30 yrs already old things

via @courosa

intro to the virtual choir

rscon11

alec couros

google doc for his session

video from rscon11
and josh's closing video

cool night on twitter

cristian:  http://tinyurl.com/294vfw2
blogs this:  http://tinyurl.com/32hc9f5
i tweet this:

cameron tweets this:

(yeah - the Cameron Sinclair - architecture for humanity)
later..
seth tweets this:

because we had about an hour face to face yesterday on just this stuff.



how could you want to miss any of this?
all after hours.
all stuff that matters.

oh the connections we can now make.
makes me giddy.


ah George. perfect:

thanks Tom..
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curation tools

4 promising curation tools that help make sense of the web

10 creative uses of new facebook profile

tech & learning

drake and warlick
using tech well not just when the tech is invisible, but when the walls and the clocks and the labels become invisible.



nielsen and webb (mesa state)  - cells


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dorfman & davis

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dan ariely

temptation and self-control

can you take on short term consequences of loss for a long term gain

waiting for choc, doing exercise, etc... we'll do it
because in the future we'll wonderful people
problem is we don't live in the future


his trick for self-control
he loves movies but has no time to watch, so his deal was after injection, he would watch movies

we exagerate the now and ignore the future
he did reward substitution, he acted as if he cared about the liver

we face problems with self-control all the time
can we use reward substitution, maybe

all the elements that create human apathy - rolled into one
perhaps it isn't reward substitution

1) reward substitution
2) self-control contracts - creative ideas, alarm clock connected to your least fav charity, etc
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kevin kelly

web (not internet) is 5000 days old - and if we would have suggested it 5000 days ago - we would have said - that's impossible.  (and what has happened is amazing and no one is amazed)
so what will happen in the next 5000 days

100 bill clicks per day
55 trillion links
to a first approx - size of machine is size of brain
however your brain isn't doubling every 2 years
2040 - will exceed human brain in world
consequences
1) we're giving this machine a body -
portals
the cloud - touching the cloud to compute - everything goes through it
our environment becomes the web...embed web into the world
2) restructure it's architecture -
a) link computers - net  [machine to machine]  b) link pages [page to page]  c)  link info [id to id]
so you have to be open to having your data shared vs just your page or computer
after 5000 days - future d) link things
3) we're going to become co-dependent on it - our environment becomes the web...embed web into the world
always on it - total personalization will require total transparency


we think dependency is bad - but now - we're totally dependent on other techs - ie the alphabet, etc

next 5000 - not going to be the web but only better
going to be smarter (anticpate what we're doing in a good sense)
will know us
will be more ubiquitous - us in the middle of it

you have to begin to think of this as a new kind of stage - not just - only better
it's a large organism, it's a whole system, a one, a unity of some sort is starting to emerge.

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steven johnson

ted on emergence


book was on density - and how the coming together of people, intertwined as a web (emergence) was making the world a better place..
just finishing while he is a couple blocks away from 911, when density is embodied in the destruction, density kills

a week after - walking 20 blocks.. streets were alive with people, a beautiful urban day, the city was working, everything that makes a city successful was on display, on the streets.
decentralized in function - 20 blocks north, 2 days later, city was thriving

who builds a neighborhood - personalities, etc
answer - everybody and nobody
who is keeping the streets alive post 911 - whole system

increasingly what we're starting to see on the web

new model of inner-activity
you suddenly have the power to put a link to your dog on your page, and others have the power to click on those links


wow - filmed in 2003



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barry schwartz

we need less rules and more virtue


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homeless

how cool is this:


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Idzie Desmarais

great post (and entire blog) on unschooling. much to learn here..

unschooled 101.

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kate fridkis

trouble with being exceptional
these notes from listening to her interview with Beatrice of Radio Free School.
the idea of balance
when you learn to love learning - you do things that interest you, whatever things that interest you end up connecting you to a lot of things in a lot of surprising ways..
so you end up being more well-rounded than anyone expects.. but it's not because you set out to do that

you learn something new in every environment - always learning.. because you're living

so glad to make the acquaintance of the lovely @EatTheDamnCake


esp love this: when she said - i wish it wasn't a competition, because no one thing is the answer. we need many choices. (my paraphrase)

and then the interviewer making a comment on questions asked of homeschoolers - that they don't seem to ask of others.. like - can you socialize, can you adapt to the real world
reminded me of Roger Martin's The Design of Business, we live in a reliability-oriented world, which we don't question. validity-oriented thinking, innovation, alternate thinking, is questioned beyond measure and then blown off when the same questions should be asked of everyone. the ones asking the questions are quite often lacking those answers most.
ie: can you adapt to the real world - how far from the real world is public school? life isn't like a traditional school classroom.

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mark harvoth

bravo Mark




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steven johnson

where good ideas come from  - rsa


what spaces do they hatch in:
1) hunch state - slow
ie: tim berners lee - 10 yrs for www
create a space where ideas can mingle and swap


the great driver of scientific and techno  innovation
has been the historic increase of connectivity - over the last 600-700 yrs
so yes - we're distracted.. but we have so many new ways to connect.
chance favors the connected mind.

fitting with Kelley's below - the more drippings we leave, the more potential for others to connect them, whether we do it or not..

min our selection of tech
but max the global choices of tech

Steve's april 2010 Ted


1650 english coffee house was crucial to the birth of the enlightenment
1) before that - people drank alcohol all day long
2) architecture of the space -

what are the environments that lead to unusual levels of creativity
coffee house
web
cities
bio environments - rain forrests

shared patterns?
flash, eureka, lightbulb - all share that an idea is a single thing
when really - it's a network that has never formed before
how do you get your brain into these environments where these networks will form

a design that matters
spend money getting aid and advanced electronics, but then when it breaks down, can't fix, so waste
these places can keep cars working.. so built a neonatal incubator from toyota parts

if we are trying to spaces for innovation.. we need messy looking spaces.
most people aren't good at telling/remembering where great ideas happened
kevin dunbar - went around and videoed and asked
almost all the important break through ideas happened at the conference table at the weekly lab meeting, often when they shared their mistakes (not individually by the microsope)
the liquid network, lots of different ideas playing off each other
aslo - a lot of great ideas linger for decades, not a lightbulb flash on moment
darwin tells the story of coming up with the idea for natural selection, says it's a light bulb moment in his auto bio
howard groover looked back at darwin's notebooks - he found that darwin had the full theory months and months before he had the lightbulb moment
he had the concept, but unable to fully think it yet

how do you create environments for ideas to have this long half-life?

google has hunch cultivating environments
and if you share that space, grows faster

used to be we locked them up - to make them more valuable
we should spend even more time valuing the sharing and connecting of ideas.

oct 1957 - sputnik - johns hopkins - nerd heaven
2 having an informal convo, "has anyone tried to listen to this thing?" so they try - and they pick up the signal
before long - they think they might be the first to do it, so they record it.
then they start thinking, we're noticing small frequency rates, we could probably calculate the speed using the doplar effect
we could look at the slope of the doplar effect to figure out how close it is to us
after 3-4 weeks, they have mapped the exact trajectory of this satellite going around the earth - from this little sounds
figured out an unknown location of satellite from known location on the ground
could you figure out the other way?
and they say yes
so they work on submarines with satellites
that's how gps was born,
30 yrs later - anyone could do it, and

great case study in the unplanned power of open innovative systems and spaces

listening, plotting, cold war, cup of coffee

chance favors the connected mind

how do i miss all this. this is from sept by steven - tinkering - and  
adjacent possibilities
really what headed to steven in the first place yesterday when i read this by stephen hurley at the coop

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speaking of the connected mind.. check this out - via smart mobs - mappings/networks that will make the world smart  thanks to tweet from @ricetopher

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kevin kelly

what tech wants

p. 236 - what tech brings is expanding choices... which allow us to be us.
writing in 1950, sociologist David Riesman: " the more advance the technology, on the whole, the more possible it is for a considerable number of human beings to imagine being somebody else."
we expand technology to findout who we are and who we can be.

upon studying amish, hippies, wendell berry and eric brende - who believe they don't need exploding tech to expand themselves. they are all minimalists. but - have they traded contentment for revelation. have they discovered, can they even, who they can become.
this is fine for them, but what if everyone does it, the optimization of choice collapses.
by constraining the wuite of acceptable occupations and narrowing education, the amish are holding back possiblilites not just for their children but indeirctly for all.

unlike the amish and minimites, the tens of millions of migrants headed into cities each year may invent a tool that will unleash choices for someone else. if they don't, then their children will.

our mission as humans is not only to discover our fullest selves in the technium, and to find full contentment, but to expand the possiblilites fo rothers

the amish and minimites have important lessons to teach us about selecting what we embrace.

i do want to be choosy about what i spend time mastering. i want to be able to back out of things that don't work out. i do want the minimum because i've learned that i have limited time and attentions

ownership of choices
we owe the amish hackers a large debt... through their lives we can see the technium's dilemma very clearly:
to maximize our own contentment, we see the  
minimum amount of technology in our lives.
yet to maximixe the contentment of others, we must
maximize the amount of technology in the world. 

we can only find out own minimal tools if others have created a sufficient maximum pool of options we can choose from. the dilemma remains in how we can personally minimize stuff close to us while trying to expand it globally.


p. 244 - we can learn much from disruptive technologies
switching occupations is the norm for tech.. and invention requires many encounters with early adopters and collisions with other inventions to refine its role in the technium.

we make prediction more difficult because our immediate tendency is to imagine the new thing doing and old job better. (school, no?0
we are stuck in the same blindness.
ie: the advertisers pitched the telephone as if it were a more convenient telegraph. none of them suggested having a conversation.
technologies shift as they thrives. they are remade as they are used...
they bring completely unpredicted effects as they near ubiquity.

if we examine technologies honestly, each one has its faults as well as its virtues.. in fact, an invention or idea is not really tremendous unless it can be tremendously abused.

p. 246

first law of technological expectations:
the greater the promise of a new tech, the greater the potential for harm as well
so comes precautionary principle (first crafted in 1992) most recent version states: activities that present an uncertain potential for significant harm should be prohibited unless the proponent of the activity shows that it presents no appreciable risk of harm.    [aup's, cipa, etc]

so - a tech must be shown to do no harm before it is embraced.
so - precautionary principle is very very good for one thing - stopping technological progress,
via cass r sunstein, we must challenge the precautionary principle not because it leads in bad directions, but because read for all it is worht, it leads in no direction at all.

every good produces harm soemwhere.
ie: malaria infects 300-500 mill, casing 2 mill deaths per year, it's debilitating to those who don't die and leads to cyclic poverty. but in the 1950's the level of malaria was reduced by 70% via ddt. it was so successful however, farmers eagerly sprayed it by the tons on cotton fields, so got into water cycles and into fa cells in animals, drop in reproduction rates for some predatory birds and die-offs in some fish and aquatic life species. so banned in 1972. and malaria cases in asia and africa rose again to deadly pre-50's levels.
plans to reintroduce ddt for households were blockded by the world bank, etc 1991 treaty by 91 countries - phase out ddt altogheter. ddt was probably bad, better safe than sorry. in fact ddt had never been shown to hurt humans, and the environmental farm from the miniscule amoutns of ddt applied in homes had not been measured. but nobody could prove it did not cause harm,despite its proven ability to do good.

risk aversion

we now know that people will accept a thousand times as much risk for tech or situations that are voluntary rather than madatory.
ie: you don't have a choice where you get your tap water, so you are less tolerant in regard to its safety than you might be from using a cell phone of your choice.

also - the acceptability of risk is directly influence by how easy it is to imagine both the worst case and the best benefits, and that these are determiend by ed, advertising, rumor and imagination.

generally - safety trumps innovation

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david kelly

IDEO founder

Creative Confidence, Innovation, and the Power of a Child’s Mind

According to renowned entrepreneur, designer and visionary David Kelley, it really is true that everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten—because that's when you had innate confidence in your own creative power. The problem? Figuring out how to get it back as an adult, tap into the power of that creative spirit, and harness it so you can innovate your way to personal and professional success.

creative confidence is just getting back to the natural creativity we had in kindergarten.
students don't know what they don't know, experts can't see the forest for the trees, the don't know to be afraid

a fish doesn't know he's wet
but a student has a child's mind


methodology
1) experimental - looking for non-obvious latent needs that people have
2) synthesize and develop a point of view - develop a child's view
3) prototype - act it out, instead of talking about it, build it and show it (the central persona) they tell you what's wrong with it, you fix it, they tell you again, fix it, then you ship it

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wise

world innovations summit for ed

improving ed systems
#wise2010

pisa results:
countries of similar prosperity get very different results
the best school systems are those that are the most equitable

policy tourism - can't just export one set to another country
1) extending ed to those not receiving it
2) enhancing it for those that are

pisa
funding
new resources and what can be done about existing resources

Dr Qian TANG, Assistant Director-General For Education, UNESCO
we must develop capacity of all actors
4 levels capacity should take place
1) individual officers - greater recognition of planning/curriculum
2) organizational - incentives, accountability
3) public service - reform must have strong national leadership
4) external assistance must be long term
local knowledge based on strong international ownership
hepefa - program to help countries to improve effectiveness of ed systems -

[gosh.. love these people but i wonder if we try to manage too much? i don't know. i know little. i keep hearing schooling the world. are we helping people or hurting them by helping them. not just with developing countries.. but with students in our classroom.]
curricula and pedagogical assessment?..prepared w/support of the world bank.
we always say - involving all stakeholders - but we then tell them their parameters.. is that a problem?


His Excellency Fasli JALAL, Vice Minister of National Education, INDONESIA
indonesia provides ed to 51 mill children,
how can we improve? we look at pisa - we realize we are lacking in math
why did this happen - what is the role of the teacher
360000 teachers going through certification assessment.
what does certification mean?
cost for certification, and then doubling of salary once certified
0 to 5.5 bill just to pay for prof incentive
how to improve innovation: 1 year induction program for teachers?
detailing how to link salary increments to ? missed it
how can we insure ongoing prof development 78000 villages
improve system to improve teacher planning
all this to "improve the learning capacity"
i think we're missing something huge.

Prof. E. Nigel HARRIS, Vice-Chancellor, THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES
didn't listen to all of this.. no reason, just ran out of time

Mr Michael STEVENSON, Vice-President Global Education, CISCO
at cisco defining transformation - education 3.0
1.0- the way it was till the final 1/3 of the 20th cent - good/bad schools but little in a way of a system of schools
2.0 - set of ideas that became prevalent in may countries through 80's 90's, standards, illiteracy & numeracy, effective teaching, investent in quality leadership and accountability
3.0 - core idea - development of higher order of capabilities, everything else pedagogy to metrics need to be designed to support that,
many systems were beginning to think - what's next (even those at top of pisa results)
whether it's curriculum or teaching and learning or assessment.. it needs more than anything.. the skills to tackle complex problems,
key elements: connectivity & continuous professional development
effective change is holistic change. levers need to be pulled in some sort of intelligent sequence, and at the heart of it is ownership, of teachers and learners
it requires a systems approach - thinking of relationships over time and how they move
2009 - the global ed leaders program - gelp - a global movement for change - see if we can make these ideas work of scale
critical propositions for change
not so much about the what of ed 3.0- but how
1) the criticality of the leadership (policy maker, teachers, principals, esp at state/city level) - need to have a narrative, passion, and politically cute
2) not focus on tech, but on processes and personal relationships, one to one
3) safe spaces, licensed at the margins, authorized to innovate
some want to while intro'ing aspects of transformation - stay w/improvement, ontario, victoria, australia, new zealand, etc
others want to adopt transformation more fully, ny city, finland, s korea - want to do more than improve..
[fractals - countries are just like kids in the classroom]
w/in more transformational strategy
diff problem around engagement of students between ny and korea
diff approaches at transformational journey...
ny - split screen approach, grow disruptive innovations from within, i school to i zone, etc
finland - identifying radical innovations as they emerge and then apply knowledge management strategies to scale them up

korea - diversifying the means of assessing skills, undermining the rigid grip of assessments on the system


on assessment, you think you can put in a place a process for transforming the system..and develop leaders to push it along.. but

if the way we assess learners remain traditional and unchanged we will quickly get stuck

atc201s - with intel and microsoft - assessment and teaching for 21st cent skills program
singapore, finland, aust
designing practical tech bases assessment, complex problem solving in teams and social learning with tech
tech tool kit and a policy makers manual
international assessment bodies are fully engaged with this work, sliker of pisa is into this as well
ability to extrapolate what they learn to day and apply in new ways - from stocks to flows

• transformational change
• system leadership
• bold approach to assessment 

his podcast - determine skills needed, are we asking the people?.. how you go about large scale system wide change... a reason to work with cisco - we see a big vision, and ambitious roadmap - we'll walk with you on that road, [but are we asking the cultures/communities what success is to them]
5 yrs ago didn't have the tech to shift big systems
this is not simply about ed tech, it's about ed transformation that takes advantage of tech to drive it
reforms have been about efficiency, numbers, start talking about what they do - teaching and learning
inquiry based and collaborative in elementary
project based in secondary
great challenge for unis think of how to better teach young students
jordan, mississippi, louisiana, using collab tech


 interesting - glad i stayed for his talk -wonder how true to form these new assessments will be. would love to get a look at it..

{interesting.. each one of these guys read their speeches}



[perhaps - why are we focusing on pisa and on math?]
so answer - is more "public ed" for teachers..[ fixing it with the thing that is wrong .. is that a good thing?]
diane ravitch on pisa
deb meier - tensions of ed reform
daniel lemire - how reliable is science 
i lamely wrote them all the same comment. is that bad?


interesting.. after all of today.. esp daniel's post on peer reviews.
here i am curious about cisco. so i google it. i know that most of what i find from them will be pat answers.. hopes and aspirations for what they want to be.. but not necessarily what/who they are.
what i really want to find, is people i trust who have an opinion on them.


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mit to haiti

the kind heartedness of mit

tackling large problems across the world - how school should be no?
skill indexing, what would we do if this happened here..
what can we do in the medium term with this skill data
often times ngo's bring in their own people instead of hiring local haitians, simply because communication/process is hard - so they set out a system to make it easier for ngo's to find locales to help.
biggest block was literacy.. so used voice.
humanize job searching. get some life experience
this is free and open source..
no money made - any one can reuse however they like

trying to get haitian national jobs, esp from those hidden
in building this database, they see who's getting jobs, become more equitable in sharing jobs.


Konbit, a response to the Haitian earthquake, is a service that helps communities rebuild themselves after a crisis by indexing the skillsets of local residents, allowing NGOs to find and employ them. Haitians, their diaspora, and the international community can volunteer their skills via phone, SMS, or web. Skills can then be searched in real-time and location by NGOs such as CHF International, Partners-in-Health, and others. Konbit is possible due to key partners, such as the UN Development Program, the US State Department, the Clinton Foundation, and Digicel. Konbit won the grand prize ($8,000) at the 2010 MIT IDEAS competition. It is being created in collaboration with Greg Elliott.

bravo mit
bravo Aaron Zinman  (and his defuse - about online discussions) and Greg Elliott

greg's band having fun  and for real and his synch step - amazing

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