Nine Shift

Abandoning truly personal interaction

Psychotherapist Philip Chard believes "Technology pulls plug on social contact."

Writing in The MIlwaukee Journal-Sentinel earlier this month, he says:

"Increasingly, we are abandoning truly personal interaction in favor of terse data exhanges - - email, text messages, online chat, voice mail, etc.

"After millennia of person-to-person discourse, recently we have embraced the one-dimensional, dehumanized communication afforded by technology."

For our real life, personal reply to Dr. Chard, see Comments.

Refrigerate responsibly.

Gen Y is taking over our contemporary culture.
To see Gen Y language, values, and humor, just pick up a bottle of water.

Vitamin water to be exact. When I was cleaning out the car after Willie drove it, I found the copy on the bottle to be pure Gen Y:

enjoy cold. refrigerate responsibly.
the inside is natural. the outside is plastic.
vitamins + water = all you need
made from scratch for glaceau

formula 50
grape (50% daily dose)
50 cent's new album is bound to go platinum, so formula 50 decided to go platinum too. not to be outdone, we are happy to announce the release of our own album, "hydrate or die tryin". all we need is one little shout out at the MTV video music awards. suckaz be movin' out the way at them beverage conferences. plus, our drink has the nutrients you need to fuel you through your day. that's just how we roll here in queens.

Vocal attacks on kids more strident

Adults' vocal attacks on kids are becoming more strident.

As many adults continue to be clueless about the 21st century, they seem to be raising the decibel level in their vocal attacks on kids. The name calling, however, is unacceptable langauge when referring to our nation's children.  The latest examples:

* Craig Wilson, in an August 3 USA Today article, called our nation's youth "fools." That is particularly hurtful language.

* Derrick Baker, in an August 10 article, adds to the bad-mouthing rhetoric with:
"While today's youth have become increasingly and necessarily hardened to the harsh, me-first and unforgiving ways of the world, I still harbor a hankering for the days when overprotective parents allowed their children to grow up.  I am particularly vexed and flummoxed about what appears to be growing numbers of unable-to-cope kids..."

We need to be taking care of our nation's children, not calling them names.

The Magnificent Americans

The Magnificent Ambersons: "The immortal epic of the decline and fall of a powerful family too obsessed with the splendor of the past to grasp the significance of the future."

That's the cover blurb on Booth Tarkington's 1918 classic, The Magnificent Ambersons, deservedly named as one of the top 100 novels of the century.  Orson Welles made the movie in 1942.

Halfway through the book I couldn't help substituting "American nation" for "Amberson family." Try it with this paragraph from page 37:

"It was impossible to doubt that the Ambersons were entrenched, in their nobility and riches, behind polished and glittering barriers which were as solid as they were brilliant, and would last."

100 years later, there is more and more evidence that The Magnificent Americans are behaving as did The Magnificent Ambersons, with the same  results.

Upcoming Nine Shift keynotes

In North America? Come to New Orleans.
In the UK? Come to East Sussex.    Dates and places in the Comments section.

Doing business from a distance

William/Julie, reflecting on some of the issues you raise on your website, we found:

 

Intranet/Internet will replace physical offices - we are a 7 strong team based in a Wiltshire village in England, but can now reach Feline experts in 117 countries thanks to our newly designed website. We have gained an extra 15,000 visitors per month in the first 6 months of 2005.

 

New social infrastructures - instead of recruiting Members paying annual fees of $45, we introduced a new level of Friend, where the supporter chooses their own level of support depending on their ability to pay and pays monthly instead of annually. The majority of Friends recruited in 2005 choose to pay $5 a month, equal to $60 a year, with the highest contributor choosing to pay $100 a month, equal to $1200 a year.

 

Best wishes and good luck.

 

 

Steve Morton
Head of Fundraising and Marketing

 

The Feline Advisory Bureau (FAB)
Helping over 1 million cats a year - FAB knows about cats

 

Taeselbury, High Street
Tisbury,Wiltshire, SP3 6LD
Tel: 01747 871872
Mob: 07884 245002
Fax: 01747 871873

 

Teaching versus Learning

Enhancing teaching is not the same as improving learning.

That's what MIT's Michael Schrage told a distance education conference in Madison earlier this month.
It's an important new dilemna for educators to address.

Schrage says that "technology designed to enhance teaching is not the same as technology designed to enhance learning."

As we have taught a couple thousand faculty, we can vouch for the lack of teacher interest in helping students learn, understanding how we learn, and improving learning tools.  Unfortunately, it's more about one-way content-oriented delivery they call "Teaching."
Unfortunately, Schrage's message was overshadowed by his arrogance. More on that later.

Personalisation and choice key in 21st century

Rare for a keynoter to "blow me away."  Prof. Diana Laurillard did this month.

She is Head of the E-Learning Strategy Unit in the Department for Education and Skills in the United Kingdom. Prof. Laurillard keynoted the big national distance education conference in Madison this month. We hate the term 'distance education.' It's like 'horseless carriage.' but that's what they call it.

She called for "personalisation and choice" in education for the 21st century.
"We fail very large numbers of very talented students." Prof. Laurillard said, noting she meant "fail in both senses of the word."

"If we can't use technology to respond to personalisation and flexibility, then we shouldn't be using technology at all," she stated.  Citing the need to "connect with hard to reach groups," she noted that "technology is the very thing that can coax people back." 

And it can be done within both financial and time limits. "Technology is at its best when it achieves economy of scale."   She says to check this out for more info on the UK e-learning plans.

I asked Prof. Laurillard afterward if educators in the UK knew they were ahead of American educators, getting a polite reply, something about the UK being smaller and less federalized. But you can't expect UK educators to look back when they are running so far ahead of us. 

Sammie tries to enroll

Another true nightmare regarding American education.

Our foster son, Sammie, enrolls in Chippewa Valley Technical Institute in carpentry. He has a hard time getting a job because he is black, and Wisconsin has just been named the worst state in the country for African-Americans to live. 

He enrolls. Without a counselor, he doesn't know how to fill out the paperwork. "Permanent address" is a tough question for anyone, much less for 24 year olds who have had several addresses in the last few years. He gives his permanent address as his mother's address in Kansas. So while he has lived in Wisconsin for 6 years, the school slaps out-of-state tuition on him. The school then disenrolls him.

We call and email.  We get answering machines saying no one can answer the phone about registration because the school is in the middle of registration (let me know if that makes sense to you).  The main phone number on the web site is actually for disabled students only, the woman answering the phone says.  The phone hours are 7-7, but no one answers at 6:30 pm. People we talk to are in five different cities, only they don't ask what city we are in, or tell us what city they are in (e.g. "Just come down to the office. We're open another 10 minutes.")  Mostly the staff tell us it's not their job, and we have to understand their job and bureaucracy, and.......

Being educators, knowing how to use email, and knowing how to make a fuss, we get Sammie "reinstated."  There's thousands of other kids who aren't so lucky.

1. Society needs to get more people IN education, not turn them away. (Especially African-Americans)
2. Every student should have a counselor, an advocate, a helper, someone to call instead of a number to call.  Check out the confusion on their web site.

No need for the First Amendment

Julie blew me away, again.

This time we were walking down a path in the woods, discussing podcasting and Valerie Plame and journalism, when she said we may not need the First Amendment anymore.

With the Internet, people in all countries can gain access to freedom of speech and information.
Interestingly, Microsoft is testing that theory by working with China to delete such words as "democracy" and "freedom" from the Internet in China.  We'll see who succeeds.