What’s one big difference between education and business? Communication, especially electronic communication. Businesses have too much of it, many if not most educational organizations are a decade behind that curve, not yet having enough.
Free content at the Wall Street Journal includes this column by Sue Shellenbarger in Work and Family, “A day without e-mail is like . . .” She tells the story of U.S. Cellular’s chief operating officer banning e-mail on Fridays to improve work. He was striving for more face-to-face communication among employees, and he got it.
My first experience with e-mail was at the U.S. Department of Education — good heavens! — two decades ago. We were experimenting with electronic communication with the old, slow systems that linked dumb terminals through telephone connections (1200 BAUD, anyone?). Our formerly technophobic boss, Checker Finn, was at home recuperating from some physical ailment, and we made the delightful mistake of showing him he could send and receive messages by computer. Within a few weeks it took at least an hour a day to keep up with the messages. But our operations were split, with administration across town at the main ED building, and most of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) closer to the Capitol, at New Jersey Avenue, NE. Basic communications that had taken three days by inside mail, courier, and the limousine between the two buildings, were shortened to exchanges over 15 or 20 minutes. Computer messaging was a huge boost to productivity on most things. E-mail, such as it was, had to be printed out to be read. Saving it was a manual filing process.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 