Teaching is About the Students

I thought you might be interested in seeing the following video clip. Aside from the remarkable performance of an obviously gifted young orator, it's a great reminder about the importance of the teaching profession.

Socialnomics

Here is another interesting video that talks about the explosive growth of social media. The message is more for businesses, but I think it has applicability for those of us in higher education as well. I'm seeing a rising level of consciousness on this topic in higher ed, but I don't think we've really caught on yet how much the world has changed around us. Enjoy.

I Think I'm an Edupunk

Just ran across a new term - "edupunk" in an article in Fast Company magazine. The article is entitled Who Needs Harvard and it discusses how the new open source model of technology is being applied to education. The article raises some great issues about the relevance of the traditional higher education model in a new world of distributed knowledge.

While Googling edupunk I ran across this video which I think does a really nice job illustrating the challenge we face in higher education. Not so much a challenge as a complete and total shift in how knowledge is acquired and disseminated. It's changing everything about the way education should work - but are we ready for it?

We Choose The Moon

If you haven't already seen it, you should check out We Choose the Moon - it's a recreation of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. It uses a wide range of media (web, streaming audio/video, twitter) and is broadcasting behind the scenes footage in real time exactly 40 years after it happened.

It's a great example of how modern technology can shed new light on a historic event. I can remember my Mom forcing me when I was 8 years old to watch the live broadcast of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. She told me that one day I would be telling my kids and grandkids that I saw it happen live. I don't remember what I wanted to do rather than watch it, but at the time it didn't seem like such a significant event. Thanks Mom!

West LA College Tech Fair

Yesterday I spoke at the West LA College Tech Fair. They bring in a series of speakers throughout the semester to update faculty on the use of technology. I already did my iPod Generation speech for them at their leadership retreat in November so they asked me to come up with something different. I titled my presentation "Technology is Supposed to Make Our Lives Easier - So Why Doesn't It?".

I think there are two main reasons - one is unrealistic expectations and the other is poor technology design. Technology can help us do some things really well, but it's not the ultimate silver bullet that will solve all problems. Those of us who design technological solutions need to remember that - and need to remember to put the user at the center of the solution.

In the second half I talked about the Getting Things Done (GTD) personal productivity process and demonstrated some cool (and free) web-based tools they could use to stay productive and reduce their stress at work.

I enjoyed the time at West LA, but the timing was unfortunate. Their president preceded my presentation with a discussion about their massive budget cuts - including the cancellation of the entire summer schedule. There were a lot of students in the audience concerned about their ability to maintain their full-time status, which has a big impact for many of them on their financial aid and veteran's benefits. For me it put a very human face on the budget situation and I'm grateful they still extended a warm welcome during a difficult time.

CACCRAO Conference

On Tuesday I spoke at the CACCRAO conference in San Diego and did two presentations. One was on MAP and Getting Things Done (GTD) and the second was my iPod Generation speech. I enjoyed the time with the group, and if you are reading this due to my numerous and shameful blog plugs, you can find the links in the right column of this page. Enjoy.

(And for everyone else, it stands for California Association of Community College Registrars and Admissions Officers).

iPod Gen at So Cal CEO Conference

Today I gave my iPod Generation speech at the Southern California CEO Conference. It was quite an honor to be asked and I really enjoyed my time with so many chancellors and presidents. I was impressed with how tech savvy a group it was, and I noticed a large number of iPhones in the audience. Who knew CEOs were so hip?

If you are reading this because you were at the conference, welcome to my blog. The iPod Generation links are in the right column. Enjoy!

New Mexico

Every year during spring break the high school youth group from my church heads off for a week of service and for the last five years I have had the great privilege to go with them. This year we went to a Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico with 25 kids and 10 adults. It was a truly amazing week. One of the things I like best about it is I have to completely unplug from the grid. No Internet access for a full week is a great way to focus on the things that are truly important.

This year we ran into a long list of problems (engine blowing out in the box truck south of Barstow, temperatures in the 20s at night, one kid getting bit in the face by a pit bull, a sandstorm destroying our tents, etc.) It was very gratifying to see this group of young people respond to these problems with an amazing attitude and great flexibility. These problems could have beaten them down, but instead it brought the group closer together and they stayed focused on the reason they came - to serve other people.

We divided up into four work teams and my team went to the home of an older gentleman whose hot water heater burst on the same day he was at the hospital watching his wife of 35 years pass away. He didn't have the money to replace the floor so we did it for him. What a great sight it was to see a team of young people work so hard for this man they had never met before last week. One of the family members asked us where we were from, and when we told her she said, "Wow - I didn't expect you to be from Orange County. That's not the image I have of that place".

That's because she never met our youth group. They are an amazing group of young people and it was an honor to spend the week with them.

iPod Gen at the HSACCC conference.

Today I gave my iPod Generation presentation at the Health Services Association California Community Colleges (HSACCC). The venue was the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA and it had to be one of the coolest hotels I have ever seen. The building was over 100 years old and the room we were in looked like an old chapel - complete with stained glass windows. I wasn't sure if I should do the presentation, or preach a sermon.

The group was composed primarily of Health Center Directors, RNs and psychologists. I really enjoyed the time with them - during the presentation and just chatting before and after. One of the things I really love about doing this presentation before such varied groups is to see higher education through so many different perspectives. One example: I suggested to them that they might want to create a Facebook account for their health centers and use it to promote their services to students. I was asked about liability issues if a suicidal student used Facebook to ask for help during off-hours and they didn't respond in time. That's the kind of scenario that I never have to think of as an IT geek (thankfully), but that's the world they live in every day.

Hopefully I left them with some things to think about - they certainly did so for me.

Microsoft Tag

Both of my faithful DigitalEdu readers know that I'm always interested to see innovative new ideas when it comes to the computer/human interface. Microsoft has a new idea with something they are calling Microsoft Tag. They are trying to solve the big drawback in the new generation of mobile devices. Anyone who has used one knows how frustrating it can be to type on it because the keyboards are so small. I've got an iPhone and it can be a maddening experience to type on it. I'm getting better at it over time and I've learned to just keep on typing because their algorithm that filters out the typos is pretty darn good. Typing a URL won't work with that though, and one typo makes it a meaningless string of text.

Enter Microsoft Tag. It's a way to encode information in a graphic and it uses the camera on your cell phone to grab the image, send it to their server to decode, and then it triggers an action associated with your device. You can encode text, a URL, trigger a text message or a phone call. It requires that you preload their software on your phone, but that's a simple one-time process. I created the tag for this web site in about 5 minutes (pictured to the right). Go ahead and try it out and you'll be able to get all of the miniatured wonders of DigitalEdu on your phone without once touching the keyboard.

Obviously posting this on a web site doesn't make sense because you can just click on a link much easier. But picture a restaurant or store encoding the directions to their location in a print ad. Or having this on a business card so it automatically loads all of the information into your address book. Or having the graphic on a bus stop sign and it gives you real-time status of when the next bus will arrive.

I don't know if this will catch on but it's a real interesting idea.

Facebook Will Rot Your Brain

Ran across an interesting article from a British web site with the rather provocative title "Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist". You can read the full article here. Now I'm not a top neuroscientist so I can't judge the science, but based on what I read, it sounds like a lot of hooey (yes, that's a technical term). Here's a quote from the article:

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.

Hello? Since when have young people not had short attention spans, wanted instant gratification and been self-centered? Check out this quote:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

That one is allegedly Plato quoting Socrates. We think we have it bad today - at least my teenagers don't "gobble up dainties" (I think).

My point is, let's not blame the technology for a problem that has existed for centuries. Every generation thinks the subsequent one is filled with losers. Socrates just didn't have the Internet around to take the blame for it.

Perspective

The clip below I think provides some refreshing perspective on how spoiled technology has made us. Enjoy.

My Academic Plan Update

I haven't posted anything recently about our My Academic Plan (MAP) project and there is a lot going on. First of all, a quick overview. MAP went online at the end of April 2007 and it has been used by over 17,000 students to create roughly 38,000 academic plans. It was the result of a concerted effort of our counselors, some students and a couple of very talented developers - Pratik Modi and Shaun Collett. I have never worked with a design team that was more dedicated to seeing a project succeed as this group. It really is a privilege to work with them.

MAP was awarded a 2007 Focus Award from our state chancellor's office and they also gave us a small grant to explore the feasibility of turning MAP into a system that could support other colleges. We are in the midst of that feasibility study right now and are having conversations with several software companies to find one that would be a good partner with us. We are presenting MAP at a number of conferences and we are in conversations with several colleges who are interested in purchasing it.

I love this project because from the very beginning the focus was on the students. We came up with a very student-centered design and all of this exciting work going on around it remains secondary to the fact that our students are being served. Very cool.

Siftables

I'm fascinated by the human/computer interface and I love to see new and innovative ways to allow people to do their work (or play). Check out the video below - it's a demonstration by David Merrill, an MIT grad student, on a new type of interface using building blocks that recognize each other and adapt their behavior accordingly.