The Voice of the Youth

This is a video for "Oxygen", a song by Willy Mason. This song came out when Mason was 19. Watching this video reaffirmed something for me: The voice of our youth must be heard.

As educators we must allow our students to dream big and speak their mind. They are just as curious, concerned, and invested in our world as we are. As Mason sings in the song,

THE KIDS OF TODAY MUST CARRY THE LIGHT

This is a great song that not only addresses some powerful issues but shows that we must give our youth a voice. We must provide them with the skills to question, inquire, and respond.

Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi and Creativity

I saw this video a few months ago but as I have been thinking a lot about educational design, I thought posting this video would be appropriate. As we reconsider how our educational system is designed, the ability to be creative in and out of the classroom is of paramount importance.

Check out the video and I hope that it helps you find your "flow".

The New Humanities and a New Direction

I got into teaching to make an impact. I wanted to prepare my students for what may lie ahead. When I started teaching, I thought I would make a lasting impact upon my students by teaching history.

While I originally thought that simply teaching history would make an impact, I have come to realize that for educators to truly make a difference in our students' lives we cannot rely upon a traditional curriculum.

With the crises we face and an every changing world, it is critical that we reassess what we are teaching. We must examine what it takes to prepare a student for the challenges they will face. We must challenge our students to think. To be able to be presented with a difficult challenge and develop a solution. If we are to prepare the future leaders of this world, we must supply them with the skills to think abstractly. To do that we must reevaluate how we design our curriculum. No offense to the proponents of a traditional curriculum, but that ain't gonna solve global warming.

This video, found by Antonio Viva, is from Rutgers University. Rutgers has developed a New Humanities program. The core of the program gets at what I was mentioning. They have developed a curriculum that is built upon the principle of making students think about "the biggest problems our time". Now that will make an impact. That will prepare our students for their future.

The Story of Stuff

Over the last few days I have been thinking a lot lately.  My focus has been the election, our economy, the status of the world, creativity, my teaching, and how all of this is inextricably tied together.  So nothing too deep.  For the last few days my students and I have been examining globalization and it's effect upon the status of the world.  We have had the opportunity to address the current economic crisis while learning about where we are going as a globe.

My students and I are looking at arguments by Thomas Friedman, Tom Palmer, Fareed Zakaria, and Noam Chomsky in order to piece together an understanding of globalization and it's impact.  But tonight, as I quickly checked my updates on Facebook, I found a site, The Story of Stuff, posted by my boss, Antonio Viva, that made me reconsider how I approached globalization.

I am in the process of writing a proposal for a workshop for our election festival.  I was initially going to focus on the economic crisis and globalization.  But after watching The Story of Stuff, I think it's vitally important that the focus should consider globalization's economic and environmental impact.

A book that gives some good insight into this problem is Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy—which he calls "Geo-Greenism"—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.

As we look ahead to November 4th and beyond, think about  what you can do to help reverse the negative impact we have had on this planet.  We can turn our economy around AND reduce our carbon footprint, it is just going to take some creative thinking but it must be done.

K12 Online Conference 2008 Pre Conference Keynote

The K12 Online Conference 2008 is a great resource for ideas and trends that are influencing education. This is the pre conference keynote. It is a good perspective on what education should like now. Stephen Heppell presents on what education should look like in today's world. As he says himself,

It's the death of education... but it's the dawn of learning

"It Simply Isn't the 20th Century Any More Is It?: So Why Would We Teach as Though it Was?"

Prelude to Tomorrow Workshop

After reading Paul Hudson's book, Prelude to Tomorrow, and having the opportunity to speak to the author via Skype, answer the following questions:

• Does traveling simply provide you a means to reach a destination or is there something more that you gain from your experiences?

• How has this book inspired you to do your own traveling? Where do you want to go and why?

• Describe the most meaningful trip you have taken. Why do you remember it so vividly?

Free... Chris Anderson and the New Economics

This post is for my workshop on Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail.

The Long Tail

From An employee at Amazon when talking about the Long Tail:

"We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday."

What does this statement represent?

What does it mean when I can only find this book on Amazon?

The Response

The Rise and Fall of the Hit

If the Long Tail killed the Hit and made commodities more widely available, will physical stores survive?

Shelf Space Strategies in Long Tail Markets

The Future

Because of the Internet and the minimal cost of online storage, more and more stuff is not available to a wider and wider audience. Anderson's thesis in The Long Tail is a groundbreaking one. But his new book, Free will have even great implications.

Introduction to Free on YouTube.

So if the Long Tail Destroyed the idea of the 80-20 rule (that is 20% of a companies products make up 80% of its revenue) what will this concept of free economics do to the future of the marketplace?

Google

Nick Carr sums up Google's economic model like this:

"Google’s protean appearance is not a reflection of its core business. Rather, it stems from the vast number of complements to its core business. Complements are, to put it simply, any products or services that tend be consumed together. Think hot dogs and mustard, or houses and mortgages. For Google, literally everything that happens on the Internet is a complement to its main business. The more things that people and companies do online, the more ads they see and the more money Google makes. In addition, as Internet activity increases, Google collects more data on consumers’ needs and behavior and can tailor its ads more precisely, strengthening its competitive advantage and further increasing its income. As more and more products and services are delivered digitally over computer networks — entertainment, news, software programs, financial transactions — Google’s range of complements expands into ever more industry sectors. That's why cute little Google has morphed into The Omnigoogle.

Because the sales of complementary products rise in tandem, a company has a strong strategic interest in reducing the cost and expanding the availability of the complements to its core product. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that a company would like all complements to be given away. If hot dogs became freebies, mustard sales would skyrocket. It’s this natural drive to reduce the cost of complements that, more than anything else, explains Google’s strategy. Nearly everything the company does, including building big data centers, buying optical fiber, promoting free Wi-Fi access, fighting copyright restrictions, supporting open source software, launching browsers and satellites, and giving away all sorts of Web services and data, is aimed at reducing the cost and expanding the scope of Internet use. Google wants information to be free because as the cost of information falls it makes more money.

There’s one more twist. Because the marginal cost of producing and distributing a new copy of a purely digital product is close to zero, Google not only has the desire to give away informational products; it has the economic leeway to actually do it. Those two facts — the vast breadth of Google’s complements, and the company’s ability to push the price of those complements toward zero — are what really set the company apart from other firms. Google faces far less risk in product development than the usual business does. It routinely introduces half-finished products and services as online “betas” because it knows that, even if the offerings fail to win a big share of the market, they will still tend to produce attractive returns by generating advertising revenue and producing valuable data on customer behavior. For most companies, a failed launch of a new product is very costly. For Google, in general, it’s not. Failure is cheap."

How will Google's business model shift our perspective towards the future of economics?

Clay Shirky

Failure is cheaper... The average quality of what is produced is much lower but the average quality of what is consumed is much higher.

What is the implication of this change? How will it impact the future of economics?

Shirky's new book is Here Comes Everybody and he has blog as well.

For more information on the Long Tail and the principles that Chris Anderson discussed, visit his blog.