Question 241 of 365: What is a unisexual?

U is for unicycle.

I know because a toy told me.

My daughter asked me about the validity of that statement. She wanted to know about unicycles. She couldn’t quite understand why someone would want want to ride on a means of conveyance that looked like that. More than anything, though, she wanted to know why they called it a unicycle.

To that question, I said this:

“Uni means one, so its a cycle with only one wheel. Bi means two, so a bicycle is one with two wheels.”

Innocent and unassuming, but I could have gone even further. I could have spoken about the immense amount of balance it requires or that clowns ride them quite often. I could have also called her attention to the boy who was riding one outside of the drug store in Aspen. Instead, I just made the simple delineation between two and one. There are so many things that can be made simple through the means of a good prefix. By adding a few words to the beginning of the words we use, we can be so descriptive and precise. The problem is in when we use the wrong ones.

Monocycle sounds incredibly strange. And yet, why not? We say Monocle and Monorail when there is only one and yet we use Unicycle instead. Uni somehow implies independent and freeing; it is universal and unidirectional . Mono is monotonous or monomaniacal; it stands for the worst of being a single one.

Entire debates are framed about prefixes. The debate over homo or hetero is quite serious and intrusive into our lives. The most troubling part of the debate is that there seems to be no middle ground. One prefix means same and the other means different. And yet, a bisexual is someone who is attracted to both sexes. With the logic required of a four year old to understand the differences in cycles, why isn’t a unisexual those that are attracted to only one sex?

Wouldn’t it just be easier to describe those that are engaged in singular relationships to have a singular word to describe it?

Sure, unisexual doesn’t exactly have the same entitled tone that homosexual or heterosexual has, but I think that is only because of all of the baggage that those two words have had to carry for so long. The common ground here is in the fact that a great many people are attracted to one sex over the other. If that is something to celebrate, do so. By categorizing people with only the straight or gay prefixes, unisexuality has no ability to take hold. We are caught up in trying to find ways to slice up demographics and drill down to who likes, has done, or is passionate about what. We should be looking to the unicycle for inspiration.

Whether or not a children’s game told me that U is for Unisexual or not, I don’t mind. A unicycle is independent and crowd pleasing. Unisexuality can be too. We can go anywhere and support tiny changes to the creations of the world around us. We can explore the language of us and leave behind the language of “you.”

Question 73 of 365: What is the magic of a barcode?

The barcode is back.

While many are looking forward to Augmented Reality and to RFID chips as the way in which we will start tagging things and seeing everything as once big canvass for us to attach images, videos, and text; I believe that the barcode is a significantly interesting subject to consider the future of our physical world.

To paraphrase one of my favorite Breakfast Club quotes, we see the world as it is, in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. While we can attach sentimental value or recall memories based upon what we see, smell, taste and touch; we are the only ones that can see those associations. We have not barcoded our red t-shirts to produce any universally held metaphors or culturally significant symbols.

And yet, that is one of the things that we are desperate to do. We are looking forward to decoding the messages that are displayed through everything we see. We want to stop being confused. We want to stop lacking the context to make sense of the world around us.

Now, ideally, we would just be able to look at the things we wanted to know more about and then figure out their significance in relation to everything else we know, but I think that there is a certain kind of magic to putting a sticker onto something and allowing people (only if they want) to engage in figuring out what someone intended for them to know.

All of this is to say that I like the idea of http://stickybits.com/ a whole bunch. I like it more than I like AR and RFID because it introduces the idea of choice into our hyper-connected world. It allows us to decide if we want to find out what else has been attached to an object. We can print out and attach our own barcodes to the world to tell a story about the objects we choose to give significance to.

It is the new graffiti. It is a way of making old objects live again.

And yet, we can also leave the objects as they are. We can observe the painting and not have to scan its user-created barcode with a video mashup of other art. We can experience the food without seeing the way in which it was cooked tagged directly on top. We can take part in the process of tagging the world, and then when we don’t want to see that part of the world, we can turn it off. Or we can just turn off part of it.

I am engaged by the idea of my objects recommending to read, watch or experience. I think that I crave that much connection to the people that have held similar experiences that I can’t wait to decode what they have placed there for me to find.

And I think that is why the barcode is back, because I want an easy way to unencrypted other’s intentions for me. I want to stop guessing what is going on their head. While this is an intriguing game, and some would say an essential part of human nature, I am willing to give it up (at least some times) in order to more fully step into their shoes and know what they know. If I can see the connections that they are making then I can more fully know the people that I love or am interested in.

(I am not sure how yet, but I think there will come a day when we will be able to barcode  a conversation or an idea. While that may sound scary, I think that it will be really interesting to make the non-physical into something physical. It won’t have to stop with a traditional barcode. We can start creating art that is our barcodes, each one unique and full of meaning. I am still interested in tagging the world, and perhaps we need to start with thin and thick black lines.”

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• Barcode Producer 5.8 for Mac + PC Delivers Latest Enhancements (themactrack.com)
• BarcodesGenerator.com – Create Your Personal Barcode (killerstartups.com)
• Wearing your Stickybit on your sleeve, or elsewhere (news.cnet.com)

Question 63 of 365: Can we create passionate and purposeful Serendipity?

I don’t know all of the things that are going on in the world, nor do I really want to know all of them. I am content to know that there are good things going on around me and to see that I am loved. I can see things in my life working together and I can set so much into motion that I can orchestrate from beginning to end. And yet, it is the things that I don’t know about and have no control over that seem to affect my life most and create the most fulfilling experiences.

When I speak of Serendipity, I am talking about those people and events that happen TO you. They do not happen because of you or through your efforts, they are events that happen TO you, for better or worse. Given that definition, is there really any way to orchestrate serendipity?

Is there any way to hear from the people that could give you a new job if you just knew to ask? Is there any way to receive e-mail and phone calls from people you don’t know and immediately engage them in conversations about your mutual passions (not tit-for-tat opportunities)? Is there any way to join the known and the unknown on a consistent basis through channels of your own choosing?

You see, the friends I have made since College are almost entirely serendipitous. I do not work with them. I do not live near them. I do not have an overly social nature that would allow for accidental meeting or memorable repartee. Starting relationships is not an easy act, and it would be nice if I could point to something that makes finding best friends and business opportunities easy and constant.

And yet, I can point to ways of finding people and businesses. I can figure out the equation for getting more followers on twitter or having a bigger blog readership. I can decode exactly what it takes to receive massive amounts of e-mail about things you think a lot about.

But, I can’t figure out how to create a serendipitous experience for the things that I really care about. I can’t figure out how to find people that I would love to really create things with or become life-long friends with. I am at a loss for how all of the stuff I put out on my blog and Twitter feed effectively creates traction for passionate connections that are not self-serving and unreciprocated. I want a filter for those who are would want to be “all in” with me.

I understand that it is very hard to know who those people are right away, and yet I think that the filter could be created. I feel as though there has to be a way to test a connection for how strong it is and how important it will become. There has to be a test that could be applied to all of our serendipitous actions (comments on blogs, tweets and retweets from people we don’t know, new friends on Facebook, etc.).

It might go something like this:

• Will you challenge me to be better?
• Will you create something new every day?
• Will you share everything that is worth sharing?
• Will you tell me stories?

I guess that is the kind of Serendipity I am looking for, but perhaps that too high of a bar to set. Perhaps, I will just have to go through the manual process of vetting people and ideas and not jump directly to being “all in” with those who already know that they fit the above criteria. Perhaps it is good thing that serendipity only takes us so far.

Related articles by Zemanta

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• “Controlled Serendipity” & Librarians (lib.uiowa.edu)

Question 62 of 365: Why does waiting matter?

In so much of what I write and think about, I am interested in what is instant and what I can will into being. I am so interested in creating what I can’t yet see. I want to be a part of the conversations that create change and I want to be with people who are passionate and have purpose behind their actions.

And yet, there is the waiting.

I wait because other people make me wait. I wait because I want to know what they have to say. I wait because that is the only way that listening can occur. I wait because being told no should always be an option on the table.

So, today I waited for a response. I waited to hear a judgement being handed down. And while I waited, I wracked my brain for what I could do better. I wrestled with every conceivable question that could have come up, every roadblock that someone else thinks I have. I sat nervously trying to iterate without a concrete direction. I wanted to speak, but knew that it wasn’t yet my turn.

And in the end, I wanted so badly just to be able to reach inside of someone else’s head and change their mind. I wanted to write the e-mail that told me I was doing a good job and that all of my hard work had paid off. And yet, that isn’t what makes waiting important.

I am not going to Techstars for a Day, but I will be continuing to iterate on my ideas and see if I can make it into the big show. This news wasn’t what was important either.

The waiting was the best part. It was the not knowing that provided the most freedom to have hope and hopelessness. It let me see two diametrically opposed futures: one in which everything goes exactly according to plan and I have an easy time convincing others that my ideas are valid and the other in which I have to fight for every conversation and every user. The reality is somewhere in the middle, but it is important to be in limbo sometimes and weigh both sides as equally possible.

Only waiting can let me get comfortable with ambiguity. Through waiting, I am able to doubt everything and come out on the other side. I can challenge my assumptions and figure out just why those assumptions were stupid. Flat out rejection is too harsh because you end up throwing out everything. Pure success is equally damaging. It can make almost anything seem like a good idea.

Waiting is what makes us vulnerable enough to let others make us better. And that is what I did today. I got better.

Question 18 of 365: Why is there such intense competition to manage your projects?

It seems like every single day I run across another new way to do project management or collaboration with a team. It seems as though everyone really wants me to be on time or communicate effectively. They really are interested in saving me time and having me use the networks I already know and love. They want to track my issues (of which, there are many) and provide all of my stakeholders with updates on my progress. They want to prioritize my life, achieve milestones and generally just get things done. They can do it in many flavors of open source, or many “enterprise” solutions. And they just keep coming on in droves.

And the only reason I can figure out why more and more companies seem to really believe that they have project management figured out better than anyone else, is that there seems to be so little satisfaction with how projects are being managed in the mainstream. In fact, it seems that these companies and services keep cropping up simply because so many people dislike the ways meetings are run, projects are tracked, or teams are managed. We have a corporate culture that continually makes fun of inept managers and people without the ability to get things done, while still keeping the structures in place that allow it to happen.

So, when someone comes up with a way of doing things differently, there really isn’t a whole lot of reason not to try. After all, anything would be better than the status quo. Whether this is in poorly run department meetings at a high school or inefficient development collaboration in a big software firm, people are simply desperate for something different. And everyone sees the potential of this market. If any single product could inspire change enough to allow different relationships to form between coworkers or change the way we go through the process of checking things off of a list, then it would truly shift the ways that we think about work.

Project management, to a large extent,  is really a code word for “fixing the people on my team with technology”. It is a means to try and correct bad habits, allow for the communication that should be an expectation and allow the progress that most people just feel to be visible. I’m not saying that this isn’t noble work. In fact, I am using a number of productivity and project management tools right now (Pivotal tracker, Google Apps, Google Voice), but I believe that the problem that all of these Project management tools are trying to solve is a human one. They are all trying to make “any team” into the perfect team and “any project” into the perfect one.

I believe that there are only some teams that are truly great and only some projects worth doing. While there may be a lot of money to be made in trying to make the “average” projects into something more than that, there isn’t enough money in the world that would make me want to work on them. I want to be working with people who are truly inspired and on ideas that are filled with purpose. I don’t want to use any of these tools because of something that the people in my life lack. If I use these tools, I want my team to only be lacking time. Because sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to write the best kinds of e-mails, blog posts, tweets, Gantt charts, reports, or user stories.

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

Swimming lessons

For one year when I was younger, I took private swimming lessons. This
was in the stage after I had learned all of the basics with a bunch of
other kids my age. We could all do the breaststroke, tread water, and
do relay races for extended periods of time. And it was before any
official swim team existed for our age group. I saw potential in
myself; I wanted to do more advanced things than were going on in a
group, but I wasn’t yet ready to compete.
 
The reason I am relaying this rather personal story is that I feel
like this happens often for educators. They get to a point where they
need some one on one attention in order to continue their learning.
They are ready to fine tune their skills, ready to move beyond the
simple strokes that all teachers posses. So, where do they get this
one on one help? If they have a personal learning network, they can
get it quite easily. They can ask questions and create a relationship
with another teacher who has just had the benefit of “private
lessons”. But, if they see themselves as disconnected from all
teachers who aren’t in their school, then this kind of learning
doesn’t happen.
 
“Private swimming lessons” are much harder when everyone around you is
just treading water.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

15 questions…

I was given the task recently of coming up with 15 questions to ask a
information technology director candidate during an interview. While I
missed the window during which this information would have been useful
to the person who solicited my help (moving is really hard), I would
like to provide it here. It may not be useful as a list in itself, but
I had a lot of fun coming up with it, and it may lead to more good
thinking if I ever care to answer these questions.
 
1. What do you see as the purpose of technology in education?
2. What is the one change that you would make to our institution that
would help students to learn in a more connected way?
3. What do you believe is the purpose for acceptable use policies?
What is your ideal AUP?
4. What should professional development look like?
5. Who is in your personal learning network?
6. What does your learning workflow look like, or how do you learn?
7. How should our institution archive, tag, and share information and
learning objects?
8. How do you plan on bringing all stakeholders to the table to make
technological decisions?
9. What role should open source software play in our institution?
10. What is your vision for mobile devices accessing our institution?
11. What does online learning mean to you?
12. What kind of technology infrastructure is essential in our institution?
13. How will you connect our institution to others in the state,
country and world?
14. How will you let our students take their learning identity with
them after they graduate?
15. What will we find if we google you?
 
Anyone think of any others?
 
Anyone want to answer these ones?

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

The Ripe Environment: Change cannot be Institutionalized

Well, when I first started blogging about The Ripe Environment, I didn’t know that I was being edupunk, but now that I have read the powerful thinking behind the theory (Students 2.0, Stephen Downes, Bavatuesdays, D’Arcy Norman) and I believe I was. I don’t know that I really want all of the baggage that goes along with labeling myself, but I truly believe in the idea that change is about people not processes.

It takes a person to create change because vision isn’t enough. It is great to create documents and blog posts and do research projects on creating change, but unless a teacher in the classroom does something differetly or a student asks for more in the classroom, there is no way that things will shift one iota.

I happen to love the nitty gritty.

I like talking about working through significant roadblocks to change. I like convincing others that change is worth their time, that it is important.

And not just any change, we need to be moving toward Authentic Learning with such passion and ferocity that it cannot be boiled down a powerpoint presentation. Passion doesn’t come from such things. Passion only comes from a place of specific experiences, not a generic goal of creating change.

The Ripe Environment should not be about creating a hope among people that there is a movement afoot, that technology is the silver bullet or that golden jargon will save us all. The Ripe Environment is about personally expressing a need to do things better and focusing on what better really is.

I have to constantly tell myself that learning is sacred. I do it for myself. I do not share because I know what is best. I share because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is only through this act of rebellion that change will occur within others.

(I may be abstract in talking about this concept from time to time, but I really do want to talk about the personal stories and experiences that create change. Share yours in any way you know how.)

The Ripe Environment: The Most Powerful Learning

The Ripe Environment: Most Powerful Learning Podcast [ 12:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (174)

Although the podcast (which was somehow not recorded because I had the device set for line-in rather than mic… I am quite mad about it actually) for this post explains this prerequisite for The Ripe Environment pretty well, I would like to further outline it for those of you who don’t have 15 minutes to listen (or who can’t imagine all of the things I would have said, had the microphone actually worked).

I would like to start by saying that I do not actually have any problems with conferences, meetings, or workshops. In fact, they are one of the premier places that The Ripe Environment can exist. However, my contention is that The Ripe Environment cannot simply stay in that space. It has to transfer over into the times when no one else is around. It has to transfer into the individual mind, so that your own mind is a Ripe Environment for Authentic Learning. I know that probably sounds a little hokey, but I believe that there are many ways of thinking things through, some of which are more productive than others.

On the podcast (which, once again, is only in your imagination at this point) I use the metaphor of class time and conferences being a typewriter. Conferences exist in one particular place and time, as does the typewritten words on a page. They cannot be copied and disseminated in the ways that a blog post or wiki edit can be. There is something quite beautiful about words existing in only one place and an experience only being a singular event. Even in the capture of the backchannel, live-blogging or streaming of an experience, the experience held in one time. However, the true learning happens when one reflects upon the process, upon the environment.

The Ripe Environment does not end when the session is over. It never ends. The learning extends over the boundaries when it is made personal. When the singular experience is built upon with an eye toward a personal set of circumstances. Learning occurs when a resource is appropriated for your classroom. Learning occurs when a link is made (hyperlink or a synaptic link) to a website or person. Learning is occurs when an e-mail is sent off requesting a follow up or an invite to a google document is sent out.

These moments are not held in time. They are ongoing. They make sure that the Environment stays ripe rather than withers.