Question 8 of 365: What’s in a name?

Starting something new is much easier than coming up with a good name for that new thing. Whether that is a business, an educational model, or just a theory. Is KIPP a popular charter model because it has such a memorable name (or, more likely, is it popular because of the change it creates within students)? Is Twitter popular because it evokes the quickness of the service? Is Google a verb now because of the hard G sound that is repeated? All of these are plausible.

Everyone that has some advice for a new venture seems to have advice for naming it. Especially when it comes to children. People seem to want you to try on their favorites and see what you think. I think it is probably the same instinct that causes people to want to name your business or school. They would like to see what you think of their ability to own some part of the idea without actually having been a part of its creation.

So, are we dooming any venture to an early death by making an egregious error against some of the most highly valued properties of naming?

• Something that is hard to say.
• Something that is too long.
• Something that doesn’t really evoke an emotion or an image of what you are trying to accomplish.
• Something that can’t easily be turned into a verb (googling, blogging, tweeting)

Or, could we simply call it what we want and create something great, that people will want to use and help to grow. In the end, does the name really matter? Is Flickr the leader of photo sharing sites in spite of the odd spelling? Is Drop.io a success because of the strange url that is uses?

I guess to finally answer the question, I must put it onto myself. What is in a name for me?

I want whatever I do to be something that I can be passionate about. I want it to call up only the right things in my head when I think about it. I want it to be always on the tip of my tongue. I want it to immediately stick out in a crowd of millions, and I want it to stay with you long after you hear it for the first time. I want it to be something that people don’t have to overlook just to see the merits of what I am trying to do. In essence, the name is something I want to call out in triumph and not yell out in agony.

It’s a good thing I named my kids well, I suppose. The names Isabelle and Tobias bring me so much joy, and I don’t get questioned daily about them. I think there is something to be said for that.

Live Blogging With AHS students.

On
Friday, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to some of the most
unique voices in the discussion over Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.
These voices did not come from an “expert” being paid thousands of
dollars for a breakfast engagement. They did not come from a literary
analyst who picked apart Pink’s prose with perfect clarity and wit.
They came from Arapahoe high school students that were eager to create a conversation, expansive and intense. Check out the discourse for yourselves.

We
took a look at one of Pink’s chapters specifically: Story. I especially
liked how the conversation evolved over the course of the hour that we
blogged. It seemed to start from a place of pure story, then it evolved
into something about the future of the workplace. Then we got very
theoretical. We started talking about how story can influence memory
and how memory influences story. Even though Pink devotes quite a bit
of time to this idea, I really like the way the students were able to
incorporate it into their thinking. It really got me to start
reflecting on what the purpose of crafting learning environments can
be.

If we create an environment that is ripe enough to learn
within then we are creating an experience; we are crafting the story of
that learning. In turn that learning becomes a memory, one that will be
told over and over as a story if it is good enough. So, in truth, we
are trying to create learning memories for students, ones that they
will hold onto long after they have forgotten the names of their
classmates or what day of the week it was on. We want to create
memories that are so lasting that the events take on mythical
proportions, they start living on as stories of their own.

Is
there a way of analyzing the ways in which we tell stories about our
high school experience to our friends from that time period? Is there a
way to know whether or not those experiences were learning based or
extraneous (not that they were bad things, mind you)? My question to
those students, and to anyone who reads this blog is what is a learning
memory that you have? What is the one experience in an authentic
learning environment that you will never be able to forget?

(Special thanks to Karl Fisch for setting up this amazing opportunity. More of this kind of collaboration and conversation is needed desperately.)