Question 148 of 365: Who gets notified?

The shipment of iPads came in. The ones that my father was looking forward to. The one that meant a message from Apple was was sent out to his email address. I was notified because he was notified. And I went and picked it up. I will mail it off tomorrow, but for today I will spend some time thinking through the idea of being notified when good things are coming your way.

I wish I could be notified for the following things:

So, while I don’t get alerts for those things yet, I can be fairly confident that at least I get alerts for the new gadget du jour. That is nice and convenient, but not nearly as transformative,

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

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.

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

Staying away

This is the first time in a few years that I did not attend NECC
virtually. I have never attended physically, but I have anticipated
all of the thinking and writing that happens during this conference.
This year, however, I am on vacation. I have not taken a vacation from
thinking or pushing myself in all things ed tech. Rather, a vacation
from the competition for attention. A vacation from large halls with
standing room only (for even virtual attendees). A vacation from
second-hand commentary standing for research.
 
Really though, this vacation isn’t about escaping NECC. It is about
sleeping on a hammock with my daughter and waiting for the warm Austin
wind to take us away from everything that plugs in.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Conflict of interest

I accidentally posted this too soon, but here is the official version
of this idea (which is bound to change at some point).
 
What does it mean when you are faced with the following challenge:
 
The place that you work has given you the freedom to explore different
learning platforms, work with creative people, collaborate on process,
policy, and pedagogy, and the means to not have to say no too often.
 
The future you see for education is different than what is being planned.
 
The opportunities to branch out and create your own learning spaces
have never been more numerous or more engaging.
 
The community you actively engage in advocates for open communication
and documentation of every move forward that you make with your own
learning.
 
The boundaries on that communication have never been more clear: “Some
meetings are secret.”
 
The platforms for learning and support that you use are at odds with
“having someone on the other end of the line” when something goes
wrong.
 
So, what here is a conflict of interest. Can all of this coexist and
not create chaos, unrest or animosity between my job, my network, my
living, and my passion?
 
(Too vague? Give me a few months, and perhaps specifics will surface.)

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

The most trusting of folks

We trust that things will happen , that the projects we are working on
will eventually see the light of day.
 
We trust that by sharing our information and learning, good things
will occur. We trust that feeds are freedom and voice if virtue.
 
We trust that when we create something of value, that others will
recognize that value.
 
We trust that tomorrow will, in fact, be another day.
 
We trust that change will occur if we will it into being. We trust
that learning isn’t static.
 
We trust that a great many things will be stable, though too.
 
We trust that networks are not based upon the platform they were
created in. We trust that people will still be humane when faced with
the possibility of being so.
 
We trust that truth still matters.
 
Or, at least I do.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Communal living

I never realized just how important community was to me until my wife
and I asked our best family friends to come and live with us while
they are saving up to buy a house.
 
For many years I have written about online communities as being an
essential part of authentic learning. Yet, I have never lived in such
close quarters to another family, and thus did not know how much is
learning by being a part of a close-knit real-life community.
 
Daily I learn what actions by my children and theirs “really mean”. I
now know why personal space has so much value. I know what to expect
from our community and what my community expects of me.
 
The reason for this post is that it has gotten me thinking about our
need for a nurtured real-life community that supports everything we
attempt to change in education. While I would like to think that the
twittersphere is all that I need for support and community, I need the
people that I can look straight in the eye and brainstorm the greatest
learning activity with.
 
I guess I will just state this idea as a challenge to myself: if I am
not cultivating my real community as hard as I am doing so for my
online community, I will never be able to accomplish all of the things
I would like.
 
Or, to put it another way:
 
The number of people you can touch with your work depends upon how you
work with the people you can literally touch. (Although, that sounds a
little creepier than I wanted.)

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

I won’t buy anything that only does one thing

I have been thinking a lot about this recently: I don’t want anything to do with a device that only does what it was advertised to do. It is something that I have slowly realized as over he last few years as I went through the experience of using a Smart Board, CPS clicker system, an iPod touch and an Apple TV. The two former products are meant to do one thing well. They are advertised specifically for educational purposes, and they work. But the two latter products are meant to do anything that the community makes them do, and they are not specifically marketed as educational components.
 
The latter products I keep on coming back to because they can do more and more as the community supports future development, and I guess that this is the difference between products I want to use and ones I don’t. The ones I care to use for education, are the ones with built in communities. They are the ones that get pushed to their full potential.
 
So I guess what I am saying is that if I am ever put in change of large purchasing decisions for a district or school, I will be choosing to purchase and support products that connect together and have a community surrouning them.
 
For example: I am right now using my iPod touch with an open source program called boxee (remote on the touch and the full program on the Apple TV) that is a full fledged media center in order to watch powerful TED talks in high definition on my TV using WiFi to stream the content. It is all connected.
 
Shouldn’t it always be this way?
 
(As an aside, I realize that this example is filled with apple products. I don’t believe that apple has a monopoly on connectedness or hackability, it happens that this is the community that I associate with most easily. I would actually love to hear about other devices that you keep on coming back to because they increase in value over time.)
 
Sent from my iPod

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Truth in advertising…

I have had quite a few people follow me on twitter recently that weren’t exactly people. They were organizations and schools. They were large groups of people that all somehow are tweeting with the same account. This, is a little unsettling to me and I’m not sure why.
 
I guess it is partially because I believe it is a little less than genuine to have a single voice represent an entire entity. I also believe that many groups are joining twitter simply to advertise that they are on twitter. This is even less genuine.
 
To me, an organization should encourage all of it’s members to become a part of a learning network. It should ask all of it’s employees to have heir own voices and then stream them all into a single place. The school should aggregate the conversation about learning in their space, not merely give updates as to the merits of their latest program changes.
 
You raise the level or discourse about any topic by giving that discourse an official channel. By asking all participants in an organization to tweet on behalf of that organization, you can actually find the pulse of what is going on. Which is, after all, the major goal of Twitter.
 
Sent from my iPod

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

The cost of not doing anything…

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.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous