I've been working on several pieces tentatively titled "Google vs. Grok." I love telling people this. I get one of two reactions to Grok. Either people light up or look at me quite perplexed. Grok is from Robert Heinlein's 1961 Hugo-Award Winning Stranger in a Strange Land and speaks to a true, deep understanding. In the book, it also has to do with eating people when they die to truly understand them, but that's a little off topic... :) (It is also fun that I can look at all the 100 uses and contexts of grok in the book from the Google word cloud.)
I'm writing some research in this space for my Fielding Graduate University work, hopefully finishing a piece for a media journal this week, and presenting at TechEd here in the Pasadena area on April 13 about its implications on teaching organizations. I'll be talking about information literacy and its implications just in time for the proposed May "launch" of the new California state information literacy standards (noted below).
At CUE10 this past week, I found the issues illustrated by two very different but back-to-back panels on the subject:
1) First, Heather Wolpert-Gawron (http://tweenteacher.com) shared her insights from teaching information literacy to Southern California middle schoolers in San Gabriel. From her engaging and humorous work in the classroom, she has created and published two workbooks on the subject, available at Teacher Created Resources. She has some marvelous illustrations and exercises to get students to decode the web and think of its many layers in very real terms to that age group. She found a gap and has filled it.
She also shared some interesting sites with "wrong" information that are great examples to share with students. My favorite example was about the extinction of the Tree Octopus at http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.
2) In a room down the hall just following Heather's presentation, a panel discussed these new state "standards." Behind the table, we had voices ranging from California PTA to UC to a school board member to the California School Library Association. The whole session was focused on the proposed School Library Standards and the contained Information Literacy Standards for the state of California: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/lb/documents/schlibstandrevdraft.doc.
However, the group repeated over and over that these aren't Standards that will be tested. Instead, these are meant to be guidelines or models for behavior.
What you don't test, we don't tend to get.
I found this entire session frustrating and all about how to set up goals with no resources, no funding, and no professional development for teachers. Everyone is happy to wave the flag around the idea, but it is shoved into the world of school libraries as the change agents. They are and can be, but on the school pecking order, aren't in the right political position of funding and influence to really affect changing how we learn. This discussion wasn't a cry to integrate this thinking and learning into the balance of the school day, but focused on parking this into the funding-beleaguered school libraries. Yet this seemed a big battle or task to even get to this point, having taken a reported 17 years to achieve.
And we wonder why many of my graduate students still use the first few items in their 2.5-word Google search to find truth for their thinking and assignments.
Monday, March 08, 2010
#CUE10 #3: Google vs. Grok -- Information Literacy Standards, but not Standards?
#CUE10 #2: Challenging assumptions between creative works and technology
What assumptions do we make in how we can create by the rules of our technologies?
At the end of March, I begin to teach my Digital Content, Commerce, and Culture course at UCLA Anderson. This year, I'm morphing it into an examination from a media business perspective of the interplay between assumptions of creativity and technology. I have a marvelous group of speakers planned and am fairly excited about it. I'm also working on doctoral research in this arena, so the fibers of my interests are connecting well here.
Many things sparked that interest at CUE 2010 this week. I am including below some of the links that were shared by intriguing speakers as well as off-site from cohorts and friends. Most of the elements below tinker with the assumptions that we make between creativity and technology:
- Paradigm shifts in how we connect technology and action: TED talk from November in India -- http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/685. Pranav Mistry is one of the 2010 Creativity 50 (http://creativity-online.com/news/the-2010-creativity-50/142647). If you haven’t explored TED.com, plan a bottle of wine and a few hours...
- Assumptions of how we interact with online video: http://soytuaire.labuat.com/. I was introduced to this by Roger Wagner, the creator behind HyperStudio. He showed this to me as an example of where we may be going in terms of interactivity. Play with this by moving your cursor. See what assumptions it challenges about (a) a screen-shaped rectangular image and (b) what we can do as users and how to plan for alternate interaction.
- Rock Our World: Take a look how a teacher used Apple's GarageBand, the Internet, and crowdsourced creativity to create music at http://www.rockourworld.org. I just heard the founder speak on Saturday – amazing, especially from where she started as just being able to do email.
- Shared by Tweenteacher (Heather Wolpert-Gawron): challenging our assumptions of the rules of the medium: http://www.youtube.com/user/oceanking97
#CUE10 #1: Changing gear-driven assumptions on Creativity and Learning
I spent Thursday through Saturday at Computer-Using Educators (CUE) out in the desert here in California and met a wonderful group of thoughtful and somewhat rebellious teachers. Many had to take their own days off to come and paid their own ways. Each was working in their own path to make the education better for the students in their classes. Most were pursuing project-based learning (PBL), using social constructivist activities to ferment and expand the learning experience.
The dialog had thankfully moved beyond getting Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom (where many sit unused) and instead how to get the students to be the ones doing the discovery and inquiry.
Vistors wouldn't have known that from the show floor, where IWB's were abundant...but so were alternatives to attach them to rolling carts (Royal iRover) to share as well as Epson coming out with a $1,800 IWB projector (BrightLink 450Wi) that didn't need a specific anything on the wall. I got to play with the Hitachi StarBoard interactive wireless tablet ($400-ish) and saw lots of excitement around the InterwriteMobi, and other devices that let the interactivity come out to the student in the room instead of the "sage on the stage," or the teacher being the dominant thinker at the front of the room. Halleluiah!
And more on saving $$$$ and changing assumptions....
I found two treats that made me smile. Both are created and distributed directly by small companies:
The other was a software product called GradeCam, which rocked. You can create input forms for quizzes on the fly, have the students fill them out, then throw them in front of a document cam for instant grading, feedback, and even graphics of results. Very cool and both save money and time versus the traditional options. You can get a single-user software for less than $400, or you can get it for your whole school at a very small amount per child per year. They are getting ready to launch a SaaS (online web) model in the near future. This alternative might be a good mix or substitute with the clicker-driven systems, and feeds directly into most gradebook programs, saving lots of time for teachers and giving direct feedback to the students immediately without a lot of preparation programming questions into a computer interface.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Tracking Memes: the Great Humbling vs. the New Normal
My husband has been amused how many times he has heard "the New Normal" since I wrote about that thought some time ago (March 2009). You can search for it on Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends?q=new+normal) and see that though it was searched for since 2005, it was a news topic increasing in 2009. Interestingly, the Beijing Review recently attributed as an idea conceived by Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of the global investment management company PIMCO, and said it had become a main idea at the Davos World Economic Forum this past month.
- Nov. 2004 -- It began percolating as a blog/book/website -- http://www.thenewnormal.com/
- March 2009 -- McKinsey Quarterly piece with Ian Davis (worldwide managing director) asking us to think about the New Normal
- March 13, 2009 -- I wrote http://musings.maremel.com/2009/03/new-normal-or-great-panic-of-2009-2011.html, which evidently was read by at least two people, which debated whether this was the New Normal or the Great Panic of 2009-2011 (and the comments supported Great Panic). I was probably starting to channel the gestalt.
- May 2009 -- PIMCO published on El-Erian's comments -- http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/PIMCO+Spotlight/2009/Secular+Outlook+May+2009+El-Erian.htm
- Business Insider Article, May 2009: http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-pimcos-el-erian-explains-the-new-normal-global-stagflation-2009-5
- May 14: http://financialjoyride.blogspot.com/2009/05/pimcos-mohamed-el-erian-on-new-normal.html
- May 2009 -- ABC News began asking their readers about it -- http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=7639021
- June 2009 -- Baron's Article with JP Morgan -- http://online.barrons.com/article/SB124424132188690295.html#articleTabs_panel_article%3D1
Yesterday, my husband was reading an online article yesterday and was intrigued by "the Great Humbling" as a related meme, but couldn't remember where it came from. It doesn't yet show up on Google Trends. So I thought I would search it to see its incarnations:
- Feb. 1, 2009: http://elitrope.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/the-great-humbling/ noted that he had been using it back Feb. 1 and actually noted in his blog that "you heard it here first."
- Dec. 15, 2009: US News: http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2009/12/15/how-to-live-happily-on-75-percent-less.html
- It then was picked up here and lots of links to this piece instead of US News: http://www.politicalhotwire.com/forum/index.php?/topic/2743-the-great-humbling/ -- This seems to have stirred a lot of the pot, as well as comes up WELL above US News in searches for this
- Dec. 16, 2009: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_121609/content/01125106.guest.html -- ah, the ever-beloved Rush Limbaugh has moved to give this both legs and spin
- http://greathumbling.com/ -- the "domain name is for sale" on the website.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Tweet turns into NYT mini-interview: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/nyregion/17JFK.html
Funny things happened on the way to Madrid and Pamplona....
I was just chatting with the charming lady next to me, a New Yorker returning home, as we were taxing in at JFK Airport in New York. Then the plane stopped and the pilot came on, saying there had been an airport security breach at Terminal 8 and we would be waiting to find a space to pull in for 30 minutes to up to several hours. Groans were heard throughout the cabin. I quickly calculated that I had about a three-hour cushion for my next flight, which was heading to Madrid to catch my connection to Pamplona. The crew made other announcements about avoiding lines to use the toilets -- not my present concern -- and didn't tell us anything else.
I got on my Blackberry. Four other people around me got on their version of Smartphones and we all began to contact friends and check out the situation. We quickly learned from a blend of Twitter, Yahoo, friends' notes, the Washington Post online, and Reuters that some guy two hours earlier had accidentally gone through a airport employee door. The pilot -- did he know for those last two hours and didn't want to tell us until he knew more information?
I tweeted at @maremel my frustration with the scene. My Twitter feeds to my Facebook, and I got some nice commiserating comments. About two hours later, after an hour of waiting on the tarmac, another 15-20 minutes waiting for the jetway to be rolled out, walk time to cut around the massive crowds in the Terminal to get to the AirTrain to get to Terminal 7 to wait for my next flight.
So, over a sandwich, I read my email on my Blackberry. Lo and behold, a very nice New York Times reporter had read my Tweet and wanted to talk with me about my experience. She and I had two quick phone calls from my waiting spot on the floor of the Iberia Airlines gate. I called my husband afterwards to chuckle at the irony of my heading to Spain to teach about digital media and having a Twitter note turn into a NY Times interview!
It turned into a few lines of the article itself: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/nyregion/17JFK.html. that's turned into emails and Facebook comments from friends to see if that was me. (I supposed there probably is another 47-year-old Gigi Johnson somewhere.) What a way to start a trip!
It also is ironic that a year ago when I was here I Tweeted about my masters' class, and that Tweet was read by the Higher Universities of Technology in Abu Dhabi, who is having me come there to teach next month. The world is small and Twitter is making it smaller in all sorts of weird, wired ways.
