Category: In the news

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Web 2.0, the meltdown, and education

Empty pocketSo when I was in Australia last week, the US was going through some pretty interesting times. Wall Street seemed to be melting down, Congress had to jump in, with lots of finger pointing about what the causes were. Among other things, It made me wonder what the long term consequences will be for schools, and for companies doing business with schools.

Back in July, I wrote this post, Twitter buys Summize – should educators care? In it, I talked about how many Web 2.0 companies will consolidate and/or vanish. If a school or district technology plan is built on these free web apps, what happens when they disappear? And sounding very prescient, I said, “It’s not a matter of if, but when. Are you ready?”

What happened here in the US over the past few weeks just makes that more imminent. Imagine if you are a Web 2.0 company with a free product. Your bottom line is that you need to get bought or get funding (since you aren’t making money.) Or, if you have funding, you need to pay back your investors in some time period. And along the way, you still have to pay your employees and all your bills.

But now, there aren’t going to be a lot of IPOs, you can’t get your credit line extended from the bank, and those potential investors aren’t even returning calls. If you do have investors, they are going to be watching you harder and expecting more. If you were hoping to get bought by some bigger company, well, their stock just dropped and they won’t be going shopping for a while.

So what do you do? You have to make a decision. Make your one year of funding last for three…. or walk away.

If you want to try to skinny it out, you cut expenses to the bone — like marketing, promotions, and staff. You put new features on hold and try to make money on what you’ve already got. And of interest to educators.. you cut your support to areas least likely to make money, particularly small niche markets like schools.

Of course everyone is affected by this financial crisis, not just Web 2.0 companies. School budgets are being cut as well, making it even more tempting to use free tools. There are definitely alternatives such as open source, as Tom Hoffman pointed out in his response to my earlier post. But every alternative has its long and short term costs, and as we are about to find out, there is just no Free Lunch 2.0.

Next, I’ll take a stab at picking the winners. Any early favorites for which favorite edu-tools 2.0 will remain standing? Leave them in the comments and we’ll do some forecasting together.

Sylvia

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Believe in…

This year, the Dallas, Texas school district hosted the usual meeting for teachers to kick off the school year. The unconventional choice for convocation speaker was Dalton Sherman, a 5th grade student in the district. His speech, I Believe in Me, Do You? was given to the 17,500 teachers in attendance. It was a huge hit, won him a standing ovation and national acclaim. This video is making the rounds of education blogs (some a little over the top breathless) and being played in lots of opening day staff meetings. The YouTube version has had over 34,000 views so far. I have no doubt we’ll be seeing this in numerous keynotes this year.

In the speech, Dalton asks Dallas teachers to believe in him and all students, “…what we need from you is to believe that we can reach our highest potential.” He asks that the teachers believe in their colleagues too, “…trust them and lean on them when times get tough – and we all know, we kids can sometimes make it tough.” (Full text of the speech.)

It’s a good speech, but it’s the performance that takes it to the next level.

Dalton won his first oratory contest in the first grade, and his rightly proud parents say his talents are “a gift.” But Dalton works hard at his craft and has earned his acclaim. He’s given speeches at churches and events all over Dallas. He enters (and wins) contests. He practices. For this speech, Dallas ISD contacted his family in June with the invitation. They wrote the speech for him, and he practiced three times a week all summer long, working on his timing and performance to turn the words into a powerful, inspirational message.

He’s great, isn’t he? But wait…. there’s more to think about here.

Like… Is it cynical to put words like “believe in me” in this child’s mouth, no matter how admirable the performance? This is what some anonymous adult in charge wanted other adult underlings to hear, and they used the passionate talent of a youth to deliver the message. They knew that the message would better reach its target that way. Does it matter that it’s a “good” message? Is it manipulation or simply smart marketing?

We talk about “student voice” all the time, and this obviously is NOT an example of student voice. There is not even the pretense here that the message came from a student, although the performer was young and talented. That’s a tough distinction to puzzle out, because praise flows easily to students who deliver adult messages and play by adult rules. It’s easy to believe in them, because they validate what we believe about ourselves.

But what about the “other ones”. You know the ones, the students who don’t toe the line, the ones who have checked out. The ones who deliver uncomfortable messages in voices at times eloquent and at times spectacularly clumsy or even crude. The ones who challenge the world and the ones who seem not to believe in themselves. Do we listen when the message isn’t so pleasantly packaged, isn’t so clear, isn’t so crafted? Do we believe in them too?

Sylvia

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Why open curriculum wikis won’t work

Magical thinkingWe’ve all heard calls for various kinds of open curriculum wikis. Districts, states and foundations are designing portals, wikis and other online databases so that educators can upload their lesson plans and activities, learning modules, or other bits and pieces of what they do in their classrooms. The idea is that as more educators upload content, the collection becomes a free, shareable curriculum.

Sounds good, right? The problem is that this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of curriculum.

Curriculum is a statement of opinion – it reflects the author’s beliefs about the nature of teaching and learning. Curriculum is pedagogy in action, the day-to-day plan for how to teach a subject, based on what we think students should learn and how we believe students learn best.

Curriculum is not just a collection of content. It is more than disconnected lesson plans attached to a list of standards. It reflects a person’s or group’s belief about what order to approach topics and what kinds of activities work best for most students. The pacing, depth, and order are all based on these beliefs, which can differ widely between authors. Curriculum authors have to think long and hard about their philosophy regarding the subject area and presentation of the material. Directions for the teacher reflect a belief of how much scripting a teacher needs to deliver the lesson as envisioned. They have to create consistent assessment plans that support and complement the lessons and activities. The pieces — lesson plans, activities, and assessment– hang on this superstructure. Without the structure of a consistent philosophy, these pieces are useless.

Unfortunately, beliefs and philosophy don’t make good subjects for open wikis, at least not the cast-of-thousands Wikipedia kind of success we all imagine. That’s why the calls for open curriculum wikis, free portals, and lesson plan collections that depend on large numbers of independent educators producing bits of curriculum are doomed to failure.

Without a guiding hand and point of view, anything added to a curriculum wiki will have no anchor in a common belief about the nature of teaching and learning. Even hiring editors doesn’t solve the problem. Sure, editors might be able to clean up things like grammar or level of detail. But how will editors collaboratively decide whether to favor student-centered teaching or direct instruction? It will be useless to a teacher who finds that one lesson calls for student collaboration on a long-term project and the next is a 30 minute lecture with downloadable worksheets for students to silently complete.

I’m all for breaking down the monopoly that textbook publishers have on schools worldwide. I’m completely in favor of people using the collaborative power of wikis to build reference and teaching materials that reflect their views about learning and teaching. I have nothing but praise for people who decide to freely share the results of their hard work in public, like the MIT Open Courseware.

But hoping random lesson plans can knit themselves into a coherent curriculum is just magical thinking. At best, teachers may find a few nuggets they can adapt for their own classrooms. At worst, these pipe dreams soak up time, energy and money.

Sylvia

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Twitter buys Summize – should educators care?

Yesterday’s news brought a new Web 2.0 related announcement. Micro-blogging favorite Twitter has purchased Summize, a Twitter search engine.

Twitter has become the new tool of the day for many edu-bloggers (like me). It’s great for keeping up with personal networks, keeping track of people at conferences, and just chatting. There have been a few educators interested in the educational potential, but mostly, it’s been a tool for sharing and socializing. Twitter is also a favorite of many marketing social networking gurus, some who have amassed tens of thousands of followers. Like the early days of Google when it broke out of the pack of dozens of popular search engines, Twitter seems to be at the tipping point of widespread use.

Many other Web 2.0 applications have sprung up in the fertile Twitter ground, dedicated to providing a better user interface, connections to other tools, or better search and conversation tracking. Summize was one of them.

Yesterday, Twitter bought Summize, and now the Summize search can be found at the subdomain search.twitter.com. The speculation is that the purchase was made in Twitter stock, plus jobs for the five Summize employees at Twitter. All this for two companies that make zero revenue!

But somebody believes that Twitter is worth something – they’ve been funded with 15 million dollars of venture capital. That’s not a gift, somebody is expecting them to return that 15 million with much more on top. Other venture capitalists have invested 1 million dollars in Summize.

So Twitter believes that Summize is worth money. And the VCs that own a piece of Summize most likely believe that their million dollar investment is now going to pay off big time.

So what’s the education angle here?
For educators, Web 2.0 apps offer some amazing features for collaborating, communicating, access to data, photos, audio, video, and more. But the main reason it appeals is the price – free. For many schools scrambling to balance the budget, free overrides all other features. Educators find out about these apps the same way everyone else does – buzz and early adopters. The more people flock to these sites, the greater the chance they might break out of the pack and become the darling of the moment. And that’s how they attract venture capital, which allows them to stay in business, expand, and gain more customers. Buzz is the business of these Web 2.0 companies, even more important than the products they make. If the buzz is big enough, they might hit the Google jackpot and make millions.

So you have to ask yourself, is “buzz” plus “free” driving educational practice and planning? Are you building a future on this premise? Are educators walking into a trap set out to attract any and all users, just so venture capitalists can make a return on investment?

Sure, you could argue that we’ll just use these tools as long as they’re around, and then move on to whatever the new new thing is. But by then, how much of your current technology plans will have shifted to relying on things being free? If you have sold Web 2.0 to your colleagues, principal, and superintendent as the way of the future, what happens when these companies finish their speculative games, take their money and go home?

So while you might not care about Twitter, this particular bit of Web 2.0 business news is just the tip of the iceberg for the coming consolidation.

We all know that day is coming, when the companies that don’t get enough buzz to attract money will shut down their free services. Once the money in Web 2.0 settles out everything will change. The VCs will find a hot thing to invest in. A few lucky little companies will get bought or turn into big companies, and that monetize word will have real meaning. The rest will go away.

It’s not a matter of if, but when. Are you ready?

Sylvia

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Anticipating an Educational Revolution

Tweet screenshotI got a message today from Carolyn Foote, aka technolibrary on Twitter, with a link to this article in the New York Times – High Cost of Driving Ignites Online Classes Boom.

I’d almost forgotten that we’d gotten off on an interesting tangent at one of the NECC 2008 EdubloggerCon conversations. It was Will Richardson’s discussion group on Here Comes Everybody, the current bestselling book by Clay Shirky. Will has done a couple of terrific blog posts about this book (here’s one), and recently did an interview with the author.

We were talking about revolutions, and whether education is ready for one, and why is it taking so darn long when it’s so obvious that we need one. My comment was that most revolutions don’t happen for the right reasons, they often happen for disconnected reasons that somehow push a mass of people past a tipping point, or when something happens that shocks people out of behaviors that seem set in stone.

And in fact, my example was that gas prices may well be the catalyst for the educational revolution we’ve all been waiting for; that arguing for a revolution may well be a waste of time, but that being prepared may make all the difference.

Chris Lehmann’s recent blog post, Why Educational Change is Hard (and the limits of “Here Comes Everybody” for schools, brings this up in a different way. He writes, “We have to understand, in ways that Shirky describes, why low-risk mediocrity is almost predictably a better outcome than high-risk success.”

Revolutions stall at the gate because of this. Revolutions are high-risk endeavors. “The devil you know…” (which is such a good cliche that you don’t even have to finish the sentence.) Revolutions aren’t planned by committees of well-meaning citizens. Something unpredictable happens, and then history is written by the prepared and the lucky.

Will gas prices be the tipping point for an educational revolution? Perhaps. Will it be the revolution we want? Maybe. I certainly think it has the potential to deliver the kind of systemic, no-boundaries impact that could shake the basic structure of school as we know it.

Once you mess with the bus schedule, can the bell schedule be far behind?

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Solutions to the Dropout Crisis – Webcast Series

The Solutions to the Dropout Crisis  series is available on the 4th Tuesday of every month at 3:30 PM Eastern Time. This is a live call-in show featuring international experts and authors in drop-out prevention. Click here to access the website, archives, and many supplementary resources.

This program is a public service of Clemson University. There is no fee, and no registration is required. You may listen to the program and view the supplementary materials using only your computer, either live or afterwards. You will need to call in if you wish to speak on the live program.

 

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60 Minutes sells out Millennials

I finally got around to watching the 60 Minutes segment about the Millenial generation coming into to workplace, The Age of the Millenials.

Here’s how CBS describes the story, “They are young adults and have been coddled by their parents to the point of being ill prepared for a demanding workplace. Morley Safer reports on the generation called “Millenials.”

No bias or editorializing there, eh?

The piece was even worse. It was not just biased, but a con job. There was not even the slightest attempt at fairness or getting a story right. Every single person interviewed was a consultant who makes money teaching companies how to attract and retain these employees. And how do these people sell their services? By whipping up stories about how different and scary this new generation is. 60 Minutes swallowed this hook, line and sinker. There was not one sociologist, psychologist, business owner, or historian interviewed.

Morley Safer, a respected journalist, did not question one outrageous comment or preposterous claim. Anecdotes were accepted as facts, and there was not one shred of research or evidence presented.

You’ll have to watch the piece for yourself to see it all, but these consultants generalized all youth as lazy and spoiled, and blamed permissive parenting, Mr. Rogers, and a culture of rewarding every youthful accomplishment no matter how trivial. So how do these consultants advise companies to handle young employees? By lavishly rewarding them, avoiding criticism, and doing away with the whole “boss” concept. Ironic, eh?

Then they showed videos of employees receiving certificates and rewards for doing a good job. Truly, 60 Minutes portrayed employee incentives as if this was a major innovation. Apparently these people have missed out on something commonly done for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Ancient warriors got extra booty if they were on the winning side. There were probably consultants to Crusader kings advising how to motivate slacker knights to bring home better holy relics. Even I remember my insurance agent father bringing home a catalog of “prizes” for top sales. We got our first color TV that way. This is not new, people!

So there’s the story. This isn’t about a new generation, it’s about consultants cashing in by exploiting companies with a new scare story. Wow, thanks 60 Minutes — way to smear a whole generation with non-existent reporting and free air-time for  consultants!

Sylvia

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CASTLE Advisory Board Here I Come!

The Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) is the nation’s only center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators. CASTLE helps  university educational leadership programs prepare technology-savvy school leaders and provide numerous resources for K-12 administrators and the faculty that prepare them.

I’m proud to announce that I’ve been named to the newly formed CASTLE Advisory Board.  I’m really looking forward to working with this diverse, accomplished group of people to assist with the important job of helping K-12 school administrators understand the role of technology in improving student achievement and creating relevant, engaging experiences for tomorrow’s global citizens.

Sylvia

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Ed in 08 Bloggers Summit – part 2

The other day I wrote about the Ed in 08 event I attended in Washington DC last week. Although it was a nice event, I really didn’t get what I expected out of it. I expected more details about their platform.

The Ed in 08 campaign is a plan to get the presidential candidates to talk more about education and create more urgency in American politics for improving education. Their three policy pillars are:

  • Higher standards
  • More effective teachers
  • More time and support for learning

Uh huh, sure – who isn’t for these. But what exactly do these phrases mean? There are a thousand interpretations, and a thousand more implementation ideas.

  • It matters a great deal if “higher standards” means “more tests” or “national standards” or “punishing children”. In the printout of the 25 slide PowerPoint they handed out, there is only one bullet point that addresses this, “The next president must lead a national effort to create more common, rigorous standards that are benchmarked to the world’s best performing countries.”
  • It matters a great deal if “more effective teachers” means “blowing up schools of education” as one speaker put it, or merit pay, which is another idea that sounds good but always ends up badly, or some other secret agenda. You can’t just wave a magic wand and pretend that effective teachers will appear out of nowhere.
  • It matters a great deal if “more time” means more of the same, or if there is some coherent plan to make something different happen in that extra time.

As they say, the devil is in the details, and anyone who has lived and worked in the virtuous-sounding “No Child Left Behind” era knows that slogans and empty platitudes aren’t policy. Judging from the examples most often used at the Blogger Summit, what they are talking about is KIPP Academy. If that’s what they mean, they should just come out and say it.

I don’t understand how Ed in 08 expects people to get on this invisible bandwagon. If they are calling for national standards, or a national test, let’s hear it. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of empty words.

Sylvia