Wiki Watch & The Shifts   19 Apr 2007 02:13 pm

Business Cards We Love to See    

So a teacher named Diane Albanese came up to me before a presentation I was giving at the Delaware Instructional Technology Conference this morning and handed me this business card. Her students were presenting in a showcase last night and were handing out these little puppies...even gave one to the Lt. Governor. Now how cool is that?

And the wiki is pretty darn cool.

This is the stuff I really love, when teachers and students just begin to make this a natural part of what they do in the classroom. They write. They collaborate. They publish.

Way to go Danielle, Kim, Kayla, Dalton, William, Brandon, Aaron and Mrs. Albanese! Wikimasters Rule! And we would love you to come in and comment on this post (as other students have recently done) and tell us all more about what you're doing.

Go Wikis! Go!

Technorati Tags: wikis, education, schools Delaware

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Saturday, March 31, 2007

2020 Vision on DesignShare

(The bottom portion of this post is cross-blogged at DesignShare.)

DesignShare is a virtual collaboration of school design professionals working around the world. They facilitate ideas and resources about best practices and innovation in schools from early childhood through the university level, focusing on the design of learning environments, with their target audience being primarily school architects, designers and planners. Christian Long is the President and CEO, and many of you know him from his think:lab blog.

When I created the 2020 Vision presentation back in November, Christian left a comment and also e-mailed saying that he would be using it with various audiences of school architects, designers and planners. I thought that was pretty cool, and he was nice enough to follow up to say that it went well and that he would probably use it again. Then about the first of January, Christian contacted me and asked if I would be interested in sharing it with the DesignShare audience:

Imagine that you're talking to a room of 25 diverse school architects who are working with passionate school leaders/board members, all trying to get their arms and minds around the idea of the school of the future. They don't yet know what they don't know, and they need a provocative kick in the pants to imagine beyond their own world experiences. They've asked you for ideas. A way to future-think. Imagine writing a 2-3 page ‘introduction' to your video - the context/history, main theme(s), the essential questions, and a bit of background context on the way you are using this to help your own district look forward. Imagine that after reading this introductory piece, they'll watch your video...and want to learn more.

I said, "Gulp," but - after a few emails - ultimately agreed (Christian is hard to say no to).

The result is now on DesignShare, as part of a series of articles on the future of school design (including a great article by Chris Lehmann). Christian also kindly gave me permission to post it here on The Fischbowl as well, which I'll do in a moment.

But first, I wanted to briefly reflect back on how I/we wrote this article. I wrote a rough draft and created a Google Doc, then invited Christian to collaborate. I don't think he'd ever used Google Docs before, but quickly figured it out and left comments and suggestions on my rough draft. I then went back and revised, he then went back and commented some more, and we repeated that process quite a few times. When it was finally ready for publication, Christian just took the Google Doc and basically pasted it into the DesignShare website (with a little html clean-up, I'm sure).

This is a process that could not have happened even five years ago. First of all, he never would've seen the presentation or let me know of his use of it or his interest to publish it on DesignShare. Second, we wouldn't have been able to collaborate so seamlessly using something like Google Docs (yes, we could've emailed, but there's no comparison). Third, you wouldn't be reading about it now. And, don't forget, Christian and I have never met. He's in Texas (when he's not traveling around the world) and I'm in Colorado, and we were able to come together, collaborate, and publish ideas that will be shared with school architects/planners/designers around the world, without ever meeting face to face. (I think we may need a new definition of what "meeting somebody" means.)

I still find this just so amazing . . . anyway, here's a copy of the DesignShare article (very slightly modified to fit the blog better).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Creating a 2020 Vision for School Design"

"The kindergartners that start in the fall of 2007 will graduate in the spring of 2020. As architects of schools, you need to have a 2020 Vision. Your client's and children's futures depend upon it."

by Karl Fisch

*****

Note: Like many others who spend time reading various education-oriented blogs, we ran into a most amazing video presentation called "2020 Vision" that was put together by a Colorado (US) based educator named Karl Fisch that truly put into fresh new perspective how kids'/students' lives are radically transforming before our eyes. His video (and 2 others) were put together to help his own teaching colleagues ‘get it' when it comes to embracing new technologies to help empower their students for the students' own futures (not just our pasts). And after only a few months, the videos suddenly went global in a very word-of-mouth viral manner, and they have continued to gain notoriety in all corners of the blogosphere. So we thought we'd ask Karl if he'd write an open-letter to the school design community based on the work he's done to help his own school community embrace the emerging future of learning. We hope you'll find the videos challenging and affirming all at once. ("2020 Vision is the 2nd (third one here - K.F.) video you'll be able to play down below straight from this page).

*****

Anticipate the future.

That's something that the folks that work in schools - and the architects that design them - have to do every single day. In order to truly meet the needs of students, we really have to predict the future. My staff has spent the last year and a half trying to anticipate the future, trying to figure out what we need to do differently to adequately prepare our students to be successful in the 21st century. A century that we feel is going to require different skills, different abilities, different habits of mind than the last century did.

How can we change the way we teach or, more importantly, the way students learn, for them to be happy, successful, and productive citizens of the 21st century?

As part of this process, I developed three presentations for my staff:

• one that looks at the past ("What If?"), via Google Video,
  
  er.swf?docId=-2855786550703993653&hl=en"

   

• one that looks at the present ("Did You Know?" that appears via YouTube, modified with permission by Scott McLeod),
  
  8WecI"

   

• and one that looks at the future ("2020 Vision"; via Google Video version).
  
  yer.swf?docId=7281108124087435381&hl=en"
  
  

The first two were obviously easier to create, but the third one - looking at the future - was tougher because we can't predict the future - at least not yet. So how could I get my staff to prepare for it? It's tough to be the one that's supposed to have the vision and then tell folks that you really don't know exactly what it's going to look like. But I felt it was important for them to have some kind of plausible vision of the future to think about and discuss. Even if it turns out - as it surely will - to not be totally accurate. As long as I got the general trends right, it would make it much easier for my staff to anticipate what skills and abilities and habits of mind students would need in the future - and therefore we could make the necessary changes now to make that happen. As a result of our ongoing staff development, and helped along by the presentations, my staff is beginning to have a vision of the future. Right now it's mostly a bunch of individual visions, but we are working together to create a collective vision for our school, our students and our community.

School architects face a similar dilemma.

You are tasked with creating buildings that will serve the needs of educators and students far into the future. But how do you do that when we are in a time of such rapid change? How can you possibly design a building that will meet future needs when those future needs could be so very different from today's needs? Just like educators, you need a vision of the future. We can't change the past - it's already happened. We can't even change the present - as the moment passes too quickly. The future is the only thing we can change. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Shouldn't we get started?

The future is a lot like the weather.

Everyone talks about the future but nobody does anything about it. Who can see the future? Nobody can (at least not yet). But what if it's your job to see the future? What if you are supposed to be the one that has the vision?

Who needs to see the future?

Well, lots of people.

Weather forecasters, farmers, investment managers, CEO's, politicians - you name it, just about everyone could benefit from some insights into what the future will bring. Weather forecasters would be pretty happy with getting the next three days worth of forecasts right all the time. Extend it out to ten days and they'd be ecstatic. If they could be fairly accurate on temperatures and precipitation for a region for the next year they could retire happy. Farmers match up pretty well with weather forecasters.

Likewise, investment managers and CEO's have a little bit longer viewpoint, but not by much. Many investment managers focus on quarterly numbers, then building to a 1-year, 3-year and perhaps 5-year return on investment. CEO's and their corporations also focus on those quarterly numbers and, if the CEO is lucky, he or she makes it to the end of any five year plan. Politicians - at least in the United States - rarely focus on anything longer than the next two to four years, knowing so much will change with every election that they don't have to focus on anything longer than that.

But what about educators?

K-12 educators may have the toughest job of all.

When a child starts Kindergarten, the school system makes a commitment to educate them for the next thirteen years. Implicit in that commitment is that the student will be prepared to be successful in the world as it exists thirteen years from then. That they are prepared to enter college, the military, or the work force with the knowledge and skills that are deemed necessary at that point in time - thirteen years in the future. As if that isn't daunting enough, traditional wisdom holds that those thirteen years of education should really prepare students for the rest of their lives, at least until they retire, so sixty plus years out from when they start kindergarten.

This has never been easy, but when the world was changing at a relatively sedate, linear pace, schools could change slowly and still be successful. In a time of rapid change like today, in exponential times, it is next to impossible. When the predicted top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 didn't even exist in 2004 (former Secretary of Education Richard Riley); when a $1,000 computer will exceed the computation capabilities of the human brain in 2023 (Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near - and in this article); when a $1,000 computer will exceed the computation capabilities of the entire human race by 2049 (Kurzweil again) - what are educators to do?

So what do we do?

What can teachers and administrators, school board members and taxpayers, school architects and students - do? Nobody can accurately predict the future in a time of such rapid change. Educators instead just focus on making their "quarterly numbers," getting their students through the next unit or the end of the semester, trying to do well on mandated tests, and generally doing their best and hoping for the best for their students. School architects just focus on the bottom line, on submitting the lowest bid that meets the minimum specs, and then trying to come in on time and on budget - hoping that the price of steel doesn't go up too much in the interim.

But in a time of rapid change, that's not going to cut it.

We need to have vision, even if it isn't one hundred percent accurate. It doesn't need to be, as the future in a time of rapid change is likely to be much stranger than most predictions. The vision doesn't even have to get most things right, just enough of the general trends so that educators can start moving - both themselves and their students - in the right directions. Because this isn't something that can be addressed by incremental improvements. You can't leap a 20-foot chasm in two 10-foot jumps. We don't need incremental improvements, but revolutionary ones (Kathy Sierra, for one, talks about this here and here).

That was the impetus behind writing one version of the future.

To give educators - and everyone concerned about education - one possible vision of education in the near future. Maybe by having one possible vision of the future we can get beyond our natural resistance to change.

I ask teachers, "Are you ever going to be 18 again? Are your students ever going to be your age? Should we be preparing students for the world as it was when we were 18, or for the world as it will be when they are our age?" I would think school architects would ask their clients some questions as well (in addition to those). Maybe along the lines of, "What are your core values? What are the three habits of mind you most want your students to leave your school with? Do your current school designs support those values and habits of mind? How could a new school design not only support those values and habits of mind, but actually foster them?"

Instead of throwing up our hands and saying, "Everything's changing so fast. How can we possibly know what's going to happen so why even bother," we get to work envisioning what our students are most likely to need to be successful in the 21st century - and then preparing them accordingly. Because who can see into the future? Teachers can, every time they walk into their classrooms and look into the eyes of their students. But if their classrooms are built for the past, preparing our children for a world that doesn't exist anymore, then the future looks pretty bleak.

School architects - at least the really good ones - have a very tough job.

They are tasked with building schools that are supposed to serve the needs of students forty to sixty years into the future. For architects that think schools are just buildings - just walls and floors, ceilings and doors - that's pretty easy. But the problem with school as building, with a lowest-bid mentality, is how do you put a price on inspiration? How do you measure the building's impact on the learning, the hopes and dreams of the tens of thousands of students that will read what's on those walls, walk on those floors, stare at those ceilings, and pass through those doors? Do you simply want to shelter, or do you want to inspire, the students of the future?

Albert Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge.

He didn't mean knowledge wasn't important, but that it wasn't sufficient. Schools built today must be designed to not only meet the needs of today's students, but of multiple future generations of students that will live and learn in a constantly and rapidly changing world. We need to build schools that learn, schools that are flexible enough to adapt to meet the future needs of teachers and students. We need to harness our imaginations now in order to build schools that can inspire future imaginations.

School architects need the vision to design not just buildings, but learning spaces.

Professional learning environments where teachers and students can learn together as they boldly go into the future. I don't know exactly what that looks like, although I have some ideas, but I do know that architects need to have a vision of the school building of the future that doesn't try to meet the needs of the past.

Just like educators, school architects don't have to get the vision exactly right, but they do need to have one.

We no longer live in an industrial age, so why do we have industrial age classrooms? Is it necessary (or appropriate) to have thirty-six individual desks in neat rows in a room with four walls and a door that we close to keep the rest of the world out? Do we need an assembly line mentality, where a bell rings and widgets (students) move to the next spot on the line? Do we need a system where all the raw materials (students) must be dealt with in the same way or they are tossed off the line as defective (learning disabled)?

Or do we need an environment where students are both respected and nurtured, where they are treated as professional learners, where they are seen as individuals that can contribute to the common good? Where they are viewed not just as passive consumers of information, but as active producers, who add meaning and value to the information. An environment where students are encouraged to interact, not only with others in their classroom, but with others in their community - and in communities around the world. An environment that views students as the ultimate "knowledge workers." Which environment would you like to learn in?

The kindergartners that start in the fall of 2007 will graduate in the spring of 2020. As architects of schools, you need to have a 2020 Vision. Your client's and children's futures depend upon it.

Labels: 2020_vision, DesignShare, education_change, future_school

posted by Karl Fisch at 8:45 PM 2 comments  

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2 Comments:

Carolyn Foote said...

Karl,

Your presentation is cropping up everywhere! Our campus technologist attended a workshop yesterday (in Texas) and the first thing they did was show "Did you Know?"

4/5/07 5:48 AM  

Karen D said...

Karl,
Wow, I guess I just hadn't thought about it, but my daughter will be a 2018 grad and my son a 2021 grad. You really got me when you wrote: "Because who can see into the future? Teachers can, every time they walk into their classrooms and look into the eyes of their students. But if their classrooms are built for the past, preparing our children for a world that doesn't exist anymore, then the future looks pretty bleak." That is powerful!
Your first presentation on "The Past" really puts into perspective today's technology naysayers. What really amazes me, is why are so many of today's educators so afraid of technology in the classroom? Why do we apparently want to stunt the creativity and learning potential of our students? This is the generation that we will be counting on to take care of us when we are old! Why would we want to squash any creative thinking mind that could potentially someday develop a cure for illnesses or diseases? What does the future hold? I am not quite sure yet, but let's start planning!

4/9/07 2:54 PM  

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Links to this post:

  2020 Vision on DesignShare from Fischbowl  

2020 Vision on DesignShare from my favourite blog ! If your involved with Building Schools For the Future in the UK in secondary, The primary Capitalisation programe (BSF for primary) or FE colleges new build reads this stuff. ...
posted by andy black @ 4/2/07 4:23 PM

The Fischbowl

 

A staff development blog for Arapahoe High School teachers exploring constructivism and 21st century learning skills. The opinions expressed here are the personal views of Karl Fisch - and various other teachers at Arapahoe - and do not (necessarily) reflect the views of Littleton Public Schools.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Over Two Million Served

(Note: this post has been kicking around in my head for quite a while, but I was finally spurred to write/publish it as a result of this post by Will Richardson, which was - in turn - spurred by my comment on this post by Will. If you haven't yet read through the comments on that one, they're well worth your time. This is going to be an extremely long post, so bear with me - I will eventually return to Will's post.)

Does everyone remember when McDonald's used to put up so many millions (then later billions) served on their signs? Well, you hopefully won't be surprised that I'm not referring to Happy Meals in the title of this post. That's my current estimate for how many folks have now viewed the Did You Know?/Shift Happens presentation. (And, to be honest, I think two million is a low estimate, more on that in a few minutes.) So, let me take some time to bring you up to date on how we got here - and how I got to that estimate - and then I'll talk a little bit about the presentation itself and what I've learned.

How We Got Here
Here's the chronology (as best I know it, although as you'll see it quickly moves beyond my direct knowledge).

• Early August 2006 - My administration asks if I want to speak at a beginning of the year faculty meeting, I decide to create a presentation instead to start the conversation, so I created the PowerPoint (see original post for more details on that). I show the presentation in a faculty meeting and they liked it.
  
  
• August 15, 2006 - I make the seemingly innocuous decision to post the presentation on The Fischbowl. Why? Three reasons. First, some of my staff members wanted to show it to their families at home, so it was an easy place for them to get to it to download it. Second, while face-to-face conversations were happening in my building after the presentation, I wanted to continue the conversation on the blog (which, after all, is the purpose of The Fischbowl in my building and I wanted to encourage that), as well as receive some feedback from my staff. Third, I thought there might be one or two teachers outside of my building that might find the information interesting and want to use bits and pieces of it (I might have underestimated that just a smidge). Please note that at that time, The Fischbowl did not have a very large readership (or at least I wasn't aware of it, but I'm pretty sure it was small at that point).
  
  
• August 17, 2006 - David Warlick blogs about it. I'm guessing he found it because I linked to him and talked about his idea of Telling the New Story, and that he has a blog search set up looking for those keywords. (I linked to him because I felt I was trying to help tell that new story to my staff, and because his ideas were part of the genesis of the presentation.) The comments and emails begin.
  
  
• August 23, 2006 - Bud Hunt blogs about it.
  
  
• August 25, 2006 - Will Richardson links to it in a post. I'm not sure how many of the folks that read Will Richardson and Bud Hunt don't read David Warlick, but I think some more folks that maybe didn't follow David's link to it took a look when Will and Bud also linked to it. (Are David, Bud and Will Connectors or Mavens? More on that in my next post.)
  
  
• End of August and throughout the fall - It spreads fairly quickly and widely through education circles, starting with education bloggers, but many of them show it in staff meetings or to other influential folks that show it in meetings. There's some spread outside of education (educators shared it with spouses, who then shared it with others) - places like Chambers of Commerces, and some non-education specific bloggers also link to it. I get a slow, but steady, stream of emails and references in other blogs throughout the fall and as 2007 arrives. My guess is that somewhere over 100,000 people have seen it at this point, but that's a very rough guess.
  
  
• January 19, 2007 - Scott McLeod, who had been using it in some of his classes and presentations, posts a remixed version of the presentation, which removes my school-specific slides (more on that later) at the beginning, adds a MySpace slide, and improves the look quite a bit. He also posts it in multiple formats. While many, many folks had modified it for their own uses before this (typically replacing my school-specific slides with their school specific slides, or replacing U.S. statistics with their country's statistics), this is the first time I know of that somebody posted just this part of it.
  
  
• January 19, 2007 - Sacretis posts it to YouTube (he's a student and knows Scott).
  
  
• February 8, 2007 - Vipeness posts it to YouTube (for some reason this is the one that takes off first).
  
  
• Late January/Early February 2007 - Somebody, somewhere, starts sending an email that goes semi-viral with a direct link to Scott's WMV version. I would guess this precedes Vipeness' posting on YouTube, but I don't know.
  
  
• Late January through early March - Gets posted on a lot of other video sites, and lots and lots of links to it from blogs, mostly blogs outside of the education arena.
  
  
• March 13, 2007 - Gets posted on Break.com.

All those postings get noticed by some prominent non-education bloggers, who then mention it, which of course draws more attention. At the height of it, I was getting at least ten to twenty emails a day from folks outside of education (and those were the ones that tracked me down, since many of the online postings didn't reference Scott or I, and Scott's WMV version didn't have any reference link in it, so folks had to be URL savvy enough to explore his site to find his blog).

The Estimate
Here's my thought process on the estimate of at least two million views. First, the relatively easy numbers from online postings that list number of views (all numbers as of this writing, of course).

• Break.com - 1,047,000
  
  
• Glumbert.com - 500,000+ (doesn't list views on the site, but I emailed them two weeks ago and it was at 363,000+ views and 6400+ emails. It's still listed on the "most emailed" list, so I'm assuming 500,000 is probably a conservative estimate.)
  
  
• YouTube.com - It's been uploaded many different times to YouTube (I stopped counting at ten), but this one is at 361,000, and this one is at 149,000, and this one is at 108,000 (update: in the day or so that I've taken to finish this post off, this one is now at 155,000 - it's now the "hot" one on YouTube - 47,000 views in the last 24 hours). When you add in the other ones, YouTube accounts for around 650,000.
  
  
• MySpace - Again, uploaded many times, but this one has been viewed 122,000 times.
  
  
• Then there are a bunch of other places that have it as well (not just linked to a YouTube or MySpace version, but their own hosted version).

So, those add up to about 2.3 million (not counting all those other places). Now, I'm aware that the number of "views" these sites report may not be completely accurate. I have no idea what constitutes a "view" to them, so 2.3 million might be a little high. On the other hand, at least some of those plays have been in front of audiences (some small, some large), so that probably boosts it back up closer to 2.3 million again, and then add in all those other places it's hosted and posted.

But those are just some of the online postings that track the number of views. As far as I know, January 19th was the first upload to YouTube, but recall that the presentation was posted in August and received fairly wide distribution in the education blogosphere. That distribution included direct links to a PowerPoint, so there's no tracking those numbers. And that PowerPoint (or a modified version) was then shown to quite a few faculty meetings Kindergarten through Post-Grad level, as well as some spread outside of the education arena. And then, of course, somebody, somewhere started sending that semi-viral email with a direct link to Scott McLeod's WMV version, which we don't have statistics for either (and is probably what ended up generating all those online postings).

So, given all those "untrackable" numbers, and that I know that it has been shown to many, many audiences, some quite large, my guess is that the number of folks that have seen it is actually over three million, but I chose to go with two million in the title because that's much easier to "justify." There are also many, many interesting stories that Scott and I can share about who has used the presentation and how it's been used, but this post is already way too long - I may eventually get around to blogging some of those stories.

Some Things I've Learned
Embed an ad in everything you post on the web. Kidding.

Well, so what's the point of this post? I'm getting there, really I am. Here's part of the point. As I commented on Will's post, I'm not sure that Did You Know? is the video/message I would've chosen to go viral. While I think it's certainly part of the message, I worry that it's often taken out of context or used in ways that I don't think are the most helpful for the direction I think we need to go. For example, most of those two million folks that have seen it haven't read the original blog post, so they don't know what its intended purpose and audience was (high school teachers thinking about the world our students are entering and wondering how best to help them prepare). (Yes, I know I should've thought of that before I posted it, but I really, really, really had no idea it would spread like this. Now I know - pun intended.)

Also, keep in mind that the original version started with eight slides about changes at my school, then moved on to the China and India flat-world stuff, then on to the exponential times stuff. When Scott McLeod remixed and posted it, he removed those eight slides - which was the logical thing to do and is almost assuredly the reason it went viral (folks would've lost interest at the beginning reading about my school). But the effect of that was that it started with the China and India stuff, instead of that being in the middle, sandwiched between my school statistics and the exponential times stuff - which is a subtle change that I think changes the impact significantly. This leads many folks to focus on the China and India piece, and many of them have highlighted and criticized that (much of it valid, but also out of context). I was concerned about how that part would be interpreted when I showed it to my staff, but I think it's exaggerated when those original eight slides are removed (makes it the lead, not just part of the story of change).

The presentation was intended to be the start of the conversation, not the entire conversation, and that's part of my concern with how it's being used. If it's just shown to educators - or others - without any context or opportunity for follow-up conversation, then it can leave the audience in a state of what Wesley Fryer termed "shock and awe." If that's the case, then not only is it not helpful, it's actually detrimental. Only with context and conversation can we help move the audience(s) past the "shock and awe" stage and into the, "Okay, this is also kind of exciting and invigorating. What are we going to do about this?!" stage.

And while I think pieces of Did You Know? can be part of the message we need to deliver, I'm not sure it's the right one in and of itself. I think pieces of The Machine Is Us/Ing Us, Animal School, the Inclusion Video, and, yes, even Did You Know?, What If?, and 2020 Vision could all be part of a better video that I would've wished had been the one to go viral. And, of course, throw in a lot of the ideas we're all trying to get our heads around through our blogging, that maybe haven't made it into a video yet. One of the problems (more problems below) with Did You Know? is that it doesn't specifically ask the viewer to do anything at the end. For my intended audience - my staff - the last slide "Now you know . . . " was an implied challenge. Now that "you" know, what are you going to do about this? It could be implied because I knew I would be having those conversations with my staff, both formally in our staff development efforts, and informally in the hallway and on the blog. But once the presentation went "into the wild," that implied challenge ran the risk of being lost. When it initially spread through the education blogosphere, I wasn't that worried - because I figured 95% of educators would know that it was just the start of the conversation, and would get the implication that now that their audience "knew" this, they should discuss what they should do about it. But once it spread much farther, I'm not sure that's so true anymore. If I had created this video for that purpose to begin with, in the hopes that it went viral, then I would've approached it much differently - but it never crossed my mind. I think this is part of the "What's Next?" question that Will was asking in his post. I'm going to try to address that in my very next post (hopefully within the next day or two), for fear that it will get lost in this gargantuan one, but this paragraph has been a piece of that.

What About the Presentation Itself?
So, what about the presentation itself? Is it really that good, or is it reaching too far, or is it really bad? I think the answer to all three of those may be "yes." If you peruse the comments on some of those online video sites, or read through the comments on some of the blog postings, they can be brutal. While the majority are complimentary, many are not - and many of them are also valid. Let me break down the slides myself and take a look. (Slide numbers refer to my modified original PowerPoint, not Scott's version.)

Slides 1-8: These are about my school. Data is good, very relevant to my school. I'm completely okay with these.

Slides 9-18: Population statistics from China and India. Data is good, relevance is good. Intention of the slides was not xenophobic, but was certainly U.S. centric because presentation was intended for just my staff. Many folks have pointed out that not only is the 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ's greater than the population of North America, so is the lowest 25%. For me, that's not actually a counter-argument, that just reinforces the point. That's that many more folks that are "competing" if you will on Friedman's global playing field. Again, this was to be the start of the conversation, not the entire conversation, and I was not trying to minimize the very real issues that China and India have. The intention of these slides was to illustrate what a different world our students would be living and working in, competing and collaborating with folks all over the world, so should we be preparing them the same way we did in the 1980's (or 1960's, or 1930's or . . .). I'm okay with these.

Slides 19-21: China number one English speaking country/ship every single U.S. job to China they would still have a labor surplus. Data is second hand and therefore shaky, relevance is good. The impression I was again going for was simply that there are a lot of folks out there who would like to work, a lot of folks that up until now maybe haven't had the same chance that students in the U.S. had. I wanted my staff to think about that and what it meant for how we were preparing our students. Even if the data turn out to not be completely accurate, I think it's close - and the point and relevance remains the same. I give myself a pass on this one.

Slides 22-23: Number of babies born in next 8 minutes. Data is good, relevance is good. Certainly there are definite downsides to the population issues in China and India - and I'm not trying to minimize that. But what if China and India do a great job of reforming and fixing those problems? This is presumably what we all want - and what the U.S. Government's policies supposedly support. I think that a whole lot of people are actually taking comfort in and counting on China and India's problems continuing. I think that's not only morally wrong, but could also be a huge miscalculation. I'm okay with these slides.

Slides 24-28: How long folks in U.S. have been working at current employers. Data is good, relevance is good. I'm okay with these.

Slides 29-33: Top 10 in-demand jobs/preparing students for jobs that don't exist using technologies not invented, to solve problems we don't know about yet. Data is third hand and shaky, although the source is good. Relevance is good. I really have no idea if this is true or not. I would hope that Richard Riley has good data sources, but I don't really know. But even if this is not true, I think the point of these slides is still valid - we don't know a whole lot about the jobs our students are going to have, the world they are going to live in, the technologies and problems they are going to encounter. We live in a rapidly changing time (see Kurzweil's book, or this article), what does that mean for our students? That was the point of these slides. I'm okay with the implications of these slides, but uncomfortable with citing something that could be completely false. As I've stated on other folk's blogs, this was not meant to be "scholarly" or "authoritative," simply a conversation starter for my staff. That allowed me greater leeway, but I obviously lost that leeway once it was on the web. So I'm okay with the end result of these slides, but I'm not sure that the Riley quote slide should still be there since the data could be inaccurate.

Slides 34-37: England. In 1900. Data is second hand, but source is good and data appears to be correct. Relevance is good. I'm good with this one - other than it should read Great Britain instead of England. I kept it England because that's what Angus King used, and because it "flowed" better in the presentation then Great Britain would've.

Slide 39: Luxembourg just passed us in broadband Internet penetration. Data is good, relevance is good. I'm good with this one.

Slides 40-41: U.S. Government spent less than half as much as Nintendo on research and innovation in education. Can we just skip talking about these? I guess not. I thought data was good, but not so much. These slides should be removed. But wait, maybe they shouldn't. Instead, slide 41 should be changed to something else with better data that relates, and we're working on that (see my next post for more on that). But for now, these are bad.

Slide 42: 1 out of every 8 couples married last year met online. Data is second hand, but source is good. Relevance is iffy. I'm okay with this slide, but not sure it belongs. But it provided both some comic relief in the middle and I think is still relevant in terms of how our world is changing. I mean, think about it, 12+% of the folks who got married last year in the U.S. met online? Wow.

Slides 43-44: MySpace statistics. Data is good, relevance is good. Lots of people have pointed out that registered users does not mean the same as active users. Point taken, but it's still a huge number and - much like married couples meeting online - points to the changes in our world. I'm okay with these.

Slides 45-53: Searches on Google/text messages/words in English language/books published. Data is good (except for text messages which is probably good), relevance is good. I'm okay with these.

Slides 54-55: Week's worth of NY Times compared to 18th century. Data is iffy - based on a book, I have no idea how accurate it is. Relevance is good. I'm still okay with these, because even if it's not completely accurate, the point is well taken.

Slides 56-64: Unique new information/technical information/fiber optics. Data is good on exabytes, other data is second hand. Relevance is good. I'm reasonably okay with these, but don't know how accurate the technical information doubling times are. Again, for me, the trend is what's most important and relevant.

Slide 65: ePaper cheaper than real paper. Data is second hand and possibly non-existent, relevance is good. Here's what I wrote as a comment on Tom Hoffman's blog:

I still think this is something worth thinking about. I certainly don't know enough about paper production versus nano-technology of ePaper. . . Yes, I imagine a single piece of paper might be cheaper than a single piece of ePaper for quite some time. But that "single piece of ePaper" could conceivably hold hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, who knows how [many pages of] information compared to real paper. So maybe a better phrase would've been ‘cost per bit of information' or something, but that just doesn't roll off the tongue . . .

I still like the concept of this slide, but the wording should probably be changed.

Slides 66-67: Laptops/$100 laptop project. Data is second hand, but source is excellent (Negroponte). I'm good with these.

Slides 68-72: Future computers compared to human brain computation capability. Data is not universally agreed upon, but source is extremely solid (Kurzweil). Relevance is outstanding. Along with the China and India slides, these are the ones that get attacked the most on the web video sites. It's amazing, because these are the most well-documented of all the stats - even if not everyone agrees with Kurzweil's calculations and conclusions. But most folks just assume that this couldn't possibly be true, and so therefore dismiss it - which is certainly a huge part of the point here. I'm good with these and - while it's not an easy read - I recommend anyone who's interested read Kurzweil's book.

Slides 73-75: What does it all mean? Shift Happens. Now you know . . . I'm still very comfortable with these, except for the aforementioned point that the challenge to do something about this is implied, but that was okay for my original audience. Could definitely be improved upon for a wider audience, and I'll talk about that in my next post.

So, scorecard please? Overall, I think it holds up okay for the original purpose and audience for which it was intended - if you're willing to give me the benefit of the doubt on my intentions, and if you're willing to acknowledge that I didn't anticipate the spread of this thing. Note that I certainly knew that anything I posted on the web could spread like this, but I think most reasonable folks would agree with me that I couldn't have really expected that it would. While I liked the presentation, that would've required a huge leap of ego to think it would resonate like it apparently did and go viral. I have a healthy ego, but not that healthy.

Would I Post It Again?
That's a really tough question. I think that if I could've foreseen that this was going to happen, I'm not sure I would've had the courage to post it. It's very hard to believe that it's only been seven months since I posted this - it's been a very long seven months. Having spent the last seven months replying to thousands of emails (in addition to the ones I already get as part of my job) and trying to keep watch on thousands of blog postings about the presentation to make sure my school isn't negatively impacted, all in addition to the staff development role I've taken on in my building, plus my regular job duties supporting technology in my building, and - oh, yeah - being a father, husband, son, brother, friend, etc., has been a bit much. I'm exhausted. I don't write this to invite sympathy (or wrath!), just trying to be honest here. I'm glad my fifteen minutes are about up.

As far as the bigger and more important picture of whether this has done more good or evil in terms of our "cause," I'm just not sure. I've been trying (most of the time) to take the optimistic view when discussing all these challenges and opportunities. If I do that with this presentation, then I have to say that it certainly has accomplished one of its goals - it sure has started a whole heck of a lot of conversations. But the question remains, will those conversations move beyond talk and into action for our students? As Will says, What's Next? Please see my next blog post (in a day or two - I'm written out) for some more thoughts on that. Oh - and if you've read this far - then let me quote Will once again. Oh. My. Goodness. You deserve a medal.

Labels: Did_You_Know, education_change

posted by Karl Fisch at 10:06 PM 4 comments  

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4 Comments:

Mark Ahlness said...

Karl,
I'm just one of the millions who saw what you created and was moved by it, was pushed to think harder, think world, not city or neighborhood. One of the many teachers who went back to think about whether yesterday's math lesson had relevance to anything at all... and showed it to my colleagues. It's all about thinking bigger, pushing us out there. Thank you! - Mark

3/29/07 12:25 AM  

Diane P said...

I too was moved by it and used it with the teachers I was teaching-what are we going to do for our students? My students' parents-why am I teaching this technology/literacy to your students?

Sometimes a picture is better than a million words. I believe that the message began to get across that we need to use our computers for something more than testing. It was so powerful that is made the needed impact.

Thank you for putting it together. By the way I adapted it and put relevant information about our school district on the first few slides so then it was personalized to our needs, of course giving credit to you for the main body of the PPT.

Many people need to have the same information re-visited in other ways and that is what I think is next step. Until they see a need for these tools/literacies we have keep showing them why.

3/29/07 8:34 AM  

Will said...

First of all, welcome to the "If I'd Known" club. I'm a charter member.

Second, there's no doubt that the video has started tons of conversations. And I would think that's great on a general level as long as the conversations do get stuck in the nuance of the numbers. It's the shift happens part that's important.

Third, isn't Creative Commons a wonderful thing? The personalization that Diane talks about can only make the conversations more powerful.

Fourth, so now what? This is one of the few things that has reached a large audience that is outside of the current online edublogging community. How do we follow up on that? To me, that is the big question right now, and I'm looking forward, as always, to hearing your thoughts.

Will

3/29/07 9:18 AM  

Karen D said...

Karl,
Like Mark said above, it is all about thinking bigger....getting out of my backyard and going global. It reaffirms the importance not only my teaching, but also my learning. I am currently a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction, taking an Ed Tech course this semester. I have learned so much about new technology and the Web 2.0. Hadn't heard of it prior to January, and now I can't imagine life without it! Shift WILL happen...it already is happening. I've shifted. I am encouraging my students to shift. Eventually, the world will shift those who don't shift themselves.
If anything, your presentation and the "controversy" surrounding some of the slides totally displays and affirms the beauty of technology and the Web 2.0, and the importance of it all in education.....what and how we teach. People are out there, reading, learning, collaborating, reflecting, etc! Isn't that what education is all about! Moving people to think! Getting people to "shift" outside of their box and explore new ideas, worlds, and possibilities. Thank you!

3/29/07 8:51 PM  

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Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 in Teaching

I've been talking a lot, in the blog and with folks f2f, about the need for teachers and faculty to increase student engagement by taking advantage of all the social networking tools and allowing students to be responsible for their own learning - teachers become experts in guiding rather than shoveling content.

Well here's something to think about. Watch this video, then tune into tomorrow's blog for an explanation of who they are.

http://www.sfett.com/ican5/digital_students.html

Leave a comment on what you think about what these NeXt Gener's are saying.

 

11 comments

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March 8th, 2007 at 3:45 am

Sohbet

Perfect

March 8th, 2007 at 8:18 am

Cheri

That's what I thought. Now, how can use this to impact college faculty?

March 8th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

Frank Corsini

Thats why I left college and went on to starting my own businesses.
| http://www.allbicycling.info/ |

March 8th, 2007 at 10:10 pm

Rob

Well,

First of all, I can't hear anything on this link, but with other comments, I would assume that it works and that I have something strange going on.

BUT, I completely agree with the need to guide students in learning rather than shoveling information into their minds. A completely different viewpoint than most students experience in post-secondary education these days.

I don't know if social networking can increase the educational engagement, but it should if used appropriately. A post by David Warlick mentioned two new social networking sites: http://www.tubesnow.com/ and www. ning.com. The tubes idea seems extremely interesting, but the ning site has inappropriate material on the very home page and would not be appropriate for the educational setting.

I also would like to comment on how you don't "toot your own horn" like several of the other authors in blogs that I have been reading... only talking about their accomplishments, speaking engagements, or how great they are. Thank you for that.

March 8th, 2007 at 10:25 pm

Cheri

Thanks for the visit, Rob! I'm impressed that you took the time with all the excitement going on at home. When do we get to see baby pictures? Do you have a Flickr account set up yet?

Make sure that you're allowing pop-ups and not blocking the sfett site - that might be the problem.

I'll bet the ning site is a wrong URL because David wouldn't pass something inappropriate on - he's an educator at heart.

Thanks for the compliment - I never even thought about using this as an advertisement for myself ... hmmmmm. Just kidding.

March 9th, 2007 at 12:22 am

Julie Schumacher

Dr. T- So tell me why this video isn't shown at orientation for professors at universities? I remember my first week as an instructor- I went to orientation for my health plan, retirement plan, and a basic lecture on the history of the university. I never was given instruction on ‘best teaching practices.' Instead, when I got to my department, I was given a binder with all of the instructional materials in it. (100-slide lectures, exams, and notes). That didn't sound exciting to me, so I knew the students would not be engaged. With focus at many universities on research, I feel the instruction on student engagement gets pushed aside. I know many classes are being taught as the video implies ‘with old-fashion techniques.'
That is why with no previous background in the educational field, I felt strongly about taking Curriculum and Instruction classes. An instructor may be an ‘expert' in his or her field, but without connecting to the students, as was much cried out for in this video, there is a potential for learning to decline.
What a unique video - very well put together for collaboration online by the students- wow!
-Julie S.

March 9th, 2007 at 7:26 am

Cheri

Julie,

There is a history to this approach - a long history ... and you are part of the new cycle in university professors. There have been movements toward engaged learning and problem-based learning, but because disciplines other than education do not address pedagogy these approaches have not caught on.

In addition, because information has been unavailable except to the experts, there was a need to shovel the content to some point. It's like any system, any changes need to occur from the bottom, from the top, and from within.

We're in the midst of some change and you can be a huge part ... show the video to your colleagues, your chair, your dean. See what they say.

CT

March 11th, 2007 at 10:50 am

Monica

Anyone interesting in making a video response, Digital Faculty? Seems like we may be able to add the faculty side....time, resources, motivation, etc.

March 11th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

Cheri

What a great idea - I think it's important to provide a visual representation of digital faculty. That's what we're putting together for K-12 teachers like I talked about in class.

March 18th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Slodog

I think it would be interesting to have a two part class where the instructor would design the first part and let students design the rest of the class.

This could be one way for students to bring their knowledge and experiences to share with the rest of the class AND the instructor. This could be one aspect of faculty development. I think fear of how things will go, lack of IT support and lack of time probably stops faculty from pursuing this.

I agree this would be a great video to show faculty members who are stuck in the same old way of teaching.

Monica, I would love to work with you on the digital faculty. Great idea

March 18th, 2007 at 8:08 pm

Karen Dennis

This really got me to thinking about comments that I hear frequently by faculty in higher ed, such as "students today just don't want to work for their grade" or "they want something for nothing, and don't want to learn." I don't think this is necessarily the case when it comes to this generation, at least for the majority. I think "our" generation is simply just not reaching them.

I really picked up on the statement by the one student that said students in this generation aren't preparing for the same jobs that their parents were. Why should they then have to be subjected to the same pedagogical methods that their parents were?

I mean, if we are preparing today's students to be innovators, movers, and shakers, so to speak, why are we teaching "inside the box." Don't we want to foster creativity and innovation? Don't we want to foster a desire for learning that can't be satiated? Think about it, we are preparing a generation of individuals who someday will be asked to care for us when we are sick and old. Don't we want this generation to be creative and innovative so that they can discover creative and innovative cures/treatments and higher quality of living for us? Why would we want to squash that?

I would also like to work on a digital faculty video. I think it is important to show a faculty response, maybe even from both perspectives or sides (techno-adopters and techno-phobes).

Stuck    

I'm blog stuck. Stuck pretty hard actually. Probably a little because of my schedule, the kids basketball games, the furnace breaking...life is getting in the way of blogging.

More, however, because I'm butting up against some real questions, and the answers I'm finding in the reading and conversations out there aren't as satisfying as in the past. This whole School 2.0 thing is the crux of it. There's this niggling feeling in my brain somewhere that at the end of the day, I'm totally missing the point. That for the most part, we're all missing the point. That we have to look further outside of our current frames. That much of the structure we are building those frames on is flimsy at best, that I'm too willing to pull pieces of the experience in because they fit and not willing enough to grapple with those that don't fit. And that the echo chamber makes it all feel good.

I know. I've been here before.

I mean, what if we just stop focusing so much on school and just focus on learning?
What if the mere term "school" limits our thinking as to what's best for learning?
What if School 2.0 whatever that is is nothing more than a short term transition to a better system for learning that has nothing to do with physical space it the ways we are familiar with it?

There's nothing new here, really. I know. What's new for me at least is that if feels like my lens for all of this is changing. And that's why I'm stuck as to what to write about here. My learning and classroom learning look very different. I will never enter another physical classroom as a "student" again, and that's by choice. That physical space just doesn't cut it. And schools are all about physical space. And control. And content.

On my way out here to CalCUE yesterday, I read a good chunk of David Shaffer's How Computer Games Help Children Learn, and he says this:

Schools as we know them developed in a particular place and time to meet a specific set of social and  economic needs. But times have changed, and the way we need to think about education has changed too.

 

Education no longer necessarily means school in the physical, traditional sense for those that have a connection. And again, I know that for some, it never has. But for the masses, it has. I guess I'm wondering in this environment, however, if our best efforts may not be wasted in trying to make relevant an idea that may just be past its use.

And, so I'm pretty stuck...

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