Learning is Change

Question 15 of 365: How do we form our Digital Habits?

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I’m sure that many of our digital habits would qualify as addictions. Whether that is tweeting, texting, googling, emailing, or simply youtubing; each of us has developed a series of habits related to digital content. We are drawn to do these things on a daily basis without being asked to do so. For many, the habits are probably more productive than those of smoking, drinking, or commuting. But, no doubt, there are some not so great results of our digital habits.

We may be more withdrawn from our experience because of Digital habits, or perhaps we are more plugged in to them. Our documentation of them with status updates and posted pictures is certainly improving our ability to remember some pretty important events. I can personally verify that I only remember my children’s birth as well as I do because I have the “minutes” recorded as tweets. Those experiences were captured by my digital habits. I only wish I could have done the same for my wedding (we also should have had people doing video all over the place). Right now  it is just this whirlwind of experience that I loved, but can’t really remember because it is such a blur.

As to the question at hand, we can just make the assumption that these Digital Habits are a reality and one that we must face head on. So, we probably need to think through how our Digital Habits are forming in the first place. Again, I must start from my own experience.

On Tuesday, the 20th of March, 2007, I sent my first tweet. While I had been aware of twitter for quite some time before that, I first gave it a real shot by stating: “I’m figuring out how twitter can be used in middle school.”

I didn’t tweet another thing until May of the same year. The very next tweet was something more auspicious in nature: “I’m finding out that twitter can increase your blog readership.” Clearly I saw some benefit, and so the tweets started to pick up. I tweeted a total of 8 times that May, including a totally existential posting thanking a “steve”: “Thanking Steve for the link to the 6.99 microphone deal: http://tinyurl.com/2ttmll” Clearly without the capacity to use the @ symbol, I didn’t really get the conversational aspects of Twitter. My first use of that symbol was not until June 10th.

Then, I started trying to add twitter into my every day speach, even making up words in some cases “The twaiter[?] was just for me, although you can make a dentist appointment for yourself as well.” It turns out that I was sending that with Jott, a voice recognition software for cell phones, so I can’t really take credit for that one (but, I was trying to say “the twitter”, which was clearly before “tweet” came into popular usage.)

I then started to link to my podcast and blog frequently for a few months, but in August, September and October of 2007 I sent out only 6 tweets in total. What happened during those months? And then, 78 tweets in November. This was an absolute explosion of content. What happened during that month too? It was during this month that Twitter became a digital Habit. It became the place that I asked the majority of my questions. It became the way that I collected contact information and the way that I collaborated with those new found contacts. November of 2007 was when I “got” twitter.

It took me 9 months and a few dozen tweets before I could call it a habit. Before that, it was just something I checked in with a few times a month. The habit happened because of this tweet: “New blog post: 101 Tools and Resources for Authentic Learning… http://tinyurl.com/2c7uca” (which was the first one on November 1st). When I released that single tweet, I realized that I wanted to start sharing pretty much everything that I was thinking about and asking with the people that I resourced in creating the 101 Tools and Resources. I figured out that it wasn’t enough just to share the big “information”, I had to share the small stuff too. I had to work with others in order to create more meaning.

So, I guess I formed this digital habit out of necessity. I needed to share and be shared with. I needed to find connection. I needed to @ as many people as possible (the ratio of regular tweets to @ tweets shifted from 15:1 to about 1:2, which is the clearest definition of this change). That is how I formed my digital habit, and I think that is how we form most of them. When we start talking to other people more than just talking to hear ourselves. That is when we truly see the benefit. When we know someone is listening and will respond, we find that it becomes an essential part of our daily activities. For better or worse, we need these digital habits to bring meaning into our modern lives.

(Also, if you are wondering how I looked back easily at those long forgotten tweets, I used tweetbook, which is a fantastic service)

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Question 14 of 365: What is the future of outsourcing?

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I do not claim to be an expert in outsourcing, nor do I claim to know all of the terrible (and good) things that have come from an acceptance of outsourcing as a reality. What I am claiming by my attempt to answer this question is that I think I may know where it is going. It may be quite arrogant to claim that you know where something is going without really understanding where it has been, but I feel as though it may be important to take this stab in the dark.

The future of outsourcing is personal. It is within your own daily workflow. It is within the stuff that you always wish you didn’t have to put up with, and now you don’t. And, I am not simply talking about the Roomba. I am, instead, referring to the idea that all of the monotonous aspects of your daily existence will be put up for bid. And, if anyone is willing to do them, they will be outsourced. I think the only real way to prove this point is to look at examples.

Prefinery and UTest allows you to outsource your beta testing. No longer will you have to figure out exactly who your users should be. You can rely on the crowd and a company to do it for you.

Smart Thinking allows you to outsource your stack of papers to grade. You can have someone else give your feedback for you. Isn’t “peer” review and writer’s workshop just another form of this kind of outsourcing?

SendGrid gives you the ability to outsource your personal responses to e-mail. We can now scale what used to be a human reaction to having completed steps or done something with an organization, business, or school.

Seed will let you outsource photography, writing, or other creative (but time consuming) work. The question is, how low will the network of creatives go?

Do my Stuff will let you basically put any task you have to do up for auction. Even cleaning bathrooms is up for grabs.

LivePerson will give you life advice and possibly outsource how you should act in your love life.

So, why does this all matter? Why is it that these services are worth even looking at, even as I make fun of the idea of how our future will look when faced with these realities?

Outsourcing (and some people call this version, enlightened outsourcing) in general lets us focus our attention. If it doesn’t do those things, then the future doesn’t look good. If we are outsourcing what is essential to our happiness, then we need to take a step back. But, on the other hand, if we are outsourcing the non-essential then we are streamlining our own existence.

I believe in that part. I’m just not sure if some of this is the answer. While it may be the future of outsourcing, I’m not sure it is a future that all of us can buy into. There may be a huge backlash coming where people take great joy in cleaning their bathrooms and doing their taxes and working with students and users directly. So, what will that be called? Self-sourcing? Unsourcing? Besourcing?

Whatever it is called, I would like to find a balance if I can. I would like to do what I can to be human and involved in the daily events of my life, all the while, not getting bogged down by the things that I have no interest in attempting. That doesn’t have to be a part of a movement. That part can just be for me.

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

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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.

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Question 12 of 365: Which words cause us to act?

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Action is a relative term.

Is action the clicking of a button on a webpage? Is action the filling out of a form? Is action telling a friend or coworker about an idea? Is action standing outside holding up a sign, or waiting in a line? Or is action simply taking an interest where apathy and doing nothing is the alternative.

There is a science to persuasion, to getting others to do what it is that you would like. We see this every day in the decisions we make to advertise for ourselves, for our ideas, and for our products. Whether we like to admit it or not, each blogger or YouTuber or teacher or entrepreneur is trying to convince anyone who will listen to pay attention for one minute more. We are trying to convince someone to care about what it is that we are saying. We are trying to get someone else to act engaged or act like they want what we have to offer, whether they really do or not.

So, if that is what I am doing, which words are the ones that cause that action as much of the time as possible? People are turned off by simple commands. Look here or Click this have their place, but it isn’t a substitute for actual engagement. At the end of the day, I want actions that are authentic. I want people to want to build something with me.

I guess the words must be authentic too.

If I am asking for others to respond with genuine interest, I had better be genuinely interested in the problems that they are having. I had better find a way to express the feelings that they would express themselves if they had only typed the blog post with their own fingers. And, I guess I better have a solution too. The solution is what will cause someone really to turn from a passive viewer to an active participant. I must solve the thing that has been eating away at someone for too long. I must resolve the issue that has plagued someone, create peace within a tortured experience.

So, I will. I will put the solution into words. I will make the pitch that allows someone else to take part. And, I hope to do this without telling lies or trying to be something that I am not. I hope to do this without selling out or selling air. I hope to solve problems by starting with my own.

I guess other people might have the same problems too.

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Question 11 of 365: Why does the world need perpetual beta?

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Jazz Jackrabbit, the titular character of the ...
Image via Wikipedia

Beta testing used to be something that a few early adopters did. It used to be a big deal to be a “beta tester.” I remember applying to become a beta tester when I was in the 8th grade for Epic MegaGames, the creators of Unreal (although, I was wanting to beta test things like Jazz Jackrabbit and Jill of the Jungle). I went through quite a process of Non-disclosure forms and written interviews. After all, I was getting to see a product long before others were. In fact, the process was so long (about 2 months), that I got fed up with it just as they sent me the final Beta Tester Contract and I never saw a single game before it was released.

Now though, there is almost never even an application to be a beta tester. It has become something that everyone does. The word beta is attached to products for much longer than was ever thought reasonable (gmail was in beta for 5 years). Why has this shift occurred, and more importantly, why is it a good thing?

It is my contention that everyone should be a beta tester and that perpetual beta should be the norm.

Beta teaches us that we are never finished, that there is always something to do better. It teaches us that we are all fallible and that we all make mistakes. Beta asks for a community to be formed to discuss what is working and what isn’t. Beta requires feedback. Perpetual beta means that new discoveries are around every corner. It shows that single contributions can have a great affect on the overall experience for millions of people. It allows us to become better. It also allows us to fail.

So, why not put beta on other institutions besides software? Why can’t we call our schools “beta” and our students, “beta testers”? Why can’t we call our Government “beta”? Doesn’t saying that our educational systems and our systems of government are finished products seem a little arrogant? If we were to apply the label to more than just software, I believe that many more people would feel comfortable to try new things and get feedback for those things.

I realize now that when I was in the classroom, I really did think about my students as beta testers for their own learning. They were trying out hypotheses and seeing what feedback I would give them. They would change drastically from version to version sometimes, but would always settle on who they really were. Their user interface would get reinvented every single day, but their bugs were never so terrible as to get them shelved.

Perhaps the metaphor is stretched a little thin here, but I think that if we could show just how much beta has done for the american psyche (not having to be perfect at every step, learning from mistakes, being innovative), I think that we may just have a chance to create change without having to dismantle entire systems. I think that a big rubber stamp should be fashioned with that iconic word for our time and we should apply it to anything that doesn’t already have the moniker. Because whether we believe it or not, if you don’t say you are in beta, you are just fooling yourself.

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Question 10 of 365: What does Open mean?

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conversation
Image by D’Arcy Norman via Flickr

Right now there is a heated debate going on about what Open Education is and should be. Mark Weller, George Siemens, David Wiley, Jim Groom, Graham Atwell, Frances Bell, Dave Cormier, Darren Draper and Stephen Downes have all weighed in on the issue. I mention them and the discussion here not in order to fully engage in the debate that is raging, but to simply acknowledge that quite a number of people are putting a lot of time and energy into hashing out exactly what a single word should mean and whether the word is something that we should aspire to.

However, my question is not so specific as to think through only Open Education, but rather to think through the word itself. I know that many of the proponents of more radical definitions of “open” would say that Open cannot be co-opted, that it is a conscious choice that both limits and frees a person who subscribes to the ideal. It limits in the ways that profit off of what is Open is strictly forbidden, and it frees because you can truly create a network of shared work.

Coming further away from those definitions, I would like to propose that Open simply means “having the space between”.

My “Open” is about having the space between commercial and personal to do with what you need. My “Open” means having the space between schools and learning to figure out exactly how real people fit in. My “Open” means designing and working on projects that require collaboration but that do not obsess on FOSS or Free-ness. My “open” is open enough to allow spaces for distraction, toiling away on things that are private, and pride in a single contribution.

The give and the take of “Open” needs to always be there. We need to have a “closed” to combat against. We need to have someone who believes they have a better way of sharing information to make sure that Open really is in the best interests of everyone involved.

If Open means the space between, then these are the spaces I want to concentrate on. These are the spaces that I want to be a part of designing. These are the spaces that will bring about the greatest change.

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Question 9 of 365: Does the screen dictate what is possible?

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This year may be the year of the smart phone. It may be the year of the tablet or ebook reader. It may even be the year of networked (not network) television. But all of these new gadgets have really got me pondering whether or not the physical screen is what is limiting what is possible. Are we limited to touch apps because the screen now allows us to touch? Are we limited to viewing and social apps now that our TV has the ability to view anything and be social? Are we limited to reading what is available in ePub format because now we can read books on the go?

While all of these advances are pretty amazing (I myself am most impressed with the Entourage Edge Demo), I am concerned that the new screens that we introduce into our life are only going to really be dictating to us what we should be doing with our time. To be fair, Television has long dictated that we sit there and watch, so shouldn’t a smart phone dictate that we should touch and play? I am just wondering if these new devices are creating a need for doing these things that doesn’t really exist.

What I need is to collaborate with others. I need to write. I need to provide feedback and share. I need to consume information and learn more about myself in the process. I need to play with the possibility of creating new ways to play. I need to eat well and be healthy in my choices. I need clothes, a home that is inviting and a family that loves me. I need the tactile, the emotive, and the beautiful. I need to provide for my wife and children. And, I need to sit down every once in a while.

Do the new screens do these things? Maybe.

But, if I leave it up to the screens, I may just be losing out on some of those needs. I may be missing out on what the screens don’t provide, and I am not just talking about taking time away from technology. I am a firm believer that these screens can coexist quite easily with well adjusted family life.

More importantly perhaps for answering this question is how can we make sure that these screens don’t dictate what is possible in what I write or create. How can we make sure that these screens adapt to my needs rather than simply trying to anticipate or create them?

I would like to advocate for screens that I can tear. I would like to see screens that I can crumple. I would like to see screens that I can stretch or shrink. I want screens that I can roll, screens that I can spill coffee on, screens that I can throw. Basically, until screens aren’t special any more, they will always dictate the task that we should be doing with them. Until we can throw them away and not have to worry about the money we spent or the environmental impact, we will be chained to them in the ways that have created the phrases “crackberry” or “video game addict”.

So, in a single word: Yes. The screen does dictate what is possible as well as what we do with them on a daily basis. But, it may not always be that way.

Question 8 of 365: What's in a name?

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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.

Questions 7 of 365: Why are we still looking for new ways to answer our questions?

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People have been asking questions for a lot longer than I have expertise to comment on (as many of you know, I am not an anthropologist, sociologist nor psychologist). But, I do know that we have asked questions of our parents to know why the sky is blue. We have asked questions of books to know more about a given subject or to know more deeply an idea or story. And, more recently, we have started asking questions of machines (Google, most specifically) to answer questions of the moment like who sang 867-5309 (Tommy Two Tone).

So, the question I am posing is really, why is it that we have not yet found a perfect way of getting our questions answered? Why is it that we are constantly searching not just for answers, but for better ways to attain those answers. Entire ventures and industries rest on having the best way to answer your questions. Services like Hunch, Aardvark, or Quora believe that they are on the cutting edge of leveraging the crowd to answer questions, and I have to say that I have turned to them on occasion. I have also looked at Wikihow, Answers.com or Yahoo answers for an occasional fix of information. Yet, I’m not entirely satisfied by any of these services.

Which is, I guess, why I am still looking. I still have to cobble together the best of what I find and make decisions about which answers make sense for my particular need. I just keep wondering why we haven’t figured it out, yet. Why is it that over the centuries of asking our questions we haven’t developed any better way of getting answers. I understand that we will continue to research and dig deeper, and find out more about the human condition every day. I get that every question we ask just begets more questions. But that isn’t it…

I just want to know why I keep asking our questions to different things. Why can’t I find a single place to go to get all of my questions answered by people that I trust and respect? Is it too much to ask… perhaps.

But, perhaps we are getting further away from that value. Perhaps by turning to a machine to answer questions, or turning to the wisdom of strangers we are still having to apply the same level of skepticism that we are looking to lose. Perhaps we need to go back to asking our parents why the sky is blue, and then just believing them when they answer. At some points, I need to know the people answering my questions intimately. At some points, I want to put together the knowledge with those people and have that be enough. In these times, I want a place that feels like looking up at a mystery and slowly watching it unravel in front of me as someone I trust comes to my aide with a story of experience or a suggestion of what to do next.

That is why I haven’t found a single place to ask my questions. I guess that is what I am currently trying to build, what I want to be in place for my children and for the people I work with, and for the strangers I meet who also have questions. If we could just all bring along the people that we trust and start weaving our questions and answers together into a network of real conversations, that would be truly something. I guess I would still probably Google things, but for questions like “Where should I go from here?”, I need something else.

Question 6 of 365: What happens when your Digital Footprint becomes a liability rather than an asset?

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Everyone has a digital footprint that could get them into trouble. No matter how careful you are, if you are posting things online, they represent who you are (and possibly who your employer is). So, as you build your network, your content, and your wuffie; you may find yourself in a situation that calls for you to try and undo what has already been posted.

I am not running for any kind of major office, but I tend to think if I were, I have given my opponent a huge amount of ammo simply by being open to the learning process. To me, it is the learning process that gets us into the most trouble. Last year, I posted about my struggle with people who talk about teachers when they aren’t around. My CIO read it and fired off an e-mail asking me if anyone on his team was the subject of the post. I had to explain a lot of the comments within that post and he was very understanding about it, but I think that with a different CIO or with a few of the statements I could have made would have left a dark mark on our relationship or even lead to my termination.

This example is not unique. There are many different ways that a Digital Footprint can signal the downfall of an otherwise happy employment, friendship, or business relationship. It is simply that so much of our lives are lived out in the open. The biggest single problem is that by sharing that life with others through a blog, twitter, or a flickr account, you are no longer in control of much of it. Your Digital Footprint can take on a life of its own.

By putting yourself out there, you are letting others reframe who you are in their own blog posts and twitter accounts. You are giving them the ability to infinite link to your content and promote your least appealing idea to the top of the Google search page with your name as the keywords. So, what do you do when this happens? How can you really fight back against a crowd of people who are working to highlight your digital blemishes, especially if they are “viral”?

You have a couple of options. Option one is the Web2.0 Suicide Machine. This single web service will allow you to delete all of your content, friends, and connections on social networks. You can actually watch as the machine unfriends each person. This will get rid of part of your problem, but the worse issue is that Google remembers everything. It will have a cache of your content as it existed. And, everyone who posted about your stuff will still have theirs up. You are now even more defenseless than you were with your content up there.

The only other real option is to form a network around what it is that you do want to highlight. The only real way to take back control of your Digital Footprint is to leave a bigger, better version of it elsewhere on the web. Work with people who have your best interests in mind and have them link to your greatest ideas. Oh, and never stop posting. The more content that you can put out there, the more diluted any single post will become. While you can never shove the words back into your mouth, you can give the world new words to know you by.

When your Digital Footprint becomes a liability, read that as a sign that you have been treading too lightly, not seeing the true responsibility of wearing your online shoes. So, start to walk with purpose. Press firmly into everything that you are doing and posting and thinking through. You will indeed leave a mark, and if that comes back to haunt you, get some Doc Martins.