Stop blogging, stop email (well I did answer 5 messages from my students), hold the tweets, facebook freeze?

What do you have to lose is the big question.

Maybe continuity.

Maybe followers.

Maybe nothing.

What I find whether I take a 7 day or 7 week break is that I fell far more alert to the environments I am in.

Probably because living an eLife keeps you become glued to a machine or device we tend to become more detached from the slower more textured world we live in when we are not totally immersed in that world.

What I find is that the smells, the little things, become far more focused and clear when I am not glued into my eLife.

I am back and looking around and wondering how to straddle the eLife and real life divide without sacrificing anything!

I am still working on it but I do think after 5pm the personal computer and mobile phone are being turned off.

Too much of something can be a bad thing and in the case of our eLives that too much is easy to butt up against really fast.

EVERYTHING big or small that I do is now about some collective social good.

It is all about change now.

Betterment.

How can what I do have even a second of impact on the world?

This is my new challenge!

Maybe we lose sight of our influence?

Maybe we don’t have any!

BUT whether we are blind or whether we are simply sleeping through the impact we have that does not mean we should not try, anything.

On that note I have a wish.

I want to provide an innovative, quality, real post secondary education to the bottom billion people in the world!

Well, at least those in the bottom billion who want a post secondary education!

How?

I want to create a new way, a return to the old way, of thinking about HOW we educate and why.

More to come on that!

The start is to work with those people who are in the developed world who want to advance their education, take some PD or just get back into the education environment!

So part A of my wish is to provide the best PD/low cost ultimate quality education to anyone who would care to get involved!

A pay it forward idea.

How?

I teach 3 classes right now at Zayed University in Dubai, UAE.

I want you to take them! Or take one!

I want you to participate and do the courses, just one!

There are 14 weeks left, give or take!

The courses are in general communication, public speaking and conflict resolution.

I am posting the courses in podcast form online.

If you are interested email me and I will send you a syllabus!

james.piecowye@gmail.com is my address.

Listen, follow, react and email me the pieces I ask for!

Easy really.

Do it all and do it well and I will send you a letter that you can keep that says you have done what was required!

Instant professional development!

The cost?

I want to set up a means to provide this type of education, as I said to the bottom billion!

So what I ask for is your help!

Publicity, speak to others, your skill.

Maybe you can help with a service of a sort… what can you offer?

It might be as simple as telling a friend or as in depth as collecting mobile phones to be used!

The short and sweet is I see no reason for many people to not take my courses.

I see no reason for other educators to not get involved.

And I see no reason for you and I to not give something to make the larger wish a reality!

So what are you waiting for?

Listen, email me james.piecowye@gmail.com, do!

Yesterday I had the pleasure, and I do mean pleasure, of attending a staff meeting that was enjoyable and not a pain.

How many staff meetings have you sat through and wished for a root canal?

What makes a good meeting?

What makes a good presentation?

What meets a good class?

What makes a good sales experience?

THE STORY! How we tell the story and the story itself makes or breaks an experience.

So where do we learn the art of storytelling?

How many engineers, accountants, CEOs… can tell their story in a way that is compelling, emotional, information packed, even entertaining?

What I learned from TED, go to www.TED.com, is that it is the design of the story telling process and the delivery that also matters, not just who you are and what you know.

So why is explicit storytelling not a part of our university, college and high school programs?

The pieces of storytelling are part of the collective education curriculum’s but obviously nobody is getting it because for the most part the story and the message seldom if ever get through.

I think every student, every year should have to do an 18 minute TED like presentation on their great idea!  Build their year of learning, and action into 18 minutes of magic… instantly we would have a world of effective storytellers emerging!

Imagine!

We are being led down a very narrow path that I call the ARTIFICIAL DEPENDENCY.

We are being told, over and over, by Apple, Microsoft, Lenovo,HP, Xerox and the bucket full of content and service providers that we need this and that to be whole/complete/active/connected/collaborative members of society.

I feel that I am being guilted maybe even blackmailed into buying and using technology that I do not need or want!

One of the greatest claims of our modern day technology snake oil sales people is that it is technology that will allow us to collaborate and create a more connected society.

I say what if I say no? Will I be less connected?

The reality is no!

In fact if you get off the cell or mobile phone, if you pull yourself away from the Blackberry and tug your eyes away from facebook you might actually be amazed at how much old school social networking and collaboration is going on!

And the best think about this networking and collaboration is it does not depend on bandwidth, does not have a huge cost, maybe none, and it is portable!

RADIO! Marconi had a big hand in making this little idea a real big thing!

I believe that radio is more immediate, reaches a greater community audience and can have a far greater impact than the Internet any time and any place.

How you might ask?

Last night on Nightline we spoke about terrorism with Dr. Raymmond Hamden and we had an amazing call from a person who survived a terrorist bomb attack!

Our conversation took place live, and was immediatly broadcast to the UAE and the impact, fantastic!

This is our conversation with a terrorism-survivor !

This is the power of radio, the power to tap into our community and bring to life the ideas, motivation and conflict that lives around us and to do it in a contextualized immediate fashion without any real effort on the consumers part and to do it for little to no monetary investment!

Maybe we need to think twice before we jump to hard and fast on the technology band wagon!