Worth checking out if you’re interested in communicating a message effectively.

You can listen to his talk here. There are also some other talks on the site that look interesting:

1. Clay Shirky - Here Comes Everybody
2. Jonathan Zittrain - The Future of the Internet: And how to stop it

I haven’t been blogging of late, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing or reading. Much of my writing has been in other places and related to the work I am doing in my doctoral program. As I am driving or exercising, I have been listening to audiobooks lately. Granted, they are not like reading a book where you can re-read or easily refer back to something later. I just finished Atul Gawande’s Better.

In the Afterward he offers five suggestions for being a positive deviant:

• Ask an unscripted question. This allows you to get to know the human side of who you are working with.
• Don’t complain. This includes not blaming and taking ownership for things that aren’t the way you would like them. Do something about it instead.
• Count something. This can inform where you should be focusing your efforts.
• Write something. This forces you to clarify your thinking and it gives something back to your community.
• Change. This means finding something new to try.

How many of these do we practice in education? Do we really get to know our student? Our teachers? Or are we so focused on that content? Or that test? Or that latest Initiative? When we offer criticism, do we offer a solution, or are we just complaining? Do we play the role of victim to the parts of the system we have little control over? Do we use our own research, no matter how informal, to inform our practice? Do we share what we learn with others? Do we use new tools and their affordances to communicate in ways that weren’t possible years ago? How do we respond to change? Are we early adopters? Late adopters? Or forever resistant? 

With my interest in social networking in schools, I have started reading some about the knowledge commons. With the expansion of the internet, knowledge can now take on some of the characteristics of “commons” as we know it from the natural-resource world. There are two main differences though between natural resource commons and the new knowledge commons - knowledge commons are non-depletable and non-rivalrous. Knowledge resources often multiply the more people are a part of the network, so they grow in richness rather than become more scarce. Because there is not a finite amount of knowledge, there is no competition among consumers.

One of the issues with knowledge commons in schools is that it doesn’t fit the age-old paradigm of knowledge creation and consumption. This paradigm primarily rests on the idea of individualism. Because of our assessment models, learning is quite commonly perceived as individualistic. While collaboration occurs in the classroom, it does not have the same richness as a knowledge commons supported by digital technologies.

As with other commons, knowledge commons must have its own set of clearly defined norms in order to function successfully, otherwise members of the community can abuse the knowledge creation process and cause the network to degrade or even collapse. These, too, are issues that we are struggling with as we encourage a knowledge commons in school.

How do we shift the mindset (of all school community stakeholders) from learning as individualistic to learning as common? I think that is my struggle at the moment.

In my doctoral program at UPenn, my “team” of four has been using a wiki and Skype to extend our learning between face-to-face meetings. While the tools have kept us connected on some level, I feel that we really haven’t yet experienced the benefits of the network. More on that a little later…

In the program, we are wrapping up a quantitative methods module. I suggested to one of my cohort members, Jenn (not on my team), that we establish a wiki to encourage all 22 cohort members to contribute their knowledge and understanding about statistical methods. Since we all were looking for something to tie our work together, we thought this might be a good way to tap into the thinking of other cohort members. (Surprisingly, we don’t get to do that often.) The response to the project was very positive from many cohort members. But here is the catch, and I think it is a problem with networking electronically. In order for it to work, people need to regularly participate. Otherwise, it becomes, yet again, the work of a few, while the rest sit, content and happy with their individualistic model of learning. This “project” is only a few days old, but I am interested to see how people follow through on their initial enthusiasm.

And I think follow-through is also the issue with my team. It is a lot of work to stay connected to people. And often it seems that it is more work than simply doing your own thinking in isolation. People who lead a “check off” life find connecting to people through technology a nuisance. “Just let me finish it so I can move on to the next thing - so I can check that one off, too.” Those that are really interested in learning find the payoffs of connecting far greater than work required. Count me in this second group.

At school (in my day job), I have a group of teachers working with Ning to collaborate and share ideas and multimedia. They are in three different buildings so I’m hoping this experiment will strengthen their relationships and learning between our monthly face-to-face meetings. They’ve been at this for a few weeks, and I can already see how the novelty of it is wearing off. Some need prompting and some don’t. It’s just too easy to fall back into the same old routines. Kinda like dieting, I guess…

Anyone with experiences in getting folks from 0 to 90 in not a lot of time where networking is concerned? Or is this just a hump we need to get over?

I have been thinking about the idea of leaders (and teachers) as inquirers. Unfortunately, there is little reflection and inquiry in our schools, from the highest roles down. What I am seeing (and what I am guilty of) is not asking the questions...especially the right questions. As an educational system, we are entrenched in a history (what Lankshear and Knobel call “deep grammar"). This is a history that we are not doing much to break out of. We tend do jump on the bandwagon of new initiatives without asking the WHY.

Do we as leaders model lifelong learning? Are we asking the questions that need to be asked? How can we get better at inquiring so we break away from the history of schooling? 

I ran across this in the Academy of Discovery wiki and wanted to preserve it here:

In response to the question, “How do you create authentic learning?” ---

• Contextual (Relevant) - All information that is disseminated, and content that is uncovered has a greater context in the past, present, or future lives of the students.
• Connected (Hyperlinked) - All concepts are linked to others’ ideas, whether they be original source documents, experts in the field, student experts who already have an advanced understanding.
• Collaborative - Each assignment has the potential for working with others to brainstorm, create, refine, or revise.
• Change-directed - All knowledge is constantly changing, and so are students understanding and demonstration of knowledge.
• Conversational - Understanding is created through thoughtful discussion, conversation, and debate.
• Continuous (Spontaneous) - Students can pursue all of their inspiration for learning. It does not have to wait until they get to the next class or until they get home because they have access to the technology and the freedom of the environment.

How do you specifically apply these “Cs” to create authentic learning? I think this could be useful to keep us on track as we design learning opportunities.

Soft Tires...Pick Your Dip

Consider the bicycle tire.

The first ten pound of pressure you put into a completely flat tire do no good at all. and adding ten extra pounds to a full tire will burst the tire, defeating the entire purpose of your effort. No, it’s just the last ten pounds, the ones that get it to full that really pay off.

When it’s down five or ten pounds, it might as well be flat. A 10-percent change in pressure makes it defective. If it’s up five or ten pounds, though, the entire wheel is threatened with a blowout. Obviously, it’s the pressure right around full that has the most impact.

How much pressure have we put into the educational technology tire? This not only includes resources, but also evaluation and assessment? In what areas are we below full, around full and above full?

It’s an interesting analogy.

There was a segment on this during 60 Minutes tonight.

What amazes me is that there is so little talk about this mass production for American schools. Third world classrooms with laptops...while most of our schools can’t even consider one laptop per child. And nobody seems to think that’s wrong. I can imagine it’s only a matter of time before this catches on here, especially if there are positive outcomes to this and other 1:1 projects. There is reference to a “competitive” project from Intel, focusing on the same countries and kind of technology.

Another interesting aspect about OLPC is the answer to the question, “What exactly are they doing with these laptops?” After all, it’s certainly not about the technology but how these tools are used to improve learning.

I blogged about OLPC earlier this year on our district’s blog: $100 Laptop and More on One Laptop Per Child.