Category Archives: positivity

Learning By Doing: Rider University Students Take Over Social Media at #HMHWomenRock Event

I’ve always been a big believer in the concept of “learning by doing”! myLIpost WOMENROCK

This semester (Fall 2017), my “COM341 Publicity Methods” class at Rider University has had the wonderful opportunity to work with, and learn from, Meghan Higgins, Online Conversation Starter for Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH), and Margaret Fontana, HMH Digital Information Officer. Meghan and Margaret are our class’ “real-world” clients, and they’ve been helping us to learn everything we can about communications, social media, digital media, event planning, promotion, publicity, business, and more!

After weeks of planning during our class meetings and Skype sessions with Meghan and Margaret, on Saturday, October 21, we accomplished a “social media takeover” at the HMH Women Rock event in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Throughout the afternoon event, which was attended by hundreds of people, we expertly handled the social media coverage. We also were fortunate to have the assistance of a few photographers from my class and from Professor Jessi Oliano’s photography class at Rider. It was a great day – and an awesome experience for everyone involved!

A big “thank you” to these special people:

  • Thank you to my Rider students and Prof. Oliano’s photography students for doing such an amazing job! You make me so proud to be associated with you and Rider University. 🙂
  • Thank you to everyone at the #HMHWomenRock event who participated with us in real life (IRL) and on social media – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Pinterest!
  • And, most of all, a BIG “THANK YOU” to Meghan Higgins, Margaret Fontana, and the folks at Hackensack Meridian Health who made this learning experience possible!

 

‘Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm…’

syllabi fall 2017American Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” I agree 100%! That’s why I’m so excited to be starting another semester working with my students at Rider University. This semester, I’m teaching “COM107 Writing for the Media” and “COM341 Publicity Methods.” I couldn’t be any more enthusiastic about meeting my students (although I’ve met a few before) and about moving ahead with the activities planned for Fall 2017.

It’s go time! Classes start this week, and my syllabi are complete and already shared on Canvas (Rider’s learning management system online). Enthusiastically, I anticipate Fall 2017 will be a GREAT semester! Bring it on!

Introducing a new feature on this blog: WriteOn!

Each week, I’ll be posting a “WriteOn!” mini-post here on my blog where you’ll find two or three links to blogs, articles and academic research paper posts that I’ve discovered online during the previous week. WriteOn3-carrotHonestly, I’m not sure what the specific topics will be – I’m open to learning about anything and everything that can help keep us positive, focused, motivated and moving forward in today’s sometimes-crazy, often-distracting world.

I’ll be looking for writing that somehow catches my attention. (For those of you who already follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, you know my interests are wide-ranging and somewhat scattered: business, writing, teaching, learning, entrepreneurship, social media, communicating, etc.) In determining my picks for each week, I’ll be focused on sharing writing that’s somehow eye-opening, thought-provoking or just plain interesting – something that makes me (and hopefully you) think or react or take action.

Let’s face it: There’s so much good writing that’s going on right now, it’s impossible to read it all. Today, it seems we’re all writers – and we’re writing more than ever before: texting, emailing, blogging and expressing ourselves on social and online media… The reality is that humanity, as a whole, is communicating on a global scale and we’re linked together now more than we’ve ever been before.

This new blog feature – WriteOn! – will be my attempt to simplify and filter through all the writing and communicating that’s going on online today. I’m doing this for myself and for my like-minded friends and followers. Hope it helps us all! Look for my first WriteOn! post this Monday, January 5, 2015. Let me know what you think by commenting or tweeting to me. Thanks!