If only there were tools to find out which employees are susceptible to phishing and other scams that masquerade as legitimate email?

There are such tools including at least one product that lets IT send fake phishing emails to employees to test their awareness of and adherence to IT policies. Such products enable IT to find out who the security weak links are among employees.

Security breaches of the humongous kind get very bad press and agitate people and government regulators, but many smaller and unpublicized potential intrusions are foiled everyday; criminals and others test the security of companies, governments, and individuals all the time.

So what is my point? Call me incredibly naïve, but the effects of outing the weak security links among employees may not all be positive. For IT, testing individual employees for security awareness can help close holes in security. For the employees who fail and even those who do not, the fact of testing can remind all employees of IT policies and of the consequences of opening email from unknown sources or clicking on links. It will make them more skeptical, which is probably a good thing when it comes to corporate network security.

It also may have other effects. It may make them resentful of IT for duping them, may harm morale and affect engagement, and may, in particular, turn off younger employees, who may well post their disaffection on social network sites, or Twitter or even via text messaging, which can make it very hard for the company to find out. Recent research by Accenture among Millennials – the Gen Ys in your workforce – reveals that 45% of employed Millennials use social networking sites at work and about half say they have accessed “online collaborative tools, online applications, and open source technologies” from free public sites at work when the tools provided by the employer are either inadequate or missing. Furthermore, 66% of Millennial employees say they do not abide by corporate IT policies, some because they are unaware of those policies, some because they claim the policies are either not published or too complex. They clearly have a very different attitude towards security than other employees.

I am not advocating that IT tune its policies to the wants and desires of Millennials, or that it stop testing for security holes, but rather that it be aware of the consequences of surreptitiously checking up on specific employees. Testing security all the time is important; testing individual employees for compliance may be counterproductive, especially among the youngest employees.

What’s your view?

I had a beer with my 25-year-old daughter Jen and Laura, her friend from high school, before seeing a performance of The Nutcracker in mid-December. I mentioned something about Facebook, and was surprised by their animosity toward the site. They both agree that they did not like what it is (too serious, a soapbox for self-promotion, populated by arrogant and self-absorbed Gen Ys) and missed what it was (fun and a safe way to meet people in college, a closed community). They both also did not like that it was now a place for parents – yes, me – to go. (Note: My daughter has friended me but 21-year-old son says he won’t.)

Their perspective is, of course, is easily dismissed as useless information because it is entirely anecdotal. I personally know other people in their 20s and 30s who do use it and share enormous amounts of information and photos.

And Facebook Statistics clearly don’t support the notion that it is fading in importance, even among younger people: 350 million members, each with an average of 130 friends, 8 friend requests per month, and 3 event invitations per month. Facebook crossed the 200 million member mark in April 2009, so membership has increased by 75% in some nine months or by more than 16 million members per month. Facebook has more than 101 million members in the US as of December 31, 2009, and according to CheckFacebook.com, of the 95 million US members it had as of November 3, 2009, slightly more than 50% are between the ages of 18 and 34. Facebook is growing overseas as well but numbers in any country are dwarfed by US membership, with the UK coming in a distant second with some 22.6 million members. The largest growth rates over the last 12 months are in the Philippines (2046.8% growth), Indonesia (1536.7% growth), and Thailand (1063.8% growth).

Nevertheless, there seems to be some increasing disillusionment with Facebook, though I know of no definitive trend in any age group that has been reported, other than among members 55 and older, whose ranks diminished by some 600,000 in April and May 2009. Type “Facebook sucks” into the Google rectangle and “about 19,600,000″ results show up. (This is so unscientific I won’t even make a claim about validity.) But there are also some thoughtful, reasoned articles about quitting Facebook that intrigued me:

• Carmen Joy King at Adbusters: “The amount of time I spent on Facebook had pushed me into an existential crisis. It wasn’t the time-wasting, per se, that bothered me. It was the nature of the obsession – namely self-obsession. Enough was enough. I left Facebook.”
• Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times writes about friends quitting: “If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.”
• Singer Lily Allen, quoted by Anita Singh at showbusiness.com: “I just had this revelation that Facebook, blogging, all those things were becoming a total addiction. I’d be with my boyfriend or my mum and they’d have just got half of me. So I put my BlackBerry, my laptop, my iPod in a box and that’s the end . . . We’ve ended up in this world of unreal communications and I don’t want that. I want real life back.”
• Hannah VanderPoel at North by Northwestern, a Northwestern University online publication: “Ultimately, my own self-prescribed hiatus from Facebook was fueled by three factors. One was to rid my life of unnecessary distraction, mostly in an attempt to finish my homework. The second was the hope of re-learning how to socialize in ways that don’t involve typing public messages to profile avatars that serve as pixeled representations of real people. Thirdly, it was the desire to regain the sense of personal privacy that I surrendered three years ago when I first created my account –- a move that I am retrospectively thankful for, given the controversy surrounding the site’s privacy policies (or lack thereof).”
• Boston University sophomore Brendan Gauthier: “I couldn’t justify the amount of time I was spending — no, wasting — on it. Why was I looking through my friend’s roommate’s girlfriend’s sorority sister’s photo albums? I didn’t even know this person, yet I could tell you what she did last weekend. . . . At what point are we willing to sacrifice real friendships for convenience? Since giving up Facebook, I’ve called my high school friends, and our conversations are much more gratifying than three words on our wall-to-wall.”

So, my questions are: Do you know people who have quit Facebook? Are you thinking about quitting yourself?

An HR executive at a major manufacturer confided to me: “Last weekend, I hacked my iPhone so I could use it on our network because it is not an authorized device at our company.” When I asked how he learned to hack his iPhone, he said he found an Internet chat group of like-minded iPhone owners and readily found the right settings for his particular network.

A Managing Director in Singapore for a US-based company told me that his PC is virtually useless in Asia “Recently I was in Hong Kong stranded in traffic,” he said, “and I watched another executive, probably a competitor, thumbing his way through phone calls, emails, and other business on a tiny keyboard and tiny screen. Meanwhile I sat in the back seat of my limo twiddling my thumbs looking at my un-tethered laptop, bemoaning the fact that our company does not support an Asian mobile solution.”

Are these isolated examples? No. Are they real? Yes. Are these your typical Gen Y or Net Generation employees? No, all are senior executives each with over 20 years of experience. Why would any company want to stifle the productivity of its high paid executives?

The anecdotes come from the fieldwork of a major study of employee computing released by nGenera Corporation earlier this week. A group of colleagues and I spent more than a year conducting the research, which was sponsored by a blue-ribbon syndicate of global corporations that are members of our nGenera Insight programs. We interviewed individuals at top vendors, global companies, and major government agencies to understand the best way to unleash employee creativity, support new forms of collaboration, and drive new levels of productivity.

Let me review just a few of the findings from the study. (You can download a summary of the report here.)

• Some companies get it, some don’t. Most employees come to work to be productive. Many want to be creative. And, increasingly, more and more want to collaborate. Collaboration in the workplace requires open data, open apps, and open minds. Does this mean a workplace free-for-all? No. In fact, companies that “get it” categorize their data, specify where open apps can be used, and put in place infrastructure that naturally implements policies and controls to guide “creative and open minds.” Those that don’t get it find themselves outmaneuvered when it comes to looking for new talent and forced to reinvent the wheel every time they need to partner. Competitors who get the need for collaboration will continually extend and improve their product and service features faster and at a lower cost.
• Collaboration requires a collaborative services infrastructure – nGenera calls it a Collaboration Server. Who has better information about your employees, your HR systems or Facebook and Linked-In? With over 300 million profiles on Facebook, it’s very likely that Facebook profile information might be useful to download into your internal systems. Would such information benefit your employees? Would profile information benefit your sales reps when they deal with customers or prospects? Yes and yes. Organizations need a “master hub” for collaboration. This “master hub” seamlessly interconnects proprietary systems, structured data and unstructured data, internal search with external search, open applications, and external platforms (e.g., Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, WebEx, Salesforce.com, etc.), so employees have what they need. As nGenera puts it, the Collaboration Server integrates leading consumer platforms, user management and security, policy and compliance management, and metadata repositories.
• Share data, information, and knowledge to create value, but categorize first. Companies need to segment data and knowledge into a minimum of three categories: 1) data that is open; 2) data that can be shared; and 3) data that is closed (locked up). Why? Employees need to know what data is in which category. Open data can be freely shared with a great deal of discretion and often this leads to new ideas and innovation. Shared data, the realm of joint ventures, product design, etc., must be controlled and selectively (usually under contracts and NDAs) shared. Data such as formulas, designs, customer data, etc., need to be looked up and sometimes taken completely off the grid for competitive and legal reasons. In our research, thought, we found that few companies have taken the time to make even these simple distinctions. It is no wonder data security and privacy are compromised.
• IT cannot do everything, nor should they. Yes, technology is a major source of innovation. And yes, it’s impossible to have any business discussion these days without having a technology discussion. But that does not mean that IT must do everything. Companies that completely lock down their IT tools, technologies, and infrastructure, by definition, must depend on IT professionals to do everything. Today, with computer literacy rates at all-time highs, employees can do much on their own, if given the right tools and the right policy frameworks. In fact once the creativity is unleashed, few companies can anticipate all the innovation that ensues. Locked-down companies deprive themselves of significant productivity and innovation in their workforce. Smart CIOs are revamping their infrastructure and policies to support self-service IT models and unleash enterprise-wide creativity on a massive and measurable scale.
• Some employees will manage their own computing just for the privilege to be more creative and self-reliant. One of our earliest findings in this research program was that every organization has a segment of employees that want to be self-sufficient. They will even buy their own technology and provide their own support if the organization will give them greater freedom over their technological choices. A number of companies now provide this option to employees, such as by providing a stipend for purchases. Employees buy what they can with the stipend (usually from an approved but diverse list), and then are welcome to make additional purchases on their own nickel to augment their “computing environment.” At BP, one of the largest global energy companies, such a program reduced support costs and increased employee morale. Of course, BP also put in place the policies that defined the rules of the road, instituted a computer “driver’s license,” had the participating employees sign appropriate use contracts, and engineered a thin client infrastructure to securely link self-reliant employees to sensitive internal systems. The moral of the story: Do whatever you can to harness this class of employees.

We uncovered several other key findings about how companies are supporting and nurturing employee freedom, creativity, and self-reliance in pursuit of a collaborative workplace. Some companies (see Dion Hinchcliffe on open business data and open business methods) are on their way to the new model of employee productivity and so are some leading government agencies (see data.gov and apps.gov). Every organization has a choice and the consequences of the wrong choice may be dramatic and immediate: Will they pursue new policies, technologies, and practices that unleash the creativity, innovation, and energy of their workforces, or will they continue to rely on command and control and in the process stymie the next generation of enterprise innovation and productivity gains?

In an age of collaboration, check out these back to school musts à la Web 2.0:

Time to pick your course schedule but undecided on which classes to take? Don’t panic…Do log on to http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/.  This popular forum is well known amongst university students and has well over 10 million peer contributions worldwide. You can search through its database of 1 million professors and browse through the collective ratings of past students who have taken his/her class. Profs are rated on a 5 point scale across four dimensions; Easiness, Helpfulness, Clarity, and Interest. And with an added twist, some profs even have the honour of receiving a red pepper badge when rated “hot” by their students. Now you’ll just have to deal with the trade-off of either getting an awesome prof or waking up early for those 7:30 AM classes.

Desperately needing a tutor for chemistry but not willing to pay the lucrative $20/hour rate? eTutoring.org may be the solution to your problems. The site boasts a network of talented peers who help each other either in real-time through web communication (Webcam, Skype) or offline through back and forth conversations. That knowledge is in turn pooled into the forum and recycled to future students, setting up another cycle for value creation, capture, and distribution.

Skipped one too many classes or just sick of taking notes yourself? No problem, just log on to NoteMesh and let your peers do all the work. NoteMesh self proclaims to be the Wikipedia of class notes, creating ingenious wikis for various classes across campuses. Students can upload their own notes, modify and edit existing notes, or simply log on to take a tour. This certainly puts a new spin on collaborative education but will it get you that A in history class? I guess we’ll have to find out…

I’m interested in hearing what your thoughts are on this school kit and if you have any additions to the list

Also, how do think these collaborative tools will impact education in general? No doubt, there will be a shift from traditional pedagogy, but what about other factors such as quality, costs, and incentives of education?

“Throughout August, members of Congress are back home, where the hands they shake and the voices they hear will not belong to lobbyists, but to people like you,” Obama wrote.

“Home is where we’re strongest. We didn’t win last year’s election together at a committee hearing in D.C. We won it on the doorsteps and the phone lines, at the softball games and the town meetings, and in every part of this great country where people gather to talk about what matters most. And if you’re willing to step up once again, that’s exactly where we’re going to win this historic campaign for the guaranteed, affordable health insurance that every American deserves.”

Healthcare reform, writes Obama, is the issue “our movement was built for.”There is no possible compromise on health care and the myth of Obama as a “post-partisan” president is exactly that — a myth.   The health care industry generates billions of dollars in profits and many people are seething that these profits might be curtailed.  This issue can never be negotiated in Washington back rooms as there are huge interests vested in the status quo — such as the big insurance companies, health maintenance organizations and pharmaceutical giants.  Like many social changes, for this one there will be winners and losers and an historic battle will determine the outcome.

As Obama noted in his message to supporters, “In politics, there’s a rule that says when you ask people to get involved, always tell them it’ll be easy. Well, let’s be honest here: Passing comprehensive health insurance reform will not be easy. Every President since Harry Truman has talked about it, and the most powerful and experienced lobbyists in Washington stand in the way.”  But this time Obama has what those presidents lacked:  the Internet and a powerful social movement that potentially can shift the relationship of forces in America away from the traditional entrenched interests towards the needs of the population.

One of the principles of the New Media Group in the Obama presidential campaign was that “online activity exists to support offline activity.”  The goal of the online media specialists was to motivate and energize volunteers to be active in their communities.  This principle is being carried into the battle around healthcare:

Obama’s email says:  “That’s why Organizing for America is putting together thousands of events this month where you can reach out to neighbors, show your support, and make certain your members of Congress know that you’re counting on them to act.” He says:  “These canvasses, town halls, and gatherings only make a difference if you turn up to knock on doors, share your views, and show your support.”

He asks his supporters:  Can you commit to join at least one event in your community this month?

The battle will be fierce.  Already, opponents to health care reform are starting to sabotage the first of thousands of these town-hall meetings.  Protesters are being bussed in to disrupt information sessions and help spread myths that Obama’s plans are socialist or fascist or both.  The protesters are fueled by the rhetoric on Fox News and use the same sleazy tactics as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth used against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

“So yes, fixing this crisis will not be easy,” concludes Obama  “Our opponents will attack us every day for daring to try. It will require time, and hard work, and there will be days when we don’t know if we have anything more to give. But there comes a moment when we all have to choose between doing what’s easy, and doing what’s right.  This is one of those times.”

In my mind, the results are completely predictable. Personally I trust Jon Stewart more than anyone else to probe issues of actual importance. Most network news is sensationalist, and typically irrelevant blather, one step up from man bites dog. There are real problems in the world today. Young people know this. Increasingly they don’t accept the existing paradigms of what constitutes public discourse.

Jon Stewart’s popularity does not mean that today’s Net Generation is indifferent to the news. After all, to get most of Jon Stewart’s jokes, you actually have to know what is happening in the world.

Today’s youth are media-savvy, and have a good grip on what I would call the theater of Washington. A favorite Stewart technique was to note when a politician was blatantly contradicting what he or she said in the past. He would show two or three video clips back-to-back, and often just leave the contradiction to speak for itself. The news department of the big networks could do the same thing, but they choose not to. That’s not how they play the game. One can’t blame Stewart’s audience having greater faith that they’re getting the real goods.

Radio: Teenagers do not listen to traditional radio because they are able to listen to online streaming music that is advertisement free and enables them to choose which songs they want to hear.

TV: Most teenagers still watch television but the consumption varies seasonally with popular programs (i.e. Teenage boys watch more TV when it’s football (soccer) season). Advertisements are a turnoff so many turn to internet channels to watch ad free programming. It’s getting harder for youth to find the time in their busy schedules to watch TV.

Newspapers: “No teenager I know of regularly reads a paper.” Most are reluctant to pay for a newspaper and when they do, prefer those that are compact for easy reading on the go.

Gaming: Girl gamers are becoming more numerous. Consoles that enable chat via internet are popular and negatively impact phone usage. PC gaming has no place in the market as it can be downloaded for free.

Internet: Most teenagers engage heavily in social networking. “Teenagers do not use Twitter”

Music: Teenagers listen to a lot of music but are very reluctant to pay for it. Most do not listen exclusively to music but rather do so while multitasking

Mobile phone: 99% of teenagers have a cell phone, and upgrade it every 2 years.

These revelations are not groundbreaking and if you are familiar with our research or Don’s books (Growing Up Digital and Grown Up Digital), you would find uncanny similarities between Matthew’s anecdotal findings and our 8 Norms of the Net Generation.

However, what IS surprising are the reactions that this paper is getting from the business community. Edward Hill-Wood, Matthew’s supervisor, claims that dozens and dozens of fund managers and CEOs have been e-mailing and calling all day. Others cite that this report has generated 5 to 6 times more feedback than the average Morgan Stanley research report. This goes on to show really how large the generation gap is between baby boomers and today’s digital natives. It seems that the impact of an internet savvy generation can no longer be ignored as executives turn their undivided attention towards understanding the Net Gen.

But before taking Matthew’s views for granted, I’d like to point out a few areas of caution. First, the findings are not supported statistically but rather represent solely the views of Matthew and his friends. Secondly, it’s important to take into account the context in which this research was conducted. Matthew is from London, England and being a 15 year old intern at a bank, must come from a solid educational background. In other words, his views may not be indicative of other teenagers… Net Geners in Japan certainly update their phones more frequently than once every two years and I for one do use Twitter as well as read newspapers on a regular basis…

While browsing the CoSN website (which, by the way, is loaded with resources for educators looking to bring technology into their schools), I came across a really great video called “Learning to Change, Changing to Learn“.

The video itself is simple, interviewing a handful of young people about the impact of technology on their lives. What’s amazing is some of the insight in their answers.

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

“If I didn’t have computers, I would say a lot of my hobbies that make up most of my time, I wouldn’t have. Because, well, I learned Japanese, and I learned a lot of that through the Internet.”

“That’s the cool thing about technology. You can change things whenever you want.”

“When you have access to everything, you learn how to know yourself better because you are forced to decide what to use and what not to use.”

“What we’re doing in gaming – coordination and communication – is very similar to what we’re doing at school. In the game, we have to talk to each other, we have to coordinate what we’re going to do in order to make sure that we do it well.”

And my personal favourite:

“I would say that being able to experiment with technology, is really what makes it technology. If people didn’t sit there and experiment with test tubes back in the days of Newton, nothing would have happened. It’s paving the way for us to move forward as a species and a civilization.”

The video can be seen here.

This problem is undoubtedly complicated, but one of the reasons why many American youth are unmotivated and not learning well is that they’re bored in school. They’re grown up in a fast paced, challenging digital world, with the Internet, mobile devices, video games and other gadgets. They watch less television than their parents did and TV is typically a background activity. They are a generation doesn’t like to be broadcast to and they love to interact, multi-task and collaborate. Yet, when they get into the classroom, they’re faced with stale textbooks and lectures from teachers who are still using a nineteenth century innovation, chalk and blackboard.

American classrooms need to enter the 21st century. Thousands of teachers agree. Earlier this year, several important educational groups urged the president and Congress to spend nearly $10 billion to improve technology in the classroom, and ensure teachers know how to use computers most effectively.To show the way, I suggest the president take a look at a modest country across the Atlantic that’s turning into the world leader in rethinking education for the 21st century.

That country is Portugal. Its economy in early 2005 was sagging, and it was running out of the usual economic fixes. It also scored some of the lowest educational achievement results in western Europe.

So President Prime-Minister Jose Socrates took a courageous step. He decided to invest heavily in a “technological shock” to jolt his country into the 21st century. This meant, among other things, that he’d make sure everyone in the workforce could handle a computer and use the Internet effectively.

This could transform Portuguese society by giving people immediate access to world. It would open up huge opportunities that could make Portugal a richer and more competitive place. But it wouldn’t happen unless people had a computer in their hands.

In 2005, only 31% of the Portuguese households had access to the Internet. To improve this penetration, the logical place to start was in school, where there was only one computer for five kids. The aim was to have one computer for every two students by 2010.

So Portugal launched the biggest program in the world to equip every child in the country with a laptop and access to the web and the world of collaborative learning. To pay for it, Portugal tapped into both government funds and money from mobile operators who were granted 3G licenses. That subsidized the sale of one million ultra-cheap laptops to teachers, school children, and adult learners.

Here’s how it works: If you’re a teacher or a student, you can buy a laptop for 150 euros (U.S. $207). You also get a discounted rate for broadband Internet access, wired or wireless. Low income students get an even bigger discount, and connected laptops are free or virtually free for the poorest kids. For the youngest students in Grades 1 to 4, the laptop/Internet access deal is even cheaper — 50 euros for those who can pay; free for those who can’t.

That’s only the start: Portugal has invested 400 million euros to makes sure each classroom has access to the Internet. Just about every classroom in the public system now has an interactive smart board, instead of the old fashioned blackboard.

This means that nearly nine out of 10 students in Grades 1 to 4 have a laptop on their desk. The impact on the classroom is tremendous, as I saw this spring when I toured a classroom of seven-year-olds in a public school in Lisbon. It was the most exciting, noisy, collaborative classroom I have seen in the world.

The teacher directed the kids to an astronomy blog with a beautiful color image of a rotating solar system on the screen. “Now,” said the teacher, “Who knows what the equinox is?”

Nobody knew.

“Alright, why don’t you find out?”

The chattering began, as the children clustered together to figure out what an equinox was. Then one group lept up and waved their hands. They found it! They then proceeded to explain the idea to their classmates.

This, I thought, was the exact opposite of everything that is wrong with the classroom system in the United States.

The children in this Portuguese classroom were loving learning about astronomy. They were collaborating. They were working at their own pace. They barely noticed the technology, the much-vaunted laptop. It was like air to them. But it changed the relationship they had with their teacher. Instead of fidgeting in their chairs while the teacher lectures and scrawls some notes on the blackboard, they were the explorers, the discoverers, and the teacher was their helpful guide.

Yet too often, in the U.S. school system, teachers still rely on an Industrial Model of education. They deliver a lecture, the same one to all students. It’s a one-way lecture. The teacher is the expert; the students are expected to absorb what the teacher says and repeat. And students are supposed to learn alone.

Teachers often feel that this is the only way to teach a large classroom of kids, and yet the classroom in Portugal shows that giving kids laptops can free the teacher to introduce a new way of learning that’s more natural for kids who have grown up digital at home.

First, it allows teachers to step off the stage and start listening and conversing instead of just lecturing. Second, the teacher can encourage students to discover for themselves, and learn a process of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the teacher’s information. Third, the teacher can encourage students to collaborate among themselves and with others outside the school. Finally, the teacher can tailor the style of education to their students’ individual learning styles.

It’s not easy to change the model of teaching. In fact, this is the hard part. It’s far easier to spend money, as Portugal did, to put Internet into the classroom and equip the kids with laptops. ( By now, half of high school students now have them, as do four in 10 middle school students.)

Yet Portugal has been careful to invest in teacher training to capitalize on the possibilities of the laptops in schools. They’re also thinking of creating a new online platform to allow teachers to work together to create new lessons and course materials that take advantage of the interactive technology. Through this collaboration, the Portuguese school system will create exciting new online materials to educate children. Lots of ideas are already making their way into Portuguese classrooms, says Mario Franco, chair of the Foundation for Mobile Communication, which is managing the e-school program. There are 50 different educational programs and games inside the laptops the youngest children use. The laptops are even equipped with a control to encourage kids to finish their homework and score high marks. If they do, they get more time to play.

It’s too early to assess the impact on learning in Portuguese schools. Studies of the impact of computers in schools elsewhere have been inconclusive, or mixed. One key problem is that simply providing computers in schools is not enough. Teachers facing a classroom of kids with laptops need to learn that they are no longer the expert in their domain; the Internet is.

Yet Portugal is on a campaign to reinvent learning for the 21st century. The technology is only one part of that campaign. The real work is creating a new model of learning.

I believe this could help the U.S. revive students’ interest in school and perhaps keep them in school long enough to graduate, and even go to college. It would be a substantial investment. It’s estimated that the total cost of giving a computer to each student, including connection to networks, training, and maintenance, is over $1,000 per year.

Yet after seeing the promise of the exciting classrooms in Portugal, I’m convinced it is worth it. Your child should be so fortunate.

Don’s post yesterday, “Will universities stay relevant?”, sparked some interesting discussion around the idea that our education system is in crisis. Given Mike’s innovative perspective on teaching, I sent him the article and asked for his feedback. To be clear, Don addressed the university system and Mike’s perspective comes from teaching high school, but I still thought it would be interesting to hear what his experience has been like in the classroom.

With his permission, I’ve posted some of his email response here, which he also published on his blog “Teaching, Technology & More“:

“You must understand that students like yourself are not the norm in terms of being in touch with the digital world and having the passion to use the tools available to them in the pursuit of knowledge.  Most of these students head off to university (and our new inflated grading system is making it easier) with little self-initiative and passion for learning.  I have been using technology in the classroom for 3 years now but I still fall back to the lecture style often because most of my students are not mature enough to embrace student-directed project based learning.

That being said, the first two years of university (as I recall them) are designed to “weed out” those who really do not belong, so to speak.  Although most of my professors in the 80′s and early 90′s used the lecture style, their classrooms became more open to critical thought and discussion after second year.  From what I am told, this is still the case.

Right now, I have reached a point in my classroom where I cannot proceed any further with student-driven methods due to lack of technology and support.  We do not have the bandwidth nor the requisite hardware in place to allow students to develop their critical thinking skills using web based applications.

I sympathize with the universities somewhat.  Many of these professors grew up without technology and are now being pushed to adopt it.  The process will take time and embracing a digital pedagogy does not ensure critical thinking skills will be developed.  The passion for learning must come from the students and that passion is something that transcends generations.

What I mean to say is students, like yourself, who have a passion for learning always embrace the latest technology the world has to offer to enhance their critical thinking skills and understanding of concepts.  The fact that you are using Twitter, etc. to accomplish this is no different than a student in the early 1980′s using one of the first computers to be more productive or a student in the 1950′s using a slide rule to do the same.

We need to work on fueling the passion for learning if we want to produce a generation of critical thinkers.  I try to use technology to inspire students to become passionate about knowledge.  The technology on its own is merely a conduit to critical thinking.  The passion for learning must come from within.”

I argued that is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn. The reaction on Twitter, mainly from students has been enormously positive. So far two academics have written critiques of my views at the Edge.

However because the Edge does not enable readers to comment, I’d like to know what you think. Please read a summary below and then check out the Edge article and let the world know what you think here on Wikinomics.com.

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still common. It’s part of a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education.

Students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities are to remain relevant, they will have to change.

Professors will have to abandon the traditional lecture, and start listening and conversing with the students — shifting from a broadcast style and adopting an interactive one. They should be encouraging students to discover for themselves, and learn a process of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the professor’s store of information. They need to encourage students to collaborate among themselves and with others outside the university. Finally, they need to tailor the style of education to their students’ individual learning styles.

Some leading educators are calling for this kind of massive change; one of these is Richard Sweeney, university librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He says students are smart but impatient. They like to collaborate and they reject one-way lectures. While some educators view this as pandering to a generation, Sweeney is firm: “They want to learn, but they want to learn only from what they have to learn, and they want to learn it in a style that is best for them.”

This is not fundamentally about technology per se. Rather it represents a change in the relationship between students and teachers in the learning process.

In the old model, teachers taught and students were expected to absorb vast quantities of content. Education was about absorbing content and being able to recall it on exams. You graduated and you were set for life – just “keeping” up in your chosen field. Today when you graduate you’re set for say, 15 minutes. If you took a technical course half of what you learned in the first year may be obsolete by the 4th year. What counts is your capacity to learn lifelong, to think, research, find information, analyze, synthesize, contextualize, critically evaluate it; to apply research to solving problems; to collaborate and communicate.
This challenge to the existing order raises a deeper issue — the purpose of the university

“The time has come for some far reaching changes to the university, our model of pedagogy, how we operate, and our relationship to the rest of the world,” says Luis M. Proenza, president of the University of Akron.

He asks a provocative question: Why should a university student be restricted to learning from the professors at the university he or she is attending? True, students can obviously learn from intellectuals around the world through books, or via the Internet. Yet in a digital world, why shouldn’t a student be able to take a course from a professor at another university?

Proenza thinks universities should use the Internet to create a global centre of excellence. In other words, choose the best courses you have and link them with the best at a handful of universities around the world to create an unquestionably best-in-class program for students. Students would get to learn from the world’s greatest minds in their area of interest – either in the physical classroom, or online. This global academy would be also be open to anyone online. This is a beautiful example of the collaboration I described in the book I co-authored, Wikinomics.

The digital world, which has trained young minds to inquire and collaborate, is challenging not only the lecture-driven teaching traditions of the university, but also the very notion of a walled-in institution that excludes large numbers of people. Why not allow a brilliant grade 9 student to take first-year math, without abandoning the social life of his high school? Why not deploy the interactive power of the internet to transform the university into a place of life-long learning?

Share your thoughts here.

Widely recognized for creating some of the most brand loyal customers around, Apple has designed an overwhelmingly popular in-store summer camp targeted at 8 – 12 year old children.  The camp features a series of four different workshops: Movies, Music, Photos, and Presentations.  Each is designed to give children exposure to Apple’s hardware and software suite.

While certainly not as exciting as the dinosaur camp that I attended in my childhood, I think that Apple is really onto something here, and all kidding aside, I know many adults  who could benefit from similar workshops.  Here is the ad for the Presentation Workshop: 

Replace kids with employees or executives and school with work and think about how many people you know who should probably be first in line for this workshop.

These sessions are being offered at all U.S. Apple retail locations free of charge and all technology required is to be supplied by Apple (unless you’d like to bring your own gear).  Of note is that if you’re looking to sign your litte one up, you’d better hurry as many sessions are already filling waiting lists and some have been closed for registration due to oversubscription.

I think this is an interesting example of industry creatively stepping in (albeit for self-motivated purposes and on a tiny scale) to help provide training in skill sets that our school systems may not be able to immediately address – advancing the technological skills and comfort level of some of our youngest scholars.

What’s your take on Apple’s attempt to create a little army of I’m a Mac evangelists?  Creative marketing combined with valuable skills training or targeting a market too young for comfort?

Want to know what the most effective corporations of tomorrow will look like? Look at those that are most successful at attracting young workers today.

If you persuade them to work for your company, these young people will bring with them a natural affinity for technology that seems uncanny. They instinctively turn first to the Net to communicate, understand, learn and find. If you’re older than 30, you probably think you are as cyber-sophisticated as the next person – shopping online, using Wikipedia, sending 100 e-mails a day and doing the BlackBerry prayer every 10 minutes. But compared to the kids, most of us are Luddites.

Read the full article and view the video here.

On this platform, everyone contributes to a library of content that can be used by anyone to do anything, the payoff for sharing your content is that everyone else has access to yours. I think Larry Lessig would agree.

Unfortunately, the interface for accomplishing such a level of collaboration doesn’t yet exist, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t already started happening. Introducing thru-you.com — a site run by YouTuber ‘Kutiman’ that remixes unrelated existing user-submitted YouTube musical content into new pieces; making songs played by ‘bands’ whose members have never met one another. The result is pretty cool to behold:

Under the editorial control of Kutiman, a massive pool of unrelated source material has been crafted together into an original piece. Conceptually, this is reminiscent of the sampling done in hip-hop, but from a much larger, more diverse pool.

Generating these movies required downloading each of the YouTube videos, converting them to an editor-friendly format, stitching them together and then uploading them again — something that is likely beyond most casual YouTubers’ technical abilities. It won’t always be this way, and soon I believe new technologies will emerge that allow all YouTube users to better leverage the content that their entire community has generated. Once this happens, the remix-culture will really be in full swing.

Part and parcel with viewing YouTube as a platform with open content that can be used and displayed however a content remixer likes is a new way to view YouTube videos: YooouuuTuuube.com. YooouuuTuuube.com takes a normal YouTube video and spits out the frames on a grid before your eyes. The result is pretty different from the normal experience of watching a YouTube video, but it shows the new kind of media that can be created when existing media is open (or at least taken) for use by others. To see it in action, check out this YooouuuTuuube’d version of ‘Junior Kickstart’ by The Go! Team — Enjoy!

Best Buy management understand that the nature of work is changing. It has become more cognitively complex, more team-based and collaborative, more dependent on social skills, more time-pressured, more reliant on technological competence, more mobile and less dependent on geography. A growing number of firms are decentralizing decision-making functions, communicating in a peer-to-peer fashion, and embracing new technologies which empower employees to communicate easily and openly with people inside and outside the firm. In doing so, they are creating new corporate meritocracy that is sweeping away the hierarchical silos in its path and connecting internal teams to a wealth of external networks.

For Brad Anderson, Best Buy’s CEO, supervision and even management in the old sense is outdated. He notes: “The Net Geners we hire have enormous knowledge, unprecedented information, and facility with tools that in some areas is superior their seniors.” So the job of management is more to create the context whereby they can be successful, rather than to supervise them.

Every company should be thinking along these lines.

The Institute is dedicated to keeping the profession abreast of new techniques, new media and new practices. Promoting best practice, the Institute works to increase marketing’s contribution to business, while reducing its cost, through:

* Assisting the lifetime professional development of those engaged in direct, data and digital marketing
* Providing thought-leadership and disseminating best practice
* Setting and promoting global standards of professionalism

Of course no one really knows how much accumulated wealth there is in the GI and Boomer generations, or how longer life expectancies and inheritance taxes will affect the transfer of wealth, or if the current downturn will eventually empty the Boomers coffers, leaving nothing at all. Still, there seems to be an untapped opportunity in there somewhere.

For companies with Boomer marketing strategies, it could mean it’s time to start thinking about what strategies are needed to ensure that Boomer assets and business stay with the enterprise. At the very least it’s a whole new angle on retention and relationship marketing – call it “inheritance marketing” if you will. I recently came across the term gerentocracy to describe the imbalance of political power between the young and the old. How about geriadvertising for Boomer-inspired advertising?

An interesting article in USA Today talks about how, while Boomers have enjoyed unprecedented levels of wealth; “Households headed by people in their 20s, 30s and 40s have barely kept up with inflation or have fallen behind since 1989. People 35 to 50 actually have lost wealth since 1989 after adjusting for inflation.” This would seem to suggest that targeting Boomers is the way to go.

In the book Workforce Crisis, by Ken Dychtwald, Tammy Erickson, and Robert Morison, the authors discuss the implications of the imbalance of wealth distribution (written in 2006 before the market crash):

“How should companies and governments plan for the shrinking number of young workers, young taxpayers, and young consumers? Most marketing is still youth-oriented (or “youth obsessed”) even though today’s mature adults (those over fifty) control two-thirds of the accumulated wealth in the United States. Boomers will be the most financially powerful generation of mature consumers ever. What happens to marketing and product development when 80 percent of the consumer growth comes from the fifty-plus age group? How will businesses maintain brand loyalty when customers reinvent themselves at forty, sixty, and eighty years old? Will boomers, who have been active spenders in their middle years become more frugal as they mature?”

But, Boomers are moving / have moved out of their key spending years. Tammy Erickson wrote a recent post in Harvard Business, “What Demographics Tell Us About the Economy,” where she talks about how tracking the number of people age 46 to 50 in a given economy can be used as proxy for growth in consumer spending, and how this “big spender” demographic is declining around the world. She says, “This narrower age range, 46-50 year olds, will decline in number in the United States for the next twenty five years, until about 2035, when members of Generation Y will begin to enter this age category.” Looking at this data, targeting Boomer inheritors and Gen X makes sense, but inheritance marketers may have to wait for a while to see the returns.

Regardless of how well- or poorly-informed an inheritance marketing strategy might be, there are definitely Boomer brands out there that are trying to reinvent themselves. Here’s an example from this past year that sparked my thinking on this and made me smile a bit as well. I don’t know if Canadian Club has been thinking about Boomer wealth redistribution, but I have to say the tag line for ad campaign certainly helps make my point. “Damn right your father drank it!” says CC was a cool brand for Boomers, but can still be cool for their Net Gen children. Certainly invokes images of my own dad living out his college years in California in the 60’s.

Wordles can be a great way to visualize political discourse, especially when you use them in comparative form.  After Inauguration Day in January, Naumi wrote an excellent post , using IBM’s ManyEyes analysis to compare Obama’s inaugural speech to those of his predecessors.

These three tag clouds were all pulled from the Capitol Words Application, another development from the Sunlight Foundation (who we’ve written about previously – here, here and here).  Capitol Words is a program that takes every word entered into the congressional record and archives it online in a mashable and searchable form.  With different search metrics and visual aids, it allows you to see who’s saying what – broken down by individual, state or date.  One application lists the “10 most vocal” and “10 quietest” lawmakers of the last 60 days (over this most recent period, Michael Michaud has only uttered 8 words in Congress, while Richard Durbin has said almost 70 000).

Above, I’ve copied 3 tag clouds.  One of them represents all the words that John McCain has entered into Congressional Records over the past year.  Another one is from Nancy Pelosi, and the third is from all the representatives from the state of Massachusetts.  Can you guess which is which?

Too easy?

If you got the first three, here’s a more challenging one:

Representing all the words that he/she entered into record over the past 12 months, which well-known member of Congress does this cloud belong to?  (note:  I had to blur out the name of the state to avoid giving away the answer)

Joseph Brusuelas, economist at Moody’s Economy.com is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying he fears “we’ve lost a generation of investors.” His take was that people won’t invest because they won’t have the money to do so, but I think it’s safe to say that there will also be a certain lack of trust in the market. Have we gained a generation of entrepreneurs? A generation of socialists, scrutinizers, realists, and environmentalist?

Jon Stewart’s “senior black correspondent” Larry Willmore jests that the swath of white collar crime leading into the recession will change the face of criminality in America such that the Wall Street look (i.e. white men in suits and ties) will be seen as inherently untrustworthy in the future. Willmore’s analysis is satirical, but looking at our own research here at nGenera, Scrutiny and Integrity are two of the eight norms of the Net Generation that will definitely be amplified by the recession (the other norms are Freedom, Customization, Collaboration, Entertainment, Speed, and Innovation). If the Net Gen weren’t already scrutinizing corporate America before, they certainly will be now.

For some deeper thinking on the effect of the recession on the Net Gen, I turn to Fast Company staff writer and author of Generation Debt, Anya Kamenetz. As Anya rightly noted in one of her Yahoo! Finance columns, “Economic dramas shape an entire generation’s beliefs about the nature of the economy and the risks involved.” That was a year ago and already she was postulating about how the Net Gen’s psyche might be shaped. Specifically, she noted that young people:

• Won’t expect to get rich quick.
• Will “get real” about consumption.
• Will buy on the cheap.

I spoke with Anya recently so I thought I’d ask her to elaborate on her thinking.

What effect do you think this recession will have on the psyche of people entering the workforce now?

“The climate in the last 10 years has been a very unrealistic one. We have been living in this huge bubble. For young people who are entering the 20’s now, this is really all they knew: Inflated expectations, ridiculous monthly consumer debt, and the idea that you don’t need to save for the future because you can just count on the equity in your house. But, when the bubble bursts, the paradigm shifts. For young people now, they are really looking around and seeing the world as being a very different place. For older people, it can be a lot more traumatic to have this happen, but for young people, they’re more ready to maybe accept that change.

And so, if you look at ‘The Greatest Generation’ that came of age during the depression and then entered World War II, they were able to achieve at incredibly high levels and get a great education. That legacy of the depression, obviously it was very hard for a lot of people, but it also led to realistic attitude about money, and a very practical down to earth determination to try to succeed, and some strong family-oriented values. I think that I’m starting to see the beginning of that among this generation. People are saying, ‘Well, you know, this idea of endless wealth and greed, it’s not something I really want to sign up for.’ Young people are forced to consider, at a very young age, what is really important to them and what they really want to have because they know they can’t have it all.”

So, really, this is good for us?

“From a purely economic point of view, I think it could be [good for us]. It’s a mixed bag, right? Because on the one hand, the drama that you enter into upon graduation, it actually can determine your salary for years to come. So if you start in a down market or you have to take a job that’s not exactly matching your skills, it could have a long term effect on your income. But on the flip side, if you get into a habit of saving very early, you have the magic of compound interest on your side, plus you develop lifelong healthy financial habits.”

So, in the end, a generation known for being spoiled, having unrealistic expectations about work, and graduating university with an inflated sense of entitlement might actually end up being the “sensible generation.” I would add to Anya’s analysis the notion this will be a generation that will trust corporations even less than previous generations and will be more adamant in demanding integrity from their corporate and government leaders.

And while I hope all of this is true, I also know that there is a layer of insulation between the Net Gen and the economy: their parents. The extent to which many Net Geners will feel the impact of the economy is also dependent upon how well their Boomer parents are able to weather the storm and continue to provide for adult children that may still be living in their basements. Given that many Boomers are being forced to delay retirement, I would say the insulation is getting thin. In fact, if pensions shrivel up and forced retirements put a strain on the family coffers, the Net Generation may even have their own basements occupied by Boomer parents that need caring for in old age. I’m sure there is an entire school of psychology devoted to that topic, so I won’t even get started.

As they note in the article, Southern Ontario has had its share of very successful companies in the creation of new technology tools, such as Waterloo’s own Research In Motion.  Now, it seems that top-level leadership is waking up to the massive growth potential that exists in getting people and companies to actually use all of the newly-available tools, something we’re constantly pushing here at nGenera.

Here’s an excerpt from Ken Coates, Dean of Arts at the University of Waterloo: 

“The new economy will be driven more by the use of technology than the making of technology,” he said, citing companies that are working to adapt the social network technology of Facebook and YouTube to the way they deal with staff and even clients.

“This is the fastest-growing sector the world has ever seen, and we want to bring together people from engineering, the humanities, performing arts and a range of disciplines to work together to solve real-world problems,” Coates said.

“Whoever can figure this out will be the leaders in the new economy. Our goal is to devise made-in-Toronto solutions for i-banking, i-business, i-news, i-industry, i-medicine and i-everything.”

When using government expenditures to help us out of this recession, this is exactly the type of initiative that I think we need.  Coming out of this recession and entering a new age, we need forward-thinking plans to make us economically competitive.  I can’t comment on the viability of this particular plan (I don’t have all of the specific details), but I will say that in principal, this type of thinking is on track. 

With all the front-page media debate surrounding how we can save the auto industry, we often lack the necessary focus on developing the new industries that will drive our growth in the future.  Well done, U of T, Ryerson and Waterloo, I hope this plan lives up to its promise.

The remarks were made to the House of Lords and written up by the Guardian as Greenfield criticized regulators for not taking into account the broad cultural and psychological effects of social networking.

Like others in the field, Greenfield asserts that exposure to digital technologies impacts brain development. “It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations. We know that the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the outside world, ” she said.

But Greenfield draws decidedly less optimistic conclusions than those in Grown Up Digital.

“If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder.

“It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.”

Excessive exposure to video games is also fostering a culture of instant gratification, says Greenfield:

“[with] a much more marked preference for the here-and-now, where the immediacy of an experience trumps any regard for the consequences. . . The sheer compulsion of reliable and almost immediate reward is being linked to similar chemical systems in the brain that may also play a part in drug addiction. So we should not underestimate the ‘pleasure’ of interacting with a screen when we puzzle over why it seems so appealing to young people.”

Finally, Greenfield worries that social networking sites may erode our sense of identity and even our ability to communicate through face-to-face conversation:

“real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction.”

Greenfield seems eminently distinguished in her field and her warnings remind us that the psychological impacts of the digital revolution on children require more study. But Greenfield is also the author of Tomorrow’s People: How 21st Century technology is changing the way we think and feel (Penguin 2003), a dystopian novel about how everything we take for granted about human nature – imagination, individuality, memory, love, free will – could soon become lost forever as genetic modification, nanotechnology and cybernetics conspire to leave us in a ‘passive, sensory-laden state’. Makes me think that Greenfield has over-reached in her analysis of how digital technologies will influence society, culture and human nature.

Unfortunately, Greenfield’s dystopian pronouncements are likely to fall upon welcoming ears in the House Of Lords where ignorance about social networking technologies and the emerging youth culture could result in unwelcome new regulations.

Here are some quotes from professors in the article:

“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark…Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C…That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

“Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “

Quotes from students:

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade…What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?…If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

“I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”

What are your thoughts on this? Have you experienced a similar disconnect in the workplace?

My five-week-old son has had over 1,400 individual visitors to his website. Within two hours of his birth, he was Twittered because a friend got a text message announcing his birth. In a matter of days his name was indexed in Google. A friend’s five-month-old already has a Facebook page. Anecdotally, I find that a favourite pastime of many new dads in my peer group is electronic communication involving their newborns. Maybe it’s a way to connect both to the newborn and to the outside world during what is a cocooning and potentially isolating time. Maybe it helps dads become involved. Whatever the reason, most new babies these days are “born digital,” to borrow a phrase. What it will mean when they grow up, I’m not sure, but it changes something fundamental about who your little one is in the world. He has a public persona often before he can hold up his own head.

The author notes that when friends and families live far apart, the immediacy of online communication is a powerful way to share in the birth. But will these “born digital” children grow up to regret their parents enthusiasm to chronicle the early stages of their lives online? Or, will this level of personal transparency be seen as completely natural by the time they are old enough to voice an opinion? Perhaps it already is.

Increasingly, Net Geners are viewed as a make or break generation, one that has the power and choice to reverse the many mistakes of previous cohorts, or to continue on with the many destructive habits. The second place clip is interesting insofar as it accurately articulates this pivotal moment in time: it speaks to the popular idea that we have reached an historical tipping point, and many are speculating on the eventual outcome.

With generational debate and discussion figuring so prominently in the media these days, I am increasingly starting to wonder which way history will play out. Watch the video then ask yourself if the book of history that Net Geners write be read the first way or will they succeed at writing it in reverse?

Check out all the AARP contest videos here.

It seems that an unpaid internship suddenly seems like a good deal. Charityfolks.com is auctioning off internships (they expect an internship at Elle magazine to command a bid of $50,000). Obviously, there is a lot of controversy about this announcement. Click here and here for active discussions.

Optimists claim that paying for an internship for your kid is a good investment. After all, a parent has already shelled out a whack of cash to pay for their education, why stop short of a final investment that will help them get a good job (eventually). Detractors point out that it is another example of how the rich get all the advantages and that companies are doing themselves no favour by hiring the highest bidder rather than the smartest or the most passionate.