Never can say goodbye.

What can I say? Kalim got me into the spirit.

There's almost nothing to say after watching MJ at the height of his pre-pubescent powers, except RIP, you crazy-talented freakshow.

Classmates, Dr. Strange, Others: This is it, for now, but come find me the future. I plan to be an active participant in it.

I'll leave you with a quote from another dearly departed genius, Douglas Adams (brilliant author and inventor of the Babelfish, from whence the ubiquitous translation engine got its name) which I hope someday will serve as my epitaph:

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

On Comments4Kids

This is Kalim, and he wants you back. Courtesy Room 18 Point England School. Go drop 'em a line.

Alternate post title: "Saving the best for last."

Throughout the semester, we EDM three-tennants have participated in Comments4Kids, an effort begun by Mr. Chamberlain (if you're reading this, Mr. C: thanks again for all your thoughtful comments on my blog, and seriously, how many hours does your day have?) that's at once head-scratchingly obvious, righteously innovative, extraordinarily powerful, and just plain cool.

Seriously, it's all right there in the name: it's comments, for kids. Students around the world commonly share their work online and maintain their own blogs, and it's likely an understatement to say that this trend tilts upward. Comments4Kids provides a hub for teachers to solicit comments for their students, and for concerned stakeholders in education (read: "people who care") to share links of class and individual blogs. At the risk of redundancy, this is kind of a big deal.

I've left comments for Kate, an young narrative writer in Manchester, UK; for Beth, her classmate, a gifted and posh lupine role-player; for Kalim, a year-6 New Zealand rockstar; for Ms. Deyenberg’s class, who put us to shame by thoughtfully podcasting about technology and learning way younger than we ever got around to it; for Allison, Danny, and Ally, students in Ms. Ionno’s Math Class in Florida with interesting perspectives regarding mathematical inventions; for Shane, an aspiring animator; and for Alex, an award-winning gingerbread baker and artist, among others throughout the semester.

Click here to (gulp)... follow Comments4Kids on Twitter. At long last, Dr. S and Mr. C, you've managed to thwart my Twitter prejudice. I'm not tweeting yet, but I understand it's a slippery slope.

My Personal Learning Network (such as it is)

When you Google Image Search "Personal Learning Network," countless incomprehensible results promulgate. This is, perhaps, the least comprehensible.

Broadly speaking, I follow TED and have become a slave to iTunes U (see, when you ride a bike 7 hours a week, you run out of podcasts, until Harvard comes along and gives you free lectures). I also read Bridging Differences and Schools Matter regularly, and highly recommend both. I might even include Congressional Quarterly -- I still monitor CQ, as old overtly political habits die hard (especially when you still remember your old corporate user ID and password), and I thereby keep an eye on legislative goings-on regarding education.

Individually, I now follow William Chamberlain and Karl Fisch on Twitter -- high praise, given that I might have mentioned once or a thousand times my aversion to Twitter. (Seriously! This class has me paying attention to, if not yet embracing, Twitter. Baby steps!) I've also incorporated a handful of friends from afar into an patchwork PLN, including Katherine Snape (Thompson Elementary, Washington DC), Ruth Chan (New Community For Children, Washington DC), Dan Morrison (CitizenEffect.org), and my very own brother, Tom Woolf (a middle school science teacher in Jacksonville, FL) via Google Chat and Facebook. I also talk to my brother on the phone, but that isn't always about school. Sometimes, it's about football.

In summary, my personal learning network could be less personal, and more networked. But by virtue of this class, I'm casting a wider net.

Winding down

Neil Young will see you later in this post.

Let's review.

1. This has been an extremely interesting class -- not just because of the material we covered, but because of the way we covered it. By way of contrast: in another class offered this semester by this fine Educational Department of Educating Educators, our professor gave us strict deadlines for the harried submission of copious busy work, and quizzed us at every opportunity on regularly scheduled textbook readings. Don't get me wrong; I learned things in that class. I wouldn't have passed it otherwise. But a funny thing happened on the way to academic success: I became disenchanted with the coursework. The investigation of fascinating information became, well, a damn hassle. (Pardon my language, but it's the home stretch, and I'm feeling confessional.) Because despite all talk of experiential learning and progressivism in that course, it came down to the three r's: reading, writing, and ruh-getting ticked off.

Here in 310, I can't say I was exposed to more new information than I was in the Other Class. I've got experience with many of the tools and applications we've covered; I've blogged before; and admittedly, given the stress of the semester, I threatened to collapse into my worst academic instincts, using the trust and respect Dr. Strange affords his students to work to their potential as a goodly length of rope to hang myself.

And yet -- this is the important bit -- the ongoing collaborative conversation regarding the future of education means more to my future practice than anything we covered in That Other Course. That stuff? Maybe I didn't know some of the cold, dead facts, and maybe I hadn't prospected the perspectives of others through the perspective of fleeting exposure. (Reading about multicultural attitudes! When Skype exists!) It seems so much more important to acknowledge that learning evolves with or without you, to admit that you can't predict what will happen next, and to hang on to the cusp as hard as you can.

Whatever else I learned or didn't in this class, I thought. I thought a LOT.

2. And what, specifically, did I NOT I learn? Hard to say. This is a forward-looking course; as applicable to my life, it's less about what we learned than the way we approached learning. So, we didn't learn about what happens on the internet next year, or where classroom technology will be ten years from now (if we have classrooms, and not silicate mind-hives hidden deep in the boiling ocean), but does it matter, if we're flexible and adventurous?

(I also have yet to learn why I should, in good conscience, Tweet, but I may just be stubborn.)

3. In that spirit of adventure, there's nothing in this class I regret having learned. One should never ever regret learning anything whatsoever.

4. Beyond learning, here's what excited me about the class: when else, as a college student, have I felt so free in academic response and participation? (Hint: the answer is "never," as demonstrated by this and countless other silly parenthetical asides.) This very blog is a class assignment, but it is also intrinsically my own -- a prompted diary. And I've tried to treat it as such.

5. But to weave divergent free-thinking into a coherent whole, worthy of some manner of academic assessment, I've had to come up with some actual ideas. Thus, the intellectual challenge: I challenged myself to demonstrate some intellect. In each post, I tried to contribute something new and unsaid, whether fresh perspective or simply clever wordplay. I think that's valid -- even dumb jokes, lovingly crafted, are an intellectual product. And that's how I define a true intellectual challenge: go ahead, make something new. I dare you.

6. In the interest of full disclosure, the riveting call to "make something new" as a determined intellectual did not make more exciting the creation of a form in Google Docs.

7. Still, I freely admit that I take for granted some technical skills (god, the smothering egotism of an over-old, once-failed, second-time around South Alabama sophomore!) that prospective teachers, and most citizens, have no business doing without. The ability to create a form... no, let me not lose sight of the bigger picture. The AUDACITY to create a form, or to create ANYTHING, is something prospective educators must learn. Be you not afraid, say both great Allah and the mighty Neil Young. This course makes many students confront the darkest depths of technophobia on their own terms, for which it should be lauded.

Though I might change the assigning of groups for collaborative projects. A little... randomness, maybe? To break up established social patterns? Like, creating new paradigms? So people who work with some people sometimes get to work with other people other times?

8. But I don't want to sound like a whiner, so let's trot our good friend Ego back out and assess the depth, breadth, and general fortitude of my "technical literacy," as required. Here goes: on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 equals "caveman having a series of strokes" and 10 equals "I am as technically fluent as I need to be," I give myself an... incomplete. Because I am technically fluent. Highly so. But in the 90 some-odd minutes I've spent typing this ridiculous epilogue, technology left me 90 minutes behind.

9. And thus, I gotta get out there and see what's up. I'm going to rake my eyeballs over the internet from now until the day it's available in liquid form. The shape of the future? Amorphous! In order to be prepared -- if I'm egotistical enough to believe I'm qualified to teach anyone anything whatsoever -- all I have to do is learn constantly, until I am dead.

Always end on a high note.

Image courtesy Dr. Strange's class blog - link over thataway. --->

Way back in October -- a veritable lifetime in blog years! -- I responded to the "This Is How We Dream" presentation, delicately balancing high-minded optimism with skepticism regarding the "illusory free market of ideas." (I was chided, and deservedly so, for missing the fact that Dr. Richard Miller was not only attempting to inspire deep thought, but perhaps trying to skim deep pockets to fund the hypothetical new technology center showcased in the presentation. Pessimism, how could you betray me?)

Meanwhile, fellow USA EDM 310 student Anthony Capps expounded on the core ideals of Dr. Miller's presentation in remarkable fashion. His entire post is worth parsing, but one particular quote -- "The more ideas that are circulated, the faster our communities can change and our thoughts can flourish" -- proved prophetic, as Dr. Miller, Dr. Strange, Mr. Chamberlain, and others contributed comments and discussion regarding the post.

Dr. Miller also specifically addressed the building project, saying it was merely a "thought experiment." Maybe my cherished pessimism is still intact, despite all this deeply-considered collaboration and warm intellectual discourse. Or maybe I'm just a sucker.

A Big Question from At The Teacher's Desk

This is the horizon. It is probably here because it is an applicable metaphor.

So here I was, struggling to find something innovative to say about the importance of digital collaboration and inter-networking for today's (and in many cases, yesterday's) teacher, when I run across this quote from a recent post by our friend Mr. Chamberlain from At The Teacher's Desk, a great blog that stands as a fine example of such collaboration. To wit:

The one question that is most important has nothing to do with hardware or software. It is the one thing I can control: How will my school change for the better because I am here?

Allow me to repeat his question for emphasis: "How will my school change for the better because I am here?"

I could write more about the value of digital student portfolios, or connecting accross cultures with Skype, or sharing methods and strategies with an heretofore unimaginable and practically limitless team of passionate educators who are fully engaged in the evolution of education, but I hope we all agree on that by now. (If not, Dr. Strange kindly requests you re-enroll.) It's a brave new world, but it's always going to be a brave new world, because that's just how time works, and we have to keep up.

The "Brave New World" -- when Aldous Huxley named his Utopian parody (mentioned in a previous post), he alluded ironically to Miranda's quote from Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in't!

Once more with feeling: How will your school change for the better because you are there?

On brilliant and stupid applications of technology

While the Roman arch is, indeed, a brilliant idea, I don't think this is what the list is getting at.

Seven Brilliant Things Teachers Do With Technology, courtesy Doug Johnson's Tech Proof (an Education World blog)

Many good things here, but juxtapose these rules: empower kids with technology, and accept the role of co-leaner. Technological fluency is like linguistic fluency -- if you're raised with the exciting and new, you encounter new challenges more competently and confidently (in the case of language, Real Science has demonstrated in Actual Laboratory Tests that teaching students an additional language when they're young makes their brains double in size.*) For those teachers who are only now becoming technologically adept, such "native speakers" are an invaluable resource. See, that's the "co-learner" bit. (I'd include another of the listed ideas -- to creatively find and develop resources -- under the umbrella of co-learning.)

* - This is probably not a fact.

Seven Stupid Mistakes Teachers Make With Technology (also from Tech Proof)

Right out of the gate: any adult who has ever touched a computer should already understand that Loki, the trickster god, will eventually convince your computer (or PDA, or helper robot, or whatever) to eat your data. I like the quote regarding recidivist data-forfeiters: "stupidity ought to cause some suffering." Ah, in a perfect world.

Equally important: what happens online stays online. We talk a lot about the unforeseeable horizons of evolved learning, but to get down to brass tacks for a second, HEY TEACHERS, YOU CAN GET FIRED BECAUSE OF YOUR SCANDALOUS FACEBOOK PHOTOS. (And if you aren't fired, you'll certainly struggle to earn the respect you hopefully deserve, despite what was going on in photo #13. Seriously, a donkey?)

The New Clasroom Rules, courtesy Education Innovation

3. Leave your seat only when necessary, which should be often to go collaborate with others or demonstrate something to the class.

15. Know what you are supposed to be learning, why, and what you will do with the knowledge.

Not much to add here -- learning is dynamic, not static, and rote practice strangles dynamism. #15, you're a rule after my own heart.

Thadeus rocks the SMARTboard (Project 11)

On "The Machine Is (Changing) Us"

"In the midst of a fabulous array of historically unprecedented and utterly mind-boggling stimuli... whatever."

This quote applies, historically, to most of history. (While we know the Renaissance as, well, the Renaissance, I'm sure the majority of the bodice-and-jerkin crowd were less interested in the evolution of artistic culture and modern reason than getting through the day without contracting syphilis -- maybe the Internet age will fare so well in history's estimation.) Great leaps in technology are, by definition, unprecedented. Still, here's a fascinating explanation of ennui and narcissism as end-products of one's anonymous existence in a physically disconnected world, especially in the context of daily-emerging technologies that forever alter the landscape of human communications. At least until the next thing comes along.

I'm looking at you, YouTube. Dr. Wesch himself offers the caveat that "over 99% is irrelevant to you," threatening the "negation of all horizons of significance." And here we are again, with me wondering how the internet evolves now from "everyone says anything all the time" to "everyone has something to say and a place to say it." Compared to dumb ol' teevee, the "cultural conversation" offered by the internet has always been multi-directional and chaotically democratic. And I agree wholly with Dr. Wesch's thesis: identity is defined by relations to others; new media allows new ways to relate to others; new media therefore allows new understanding of the self.

But does the internet merely offer the illusion of engagement? As more engage digitally, may individuals become disconnected cognitively as well as physically? Do we respond with the same expressed self-importance facing impotence of the self, despite, or even hastened by, truly open dialogue? Or is it enough? Or will it become something else entirely?

If it leads to dystopia, I prefer both the Orwellian State-controlled truth and Huxley's world of empty pleasures (where the "truth is drowned in irrelevance") to any future where the truth doesn't really matter because of all the zombies or cannibals. (I'm looking at you, "The Road.")

On Publishing Student Work Online, The Importance Of

Our instructor, who art in Cloud, poses the question: "Why is important for students to post their work to blogs (or in other ways)?"



This YouTube video so impressed Fleetwood Mac songstress Stevie Knicks that she invited the students to perform with her at Madison Square Garden. So, obviously, the reason you should post student work to the web is "So you can meet Stevie Knicks." Question answered! I'll be at the bar.

Most importantly: great education demands frequent, positive reinforcement. Period. Prospective teachers hear it constantly, in every education class, and even the barest experience bears it out -- students won't succeed without praise, support, and encouragement, and it's your job to heap it on them, because for some kids, no one else will. The good news? By sharing their work online, the WHOLE WORLD can encourage their efforts. We only need to look again at Kaia's story to see what impact even a single post may have. My science fair projects never enjoyed international acclaim, but you can bet that if they did, I'd be building hydroelectric dams left and right (And this time, it'd friggin' work. I wondered then why my teacher kept calling it "That dam project of yours.")

Second: to innovate, we need evidence of what works and what doesn't. The internet is many things: an infinite resource of information, a boundary-free public medium of personal expression, the strangest and most comprehensive shopping mall conceivable, a chainsaw attack upon print media and copyright protection, and, often, totally creepy. As a research tool, it's revolutionary and indispensable. To develop stronger practices and methods, we must experiment and share the evidence widely. The internet frees educational research from the heady bondage of academia and scholarly journals, giving actual teachers practical (and practicable) methods and classroom strategies. As Mr. Pausch demonstrated, we are graced with new ideas, and can see how students respond to them in real time.

Third: Responsible thinkers continuously reflect upon what they've done, and retroactively learn from experience. Teachers, who teach other people how to think, really should be responsible thinkers, dedicated to improving their craft and expanding their consciousness. (Please note that despite my word choice, I"m not subtly endorsing self-medication -- I just mean, y'know, reading more and stuff.) By archiving student work online, teachers not only reexamine and reflect upon the process and results, but may receive insightful commentary from outside parties or students themselves, commenting upon their own work. A classroom blog is a portfolio with a heartbeat, if not redefining the hoary term "living document," then at least bringing the concept closer to reality with the Frankensteinian application of electric current: unpredictable, with thought independent of its creator.

Above: your classroom blog. (Please note: it's alive.)

On ACCESS

What is ACCESS? Short answer: an acronym for the Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide program. Better answer: ACCESS is an initiative launched in 2004 to implement distance learning in Alabama high schools, offering students greater curricular opportunity and flexibility. Students can freely access (see how that works?) more advanced studies (such as AP and dual-credit courses), courses of study otherwise unavailable to them, and remedial and supplemental resources, while teachers can access (there it is again!) multimedia content and resources to enhance instruction.

ACCESS hopes, eventually, to prove a "21st century distance learning classroom for every Alabama high school," serving 45,000 students. This classroom would include:

• Cameras and projectors
• Interactive, portable, wireless whiteboards
• At least 25 tablet computers
• Wireless connectivity
• Installation, on-site service, warranty, technical support, and equipment training/reference materials
• Specialized training for administrators, guidance counselors, and other school personnel on the project, and well as "E-teachers."

Anyone else think it's interesting that ACCESS thinks their model 21st century classroom should offer all of the above (instead of, for example, chalk and fire ants) and yet, the 21st century is already 10% kaput? The phrase "21st century," meant as shorthand for THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF TOMORROW, had a sell-by date, and it's starting to sour.

On ALEX

No, not this dapper font of information available five days a week -- I mean the non-mustachioed resource that's open all the time.

ALEX, an Alabama Department of Education online initiative made possible via private donations and federal/state funding, offers students, parents, teachers and administrators a variety of free educational materials and information, including lesson plans, web resources, and interactive activities.

The ALEX team -- a murderer's row of talent from a cross section of university, K-12, and some guy from NASA (what does that guy think he is, some kinda rocket scientist?) has adopted as its motto "Quality for Every Facet of Learning," and their dedication is clear from the materials assembled to date. There are some extraordinarily valuable resources there, especially example lesson plans. We all love lesson plans, right?

Also, ALEX has a Facebook page. You can "friend" ALEX. ALEX promises not to obsessively check your relationship status or send you the " Which True Blood Character Are You?" survey.

On "Dear Kaia" & Comments4Kids

Meet Kaia: she's a three year-old from Qatar. You can read her blog here.

Photo courtesy Kaia's blog.

This is a remarkable story about how innovative teaching and global connectivity can interact and inspire students. By not only encouraging Kaia's direct interaction and engagement with her environment, but also giving her tools with which she could reflect upon and share her experience, Kaia's "lesson" was cognitively engaging, structurally nuanced, and emotionally compelling.

But equally remarkable is the reinforcement Kaia's readers can provide, practically immediately after she creates and shares her work. I can't imagine how exciting it must be for an eager young learner to get such positive feedback from a global audience. Frequent positive reinforcement is a hallmark of great education, and vital to the inspiration and encouragement of proactive, self-motivated learners. Consider Kaia's likely future, growing up in a world where education too often fails to engage bright students, in the context of her examination of the desert's beauty: not bereft of promise, but bright, vast, wide open, and full of riches to be unearthed.

On New Media Literacies

Answering questions from the Great Blogger In The Sky Who Gives Us Assignments:

What do you think of the New Media Skills covered in this video (judgment, negotiation, appropriation, play, transmedia navigation, simulation, collective intelligence, performance, distributed cognition, visualization, multitasking)?

I think they're dandy. In previous posts, I've stood (virtually) on my (digital) soapbox and shouted (via typing, but typing super hard) about judgment, or being able to assess information you discover in the wild as useful, honest, and reliable. Multitasking, especially, is more important than ever, so much so than some people think we may in fact be reprogramming our brains to better multitask as an evolutionary function. Even appropriation, the sampling and remixing of content into a meaningful new product, is the same sort of informational synthesis employed in academic studies for decades ("sourcing," I think cave-scholars called it), but in a multimedia context.

Are they really the 21st century skills that will be needed to be effective artists, citizens, workers?

Perhaps. Certainly, anyone with these skills will have a leg up in society and in the workforce, by virtue of having developed a more nuanced and comprehensive skill set. But to be an effective artist? Well, that all depends on what kind of artist you mean, and how you can possibly define art as "effective." Art, by virtue of being art, is neither medium-specific nor goal-oriented. I don't think you can say with a straight face that "all effective artists of the future will be masters of transmedia navigation and distributed cognition." Unless you are a robot, and you talk like that anyway, and you cannot smile.

How many of these skills do you possess? Which ones? How will you acquire the others?

I'd wager I've demonstrated each of these skills to some extent before. Certainly, I can improve -- I could multitask better, that's for sure -- and as with any skill, it'll take practice with and exposure to new media applications.

---

And speaking of practicing those skills, MIT'S Project New Media Literacies (NML) seeks to equip students with the "social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape," while redefining the commonly held view of whatit means to be literate in an international, interconnected world.

NML seeks nothing less than a paradigm shift: rather than adapting our methods of teaching certain subjects, we must reconsider what teaching means by taking ownership of skills fundamental to areas of study. We also must foster participatory culture in education -- for instance, by shifting the focus of literacy curriculum from individual expression to community involvement. For some interesting examples, check out this white paper.

On "The Networked Student"

I love this hypothetical student. I love his spiky, Bart Simpson-esque hair, and his googly volleyball eyes, searching so hungrily for new information. I love his zeal for new ideas, his take-no-prisoners approach to learning, his ingenuity, creativity, fearlessness, technical ninja-ery, and boundless motivation. I'm so in love with this student that I can barely stand to acknowledge that I've never met a student like this in my entire life.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. Given the tools, training, resources, and most critically, personally relevant materials, many students voraciously seek knowledge. Training, as the video plainly states, is crucial, as any erstwhile internet scholar must know the difference between good, factual, scholarly information and Things That People Type On The Internet Because They Can.

This style of learning -- the personal learning network -- nicely compliments social networking, which is old news to this generation and will be ubiquitous, in some form, in the future; maybe an academically-sound architecture that functions according to the same principles (and is therefore relevant to students) could inspire the kind of freight-train effort the "Networked Student" puts forth. FactBook, anyone?

But I also have a gripe. (Don't tell me you didn't see it coming.) In this construct, the teacher is described as a learning architect, whose role is to teach the student how best to seek information outside of the classroom. Are we to suppose that the student should seek all authority outside of the classroom, and that the teacher should serve as some hybrid librarian/operator/IT consultant, free of any particular mastery of the subject matter? Or does the teacher need to do both, in the same classroom, while conforming to curriculum guidelines that realistically cannot require expensive technology (because let's recall that not all students have computers, and not all schools have enough of them, and that's a sad and inescapable fact) AND attempting to engage students who are not crazy self-motivated?

On "This Is How We Dream"

Fascinating big picture spit-balling by Rutgers English professor Richard Miller, a self-described "person of the book" who now envisions technology as a means of articulating dreams, making the humanities visible and vital, and actively, immediately pushing ideas into culture where the may exist and evolve free from their creator and context. "As educators," he says, "we must be in the business of sharing ideas freely."

He freely admits that he doesn't know what shape the next evolution of composition will take, and acknowledges some fairly high hurdles to overcome before such composition is accessible by a wide audience, including an "extraordinary combination" of additional resources, the participation and initiative of inspiring and informed teachers, and pedagogy that has yet to be invented. Despite these... well, let's be generous and call the formidable challenges, he foresees a time when students will compose with "digital composing material" -- creating multimedia, multidimensional, aesthetically innovative pieces -- instead of word processors.

Of course, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, one challenge he does not address is that if you a critical mass of information growing exponentially in already (practically) infinite universe of data, your research is only as good as your research tools and the reliability of your sources. Ideas should exist in a free market, but the question of original authorship becomes important when false facts and bad data aggregate. He mentions, for example, following the 2008 election results in real-time; well, I did that too, and the "real time" data offered by a number of of sites was... well, let's be generous (I guess I'm in a giving mood) and call it "incongruous." (I recommend Nate Silver for all your accurate poll number needs, by the way.)

The evolution of methods and tools by which we access and organize this morass of information must keep pace with the web's expansion. And as there are bucks to be made from such services (Google's awesome, but they aren't exactly a non-profit), we have to assume that politics, economics, bias, agendas, and all sorts of other interference may create an illusory free market of ideas. Not that that's anything new.

I don't mean to pooh-pooh Mr. (Dr.?) Miller's presentation or high-minded ideals. As a book person who's deep in the thrall of new media, I'm fully behind his dream, instinctively and optimistically. But my instincts also scream out for somebody to play devil's advocate when we talk about a future that demands "extraordinary" resources, when extraordinary resources have been, historically and without fail, unfairly allotted.

Maybe that's not playing devil's advocate after all, but rather, just playing plain ol' advocate.

On Did You Know 4.0

Did You Know 4.0 asks, "Are you ready for the future?" I'm not sure the future particularly cares if you're ready for it or not, so it's nice of this video to ask.

Few of these numbers greatly shock me -- for instance, I followed the 2008 presidential election closely, and thought then-candidate Obama's online fund raising success vs. John McCain's traditional (read: antiquated) methods was just more evidence that one of those guys was looking forward and the other, well, not so much. I followed tweeting protesters during the aftermath of the Iranian elections, marking the first time a.) I've ever followed tweets or b.) there was any use whatsoever in following tweets.

On the other hand: 2 million teevees in bathrooms?! I suppose, given the population sample, this isn't a totally outrageous percentage, but it does go to show that I often have no idea what's going on in this country. Who are these people? Do they run coaxial cable to their bathrooms? Is that a thing that electricians do in new homes? (Me, I still read the newspaper -- as recently as this morning, to answer the video's rhetorical question and provide blog readers with too much information.)

And since data convergence is the topic at hand, I can't help but evaluate the reference to countless extant webpages and hours of youtube video in context of this little nugget:
"90% of the 200 billion emails sent daily are spam."

On the Duke Digital Initiative

Educational technology orthodoxy sez, "Better the devil you know." But let's ask the devil we don't.

(This is mildly terrifying.)

In 2005, Duke University did something that made its freshman class as happy as Microsoft shareholders weren't: it gave each freshman (about 1,600, total) a 20gb iPod pre-loaded with orientation material and rigged with a voice recorder. In 2006, Duke made iPods available to all undergraduates in specific courses upon the request of faculty members.

Evaluating the initiative, Duke noted the following benefits:
- Reduced dependence upon physical materials
- Flexible access to digital class resources, independent of lab and library hours
- Convenient digital recording of interviews, lectures, notes, and oral assignments
- Greater student engagement and interest in discussions, labs, and projects
- Enhanced individual leaning support

And remember: these iPods, compared to the current iteration, were practically dinosaurs. Rather, they were dinosaurs with significant sensory impairments -- no graphics, no video, no wifi, no app store (and maybe I've mentioned something about free Ivy League college in your pocket?) -- and fragile brains, prone to aneurysm. We're talking basic text/audio functionality and a spinning magnetic hard drive all too happy to crash and delete that one Norah Jones album you couldn't avoid in 2004.

But the experiment was successful enough to give birth to the Duke Digital Initiative, whose stated mission is to "promote innovative and effective teaching, to use technology in support of curriculum enhancement, to develop our technology infrastructure and to share knowledge about effective instructional technology strategies." In 2007 and 2008, DDI experimented with limited distribution of tablet PCs. In 2009? High-def video cameras, camera-enabled flip-phones, and webcams. You can read more about how that turned out here and here. (SPOILER ALERT: it turned out well.)

My college, on the other hand, has a scanner in the computer lab. So, you know, we got that going for us.

On FREE COLLEGE.

I'm in college. I own an iPhone. I therefore speak with total authority: hey, you know what's prohibitively expensive? College and stuff from Apple!

So imagine my shock and delight: iTunes U is as incongruous as it is completely and shamelessly awesome. Through iTunes, and accessible via internet or cellular connection, Apple and partner Universities (which is to say, any University that wishes to participate, or any museum, or any public media organization, etc.) offers, basically, free college in the form of more than 200,000 downloadable lectures, presentations, audiobooks, language lessons, and more.

Click here to launch iTunes and marvel at the resources available, from the Ivy Leagues to Oxford to many of the top schools worldwide, including Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. Or, from my beloved prior alma mater, distinguished in both football and, apparently, cutting-edge necrology: "Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature." (Cue Auburn fans joking about how we all wish Bear Bryant would rise from the grave. Go on. IT'S TRUE AND OUR SCIENTISTS ARE WORKING ON IT)

Ahem. FREE. COLLEGE. If I have to explain to you why this is a good thing, you should... well, go get some free college. The haves in the world (those of us whom a college education is feasible, despite myriad financial or societal barriers) may now have so much more, but the have-nots? Well, they gain access to some of the finest educational resources from some of the most exclusionary institutions in the world. And it can live in your pocket. This is the sort of revolutionary deployment of information that reminds us how the internet can, in fact, fundamentally change the world for the better.

Now, to get iPods in the hands of the have-nots. Maybe the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help! They love to support educational technology initiatives!

...

Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh, right. Zunes, anyone? Please, take a Zune?

On Dr. Alice Christie's Phenomenal Website

Alicechristie.org, the homepage of and information clearinghouse run by Dr. Alice A. Christie (President’s Professor Emeritus, Arizona St./massively informed and experienced techno-sage), gives prospective educators a wealth of resources and tools so that they may enhance their practice and their students' education. Really, there's no way I can properly represent the depth of substance here, except to say generally: from her online university to classes to her comprehensive introduction to GPS and Geocaching to her invalubale educational technology guide, any wise neo-futurist edu-person would do well to root around the site and interact with the materials she offers.

One subsection, however, set a handful of my synapses to tinglin': Dr. Christie's Internet Resources and Tools: IM. Language and dialect develops organically, and there's nothing we can to stop its evolution. One of the major issues in any educational setting -- and why stop there, when you can include any circumstance where adults try to communicate with kids, such as, I don't know, parenting, or existing anywhere in the world, anytime, ever -- is the hoary old "communications gap" between generations. But this cliche is alive, well, and happening, as children of the iGeneration interact with those from the "Me" generation. (Has anyone coined that comparison yet? If not, I call trademark.)

"Netspeak," or 1337speak, is the de facto lingua franca (pardon my language) of this generation's digital, textual interaction; it's pervasive in society, multinational in scope, and has significantly altered our lexicon while naturalistically becoming a medium suitable for worldwide reception. From the perspective of a future educator, who will at least interact with masters of this dialect (and who, at most, may use IM and MMS tech to interact with students), we need to remain fluent so that we may communicate with our students.

IMHO. TFWIW.

On Wikipedia (or, for the British, Wikipaedia)

When can Wikipedia be trusted? Well, according to non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the show, if not now, then soon. According to an August 24th article in the New York Times, Wikipeditors were then in the process of instituting a feature called “flagged revisions,” which requires an "experienced volunteer [Wikipedia] editor" to approve public alterations to articles about living people before those changes go... um, live. Like most message boards worth reading (or, at least, worth not dismissing out of hand), articles won't reflect updates until a moderator gives the nod.

Better refereeing, while perhaps antithetical to the free-for-all origins and explosive growth of the site, is now imperative; in the wake of troubling edits by a variety of self-serving corporations and politicians, and given the site's scope, popularity, influence, and ubiquity. Quoth Michael Snow, Seattle lawyer and chairman of the Wikimedia board: “We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.” Yes: when 60 million Americans a month rely on Wikipedia as a trusted source regarding many subjects beyond the oeuvre of Joss Whedon, time to hold editorial input to a higher standard than the "is my fettucini al dente?" test.

Disclosure! I use Wikipedia. I have Wikipedia in my pocket, thanks to my iPhone. You the best thing about Wikipedia, besides comprehensive Joss Whedon information? The thing that makes Wikipedia something like a reliable source? The webliography, man. The articles may be tainted, but having a clearinghouse of sources at the bottom of each page can save some valuable googlin' time. (Listen to me: as if googling information is so gosh-darn time consuming. Boy, am I spoiled.)