A long history of technolgy warnings

“Writing destroys memory and weakens the mind, relieving it of work that makes it strong. Writing is an inhuman thing.”  - Plato (500BC)

From the Slate article Don't Touch That Dial by Vaughn Bell that outlines how humans have always viewed new information technologies with trepidation:

A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful" to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an "always on" digital environment. It's worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and was completely ignorant about computers. That's not because he was a technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press.

This was timely for me since I heard a recent speaker warn about our mobile technologies becoming our "outboard brain."

Great article to share with your more technophobic colleagues.

Not if, but how, a person is creative

After being a tourist for the past few days, I am back to work. I've spent yesterday morning revising and updating and thinking about my workshop Designing Projects Students (and Teachers) Love for the ASB Un-plugged Conference here in Mumbai.

I am putting an emphasis on the creative aspects of such projects. After all the new ISTE and AASL Standards emphasize creativity.

My basic concern about the traditional use of the term is that we tend only to think in terms of the arts when we think of creative people. (See Concerns about Creativity) But we can and should extend Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences to Multiple Creative Abilities. I've started to generate a list

Johnson's Multiple Creative Abilities (with apologies to Howard Gardner)

• Writing/Presenting/Storytelling
• Numeric problem-solving
• Graphic artistic (drawing, painting, sculpting, photography, designing)
• Athletic/movement (Sports, dance)
• Musically artistic
• Humor
• Problem-solving
• Teaching
• Inventing
• Team-building/Organizing/Leading
• Motivating/inspiring
• Excuse making

What can be added? How are humans creative in more ways than artistic?

Sir Ken Robinson in his book, The Element (my review), says we should not ask if a person is talented, but how the person is talented. We should also be asking not if a student is creative, but how a student is creative.

http://www.wackyarchives.com/featured/creative-furniture-sets.html

OK, so maybe some creativity ought not to be encouraged.

Don't let the great stand in the way of the good

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. - Friedrich Engles

Karl Fisch in his thoughtful post, Google Apps for Education: Is It the Right Choice for Our Students, writes:

My first concern is what happens to our students’ stuff when they graduate (or leave the district before that)? Because of the nature of Google Apps for Education, all student work (Docs, Gmail, Sites, Groups, etc.) is tied to their Google Apps domain login, which is very helpful and convenient as long as they are students in our district. The problem comes when they leave – what happens to their stuff? Most – if not all – districts are going to delete student accounts after they leave – which will delete all their stuff.

and...

The second major issue is their digital footprint. If out students produce stuff that’s worth keeping, and stuff that’s remarkable (employing Seth Godin’s use of that term), then we would hope that other people will have taken note of their work and will reference it. They’ll bookmark it, Diigo it up or Evernote it, use it as a reference, etc. When we delete their account, we delete their footprint. The Google Sites they’ve created? Gone. The Google Docs they’ve published to the web? Possibly gone. (If they transfer ownership outside of the domain I think the URL will stay the same. If they download all their docs it will not.) All the links and digital conversations centered on that work? Broken and incomplete.

And concludes..

I just can’t help thinking that we’re putting in all this time and effort (including on-going management) to go to Google Apps for Education, when really it gets us less than what we have if we don’t. Not only does it give us less, but it may actually undermine what we want to do with students. If we want them to be safe, effective and ethical users of the Internet, let’s not create a semi-walled (and only temporary) garden that limits their ability to learn, create, publish, distribute and interact.

First, go read all Karl's post. I'll wait.

I think we all realize that Google Apps is not the perfect tool, for the reasons Karl mentions and more. But the problem is, solutions like Karl's are not always viewed as as safe by the communities we serve - communities of parents, teachers or administrators.

We will set Google Apps up for our kids under "walled garden" conditions. Given the fear our thoughtfully conservative (an no, this not an oxymoron) community has about Internet safety and kids, even this may be a tough sell for some. I see that a positive first step in helping our students learn to use online technologies to collaborate, to create and to share - not the final step.

In response to Karl, I might also argue that we do our students a favor by instilling in them early that they should have an institutional/work online presence and a personal/entrepreneurial web presence, and that there different standards and uses for each. In giving our students school e-mail access, we help them begin to think about the use of that resource vs. any personal e-mail account, including its temporary nature.

Were I to wait for the perfect conditions where all our kids were given full access to all Google Tools, I think I would be waiting a very long time. And TODAY we can make great use of the tools we have TODAY.

Don't let the great stand in the way of the good?

Steve Taffee in his recent post Are You Patient Enough to Innovate reflects:

I am learning and re-learning every day the virtue of patience; patience, and faith that good ideas will win the day. This is not easy for me to swallow. I am frequently distressed at the pace of change within education, within society, within the world, and even within my own life. But more and more I am coming to see that tim-ing and not time is the key to innovation and personal growth.

Patience and innovation. Strange bedfellows.

Now I wonder who the impatient person is - Karl or me?