Dangerously Irrelevant

I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with a woman who works for one of the Big Four auditing companies. She’s essentially what I would call a virtual employee: her supervisors are in cities across the globe, her peers are across the globe, the employees she supervises are across the globe. In other words, they’re basically doing everything over the phone or online using various collaboration tools. I felt like I was immersed in Wikinomics.

She then proceeded to ask me some really hard questions about ‘virtual management’ and ‘virtual leadership development’:

• How do you effectively lead a workgroup of people you’ve never met face-to-face (and may never meet)?
• How do you effectively supervise the work of these people?
• How do you facilitate those often ad hoc, ongoing opportunities for leadership development (for yourself and/or those you supervise) in such a work environment?

Having never been in this situation, of course I had no good answers for her. I did recommend that she contact some of the big technology companies or other global companies that are her firm’s clients and ask their Human Resources people her questions. I’m guessing that they have done some work in this area as they develop their geographically-disparate workforces.

Any thoughts on this issue? Anyone know of work that’s been done in the business arena on this?

How many times did I hear the title of this post when I was growing up in Virginia and visiting my relatives in the South?!

Hope you can join me, Miguel Guhlin, and Doug Johnson (and maybe a mystery guest?) at EdTechTalk this evening for the Women of Web 2.0 broadcast. We will be talking about issues related to K-12 technology leadership and administrators. The fun starts at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific. You also can log in to the chat room (use the link on the left) to interact with us and our hosts, Vicki Davis, Cheryl Oakes, Jen Wagner, and Sharon Peters. If you can’t join us this evening, you can visit the Women of Web2.0 archives later on and download our podcast.

To quote Casey Kasem: ‘the hits just keep on coming.’ Only in this case, the hits aren’t so good (at least not for American education).

In case you haven’t been keeping track, here’s a list of some recent reports that bemoan our schools’ inability to prepare globally-competitive citizens. Continuing our country’s long-standing tradition, committees, commissions, and task forces have been scrambling over each other to issue the latest update on our schools’ ineptitude:

• 2005 – Business RoundTable – Tapping America’s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative
• 2006 – Committee for Economic Development – Education for Global Leadership: The Importance of International Studies and Foreign Language Education for U.S. Economic and National Security
• 2006 – Council on Competitiveness – Competitiveness Index: Where America Stands
• 2006 – New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce – Tough Choices or Tough Times
• 2006 – Partnership for 21st Century Skills – Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce
• 2006 – United States Department of Education – Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World: Strengthening Education for the 21st Century
• 2007 – Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century – Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
• 2007 – ETS – America’s Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation’s Future
• 2007 – Phi Delta Kappa – Education in the Flat World
• 2007 – United States Chamber of Commerce – Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness

This doesn’t include magazine articles, speeches, interviews, and other activities along these lines. We might be in danger of losing our global lead on some measures, but I’m guessing we’re still ahead of everyone else when it comes to task force and commission reports!

Did I miss any? Are we seeing similar activity in other countries?

I hate the whole concept of Fox’s television show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth
Grader? Here’s why…

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel thought
it would be fun to have local teachers create
a twenty-question quiz on stuff fifth-graders ought to know. Here are the
questions from the quiz, each of which is hyperlinked to the Google search
results for the question text:

1. What
   is a hyperbole?
2. Which
   chamber of the heart receives blood from the lungs?
3. Is
   the equator a line of latitude or longitude?
4. What
   is a mixed number?
5. What
   organ in the body produces bile?
6. What
   kind of a root is a carrot?
7. Nomadic
   tribes of American Plains Indians lived in what structures?
8. What
   did American Indians of the Northwest coast use to symbolize their clan and tell
   family stories?
9. Which
   is larger: 3/5 or 5/8?
10. What
    are the three branches of the United States government?
11. What
    are the names of the five Great Lakes?
12. How
    many hydrogen atoms are there in a molecule of water?
13. "You
    are as strong as an ox." Is this statement a simile or metaphor?
14. What
    part of speech is "after": An adverb, conjunction or preposition?
15. Who
    invented peanut butter?
16. How
    many pints are in 2 gallons?
17. How
    many feet are in 9 yards?
18. What
    part of speech describes a verb?
19. What
    is a proper noun?
20. What
    is something found on a plant cell that is not found on an animal
    cell?

Go ahead. I dare you to compare the Google search results to the quiz answers. For nearly every question, the first or second Google link has the correct answer.
In most instances, you don’t even need to click through to the actual web site.
You can just read the short blurb for the link on the Google results page.
[Also, note that question 14 is a trick
question and that the teachers’ answer
to question 20 may be incorrect (I think it should say chloroplasts, not
cytoplasm).]

So now we’re not only spending all this time in school making kids memorize
stuff that literally can be found in mere seconds, we’re actually making game
shows out of it (like we’ve always done) and framing it in such a way so
that grown-ups feel stupid if they don’t remember information that
most adults never need to keep in their heads. Let’s be honest
here: when is the last time you really needed to know the names of all five
Great Lakes, whether or not animal cells have cell walls, or who invented peanut
butter?

I’ve
blogged about this before. I know there is some core knowledge that we want
all of our kids to know, both because we want them to be able to recall it even
faster than the time it takes to search the Web and because it’s part of our
cultural / societal background and heritage. But as I said in my
earlier post, I’m guessing that this body of knowledge is much less than
we’ve traditionally believed because of the technology that is now available to
us.

We used to have to memorize things because the only way we could store
knowledge and information was in our heads. We passed that information down
orally from generation to generation. Over time we learned to mark stone
tablets, knot ropes, write on papyrus and then paper, and print books. With each
technological progression, we needed to carry less factual information in our
heads because it was available in other places and we could get it if we needed
it. Our ability to store information digitally on hard drives, DVDs, and the
Internet is just the latest transition, with a concurrent reduction of the need
to carry around a bunch of disparate, disconnected facts that are irrelevant to
our daily lives. There’s a reason we don’t make most individuals memorize the
periodic table or the quadratic equation: they don’t need that information most
of the time and, if they do, they can find it pretty easily.

Am I smarter than a fifth grader? Yes, and it’s not because I have memorized
all of this stuff. It’s because I’m an adult who can find the information that I need in mere seconds when I need it,
critically consume information, and act upon information in professional, ethical, and productive ways.
What do you want your fifth grader to be learning in
school?

Further reading

• Gary Stager
• Pete Reilly
• John Taylor Gatto

[Update: I love this follow-up on the Journals of Journeys blog.]

Random musings. Half-finished (and quite possibly half-baked) thoughts.
Things that have caught my eye…

Helpful school guidelines

Ewan McIntosh kindly shares
East Lothian’s self-publishing and social media
guidelines for students and for staff:

• Students
• Staff

Commas rule. Comma rules.

Jim Coe shares his awesome presentations on comma rules. I’m
quite partial to Rule 1. These are
great for teachers looking for examples of interesting and effective pedagogical
uses of technology. Thanks for the link, Global
Learner!

Hoochie skirts

Regarding teacher dress codes, Miss
Profe asks, “Would we take a trial attorney seriously if he came to court
dressed in a Hawaiian print shirt and board shorts? Or a hoochie skirt and
midriff-bearing top?”

Madison dust-up

There’s a battle raging over the Madison (WI) school district’s decision
to turn down $2 million in Reading First money:

• Schemo
  responds
• Big
  guns pound Schemo

Teen lit

Despite concerns about media immersion (television, music, Internet, etc.),
teens are
reading like never before.

Remember the Celestine Prophecy?

Check out David Truss’ Web2.0 Prophecy.

We need a plan. We really do.

Patrick
Higgins nicely extends my contrarian
post regarding Web 2.0. Thanks, Patrick!

Oops!

Rulers
for New York’s state test don’t measure up. There’s probably a lawsuit in
there somewhere. The last two paragraphs of the story are spot-on.

Have I mentioned that I like Seth Godin?!

• Better start buying your [school
  district]sucks domains now! (be sure to click through to read the
  various domain names that were bought)
• Schools
  are monopolies (almost). Ouch.
• Are digital
  refugees really just fear
  avoiders?
• Most schools fall in the good, not great, category. Godin believes that there’s
  a big gap between good and great.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

[cross-posted at The Gate]

Someone recently sent me the following quote from a school administrator
(regarding legal concerns related to technology initiatives):

The school district is legally obligated to protect our students
from the outside. It is not legally obligated to prepare them
for the outside.

Ouch.

On its face, this statement gives precedence to legal concerns over whatever
moral, professional, and/or ethical responsibilities schools have to prepare
students for their future. This statement elevates CYA thinking over social
justice concerns about technology
access/usage and workforce
preparation for disadvantaged students. This statement is reactive, not
proactive, at a time when we desperately need forward-thinking school leaders.

Since when did schools not have a legal and societal mandate to provide an
adequate education for students? As
Kagan notes, every state’s constitution requires the state to provide its
children with an ‘adequate’ education. Every community expects its local schools
to prepare kids to be competent, functional adults in American society. How well
do you think the ‘we don’t have a legal obligation to prepare your children
for the world’ argument is going to play with parents and politicians?

We can reasonably disagree about the qualitative definition of what
constitutes an ‘adequate education’ (e.g., we’ve seen this play out in both the
school
funding and special
education arenas). But as people become increasingly aware that the Internet
and digital technologies are necessary requirements for most adults’ productive
lives and careers, this administrator’s statement that technology doesn’t fall
under schools’ legally-required mandate to provide an adequate education for
students is going to become increasingly unpalatable.

It may be that few of you are interested in this besides me, but I thought I’d post on the impact that Did You Know? has had on this blog over the past month. I posted earlier that Karl Fisch’s video had gone viral yet again, this time outside the education community. Karl and I continue to have some very interesting exchanges with folks about the presentation; there now are even spin-offs and parodies.

According to Feedburner, on February 12 I had 378 subscribers to Dangerously Irrelevant and 352 folks who actually visited the blog that day. Over the past 30 days this blog has averaged 1,095 visitors per day. As of yesterday, the number of subscribers to this blog is 639. In other words, traffic to my web site has about tripled (although it’s slowing down of late) and the number of individuals who have decided to add me to their RSS aggregators has increased 70%. Now that’s the power of a good message combined with technology that enables reach!  (FYI, the most popular YouTube version of Did You Know? has been viewed over 274,000 times)

I’m not in Will Richardson, Stephen Downes, or Boing Boing territory yet, but I’ll take the traffic (and give Karl my thanks yet again!). As I’ve noted before, I’m on a mission…

Both Will
Richardson and Andrew
Pass blogged about tonight’s conversation with Senator Lamar Alexander regarding
the proposed America COMPETES legislation. I will be participating in that
conference call too. FYI, here’s the complete list of ‘edubloggers’ who are participating:

• Alliance for School Choice
• D-Ed Reckoning
• Dangerously
  Irrelevant
• Education News
• edexcellence.net
• Pass-ed.com
• Right Wing Nation
• This Week in
  Education
• Weblogg-ed

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

[Law students learn to argue both sides of any issue because as attorneys
they may be hired for either side of a case. Knowledge of the other side’s
arguments also allows attorneys to counter those arguments and thus strengthen
their own side. So with that in mind, here’s a little contrarian perspective on
School 2.0. As technology advocates, we must be able to offer real solutions,
not just empty rhetoric.]

Dear School 2.0 advocates,

We’ve heard it all before. The sky is falling.
America is in danger of losing its role as lead actor on the global stage. What
else is new?

National commissions? Esteemed task forces? Corporate leaders as education
critics? We’ll see your Bill Gates and raise you a Sputnik.

We heard it in the 1950s:

We are engaged in a grim duel. We are beginning to recognize the threat
to American technical supremacy which could materialize if Russia succeeds in
her ambitious program of achieving world scientific and engineering supremacy by
turning out vast numbers of well-trained scientists and engineers. . . We have
let our educational problem grow much too big for comfort and safety. We are
beginning to see now that we must solve it without delay. – Admiral Hyman
Rickover, 1959

We heard it in the 1980s:

The risk is not only that the Japanese make automobiles more efficiently
than Americans and have government subsidies for development and export. It is
not just that the South Koreans recently built the world’s most efficient steel
mill, or that American machine tools, once the pride of the world, are being
displaced by German products. It is also that these developments signify a
redistribution of trained capability throughout the globe. . . If only to keep
and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we
must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system for the benefit
of all–old and young alike, affluent and poor, majority and minority. Learning
is the indispensable investment required for success in the "information age" we
are entering. – A
Nation at Risk, 1983

We heard it in the 1990s:

America’s education system is broken. – IBM
CEO Louis Gerstner, 1994

And we’re hearing it again today:

Whereas for most of the 20th century the United States could take pride
in having the best-educated workforce in the world, that is no longer true. Over
the past 30 years, one country after another has surpassed us. . . . While our
international counterparts are increasingly getting more education, their young
people are getting a better education as well. . . . Our relative position in
the world’s education league tables [continues] its long slow decline. – The New Commission on the
Skills of the American Workforce, 2006

America’s high schools are obsolete. – Microsoft CEO Bill Gates,
2005

And yet, somehow, despite our educational system’s long history of alleged
mediocrity, our country and our economy keep chugging along quite nicely. Our standard
of living is the envy of most of the world. Our gross
domestic product per capita literally dwarfs those of China or India, the
latest international competition du jour. Despite our country’s
creativity-stifling schools, our citizens and workers continue, quite
astonishingly, to build upon our nation’s well recognized and long-standing
traditions of innovation and excellence to create new products, new systems, and
new markets.

We’ve heard it all before. Creative thinking.
Problem solving. Independent, self-directed learning. Daniel Pink, Richard
Florida, John Seely Brown…

Ho hum. Ever heard of progressive education? The turn of the LAST century?
Summerhill? John Dewey? Neil Postman? The 1960s? Been there, done that. Why is
THIS time any different? Why is it that THIS time we should replace the entire
system?

Yes, we get it. Most kids think schools are boring. Big surprise. John
Goodlad told us that long ago. As if we needed ANYONE to tell us that. Isn’t
that just the way school is?

Fine. School 2.0 is the “right” thing to do. Technology has the potential to
transform education. Our educational institutions could be doing so much more.
Educators should feel more of a moral imperative to do things differently. Blah
blah blah… Let’s be honest: isn’t this true for ANY bureaucratic government
entity? Do we really expect our public schools to be any different?

We’ve heard it all before. The status quo is
inadequate. Too many kids drop out, our assessment systems are all wrong, and
we’re squandering our children’s future. The problem is that you offer no
concrete, tangible, publicly- and politically-viable alternatives.

It’s easy to throw stones at glass houses. It’s much harder to replace a
venerable system that’s served us well for a century with something else. The
old saw, “Never make a complaint without offering potential solutions” applies
here in spades. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say that we “tore down the
walls” tomorrow. What would education look like instead? How would we ever get
there from where we are now? How are you going to persuade educators, and
politicians, and your local community members that this is worth moving toward?
That it’s not just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking?

What’s your plan? We mean a real plan. Not just “kids learning
independently on matters of personal interest, taking advantage of the power of
digital technology to help them do so.” What will the structures look like?
Policies? Laws? Funding streams? How will we know if kids have learned anything
important? How will we handle parents’ very real needs for someone to take their
kids while they go to work?

Quit offering us wishes. Quit offering us dreams. Quit preaching to us about
what is morally right and educationally appropriate. Help us realize, in terms
we can understand, what this new thing might actually look like AT SCALE and how
we might reasonably get here. Even if we agree with you that this is important,
without a vision AND a plan we’re just as stuck as you are.

We’ve heard it all before. What else you got?

Does your school organization make decisions because they sound good or because internal analysis shows they’re the right decisions to make? In other words, what department do your decisions fall under? Marketing or R & D?