Learning is Change

Question 212 of 365: Is it going there or coming back that is harder?

Weehoo Inc., maker of the iGo pedal trailer.
Image via Wikipedia

I rode my bike today from Frisco, Co to Breckenridge, an 8 or 9 mile route one way. The path was a slow grinding incline on the way there and a downhill masterpiece on the way back. And yet, on the way back there were these two hills that I had to get off and walk. I probably wouldn’t have done that, but my daughter was trailing behind me in a WeeHoo, a recumbent bike for kids that attaches to the back of my bike.

The ride was beautiful both ways. I couldn’t look up much at the surrounding mountains on the way there because of the grinding uphill battle. I couldn’t take in the scenery completely on the way back because of the overwhelming fatigue that had set in. I was happy when it was over, both ways.

It reminded me of the first long bike ride I took as a kid. I rode with a group of friends to the farthest one of our houses. It was almost all uphill. And I never made it back. My mom came and picked me up because I didn’t think that I could take the muscle exertion that everyone else had signed up for. I felt defeated, or at the very least, unequal to each of my friends who could to it.

After that moment of defeat, I decided to start riding more often so that the next time I had the opportunity, I would be up the the challenge.

This time, though, I was up to it. I didn’t think that it was possible after having arrived in Breckenridge but the people I rode with were able to convince me otherwise. They said that it would all be worth it to ride downhill, at least until I hit the two big hills that I would most likely have to get off and push my bike and WeeHoo combo. They were giving me permission to do what I needed in order to make it back with them. They were letting me go at my own pace and engage in the types of travel that would get me to my destination.

So, coming back was decidedly better.

I had the support I needed to encourage my return. I knew the route and could predict what it would be like. While I had more energy on the way there, I knew exactly what it would take to get back. I could coast downhill and gaze up at the mountain forest. I could see the end in my mind and then see myelf through.

I think this is how it is with every long journey. While everything is new and different on the way out, the satisfaction comes from the return. While the effort is easier at the outset, the steep incline wears on you. And if you decide to skip out on the way back, you will lose out on the most important learning of all: getting off your bike and walking it up a hill. By doing that, you will know that there is no pride lost in getting there under your own power at a different speed and via a different method. Some may judge, but the people that are really important, the ones that came with you, never will. And that is well worth the trip.

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Question 211 of 365: What are our impulse buys?

SAN ANSELMO, CA - APRIL 30: A customer walks ...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I run a lot of errands to the grocery store. I pick up items like milk for my kids or spices for an upcoming meal. Almost always, though, I find myself at the checkout line looking directly at chocolate bars and sodas. I find myself increasingly drawn to buy them. I pick up a payday or a Kit Kat. I consume whatever it is by the time I get to the car. I feel a sense of entitlement to these items because I went on the errand. I earned these things.

And that is what an impulse buy is for me. It is something that I feel entitled to under the right circumstances. The rest if the time, I only look at those items, able to resist their intense attraction.

I think about the many other impulse items in my working and waking life. I think about the distractions after a nice bout of email responses. I think about a little Twitter fix or a few text messages. These are the sugary sweet moments that I feel entitled to just like those chocolate bars.

I feel as though that is what Facebook has become, what nearly all social games are. They are the things that we do in-between the really important stuff, on errands from the rest of our life. It is only when the social networks become more than impulse foods that our judgement becomes truly clouded as to what is healthy and what isn’t. When the junk food becomes what we fill up on, priorities get skewed.

It isn’t as though I am saying that it is all junk. I just know how sweet and addicting finding a voice outside of my own physical sphere of influence can be. I know how easy it is to spend hours looking into old friends or going down the rabbit hole of followers of followers of followers. If it is more than an impulse buy for me, the impulses win and there is no plan. I never get back home to make the recipe or fill my children’s bellies. And that isn’t the way I want to live, not online and not at the grocery store.

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Question 210 of 365: What does a three year old think about the oil spill in the gulf?

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Blowout Preventer (BOP) Cut Away
Image by eschipul via Flickr

Today in the car, my daughter wondered what the oil wells in the farmland of Colorado were all about. I said they were used to suck up the oil that was underneath the earth. My daughter paused, deep in thought, and then she said this (I’m paraphrasing, but all of the ideas are there):

My teacher told me that in Florida there was an accident. Deep underneath the water there was a big machine that started to leak and let oil out into the water. I think that they are getting oil out of those wells because we need some in Colorado and the leak is too big.

I was proud. My daughter knows about the events of the day. She knows enough (or could guess at least) to reveal the root problem of oil in our lifetimes: there isn’t (and won’t be) enough to go around. If you don’t get it in one place, you have to get it in another. I love that her mind works this way, and I wonder why so many others don’t.

If others saw this in such simple terms, I don’t think we would debate about our focus for the future. Any energy source that’s scarcity can be found out by a three year old, needs to be replaced by one that isn’t so easy to poke holes in. Right?

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Question 209 of 365: What is the difference between a leak and a link?

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Logo used by Wikileaks
Image via Wikipedia

The wikileaks papers are exquisite. In their scope and its specificity, they are immense. I don’t fully understand all of their implications, but I know that they are not ordinary. They represent sharing on a magnitude that we have not seen for years. Or, at least that is what many mainstream media outlets would have us believe.

To me, there is a much bigger leak that is happening every day now. It is so massive in scope that it makes the wikilink papers look like a children’s book of content. The leak that I am referring to is the newly public Google Docs.

A few months ago, Google Docs decided to change the default settings for how public documents would be indexed into the Google search engine. At the time, Google was telling everyone that if they wanted to maintain anonymity for their documents, they should “unpublish” the content. What was still up in the air was how all of the public documents would be made available to anyone who cared to search for them.

I have been spending the last few days looking at public documents that include intricate notes of meetings, planning documents for major projects, and simple to do lists. It is amazing to me to seen just how many people’s ideas are indexed in their unfiltered form. The difference between a web page or a blog post and a google document is that people use documents for more intimate communication and collaborative purposes. They use them to plan things that perhaps only a few people would find important. In fact, they use them much like many of the military personnel used the wikilinks documents. The public Google Docs are the types of communication that were formerly private but now have been given searchability in a way that only Google can do.

And I think this is good. I think that much of our communication is too private. The default for collaborative notes should be public and published. The minutes for our organizations shouldn’t have to be vetted before they are posted. They should be saved every half second as they are in Google Docs.

In other words, this type of leak should continue. We should continue to tell the stories of successful collaboration and creation. We should continue to share drafts with the world, complete with comments and unedited passion. The instinct should be that we leak our communication as often as we can. I know that we aren’t trading secrets of national security, but perhaps by doing this we will be able to rise above the secrecy that has plagued organizations the world over since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Finally we will be able to harness our institutional memory and momentum and move beyond doing the same things over and over again. We will start to build upon one another and through the process of simple sharing and searching, we will all become reporters on the major story of our time: Information, when attained through learning and collaboration, is the largest power there is.

Oh, and just in case you don’t know how to search the public google docs, go to google and type site:docs.google.com and then whatever search terms make sense. You may be surprised by what you find.

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Question 208 of 365: Are we special customers?

Image representing Edmodo as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

There was a local chinese takeout place that my wife and I used to frequent. When we lived in the dorms, we were a stone’s throw away. But as we moved further and further out from the location, the delivery folks became more and more skeptical that we were “local.” Because we got food so often, we were designated as “special customers,” with the distinct privilege of receiving our delivery food no matter where we happened to be. I always think back to the status that we had cultivated through many phone calls.

It meant something to be a special customer, and I think that it is something we should be trying to achieve elsewhere. We tend to shy away from it because it is favoritism, but it really is the good kind. To me, being a special customer means that we are parts of the process of creating value. We are a bigger part of the equation for that restaurant and if I am able to demonstrate value in other spaces, I should be able to find the same label of “special customer.”

In essence, I would like to be a special customer for Google when I show others how I use Google Docs and gmail. I want to be a part of creating those tools for others. I want to be a special customer on the iPad and for Edmodo. I want to be a part of making these tools and ideas into what they can be. I don’t feel that way, though. I feel as though I am the same as any user. While I am okay with being treated as equals, it is hard for me to understand why creating a space for special customers to come together and share their specialness is out of the question.

I want free delivery to anywhere. I want the folks who really control the fate of the products and services I use to see me as a partner in their launch process. I want them to see the same distinction I do within special customers and users. I want to help evangelize and create within your space, but only if I feel valued. How do you value us?

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Advanced Online Learning Day 2: #synclinkpost

I am often amazed at how shallow my knowledge can be if I haven’t taken the time to play. I can get the concept that a given tool or idea is useful, but until I actually put it to use, there is very little that I understand about how it works or why I would use it. And when I do finally do get around to using it, I find that I could have used it in so many other ways in other recent projects if I would have just taken the time to create something with it originally.

So, that is our task together. We need to spend some time with the tools that we have worked so hard to learn about. We need to make a case for their existence in our workflow. We need to create something of value and then present that value to others. In order to do this , we must first answer one simple question: What is the itch that we need to scratch?

If we do not have an actual problem, elemental in nature, that we are trying to solve with Advanced Online Learning tools then we really don’t need them and they will be able to fall by the wayside quite easily. However, if we are able to define and articulate what it is that Dropbox alleviates or Posterous allows us to do then there is a better chance of us putting into practice some pedagogically sound actions. It isn’t enough to state that simplifies posting content or syncing files between computers. It isn’t enough that we brainstorm what we “could” do with it. The problems that we define must be ones that we have experienced for years or that are too pressing to ignore. Things like a specific unit that has always been a chore for students or an area that has too much content to cover in the given amount of time. Scratching those kinds of itches are going to lead us to create something much more worthwhile than simply sharing resources or doing the first things that come into our head.

So, I would like you to start planning and to start creating. Create a Google Document called My [insert your name instead of my] Pedagogical Itch. Share it via a link and then post it to our Moodle course by clicking on add a resource and then add a link to a file or website. This will allow all of us to check in on one another as we start to create and talk about our act of creation. At the end of today, you should have a plan and a working prototype for how you will bring a single tool (or cohesive collection of tools) into your practice. This can look like a lot of things, but the thing it can’t be is vague. Dig into a unit or theme or content area. Build out a resource that you can be proud of. We will be doing a presentation of what we have created as the culmination of our course. Enjoy.

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Advance Online Learning Day 1: #synclinkpost

Every online course I have taught has been pre-packaged, with known outcomes. While I have felt as though others needed me to provide that kind of an experience because of their apprehension about online learning, it wasn’t the type that I knew they would learn the most from. Because this course has “advanced” in the title, I have decided that we can write the rules together and create something that hasn’t existed before. Here is how I introduce the course in the Moodle instance (open to everyone) where all of our resources will be housed:

This course will center upon three basic principles of advanced online learning. These principles are defined as:

  • Learning is co-created
  • Tools are multi-use
  • Sharing is essential

I separate out advanced online learning and traditional online learning because we can no longer be satisfied with doing read and respond activities within our online courses. For too long, we have relied on content heavy online resources. The purpose of this course is to ensure that we are focused on the individual participant and his or her learning rather than on simply transmitting what it is that we want them to know. To state the obvious: he ability to know and the breadth and depth of that available knowledge has grown beyond our comprehension. We must build better nets. This course will go about building those nets and also how to cast them out.

With that in mind, the content for this course is not established before we begin. We will be exploring the tools, creating the conversation, and inspiring the community of practice necessary to push the boundaries of Online Learning to the point at which it becomes Learning.

It is my belief that all we need in order to create a space worthy of our time is a few good tools and a lot of conversation about how to use them. Our responsibility over the next two days is to craft learning experiences for ourselves and others, and not to have me craft them for you. Here are the tools and spaces that are going to help us do that:

Please help our course by simply using the hashtag #synclinkpost in order to share how you co-create learning.

Question 206 of 365: Where is the open book?

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original title page of Jude the Obscure by Tho...
Image via Wikipedia

Every time I put my son down for bed, he sees fit to be totally uninterested without a good amount of singing of songs and reapplying blankets. In between each one of these tries at sleep during which he may or may not actually close his eyes, I head over to the bookshelf with all of my old novels on it. As my son considers sleep for the twelfth time, I open up The Great Gatsby or if I’m feeling slightly more ambitious, Plato’s Republic. I read through all of the passages that I have highlighted or notated, which is quite a bit.

Each of the stars next to a given paragraph is enough for me to jump right back in to the person that I was when I first read the book. And as my son wakes up and goes back down with severe regularity, I keep on coming back to the fact that I have absolutely no way to retrieve those moments of insight without opening up each one of those volumes and reading that exact underlining, with scribbles that only I would understand.

Every time I stumble upon something that meant a great deal to me in a book I haven’t read for years, I feel this pang of regret that I didn’t read it on a digital device with syncable notes and sharable annotations. I look at a lot of the works that I read as an english major and how many of them are in the public domain. Each one of those I could have downloaded as an ePub file and opened up on an iPad or Kindle, had they only existed.

I know the intimacy of books is desirable, but sometimes I just wish that I could export those intimate moments and savor them more regularly. I don’t want to have the parts of me that I left on those pages get left behind. I want them at my fingertips.

And I know I could use Evernote to scan in or take pictures of those notes, but I really think that misses the point. If I am only copying over the pages that mattered then, there is almost no hope that I will read the entire work again and discover new things about the author and myself. I want the whole context of these notations. I want the whole story of why I starred entire sections. I want to search through and find the threads that bind together all of my braces hanging in the margins like unfinished picture frames ready to be hung in my digital memory.

I believe that this kind of work will happen when I am not responsible for digitizing the content itself, but only the annotations. I mean that all of the books I read as a student must be available in Google Books or some other easily searchable format. Then I want q scanner that only looks in the margins and maps it to a page number and a paragraph.

It would look something like the formula that a good friend of mine wrote in high school for knowing what page number he should be on in his very different version of Jude the Obscure. The class set was larger print, but my friend’s copy was an antique. He used his graphing calculator to concoct a formula for going back and forth between his book and ours. It worked flawlessly. I want the same thing for my notes. I want a way to map the words I wrote with the ones that my famous counterparts penned. Only then will I be able to look at the little diagrams I made up in the 9th grade with anything but nostalgia and regret.

If I want my past to live into my ore went I need a way to map it to something living. All of the books on that bookshelf are dead. Without commenting and liking or metadata, those words are not going to assemble themselves into something of value. And I want to find that value again, if for no other reason than to see exacltly who I was and how all of that has changed now that I am reading exerpts wle my son sits in his room, screaming because the door is stuck on the inside.

Because, it has changed, believe me.

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Question 205 of 365: Why don't we clear the board more often?

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Small Price to Pay for the All Clear
Image by MarkyBon via Flickr

I have been to a few emergency rooms, mostly for highly nervous new parent reasons. Near each one is a board with names on it. Ussually this board has ailments, procedures, and where patients are at any given time. It tells of upcoming surgeries that require a certain level of expertise. This type of board has been highly popularized by shows like Grey’s Anatomy and other hospital dramas. It always struck me as a very public way for everyone to know what was going on in the hospital on any given day. No one can hide from the responsibilities that the board requires. The board dictates your schedule. Every day, new patients arrive and old patients are erased from the board. More than once a day, the entire slate is wiped clean and the whole process starts anew.

I wish this board existed for more than just hospitals.

Instead, we lower the stakes. We move the boards into more private areas like meeting spaces and classrooms. We let notices stay there for weeks or months with large “do not erase” signs around them. Or, we digitize the process and make it even more secretive in our email inbox or content management systems. There is no feeling that we must clear the board or people will die. There is no feeling that everyone will know exactly what we have been up to because our names are tied to the procedure to which we were assigned. In essence, the board is inconsequential in our working lives. It doesn’t dictqte order or urgency and we don’t feel the need to clear it nearly as often.

But what if we did put up such a board in our schools and workplaces? What if we put the things that we were doing up for everyone to see and then cleared them away with a medical efficiency? I would like to see the progress and the stories that get told then.

If I had to guess, most people wouldn’t spend their time on menial work. If their tasks were going up on the board, everything we did would become important. If we had to write up there what we were learning about or what we were about to tackle on any given day, we would see just how urgent our procedures can be.

And when we needed help for a given procedure, we could elicit help from one another simply by adding one another’s names to the board. We could focus on the collaborative spirit that is required in a hospital in order to keep patients alive. There would stop being a competition between who has harder or more important work because the task for each day is not to complete your own work, but to help clear the board. If you have a free moment, help someone else clear the board. If you have something that needs doing, write it up.

I don’t clear my email inbox as often as I should because there is nothing making me do it. It isn’t life or death and there isn’t any help if I get stuck. But if every one fo my job requirements were up on the board, waiting to be cleared by a team of highly skilled people, you had better believe that I wouldn’t still have an unreturned email from last December just with a draft that has been saved 5 different times and then abandoned because something more interesting came up.

I get that I am not saving lives by creating learning objects or by talking about social media or asking better questions through video. But hqt doesn’t mean that the ambition and pride that doctors feel for clearing the board is unavailable to me. I just have to make my system more open to people walking through my emergency room. I need to allow others to help me, too.

If I simply keep my work as public as possible and not try to own everything, I believe that more will get done and I will feel better about it as well. Or maybe I will jut better be able to put myself in the shoes of someone in ER or House.

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