The girl, 17, had been helping her grandmother count the 72-year-old woman’s personal savings. Apparently wishing to impress her friends and the world at large, the teen snapped a picture of the cash and uploaded it to Facebook.

Within hours, masked robbers showed up at the girl’s own house with a knife and a club, breaking in and stealing cash and personal possessions from the teen’s 47-year-old mother.

I read this the other day and was wondering if this girl ever was taught about social networking and where her information goes. 

Some rights reserved by ifranz

I then starting thinking about the autonomy I had as say a 13 year old. My parents knew where I was 99% of the time, knew who I was hanging out with, who I was talking with and where I was physically...seeing there was no digital place for me to be yet. 

I think about the autonomy a 13 year old has today. The autonomy to post, talk, respond, take a photo with anyone they want without parents knowing about it...and being able to share with people that their parents might not know. 

These are new behaviors we need to be teaching in schools. We teach how to share, in the physical world. We teach how to cooperate, in the physical world. We teach how to stay away from danger in the physical world. But do we teach these same skills in the new digital sense? Why not?

If we know we are all spending more time online, in online relationships and communicating more online than in person these days, why are we not teaching these social-networking skills?

We talk about making friends, in the physical world. We talk about what it means to be a good friends, how good friends trust each other and how good friends watch out for each other....in the physical world. 

Are we teaching social-networking in the digital world as well? If not are we doing our students, our community, our society a disservice?

Excited to see the Learning 2.012 conference is filling up fast. The conference that I helped to start back in 2007 continues to explore the meaning of what it means to be a modern day conference. Every year the committee plays with different formats and different ways to get participants involved in the learning process. The one thing this conference has never had is a keynote speaker with the committee always trying to find ways to get participants involved in the learning process.

For Learning 2.012 in October the breakdown of sessions looks like this:

• Two Extended Sessions led by Learning 2 Leaders (3 – 3.5 hours)
• One Learning 2 Leaders presentation: the big idea in a nutshell
• Two additional workshops or presentations
• Two ‘unconference’ sessions
• Three ‘cohort’ sessions in curriculum/common interest groupings
• Three sets of Learning 2 Talk sessions

You'll also want to check out the website and have a look at this years Learning Leaders. The conference continues to attract some of the best in the field and within International Education. 

I'm honored that after stepping down as a main conference organizer two years ago that the committee has asked me to stay involved and has again invited me back to be a learning leader. It is one of my favorite conferences to attend and be apart of for no other reason in that it's just different from any other conference I've been to.

The Early Bird Registration ends this Friday (June 1st). If you haven't registered already you might want to head on over and get registered quickly. After June 1st it will cost you an extra $50. I wouldn't be so worried about the extra $50 as I would be that the conference will fill up. It's limited to 500 participants.

Have you been to Learning 2.0 in the past? What have been your take aways from the conference?

If you are going in October what is it your looking forward to the most?

Each week they will choose a winner who's winning response will get posted on the website as well as shared on Twitter and Facebook. A great way to promote student work through the NYT.

Also not a bad way for parents to get their students involved in reading and writing over the summer. Reading and writing for a purpose around a contest. 

But I think it could be more....what if.....

CC: By Mike Licht

What if students had a blog where they could write as much as they wanted and linked back to the articles they were writing about? From what I can tell the New York Times doesn't show/allow trackback links which kind of stinks as then students would automatically be linked to the piece they were writing about. Of course the way around this is to simply leave a comment on the article or piece of media you are writing about. Just like I'll do on the link above in a comment. What if your child or students where responding to articles and wrote 1000 word responses or 1500 word responses or 200 words? What if we connected those responses to the articles they were writing about, reflecting about and learning from? What if some other readers of those articles followed the links to the students' blogs and continued to read their reflections there? What if someone left a comment, or tweeted, or shared on Facebook one of the students' responses to an article? What if we taught students how to build a network, how to use hyperlinks, and how to write for the audience that reads the New York Times. Of course students could still enter the 350 word contest and in writing blog posts probably make those 350 words more precise giving them an even better chance as winning the contest one week to the next. Once students realize they're writing is linked to the New York Times and they start getting readers, then we start talking about improving the writing, working on technique, voice, grammer, etc. Because now there's a purpose to be a better writer....you have readers. 

What if during class time you pulled up a blog post written by a student and read it together as a class? What if you had a discussion about the writing; what you liked? What could be improved? What does the author (seeing they are sitting there in your class) thinks about the piece? What if you looked for the strongest sentence, or the weakest sentence and gave the author feedback on how to improve their writing the next time? What if you have a couple different students respond to the same article and their responses were different? What learning could happen from this teachable moment?

What if a blog posts gets tweeted or shared on Facebook? Can you track how many people saw that link? Or how many potential readers a student might have had? Can you teach about the spread of information within social-networks and then apply that to where status updates go when you post them on Facebook and how quickly a readership can multiply?

It's strange all the learning that could come from a simple online contest that incorporates social-networking and sharing.

Just a thought.... 

cover of Monkey and cat

What I was struggling with was finding a project that I felt was worth the time away from exploring, running around, building, and imagining things in favor of sitting with a digital device. I still struggle with this actually. If all that iPads and technology can be used for in the younger years is games, flashcard replacement, and a handful of other replacement type tasks then I'm not sure we're getting the bang for our buck with technology. I want it to do more, I want it to redefine the classroom and that's hard when I believe kids should be spending time playing together, interacting, and imagining. Also knowing that outside of school many of them are getting plenty of screen time at home. So what I really am looking for is a project where I can say...that is a good use of technology with Kindergardeners. 

And I found it....

Ben Sheridan is a recently graduate of the COETAIL program. For his final project he talked about the way he was using technology to connect his students to other Kindergarten classrooms. His class has a blog, they tweet, they Skype, they use the SmartBoard...and the best part is they think this is all just normal Kindergarden stuff. 

Out of these connections came an opportunity when Ben connected his class with Zoe Page's class, a Kindergarten teacher in Japan and current COETAILer. Their students set up a Skype call and introduced themselves to each other. They then decided that they wanted to write a book together for the iPad. 

That book can now be downloaded free in the iBook Store here. 

Ben outlines the project and how they completed it in a series of blog posts on his blog. If you are an early childhood/primary teacher Ben and Zoe are two blogs worth following. 

These are the kind of projects that get me excited about using technology with younger kids. Let's stop arguing over how many iPads a class needs, or what device is right for the primary grades and lets find ways to create classrooms that connect students to each other and show them the true power of this technology. The power isn't in the device, it's in the connections that it can create that lead to learning.

There are so many different ways to go 1:1 and in my opinion no one right way to do it. There are so many variables that need to be considered that 1:1 programs can look drastically different from one school to the next and still be successful.

Here are a few of the things we discussed:

Money:

It’s always the elephant in the room and the problem with dreaming of endless possibilities without considering the cost leads one to believe that the dreams can become reality and in many cases it is just not financially feasible to fulfill our wildest technology dreams. As much as we want to say money is not a factor…..at some point it always is.

Infrastructure:

In many countries in Asia this can be the most frustrating part of the whole plan. We all read, watch, and see the amazing things that are happening on the web. However, to do those amazing things you need a web connection. In developing countries like Vietnam the Internet is expensive, unreliable, and most of the time just plain frustrating. BISVietnam currently has a 2MB Internet line for 1600 students. Think about that the next time you want to complain about your Internet speed.

You can not consider going 1:1 without looking at the cost and feasibility of it from an infrastructure standpoint. Money put into your infrastructure is always well spent but it also means every dollar that goes towards infrastructural improvements is dollars taken away from learning devices. Finding the balance is important.

One thing that I stress is do not spend money on you infrastructure for the future. Support the here and now.

If a school spends money building up an infrastructure that looks to support learning years from now then you’re wasting money. You might know what you will need two or three years from now…but you don’t need that today. The chances are the infrastructure your school will need in the future will get cheaper and faster.

Example: You know you’re going to need more server space as students store more and more data on the Intranet. Calculate how much storage you’ll need this year and next year. But only purchase what you need for this year. By next year the cost of the same storage will be cheaper and faster.

In the end support what you need, not what you want.

Intranet vs The Cloud:

Really what this should say is Internal Cloud vs External Cloud. Based on the infrastructure that is available to a school, you may need to consider building your own Internal Cloud. Basically turning those old folder heavy Intranet servers into web accessible servers. By making your Intranet Servers accessible via a web browser you can essentially create your own cloud on your campus. You can install programs like WordPress, Elgg, Drupal, and a host of other open-source software that essentially creates your own Internal Cloud system. 

This is a common process in China where access to many cloud services is blocked by the government. If that’s the case, or you don’t have a fast reliable Internet connection then building your own cloud is an option. Shanghai American School is a great example of a school building an internal cloud. Check out there Online Community Portal

At ISB, my current school for 23 more days, we are slowly making the transition from an Internal Cloud to an External Cloud system. When I arrived four years ago we starting building our Internal Cloud system as it was faster and more reliable. As the infrastructure of Thailand has improved and we’ve been able to purchase more bandwidth (20MB when I arrived and 100MB now for 1800 students) we’ve slowly moving to an external cloud. 

Exchange Mail Server to Google Apps – 2011-2012

Hosted Moodle to Externally Hosted LMS – 2012-2013

Internal Hosted Blogs to External Hosted Blogs – 2014

Or something like that. By moving these services to the external cloud we trade servers for Internet speed and reliability. As our speed and reliability increases so can our reliance on the external cloud.

Learning Devices:

Of course this is where we all like to discuss our options. What devices are right for students? 

The only way to answer this question is to first identify what it is you want students to be doing with the laptops. What kind of experiences do you want them to have, what skills do you want them to gain and what creative products do you want them to produce? 

By first identifying what we want students to do at different grade levels we can then choose the device that meets those needs. 

Again…dreaming here can be dangerous. We must realized and understand that in developing countries we don’t always get the lastest and greatest technology and not every company is currently supporting devices in every country. In Vietnam’s case Apple has no support in Vietnam as of yet. Sure, you can buy Apple products, but any support needed on those products has to be sent out of the country. Coming to the realization of what’s possible and what learning devices you have access to is not always fun…but again is reality. 

Ownership:

Ownership is something I think we spend to much time and effort on….as basically you have two options. 

1. School Owned

2. Parent/Student Owned

This decision comes down to two points.

• Can the school afford to own all the laptops? 
  • If the answer is no…then Parent/Student owned is your only option
  • If the answer is yes….then you need to think about and understand your community

• Will the school community support a laptop program?
  • Have we done work with the school community in helping them understand the reasoning behind a 1:1 program?
  • How can we move our school culture forward?
  • Can our community afford it?

Administrators must know their community and be willing to hold community sessions to educate the community on the benefits of a 1:1 program. This decision is a school based one. Both options work…it’s picking the best option for your school that is important to success. 

In the end, you can look around at what other schools are doing or have done but that will only get you so far. Every school culture and situtation is different, hence there is no one way to roll out a 1:1 program that is magical and perfect. They all have their positives and negatives. At the end of the day make a decision and just do it!

The COETAIL Program or Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy, is a 5 course 15 graduate credit program started by Kim Cofino and I in 2009. The program, only available to educators outside the U.S., continues to return positive results with 86% of educators who have taken the program saying that the coures and the learning have had a positive effect on their teaching practices 6 months after they finish the program. The fifth and final course asks educators to take everything they have learned in the first 4 courses and apply it to their teaching. We push the educators to try to use technology in a way that redefines the learning experience using the following definition:

Redefinition: The computer allows for the creation of new tasks, inconceivable without the computer.

As usual the TAS educators rose to the challenge and presented some fantastic learning examples as well as some failures....which in itself is a success. Here are a few highlights. 

Nancy and Kathy put together this fantastic video for their final project. You can read about their reflections on their blogs.

Allison Nave has done a great job of sharing and reflecting as she flips her middle school math class.

Nyoli had her Algebra students create a Google Site for review purposes. Students don't want the site public but she outlines the learning and the process.

Barb outlines making book trailers with elementary students in the library and collaborating with Tara our librarian here at ISB.

Scott and Laura reflect on using iPads with 1st graders.

Steve talks about using Google Docs with 2nd Graders.

Jennifer teaches music through creating a sound track for a movie trailer.

It was great to see teachers stretch themselves on these projects as I encouraged them to push themselves and the technology so far beyond what they though capable that they failed.....and we had a few "successful failures" as Michael called it in his presentation. That's a term I could get use to using.

If you are an educator outside of America and you are interested in the COETAIL program. Head over to the About page where you can read about the program and put your name on the list to get more information. Our plan is to start another cohort in September.

But tonight I'm closing everything else to reflect on some articles lately that I can't get out of my head. 

Some rights reserved by nojhan

Wikipedia has its first 1 million editor. Stop and think about that for a minute. That's pretty amazing that someone would take the time to sit down and make edits....for free...for others to use. What worries me most is Wikipedia is seeing a decline in the number of editors yet the website is as popular as ever.....and all I can think about is are we creating a generation of takers and not givers? How many teachers have taught the true meaning of giving on the Internet.....or actually given themselves. We all take, I haven't met a teacher yet that hasn't gotten a resource from the web, yet very few share and give back. The generation in our schools today are some of the heaviest users of Wikipedia and I hope that we're challenging them to give back at least some of what they are taking. Wikipedia is a project waiting to be using in every subject I can imagine. There has to be away to use it in our schools. 

Many schools, including mine, have expectations that students put in community service hours. I wonder if there is a way to count Wikipedia editing as community service. I'd love to be on that interview:

"What community did you support?"

"A community of about 1 billion people."

TED-ED launched their new site recently which has some interesting features and an interesting twist to the flip approach. I need to dig into the site more to see how it all works but from the readings I've done and exploring the website it looks be be a pretty useful resource. But teachers will be the ultimate judge of that! 

And lastly the Internet officially received its own Hall of Fame. Great to see those who invented this thing be recognized. It has been fun to read through some of their bios. It's great to see people like Raymond Thomlinson who years ago looked down at his computer keyboard for a symbol that would separate the username from the domain host. He needed a symbol that wasn't in use yet and choose the @ sign. Forever changing the world of communication. There is a great article that I re-read every once and awhile called How the Web Was Won that talks a lot about the pioneers of the Internet and the early days. A great historical read if you are interested. 

Who do you give your attention to?

I talked about the 1-9-90 rule that researchers see emerging. That is that 1% of us create, 9% of us curate, an 90% of us only consume information. After the presentation I asked students to write down the top three things that get their attention.

CC 2.0 by Stephen Poff

The idea of the Attention-Economy is not new, but I felt that students needed to know about it and needed to think deeply about how they spend their time....specifically how much time they spend consuming vs creating.There is another part of the Attention-Economy that I think we as educators need to pay attention to. That is when to ask for someone's attention. Over the past couple of years I've been playing with this idea of attention myself. Being in Thailand and having most of my readers in the United States I have found that the time my blog posts go public has a direct correlation with how many people read my blog posts. If I publish my blog posts in the middle of the night U.S. time I get almost 50% less people reading that particular post, 50% less tweets about it, and therefore less feedback on my ideas. 

Because the pace of information is so fast, by the time readers in the U.S. wake up my piece of information is history. 

Based on what I have learned playing with my own blog posts, I've started to transfer over to e-mails at school with pretty good success...and this is really what I want to share with you.

Do you pay attention to the timing of your e-mails?

I haven't come across a school yet that does not rely heavily on e-mail to get things done. Which means we all get a ton of e-mail during the work day and sometimes even more after hours.

When you send that e-mail to your staff could be as important as the e-mail itself.

Case in point:

I needed to send out a survey last week to staff. The administration had asked that I send it out right after an e-mail that they were sending out to staff about e-learning and our school's expectations for teachers.

There was nothing wrong with this....except the timing that the administration sent out their e-mail was all wrong. Teachers were in the last day of finishing up grade reports (never a good time to send e-mails) and second, the e-mail came out around lunch time when many teachers were working on their grades. As I talked to some teachers later on, some admitted to me of just deleting the e-mail, "It wasn't relavent to me at the time." While others don't even remember receiving the e-mail in the first place.

Teachers' attention was focused on something more important and therefore other less relevant information is missed.

Instead of sending out my e-mail of the survey at that time....I waited for the right time. Tuesday at 2:00pm, two working days later and 5 minutes before the end of the day I sent out the survey link in a quick two sentence e-mail explaining that the survey consisted of 7 questions should take 2 minutes at most and would really appreciate their time and effort.

Over 50% of the staff filled the survey out by 2:30 that same day. Here's what I've learned.

Timing is everything:

CC 2.0 by DylanHartmann.com

Send e-mails just before teachers have a break to put that e-mail at the top of their inbox. Very few people answer e-mails from the bottom up even though that would be chronologically correct. Things at the top get noticed, so try to plan and send your e-mails a few minutes before a break, lunch, or right before school gets out. These are times when teachers check their e-mail. 

People appreciate short:

This is why every administrator should be on Twitter. To learn to write short, concise e-mails that get to the point quickly. If you need your staff to read something longer, put it in a Google Doc and link it to the e-mail. We read documents differently then we read e-mail. Use the right form factor for the information that needs to be communicated. 

Subject Lines are Important:

You have one really good chance to sell your e-mail and that is the subject line. It honestly could be the most important part of the e-mail. Make the subject purposeful...make me want to click on the e-mail and not just pass over it.

Be sensitive to teachers attention:

Before sending an e-mail think about what has teachers attention at the moment. Are grades due? Is there a holiday coming up? A special schedule? Much like we tell students to "think before you post" we need to "think before we send". 

Attention is a valuable commodity and we all get frustrated when we feel like our time is wasted. By making a few simple adjustments in the way we think about communicating could help all of us focus our attention in a much more productive way.

Doesn't he know better than to give a test on game day?

As if the professor actually cares that there's a baseball game today. 

Man on first, lefty at the plate........Why is Chief Seattle's speech in 1854 so significant?

Focus....you have to finish this test!

It is always hard to concentrate on game day. I glance over at my friend Ryan, our back-up shortstop sitting next to me, our eyes meet and he shrugs. 

Lefty at the plate, man on first...curve ball down and in...........1854......I have no idea.

Really there should be some sort of rule about giving tests to players on game day. The school might call us "Student Athletes" but in our minds we are "Athletic Students". 

The bell rings and I turn in my blue book and walk outside and wait for Ryan. 

"That was brutal!"

"Yeah.....at least it's over"

We walk across campus to the locker room on a rare sunny day in Bremerton, Washington. 

We're an odd couple Ryan and I. No one would ever guess a farm boy from Spokane who wears Wrangler jeans, a cowboy hat, boots and a belt buckle would become friends with a Filipino who wears baggy jeans 5 sizes too big, a baseball cap a little crooked, and listens to grunge and alternative rock. 

But we have one thing in common. The love of baseball. We talk the game constantly whether it's situations, pitch counts, our latest practice or our favorite topic, the Mariners. 

"You think we'll see any action today?"

"You might" I say as we walk across the commons "but I threw a pen session yesterday so I'm on charts."

"Doubt I will either...a day game on four days rest. Maybe as a pinch runner but that's it."

We're not the best players on the team, Ryan doesn't start many games and I'm a relief pitcher who tops out at about 78mph. Not enough gas for the community college league we play in. 

We make our way to the locker room and get changed for the game and then take my truck to the ball field about 20 minutes away. Although we know we're not starting, the preparation is the same. We spend the 20 minute drive in silence knowing once the uniform goes on the mental preparations begin. I'm lost in thoughts of pitch counts and pitch selections while Ryan runs through play situations in his head. 

The game goes as expected for Ryan and I. I spend the game sitting on a bucket of batting practice balls spitting sunflower seeds and charting pitches. Ryan sits next to me on his own bucket with a stop watch. Timing everything from the speed of pitches to the catcher's throws to second base. A split second can mean the difference of a stolen base or an out....and nobody catches the small details better than Ryan.

It's not all glamour this game. You never see a pitcher charting piches on TV in the big leagues. They have staff people that do that. But here at the community college level if you're riding the pine sooner or later you'll find yourself keeping charts. 

By the 7th inning, although we'll never admit it afraid to jinx the team, our minds start praying that these last two innings go fast. It's not helped by the fact that the third person of our group has just shown up in the stands, coming straight from work. She slides in on the end of one of the bleachers with her Mariners sweatshirt on under her jacket and her hair pulled back in that signature ponytail.

I nudge Ryan with my elbow and give a toss of my head in her general direction. Ryan sees her sitting there and gives the slightest of head movements acknowledging that he sees her. 

As the last out of the game is made we break our silence.

"What do you think......can we make the 5:30 Bainbridge?"

"No way...we still need to pack up and drop my truck off at my place.....we're better off taking the 6 o'clock Bremerton."

"Yeah...but the Bremerton is an hour ride we won't make first pitch."

"Yeah...but if we try for the 5:30 and miss it we miss the first three innings."

We part ways and work as fast as possible to clean up after the game. Another shot you'll never see on TV. The players raking the field and fixing the mound after a game. But here in community college we're both player and grounds crew. 

Ryan heads to shortstop and I head to the mound. Everyone knows these are our areas and everyone stays clear. Ryan and I built this mound from the ground up on a rainy Sunday for 5 hours with coach one weekend. I know this mound better than anyone and quickly work it back into shape. 

On another wet and rainy weekend, Ryan and I resodded the entire infield with new grass, and yet another weekend remixed the dirt for the infield. Ryan knows every bump, ever rock of the shortstop position and using a rake quickly smooths it out. We might not get a lot of playing time on the field but we still respect it and honor it the way a baseball player should. 

We quickly put our rakes away grab our bags and hustle out to the parking lot. She's there at her car waiting for us. 

"We'll never make the 5:30 Banbridge...we still need to drop my truck off at my place and change our clothes." I say with a smirk on my face. 

"What if we left your truck here and you guys changed in the car? We have to pass back by here after the game anyway so we can pick your truck up then."

Ryan and I look at each other with that look that communicated, why didn't we think of that? And at the same time, We knew there was a reason we hung out with her. 

We pile into her car and head to Banbridge. 

Ryan and I change in the car in a similar scene that you've seen in the movies. Body parts being bent in all sorts of positions, clothes flying everywhere, and laugher erupting from all of us. By the time we hit the ferry terminal in Bainbridge, I've transformed back into my Wranglers and flannel shirt and Ryan into his baggy jeans and baggy sweatshirt. We both opt for our college baseball hats with the big OC for Olympic College embroidered on the front. After all, a cowboy hat doesn't go over too well in Seattle.

We quickly park the car and sprint down the plank and jump onto the ferry just moments before its whistle blows and sets sail for Seattle.

"Told you guys we'd make it." she says out of breath but in a tone to remind us that this is her town.

Mt. rainer from the Ferry

It's an unusually warm May day, so we elect to sit out doors at the front of the ferry. As we slowly gain speed she pushes Ryan and I apart and sits between us. She promptly turns sideways laying her head on my shoulder and kicking her feet up over Ryan's lap. I swear she never could sit like a regular person.

"So....didn't see any action today huh fellas?"

"No....we saw loads of action today......we just weren't involved in any of it."

She laughs and Ryan and I bump fists over top of her.

As we sit there with the smell of the ocean filling our nostrils and the wind from the boat gaining speed forcing us to turn our hats around, we see our destination come into view. 

space Needle and Seattle Skyline

The whitish gray top of the Kingdome standing out like a beacon south of the city. Off to our right Mt. Rainer stands clear and tall over Seattle slowly turning purple and pink with the setting sun. Off to our left and north of the city the Space Needle rises like a watch tower among low buildings. We sit there in silence for the longest time just taking in the view and the smell of the ocean as the ferry makes the 35 minute crossing of the Puget Sound.

"Who's pitching tonight?" 

"Randy Johnson!" Ryan and I say in unison as if the answer was rehearsed. 

We return to silence as I wrap my arm around her shoulder as I can tell she's cold. Ryan hugs her knees close to his chest to keep her warm on his end. 

As the boat slows to dock in Seattle, the skyline of the city sits in front of us slowly turning the same purple and pink of Mt. Rainer as the sun makes it's way lower on the horizon. 

"Some day we're gonna live right there." I say pointing to a new condo building with a big NOW RENTING sign and phone number on it.

"Yeah...wouldn't that be the bomb if we could afford to live there?"

"We can live there....the three of us together could afford it."

"There's no way! No way we could afford that.....seeing I'm the only one with a job." She reminds us with a chuckle. 

"I bet we could....Ryan....write down the number....how much do you think the top floor of that place costs?" Ryan always has a pen on him usually with reminders scribbled all over his hand...so one more phone number won't hurt.

"With that view? More than two baseball players with no jobs can afford." Again reminding us of our employment status.

"I'm not talking now" I say, "but in the future...seriously....the three of us could afford it together."

"That would be too cool.....could you imagine us all living in Sea town?" Ryan says spinning his hat around but leaving it just a tad to the left of straight. 

"Some day....I'm telling you...some day we're all going to live here. We're gonna live here and walk to games whenever we want. No having to run for a ferry!" 

"Keep dreaming boys!" She says as she sits up straight and the ferry pulls into the dock. 

It's 6:05, an hour before the first pitch. We exit the ferry with the rest of the passengers dressed in their Mariner garb headed to the game. Once off the ferry we quickly separate from the crowd with our quick pace and make our way to the Kingdome. We order a soda and popcorn and find our seats just in time for the National Anthem.   

Ryan and I at Safeco Field

As another baseball season begins today with my beloved Mariners taking on the Oakland A's in Japan, I'm reminded of this boat ride. We had probably close to hundreds more just like it over the years as we made our way from the Olympic Peninsula to the Kingdome and Safeco Field. Each ride would be basically the same conversation. This idea that some day we would all live in Seattle and be able to walk to Mariners games whenever we wanted. Ryan and I envisioned leaving work in our ties and throwing on a baseball cap to catch an afternoon game or owning season tickets for those seats we could never afford. As we prepare for our move back to Seattle, where that girl and I now own a condo that has a view of Safeco Field and Ryan owns a condo just 7 blocks from us, I'm reminded of all those conversations we had on the ferry about these days to come. The days when we would all be living in Seattle, and just a quick walk from the ball park. 

safeco and mt Rainer from our Condo

So to my wife and to my best friend....may our dreams of 16 years ago see the light of day....and just remember I told you one day we would do it!

 In two weeks time I have to give a presentation to our high school student body. I always struggle the most with what to talk to them about.....them being kids in general. I've got about 15 minutes to inspire them to use technology in ways that really matter. 

Thanks to the Kony 2012 campaign I have a starting point to talk about this new world that they are going to create. I believe this generation could be the greatest generation since the great WWI generation years ago. They have the ability to connect and communicate in a virtual way that can bring real impact to the world. We are already seeing it happen: The 2008 Presidential U.S. elections, Arab Spring, London Riots, Occupy Wall Street, Stop SOPA, and now Kony 2012 just to name a few of the larger movements where social networking has had a direct impact on world changing events. 

....and the great news is....this generation is just getting started. 

They have older generations running scared. From Iran to Syria, China, Thailand and most of the western world, governments and generations are fearing what is to come when this generation decides they have had enough, can connect, communicate, and bring about change in the blink of an eye. 

I read a new term the other day:

Slacktivism: The word is usually considered a pejorative term that describes "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist. The underlying assumption being promoted by the term is that these low cost efforts substitute for more substantive actions rather than supplementing them, although this assumption has not been borne out by research.

I am still feeling my way around this new term and not sure I totally agree with its ideals. The cases I stated above are all cases where the rally cries within social networks saw real change in the world. Retweeting or reposting the Kony 2012 video is good for spreading the message, but what are you and I going to do in the real world that really matters? That's what this will come down to. 100 million views on YouTube mean nothing if nothing changes for the better out here.

And then there is our generations, any of us born before 1980 basically, who for the most part do not understand all of this. I have heard on more than one occasion "I don't get it" from people, and instead of helping this generation understand the power they possess, we fear it, run from it, and then turn around and punish this generation for using tools that are as much a part of their generation as the TV, gaming console, and microwave oven were to ours. 

Some rights reserved by Yaniv Golan

Social Networking can be scary if we don't teach students the amazing power that lies within those connections. Today I read this article about a girl in Minnesota that is suing the school district over her Facebook privacy. Now I don't know the details and I'm sure it's not as bad as the article makes it out to be, it rarely ever is. But the point is, could the school have handled this in an educational way? What if the school had been teaching social-networking rather than cursive handwriting in 3rd, 4th, 5th grade? 

And then there is the part of the article that talks about potential employees being asked to hand over their Facebook password during interviews as part of the interview process. 

A number of prospective employees have complained that they were forced to hand over their passwords to Facebook and Twitter when applying for jobs.

Really? Do employers really have that much to fear? If they do then they have bigger things to worry about than an employee's Facebook page I would think.

Or what about this bit about university athletes: 

In an recent investigation, the TV station MSNBC found that many university sports departments now require students to "friend" their coach, giving officials access to their "friends-only" posts.

The University of North Carolina handbook reads: "Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members' social networking sites and postings.

Could we view these as educational opportunities rather than potential threats? Gee....a university teaching students how to use their social networking connections for good...there's a thought!

Then there are guys like HeeJin, an American Idol contestant, who may not be the best singer of the group, but is leveraging his twitter account and the connections to stay in the race. Whether he really knows what he's doing or not he's trying to use those connections to bring about change....change for himself in this instance but real change in the world for sure. 

So this is the direction I want to go with my talk in two weeks. I know some faculty on my staff will be upset that I won't warn the kids about sexting, or about spending too much time online, but they're 15-18 years old and the last thing they need is another person from the older generations telling them what they should and shouldn't be doing rather than getting them excited about what is possible for them and their future. 

The danger lies in not educating them on how to use these connections for the better. Instead of scaring them into not using them at all....can't we help them understand the power of an update, the power of a connection and use it to do amazing things in the real world?