I’m astounded by this article from MediaShift! It has to be heresy to greatest degree! I never really believed that email would ever go away, but it looks as though it is here to stay and appears to be making a ‘resurgence’ on the backlash against social networking phenomenon.
Surprisingly, the vast majority of our staff check their email, some more regularly than others. Proudly, our administration has stayed true to their commitment to reducing paper and communicates primarily with staff via emails. Everything goes via email. At first, some staff balked at the idea and refused to check their emails requesting paper memos, notes, etc. And for a while there administration capitulated. But, it seems as though they ahve located their commitment to a ‘greener’ operation. As a result, these ‘holdouts’ found themselves out of the loop more and more; they had to get with the program.
The only real issue that seems to be still be hanging around like wet-dog smell is the fact that many faculty members still use their personal email to correspond with parents. For some reason this bugs me to no end.
I really believe that we must delineate between our personal and professional correspondences. If I worked for Telus, Terasen, or any other multinational (including the Canadian government), I would be expected to communicate all my professional dealings with customers, vendors, etc. using that account. No exceptions. In fact, it would be implicit in my contract. I know this because my brother works for Terasen and it is status quo. I’m not sure why teachers are so headstrong on this point. We are a company with a large staff and client base. It only makes sense to correspond via our professional accounts. Still room for improvement, but man we have come a long way.
And business that I do in my capacity as an employee of the school district is done using my district account. Paying bills, viewing picture of my new nephew. Checking the arrival times of my parents’ flight. All done with Hotmail.
Now, the other issue arising from emailing is the argument that it takes up so much time writing replying, etc. And I suppose you could look at it from the perspective of the parents of our clientele (and I know I’ll get shot for even aligning education with commerce–but they both require money and funding and both are always trying to get more of the same–self-interest be damned!) that they prefer email as the primary means of correspondence. Like any job there are those things that we don’t like to do but for the sake of the pay cheque, we do it with a smile on our face.
And it’s not like people don’t have options: continue to stay out of the loop and keep your head in the sand; maybe retire early. Or maybe, just maybe learn to use email effectively and efficiently.
We always have options.
GETTING CURIOUS 