Dangerously Irrelevant

2008 Media literacy research award

Cable in the Classroom is sponsoring its annual Media Smart Research Award:

Media literacy is a key 21st Century skill because it provides a framework and method to think critically about the media and technologies students and adults use for information and entertainment. Media literacy means knowing how to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and create media messages on television, the Internet and other outlets. It also means knowing how to use these and other technologies safely, productively and ethically.

The deadline for emerging media literacy scholars to submit materials is May 31.

Questions for Michael Vitelli, CEO of The Gaming Krib?

Lately there's been a bunch of conversation on this blog about The Gaming Krib, a service designed to help parents and children 'balance ... playing time and learning time.' Most of the comments (both here and on Twitter) about the company and/or its underlying paradigm have been pretty negative. Michael Vitelli, President and CEO, has kindly agreed to do a podcast interview with me on May 9 to talk about the need his company is addressing as well as its approach to solving that need.

Check out my previous post and The Gaming Krib web site. Then, in the comments area for this post, please submit some questions that you'd like me to consider for the interview. Rather than answering them here, Michael and I will save them for when we chat. Thanks!

Two reminders: NECC buttons and CASTLE advisory board

Just a couple of reminders...

• Submissions for the NECC button design contest that Wesley Fryer and I are sponsoring are due May 1.
• Submissions to be considered for CASTLE's advisory board are due May 5.

I've got my next contest already planned. Dan Meyer has got one cookin' too - he's just waiting for the NECC button design contest to end!

Wanted: CASTLE advisory board members

After 3 years, it’s time to set up an advisory board for CASTLE. Although I have a few people in mind that I’d like to invite, I also thought it would be great to tap into the expertise of my readers. Duties would include reviewing curricula, giving feedback on current initiatives, suggesting ideas for future projects, connecting us with external partners and/or opportunities, etc. All work and collaboration will be done electronically. Time commitment shouldn’t be too strenuous and the work (hopefully) will be interesting.

Interested in serving on the CASTLE advisory board? Drop me a note describing your professional background/experience and why you think you’d be a good advisor to the only center in the U.S. dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators. International applicants are welcome. Deadline is Monday, May 5.

Questions? Leave ‘em as a comment to this post so all can see my replies. Please note that, if interest is high, I can't take everyone and will have to make some difficult choices. Thanks!

Is this what K-12 educators are secretly hoping?

Credits: F Minus by Tony Carrillo, Dist. by UFS, Inc. [permission for use granted 4–24–2008]

Cynicism or hope?

We have a choice to make for ourselves and the organizations that we lead: cynicism or hope. Moving forward or remaining still. Not starry-eyed, quixotic optimism but a realistic, determined belief that we can figure this out and do this. Or a stagnant, regressive retrenching, an unwillingness to invest in the proven and potential capacity of humanity. Which will you choose?

And when today cynics dismiss as and impossible dream or naïve idealism proposals to create the institutions of a truly global society let us remind them that people used to think black civil rights a distant dream, the end of the cold war an impossible hope, the ending of apartheid in our generation the work of dreamers, debt relief for the poorest countries an unrealisable idea ... And so let us have confidence we can discover anew in ourselves the values we share in common,  ... and let us have confidence we can create a global covenant across nations to make peace and prosperity real in our generation.

 - Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister (courtesy of Richard Florida)

Operationalizing the concept of 'teachers as learners'

Stephanie Sandifer recently blogged about the concept of ‘teachers as learners’:

Rather than immediately engage in a technology purchasing frenzy, take some time to begin discussions on your campus about how to transform your school into a place where teachers see themselves first as LEARNERS who are invested in improving their instructional practice through reflection and inquiry

This is an old edublogosphere theme. For example, here’s a post by Will Richardson from way back in 2006:

In a world where knowledge is scarce (and I know I’m using that phrase an awful lot these days), I can see why we needed teachers to be, well, teachers. But here’s what I’m wondering: in a world where knowledge is abundant, is that still the case? In a world where, if we have access, we can find what we need to know, doesn’t a teacher’s role fundamentally change? Isn’t it more important that the adults we put into the rooms with our kids be learners first? Real, continual learners? Real models for the practice of learning? People who make learning transparent and really become a part of the community?

So what do we mean, exactly, when we say we want teachers to be ‘learners?’ The operationalization of the answer to this question is important, I believe. For example, I once asked a group of high school guidance counselors in Minnesota, ‘How do you know if you’re a successful high school guidance program?’ They responded, ‘When every student has a meaningful connection to at least one adult in the building.’ I said, ‘That’s great! Now, how do you know when you’ve gotten there? How do you know where you are now? How do you know if you’re making progress?’ And then there was silence - crickets chirping - because they didn’t know how to operationalize what they said was the ultimate measure of success for themselves.

I’ve asked similar questions of school administrators:

If, like 98.7% of all schools and districts in the country, your mission and/or vision statement says something like ‘blah blah blah blah lifelong learners blah blah blah,’ how do you know when you’ve gotten there? How do you know if you’re making progress? What does that look like? Can you tell me?

And, again, crickets chirping - because they can’t operationalize what they say is the ultimate intended outcome of the organization.

So what’s your answer? If we want teachers to be ‘learners’ - if that’s important to us - how do we define that? What do we look for? How do we know if we’ve got it?

If we can’t define it, we can’t recognize it / hire for it / reward it / remediate for the lack of it.

Anyone want to take a shot at it?

One year ago: Don't hold your breath

The importance of educator perceptions

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Last June, during Change Week at Dangerously Irrelevant, I blogged about Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory. In that post I mentioned that one of the most underutilized aspects of Rogers’ work was the concept of perceived characteristics of innovations (PCIs). PCIs are those things considered by potential adopters that affect how likely they are to move from awareness to adoption. Rogers noted that issues of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and usability were important when thinking about innovation adoption. The key is that the perception - what’s inside the potential adopter’s head – is what’s important.

Rogers’ work ties in nicely with another concept that I’ve recently been thinking about: technology affordances. As Gaver (1991) noted, affordances are aspects of an object ‘that are compatible with and relevant for people’s interactions.’ In the context of digital technologies, affordances are the characteristics that let us answer the question, ‘What do these tools do for me?’ For example, the digital camera has a number of affordances that a traditional film camera does not, including easier manipulation/alteration of raw images, ease of sharing, and elimination of the need to print unwanted pictures.

The idea of affordances intersects with the idea of perceptions. Gaver has a useful diagram in his article:

Quadrant B represents the situation when the affordance of a digital technology is actually there but is not perceived by educators. For example, essay grading software can do some powerful things but I have seen educators simply refuse to believe that the software works the way it does. In contrast, Quadrant C occurs when educators believe a digital technology might do something for them that it actually cannot (ever bought a technology that didn’t live up to its promise?). In an ideal world, educators would be in either Quadrant A or Quadrant D, rejecting or adopting digital technologies with full understanding of what those tools can or cannot do for them.

Of course we don’t live in an ideal world. In fact, it’s difficult for non-technology-savvy educators to have accurate perceptions about digital technologies’ affordances simply because their level of knowledge and understanding is so low. This leads to vendor pitch susceptibility, inappropriate buying decisions, improper implementation, incorrect rejection, and a host of other issues.

Those of us who are using these tools – who are often living and breathing these tools – need to internalize the diagram above. Although a tool may fall into Quadrant D for us, it may fall into Quadrant B or C for someone else. Indeed, for many, residence in Quadrant A is quite appropriate for the instructional task at hand, even when we might say it falls into Quadrant D.

So is this all a fancy way of saying ‘don’t use technology in unthoughtful or inappropriate ways?’ Maybe. Or maybe it’s a way of saying that teachers will reside in Quadrants A or B unless we help them navigate the implementation dip that’s required to get to Quadrant D. Either way, I believe that it’s a useful framework as we think about school staff and where they fall regarding the innovations we often ask them to adopt. If we technology advocates can’t both show and persuade our potential adopters that a particular digital technology falls into Quadrant D for whatever they want to do, we’re not doing our job. And it’s not enough that the technology actually would be helpful, that it actually has the affordance. When it comes to adoption, the perception is as important as the actual capability of the tool.

Citation: Gaver, W. W. (1991). Technology affordances.

Related links

• Diffusion of innovation
• Change Week wrap-up
• The aggregate impact of individual choices
• Implementation dip

Make something happen

Hey, principals! Superintendents! Teachers!*

On a related note, here’s what I’ve been saying a lot lately…

* Seth Godin, Free Prize Inside (p. 47)

2008 Fantastic Commenter Award

As I said last May…

In the blogosphere we pay a lot of attention to the folks who blog. We rarely, if ever, recognize those folks who comment. But of course the power of blogs would be greatly diminished if folks weren't willing to add their commentary to others' posts.

So continuing my idea from last year, here are my first two recipients of this year’s Fantastic Commenter Award (who can now post this badge with pride!):

• Charlie Roy
• Gilbert Halcrow

Do you know someone who always leaves great comments? Please recognize him or her with this badge (or make your own!). [Note: you must be given this award by someone else. You can't just recognize yourself!]

Fantastic Commenter Badge

• 150 pixels wide
• 125 pixels wide
• 100 pixels wide

Recognize someone today. You know he/she deserves it!

ITEC 2008 - My proposals

The Iowa Technology Education Connection (ITEC) conference each year is fairly small. Despite its size, however, it tends to bring in some really big-name speakers for its keynote addresses. Last year the keynote speakers were Steve Wozniak and David Pogue (I also had a chance to finally meet Dennis Harper, which was super fun for me). This year’s keynotes are Hall Davidson and Alan November.

Below are the proposals I just submitted to ITEC 2008. Hopefully some will get accepted. Hope to see you in Des Moines in October!

Getting your principals and superintendent on board

If the leaders don't get it, it's not going to happen. This highly-interactive workshop will focus on some techniques and strategies for getting principals and superintendents to be better supporters of technology integration efforts. Bring your laptop!

Establishing an effective online presence in an attention economy

In an attention economy - when there is more information than people can possibly pay attention to - it's hard to get noticed. Learn why an effective online presence is now necessary and how to get started.

Why aren't you having a bigger impact?

Feel like you're working hard but making less of an impact than you'd hoped? Join us for an interactive discussion about technology, school change, and informal leadership.

(In)Effective presentations

Death by PowerPoint. Everyone knows the phrase and yet dry, boring, ineffective slideware presentations continue to be the norm. Both educators and students can learn how to create and deliver memorable presentations that leave audiences wanting more!

Contest: I'm here for the learning revolution (due May 1)

If you’ve been reading Speed of Creativity lately, you probably noticed Wesley Fryer’s nifty phrase: I’m here for the learning revolution.

• Here for the learning revolution
• I officially claim this title for my first book – YET unwritten!

I AM here for the learning revolution! Are you?

I suggested to Wesley that we have a button design contest because I love the idea of all of us wearing these at NECC. He agreed, so this is the official announcement that he and I are hereby sponsoring a contest!

1. Design a button for people to wear at NECC (and beyond) that says I am here for the learning revolution  [no period at the end]
2. You can (and should) use any of these buttons at Absorbent Printing as design guides.
3. You may enter more than one design.
4. Your design must be made available under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial-share alike 3.0 unported license and must be in a file format and resolution suitable for printing.
5. Prizes include everlasting fame, a CASTLE mug, a picture of a monster drawn by my 4-year-old, and a copy of Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. If the design is suitable for a t-shirt, CASTLE will buy one of those for the winner too. Plus I think Wesley also might have some stuff for the winner.
6. The deadline for submission is May 1. E-mail me your file or a link to the file.
7. If you have any questions, contact me.

CASTLE will pay for prizes and the buttons. Anyone who attends the Edubloggercon 2008 & Classroom 2.0 ‘LIVE’ session at NECC gets a free button. I’ll pass out the rest during NECC until they’re gone.

So I’ll be sporting at least two buttons at NECC: this one and another nifty one that says I read blocked blogs (designed by Stephanie, inspired by Bud). Awesome.

Happy designing!

Update: See the winning entry!

Delusions of grandeur and student success fantasies

This comment was left on my blog recently:

I have a personal opinion that many teachers become administrators not to help more students, but because it is easier to ... preserve student success fantasies and their own delusions of grandeur as social influencers that simply can't be maintained in the face of the constant reality of the classroom experience.

How is your school?
Admin response: Great!
Teacher response: well....

I asked the students in our superintendent preparation program (nearly all principals) to respond with some thoughts. Here’s what one said to the other members of the cohort:

Ever had a teacher like Arnie in your building?

When good teaching and effective school leadership align, teachers like Arnie feel like a duck out of water. I am sorry that Arnie feels compelled to paint with a broad brush that all administrators are hapless lemurs (my words, not his). These "Arnie-like teachers" truly represent an all-too-large segment of the teaching and non-teaching population.

Truthfully, his circumstances may be the reality for far too many teachers and schools. His circumstances and experiences, however, are not mine. They are not the circumstances of my staff, my students, or my community. I know in my soul that the 13 of us in our cohort entered into school leadership positions for reasons that could not be any further from the reality Arnie describes above. It must be hard for him to get up in the morning. I feel sad for him and his students. I feel outrage.

I read a recent Education World article which discusses, anecdotally, why teachers chose to become principals. This article, and the stories it tells from principals in the field, is a better match of my personal narrative. I strongly sense it is a better match for your personal narratives as well. I think so highly each of you.

Essentially, we lead for the same reasons we teach; we find ourselves compelled to make life-changing differences for each student we serve. Our strategies and responsibilities are different. We acknowledge a level of commitment that is met with a differentiated compensation package. Our families bear the burdens that our professional obligations demand. Yet we lead because we are compelled to lead; to make the work of our staff, the lives of our students (each and every one individually) and their parents, and the fullness of the communities we live in, better. In some places, we call these schools exemplary. In others we call them first class, or world class education, or 21st century.

In the end, what gets us there is expert-level practitioners and high-performance leadership. “Delusional.” No - data driven. “Fantasy?” No – fact. “Easier?” Give me a break.

I do agree with Arnie on one thing, however. Social influencers do challenge all of us to be resilient, responsive, and rigorous. At least that is how I took his meaning.

Arnie (and his students) would be better served by thinking through the fullness of the basis of his unhappiness. Arnie, walk - no run - to your home computer and click on mywantads.com. Surely there is a second career out there for an erstwhile, want-to-change-the-world teacher who deserves a chance to make a difference in life. “Delusional?” I hope not. "Fantasy?" It's up to you. "Easier?" As easy as getting up each morning to go to a job that you feel passionate about.

Other thoughts or reactions?

Moving Forward - Elementary classroom blogs

Thanks to @rickscheibner, @abubnic, @rrmurry, @kolson29, @plugusin, @glassbeed, @pmcanulty, @tracyweeks, @NancyW, @RickTanski, @juliafallon, @swvalley, and @rwentechaney, I now have a number of new elementary classroom blogs to show my children’s principal today. What's with the @ signs? Oh, those are Twitter IDs. What’s Twitter, you say? Well, among other things, it’s a great way to get questions answered. Fast.

I’ve added these blogs to the Blogs page of the Moving Forward wiki. If you know of any other great elementary classroom blogs – ones that have students blogging (as opposed to just teachers) – please add them to the wiki. What’s the Moving Forward wiki, you say? It’s a communal resource for people trying to facilitate change in schools. Check it out.

Thanks for the tweets, everyone!

What would you ask Mike Schmoker?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

In May I have the glorious opportunity to interview Mike Schmoker, guru of data-driven education and author of Results, The Results Fieldbook, Results Now, and The Crayola Curriculum. And, yes, I’m going to try and record it as a podcast.

I know that many of you are familiar with Mike’s work. If you were me, what interview question(s) would you ask him?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

In May I have the glorious opportunity to interview Mike Schmoker, guru of data-driven education and author of Results, The Results Fieldbook, Results Now, and The Crayola Curriculum. And, yes, I’m going to try and record it as a podcast.

I know that many of you are familiar with Mike’s work. If you were me, what interview question(s) would you ask him?

The Gaming Krib

Bud Hunt posted in Twitter about The Gaming Krib. Here’s the basic premise of the service this company’s trying to sell:

1. It has the ability to shut off families’ electronic media (television, computer, cell phone, etc.). [I’m not clear how it does this]
2. Parents sign up for the service for their wayward children who’d rather play than do schoolwork.
3. If a kid tries to play a game or watch TV, he is told "Sorry, you cannot run game, go online, turn on TV, or use phone until math questions are answered."
4. Kid does math problems and earns time credits for use of electronic media.
5. “Both parent and child happy.”

Check it out, particularly the endorsements (Daniel Pink saying “good luck” is an endorsement?). Also be sure to see the hilarious pictures for Steps 1–3 on the home page.

I like the idea… but for adults. Sorry, Mom or Dad. Too bad that you had a tough day at the office today. You can earn 10–minute allotments of time to watch TV or use the phone, though. You just have to first do the dishes, scrub the toilet, clean out the garage, run your errands, wax the floor, fold the laundry…

Not so irrelevant 007

My latest roundup of links and tools…

Some really cool posts about Twitter

• Twitter set theory & the wisdom of the group (a must-read)
• 17 ways to visualize the Twitter universe

Reading blogs is like visiting a new city

• I need to think this way about all of the unread posts in my feed aggregator (thanks, Mike Maloy!)

Rethink trust

• An interesting video from an interesting organization (also downloadable)

Zamzar

• Like many others, I am enjoying using Zamzar, a video download / file conversion tool

Lame-o

As someone in a Ed leadership program right now, I couldn’t agree more that it is a waste of time and hoop-jumping to get an administrative license. My professor lectured for two hours to a class of adults on the importance of collaboration in adult education. Lame-o.
– Jethro

A great way to think about the social Web

• No one has ‘forgotten’ or ‘left out’ anything. You just haven’t added it yet. – Alan Levine, Wiki Way (thanks for the tip, Vicki Davis!)

The firestorm subsides

• In case you missed the latest edublogosphere hubbub, you can check it all out here (start at the beginning!). I thought that there were lots of thoughtful replies to Jon’s concerns, but Vicki Davis’ and Ric Murry’s and Tom Hemingway’s stand out for me. I also really liked Wesley Fryer’s reflective post today on his own history and the changes that he’s seen.
• One of my previous posts, Linked, may provide a useful way of thinking about blog ‘superhubs’ as connectors, not inner circles. As the conversation swirl about Jon’s post so aptly demonstrated, getting noticed by the superhubs can bring you into the conversation very quickly and get you a substantial increase in traffic. My experiences with the Did You Know? video and my post about classroom cell phone videos, both of which were picked up by bloggers with far larger audiences than me, bear witness to that truth.

Happy reading, everyone. Like Wesley, I am here for the learning revolution. Hope you are too.

Bad PR: Chorus concert copyright restrictions

One of the local school districts here in Iowa had an all-elementary-school chorus concert on Friday. At the beginning, the audience was told

Please turn your cell phones off. Please do not use flash photography; we don’t want to startle any of the participants. And no videotaping, please, because of copyright restrictions.

Not safety or privacy or confidentiality considerations. Copyright restrictions.

270 shining little faces on stage, ready to perform. A packed auditorium full of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and family friends. And the deflating message that they get, mere seconds before their children begin to sing in their dulcet voices, is:

Hi, John Q. Public. Thanks for slogging your kid to school, even in the rain and snow, every Wednesday at 7:30am all year for chorus practice. Thanks for getting your kid all gussied up for this huge event. We know that your precious angel is up on stage getting ready to sing his or her heart out. We know that the whole extended family is here to support that little boy or girl. But even though your heart is just bursting at the seams to capture the joy and excitement of this experience and share it with your child and your loved ones, we’d like to invoke ‘copyright protections’ so, too bad, you can’t do that. Have a good concert!

What a slap in the face. And we wonder why the public doesn’t support school bond referenda…

What should we buy?

We have some technology funds to spend in my department. The computer lab that we provide for our on-campus graduate students is brand new and, other than some needed software, is in pretty good shape. We have large numbers of off-campus graduate students that never derive much benefit from the university technology fees that they pay each semester because their classes are online or are in remote locations several hours away.

If you were in our situation - with tens of thousands of dollars to spend on hardware, software, online systems/tools/accounts, and other classroom technologies for use by Educational Administration and Higher Education graduate students and faculty - what would you buy?

Dear Jon letter (a.k.a. The world doesn't care about you)

Dear Jon (and all you other new bloggers),

Following the time-honored tradition of Dear John letters everywhere, I write this because I care about you. I hope that we can still be friends when all is said and done. But it’s time that you faced a few brutal facts.

Fact 1. The world doesn’t care about you

Like the real world, other than your family and friends like me, the blogosphere doesn’t care about you. In the words of Seth Godin,

[They] don’t care about you. Not really. [They] care about [themselves]. If your message has something to do with [their lives], then perhaps [they’ll] notice, but in general, don’t expect much.

They don’t care that you want to be loved. They don’t care that you want more comments or that you want to be in on the conversation. It’s not about you. It’s about them (us) and whether, in an attention economy, you have anything worth paying attention to.

Fact 2. If you build it, they won’t come

Not at first, not for a long time, and maybe not ever. But eventually a few might swing by. For a few seconds. Maybe. And, if you’re adding value, they might stick around. Maybe. Or they might not. If you’re really lucky, they might tell a few friends about you. And some of those people might actually stop by and/or stay. But they probably won’t. They’ll probably go back to watching YouTube videos or reading I Can Has Cheezburger? (Lol).

Fact 3. There are things that you can do to increase your blog traffic

1. Blog about stuff that your audience wants to read
2. Help them find you

That’s it. Okay, that’s not completely it, but that’s 99% of it. Give me a ring if you want some tips about the other 1%.

Fact 4. If you’re nice, some folks might actually help you

Amazingly, many of those cocktail party elitists, despite being busy with their closed conversations, somehow found time to step outside of the inner circle and deign to offer you their thoughts. Vicki wrote you a very nice note. So did Darren. Lots of other folks left you comments and Stephen sent people your way. And of course there’s this tough love missive from me, your buddy who’s been down this path and is willing to share a few unsolicited thoughts that might be useful to you.

As my mother always used to say, don’t forget to write them a thank you note. The path to heaven is paved with graciousness.

Fact 5. You need to be patient

You’ve been blogging for how long? And your audience is how big? Congratulations! You shouldn’t be whining, you should be celebrating! Most newbie bloggers who are trying to grow their traffic would kill to be in your shoes.

I get that you want the buzz, the conversation, the mojo. You’ve tasted the juice and you want more. But it doesn’t work that way. Because it’s not about you.

If you follow the steps in #3 above, your audience will grow. You’ll get a few comments now and then (only a few, now, don’t be greedy). You’ll get a little link love. A few friends – some of whom you’ve never met – will help you. Twelve to eighteen months from now, if you’re still blogging and adding value to others, let’s see how you feel about things, okay?

Until then, keep doing what you’re doing. Blog great stuff. Link to others. Comment on others. Rinse and repeat. Oh, and be grateful that you have a voice and the tools to express it. We love in wonderful and interesting times.

Go in peace, my friend.

P.S. Your belief that the blogosphere may be saturated? Call me when every one of the 4+ million U.S. educators each has a RSS aggregator overflowing with feeds and no time to read them all. Then we can talk.

Reclaiming my blog, reclaiming myself

My posting rate here at Dangerously Irrelevant waned considerably over the past two months. I could make the excuse that I’ve been super busy but, of course, we all are super busy with whatever we’re doing. The bottom line is that I haven’t given blogging the dedicated time and attention that I used to.

The interesting thing to me is that I’ve missed it, that I actually have felt sad that I haven’t been posting more. I think that speaks to the power of blogging for many of us – that we have the very human needs to express ourselves, to get feedback on our ideas, and to be connected with others. Of course blogs can be an excellent way to do that, particularly those of us who don’t have anyone around us locally who understand or care about our interests and our passions.

So I’m reclaiming my blog and, through that, also reclaiming myself. Before I began blogging - way back in August 2006 – I wouldn’t have understand this need that I now have to post stuff on the Web for others to read. But now I’m hooked. This is something I have to do. So I’m back in the game.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my last few posts. There will be many, many more to come. They won’t all be great (or even good), but hopefully I’ll be adding value again to the blogosphere and you’ll stay for the conversation. Thanks to everyone who’s stuck around during my doldrums. I look forward to our continued interactions (and, hopefully, to meeting as many of you as possible at NECC).

We Think

Here's a nifty video by Charles Leadbeater, author of We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity. The book looks interesting. I don't know how much it overlaps Clay Shirky's phenomenally excellent book, Here Comes Everybody, but I might have to get it (it's only available at Amazon UK?).

Many thanks to Rob Jacobs for leading me to this video. I have a feeling I'll be using it in some presentations in the near future.

Johnny Bunko

Johnny Bunko: a cartoon Joe who hates his dead-end accounting job. A set of magic chopsticks. And Diana, a Greek-anime goddess of job satisfaction. Mix ‘em together and you have the latest business manga. That’s right, I said business manga.

Lesson 1: There is no plan. The average worker will have a gazillion jobs before she’s 42. Don’t do things you hate or are worthless just ‘cause you think they’ll get you somewhere. Do stuff ‘cause you love it and it’s valuable to you. This is the path to success and fulfilllment, grasshopper.

Lesson 2: Think strengths, not weaknesses. Diana invokes the sacred bobbleheads of Seligman and Buckingham. Capitalize on what you’re good at. End sentences with prepositions. Who cares? Screw that ‘fill in the gaps’ crap. Allow yourself to bring out your best. Follow your heart with a vengeance. That’s what remarkable leaders do. Be f’n amazing.

Lesson 3: It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about you. Really. It’s about them. Help your students-customers-clients-stakeholders solve their problems. The most valuable people in any job bring out the best in others. Be helpful. Add value. It’s not about you.

Lesson 4: Persistence trumps talent. The fall of dropping water wears away the stone. Keep on sucking until you succeed. What are you afraid of?

Lesson 5: Make excellent mistakes.

If your strategy is to lie low, do your job, follow instructions, and hope that nobody notices you, (a) nobody will ever notice you, and (b) you’re actually increasing the chances of something bad happening.

If, on the other hand, you develop a reputation as the person who is always pushing the envelope, challenging the organization to go to the next level, and using your influence to get good stuff done, you’ve got the world’s best job security.

You can’t shrink your way to greatness.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Fail smarter. Being safe is risky. Being risky is safe.

Lesson 6: Leave an imprint. Make a difference. Do something meaningful. Stand for something big and important. Stop being ordinary. Make the world a better place. What are you waiting for?

A rehash of earlier works? Absolutely. A super fun way to spend an hour? You betcha.

Watch the trailer. Buy the book. But whatever you do, don’t let your local adolescents get hold of it or they’ll really start asking questions about whatever it is you’re ‘teaching’ them.

Oh, did I mention it’s written by Daniel Pink? Rock on.

Four charts

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Chart 1: A discrepancy of beliefs

Here is a chart of some findings from the recently-released Speak Up 2007 surveys of nearly 368,000 students, parents, teachers, and administrators. The chart shows the agreement of each school stakeholder group with the statement that the local school is preparing students for jobs of the future. It would have been interesting to see the results for students with more basic technology skills…

Some questions I have:

• Why are administrators so much more positive than the others?
• Do students really know what it means to be ‘prepared for the future?’
• If almost half of the teachers (and 40% of parents) feel that schools are not preparing students for the future, why aren’t they making more noise about it (not to mention doing something about it)?

Chart 2: We’re losing them

Here is a chart of how I think about students as they progress through the K-12 system. Almost invariably, they start out in kindergarten as insatiable learners. You can’t stop them from learning. And then, as the years go by, their intellectual curiosity – their overall engagement with their academic content – dwindles. By the time they leave us in high school, they’re often (primarily?) bored and apathetic. It’s probably not a linear process (line A). I think most students’ engagement levels probably stay fairly high into upper elementary school (line B). And then we start losing them.

Some questions I have:

• Although some might disagree with the severity of the slope, few people I know would disagree with me on the direction. So, again, why aren’t we doing more about this?
• Some people feel that students are less engaged than they were a few decades ago. Others feel that students always have been bored. Who’s right?
• Is technology to blame for this? The recent generation of parents? Our media-saturated culture in general?

Charts 3 & 4: Is this all they expect?

Finally, here are two charts from an informal poll done of 76 graduate students in one of the departments here in the Iowa State University College of Human Sciences (okay, it’s my department but don’t tell anyone!). We asked them if they were satisfied with students’ and instructors’ classroom technology usage. Overwhelmingly they said yes. But when asked what they liked (or disliked), nearly all of the comments pertained to PowerPoint and/or WebCT, our online course management system. Nary a word of any other technologies, good or bad.

Some questions I have:

• The age of the graduate students that we serve ranges from about 25 to over 50. Is good use of PowerPoint and WebCT all it takes to satisfy most of these folks’ expectations of classroom technology usage?
• If so, how sad is that?
• Are these results representative of other Education graduate students’ beliefs?

Creating our own lament

Education Canada has published a great article from Michael Wesch, author of several videos that should be seen by every school administrator. Here’s an excerpt from Anti-teaching: Confronting the crisis of significance:

If you want to see the significance problem first hand, visit a classroom and pay attention to the types of questions asked by students. Good questions are the driving force of critical and creative thinking and therefore one of the best indicators of significant learning. Good questions are those that force students to challenge their taken-forgranted assumptions and see their own underlying biases. Oftentimes the answer to a good question is irrelevant – the question is an insight in itself. The only answer to the best questions is another good question. And so the best questions send students on rich and meaningful lifelong quests, question after question after question.

Unfortunately, such great questions are rarely asked by students in an education system facing a crisis of significance. Much more common are administrative questions: “How long does this paper need to be?” “Is attendance mandatory?” Or the worst (and most common) of all: “What do we need to know for this test?” Such questions reflect the fact that, for many (students and teachers alike), education has become a relatively meaningless game of grades rather than an important and meaningful exploration of the world in which we live and co-create.

Contrary to many of my faculty peers, I do not blame the students themselves for asking these kinds of questions. As teachers we have created and continue to maintain an education system that inevitably produces them. If we accept John Dewey’s notion that people learn what they do, the lecture format, which is the mainstay of teaching (especially in large introductory courses), teaches students to sit in neat rows and to respect, believe, and defer to authority (the teacher).

Wesch calls students educators’ ‘most important critics.’ I wonder how many teachers or professors would agree with him?

Annoying ad from Cisco

Does Cisco really believe that I’m going to feel positively about this ad that covers up more than half of what I really want to read? Ugh. How annoying. Someone there needs to read some Seth Godin…

BlogBall08

For those of you who are interested, here are the twelve teams that are participating in edublogger fantasy baseball this year (in alphabetical order by manager):

• A Few Good Men, Jon Becker, Educational Insanity
• Wiki Warriors, Eric Bouvier, Auburn High School’s Breaking Ranks Initiative
• Motor City Kitties, Jim Dornberg, EdTech Update
• Frequent Fliers, Scott Elias, Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
• Mr. Higgins' Blog, Chris Higgins, Mr. Higgins’ Blog
• Lehmann's Demons, Chris Lehmann, Practical Theory
• TradedForABagOfBalls, Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant
• Multi-Colored-Sox, Ted Sakshaug, Nonsense
• Bad Century, Mark Schuldt, What’s Going On at Gunn!
• Harold's Red Sox, Harold Shaw, HShawJr – My Thoughts
• Great Hambinos, Brian Smith, Streaming Thoughts
• Hartwick Huskies, Matthew Tabor, MatthewKTabor.com

My sincerest apologies to those of you who also expressed interest but e-mailed me after these folks. We didn’t have enough to make a second league or I would have done so. Let’s try for two leagues next year!

Good luck, everyone (and Go Twins!).

Managers wanted: Edublogger fantasy baseball

An idea so brilliant that I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it earlier: edublogger fantasy baseball! 12 edubloggers. An online fantasy baseball league. Winner gets online bragging rights and an actual, physical trophy courtesy of CASTLE. Hey, if we’re a virtual community, let’s do it right!

Here are the settings for the league. Competition will start next Monday. Since it’s after the start of the season, we’ll do an autopick draft which will occur Sunday morning (you still can rank your picks ahead of time). Maybe next year we can do a live draft instead.

Interested? The first 11 edubloggers that contact me with the word BASEBALL in the title of their e-mail are in!

Rules of participation

• Must be willing to engage in friendly banter with other participants
• Don’t join if you’re not going to be a good sport
• Participants, team rosters, league standings, etc. are fodder for public disclosure on blogs, Twitter, and so on
• All decisions of the commissioner (me) are final

Play ball!