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Macrowikinomics: A book for those with short attention spans

Macrowikinomics Book CoverI attended a webinar on Discovery Education a few weeks ago which was essentially a promo for this book. Co-author Anthony D. Williams gave a 35-minute talk/slideshow laying out the scope of the book, and then fielded a few questions from the audience. I got a chance to answer a couple of questions:

“How can we enact change in the classroom if we don’t have the funds for the technology?”
He answered that it is definitely a political priority, and funding from the private sector is essential. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckrberg start buying tablets for classrooms!

“How long is it going to take for change to happen in education?”
He said that it will take a whole generation of people to enact the change, and it’s up to the 25-30 year olds to make it happen. We’re the first people to enter the workforce with at least 50% of our lives spent immersed in the Internet.

The Age of Networked Intelligence: It’s (sort of) Happening at my University

This was the first time I’d ever interacted with an author in such a manner before, and it made me realize how we really are entering into an age of networked intelligence, whether we like it or not. The companies and institutions who react and shift their ways of thinking from the relic of the Industrial age model will be the ones to succeed. It’s great to see that UBC is taking the step of encouraging the use of open-source blogging software. I think it’s a step in the right direction at least.

I gave a quick Prezi to my class at UBC about the nature of the webinar, and then we talked about how some of the principles might apply to education. In class we talked about the greatness (and pitfalls) of Wikipedia, and how it represents the true power of crowdsourcing, and a couple of newer sites such as Wolfram Alpha and Curriki.org.

Seeing as UBC is pushing us to keep a blog (using WordPress) during our year in the education program, I thought I’d keep a blog going about this book as I read it. Taking a few notes and jotting down major ideas is a good way for me to keep track of what I’m reading.

A book for those who say they can’t read books

I find it interesting to note how the book is broken down into fairly short subsections. My guess is that Tapscott and Williams are writing with digital natives in mind. They know that people are reading online more often than they read hard copy books, and online reading involves much shorter pieces of text at a time. By structuring their book in this way, they’re making it easier to read. Rarely will you read more than two or three pages without coming to a new heading or sub-heading.

To further reach the digital natives, Macrowikinomics is being presented in 12 parts on the Huffington Post. The first article is called Rebooting the Economy. I think that posting a summarized version of the book, in online newspaper form, is a really cool idea, and is spreading the message about the reboot required to change our ways of thinking.

I feel like I have a lot to say about this book and one single post for a review wouldn’t be fair, so I’m going to split it up into sections.

How to Use Prezi

Prezi is an online program that allows you to make quick, clean presentations with a variety of transitions and possibilities not seen in Powerpoint. A prezi is basically a big blank digital white board where you can post text, images, and even video clips, and then program a ‘camera’ to pan around the whiteboard, zooming and rotating at defined positions for emphasis. This video explains the basics pretty well:

There is a learning curve with Prezi, but it’s relatively painless. Once you learn the basics and have practiced a bit, you should be able to make a simple Prezi in less than 10 minutes.

Some things to keep in mind:

  • Plan your Prezi. Have a general idea of what information you want to include and how your path will look.
  • The Transformation Zebra (the blue circular thing) is extremely useful. If you click the center, it lets you move your object, if you click the second ring, it changes the size of the object, and if you click the outer ring, it lets you rotate your object.
  • Use the Write tool for most cases, when scrolling around your Prezi and creating new content. If you are on Path or Show when you just want to edit, you will get frustrated.
  • Keep it simple. Don’t add really large images. Prezi is web-based, and it will start to act strange if it gets too big.
  • YouTube videos can be embedded directly into the Prezi by simply pasting the YouTube link into the text box. As far as I know, they are limited to 360p resolution.

UBC eFolio FAQ

So you have a CWL account and you’re wondering what this eFolio thing is.

How do I get started?

UBC has already set up a very good intro tutorial here.

Why do I have to do this?

The intention of the eFolio is to have you collect ‘artifacts’ and then reflect on them, linking them to eight already defined standards, as determined by the BCTF. The reflections you write demonstrate that what you have learned over the course of the year, and how you’ve grown as an educator.

Secondly, it’s increasingly important in our digital world to be able to use technology such as WordPress’ open-source blogging software. We need to speak in the language of our students, and our students are online. Being able to make a simple blog for posting and collecting homework is becoming an essential skill, and can set you apart from other teachers.

Thirdly, consider this your eResume. The first thing hiring managers do when they receive a resume is Google your name. What do you want them to find?

What is WordPress?

WordPress started as a blogging platform, but has evolved to become a viable Content Management System (CMS). It is very user friendly, and allows you to create web pages, upload media, and write blog posts. Its software is open-source, which means it is completely free.

What do I use posts for?

A post is like a blog post. This is where you will make posts with your Artifacts and Reflections. An example blog post might be called “The Day I Taught My Students Trigonometry”. You could upload a picture of a student doing his or her trigonometry activity (the picture would count as your Artifact) and then you would write your Reflection in the text editor. You need to figure out which Category/Standard to connect your reflection to.

What do I use pages for?

You won’t need to make too many pages, unless you really want to. You could probably get by with just one page, the About Me page. Remember that pages are static, and stay the same unless you edit them directly in the Edit Page area. You cannot select Categories for Pages.

How do I get marked for this?

By the end of the year, you should have a minimum of 8 Artifacts and Reflections, one for each standard/category. Ideally, you would have around 20, and then select your favourite/best ones. You choose your favourite posts by creating Post Tags. Tag a post with the word ‘audit’ to specify that you want it to be marked. Be careful of capitalization. it’s ‘audit’, not ‘Audit’ or ‘AUDIT’.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is written by Jeff Howe, a contributing editor to Wired magazine, where he covers the entertainment and technology industries. He discusses the rise of a number of remarkable websites which seemingly broke the rules of business. How did they do it? They utilized the power of the crowd.

Jeff Howe explains how the wisdom of crowds is nothing new, but it’s only recently that we have been able to utilize the collective power of the crowd, with the widespread use of the Internet. He has the book split into three parts: a past, present, and future of Crowdsourcing, entitled How We Got Here, Where We Are, and Where We’re Going.

Howe discusses the creation of Linux and the rise of open source software. He recounts the creation stories of websites like Threadless, iStockPhoto, Wikipedia and even CincyMoms, a site where moms located in the Cincinnati area can get their local news, share cooking tips, and rate restaurants. The site received over 50,000 visitors a day just weeks after its launch, and earned $270,000 in advertising revenue in its first three months of operation. He has countless examples of Crowdsourcing in action, ranging from the value of holding public programming contests to punk bands on Warped Tour who use MySpace to have their fans do the marketing for them.

This is a really insightful book and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who’s even remotely interested in computers, technology, business trends or the Internet.

Socialnomics

I just finished reading a book a few days ago called Socialnomics, by Eric Qualman. (I find it funny that his logical email or Twitter name shortens to equalman.) The book is about social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and to a lesser extent, Youtube, and how they are impacting the way we live and do business.

It’s a pretty interesting book, and Qualman brings up some pretty solid points about the social and economic effects of social media sites. He uses a lot of hypothetical stories, which to me come off as lazy. I feel like if he’d dug a little bit, he could have come up with real accounts of interesting people who have benefited from sites like Youtube and Facebook. Instead, we get News Site A vs Blog Site B, home to Jane the Blogger. Surely Qualman could have found a similar example that actually happened, done a bit of research, a couple of interviews, and then recounted the story. Maybe he felt he could better illustrate his points with picture-perfect hypothetical examples, but to me it just seems lazy. Speaking of lazy, I’m not going to spend my time doing research to find a case that would have worked, and will move on.

Despite the nitpicking, there are a lot of insights to be had here. Qualman equates Social media to braggadocian behaviour, which he argues is a positive thing for society as it allows us to take collective stock of our lives and to monitor the social lives of our friends and colleagues more efficiently than we have in the past. He has another chapter on the Obama campaign, and how he used social media sites such as Facebook in order to build a grassroots campaign. Did you know that one of the four founders of Facebook, Chris Hughes, worked on the Obama campaign? I bet he knew how to reach a lot of people on Facebook for a small amount of money…

Overall, it’s a pretty interesting book, but I have to wonder if it had an editor. I’m not claiming to be a grammar whiz or anything, but there are numerous places in the book where you just have to scratch your head and wonder how an editor could have missed not only the first and second confusions of your and you’re or it and its, but the third and fourth as well. I’m exaggerating, but that’s not to say it’s a prize winning piece of prose.

Grown Up Digital: The Net Generation as Learners

“Instead of focusing on the teacher, the education system should focus on the student.

Instead of lecturing, teachers should interact with students and help them discover for themselves.

Instead of isolating students, the schools should encourage them to collaborate.”

Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital, on the education system.

This book analyzes the Net Generation, those who have grown up with the Internet as a daily part of their lives. I just finished reading Chapter 5: The Net Generation as Learners, and it’s really interesting to me, as somebody who has been tutoring high school math and science for the past year and a half. There are a number of great quotes in this chapter, including this one from a college president named Jeffrey Bannister about the state of his professor’s technological advancements in the classroom:

“We’ve got a bunch of professors reading from handwritten notes, writing on blackboards, and the students are writing down what they say. This is a pre-Gutenberg model – the printing press is not even an important part of the learing paradigm. Wait til students who are 14 and have grown up learning on the Net hit the [college] classrooms – sparks are going to fly!”

Some of the kids who are in middle school right now have had daily access to the Internet since the day they were born (or could type). These students’ brains have developed in a digital world, and the way they function is different than a boomer, for example. Tapscott often compares Net Geners and boomers, and how differently they have grown up. Today’s student grows up with a Facebook profile, an iTunes account, Youtube and the instant answers of Google. A boomer grew up with the neighbourhood kids, Leave it to Beaver on one of four TV channels, and the daily newspaper. Things are different.

Tapscott calls for a shift from individual to collaborative learning, but notes that this is a tough approach to sell to traditionalists. He tells the story of Chris Avenir, a first-year engineering student at Toronto’s Ryerson University, who set up a Facebook group called Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry. The group gained 147 students as members, and shared tips on how to solve the assignments that were worth just 10% of their grade. When the teacher found out, he was outraged, and the school nearly expelled Chris, but due to protests, he was allowed to stay. He did get zero on his homework assignments though.

I think this story is ridiculous, and shows how far off some professors and/or schools are. We learn by working with each other, and in the real world, every test is open book and subject to collaboration. Why isolate people in this digital age of information? Let them collaborate on assignments. Is there really anything wrong with 147 students discussing a particular assignment? Would it be okay if they discussed it in person? Did the act of making the discussions public and in text form make it wrong?

This reminds me a lot of the story about Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, who had a similar incident during his university career at Harvard. As the story goes, Zuckerberg had an art history exam coming up, and because he had been so busy building a little website called Facebook, he had forgotten to go to class. So he did what any computer geek would do: he set up a website that contained all the pieces of art that would be covered on his exam. He left spaces for other students to leave comments, and in a few days, he had a website that was filled with comments and discussions about the pieces of art that would be on the upcoming exam. Zuckerberg studied the website and aced the test. When the professor found out, he was (according to Zuckerberg) “really pleased”, and also noted that the entire class did better than normal, perhaps due to the online collaboration.

I personally think that approaches such as Zuckerberg’s and Avenir’s are certainly the ways of the future in education, and it’s up to educators to not only accept, but also embrace and encourage the change.

What Would Google Do?

This book has inspired me to start posting on here again. I realized that when you’re writing in a blog, it doesn’t matter who’s reading. You’re writing it for yourself. If other people happen to like it, that’s great. If not? Oh, well.

By writing down my thoughts about a particular book, I am keeping a recollection of what the book meant to me.

In What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, the creator of Entertainment Weekly and the originator of the Dell sucks! blog which lead to the computer company’s near-death, goes inside the world of Google. He explains how the search giant has quickly become an advertising titan which controls the organization of information.  He explains the Google Rules, what Google would do if it ruled the world, and Generation G, home to a growing amount of people who are being influenced by Google in all aspects of life: how we think, act, shop, navigate and converse.

Gmail, Google Maps, and the almighty Google search. Where would you be without them?

I’m about half way through it right now, and am hooked so far. It’s really opening my eyes to a lot of niche markets, and I sort of see the book as a spirtitual successor to Chris Anderon’s The Long Tail, which explored the new demand curve and what it meant for the lower half of the curve:  the smaller market, less than blockbuster hits – the things you can only find on Amazon, eBay, or Youtube.

Because he is such a veteran of the entertainment journalism industry, he has countless stories to recount about lunches with former bosses at TV Guide, discussions with Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, and conference exchanges with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

This books brings up a number of interesting questions, such as:

– What did Facebook do so well that it became so popular? It established elegant organization to existing networks that already existed in your social lives.

– What can be done to save the failing book industry?

– How can Hollywood use the Google Rules to capitalize on a new era of consumers in a Long Tail marketplace?

The Long Tail

I am currently reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (the editor of Wired magazine). It’s about how nowadays, markets are not dominated by hits anymore. Instead, the less popular niche markets (the onesies and twosies) are adding up to create huge sources of revenue for companies like Apple (through iTunes), Amazon and even Google, with their advertising market. The Long Tail looks a little something like this:

The Long Tail Graph

It’s a pretty cool book so far, and is really making me think about how much the marketplace has changed in the past 10 years.

Fighting Terrorism With Books, Not Bombs

I was just watching CNN and their debate about Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. Coincidentally, I just finished a book that tells the story of a guy who was just nominated by US Congress for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Three Cups of Tea is the true story of Greg Mortenson, an American mountain climber who has built over 130 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the war-torn mountain terrain most commonly associated with the Taliban.

Mortenson keeps coming back to the idea that the path to peace is not one that can be accomplished overnight by simply sending in more troops. It’s a long term process that begins with education. As he says, “If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs.”

eReaders

Walking around during the Word on the Street festival in the Library Square, I couldn’t help but notice the marketing campaign going on for the Sony Reader. This is Sony’s eReader, their answer to Amazon’s Kindle.Sony_PRS-300

I am really curious to see if these things will take off. I have yet to see anyone using one on the bus or in a coffee shop. While it’s true that every new technology might seem a little strange at first, I have a very hard time picturing myself reading books on a small digital screen. Then again, I’m sure people resisted the switch to paper, claiming there was nothing wrong with their stone slabs and chisels.

Anyway, why buy an eReader that is limited to books, music and video? Why not simply buy a smart phone that can not only store books, pictures, and video, but also act as a phone and camera?

Perhaps I’m missing something, but to me it seems kind of pointless to have an electronic device whose sole purpose is to store e-books.