Education Innovation

14 Trends Of The New Educational Reality (Part 1-Trends 1-7)

What do you get when you combine a meatball sundae, home/school communication, brand management, the New York Times best sellers list, Google, homework, outsourcing, and the definitions of literacy? Let’s put them in the Education Innovation blender and find out.

In his book Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin describes 14 Trends of New Marketing. I put these trends under the lens of education and call them the New Reality.

Trend 1: Direct Communication and Commerce Between Producers and Consumers
Consumers demand speed. Businesses need to respond quickly to consumer demands or the consumer will go elsewhere. Consumers can now connect directly to the top of an organization. They expect a response. Technology is changing the way organizations and customers interact.

Our students and parents live in a world with the ability to communicate with an organization and expect a quick response. Is the use of technology in your school changing the way you interact with students and parents? Are you responding to the needs of your students and parents and communicating that response effectively? If students and parents can communicate directly with the school, how important is the response you give back? How quick do you respond? Do you view it as a burden or an opportunity to spread your educational vision and message?

Trend 2: Amplification Of The Voice Of The Consumer and Independent Authorities.
Every interaction with a consumer is an interaction with a critic (or potential critic).
Everybody, student, parent, community member has a voice that can be amplified through technology. What are they going to say about your school?  What are they going to say about your educational brand? (You do have a brand, whether you like it or not.)

The web remembers forever. A poorly written email can be posted in minutes to the web.  Blogs allow students, parents, and community members into instant publishers. YouTube allows them to become movie producers. What are the publishing or producing about you? You may have a point of view on an issue, but who is better able to get their message out, you or the student run blog posting pictures, YouTube videos, and podcasts? Your schools reputation is always on the line and on-line. What is being said about you?

Trend 3: Need For An Authentic Story As The Number Of Sources Increases
Stories spread, not facts. So what stories are being told about your school and your teachers? A story is a symbol of who you are. Do you know your symbol? Do you care? Why would anyone want to go to your school? What makes your teachers so great?

Technology is allowing for students and parents to share their stories about you. Are you sharing your own stories? Do you have an educational brand that you trying to spread? What kind of message is your school trying to spread? There is a story about your school, the question is, is it your story or somebody else’s version?

Trend 4: Extremely Short Attention Spans Due To Clutter
There is a multitude of choices and a deluge of interruptions for students and parents. Commercials went from a minute to thirty seconds to, in some cases, three seconds. A bestseller was on the New York bestsellers list for 22 weeks, now it’s on the list for two. Books are shorter. Not enough time to read the book, listen to the audio version in the car. YouTube has over 7 million video. Most are only watched for less than 10 seconds. If it’s not good we move on.

That is the world you student is living in. If the don’t like it, the switch it, drop it, or change it. They don’t have to wait for something better. They are in control.

What about in the classroom? How much time do you get to grab their attention, make it meaningful, and engage before they drop you? They may be forced to sit there, but they aren’t forced to learn. The world is catering to their desire to move on. Your teaching can’t afford to be good enough. It must be great or it won’t cut through all the clutter or the world they are living in. You can’t count on their attention and engagement. You have to compete for it and win it.

Trend 5: The Long Tail
“Any market of people with sufficient resources will get very pick on you.”
People want choice. Students and parents want choice. Education does not have to provide that choice. (For now) Students have to go to school. They have to go to school in your district. They may be allowed to move within your district, but for the most part, they are assigned to you. You didn’t have to earn them, they were just sent to you. But you can’t rely on that forever.

Your students and parents live in a world where they can find nearly any book they want at Amazon. More of them are watching YouTube videos than the top ten television shows. Online they can find a hundred times more inventory than a retail store. You can find nearly anything on Google. The digital world means products are easy to store and easy to customize to the individual need.

So, if they can find nearly anything they want or need online and have it customized to their needs, what makes you think they need your school? They can find the learning they want online, learn what they want, when they want, where they want, and at the pace they want. So why should they want you? What is it about your educational brand or story that makes them want to choose you?

Trend 6: Outsourcing
You assign the project or the paper and then your student goes home and out sources the work online to some student in India or Sri Lanka. Why not? A report you want, a report you shall get. It costs your students and parents to connect with people in any part of the world to share skills, abilities, and resources. Homework for sale via the Internet is a reality. There is not sense trying to stop it, it’s already out there. The question is how can you adjust your assignment to make them meaningful and engaging so the student won’t outsource the work.

It’s not just assignments. When I can hire online tutors, watch educational videos, or get language lessons through my web cam, outsourcing teaching is here too. What are you doing about that reality?  Maybe just you are just going to rely on the old model of, “You have to go here. You live here.”  That may work for you, but that is not the world your students are growing up in.

Trend 7: Google And The Dicing Of Everything
Having the teacher in your classroom is no longer a reason to believe that is where the teaching and learning is going to happen. Students are a few clicks away from being connected to people all around the world who are willing to teach and tutor.

Google has allowed us to find any piece of information or facts we would ever want to know. In fact, in the new reality, it is not the piece of information or fact; it’s how to find it. Students don’t want to memorize names, dates, formulas, etc., that they can just look up in Google. Why? Why memorize what is right at my fingertips? They key is learning how to find the facts or information. Google has changed literacy? It not longer memorizing the “what”, but knowing where and how to find the “what.”

We will look at Trends 8-14 in a later post.

Catalytic Questions:

How might your view of parent/student communication change if you knew it was being used to judge your school or yourself?

In what ways are you using technology to communicate with students and parents to spread your educational vision and brand? 

Is it effective? What might you change, add, or subtract from what you are currently doing?

Do you know what is being said about you and your school online?

Do you have an educational brand and are you managing it effectively?

In what ways are you or might you leverage technology to communicate your educational brand and your school’s story?

What is your school’s story?

How might your teaching change if you understood that you must compete and win your students’ attention?

What might this look like in the classroom?

Are you relying on the current lack of choice parents and students have, or are you thinking and preparing yourself for the power of choice they will soon demand?

If students and parents could choose, why would they choose you?
How might your thinking on assignments change based on the knowledge that students can outsource the work?

What might you do differently?

In what ways might the definition of knowledge and literacy change based on what Google has provided to every student?

Recommended Reading:

Literacy in the 21st Century

Why My Gym Is The Future of Education

The Questions We Choose To Ask and Answer: The Open Model of Education

The Future of Education

The Future of Education: Send the Lecture Home

Why My Gym Is The Future of Education

What do my gym and the future of education have in common?  Let’s throw them in the Education Innovation blender and find out.

I belong to a gym is called Snap Fitness. Their motto is “Fast-Convenient-Affordable.”

They describe the Snap Fitness experience…

“Drive up, walk in, and work out whenever you want. Just minutes from your doorstep, our club is like a having a private gym in your backyard.

“Use your personal keycard for instant access to a safe, clean, comfortable facility packed with state-of-the-art exercise equipment and value-added services you’d never expect from a club our size.

“Enjoy the same workout experience as at those big-box health clubs – but without the crowded parking lots, long waiting lines and inflated fees.

“Time-saving convenience, money-saving value and fat-burning workouts – just another way we deliver a better experience and better results…”

I think the future of education will be similar to my gym. First, education in the future will be fast. It will be fast because students won’t even have to leave their house in many cases. E-learning and virtual learning will provide students the opportunity to learn right in their own homes. Teaching and content can be delivered at the speed of an Internet hook-up all over the world.

It will be convenient. Students will be able to learn anywhere or anytime that makes sense for them. Much like Snap Fitness says, “…our club is like having a private gym in your backyard,” the same will go for education. The web will bring learning to the student, regardless of where the student is and at a time that the student chooses. What could be more convenient?

My gym uses the personal key card to get into the gym, while our students will simply use their passwords to log into the personal learning portals. The learning will be of a quality similar to what they can get in the classroom, if not more so, because students will be able to pick and choose classes that best match their learning styles.

Great workouts at my gym are the great teaching and learning of the virtual school. Imagine the wealth of resources, including expert teachers, video, audio, interactive websites, podcasts, social networks, etc, that the virtual school can bring to students.

My gym says it is affordable (which it is), but so to will virtual education and e-learning. Think of the amount of money that could be saved if teachers taught from their homes or places of work and students learned from home or their places of work. No costs for building buildings, no costs for utilities, no need for busing, for maintenance, etc. Virtual learning could save districts money. Why open a new high school, when you can start a virtual one?

My gym and the future of education both share one other thing. You have to put in the hard work to get results.

Catalytic Questions:

What excuses are teachers, schools, and districts giving to avoid e-learning and virtual learning opportunities for your students?  How can you answer them?

In the same way I have hunches about the future of education, what hunches do you have and what are you doing about them?

In what ways might some “sacred cow” be holding up e-leaning in your school or district?  How can you overcome those beliefs?

In what ways might virtual learning be made more attractive to teachers and administrators in your district?

What is your sense of things to come: More of the same or big changes? In what ways are you preparing for what is coming?

How might you start developing the tools and methods that will be needed to succeed in an e-learning or virtual learning environment?

How might Professional Learning Communities change is such an environment?

What are the unintended consequences of these changes?

What analogies or metaphors do you see?

Recommended Reading:

An education is…

Get an MIT or Yale Education Free

eLearning Technology

Fear of Virtual High Schools

Teachers Doomed To The Fate of The Ancient Scribes?

What does Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody, scribes, the printing press, teachers, web technology, virtual learning, and a barking robot all have in common?  

    

Let's put them into the Education Innovation blender and take a look.

What ever happened to scribes?  Scribes were one of the most essential of professions in the 1400’s. Few people could write, and it was the scribes that hand copied existing written work. If not for scribes, the loss of ideas, wisdom, and knowledge would have been lost through the ravages of time on existing written work. The scribe was crucially important and irreplaceable, for it was the scribe who was able to preserve and pass on the knowledge of the past and current.

Then, one day, scribes became outdated. They had been replaced by movable type. It didn’t happen all at once of course. For a time scribes worked simultaneously with publishers using the printing press, but the reality was that the society in which they labored had fundamentally changed. The protestant reformation and the printing of bibles in many languages were transforming the society in which scribes and printers worked.

Scribes, not wanting to lose ground to the printers, published a very eloquent defense of scribes. The hypocrisy of it was that they used the printing press to publish it. Times had changed. The society was different and the technology of the day, the printing press, allowed for those changes to continue and spread. Scribes were no longer essential as they had once been before, swept out in the revolution of the reformation and the bible in many languages. The printing press was the technology that made it easier, not the cause.

As Clay Shirky writes, “Professional self-conception and self-defense, so valuable in ordinary times, become a disadvantage in revolutionary times, because professionals are always concerned with threats to the profession. In most cases, those threats are also threats to society…”

He continues, “But in some cases the change that threatens the profession benefits society, as did the spread of the printing press…”

Education and classroom teachers are in much the same situation as the scribes of the 1400’s were. How is that you ask?  Simple, we are in a revolution of how our society connects, communicates, and in many regards, how it functions. The technology of the web has changed how we communicate. It has made it possible to communicate and teach from virtually anywhere. Learning is no longer limited to the teacher in the classroom or the brick and mortar school. Learning can take place anyplace and at anytime with web technologies. Online courses, online schools, etc. have arisen and benefited from the revolution of our 2.0 society.

The train has left the station on virtual education. It may not be heavily adopted yet, but it will. Why wouldn’t it?  We in education can resist, fight it, and even argue against it, but like the scribe of the 1400’s, we are living in revolutionary times and we are working along side virtual schools, teachers, and classrooms. The shift is already beginning, the question for us becomes, adapt to it and adopt it, or go the way of the scribe. I think we are much too smart not to do the former, and far too important to do the latter.

But so did the scribes.

Derek Baird at his excellent blog, Barking Robot has an excellent post in which he summarizes some of the most current research on e-learning. Take a look.

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways might your old beliefs or assumptions about education need to be eliminated?

How might you combine web based technologies and virtual learning opportunities into your educational plan?

In what ways would you need to modify your existing instructional model and methods to meet the needs of online or virtual teaching and learning?

If you imagined yourself as a student, what sorts of things would you want in online education or virtual learning?

How might you allow your school or district’s virtual teaching and learning programs develop? In what areas might you need to force the action?

In what ways might you adapt the online-based technologies you use frequently to develop your online education plan?

What else might you need to think about?

Where else can you look for ideas, methods, and models for online or virtual learning?

Technology Leadership Is Literacy Leadership: Leadership Day 2008

So you are and education leader? You know the standards, the curriculum, and the methods to bring about literacy. If technology is not part of that, then you may be a leader, but you are missing a major component of what our students will need in the coming years. Our students need to be able to climb the "ladder" and it is your job to make sure they get those opportunities.

The ladder. Charlene Li and Josh Bernofff have written a great book titled Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. In their book they describe The Social Technographics ladder.

“Each step on the ladder represents a group of consumers more involved in the groundswell than the previous steps. To join the group on a step, a consumer need only participate in one of the listed activities at least monthly.” I believe that each rung of the Social Technographic ladder present a unique literacy challenge for our students.

Top Rung: Creators
These are the people who, at least once a month, publish a blog, put an article online, maintain a website, or upload music or videos. In the United States, about 18% of us on are the top rung or creators.

The percentage is only going to go up. So, what are we doing to prepare our students to be creators? How are we preparing our students to occupy the “top rung” of the Social Technographics ladder?

If you think about it, this is a question of literacy. For example, here are the writing standards for 6th grade in California: 

Narrative
^{write narratives, that(1) establish and develop plot and setting, and choose a point of view that is appropriate to stories
(2) include sensory details and concrete language to develop plot and character
(3) use a range of narrative strategies (e.g., dialogue, suspense)
Expository
Write expository compositions (e.g., description, explanation, comparison and contrast, and/or problem/solution) that
(1) state the thesis or purpose
(2) explain the situation
(3) follow an organizational pattern appropriate to the type of composition (e.g., if problem/solution, then paired)
(4) offer persuasive evidence for the validity of the description, proposed solutions, etc.
Research Reports
Write research reports that
(1) pose relevant questions narrow enough to be thoroughly covered
(2) support the main idea(s) with facts, details, examples, and explanations from multiple authoritative sources (e.g., speakers, periodicals, on-line information searches)
(3) use a bibliography
Persuasive
2.5. write persuasive compositions (or letters for grade 5) that
(1) state a clear position in support of a proposition or proposal
(2) support the position with organized and relevant evidence; and (3) anticipate and address reader concerns and counter-arguments}

The standards seem to say that we want students to be creators. The question I have is; are we preparing our students to occupy the top rung in the groundswell. Remember, the groundswell is: “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”

In other words, the groundswell is what is taking place in this new ecosystem called the web where any person, in any place, can be a producer of media. Or, as Clay Shirky says, every person is a one-man media outlet.

So why only 18% participation?  Obviously this is an optional activity. Nobody has to be a creator. In our classrooms we required that our students be creators. We want all of our students on the top rung. We ask that our students create stories, research reports, projects, and narratives. We are teaching the next generation to succeed in this new online ecosystem. The standards seem to suggest we have the right intentions, but do those standards prepare our students for life in the groundswell. I think it depends on the teacher. The greater the teachers understanding of the power of the groundswell in the online ecosystem, the better the assignments will utilize the standards to prepare the students.

The next rung down: Critics
Critics react to what has been created. This is similar to the responding to literature standard.
_{Response to Literature
Write responses to literature that
(1) develop an interpretation which exhibits careful reading, understanding and insight
(2) organize the interpretation around several clear ideas, premises, or images
(3) develop and justify the interpretation through sustained use of examples and textual evidence}

Again, the question becomes, are we properly preparing our students for being a critic in the groundswell. When I was a student, I was never allowed to comment on what other students wrote. Even in college, my job was to create. The only opportunities I had to be a critic was in writing a book report. Most of us are simply not used to commenting on blogs. We were not trained to do it as students and we had so few opportunities in our academic lives to practice it. But, our students are growing up in the online ecosystem that allows them to comment and critique nearly everything. The can comment on a song, a video, place a comment on a blog, put a book review on Amazon, review a product epinions or CNET. Their world is the world of the critic. Are we as educators equipping them to succeed in this world?  Are we preparing them for life on the second rung? What opportunities do your students have to critique what others have created?

The next rung down: Collectors
Collector collect RSS feeds, save website to Del.icio.us, vote for sites on Digg, and accumulate all forms of created digital media from the online world.

So, what standards address that? How are we preparing our students to be effective collectors of information? What opportunities do our students get to practice the art of selective information collection? How do our students learn to filter information for their select needs? How are we preparing our students to be literate collectors?

The next rung down: Joiners
Members of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orcut, etc. are all joiners. These are the people who maintain profiles on social networking sites. My guess is that most of our students are far ahead of most of their teachers in this aspect. But, how can we teach our students the skills necessary to properly maintain these sites for optimal effect and leverage their power to further themselves via networking?

Our students are natural collaborators and net-workers, but how are we making them literate in the power of networks?

The next rung down: Spectators
Spectators consume what the rest produce. This is the largest part of the groundswell. This is about making choices. What they choose to consume can enhance our students’ education.  So, our students need to make choices that will enhance them as people, as students, as informed citizens, etc. Of course kids will always choose the strange and offbeat, but we can equip them to understand what sorts of media are important for them to consume. What opportunities are your students getting to be selective literate spectators?

The bottom rung: Inactives
These are the people who are not impacted by the groundswell at all. For our students, it might those students who have no access to technology and the web. I still meet students and parents who have no web access. If the school isn’t providing it, and they have no access at home, when are these students given chances to move from inactive to spectator, joiner, collector, critic, or creator?  We need to think about how we can provide opportunities or resources for them to climb the Social Technographic ladder. It is a literacy issue for life in the 21st century.

Catalytic Questions:

In what way is your leadership preparing your school and your students for the literacy of technology?

Is your personal leadership and catalyst or hurdle in the implementation of technologies that will provide opportunities for technology literacy?

In what ways do our current literacy standards meet or fall short of the issues and challenges faced by our students at each rung of the Social Technographic ladder?

In what way can we better prepare our students to be literate creators of information?

How might this look in a classroom?

In what ways can we provide opportunities for our students to be literate critics of created information?

In what ways can we prepare our students to be literate collectors of information?

What might this look like in the classroom?

How might we prepare our students to leverage the power of networks?

In what ways could we prepare our students to make literate choices about the networks they join and the information they place on those networks?

In what was are we preparing our students to be literate spectators of information?

How might we better equip our students to make excellent choices in the information they consume each day?

In what ways can we provide resources or tools to move the non-participating Inactive up the Social Technographic ladder?

Recommended Reading: 

Calling all bloggers! - Leadership Day 2008

The New Literacy Ladder: Clay Shirky's -- Here Comes Everybody

The Groundswell and Your Educational Brand Management

Study: Social networks give kids 21st Century skills

South of the Border, Down Mexico Way: Edtech Lessons from Mexico

South of the Border (down Mexico way) Chris Isakk's Baja Sessions

Last week I traveled to Mexico. My first stop was beautiful Cabo San Lucas.

While In Cabo, I traveled via Jeep into the hills above the city. We traveled the dirt roads back into the hills where more cows and goats than people lived.

After traveling many miles, we stopped in a dusty little village and visited a school. It is a boarding school and the students live there almost 11 months out of the year. They are provided room, board, and learning free of charge. This particular school was for students from Kindergarten through 8th grade.

So, imagine my surprise, when out in the middle of nowhere, in tiny dusty little village, in school where times seems to have stood still, I walked into this classroom and found a Smart Board.

Yep, technology has come even to this sleepy little corner of Mexico. The director of the school explained that the Smart Board is used during instruction and is hooked up to a satellite connection so that instructors in Mexico City can be beamed into this classroom to instruct students.

And I ask, why aren't we doing more of this in the United States. Technology could allow us to bring instruction to students where they are at. It just takes an open mind, some creative use of technology, and an innovative school or district. So what are we waiting for.

Companies like EduFire or schools like Florida's Virtual School are a great start. This school is proof. The technology works and learning happens.

I like the motto of the Florida Virtual School..."Any time, any place, any path, any pace."

That is the future of education. Distance is dead!

Catalytic Questions:

What is preventing education from embracing these technologies and models?

In what way could we better leverage technology to bridge time, space, and pace?

What benefits could you imagine to schools and students if expert instructors could be beamed into the classroom?

How might we begin the exploration of better use of these technologies?

In what ways are concepts the like the Florida Virtual school or EduFire changing the role of the teacher and the brick and mortar school?

What role will creativity and innovation play in these issues? 

Recommended Reading:

Why Aren't We Already Doing This?

Literacy Ladder: Learning on the Social Technographic Ladder

The ladder. Charlene Li and Josh Bernofff have written a great book titled Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. In their book they describe The Social Technographics ladder.

“Each step on the ladder represents a group of consumers more involved in the groundswell than the previous steps. To join the group on a step, a consumer need only participate in one of the listed activities at least monthly.” I believe that each rung of the Social Technographic ladder present a unique literacy challenge for our students.

Top Rung: Creators
These are the people who, at least once a month, publish a blog, put an article online, maintain a website, or upload music or videos. In the United States, about 18% of us on are the top rung or creators.

The percentage is only going to go up. So, what are we doing to prepare our students to be creators? How are we preparing our students to occupy the “top rung” of the Social Technographics ladder?

If you think about it, this is a question of literacy. For example, here are the writing standards for 6th grade in California: 

Narrative
^{write narratives, that(1) establish and develop plot and setting, and choose a point of view that is appropriate to stories
(2) include sensory details and concrete language to develop plot and character
(3) use a range of narrative strategies (e.g., dialogue, suspense)
Expository
Write expository compositions (e.g., description, explanation, comparison and contrast, and/or problem/solution) that
(1) state the thesis or purpose
(2) explain the situation
(3) follow an organizational pattern appropriate to the type of composition (e.g., if problem/solution, then paired)
(4) offer persuasive evidence for the validity of the description, proposed solutions, etc.
Research Reports
Write research reports that
(1) pose relevant questions narrow enough to be thoroughly covered
(2) support the main idea(s) with facts, details, examples, and explanations from multiple authoritative sources (e.g., speakers, periodicals, on-line information searches)
(3) use a bibliography
Persuasive
2.5. write persuasive compositions (or letters for grade 5) that
(1) state a clear position in support of a proposition or proposal
(2) support the position with organized and relevant evidence; and (3) anticipate and address reader concerns and counter-arguments}

The standards seem to say that we want students to be creators. The question I have is; are we preparing our students to occupy the top rung in the groundswell. Remember, the groundswell is: “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”

In other words, the groundswell is what is taking place in this new ecosystem called the web where any person, in any place, can be a producer of media. Or, as Clay Shirky says, every person is a one-man media outlet.

So why only 18% participation?  Obviously this is an optional activity. Nobody has to be a creator. In our classrooms we required that our students be creators. We want all of our students on the top rung. We ask that our students create stories, research reports, projects, and narratives. We are teaching the next generation to succeed in this new online ecosystem. The standards seem to suggest we have the right intentions, but do those standards prepare our students for life in the groundswell. I think it depends on the teacher. The greater the teachers understanding of the power of the groundswell in the online ecosystem, the better the assignments will utilize the standards to prepare the students.

The next rung down: Critics
Critics react to what has been created. This is similar to the responding to literature standard.
_{Response to Literature
Write responses to literature that
(1) develop an interpretation which exhibits careful reading, understanding and insight
(2) organize the interpretation around several clear ideas, premises, or images
(3) develop and justify the interpretation through sustained use of examples and textual evidence}

Again, the question becomes, are we properly preparing our students for being a critic in the groundswell. When I was a student, I was never allowed to comment on what other students wrote. Even in college, my job was to create. The only opportunities I had to be a critic was in writing a book report. Most of us are simply not used to commenting on blogs. We were not trained to do it as students and we had so few opportunities in our academic lives to practice it. But, our students are growing up in the online ecosystem that allows them to comment and critique nearly everything. The can comment on a song, a video, place a comment on a blog, put a book review on Amazon, review a product epinions or CNET. Their world is the world of the critic. Are we as educators equipping them to succeed in this world?  Are we preparing them for life on the second rung? What opportunities do your students have to critique what others have created?

The next rung down: Collectors
Collector collect RSS feeds, save website to Del.icio.us, vote for sites on Digg, and accumulate all forms of created digital media from the online world.

So, what standards address that? How are we preparing our students to be effective collectors of information? What opportunities do our students get to practice the art of selective information collection? How do our students learn to filter information for their select needs? How are we preparing our students to be literate collectors?

The next rung down: Joiners
Members of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orcut, etc. are all joiners. These are the people who maintain profiles on social networking sites. My guess is that most of our students are far ahead of most of their teachers in this aspect. But, how can we teach our students the skills necessary to properly maintain these sites for optimal effect and leverage their power to further themselves via networking?

Our students are natural collaborators and net-workers, but how are we making them literate in the power of networks?

The next rung down: Spectators
Spectators consume what the rest produce. This is the largest part of the groundswell. This is about making choices. What they choose to consume can enhance our students’ education.  So, our students need to make choices that will enhance them as people, as students, as informed citizens, etc. Of course kids will always choose the strange and offbeat, but we can equip them to understand what sorts of media are important for them to consume. What opportunities are your students getting to be selective literate spectators?

The bottom rung: Inactives
These are the people who are not impacted by the groundswell at all. For our students, it might those students who have no access to technology and the web. I still meet students and parents who have no web access. If the school isn’t providing it, and they have no access at home, when are these students given chances to move from inactive to spectator, joiner, collector, critic, or creator?  We need to think about how we can provide opportunities or resources for them to climb the Social Technographic ladder. It is a literacy issue for life in the 21st century.

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways do our current literacy standards meet or fall short of the issues and challenges faced by our students at each rung of the Social Technographic ladder?

In what way can we better prepare our students to be literate creators of information?

How might this look in a classroom?

In what ways can we provide opportunities for our students to be literate critics of created information?

In what ways can we prepare our students to be literate collectors of information?

What might this look like in the classroom?

How might we prepare our students to leverage the power of networks?

In what ways could we prepare our students to make literate choices about the networks they join and the information they place on those networks?

In what was are we preparing our students to be literate spectators of information?

How might we better equip our students to make excellent choices in the information they consume each day?

In what ways can we provide resources or tools to move the non-participating Inactive up the Social Technographic ladder?

Recommended Reading:

The New Literacy Ladder: Clay Shirky's -- Here Comes Everybody

The Groundswell and Your Educational Brand Management

Study: Social networks give kids 21st Century skills

Teachers, Your Personal Brand Management Is On The Line

After following the conversation over at The Thinking Stick and 2¢ Worth, it got me to thinking. The Internet and new information technologies have radically changed the ways and the speed with which information, data, perceptions, and opinions about you, your school, or your district can be spread. Today, you have a personal brand.

Today, parents and students share their thoughts about teachers mostly through word of mouth. But that is changing. Technology is changing it. The reputation of teachers, the perceptions or opinions of teachers, are becoming public shared via Web 2.0 technologies. Nowadays, there is no limit to how many people (students, parents, community members, and other teachers) can communicate via the Internet.

I imagine a conversation between a parent and principal in the near future might look like this…

Parent: “I would like my student in _________ class.”

Principal: “All of the teachers at _________ are excellent, why this teacher?”

Parent: “I looked at the teachers website and saw examples of past assignments and projects. I looked at the teacher’s latest test scores via the state department of education data/information website and like what I saw. I checked the district website and found the latest professional development the teacher just participated is suited for my students needs. I ran the teacher’s name through Google and Wikipedia and didn’t find anything that troubled me.

“Further, I checked the teacher’s Facebook site and ran their name through RateMyTeacher.com and was impressed with their reviews. I listened to several of the Podcasts created in the their class and viewed some of the digital projects created by students in their class. I appreciate their style and the type of learning going on. Finally, I asked for opinions about the teacher on a few community blogs and was impressed with some of the feedback I received. So based on this teacher’s public profile, I would like my student in their class.”

Principal: “Umm, wow! Can you go over that with me one more time?”

The availability of information and the increasing use of multiple communication technologies is going to create a day when and teacher is a “brand.”  The way the teacher teachers, the techniques used in the classroom, the types of assignments given, the use or non-use of technology, student test scores, professional development received, degrees or certificates earned, and opinions and perceptions from others posted to the Internet will create a profile of a teacher. That profile of the teacher is, for all intents and purposes, that teacher’s brand.

Teachers will have to manage their brand just as any other company would want to manage their personal brand. Their methods, their style, personality, strategies, use of technology, test scores, etc. will combine to make your personal brand. And believe me, your personal brand is going to be discussed, shared, and examined via the Internet. RateMyTeacher is just the beginning.

Digitization is going to allow student work and assignments to be put on the Internet, creating a digital portfolio or footprint that will follow you. It is not a stretch to imagine, that as state, county, or district data/information management will allow the public to see your students test scores, professional development hours, credentials and certificates, etc. all of which will allow the public to see more of your personal brand. Transparency is here!

Maybe you should get a new head shot. You want to look your best! Sanders Says, "If not, how can you build a personal brand? Your picture is more memorable than your bio. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Catalytic Questions:

What do you think your personal brand is?

How will educators manage their personal brands?

How might we encourage schools and educators to begin thinking about managing their brands?

Will books and courses on marketing and brand management become essential tools and knowledge for educators?

What other types of data or information will be part of an educator’s personal brand?

 Ideas:
Jeff Utecht offers some advice:

1. High Schools especially should start by creating a group on Facebook that they can control the content      on. Then invite their students to join.

2. Search Often: Schools should run searches on all major search engines to know what people will find       when they are looking for your school.
   Using RSS feeds from sites such as Wikipedia allows a school to track changes on their school’s page.
   Know your audience: Signing up for a simple tracking program like Google Analytics and install it on        the school’s home page.
   Understand Students: Understand students today. Be connected to them, listen to them, where are they    at online? What are they talking about? Where should the school be?
    
Suggested Reading:

Jeff Utecht

David Warlick

Tim Sanders

Why Aren't We Already Doing This?

Take a look at this website. Edufire provides foreign language learning by connecting students to teachers or tutors via a webcam.

The creators of the site have leveraged technology and created an open learning model. Teachers come to the students and meet their individual needs.

As we begin to implement Response To Intervention models at schools, wouldn't this make a perfect Tier 2 or Tire 3 intervention. Tutors or teachers could help students via webcam with live language learning. The technology would allow for one teacher to conduct small groups from across town. Think of it, teachers, tutors, resource specialists, curriculum specialists could conduct small group learning groups via a webcam hook up. Give the students laptops, webcams, and headphones, and the learning isn't limited to the teacher being physically present.

So, why aren't we already doing this? Maybe somebody is. I think the idea is awesome. In an age where  students need individual or small group instruction to learn language, receive interventions, or remediations, technology like Edufire is a perfect remedy. We could meet the needs of our students and better utilize our personnel.

Bring the teacher to the student. Give the student what he/she needs. Leverage technology to do both. 21st century learning at its best.

Microsoft Putting Windows On $100 Laptops

From Fortune Magazine...

(Fortune) -- Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative announced Thursday that the Windows operating system would soon be available on the so-called XO, also known as the "$100 laptop." In interviews, executives made it clear that this could be a catalytic shift in perception and market success for the innovative but up-to-now aberrant laptop intended for the poor children of the world.

The Windows version of the XO will go on sale by September. Like the regular, Linux-based version, it will at first actually cost closer to $200, because the project has not yet achieved the volumes that could drive costs down.

Making Windows available on the XO could make it far more palatable for developing-world governments to make the huge investment necessary to purchase large numbers of XOs for their children. "It's a very big deal," said OLPC chairman Nicholas Negroponte in an interview.

Read the rest of the article..

The Age of Relationships: What Will You Have To Learn? What Will You Have To Unlearn?

Nobody reads my blog. Well, that is not entirely true, but most never leave a comment. On his great blog The Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht posted about why people don’t leave comments on the blogs they read (Where are the comments?)

I of course, left a comment.

Jeff, your previous post about participating in Web 2.0 and the accompanying diagram provide some meaningful ideas.

As Gary Hayes said, “… that participation in society, politics, online social networks etc: is not either on or off it is a continuum of degrees of influence.”

Many more people fall on the continuum of consumer as opposed to commenter.

Having not have grown up with the ability to comment instantly on what we read, view, or hear, we are simply not used to doing it. In school, we never got to comment on or share what other student wrote or created. We simply created and that was it. Hand your work in, the teacher will make comments, not you.

Maybe we are just selfish. A comment signifies you have more insight than I. Your ideas are somehow more worthy than mine. Why should I help you?

Maybe we are just lazy!

But this got me thinking about something I read in Peter Sheahan’s book Flip. Peter believes that we are leaving the age of the knowledge worker and entering the age of relationships.

So just as we are coming to grips with the fact that we live in a flat world and knowledge workers is the area the education should be focused on developing, we come to find that even the knowledge itself is a commodity that can be outsourced overseas. In it’s place it the ability to create and trust and build relationships that will be the competitive advantage and need we should begin preparing our students for.

Peter says, “Being a knowledge worker is not going to offer competitive advantage in and of itself…In the years ahead, two things will count the most. The first is your ability to unlearn the things that are losing relevance, to flip yourself free of old scripts, and to learn the things that are gaining relevance. The second is whether people come to know and trust you as they struggle to bring their own learning forwards. That is do you really care about and respect them?”

So I ask what things are our students learning today that they will have to unlearn to be successful in the flat world of tomorrow?

Also, what sorts of skills and experiences must we provide for our students so that they are able to build relationships?

What are the tools of the relationship era? Blogs, wikis, podcasts, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google Earth, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and many other Web 2.0 technologies are certainly all examples of tools of the relationship age. How many teachers or principals are “literate” in these tools and technologies?  How many of our students are? 

Are we asking the right questions? What is literacy in the relationship era? What does educated look like in the relationship era? What will our students need to be able to do?

Peter says, “If you are betting instead on a lifetime of learning and unlearning, and of leveraging relationships with valued customers and clients, you should be confident of your ability to make your way.”

So, coming back to Jeff’s post. Wouldn’t posting comments on blogs we love or find interesting be a useful skill in the relationship era?

But then again I could be wrong. How else could we are still banning cell phones, blogs, and YouTube from our schools. So where is the real job preparation happening. In the school from 8 to 3, or in the Web 2.0 technology rich lives of our students outside of the classroom.

Speaking of Web 2.0, take a look at this YouTube video.