The Hive-Mind and Steve Jobs

My reaction on the death of Steve Jobs, ex-CEO of Apple, was the same as those expressed over and over in the online hive-mind of Twitter, and surprisingly strong.

Thinking about this, I copied and pasted a couple of hundred tweets about Steve Jobs into 'Wordle', which aggregates the most common words and formats them according to frequency of occurrence. Here is the unsurprising result:

 

What doesn't show up in the graphic is a small number of comments made on Twitter regarding the working conditions in the factories where Apple products are made. If you're not up to speed, a huge number of digital devices sold in the west are manufactured by Foxconn, that operates in various developing nations. From Wikipedia:

"Hon Hai's first manufacturing plant in Mainland China opened in Longhua,Shenzhen in 1988.^[5] Now the company's largest operation, 300,000^[10] to 450,000^[2] workers are employed in Shenzhen at the Longhua Science & Technology Park, a cramped, walled campus^[5] sometimes referred to as "Foxconn City"^[11] or "iPod City".^[12] Covering about 1.16 square miles (3 square km),^[13] it includes 15 factories,^[11] worker dormitories, a swimming pool,^[14] a fire brigade,^[5] and a downtown complete with a grocery store, bank, restaurants, bookstore, and hospital.^[5] While some workers live in surrounding towns and villages, others live and work inside the complex,^[15] which broadcasts its own television network, Foxconn TV.^[5]"

There has been plenty of criticism of the living conditions in these factory-cities.

450,000 workers in three square kilometers; it is another hive, a work-hive, creating the devices by which we connect to each other on the hive-mind social media. 

It's the same broad issue that rich people like us face with many manufactured products that we love: the grunt work goes to poor people and we are left to do the fun stuff, the ideas-work.

The ideas-work: the inspirational stuff you can do on an iPad. Whence my admiration for Jobs, whose clarity of mind and insight shaped the devices whose elegance assists us gain clarity of mind and insight. It's a precious prize in a world characterised by information overload and noise.

In the west we navigate an information landscape. At the top of Mount Maslow, my life is in the shape of creativity, not survival, until I die like Steve Jobs. 

When we upgrade our devices, the old ones are liable to be shipped back to a poor country. Journalist Giovanna Vitola blogs about her experiences in the e-Waste dump in Ghana, where shipments from Australia were arriving. Children fossick through the waste and it gets burned and toxic fumes float through a local market. 

My mind is drawn to both these worlds at the sad news of the death of Steve Jobs.

Edward de Bono VS Social Media

I read this article today where Edward de Bono identifies a danger of social media:

"(Social media causes) laziness – that we just feel we’ll just get more information and we don’t need to have ideas ourselves – we’ll get ideas from someone else, we don’t need to look at the data we’ll just see what someone else has said and so on."

My immediate response was: "hang on a tick, Socrates already said that!" because the same discussion comes up in a book I'm reading (listening to, actually) by James Gleick on the history of information, but Socrates is speaking about writing, not social media.

In The Phaedrus. Socrates quotes the god Thamus speaking to the Egyptian god of writing, Theuth:

"you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality." (read more here)

I must confess to giggling, even LOLing at Socrates. He does appear to be describing Facebook, and if Plato had included a 'Like' button I'd be the first to press it.

"they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."

Heh heh! Fair call, Socrates, fair call.

Now, Socrates' concern about writing seems quite silly 2,381 years later, and is not going to get traction in the media, but de Bono's concern about social media will get plenty of attention.

Why? Because, because, because, us human beings are beset by perils, everywhere we look, but we're most conscious of new ones. De Bono's observation is of a new peril. Socrates' concern is no less valid, but it's an old observation about a well-known technology. 

Of course social media can drown us in information but strip us of wisdom and deep understanding. Well done de Bono. Writing can too - props to you, Socrates. 

When was the last time someone at a party said "You know, I hear a lot about writing, and I've been thinking of taking it up myself, but don't you feel that writing can make us lazy, because, you know, no one has to remember anything anymore, or internalise, you know? The information is just there on the page, ready for any half wit to consume and chalk up to understanding... <sigh> I don't know..."

Or for that matter, any technology, "I'm just not convinced about automobiles. Have you stopped to think how dangerous they are? Also, by travelling further to our work places, I really wonder whether it might dislocate us from our sense of local, village-like community..." Which again is of course quite a valid point.

I get that all the time about social media: It shortens our attention spans, it floods us with noise, it promotes mindless trivia, it distorts our identity with a constant quest for shallow online kudos, it makes us lazy. 

I take such comments as a sign that someone has not sat down and done a full analysis of the technology to point of being comfortable with it. They are clearly still coming at it as an outsider, as a rookie. They're still awkwardly getting a shape for the new thing. I mean if Socrates had joined up for a writing.com account and not left it for Plato I doubt he would have been so touchy about it. Imagine the irony Plato himself felt as he wrote down Socrates' words? De Bono has been plenty a tweeted, too. 

People who criticise Twitter are invariably not on Twitter, or they 'tried it once but got sick of hearing about people enjoying a coffee or buying some new shoes'. That can't possibly be a full analysis of Twitter. If it were, why would anyone be on it?

It's like they stopped half way through a thought and couldn't get any further.

To Socrates, de Bono, and social media worriers, I can only respond: you're better off to dive into the new technology and find wisdom and balance within it, and then share that wisdom with others once you've reached a mature, stable and sophisticated understanding of it.

Otherwise if you have a dig at it as an outsider you just end up sounding like an old codger. Verrrry old. 

The Attention Economy and Teacher Talk

(addressed to myself)

In the mythic age was the campfire, where we gathered to hear stories.

I'm reading 'Watership Down', about a mythic tribe of rabbits, each one with a gift, including Dandelion who is the tribe's story teller. They gather in campfire mode, and Dandelion tells a damn fine story. 

The story teller has to have a special gift - that's part of the whole campfire genre. We all bother to gather and sit together because the speaker who speaks has something to say and knows how to say it.

Even in mythic times this was the case.

Then came the radio and the television.

Watch the tribe gather around the screen. Look at the first broadcast - black and white, fuzzy image, neighbours gathered to peer through the window.

And it changes everything. For how can 'the best story teller in our tribe' compare to 'the best story teller in our country' or even the world.

Shaun Micallef, Jonathan Ross, or David Letterman didn't get their jobs by being pretty good. They're the best there is. If they weren't the best, someone else would get their job.

The moment we had radio and television, the standard for campfire storytelling went into the stratosphere, because technology beamed the best stories right into our laps.

Zoom out to the media in general: storytelling is perfected to virtuosity in the advertising industry, whose magicians can engineer that goes right to marrow of your identity as mother, father, cool kid, adventurer, and links it to some plastic watch or washing powder, all in 15 seconds and in competition for our attention with our loved ones, who want to talk to us during the ad-break.

Decades of media expertise, and decades of media-literacy.

Watch as time speeds up and the tapestry condenses in sophistication, with layers of nuance and irony.

Compare the pace and complexity of this 60s show My Three Sons:

to this 80s show Family Ties

And this 90s show 'The Simpsons'

We could talk all day about The Simpsons, with its playfulness, ironies, and deliberate contradictions. The show frequently re-frames itself, as if 'story' were an elastic band and the Simpsons was trying to stretch and tangle its fabric.

And now, at last, to the Internet, where I have 'CAMPFIRE-ON-DEMAND'. Watch me, as I wash up each evening, iPad propped against the windowsill, listening to brightest minds in the world paint dazzlingly optimistic visions of the future on TED.com. To attend TED conferences costs a fortune and is by invitation only, but not to worry, these virtuosic meaning makers will sit at YOUR campfire at YOUR time, at the click of a button.

In fact, no matter what field interests me, via the internet I can find the most charismatic, insightful, and entertaining speaker on topic within seconds.

School kids have never known differently, and their amazing minds have adapted to thrive in a hyper-stimulated, shape-shifting world, where a year is a decade, and tomorrow's technology is old by Sunday. They stand at the nexus of physical space, digital space, virtual space, ready and instinctively equipped for an age where industries boom and go extinct, and frenzied improvisation saves the day, again and again, in the nick of time. 

And then, teacher, you gather your students into your classroom space, ask them to sit, to face you, and to listen.

SIT STILL JOHNNY.

STOP FIDGETING.

HOW DARE YOU BE SO RUDE.

And later, in the staffroom, to a colleague: THIS GENERATION HAS LOST THEIR SENSE OF RESPECT. THEY HAVE NO ATTENTION SPAN. THEY ARE UNABLE TO LISTEN.

Nay, teacher, you are unable to speak.

Teacher-talk in the age of the attention economy?

If you're going do ANY of it, EVER, you better do a bloody good job.

It better be brief: not a second longer than it needs to be.

It better be brilliant: someone else has done it better.

It better be supremely relevant to the moment: savvy kids can pull the information on demand.

And if you do not heed this warning, and you speak, and they look miserable, or anaesthetised; if they wave to passers-by out the classroom window, or write notes, or play tricks, or simply sit still, head lolling in a coma, and fail to respond to your absurd "Ok do you understand?"

Then blame yourself.

And maybe get a job as a prison officer.

The School That Utterly Changed

I am always so frustrated by the inability of words to capture the bizarre transformation that has whirl-winded my school into a different dimension over the last 5 years. Everyone who visits says "I heard about this but I only understand now I can see it in action."

Well you should still come visit us, but in the meantime, these videos are a realistic window into business-as-usual at NBCS in 2011. 

The change has almost entirely come within the last 5 years. The seeds were being sown previously, but then it just went ballistic! The scary thing for us is that the change is noticably speeding up, even since, say, last term. Ahhhh heeeelp we're falling into an educational singularity! (yay!)

Video #1 - The Zone

The Journey: Tomorrow’s School Today at SCIL from SCIL on Vimeo.

180 students + 6 teachers + one large space = inspiration. 

The male teacher who speaks early in this video is Skender Cameron, who has been teaching for decades in the old paradigm. Now he is one of a team of teachers acting as shepherds over all of Year 5 and 6 as they work in one large open space we call 'The Zone'. Students flexibly group up and regroup depending on the context and their learning profile (which is constantly redefined). 

Skender articulates succinctly why the new paradigm works so well on a professional level, and the students describe their own experiences working in an organically flexible environment.

Why does the chaos not collapse in on itself? Chantelle explains how we create a kind of scaffold - a digital learning ecosystem, that allows every student to know where they are and where they're going, even as they choose their own path.

So it's not chaotic, it's organic, and mixture of culture, community, and digital landscaping holds it together. I've provocatively entitled an upcoming conference presentation "Anarchy in Learning" because of this bizarre paradox: the more we let go of control, the more students rise to the occasion. 

Video #2 - Year 8 Quest Program

The Quest: Tomorrow’s School Today at SCIL from SCIL on Vimeo.

140 students + 6 teachers + one large space = no conflict and a love of learning.

In the video my colleague Mark Burgess (@matonfender, blog), Director of 21st Century Learning, talks over footage of our Year 8s. What is gobsmacking is that teachers aren't wasting energy on conflict with the students. "Classroom management" is a non-issue. It's a non-word for us. A dream?! But true!

I am so proud of how far our school has come. We are so conscious of how far we still have to go, but now the innovation spot-fires have turned into a raging bush-fire. Teachers aren't even asking permission anymore let alone waiting to be prompted. The innovation is being pulled along from the grassroots-level. 

Come visit us! We'd love to have you! My school website is www.nbcs.nsw.edu.au and our visitors program is here: www.scil.nsw.edu.au.

Stay in touch with me: subscribe to ths blog in a reader / by email.

My school's innovation newsletter: http://www.scil.nsw.edu.au/newsletter (We're trying to gather a tribe-for-change!)

Our principal's blog: http://imaginelearning.tumblr.com

Professional Development and the Web

Here are my notes for my workshop at the ELH11 conference on "Professional Development and the Web". We will kick off by watching this video. 

The event is now over but you may find the four activities below interesting.

There are links and activities:

Option #1 Join Twitter	Option #2 Attend a Live Event
Option #3 Explore a Virtual Edu-World	Option #4 Browse Crowd-Sourced Resources

Still got nothing to do? Research 'edupunk', 'flipped classroom' and 'gamification'. These are hot topics in the twittersphere. 

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 Join Twitter

1. www.twitter.com and sign up.
2. I suggest you use your real name. This is your public face. You won’t post anything even remotely sensitive.
3. For your username, think of something catchy.
4. Mention you are a teacher in your ‘bio’.
5. Upload an image, any image, to your profile. Otherwise you will appear as an ‘egg’, which brands you as unlikely to continue using Twitter.
6. Now go here: http://t.co/cHywD9B and add your Twitter ID and then follow the others that are there, by clicking on them and clicking ‘follow’. Also read the tips on this page. Down the bottom of the document is a list of teacher's reasons for being on Twitter.
7. Send a tweet including the letters “#elh11” which is the code you include to clarify you are referring to the ELH conference.
8. Send a tweet to me! Do this by including “@steve_collis” somewhere in the tweet, and I will be sure to see it in my ‘replies’ column

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 Attend Live Events

1. http://www.classroom20.com/ and click ‘Webinars’. Scroll down and click on a few upcoming sessions.
2. Click here: http://bit.ly/pKv8pA to get a video tour of the website.
3. Sign up and become a member, browse the website, join a special group!
4. Homework: go along to some of their live sessions!
5. Visit other teacher networks: http://www.educationalnetworking.com/List+of+Networks

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Browse Crowd Sources Resources 

1. Visit http://edte.ch/blog/interesting-ways/ and browse the final documents.

2. Consider how I quickly crowdsourced the twitter google doc. 

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Join a Virtual Edu-World 

1. Visit http://www.jokaydiagrid.com/ which is an Australian network of teachers exploring virtual worlds for education.

2. Join!

3. If you have Second Life installed, click here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/108/159/23 and explore.

4. Visit the Rez Ed website http://rezedhub.ning.com/, and note the specialist groups on Minecraft, WoW, and the use of other virtual worlds with students.

5. Watch this video introduction. Join the website! 

6. Consider attending one of these upcoming events. 

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Ref: image of crowd from http://www.flickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/3786725982