Communication: Ever Changing

When I was growing up, life was different.  We had one television in our house.  To change the channel we had to get up off the couch, go to the television, and turn the dial.  We had five television channels - ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and a local independent station.

Today, there are two hundred and forty million televisions in the United States.  Two million of them are in bathrooms.  There are over three hundred television channels.

We had one phone - one that you actually had to dial.  If someone call and we were not home, we did not have voice mail or an answering machine.  When I went away to college, if I wanted to call home I had to use the common phone located in the dorm hallway.  If my parents wanted to call me, they had to call that phone, hoped someone would answer it, and, if it was not me who answered, they asked that person to go and find me.

Today, thirty percent of U.S. households do not have a traditional phone line.  As of December 2009, there were over two hundred and eighty five million wireless subscriber connections in the United States.  That would equate to almost ninety-one percent of the U.S. population.

We had no computer.  There was no such thing as email, gmail, or hotmail.

Today, over seventy-six percent of Americans own a computer.  Some estimates say that there are over two hundred and forty email accounts in the United States alone.

When I was young and trying to woo my girlfriend who later became my wife, I wrote her letters.  Now people post messages on Facebook or tweet on Twitter to communicate.

Americans have access to over one trillion web pages, sixty-five thousand iPhone applications, ten thousand radio stations, five thousand magazines, and three hundred cable television networks.

The major television channels - ABC, NBC, and CBS - get about ten million unique visitors a month.  You Tube, Facebook, and My Space get two hundred and fifth unique visitors a month.  None of those websites even existed ten years ago.

Today it is easier than ever to reach people.  Yet, it seems harder to connect that it has ever been.

Ninety percent of the two hundred million emails sent everyday are spam.  Answering machines and caller ID make it easier to screen calls and not answer those call that you would prefer to ignore.

While there are any number of ways for people to connect, it seems like it is harder and harder to communicate.  Our school district wants to communicate important messages to students, parents, and community members.  We constantly wonder what is the most effective way to communicate.

Communication is hard.  Making sure that students, parents, and community members learn about what we are doing is important.  It is also important to be able to hear from our community.  My goal is to communicate with the people who care about our district - students, parents, community members, and employees.

At the end of this entry I have listed several of the tools that I use in an attempt to communicate about our district.  I invite you to join me - in person or virtually.  While life is different today than it was when I was younger, I believe that we need to communicate today more than ever.

The district website:  http://www.glps.k12.mi.us
The Superintendent's blog:  http://grandledgesuperintendent.blogspot.com
The Superintendent's twitter:  http://twitter.com/docsmatthews
The Superintendent's You Tube videos:  http://www.youtube.com/docsmatthews

The next two Superintendent's Coffees:  Wednesday, November 10; 7:30 - 9:00 AM at the Grand Ledge A&W; Thursday, December 9; 5:30 - 7:00 PM at the Grand Ledge Biggby on Charlevoix.