Did You Know 3.0

The latest in the series of "Did You Know" videos is below. A lot of the material is recycled from past videos, but it's still a compelling illustration of how quickly things are changing in this world. Will those of us in higher education remain relevant? Only time will tell...

College Communication

A nice post by Sarah Perez on the ReadWriteWeb blog about the way young people communicate today. Not a big surprise to anyone who has been following the trends to see that texting is the number one preference. I wonder how many colleges and universities utilize texting? We don't at SOCCCD yet - but we are looking into it.

iPod Gen at West LA

Today I spoke at the leadership retreat for West LA College and had a great time. I did two sessions and was once again assigned the dreaded post-lunch position. Fortunately both groups were very attentive and responsive and I really enjoyed talking with them. At lunch I ran into a friend from Jr High who works there which made it even more fun. When I spoke at LA Pierce College, I ran into a friend from high school, so does this mean the next time I'm going to find someone from elementary school?

If you are reading this because of my (once again) shameless plug at the session today - welcome and don't forget to click refresh a few times.

A Humble Proposal to Save Democracy

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that democracy doesn’t work. I don’t know how anyone can view the current crop of leadership we have in Washington D.C. – in either party - and come to any other logical conclusion. What’s worse is that I’m not seeing a lot of hope on the horizon right now. Take this election (please). Do I vote for the tall, handsome smooth-talking inexperienced secret Muslim socialist who wants to give my money to people who didn’t earn it, or the old angry guy whose vice-presidential selection’s sole qualification appears to be the ability to field dress a moose on the Alaskan tundra? Now, you might think that I’ve taken a very complicated decision and overly simplified it, but I read all of that on the Internet, so I know it’s true.

I was trying to figure out why we keep getting stuck with such poor candidates to pick from, when it struck me. We are getting the exact leadership we deserve because we are a nation of predominantly stupid and/or ignorant people. Now you might object to this assertion for one of two reasons. First, you might yourself be a stupid and/or ignorant person (henceforth we shall refer to them (you) by the acronym SIP – I love acronyms –I’m a geek after all). Secondly, you might not be a SIP yourself, but you might object out of a misguided sense of compassion. If you doubt me, just take a look around the next time you are in line at the grocery store. Are these the people you want selecting the most powerful person on the planet?

The only possible explanation for the abject losers we have in leadership is that we have SIPs picking them. It explains a lot of other things also. Primetime television. Oprah. QVC. Commercials. Network news that reduces complex topics to sound bites. I gave up watching any news on television a long time ago because my brain got tired of filtering out all of the hype to try to get one small, golden juicy fact nugget. I turned it on the other day and couldn’t believe how much action was taking place on the screen. Headlines were flashing at the top, there were two different banners with scrolling text below, the corporate logo was spinning at random intervals and all of this was on a slowly morphing background. Good Lord - I got dizzy just trying to assimilate it all. Is this what they have done to keep people watching? And if this is what it takes, are the people picking our leaders qualified to do so?

A cold chill runs down my spine when I hear of yet another “Get Out the Vote” campaign. The problem is not that we have too few people voting. The problem is that we have far too many people voting. If someone has to be enticed to drag his lazy butt out of the Barcalounger to do something as critical as participate in democracy, maybe we don’t want him drooling in a voting booth, picking people whose name sounds familiar.

Fortunately, technology can save us from the SIPs, and it’s actually quite simple. Thanks to the infamous Florida chads, most voting in this country has now gone electronic. I propose that every citizen be required to take a short quiz before they vote. The questions will not be too difficult, but they will help determine if the person we are entrusting with selecting the future leadership of our country is paying enough attention – or has the raw brain power to form cohesive thought.

A bipartisan panel should select the questions to avoid rigging it toward one party, but here are a few of my suggestions:

1. Name two of the three branches of the federal government.

• Republican and Democrat
• Executive and Judicial
• Agriculture and State
• FBI and CIA

2. Name one Supreme Court Justice.

• David Souter
• Diana Ross
  
• Greta Van Sustern
• Judge Judi

3. How many times a week do you watch the Jerry Springer Show?

• Every day
• Once a week
• Occasionally
• Who’s Jerry Springer?

4. How many times a week do you watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart?

• Every day
• Once a week
• Occasionally
• Who’s Jon Stewart?

I’m sure we could get a panel to come up with ten good questions. If the person doesn’t get a decent score – say 6 of them right, then his vote doesn’t count. And this is what is beautiful about my proposal – we never reveal the score to the voters, and we always let them go through the motions of voting, even when we know their votes are going to be discarded. My experience is that a SIP rarely ever recognizes his own – shall we say - sippiness, so everyone gets that good feeling of participating in the process, without damaging the country with their ignorant decision-making.

Now at this point, you no doubt are thinking this is a brilliant idea (unless you’re a SIP) and could not get any better. Think again, my friend. I believe we should take it a step further and if someone gets an abysmally low score – say 3 or lower - then we not only don’t count his vote, we actually deduct one vote from the candidates he selected. We have now built in a disincentive for candidates to pander to the SIPs. They won’t want stupid or ignorant people to vote for them, so 30 second misleading commercials (such as “My opponent wants to raise your taxes to fund mandatory pornography classes for kindergartners”) will disappear overnight.

So, there it is – my humble proposal to save democracy. What do you think?

One of the Hurdles of Upgrading Technology

Happy Birthday Google!

I'm not alone in being a big admirer of Google. No company has had a bigger impact in how we acquire information and they have huge plans for the future. It's always exciting to see what new product they have coming out - like Chrome, their brand new web browser that I think is just their first step into taking over the desktop from Microsoft.

Google is celebrating their 10th anniversary and you can read this interactive timeline to see how much they have accomplished in ten short years. It will be interesting to see what they do over the next ten.

Citrus College

I spoke yesterday afternoon and this morning at Citrus College in Glendora and it was great. They put me in a beautiful new building called the "Center for Innovation". What a great name for a building, and I certainly sensed a desire from their faculty to carry out that vision. We had a great discussion about how to use technology to more effectively reach our students, and I really appreciate their invitation to

Visual Computing

I just read an interesting article about the NVision conference that happened this week in Silicon Valley. It focused on the changes that are happening in the computer industry that are putting more attention on a visual style interface. Here is a quote from Chris Malachowsky, a co-founder of a graphics card company:

"It used to be about the computing part, but the emphasis is shifting. It is not so much about the computation but how it is presented and seen by people."

At last! People are really starting to get it. We can create the greatest systems (or online courses) in the world, but if we make the interfaces difficult to use, then we won't be successful. It's not about the system, it's about how the system helps people. We won't help them if the system just gets in the way.

Check out the article - it reveals some fascinating trends

LA Pierce College

Yesterday I spoke at the LA Pierce College Faculty Convocation and it was great. I always enjoy doing my "iPod Generation" speech because it's something I feel very passionate about, but this was even better than usual because I attended Pierce right out of high school (a very long time ago). Just walking around campus brought back a lot of great memories and I got some wonderful feedback from some of the people afterwards. Thanks Pierce College - for your kind hospitality yesterday and for getting me off to a great start in my career!

Yesterday

(This week my family went through a major transition as my daughter moved away to college. I wrote the following in response to the strange set of emotions this event has elicited in me. I promise I'll get back to the kinds of postings you expect from an emotionless geek after this brief indulgence.)

It seems like just yesterday, my little girl was shyly hiding behind my legs any time a stranger was near… Today she is a beautiful, confident and fiercely independent young woman.

Yesterday we dropped her off at college and drove away without her… Today she is beginning a grand new adventure without us – as it should be.

Yesterday I knew this day would come… Today I wished it hadn’t - yet it also feels strangely right.

Yesterday when she was a baby she would fall asleep with her head resting on my chest… Today she sleeps on a pillow hundreds of miles away – so why does my chest feel so heavy?

Yesterday she thought everything I said was true… Today she argues with me about politics (or anything) – and holds her own.

Yesterday my son was tormented by his older sister… Today he thinks being tormented sounds pretty good.

Yesterday it was my job to protect and manage… Today it is to advise (when asked).

Yesterday my daughter begged us to leave the big city we stopped in during a vacation because the homeless people frightened her… Today she is living in that same city.

Yesterday she was my little girl… Today, she still is. And she will be tomorrow.

Yesterday when she was a toddler she came up to me and handed me a rock, explaining that it was because she loves me… Today she tells me the same thing through a text message (but I still have the rock).

Yesterday it was hard to remember what it was like before I was a Dad… Today I’m wondering how the time went by so quickly.

Yesterday I thought there was nothing more important than being a good Dad... Today I understand even more why that’s true.

Yesterday I wished I had spent more time with her… Today it’s too late.

So how are you going to spend your time today… so you don’t regret it tomorrow?

Geek Report at IVC Only

For any Saddleback faculty reading this - I turned in my paperwork too late to get into the Fall in-service schedule at Saddleback. I'm trying to see if I might be able to set up another time later in the semester if there is enough interest.

I am doing my "Geek Report" at IVC on Monday, August 18th at 1:00 in A 207.

LA City College Student Services Retreat

I spoke today at the LA City College student services retreat and it was a real treat. The organizing committee was very hospitable and the audience was great. Very attentive - I always seem to get the post-lunch time slot, yet they were right there with me. In talking with people before and after, I was struck once again by the dedication of people in student services in a community college. They have a very difficult job that has to be done with scarce resources, and I appreciated their passion in serving students in the best way possible.

If any of you from today are reading this post - thanks for the great experience. The links I mentioned are in the right column of this page. And thanks for atrtificially inflating my hit count as I requested. Please feel free to hit "refresh" on your browser a few times to make it look even better.

Unintended Consequences and Continuous Partial Attention

Our state legislature here in California, in their infinite wisdom, recently enacted a law that makes it a crime to talk on a cell phone if you hold the phone in your hand, but not if you use some kind of hands-free device, like a bluetooth headset. This despite the fact that virtually every study on the subject came to the conclusion that it doesn't make you any safer to drive hands-free on the phone compared to holding the phone to your ear.

Politicians are never ones to let silly things like facts get in the way of passing legislation that attempts to modify the behavior of millions of people, so we are now dealing with the unintended consequences of their action. The first of which I noticed while in line at the Home Depot the other day. I was just about the only customer in the three lines around me that did not have a bluetooth device sticking out of his/her ear. Obviously people either forget that it's in there, or it's too inconvenient to remove and replace it every time you get in your car. I used to see this every once in a while, but now just about everyone I see looks like an extra from the latest Star Trek movie, blue light pulsing mysteriously in their ear as they communicate with their Romulan Overlord.

I am going to perform a public service right here on the virtual pages of Digital Edu for those of you who do not have a loved one who cares enough about you to tell you the unvarnished truth about your appearance. Ready? Here it is. If you walk around with one of those thingees sticking out of your ear, you look stupid. Really, really stupid. And it doesn't change that fact just because everyone around you has one also. The Borg may be taking over, but it can't make you look cool. Another more pleasant unintended consequence is that since I refuse to wear one, for the first time in my life, I'm the least geeky looking guy in the room. No small feat, that.

It also makes me wonder - when did we get to the point when we feel like we must be in constant communication with everyone else, at all times, and under any circumstances? When did it become a travesty to allow a phone call to go to voicemail? At work I rarely pick up my phone if I'm in the middle of something because I don't think the person calling me gets to decide what my highest priority is at that particular second. I can always call them back (or not). My family knows that if it's an emergency just immediately call back and I'll be sure and pick up.

One of the unintended consequences of this wonderful mobile communication technology is that we rarely have time any more when we are not plugged in to the ever increasing (and demanding) communication grid. At what point does the technology stop serving us and start ruling us? If we have a Pavlovian response to a ringing noise and stop whatever we are doing to answer the call, or return the text message, or reply to an IM, or pick up that email, do we really control our time? If we don't control our time, do we control ourselves?

I joke about it, but it is actually a serious problem that is starting to receive attention. Some are calling it "Continuous Partial Attention" or CPA. It describes that state we are in when we are continously interrupted to respond to an incoming message that demands our immediate attention. A recent study estimates it costs the US economy $650 billion dollars a year. An article in New Scientist magazine stated that overexposure to information lowers a person's IQ score in a manner similar to smoking marijuana.

So what do we do about it? Simple - unplug every once in a while. The world will continue to rotate on its axis if you don't answer that email right away. The person calling you to chat will still be your friend if you don't pick up. The text messages can wait. Unplug, relax and maybe even spend some time thinking and reflecting rather than constantly being on the hunt for new information.

Oh yeah, and also take that thing out of your ear. You look stupid.

New Virtual Spaces

My apologies to both of my faithful readers of DigitalEdu for the long absence in blogging. Life just gets real busy at times, and something has to get tossed overboard. For me, it was blogging, but I'm hoping to get back into more regular postings. There is certainly plenty to blog about.

I've been following SecondLife for a couple of years now, and have been intrigued by the potential of a virtual world. Today I ran across two new virtual environments, both of which can be accessed from within your web browser. They do require that you install a plug-in, but that's easier than a complete program installation like SecondLife.

The first is called Vivaty and allows you to post items like pictures and YouTube videos in a virtual space. It appears on your Facebook page and your friends can dive into the virtual world to enjoy your information in a 3-D environment - as long as they are using IE on Windows, anyway. The second environment looks really promising, if for no other reason than it is from Google - my all time favorite software company. It's called Lively and it at least supports Firefox, but is also currently limited to Windows.

If you go to check them out, I suspect your first reaction might be a bit dissapointing. They seem rudimentary, the avatars look cartoonish, and the motion is a bit jerky. When I see something like this, I think back to the first time I used a web browser - Mosaic 1.0. There were very few web sites, they all had gray backgrounds with left-justified text which couldn't even wrap around images, and worst of all, they didn't contain useful information. The web became powerful because lots of really smart people turned it into the most powerful communication mechanism in human history.

I suspect that years from now we will be enjoying our fully immersive 3-D virtual worlds and we'll be looking back at these first steps with the same kind of wistful memory I have of Mosaic. All they need are some really smart people with the imagination and drive to make them into powerful and useful tools. Are you one of those people?

Geek Report

I have been doing in-service presentations for the faculty at our two colleges for many years, and it has evolved into something called the Geek Report. I try to highlight technology trends that might be helpful to them, whether in their personal lives (such as GTD), or things that could help them in teaching (such as Second Life). Tom Weisrock, who does a fantastic job organizing the in-service week at Saddleback College, produced this graphic to advertise my session in the fall. I don't know what this says about me (or about how much free time Tom has), but I got a chuckle out of it. You can click on it to view Tom's handiwork in full detail.

It Takes a College

Yesterday I spoke at our state student services conference in LA - "It Takes a College" - and did my iPod Generation speech. It was my first general session so it was a bit nerve-wracking facing such a large audience. I was the only thing standing between them and lunch so I was motivated to keep it lively. No one fell asleep (that I could see), so I think it went OK. Once again, it was a great crowd and I really appreciated the opportunity. It's a topic I really believe in and I hope I started some conversations that will continue on their campuses.

Two young ladies in a graduate program at UCLA spoke with me afterwards and posed a very interesting question regarding liability. If we start interfacing our systems with sites like Facebook or MySpace (which I think is a great idea), how do we ensure our institutions don't become liable for that content? If those students have items on their sites that are unseemly right next to information from our colleges, will that create an association in people's minds that will be unfavorable?

When the producer/consumer model of information is upended, it raises questions that don't necessarily have easy answers. We could just avoid it entirely and stick with our static (AKA boring) web sites that don't really serve students, but that certainly isn't appealing. We are at the beginning stages of an entirely new era of communication and the rules and policies haven't caught up yet.

Life 40 Years From Now

Kurt Dowdle tipped me off to this fascinating article from Mechanics Illustrated magazine in 1968. It predicts what life will be like in 40 years. Read it and see if it accurately describes what your life is like now. This should give anyone pause who is making predictions today on how technology is going to alter our lives in the future.

Information Revolution

Another great video from Mike Wesch of Kansas State University. This one is on the nature of information in a digital age. Enjoy!

Artificial Intelligence in Second Life

There is a very interesting article about an avatar in Second Life that is not controlled by a human, but by software (thanks to Ted Leath for sending it to me). As the article points out, the future possibilities for this kind of system are endless - I think particularly in education.

Keep an Eye on This

Robert Scoble is a technology blogger who I read on a regular basis. He wrote a post about some new technology that Microsoft previewed recently that actually made him cry. It's called World Wide Telescope and it sounds very exciting. It appears to be similar to Google Earth Sky View, but sounds like it is even better. This could be a great tool for teaching science and astronomy classes, and hopefully they'll make it available to the public soon. You can read more about it on their web site.

Expressing Ideas Through Images

Christian Long, on his think:lab blog, directed me to see an amazing set of images produced by a photographer/artist named Chris Jordan. He transforms statistics into stunning images that are both beautiful and disturbing at the same time. He makes some fairly powerful statements about our consumer culture.

Check out Christian's article and then be sure and click on the link to the images themselves. It's worth your time.

ACCCA Conference

Today I spoke at the ACCCA conference on the iPod Generation. My energy level was pretty low since I just got back from Mexico yesterday (see post below), but it was a very engaged audience so I got motivated pretty quickly and we had a great conversation. There were some really good questions and one person talked about how in her classes she has her students listen to her lectures prior to her class and then she uses all the class time for interactive activities. What an awesome idea! (If you are that person, please email me because I would love to ask you some more questions).

Mexico 2008

Yesterday I returned from our youth group's annual house building trip to Mexico. I have written on this topic the last few years, so I won't go into all of the details (in the hopes that you will search the archives and read more). This year it was even more special because my son is now in high school so I had both my kids with me for the first time.

As in the past, it was an amazing and inspiring experience. I can't adequately describe how fulfilling it is to see young people so committed to changing the lives of people they have never met, and will never see again. They experienced 6 days of camping with no hot water, electricity, flush toilets or showers and experienced frigid temperatures at night. On top of that, they had to rise shortly after dawn, and work until dark to build a house in 4 days using only hand tools.

What an amazing group of young people! I'm honored to be associated with them.

India

I returned two weeks ago from one of the most fascinating places I have ever visited. I spent a week in India along with three people from Neudesic - the company we are partnering with to create our new student system. Neudesic has an India branch and they are going to start developing parts of our new system. I was asked to join a team going there to bring the India team up to speed on the project. I jumped at the chance and it was a fascinating week.

India is such a study in contrasts. It has an intriguing mix of cultures - Hindu and Muslim, poor and rich, eastern and western. We drove every day from our nice hotel to a brand new office building, yet in-between we saw temporary shacks housing construction workers and cows wandering the streets. We spent most of our time in Hyderabad where the Neudesic India office is located, and it is a city that is rapidly growing. There was a high level of energy and everyone seemed to be on the move. Words cannot adequately describe the traffic and what it's like to ride in it. We had a local driver because driving in India is not for the faint of heart!

In the picture you can see the Neudesic India/SOCCCD team. I was really impressed with them and I look forward to seeing them contribute high quality work to our project.

Lifehacker on Jott

Yesterday in my faculty in-service sessions I demonstrated a great service called Jott. Lifehacker has an article today that provides a really nice overview of Jott.

I discovered by reading this article, and checking the Jott web site, that this service uses a combination of software and humans to transcribe voice messages into text. I didn't know that any human intervention was involved. It does explain how amazingly accurate it is, but also makes me think back to some of the messages I have sent myself while testing it. Oops! I think I'll be a little more careful from now on. It is possible to set your account settings so no humans are involved. I may try that and see if the performance or accuracy changes.

In any case, it's a great service and I use it all the time when I think of something I need to remember and I'm not in a place where I can record it in my to-do list.

Using Technology to Get Things Done

Today I'm doing a faculty in-service at each of our colleges on the Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system by David Allen. I'm going to talk a little bit about the GTD principles and then demonstrate some technology tools that can be use to get yourself more organized and keep email from dominating your life. Links to all of the systems I mention are in the right column on this blog under "GTD Links".