A Fundamental Flaw

From the May 21st issue of Fortune Magazine (article not online yet), comes this quote from Fred Smith, founder and CEO of FedEx:

We put so much emphasis on "college degrees." Well, in Germany students at some point come to a fork in the road, and they either go on to university or they go on to a trade school. Say you're a FedEx airplane mechanic working on one of our Boeing Triple Sevens. That's a $100,000-plus job. You don't have to have a college degree to get that job. You don't have to know Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales. You can go right to West Memphis, Ark., where we have a relationship with the community college, and be trained to be a licensed mechanic. Then you can come to work at FedEx. (p. 206, emphasis mine.)

Now, I have mixed feelings about this quote. I've never believed that going to college, or getting an education in general, is solely about job preparation. We don't read The Canterbury Tales in order to directly prepare for having a particular career. Having said that, however, this quote resonated to me because once again it seems to be flying the face of most current education-reform movements, which all seem to promote academic skills and college admission as precursors to employment as the ultimate goals of K-12 education.

There are a lot of skills an airplane mechanic for FedEx needs - and some of them will be learned in school - but my guess is that knowing "there is a complex number i such that i² = -1, and every complex number has the form a + bi with a and b real?" (CCSS, N-CN 1), or how to "prove the Pythagorean identity sin²(x) + cos²(x) = 1 and use it to find sin(x), cos (x), or tan(x) and the quadrant of the angle" (CCSS, F-TF 8) isn't quite necessary.

So, once again, I'm struggling with this idea that all students need to learn the exact same things at the exact same time. That doesn't mean that some students shouldn't read The Canterbury Tales, and that some (possibly other) students shouldn't learn trigonometric identities. But I worry that locking our students into a fixed, required, standardized curriculum that is supposed to meet the needs of all of them will end up meeting the needs of few of them. I worry that our "assumption that it does indeed provide a comprehensive, well-rounded education" is a fundamental flaw in our thinking.

Quotes I'd Like My Future Principal to Ponder: This new economy tilts toward publicness.

Again from Jeff Jarvis's Public Parts, a quote I'd like my future principal to ponder (p. 137):

"Privacy was once free. Publicity was once ridiculously expensive," says entrepreneur Sam Lessin. "Now the opposite is true: You have to pay a mix of cash, time, social capital, etc. if you want privacy." You pay for privacy in the effort and hassle it takes to manage privacy settings. You also pay in the opportunity lost if you choose not to be public and social. On the other side of the ledger, you can be rewarded - with attention, influence, information, deals - if you reveal yourself. This new economy tilts toward publicness. (Emphasis mine.)

What opportunities might schools (students, teachers, administrators, communities) be losing by choosing not to be public and social? How are our fears possibly getting in the way of preparing our students to be successful in an "economy [that] tilts toward publicness?" As my future principal, how are you going to help our staff - and our students - understand the new privacy and the new publicness?

Things I Want My Future Principal to Read: What To Tell Your Twelve-Year-Old

(This is part two in a possible series. See this post for an explanation of the future principal part of the title of this post.)

I found these two recent articles from the Economic Revolution column in The Denver Post pretty interesting. They're written by Dave Maney who, in his own words, attempts to "connect the dots to our economic future." This sums up the thrust of the two articles:

The prescription for the last few generations has been: Work hard in school, get into a good college, pick a career field with lots of demand, and success will follow. I'm pretty sure that's what my parents told me, and it served me well. But I'm afraid it's largely misguided advice now.

While I don't believe that education is solely about preparing you for future employment, I do believe that's part of our mission. I also believe that many of the current batch of reforms are being made in the name of economic success and competitiveness, yet they seem to fly in the face of what I see happening. (Which, of course, is probably why these two articles caught my eye, since I agree with much of what he says. It's always dangerous to read too much into something that confirms your own bias, but here goes.)

I particularly like how he attempts to state his "ten big ideas," but then also tries to frame them in terms of how he would begin a conversation with a twelve-year-old. For example, one of his points is:

In this tumultuous time, I wouldn't trust anyone's traditional prescriptions for success. (Nor mine for that matter.) It's incumbent on everyone to think for themselves, to observe, to interpret, to plan and to course-correct.

 And he frames it for a twelve-year-old as

Starting point for your 12-year-old: "School's important, but being able to think for yourself is more important. We should talk about how people learn to do that."

Perhaps these articles could be part of the basis for a good discussion led by our new principal about our current assumptions about what our students are going to need to be successful in the workforce. As a bonus article, we could add in The Career Of The Future Doesn't Include A 20-Year Plan. It's More Like Four:

The particulars of Hasler's young career can appear exotic and, yes, flighty. But his essential experience--tacking swiftly from job to job and field to field, learning new skills all the while--resembles the pattern that increasingly defines our careers. According to recent statistics, the median number of years a U.S. worker has been in his or her current job is just 4.4, down sharply since the 1970s. This decline in average job tenure is bigger than any economic cycle, bigger than any particular industry, bigger than differences in education levels, and bigger than differences in gender. (Since women are more likely to interrupt their careers for child rearing and caregiving, their average time in a job is even shorter than a man's.)

Hmm, reminds me a bit of this.

Conversation with Jason Schellen

In the fall some of our Business students had the opportunity to talk with Jason Shellen about entrepreneurship, starting a business, and the high-tech field. Jason is currently CEO of Thing Labs, makers of the Twitter/Facebook app Brizzly. Previously he was an employee of Pyra Labs and worked on Blogger as it was acquired by Google, and he was the founding product manager of Google Reader.

Jason has graciously agreed to talk with students this semester as well, and he’ll be Skyping in this Thursday for about fifty minutes. If all goes well with the technology, we’ll be ustreaming it as well, so feel free to join us on our ustream channel at approximately 12:15 – 1:10 pm MST (UTC/GMT -7).

Update 2-25-10: Here's the ustream archive.

Snow Kidding

Just a quick post to point out two articles in today's Denver Post. The first article is about how Colorado Ski Resorts are leveraging technology to get the word out about ski conditions.

"The snow message is absolutely as important as it has ever been for us," said Vail Mountain's senior vice president and chief operating officer, Chris Jarnot.

What has changed is that everyone with a mobile phone can be a snow reporter — and everyone with a mobile phone or computer can be the instant recipient of the latest snow news.

Not even a year ago, resorts' hopes hinged on snow during televised Broncos games. Resorts issued snowfall totals a day after the snow fell. They bought powdery ads in magazines six months before the season began.

The idea was that resort reservation desks were inundated with calls when football stadiums were frosted white, and last year's photos of untrammeled snow were good enough.

But by 5 a.m. this frosty Christmas week morning, the news of new snow was posted on websites for Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone, the four resorts that host more than a third of Colorado's roughly 12 million annual skier visits. It was waiting in the inboxes of thousands of skiers. Newspapers, radio and TV stations had it ready for morning reports.

Copper Mountain and Sunlight have eliminated the middlemen like Semrow — allowing Web surfers to check the snow themselves via webcam.

"Now we see that blip (of vacation interest and bookings) as soon as the first flake flies," Jarnot said.

And here's the quantification of that shift:

Vail Resorts held back about 80 percent of its multimillion-dollar winter marketing campaign by skipping the traditional one-page ads in national magazines like Outside, Men's Health and Conde Nast Traveler. Instead, the company joined the social-networking revolution and now e-pitches its powder.

The company took the money it would have spent on those pricey magazine ads and kept it for up-to-date campaigns issued through e-mail, newspapers, search-engine display ads and online banners.

It's a plan that works with skiers' changing habits: Where they once booked holidays months in advance, today they are increasingly apt to book the week before.

80 percent. Wow.

The second article was a brief report on the accuracy of ski resort snow total reports. The interesting thing here was not that resorts in New England (the study didn't look at Colorado) tend to inflate their snow totals slightly, it was this:

Ironically, during the study period, a new iPhone application emerged that allows users to report their own snow observations at various resorts.

Suddenly, according to Zinman and Zitzewitz, "exaggeration falls sharply, especially at resorts where iPhones can get reception."

So, perhaps nothing profound here, but another indication of two of the shifts that I think we're seeing.

First, a shift away from traditional marketing and broadcast advertising to more targeted, passion-based, direct-to-those-who-are-interested-when-they-are-interested campaigns, with the resultant elimination of various middlemen (including traditional media). It's also a "just in time" information delivery service, which allows people to much more easily adapt their plans at the last minute ("they are increasingly apt to book the week before"), which I think is an interesting emerging meme that we'll see a lot of discussion about in the next few years.

Second, the continuing rise of user-generated content, in this case real-time snow reports, that - at least in a small way - continues to democratize access to information and transfer some of the power from businesses to customers ( and governments to citizens; and producers to consumer/producers). As transparency increases, behaviors change, which is also another interesting meme I think we'll be talking about.

So, this post is mostly just to point you to those two interesting tidbits, but I do wonder about the potential impact to educational institutions. Passion-based, just-in-time delivery of information and the importance of transparency and users generating relevant and meaningful information for each other - I wonder what we can learn from that?

Shift Happens Statistic of the Day 12-2-09

From the December 7, 2009 issue of Time Magazine:

In 1979, GM's U.S. employment peaked at 618,365. Today it's at 75,000 and falling fast. GM's U.S. market share, once about 50%, has fallen to about 20%.

That's about an 88% decline in U.S. jobs at GM in 30 years. Interestingly, it's only a 60% decline in market share, which illustrates the automation/productivity portion of the shift.


Flickr Photo Credit: two GM dealerships out of business, originally uploaded by marina.

Jason Shellen Ustream Archive

For anyone interested, here's the ustream archive of Jason Shellen speaking with our students that I blogged about previously. He starts speaking right about the 5 minute mark. Ustream allowed me to "cut" the video so it should start at that point, but it appears to be inconsistent so you may have to fast forward to the 5 minute mark. (It appears that if you go to ustream and watch it there, it starts at the almost 5 minute mark. If you play it in the blog, it starts at the beginning.) My live tweets are below the ustream.



108. Starting ustream now. Class starts in about 5 minutes. http://bit.ly/13MP8H about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

107. Students are hearing from @shellen started with Pyra labs, bought by Google when they brought in Blogger, then prod manager 4 Google Reader about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

106. He's now at Thing Labs, makers of Brizzly. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck


105. He was an art major in college. Didn't think he would need any business knowledge. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

104. Graduated college in 96, web was just coming on the scene. He took a class called "web publishing" about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

103. He thought it was fantastic as an artist that he could put his work out there on the web and control the way it looked. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

102. http://bit.ly/16U1hw for the live stream about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

101. In 1999 started Blogger - a way to get yourself online easily about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

100. about five of them working together in a basement in San Francisco about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

99. He joined them and worked with them to build relationships with larger companies to try to make a little money with Blogger about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

98. In 2003 we had the opportunity to sell to Google - so we did. We had about a million users at that point. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

97. We could accept venture financing and see what happens, or we could join Google and hope that blogging explodes. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

96. We chose to join Google to raise awareness of blogging. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

95. Once he joined Google they though things were going well, but he wanted to find a better way to read and keep up with blogs about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

94. Built a prototype called Fusion (looked a lot like Facebook does now) with one other guy at Google about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

93. It then developed into a product called Google Reader. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

92. It's one of the best ways to subscribe to content on the web. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

91. Stayed at Google for about 4.5 years. 600 people when he joined, 16000 when he left. He liked working in small teams. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

90. He wanted to get back out there and solve problems with people, so he started Thing Labs in June of 2009 about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

89. In January they launched their first product. It's done okay, but he's not really excited about it. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

88. So now he created something he likes better. Brizzly. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

87. A social web reader. Twitter integration, coming out with Facebook support next week. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

86. Trying to streamline your interaction with Twitter, Facebook, etc. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

85. Also focused on the growing phenomenon. People are talking about current events on the web. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

84. Easier to get your news from real people now, not just CNN, MSNBC about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

83. Live stream at http://bit.ly/16U1hw about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

82. You're okay with hearing things through a status update, doesn't have to be highly polished. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

81. Tries out new things and see what sticks. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

80. None of these tools wouldn't be anything without the people involved with it. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

79. Now kids are going to ask questions. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

78. Q: What actually happens when a large company approached a small company and offers to buy it? What's the process? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

77. They were approached by a friend of a friend. Sergie Brin approached them through a friend. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

76. He thought they were going to talk about a business deal, not buying them. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

75. .@shellen is speaking to a Business Principles class, so they're asking about how to run a business, startup issues, venture capital about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

74. Hard to value these things. Google wasn't a public company, so hard to value them. We said we think you're worth $1 billion, they came back about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

73. with we think we're worth $3 billion - hard to figure out what things are worth when no public share price. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

72. Q: Kylie asks: How does a product like Brizzly make money when you don't charge for it? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

71. Difficult to make money from day 1. For any sight that deals with people, it's visually repellent if you ask for money up front. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

70. We do have a long range plan, a way to monetize something other than just visiting the web page. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

69. Try to build users first, then monetize it. Now talking about Twitter in relation to that. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

68. Facebook didn't turn ads on until they had 100 million users. The economics change when you have enough users. Can make large amount . . about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

67. of money from a small amount of ads. Not as intrusive. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

66. Most models are advertising based. Next model is subscription or pay for upgraded services. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

65. With Blogger they had a free offering, but you had to pay for more features (images, spell check) - sounds silly now, but it was new then. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

64. Q: Eric asks: What will Thing Labs work on after Brizzly? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

63. They just launched Lets Be Trends dot com about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

62. It's an application interface. Brizzly shows lots of the trends on the web. Last night it was football as a trending topic. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

61. Lets Be Trends open up that data, and let Brizzly users explain what's trending on the web. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

60. We might develop Lets Be Trends into something else, but we're asking our users right now to make the data more attractive to other people. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

59. But it's too early to really tell what's going to happen with it. We're working hard, but things change quickly. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

58. Q from Ryan: If you want to setup a website for a group or club, but didn't want to use Blogger, what would you use? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

57. Talking about weebly.com - met the guy at a ball game. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

56. Turns out Blogger is very bad at creating a group web site. He would suggest checking out weebly - his Mom is very happy with it. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

55. Lots of people are also using Facebook fan pages, but he's not a fan of having Facebook bradning on everything. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

54. Q from Shelby: Did you ever think of a product or service, but never tried to start it? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

53. Yes, more good ideas than there is time to implement them. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

52. The execution is so important, doing it really well. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

51. When he has an idea, he thinks about how hard it would be to do well. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

50. Sometimes it's crazy to try to build your idea. So he thinks about the simplest possible thing he can do that people can use, about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

49. and is transformative for people, and that I can do really well. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

48. Save the good ideas, because sometimes they pop up again in unlikely places. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

47. 2nd Question: Do you ever have regrets over not going with an idea? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

46. Not really. He has regrets over poor execution of ideas, or not seeing a different angle on his products. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

45. Q from Richard: How do you account/track for every action that a person can take on Brizzly? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

44. He's now talking about Google Analytics in terms of analzying what's happening on your page/product. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

43. The trouble is there's too much data, so they aggregate all user data to see trends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

42. Brizzly is a little different - it's javascript. So they are implementing some of their own, also using Kiss metrics (sp?) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

41. There are always bugs in any software. But he hires the right people in the first place, tries to minimize that. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

40. They use "test driven development" - write some code, test it, make sure it should work, then try it themselves. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

39. Users are then pretty vocal about letting them know. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

38. Started working on Brizzly in May - it was part acquisition so he brought on a good engineer about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

37. Rolled it out to users in the beginning of August. So about 2 months - that was fast, and it wasn't ready for prime time about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

36. It's still in private Beta, but rolling it out to more folks every day. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

35. Q from Matt: How do you name your products? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

34. There's a saying in computer science that naming is one of the hardest things. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

33. He wasn't particularly happy with the Google Reader name (he liked Fusion). about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

32. With Brizzly they came up with two terrible names. A new employee was joining them and he asked about it. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

31. They shared the names and they hated even saying what they had. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

30. Went to Brand Market (sp) dot com - found what was available. Really hard to find something not taken. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

29. Q: How do you advertise your products? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

28. Started by talking to the press. After a a few thousand users, let their users give away Brizzly invites. So relied on their users to say about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

27. they liked the product and invite their friends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

26. Some call it viral marketing, he prefers organic. Nobody wants a virus, everybody likes organic. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

25. Q from Katie: Did you ever think you'd be where you are when you were a kid? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

24. I thoughts I was going to be a cartoonist, working on my drafting board each day. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

23. Q from Adam: Where did you get your inspiration to create Brizzly from. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

22. Talking about Evan Williams and Biz Stone. They left Google before him, they created Twitter. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

21. When they created Twitter, they invited a close group of friends, including him. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

20. By using that early version of Twitter, he got to thinking about all the ways Twitter could be better. (Facebook too). about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

19. He's always thinking about optimization, how to make thinks a little bit better. It's not revolutionary but evolutionary. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

18. When he thought about how to make Twitter/Facebook better, he thought about trends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

17. The thing that would make this better is to have your friends with you on websites. That then moved to trends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

16. Q: How do you find a domain that hasn't been used, then purchase and use it? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

15. There's a huge market - he uses namecheap but there are others about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

14. You enter something in, search for it, see if it's taken. There's also an aftermarket - like Brizzly was already taken, he bought it. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

13. There are also word combiner tools, help you come up with permutations, then you see if it's available. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

12. Q from Alex: How difficult is it to create your applications? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

11. (Sorry if this is too much - thought some folks might benefit from it) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

10. Start out with a huge list of what you'd like to do, then figure out what you can actually do. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

09. IF you like sleep, then it was hard. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

08. People bring their ideas to me, because I'm sort of known for this. It's a great position to be in. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

07. Thanks @shellen, that was great. Archive should be on ustream a little bit later. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

06. .@shellen Well, did you think it went as well as when they do it on Oprah? From our end we thought it went great. Thanks again. 41 minutes ago from TweetDeck

05. Archive of the ustream with @shellen is available at http://bit.ly/lIL5N - starts about 5 minutes into the recording. 37 minutes ago from TweetDeck

04. Check that. Ustream now allows you to "cut" your video so I'm able to position it so it starts playing right before he starts speaking. Nice 31 minutes ago from TweetDeck

03. Apologies to everyone if it [the massive number of tweets] was annoying. 30 minutes ago from TweetDeck

What Does This Business Center Tell Us?

We traveled to San Diego earlier this week and stayed in a Courtyard by Marriott (very nice, by the way, even though they are remodeling). While there were certainly some families staying there, it appeared as though the majority of guests were business travelers. I used the Business Center in the lobby to print some directions and our boarding passes, and I found their computer setup interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, they were running Thinix, a kiosk-style interface that runs on top of Windows XP.

Second, and most interesting to me, was how they had the kiosk interface configured. Here’s a picture of what the computer looks like when you walk up to it.


This is the main tab, and I find it very interesting what they chose to include here considering their primarily business clientele. Web browser, Chat (linked to Meebo), MySpace, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and the Weather Channel. Now, assuming they are attempting to meet the needs of their business travelers in the most efficient way possible, and assuming someone consciously thought this through, I find it significant that the main tab had mostly social resources, while the Office Apps tab was relegated to #2. But let’s look at the other tabs as well.

On the Office tab, here’s what it looks like:


The word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps are all ThinkFree Office apps, then they have some remote connection apps and a calculator. So, while this was still running on top of Windows XP, it’s interesting that they don’t feel compelled to offer MS Office for their business customers.

The games tab isn’t all that interesting (other than that they have it at all):


But moving on to the Bookmarks tab we see once again what Marriott apparently thinks their business guests are most likely to want to access:


Here’s the Media tab:


Again, interesting choices – YouTube, Hulu, Pandora, Flickr, then the three networks formerly known as the “major networks.”

So, what does this Business Center tell us - what’s the takeaway from this? Perhaps nothing profound, but perhaps another indication of the shifts that are occurring in all areas, including the traveling business world: from desktop to desktop/cloud combination, from private to social, and from proprietary to open source.

So, I’m curious. At your school, what direction are you going (are you shifting the same direction?), and what page do your computers/browsers open up to?

If you’re curious, at my school browsers start up to a locally hosted version of this page. This is the external version that our eeePC’s (37 currently, but hoping to add to that) that connect wirelessly start up with, since they are not connecting directly to our domain, but instead are using the open side of our wireless network that any student device can connect to.

I Just Want to Say One Word to You: Collaboration.

With apologies to The Graduate . . .

Mr. Chambers: I just want to say one word to you – just one word.
Me: Yes sir.
Mr. Chambers: Are you listening?
Me: Yes I am.
Mr. Chambers: Collaboration.
Me: How do you mean?
Mr. Chambers: There’s a great future in collaboration. Blog about it. Will you blog about it?
Me: Yes I will.
Mr. Chambers: Shh! Enough said. That’s a deal.

The December/January issue of Fast Company has an interesting article on Cisco and its CEO John Chambers. Here are some lengthy excerpts (emphasis added by me).

He has been taking Cisco through a massive, radical, often bumpy reorganization. The goal is to spread the company’s leadership and decision making far wider than any big company has attempted before, to working groups that currently involve 500 executives. This move, Chambers says, reflects a new philosophy about how business can best work in a networked world. “In 2001, we were like most high-tech companies, with one or two primary products that were really important to us,” he explains. “All decisions came to the top 10 people in the company, and we drove things back down from there.” Today, a network of councils and boards empowered to launch new businesses, plus an evolving set of Web 2.0 gizmos – not to mention a new financial incentive system – encourage executives to work together like never before. Pull back the tent flaps and Cisco citizens are blogging, vlogging, and vitualizing, using social-networking tools that they’ve made themselves and that, in many cases, far exceed the capabilities of the commercially available wikis, YouTubes, and Facebooks created by the kids up the road in Palo Alto.

The bumpy part – and the eye-opener – is that the leaders of business units formerly competing for power and resources now share responsibility for one another’s success. What used to be “me” is now “we.”

Cisco is moving from “me” to “we.” What about your district? Your school? Your classroom?

An avowed Republican (and a cochair of John McCain’s presidential campaign), Chambers politely ignored my observation that Cisco’s new regimen feels a bit like a socialist revolution. But Chambers did kick off the analyst conference with a slide that read, COLLABORATION: “CO-LABOR”; WORKING TOWARD A COMMON GOAL. In language and spirit, Chamber’s transformation is a mashup of radical isms and collectivist catchphrases. Of course, with analysts suggesting that the “collaboration marketplace” could be a $34 billion opportunity, it’s radicalism of a reassuringly capitalist bent.

Cisco is emphasizing working toward a common goal and developing the collaboration marketplace. In your last staff meeting did you discuss a collaboration learning-place, or did you discuss moving borderline students up to the next cut score?

Trust and openness are words you hear a lot in the endlessly optimistic world of Web 2.0, but at Cisco, it seems to be more than a PowerPoint mantra, even to my jaundiced eye. As Mitchell and I settle down to our conversation in an open space not 25 feet from Chamber’s office, I can hear the CEO chatting on the phone with customers. Mitchell, who is charged with encouraging the company’s rank and file to adopt new technology, is undistracted. “We want a culture where it is unacceptable not to share what you know,” he says.

Cisco wants its employees to share. And share some more. It’s unacceptable not to. How much opportunity do you give your staff to share? Your students? Is it an expectation that they share? Or are they punished if they share?

So he promotes all kinds of social networking at Cisco: You can write a blog, upload a video, and tag your myriad strengths in the Facebook-style internal directory. “Everybody is an author now,” he laughs. Blog posts are voted up based on their helpfulness. There are blogs about blogging and classes about holding classes – all gauged to make it easy for less-engaged employees to get with the program.

Cisco provides resources and training opportunities so that less-engaged employees can “get with the program.” What is your school – or district – providing?

So that Facebook-style directory at Cisco serves not just as a way to make lunch plans or find a second baseman for a softball game. It is a real-world, real-time sorting apparatus, designed to help anyone inside the company easily find the answer to a question, a product demo, or precisely the right warm body to speak to a waiting customer or present at a conference – in any language, anywhere around the globe.

Sounds a lot like what GE is doing, as I blogged about previously. So GE and Cisco are embracing social networking, is your school? Are you?

Most of the videos are short product reports, sales ideas, and engineering updates, all created deskside and published directly to the network with the click of a mouse. No filter, no lawyers. It is a petri dish for ideas and exchange.

Cisco is open, no filters, no lawyers, in order to foster the creation and exchange of ideas. Compare that to your school. How open is your school? Your classroom?

“Collaboration this way helps a world community solve big problems,” says vice president Jim Grubb, Chamber’s longtime product-demo sidekick. “If we can accelerate the productivity of scientists who are working on the next solar technology because we’re hooking them together, we’re doing a great thing for the world.”

Cisco believes that seamlessly connecting people to others fosters innovation, problem solving, and productivity. What have you done to foster seamless connectivity for your teachers? Your students?

Executives are now compensated on how well the collective businesses perform, not their own individual product units. (Playing well with others is also an increasingly important part of rank-and-file employees’ performance reviews.) . . . Without buy-in or even permission from Chambers, they brought in 15 people with relevant skills – turning down an invitation to collaborate is not an option – and built a product called StadiumVision . . . A multimillion-dollar business came together in less than 120 days.

Cisco believes in empowering their employees and measuring their performance at least partially based on their collaborative abilities, and refusing to collaborate is not an option. What portion of your assessment program evaluates collaborative abilities?

---

So, if you’re an administrator, what are you doing to foster collaboration among your staff, and especially your teachers? And I’m talking more than just PLC’s, although that’s not a bad start. What are you really doing to fundamentally change the structure of your school(s) from one of isolation (close the door and teach), to one of sharing and collaboration (knock down the walls)? Is it unacceptable to share in your institution?

If you’re a teacher, what are you doing to foster collaboration among your students? And I’m talking more than putting them into groups of four and having the students create a PowerPoint presentation together. What are you really doing to fundamentally change the structure of your classroom from one of isolation (do your own work), to one of collaboration (work with others)? What are you doing to build their skills to succeed in a corporate environment that requires them to collaborate on a global scale?

If you're a student, what are you doing to improve your own collaboration skills - and those of your peers? What are you demanding of your schools, your teachers, your administrators to help prepare you for the collaborative marketplace that is your future?

Mr. Chambers: Are you listening?
You: ?

GE, Social Networking, and Collaboration

Just a quick post to point out an article in the 7-21-08 issue of Fortune Magazine (not online yet). It has an interview with Gary Reiner, CIO of General Electric, and there were two quotes that I thought were particularly interesting.

We’ve gone out of our way to call it professional networking rather than social networking. We’ve been building a professional networking capability that allows everybody to put in the organization directory the skills that they bring to bear. It’s very searchable, so if someone is looking for a particular skill, they can go to that site. That gets about 25 million hits a day so it really is becoming sort of a heartbeat of the company. (p. 78)

I found that quote interesting for two reasons. First, it seems obvious that whether you call it social networking or professional networking, this is a skill and a habit of mind our students are going to need in their professional futures. I think it’s going to be harder and harder for schools to simply block all access to anything that smacks of social networking, both for the educational uses and the preparation for its use in students’ future careers.

Second, I found it interesting in light of some of the ideas in Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. I’m just starting to re-read it and digest it more thoroughly, but I wonder about the capacity we all now have to create similar professional networks without the necessity of the organization. GE is using this to tap into the skills and potential of all its employees, but that doesn’t depend on GE being in the equation anymore. Individuals (or even software algorithms) can now make those connections without the overhead of the institutional dilemma.

The second quote that intrigued me was this one.

Over the next five years there will be distinct change in the man-machine interface. We’ve all grown up with keyboards and mice, but I’d be surprised if five years from now we didn’t all interact with our computers via multitouch gestures . . .

Another big change is going to be OLED, organic light-emitting diodes, which are extremely thin screens that will start out as TV’s but will quickly become available as computers. They have better resolution than either LCD or plasma, and they’re so thin that you’ll be able to roll them up or fold them up and carry them. This will happen within the next five or six years: You’ll be carrying around the screen, you roll it out, and it’s got multitouch capability, and that’s all you’ll need.

Something that has already grown dramatically but will continue to grow even more and ultimately become core to enterprises, as well as consumers, is what’s known as cloud computing – having all the applications centrally located. If you ask what percent of the documents you create are just for you, it’s almost zero. Almost every document you create is for collaboration in one way, shape, or form. So why not start by building it on the web and providing permissions to people that you expect to view it and edit it and leverage it? (p. 78)

That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone who should know what they’re talking about go on record that multitouch and roll-out OLED screens will be mainstream in only five to six years. If accurate, that has a host of implications for what schools are doing now and will have a tremendous impact before any student currently in elementary school graduates from high school.

The emphasis on web-based applications and collaboration is not surprising to me, but I guess it’s surprising that he’s so open and forthright about it. It’s a given for him, and therefore for GE, so that also has many implications for schools – and, again, our filtering policies. If arguably the most successful company on the planet thinks that everything they create is for collaboration in one way, shape or form, why is it still so difficult for schools to incorporate that into our thinking (and policies)?

How Should Colleges Assess and Improve Student Learning?

First, a few caveats.

1. I don’t believe that all we’re about in education is preparing future employees.


2. Just because Business says something is good doesn’t necessarily make it so.


3. I don’t know enough about the methodology of this survey to judge bias.

Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I found How Should Colleges Assess and Improve Student Learning? (pdf) rather interesting:

From November 8 to December 12, 2007, Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc., interviewed 301 employers whose companies have at least 25 employees and report that 25% or more of their new hires hold at least a bachelor’s degree from a four-year college. Respondents are executives at their companies, including owners, CEOs, presidents, C-suite level executives, and vice presidents.

So they polled these executives about the quality of college graduates and what they’d like to change, particularly in the area of assessment. Here are a few excerpts:

Employers are satisfied that the majority of college graduates who apply for positions at their companies possess a range of skills that prepare them for success in entry-level positions, but they are notably less confident that graduates are prepared for advancement or promotion. While recent graduates are seen to demonstrate solid skills in the areas of teamwork, ethical judgment, and intercultural skills, employers are less convinced of their preparedness in terms of global knowledge, self-direction, and writing.

When it comes to the assessment practices that employers trust to indicate a graduate’s level of knowledge and potential to succeed in the job world, employers dismiss tests of general content knowledge in favor of assessments of real-world and applied-learning approaches. Multiple-choice tests specifically are seen as ineffective. On the other hand, assessments that employers hold in high regard include evaluations of supervised internships, community-based projects, and comprehensive senior projects.

Employers’ emphasis on integrative, applied learning is reflected in their recommendations to colleges and universities about how to assess student learning in college. Again, multiple-choice testing ranks lowest among the options presented, just below an institutional score that shows how a college compares to other colleges in advancing critical thinking skills. Faculty evaluated internships and community-learning experiences emerge on top. Employers also endorse individual student essay tests, electronic portfolios of student work, and comprehensive senior projects as valuable tools both for students to enhance their knowledge and develop important real-world skills, as well as for employers to evaluate graduates’ readiness for the workplace.

And, from the “Key Findings”:

. . . Most employers indicate that college transcripts are not particularly useful in helping evaluate job applicants’ potential to succeed at their company.

. . . Few employers believe that multiple-choice tests of general content knowledge are very effective in ensuring student achievement. Instead, employers have the most confidence in assessments that demonstrate graduates’ ability to apply their college learning to complex, real-world challenges, as well as projects or tests that integrate problem-solving, writing, and analytical reasoning skills.

. . . Employers deem both multiple-choice tests of general content knowledge and institutional assessments that show how colleges compare in advancing critical-thinking skills of limited value for evaluating applicants’ potential for success in the workplace. They anticipate that faculty-assessed internships, community-based projects, and senior projects would be the most useful in gauging graduates’ readiness for the workplace.

. . . When asked to advise colleges on how to develop their methods for assessing students’ learning, employers rank multiple-choice tests of students’ general content knowledge and institutional scores for colleges as conspicuously low priorities.

So, let me summarize (bias alert! bias alert!) via a single multiple choice question:

1. According to this report:

a. Grades are pretty much a non-factor in the hiring process.

b. Multiple choice tests are an unreliable predictor of success.

c. Employers are pretty much satisfied with the content knowledge of their employees and think assessments that cover content are relatively meaningless.

d. Employers want their employees to be more globally oriented, to take charge of their own job, and they must be able to communicate effectively through writing.

e. Employers prefer meaningful, relevant, experiential learning over an isolated, content-focused-only approach.

f. All of the above.

So, keeping those caveats I started with in mind, what does this mean for what we’re doing here at Arapahoe? Regular readers of this blog can probably predict what I would say about the ramifications of this in terms of the way we grade, what and how we teach, coverage of the curriculum, and how much of the responsibility for learning we put in the hands of students. But, just in case there was any doubt (and that the above wasn’t biased enough), let me add on to the choices above.

a. Since the primary way that many folks use grades appears to be superfluous, perhaps we need to take a hard look at the efficacy of grading in the first place, and perhaps switch to a focus on formative assessment versus “grades.”

b. Other than standardized test companies, politicians, and teachers who have a tight deadline to turn in final grades (see previous item), who’s really in favor of multiple choice tests? (Yes, I’ve ranted about this before somewhere, but I can’t find it at the moment.)

c. Content is necessary, but not sufficient, to be successful in the 21st century. So perhaps we should stop trying to “cover” the content, and instead focus on understanding the essential concepts and applying them in real world settings.

d. Constructivism. Blogs. RSS. Read/Write Web. Personal Learning Networks.

e. We need to take a hard look at our current system.

I’d love to hear your thoughts (especially AHS folks, but of course everyone is welcome to chime in) on what specific changes we might think about making. If you do comment, please try to not focus on the rant portion of the above, but on the results of the survey and on meaningful changes that will benefit our students.

What IT Wants

I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion at Regis University on Thursday night titled “Preparing the Next Generation of IT Workers: A Challenge to Business, Government and Education.” I was a little nervous about participating for several reasons. This is not something I’ve really done before and the other panelists were from Oracle, WTS, Regis, and Metro Denver WIRED, and it was sponsored by IBM. We had an opening presentation by Dean Tucker, author of The Challenge: Managing in the Information Age and the soon to be published book Using the Power of Purpose: How to overcome bureaucracy and achieve extraordinary success! - I wasn’t quite sure how well I fit in. And, since I agree about 97% with what Chris has said about our purpose (I try not to agree with anyone 100%, just to protect their reputation), I was a little worried I might get things thrown at me.

It turned out pretty well. Here are a few things I wrote down that these folks said. First, from Dean Tucker:

In talking about Gen X and Gen Y, they are in search of “continual learning opportunities”; and, you can’t make them drink the water, but all you have to do is explain to them why the water is important. [I’d say the same is true in education.]

A lot about flattened hierarchies in business; everyone equal and also everyone with equal responsibility. [Shouldn’t our students be given responsibility as well?]

That you need transparency and that everyone is an owner; that people closest to the situation make the best decisions. [Perhaps teachers and students, not just politicians?]

That the best way to maximize your company’s success in the long term is not to make profit the primary goal of the business, but to have a higher purpose. The most successful companies have profit way down the list of priorities. [Don’t make test scores - or preparing students for the workforce - the primary purpose of education.]

That you should believe the best about people, not the worst, and quotes the Nordstrom employee handbook: “Use your good judgment. There are no other rules.” [Reminds of some of my Internet filter posts.]

One slightly disconcerting note, however. After his presentation somebody asked where they could get his PowerPoint. “You can’t. I don’t do that.” It’s interesting how much that rubs me the wrong way. On the one hand I understand – he has a book coming out and probably paid speaking engagements, but still . . .

Then from the panel discussion (there was a lot more to write down, but since I was focusing on not making a fool of myself, it was hard to listen, speak, and write things down), here are the key things they want to see from students/future employees:

• Leadership.
• Teamwork.
• Critical Thinking.
• Self-Directed.
• Make mistakes, lots of mistakes, just make sure each one is original.

Sounds a lot like the business panel discussion we had back in June.

Then quite a few folks came up afterwards to talk with me. Now, this may be somewhat of a self-selected group because they chose to talk to me after hearing my viewpoint on things, but they pretty much agreed with what I had to say. Here are the highlights of what I said from the notes that I worked from (or at least tried to say, I think I got most of this out):

What does an ideal graduate from your school look like?

• Passionate about learning.
• Self-directed, motivated.
• Curious.
• Creative.
• Global perspective. De-centered – focus on others.
• Tech enabled.
• Has their own Personal Learning Network and is actively nurturing it.
• Understands that working on problems that haven’t been solved is what real people do, not following step by step procedures. Be problem solvers. Also problem finders.
• Able to be given a “big picture” overview of an assignment and go for it without a lot of direction.
• Collaborative.
• Learn how to learn.
• Don’t stop at the first right answer.
• Producers, not just consumers.

How do high schools and colleges ensure your curricula meet the needs of business?

We don’t, we meet the needs of kids. But if we truly do that, we will meet the needs of business. So if you’re talking about STEM as an example, we make math and science interesting and engaging, kids really doing math and science not just learning about others doing it. Kids doing meaningful, relevant, engaging, significant work that makes a contribution, then we’ll have kids that will be able to meet the demands of business.

What are your institutions doing to increase the pipeline of IT students?

Again, we’re not. Not directly. We’re doing our best to prepare students to be successful learners, citizens and human beings in the 21st century. If we do that, they’ll be plenty of folks to choose from in IT.

What does education need to help us with this?

• Time. Time for staff development, collaboration, learning. Less focus on testing and more focus on learning/thinking/doing.
• More on-going, sustained interaction with folks from IT, not just career day (although that’s good, too), but working week after week, month after month, year after year with teachers and students in classrooms (and bringing teachers/students to the work site to do meaningful things).
• Show students the creative, purposeful side of IT. Don't necessarily focus on the tech, focus on what you can accomplish with the tech - what cool things can you do, interesting problems that you can help solve for people.

There was definitely an anti-testing (in its current form) sentiment among the folks that talked to me, much more of a focus on meeting the needs of kids. But, again, this was the ten or so people out of about forty-five that came up to me, so I don’t want to read too much into that.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t pass along this message – they are desperate for IT workers. They say they have thousands and thousands of unfilled job openings in Colorado, and hundreds of thousands across the U.S. And that it’s only going to get worse with a wave of boomer retirements. They said the portrayal of dot com bust and outsourcing is killing them, and they want parents and students to know that there are plenty of good IT jobs available. And that IT jobs are not just sitting and coding (although there is some of that), but that it can be very people oriented, very creative. In fact, they phrased it as, “Think of IT workers as being creators, not mechanics.”

All in all, an interesting experience. Thanks to Regis for hosting it and inviting me to participate.

21st Century Business Panel

The teachers in my staff development had the opportunity to participate in a conversation with eight leaders from the business world last Thursday. Throughout our discussions over the last few years, one of our worries has been whether some of the changes we have been talking about might actually do a disservice to our students (either short term or long term) in terms of them being successful at the college level or in the world of work. In other words, what if we’re really, really wrong?

Now, before I go on, let me state clearly that I don’t believe that all we are about in education is preparing future employees. I want our students to be successful human beings – successful in their personal lives, successful in their work, successful citizens in the 21st century. To be both personally and professionally productive, to be a contributor to their communities and the world, and – yes – to be happy. But I do certainly think that part of that is helping prepare them to be successful in the world of work, so we thought having a conversation with some folks from the business world – getting their perspective on some of the ideas we’ve been talking about – would be very valuable.

As fate would have it, Kelly Dignan is an entrepreneur who was doing some volunteer work through Junior Achievement in one of our Business classes. She also stumbled across The Fischbowl and realized that I was talking about the school she was volunteering in. She wrote a nice email about the blog and then made the mistake of closing with "If there’s ever anything I can do for you . . ." I wrote back and pitched the idea of getting some of her colleagues/contacts together to speak with the teachers in our staff development about what they felt students needed to be successful in the 21st century. She thought it was a great idea and ran with it.

In addition to forty-four or so of the teachers in our staff development, we had our district Director of Career and Technical Education, our district CIO, our Superintendent, and four of our five school board members. (Umm, yeah, I was a little nervous.) Now, it turns out Kelly knows a lot of folks in a variety of industries, and she assembled the following panel for us:

Pete Dignan – President of ProtoTest.

Carla Donelson – Former Vice President & General Counsel of Verio.

Vicki Scharnhorst - Chief Operating Officer of MWH Federal Services.

Karyn German – VP of Product Development and Support at NewsGator. (Karyn couldn’t make it, but submitted written responses.)

De McQueen – Colorado Business Bank.

Chris Onan - Managing Director with Appian Ventures.

Nancy Sauer – President of D2Xchange.

Chris Scherpenseel – Former President and GM, FRx Software Corporation.

Moderator: Kelly Dignan – Director of Pursue U.

We then provided the panel with some hastily composed guiding questions that they could be thinking about before they came.

1. What skills/abilities do you feel students need to have to be successful in the 21st century as employees?
   
   
2. What skills/abilities do students need to have to be successful citizens in a globally-interconnected world?
   
   
3. Looking at the students you currently see entering the workforce, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses?
   
   
4. There is a lot of discussion in K-12 education about the importance of content knowledge (knowing a lot of “stuff” about math, science, social studies, language arts, etc.) versus the importance of learning skills and students being able to construct their own understanding of material/ideas that are new to them (being able to “learn how to learn”). What are your thoughts regarding how much we should focus on content knowledge versus focusing on students’ ability to learn/adapt/grow?
   
   
5. There is also a lot of discussion in education on the tension between being successful as an individual and being successful as part of a group or team. We’d like to hear more about your thoughts regarding this.
   
   
6. Tell us a little bit about any changes you foresee for the workplace in the next 5-15 years (and beyond). What do you think this means for students currently in high school and for K-12 education in general?
   
   
7. What types of technologies should our students be proficient at using?
   
   
8. What was the best learning/educational experience you have had? Why?
   
   
9. If you were going to design a 21st century high school from the ground up, what are three key features you would include? These features could be physical (building features), pedagogical (teaching techniques/approach), structural (curriculum, schedule, etc.), technological (specific tools/software/experiences), etc.
   
   
10. When we're done today, what's the one most important "take-away" message you'd like our teachers to hear?

While we knew we wouldn’t be able to get through all these questions in two hours, we wanted to give them an idea of the questions we were wondering about. As it turned out, we probably only talked about three or four of the questions, but that was because the conversation was so good. They started out talking, we asked some follow-up/clarifying questions, and they asked us some questions back. In other words, it turned into a conversation instead of a presentation (well, with 60 or so people it wasn’t quite a conversation, but it was still pretty good give and take). Here are some of the highlights (these are not direct quotes, but close - from my notes):

• A core value is to learn something from every situation.
  
  
• People must have a willingness to learn new ways of doing things, to study best practices, and to evolve their thinking – not to think that the way they’ve always done things is the only or best way.
  
  
• Both written and verbal communication skills are essential for everyone.
  
  
• Teamwork and collaboration are key. Everyone needs to be able to take a leadership role at the appropriate times, as well as be a contributor at the appropriate times.
  
  
• Acceptance of differences/diversity is important. Everything is global and folks need to work hard to understand different countries and cultures – as well as the cultures of other companies. Norms are very important.
  
  
• They need to have the ability to make a plan with very little guidance – there’s not a rubric for everything. They need to take the initiative and be producers.
  
  
• There is no one right answer – there are lots of answers, some are better than others – and critical thinking skills are paramount.
  
  
• Creative thinking and flexibility is key – they need to be problem solvers, not just memorizers and regurgitators.
  
  
• Having said that, a strong foundation in the basics is still necessary - but it’s necessary, not sufficient, to be successful in the 21st century. We need to ask them to do more – not more of the same, but more meaningful, purposeful, productive work.
  
  
• They need to de-center. They need to lose the sense of entitlement - “Ask not what your employer can do for you . . .” Also, community service is key. Understanding and taking an active role in helping others.
  
  
• All students should have a minor in leadership.
  
  
• All students should have lots of experience working in small groups to solve meaningful problems. They shouldn’t focus on the final answer, but how you get there. An inquiry approach, with students always looking ahead one step. Don’t just think about the current step as you’re making a decision, but what’s going to be next when you solve this problem. As you’re working on anything, come up with the next set of questions.
  
  
• Listening is essential.
  
  
• They need an awareness that they are part of a global economy – work can be done anywhere, ideas flow freely around the world instantly. Work will move to where it will be done most efficiently, and being able to use technology effectively is a big part of that.
  
  
• Technology and the Internet are everywhere – they should be everywhere for students.
  
  
• Students need to find their passion and learn all they can about it.
  
  
• Cross-training is also important – understanding all the roles in a company/organization/problem so that they have the big picture.
  
  
• Healthy competition is important, we all have to compete with companies around the world. But collaboration is more important, we need to work as a team within our company. They need to move from “I” to “we.” Everything is done as part of a team, both within a company and across companies working together on a particular project. Those that are only successful as individuals are not successful in any of their companies. [A follow-up question was – where can those individual folks be successful? Answer: Sales.]
  
  
• Students need more self-knowledge, to be reflective, and to know their own strengths and weaknesses. They should play to their strengths. Yes, they should try to overcome their weaknesses, but they should really leverage their strengths, find their passion.
  
  
• Parents have a responsibility to teach their kids respect and expose their children to lots of different and varied experiences – we need to pressure them to step up. [As you might imagine, the teachers agreed with this one. While I don’t disagree, the fact remains that we still need to meet the needs of the students we have – whether their parents have “stepped up” or not.]
  
  
• We need to focus on life skills for students, on creating an environment where students can do their best work. Students need to learn by doing – applied learning, internships.
  
  
• There’s a world of ideas out there – you need to pursue them with passion.

I'm sure there were things I missed, but this is most of what I wrote down. While none of this was earth shattering or particularly surprising, it was good to hear that what they thought was necessary for our students to be successful in the 21st century pretty much matched up to what we think – and have been working on. The panelists were all very passionate not only about what they do, but about education and giving back. It was good to see how much they cared about education, and how much they appreciated our efforts.

Overall, it was a very worthwhile two hours. I, of course, would’ve loved for it to continue for about another five, but we did have small group and then large group discussion among our teachers afterward. They all found it informative and engaging, and the feedback from the panelists (and the school board members) was very positive as well. We will now be thinking about ways to bring some or all of these folks back again, to have further conversations with our teachers and hopefully to come into some classrooms and have conversations with our students as well. Ultimately, they are the ones that need to hear this the most.