. This should be a topic of high interest, but for reasons that are unclear it's not something many people want to commit to learn about, at least in the contexts where we've tried to share this.

We will be able to have WiFi Internet access during the workshops this year, and having small numbers could be postive since I can scrounge up several laptops that participants could actually use to be "hands-on" during the workshops. I'm just wondering if we should cancel or proceed.

This could be a "long tail" moment, where there certainly is a lot of interest in this topic across the Internet population and edublogosphere specifically, but perhaps not at this particular church or in this particular community. The frustration is, of course, that these topics SHOULD be of high interest to all parents since their kids (especially teens, but younger kids too) are likely frequent consumers of media and users of the Internet. I'd like to proceed with the class, but at this point we're not sure.

I'm wondering if it would be possible / desirable to invite people online to join our class discussions asynchronously as well as synchronously, using a tool like Ustream.TV? I definitely want to be a catalyst for continuing conversations about digital dialog, digital discipline, Internet safety, safe digital social networking, etc... and one of the reasons I agreed to co-teach this class was so my wife and I would be sure to work together this fall on supporting local education efforts on these topics.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: internetsafety, socialnetworking, education, parent, parenteducation, quandary

[Nadine Norris]

Wesley,
I think you should go ahead with your workshop. It might even turn out to be a private tutorial - as people get busy and change their minds about showing up to stuff like this. I routinely have only a few people at my workshops, but the people who do come are so appreciative of the information and seem to "pass the word". I think that perhaps the term "social networking" is so unfamiliar to people outside the ed-tech world. I don't even think the young people who are engaging in social networking know the term. Maybe the title to your workshop made it seem too far above the heads of the average parent. Although your description was quite good.

I am doing a similar workshop on Tuesday and the principal is calling it, "Internet Safety" and making the meeting mandatory for all parents (although I don't know what happens to parents who don't show up.) Little do they know that I will really be presenting the "benefits and concern (not calling them "dangers") to social networking". I'm getting a great deal of my presentation from the Internet Caucus advisory committee from last May. I hope to open some eyes with regard to the real truth about on-line predators along with some real risks that many parents haven't even thought of.

Anyway, I think you should do your workshop - you never know.

[Nicole]

I have attended a workshop in in our area on this topic. Wow-I gained so much from it. Prior to attending I actually thought I was aware of everything or at least a high percentage. I came away from that night with huge concerns and grateful realizations and actions I needed to take. It had minimal attendence in a community that tends to get very involved in the schools. I was surprised of the low attendence and the workshop was one of the best.
My thoughts on your dilemma is to do it. Parents are a hard market and it might pay off if you do some market research on how to reach them. Our own very popular middle school principal struggles with attendence at workshops she organizes to educate and inform parents. I think you are going to need technology to talk technology to reach people these days -and so ustream or video tape and post on youtube is a good idea. However, I personally think in person is more powerful and real. Another idea is to survey attendees at the end to evaluate that you are addressing their needs and concerns and also invite testimonials which can really help create a good buzz. Get endorsed by school and community leaders and include it with the testimonials. Market your workshops by igniting key people who support your workshops and ask if they know of two or three people who need to come check it out. If you give workshops often it is great to give a plug on your next one at the end of your workshop and even get a mailing list or sign up going.

I appreciate your dedication to this very critical topic. Good luck and great sucess to you.

Nicole