Eric Qualman, a social media expert and founder of the blog socialnomics.net also developed this really compelling video appropriately titled “Social Media Revolution”. Qualman created the blog to accompany his widely successful book Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. Recently, I showed the video to a group of public-education professionals and they all made an interesting observation. ”The mere speed at which the information flashes by on the screen speaks volumes to how the current crop of 21st century learners deal with information.” I was especially encouraged when a principal from that same group remarked “Wouldn’t it be cool if we offered a high school class on socialnomics.” This is one of the many reasons why I’m such a huge advocate of public education.
Jun 10
16
The Future of Information Engagement
Throughout the modern study of creativity it has been argued that “creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum”. With that said–it could be argued that increased engagement with information (which is more than simply having access to information – i.e. having a book on a bookshelf vs. reading that book) positively correlates to increased creative capacity. In her 2009 presentation at TED: Ideas Worth Sharing, Pattie Maes (of the MIT Media Lab) demonstrates a device (primarily developed by Pranav Mistry) that could dramatically increase such engagement to information in a truly ubiquitous way.
May 10
20
What’s Your School’s Sentence
At the release of Daniel Pink’s new book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us , he also released this short video that introduces a major concept from the book. In the video, Pink encourages the viewer/reader to ask 2 questions. The first being: “What’s your sentence?”; and the second being “Was I better today than yesterday?”. While I fully support tools that help create intrinsic motivation, I feel that the second sentence presented in the video and again in the book, allows a person to dwell too much on the past. Therefore, I would support the modification of the second senctence to read like this: “In what ways might I be better tomorrow?”. In my opinion this allows you to focus on mutiple ways to improve yourself in the future (to think like a futurist…to make current decisions in light of future effects). That be said, I also think this tool has the power to be applied to entire organizations (not just a single person). For example: schools. Schools should continually define there motivation by asking “What’s OUR sentence?” as well as continually look into multiple possibilities for improving their future by asking “In what ways might WE be better tomorrow?”.
Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.
Apr 10
14
Learning Event Generator
The Learning Event Generator developed by John Davitt is truly a 21st Century Learning Tool. Not only is it perfectly relevant to this generation of learners but it’s perfect way for anyone to understand the power of the convergence of project-based-learning with that of digital technologies. This tool in particular is truly difficult to editorialize, you simply have to try for yourself. The online version can be implemented immediately by clicking here. However, if you have an iPhone and $2.99 you can get an even more relevant version of the tool, called the Random Activity Generator that was specifically designed as a mobile iPhone App.
Apr 10
14
Evaluating an Idea
There are a number of evaluation tools that can be used to evaluate an entire organization, a new process, or even a single idea. While many have heard of a SWOT Assessment, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A similar but less known affirmative evaluation tool is called PPCo. The first P stands for Pluses: What do you think of the idea? What are the strong points, the positive aspects? The second P stands for Potentials: What might be the future opportunities if this idea were to be implemented? What might be the unique aspects, the ripple effects? The C stands for Concerns: What are your concerns about the idea, the limitations, negative aspects? Each concern should be stated in the form of a problems statement using the following statement starter: “In what ways might….?”. And finally, the o stands for Overcoming the Concerns: At this point you would use the divergent thinking tool of Brainstorming to generate ideas for each of the problem statements/Concerns.