Carnival of the Mobilists #152

Hosted by All About iPhone.net and written by Steve Litchfield is this week’s edition of the Carnival. Image Credit: Carnival of the Mobilists, Logo: http://www.mobili.st/images/cotm-button.jpg       

Dispatches from the (Family) Front Lines

So just a couple of quick education centered observations about this past weekend, spent with various family members from both sides:

First, one of my tribe is a teacher at one of the top 15 high schools as listed in the current version of Connecticut Magazine. It’s a very well off district that sends a high number of it’s graduates to college, a good number of them to the “best” schools in the world. Over the years, he’s been hearing my spiel about technology and the Web, and he and a couple of his colleagues have been dipping their toes into the social tools waters with varying degrees of success with one very notable, very positive exception. So here’s the news: almost all of it is being done pretty much under the radar with very little discussion, investment or support of technology of any kind in the classroom. Most of the professional development is centered around the learning theory author du jour, and the focus of all of it is maintaining or increasing test scores. In other words, it’s pretty much all about trying to do better what we’ve been doing all along, assessing it all the same way, and hoping for the same result. There is little or no talk of “21st Century” (or whatever you want to call them) skills or literacies in terms of global collaboration, networking, connecting and problem solving.

My other story deals with a third grader on Wendy’s side of the family. She came to visit over the weekend and at one point she pulled out a little red workbook and started doing problems in it. “It’s homework,” she said, adding that she had six pages to do over the weekend. Later, when she was done and had left it open on the dining room table, I flipped through it a bit and saw page after page of pretty basic math and word problems and (fill in the blank). When I closed it, I finally noticed the title: “Preparation for the 3rd Grade New Jersey ASK Assessment.”

Oy.

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If you could change your life

...would you?

Getting into Stanford Business School changed my life. In college, I trained to be a mediocre engineer (I didn't set out to be mediocre at it, but I sure was). I was on track to become Dilbert.

Getting into Stanford meant jumping the track. Going from one path to another in one fell swoop.

I didn't learn much of substance at business school, but that's fine, because the school allowed me to make a graceful transition. I had permission to reinvent and a platform to do it.

Which leads to this post, this track and this opportunity. (Please read all the details at this link before jumping up and down).

I'm offering an apprenticeship/not-internship/graduate school/charm school track-changing opportunity to a few people this winter. It's free, it's fairly audacious and I hope you'll check it out. It might not be for you (in fact, it probably isn't) but I have no doubt that you know people who might be interested.

I'm convinced that there are people out there who--given the right teaching, encouragement and opportunity--can change the world. I'm hoping you can prove me right. You don't have much time and there are only a few slots, so if you're even flirting with this idea, check out the lens here.

Two years at business school is a lot of time (and money) to spend to change paths these days. Most people over 20 can't afford either. I think six months might be a lot more do-able.

The beautiful conceit of Stanford during its heyday was that they recruited people who were really quite good at something, even though it might not be business. Or people who were at one level in an organization but strived to jump ahead several notches. I had a pro golfer and a teacher in my section, for example. As far as I can tell, most MBA programs have become finishing schools for commercial bankers hoping to become consultants and investment bankers (at least until recent events occurred). The creative achievers need a new, faster way to jump the track. For a few, this might be it.

This is a huge commitment for the people who sign up, of course, and a big shift for me as well. So, I'm leaving myself this escape hatch: if I can't find enough truly amazing people to take advantage of the opportunity, I'll quietly move on and won't do it (this time). I'm not prepared to settle, and you shouldn't either. But, if I'm right about the caliber of restless people reading this, I'm figuring that there will be plenty of amazing people out there passionate enough to take a leap.

So, if you think you'd like to find a new track, here's your chance. If you think you might be able to turbocharge your impact on the world, let me know. Sort of my way of repaying the admissions officer at Stanford who was crazy enough to let me in all those years ago.

Sorry About the Understatement!

In a recent Post, I recalled a story from Maryann Keller's Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors about the extreme deference paid to GM middle managers. I did it from memory, but ordered the book anyway. I got the stocked refrigerator and the torn-out hotel room wall part right (mostly—it was soft drinks, not beer), but had forgotten the story that preceded it—which made my little vignette small change by comparison. An exec reported this to Ms Keller about a not-atypical incident that marked his more junior days as a GM staffer:

"When [the assistant general sales manager] would fly in from the Chevrolet Central Office in Kansas City, I was assigned to stand outside the door of the Muehlenbach Hotel in a snowstorm and I was not to move, because whenever he showed up, I had to be there to open the door. We bought the elevator and blocked it off so he'd have an elevator to go to. We had somebody assigned to stand outside his room all day to take his shirts to the laundry and perform other tasks. And—this is true—we had learned that he had to have his morning orange juice a certain temperature, so we had somebody in the kitchen every day who tested the orange juice with a thermometer." [My italics.]

NB: Pondering Senator Obama's recently announced national security team and the Big Three execs returning with their begging bowls to D.C. this week, this thought occurred: While autoworld's Big Three CEOs took home about $40 million in compensation for their individually and collectively disastrous performance in 2007, the combined pay for the Big Four Generals responsible for our global security (military heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps) was about $1 million!

YouTube Generation

When I told my daughter that rather than taking photos of her musical theater Christmas show solo, I actually filmed it… she immediately asked me, “Can you put me on YouTube?”

I obliged.

After Cassie saw the video she momentarily didn’t want it up. Why? Because she was sick for 3 days before-hand with a fever and sore throat, and so she had some trouble with a few of the high notes… Notes that she could hit just a few days ago. I told her how much her grandparents in Toronto wanted to see this and she permitted me to put it up. I happen to also think it is still pretty good:-)

And here is my other daughter Katie and her friends in their feature song:

For her there was an expectation that if her older sister could be on YouTube, then she should be too.

I haven’t put any photos on Flickr yet, but I will soon.

How different this is from my private childhood! I think I have some 8mm film of me on a beach when I was Cassie’s age. And I know there are some photos of me at that age burried in my basement or hidden away in my parent’s closet.

Meanwhile, somewhere between 3 and 5 million photos are uploaded onto Flickr daily. And, “Every minute, some 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. “That’s the equivalent of Hollywood releasing more than 57,000 full-length movies every week,” (Chad Hurley). That’s a lot of ‘flotsam and jetsam‘.

So it comforts me that my daughter, weeks before her 9th birthday, is concerned about the quality of her performance being publicly placed online. I wish more students thought that way before putting things on Facebook! Two of my recent - posts have been about the need for us to help guide our students and our children as they engage in a digital world.

I’ve had to do just that recently. My youngest, Katie, decided to check out ‘katie-dot-com’. She was greeted with rotating photos of topless women and an invitation to become the next p?rn star. She thought it was a lot more amusing than mom and dad did!

The talk with Katie was simple enough: There are a lot of inappropriate sites, and you should only be on favorites unless mom or dad are helping you, (after all, she is only 6). But this was also good for Cassie to hear. We are more liberal with her use of the computer and so it was good that she listened in too. We talked about closing windows if you found something inappropriate and also telling us… that we won’t be mad.

The fact is that our kids already do a good job policing themselves with what’s appropriate on tv and so it isn’t a big logical jump to do the same on the computer.

Years from now my girls will be able to view their childhood memories at any time from virtually anywhere. They are part of a digital generation, and we need to help them grow up digitally respectful and responsible.

An iphone app that could change the way you get to work

[Update: since I posted this two days ago, I've gotten dozens of notes about systems in the UK, Australia and around the world that people say are "almost but not quite what you're describing." I also got a few notes pointing out that this was impossible and would never be done. Go figure.]

In 2000, I invented a gadget called RadaR. Fred Wilson told me that I was ahead of my time, and he was right.

RadaR.com was a hardware/internet hybrid that could eliminate boatloads of traffic (and frustration). The idea is this: traffic reports are useless, because they tell you about places where you don't want to go and because they don't help you make smart choices. Have you ever once been on the Father Baker Bridge? Me either. I don't care if it's closed.

When I go to the airport, I have a choice of three bridges. Which one should I take? If a smart friend was in a helicopter, she could call me and say, "don't take the Triboro (RFK)! Take the Whitestone..."

They never say that on the radio. "Hey Seth, don't go that way!"

Well, with GPS and a little spectrum, we could fix this problem in a clever way.

You get a box a little bigger than a pack of Altoids. There are four big red buttons on top and a serial number on the bottom. Type your serial number into radar.com then put in addresses for the four buttons (the airport, work, your grandma's house and Philadelphia, say). Then, whenever you get in the car, hit the button for where you want to go. The device speaks to you and tells you which route to take.

Here's the killer part: the way it knows which way to go is that everyone driving along with a RadaR device is consistently uploading two pieces of data: where they're going and how long it is taking to get there.

Since RadaR central has thousands of cars in every city, it knows which routes are fast and which ones are slow. Crunching some numbers, it realizes that the Whitestone is totally jammed and can send people over the Throgs instead.

I was going to seed the market by giving RadaR devices to taxi drivers, so we'd have plenty of data points from the beginning.

The challenge is that getting this much hardware to so many people is expensive. Not to mention the bandwidth.

You probably already guessed the punchline: Do it with an iPhone.

Have the iPhone use the gps data... upload where I was a minute ago and where I am now. Figure out my speed and route. Use the data to tell other RadaR users which route is best. It's worth $20 a month if you live in a place with traffic jams. It's a natural monopoly--once someone figures it out, why wouldn't everyone want to use the market leader?

I minimize the difficulty of technology implementation (and I'm usually right). So don't tell me why it's impossible to do this, just build it and I'll buy one. If you build it, let me know.

BONUS! Here's an easier one that you could probably sell as well. I type in a phone number and enter a time. Record a message and press go. I can cue up a bunch of messages that are based on time. I can have groups get the message I record, at the time I want them to get it. I can make announcements... For example, if the sign in at the gym starts at 6 am, I can set my phone and it will call ahead and sign me in. Or you could ping your exec team every morning at 8 on their way into work...

Creating a clearance sale culture

If you want to avoid being stuck with inventory or downtime during a recession, you might profit from realizing that people tell themselves a different story when they go to buy something.

During good times, we wonder, "can I get this house before the price goes up or someone else snatches it?" or we think, "my time is really valuable, it's okay if this is a little more expensive than the store down the street." Businesses think about getting the invoices in before budget closes, or making the boss happy.

In our current times, people tell themselves the story, "I got a steal!" If it's not a steal, they wait.

You can't just lower all the prices in your operation. There are two reasons this doesn't work. First, you no longer communicate the story of 'special deal', instead you communicate 'we're in trouble.' Second, you end up charging everyone a lower price, even the people who were happy to pay more--who wanted to pay more, in fact.

Important distinction: if you say to someone, "if I give you a discount, will you buy it?" the answer will almost certainly be no. No, because lowering the price is almost never sufficient to change non-interest into interest.

So, empower your staff, all of them, to take 10% off the price of anything if someone asks or seems concerned. "Oh, don't worry. I'll just take $20 off the price of the room if you can book it now." For retailers or personal selling situations, you can give your staff a pile of "manager's coupons" that they can just whip out... peel one off and quietly hand it to the waffling customer. It needs to have a date on it, probably hand written. Even better, let them write in the discount (up to x%, and of course they'll always write x, which is fine, because that's what you planned on.)

Is this something you want to do? Probably not. Almost certainly not. But it might be something you have to do. The alternative are shoppers who walk out of the store and leave you with nothing.

Don't know what you've got till it's gone

IWantSandy is folding, as are a number of web companies. So is that restaurant you loved down the street. Users are outraged. Outraged!

When you find a service or establishment or product that gives you joy, it's tempting to keep it to yourself. Perhaps it's uncomfortable to recommend it to a friend (after all, you might seem silly) and even more uncomfortable to recommend it to a stranger (after all, you might seem like a shill).

Plenty of people hesitate before spreading the word about a political candidate or a business or a medical device. We're worried that we'll look silly, or that the place will end up being too crowded and now we won't be able to get in. Or perhaps we're concerned about losing our uniqueness...

Anyway, the outcry that accompanies the closing of one of these businesses should be enough to remind you that your hesitation has a cost.

It's simple, I think. In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

• If you don't like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change

and

• If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.

Let’s Talk About Sex

On Monday night Sexual Health Educator Alix Bacon from SaleemaNoon.com/ did a parent presentation at our school. Today and tomorrow she is presenting to our students in groups of 2-3 classes at a time.

This is what I got out of the parent session…

—–

When talking about sex, two ideas really struck a chord with me:

1. The younger we bring up the topic, the more comfortable students/kids are talking about protection and prevention later on.

2. Open the lines of communications, and keep them open, and a kid is more likely to come to you for information or tell you a problem. (Rather than turning to the wrong people or relying on the poor judgement of friends.)

Alix spoke about how Predators go after kids that lack information/knowledge and kids that do not have clear boundaries about what is and what isn’t appropriate. This was confirmed with research where predators, who had at least 10 victims, were interviewed and asked what they looked for in a ‘target’. Time and again they looked for the naive, uncertain, kids that had limited knowledge, or vocabulary, pertaining to sex.

—–

Now, let’s think about online predators for a moment… doesn’t it make sense that they would look for uninformed, unsupervised students? Would they target kids who put all their information online, and don’t understand safety?

Now, let’s think about cyberbullies for a moment… doesn’t it make sense that they would go after kids who they knew couldn’t talk to their parents or teachers about a problem. Kids who sneak behind their parents backs to go online, or who don’t understand the permanence of what they say online?

Maybe it isn’t just sex we should be talking about with kids when they are young?

Maybe protection and prevention are things we should think about online?

Maybe these conversations need to happen both at home and at schools?

Maybe we need to engage with kids on Facebook, or deal with cyberbullying in the classroom, or examine how we can handle issues without ’slinging mud’.

It is ok to bring in a specialist to make sure a minimal amount of basic background or common language is discussed, but beyond that we need to keep the conversations and the learning going… About sex, about online safety, about appropriate behavior in our schools and community, and about being smart, safe citizens.

Let’s talk about more than just sex.

Thanksgiving

This has always been my favorite holiday. No gifts, no guilt, no doctrine.

For me, the holiday celebrates people who contribute with no expectation of anything in return. Online, the rules are no different. There are plenty of people typing as fast they can, all in expectation of what they'll get in return for that link or that shoutout or that flame. And then there are the superstars, the folks who have found a great platform for generosity.

Why be generous?

Why go out of your way for someone who can't possibly pay you back?

I hope the answer is obvious. It is to me. The benefit is in the fact that they can't pay you back. The opportunity to instruct or assist when you can gain nothing in return is priceless. It creates meaning and momentum and structure.

If you've been reading my blog this year, thanks for giving me the chance to teach.

If you've been helping at triiibes or Squidoo or on Twitter or on your blog or your social network of choice, and doing it without regard for repayment, thanks. We appreciate it more than you know.

And if you've dedicated your life to helping real people in real need, not just doing it when it's convenient, then you have my deepest thanks. It's not easy and it's not always fun, but it's vitally important and it matters.

Thank you.

TLITE Presentations

For the last couple Mondays I have presented to two of Betty Gilgoff’s TLITE Classes, (TLITE- Teaching and Learning in an Information Technology Environment). I did two different presentations one based loosely on Learning Conversations and the other on This My Blog has Taught Me. Both presentations asked for teachers to contribute to a VoiceThread and to join a cohort diigo group.

I’m really impressed with this SFU program and the teachers who have signed up for it. The TLITE program offers teachers an entry point into engaging students with technology. Both classes have students with very wide ranges of digital competence, but all with a willingness to learn within a community of other learners.

Check out some of the comments these teachers contributed to our VoiceThreads. The first Voicethread was created for my Learning Conversations presentation, but I didn’t encorporate any time within the presentation for participants to use it and as a result it wasn’t really used -lesson learned there! The second one I put together just for the TLITE class. Please feel free to add you own voice.

See ‘Learning Conversations’ on VoiceThread

See ‘This My Blog…’ on VoiceThread

I wanted to introduce a tool that would be easy to sign up for and easy to see value for in classrooms, and so that’s why I chose VoiceThread. And I also wanted to help these teachers learn from each other and that’s why I chose diigo groups. The first session felt rushed when we got to diigo whereas the second session was given more time. In the second session I talked a bit about the potential for using diigo in the classroom… what a great opportunity for educators to use this tool with students!

Thanks to Betty and to the two TLITE cohorts for inviting me into their classes. It excites me to see teachers in learning communities engaging with new tools.

Condolences

My heart goes out to our brothers and sisters in Mumbai. Personally, I feel like the guy who had a flat tire on the way to the airport and missed flight XXX, which was subsequently hijacked; I was due to have landed in Mumbai next Wednesday and proceeded to the Oberoi hotel, radioactive American passport in hand, prior to a Thursday seminar. It's a messy world; this was my third near-miss this year. Earlier in Johannesburg a trio of gunman hit my hotel at 6:30 a.m., 20 minutes after I'd left for my seminar that day. And in Mexico City last month, a small jet crashed and burned 5 or 10 blocks from my hotel; the crash was suspicious (still unresolved), as it carried the young Federal Interior Minister who was having some success against the powerful drug cartels.

I am shaken by the three near-misses, as any sane person would be, but will not curtail my International travels in any way. (Give me a couple of weeks re Mumbai, please.) I am a keen believer in the immense benefits of globalization and a charter member of the flat-earth society, circa 2008. It is my pleasure to be of some tiny service to my friends from Kuwait, Saudi, Dubai (week before last), to Kiev, to my beloved South Africa (may Mr Mandela live to 100+), Ukraine, Romania, etc. And India! Re the latter, I am "one of those"—a true blue India lover!

(As a matter of professional interest, I'd suggest Philip Bobbitt's Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century. I had just started it; it's a tough slog, but truly an original work.)

Holiday shopping guide

The decisions you make with your hard-earned money this year will have more impact than ever before. So put your money where your mouth is.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

1. Buy handmade items from people you like.

2. Don't buy gift cards. It's lazy and sort of dumb.

3. Don't buy from big brands or big stores that don't care about you, or that act in ways you don't applaud. There are very smart alternatives in almost every category.

4. When in doubt, buy digital items. Even better, give a donation and make many people happy.

5. Realize that when you're going to buy from Amazon, buying from a lens with a red ribbon on top will earn significant money for charity with no effort on your part.

Hugs are an underrated substitute.

And Now For Something Completely The Same

"And now for something completely different," the Monty Python gang used to promise. (I went to "Spamalot" this past weekend.) Forget that, I want to honor this Thanksgiving with something "completely the same."

Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike, is certainly one of the ten greatest Americans of the 20th century—and surely ranks in the top 50 for the world as a whole. As president from 1953–1960, he got us out of Korea more or less with honor, kept the Cold War from getting entirely out of hand, had the perfect demeanor for overseeing our post-war wound-licking and rejuvenation, was an unsung civil rights hero, and this great general ended his second term by warning us of the financial and political costs of a "military-industrial complex" with too much power—talk about prescience. And all this, of course, was preceded by D-Day and the campaign that ended World War II in Europe, in which Ike, make no mistake, was the prime mover.

I'm fascinated anew by DDE, and it all stemmed from a single and simple quote from General Eisenhower, which appeared in the May 2008 issue of Armchair General, a magazine I almost inadvertently grabbed at Logan Airport: "Allied commands depend on mutual confidence [and this confidence] is gained, above all through the development of friendships." The magazine's writer reinforced Ike's self-assertion by adding, "Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point] was the ease with which he made friends and earned the trust of fellow cadets who came from widely varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay great dividends during his future coalition command."

The quotes above are borne out in Michael Korda's extraordinary, new-ish 800-page prize-winning biography in which I am currently immersed, Ike: An American Hero. I selected a more or less random couple of chapters, covering DDE's arrival in England in 1942 and his subsequent and surprising assignment to command of Torch, the Allies first offensive action of the war and the biggest and most ungainly offensive of its kind in history to that point. (The North African landing took place on my day of birth—07 November 1942.) In the space of just 43 pages (pp. 268–311) we find these phrases describing Eisenhower:

"infectious grin and great charm" ... "nice face" ... "grin that was to become so famous" ... "got along famously" ... "goodwill was spontaneous and easily recognizable" ... "good impression that Ike had made in six weeks" [newcomer junior general to Supreme Commander, Torch, agreed upon by Roosevelt and Churchill—in, yes, just six weeks] ... "least rank-conscious of generals" ... "Men were happy to serve under Ike, even British admirals and generals who might easily have raised objections; his sincerity and lack of ceremony made it difficult, even impossible, to refuse him, and enabled him very rapidly to pull a team together." ... "Ike was gregarious, rarely had anything bad to say about anyone, and, on the surface at least, was relaxed and good natured." ... "Whereas Ike's good humor was genuine, unaffected, and affectionate, Monty's [Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery] was cruel and mocking and always carried a sting."

Following successes in North Africa and Italy, Eisenhower, still a rather "fresh face" and less than two years past arriving in London as a Lieutenant Colonel, was selected as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force Europe, tasked to invade the European continent and procure Germany's unconditional surrender. Korda explains the somewhat surprising decision:

"The Allies had generals with, perhaps, a sharper strategic vision than Ike. ... There were also generals who were more experienced at 'fighting a battle' ... But there was nobody who had anything like Ike's record of leading an alliance—always the most difficult feat in warfare. ... What is more, Ike somehow inspired people: civilians and ordinary soldiers of both nations, even cynical political figures and the always troublesome French. Something about his big grin; his long-limbed, loose American way of walking (the Kansas farm boy grown to a man); his easy, familiar way of speaking to everybody from King George VI down to privates in both armies; his lack of pretension; his evident sincerity ... They were willing to be led by him. They were willing to have him command their sons and husbands in battle. They trusted him. They were willing to die for him. ..."

(NB: Precisely these same things could be said about the two military figures I have studied most assiduously, Lord Horatio Nelson and General Ulysses S. Grant.)

(NB: When DDE subsequently ran for President of the United States in 1952, his campaign slogan was the simple "I like Ike.")

So?

So: Why must we constantly pursue "breakthrough thinking," why must we leap "out of the box," when the secrets to success and, conversely, the causes of failure—in the sense of persuading or failing to persuade groups of all sizes to pursue and achieve excellence in any and all endeavors—are almost wholly dependent upon character traits and personal characteristics that are, in fact, more or less eternal and which unequivocally transcend cultures of every flavor?

Benjamin Franklin's Parisian charm offensive of 1776–77 gained France as an American ally and changed the course of history in our Revolutionary War against England.

Nelson Mandela's extraordinary smile disarmed one and all. ("One of the greatest charm offensives in history" was one biographer's description of Mandela's amazing feat of disarming enemies and allies alike and transforming South Africa without civil war.)

Eisenhower's grin ("something about his big grin," "grin that was to become so famous") united fractious Allies and insured the effective conclusion of World War II in the European theater.

We are confronted at the moment with an economic crisis of epic proportion. There is no better time to heed the eternal lessons of Eisenhower (Franklin, Mandela, etc). Make no mistake, the keys to surviving and thriving, as individuals and organizations, will not primarily be the "out of the box" cleverness of our "strategic response," but instead individual and organizational character as expressed by the depth and breadth of relationships throughout our individual or organizational networks. Current case in point, Mr Pandit of Citigroup is as smart as they come and then some, but, unlike Ike, when he said, "Follow me"—nobody moved, except to cut and run.

American Thanksgiving is our quintessential "family holiday." Giftgiving—for once!—is not the norm, except as it is reflected in exchanges of pumpkin pies and 7-generation-old recipes for turkey stuffing. It is a day in which we even put the likes of sibling sniping on hold and simply rejoice in each other's presence. It is a day, one hopes, when we also reflect on those, numbering in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, who go to bed on less than a full stomach.

The economic crisis? Not much fun. And less fun to come. But this, too, will pass, especially if we can assiduously translate the good will around the Thanksgiving Table and the character lessons of Eisenhower and Franklin and Mandela into our minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day affairs.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Death of the personal blog?

A quick look at the list of the 'top' blogs in the world will show you that almost all of them are written by teams of people. There isn't one in the top 10 that's personal.

"Socialism" Versus "Capitalism" In Modern America

The Socialists are going berserk!
(The Republicans, of course.)
The Capitalists are in retreat!
(The Democrats, of course.)

Bill Clinton deregulated financial services!
Bill Clinton didn't bat an eye when the dotcom bubble was pricked!
Bill Clinton gave us "welfare to workfare"!
Bill Clinton got NAFTA passed over fierce resistance from both parties!
[To be sure, Mr Clinton had a little help on the ground from Newt Gingrich & Co, and the intellectual support of Alan "Ayn" Greenspan.]

George W. Bush, to the conservative rag, the New York Times, this morning's edition, has through yesterday unwound the Clinton radical pro-capitalist legacy via $7,800,000,000,000 [$7.8 trillion] in government assistance and guarantees.

(1) To quote Margaret Thatcher, it's a funny old world.
(2) In all seriousness, to those blinded by partisanship who say Mr Bush is sitting out the financial crisis, I say, Baloney! [And thank God.]
(3) Now what?

Reading to Find: Rip-Mix Classrooms

Ok, so humor me for a minute here…

Here’s what I LOVE about reading on the Web, when I get into a link flow that dances me from blog to blog, post to connected post and comments, and after about 20 minutes of just letting myself be carried away by the threads of conversations I land on something that makes a small part of my brain blow up in wonder. (This is also, by the way, something that I think too many of us fight when we read online, this idea that if we just let ourselves get caught up in the link trip, reading snippets here and there, scanning there and here, that we’re not really reading deeply somehow. Like my seventh grade English teacher Mrs. Tharp is on my shoulder shaking her head in disdain. It’s just a different depth, I think.)

So bear with me as I try to capture this: somehow I got to Sarah Stewart’s post on the Connectivism course and hopped from there over to this mind-bending post at Mike Bogle’s blog which led me to graze around his site a bit to find this post which sent me to this conversation about Open Educational Resources on Brian Lamb’s site which led me to this comment by Mike Caulfield which provoked me to search for and find this very cool concept of Rip-Mix Learners. Setting aside the beauty of that idea, let’s reflect for a second on that process, one that I’d bet most teachers would dissuade their students from practicing. At every point, my decision to click was motivated by an interest for context, for moving more deeply into the one idea in the maze of stuff that was pulling me most at the moment. I didn’t read half of these posts in their entirety, nor do I feel the need to go back and do so. If I had, I most certainly would not have ended up where I did. And while I know that I just as easily could have ended up someplace even better, I let my interest drive the narrative, not the expectations.

While I’m not suggesting I understand fully the implications of reading in this way, I do know that these flow moments are, on balance, a good thing. I love being lost in it. And it’s almost as if I’ve done this enough to know that if I just give myself to it, the thing I’m supposed to find and learn will eventually make itself known, like it’s finding me somehow. Ok, that may be a bit over the top; suffice to say it’s Zen in a way that I wish all of my moments were.

So anyway…

…this concept of Rip-Mix Learners has my brain taking off in all different directions.:

Rip Mix Learners is a student-run Open Courseware project, in which students make audio recordings of the lectures, compile class notes, and other materials and share them with their peers online.

I’m thinking “Rip-Mix Classrooms” or “Rip-Mix Workshops” or heck, “Rip-Mix Conferences.” I’ve been railing of late at all the paper note talking conference attendees whose observations and reflections and experiences will never be connected after the conference ends. And I know that we’re already doing this to some extent on the conference level and the classroom level (i.e. Darren’s scribes and others.) Problem is, most schools would probably attempt to shut this down and call it cheating, especially if, as this group is doing, they are collecting and adding tests and quizzes to the mix.

The horror!

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Note to the Appalled on Bear Scat

My neighbor brought me the bear scat. (See immediately below.) He had it in his hand—and handed it to me. Basically, it's modestly digested bark and nuts. (Period.) I surely wouldn't take a knife and fork to it, but it's a long, long way from what city folk might imagine. Particularly when the world goes wobbly, it is pure joy to be imbedded in the land, listening to bear calls at night (they sound like owls), waking up to farm sounds and having an oasis a long way from Citicorp HQ. I'm one of the old fashioned types—I guess it's the new fashion, in point of fact—who think we were designed to be in touch with the land in one way or another. (I say all this, while I claim with equal sincerity that I left my heart in San Francisco. Lucky me.)

Hargreaves and the 4th Way

After reading The Fourth Way article in Educational Leadership/October 2008, by Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, I’ve been trying to apply personal meaning to this new way. The 4th Way has five Pillars of Purpose, three Principals of Professionalism and four Catalysts of Coherence. But I think The 4th way rests firmly on just one pillar!

“An inspiring and inclusive vision that draws people together in pursuit of an uplifting common purpose.”

Beyond that the other pillars involve Collaboration in order to achieve the vision and common purpose being pursued. The Principals of Professionalism come from having Learning Conversations, or from Collaborators involved in an Active Learning network. And finally we need *accountability Responsibility to ensure the changes that we make are meaningful. I specifically avoided the term ‘assessment’, as that term suggests measuring things in ways that may not necessarily measure what we would consider progress. No ’standardization’ as Hargreaves suggests! Hargreaves’ Catalysts of Coherence are embedded throughout the pyramid.

We need a common vision of what we are in this for… Why schools are important? And how are they of value to our society and to our students? We need to be collaborating more effectively.

In doing so, we need to meaningfully connect Community, Educators, Students and Schools. We need to harness the strength of networks and learning communities and, equally as important, we have to create the time for these communities to meet as part of an educator’s (and student’s) day/week.

We need to be reflective learners, *accountable responsible to our communities that we share our learning with. Principles of Professionalism and Catalysts of Coherence will help us get ‘there’… but we need to collaborate and figure out where ‘there’ is first.

Maureen Dockendorf spoke of:

Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry. Not covering the curriculum, but ‘uncovering’ the curriculum. A focus in innovation and creativity… how do we model this… every day?

We model this by creating meaningful learning communities based on professional inquiry and by giving those learning communities the time and resources to make things happen.

*See update below.

—–

Inspirational reading and viewing:

School Reform in 5 minutes by Chris Lehmann. Also see his What I want to talk about post.

What business are we in? by Clarence Fisher.

If “It’s not about the technology.” Then What is it About? by Heidi Gable.

Letting Go by Alec Couros

21st Century Pedagogy by Greg Whitby on YouTube

Raising Expectations by Kelly Christopherson

We are ready for The 4th Way!

———–

*UPDATE: November 2nd, 2008

I originally had “Accountability” in the top arrow, but a colleague suggested that I change it to “Responsibility” in keeping with Hargreaves’ idea of “Responsibility before Accountability”.

In a letter to my Superintendent, Tom Grant, Andy Hargreaves suggested that “Teaching and Learning” be at the top of the Pyramid. He said, “ We would put teaching and learning at the top, though and reflection all around it, probably.” I may change this yet again when I get an understanding of how to represent ‘all around it’ visually. Hargreaves also said to Tom, “It’s great that you are the first in to the fourth way, and in your own way which is entirely as it should be.” This truly is an exciting time for us!

The You Show

A friend was telling me about some job interviews she went on. She enjoyed them.

Of course she did, I thought. She was starring in a show, a show about her.

I wrote about this five months ago, but it's worth boiling it down to the interview or sales call level.

One approach is to be reactive, to sit where you're supposed to sit, have your resume appear just so, wear what you're supposed to wear and answer each and every question in the safe and secure way.

The other approach is to put on a show. To be in charge, to lead.

When you go to Las Vegas, Penn and Teller don't ask you what sort of lights you want, what tricks you want to see and how long the show should be. They put on their show. If you don't like it, that's fine. Plenty of other people do. As a result, they win. They get to do their work, their way. And they profit from their confidence.

Some bosses don't want to hire people who have a vision, a personality and a shtick. That's okay. You don't want to work for them anyway.

Hold Your Nose!Bail We Must!Scrooge Not!Spend As If Your Life Depends On It! (It does!)

What follows is an economic primer from a non-economist:

Warts and all, America is the lynchpin of the global economy.
(And probably will be for next 25 years.)
Citi is a, maybe the, lynchpin of the lynchpin.
In fact, probably.
Psychologically, beyond doubt.
More than ever in a connected, hyper-tangled, wholly mangled world.
Financial system outcomes and movements are a "pure expectations play."
1% math.
99% individual and group and herd psychology.
(Basis of entire system is pure "psych": You deposit a little, they lend a lot, we both pray to any and all gods that the depositors don't all knock on the door at the same time. Hint: they did-are-will pound & wail for the foreseeable future.)
Hence, system precarious 100.00% of the time.
Vicious and virtuous circles are always in play.
Always.
There is no normal.
Never.
Ever.
(Wish there were a psychologist on Mr Obama's top econ team.)
(Or at least someone with a normal IQ.)
("One who knows" reports that Citi CEO Pandit has an EQ of approximately zero.)
(Sorta like L. Summers.)
Soooooo ...
Citi fails.
Depression follows.
(Or at least the odds go up not imperceptibly—and, hence, unacceptably.)
Therefore bailout justified, at almost any cost.
Pump Citi up with a few tens of billions.
Save not improbable downside of as much as tens of trillions.
Globalization threatened if Citi tanks.
25-year setback.
Bailout awful, unconscionable.
Bailout bodyblow to pure capitalism.
No bailout, possible capitalism knockout—or at least a wretched decade or two.
Fact—nobody has a clue.
Systemic interdependencies of this order are truly novel.
And psychological irrationality and the utter madness of crowds—of smart people as well as not-so-smart people—is a perpetual "given."
In a clueless world, one must assiduously attend to lowish probability outcomes with catastrophic consequences.
"Catastrophic" is not a hyperbolic word these days.
"Catastrophe" is an ever-present "plausible" outcome.
"Net net": Bailout "least worst" solution.
Welcome to the real world!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Friday-After-Thanksgiving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Consumption rules!
Buy presents!
Give to the homeless!
Make those Salvation Army buckets sag with Susan B. Anthony coins!
Pray that every sumbitch makes this Friday "Open Wallet Day"!
Got a Great Aunt Maude?
Haven’t seen her for 20 years?
Buy her a 60-inch flat-screen TV!
Better yet, a Ford hybrid!
Better yet, a house at list price!

(Photo below, bear shit from a beast estimated to be 250 pounds—from my farm, up the hill a couple of hundred yards from the main house, exhibited on a wall outside my working studio. Great symbol for a Bear Market, eh? Deposited on Citi Bailout Day. Ah, all is not lost—there are deposits out there!)

True Loyalty in Tough Times

The first notice most of us got of the current economic crisis came from TV and newspapers. Now, as the ripple effects of softening business move through the marketplace, just about everyone I talk to is seeing some sort of softening effect on their business. We are all vulnerable.

We can't afford to be sloppy right now, in anything we do. We can't waste resources. We can't let customers, in whose acquisition we have invested considerable sales and marketing resources, slip away, believing that new customers will show up to take their places.

In this economy, customer loyalty is one of the most important variables that will affect our success. It will be increasingly difficult to find new customers who can become big customers, so we have to get the most benefit out of what we already have. But ... we also can't afford to be sloppy with our concept of customer loyalty.

In so many cases, companies mistake promotional bribes for loyalty. But the kind of loyalty created by this type of approach is fleeting, and defenseless against a better offer from your competitor. (And you can bet that your competitors will be offering richer deals in the near future.) This type of loyalty, which I call transactional loyalty, can temporarily steer transactions in your direction, but keeps you very vulnerable in tough times.

The kind of loyalty you want to create in these times is what I call True Loyalty. When a customer is truly loyal, she is not loyal to your latest promotional offer, or to filling out her punch card to get her 10th smoothie for free. When True Loyalty happens, the customer is loyal to you. More specifically, she is loyal to her relationship with you.

This is a big difference. If a customer believes she is in a "We" relationship with you, her frame of reference is not the latest transaction, but the entire history of her relationship with you.

Soon, here at tompeters.com and at yastrow.com, I will share my thoughts on how to create True Loyalty. For now, what do you think? How do you avoid transactional loyalty, and create True Loyalty? Is True Loyalty a key to thriving in a tough economic climate?

Carnival of the Mobilists #151 Returns Home

This week’s Carnival, hosted by Judy Breck at the Golden Swamp, gazes into the future. The most interesting post to me is the one by “Helen Keegan of Musings of a Mobile Marketer said, as she does in this post, that there is no future to mobile, providing then 6 reasons why that will be [...]

Writing to Connect

So a number of different threads are congealing in my tired brain regarding writing and blogging and why we do all of this stuff. The post that finally led me to try to get this down was Bud’s Brain Dump on NCTE where he quotes council president Kathleen Blake Yancey as saying this:

If you are writing for the screen, you are writing for the network.

Oh. Yeah. How nice that is to hear, isn’t it? Not “global audience,” but “network”. And as Bud unpacks his conference experience, you get the sense that this whole blogging thing may finally, finally, finally be tipping over the edge in terms not just of a tool to publish but of a tool to connect.

And that is a crucial distinction, I think. Yes, we write to communicate. But now that we are writing in hypertext, in social spaces, in “networked publics,” there’s a whole ‘nother side of it. For as much as I am writing this right now to articulate my thoughts clearly and cogently to anyone who chooses to read it, what I am also attempting to do is connect these ideas to others’ ideas, both in support and in opposition, around this topic. Without rehashing all of those posts about Donald Murray and Jay David Bolter, I’m trying to engage you in some way other than just a nod of the head or a sigh of exasperation. I’m trying to connect you to other ideas, other minds. I want a conversation, and that changes the way I write. And it changes the way we think about teaching writing. This is not simply about publishing, about taking what we did on paper and throwing it up on a blog and patting ourselves on the back.

This after-the-publishing part is difficult because we are forced to attempt to do it in filtered, restricted, contrived spaces for learning, spaces that are not conducive to this type of writing or learning.  Barbara Ganley (who was featured last week in the Times as a “slow blogger”) is consdering this as well.

As a college teacher, I thought I was all about collaborative learning, about students taking responsibility for their learning and their lives–together–but how can you do that within an artificial environment? Within a closed environment?…Teaching and collaborating and learning and working inside an academic institution have absolutely nothing to do with how to do those things out in the world.

And I continue to wonder if the two are even possible to combine. Those of us who write to connect and who live our learning lives in these spaces feel the dissonance all the time. We go where we want, identify our own teachers, find what we need, share as much as we can, engage in dialogue, direct our own learning as it meets our needs and desires. That does not feel like what’s happening to my own children or most others in the “system.”

Barbara’s post is worth reading not just for her own reflections but for the connections she creates in the writing process. She took me to Scott Leslie, whose post “planning to share versus just sharing” is as one of the commentors called it, “another doozy.” Scott writes about how frustrating this dissonance is, how difficult institutions make it from a tradition and culture standpoint to make this kind of learning happen.

In all of this lies the tension of the world “out there,” outside the walls, this great unknown, or more likely, this great potential wrench in ointment to what we’ve been so darn good at doing for all of these years. I can’t tell you how many “why me?” looks I get from people who listen politely to my presentations but then probably want to go home and throw up. And I think it’s because they’re not writing for the network. They’re not connecting, seeing the value, feeling the network love. Scott nails it:

Now I contrast that with the learning networks which I inhabit, and in which every single day I share my learning and have knowledge and learning shared back with me. I know it works. I literally don’t think I could do my job any longer without it - the pace of change is too rapid, the number of developments I need to follow and master too great, and without my network I would drown. But I am not drowning, indeed I feel regularly that I am enjoying surfing these waves and glance over to see other surfers right there beside me, silly grins on all of our faces. So it feels to me like it’s working, like we ARE sharing, and thriving because of it.

Oh. Yeah.

(Photo “A fractal night on my street” by kevindooley.)

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