:Connecting the Dots

Getting through Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams’ Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything was a long haul for me. It’s not that I don’t agree with their ideas, because I do… mostly. I found it very dry and not nearly as engaging as The World Is Flat or Everything Bad is Good for You. Maybe it was just a little too business-oriented and it took a little too much work to apply their ideas to schools. In some cases it was a fool’s errand to even try to make that connection. But I did mark three pages which I thought captured important ideas for the education community:

• “The culture of generosity is the very backbone of the internet” - I love this quote and will use it again and again. It comes about in the context of their discussion of open platforms like Amazon’s e-commerce engine and flickr. It’s part of a very honest and frank exploration of people’s motives for taking the time and effort to put things “out there” - one of the few moments where the book seems more real and less Polyanna-ish. They ask some very hard questions about where people’s willingness to contribute really comes from and if it is sustainable in the long run.

• “‘The technologies that come along and change the world are the simple, unplanned ones that emerge from the grassroots rather than the ones that come out of the corner offices of the corporate strategists’.” - Boy, do I believe this sentiment expressed by Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems. Real evolutionary (and sometimes revolutionary) change always comes from the bottom. As I continue to look at technology adoption in schools, I become more and more convinced that top-down dictates just don’t work and it’s the creative use of simple technologies by those in the trenches that eventually spreads and hits critical mass. This will be the focus of my short talk at NECC Unplugged. The chapter in which this quote appeared, “Wiki Workspaces,” was my favorite.

• “Danny Hillis, who founded Thinking Machines and invented parallel computing, says there are two ways to build complex things: engineering and evolution.” - Perhaps just another way of saying bullet #2 above, but I like the contrast between the two. I think that what I’m coming to realize in looking at organizational change in schools is that you can’t engineer it; you can only create conditions conducive to evolution. You create learning communities where people can grow and the organization moves ahead as a result.

Time to read a novel - something enjoyable that will drag me in and keep me reading…

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I think we need to be skeptical about the things which sweep us off of our feet. When you say to yourself, “Oh my god, this is the best thing i’ve ever done/seen/had/etc.,” it’s time to step back and ask some questions. Well, I’ve been doing that a lot lately as I think about the social web and privacy.

When people raise concerns about Gen Y’s seeming lack of concern about protecting their privacy, I sometimes counter by asking why every other generation is so obsessed with secrecy and self-imposed isolation. And I do believe that’s an important question to ask. But lately, Michel Foucault has been on my mind when I think about how willing many young (and some old) people are to expose every detail, every thought, every action, every moment, to public view on YouTube, blogs, Facebook, and so on. Foucault said that power exerts itself by fixing its subject in its gaze, by keeping him/her/them/it under constant surveillance. So we put ourselves “out there” for all to see. And we celebrate that freedom. And we, the techies, encourage our colleagues and students to follow suit. But whose purposes are we serving?

When I was growing up in the Eighties, 1984 loomed large. Was Orwell right? Were we heading towards a police state? It was a scary vision: cameras watching our every move, secret police monitoring our relationships and private acts, “Big Brother” constantly peering over our shoulder. Certainly there are people thinking about these same issues in light of the Patriot Act and revelations about domestic spying and monitoring of phone calls by US citizens. But in my more cynical moments, I’m beginning to think that it’s less about the all-seeing eye prying into our world and more about being tricked into opening the kimono. With web 2.0, have we internalized the gaze of authority? Have we convinced ourselves, in Huxley’s words, that “everyone belongs to everyone else?” Why does the government (or whoever) need to spy on us when we’ve become so excited about putting it all out there on our own?

It’s a weird philosophical question but one that might be worth asking the next time you hit that “Upload” button on YouTube. Have we become the unwitting accessories to our own oppression?

Photo by andy emcee posted on flickr.com

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For the last two months, teacher participants in my New Technologies Seminar (offered through the Scarsdale Teachers Institute) have been trying their hand at blogging to reflect on the course and to discuss its content.  I thought this would be as good a time (and place) as any to introduce them to the rest of the education blogosphere:

Regina - What’s going on in my gray matter?

Laura - Hola Todos

Rachel - This and That

Heather - All That and More

Deborah - Zig Zag

Sandy - Sandy’s Blog

Jennifer - Make Sense of It ALL

Beth - For the Technologically Challenged

Jeanette - jstockblog

Barbara - Literary Lines

Jessica - Why Blogger?

 Stop by, take a look, and leave a comment!

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I don’t know what pushed me over the edge.  Curiosity?  Boredom?  A burning desire to connect?  Feeling left out of the Web 2.0 revolution?  Maybe a little of each.  Today I joined Facebook.

I guess I have three immediate reactions:

1.  Either I need to meet more people or the people I know need to get with the program.  I could only locate two friends!  I’m sure it’s in part due to the fact that we’re friends with so many teachers and teachers are, well, you know… on the outside looking in when it comes to social web technologies.

2.  What an incredibly polished piece of software!  I was impressed at how powerful Facebook is, how nicely it presents, and how tight the integration with other web apps is.
3.  The privacy stuff.  The very first thing I did after signing up was to go and lock down my profile.  I was impressed at how granular the privacy controls are (field-level controls - you decide who can see each discrete piece of information in your profile) and relieved when I looked up our district’s students to see how few actually had public profiles.  They are more savvy than we give them credit for being…

I’m having fun with it so far.  More to come!

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