~synthesis~

the NRA is right - it’s not about the guns...

...it’s about the gun owners. According to Wayne LaPierre (head of NRA), “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” It’s hard to argue with that, just as it is hard to implement an “only good guys may have guns” policy.

Proponents of gun control will say that access to certain (or all) weapons + ineffective buyer "qualification" are the issues. This might be true, but so what - it will not prevent gun violence in a country where there are ~9 times more gun dealers than McDonalds restaurants; where there are already ~300 million guns in circulation, and where 5-10 million guns are purchased every year.

The American Bill of Rights protects an individual’s right to bear arms; changing that is nigh impossible, so the real question is not how to prevent gun ownership; it is akin to what LaPierre said, how do we prevent bad guys from wanting to use guns.

I think the anti-gun lobbies/organizations are wasting their time and money. They ironically draw strength and impetus from killing sprees (especially where young people are involved), and sure they create a feverish signing of anti-gun petitions and calls to Congresspeople, but in the end, the outcome is status quo. And then comes another spree, the process begins anew, with the same outcome - status quo.

Back to LaPierre, who are these “bad” guys? The killers are almost always male, they often are killed or kill themselves in the process (society gets no justice), and they are deranged.

So most gun violence is committed by men; these men buy/get guns as an extension of their penis/machismo. They use guns to assert their maleness, and as a conduit for their anger and bravado. Their role models are gun-toting archetypes, like John Wayne/Rambo/etc., revolutionaries, survivalists, gangstas, soldiers, other spree-killers, etc.

They crave the luster of strength, confidence, coolness, assertiveness, heroism, etc. that comes from wielding a gun. Guns are perceived to be a supremely manly accessory.

Rather than relentlessly pursing the pointless cause of legislative relief, let us instead change the perception of guns. Let us reposition gun ownership and gun usage as something other than an expression of machismo.

It would take time; it would take persistence; it would certainly take creativity; but compare that to the multi-decade failure of every anti-gun organization to meet its goal. It is time to try a new approach.

Positioning is a powerful, powerful tool. It allows a thing to be conceptualized or re-conceptualized in a way that will endure. I wrote this a couple of years ago - if you have a moment, read it, and more importantly, watch the two videos. They are outstanding, and they are exactly what is needed to redefine the lure of “bearing arms.”

How would “men” feel if guns were associated with tampons, or as an indicator of erectile dysfunction? Will this happen overnight? No. But look at how we view cigarette smoking today vs. during the era of Mad Men.

If America’s love of guns is to be diminished, it will NOT be with laws; it will be because we redefined the notion of gun ownership to be insipid.

fear foiled

Why is Mitt Romney not winning? He should be - his background is perfect - proven business man (Bain), proven state leader (Gov. MA), proven repairer of things gone bad (Olympics). On top of this, he’s a good person - faithful to his family, committed to his community, strong moral foundation, etc.

And yet the incumbent who has presided over the largest national debt in history, middling economic performance, difficult times internationally, massive unemployment, and has Hussein for a middle name is preferred.

How?

Is it because Mitt is so far up the ivory tower that he simply doesn’t connect to “regular” people? Is it because his plans are ambiguous? Is it because he equivocates too much? I don’t think it’s any of this. Compare Romney to W. Bush, and you don’t see major differences (President Bush never equivocated; but he was perceived as a bumbling idiot, no-one will accuse Romney of being an idiot so that evens out).

President Bush won because he sparked fear in his constituency. He (and Karl Rove) polarized their base against Gore (and Liberals) to the point where its fervency was so strong, it bled to the center to make the election very close. The Florida debacle did tip the balance, but fear made it close enough for Florida to matter.

In 2008, candidate Obama won because he caused people who had never done so to vote; his rhetoric combined with the absurdity of Palin assured a win. That fervor abated by 2010, allowing the Tea Party to take control of the Republican machine and dominate the House.

Over the last year, Tea Party fervor has abated some (abysmal Primary candidates), and while they still have a hold on Party policy, they are not controlling the campaign dialogue.

Here’s the problem - Team Romney (despite the best efforts of the FoxNews whackos) has not been able to spark enough fear in the base. Potential wedgies:

• Economy - everyone is resigned to a crappy economy; the EU crisis and China’s strength have taken their toll. No-one believes either side can really do much.
• Unemployment - no one believes either candidate’s claims that they can fix this, also a wash.
• Foreign Policy - as much as the media cares about this, most Americans just don’t.
• Redistribution - what crap! A society can't exist without redistribution; Romney has already said wealthier Americans should get a smaller Medicare benefit.
• Obamacare - well... sucks that Romney implemented 1.0.
• Terrorism - whatever - we’ve all got terror fatigue.
• Obama the Socialist - those who believe this are already voting Republican - the rest don’t see it as real or a big enough threat.
• Obama the Muslim - he’s been President for four years, and no-one’s singing the call to prayers from the White House balcony.

See what I mean? The fanatical Left and fanatical Right will vote for whomever their Party nominates - that’s a given. But this leaves Romney way short.

The “issues” aren’t scary enough, and no amount of Hannity/O’Reilly spin can change that. The tried and true Karl Rove strategy is failing despite the money they’ve raised and the vitriol they are spouting.

Romney could ask Grover Norquist to have every Republican candidate sign a pledge promising to cooperate with a Romney White House; it’s hard to imagine that happening, but it might be the one legitimate opportunity to one-up Obama... But then again, people hate Congress.

So, short of Romney so flustering Obama during the debates that he admits to being a closet Muslim who intends to give Palestine nukes, the Democrats have fallen into the good fortune of a country so resigned to its fate that it can’t be scared into voting for Change.

social business

Facebook announced its first post-IPO earnings this week, heralding a critical step in the maturity of social networking - is this a new way to make money, or just the same-old?

The "same-old" is Google, whose innovation was to turn what was the customer (we who search) into the product, and selling us to their customer - the advertisers. It was brilliant, and transformed the very nature of internet monetization.

Social is a bit different - most who use it are less susceptible to, and rarely click on ads. After all, the idea is to connect with friends, share - not to click on random ads. With that, this aspect of Facebook's Q2 (second quarter) numbers should give pause:

• Earnings: $1.18 billion
• Earnings from advertising: $992 million (84%)
• Average monthly users: 937 million
• Total quarterly users: 2.865 billion
• Average revenue/user/quarter: $0.41 ($1.23/year)

Piling on, their most ad-lucrative market, and also the most stagnant in terms of user growth is America; the fastest growing is mobile (543 of 937 million users, or 58%), however converting mobile users into big time revenue remains undiscovered country.

At ~1 billion users, Facebook owns ~14% of the planet's population; but even the user base doubles this coming year (nigh impossible), the current revenue/user puts them at just $8.5 billion/year. Hardly "big-time," especially given their initial $100 billion valuation. (For context, Apple expects to earn $13 billion from iTunes alone in 2013.)

Key to social networking is the ability to publish what you're doing or thinking right now. This requires a mobile, connected device. The problem of course is that mobile, connected devices have to be small enough to go anywhere, and if the screen is cluttered with ads, there's no room to express yourself or see what your friends are up to, which defeats the purpose, and turns users off.

While Facebook started out on PCs, it's pretty clear that their future is mobile. But they've also admitted they don't know how to turn those users into $$.

The approach they're most bullish on is Sponsored Stories - where if a company buys the service, their ads show up in the right pane (on a PC), along with names of your friends who Liked it, and with that endorsement, the hope is that you'll Like it too. Facebook said they're now earning $1 million/day from these ads, with about half of that from mobile.

Even if this does create meaningful mobile revenue, it's not how Facebook becomes "big," or how social networking gets through puberty in a compelling way. Ads are just plain intrusive on a small screen; moreover, mobile click throughs need to go to mobile-enabled sites, which are more difficult to turn into actual sales for the advertisers.

Despite Google's brilliance, click through rates have declined from 5% initially to about 0.3% today. Google is still a success, but now with logarithmic (or less) vs. exponential growth.

If social media rely on ads as their primary revenue source, they will only make money by interrupting human interaction, not enabling it or enhancing it. It will however have the advantage of being not at all transformative, but at least it will be irritating.

I hope they are thinking bigger. I hope that Sponsored Stories sparks in the very smart minds at Facebook, Twitter, etc., ambition to innovate yet one more business model; one not based on the user's propensity to click random links, but instead attuned to the interaction between people, aware of what they care about, and savvy about how they will express it. Imagine how effective a company would be when armed with this kind of insight! Let's call this IP - Interaction Perception.

In fact, the smart approach would be to eliminate advertising altogether (reduce distraction and improve satisfaction) and focus instead on collecting data and creating algorithms that can (without infringing on privacy) assess and predict interaction, preference, and passion based on how we Facebook or tweet or tumblr.

Advertising is about creating urgent awareness (you learn something and are then compelled to act). The more savvy or sophisticated the consumer, the less effective ads become. Most ads suck at doing both - they at best accomplish awareness.

The type of contextual engagement that would be possible with interaction perception makes advertising obsolete. With IP, you could pinpoint exactly where your target audience tends to be when they're most likely to want your product, and literally place yourself at that location. You would know the 5 or 10 trend-creators for your product that you need to reach, and through whom you can create immediate and pervasive market penetration without ever "advertising."

foursquare for example creates incentives for people to announce their location, and then works with businesses to create special offers for frequent visitors. They can now identify "magnets" that bring people together, track traffic flow from place to place, determine brand preference, and much more. Today, foursquare is still using their knowledge to help merchants better target advertising/offers on their site, but this is just the beginning. While much of the insight today is location-centered, I'm sure this will not be the case tomorrow; they'll be able to get predictive enough to know when you need your next coffee, and potentially be able to vector a mobile coffee service to where you are. The possibilities are endless.

Unlike search, social networking is implicitly permissive. We never gave Google the right to track our behavior; we became angry when they started doing that and figured out how to disable their oversight. But we choose to publish what we're doing, with whom, and how we feel about it on Facebook/twitter/etc. Sure, some prefer to keep it private, but most don't - they want to share.

Social networking is about the only way to capture interaction perception - the problem is the "innovators" in social networking are too busy trying to sell ads, despite the inherent diminishing returns.

Rather than interrupt our experience with ads, why not infer and fulfill our needs with insight?

quintessence

Steve Jobs resignation as CEO of Apple has provoked questions - will Apple maintain their trajectory of success? What is their unique advantage?

Check out these three articles:

1. Ultrabook: Intel's $300 million plan to beat Apple at its own game
2. The New Apple Advantage
3. 10 Reasons Why iPhone 5 Doesn't Stand a Chance Against Motorola Droid Bionic

The first is Peter Bright’s quest ‘to find a 13" MacBook Air that isn't made by Apple.’ Sobering insight into a normal person's experience of buying a laptop from Dell, HP, or Lenovo.

Next John Gruber thinks Steve Jobs and Tim Cook are responsible for Apple’s success: “We’ll give Jobs the credit for the adjectives beautiful, elegant, innovative, and fun. We’ll give Cook the credit for the adjectives affordable, reliable, available, and profitable. Jobs designs them, Cook makes them and sells them.” Gruber feels that it is possible for Dell, HP, etc. to copy Steve, but they’ll never match the economies of scale that Cook achieved.

Finally, Elias Samuel delivers a detailed and apparently thorough assessment of the shortcomings of a phone that no-one has seen vs. a phone that few will use. It includes the Korean version of their teaser ad, here’s the English version. If you want to nerd out some more - here’s a comparison of three random Android phones - does a typical consumer really think this way?

From these articles, I concluded that Apple made it easier for us to buy; consolidated their product line and parts requirements to lower operating costs; and conceded the phone-nerd audience vs. normal consumers.

But this isn't really Apple's magic...

Have you seen Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement speech? He said one of the best things that happened to him was getting fired from Apple in 1985. It gave him the freedom to create NeXT (which Apple eventually bought), and Pixar, the most successful and creative animated film studio ever.

Steve Jobs is brilliant and a visionary, but there are many of those; what makes Jobs unique is his time at Pixar.

Two “behind the camera” roles in film-making are Producer and Director. Simplistically, the producer’s job is money, logistics, and marketing; the director’s is the story, the artists, and the ultimate experience.

I think John Lasseter (director, Chief Creative Officer, Pixar) is/was a HUGE influence on Jobs’ thinking about the essence of product development.

Great directors must:

• Interpret an intricate, complex and wide-ranging story and turn it into something that can be conveyed in ~90 minutes;
• Marshal talented, creative, and ego-filled actors to work together for one cause;
• Create a complete sensory (emotional, visual, auditory) experience;
• Make all the difficult editing choices that turn hours and hours of footage into a tight story that will not only entertain at the theater, but also in DVD.

The story is preeminent. Difficult tradeoffs will be made, forsaking interesting story lines, scenes, and special effects. The audience will be treated to a unique and powerful and memorable experience because these tough choices and decisions were made. The audience's job is also made easier because *they* don't have to do this hard work - they just have to enjoy its fruits.

Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 as CEO, but he was really the Director.

He took over a company that lacked focus and was bleeding money. Jobs eliminated most of the product portfolio (Newton, Cyberdog, OpenDoc, etc.), keeping only what he believed was part of the "story," and he aligned every employee to a singular vision.

He defined the experience customers would enjoy. I can imagine him saying, “Forget computing or productivity or any of that crap! Apple will entertain. We are not a company that builds multi-purpose devices that offer flexibility and choice at a low price. Apple's job, our job is to elevate spirits, to amaze, to create pleasure in use and pride in ownership."

This is Apple’s magic - this obsessive and uncompromising desire to create pride, to elevate.

Will it survive Steve Jobs’ departure as CEO? Is there another Director in the wings who will have as strong a spine and be as unwavering?

I hope so.

Stay hungry, stay foolish, Apple.

mastering apprenticeship

I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo in Canada. It is a fantastic school (I might be biased), and it contributed greatly to preparing me for what awaited me in the years that followed.

In addition to the academics and the social, thanks to their Co-op Program, I graduated with excellent work experience, zero debt, and a firm job offer. Combining the practical with the learning is a critical success factor for any educational system.

I can’t count the number of candidates I’ve interviewed over the years with a solid academic pedigree, but no sense of the working world, how to navigate it, get things done, add value in a team setting, and even to be self-motivated and driven. We’d take a chance on some, but there’s no substitute for someone who can hit the ground running with both school and street smarts.

Many colleges and universities are embracing co-op or similar approaches to better prepare their graduates for employment (I’d like to think Waterloo is a pioneer!), as now are some forward-thinking high schools.

I was invited to speak to the faculty of such a high school a couple of weeks ago - Saint Martin de Porres in Cleveland. It was an eye-opening experience.

Saint Martin teaches low-income students and is noteworthy for many reasons, the greatest of which is that EVERY student graduates (vs. ~50% for the rest of Cleveland); and every graduate in the school’s history has been accepted to at least one college or university, all with a >30% higher college persistence rate than the national average. ...Wow!

From the founder to the school head to the faculty, everyone is committed to (in my words) the ideal that every child matters; that they must embrace and nurture each student; imbue drive, resourcefulness and perseverance; and teach them to embody integrity, respect, and grace.

Powerful stuff.

But there’s more - every student is required to work for a local company in a four-student job-sharing team, where together they cover a full work-week throughout the school year (1.25 days/week/student).

Over 100 companies in the Cleveland area are Corporate Work-Study Program partners, and this year alone, will invest more than $2.5 million towards funding the school! ...Wow!

Saint Martin takes this program very seriously - in fact, a teacher told me that they have a (very real world) zero-tolerance policy if students fail to take their job seriously; they are a bit more tolerant of in-school lapses, but work is work.

So... not only does every student receive an excellent education, they also graduate with work experience; are savvy about the workplace and how to thrive there; and they benefit from their very generous employers who provide mentorship and career guidance.

Blending theory and practice (master/apprentice) is at the heart of true learning and life-preparation, and has never been more critical than in this day and time, when students (and especially minorities) are disproportionately unemployed.

This alone is noteworthy, but there's also this:

The students’ academic proficiency is undisputed (100% acceptance of graduates to college/university), but they accomplish that with 25% less class time than other schools! Recall that each student spends five (5) school days every four weeks (ave 1.25 days/week) at work.

That’s “lost” teaching time -- or is it?? When you personally experience the application of learning outside school, your desire and capacity to learn in school grows, as does your engagement in class. In other words, they have improved the efficiency of teaching and learning by removing the kids from the classroom and putting them to work! How cool is that!

While almost every teacher I’ve ever met is worried about the volume of content that must be taught in a very limited time window, the faculty at Saint Martin has been able to literally teach more in less time ‘cause their students are steeped in context.

An important lesson for all school leaders and teachers.

Inner city students are the most disadvantaged among us, and it is important to learn from schools like Saint Martin de Porres, who are changing this by caring for their students, being innovative and creative in how they prepare their students to be kick-butt graduates, and by ensuring the sustainability of the school.

Bravo

essence

I’ve been pondering the role of technology in teaching, and what surveys say is the teacher's biggest challenge - student engagement.

Unpacking it:

What is engagement? Starting with an easy one :). It is when students crave learning, when they run to school, and dread leaving.

What is teaching? I see it as an unwrapping and a wrapping. The unwrapping is the job of the teacher, enabled by the student, and the wrapping is the job of the student, enabled by the teacher.

Unwrapping, according to sculptor Fredrik K.B.: “There is life inside the stone. Just as with people, you have to lure it out with love. To force upon it a form you self [sic] have made up is to me the worst form of violence.”

Except for some indigenous societies, this concept is anathema to most Western parents and school systems. Our “evolved” goal: “an effective education leads to gainful employment and economic independence.”

To create employees, education identified common denominator skills across “all” jobs and requires all students to learn them in the same way. To be common, these skills (fractions, algebra, grammar, essay-writing, etc.) are abstracted, and thus difficult to connect to any “real” job, and for most students, impossible to visualize as something fun or interesting or even employment-like.

Skipping the unwrapping process altogether, our system aims to shellack every child with a veneer of “common” skills so that they are generically palatable to the greatest number of employers. In doing this, we admit that education’s “customer” is the employer, not the child; and that success is not fulfilling the child’s destiny, but rather creating faceless drones.

...Truly honorable work.

Ironically, employers are not looking for automatons, they are looking for inquisitive, motivated, creative, team-oriented, and energetic people who are compelled to achieve greatness.

Maybe a bit of a disconnect here...

What is technology? In this context, technology is any “tool” that comes into the classroom and disrupts the status quo. Much of the education community perceives it as a threat because it disrupts “control and order.”

I wrote about the 21st century imperative in 2008, talking about how technology has enhanced communication, and bypassed the teacher as a bottleneck to information; you will also see some awesome quotes on how the establishment decries these intruders in their midst.

But I missed something in my post - technology can be more than this. It, with the help of a teacher, can be the path to engagement, and through that, the unwrapping and wrapping of a student.

“Why?” is probably the most frequently-spoken word by young people everywhere. Instead of dismissing this “insolence,” why(!) not have the child figure out the answer themselves? Most children in the West already have the second most powerful research tool ever (the first being the brain) in their smartphone, let them use it!

Teachers will tell you that a smartphone is a distraction, with Facebook and YouTube and games, they need to ban it so that kids can focus on “learning.”

I don’t agree. If you are given a thing and not shown how “best” to use it, you will use it “randomly.” To compel a student, you must take what interests them already (be it baking or playing music or humor or how-things-work or fashion), and help them “get good at it.” Teachers can help them use the tools at hand to observe, reflect, document, and exhibit what compels them. This is learning!

Michelangelo said, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.” This is true of cooking, DJing, being funny, building a car, or creating amazing clothes. In fact, there is hard work and mathematics, grammar, communications, science, and much more in every one of these endeavors.

Education is not wrong to define subjects like mathematics, language arts, and science as “core” to almost everything that follows. Its failure is in being “well-intentioned, wise, experienced, and successful” adults who have forgotten the moments in their lives oh so long ago when they swore they’d never be the unfeeling jerks their parents were.

Education has the opportunity to help students use the tools they have and like in ways that lead to learning. It can help them unwrap the perfect statue(s) that exists within every child, and through that, make each one a unique and valued and shape changing contributor to our ever-stodgy adult world.

It just has to want to.

leap of faith

Education's goal is to prepare students to succeed in life. What skills will help kids be healthy, independent and even happy?

Most schools choose English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and "World" Languages as core skills. Missing is anything that helps students bridge concepts across subjects, or become independent thinkers and learners. Also missing is anything that looks at the whole student, their hopes and emotions (as they go through puberty), how they will live and work within our society, and how they become ...a person.

Research shows that employers are looking for broad, creative thinkers who can work in varied settings and in teams to solve complex, multi-disciplinary problems. In other words, people who know how to learn and have the confidence and wherewithal to get things done in ambiguous and unpredictable settings.

There are schools whose mission is to graduate students like this. Two that I know are Seattle Girls' School and High Tech High. They are amazing.

Both schools incorporate an integrated curriculum in which students actually become entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, activists, writers and artists. They also focus on the person before them, treating them not like a widget in a factory but a human being with feelings, fears, interests and lives outside school.

Tangentially, the US Department of Education is investing $4 Billion to fix the 1,000 poorest-performing schools in America. The primary approach is a complete reboot, including a complete staff overhaul. Cynics predict a 1% success rate, or 10 good schools, and $3.96 billion wasted. I think they'll do better, and I'm willing to bet that the successful schools will have principals who are focused on the whole student, who aren't pitting teachers against each other, and who recognize that an integrated and experiential curriculum is not only what the kids need, but how best to engage them in the magic of learning.

Leaders like this are what made Seattle Girls' and High Tech High successful, and what's needed not just in the worst of our schools, but all of our schools. These aren't easy people to find, so we need better resources to help the less-brilliant leaders.

I recently suggested an approach that leads to integrated learning by inverting the classroom, turning lectures into homework, and what was homework into teacher-facilitated classwork. This ought to be a part of the academic solution, but it doesn't address a problem most poor schools face - that the students have a tough, tough life (poverty, violence, drugs, etc.) outside school; and with that occupying their minds, can hardly be expected to care about math or grammar.

Of course a school can't fix problems at home, but is it possible for them to help children cope with these issues, and in doing that enable them focus on school? Yes. Are there examples of this in action? Also yes.

John Gilmour founded four LEAP Science and Maths Schools, in townships (where the black people were forced to live during Apartheid and continue to live now) in Cape Town and Johannesburg. I had the opportunity to visit one school last year and was amazed. Each class spends one hour/day in Life Orientation, where an Occupational Therapist helps students listen, feel, understand and express what is inside them, and learn how to interact with each other.

The result is a remarkable awakening of children who might otherwise have lived lives of crime, poverty and disaffection, but instead are successful, empowered contributors to society. Gilmour has made this work with students who are immersed in the worst circumstances, and created graduates whose brightness and brilliance easily matches that of any American private school student.

Are inverted classrooms and Life Orientation a panacea? No. Are they worth exploring? Absolutely. What holds us back? They're different and not invented by the "establishment."

There is a fear of trying anything new or "radical" even though America is only graduating 70% of its students, of which most are unprepared for college (1/3 drop out after their first year, and 1/2 never graduate). Shouldn't some of the $4 Billion from the Dept of Ed go towards proving these approaches in American schools?

The traditional approaches are failing; radical is our only choice.

tech in ed - epic failure

Education today is designed to meet the needs of 19th century Industrial Revolution employer - “We need millions of assembly line workers, who are all similarly-skilled, and able to work for a simple wage.”

But children today want more, they have broader needs and expectations from their school - not the least of which is to be treated as individuals and to be engaged based on their unique aspirations and abilities. This is not possible if the least interactive and differentiated part of learning in today’s schools is the lecture, and the most interactive part is the homework. We are not only wasting the most valuable asset in the room - the teacher - but also flaunting the idea that you can create creative, critical thinkers in a one-way, generic teaching system. Real learning is a curated experience; humans - teachers - must be involved, but in an interactive and personalized way.

Technology’s role is NOT to mechanize, but to humanize. The most humane technology interventions in history are characterized by a simple truth - the target audience naturally consumed them. The telephone, television and browser are examples of this.

Sadly, a generation of school leaders, administrators, teachers and parents are now conditioned to view technology in the blandest way; from the slate to the blackboard to the whiteboard to PowerPoint to the SmartBoard, the ONLY improvement is mechanization. Teaching and learning NEVER changed. To-date the use of technology in learning has been a waste.

Successful teaching can’t be an act of oppression, it can’t be “pushed,” it needs to be “pulled” - the student must want. Talk to any teacher and they will say that student engagement is fundamental to success. Combine the best teacher with the smartest but disengaged student, and learning will NOT occur. But if the students are engaged, and if the teacher can meet them where they each are and work with them, any student can be successful.

This is our challenge, but in a system this complex (USA: 50 million students, 3 million teachers, 15,000 school districts, $600B/year), it must be done correctly.

The answer is not rocket-science. In fact, it's right in front of our noses. Look at children at play - watch them engage and interact in mediums of their own choosing - they have already know how they see, learn, play, and enjoy. My favorite example is Pokemon. Excerpt from student teaching?:

Most Pokemon aficionados that I know mastered the game in about six months. Mastery implies a full understanding of the Pokemon vocabulary, ecosystem, evolutionary paths, strengths and weaknesses of each character and appropriate strategies with which to select the right Pokemon and win battles, etc.

Moreover, each child also learns to interact with their peers, learn tricks and techniques from each other, and of course battling to achieve supremacy in the game.

Finally, for particularly tough battles, students need to also do research online to uncover cheats that they can use to achieve status.

How often do you see average students achieve this level of skill this quickly in Algebra, Grammar or even simple Fractions, forget Organic Chemistry, Biology, or a foreign language? Animated cartoons, simple re-playable simulations, pervasive, easy-to-use, child-friendly, long-battery-life devices are the basis for Pokemon's success.

This can be translated into mainstream learning. Technology can inspire children to want to learn.

We can't ignore the role of the teacher - they are essential to connecting with students based on their specific interests, abilities, and learning needs; and to being the human connection that all Brain Science tells us is crucial to effective learning.

Technology should liberate teachers from the burden of generic lectures and enable them do what they're best at, what they came to do in the first place - engage students. But we have to do this practically, knowing that they have 30 students and 50 minutes per class.

What if we took the current education standards in a given school system and created short (< 10 mins), animated lectures of each concept(s) with a simple assignment to test comprehension? The teacher could assign these lectures to students as homework, have them "play" their homework and complete their assignments, and automatically receive "reports" on how each student did, and what they understood before class started. In class, the teacher would group the students based on their comprehension, and work directly to inspire, and bridge their learning gaps.

Of course there is much more to this approach; but in the end, it helps accomplish three things:

1. Recognizing and accommodating the way children naturally think, learn and play.
2. Empowering the teacher to directly engage students and help them learn.
3. Eliminating the child abuse of forcing young children to shoulder 20lb (10kg) backpacks filled with dated textbooks.

It can be done at a substantially lower cost - American public schools spend more than $5 billion/year on text books - this approach would cost much less, if for no other reason than most kids already have the devices (smartphones, MP3 and game players), and that all learning content should be open-source.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger. ~Confucius. Bold school districts and teachers unions need to step up and lead our children into safety.

tax refunds

When money is exchanged for a good or service, the buyer and seller enter a contract where the product offered will meet expectations and achieve advertised results; and if it doesn't, some form of restitution/refund is expected.

In a market economy, providers of goods or services that do not operate with integrity should as a matter of course lose customers and go under. This behavior is enforced in America by the Federal Trade Commission. With all of this, one would think that the American consumer is well taken care of... but no.

In 2008, Americans spent almost $600 billion (via income taxes alone) on public education (or well over $10,000 per student per year). That's a lot of money. Where is the consumer protection? If a student doesn't successfully complete high school, fails to get accepted to college, or fails to get a job, shouldn't the "buyers" be entitled to a refund? What if the school doesn't do enough to educate a child? What then? How does one get restitution?

If we look at Education America as a business (EA.com), who are its customers? What is the product (how do they create value)? What does the model look like?

1. EA.com creates value by taking raw materials (students age 5) and machines (curriculum, exams, standards) them within its factories (schools) and with its workers (teachers) into theoretically actualized, independent, and contributing members of society (students age 18-ish) 13 years later.
2. A company's customers are the ones that pay for the good or service, or in this case, the American taxpayer. The customers are the ones that have already passed through the system, not the ones currently in the system. Their stake is in the "future value" of EA's product and not in the process. This is a pretty significant nuance, and rather convenient for EA.com as its customers are unable to judge the quality of the product until well after the product has left the factory, and the payments have been collected.
3. The model is brilliant - get paid to crank out widgets according to an external specification (curriculum) and measured based on an antiquated (standardized tests) assessment, which has no connection to the graduate's ability or likelihood to succeed per the customers' requirements (blue text in #1 above).

By the time you realize the education you bought your child didn't meet expectations, it's already too late 'cause they've already graduated. And since there are no refunds, EA.com is counting on the fact that you will recognize there is no value to airing your very legitimate grievance, and just give up.

This can't be allowed to go on. Since a bad-education-refund is not possible, what can we do??? Where is our Fair Education Commission???

In the spirit of my last post, to create change, we must identify the most influential constituency, pick the most provocative issue, and pour some Tabasco into that wound.

The only way to truly and sustainably change Education America is to mobilize most if not all citizens to vigilantly ensure #1 above for every child. Adults aren't doing this today because it's in their past, and they don't correlate it to their future. We need to reposition Education and make it much, much more viscerally relevant to everyone.

Education America is funded by American taxpayers, all of whom are current or future retirees. Every one of whom expects to receive Social Security and Medicare until they die. Social Security and Medicare (SS&M) are the political third rail - the one place where all political parties fear to tread. This is because both are at risk of bankruptcy, and more taxpayers are closer to retirement than ever before (i.e. they are going bankrupt faster). 

SS&M were designed on the premise that there will always be more employees than retirees (bizarrely, no-one counted on people being healthier, living longer, having less kids) and that the current employees' taxes keep the system afloat (unemployment = bad). So if I'm retiring in the next 10-20 years, I want to make damned sure that today's students are VERY employable and will pay a ton of taxes, otherwise all I've done is fund my parents' retirement, and I'm left holding the bag.

Strategy: Make SS&M the wound, a poor education the Tabasco, and push the masses to personally focus on improving Education America to ensure their retirement benefits.

Let's take a look at the "biggest" education change agent in America - the Gates Foundation. They are investing a TON of money (my guess: $1-3billion/year), but that's less than 0.5% of the total education budget - a relative pittance. They can't make a big enough impact with that - they need a bigger lever.

Rather than creating programs, they should stand squarely on the third rail (since they're not political), and use their $Billions to create a fervor among Democrats and Republicans alike. If the citizens of America want to ensure SS&M access for their own retirement, they need to make sure that EVERY student graduates and is very GAINfully employed very soon after. The Foundation should produce a clear, simple list of three things that the voters must expect from Education America in the upcoming election (step 1). In the following election round, they should specify the next three things that voters must focus on (step 2), and so on.

We can't get a refund on the misspent $600 billion - let's at least make sure all future money is spent well.

why?

How often do you ask this? More importantly, how often did you ask this? Wondering and asking "why" is a powerful determinant of creativity. Ironically, it's something we "breed" out of our children when they're young. I think it's mostly because adults get tired of being asked it at home, and when they're in school, it's because teachers (also adults I suppose) are also tired of being asked.

Sir Ken Robinson (if you haven't seen him speak, click on the image to the right; if you have seen it, click anyway - I've watched it at least 4-5 times) defines creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value." He argues that creativity should be as important in schools as literacy.

Sir Ken further argues (I couldn't agree more) that our schools in their ever-mechanical approach actually extract creativity from our children because of the way they measure "achievement," how they "enforce" discipline and adherence to structure, and worst how the "wrong" answer or approach is so actively discouraged as to impede the emergence of anything but a bland, conformist child. "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original."

Newsweek published The Creativity Crisis this month, where among other things, they talk about the correlation between a student's score on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and their "success" in life (entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers).

I've written here and here about how the values and needs of the industrial revolution have polluted the idea of a public education being about helping every child achieve their greatest self. As I stated during a recent interview on edReformer: "It feels like Education America has become an end unto itself – i.e. the system is less about whether children graduate prepared for the world vs. whether they went through the process of going to the school. The former is righteous, the latter smacks of too many administrators and mid-level bureaucrats getting in the way of people with a legitimate desire to help our children be the best they can be."

Voices like that of Sir Ken, and Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (authors of the Newsweek article) are important, but not enough if the goal is to reshape Education America or any other country's system.

The most critical voices are parents and employers. The former because they are (or are supposed to be) their children's advocates, and because they are voters and hence valuable to elected officials. The latter because they are the "reason" that education exists in the mind of most people/parents (to prepare kids to earn money). In effect, the employer has the real power, and the parent is one of the strongest advocates of their needs.

If employers don't want creativity, parents won't demand it in the classroom. If employers stopped hiring graduates of school factories, parents would take action. I had dinner this weekend with two very cool people who work for an education foundation, and we were talking about how difficult it is to affect real change.

What if instead of trying to change teachers or drive common standards or curriculum, etc., these foundations went straight to employers to "help" them become stronger advocates for better job candidates? What if they were able to get these employers eliminate the requirement for an accreditation to get a job? What if they were willing to put a bit more energy into the recruitment and filtering process, but focus on the person and their ability vs. what some piece of paper said they could do?

What if the foundation in question invested in a service that helped candidates better represent their true capabilities and not just what the transcript said? Imagine how by building a whole new way of marrying candidates to employers, a foundation with a relatively small investment could create fundamental change in the education system without ever touching it. Now imagine how parents would glom on to this and push their children, and their children's schools to make sure they were prepared for this new world.

Creativity requires that you be prepared to be wrong; if we're not willing to try new approaches, we will forever live up to Einstein's definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

standard deviance

"The idea that you are a faceless cog in a benevolent system that cares about you and can't tell particularly whether you are worth a day's pay or not, is, like it or not, over." So wrote Seth Godin a few days ago.

There's a lot in this - and not just about work. We are, each and every one of us, unique. The way we look, the way we think, the way we dress, the way we work, the way we play - we are unique.

At first, I wondered if this was something that we did to ourselves - do we each need the comfort of being a cog because standing out makes us uneasy? Or are there other forces at play? (And if there are, how long have they been "playing" with us?)

In my limited experience, most parents of young children look to correlate their child's progress to published norms. They want to make sure s/he is at the right percentile physically, behaviorally, and intellectually. They may want their child to be at the "upper" end of the scale, but "normal" is just fine. Even the doctor's goal is to map every child to an expected norm.

Once in school, the measures become more tangible since we explicitly assess performance vs. set of pre-defined standards/expectations. We should of course note that these standards most closely resemble the management structure that Henry Ford implemented to build his Model T with one notable and evil addition.

Success for Ford was setting a standard of consistent, prolific production - millions of cars, all identical in quality, capability and performance. At that same time, kids were "institutionalized" to both manage the child labor problem and create lots of future factory workers. The schools adopted a similar approach to standards, with the shared goal of burping out millions of children, all identical and drone-like in knowledge and skill.

As factories have become a smaller and smaller part of the employment base, the need for hoards of similarly-skilled workers has also fallen. Whilst "they" do pay lip service to the idea that each child is unique and must be treated in accordance with their specific needs, capabilities and potential, actions speak louder than words. And just as in the 19th century, schools continue to have one standard, one set of assessments, one curriculum, and one teaching approach.

Even the latest "innovations" in learning embrace this idea of normed achievement. You might know that Common Core Standards were published on June 1 (2010), and have been heralded as a tremendous step forward for American education. As ever, success according to "them" is about burping out hoards of like-minded and like-abled drones. The only thing that's changed is type of drone. How sad.

The evil addition? The Bell Curve. In an attempt to patch the genericness, many schools (still) grade on a curve so they can normalize the results and create an achievement blend (say 20% great, 70% average, 10% poor).

In essence, we're assuming that everyone contributes (and must contribute) in an equal way - that there is only one meaningful measure of attainment as a student, and that nothing else matters. If a student doesn't measure up, it's the student's failing, and like at Henry Ford's plant, those cars don't graduate to the showroom. But unlike Ford (and this is the evil part), the curve implies that we can only have so much greatness; the rest of you are (whether you are or not), normal or failing.

Ironically, this implicitly limits a school's ability to graduate more than the specified number of great students, or less than the specified number of failing students!

As Seth pointed out, norming doesn't end when students graduate. The world of work is also normed - from recruiting to training ("on-boarding") to performance management - most organizations operate on the basis that all employees in a given level or role stratum are essentially equal; their contribution should be compared relatively, and they should be graded on a curve (a zero-sum game).

In each instance, we've bizarrely ignored our real and true instincts. When a child is born, it is (and forever will be) the most beautiful person their parents know. Their light will shine above all others, and remain brightest ...forever. When a parent looks at their child in school, some part of them has to want them to be the best, perhaps not the best of all, but certainly the best of themselves.

Surely every teacher, every principal, every minister of education wishes their education system to be the best, that it not be limited by any norm, but rather perform with excellence and graduate brilliant students. Surely there's no such thing as a good (and successful) business leader who aspires to not suck, or to not lose, or to be average, or not rise above the fray?

So if these leaders all expect the best of themselves and their organizations, how do they justify embracing standards that require the people they serve or the people they employ to be merely average? Seth is urging us to rebel against the system, to proclaim individuality in the face of facelessness. 

Bravo.

head games

Are you open to trying something new? Are you open to learning something new? Are you open to a new idea, or to overturning a closely-held belief? Before change is possible, a society must be able to say "yes" to these questions, otherwise enacting change is like pushing a rope uphill.

I attended the Games for Learning day of the Games for Change Festival at NYU last week. Brilliant people spoke on the role of games in learning, approaches to assessing efficacy, and how to build great learning games. It was hosted by Ken Perlin and Jan Plass, who are the co-directors of the Games for Learning Institute. There is a lot happening, I learned a ton, and was privileged to meet and hang out with some very cool people.

One facet that wasn't a focus at the Festival is how to ingrain games more deeply within mainstream education. This is a tough, tough challenge, one that will take some careful thought, mostly because the deck is so stacked against change in education.

I recently had lunch with a ~29 year old mother of a 5-year old boy (both were born and raised in the Seattle area). She believes strongly in the authoritarian approach to education, where the teacher is in front, the students listen quietly, write down what the teacher says, do their homework and pass their tests. This is what she wants for her son. I wonder how much of the population she represents?

I've also been talking to a friend about intellectual divides; she sent me two links that shouldn't have surprised me, but did. First, Charles Pearce's treatise on the a segment of America that disdains "smart" - one payoff quote comes from Pastor Ray Mummert of Dover, Pennsylvania, a leader in Intelligent Design community: "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." That says it all, doesn't it?

But there's more! The second link is to a survey in National Geographic measuring the relative belief in evolution in Western Countries. Just 14% of Americans believe that evolution is "definitely true"; over the last 20 years, uncertainty about evolution has grown from 7% to 20%; and now fully 1/3 of Americans (more than 110 million people) outright reject evolution. Less than 50% of Americans can provide even a basic explanation of DNA. This ranks America #31 out of 32.

These stories illustrate something of the current state of education in America, how science is regarded, and how deeply-held the idea of "old school" and "traditional" education might be in this country.

I have no data to back this up, but my guess is that the people more likely to believe in creationism are also likely to support "traditional" education approaches. I'm also guessing that a direct "innovation" message will NOT resonate with this audience or help affect change.

How then is something as "radical" as the use of games in learning going to achieve broad use across the American public school system?

Socio-politically, there are two ways to achieve (relatively) rapid, widespread change - brute force (e.g. 9-11/terrorism and security; or H1N1 and the obsession with hand-sanitizer), and guile (e.g. the $billions America spends fruitlessly on dieting).

How is this guile? Most diet-related advertising says something like: "try our new quick, easy and safe approach to losing tonnage without sacrificing the foods you love." The people who buy the product or service keep buying and buying and buying, always seeking that quick, easy fix. The $$ spent on trying to get thin keep increasing despite the fact that the number of obese people in the country is also increasing. People are relentlessly gullible.

Call it guile or preying on stupidity - either way, the lose-weight industry is literally and figuratively making a killing.

I believe that transforming education will require the same mercenary, exploitative approach that the weight-reduction industry has perfected. If we want to see pervasive change, we have to create a marketing groundswell that preys on the gullibility and quick, easy fix-obsessed nature of Americans. The message has to come from a united front - the Department of Education, (some) universities, and foundations, all of whom must be willing to put their money where their mouth is.

I would also focus my "magic pill" on lower grades - say Kindergarten through Grade 3, prioritizing core skills like literacy, numeracy and the sciences. Parents tend to get less involved in school as their kids get older; to make them an effective change agent, they must be at their most passionate, most susceptible to external influence, and most able to influence their school board/district.

Once you have achieved success in the lower grades, you train these same parents to expect and demand innovation as their children grow. If all goes well, you do the same thing with the next generation of K-3 parents, because by then, whatever we're changed will now be the new "old school."

To teach in a changing world, we must ourselves be ever-open to change; today it's games, tomorrow - who knows.

sex and selling

Among other things, The Art of War teaches us that we must understand our opponent - know their situation, their motivations, and their strengths and weaknesses. Aikido teaches us to then transform that energy into mutually-positive outcomes.

Recent conversations with parents tell me they're still at a loss about broaching sex with their kids.

Most children have sex way before adults believe they do; they like it as they like other things they're told they shouldn't (alcohol, downloading unlicensed content, staying out late, etc.). It got me to thinking - rather than take the fear and forbidden fruit approach to sex, why not take advantage of what's already there?

Here's my sex speech:

I know sex is something you're going to want to try, and if you're anything like I was, once you start, you'll want to get it as often as you can. There are three things you need to know that'll help you get as much as you possibly can:

1. You can't have body parts falling off - there are a ton of sexually-transmitted diseases, and if you catch one, not only will it hurt, but you might never get laid again.
2. Pregnancy is a sex-stopper. Once you are or get someone pregnant, sex stops - period. You don't want any part of this.
3. The best sex is with someone who wants it just as much as you do. If your partner says 'No' - that's it - stop; and you have to make sure your partner will stop if you say 'No.' If you ignore this, you might go to jail where you'll get way the wrong kind of sex.

What do you do? Always, always talk about sexual history and diseases - you gotta know you're both free of disease; condoms do help, but the conversation is just as important, and your partner will like you more for it [If it's a boy, say: girls will really respect and like you for bringing this up, and it will help you get more sex]. Condoms will also help pregnancy, so it's a two-fer.

Let's review - first - you've gotta talk history; second - condoms; third - 'no' means stop.

You know they're going to do it anyway, I'd rather it be safe, protected, consensual sex than the alternative.

This is a bit of a departure for this blog, or is it? While more personal, this is basic marketing. A old friend Nick Stodin once said the key to successful selling is the organizing principle - if you package something correctly, people will buy it - no selling required. His example:

• Take a bunch of vegetables, chop them up and throw them in a pile in the back yard. What do you have? Compost. What do you do with it? Turn it over, wait for it to rot.
• Take a bunch of vegetables, chop them up and drop them on your kitchen floor. What do you have? A mess. What do you do with it? Clean it up.
• Take a bunch of vegetables, chop them up and put them into a wooden bowl. What do you have? A salad. What do you do with it? Eat it.

The organizing principle is the bowl, or in the previous case, the path to prolific sex; the desired behavior is assured, no selling required.

all for one...

When something becomes too big, it is or is perceived to be domineering and dictatorial. America was formed in response to an overbearing Britain. To quote the Declaration of Independence: But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Brilliant.

In writing the constitution, the framers were mindful of this, and built a structure intended to prevent a federal government from ever getting too big. They did this by separating power in two ways - federally with three "independent" branches (executive, legislative, judicial), and overall with federal, state and local governments (or more appropriately - federal and not federal).

But today these layers are so tightly connected that they can't really act independently - the state and local governments are so economically beholden to the Feds that there is no practical checks/balances capability (biting the hand that feeds gets toothless pretty quickly).

I favor a (benevolent) central model vs. a local/state/federal model. The American system is redundant, inefficient, and with a dearth of great (even good) leaders (but a surplus of great egos), suffering from bad management and egregious excess. In tough time, the more layers you have the less revenue each layer is able to collect; the less each layer is able to raise, and with bad management, the more the whole system (not to mention the citizens) are at risk.

Creating a central government would of course require a serious Constitutional amendment, but is closer than you might think. If this had been a slightly deeper and more protracted recession/depression (Detroit plans to literally shut down parts of the city because it's too expensive to service them (street lights, police patrols, trash pickup, etc.); elsewhere schools are closing, teachers laid off, hospitals are cutting back, state employees are furloughed, it's endless), I bet a dozen States would have declared bankruptcy and ceded control to a higher power, ultimately creating the United State of America (note the singular).

It's not just America - Greece, Spain and Portugal in the European Union are all struggling. The "Northern" Eurozone (Germany, France) and their taxpayers will bear the brunt of bailing them out, and while they agree the bailout should happen, there is also resentment. "Why are we always sending € billions to them?? All they ever do is go on strike and take vacations!" In the United States we have angst against Wall Street, the automobile manufacturers, and even consumers who can't manage their own debt; think of how New York and Texas will feel if they have to bail California out.

What happens if the United States or European Union fails? What then?

We need a different approach to government.

Most people don't like centralization, believing it results in bloat, bureaucracy, declining services to the citizenry, and worst of all, the risk of an unchecked power running roughshod.

I agree :-) -- BUT - I'm pretty sure we already have this in our current Federal/State/Local government model???

The Constitution delineated Federal responsibilities based on specific portfolios (foreign policy, treasury, military, etc.) combined with omission (what's left is state or local). This was fine when things were easily separable, and there was physically no way for a central government to reach and connect to every corner of the land. Neither is true today. Not only are there overlaps in purview, but the physical portfolios are so intertwined that changes in one have ripple effects on others, and most critically the citizens.

Is there a way to create a government system that achieves both the efficiency and equitability of centralization with the effectiveness, local empathy, balance and accountability of de-central? I wrote about federalizing education, where the Feds were responsible for "the what" and the schools (local leadership) "the how." Extrapolating this to the larger context:

The What - Centralized Laws, Mandate and Funding. This body will set:

1. Rights - create the fundamental laws and principles that should govern the land
2. Vision - define success, identify the "customer," the desired outcome, and how it will be measured, and most critically, have a long-term perspective
3. Funding - raise money and provide financing; $$ per outcome, penalties for non-performance, bonuses for exceptional performance
4. Oversight - policy and remediation; clear process to track performance, and manage poor performance
5. Synchronization - look across programs to create leverage, economies of scale, manage interoperability

6. People-focused - they serve at the pleasure of the citizenry

The How - Decentralized Service Delivery. These bodies will be:

1. Focused - suited to one task (middle school, building bridges, public transportation, hospitals, etc.)
2. Public or Private - could either be government owned with federal employees or private
3. Local, regional or central - organizational structure and span based on need (TSA = central, road builders specializing in cold weather = regional, school = local or regional or national)
4. Outcome-driven - compelled to deliver per the metrics and oversight above
5. Creative - not constrained by "tried and true;" free-market approach to problems and opportunities
6. Customer-centered- their customer is the central government, whose customer is the citizenry

Is it this simple? No - but I think simplicity + decoupling funding and oversight from execution is how a government should be run.

aVOIDance

Lao Tzu was a brilliant, brilliant man - in Tao Te Ching, he wrote this:

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

This should be tattooed on the foreheads of every leader and politician so that they can read it every time they look in the mirror (I presume mirror-looking is a frequent act). Governing (or leading in that rare case) is as much about what you do as what you don't do; it is as much (more) about the things you help happen as it is about the things you prevent from happening. It is indeed as much about the usefulness of what is not as it is about the structure we create. But most critically, governing is about creating a space in which the people it serves are allowed to be great, and to be happy.

I do believe the gentlemen that wrote the Declaration of Independence were aware of Lao Tzu and others, and were themselves brilliant and well-thinking men. Here's a bit of their work:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Read this a couple of times to see how in a mere 202 words so many powerful ideas were collected; how so much power and possibility were granted to both the citizenry and its government. Knowing that this was written to set up the throwing off of one "such Government" is powerful. This document is one of the most eloquent demonstrations of creating a container; knowing full well that the value lies not in the shape or structure of the container, but the power of what it holds, and the potential that creates.

When you read of today's political machinations, you can't help but wonder why our politicians (I can't call them leaders) are bent on creating ever more walls. It's like saying that everything that could possibly happen needs a law to "manage" it.

But we fail to realize that humans are innately skilled at finding the 11th door out of a 10-door room. Every new wall we create invites (nay, demands) loophole seekers, makes it harder to find "miscreants" because the very walls obscure things, and forces us to waste energy policing existing walls.

We also ignore the very purpose of government - to secure their citizens' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, among others. Today the purpose seems to be to enumerate and prevent misdeeds.

How sad that we're defined by what we mustn't do.

We are voidphobes. Whether it is a lull in conversation, or a lull in behavior, or a lull in regulation - we are much more comfortable when cocooned (straitjacketed?) in structure and "no."

Consider our schools and what we impose on children from the first moment of "institutionalization" - rules, constraints, expectations, examinations. I wonder if this is one reason we have so many more "atypical" children in schools today than ever before? Our definition of "normal" is compliance, living within walls, and accommodating adult expectations. We resist, as Seth put it, exposing ourselves. This might be the worst thing adults can do in service of human evolution, and caring for our young.

A free society, a free people, a free nation are powerful, powerful ideas. They live only when what is celebrated is not the walls around us, but the vast, possibility-filled spaces we inhabit.

Our future may well hinge on our ability to resist avoiding voids.

create a public

When leaders are asked about how they got to where they are, many share a story; a story that makes visceral the journey they traveled, the experiences that influenced them, and hints at some of the challenges they faced.

The leaders I admire most embrace the principles of Aikido - when confronted, they seek to at least neutralize their opponent (without causing either party harm), and ideally transform that negative energy into something positive for both sides. This approach doesn't just lead to progress, it leads to sustained progress where in time, nay-sayers might even become advocates.

I've also noticed that leaders are perennial students - it is that openness that creates new possibilities and partnerships. And this almost goes without saying - you won't find a leader whose mission can't be articulated in a single, clear and succinct statement.

I was talking with my dear friend Larry last week about his creation - in his words: "our mission is to create a public." Larry is a great leader, this is his starting point, and his simple and powerful intention.

Parsing this statement, we first discussed it's Jeffersonian connection - schools must reflect all of society, and in the right proportions. It must represent all the peoples of the state (irrespective of gender, race, economic status, etc.) - that's what public means. Sadly, our current system doesn't - while desegregation is law, most schools are in fact segregated, and worse, our policies and philanthropy are intent on perpetuating this segregation! (You get more funding if your school has more underserved students - so schools tend to become all underserved to maximize $$.)

It hasn't worked with prisons (let's put all of societies transgressors together in one place in the hopes that they will rehabilitate while being surrounded by fellow criminals), what makes us think it will work in schools? Every school needs to be a place where all of society mingles, collaborates, and evolves. It is the first representation of that more perfect union, where you bring students from all walks together and give them a place to learn about each other, to work together, and learn from each other. You must create a possibility for tomorrow that is vastly superior to lumping all the poor urban kids in one school, and all the rich in another.

Larry also talks about head and hand - you must learn and do, learning theories and concepts and reading about things is not enough - you must not only build things, you must be those people - to learn biology you must do as biologists do; to learn engineering, you must be an engineer - only then can you really know, and only then can you really choose your own destiny. This is why his graduates are more focused, more adaptable and more open to a changing future.

When you explore his village of six (one elementary, two middle and three high) schools, some things occur to you - first that you would have loved to go to a school like this, second that you'd want this for your children, and finally, you'll ask: "why isn't every school like this?" So much of it is so obvious (and so right) when you see it, that you are shocked to learn that the mainstream school system resisted it because it is different; not "normal," and not how they've always done it (some continue to resist).

But with time and with leadership and with perseverance and with results, minds are changing - there is hope. Maybe one day all schools will be like this.

I'm left with this question - how do we accelerate the transformation? It's not that every school must look like Larry's. It is rather that real leaders must be in charge of all schools. These leaders should be as exacting as Larry is about hiring people, as committed to creating a place that is open to possibilities, and as intent as Larry's teachers are on helping every child find that spark that elevates them from bored to compelled, from observer to participant, from consumer to creator.

We've made education complex - it isn't. We've created a system whose rules require a book that's several inches thick, whose administrators are intent on saying no, and whose staff is only interested in test scores. We've forgotten what it's like to be a student. We've forgotten that it is about graduating children whose future is profoundly more brilliant than anything we might conceive. We've forgotten that it's about creating a public.

We need more leaders that won't ever forget.

e pluribus unum

"Out of many, one" was the translated motto on the Seal of the United States of America. It is a brilliant phrase, and speaks to the one nation formed of first 13 and eventually 50 states, to the principle of democracy shared by all Americans, to the idea that so much more unites Americans than divides them, to the idea that in being one, we are greater.

This was so from 1776 to 1956, when Congress officially replaced it with the motto "In God We Trust." Just a little bit ironic, especially today that a conceptually pluralist society chose to embrace a monotheist declaration isn't it?

We are human (I suppose Congress-people are as well, but I could be wrong). We each have strengths and weaknesses (not sure they have many strengths). How we deal with them is what makes us more or makes us less; our response, our actions are the true measure of who we are.

In changing the motto, Congress chose to shift accountability, to pass the buck. When management faces their shortcomings, what do they do? I think most embrace Congress' proven skill at passing the buck.

My last post was about the mistake America is making in seeking to measure teachers based on student performance. The meta point was that merit pay doesn't work in most team settings; it pits members against each other, and measures them based on their relative achievement - your "success" requires others in your team to "fail."

Merit is the easiest way to pay people - it is not equitable, but is perceived to be. It does not create a true team, but most MBA and HR-types will argue that it does. There is no e pluribus unum-ness with merit, unless your interpretation is "I emerged from the hoard and am the one." It requires you to not care if the team wins or loses, just as long as you win. Here's the other thing - in normalizing performance, you also normalize roles.

By normalizing roles, contrary to Jim Collin's Good to Great, you don't try to get the right people on the bus, you try and get the same people on the bus. That might be OK for certain jobs, but it's not realistic for most work done today. Having a team filled with like-minded and similarly-abled employees isn't ideal in today's competitive and complex world. Is it any wonder that there is so little innovation and creativity in the workplace?

These same MBA and HR-types will argue that merit is also the way to manage the herd and weed out poor performers. Hmmm... recalling the Congressional buck-passers, isn't merit management's way of compensating for their own recruiting, hiring and management failures? If managers were effective, the right employees would have been hired, perform optimally, work together, and achieve greatness as a team. This is exaggerating to make a point, but it might still resonate for some of us.

Passing the buck isn't just about normalizing the workforce. It's also about trying to get by without making tough decisions or more appropriately, deferring tough decisions to others. Steve Lohr wrote an article in the NY Times last week about the economics of elitism where he reflects on Steve Jobs' rule over product development at Apple. Lohr says: "They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products."

As engineers, rather than ex pauci plures (out of few many), they chose e pluribus unum - out of many minds and ideas and approaches, they would make rather than defer the difficult decisions; they would design based on the ideal, and not the compromise.

Matter, people, our very world tends towards entropy - it is easy to accede to chaos. The tougher path is to resolve to be one, to be a team, to make a choice.

no why, no how

One of the cornerstones of "good business" is to create consistent, predictable outcomes. Customers value it, Wall Street values it, it's basic MBA theory, and most employees value it as well. As leaders grow and shape their companies towards this outcome, there is a natural excitement attenuation effect - 'mundane' is rewarded more frequently than 'exceptional'; and 'different' is just plain discouraged. Keep at it long enough and creativity turns into procedures, and breakthrough turns into incrementalism. The final step is commoditization, margin pressures and, with an ironic twist, eventual demise - all in the name of "good business."

Seth Godin wrote Why ask why? today - it struck me as an interesting variant on this theme, not just in the commercial world, but especially in education.

'Progress' demanded the same "consistent, predictable outcomes" of education as it did of business. The Industrial Age needed a massive influx of skilled workers and education was scaled up to respond. In the interests of standardization, they distilled curriculum into 'core' knowledge, and in the interests of efficiency, all teachers focused teaching 'core,' to the exclusion of almost everything else. One result is the suppression of students' ability to ask "why?"

A few years ago, the "new" idea of 21st Century Learning became vogue - a lot of .orgs were formed, a lot of companies intent on social responsibility set up programs to support it, and a lot of edu-cognizanti heralded 21st Century Learning as the basis for education reform. IMO, there is no difference in the essence of learning in the 18th century versus the 21st century; content, method and tools may change, but the fundamentals remain the same. Ironically, while these proponents all think that inquiry and creativity are new skills, most want to mechanize their teaching.

I am reminded of this quote (my emphasis) when students did ask "why?":

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. - John Keating from the film Dead Poets Society.

Seth argued that not being able to ask "why?" prevents improvement; I think not being able to ask "why?" also leads to the suppression of our essential poeticism - the very thing for which we stay alive. When you walk into a great school, there is a vibrancy that sparks a need to channel Thoreau (with my emphasis and also from the same movie): "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." It's why as adults we wish we were that young again, to have that passion, and be immersed in that place.

Even in Dead Poets Society, Keating was forced to succumb to the school authorities, and extract the passion and marrow out of his class in favor of consistent, predictable and conventional outcomes.

I am convinced that size does matter, that overemphasizing predictability leads to the starvation of passion and excitement, and when the original wave of innovation dissipates, we are left with emptiness. The bigger a company or a school gets, the more likely it is to lose its mojo - there are exceptions - High Tech High comes to mind, but I can't think of many others.

Business has the luxury of bankruptcy and acquisition and start-ups and venture capital to achieve renewal - education doesn't. When education goes under, it takes futures with it.

While there are many federal and state programs in America aimed at investing in education, the one common denominator is consistent and predictable outcomes. I'm not saying this is not required, it absolutely is; but today it seems that the winners of the grants and prizes and awards have to be mechanical right from the get-go, and there goes our mojo.

As I've written before, I think it's absolutely appropriate for schools to be funded federally, but that the feds don't get to tell schools how to teach, theirs is to define the outcomes they expect for their investment. 

The schools in turn must treat their students as customers, respect them, and create an environment that allows them to wildly exceed the federally-designated outcomes, and most critically, experience the joy of learning.

1-1-10

The first day of the year is the most widely celebrated day on earth. It is the one day that almost everyone recognizes and feels good about.

But a new dawn, no matter the day is just that - it's what we do with it that counts. Our world today is so much more connected than ever before; today almost any action is a visible action; almost any idea is a shared idea; almost nothing can hide, and almost everything seeks exposure.

One implication of this is that we (people and organizations alike) must be quick to sense, quick to diagnose, and quick to react. This instinct is in us, and has evolved to protect us. But as often as it saves us, knee-jerk reactions can also hurt us; and in our world, this hurt can easily be magnified.

I am a CAAD, someone who is more interested in the beginning than the middle or the end, someone who thrives in a world of ideas. And as a marketer, I understand the power of ideas, the reality of perceptions, and the potential of the moment.

Seth talked today about this being the frustration decade; there is some truth to that, but I think this is also going to be the decade of clarity - one that like today's date, consists only of ones and zeroes; one that requires modernizing (pictured) The Thinker in all of us. This is going to be a time of binary actions and reactions, where judgments will be made rapidly and often indiscriminately. Clarity is not truth, but clarity is easily grasped and easily shared. Actions need consideration.

I don't make resolutions (ever), but I was reading The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card and was so struck by the power of I was what I did; I am what I will do - that I had to stop and write.

My resolution is this - I will do many things from now, I will do many of them instinctively, but I will do some deliberately. I will sense, diagnose, contemplate and then respond. I will take more care to do what I do, to think what I think --- to be who I am.

on time off

America enjoys this wonderful period from Halloween through Thanksgiving to the New Year, where there is more optimism in the air, more energy in the workplace, and a legitimate feeling of community:

• Fun is pervasive - lots going on - all centered on celebrating life, friends and family
• There are more days off per week during the last two months of the year than any other time
• Even the media gets into it, celebrating stories of goodwill and the golden rule (do unto others...)

I don't know about you, but when I'm happier, more rested and more connected to the people around me, I am more productive, more engaged, and just plain get more done. I wonder if this is true across the board? I presume there is a seasonality to America's GDP - is it higher in the last quarter of the year? If it is, there is a business case for the power of restorative thinking.

We have winter break, spring break, summer holidays and Christmas/New Year's holidays for students - why not do the same for adults? (OK - maybe not give everyone the whole summer off ;-).) If in the end the nation achieves more and is happier, I'm all for it! Who knows - it might even lead to less anger and violence in this little corner of the world.

Related to this, and paraphrasing a quote my great friend Larry shared with me a couple of days ago:

Those who can, do
Those who can't, legislate
Those who can't legislate, legislate war
Those who can't legislate war, legislate healthcare

Should Congress take more breaks? I think they should only be allowed to work one week/month and be required to have full-time jobs for the other three weeks (like the National Guard Reserves). This would viscerally improve their grasp of the realities their constituents face every day, and require them to be much more focused and succinct when at the Capitol. I think it would lead to fewer, better, simpler bills, and who knows - maybe even a more effective Congress?

Enough of this - I'm taking a nap...

the war on peace

One of our (Americans in particular) most powerful motivators is winning. From its inception, America has had to fight for what she believed, and keep fighting to achieve progress. More often than not, America won - the economy grew, its role on the world stage grew, its contribution to the sciences and entertainment grew, its ego grew, etc. It is therefore clear why this competitive instinct is so deeply-rooted in the American "system," and how it is fundamental to her approach to life, the universe and everything.

From birth to school to work to love to death, Americans view life as a zero-sum game. At birth we're competing for cutest baby, baby closest to the XXth percentile of development, etc.; next it's getting in the right schools; then the best jobs; the best girl/guy; etc. In every instance, keeping score is about besting someone else - the pie is only so big, and for us to win, others need to lose.

The competitive instinct can sometimes lead one astray - there have been many American declarations against rather unlikely foes. Some of these "Wars" include: Poverty (Johnson, 1964 - winner: poverty); Drugs (Nixon, 1969 - winner: drugs); Terror (Bush, 2001 - winner: terror); Greed (US Congress 2008/9 - winner: greed); ...

Even corporations have gotten into it - one recently declared War on Cost. If they actually win, price = free; success = bankruptcy. Not sure the shareholders will approve.

It is pretty hard to spot(!), but did you notice a trend among all these wars? Each has cost a ton of money, wasted a ton of lives, burned a ton of energy, and in every case, resulted in more of the "bad" thing than before the "war" was declared.

Hmmm...

"My fellow Americans there is a cancer among us, it is evil, it is insidious, and it is fomented by those will not stop until they have found the best in every one of us. I call upon every red-blooded American to stand with me, and in the spirit of our founding fathers who prevailed against a superior foe armed only with the power of their ideals, rise as one to combat what is surely the most diabolical axis of evil that has beset our glorious nation.

My fellow Americans - I stand before you today with pride and purpose to declare War on Peace. Peace is the most powerful foe America has ever faced, but I am confident that our relentless pursuit of failure will once again restore our faith and ensure our prosperity.

This is just the beginning - lead by Peace, this axis of evil contains two other collaborators that must also be quelled. Immediately upon losing to Peace, and in the spirit of all that is great, we will first declare War on Wellness, and then War on Education.

Thank you, God bless each and every one of you, and God bless America."

Yes we can!

overclocked

Have you noticed how much e-stuff you have? How much you depend on all that e-stuff? How much the e-stuff dictates your behavior?

I was giving a speech recently and among other things, talked about how significantly electronicization has altered power consumption. There was this article I read in 2003 that said the average freshman at the University of Miami needed 18 power outlets in their dorm room! As part of a renovation of residences, the University actually had to add new power substations to accommodate the students' hunger!

I'm guessing today's student may need less plugs but more power - if it were me, I'd need 6 - iMac (music, video, work), external speakers, laptop, iPhone/iPod (shared), headset, oh and my toothbrush.

Overclocking is the equivalent of giving your computer steroids to increase its throughput. If you go too far, you can harm the circuitry, and potentially trash the PC. What's the human equivalent?

You know you're overclocked when you're wishing you had your phone so you can check email or play a game while waiting in line, or at the gas station filling up your car. You know you're overclocked when you have to check texts and emails when you're having a drink with a friend and they've popped off to the bathroom. You know you're overclocked when you dim your phone so you can play without disturbing others while watching a movie.

I admit to the first two, but not the third :-).

Are our bodies able to cope with the increased electro-magnetic radiation? What about our minds? We now have many (too many) business processes but not enough time to process things. There is value to reflection - it is how we change minds, grasp concepts, and create a shared vision. Reflection is also how we question things; it is how we are able to look at things from alternate perspectives; it is how we move from reacting instinctively (which is all you can do when you don't have time) to reacting purposefully, to changing outcomes ...profoundly.

We intentionally create pressure situations - in the corporate world they call these "forcing functions" - creating faux crises that require rapid response. The result has no choice but to be evolutionary, gradual if any improvement and largely the same old thing in a new PowerPoint template - because there's no time for anything profound. Without the time to change minds, new ideas can't gel, be socialized and convince others.

There is absolutely a place for rapid-fire reactions and quick decision-making - this is a big part of getting things done. BUT you can't expect every decision to be made this way. Briefly overclocking a business is good when reacting to a crisis or capitalizing on an opportunity, but like any computer that's treated this way, the longer you do it, the greater the risk of burnout.

The obvious damage is falling ever deeper in a rut and ironically losing that very competitive edge; the collateral damage is people burnout - you only have to look articles like this or this to see that the American worker is overclocked - they're afraid of being viewed as redundant so they don't take vacations; they don't have time to reflect and be energized so they can't conceive to catalyze revolutions (or even evolutions); and worst of all, they make big decisions rashly, and end up paying the piper at some point in the future. Constraining broad thinking (or as Seth Godin put it, getting meta) is what prevents us from really grasping a situation and doing something about it.

In the end though, I think the e-stuff is a red herring; we've overclocked ourselves in response to a ...desperation to get things done, to build and sell more widgets, and to own more crap. This ideal is not ideal. It is impales us in a self-imposed rat race, and removes us from the social, reflective, connected (dare I say actualized) world in which we ought to live. We've lost our ability to exercise a modicum of control over our own actions, and achieved an inability to exercise the instinctive urge to sit back and think...

affect magic

I tend to think in threes. Driving home this evening, the concept of experiences was bouncing around my head, and I saw three aspects - those that create, those that watch, and those that curate.

I was marveling earlier at my good fortune to have such great friends. Two of my dearest hosted an impromptu celebration tonight for a collection of fellows that were all three of these aspects of creation. They are artists one and all - their inspiration comes from everywhere, anywhere, and everything in between. It is filled with passion, intellect, sensuality, brutality... It is life.

Creators of experience use authorship, performance, story-telling, and many other -ships to enliven. Their ability to interpret the world and then reveal it is astounding to me.  The watchers (perhaps voyeurs is a better word) are people like me, who (I must admit) are all about the vicarious moment. Being a part of conversations in this home reminded me of how passion and art create boldness. How they bring to people the strength and fierceness to not just do it, but to do it in a unique, magical and affecting way.

As an observer, I got to revel in their energy, and to be ever-more inspired to create my own thing - for that I thank them.

Curators are many things - they are of course creator and observer, but that's not enough. They are also collector (like the creator they must consume, digest and interpret but they also have to get others to give). The are able to do this because they honor without judgment. They like to watch, but their eyes are filters that aim to reveal insides. In the processing is a special mechanism that formulates that most conveyable aspect that when combined with other such aspects, achieves a gestalt that we as voyeurs will experience and say "wow."

Tonight I was at a celebration for A Wink and a Smile. It is a brilliant and wonderful film whose director Deirdre Timmons is the quintessential curator. She and her producer-husband Jack Timmons are creatures who have that ability to find, nurture, honor and convey expression in a way that simply affects magic.

Driving home, I got to thinking about other brilliant curators - the first that came to mind is another good friend - Larry Rosenstock. As the leader of High Tech High, Larry like Deirdre created an environment in which his actors (teachers) are able to create and express and inspire and provoke with the trust and freedom that becomes the magic that is High Tech High.

It's one of those ineffable "we know it when we see it" qualities that is able to affect magic. If there were more magic affectors like Deirdre and Larry, we'd have more brilliant films, more brilliant schools, and more brilliant ...brilliance.

simplicity

Have you noticed that the more America cares about something, the more she screws it up?

From education to healthcare to crime to terrorism to disaster relief to taxation to foreign policy to whatever; anything that the politicians get their paws on is sure to take a turn for the worse. Moreover, the longer they hold on to it, the more harm they do. The media doesn't help with it's hype-obsessed approach, but that's a separate story.

Education has been at the forefront of political debate for as long as I can remember, but this year 7,200 American students will drop out on every school day. Look at America's foreign policy history of "anointing" leaders (just in the Middle East: Saddam Hussein, Hamid Karzai, the Taliban, etc.); or how Hurricane Katrina was handled; or how many people in this country die of preventable diseases; or the "war" on drugs; or crime-prevention efforts that result in more crimes and more criminals in jail year on year.

The list is endless, as is the complexity of each of these programs. It seems that everything this country cares about must be huge, intricate, nuanced, and over-manned. If it isn't we don't care enough. If we don't throw enough money at it, we're not really committed. Therein lies the rub, the fallacy, and our failure.

What can be done to create a more productive system? Whatever it is, it's for sure not as simple as I'm about to make it. Or is it? Is that our problem? We like complexity? It's much easier to hide (or hide things) in a tree/bush/shrub/etc.-ridden forest than in a less-cluttered place like an empty parking lot. Ask people in the government and they will affirm that it's an incredibly complex and nuanced thing - this is why the 2008 Federal Budget numbered 2,200 pages.

Warren Buffet once said that "business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective." Most corporations and governments are rife with business school graduates. Maybe not such a good thing... We should not take this idea that complexity is good, inevitable, and to be cherished as truth or acceptable.

What if three things were to change:

1. Spend well - most budgets are funded based on LOBA (lower of budget or actual), which is fine when you have a ton of money and no accountability. It favors those who spend, not those who do. What if this changed - budgets are now zero-based (start from scratch), and funded based on outcomes. There will be multi-year projects that need to maintain funding, but they should be assessed based on what got done in the current year and whether it's time to increase, reduce, or cut the investment. The goal should be (for the 1st year) a budget that is 10% the size of the current one - 220 pages.
2. Rewarding completion - why don't things stop in government? So many projects (largely due to #1) go on and on and on, just because departments measure success based on funding; and cutting things admits a need for less money. We should reward good completion - it could be as simple as a bonus (to the government employees, not the contractors) for finishing a project on time, on budget, and closing up that shop. Those people should be first in line for the next cool thing to happen, because they got it done the last time. I'm not sure what the real goal should be, but my gut says 80% of programs 20 years or older should be cut, and 20% of programs younger than 20 years should be cut - every year.
3. Being accountable for less - this is big. I've never seen any successful project get done when it had more than three objectives. In fact, the most successful ones have just one. When you try and do everything for everyone, you end up doing nothing for anyone. We must only fund programs that have a clear, singular, time-limited objective. It's true that some things are not time-limited - defense or social security come to mind - and that's fine, they should be the exceptions. The goal should be for every project to have a clear, specific and timely outcome. If it doesn't, it doesn't get funded.

I know I've focused solely on money, but look at how things get done in government, it boils down to he who has the $$ has the power. Let's temper that power a bit...

inversions

 

There was an article in the NY Times recently about a research study that found that students who study online outperform those that study in the classroom. But according to an email Prof. Kathy Gill at U Washington sent to a listserv, the causative factor was not on/off line, but time on task

So it wasn't the medium, it wasn't the message, it was the participation level that made the difference. It makes sense doesn't it? You could be in the most beautiful place with the most beautiful people looking at the most beautiful things, but if you weren't engaged, it was all for naught.

One thing this study does show is that listening to lectures online does work - students can and do pay attention; insight is conveyed, and gained.

Have you heard of Professor Glenn Platt at Miami University? He along with Prof. Maureen Lage invented the concept of "The Inverted Classroom." This is Einstein-like (so simple and yet no-one's ever thought of it before) brilliance.

From the students' point of view (and let's face it, they're the customers!), the lecture is the least interactive part of a learning experience; the assignments/homework are the most interactive.

So why not flip things around and make the lectures homework, and the assignments class work? The teachers should actively facilitate the interactive experience, and expect the students to "attend" the static part out of class.

The lecture is information with some insight (students sit, listen, take notes). The homework and assignments are where you're meant to internalize the concepts, be able to extend them to related areas, and demonstrate your knowledge by submitting solutions to problems you've been assigned (student reviews, infers, works, and documents understanding).

Think back to when you were doing homework - did you collaborate with your peers to solve a particularly difficult problem? If so, you had to arrange for an "out of class" meeting, to connect and then brainstorm, argue, share, and hopefully solve. There are many studies that show that the best way to know is to teach - getting together with your mates was the first step in teaching (or co-teaching), and understanding.

Platt/Lage published this idea nine years ago (in 2000) - shocking that this hasn't been more broadly explored.

Why hasn't it taken hold? IMO - there are three reasons for this:

1. Ability to record and disseminate lectures - requires video recording tools, a portal with video streaming services, the disk space and bandwidth to assure a good experience. This is being done in many places today - my traditional favorite is MIT Open Courseware, but Curtis Wong at Microsoft Research has created a rather ground-breaking project called Tuva - well worth a visit, especially if you share my appreciation for Richard Feynman. I don't think this is as expensive as everyone makes it out to be. Plus there are many organizations that would happily lend assistance to school systems that wished to implement this.
2. Capacity for all students to receive and consume lectures at home - this is more contentious. Throwing out the trust issue (kids won't do the work), which I believe is spurious and can be overcome, this is also the expensive part. Every student will require their own device to access lectures (could be as simple as a mobile phone), and the bandwidth to download them. Again - this is not a complex problem, but merely a costly one. I've talked about an adult equivalent of this here, I think the opportunity and impact is even greater for children.
3. Incumbents' willingness to change - there are four players involved (besides the students) and each is a big hairy issue. Are teachers and administrators willing to change? Are their unions open to encouraging this type of approach? Will parents (voters) agree to this idea? Does anyone have the cojones to pilot this for a whole school system?

Does it affect pedagogy? Yes. Does it require a new set of teaching skills? Hopefully not - my presumption is that teachers sought this scenario when they chose the profession. Does curriculum need to change? It could - for example, rather than streaming full 50-minute lectures, try ~10 minute "lecturelets" that are aggregated into lessons. One advantage of the inverted model is that the teacher and the lecturer don't have to be the same person. If your state had a standard curriculum, you could record the 4-5 best lecturers in your state, and then have that "best of the best" set of lectures be your streaming library; this library could be updated every two or three years to keep it fresh. The in-class teachers' role becomes more guide on the side.

The other advantage of this lecture/lecturelet model is that students can replay them to clarify understanding and review prior to exams. It allows them to learn in a much more self-directed way.

The issue with this model - will all students actually watch the lectures? No. But how is this different from today? I have observed a number of primary and secondary school classes, and can say with certainty that despite physically being in the room, not every student was really in the room. Moreover, not every student actually did their homework. Bet you're surprised to read that!

One other thing - when surveyed most teachers say that keeping students engaged while in the class is difficult. That doesn't surprise me given that most of the time is spent lecturing. This approach changes that - it puts the teacher in the role of actually working with the students to together internalize, understand and demonstrate the material. And I bet engaged students are more likely to watch lectures at home too.

I would change the approach to assignments - it's not about kids being head's down, answering questions, but rather about a discussion with problem solving, team exercises, lab work, etc. I'm not sure if assessments would need to change (they might), but I think the grading breakdown should - class participation and activity must now be at least 50% of the student's grade.

The data shows that time-on-task helps performance, that it is possible to learn from steaming lectures, and that keeping students engaged is a challenge for teachers. Inverted classrooms could be an answer.

I would really like to see a sizable school district or maybe a whole State give inverted classrooms a try. I think it has incredible potential, and might actually transform learning in a way we've never seen before. Perhaps this is what President Obama and Secretary Duncan should provoke with their Race to the Top program.

 

is free free?

How do you make money and still sell things for free?? Inquiring minds want to know!

I'm fascinated by these business models - one approach is to lower the price and make it up in volume (examples include SouthWest Airlines, Walmart, Costco, etc.). Google zeroed the price altogether by turning the end user into the product and the advertiser into the customer - this was the first real step towards free at scale. Now free is expected, and if you're not ad-funded, it makes it hard to turn a profit... or does it?

Seth Godin wrote about righteous indignation and avalanche opportunities this week, and Krishna asked sure free is for users, but what about publishers? All three blogs apply to business models, how you can optimize your opportunities, create scale (which requires very broad reach), and make money.

While Seth was talking about customer service in the first, I see a different kind of righteousness - "I deserve to get paid, and I'm damned if I let someone take my stuff for free!!" As Krishna argued, it costs money to sell stuff for free; it's easy to understand why people feel indignant about it. Read Seth's second post (avalanche), and you learn that your boss *really* pays attention when you can demonstrate significant reach, outcomes, growth, etc., and you begin to think - the only way for me to break through and get customers to pay attention is to sell it for free.

Do you have to overcome the mentality of expecting to get paid for what you value most? Surely its what the customer values that counts! Not everything has to be for free - people will pay for some things - but what?

If I were an artist you liked and were to offer you my music CD for free, would you begrudge me charging you $4.95 for shipping (even if it only cost $1.25 to ship)??

If I were a chef you liked and offered you appetizers for free provided you bought the main course, would you "buy" (even though you know the main dish prices include the other costs)?

If I were to give you a car for free but charge you $10/gallon for the special fuel it needed, would you "buy" the car (even though you know you'll end up paying for the car in the end)?

Is Free *really* Free?

We all *really* know that deals like this are not truly free, they're just packaging. At the end of the day, any of these organizations needs to earn money in order to pay its employees, cover operating costs, etc. We recognize and respect this because we hopefully do, and want to keep getting paid ourselves.

What about Google? When you happily use their service, you might do so because they're a great company, have a great product and try not to be evil; but have you thought about how economically successful they are? Google employs more than 19,000 employees, earns more than $20 billion/year and achieves more than $4 billion in net profits. These are amazing numbers!

Lots of people had to pay Google cash so that they could be so profitable. These same people had to get paid to be able to afford to pay Google, and you and I (end users) had to have paid them to start this process.

Free isn't free - it's just damned good marketing. Or in Google's case, a brilliant business strategy of turning the customer into the product and selling it to someone else.

Where is the next "avalanche"?? I'm thinking it has something to do with aspects of reCAPTCHA and massively multi-player games. These are both brilliant innovations that are just scratching the surface of new paradigms of commerce.

Resourceful, Fearless, Passionate

Education in America is one of the most maligned institutions around. Everyone believes they have the silver bullet that will fix education once and for all. Off the top of my head and in no particular order, here are ten panaceas (by the way - how can "panacea" have a plural form??):

1. Class size
2. 21st century skills
3. STEM
4. Constructivism
5. Desegregation
6. Standards
7. Instructivism
8. Integrated curriculum
9. 1:1 laptops
10. Increased budgets

The thing Edu-America has done most consistently in the last century is wholeheartedly embrace fads - but like diet cures, with a dismal success rate. I couldn't come up with one example of when any of these has worked over time (sustained success) and at scale. Can you? As with diets, there is no miracle pill that takes no effort, has no side effects and maintains ideal and guilt-free health and fitness.

Ideas like "21st Century learning" freak me out. The nature of life is that things change - today's internet is yesterday's library or bookstore; today's cell phone is yesterday's letter (the kind you mail); today's podcast is yesterday's correspondence course... The only truth is that tomorrow will not be like yesterday. What "21st century" skill would not have been useful in the 18th century when this country was formed?

Mainstream schools today seem like the worst kind of sweatshops. If anyone in the education system needed a union, it's the students. When you find a school whose leadership is the strongest advocate for the students, you find a pretty good place to learn. They don't come at it with isms - that's not the path to greatness.

So what should a student be? How can school contribute to the graduate being more than the freshman?

If I had a child there are three things I'd want them to be - resourceful (find things, learn things, get things done), fearless (never let someone else's lack of imagination or inhibition stop you), and passionate (care about things, and share your ideas). Above these three, I'd want them to be filled with joy.

Shouldn't a school be able to contribute to this, be the place where creativity and exploration happen? Don't you want to be these three things as well?

Deciding what change a school system needs doesn't IMHO begin with standards or curricula or tests (and certainly not isms) - it begins by first describing what we want ourselves to be - making that our mission statement and building something that manifests that destiny. If you start with, say "we need more nerds," you're destined to fail as we've proven time and time again.

you had me at hello

This line (title) from Jerry Maguire is the holy grail of marketing. Seth Godin's blog about attention surplus made me ask myself: marketing tries to create awareness and consideration; but if people are exposed to increasing more messages, how do you break through - how do you get them at hello?

As Seth points out, there are a ton of free content channels out there, and bad marketers flood these outlets with generic "spray-marketing" content that likely yields much lower returns than traditional direct mail or advertising. People do it because it's perceived to be free, so what the hell. But, it's not free - it costs money to produce, it costs money to support and it costs money to respond to potentially spurious customers in the hopes of finding the real spenders. But there's an even higher cost - if you do it badly, there is a risk that your poor execution will be visible to millions, just like all those videos of dumb things people or companies do.

Treating your public "face" casually is never a good thing, and speaks volumes about your organization, its attitudes, and its commitment to its customers.

Seth talked about the attention drought. In the old days, there were very few channels to reach the individual consumer; if you had a successful one (really popular TV show, magazine, etc.), you were able to command a premium for advertising because people couldn't avoid the ads (Tivo + no remote controls), and you were much more likely (with a good ad) to create broad awareness. The market was hungry for it and would pay attention. Creativity trumped insight.

Today three things work against you - profusion of content, proliferation of channels, and easy tools to avoid consuming advertising. Add search engines to refine surfing and (if you're like me) the ability to ignore web ads, and most "traditional" marketing campaigns will struggle.

If in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, then in the land of the sighted, the one-eyed marketer is lost.

To get me at hello is to give me what I want when I want it and how I want it. Google and other search engines have tried this, and initially I think it worked really well because it was new, there weren't that many advertisers, people devoted a little (not a lot) space to it on their pages, and it was a novelty (just like TV ads in the 50s). But now there's too many ads, it's obvious where they are on the page, and they're easy to ignore.

Great marketing is about really (really) understanding your audience, what they need and care about, and then providing them what they want with ideas, words, and images that mean something to them. A very smart communications consultant told me that more often than not, people communicate in ways that are meaningful to them but not their audiences. He said that great communicators care not at all about how it looks to the speaker, but rather whether the listener/reader/watcher got what they wanted out of it.

The Internet and search engines have made the Long Tail real; they've led to people being able to very precisely state their need and find what they want. I fear that marketers are still mistakenly led by traditional approaches and metrics that applied in the old days when BIG reach was key. They ignore the real hard work of precisely identifying, segmenting and understanding your target audience, being able to craft a message and offer in a way that implicitly resonates with that audience, and then finding the ideal medium with which to reach them.

Find them, know them, care about them, and they will care about you. That's how you get them at hello.

nerd-up!

There's a conversation happening between luminaries in American industry, major players in the American philanthropic scene, leaders in the American education system, and some very senior and "in-the-know" people in the state and federal governments to figure out ways to grow the number of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)-skilled graduates in the United States. Specifically, there aren't enough students in elementary and high school with an interest in STEM and there aren't enough university graduates in STEM to fill current and future open positions.

Let me start by saying that I don't believe in isolating any one (or one set of) disciplines - good learning must be holistic and serve the complete child. I can't learn science well and sacrifice communications skills (reading, writing, speaking, etc.); I can't learn engineering well and sacrifice creativity (music, sculpting, painting, etc.); I can't learn any STEM discipline without a good (really good) sense of art and crafts (carpentry, etc.).

Making this about one and not the other creates a bifurcation of the education system that is wrong and unfair. My good friend Larry has decided he'll focus his schools on STEAM for this very reason (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) - I could agree more + I love the idea of steAm:-)!!!

How about this:

Overarching goal: every student must achieve their greatest academic potential.

STEM-focused goal: America will double the number of American-educated, successful STEM employees by 2020.

Situation:

• The forecast for STEM jobs in ten years is almost double the current population of STEM employees (i.e. at least 80% growth in jobs in 10 years)
• American junior and high school students drop out of STEM disciplines at alarming rates
• Graduates in general are weak in STEM basics irrespective of major
• Students are daunted by the sciences, and aren't captivated by how interesting (and well-paid) jobs in the sciences can be; it's also noteworthy that students normally decide (explicitly or implicitly) an interest in STEM before they reach grade 7
• Employers have done an abysmal job of engaging students and compelling them with opportunities in their organizations
• Philanthropy alone cannot sustain any major social (or other) change (it's incredible at sparking things, but it's not forever)
• In the rest of the world, families and institutions value STEM graduates tremendously; students are encouraged by their peers, families, employers, etc. to get in that game, and get some of that coin; and the results in these countries (like Korea for example) are outstanding, and at a lower cost-per-student than America

Truths:

• Employers are motivated by the following: making money, hiring the best talent, looking good (image) - let's not waste time on any other incentives - help them with these three and you win, everything else is crap
• Students are motivated by the following: getting laid, making money, looking good - let's not waste time on any other incentives - help them with these three and you win - everything else is crap
• Parents are motivated by the following: getting the kids gainfully-employed, becoming burden-free empty-nesters, being financially solvent - ibid
• Teachers & Administrators are motivated by the following: being employed, teaching students, preserving status quo - ibid
• Governments are motivated by the following: getting elected, being perceived as doing good, getting re-elected - ibid

If we want all schools to improve their curriculum and performance, the most sustainable way to do this, is to get the parents (voters) to demand it and expect it. If you want scale and sustainability, this is the ONLY way to do it. If you can achieve this, the governing bodies who seek reelection will find a way to make it happen, and I argue, make it happen without additional funds.

This is a marketing problem - if the demand is created, and elected stakeholders start feeling it from their constituents, outcomes will occur.

Some might think this trivializes the problem, but I've never heard of organized ingenuity (seems like an oxymoron), or broad, sustained, grassroots change (outside of declarations of war or the like) happening just because one person (irrespective of how charismatic, powerful or visible they are) said it should.

The real goal is to make STEM sexy (dare I say: "STEAMy" = Science + Technology + Engineering + Art + Math = yeah baby!).

Sustained, societal change requires a broad from the bottom-up movement that changes culture and expectations.

Solution:

I think we need to create a whole new concept and movement in America - I'm calling it "MInternship" - a combination of mentoring and internships.

Today, most American STEM firms get R&D tax credits for doing all that nerd stuff. I want to change the rule for getting the tax credits. From now on (beginning with the 2010 tax year), in order to qualify for any R&D tax credits, 100% of your R&D staff must mentor a student in grades 6-12. Each mentee must also intern in your organization for at least one week during the school year (not in one go, plus it counts as community service for the student), and optionally for an additional two weeks during the summer break - paid experience.

But please let's not make this exclusive to STEM - why not open this up to all industries - if you want your R&D or operating tax credits, this is the new cost of doing business - involve the future in the present.

It is an amazing opportunity for employers to reach out, identify and nurture stars, eventually hire them, and of course get those tax credits. It's huge for students because they get to be engaged in reality, identify with people who are doing great work, learn, and realize that this could be their vocation.

We marry this with a marketing campaign where we showcase and applaud nerds (Iron Man and Hulk are two pretty cool nerds, and both got laid (well Hulk almost did)!), with creative uses of media - targeting both parents and students. This campaign is a myth-busters campaign - we want everyone to know that nerd-smarts are absolutely attainable irrespective of gender, demographics, whatever; and we especially want everyone to know that nerds get paid really well, and better on average than other professions.

This marketing campaign has to show parents how important it is for them to focus on their children's academic time as an investment in independence, and how a great education is the key to being a successful empty-nester.

Result:

It will take some time - say 5-6 years, but if done right, this is a sustained and totally scalable approach to growing the American nerd (and otherwise) population - by creating a desire in the American ethos for a better education that is more closely connected to employment. We are also addressing the needs of each of the audiences identified above.

The problem with it is that it doesn't fit well with bureaucrats and politicians because it doesn't demonstrate direct and substantive results in the first year. (Though I'd challenge you to name five government programs that have.) But the key is to find answers that will be pervasive and live for a long time.

It will also be daunting because it's whacky, there were no committees formed, we didn't hire expensive consultants, and there were no 500-page PowerPoint presentations developed that demonstrated blah, blah, blah.

Let's hope that that group of people above will come to a dramatic and divergent conclusion, rather than live up to a most primo nerd (Einstein)'s definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

actually, "gov"-up

Creating a converged government is controversial, some of the comments I received (like J.R.'s) made me ask myself, "what if we could do a full tear-down and start over, what would the new house look like?" But before I get into that, as d.eris pointed out, the result would no longer be a federation, so instead of a federal government, there would be a national government, or just a government:-).

So... here goes - this is mostly about the process of getting elected, some of the political accountability and it touches on a couple of other aspects like taxation and some core national services. This is by no means exhaustive. Hopefully it provokes a debate about how things could be in iAmerica (i=imaginary;-).

Elections

There are only two kinds of elected officials - the President/VP and the 435 members of Congress; there is no Senate, nor of course are there any local officials. The President can run for one six-year term. Congresspeople can run for up to two four-year terms, and they overlap - so half the House is reelected every two years.

Campaign Financing

Actual or prospective government employees may not accept any kind of gift - public or private, cash or otherwise. To become a candidate, you must be nominated by 1% of your district's citizens, or 10,000 voters, whichever is less. Once nominated, you are entitled to $0.50 per voter in your district, or approximately $250,000 in government funds for your campaign. The presidential candidate follows roughly the same process, and is likewise constrained to $0.50/voter of national funding.

Voting

Voting is mandatory and fully electronic. The penalty for not voting is harsh - your tax bracket is raised to the next level until your vote is recorded (i.e. skip two elections and you're in a higher tax bracket for four years).

During the election (one month every two years), candidates must speak not only about their national interests, but also their local/district commitments. Each candidate must declare their ten most critical local priorities, which forms the basis of their "local" platform and part of the framework for their accountability to their voters.

Voting is a three-step process:

1. Indicate your top ten local issues/priorities based on the published list of each candidate's top ten (so if there are three candidates, you pick your hot issues based on the aggregated (30 or less, since some issues will overlap) candidates' list).
2. Vote for your Congressperson (you will also see how each candidate matches up to your top ten; if there is an incumbent, you see how they performed in support of your top ten issues).
3. Select your presidential candidate (potentially with a similar prioritization model).

By first being asked to prioritize the local issues you care about, we create a sensitivity to local needs for the eventual winner, plus the voter is now able to clearly see which candidate(s)' priorities are most closely aligned. It doesn't force you to vote for the best match, but at least you are making a more informed choice. Moreover, it is in the candidates' best interests to understand their voters' issues up-front and focus on the things at top of mind in their platform to create the most matches on voting day.

Reach

A mandatory electronic voting process includes the provision that the government provide every citizen with the means to do this. As you probably know, every wireless device in the world (phone or PC or whatever) has a unique (MAC or IMEI) address. The government must provide each citizen with a basic device (that is registered to their social security number; if the citizen chooses, they can purchase their own device, but each citizen must have a "registered" device).

This device will be provisioned with basic, free wireless access to deliver government services (voting, emergency services, information, potentially health care records (in a health vault of some kind), financial information (e-wallet), etc.). Each citizen will therefore be able to "connect" and vote wherever they are on Election Day. Since the incentive is quite powerful (see above), it is expected that turnout will be virtually 100%, ensuring that every individual's voice is heard.

Further, the system will capture local priorities (this could also be extended to national priorities), aggregated by district to ensure local needs are met, and when mapped to voting records, actual outcomes, etc., will create a powerful accountability model. I would imagine getting a quarterly report card on how my Congressperson is doing vis-à-vis the aggregated priorities of the district, and the ones I outlined.

This might create the perception of a more big-brother-ish society, but I think with the right regulatory safeguards, it actually creates the opportunity for a leaner, more accessible government, and a better-served citizenry.

Once Elected

The three branches of government remain intact, though Congress does have additional responsibilities.

Congresspeople are required to spend two-thirds (67%) of their time in their district, overseeing national agency focus and prioritization based on the local top ten issues, etc.; and one-third (33%) in Washington on national issues (education, health care, security, infrastructure, defense, etc.).

The local responsibility is much greater than in today's Congress. In this regard, Congresspeople act more like governors of their district. This will require a larger local staff, a deeper understanding of local needs and issues, as well as the ability and accountability for all of the constituents' governing needs.

Since the penalty for accepting private or commercial funds is termination, lobbyists will have a harder time creating influence. Congresspeople will also be judged based on their track record versus the priorities their district set out during the election; this will create a more powerful accountability dynamic, and given that they are required to "govern" their district as well, build a deeper appreciation and focus on the needs and challenges facing their constituents.

When in Washington D.C., Congresspeople will focus on national issues alongside the President. This process operates similarly to the current House, but with the dynamic of a multi-party system (vs. the two that currently dominate). As we've discussed here and here, I think a 3+-party system offers a better representation of the people's wishes, creates more moderated governance, and provides a stronger checks/balances model than we have now.

Checks and Balances

While in principle the federal/state/local model is a check/balance model, I don't believe it works in reality. Look at how much power the Feds wield during crises (9-11, Katrina, etc.), but more importantly, when you follow the money it's very clear that in the end, federal dollars are worth way more than local dollars. You only have to look as far as No Child Left Behind - the Feds account for only 9% of the total national education budget, and yet through NCLB, they basically defined an education model that dramatically altered every state's approach to education.

But if you want more evidence of this, ask any state or local official that you know how much time they have spent (as a percentage) trying to figure out how to maximize their access to federal funds (TARP, stimulus, or otherwise). It's now common for a city to have a stimulus package lobbyist in DC!

When a municipality or state is beholden to the Federal government for handouts, the checks and balances have evaporated. 

I therefore feel that the Congressional accountability model, change in their job descriptions, constraints to financing rules, and the multi-party approach, combined with the current Separation of Powers are enough to ensure an improved government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Taxation

There is only one form of taxation allowed in the country - a simple and progressive income tax. We would start from scratch and create a simpler tax policy for the country that achieved three things - enough income to operate the country (no deficit financing); the ability to set aside some funding as a national reserve; ideally operated so that the poorest third (or higher) of the population paid no taxes. Note that if you didn't vote in an election but were in the lower third of income earners, you would now be subject to taxation per the penalties of not voting.

National Standards

There will be national standards for things like education, health care, infrastructure (roads, air/marine traffic, etc.) and domestic and national security. These standards will ensure equal access to all resources for all people and across the country. Every school for example will operate under the same guidelines and expectations, much like this. In the same way, all roads, railways, airports, ports, etc. should be managed equitably.

Health care... that's a whole separate kettle of fish - I may write a separate post on this, but in the mean time, suffice it to say that today Americans are not the healthiest people in the world, and much work is needed to get them closer to good health. Defense - I believe this is a matter of foreign policy vs. global policy, where in almost every case, economic acts trump military acts.

As I began to write this, it became clear how expansive and complex this is. It raised to a higher notch my respect and admiration for the gentlemen that wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It made me realize how much they were able to accomplish with so few words. They were quite something.

In a related vein, I think these next-generation Congresspersons have an incredibly difficult job. In this new world, I think it might actually be the place where true impact is created, and where leadership and the qualities of being a great leader are tested and honed.