I teach video production. One the biggest obstacles I have is the curriculum. The name alone screams hands on course. The curriculum is anything but hands on ( history, scriptwriting, law). In order to compensate for this problem, I try to move quickly through the book work. This leaves more time for hands on work. Sounds like a good plan right? In order to move more quickly I am trying a lot of new things. One of these things is Google Docs. So, I asked my students to get a Google account so I could share things with them. Last semester, I put me exam review sheet online. Normally, my students copy down terms during class time while I review. This year I pulled up my Google Doc of my review sheet on my video projector and passed out the laptops. While I was reviewing, the students took notes in the review sheet. It didn’t work perfect but it was interesting.

This brings me to my point, the morning of my review I emailed several people to tell them about my activity. I invited them down to see either the success or failure of my online collaborative review sheet. I was disappointed because no one showed up or even responded to my email. I realize that people might have had other things to do and that not every email demands a response. However, it would have been nice to have had a ” sorry I couldn’t make it, how did it go?”

This has become a major pet peeve of mine, people who do not respond to emails. In some cases, I don’t believe they are even reading my email, which is just insulting. I researched and read in business situations that email should be responded to within 24 hours. I am sure I have missed an email, on occasion, but I work with some frequent violators. From now on, I am going to reword all my emails to suggest that not responding is agreeing to something. For instance, I might suggest ” unless you hear back, you can pay for tonight’s meal”. Or ” I told my teenage son and his friends that you would let me know if you didn’t want them swimming in your pool while you out of town. ” So unless they open their email and respond they are agreeing to the statements.

The other option is a start a policy that states by not answering an email, you give the sender an option to write their own response from the receiver. So if you send an emailing asking for a day off, if they don’t respond to your own email. You could send yourself an email telling you to take a week.
That all for now.