Growing old or growing up?

Sitting in board meetings gives one plenty of time to think – especially when the financial reports are being given. After two pretty much sleepless nights, I wasn’t tracking all that well Saturday and Sunday during the ISTE board meeting in Austin, even when the discussions got interesting. Somehow my sleep deprived brain drifted toward how my strategies for creating change have modified as I’ve gotten older.

I am, for good or ill, less likely to take issues head on. It doesn’t mean I’m not passionate about things, just that the passion has been tempered a bit by patience. I think I’m learning to:

Play the hand you’re dealt. It doesn’t pay to waste a lot of energy bemoaning one’s fate, dwelling on what one doesn’t have. It makes more sense to spend one’s time figuring out how to leverage the assets available. Yeah, we could always use more computers, more bandwidth, a better book budget, and more personnel, (along with more time, more intelligence). And we should work for these things. But until Santa comes, a heck of a lot of fun can be had and good can be done in meeting challenges with the resources on hand. If you wait for the perfect conditions, you’ll spend your life waiting.

Dance with the one what brung you. Some people will never “get it” no matter what the “it” might be: the importance of libraries, the power of technology, the need for kids to have 21st century skills, whatever. These people might be your principal, your teachers or your parents. Passions have to be discovered; they can’t be transferred. But we still need to be working with the folks we pull into the parking lot with each morning, despite the fact that they don’t share all the same concerns we do. Increasingly, I am finding satisfaction in helping other people achieve their own vision rather than convincing them of the righteousness of my own. Think about it. Do schools exist to support libraries and technology or do we create good library and technology programs to support schools? I hope you didn’t have to think too hard answering that question.

Steer the camel in the direction it's already going. Yeah, I dislike standardized testing. I think this grim obsession with basic skills is hurting our kids. Technology is being implemented without enough consideration to the impact it will have on kids or society. The direction society has taken on many issues over the last few years is not one I would choose were I King of the World. But rather than simply being obstreperous or living in denial, I may as well figure out how, if I can’t turn, at least nudge this camel in a direction that’s better for kids. It’s why I advocate including information/tech skills as an assessed part of NCLB. It’s why I stay involved in technology and library issues in schools. I can control almost nothing, but I can influence almost everything.

Love and balance.  One of our principals is fond of quoting John Wooden, former head coach of UCLA´s basketball team who says love and balance are the two most important words in the English language. Nobody’s going to deny the power of love, but we underestimate the power of balance. Balance doesn’t get headlines like the extremes do. And yet attention to negotiating, creating win-wins, developing understanding, endorsing moderation, creating shared ownership, and building consensus – keeping one’s values and honoring the values of others seems at the heart of both love and balance. I’m working on it.

So maybe my fire has burnt out. But remember, it’s easier to cook over the coals.

BTW, check out Guy Kawasaki’s definition of a mensch. Nicely put.

Are virtual experiences driving out real life experiences?

Lowell Monke in Not OK Computer, appearing in the February 5 Toronto Star, follows Larry Cuban,  Diane Healy, and especially The Alliance for Childhood folks presenting a condemnation of the use of computers in education. (This article has appeared in other incarnations in several publications, including Education Next and Orion, under the title "Charlotte's Webpage.")

Blue Skunk blog readers know that I appreciate technology cynics, being one myself not too far beneath the surface, and that one is far better prepared reading one's critics than one's friends. Do take a look at Monke's rather interesting, though overblown concerns including:

...the computer has not been able to show a consistent record of improving education.

As measured by standardized test scores. Improving test scores is not the same as improving education. 

...the first troubling influence of computers: The medium is so compelling that it lures children away from the kind of activities through which they have always most effectively discovered themselves and their place in the world. 

This sounds like a "digital immigrant" statement. Aren't kids discovering themselves and their places in the virtual world? What makes this medium so compelling exactly? Worth asking ourselves. 

Structured learning certainly has its place. But if it crowds out direct, unmediated engagement with the world, it undercuts a child's education. Children learn the fragility of flowers by touching their petals. They learn to cooperate by organizing their own games. The computer cannot simulate the physical and emotional nuances of resolving a dispute during kickball, or the creativity of inventing new rhymes to the rhythm of jumping rope. These full-bodied, often deeply heartfelt experiences educate not just the intellect but also the soul of the child.

My observation is that students engage in structured computer use to much lesser extent than unmediated use - especially outside of school. 

Computers not only divert students from recess and other unstructured experiences but also replace those authentic experiences with virtual ones. According to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and others, school-age children spend, on average, around five hours a day in front of screens for recreational purposes. All that screen time is supplemented by the hundreds of impressive computer projects now taking place in schools. Yet these projects — the steady diet of virtual trips to the Antarctic, virtual climbs to the summit of Mount Everest, and trips into cyber-orbit that represent one technological high after another — generate only vicarious thrills. The student doesn't actually soar above the Earth, doesn't trek across icy terrain, doesn't climb a mountain. Increasingly, she isn't even allowed to climb to the top of the jungle gym.

So, if one can't really climb Mt. Everest in real time, one shouldn't climb it at all?  And we certainly wouldn't want kids experience anything in education that might be considered thrilling.

...after engaging in Internet projects, students came back down to the Earth of their immediate surroundings with boredom and disinterest — and a desire to get back online. 

Is this a condemnation of technology or current F2F teaching practices?

Keep in mind that a computer always has a hidden pedagogue — the programmer — who designed the software and invisibly controls the options available to students at every step of the way. If they try to think "outside the box," the box either refuses to respond or replies with an error message. The students must first surrender to the computer's hyper-rational form of "thinking" before they are awarded any control at all.

 I am surprised by this statement. I've found that technology is popular with kids because it gives them the tools and allows them to be creative. Monke's kids and Mankato's must be using different software.

We hand even our smallest children enormously powerful machines long before they have the moral capacities to use them properly. Then to assure that our children don't slip past the electronic fences we erect around them, we rely on yet other technologies or fear of draconian punishments. This is not the way to prepare youth for membership in a democratic society that eschews authoritarian control.

I agree with concern. At a very basic level, why are allowing kids who can't read and understand our AUP to use the Internet? No comment about "a democratic society that eschews authoritarian control" and warrentless wiretapping.

In the preface to his thoughtful book The Whale and the Reactor, Langdon Winner writes, "I am convinced that any philosophy of technology worth its salt must eventually ask, `How can we limit modern technology to match our best sense of who we are and the kind of world we would like to build?'"

Unfortunately, our schools too often default to the inverse of that question: "How can we limit human beings to match the best use of what our technology can do and the kind of world it will build?" As a consequence, our children are likely to sustain this process of alienation — in which they treat themselves, other people, and the Earth instrumentally — in a vain attempt to materially fill up lives crippled by internal emptiness. We should not be surprised when they "solve" personal and social problems by turning to drugs, guns, hateful Web logs, or other powerful tools, rather than digging deep within themselves or searching out others in the community for strength and support. After all, this is what we have taught them to do.

  Where Monke sees isolation others see "social networking." Goodness, an awful lot of consequences to assign to a little box of silicon and plastic. Why am I skeptical about the computer being the root of evil?

The author makes some great points in this article here - too bad he so overstates the problems that the kernels of truth are lost in the hype.

BTW, I, like Mr. Monke, grew up on an Iowa farm. His recollections are far more idyllic than my own.

In my case, belonging hinged most decisively on place. I knew our farm — where the snowdrifts would be the morning after a blizzard, where and when the spring runoff would create a temporary stream through the east pasture. I could tell you where I was by the smells alone. Watching a massive thunderstorm build in the west, or discovering a new litter of kittens in the barn, I would be awestruck, mesmerized by mysterious wonders I could not control. One of the few moments I remember from elementary school is watching a huge black-and-yellow garden spider climb out of Lee Anfinson's pant cuff after we came back from a field trip picking wildflowers. It set the whole class in motion with lively conversation and completely flummoxed our crusty old teacher. Somehow that spider spoke to all of us wide-eyed third graders, and we couldn't help but speak back.

The farm I grew up on, my "place," had a lot more manure that needed scooping, endless bean fields that needed walking, and was a far away from adventure as a place could possibly be. I don't remember Mr. Monke's sense of wonder. Apparently I was shallow even as a child.

Greetings from the ISTE Board meeting in Austin this weekend.  

Snippets from The Search

I finished reading John Battelle's book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture recently and I highly recommend it. But read it soon - as fast as things change in the search biz, this will get old faster than a ripe banana.

First, remember not to be fooled by  look alikes. Second, I already commented on one interesting statement that Battelle made on how online publishing has changed his reading habits.

From The Search

"Search as a problem is about five percent solved," notes Udi Manber, the CEO of Amazon's A9.com search engine. Five percent - and yes the search business has already blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry. Search drives clickstreams, and clickstreams drive profits. To profit in the Internet space, corporations need access to clickstreams. And this, more than any other reason, is why clickstreams are becoming eternal. p. 12

 The bargain is this: we trust you not to do evil things with our information [gathered from tracking clickstream traffic]. We trust you will keep it secure, free from unlawful government or private search and seizure, and under our control at all times. ...That's a pretty large helping of trust we're asking companies to ladle on their corporate plate. p .15

...of all Americans who use the Internet, 85% use search engines. p. 25

...the world conducted 550 million searches a day in 2003, a figure it expects to grow by 10 to 20 percent a year. p. 26

Nearly 50 percent of all searches use two or three words, and 20 percent use just one. Just 5 percent of all searches use more than six words. p. 27

...it's a good idea to check your own name on Google, early and often. Given that just about everyone else you meet will be doing it anyway, it's just smart to get a picture of who your are in the world according to the index. p. 193

Googles' mission of organizing the world's information and making it accessible sets the company up to deliver nothing short of every possible service that might live on top of a computing platform = from mundane applications like word processing and spreadsheets (Microsoft's current bread and butter) to more futuristic services like video on demand, personal media storage, or distance learning. Many experts believe we'll store just about everything that can be digitized - our music, photographs, work documents, videos, and mail - on one massive platform - the Google grid. p. 250

...the search engine of the future isn't really a search engine as we know it. It's more like an intelligent agent - or as Larry Page told me, a reference librarian with complete mastery of the entire corpus of human knowledge. p. 252

Read the book. It is remarkably prescient in predicting Google's decision to offer censored searches in China. New corporate motto: "Don't be evil unless there is a profit to be made in being evil."

This book should make ya nervous.