Posts filed under 'education'
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October 15th, 2008, 02:56pm
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I blogged last Fall about an initiative here in Canada called Student Vote that runs in parallel to the general election. The program educates over 400,000 young people about political issues and allows them to cast mock ballots that are tallied according to riding, as would real ballots.
As the voting public digests the results of yesterday’s Federal election, I thought I’d bring it up once again. Viewing the disparate results between young students and those eligible to vote, I have to believe that as this next generation matures, they will elect a fairly different (and greener) Parliament than we did this time around.
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August 13th, 2008, 12:03pm
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For those who have not yet heard, Don and I are working on a sequel to Wikinomics that will lift the lid on a wide range of topics that we did not really get to in wikinomics 1.0. So, for example, we’ll be examining how mass collaboration is changing education, health care, science, government, democracy, international advocacy and national security.
Based on our early conversations, I’m already convinced that we’ll surface a whole new set of meaty themes that shed new light on the emerging wiki world. But If the experience is anything like writing the last book, those themes will probably not be apparent until we’re more than 50% through the writing process! So that’s where you, and the broader the wikinomics community, come in. Read More »
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July 30th, 2008, 03:16pm
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I would like to take time now to apologize to many of you teachers out there. In my first blog post, I hopped up on my soapbox and condemned all academia. That was a little unfair. Growing up with ADHD and being forced to sit through HOURS and HOURS of INCREDIBLY BORING lectures literally feels like cruel and unusual punishment for a child/adult. It has left me a little bitter.
Many of you educators are picking up the Wikinomics standard in your communities and starting grassroots movements to make sure that students are being given better opportunities to learn. So, to extend the olive branch I have decided to write a blog post to try to help you out.
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July 28th, 2008, 09:50am
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There is a great debate raging all over the blogosphere, and more traditional media for that matter, in regards to the effect the Internet is having on the “wiring” of our brains, and more specifically our collective reading skills. We’ve recently written about it here, here, here, and here, Nicholas Carr had a great piece published in the Atlantic Monthly called “Is Google Making us Stupid“, Clay Shirky has an excellent response on the Britannica Blog entitled “Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr“, and a variety of other well thought out replies to Carr’s article can be found here.
Personally, I find that the quality of the debate itself runs somewhat counter to the thesis that Google, Digg, blogs, and other social media tools are making us stupider (or stoopider, if you prefer) - it’s pretty hard to read everything that I’ve linked to above and not come out feeling a little smarter for the time invested. However, such articles are by no means representative of what most people typically spend time reading online, so I certainly see value in the debate continuing to evolve - which is where this recent NY TImes piece comes in.
Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes (and I really like the first couple as thought starters in terms of how brains are being wired differently, in a way that could be construed as both good and bad): Read More »
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July 8th, 2008, 09:37am
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I kept thinking there was a twitter joke in here, but I couldn’t come up with it… can you? As always, you can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
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June 30th, 2008, 11:42am
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Our weekly look at what people are saying about us:
- Wikinomics has won the Highams Business Technology Book of the Year award. One of the judges, Mark Samuels, blogs about the decision with some kind words for the book.
- Doug Cornelius posts enthusiastically about the prediction markets presentation put on by Hagai Fleiman and Jeff DeChambeau at last week’s nGenera Enterprise 2.0 Conference.
- 6th grade teacher Bill Ferriter has an interesting post at the Teacher Leaders Network about using Wikinomics princples in education.
- Another teacher, who just started their blog (and doesn’t seem to have posted their name), discusses the challenges of teaching children the skills necessary for a wikonomy. (S)he also remarks at how education 2.0 innovator Vicki Davis reached out to her after she saw the blog. Isn’t it great how web 2.0 brings people together?
- And according to this guy, John McCain’s proposal for a $300 million prize for battery innovation is “straight out of the wikinomics playbook”. I wonder how Don and Anthony feel about that.
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June 27th, 2008, 11:42am
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Wired is running a great slide show of screen shots from Zero Hour: a video game in which you play an EMT responding to a biological weapons attack in downtown Chicago. Players must diagnose and treat hysterical patients while dealing with disorganization and unpredictable supply levels. The game was developed in part by the US Department of Homeland Security in order to train first responders for real-life emergencies. This is a great example of how interactive virtual environments are revolutionizing the way we teach and train.
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June 24th, 2008, 04:37pm
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I came across this great post at the SLED (Second Life in EDucation) Blog:
If you’ve ever seen a floating molecule in Second Life, chances are it was created by Dr. Andrew Lang, a mathematical physicist at Oral Roberts University, otherwise known as Hiro Sheridan in-world. Hiro recently demonstrated working prototypes of several different tools in collaboration with Jean-Claude Bradley, a chemistry professor at Drexel University, known as Horace Moody. The demonstrations included a molecule rezzer that allows a user to name a compound in text chat and watch as it builds itself in front of you atom by atom, and a docking simulator that demonstrates how molecules bond together to form more complex structures.
Check out the rest of the article and more images here.
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June 4th, 2008, 08:57am
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As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com. For those that may be seeing this for the first time, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams has embraced the principles of wikinomics, and created an easy-to-use “mash up” tool on his website. Each morning he posts his cartoon, and then invites people to come up with alternative punchlines for the final box. I’ve been giving it a go for almost a month now (sticking to a wikinomics theme wherever possible), and you can check them all out by clicking on dilbert in the tag cloud - rumor has it that May 13th and May 30th are my best.
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May 29th, 2008, 09:52am
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A little over a week ago I published a post called Is that gemeinschaft uncomfortable in your geshellschaft?, which was about an unfortunate Schnitzel incident that I had at Octoberfest once. Er, I mean it was about the two sociological categories that were introduced by German sociologist Fredinand Tonnies in 1887 (You can think of Gemeinschaft as community interest, and Geshellschaft as self-interest), and how they applying to strategic choices for business in the age of wikinomics.
The insightful comments from Venkat added a lot of value to the post, and he dropped me a note to say that our brief exchange helped him frame the Outsider Innovation 101 post he put up yesterday. I think wikinomics readers will find it interesting. The start of the post lays the foundation for the concept of outsider innovation he hopes to explore, and this touches on many of the themes of the book. The middle of the post then focuses on what we would probably call Education 2.0 (and what he refers to as the missing Education Revolution), which is a particular interest of mine. Having recently went back to school to complete a master’s degree, I’m wholly convinced we’re closer to Education 0.1 than 2.0 right now - but that’s a topic I’ll have to come back to later.
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May 22nd, 2008, 11:56am
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Interesting or unusual examples of visualizations:
(please add your own favorites in the comments below)
Trendalyzer - this software was created by gapminder.org. Google acquired the Trendalyzer software in March 2007 and it is now part of Google’s visualization api. You can see it in use at: http://www.gapminder.org/world/ or a description of Trendalyzer on wikipedia. Here’s a video of Hans Rosling presenting at TED using Trendalyzer.
MySociety.org has created some superb interactive maps that use simple sliders to interactively display how commute time ranges intersect with home prices - all compiled from public data. The map itself was created by Stamen Design (also producers of the Digg Labs visuals)
Share of consumer spending - The New York Times has an interesting breakdown of consumer spending.
3D Via - offers a library of 3D designs (owned by Dessault systemes, a PLM company)
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May 15th, 2008, 10:00am
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Have you ever looked at one of those strangely patterned posters with the hidden 3D picture inside? You know, the ones you stand in front of for five to ten minutes crossing and uncrossing your eyes to see the hidden tropical island, bunny, or house your friends are describing to you. Well, I was the fourth grader who could never quite pick out more than just blobs in the pattern. I still remember that day in eighth grade when I looked up at my English class wall and instead of little squiggles I saw a whale in the sea. It was a great day. Read More »
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May 12th, 2008, 09:54am
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Last week I gave a keynote at Case Western Reserve University, as part of the President’s Symposium on Collaborative Technology and the Future of Education. I’ve posted my slides on slideshare.com and I’m working with the event organizers to make the video of my talk available here on wikinomics.com.
The event was organized by Lev Gonick, Case Western’s CIO and a trailblazer in educational innovation. Check out Lev’s blog for an amazing compendium of breakthrough projects. Among other things, Lev and his team are introducing the use of QR codes across the campus — to the best of my knowledge they are the first North American college or university to do so. According to Lev, “The codes are found everywhere from transit stops, where students can scan them to see when the next bus would arrive, to applications on Facebook and MySpace, to the student newspaper where QVC recently began rolling out its own marketing campaign with Mobile Discovery.”
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May 11th, 2008, 05:26pm
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I must first acknowledge my personal bias on this topic…
As a member of the Net Generation research team at nGenera (and a member of said generation myself), I am a firm believer in the tremendous accomplishments and potential of the Net Generation (those born between 1977 and 1997). So, I must say that when I first heard of the upcoming launch of Emory University English Professor Mark Bauerlein’s book: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), I was quite intrigued.
While I cannot yet comment in-depth on the quality of Bauerlein’s research or the content of his book, I want to highlight the book’s launch this Thursday (I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy), and I also want to give our Wikinomics readers the opportunity to weigh-in with their opinions on Bauerlein’s thesis here. Bauerlein will also be addressing your questions here, this Wednesday at noon. Read More »
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April 21st, 2008, 09:05am
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Today’s Globe and Mail discusses a survey of 1,500 Canadians who were asked for their opinion on the economy. The most shocking part of the survey is what people ranked as the biggest “challenges facing Canada”. The “price of gasoline” was ranked an astonishing number 2, only “the state of the health care sytem” ranked higher. That puts gas prices ahead of issues such as “education”, “crime and safety”, “reduction of poverty” and “climate change” (which is ranked way down on the list at number 11).
I’m ashamed to see price of gas as number 2 on this list. Obviously when the contest is between our personal pocketbook and a variety of social and environmental issues (including climate change itself) we put our own interests first. If high gas prices are the biggest thing we have to worry about, then everything else in our society must be faring very well indeed.
With higher gas prices, maybe we’ll see more car pooling, fewer SUVs, trips that combine errands, and even more walking/biking/blading. Every $.05 in price in gas hikes brings automatic C02 redution with it. A $2 gas price would be the best thing that ever happened to mother nature.
I’d take improvements to education, crime & safety, and poverty reduction over cheap gas prices any day.
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April 18th, 2008, 10:15am
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My colleague Thusenth and I are working on a short piece on the democratization of data and knowledge enabled by data visualisation applications like ManyEyes, Swivel and TrendAnalyzer.
But valuable as these tools may for discussion and decision making, they pale in terms of coolness to the recent move by Cambridge University Library to put all of Charles Darwin’s research papers online. The Darwin Collection holds some 20,000 items and 90,000 images, and are now available at http://darwin-online.org.uk .
Given that these are the materials that helped shape Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species, and helped form our understanding of evolution, progress and human development, their value for discussion, debate and learning is priceless.
Moreover, in a future world of dynamic wiki’d curriculum, being able to learn online from the thoughts, ideas and insights of the world’s greatest thinkers will be one more step towards the democratization of knowledge and a huge step towards improving access to educational materials in developing countries.
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April 15th, 2008, 10:28am
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Here’s an interesting thesis: Wikipedia is fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking information.
That’s the view held by Deakin University associate professor of information systems Sharman Lichtenstein. In a recent Computer World article, Lichtenstein notes the “reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was ‘crowding out’ valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source ‘credible expert’ views even if desired.”
Evidently this is part and parcel of the Wikipedia vs. Britannica debate that has been bandied about for years. Lichtenstein, however, adds that the real crux of the problem is not the masses that contribute but rather the hierarchy of editors that are often veiled in anonymity and thus lack accountability for the final product. Hence why competing products like Google Knol will be, in her opinion, a step ahead.
So what do you think? Is this simply a dissatisfied member of the Ivory Tower attempting to preserve their position’s status as an “authority” on a specific topic? Or is the world of mass produced content a real threat to the depth of human knowledge and expertise?
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April 3rd, 2008, 04:12pm
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According to a survey of 5,000 adults and 3,000 children in the UK released by OfCom (Office of Communications) yesterday, 49% of children between the ages of 8 – 17 are on some form of social networking site.
It’s amazing the difference a few years makes in the daily lives of young people. When I was young (and I’d like to think I’m still relatively young), at elementary school, the only way to keep in touch with classmates was through snail mail (at that age I wasn’t allowed to, nor was I interested in, using the phone) – and snail mail definitely isn’t the best way to communicate with anyone. But even as I got older, I never got to use technologies such as IM to keep in touch with my friends at school during the summer time or to discuss questions about homework. (I remember when I first started using IM at the end of high school, probably around OAC, my friends thought I was really geeky and nerdy – my IM use really took off when I got to university though). I look at how my sisters study and do work now in high school and it seems like light-years have passed from the archaic idea of dictionaries, encyclopedias and even libraries – who uses books these days anyways? When you have Wikipedia! Why do you need to consult any of those ‘old-school’ resources when everything can be found online?
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March 12th, 2008, 12:33pm
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So what should universities do about facebook groups acting as “study groups”?
This is a very important question at Ryerson right now, as a student is facing possible expulsion because he created a facebook group where, according to him, students could collaborate on small homework assignments. His supporters argue the group was productive in helping each other collaboratively learn problem solving methods. That’s good. The counter-argument, of course, is the forum effectively “invites” people to post and share answers… which can sound a lot like cheating. That’s bad.
It’s quite a tricky issue to deal with. Read More »
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March 10th, 2008, 01:11pm
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Bill Vadja, CIO of the US Department of Education, joined us in Washington for our Government 2.0 launch meeting and in the spirit of fair trades I thought I’d give one of his key projects a little press. The School 2.0 initiative is led by the Director of the Office of Educational Technology, Tim Magner, and focuses on how the education system needs to proactively adapt to changes in our global economy.
You can download their nifty map here. It’s quite similar to our nifty network map shown here:
Regardless of the source, what these models entail is a focus on a new, networked form of education. A model shaped by the following (amongst other) factors: 60% of new jobs require a post-secondary education; 22% of college freshmen are taking remedial math courses; allophones form a growing proportion of the workforce; and the number of college students in the U.S. choosing engineering as a major fell 20% between 1993 and 2002.
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