The Blue Skunk Seal of Approval

This year at NECC I was directly approached by lots o' product vendors who wanted my involvement with their product - to try it, to serve in an advisory capacity, to promote it in my talks or writing. I am flattered, more than a little surprised since I am small fish in the ed tech pond, and a little uncertain about how to handle such requests.

To the credit of at least a couple vendors, they took the time to attend my session on "Policies for the Social Web" and scout out my online offerings to make sure we were philosophically aligned. This saves time since I am not impressed by limiting technologies - overly ambitious filters, monitoring software, integrated learning systems, etc.

But I am excited about some social networking tools that operate in a "walled garden" environment. These products offer many of the same benefits and experiences of common Web2.0 tools, but security through limited access and monitoring is a part of the design. I believe Gaggle.Net is the prototype for this approach to offering students a "safe" means of communicating online.

What I am trying to do is figure out what my personal guidelines ought to be concerning endorsing or even mentioning commercial products on the blog or in my talks. These are what I've followed so far:

• I will not endorse or mention a product (at least without a heavy-duty disclaimer) which I don't have experience using in our district. This is important. While the product itself might look very cool, it's only through experience that one learns about little things like support, compatibility, bug fixes, situational customizations, and unintended consequences of use. (Yes, we use and like Gaggle.Net.)
  
• I will not accept any form of remuneration for reviewing or writing about a product. (Exception listed below.) This includes trips, gifts, cash, cars, call girls or dictatorships of small countries. Not that any of these things have actually been offered to me.
•  I don't take paid advertising on my blog or website.
• I don't wear t-shirts, baseball caps, or underwear with corporate logos. (I do have a hip flask with the ALA logo on it, however.)
  
• I do write "blurbs" for books and/or products that I've actually read or used and liked.
• I try to keep my recommendations my personal recommendations  - not the school district's.

I suppose there are other guidelines I should set for myself. That readers trust my objectivity is important to me.

Now there is one big caveat to all of this. If the price were right, I would probably say just about anything. I am thinking $100K would pay off the mortgage, allow me to fill up both family motor vehicles at the same time, and get the LWW that new garbage disposal she's been pining for. Cool.

There is an old joke about a man who approaches a woman in a bar and offers her a staggering amount of money if she will sleep with him. She accepts. Then the man offers her five dollars if she will sleep with him. The woman responds, "Just what kind of a woman do you think I am?" The man responds, "I think we both know that. We're just negotiating the price."

 I suspect it's good for my professional reputation I work in education where the profit margin is so small that the temptations just aren't that tempting...

What needs to be added to my endorsement guidelines?

Odds and Ends - midsummer 2008

Sorry folks. Summer is half gone. Didn't it just start last week? A few odds and ends and random thoughts.Too lazy to think too hard. Too bored not to write at all.

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I've expressed my feelings about cold sales calls and how to deal with them in this blog before.  But this was a new experience:

I picked up the office line the other day after the secretaries had already left for lunch:

Me: District Media Services. How may I help you?

Caller: Who is this?

Me: This is Doug.

Caller: Heeeeeeyyyyy, Doug. How ya doin'?

Me: I was just about to leave for a noon meeting. Who do you represent and how can I help you?

Caller: Say, there must be something in the Muh-Ka-Toe [not Man-Kay-Toe] water there that makes you so energetic.

Me: Listen, I really am in sort of a hurry. How can I help you?

Caller: You know what? You don't sound like someone I would enjoy working with.

Click.

I didn't even get a chance to say, "It's mutual, I'm sure."

Just what was the magic phrase that got him to hang up?

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The family and I went to see the Science of Star Wars exhibit at the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul yesterday.  Given that my son-in-law and grandsons are huge Star Wars fans, it really was must see. The exhibit was great and our Science Museum is always a fun place to visit.

But what rocked my world, however, was the cost. And I am not complaining, only commenting.

There were seven us attending. Five adults, one elementary age student and one pre-schooler:

Exhibit, museum and OmniMax movie tickets: $180
Souvenirs: $60
Lunch at the museum: $80
Gas and parking: $50

Total: $370

Now I am genuinely blessed to have the discretionary income that allows me to treat the family to an occasional outing like this. I would happily spend twice this to give my children a memorable experience, and there is absolutely nothing on which I would rather spend my money.  But I really worry about just how many families can do these sorts of trips anymore.

What richness and conversation is being lost when most of kids' experiences come cheaply online through virtual field trips, videos, or not at all? Field trips seem to be an "easy" budget cut to make. Should they be? How is the real museum, the real zoo, the real theater experience different from their digital versions? Are we taking the easy way out or should we be fighting for funds?

I remember my then teenage son's first words after walking out of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. "Dad, I didn't realize Anne Frank was a real person."  Hmmmm...

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My grandsons are certainly popular culture addicts - or at least aficionados.  I wonder how great the museum attraction would have been had it not been the "Science of Star Wars," but the "Science of Space Travel" or something? On our regular trip to the book store, both boys' self-selected book acquisitions had movie tie-ins (Indiana Jones, WALL-E, and Star Wars.) Lunch was chosen on the basis of the best movie tie-in toys with the kid's meal, not the quality of the French fries. Spiderman and Batman adorn the BVDs.

I was startled by Consumer Reports WebWatch study, "Like Taking Candy From a Baby: How Young Children Interact with
Online Environments" published last May, on the degree of commercialism experienced by even very young children online. For example, one observation made was:

Logos and brand names are ubiquitous. Not a single [web] site or service observed for this study was completely free of brand names, logos, licensed characters, underwriters or sponsors. Even nonprofit content providers such as PBS KIDS and Sesame Workshop display logos of sponsors or underwriters, though not always in areas of the site designated for children.

Hey, these are MY grandchildren's eyes we're talking about here!

How many schools rely solely on the "free" commercial web to meet their students' information and learning needs? Is a bombardment of advertising too high a price to pay?

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One of the latest "manifestos" from ChangeThis is "People Don't Hate Change. They Hate How You're Trying to Change Them" by Kanazawa. A couple interesting quotes from the 13 page tract:

Because so many of these [change] programs fail, some executives and managers start to believe the old saying that “people hate change” must be true. That is not true. In fact, employment surveys reveal that the top reason good employees leave companies is over a lack of new opportunities and boredom with stagnant, never-changing, dead-end jobs.  People don’t hate change; they hate corporate change programs. How can we fix that?

and 

Think about this… is your goal to get the most out of people or the best out of people?  You typically can’t get both.

Worth a read...

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Our granddog Willie is part Basset hound. My daughter pointed out that the breed was used for tracking "slow game."

It doesn't get much slower than this...

 

 Stay cool. Get rested. School will start sooner than you expect.

Viewing the future

It doesn't get much bleaker. The Earth is a desolate wasteland, devoid of life, overflowing with the detritus from centuries of consumerism. Rivers are are a gummy soup. Smog and dust storms hide the sky. Humanity has been reduced to lifeless slugs cared for by psychotic robots in a gigantic spaceship. The ship's auto-pilot refuses to relinquish control to its human captain. The last green plant alive is losing its few limp leaves.

This was the setting for one of the funniest movies I've seen for a long time.

The family, including very excited grandsons ages 7 and 2, watched WALL-E on the big screen last night. And all of us enjoyed it on our own levels. Paul and Miles loved the slapstick and silliness of WALL-E (Chaplin's Little Tramp morphed into a trash compacter). There was a sweet love story. The allusions to sci-fi flicks from Star Wars to 2001 to ET to The Matrix came fast and furious. Others have written about the movie's political message. It certainly is an environmental fable. But I was fascinated by the humans even more than the robots in the film.

I've written before about how much I value science fiction books that take current social/political trends and then stretch them into an identifiable future. The science "fiction" of WALL-E does the much the same, guessing how our Net Gen might look taken to the extreme.

Aboard the Axiom spaceship, enormously fat, rather sexless humans have given up the use of their legs, preferring to move (and be moved) by floating chaise lounges while sipping gigantic soft drinks. They move in parallel staring at a Facebook like screen, neither talking nor touching each other. Advertisements are their scenery.  The technology allows them a carefree, self-centered existence. These people are not evil - just meaningless. It's only the artificial intelligences that have personalities in WALL-E's world.

This is an amazing movie that I am dying to see again. (I do spend a fair amount of time watching my grandsons watching movies rather than the screen itself.)

I'm interested in hearing your take-aways from WALL-E.

Photo from the IMBD.