Email makes road sign

Another brilliant example of blur between the real and unreal. When the Welsh transport department emailed this text for translation, what they actually put on the sign was:

"I am not in at the moment. Send any work to be translated."

Sex in Second Life ruining marriages

I love this tale of the blurring of the real and unreal

Sexual couplings in Second Life are fraying real  marriages

William Saletan gives us this example from Slate. Counselors are "seeing a growing number of marriages dissolve over virtual infidelity." One wife says her husband's avatar's marriage to another woman's avatar is cheating; he says he isn't. 

His arguments: 1) It's just a game. 2) He has never met the woman behind the other avatar and doesn't plan to meet her. 3) His participation in Second Life is no different from his real wife watching TV. 

Her arguments: 1) The virtual marriage includes a joint mortgage, dogs, and spending hours together. 2) The husband and the other woman spend real money on each other's avatars. 3) The other woman says, "There's a huge trust between us. We'll tell each other everything." 4) The husband met his real wife online in the first place. 5) His virtual avatar is all about lingerie, nude dancers, and redheads, which is fake wife is but his real wife isn't. 6) He's spending all day in Second Life and ignoring his real wife. Wife's summary: "When it's from six in the morning until two in the morning, that's not a hobby, that's your life." 

Human Nature's view: Leave him. 

Best 'Rapid' software ever!

Best ‘Rapid’ software ever?

Forget ‘Rapid’, this hell-for-leather software must be the quickest and easiest course builder on the market. ‘Rocket Coursebuilder’ promises you full courses on any subject in minutes, yes minutes, with unlimited licences, all for $9.99.

The tool has six software modules, which you can mix and match to create your own courses (classroom and/or e-learning), without any prior knowledge or training. The truly amazing feature is that you need no subject matter experts or expertise, the software does it all. Blend the following components in any order on any subject and, hey presto, you’ll have a corporate classroom training course quicker than Jesus turned water into wine. 

 ‘C’reator

First a quick dose of alliteration. ‘C’ word creator puts the ‘C’ into courseware. The creator selects from a considerable database of ‘c’ words including;  creativity, challenge, commitment, communication, compassion, cooperation, collaboration, curation, connections, culture, conflict, clarity, concise, context, competence, change, chemistry, contribute, critique, compelling, coordination, consultation, community etc. It takes five of these, randomly, and inserts the phrase, ‘The 5 ‘Cs of..............’ In fact, pick any letter, apart from those pesky ones at the end of the alphabet, and’C’reator will define your course structure in seconds.

Shape Sharpener

First step is to choose from the menu of a ‘square, triangle or circle’. Then choose the number of segments and shove in words (preferably starting with the same letter). For hierarchies, it recommends triangles with the important thing at the top and the rubbish category at the bottom. Something like Maslow’s hierarchy of the bleeding obvious is used as an exemplary model. Or there’s the interlocking circle of arrows, always good for the continuous process, because not many people realise that things in life go on and on and on and on and on. The square with four quadrants is also available, as we all know that anything in the world of knowledge and skills can be split into four things with two axes.

Quotator

Zipping up a good quote or two, culled from the quotes database, gives an atmosphere of intellectual seriousness or credibility, especially if it’s by Aristotle, Samuel Johnson or Einstein. Einstein quotes are great, as he never actually said any of them but they have gravitas. For every one of these you’ll need a lighter touch, something by Groucho Marx always goes down well. It needn’t be relevant, just amusing. If you’re talking about the future of anything, there’s quotes from the likes of the IBMs CEO Watson who thought there’d only be the need for five computers in the world (this is a sure-fire winner, as no one is likely to have heard it before). He didn't actually say it - but nobody knows or cares.

Cartoons Cart

You can pull in a cartoon from the Cartoon Cart in seconds. Just type in the level of your audience and subject, and a Dilbert or Doonesbury cartoon, that need only be distantly related to the topic, will pop up. This lightens things up. Everyone loves a cartoon but Peanuts may is deemed too lightweight for all but Leadership courses. Mad, The Far Side and The Simpsons are reserved for techies.

Breakout Builder

To give the illusion of collaboration and, let’s face it, this gets the students do all the work, an online breakout planner is included. Simply pop in a nice open question(s), and this software will split trainees into groups, allow them to vote on a chair online, provide a discussion forum, then the voted chair reports back online (no writing it all on flipcharts and pinning them around the walls with bluetack ruining the walls). Virtual mints and sweets also appear on the centre of the screen. The software then promises to email the results to all participants (one particularly realistic feature is that it doesn’t actually send them anything at all).

Assessinator

The final module deals with assessment and provides multiple choice questions that can be peppered throughout the course (formative assessment) or at the end (summative assessment). It generates multiple choice questions by pulling out stuff from the web, creating questions such as ‘Rank these in order of importance’ or ‘Which of the following is relevant to...’ Even better is the options creator which automatically generates four options; one completely stupid, a couple of likely suspects and the right answer.

Even smarter than all of these six modules is the ‘Happy Sheet Generator’, which tracks the trainees’ mood by getting them to choose from rows of emoticons. These results are then translated into a full report with bar chart graphs, statistics and business impact scores, all of which can be handed over to the CEO - under the heading data analytics.

Did McCain have better learning policies?

Interesting postscript to US election. Turns out McCain had more progressive educational ideas in technology than Obama.

McCain was far more radical and progressive in e-learning. He supported expanding virtual learning by reforming the "Enhancing Education Through Technology Program," with an initial $500 million in current federal funds to build new virtual schools and support the development of online course offerings for students. He said he would allocate $250 million to support states that commit to expanding online education opportunities and proposes offering $250 million to help students pay for online tutors or enrol in virtual schools. On top of this low-income students would be eligible to receive up to $4,000 to enrol in an online course, SAT/ACT prep course, credit recovery or tutoring services offered by a virtual provider. Obama has no policies in this area.

Both voted for and support Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with some adjustments, no difference there. Both want to fund more teacher training, get better qualified people teaching and increase more accountability into teaching, no difference there. 

The real difference comes in Obama’s Early childhood education: where he wants to invest $10 billion a year to increase the number of children eligible for Early Head Start, increase access to preschool, and provide affordable and quality child care. He also proposes to increase the child and dependent care tax credit.  It may also surprise some that Obama is a keen supporter for Charter schools that receive funding from sources other than the state and get autonomy in return (same as our Foundation Schools), doubling the funding. This is part of his policy to increase choice for parents on what schools they can send their children to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Obama fan, but on education his policies seem predictable and a bit limp. For someone who won the election on the back of the smart use of technology he’s really missed a trick here in education and training.

Obama: e-President

Orchestrated not organised

Both candidates used the web for their political campaign but it was Obama who won hands down. This is because he did more than use it, he understood it. Obama did not attempt to simply use it as a censored broadcast channel, he saw that it control was NOT what it was about. He also understood the importance of e-invites and the viral spread of active agents. Online activity now leads to proportional offline campaign effort. This was truly a bottom-up, networking, viral campaign, superbly orchestrated (not organised).

TV is still a major force with hundreds of millions spent by both candidates on advertising (much more by Obama due to his successful fund raising. But print has been left behind. Newspaper circulation is down and they're a poor third in a race for an ever younger audience. Obama understands the changing demographics - younger and more diverse. 

YouTube
YouTube has been a significant media player in this election. 7/16 presidential candidates announced that they were running on YouTube. Old videos of Obama, Biden, Palin and McCain have been unearthed and published. Pro-candidate videos such as Obama Girl got over 10 million hits and the War veteran pro McCain video even more. Then there's spoofs; the Tina Fey SNL appearances and the fake Canadian radio interview with Palin. My favourite is McCain singing 'Bomb Bomb Iran' to a Beach Boys tune. 

To those who complain that some videos have been edited to show their bad side, a good example was the Obama video showing him making a statement about his faith. In fact it was taken out of context and the fuller video was posted, rising above the first in the ratings. What many don't realise is that YouTube works on a flagging system and if viewers flag something, it is taken down. The bottom line is that almost every serious election will have to manage their YouTube and online strategy. This is a good thing as so many more voices have been heard and the candidates have no where to hide. In the end the Obama videos topped 9,000 with 5,000 for McCain.

Facebook

With 2.5 million friends compared to McCain's 624,000, Obama is the clear winner.

MySpace is ObamaSpace

Obama hammered McCain on friends with 860,000 to McCain's 217,000. Only 100 or so comments for McCain but thousands for Obama. Interestingly, McCain's is much more broadcast, whereas Obama's is a call for action and involvement.

Texting

Telephone numbers were collected at rallies and key tests sent to encourage activism and voting. This is being used to get young, especially black, voters, out to vote. A Princeton study showed that this was much cheaper.per vote, than leaflets. Both used texting but Obama started collecting numbers much earlier and in a more sophisticated manner.

iPHONE

There was even an iPHONE app for contacting people and getting them to contact and ancourage others to get involved and vote!

Twitter topped by Obama

Both candidates had Twitter sites, but the Obama one was taken seriously. McCain's was an afterthought with Obama posts running at three times those of McCain, which stopped suddenly on October 24th. Around 100, 000 were following Obama's Twitter and about 5,000 for McCain. And remember that his democratic nomination was announced on Twitter BEFORE he announced it in person.

Games

There are even reports of in-game advertising.

mybarackobama.com

But it has been the Obama web campaign that has changed US elections forever. Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, helped build the site. It has been groundbreaking. It was here that 280,000 people registered accounts and went on to form 6,500 volunteer groups organising 13,000 offline events. It also became a source of policy ideas, with over 15,000 submitted. 

Online money

Obama had 3 million donors who gave $6 milion, with the founder of Fcaebook chipping in. Compare that with $84 million for McCain. Then there's the 370,000 donations, all under $25. Other personal sites raised $1.5 million. Obama's web fund raising has been a first, and massively successful. I wonder if the first US president would have got there without the web?

On policy Obama has proposed the idea of a National CTO to orchestrate the Government's approach to technology and supports network neutrality (good man). 

In any case, I suspect that most people around the world will wake up tomorrow feeling a lot more hopeful after an Obama victory, some may even have a lump in their throat and a tear in their eye. GO OBAMA!

Conferences – jumped up classrooms?

Conferences are mirror images of the classroom. By and large people turn up to be spoon-fed by sages on the stage talking at them, with the occasional opportunity to ask questions. It has one, and only one, advantage over the classroom - scale.

It’s a lazy approach to learning made even more inefficient by the fact that even learning professionals often fail to take notes. This makes it a forgetting experience. The best one can hope for, as a speaker, is to affect some emotional or attitudinal shift. And when people get back to the ranch they rarely write up their findings and distribute them across the organisation. If one were to truly apply a ROI justification for conference attendance, few would be able to look you in the eye.

10 suggestions

So here are 10 off-the-cuff suggestions for sticking some rhubarb up the backsides of these events:

1.       Stop handing out those black, canvas bags that just get dumped – save embarrassment and the planet2.       No name badges – encourages more random networking
3.       Get all speakers to introduce themselves and their talk to all (one minute each) as the very first event
4.       Cut the crap catering – be imaginative with the food
5.       Limit number of PPT slides – maximum of seven, ten at tops
6.       Cut the corporate crud –don’t tell us about how wonderful your organisation is
7.       Smack down sessions between opposing views – more contention
8.       Force audience participation with debate and discussion (not break-out groups)
9.       Tear up the happy sheets – disturb and disrupt people, make them reflective, even angry, not happy
10.   Two feet rule – if you don’t like it leave – this should be encouraged – keep doors open

Handheld chutzpah

I listed these on the train coming back from chairing the Virtual Worlds session at Handheld Learning in London recently, organised by my old mate Graham Brown Martin, as it was refreshing to be at a conference with a difference. Graham has worked in the music industry and brought some of his chutzpah to bear on the event (unlike the exponents of Edupunk who seem to think that slapping a punk track beneath some images makes them interesting).

Of course he had complaints from the old guard who like their traditional fare. Sure you had to write your own name badge and it was a little anarchic at times, and there were a touch too many people living on fat grants on projects that were clearly going nowhere, but that was the whole point. I loved the coloured, Glastonbury wristbands for entry, the bowls of bangers and mash (none of those crap triangular sandwiches and breaded things) and the speakers. Graham is well connected and he had some impressive sponsorship and speakers.

Revolt is in the air

I’ve blogged on the SXSW conference where the audience revolted by taking off articles of clothing every time a ‘social media’ was mentioned. The audience were so incensed at the boredom of Mark Gutenberg’s interview (he of Facebook – and the most boring billionaire on the planet) that they simply grabbed the microphones and started shooting questions themselves.

Time for some fizz

You need only see the audiences mid-afternoon, struggling to stay awake, to realise that something is amiss. There are some great conference organisers out there, specifically Donald Taylor (Learning Technologies) and Rebecca Stromeyer (Online Educa). The problem they have is the same problem that the learning community has, the conservative expectations of their customers. I’m not suggesting that we swing wildly into wholly, participant-driven events, unconferences, where the whole event takes shape as it progresses. They’re rather good actually, but the UK is far too socially reserved for such events to work. What I’d like to see is some added fizz.

Do bullies have low self-esteem or a surplus of esteem & narcissism? Why I changed my mind

It's always satisfying to read something that makes you turn one of your views on its head. A good example is the Scientific American article 'Violent Pride' (2008), where the traditional attitude towards bullies and violent young men was truly trounced. My memories of school are not good. Two tough, often violent, Scottish, secondary schools where few went on to Higher Education. As a bookish sort of kid, my day started with anxiety, and was puntuated by breaks and lunchtime, which I dreaded, when predators would be on the prowl. I'd like to say that the classrooms were safe refuges but back then there were a couple of teachers with leather straps, who literally broke the blood vessels in my wrist with the 'tawse', a thick, two-tongued leather strap. The first time this happpened was when I was 5 minutes late for school - the bus was late, not my fault - didn't matter. A straight six. I'm still burning with the injustice of that incident. In any case, I had many years of witnessing the problem I'm about to describe.

Low self-esteem theory

The traditional view in schools and social work, is that problematic, and often violent bullies, suffer from low self esteem.  When Roy Bauermeister looked for research to support this view, he found zilch. Not content with this, he went on to complete a thorough set of research projects to see if his hypothesis, that they have an overabundance of esteem, even narcissism, was true.

Bullies have high self-esteem

What he found was shocking. Far from having LOW self-esteem, they were egoistical with grandiose views of themselves. Their inflated sense of self-importance meant that, when threatened, or perceived to have been threatened, they turned to violence. Their research were confirmed when they extended their studies to prisoners, where murderers and violent offenders, on the whole had high scores on self-esteem studies. Alcohol often acted as a trigger as it boosted their esteem. In a series of clever trials he showed that threatened egoists and narcissists were the norm in bullying and violent behaviour, not threatened low self-esteem.

Tough on outside, weak inside?

But couldn't it be that their low self-esteem is just hidden, deep inside? This was the vorthodox view, on the back of the feudian paradigm, where unconscious drives lurked benetha every act. The research here was also clear. Those who have studied violence, from playground bullies to gang culture, have found no evidence of hidden low self-esteem. "In contrast to a fairly common assumption among psychologists and psychiatrists, we have found no indicators that the aggressive bullies are anxious and insecure under a tough surface".

Dangerous consequences

Two thirds of teachers have experienced bullying, one in four pupils and similar numbers in the workplace. The danger that lurks in many schools and institutions is that staff are encouraged to boost already bloated egos in the mistaken belief that they have low self-esteem. This is to inflate already overblown egos to become larger and more dangerous. Praise, in other words, needs to be tied to actual behaviour and performance, not dispensed freely. Could it be that our schools have become more dangerous because the bullies have been inadvertently molly-coddled?

Computer games - astounding improvements in numeracy

Here's to you Mr Robertson

Brain Training did more for e-learning than any government campaign or product. It took e-learning mainstream.

The wonderful Derek Robertson has been using this sort of stuff in schools for ages but we now have an excellent piece of research from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Trial:

• 600 pupils from 32 schools
  
• 20 minutes at start of class for nine weeks
  
• control group did normal class stuff
  
• pupils tested at start and end of study

Brain Training group:

• 50% better test scores than control!
  
• 13.5 minutes to do test, control 18.5 minutes
  
• more improvement in less able kids
  
• no difference between boys and girls
  
• reduced absences
  
• reduced lateness
  

These results are outstanding. If replicable, they have huge implications in terms of a potential solution for our low numeracy standards.

While Derek is wrong in claiming that this is the, 'first independent, academic evidence that this type of computer game could improve attainment when used in an educational context', it's a damn fine piece of work.

Get these things into primary schools now! Better still, simply encourage parents to buy them for their kids. Perhaps we can see the politicians and educational establishment stop whinging about poor numeracy and doing something simple to solve the problem.

Edupunk - more ponytails than punk

It has its own Wikipedia page, and bloggers have been punking it up, but as a movement it’s more ‘dippy-hippy’ than’ punk’.

Armchair anarchists

I’m all for punking up conference presentations and learning experiences. But when grey-haired teachers take on these terms, they’d better look at themselves first. This so-called punky attitude is coming from well paid teachers and academics, in the comfortable context of largely tired old institutions. If they want to peddle punk then do what punks did – free themselves from the cosiness of the establishment. Why don’t they do this? Because they ARE the establishment. Stephen Downes offers up Alice Cooper’s School’s Out as the Edupunk anthem. OK, then get out of school. Armchair anarchists are ten-a-penny, and when they get on a bit, tend to mistake punk for ponytails. Worst example: Johnny Rotten doing Butter ads on TV. What a rotter!

Use, don’t abuse, technology

It’s merely a bit of a rant by old teachers who are fed up with the job or having to use Blackboard, and want a little bit of excitement in their lives.  In other words, it’s all about teachers, not learners. If they were really interested in punking up education and training, they’d use, not abuse, technology. The punkier side of learning is all YouTube, Facebook, games, gadgets and fringe technology. To drag learning back into the classroom with anti-technology rhetoric is simply a backward step. School ain’t punk. Staffrooms ain’t punk. Teaching ain’t punk. Teachers ain’t punk.

Dancing dads

As my two fourteen year old keep reminding me – there’s nothing sadder than 40 and 50 year old teachers high-fiving the kids. Let’s leave it to the young turks who are already punking it up, independently of the dancing dads. The Edupunk video typical. After a confusing montage, to the Ian Brown’s superb Keep What Ya Got, Martin Weller of the OU narrates, perhaps the most boring video I’ve ever seen. Martin wants to ‘turn us all into Broadcasters’ – then trots out a series of obvious and ordinary  ideas, such as using YouTube videos, chat, podcasts and so on. This is more Edujunk than Edupunk.

I’m now off to work up my next big idea – education with a groove – Edufunk.

Nudges and learning

Nudge, nudge

'Nudge' by Thaler and Sunstein is the book that in every policy maker’s, combination-lock briefcase this summer. It’s another ‘concept’ book, which is basically an innocuous word masquerading as a serious idea.

But there are several problems with the book:

1. The basic concept is too vague and covers too many cases to be taken entirely seriously. TV ads, slogans, pictures, policy tweaks – you name it, it can be called a nudge. It’s a jack of all trades term.

2. It is hopelessly US-centric. They literally talk about the American Dream (which has just turned into a nightmare) as if it were the premise behind all human behavior. They really do distrust government and have unbridled trust in business (hope they’re watching TV this week). Their whole treatise is framed in a Democrats v Republican frame (say no more). It’s libertarian capitalism at its worst.

3. They are really lawyers masquerading as psychologists. They drag out a couple of old Asch studies but largely ignore the bulk of 20^th century social psychology, depending on anecdote and examples.

4. By recommending ‘nudges’ as a panacea, they simply put policy making into the marketing sphere. The bad news is that the private sector will market you out of existence. Take smoking. The only way to stop those crooks from killing our children is to make the laws tougher.

Nudges are actually interesting

To be fair, nudges is a nice little word, and some of their examples are quite catching.

Example 1: place the image of a fly in airport urinals to reduce spillage (I can confirm that this works as the cleanest urinals in Brighton are in Zilli’s restaurant)

Example 2: cash feedback loops on utility and petrol consumption

Where the book scores is in giving a complex set of techniques a simple name. It forces you into thinking about how to change behaviour without automatically defaulting into compulsion.

Nudges and learning

What are useful are the lessons to be learnt about the marketing of learning and e-learning to learners. The book does have some useful ideas that could be taken across into the learning world. Here’s my top ten starter list:

1. Language nudges

Learning professionals should use appropriate language and scrap training, learning styles, competences, objectives, homework and so on.

2. Feedback nudges

Focus on regular formative and not end-point feedback. Learning is about correcting errors, see Beyond the Black Box.

3. Email nudges

Email nudges like no other form of communication, yet little actual learning is delivered or prompted by this means.

4. YouTube nudges

Use YouTube nudges to virally spread learning. For example, this brilliant PowerPoint tutorial – hilarious and succinct.

5. Book nudges

Encourage the purchase of books, give everyone an Amazon account and budget, and get one into your bag for the train or plane.

6. Note nudges

Branson has a notebook on him at all times. Memory is fallible and note taking dramatically increases learning. Take notes every day.

7. Audio nudges

Podcasts, audio books, recording lectures. A still, vastly underused form of nudge learning.

8. Doing nudges

Buy Getting Things Done by Allen. It’s full of nudges around getting things done, on the premise that you leave nothing hanging in the air. Brilliant book.

9. Feed nudges

Get a personalized home page with feeds from your favourite learning sources and start using RSS.

10. Blog nudges

Get blogging. You’ll learn loads by habitually writing things down.

Leadbetter's 21 Ideas for 21st Century Learning

Charles Leadbetter tries hard to be a web guru and while adored by the London media luvvies, he is completely ignored by everyone else. I once attended, as a guest, a Channel 4 board dinner, and was treated like a pariah when I suggested that Charlie was a fake. He may have the thick-rimmed glasses, open shirt, cardigan and fashionably shaved head, but his ideas are second hand and he jumps on bandwagons well after the circus has left town.

WE-THINK - I think not
WE-THINK is his latest offering and it is no better than his previous efforts. He desperately tries to get this phrase into comon parlance through repetition in this rather dull book, but fails.

However, in his defence I did come across a rather interesting paper, amazingly, commissioned by the Innovation Unit. This unit is famous for NEVER answering emails or engaging with anyone in the real world. You could only ever get near them by attending boring government meetings. They were about as uninnovative (is that a real word), and closed to ideas, as you can get.

Then again, this is a very readable document, and although hopelessly optimistic, it is brimming with ideas. I loved this quote, “It is very difficult to get teachers away from the idea that learning can only happen when they are in charge of everything. They have to realise that learning sometimes happens precisely because they are not in charge of everything but the pupils are.” And here are the 21 ideas:

21 Ideas for 21st Century Learning

1. Individual Budgets and Self Directed Support Plans for Families at Risk

2. Emotional Resilience Programme

3. The Learning Concierge Service

4. Break up Large Schools

5. The Peer Learner Programme

6. The Personal Challenge

7.. Personal Learning Plans and Portfolios

8. A Right to Intensive Mentoring

9. Personal Budgets for Young People in Danger of Becoming NEET

10. Investors in Learning

11. Schools as Productive Enterprises

12. Scrap the Six Week Summer Holiday

13. The School of Everything for Schools

14. Community-Based Teacher

15. Third Spaces

16. Whole School Projects for the Community

17. Local Education Compacts

18. Participatory Budgeting

19. Leadership Teams not Headteachers

20. Wider Measures of Progress and Outcomes

21. A National Curriculum for Capabilities