Did You Know? 4.0: The Economist Media Convergence Remix

The Economist Magazine is hosting their third annual Media Convergence Forum in New York City on October 20th and 21st. Earlier this year they asked if they could remix Did You Know?/Shift Happens with a media convergence theme and use it for their conference. Scott McLeod and I said sure, they got XPLANE to create the presentation, and the result is farther down in this post. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the Forum, as I’m already missing school a few days this fall and I just couldn’t justify missing a couple more (it was very kind of The Economist to invite Scott and me), but it looks like an interesting event.

A few anticipatory FAQ's about this version.

1. It’s the first one that I’ve been part of that does not have a specific education focus (although I certainly think the media convergence ideas discussed in the video have great relevance for education). The idea behind the original (and subsequent) presentations was to start/continue/advance the conversation around certain ideas, so I see this hopefully doing the same thing around media convergence (and, selfishly, it will hopefully get some of the folks attending The Economist’s Media Convergence Forum to perhaps focus on some of the education ideas in the previous DYK’s). And, given the Creative Commons license on the previous versions, folks are not limited to remixes that only talk about education.
   
   
2. They decided to designate it version 4.0 even though there have been only two previous “official” versions. But the Sony/BMG remix that is currently the hot version is typically referred to as version 3.0, so who are we to argue with the wisdom of the crowd?
   
   
3. I should not get much, if any, credit for this one. I sent along a fair amount of statistics for their consideration, and certainly provided some feedback along the way, but otherwise didn’t have nearly as much to do with this version. Laura Bestler, Scott McLeod’s graduate assistant, did most of the research for this one, and of course XPLANE did all the graphical work. (I should, however, still get most or all of the blame if you don’t like it, since I started this whole mess.)
   
   
4. Like the previous versions, this one is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license, so you’re welcome to use/modify as you see fit, as long as you follow the terms of that license.

Finally, an observation. In a recent email Scott McLeod wrote, “It’s amazing, the legs this thing still has.” I would have to agree. The various versions have been viewed well over 20 millions times (my guess is that with downloaded versions and audience showings it’s probably closer to 30 million times, but 20 million would be the safe number). It’s been shown to audiences large and small, educational and corporate and everything in between. It's been shown to the leaders of our national defense and to incoming congressmen. It’s been shown by university presidents and kindergarten teachers, televangelists and politicians, folks just trying to make a buck and those trying to save the world. And this week it even made an appearance in Nancy Gibb’s essay in Time Magazine.

What does it all mean? (Well, besides the self-referential and now self-serving answer of “Shift Happens.”) I think the fact that a simple little PowerPoint (some folks would say simplistic and they would be right – it was meant to be the start of a conversation, not the entire conversation) can be viewed by so many folks and start so many conversations means that we live in a fundamentally different world than the one I (and most of you reading this) grew up in.

I know some folks would dispute that, and that’s an interesting conversation in and of itself, but if you buy that – if you buy that on so many levels the world is a fundamentally different place – then it just begs us to ask the question of whether schools have similarly transformed from when we grew up. If your answer to that question is no, as I think it probably is for a large majority of you, and if you see a problem with that, then what should we do? What is my responsibility, and your responsibility, for making the changes we believe are necessary? What are you willing to step up and do?

Here’s the presentation. Source files will be uploaded to the wiki shortly.

More Than a Passing Trend Part II

On the heels of my previous post I came across this video by Erik Qualman - some interesting observations in the comments to his post. I'll present it here without comment of my own, other than I think there are some interesting ideas to consider here.



Oh, one more thing. I believe this falls into the category of "D'oh!" Any chance you think they'll do retroactive revenue sharing?

Singularity University

Today's Did You Know?/2020 Vision combo sighting of the day - Singularity University.

Singularity University aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.

With Ray Kurzweil himself and Peter Diamandis (co-founder of Space Adventures and the CEO of the X Prize Foundation) on board, with support from Google and NASA, it combines both a graduate program and three and ten-day executive programs. These two quotes from the video stood out for me:

Every University needs a chief visionary.

I would add that every K-12 district and school needs one as well.

The most key thing you'll get is this global network. By coming to SU you are going to get connected with the top thinkers in this community.

Nice, but I would like to see them add an educator track, and hear how they are going to work with K-12 schools. Mr. Kurzweil and Mr. Diamandis, I'm volunteering (along with my PLN) to help with that. Seriously, please contact me. I think we could use our global network of educators to help get you connected to K-12 teachers and students.

What's Impossible in Your Classroom?

So, the Did You Know? factoid of the day from this story:

No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people around, but for the first time, information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter — about a yard.

. . . "Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale 'quantum repeater' that can network quantum memories over vast distances," Monroe said. "Moreover, our methods can be used in conjunction with quantum bit operations to create a key component needed for quantum computation."

. . . What distinguishes this outcome as teleportation, rather than any other form of communication, is that no information pertaining to the original memory actually passes between ion A and ion B. Instead, the information disappears when ion A is measured and reappears when the microwave pulse is applied to ion B.

A major step forward toward quantum computing, which powers some of the "living in exponential times" theme. And real, live teleportation of information from one object to another over a distance of about a meter. What's next, a biracial President of the United States?

So, if all these "impossible" things are happening in our world today, not to mention the impossible things that can happen if we perfect quantum computing and teleportation, what's impossible in your classroom?

Maybe, just maybe, you can find a way to do the impossible. Shouldn't you start trying?

Give Until It Feels Good: Join Team Shift Happens on Kiva

I don’t completely have my head around this post yet, but I decided I should just go ahead and put it out there anyway. We’re approaching the Holiday season for a lot of folks in my neck of the woods and, while I hesitate to use the power of the “press” that I have with this blog, I felt like I should perhaps try to do some good here.

Hearing Greg Mortenson speak so passionately at NCTE reminded me of another organization that I was intending to support this year, Kiva:

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Kiva allows individuals to contribute a small amount of money that is then loaned to entrepreneurs in impoverished communities. When that loan is repaid (currently almost 97% are repaid), then the individual that originally made the loan can choose to loan the money out to another entrepreneur, donate it to kiva to help with their operating expenses, or actually get the money back.

Poor people in impoverished communities often don’t have access to financial institutions and capital, and microfinancing addresses this problem. It is especially helpful to women, who often are the key to raising families – and communities – out of poverty. It’s also my opinion that this is one of the best ways to help achieve peace in the world.

So, while I’m still giving some small presents to family members this year, I’m redirecting some of the money we’d usually spend to Kiva. I thought it might be nice to use the reach of this blog, and my Personal Learning Network, to try to grow this a little bit, so this is what I’m trying to do.

First, I’ve donated $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I’ve also purchased two $25 gift certificates that I then emailed to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things. First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to (they can pick the one I picked, or any of the 773 currently available). Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, a Kiva Pay It Forward plan). It would also be great if they blogged about it and left a comment on this post.

Since I’m apparently always going to be connected to the phrase Shift Happens, I thought I’d try to use that to do some good, so I created Team Shift Happens on the Kiva site:

We loan because Shift Happens, and we want to be the change we want to see.

So, those email requests will also ask that when they make those loans they add them to Team Shift Happens so that we can keep track of the total (they still direct where the loan goes, it just gets aggregated under the team).

Shift Happens opines that we live in “exponential times” and, if these folks take me up on this, our contributions have the potential to grow exponentially. To hedge my bets, however, I’m also asking you to join Team Shift Happens as well. Yes, you, gentle reader. Whether you’re an education blogger, a student at Arapahoe (or any other school), or just some other interested reader, I’d like you to consider signing up at Kiva and contributing. (If you’re a student, please check with your parents first. Or, if you’re at AHS, I’ll happily collect and aggregate small cash donations in my office and then make the loans myself on Kiva.)

You can either make a $25 loan yourself, or, what I’d love to see, do the same thing that I’m doing (make a $25 loan, then purchase two $25 gift certificates and email them to folks you know and ask them to do the same). If you’re a blogger, also consider blogging about this and making the same request to your readers. I realize not everyone will be comfortable with that, or has $75 to spare, so please contribute what you can. If you wish, it would be great if you then add your loan so it counts toward Team Shift Happens so we can see what we can accomplish together, and leave a comment on this post.

So, like others this time of year, I’m asking you to give. Give until it feels good.

Update 12-2-08: My entrepreneur is now fully funded, at least partially due to the generosity of the folks that read this post. But there are still many more people needing funding - please consider participating.

Shift Happens New Vocabulary Word of the Day

I was watching this presentation by Thomas Friedman about his recent book Hot, Flat and Crowded (which I haven’t read yet) when he told of a new unit of measurement apparently coined by Tom Burke, co-founder of E3G.

Americum [uh-mer-i-kum] n: any group of 350 million people with a per capita income above $15,000 and a growing penchant for consumerism. (p. 56 when I Searched Inside This Book at Amazon)

In the presentation Friedman says there were about 2.5 Americums in the 1950’s (America, Western Europe and Japan) and now we are approaching 9 (America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Russia, Japan, India, China and South America) – with 2 more just around the corner (India and China each giving birth to a second Americum). He refers to them as America’s “carbon copies.” Ouch. He goes on to say that the energy and natural resource implications of that are staggering, and therefore we need to redefine what it means to “live like an American.”

As a red-blooded, Prius-driving American, I can’t help but agree, but I also thought of this in terms of a presentation of my own. America used to be 40% of the Americums on the planet, now it’s 11%. Unlike some folks, I see that as a good thing overall (notwithstanding the environmental impact which I agree must be addressed immediately), and I’m optimistic about what that could mean for the human race, with people living free everywhere, and enjoying a much better standard of living than they have previously.

But it also means we need to change the way we teach our students, with not just global awareness as a goal, but global collaboration. We need our students to be working with students (and adults) around the world, to learn with and about each other, and to foster relationships that will help us solve problems that know no borders. With how many of the nine Americums (or other countries) have your students collaborated?

The Next Election

Yes, I know that many folks are glad that this one is finally over (especially getting rid of the campaign ads), but I wanted to reflect briefly on one thing. I teach in a high school with students typically aged 14 to 18. Probably a hundred and fifty or so of our seniors were eligible to vote this year, and I imagine many of them did. But a thought occurred to me this morning – all of our current high school students will be eligible to vote in the next presidential election.

Think about that for just a minute. All of our approximately 2,150 students at Arapahoe – most of whom have never voted – will be eligible to vote in the 2012 elections. And all of the other 17.5 million students currently in U.S. high schools will also be eligible to vote in 2012. Which brings us to the money question (or two or three).

What are we doing to prepare these students to be engaged, intelligent, informed, and competent voters in a world that is very, very, very, very different than the one we grew up in?

How are we preparing them to be successful citizens in a publish-then-filter world?

Are we transforming our classrooms to reflect real-time, instantaneous access to factual and political information?

And I could keep going but, mercifully, I’ll stop now. But if you teach high school, or you have a student that attends high school, or you pay taxes to support high schools, or you care about democracy, I’d like you to consider one thing.

What are you going to do to make sure those 17.5 million students are prepared to be successful participants in our democracy?

Image Citation: Colorado Presidential Ballot, originally uploaded by Chris&Rhiannon.

Did You Know? - The Rise of the Rest and Arabic Translation

I blogged about Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World previously. Chor Pharn, who works in the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Singapore and is doing some futures visioning, has remixed Did You Know? 2.0 with a more Asian/Rise of the Rest focus. I think it's worth 5 minutes of your time.


Also, Ahmed Ibrahim ElShabrawy, CEO of EgyptNetwork (an ISP in Mansoura city) has remixed the original version with Jeff Brenman's graphics, the music from Did You Know 2.0?, and added an Arabic translation.

Did You Know? 2.0 -Shift Happens- with Arabic Translation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: arabic happens)

The life of this presentation continues to amaze me.

brand eins Article

My school was contacted last spring by a writer for the German business magazine brand eins (described by the writer as a cross between Fortune and The New Yorker, don't know how accurate that is). They were doing a feature issue on education and wanted to find out more about our school, so the writer and a photographer came to Colorado and spent a day each at Arapahoe. The article ran in the May issue, but it's taken me a while to find someone to translate it.

Here's a PDF of the original article in German, which includes the pictures they used in the print edition. Here's a very rough English translation (without pictures), please note carefully the explanation at the beginning as well as some of my explanatory notes.

Shift Happens Updated Statistic of the Day

According to today's Rocky Mountain News, citing the upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2009, Table 644:

4: Median number of years workers have been with their current employer.

The statistic in the original version was 5 years. Looks like things are still shifting.

By The Numbers: New York Times Visual Op-Ed Columnist

Charles Blow is the New York Times "visual" Op-Ed columnist. His column appears every other Saturday and he often includes visual representations to help him try to make his point. I find it very interesting that the New York Times has an Op-Ed columnist who focuses on statistics and visual representations, not just text, to try to communicate. I think it's another indication of the power of visuals - often, but not always, in conjunction with text - and the changing nature of both communication and literacy in the 21st century. It's also another example of the transformation of "traditional" newspapers and how they deliver content in a technological age.

He's also just started a blog, called By The Numbers, where he intends to discuss "all things statistical - from the environment to entertainment - and their visual expressions." Like many blogs, it appears to be designed to be more immediate and more interactive than a traditional New York Times column, and will definitely focus on the visual as much as the textual.

[Warning: Shameless self-promotion alert.]

Now, I don't know yet if this is going to be a blog that I'll stay subscribed to, or how well he'll make the transition from columnist to blogger. But one thing's for certain, he has excellent taste in videos.

Weather Channel Environmental Essay Contest

I get a lot of email. Even before this blog and that darned Presentation That Shall Not Be Named, I got a lot of email because I'm the technology guy at a large high school with over 2,100 students and about 165 staff members. Email is a natural way for most of those folks to get a hold of me when they need some help. Then when you throw in the email generated by this blog and that presentation, well, I get a lot of email.

I've also been getting quite a few email requests to post certain things on the blog, or offers of advertising, or press releases from various organizations (particularly political organizations trying to influence education policy). For the most part, I ignore all those, because it's hard for me to figure out when I might be crossing a line. (As an aside, I'd be curious about how other education bloggers deal with this - leave a comment or drop me an email.) But this one seems innocuous enough and some folks might be interested in it, so I'll pass it along.

The Weather Channel is hosting a Forecast Earth Summit, a conference for environmental experts and high school students in Washington, D.C. in December, and holding an essay contest to go along with it. From the email I received,

The Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth Summit is a conference for select future environmental leaders held in Washington D.C., December 5-7, 2008. The Weather Channel will provide free trips to D.C. for 20 high school students who are passionate about the environment. Share this widget to let them know about this opportunity while raising daily environmental awareness.

Here's some info on last year's summit in case anyone is interested in finding out more. Here's what that widget looks like:



AHS students, I expect at least one of you to be selected . . .

Did You Know? - Music Industry Remix

A while back Scott McLeod, Jeff Brenman (who did the Slideshare version) and I received an email from someone at Sony BMG Music Entertainment asking us if they could remix the various versions of Did You Know? for a meeting they had coming up. We said sure and they came up with this and gave us permission to link to it. (It takes a little while to load - sorry, can't figure out how to embed it. you'll have to follow the link).

Here's the written description:

The following adaptation of the original "Shift Happens" presentation was created by Sony BMG Music Entertainment. The video, presented by Richard Sanders, President of Sony BMG International, was shown on 4 May 2008 to 150 of the company's top executives gathered in Rome for Sony BMG’s annual Global Management Meeting. As part of Sony BMG’s mission to improve the music experience for consumers living in "exponential times", the video illustrates the demand for change.

No words of wisdom here, I just thought some of you might find it interesting.

Update: That link no longer works, but you can find it on YouTube, or download a high quality version (mp4, 41.9 MB). As with all remixes of Did You Know?/Shift Happens, it's Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike licensed, so you're welcome to use it under that license.

Shift Happens Statistic of the Day

According to the Google Blog, the number of web pages in the Google Index:

              26,000,000 in 1998
        1,000,000,000 in 2000
1,000,000,000,000 in 2008 (July) . . . and growing by "several billion" every day.


Perhaps we do live in exponential times . . .

Welcome CASE Convention Attendees

I'm guessing that a few folks may be visiting the blog for the first time as a result of Anne Smith's and my presentation today at CASE. Here's the web page that we referenced with examples from our classrooms. Again, please remember that these are not all fantastic examples - we share our successes and our "works in progress" so that we - and hopefully other folks - can learn from them.

To learn more about this blog and our staff development efforts, you might read About This Blog and The Beginning. To get a feel for some of the discussions that happen on this blog, you might look through some of the Best(?) Posts of 2006 or Best(?) Posts of 2007. If you're interested in presentations like the Did You Know? presentation, visit the Fischbowl Presentations page. You can also learn more than you ever wanted to know about the presentation at the Shift Happens wiki. That won't include the version we used today, but you can download that as well (without the music, unfortunately, due to copyright reasons). You can also download the PowerPoint we used for the "rant and rave" portion of the presentation.

And even though he was stuck in Newark and left Anne and me holding the bag :-), you really should start reading Will Richardson's blog - he's a very smart guy with a lot to offer you and your students. Rest assured, Will, you still have lots of friends in Colorado - including the two below.

Wipro University

From the July/August issue of Fast Company (p. 48):

When you walk around the Bangalore campus of technology-outsourcing giant Wipro, something feels familiar . . . At lunchtime, young employees (average age: 27) swarm into cafeteria cliques, or stream into computer labs, or exit en masse from one three-story lecture hall into another. Oh, that’s right, it feels like college.

So, the company that’s the poster child for outsourcing tech-support seems to be outsourcing education as well?

A span of buildings is devoted solely to education, with all the library, classroom, lab and lecture-hall trappings of a university. The expansive offerings, ranging from Japanese to advanced engineering, rival those of many universities in the United States. There are 300 professors on staff, who typically earn more than they would at Indian universities, and hundred more are “shared” with top local schools.

And they've devoted a huge amount of resources to this? And the professors earn more than they would at a university?

“Today, we pick youngsters who aren’t fully trained, bring them to campus, and train them,” says Pratik Kumar, executive VP of human resources. “There is a minimum of 12 to 14 weeks in our methodologies, technical knowledge, and of course, languages and accents. Many employees study longer.”

And all employees receive 12-14 weeks of paid training when they start? Sort of like life-long learning?

After introductory classes . . . most employees are enrolled in mandatory development training . . . The second track is voluntary graduate-level coursework, such as Friday and Saturday MBA programs and training in computer skills, leadership, and management. . . . The courses, says Sreekala Ramamurthy, a former university professor and Wipro’s general manager of talent transformation, are a way to limit job jumpers.

And after that initial 12-14 weeks, they continue to get on-going education and training, with an option for even more advanced training? And they have a position titled, “General Manager of Talent Transformation?”

The Bangalore campus gets 350 new employees every Monday; all need at least 45 full-time school days before they become billable employees . . . “We have the physical space for up to 5,000, but the bigger issues is how to scale the faculty to that number of students,” says Ramamurthy. She points out the two-way video cameras in an auditorium, which connect to the Chennai campus, so professors can teach twice as many students. She then nods to small room across the hall. “That’s a professor’s studio, where he can teach eight or nine centers at once.” Student-teacher ratio: not a priority at Wipro University.

And they’re trying to figure out how to scale it?

Hmmm. General Manager of Talent Transformation . . .

It's a Thirsty World

Jeff Brenman, who created the amazing SlideShare version of the original Did You Know?/Shift Happens for their World's Best Presentation Contest last year, has an entry in this year's contest in the same style titled "Thirst."

While not directly related to the usual content of this blog, I thought I'd share it out for two reasons. First, I think it's an important issue to discuss. Second, I think it's another example of the power of imagery and how we should help students (and teachers) learn that PowerPoints/Keynotes/Slideshares don't have to have a ton of text on them to be effective (and, in fact, rarely should have a ton of text on them).

| View | Upload your own

The Rise of the Rest

I heard an interesting interview of Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek columnist and editor of Newsweek International, on NPR the other night. He has a new book titled The Post-American World and this short interview (7 minutes) discusses parallels he sees to the British Empire at the dawn of the 20th century (shades of The Presentation That Shall Not Be Named?) and compares the Boer War and how Great Britain dealt with that with the current U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But before you decide this is just more gloom and doom, he also expresses his optimism that the United States can adapt and take on a new role as “Chairman of the Board” as opposed to dictator of the world. He makes some interesting points about the “rise of the rest”, not just China and India but others as well, and how leadership in the 21st century needs to look a little different than perhaps it did in the late 20th century.

I don’t know if this holds any particular lessons for education (I’d like to find time to read the book to see if he talks about that or not), but my thoughts after listening to the interview were that, once again, we need to make sure our students are engaged on a global level. Not just for economic reasons, but in order to help solve some of the major issues facing all of us today – issues that are global in nature and therefore need input and action from citizens across national boundaries. It makes me wonder that with all the lip service that schools typically give to creating “global citizens” in their mission and vision statements, how many of us are actually actively pursuing this in our classrooms?

RPI and The Shift

Just a quick post about this story regarding Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

The practice of engineering is now a global enterprise, but engineering education in the United States is still very much a domestic product. Few U.S. engineering students spend any significant time abroad during college, even though their eventual careers may require them to collaborate with international clients or co-workers, or even to work in other countries.

Those two dissonant facts have prompted Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y., to begin requiring all of its undergraduate engineering students to spend some time overseas.

DYK - New Orleans Remix

So Dina just got back from New Orleans - I believe she was attending ASCD's annual conference. She writes:

So I tried to write about New Orleans.

About what it was like to see azaleas blooming in March. About the rich muddy waters of the Mississippi, who “ain’t never gave us no trouble,” said one lifelong resident to me, as if the river is a quiet neighbor who keeps the grass cut. About the cabby who recommended a local’s restaurant so far out of the tourist center that it amazed the second cabby who picked me up there. And about the feeling, as tangible as breath, that emanates from the citizens who talk about Katrina– every last one. It took me until the flight home to realize why I felt like it was familiar to me. It is the exact feeling that comes from European family members when they speak of surviving World War Two.

I was nursing a seven month old baby and managing a toddler when Katrina hit in 2005. My sympathies were abstract, my mind elsewhere. My lip service didn’t do it then, and it doesn’t now.

So I gave up on writing about New Orleans. This came out instead.

What came out, you might ask? This.



I think she asks some interesting questions at the end. What are your answers?