Lives and loves of others

My reading of late has been by or about Alice Steinbach, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Harry Gordon Selfridge, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. And as I read, time collapses, bends, folds in on itself.  I am reminded of the predictable cycles (crises, some might say) through which all must navigate, as well as the transitory nature of life that seems long only for the first three decades or so.  After that, the speed with which we realize life's realities is matched or exceeded only by the speed of life itself. 

The changes and twists in our own lives are part of why we read about the lives of others.  To remind ourselves, perhaps, that we are not so different from others.  And to mine the short life of another (regardless of how long in years) for the wisdom to transform our own.  Life is a funny thing, understood by many of us far better at a distance or in the rear view mirror.

One of the things I fail to remember with any consistency is that nature--specifically the collaboration of gardener and garden to learn and honor the seasons--is where I find respite. Steinbach researched, wrote and traveled. Millay wrote and lived her poetry. Selfridge created the luxury experience we know today as shopping.  And Jackie Kennedy Onassis? She remained true through several recreations of self to her belief that "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much."

And as a reminder of the speed of change, photos from my garden. Yesterday and today. Twenty-four hours. My role as a gardener is to collaborate rather than control, to enjoy the beauty in the moment, and to remember my relatively small role.  This, perhaps, is the best reason to read about the lives and loves of others.

"Just a reminder"

"Reader will not be available after July 1, 2013. Please be sure to back up your data." 

This is the message reminding me that Google Reader is going away. Did I mention that I am not happy about the demise of Google Reader? I think I did. And I may have written about my fondness for Reader. On more than one occasion.

I have been diligent in my research for a replacement for Reader. I have downloaded my data from Reader. And I have selected and downloaded a "replacement" (which is so far from adequate as to be undeserving of recognition by name) to Reader. I have also come to the sad conclusion that there is not an adequate substitute for the Reader I have made a part of my morning routine.

And so I find myself teaching a course this semester in organizational change, talking about the reasons why people resist change, encouraging students to remember that a compelling vision plus WIFM (what's in it for me?) will appeal to the early adopters and the early majority...and I confess to a wee bit of hypocrisy. I am futilely resisting the inevitability of this particular change. And should any of my students wonder about my humanity, this is just a reminder.

The siren song of sunk costs

What we've already invested can keep us trapped, even when we know the textbook definition of sunk costs.  An education system that prizes achievement (success, perhaps) over learning may be a contributing factor, though no small part is the lifelong dialectic of permanence versus change.  

Years ago, while consulting with an oil and gas company of globally recognized name, I asked about a process that did not seem to work well.  The response I received from a successful middle manager was, essentially, this:  "Yes, it is flawed and we know it doesn't work well.  But we're comfortable with it and have no plans to change it, because we can implement this process quickly."

Using a flawed, but speedy process makes absolutely no sense.  And yet, it's what many of us do multiple times each day.  We keep doing something the way we know, rather than the best or better way, because we have so much invested; the sunk costs (whether financial or emotional) keep us from thinking clearly and charting a course to what would work far better.

This is one of many places in life and in work where the risk of failure is high--not because we've already failed, but because we refuse to ignore the siren song that lures us to stay where we are and feed the sunk costs.  If failure is inevitable in a life of exploration and learning, perhaps we need traveling companions who do not allow us to succumb to the sirens.

Pretty sure there's an "I" in irrational

So, it's official.  The Google Reader I've come to trust as a daily companion is going away. And the problem with trying something that "never caught on as a mainstream customer experience" is that I liked it.  A lot. And now I have to change. I'm a big proponent of change. But not this change.

Part of what makes change and innovation (which are, essentially, synonymous) so interesting is the emotional attachments we make to the way things are, unless we are the one wanting the change.  Allow me to become disenchanted with my RSS reader and choose another one?  Great.  Shut down the RSS reader I like and make me choose another one?  Not great at all.

The humor here is that the outcome is exactly the same.  I get to experiment with ways of aggregating the things I like to read...to play with technology...to try something new.  And I'm irrationally unhappy about it, mostly because the timing was not of my choosing.

The biggest obstacle to successful change is active resistance, sometimes for very good reasons.  When we can do something faster or better the way we do it now (as opposed to the better, faster new way), it's extremely difficult to make near-term choices we do not like or want for the promise of longer-term improvement.  Its' why most of us don't change bad habits we know we need to change.

Never let it be said that people who understand change and the importance of change to both learning and innovation are more rational than anyone else when on the receiving end of a change we do not want.

I'm going  to miss that reader.

You don't have to like it

There's a lot being written (and read) about education, technology, and change.   When you brush aside the details and posturing, most of what is being written is about how technology is changing education in ways that we won't be able to undo any time soon.  And when I think about the changes, I think about a Jerry Lewis movie from 1960.

Cinderfella is not a particularly good movie taken as whole cloth, but it has some delightful pieces.  One of those is Count Basie's music and Count Basie himself.  Another is Jerry Lewis' humor, including the physicality rarely seen in comedy today.  And the reason I think of this movie when I think about changes in education is where Basie's music and Lewis' comedy meet.

Near the end of the movie, Jerry Lewis dances with Anna Maria Alberghetti.  If you've never seen the movie (which is highly likely), it will suffice to say that the dance is that romantic moment in a romantic comedy when the magic happens. Dancing to The Count Basie Orchestra directed by Count Basie (you actually get to see the Count and his orchestra), there is a moment when Lewis brings Alberghetti to a standstill, carefully arranges a fold in her lovely gown just so, motions for her to stand where she is, then dances an exuberant and absurdly comic jig around her.  Twice.  And THAT is the moment that captures what is happening in education.

The force and magnitude of the changes being wrought in education are of the size and scale of both the printing press and the technology that has all but replaced the printing industry.  And, much as we may love the status quo, expecting it to stay the way it is while we dance our respective jigs around it is about as silly as the comedy for which Jerry Lewis is known.

The changes are already happening.  And whether we like them or not is less relevant than whether we will be active participants or passive resisters.  I'll let you in on a little secret here:  I'm not a big fan of sweeping change, especially when I like something just the way it is.  But I like even less having the change(s) decided and imposed by others.

I'm learning new dance steps and finding new partners.

Cycles and seasons

Change is the only constant and yet we often resist it with everything in us.  When we have a perfect moment, we want to hold onto it...to realize later, as T.S. Eliot wrote in The Dry Salvages, "we had the experience but missed the meaning."

The changing seasons are, perhaps, the best reminder for me that all things change.  Though I have my preferences regarding weather and seasons, I will admit (in my more honest moments) that I appreciate the beauty of the cycle and the reminder of my relative importance within it.

When semesters end, elected officials change (or don't), or milestones arrive, change looms large.  So do our natural tendencies to resist.

Dreaming in class

I wish I could take credit for it, but I think I just blundered into it.  Regardless of the genesis, what's happening in the classroom is the stuff that dreams are made of.*

The week before classes started, the new president of our state university system presented to our faculty his call for innovation**--specifically, in the form of on-line education within our state's higher-education system--and the virtual dominoes snapped into place:  What better illustration of the concepts and challenges of innovation, creativity, and change than one issued to the system in which students find themselves? Suddenly, having 11 graduate students from multiple colleges in an elective course on Innovation and Creativity appeared as the gift it is and the course was adjusted to incorporate a semester-long project revolving around online education.

So far:

• Students are applying concepts, theories, and models to a system they understand.
• We're all learning about the state around us (literally and figuratively).
• Business decisions about innovation are more easily understood or, at the very least, more easily discussed.
• Pre-conceived ideas (mostly negative) about online education are being replaced by facts obtained through research.
• Faculty from other colleges are lending support to the students in my class.
• Technology and instructional design colleagues are also lending support to the class.
• The faculty and staff who visit the classroom and/or read the material being gathered and posted on Blackboard are excited about the process.
• We are using tools and technologies seamlessly, both as tools and as research topics.
• I look forward to class.

One goal for the semester is to develop a sample of what quality online education, incorporating best practices and using the tools available.  The class has selected the subject matter and a sub-group is focusing on development of the actual product.  

Another goal is to create and deliver a presentation about our design process, the questions raised, and the students' recommendations.  My goal?  To fill the auditorium (literally and through technology) with faculty and staff.  To include others in the dream. To see where this leads. To wake and find at least some part of the dream.

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* Though I've used Carly Simon's lyrics, credit is also due to Shakespeare.  

**The text of the presentation is here, with a link to watch.


Related Ramblings:

1. Stay tuned for Dr. Seuss
2. Accounts receivable or accounts paid?

Whining trumps change far too often

My patron saint may very well be Our Lady of Perpetual Planning.  I adjust, update, edit, tweak and otherwise "improve" my course materials (syllabus, course calendar, daily plans, teaching notes, resources...pretty much everything) before every semester and right up to the day before classes start.  Classes start tomorrow, so you can pretty well guess what I'm doing.

Incorporating change into our lives is hard, especially if the change involves a learning curve or a risk.  Some of the changes I want to make in my course plan are risky, in the sense that the outcome isn't knowable.  What if the change isn't better?  How will I grade it?  Is the potential outcome worth the effort?  What if the students don't understand the assignment?  Just how hard is this going to be...for me?

As I head back to make those last and final changes (really, they'll be the last ones...absolutely, positively), I'll be going with the encouragement of trusted muses:

• "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." -- Andre Gide
• "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."  -- Helen Keller
• "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover." -- Mark Twain
• "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."  -- T.S. Eliot

Okay, I'm ready now.

Things fall apart

Poets craft distillates of our existence and experience.  Take Yeats, for example, who wrote in his The Second Coming that "(t)hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold."  Though Yeats was writing in the aftermath of the war that could only be described later as World War I and he was, arguably, deeply affected by what he had experienced, his observation transcends space and time.  Things do fall apart, despite our efforts.  And perhaps that is as it should be.

We create, we quest, we seek, we strive.  Our possessions slowly take possession of us; our tools change us.  We journey to the center, only to find that it cannot hold, regardless of the intended destination.  I am as much a product of my culture as of my DNA, which may explain some of our Western lament that things won't stay where we put them.

I realize there is a fine line between fatalism and acceptance, largely because I dance all over it most of the time.  I can argue passionately (for those who've read more of Yeats, feel free to make your own interpretation) for preserving Knowledge (which assumes there is a known or knowable body of same) and doing so in my personal favorite format--the written word.  I love my books and, while I appreciate the benefits of technology and the vast stores of information available via the internet, I am loathe to part with my sacred (to me) texts.  

But I am aware that part of my love for books is the necessary boundaries they provide. Generally speaking, my tomes don't fall apart and they hold their center quite well, both literally and figuratively.  They provide a comforting illusion, perhaps, that allows me a respite from the realities Yeats captures so well.

So, I find it oddly comforting and disturbing that David Weinberger (co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and a researcher at Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society) has given this title to his latest book:  Too Big to Know:  Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room.

And the premise?  That "business, science, education, and the government are learning to use networked knowledge to understand more than ever and to make smarter decisions than they could when they had to rely on mere books and experts."

I can't wait to read it.

Trash talk

New trash cans today!

Though this may not reflect well on the academy, it is our reality today.  We have new trash cans in our offices.  They're small.  And they are small for a reason.  The goal is to get us to think before we trash. 

And if we needed an example of how easily we can miss the important for the, shall we say, less important, this is the day.  From an email sent by a staff member in the associate dean's office:

I have received so many emails about the new trashcans, and they are all thought provoking.  Many people have strong feelings for and against the cans. The question I am hearing more than any other is: “WHY are they SO small?” 

The email provides a link  to a recent New York Times article about trash cans (at another academic institution) that are even smaller than our new ones.  The ones in the article are only 6" tall and it seems they're all the rage on that campus.   By contrast, our new ones are quite a bit larger.  

This leaves me wondering... how is it we miss the irony of having time and energy to engage in email eloquence regarding the size of our trash cans?

You just can't plan these things...

Today, in a completely unexpected encounter, I found myself talking about the Capstone course to an executive at a large retail company.  In the midst of a discussion about sustainability, I went off (or on and on, depending upon perspective) about the shift I had observed in students who took the Capstone course this summer.

I found myself explaining that I'd taken a risk (which is not a surprise, by now, is it?) by substituting 'the lens of sustainability' for the traditional business simulation associated with Capstone.  As I rhapsodized (you had to be there) about the shift I'd observed in some of the students over the course of the semester, I heard myself explaining how some students moved from a negative or skeptical perspective (about the relevance of sustainability for business) to a recognition of the business value in thinking about the world--and the people in it--as a resource worth safeguarding.

And then?  She asked to see how I'd designed my course.  It seems that her job is, in part, helping consumers make the same shift from skepticism--which, in a retail context, may be more accurately described as cynicism--to understanding, if not embracing, the value of protecting and renewing resources.

Who knew?

Calculating the odds that we'll figure this out...

Many of us remember the dark days before ubiquitous calculators, as well as the uproar when they were being incorporated into mainstream education. "If we let them use calculators, they'll never learn math!" was heard throughout the land (or at least that's how it seemed).  What was once feared has become an important learning tool, required for many junior high and high school courses...and beyond.  We teach students the requisite math skills, teach them how to use the tool, then weave both (the skills and the tool) seamlessly into educational delivery.  Though math aptitude is still a bell-shaped distribution, the assignments being completed with the new tools are far beyond what some of us were able to do in college, given our antiquated tools.  Were the concerns about calculator use unmerited?  Or did they actually help shape a better outcome?

So, what about ubiquitous social media?  From the July 2010 New York Times article about privacy issues, by George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen:

Facebook, which surpassed MySpace in 2008 as the largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members, or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site.  Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos), and the average user creates 70 pieces of content a month.  There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users, and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be acquiring--and permanently storing--the entire archive of Twitter posts since 2006.

The sheer volume of information being generated boggles the mind, as well as wondering who is viewing it.  A University of Southern Indiana doctoral student writes about hearing in her interview that her Facebook profile had been reviewed as part her social media internship application and found more acceptable than another candidate's page with a photo of eight shot glasses surrounding the candidate.  Her question in a social media guest blog seems fair:  "Why are today's students held accountable for not knowing how to use social medial professionally, yet they haven't ever been taught formally?"

We have recruiters and employers checking Facebook pages as part of the hiring process, personal information being shared without any (or with limited) awareness of the immediate loss of control over that information, and permanent records of what we create.  And, for the most part, we are not teaching students basic writing skills nor the proper use of social media tools.  We did far better with the calculators.

Our evaluation system is broken

Being the Secretary of Education has to be a difficult job.  But Arne Duncan seems up to the challenge.  And, frankly, I'd love to be on the bus when he visits teachers in our state (as well as in seven other states), because he's not afraid to say the things that need to be said.  From his August 25 remarks at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock, here are my favorite quotes:

• In just one generation we have fallen from first in the world to 12th in the percentage of young adults with college degrees.
• As a country we will stop lying to our children and dumbing down standards.
• Nothing is more important and nothing has a greater impact on the quality of education than the quality and skill of the person standing in the front of the class -- and there is so much that needs to change in the way that America recruits, trains, supports and manages our teachers.
• Singapore selects prospective teachers from the top third of the class and in Finland only one in ten applicants is accepted into teacher preparation programs. They only pick the very best.
• The issue of teacher evaluation is especially important today for a number of reasons. First of all, everyone agrees that our evaluation system is broken.
• (T)he vast majority of teacher colleges in this country are doing a mediocre job at best.
• As a country we must stop highlighting only ballplayers and rock stars and start highlighting teachers who are our true heroes and role models.

Read the text of the speech, agree or disagree, chalk it up to politics, if you must.  But don't sit on your laurels, ignore the declines in our system, and decide that you can't make a difference.  The very least we can all do is to stay informed.  The most we can do is make conscious decisions to be a constructive force in our own sphere of influence.

I may not make a difference in my state, my country, or the world, but I make a difference to the students who sit in my classes, who ask me to serve as their thesis advisor, and who look to me as a role model for how teachers should teach.  I'm no Arne Duncan, but that's no excuse for overlooking the opportunities I have to make a positive impact in my small corner of the world.  That's my seat on the bus.

Ubiquity, antiquity, and liquidity

The technology is popping up everywhere. One of the students handed me an October 6, 2009, story in USA Today about how technology is being used at other universities. Detroit Free Press reporters Kathleen Gray and Robin Erb profiled four universities with widely varying approaches and philosophies about the efficacy of technology in the learning environment. I'd not thought, for example, about using technology extensively outside the class room, while abstaining from any use during class. It's another perspective to consider. The article had pictures of the devices in our own classroom, which is just very cool.

And while the details of what changes vary, the patterns don't shift much. We grow, we age, we learn the lessons of our ancestors, we strive, we push against the limits of what we know. Perhaps that's the essence of education.

This week we focused on business plans. Reading, analyzing, and writing. The general consensus was that it's hard, that the devil is in the details, and that, ultimately, it comes down to making a profit.

And our grades on the exam? On par, both historically for the course and presently relative to the other Honors section.