by Scott McLeod | Jun 4, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Quotes |
There are two kinds of organizations. One kind likes to be on the cutting
edge . . . to embrace the new. The other kind fears that, and holds back. . . .
[Organizations] that are good at being edgy will always find a way to thrive. .
. . What do you do when the [world] is moving away from you, not toward you? If
you wait too long, it’ll be too late to do much of anything at all. Instead,
recognize that change is coming, that the reality you operate in is dying out,
and start practicing how to do the next big thing. Betting on change is always
the safest bet available.
– Seth Godin, The
Big Moo, pp. 90-91
by Scott McLeod | Jun 1, 2007 | Quotes |
Here’s a great quote by Dr.
Kevin Dettmar, professor of English and cultural studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, from
his recent article, Earbuds and Mosh
Pits, in the Chronicle of Higher
Education:
A subculture is just a community with a bad
reputation.
MySpace, anyone?
by Scott McLeod | May 24, 2007 | Quotes |
From Seth Godin:
When there’s a gap between someone doing her job and doing the right thing, then management has failed.
I bet we could come up with some examples of this in schools…
by Scott McLeod | May 1, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Miscellaneous, Quotes, Tech Integration |
[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]
K-12 and postsecondary education would be very different if we asked ourselves
this question more often (thanks,
Stephanie). Is your organization ready to take this inquiry to heart – to
really, truly critically examine its current practices and assumptions in light
of this question? Mine isn’t.
by Scott McLeod | Mar 24, 2007 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Quotes, Safety and Security |
[cross-posted at The Gate]
In case you haven’t been following the issue, the federal government
can’t make up its mind regarding Internet filtering. On the one hand,
government attorneys vigorously argued for Internet filtering
mechanisms as
part of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004:
A library’s use of
filtering software to block material covered by CIPA is constitutional.
The district court itself found that filtering software is a reasonably
effective way to block pornographic material, and that such material falls
outside of a public library’s traditional collection boundaries.
The district court’s finding that filtering software erroneously blocks
some constitutionally protected speech does not undermine the reasonableness
of their use. (see http://tinyurl.com/2omvsp)
In contrast, federal attorneys have attacked software filters as burdensome and ineffective in their attempts to defend the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which keeps getting blocked by federal courts:
The court of appeals also erred in holding that filtering software
is a sufficient alternative to COPA’s mandatory screening requirement. Filtering
software is not nearly as effective as COPA’s screening requirement in shielding
minors from commercial domestic pornography on the Web. Filtering software
is voluntary, while COPA’s screening requirement is mandatory. Filtering
software also blocks some sites that are not harmful; it fails to block
some sites that are harmful; it can be expensive for parents to purchase;
and it quickly becomes outdated. Congress also did not view mandatory screening
and blocking software as an either or choice. It mandated screening and
encouraged the use of blocking software as well. That combined approach
is far more effective than the use of voluntary blocking software alone. (see http://tinyurl.com/322qnc)
Huh?
by Scott McLeod | Mar 24, 2007 | Gaming, Miscellaneous, Quotes, Reading, Reviews |
I just finished reading Everything
Bad Is Good For You. The author, Steven Johnson, makes a quite-convincing
case that today's popular culture and media (video games, television, Internet,
movies), rather than being 'cheap pleasures that pale beside the intellectual
riches of yesterday,' are much more cognitively complex than what we had
available to us just a decade or two ago. If you haven't yet read this book, I
highly recommend it. Kottke.org
has a short blurb on the book along with a number of excellent links to other
resources and commentary.
One of my favorite parts of the book is at the beginning. First Johnson
quotes Marshall
McLuhan:
The student of media soon comes to expect the new media of any period
whatever to be classed as pseudo by those who acquired the patterns of earlier
media, whatever they may happen to be.
Johnson then hypothesizes what critics might have said if video games
preceded books rather than the other way around:
Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the
long-standing tradition of game playing – which engages the child in a vivid,
three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes,
navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements – books are simply a
barren string of words on the page.
Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years
engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and
exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him- or herself in
a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new
‘libraries’ that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities
are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and
socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to
their peers.
But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that
they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any
fashion – you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. This risks
instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though
they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active,
participatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger
generation are learning to ‘follow the plot’ instead of learning to lead.
As Johnson notes, these new forms of communication, participation, and
learning have worth. They're not the vast intellectual wastelands that cultural
critics often claim them to be. Reading still has a great deal of value, as Johnson clearly
states in other parts of his book, but so do these other forms of media. We might sometimes wish that the
subject matter or content matter of these media forms were different – for
example, I personally wish that some video games weren't so violent and gory – but the
bottom line is that the intellectual complexity of popular media is much greater
than before. We would be better served to tap into the affordances of these new
media forms rather than criticizing them simply because they're new and
different.
I give this one 4 higlighters.
