After his talk with management, Steve Sloan can now podcast his conversations with students all he wants, but logically enough, this should be happening off campus and not while he’s on the clock.
Steve writes:
“I have no desire to become a cause celeb or cause undo controversy. I appreciate the respect for my freedom of speech, understand the fact that this is uncharted waters and am sensive to the reality that some folks, at SJSU and elsewhere, may not understand what and why I am doing what I am doing. I hope
those people listen to my podcasts and the conversations going on here and elsewhere on the Internet. This has been a Cluetrain moment.
So should I still pursue the story and find out what management was thinking? Ah, I suppose the better angle is something like “SJSU Management Approves Staff/Student Podcasting”, right?
This doesn’t have to be about a University squashing anyone’s right to speak freely, it can be just another bureaucratic snafu that happens when an institution’s ideals don’t scale down to micromanaging policies.
The logic of SJSU should be: “Let’s always push the bleeding edge of any sort of use of technology in education, because this will always create connections to business and industry in Silicon Valley.” Of course, logic and bureaucracy are natural born enemies.
I think the best thing is that some folks are just a bit more aware that there is indeed a conversation happening. I would love to talk more about this. Perhaps we could do a podcast?
~Steve