David Truss :: Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts

Product You

2010-03-12T19:30:35Z

I won’t bore you with the stats, we all know that we are bombarded with advertising everywhere we look. We also know that we are being targeted better and better by advertisers wanting to part us from our money. When I was on Yahoo Mail, I was always targeted by my last name: Truss… So, I got advertising about bridge and bra supports. Google knows I’m an educator and targets me a bit better.

Now advertisers are getting really good! So how good is really good? How well can advertisers influence our purchasing power? Our attitudes? Our thoughts? Check out this clever clip: Derren Brown – Subliminal Advertising to see just how influential ’suggestions’ can be. If you don’t like spoilers then you better watch the video before reading further.

Derren Brown goes to great lengths to visually bombard two professional advertisers with images and suggestions and then gives them an assignment to create advertising for a fictitious product. After they are done, he shows them his advertising that he did in advance, which is remarkably similar to the ones these two ‘professionals’ came up with. Derren Brown completely manipulated their environment to produce an outcome he wanted.

It’s nothing new that we are the targets of advertising. And it’s nothing new that advertisers are getting better at targeting us. But now I’ve learned via The New York Times that:

“…companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft let advertisers buy ads in the milliseconds between the time someone enters a site’s Web address and the moment the page appears. The technology, called real-time bidding, allows advertisers to examine site visitors one by one and bid to serve them ads almost instantly.

…A consumer would barely notice the shift, except that ads might seem more relevant to exactly what they are shopping for. It is another way in which marketers are massaging information…

…you can be auctioned off in 12 milliseconds or less…”

Do you see the shift? Advertising has always been about getting us to buy a product… now we are the product. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, Facebook and any other company that stores, and thus controls, information about us are selling US!

Our individualized attention is being sold to the highest bidder. We are the product.

What I find concerning about this is that we are engaging more and more with companies selling us as the product. Furthermore, advertising that is directed at us has become more and more personalized and personal. I have to wonder how much of what we will think, and what we will do, in the future will be dictated by who can bid the highest price to sell their influence to us? To product you?

———-

Images: ‘my life’s logos v.2′ by captcreate and ’stencil you are the product’ by zen

Article: ‘Instant Ads Set the Pace on the Web’ by Stephanie Clifford

Teachers as Lead Learners

2010-03-15T03:26:52Z

One of my favourite sayings these days is:

‘Teachers should be the lead learners in the classroom.’

I think that if a teacher goes into a class believing first and foremost that they are ‘model learners’ and that they will learn with their students, then that teacher will create a meaningful and engaging learning environment for their students.

I’ve always been a fan of Kevin Honeycutt, I think he is creative and his podcasts are great. Well now he shares this video that tells the tale about why we need teachers to learn. Enjoy!

—–

Related posts: Shifting Education and Hargreaves and the 4th Way [Part 2].

Warning! We Filter Websites at School

2010-03-05T17:05:38Z

I’m at a Canadian School in China. At a staff meeting I shared a thoughtful blog post by a student reporter for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. It’s a great post by a student that went and visited ‘Tent City’, built to house the city’s homeless during the Olympics: Olympic Games Side Effects on Vancouver. My Grade 9 teacher asked for the Students Live website and a link to this post. (I mentioned the Students Live bloggers here.)

The Students Live website provides a number of different ways to connect and interact with the Olympic reporter student bloggers. However, we live in China which filters a lot of social software websites and so these were the options that my Grade 9 teacher was confronted with:

Facebook: BLOCKED

Twitter: BLOCKED

YouTube: BLOCKED

Blogspot Blogs: BLOCKED

Flickr: (recently) BLOCKED (again)

I had to use my VPN to bypass the Chinese filter in order to cut and paste the blog post, mentioned above, into an email so that my teacher could read it in his class. A potential global ‘conversation’ reduced to a reading, confined to a classroom. Frustrating!

Now here is the thing… I chose to move to a country where a lot of sites get blocked. I can’t imagine what it’s like for teachers in the ‘free world’ that have their own school districts do this to them!

If you are in a school where filters filter learning, here is a little poster for you to hang up in your front entrance:

Google Buzz and George Costanza – Worlds Collide

2010-02-22T04:02:33Z

In his weekly email newsletter, George Siemens wrote/quoted:

This is one of the more insightful statements I’ve come across recently – What Google Could Learning From Goffman: “When we merge social groups together, we are challenged to manage our disclosures across these groups, which have different norms of propriety.”

The social software I use regularly – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin – allows me to form different social groups. I have different interactions with different people in each….

Google, however, smashed together different social groups with Buzz, forcing information to flow between groups that were previously distinct. Buzz’s failure was not one of only disrespecting privacy, but rather one of dishonouring social clustering.

This really hit a chord with me and I can’t help but relate this to a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza sees his ‘Worlds Collide’ when people from different social groups connect:

It gets very funny when George declares that ‘Independent George’ will cease to exist by an encroaching ‘Relationship George’.

Although Google Buzz isn’t causing my worlds to collide in such a dramatic fashion, I am keenly aware that it opens up my social communities and combines them in a way that I am not sure I’m prepared to do. Fred Stutzman calls this ‘context collapse’:

When you create a profile in a social network site, or share a stream of Tweets, you’re essentially creating a representation of an identity. As we’ve seen time and time again in Facebook, we run into problems when identities collide during “context collapse” – when people from a different segment of your life view an identity you’ve constructed for your friends.

For instance, I tried linking Twitter to Facebook and all I did was infiltrate my non-twitter friends Facebook timelines with context-less tweets that really meant nothing to them… it lasted about 24 hours. Similarly, Buzz came out and I started chatting with a few people in it, then my daughter (a Gmail user who was quicker than I to figure out Buzz) said to me, “Dad you sure talk a lot about buzz with people.” And this got me thinking about how I’m normally very purposeful with my online identities. I think about where I say what, to whom and why… I contextualize my conversations to the tool.

It’s not that I’m hiding anything… My tweets are open to the public, so is my LinkedIn profile. Meanwhile, except for my recent updates to Facebook while on holiday, I keep that more candid, limiting my profile to students that I’m connected to, and being selective about what information I share in my profile. That said, there is nothing in my Facebook profile that I am ashamed of or that I wouldn’t want others to see, but I talk differently there to my family and friends than I do on other networks. I tend to share my blog everywhere and so that too has a different voice than with other tools in other contexts.

In his post, Stutzman paraphrases Erving Goffman:

In essence, Goffman argues that identity and interaction are performative, a concept that maps very well onto social network sites. By “creating” identities, we’re not living dual lives, but rather engaging in a well-established performance of identity that lets us share the proper “front” in context. We act differently on LinkedIn and Facebook because these sites have contextual norms, not because we’re duplicitous.

Later in the article Stutzman continues:

…it was simply too much to ask us to configure ourselves to the technology.

By fabricating new social groupings, Google ran head-on into Facebook’s biggest problem – that of context collapse. When we merge social groups together, we are challenged to manage our disclosures across these groups, which have different norms of propriety.

Google Buzz has mashed all these ‘worlds’ together. I don’t really want my daughter or my LinkedIn network to see me telling Seth Bowers (in reaction to him asking when I’m going to finally get on Buzz) to ‘Buzz off!’ On Twitter, with an @reply, there is context and even appropriateness in the comment (as poor as the humour may be). To my family and Facebook friends, that could easily be seen as rude, and more to the point, irrelevant when it is ‘pushed’ at them in a different setting with different norms than where the message was intended to reside.

As Seth said in his only two Buzz comments so far:

I don’t know if I need my inbox to be social…

and

Man Google sucks at social…

I may be wrong, and perhaps Google Buzz will catch on, but I think it has a bumpy road ahead, because the social web requires socialization, which in turn requires contexts for appropriate social norms and behaviors.

I’m not freaking out like George Costanza on Seinfeld, but I really don’t want a tool that merges my digital identities and forces my worlds to collide.

Cross-posted on Fireside Learning Ning: Conversations about Education.

The Trap

2010-02-07T16:11:01Z

Being the edu-nerd that I am, I often look at parallels between my experiences inside and outside the world of schools and education, (see Bubble Wrap for another example). Now, two-and-a-half weeks into my Thailand & Vietnam holiday, such parallels are jumping out at me, and I think of them as ‘traps’. It seems that everywhere we go on this holiday there are tours being offered and trinkets to buy. The packages and prices are all designed to steer you to the ‘deluxe’ version, “…for just a little bit more, you can also get…”.

Then on the way to your destination the washroom or lunch break also happens to be a great place to buy more trinkets and souvenirs and artwork and…. (insert ‘local’ artisan specialty here). This is also known as a ‘Tourist Trap’- you are committed to the tour, now let’s see how much money we can extract from you while you are here.

One parallel that I see in education is the ‘Textbook Trap’: “Buy our textbook and get the free online supplement! Oh, and by the way, each teacher will want our Teacher’s Guide, and don’t forget the Blackline Masters and the Student Workbook will save your students hours of copy-time so they can focus on the learning. Also, notice how we have designed the books to build upon themselves, you’ll also want to purchase for the next grade too. Of course if you bought more then we can increase your savings to 40%!”

… And there is the trap, you aren’t buying a textbook, you are buying a program. You are ‘investing’ a significant portion of your budget in a fixed ‘paper’ product designed with both features and flaws that become, over time, what teachers ‘deliver’ to students: A fixed/set curriculum, (that is based on, but is not necessarily the mandated curriculum).

That brings us to the next trap, the ‘Curriculum Trap’. I hear curriculum as an anti-technology ‘excuse’ all the time. I won’t even get into the Standardized Testing Trap: “It’s easy to integrate technology into the lower grades, but I have so much content to deliver that I can’t ‘waste time’ with a project like this.”

Instead, I’ll look into another aspect of the ‘Curriculum Trap’… The whole idea of curriculum being ‘fixed’: “After chapter 1 we will do chapter 2, then we get a little crazy and do chapters 4 & 5 before going back to do chapter 3.”

I’ve never seen a curriculum with a requirement of ‘Chapter 3′, and I’ve never seen a textbook that could teach a curriculum better than a creative, imaginative teacher. My kids may not remember what they did on the beach in Ko Phi Phi over a one week span, but they will remember sleeping in a floating hut just a one minute kyak ride away from viewing wild monkeys in Khao Sok National Park, Thailand. They will remember repelling from a 50meter tree after zip-lining from platforms equally as high. And they will remember riding on the neck of an elephant. These events were not part of our planned vacation, they were the side-trips, the unscheduled add-ons that became the memorable moments.

Comparatively, the ‘meaningful’ learning experiences of my education were the side-trips and ‘teachable moments’ that just came up… Discussions about world events and personal interest stories that were meaningful though not mandated or designated as essential.

The opening scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan can exemplify the horrors of war more than any textbook, just as Cry Freedom can teach students the racism of apartheid in South Africa. It’s one thing to talk about Leonardo Da Vinci and still another to watch one of his inventions at work on YouTube, or digitally turn the pages and read one of his notebooks, an opportunity only recently provided to the masses. We have to make time to be side-tracked by things that interest us and make learning memorable.

And one final parallel is the ‘Pro-D Trap’. Professional Development in education has become a fixed-time-and-date ‘event’. There is almost nothing professional about it… Punch-in, do your time, punch-out. The greatest reward a presenter can offer to participants is, “if all goes well then we’ll be out of here an hour early”. Yet, we have entered an era where anytime, anywhere learning is possible. I wrote my last post on a 3.5 hour van ride from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay. I’m writing this on the return trip a day later. I’m ‘unplugged’, but I’m thinking, reflecting & learning. I’ll be adding these posts to my blog over the next couple days and hopefully others will comment and contribute to my… perhaps ‘our’… learning.

And yet we somehow try to compartmentalize our ‘professional’ learning into ½ & 1 day sessions and we even divide those up into 45 minute, 1hour and 1.5hour sessions. Often these sessions are not even contextually meaningful: “We’re going to talk about blogging for the next hour, and you’ll know how to sign up for one when we’re done… But we don’t really have any time today to look at, comment, or discuss effective examples of blogs.” Hmmmm.

In the last two Pro-D sessions that I ran, I provided ‘play time’ in the agenda. I also provided choice: “Here are a few different resources that you might find useful. Go to one of them now, ’start’ you learning here, use me as a resource too.”

We need teachers to participate and interact with tools that engage learners and learning. We need them to take their own learning outside of their Pro-D sessions. We need them to try, to participate and to have a safe environment to make mistakes and learn from, and through, the frustrations of their mistakes. We need them to take this ‘real learning’ back to their schools with them and be the lead learners in their schools and in their classrooms.

It’s easy to fall into these traps, it’s harder to recognize them for what they are and step out of them.

Olympic and Blogging Fever

2010-02-07T16:23:59Z

For me it is a little bit difficult to think about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics right now… I’m in a car outside of Hanoi, Vietnam heading to Ha Long Bay for an overnight boat cruise. The car ride is about 3.5 hours long and so I thought I’d use this time to plug a great project happening on the other side of the globe.

If, (unlike me), you are at a school that is in session during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, be sure to share this link with your students. Chris Kennedy, Assistant Superintendent of West Vancouver School District, has helped to organize 12 student bloggers to report on events at the Olympics.

These student reporters will be given access to many of the Olympic events & venues and they will be blogging, photographing, vlogging, tweeting, and updating their Facebook group page with all kinds of reports about the Olympics. I think it is fantastic to have students sharing their perspective on the Olympics and that we are starting to give students a legitimate voice in documenting world events. What will make projects like this really meaningful is interaction between these students and students around the world, so I’d like to encourage educators to get students and classrooms to follow these reporters and engage with them online.

Today, before leaving on this trip, I was connected to the hotel lobby wireless, checking email, and saw that Danny from Jan Smith’s grade 6/7 class left a comment on my blog, (Jan told me on Twitter that he did this on his own). I had a few minutes so I commented back on his blog. I mention this here because I think that as we encourage students to blog and connect online it is important for us to not just encourage but also to support these endeavors! One of the key things that makes blogging an effective learning tool is that it gives students a legitimate audience. Danny ends his comment with, “…so thank you for being a blogging teacher from the other side of the world!”

Also, Danny’s classmate Lizzie commented on my daughter’s fledgling blog and asked a question, so I encouraged my daughter to reply and then I helped her go to Lizzie’s blog and comment.

The next time I get online, after posting this, I’ll be visiting Jim Wenzloff’s wife, Chris’, new class blog, THE CLEM, and commenting on some student posts… And I’ll be mentioning that I’m writing from Hanoi Vietnam & living in Dalian China. I would like to encourage anyone reading this to take the time to comment on some student blogs from across the hall, across the city, across the country, or across the world. If you don’t know of any then visit Chris’ or Jan’s students… Or check out Sue Waters who is an excellent advocate for student bloggers that deserve a global audience.

And finally, I’ll end where I started, recommending that you help connect students around the world with the student reporters at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

Augmented Identity

2010-01-16T05:35:29Z

Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for a while. Fans of Monday Night Football have always had the television advantage of ’seeing’ the first down line conveniently added for their viewing pleasure. A more advanced version of augmented reality can be seen here, where you can see information about all the nearest subway locations in New York superimposed onto your iPhone’s camera view.

And now from Ewan McIntosh I’m introduced to this application of Augmented Reality, possible due to face recognition software.

Ewan says, “…In a schools context this could be seen as lethal.” And then he asks:

“But there are some amazing potential side effects – what would yours be?”

I can think of a few that are really exciting in a school context:

• What if teachers could see a student’s attendance record, allergies, current marks and timetables.

• In class you could see links to a student’s current projects AND see your most recent comments/feedback to that student.

• A live RSS feed of all the things a specific student is working on in class.

• Students can see who still needs a group partner or search tags to see who is working on similar projects to them.

• Counselors and Administrators can see what a student needs to hand in, marks in their courses and office referrals.

• A quick scan of the room with your phone and attendance is taken. The office and parents can be instantly notified if a student misses a class.

Even without the face recognition aspect AR could provide classroom data like:

• What class is in session, what subject matter, what’s on the homework board, who the teacher is, and links for the lesson.

Concerns: Who decides what should be shared, and with whom? Do we want Big Brother kind of surveillance on students, or for that matter on teachers? That said, most of the information that I’ve mentioned is already tracked for students… on paper and in digital data banks. We aren’t talking about collecting new information, just providing timely information to people who could use that information to benefit a learner’s experience in school.

Seeing someone’s social networks is fun, and may be useful in social and work environments, but seeing someone’s Learning Resources and connecting to their Learning Environments… instantaneously… that’s something that can be very exciting for education!

Broken Presentations and Broken Photocopiers

2010-01-14T19:50:50Z

Yesterday morning I did a keynote presentation for our High School Pro-D day that I called: ’It’s not about the Technology -(and it’s not a secret)‘. I’ll share this online after I get back from holidays.

The night before the presentation I sat and looked at what I had prepared and hated it. I wrote on Twitter: “I’m just over 10hrs away from presenting & want to totally revamp my presentation. Not a great feeling.” ~ It really wasn’t.

I appreciated the support and advice given to me, especially from Lisa Thumann, Jen Wagner and Shelly Terrell who all offered to take a look at what I’d done. The problem was that I didn’t like my presentation enough to send it to them… then I fell asleep. I woke up at 3am and realized that I was stuck with what I had, I just didn’t have enough time to change my presentation with just over 3hrs before I had to catch a cab to the train (Qing Gui) station.

I had to deal with the slides I already had. My presentation was broken into different sections that each had the item that is (not a secret) in brackets. I took all those titles, wrote them on post-it notes and juggled them around.

I broke up my presentation and, like Lego, reassembled the pieces into something different. I moved from a scattered bunch of ideas into a story. Suddenly I had a presentation I was happy with.

I slept on the train and when I woke up I ended up in a wonderful conversation with a man who spoke to me in Chinese and continually asked questions that I didn’t understand, and then talked about me to those around us. My broken and very limited Chinese did not serve me well.

Setting up for my 8am presentation we couldn’t get my laptop sound to go through the auditorium speakers without horrible feedback. Small speakers were brought in, (I almost brought my own, but I was at this auditorium just 2 weeks ago and knew that it was well equipped). With the small speakers and addition of my mic, all was good… or so I thought!

I tried to go to the primarypad.com/ pad (an etherpad clone) that I had set up with all my links, and as a backchannel for the session, but I couldn’t get wireless. It seems the new campus wireless doesn’t reach the auditorium other than a few rows in the back.

I started my presentation and within 30 seconds the power went out. I picked up my laptop and said to the 100+ audience members, “Ok, everybody gather around here.”

I started a conversation about ‘What tech tool can’t you live without, that didn’t exist 5 years ago… and by the time people had discussed this with their neighbours and we started sharing as a group the power turned on… “POP” … that would be the sound of the ceiling mounted LCD light bulb burning out.

That’s when I asked a new question: “How many of you have had the experience before of having a lesson planning epiphany… suddenly you are up late at night planning… you head into the school before class starts in the morning and when you get to the photocopier… it’s BROKEN!“ ~Most teachers raised their hands.

“So, keep your hands up if you said something like, ‘That’s it, I’m never using the photocopier again?’“ ~All hands went down.

Sometimes ‘technology’, be it a photocopier, a presentation, or even a pen doesn’t work.

Eventually we got going. I didn’t get to more than 1/2 of my slides, but found a great place to stop so that it felt like my presentation had an ending. Judging from the standing-room only in my break-out session afterwards, what I did was well received.

~~~

There were a lot of reasons to roll my eyes and complain. There were a lot reasons to let frustration prevail… and there was an opportunity for me to model for everyone that it really isn’t about the technology.

What the day was about was professionals getting together and learning, and when it comes to learning, the hardest thing to ‘fix’ is broken attitudes!

Kudus to the staff, they were patient with me, asked a lot of great questions, and eager to learn new things. Reflecting now, the only thing that feels broken is the title of this post.

T’was two nights after Christmas… A story of lost innocence.

2009-12-28T18:16:56Z

It was only two nights after Christmas and both kids were tucked away in bed. Then the older of the two came from her bedroom and, doing all that she could to contain her tears, she sat on her mother’s lap.

“Mummy, I think I’m old enough to know and I want you to tell me the truth… is there really such a thing as Santa?”

The Discovery by Norman Rockwell

We already knew it was to be her last Christmas fully believing in the magic of Santa. Most of her friends were already non-believers and she would often ask us “Do you believe in Santa?”

“Well what do you think dear?”… “Yes, that sounds about right,” we would say… agreeing with her rather than outright admitting our view… Our way of making a BIG LIE into a small (innocent) lie… a way for us to keep the magic alive and the spirit in our hearts as much as in our children’s.

“I need to know, please just tell me the truth.”
It was not a conversation we had prepared for. Our little girl is growing up and just like when she finally said, “Daddy, you aren’t really taking your thumb off, are you?” after the 150th time that I showed her that silly little trick, it was time to be honest and strip a little more magic and wonder out of young child’s mind.

We told her the spirit of Christmas is true and real and that it exists in our love for each other, and in our joy in spending time together at Christmas time. We said that being able to give to others and the warm feelings we have when we do nice things for others, that is the spirit of Christmas but physically, no, there isn’t a Santa per say. We spoke openly and also cautiously, restoring what might have been feelings of betrayal, with some candy-coated honesty… attempting to keep the spirit of Santa alive, while killing the mystery of reindeer flying around the globe in a single night and fitting a portly, pear-shaped and jolly man through chimneys, keyholes and the smallest of cracks.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell my sister.”
An unsolicited comment that reminds us that yes, our daughter is truly growing up, and accepting the responsibility that comes with age… with being the oldest.

“I think I’ll feel better about this as time goes by.”
Yes you will.

I stayed with her until she fell asleep. Answering questions, and sharing some of my memories. I reminded her of how we answered her questions with questions, and that seemed to comfort her. She understood the intent behind our deflection of her questions… but now was a time for Truth. Her questions kept coming, her faith in us to tell her the truth, fully restored.

“So what about Rudolph?” – Created for a department store commercial.

“So what about the cookies we leave out?” – Why do you think your dad always insisted on your mom’s homemade chocolate chip?

“So what about the Tooth Fairy?” – Oh, did the conversation have to go there? Must she ask this as well tonight? So much innocence and magic lost in a single conversation!

Soon sleep prevailed for the young girl and it was time for two parents to gave each other a supportive hug.

And so where do we go now? How do we keep the magic alive?

It is time now to help our child grow up… but not with stories of sadness and heartache, there is plenty of time for her to discover those things… what we need to do now is to show her the beauty, the mystery and the magic that life has to offer:

* The beauty of a sunset over the ocean.

* The mystery of Fibonacci found in a shell, a leaf, or a sunflower.

* The magic of a single cell splitting again and again and becoming…us!

And let us not forget the spirit of giving… the joy that comes from believing… and the strength of love that bonds a family together.

Was it a night of lost innocence? Perhaps, but whose innocence? A young child’s on her way to adulthood, or two parents who want to hold on to the magic as much as they want their children to?

‘Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!’

Holiday-Christmas-Concert

2009-12-26T02:06:52Z

Happy Holidays to everyone!

On Thursday our school held our Holiday Concert. Below I’ve highlighted 2 of the performance videos.

We called it our Holiday Concert, but in hindsight it was just a Christmas Concert. It wasn’t intentional, it was unintentional bias, but all of the songs performed were either Christmas songs, or songs that we tend to associate with Christmas. Next year I hope we can make it more of a world holiday affair, but for now enjoy my two favourite performances. Considering that all of the classes started practicing for this concert just 2 weeks earlier, it isn’t a surprise that the ones that I like are from teachers with music degrees. The first video is of two classes, Ms Shae & Yee’s class and my wife’s class, and includes my daughter Cassie. The second video is of Mr. Underhay’s class. Enjoy!

Christmas Comes from the Heart is wonderful! It sounds like a choir that practiced for months.

And this class combined their talents to perform a not-so-silent ska version of Silent Night.

Two other honourable mentions go to 4 year old Max’s Cello Solo and a fun version of Dancin’ on the Rooftop.

Enjoy the performances, and for those of you that celebrate Christmas, a very happy day to you. For those of you that celebrate other festivals and ceremonies this time of year, I’d love for you to link to some performances to help inspire our holiday concert next year.