Question 126 of 365: Is multi-tasking noise?

People have been up in arms since the iPhone came out that it doesn’t allow multi-tasking. In fact, I was one of those people with arms outstretched. I couldn’t understand why any company as visionary as Apple would want to limit their devices to only doing one thing at a time. At any given moment, I have at least 20 programs running and another 20 tabs open in Chrome. This is the way that I work. It is how I communicate with other easily and how I push the flow of data along. Now though, I am beginning to question whether or not this multi-tasking mania is really good for my creative prospects.

I think I get why Apple has resisted multi-tasking so much on their devices. They wanted each one to provide an experience for their users that was unlike anything else they have seen. They wanted to make sure that each app downloaded would feel as though it were made just for them, and not as some distraction for other distractions from real work. As I have gotten used to working on the iPad, I have realized just how powerful it is that I don’t have twitter up while I am writing. I realize just how intriguing answering an e-mail becomes when I’m not distracted by downloads or multiple tabs that keep on redirecting my attention.

On the desktop, I set up tasks in separate programs. I start one and then jump to another while that one loads. I sometimes forget about the first one until I am closing out of things a few hours later. On the iPad, I don’t feel that rush. Everything is fast and the apps don’t work together at all. Ordinarily, I would be frustrated, but at the moment, I like the fact that I am drawing a vector illustration in one app, taking a screenshot, rotating it a second app, then sending it to my blog with a third. Each task becomes sacred. It becomes more time with the process of making something great. On a desktop, it is all done for you. You don’t feel as though you have accomplished something.

And, I want to accomplish something. I want to take my time editing and producing and completely forget that there are other tasks that need to be done. For the moment, there is just one. I will follow it to its logical conclusion and then move on to the next.

It lets my mind be something it doesn’t ussually get the chance to be: organized.

It is like the one time that I cleaned my room for real.

I don’t think that I am alone in complaining about having to clean up my room. Also don’t think I am alone in doing a half-hearted job most of the time because I knew that it was going to get messy again quite soon. I am also willing to wager that I am not alone in having spent one full afternoon really cleaning my room so that I was proud of the result.

I set up action figures in fight scenes on the bookshelves. I put each of my baseball cards into their protective sleeves. I made my bed with special folds at the top that were far to intricate to be accidental. I sorted my books by genre and put the series books into their correct order.

In short, I cleaned that room like it was my job. And, I enjoyed it. I took time with those action figures to make sure that the scenes were believable. I found out new statistics about my favorite ball players. I thought about how many times I had slept in that bed while I folded the top sheet underneath the blanket. And I made mental notes of when I should read those same books again. Each event had its place and I wasn’t worried about getting all of it done because I knew that I would eventually create the finished product.

I feel like that is the power of not multi-tasking. That is the power of quiet.

While I need the noise sometimes to do a lot of things quickly, I know that I will never enjoy them as much as if I only were doing one task at a time. So, the iPad may get multi-tasking this fall, but I can tell you that I will never use it to create noise. I will never enable it just so I can devalue each step in the creative process. I will only use it to know more about the one task I am concentrating on right now. On this device, I will set up workflows only to create better work, never more output.

Because for me, output and work are two totally different things. The latter I love because it gives me more purpose. The former I despise because it gives me generic accomplishments and false understanding.

Related articles by Zemanta

• AT&T iPhone Exclusive Extended To 2011 Because Of iPad (VZ, AAPL, T) (businessinsider.com)
• iPad Developer Makes Thousands Because Apple Didn’t Include An Alarm Clock App (AAPL, GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
• Did AT&T provide cheap iPad data rates to keep iPhone exclusivity? (tuaw.com)
• Make Your iPad Into A Netbook – Argh Stop It! (inquisitr.com)

Question 114 of 365: What will we pay to have simulated?

I’m pretty sure it was Hardball 3 that got me through the great Baseball strike of the 94-95 season. Rather it was one particular feature that enabled me to look past the work stoppage and sit in front of the family computer with my brothers and friends next to me, sipping on overly strong lemonade. This feature was the “simulated game.” While you could simulate 9 innings of baseball for outcomes in the game, it was the fact that you could actually watch the entire simulated game that made it something of interest to me. I was flabbergasted that I could watch a baseball game play itself and have Al Michaels announce the whole thing. This seemed to me to be the holy grail of  computing at the time. It was a specific cure for an ailment I was experiencing, and it worked so well in my head that I considered asking my friends to pay me for the privilege of watching those simulated games. I’m glad I decided against it at some point.

At that point, computers seemed to be nearly infallible. I had no doubt that every run scored and every sprite running around the bases was preordained. I believed that given the right set of data, my person computer could churn out the remainder of that season’s results. The amount of trust and confidence that I held for the glowing screen in my father’s study seems laughable now. When I consider what a phone can do that the original Pentium processor could not, the idea that a video game could forecast the outcomes of human beings is a fairy tale. And yet, I was willing to believe in it and that is what mattered.

It is what matters in all of our modern simulations as well. Google Maps simulates the traffic that you will encounter in order to predict the best route to take. Pandora simulates what kind of music it thinks you will like in order to produce the best mood for your working or relaxed state. Most search engines even simulate what it thinks you want to ask even before you start typing more than a few words. I would make the case that these simulations are just as big of fairy tales as trusting a baseball came to figure out the outcome to the complexities of our National Pastime. And yet, these simulations have found their way into our understanding of the world. They have somehow passed themselves off as reality.

And while those three examples do not currently require money, each one is being paid for by the user’s attention. Advertising rules the game of simulation at the moment, mostly because people haven’t figured out how to more effectively monazite the power of suggestion. And yet, that is all that simulations are: Suggestions. They are the thing that could be, given the right circumstances.

The simulations that are forthcoming, though, are the ones that we really need to look for. The suggestions that we will start forking over our wallets for are ones that involve the need to know our future. The prediction of response is coming. The foresight of decision-making is creeping ever closer full acceptance.

I believe that within a decade we will be able to turn on an auto-response system for our e-mail that will answer most of our basic interactions with information from our other messages and documents existing in the cloud. No longer will the vacation responder have to be a burden to us. It may be that when we leave the office and gmail automatically replies with the most pertinent information, we are doing a better job of sharing information. I have this sinking suspicion that when all of our words, ideas and connections can be crawled that the automated process of response will become the norm for anything except for the most personal or idiosyncratic messages.

Many people won’t like this, but they will be the ones who won’t get as much work done. The luddites of this environment are those who do not engage in the social graph to its full “potential.” They will be the ones that refuse to simply fill in the blank of a form response created by Google. They will type out messages in longhand and fall further and further behind. The simulation will become the reality, the prediction will become truth because we will pass it off as such. And I will not put up any barriers, either. I think that far too much of my communication is me performing a search (in my e-mail, on twitter, on the web) for someone else and then reporting out on what I have found. There will be something lost, but most people will not mourn the passing of obligatory messages.

As for the decisions that will be made with simulation, I believe that War Games will finally be coming to a phone near you. Just like in that iconic movie, we will be able to play out our interactions with others (individuals or companies) and forsee the varied outcomes so that we can choose the right way to proceed. Our every move will be judged as data. It is already starting with services like Gowalla and FourSquare. Based upon our patterns of movement, our simulations will show us where we should go next and what will happen if we do follow its insight. And we will listen because we want to believe in the rosy fairy tale that it will provide us with. And if the simulations prove to be true, so much the better. We will have figured out a way to tell the future by having it predetermined for us. We will be able to limit risk simply by allowing all of the deals to be done before we even step foot in the door.

It is right here that I think about Deep Blue and its offspring. Deep Blue at its best could go about 20 moves deep into a chess scenario. It could literally compare 20 moves down any given path to any other 20 move path and then make the right decision based upon that data. We will have that same ability, but it will be much more scary. While we will still be in control of the path, we will choose to believe the one that is displayed for us because we want the outcome that is promised. We will be strategic in our movements, but that strategy will not be our own. And that is when we will pay for simulations. When we no longer really have to think about what the next step is, we will fork over our cash for the privilege.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Google Maps search box just got smarter (Steffen Meschkat/Google LatLong) (techmeme.com)
• Google Maps Adds Auto-Suggestions From Popular Searches, Local Businesses [Autocomplete] (lifehacker.com)
• A simulation is not a guarantee of final rhinoplasty results (realself.com)

Question 93 of 365: What are our plans for data?

I don’t think that I will ever get over the fact that a world of information exists in the air I breathe. I am continually amazed by wifi and 3g and all of the other networks that carry our data as if there was nothing more natural in the world. And even though each device that can pick up on the signals that perpetuate our need for more and more access, we are still dealing with a clunky system of paying for that access.

America online started us down the path of paying by the hour. We were locked into managing time rather than content. We have corrected that issue only by changing the system to pay by the Gigabyte. Even when we get “unlimited” access, there is still fine print stating the contrary. We manage our bandwidth rather than our connections. We secure our networks within our homes so that within any neighborhood we are all paying for a service that we could be sharing quite easily. And now that we have iPads and smart phones, we are paying by the device as well. We have combined all of these payment schemes into one upsetting mess of minutes, bytes, and networks, and devices that don’t allow for flexibility or sharing of resources.

So, what is our plan for data in our future?

I would like to pay for my access, but I want the freedom to share it within my home with every device. I want the ability to use any network available without having to protect them from one another. I want every device I use to be both a host to other devices and a leach off of the data in the air. I want to be a walking network. I want to walk down the street with a device in my pocket that has both speed and versatility. I want to be a hotspot for others and an incredible bandwidth hog for myself.

So, here is what I will pay for:

• A single connection to everything (wifi, 3g, wimax, etc.)
• Unlimited Bandwidth (I will not be downloading torrents much, but I think that the principle of not cutting off the very people who test the possibilities within a network is a really good idea.)
• The ability to extend the reach and quality of the wireless networks for the companies that provide them (I’m interested in being a part of the solution here).
• The ability to share my connection with all of my devices (not, necessarily every other person around me, though, because I believe that everyone should be able to connect in public for free, but pay for connection in private)

Anyone want to give me a quote on what that should cost?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tethering iPAd with IPhone made possible (teabreak.pk)
• How ISP’s Limit Bandwidth Hogs (marketersdaily.com)
• Clear’s Mobile Users Really Use The Service (businessweek.com)
• News: AT&T to tighten data usage controls (ilounge.com)

Question 89 of 365: What’s on the table?

In discussions about change, the expectation is that some things are negotiable and others are not. There is a kind of understood language for those things that are sacred, and therefore off the table. We give them a preferred nomenclature, using words like standards or givens. These assumptions within any given change are ones that single-handedly deny compromise. They are responsible for strikes, mass-firings, and even riots given the right set of circumstances. They are what is universally known to be off the table.

But, the table is big enough to hold everything. We just seem to like cutting it short and using only part of it to hold meetings. It is like we huddle together at the head of a big board room and ignore all of the space that we could have if we acknowledged it existed.

In writing about radical use, I advocated for taking the everyday objects and ideas and figuring out ways to reorganize and utilize them to greater and more interesting effect. I would like to make the case now for putting everything on the table once more.

We should not remove things because they are too hard to discuss or they would disrupt all other negotiations. We should not remove things because they would take to long to sort out or too many people are invested in them the way that they currently exist. Everything should be laid out and explored. Everything should be debated. Now, we may come up with similar conclusions, but the only way to be truly sure that you have made the right decision is to continue to affirm it.

So, what’s on the table?

• Childhood
• Relationship
• Hierarchy
• Memory
• Privacy
• Ownership
• Health
• Religion

There should be no givens on these topics. No free passes to any groups that find themselves at odds over the particulars. I want free and open questions to be raised as to the validity of a particular viewpoint. I want to put it all out on the table and manipulate just how important and prevalent each element is. I want to question the value of starting and stopping childhood at a certain age. I want to consider outsourcing our memory to objects and metadata on a machine. I want to discuss just how private each of us needs to be if we could trust that everyone else shares the same privacy.

I want data to support what stays on the table and what comes off. I want a Microsoft Pivot-like interface on the table so that we could measure the effects of each proposal.

And why is this so important?

Because our assumptions have led us down the wrong path too many times. Believing that things were off the table have led us to compromise just how much we can get done. If we know that change is only available for the few things that we comfortably admit are broken, then change is nothing more than an illusion.

And I want it to be real. I want to touch it and see it and talk about it. I want to notice that things are getting better all of the time because we have had the tough conversations and made the difficult concessions. If we had an interface for putting everything on the table, I think that more people would inevitably no longer fear what they have committed to. They could look at their own truth, and iterate into what makes sense for who they are right now and what place they inhabit.

What’s on the table? Everything.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pivot Shows Again that Microsoft Is Kicking Serious Ass [Web] (gizmodo.com)
• Microsoft Pivot: from the wizards at Live Labs (blogs.msdn.com)
• Facebook Proposes Revisions to Privacy Policy, Hints at More Location Features (mashable.com)
• Do You Like Us Or Like Like Us? “Become A Fan” Changing To “Like” On Facebook (readwriteweb.com)
• Periodic Table of Periodic Tables (boingboing.net)

Question 45 of 365: What is the most important data?

This kind of question requires a lot of energy. Energy that I don’t have right now.

But it is a question that haunts me, mostly because I don’t know the answer.

I want to know what is most valuable, what I need to be paying attention to. I want to be able to see everything for what it really is.

My need for direction dictates a need for data. My learning requires aggregation of information. My passion necessitates statistical significance.

Is it too much to ask for precognition. Is it too far fetched to wish myself forward?

The data I want is the truth.

I want to make decisions. I want legitimate answers.

Is there data for that?

Question 27 of 365: What happens if we are wrong?

We seek truth. As much as we seek to be right, we must seek truth. If we are unable to see when we are wrong, then there is very little chance that we will ever be able to see a truth when it presents itself.

Being right is one thing I tend to think I am a lot. It isn’t that I am overly arrogant about being right, it just happens that I set myself up to be right. I make little tests for myself, hypothesize about what is going to happen and then when it does, I pat myself on the back. I do this constantly in the online school that I helped to create. When students are having a problem, I look at what they have written about it. It is usually something like “I can’t see this video” or “my login doesn’t work”. I sit for a moment and come up with what I think is the root cause. After a very simple investigation of about three clicks of the mouse, I am very often proved right. I am proved right because the stakes aren’t very high. I am proved right because I have experienced many of these issues and figured out the common denominators. In effect, I have all of the data and I can act on it.

But, why is it that I am equally certain about things like Authentic Learning (learning with a real purpose and for a real audience) and using a collaborative and social networks to get things done. Why is that I believe I am right when I say that being connected to knowledge is much better than memorizing it. I have a small amount of data to support this. I have seen it work in my own experience and I have read the work of people who agree with me on this topic. Yet, there are an equal number of people who are convinced that using technology instead of your memory is detrimental to the learning process. There are entire cadres of people who are researching and working so that the curriculum is well-defined and does not include my passion for collaboration and co-authorship. Do they have more data? Have they gone through this more times than I have and so they can make better predictions about what will happen to students?

I don’t know any way other than to write and think what I believe to be true, but there is always this gnawing suspicion in the back of my head that I could be wrong. Perhaps open source isn’t as good as proprietary software. Perhaps hybrid courses will really destroy our system of learning. Perhaps all companies do need to have a formal business plan. Perhaps we should keep following through on a mass-production way of life.

If I (or more importantly, we) are wrong about our hypotheses for all of this then we are clearly going to be leading a whole lot of people down a rabbit hole after us. We may be looking at the data completely wrong, or it is entirely possible that we don’t have the right data. Perhaps all of the things that people will create within this hyper-collaborative vein will lead to the downfall of society as we know it.

While that sounds pretty dire, it is something that keeps me trying to justify every move that I make. It keeps me pivoting at every crossroads I come to, reassessing my direction with all of the available data. Because if I am wrong, especially about the big stuff, I’m not sure how I would live with the consequences of  not preparing my kids, my students, my employees, or my society for what they face today and will continue to face unless they pick up what I have not been able to give them as a result of my hair-brained hypotheses.

I’m just glad no one has called me on it yet.

As things come together

As we meet to talk about bringing all tools under one roof, as we
start to work toward a single solution, as we start to use the same
language to discuss learning, as we get on the same page with
professional development models, as we create in the same formats, as
we pull from the same information and databases, as we get into the
same ganntt chart and project plan, as we start to realize the same
vision…
 
As we begin to all of these things more and more, I feel as though we
may lose some of what makes pushing boundaries seem so right.
 
 I believe that there is value in scope creep, so long as it is
reflective of the needs of learners.
 
I believe in not choosing a final solution.
 
I believe that disruptive innovation comes when fast moving ideas are
allowed to move fast.
 
I believe in knowing whose shoulders we are standing on and whose feet
we will support.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

A wiki spreadsheet.

I have to say that up until recently I didn’t see what was so great about spreadsheets. I have been using them for years to analyze student achievement data and present findings to others, but the didn’t seem like the “killer-app” that so many others seem to be thinking about.
 
On the other hand, my wife speaks in spreadsheets and she can really make them sing. She can have fields reference across fifteen different sheets and set up a budget in a matter of moments.
 
This is extremely cool if all you want to do is present information or figure out what makes sense in terms of data, but as a collaborative process, I just didn’t see it.
 
That was until Google Spreadsheets started opening up anonymous access to spreadsheet using forms and protected links. I started using google forms in order to record interest in our district’s online school (http://edcsd.org). This proved an effective way of collecting specific information and storing it in a place that could be accessed from everywhere. So, in this sense, it was a mass collaboration that was added to with every entry. No one really is able to see the scale of the collaboration, that is, except for me.
 
Well that was a neat trick, but it is nothing compared to the idea of a spreadsheet wiki. One feature that was just added to google spreadsheets is the ability to share a link with others that will let others edit it without having to sign up for a google account.
 
This means that students could record data on the same spreadsheet without having to sign in. It means that achievement data (not on specific students, though) could be aggregated in one place, all without having to teach an entire staff about a new service. It means that you could keep track of all of your school’s goals with everyone adding their notes, never having to go through the extra hoop of remembering a password.
 
Perhaps best of all, it would allow all of those who do not yet see the value of massively-collaborative projects to participate in one without ever knowing about it and by using a tool they already recognize as important: spreadsheets.
 
Perhaps I am making too much out of this. Perhaps there are other tools that do this already, but as I am on a search for ways to eliminate as many logins as possible, this is one great step in the right direction.
 
Do you see any new ways of using this? Are spreadsheets more valuable now?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

“Hope Online” Professional Development 11.14.08

Do Not turn off your cell phones and laptops.
If you have them, use them.

(Throughout this workshop, you can ask questions via text message by texting hopeonline and your question to 41411. You can also add to our questions without a cell phone by going to http://www.textmarks.com/HOPEONLINE)

I am not here today in order to introduce to you a brand new initiative that will require extensive amounts of training and make your life busier before you see any real benefit. I am also not here today to say that there is any one tool or strategy for making the ways in which you work actually work.

Rather, I am here to ask you a lot of questions, mostly about what you are spending the most time with in your job. What are those things that take away from what you would rather be doing, the rewarding experiences of working with kids and other adults who are working with kids.

In order to do this, let’s get one thing straight. Information is infinite. Attention is finite.

You gather a seemingly insurmountable amount of information every single day from e-mails, voicemails, web sites, student data paperwork and many other sources. It can be even more daunting to think that there is more information out there about how to organize that information. With your attention stretched so thin, it is hard to think that there are ways of getting any of it back. We are still going to try, and for the most part, we are going to look at solutions that are already in your workflow.

Well, I would like to present you with a few possibilities for a different way of organizing information.

The first is I would like to use my voice to listen to my e-mail, create e-mail, put an event on my calendar, send myself a reminder, create a text, and post to my blog. While this service has a name, I would much rather you think about the strategies that I am using in order to create more time for other things. Because I am able to use my voice to do these things, I can make efficient use of my drive time (of which, there is a lot).

Dial2Do – A way to use your voice to get things done on your cell phone.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I would like to next highlight the use of short messages to capture information. Many times, I need to be able to capture information from myself and others, but there is no time in order to send out an e-mail. I need to be able to capture it now. So I send a text message to a service that aggregates the information for me and for everyone else who I invite:

TextMarks – A way to both capture information and share information through SMS.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I use e-mail a lot. Well, perhaps that is an understatement. I am available by e-mail about 20 hours of any given day. With that in mind, I would like to be able to use e-mail in order aggregate archive the most important things that I am sending out. I want to be able to attach anything I want and have the archive understand it.

Posterous – The e-mail blog that don’t even have to sign up for.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

Now, if I am on my computer and I want to capture information on a topic. I want to capture it as I am doing my research, not go back afterwards and document what is going on. I want to be able to simply highlight text and pictures and have them all simply show up in a webpage that I can e-mail to someone or share with somone for them to add to.

Google Notebook – Collect text, pictures, and movies from webpages in order to be shared later with others.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

Well, what if I want to show others exactly where to go on a webpage using my voice. I would like to guide people through a series of webpages that I think are important. I want to do this in less than 5 mintues too.

FlowGram - Create a screencast of webpages and archive it to send to others.

An example of using this trategy to create something.

Now I would like you to figure out what you would like to be able to do in terms of aggregating and storing information. Brainstorm things that you don’t know are possible. Think about how you gather information now and how you would like to change that to be less attention heavy and more information heavy.

Now that we have all of our information gathered and stored, we will want to collaborate and talk about that information. The easiest way to do that is to meet face-to-face, but for much of the time, that requires significant driving and serious scheduling.

So, I want to come together with a few others to talk something out. I want to be able to see, hear, and write with them. I don’t want to have to set up log in to anything. I just want to hit a power button.

Tokbox – Always on Video Conferencing.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I would like to work on the same spreadsheet with someone else so that I don’t have to send e-mails of the same document back and forth and get lost in the versioning. I would also like to be able to have information be entered into the spreadsheet via a form that others can fill out so that I don’t have to do as much data processing tasks.

Google Docs – A truly collaborative version of office

An example of using this strategy to create something.

NaNoWriMo(2)

Finally, I really want all of this stuff to be accessible in one place. I would really like to not have to remember exactly what all of these sites are. I just want one place to go to where it makes sense to find all of these things. Almost like a well-maintained professional development environment for hope.

Our IQity classroom - A one stop shop for learning tools, collaboration, and further professional development.

Now I would like you to figure out what YOU want collaboration to look like at Hope. Brainstorm
things that you don’t know are possible. Think about how you collaborate now and how you would like to change that to be less
attention heavy and more information heavy.

Beyond Rubrics

This podcast was created because of a discussion I had with my students about the merits of rubrics in a School 2.0 classroom. The data was mixed. Some students felt very comfortable with rubrics because it let them know how to get an A. Others believed that rubrics would hinder their creativity and ability to be authentic. Although I had asked students to help me create a rubric for an assignment, I had never asked them if they thought a rubric was a good idea at all. This podcast is a summary and a discussion of what I decided to do: Student-Centered Youbrics.

Show Notes:

• 00:00:00: Intro to Rubrics 2.0
  The Podcast Blog

• 00:01:46: The Great Rubric Debate
  The Value of Amateurs

• 00:03:15: Rubrics in Authentic Learning
  In the Students own Words

• 00:04:45: The Youbric

  The Decision

• 00:06:11: The Downside of Rubrics
• 00:07:16: A Geek!Ed! Moment
  Episode 67

• 00:08:35: Youbric Vs. Messy Assessment
  Messy Assessment according to Wes Fryer

• 00:12:14: The Teacher and Student Assessment Connection
• 00:12:57: Conclusion
  The Discovery Utopias