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Comment * </p> <p class="comment-form-author"><label for="author">Name <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="author" name="author" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="245" autocomplete="name" required=""/></p> <p class="comment-form-email"><label for="email">Email <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="email" name="email" type="email" value="" size="30" maxlength="100" aria-describedby="email-notes" autocomplete="email" required=""/></p> <p class="comment-form-url"><label for="url">Website</label> <input id="url" name="url" type="url" value="" size="30" maxlength="200" autocomplete="url"/></p> <p class="comment-form-mailpoet"> <label for="mailpoet_subscribe_on_comment"><br /> <input type="checkbox" id="mailpoet_subscribe_on_comment" value="1" name="mailpoet[subscribe_on_comment]"/> Yes, add me to your mailing list<br /> </label> </p> <p class="comment-subscription-form"><input type="checkbox" name="subscribe_comments" id="subscribe_comments" value="subscribe" style="width: auto; -moz-appearance: checkbox; -webkit-appearance: checkbox;"/> <label class="subscribe-label" id="subscribe-label" for="subscribe_comments">Notify me of follow-up comments by email.</label></p> <p class="comment-subscription-form"><input type="checkbox" name="subscribe_blog" id="subscribe_blog" value="subscribe" style="width: auto; -moz-appearance: checkbox; -webkit-appearance: checkbox;"/> <label class="subscribe-label" id="subscribe-blog-label" for="subscribe_blog">Notify me of new posts by email.</label></p> <p style="display: none !important;" class="akismet-fields-container" data-prefix="ak_"><label>Δ<textarea name="ak_hp_textarea" cols="45" rows="8" maxlength="100"/></label><input type="hidden" id="ak_js_1" name="ak_js" value="122"/></p> </form></div> <p><a href="https://sijen.com/2025/04/29/7-questions-on-educational-leadership/">Source link </a></p> </div> <div style="margin-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--40);" class="wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size"><time datetime="2025-04-28T17:42:00+00:00"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/7-questions-with-dr-simon-atkinson/">April 28, 2025</a></time></div> </div> </li><li class="wp-block-post post-87 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-communcations category-featured category-idle-and-otherwise category-marketing category-thoughts category-trends tag-communications tag-marketing tag-trends"> <div class="wp-block-group alignfull has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained" style="padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60)"> <figure style="aspect-ratio:3/2;" class="wp-block-post-featured-image"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/2025-trends-in-marketing-and-communications/" target="_self" ><img loading="lazy" width="600" height="600" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-Trends-in-Marketing-and-Communications.jpg" class="attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image" alt="2025 Trends in Marketing and Communications" style="width:100%;height:100%;object-fit:cover;" decoding="async" srcset="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-Trends-in-Marketing-and-Communications.jpg 600w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-Trends-in-Marketing-and-Communications-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-Trends-in-Marketing-and-Communications-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /></a></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-post-title has-x-large-font-size"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/2025-trends-in-marketing-and-communications/" target="_self" >2025 Trends in Marketing and Communications</a></h2> <div class="entry-content alignfull wp-block-post-content has-medium-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-post-content-is-layout-constrained"><div> <p>Given my first job out of university was with Vichy L’Oreal where I served briefly as a junior product manager (<em>because I was worth it</em>) I tend to keep an eye of marketing and communication trends, always a moving target. As soon as one has upskilled, or briefed a sub-contractor, the goalposts have moved once again. Nonetheless, largely driven by the furious pace of technological advancements, and the slower shifts in social behaviours, we have seen several trends in 2024.</p> <p>Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts have continued to rise to dominance in the social media space, with brands leveraging these formats to create engaging, bite-sized content in the form of short-form video content. Alongside this we have seen commercial organisations allocate significant budgets to creator marketing, where influencers and content creators play a significant role in promoting products and services. The two trends together are just now beginning to be leveraged by universities, and to a lesser extent schools, by encouraging students and staff to generate marketable, authentic, content.</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter size-large"></figure> </div> <p>Another trend of 2024 has been the nascent use of AI and marketing science to finetune marketing strategies and generate targeted personalise content. This, alongside with focussing on omnichannel, consolidated, messaging regardless of the device or platform promises to be a cost saving approach once embedded.</p> <p>Everyone is fighting for brand recognition more than ever, so it is not surprising that we see several educational institutions, at all levels, exploring new branding avenues.</p> <p>As we look forward to 2025, we can already identify several new trends emerging in marketing and communications. Ubiquitous debate about AI and Machine Learning promises to dominate, particularly as it relates to the regulation of responses to sales queries by AI tools. These should produce a wealth of insights into marketing content creation for those organisations that successfully close the loop.</p> <p>The increasing use voice search across platforms requires institutions to think about how their ‘audio-brand’ runs in a crowded space. If the organisation is the ‘London School of Economics and Political Science’ but everyone who is already in the know says ‘LSE’, not problem. What about those that don’t?</p> <p>The web is awash with predictions about the impact of AR and VR for 2025, but having presented at a conference in 2019 on AR/VR and Learning Design, and being assured that universal adoption was within 12-18 months… I am still holding my breath. There are great examples of 3D campus walk-throughs, and I suspect for most that works well enough.</p> <p>The focus for everyone in marketing and communications, in education as much as elsewhere, will (almost) undoubtedly be on the importance of innovation and authenticity. The trend that keeps giving.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded" id="like-post-wrapper-7327882-7665-6766565ac7bd6" data-src="https://widgets.wp.com/likes/?ver=14.2-a.3#blog_id=7327882&post_id=7665&origin=sijen.com&obj_id=7327882-7665-6766565ac7bd6&n=1" data-name="like-post-frame-7327882-7665-6766565ac7bd6" data-title="Like or Reblog"> <h3 class="sd-title">Like this:</h3> <p><span class="button"><span>Like</span></span> <span class="loading">Loading…</span></p> <p><span class="sd-text-color"/><a class="sd-link-color"/></div> </p></div> <p><a href="https://sijen.com/2024/11/14/2025-trends-in-marketing-and-communications/">Source link </a></p> </div> <div style="margin-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--40);" class="wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size"><time datetime="2024-11-14T03:32:00+00:00"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/2025-trends-in-marketing-and-communications/">November 14, 2024</a></time></div> </div> </li><li class="wp-block-post post-402 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-715 category-e-learning category-featured category-idle-and-otherwise category-mobile-devices category-thoughts tag-sijen tag-track"> <div class="wp-block-group alignfull has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained" style="padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60)"> <figure style="aspect-ratio:3/2;" class="wp-block-post-featured-image"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/on-the-right-track-sijen/" target="_self" ><img loading="lazy" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/On-the-right-track-–-Sijen.jpg" class="attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image" alt="On the right track – Sijen" style="width:100%;height:100%;object-fit:cover;" decoding="async" srcset="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/On-the-right-track-–-Sijen.jpg 1024w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/On-the-right-track-–-Sijen-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/On-the-right-track-–-Sijen-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/On-the-right-track-–-Sijen-768x768.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-post-title has-x-large-font-size"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/on-the-right-track-sijen/" target="_self" >On the right track – Sijen</a></h2> <div class="entry-content alignfull wp-block-post-content has-medium-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-post-content-is-layout-constrained"><div> <p>In March 2024, in response to New Governmental mandates that all state schools (publicly funded schools) ban all mobile phones from classrooms and playgrounds during school hours, I wrote a <a href="https://flanz.org.nz/2024/03/30/new-zealand-government-mobile-phones-and-flexible-learning/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blog piece</a> for the Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand. It was a balanced for-and-against piece, highlights arguments for both perspectives.</p> <p>My actual views, my personal views, are somewhat different. I have no insight into the government policy space but it worries me that this is the first stage of what should be a three stage policy implementation when noone has got passed stage one.</p> <p>The mobile phone as a means of making or receiving voice calls and phone messages, possibly even SMS text messages, are not likely to be overly intrusive. However, even this argument doesn’t survive even a cursory glance at recent history. It stands up about as well as Trump’s suggestion that without total immunity all US Presidents would be continuously harangued by their successors, as though he was the first rather than the forty-fifth to hold that office. History tells us that students survived before the advent of the mobile phone. As they had indeed survived before the introduction of the ball-point pen, the ink pen, and the chalk board.</p> <h4>Stage One: removing social media</h4> <p>The distinction to be made is not whether students NEED to have access to a mobile phone in order to learn, both knowledge acquisition and associatedcognitive skills, and social interpersonal and affective skills, (<em>spolier, they do not</em>), it is rather a question as to WHETHER mobile phones are an appropriate means of exposing progressive generations of students to emerging technologies andthe power they harness.</p> <p>Until mobile phone manufacturers take their responsibility for limiting most egregious damage created by young people’s addiction to social media andintroduce some form of ‘airflight mode’ for schools, ideally accurately GPS mapped and enforceable, the onus will be on school management, teachers and parents to enforce a ban. (Heads up to any of the major handset manufacturers, having a youth-safety mode function is a market share winner.)</p> <p>Here in New Zealand, there is strong, though largely still anecdotal, evidence that playgrounds are noisier, more energetic and happier places sincethe ban was introdced, and that in-class attention is more sustained and better managed. There are even suggestions that there is a detectable reduction in cyberbullying.</p> <h5>Stage Two: infuse technology</h5> <p>So, on balance taking the mobile phones, as an instrument of constant social distraction rather than as a tool for communication, out of schools makes sense. However, I would personally like to ensure that schools are supported to infuse technology throughout the curriculum. We need to consider what a technology infused school looks like, free of social media distraction. Schools might consider providing tablets for each student to ensure digital equity. Students need to learn how to manage their digital profile, articulate what a digital-twin persona might look like, express themselves digitally as well as learning just to be confident surfers, clickers and users of a wide variety oftools.</p> <p>In less economically prosperous areas of the world the mobile phone provides a personal gateway to resources and interactivity and the price we pay, as a society, is the corrosive, addictive behaviour that social media creates. In wealthier areas I believe we can throw away the baby (social media handheld devices) without losing the bathwater (digitally immersive tools).</p> <h4>Stage Three: lobby handset manufacturers</h4> <p>Given that there is no incentive for the social media companies to face upto their responsibilities and curtail usage of their apps, they will simply to continue, as the tobacco industry did before them and the food industry does today, to deny and deny, and obscure the worst of their excesses under the banner of ‘user choice’. We need to lobby leading device manufacturers, <strong><a href="https://www.apple.com/nz/education/">Apple</a>,<a href="https://www.samsung.com/nz/">Samsung</a>, <a href="https://edu.google.co.nz/">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.sonyged.com/en">Sony</a>, <a href="https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_xa/solutions/education.html">Motorola</a>, <a href="https://www.huawei.com/en/tech4all/education">Huawei</a>, <a href="https://www.oneplus.in/education-program">OnePlus</a>, <a href="https://www.nokia.com/industries/education/">Nokia</a>, <a href="https://www.blackberry.com/us/en">Blackberry</a> and <a href="https://www.lg.com/au/business/education">LG</a></strong>,to step up and introduce serious zone based protections. And aggressively market them!</p> <p>We don’t need social media apps in schools but we do need to enable access to technology in our classrooms.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded" id="like-post-wrapper-7327882-6553-676e003b0594b" data-src="https://widgets.wp.com/likes/?ver=14.2-a.3#blog_id=7327882&post_id=6553&origin=sijen.com&obj_id=7327882-6553-676e003b0594b&n=1" data-name="like-post-frame-7327882-6553-676e003b0594b" data-title="Like or Reblog"> <h3 class="sd-title">Like this:</h3> <p><span class="button"><span>Like</span></span> <span class="loading">Loading…</span></p> <p><span class="sd-text-color"/><a class="sd-link-color"/></div> </p></div> <p><a href="https://sijen.com/2024/05/09/mobile-phones-in-schools-on-the-right-track/">Source link </a></p> </div> <div style="margin-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--40);" class="wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size"><time datetime="2024-05-09T03:09:00+00:00"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/on-the-right-track-sijen/">May 9, 2024</a></time></div> </div> </li><li class="wp-block-post post-605 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-a-i category-artificial-intelligence category-authorship category-featured category-idle-and-otherwise category-thoughts tag-authors tag-honest tag-human tag-sijen"> <div class="wp-block-group alignfull has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained" style="padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60)"> <figure style="aspect-ratio:3/2;" class="wp-block-post-featured-image"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/honest-authors-being-human-sijen/" target="_self" ><img loading="lazy" width="1168" height="473" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/honest-authors-being-human-–-Sijen.jpg" class="attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image" alt="honest authors, being human – Sijen" style="width:100%;height:100%;object-fit:cover;" decoding="async" srcset="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/honest-authors-being-human-–-Sijen.jpg 1168w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/honest-authors-being-human-–-Sijen-300x121.jpg 300w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/honest-authors-being-human-–-Sijen-1024x415.jpg 1024w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/honest-authors-being-human-–-Sijen-768x311.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1168px) 100vw, 1168px" /></a></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-post-title has-x-large-font-size"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/honest-authors-being-human-sijen/" target="_self" >honest authors, being human – Sijen</a></h2> <div class="entry-content alignfull wp-block-post-content has-medium-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-post-content-is-layout-constrained"><div> <p>I briefly had a form up on my website for people to be able to contact me if they wanted to use any of my visualizations, visuals of theory in practice. I had to take it down because ‘people’ proved incapable of reading the text above it which clearly stated its purpose. They insisted on trying to persuade me they had something to flog. Often these individuals, generalists, were most likely using AI to generate blog posts on some vaguely related theme.</p> <p>I have rejected hundreds of approaches in recent years from individuals (I assume they were humans) who suggested they could write blogs for me. My site has always been a platform for me to disseminate my academic outputs, reflections, and insights. It has never been about monetizing my outputs or building a huge audience. I recognize that I could be doing a better job of networking, I am consistently attracting a couple of hundred different individuals visiting the site each week, but I am something of a misanthrope so it goes against the grain to crave attention.</p> <p>We should differentiate between the spelling and grammar assistance built into many desktop writing applications and the large language models (LLM) that generate original text based on an initial prompt. I have not been able to adjust to the nascent AI applications (Jasper, ChatGPT) in supporting my own authorship. I have used some of these applications as long-text search engine results, but stylistically it just doesn’t work for me. I use the spelling and grammar checking functionality of writing tools but don’t allow it to complete my sentences for me. I regularly use generative AI applications to create illustrative artwork (Midjourney) and always attribute those outputs, just as I would if were to download someone’s work from Unsplash.com or other similar platforms.</p> <p>For me, in 2023, the key argument is surely about the human-authenticity equation. To post blogs using more than a spell and grammar checker and not declaring this authorship assistance strikes me as dishonest. It’s simply not your work or your thoughts, you haven’t constructed an argument. I want to know what you, based on your professional experience, have to say about a specific issue. I would like it to be written in flowing prose, but I can forgive the clumsy language used by others and myself. If it’s yours.</p> <p>It makes a difference to me knowing that a poem has been born out of 40 years of human experience rather than the product of the undoubtedly clever linguistic manipulation of large language models devoid of human experience. That is not to say that these digital artefacts are not fascinating and have no value. They are truly remarkable, that song generated by AI can be a pleasure to listen to, but not being able to relate the experiences related through song back to an individual simply makes it different. The same is true of artworks and all writing. We need to learn to differentiate between computer intelligence and human intelligence. Where the aim is for ‘augmentation’, such enhancements should be identifiable.</p> <p>I want to know that if I am listening, looking, or reading any artefact, it is either generated by, or with assistance from, large generative AI models, or whether it is essentially the output of a human. This blog was created without LLM assistance. I wonder why other authors don’t declare the opposite when it’s true.</p> <p><em>Image credit: Midjourney 14/06/23</em></p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded" id="like-post-wrapper-7327882-6435-6772fc323b64c" data-src="https://widgets.wp.com/likes/?ver=14.2-a.9#blog_id=7327882&post_id=6435&origin=sijen.com&obj_id=7327882-6435-6772fc323b64c&n=1" data-name="like-post-frame-7327882-6435-6772fc323b64c" data-title="Like or Reblog"> <h3 class="sd-title">Like this:</h3> <p><span class="button"><span>Like</span></span> <span class="loading">Loading…</span></p> <p><span class="sd-text-color"/><a class="sd-link-color"/></div> </p></div> <p><a href="https://sijen.com/2023/06/14/authenticity-honest-authors-being-human/">Source link </a></p> </div> <div style="margin-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--40);" class="wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size"><time datetime="2023-06-14T04:10:00+00:00"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/honest-authors-being-human-sijen/">June 14, 2023</a></time></div> </div> </li><li class="wp-block-post post-701 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-a-i category-academic-integrity category-featured category-idle-and-otherwise category-plagiarism category-theoretical-perspectives category-thoughts tag-age tag-desperately tag-generative tag-redefinition tag-sijen"> <div class="wp-block-group alignfull has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained" style="padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--60)"> <figure style="aspect-ratio:3/2;" class="wp-block-post-featured-image"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative-ai-sijen/" target="_self" ><img loading="lazy" width="1200" height="715" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative.jpeg" class="attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image" alt="desperately in need of redefinition in the age of generative AI. – Sijen" style="width:100%;height:100%;object-fit:cover;" decoding="async" srcset="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative.jpeg 1200w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative-300x179.jpeg 300w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative-1024x610.jpeg 1024w, https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative-768x458.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /></a></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-post-title has-x-large-font-size"><a href="https://blog.college-counseling.com/desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative-ai-sijen/" target="_self" >desperately in need of redefinition in the age of generative AI. – Sijen</a></h2> <div class="entry-content alignfull wp-block-post-content has-medium-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-post-content-is-layout-constrained"><div id="post-6391"> </p> <div class="entry-content clearfix"> <p>The vernacular definition of plagiarism is often “passing off someone else’s work as your own” or more fully, in the University of Oxford maternal guidance, “Presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.” This later definition works better in the current climate in which generative AI assistants are being rolled out across many word-processing tools. When a student can start a prompt and have the system, rather than another individual, write paragraphs, there is an urgent need to redefine academic integrity.</p> <p>If they are not your own thoughts committed to text, where did they come from? Any thoughts that are not your own need to be attributed. Generative AI applications are already being used in the way that previous generations have made use of Wikipedia, as a source of initial ‘research’, clarification, definitions, and for the more diligent perhaps for sources. In the early days of Wikipedia I saw digitally illiterate students copy and paste wholesale blocks of text from the website straight into their submissions, often with removing hyperlinks! The character of wikipedia as a source has evolved. We need to engage in an open conversation with students, and between ourselves, about the nature of the purpose of any writing task assigned to a student. We need to quickly move students beyond the unreferenced Chatbots into structured and referenced generative AI tools and deploy what we have learnt about Wikipedia. Students need to differentiate between their own thoughts and triangulate everything else before citing and referencing it.</p> <p>Image: Midjourney 12/06/23</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded" id="like-post-wrapper-7327882-6391-6774fa9f51a7a" data-src="https://widgets.wp.com/likes/?ver=14.2-a.9#blog_id=7327882&post_id=6391&origin=sijen.com&obj_id=7327882-6391-6774fa9f51a7a&n=1" data-name="like-post-frame-7327882-6391-6774fa9f51a7a" data-title="Like or Reblog"> <h3 class="sd-title">Like this:</h3> <p><span class="button"><span>Like</span></span> <span class="loading">Loading…</span></p> <p><span class="sd-text-color"/><a class="sd-link-color"/></div> </p></div> <p> <br /> </p> <footer class="entry-meta-bar clearfix"/> </div> <p><a href="https://sijen.com/2023/06/12/plagiarism-desperately-in-need-of-redefinition-in-the-age-of-generative-ai/">Source link </a></p> </div> <div 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