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Question 214 of 365: What changes everything?

Published on August 3, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.
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I don’t often make proclamations that I believe to be true for everyone. I don’t do this because I know that there is a high likelihood of me being wrong. So high, in fact, that I feel as though it would undermine my credibility as an expert on much of anything. However, for this I will make an exception.

There are two things (and two things only) that are required to create radical positive change:

1. Knowing that you are not the only expert in the room.
2. Never submitting or asking for the submittal of a piece of paper.

I didn’t realize that I held those core beliefs until yesterday. In a convsation I was having, I tried to summarize the main things that I try to get across whenever I speak in public and those are the two things that came out of my mouth. I didn’t realize how true they were until they were both out. I didn’t realize that I had been working toward them for years until they fell at my feet.

The reason I am writing this is to proclaim that I am not the only expert. I write this to be a part of what has come before, and to build upon it. I am on Twitter because I know that there are others that will give me great context and ideas and whole labors of love that they are contributing to the world. I work so that I can learn, and I play and publish so that I never forget what it is like to be a part of something bigger and more engaging than the endless monologue going on in my head.

And if in any meeting, classroom, or board room the participants will simply grant to the other people in the room and those following along via digital means that they are not the only ones with value and substance, there is no limit to what can be accomplished.

I am not talking about the wisdom of crowds. The revolutionary aspect of believing that you are not the only expert in the room comes in simply being humble enough to listen to others. You do not have to accept or believe in what they say. You may even find yourself rejecting their premises, but to simply listen for a moment to the other experts changes the ways in which decisions are made. It isn’t by consensus or by committee, decisions are made with the best expertise available, no matter what the source. If it is a 12 year old or a seasoned professional, knowing that there are other experts in the room and giving them a voice is the only way to move forward.

The other belief is counterintuitive. If we are listening to all experts and being humble in our approach, surely we should accept paper submissions. Surely we should allow those who still use paper as their means of transmitting information to take part in creating value. To this I say: No.

The act of removing paper from the equation as a submission format is not meant to save trees, although it might do that. It is not meant to focus everyone on technology, although it may do that as well. Disolving the transmission of paper is responsible solely for disrupting expectations, and exploding what is possible.

Paper isn’t about ease of use, it is about making concrete and singular the things that would rather be abstract and collaborative. Anything that is written down is held in one place and one time. This is special, and we should treasure it. But it is one thing, and it can only be that. By submitting that piece of paper, you are dictating all that it can be. By asking for someone to submit a piece of paper, you are limiting what you can receive.

And some will say that we need to limit submissions. We need ot have signatures that can only be that. But submission of a signature that is not tied to the one piece of paper means that we can find that signature elsewhere. We can string together all of the documents with that scrawling across the bottom, and we can start to tell a story through tagged contracts.

This is a shallow look at revolution. But take a look at the alternative:

Those that disagree with the two above statements as the catalyst for change could be defined as Paper Experts. They are experts that are only backed up by the paper that defines them (diplomas and letters of recommendation). In every submission of paper to others, they are proclaiming their value (every report, handout, and printed email). In every request for paper they are trying to hold on to power (jumping through legal and beurecratic hoops for signatures and documents requests). Their paper expertise is static. They do not hqve the power to expand their knowledge into a network of experts because networks are not made out of paper. And, they are certainly not made out of people who proclaim their value above all others in the room.

So, if we want to move beyond being Paper Experts, we must acknowledge publicly every time we speak that we are not the only voices in the room worth listening to. We must honor this in our actions as well by leaving time to listen and protocols to support that effort. We must also stop giving people the option to submit pieces of paper as proof of their knowledge and expertise. We must stop asking for drafts to be marked up. We must stop making copies so that we can further devalue the precious comodity of original creqtive thought. If something is worth sharing, it is worth sharing in open communication. If something is worth submitting, it is worth publishing to those who need the information. If something is worth making, it is worth exposing to the light of day.

I do not take these words lightly. I understand the gauntlet I have laid out for myself. I just know that it is something I started a long time ago by learning from students and allowing them to turn in their essays on a blog. I guess they are still teaching me.

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Question 194 of 365: What should we brandish?

Published on July 14, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.

I could have left the -ish off the question and had it be something completely different. I could have talked about all of the ways in which we need to frame our ideas and link to them and craft a language around them. I could have gone into what it takes to brand a concept from brainstorm to launch. But, that I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to talk about how to massage an idea into what will eventually become. I want to talk about the things we wield.

Our weapons of choice.

What is it that we use above all else to coerce others into doing what we want. We may not be proud of it, or carry it around without a sense of power and responsibility. But, we do it all the same. We pull it out when others question our authority or passion or motives. It becomes our signature and the threat behind which we can hide.

Most often, my weapon is that of obscure expertise. While having never been formally trained on much of anything to do with technology, it so happens that I can wield the most inane details about social networks, web applications, or learning management systems. People come to me believing that the problem they have is so intricate and difficult that they would not be able to parse it out themselves. When, in fact, there are very few things that I troubleshoot or tutorialize that could not be figured out with some simple trial and error. And yet, when I figure them out, there is a sense that I have brandished a fine tool and precisely killed off the beast that was plaguing them.

There is also, hidden within each request for help, a certain fear that everything could come crashing down at any moment with a flick of my wrist. It is a fear of unknown knowledge and unfathomable technologies. If the iPad is magical to people because they can’t understand how it works, then I am the biggest wizard around because everything starts from that singular lack of understanding.

I’m just not sure it is a good weapon to brandish. I’m not sure that being a wizard is what the world needs.

I feel like it might be better just to waive a flag, a rallying cry for everyone else that tells of my quest for the best insight and connections possible. Wouldn’t that allow for less coercion? Wouldn’t that allow for more stories and less commands?

I am under no illusion that people who do not have critical information at their fingertips are in need of some help. It just makes more sense to create the environment with flags instead of guns. That way, no one gets hurt and every time the wind shifts, we will know which way it is going. With a gun, you can only stand in the way of wind and see the everything pass you by as you try to point and shoot at nothing.

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Question 192 of 365: Where is the crazy?

Published on July 12, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.
Lyrical Time Wastr - Somewhere Down the Crazy ...
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Crazy people are everywhere. Not just the run of the mill crazy, either. I’m talking about completely out of their head insane, unable to reason their way through modern daily life, wringing their hqnds of all connection to reality, playing the fool way too well for it to be considered acting.

The reason I mention this is simply because I don’t think I have been doing a good enough job of rooting out the crazy in my life. Not for years, in fact.

When I was about 14 or so, I realized that being bored was a choice. I realized that I didn’t have to sit through whatever someone was talking about without letting my mind wander on to more interesting and productive things. Whenever I was alone and had little to do, I would just start writing. Whenever I was in the presenence of a boring subject, I would read or doodle. People who kept on complaining of boredom just weren’t interesting to me. Whqt I realize now is that they are, in fact, crazy. Or, they are about to become crazy.

It is my belief that crazy is a result of not thinking enough or not being able to find something engaging to occupy your time. Not having passion is just plain crazy. And it leads people to do the worst things imaginable.

Like blaming folks for how they try to experience the world around them. Like shaming others for grieving or for feeling or for thinking about much of anything at all. Passionless people are incapable of perspective, and that is what makes them crazy. It is also how you can pick them out of a lineup.

Sitting in a meeting or even in talking to a relative, if you get the sense that someone else can’t consider another point of view, you may want to check their crazy level.

We used to play this game called colored eggs on thenplayground in elementary school. It was a type of tag, where everyone would line up and think of a color out of a typical crayon box (64 crayons being the max that we thought was okay to try for) and then one person would stand opposite of the line and start to guess all of the colors. If the person guessed one of the person’s colors that was standing on the line, the person whose color was guessed would have to run to the other side of the playground without getting tagged. If the person was caught, they would become one of the taggers until there wasn’t anyone left on the line.

There was one boy who never chose any different colors. He always picked the same one: goldenrod. He thought that he was so brilliant in his choice that he would brag to everyone else at lunch about it. He would say, “you are never going to guess what I’m going to be today.” and then when we got out on the playground, the guesser would inevitably go through the more common colors first to try and get as many people off the line as possible. And there this boy would stand, completely confident that he was going to outlast everyone.

He never did, by the way. To my knowledge he never technically won the game. More of the time, he would claim victory because we had to go in from recess and he would still be on the line. We never guessed goldenrod because we didn’t much care about capturing him. We didn’t understand why he didn’t pick a different color so that he could play the tag part of the game. That was the fun part. Thqt was the part that got your heart pumping, that actually helped you to make friends.

When I look back on it now, I can tell that the boy was crazy for choosing goldenrod every day. He was crazy because he had to have his way rather than to join in. He had to have the obscure color rather than learn what the game was about.

The crazy is in each of us, when we find we are in a rut. It is in us when we are stubborn. It is in us when we stop looking around and seeing the differences between us that make us interesting enough to want to sit down and talk to. It is us when we allow ourselves to be bored.

I need to do a better job of rooting out my crazy, whether that is within myself or in the people around me. Otherwise, I might as well be choosing the same color for every day of my life.

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Question 90 of 365: How can we stop creating knowledge pyramid schemes?

Published on March 31, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.
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I’m in over my head.

I claim to know more than I do.

I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and I don’t even know their names.

The current expectation is that I am knowledgeable about everything that is put in front of me. It has been this way for a number of years now, but I’m not sure when that transition occurred. I used to be able to simply learn from others and not have to know anything. But now, it is getting harder and harder to say, “I don’t know.”

I must come up with answers or be able to produce them without much of a head start. I like the challenge that is posed in this assumption and the level of respect I am afforded, but it is just so hard to give advice or proclaim truth when I literally just looked up the answer or tried out a new solution 5 minutes before responding to your e-mail.

While I am huge proponent for the fact that a degree does not mean that you know anything, I also see the paradox that I have created. By stating that claim, I am forcing myself to credential each act of speech I initiate. I am saying that I can know everything that someone who has a degree does know. I am belittling their accomplishment, while ridiculously inflating my own.

I sometimes feel like I sit atop of a knowledge pyramid scheme. I feel as though, I am trying to gain as much of other people’s knowledge by reading their work and networking with them so that it makes me look important and valuable. I keep on bringing more people on because I feel as though someone is going to find me out and call my bluff. But, no one has. They just keep on feeding me more information and connections.

The pressure is pretty incredible to know and to do. It is exhilarating most of the time, but sometimes it feels hollow and overly ambitious. Resting on laurels (what laurels I can actually claim as mine) sounds nice from time to time.

The one way I keep rationalizing sitting on top of this pyramid is that I believe that others are creating pyramids of their own and I am on the bottom of theirs. Hopefully, they are not relying on a foundation (me) that will crumble, just as my pyramid may crumble at any moment.

I cannot be the oracle or the prognosticator of everything in my field of vision, whether that is startups, technology, or education. These things are fluid and, in the grand scheme of things, I know nothing about them. While I may be able to rely on others to let me do my job, I cannot exist without them. And, I need to. At least to the point of making sure that I have earned the respect I have been given, that I can cite my own experience rather than someone else’s as proof that I know what I am talking about.

So, here is the deal:

Call my bluff. Please. Tell me that I don’t know anything and make me look like a fool. Show me just how little I have done and how much I have to learn. I need that. I need to not be an expert for a while. I need to just be mentored and molded. I need someone to ask me questions for a change. And I need to not take those questions as an invitation to garner respect because of the answers I come up with. If you do this for me, I promise I will do it for you as well.

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Question 13 of 365: What does it mean to be an Expert?

Published on January 13, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.

In a world where the network is what matters, where being able to tap into knowledge that is distributed and widespread is valued, what does it mean to be an expert? Just because we can figure out the answer to most of our every day questions by googling them or by asking them of our friends and followers, does that mean that having individual experience and knowledge does not matter? Is being an expert today the same as just knowing an expert in years past?

Maybe.

Yet, there is something about actually having the understanding yourself. There is something to being able to call up information and theories and research within your own head and create a synthesis of where to go next on the spot. I have a deep respect for all those who know their stuff and can create something new out of their experience. I believe that the power to rip away any BS from what you are looking at is in knowing the truth for yourself. And so it could be that only when expertise is tested that you can see what it truly is. That is why it is still so important to know who is an expert and who is a pretender. I still need to be able to rely on the people who do have something to offer of themselves rather than those who are simply offering up their network or remixing other’s ideas by 1 degree. I believe that in a world of wikipedia, true expertise is in short supply.

So, how can we put expertise to the test? Walking up to a PhD and asking them about their work isn’t exactly going to yield the results I am looking for. I also can’t just say that I know expertise when I see it. There must be a good way to tell who it is that knows what they need to.

Perhaps there is a question that can be designed, one that will test the very nature of “knowledge” within the person. The question should be something that requires you to justify your position, to show that you believe what you believe for a reason. “Who do you think you are?” doesn’t have quite the right level of nuance. And, “What is your truth?” is really an existential mess that I think would cause more confusion than anything else.

A Curriculum Vitae is supposed to do this for us. The list of accomplishments in a resume is supposed to have the same affect. A blog perhaps is the digital equivalent of someone attempting to state their knowledge. But, I want a way to weed out the spam. Surely, even in the best Curriculum Vitae, there is some filler, some padding, some spam.

The one sticking point of my argument (although I should probably leave it to others to find those) is that becoming an expert requires experience, it requires living through and telling the stories of how you got from point A to point B. So, perhaps there is no better question than “What is your story?”.

If they have a story that is worth listening to, that really does reveal their expertise then they could be considered an expert. On the flip side, anyone who is not willing to tell their story cannot be an expert. They can be knowledgeable and even wise, but without sharing their wisdom, their expertise cannot be established. Telling your story is the test of your expertise. It is how you show the world that you are who you say you are.

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Things that I know nothing about

Published on May 16, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I believe in learning all the time,  but there are definitely some things that I know nothing about (but would like to some day). I hope to cross things off of this list, but for now they remain:

  1. Player pianos – how they work and why they aren’t more readily available.
  2. Programming applications built on available API‘s – I would like to build applications upon Tokbox, Google Reader, and Twitter (i.e., Why hasn’t anyone built a twitter application specifically for educators?)
  3. Making a to do list and then crossing of each item – I cross of all but a few and then I let the rest of them fester.
  4. Creating a webserver without using mamp or xampp – I would like to know how you open and close ports and set up a server from scratch. I don’t want to be an IT wonk. I just want to know how to do it.
  5. Reading music for guitar- I have tried so many times, but in the end, I always manage to simply rely on the chords I already know and write a new song without learning how to read someone else’s work.
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The cost of not doing anything…

Published on April 18, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I was in a great meeting this week where we were considering whether
or not to go ahead with a full scale implimentation of the Moodle LMS
for assessment purposes in our district. It was a great meeting not
because of the topic but the way it was being handled.
 
We were talking about the absolute costs of an open source LMS and of
staying with a custom-built assmessment solution. We were really
looking for a venn diagram moment when one of the curriculum and
instruction representatives said something really smart: “There is a
cost to not doing anything as well. It may not be a dollar cost, but
it will cost the teachers the ability to know more about their kids’
knowledge and it will cost the kids some learning opportunities.”
(Paraphrased by me.)
 
Too often we do not think about the cost of doing nothing or of doing
things too slowly. Does appathy in the face of huge choices cost our
kids the best learning years of their lives?
 
So, it got me thinking: What are the costs of doing nothing (or doing
very little) to change school?
 
Share an idea if this makes you think as much as it has made me.

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Networks are cities.

Published on January 23, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I am on my way to educon 2.1 right now, looking out into the night (don’t worry, I am using my phone in airplane mode). For some reason there are no clouds out there tonight, and all I can see are the bright lights of cities, clustered together and beautiful. What I am thinking about as my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the conversation I will be leading on saturday, is that the lights of a city look like the networks that I dream about.
 
I want networks that are far reaching and bright. I want to be able envision the whole thing all at once or focus on a single connection. I want to hop from network to network. I want to see far off into the horizon and know that there are other networks thinking about the same things I am.
 
I want the network to be on every time I look, glowing more radiantly in the node that need my attention right now. I want knowledge to run around my network like the people push on out toward their well ordered lofts in the city and winding single-family house lined roads in the suburbs. I want my network to bring me in for a landing every once in a while, grounding me in what is really so important: taking the time to get to know an individual and seeing them as more valuable than any amount of community created or knowledge gained.
 
(I know this post is pretty flowery, but I am away from my family for the first time since my son was born. I may be a little wistful on the blog for the next few days.)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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Networks are cities.

Published on January 23, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I am on my way to educon 2.1 right now, looking out into the night (don’t worry, I am using my phone in airplane mode). For some reason there are no clouds out there tonight, and all I can see are the bright lights of cities, clustered together and beautiful. What I am thinking about as my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the conversation I will be leading on saturday, is that the lights of a city look like the networks that I dream about.
 
I want networks that are far reaching and bright. I want to be able envision the whole thing all at once or focus on a single connection. I want to hop from network to network. I want to see far off into the horizon and know that there are other networks thinking about the same things I am.
 
I want the network to be on every time I look, glowing more radiantly in the node that need my attention right now. I want knowledge to run around my network like the people push on out toward their well ordered lofts in the city and winding single-family house lined roads in the suburbs. I want my network to bring me in for a landing every once in a while, grounding me in what is really so important: taking the time to get to know an individual and seeing them as more valuable than any amount of community created or knowledge gained.
 
(I know this post is pretty flowery, but I am away from my family for the first time since my son was born. I may be a little wistful on the blog for the next few days.)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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End of the Year Denouement

Published on May 23, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

For all of the times this year…

that we have doubted ourselves.

that we have felt like we haven’t made a difference.

that we hoped for more.

that a lesson didn’t go according to plan.

that we have worked toward something that didn’t come to fruition.

that we have been wrong.

We must know that these things are better than any sense of certainty or definitive answers that we can muster. Doubt is the manifestation of powerful reflection. Knowing that we haven’t reached everyone shows us just how many we have reached. Hope for the future is why we are here in the first place. Failure is only a negative when it is uninspired; inspired failure is the birth of the most authentic teachable moments. The direct path toward change can’t always be plotted, even if we are working for it. But, we are changed by the work we do, and that can be enough in most cases. Finally, being wrong is beautiful when we can acknowledge it and strive to make it right.

I had to write this because of all of the great things that I have done this year, I have so many great regrets. I say that they are great both because they are large and because they are valuable to me. I hold them close to me to show me the way forward. I gather them together and wear them as a badge of honor. These are the things I will tattoo across my curriculum next year, the things that I will use to transform my teaching, again.

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