College Education

In Six Years in the Valley, The Economist describes how Silicon Valley is entering their second ‘nuclear winter’ of the 21st century. After the dotcom bust, we saw a revival centered on Web 2.0 services, typically provided free to the user, with the assumption that online advertising would eventually provide the revenue stream to ‘monetize’ the venture. Well it might have worked for Google, but now the recession is hitting hard, there’s nowhere near enough advertising revenue to go round. Silicon Valley stands on "ground that is as unstable, seismically and metaphorically, as it was in the earlier bust. The world economy is in crisis, advertising is collapsing and start-ups are once again vanishing into thin air."

Typically, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Products and services can only be provided free of charge if someone other than the user is prepared to foot the bill. If advertising is not sought or is not available in sufficient quantities, it seems to me that there are only so many reasons why this situation might arise:

• The provider is the beneficiary of some form of grant, most likely through government, but perhaps from some charitable institution.
• The provider is treating the product as a ‘loss leader.’ They hope that a positive reaction to the product will boost their visibility and reputation, making it easier for them to sell other products and services.
• The provider offers an entry-level product, hoping to build an appetite for the product that can only be satisfied by a premium version or with the aid of add-on services, such as consultancy, support, training, hosting or adaptation of the product.
• The provider earns enough from other activities that they can afford to offer the product in question for free, perhaps simply because they believe in it. This argument also works at the level of those individuals who contribute their spare time freely, as a hobby or as a form of voluntary work.

We have got used to free content, free web 2.0 services and free software. We cannot assume that this situation will continue indefinitely and we may have to start dipping into our pockets to keep those services that we most value alive. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Source: Clive Shepherd

If it continues (and it likely will), the continuing geographical shift of concentrated poverty from the central city to the suburbs will deeply affect visions of “urban education.” Our current model is based on the idea that concentrated poverty around cities is focused in central city areas.

What happens when concentrated poverty shifts to the suburbs?

While there will surely be urban concentrated poverty for a long time, there is evidence that poor people of color are shifting out of central city areas and attempting to “escape” to the suburbs.

Of course the problem, well known by housing scholars, is that it doesn’t take that many poor people of color to “tip” a neighborhood into white/middle-class flight.

When poverty is located in a city, there are at least some established sets of services, smaller distances to travel, and a tax base that consists of more than housing. What happens when a small suburb that depends on housing for tax revenues becomes poor and its housing values plummet (yes, I know, we are already finding out–but right now this isn’t necessarily a shift towards concentrated poverty). Who is going to pay for schools, sewer, etc.?

From a recent article in Miller-McCune:

The displaced poor find value in the aging, outer-ring tract-home developments that once promised easy living far from the city’s hustle and bustle. And housing officials, resolved to breaking up pockets of concentrated poverty (where at least 40 percent of the families are living below the poverty line), are thrilled. The federal Section 8 housing program, which allows recipients to negotiate government-subsidized rentals anywhere, is grounded in the belief that a safe, stable neighborhood can help unbuckle the straps of poverty.

But the positive benefits of moving to a neighborhood of less poverty diminish as the number of poor relocating there increases, new research suggests. In other words, families are far less likely to pull themselves out of poverty when their exposure to other poor families reaches a kind of tipping point. George C. Galster, a professor of urban affairs at Wayne State University, has quantified this poverty threshold as roughly 15 to 20 percent of a neighborhood. If the poverty rate exceeds that, Galster said, “All hell breaks loose” in the form of crime, drop-out rates, teen pregnancies, drug use and, in turn, declining property values.

Galster’s working paper for the National Poverty Center, Consequences from the Redistribution of Urban Poverty During the 1990s: A Cautionary Tale, warns that polices to break up concentrated poverty may be backfiring. While the number of Americans living in the poorest neighborhoods has notably declined since 1990, by about 25 percent, poverty elsewhere has inched up. Galster worries that the rush to relocate the urban poor, through Section 8 and other poverty redistribution programs, has pushed many less-desirable suburban neighborhoods to this tipping point.

The article is focused on “keep the poor people out” kinds of solutions, instead of on wider questions about poverty. Although, if you are poor and live in a neighborhood that might tip, do you really want more poor people to move in? (Hello, institutional racism.)

Also see work by Myron Orfield, including this decade-old piece (PDF) predicting just what we are seeing and also actually discussing some solutions (he was a state legislator before he became a professor). (He’s the brother of another Orfield you might have heard of.)

Source: Aaron Schutz

The MASIE Center has just published an interesting survey on the use of social learning in the workplace. I’m not sure I go with the term ‘social learning’ because this is incredibly ambiguous – after all, a fair proportion of all learning involves the learner interacting with others – but let’s assume they mean the use of social media for learning and not get distracted. This was a self-selecting survey to which 1069 responded, ostensibly from ‘around the globe’, although I would predict a strong North American skew.

Respondents were asked which social media technologies they used in their organisations. Practically all the responses are interesting because they are, at least for me, unexpectedly high, even Twitter down at the bottom with 12%. Media sharing at 48%, wikis at 47%, blogs at 45%, social networks at 41%, content ratings at 13%. These are fascinating results, even allowing for the fact that respondents are self-selecting and that the question doesn’t specifically ask whether these media are used for learning. Even if you divide by four, you still have evidence of a significant trend in a hugely conservative profession.

Some 62% thought there was some or high value in social learning in their organisations. I’m not sure if this is positive or not, but I’ll take it as the former because I bet that a fair proportion of these installations flounder because they are poorly implemented or insufficiently integrated into everyday work.

When looking at barriers, by far the biggest obstacle identified was organisational culture, which is no surprise. Command and control doesn’t fit well with informal and collaborative learning approaches, and given the current crisis there’s even more command and control than usual to contend with. Chances are small organisations will find it easier.

Some 35% of respondents stated that they had a social learning project in place, i.e. a deliberate use of social media for learning, as opposed to emergence from the bottom-up. I’m not sure that it matters from which direction the impetus comes, but it would be nice if it was both.

Only 11% thought social learning was a fad, which is encouraging, although I’m not sure you can recognise something as a fad when it’s currently fashionable (as we found with sub-prime mortgages).

The question was asked ‘What percentage of your learning would you estimate could be done with a Social Learning format?’, which is rather awkwardly phrased and open to all sorts of misinterpretations, not to mention impossible to estimate. Anyway, respondents made a guess and the highest proportion guessed at 20-30%. That seems optimistic for social media in the short term, but far too low for social learning in its broadest sense.

I wouldn’t quote these figures with huge confidence, but I would be encouraged by the progress that’s being made. Thanks to the MASIE Center for getting this data together.

Source: Clive Shepherd

Rule 2: The human brain evolved too

In this chapter, John Medina explains how the brain has evolved over time. Much of this is not particularly relevant to learning, so I’m going to concentrate on one key element in this evolution – the development of symbolic reasoning:

"Symbolic reasoning is a uniquely human talent. It may have arisen from our need to understand one another’s intentions and motivations, allowing us to co-ordinate within a group."

"The ability to peer inside somebody’s mental life and make predictions takes a tremendous amount of intelligence and, not surprisingly, brain activity."

"We try to see our entire world in terms of motivations, ascribing motivations to our pets and even to inanimate objects."

"Our ability to learn has deep roots in relationships. Our learning performance may be deeply affected by the emotional environment in which the learning takes place."

"If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, he or she may not be able to perform as well. If a student feels misunderstood because the teacher cannot connect with the way the student learns, the student may become isolated."

The bottom line:

"Relationships matter when attempting to teach human beings."

I suppose there’s nothing new in this idea. If we think back to all those individuals (teachers, parents, coaches, peers, managers, etc.) that have contributed greatly to our learning, there’s a good chance that we related well to these people and them to us. They may have challenged us to go further than we would have done on our own accord, but we respected them all the more for that. Those people who contrived to bully us, humiliate us, patronise us or otherwise make us feel bad, probably succeeded in putting us off the subject in question as well as them.

Given the choice, then we will almost certainly gravitate towards those people to whom we can relate well. Trouble is, we don’t always have the choice. In the workplace, we can get stuck with the wrong manager and this usually ends the same way – most people don’t leave their jobs, whatever they say at the exit interview, they divorce their managers! When it comes to the classroom, we typically get who we get and have to lump it. This puts a considerable onus on those who select and train teachers to make sure they do a good job.

To some extent the same applies if we learn collaboratively online. Without good facilitation/moderation, there is a risk of relationships breaking down, perhaps because one person tends to dominate or behave aggresively.

So, an alternative might be to avoid teachers altogether and concentrate on self-study – after all, we know learners like to learn at their own pace and in managable chunks. Leaving aside the fact that self-study may not be the ideal pedagogical choice, we’re unlikely to completely get round the relationship issue. In The Media Equation (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Reeves and Nass demonstrated that people treat computers, TV and new media like real people and places – if what they see or hear seems impolite or unfriendly, they turn off. Funnily enough, they blame this on the hardware, not the author, so designers can relax in the knowledge that they’re unlikely to receive hate mail.

My posting on Brain rules #1

The Brain Rules book

The Brain Rules website

Source: Clive Shepherd

Rule #1: Support your message with visuals.

Rule #2: Don’t duplicate on-screen text with narration.

Rule #3: Everything is hopeless, so you may we well give up.

Forget the rules. Watch the video.

Source: Clive Shepherd

I had to share this one. Norman Lamont takes the micky out of the corporate communications department with New technology  the threat to our information.

Source: Clive Shepherd

John Medina’s excellent book Brain Rules has received quite a bit of attention already (see my original post based on the videos and online information I explored first on John’s website, as well as Donald Clark’s recent review), but I’ve only just got round to reading it properly and I want to take a look at each of the twelve rules in a bit more detail. Whether I sustain this remains to be seen.

John is a developmental molecular biologist (whatever that means) and serious about distinguishing brain myths from brain facts, so I’ve got some confidence in his work. I’m not going to try and relay to you all John’s sources for his twelve rules, because it would take too long and you’d have no reason to buy the book, but I will pass on his conclusions and my reflections on why these may or may not be important in the context of workplace learning. So don’t argue with me if you disagree with the rules; on the other hand, do let me know if you have a different interpretation or application.

Rule 1: Exercise boosts brain power

You’ll have to get used to the fact that John’s rules aren’t really rules at all, they’re assertions. In my mind a rule is a statement that explains what to do in a particular situation – ‘if x happens, then do y’ – but let’s not get bogged down in semantics.

John argues that our brains were built for the way life was for us thousands of years ago – continually on the move, hunting and gathering, avoiding danger and seeking out opportunities. Early humans walked something like 12 miles a day (which meant they must have been pretty fit and needed a hell of a lot of calories), which meant they were conditioned to thinking as they went. Experiments show that thinking skills are improved by exercise, which stimulates the flow if blood to the brain. Even a modest amount of aerobic exercise will half your risk of general dementia and reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s by 60%.

So, what does rule 1 mean to me? Well, first of all, as someone who exercises frequently and must therefore be brilliant, this is a chance to be smug and look down my nose at those who have other pastimes. As John says, "Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called ‘fluid intelligence’ tasks."

But what it really tells me is that we have a problem if we expect learners to thrive sitting down for hours at a time in a classroom. This involves an unnatural amount of stillness and a dangerous absence of stimulation. It also shows how important it is not to compromise on physical activity in schools.

In the workplace, it would not go down well, particularly in tough times, if we took the afternoon off to play football, but there must be some compromise. I know some trainers use ‘energisers’ and many of these involve exercise, so I’d advocate more of those. Perhaps it would also help if the coffee machine and the toilets were some distance away, maybe 5 miles! More realistically, I’d schedule lots of breaks and encourage participants to take a walk. On residential courses I wouldn’t schedule evening work, instead encouraging people to use the gyms and other facilities.

Would I go so far as to have everyone walk round the room continuously during the sessions or sit on exercise bikes? I’d like to think I would, but hey, they’d think I was mad (and I can’t be – see above). What I do know is that exercise in moderation certainly gets my brain going, as I always get my best ideas on the cross-trainer and then have to rely on my short-term memory operating at peak performance as I try and hold on to all this while I wait for the opportunity to take a note. We need notepads or audio recorders on the gym machines. Could there be some money in that?

Source: Clive Shepherd

Back at Online Educa in Berlin last December, I made the decision to undertake a three month trial of Twitter. I must admit I didn’t really get it, but I was encouraged by the enthusiasm of Jane Hart, Josie Fraser and others, and decided to give it a go. Well, the three months are now up and it’s time to reflect on my experience. Do I continue or call it a day?

The stats show a reasonable amount of activity: I am following 107 others, 286 are following me and I have made 343 tweets, which works out at about 3 or 4 a day. In practice, some days I don’t tweet at all, on others I suddenly remember Twitter and issue a bombardment of tweets, and on those days when I’m able to keep online continuously, I approach what I imagine to be normal Twitter behaviour, i.e. occasional tweets throughout the day. I’ve discovered I need some tools, in my case Twhirl, a Twitter client for my PC, and Twibble, which does the same for my Nokia N series phone. Technically all this has worked fine and cost me nothing.

Typically those who don’t use Twitter find it hard to understand why anyone would want to tweet and what they would find to tweet about, and that’s quite understandable because tweeting is not normal human behaviour, at least not for me. Twitter itself suggests that you answer the question ‘what are you doing?’ in 140 characters or less, and that’s where most people start. This is a bit like a Facebook status posting so, like many people, I configured Facebook to pick up my tweets and display them on my profile page.

Sometimes what you are doing is interesting to other people, not because they need to know but because what you do gives away a great deal about what it’s like to be you. From the early days of Facebook, I have been fascinated by what people have for dinner, watch on TV, read in the bath, do at weekends, etc., just as much as I want to know what they’re up to professionally. You don’t get this information from a presentation, a report, even a blog, yet somehow it brings you much closer to the real person – you feel like friends, even if you’ve never met.

Once you have a relationship with your Twitter network, you can start to be a little more demanding. In my case that means asking questions – how do you do this? what is your experience of that? Replies come back in minutes and certainly much more quickly than you’d expect from a blog or forum posting, but you need quite a large network to maximise your chances of receiving useful responses.

Of course this works two ways and the old cliche that you only get out of anything what you are prepared to put in certainly applies here. When someone asks a question and you can contribute a useful answer then of course you must. And if you’ve found a gem of a website, blog posting, video or whatever then you should share it.

As a learning and development professional it is obligatory to ask whether Twitter has potential as a learning tool. I’m not sure. It doesn’t, for me at least, have the power that blogging does as a stimulus for reflection. It doesn’t offer the potential for collaborative work that a wiki can provide. Nor is it likely to be as helpful in locating and sharing expertise as an enterprise social networking tool. But I’m sure it can work alongside all these and other tools and I would certainly never discourage the use of Twitter in a learning context.

In summary, Twitter is providing me with plenty of value, so I’m sticking with it. As someone who works from home, it keeps me in touch with a wide range of like-minded professionals. Whether the benefits I’ve found are universal, I couldn’t possibly say. So, if you’re not already tweeting, then you’re going to have to find out the same way I did.

Source: Clive Shepherd

Of course I must get this book.

Tales for Little Rebels is the first anthology of radical children’s literature published in the United States. . . . .

Tales for Little Rebels . . . explores the inherently political nature of kid lit through an expansive collection of examples.

In his foreword, folklorist and scholar Jack Zipes claims that the late arrival of such a book is no accident. . . . “We tend to repress the crucial issues that children need to know to adjust to a rapidly changing world. We tend to repress what is at the heart of the conflicts that determine our lives. We have tried to ‘nourish’ children by feeding them literature that we think is appropriate for them. Or, put another way, we have manipulated them through oral forms of communication and prescriptions in print to think or not to think about the world around them.”

Does anyone out there know of a good ideological analysis of children’s literature and/or television? I’m interested in the overall messages given to kids by these key avenues of socialization. Dora the Explorer anyone?

My 2 year old actually walked over to me this morning and started singing me the opening bars of the All Things Considered theme tune. Da da da da da da dat da.

Source: Aaron Schutz

New paper by David Berliner. Nicely done summary of the effects of non-school issues on school performance.

Source: Aaron Schutz