Free pretty much equals shallow

I will get around to explaining the title near the end of this post.

In my previous post, I introduced an interesting idea I read about in MacWorld. The MacWorld article described a new service, Readability, and interesting mechanism for supporting content creators proposed by the company that created Readability.

So many of us make heavy use of products that organize and archive online content created by others. We use tools such as Diigo, Evernote, my current favorite Instapaper, or similar products to organize and archive resources. In a way, Readability does the same and is very much like Instapaper. It identifies the core content on a web page and archives this content without the “clutter” surrounding the content of interest. If you compare the following two images (reduced in size), it is pretty easy to see what I mean by reducing clutter. The core content is certainly presented in a way that is more readable.

What the developers of Readability noted was that what I have described as clutter may contain things, such as ads and links, the authors of content want you to see. Much in the same way we may skip over the ads in television content by using a TiVo or similar recording device, we have access to tools that allow us to ignore services that content developers may be counting on to support their commitment of time. The Reading people have proposed an alternative funding model. You put in $5 a month (or more). The money is collected by Amazon. The company creating Readability keeps 30% and distributes 70% to participating content providers. So, if you few the full pages you see the ads. If you avoid the ads by using Readability and sign up for “the plan”, you contribute with clicking through ad links.

So, I am giving it a try. I have committed my $60 AND I have signed up as a content provider. It is kind of an experiment. I wonder if this idea will go anywhere. It assumes people will be willing to make a contribution to support online content. You get to see how your $3.50 is allocated each month. I think it will be interesting to see who participates.

I am thinking it must be very early. The Readability web site describes apps for mobile devices and as far as I can tell, these apps are not yet available. There is also a predicted collaboration with Instapaper that I think has yet to actually be put into play.

Back to my title. I am coming to the conclusion that “the short form” is not enough. By this I am making a distinction between blog posts and books, between conference keynotes and courses, etc.  I am certainly not implying that posts and presentations are not interesting or useful, I am suggesting that they are not sufficient as educational resources. We have access to the stuff that is relatively easy to create, but not to resources that offer the big picture and tie things together. It takes far more work to offer long form content and this is what I am predicting we lose when we ignore and even circumvent ways to encourage author/developers to focus their time on larger products.

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Guilt Trip

A recent MacWorld description of Instapaper and Readability reminded me (and probably you if you try the link) that we accept conveniences that take advantage of others. These apps strip the text we want to read out of online pages and store the text for consumption at our leisure. We may accept this convenience with good intentions, but in doing so we accept an author’s content under conditions we and not the author have defined. The author may have wanted us to view and perhaps click an ad link. The author may have wanted us to view other work he or she created. We subvert such intentions even if we do so to improve our personal experience. We are functioning in an unethical fashion whether we choose to remain ignorant of the consequences of our behavior or not.

So much for my guilt trip, but I am on both sides of this issue. I really like Instapaper. I create content, not so much this blog, but book-length stuff that I want people to use from my site and not in a form and secured on a device of their choice. I could take my own content with Instapaper. This would be called a personal conflict.

As I understand the MacWorld article, Readability is creating and Instapaper is considering a model in which product users pay a fee that is partly dispersed to content providers. I think if you value such services this commitment is a good idea.

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The coming generational battle

A tweet pointed me to this article by Don Tapscott. Tapscott (the Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital guy) sees the conflicts in Tunisia and Egypt as harbingers of a coming generational conflict. The argument is based on the growing number of young people in these countries who find there is little for them – few employment opportunities, but a way to share their frustrations using technology.

I cannot help but see similarities in the employment situation in education. There have been general accusations regarding the quality of the profession and now rejection of the validity of the tenure system. It is true that those of us in the profession for some time make a higher income which of course is the case in nearly any “profession”.  This tends to be the way things in most occupations go. What would be the basis for a generational difference in reaction to this pattern?  Impatience?  Lack of a long term vision? As I understand the research on expertise, the performance of new educators improves for several years and then levels off. So, just for argument sake, assume that 6-10 years marks the end of the experience benefit. Would this be the same for other professions? What long term consequences to the quality of practice would there be should “educator” come to be seen as a young person’s job?

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Respond to this – a nice design for requesting reactions

Cindy came up with a technique I thought was clever and perhaps of general utility. It was a strategy she used when she wanted to get and record the reaction of others to a display (in her case a project description from History Alive). So, her situation involved the need to independently solicit the reaction of social studies teachers to an activity from History Alive. I am suggesting this is a general strategy others might use to present something (any combination of media) and solicit reactions from multiple individuals you want to comment independently even if they are in the same room.

The display looks like this (I have purposefully degraded the History Alive content because of copyright concerns).

Here is how this was done. This is a combination of Google Sites and Google Forms. You use Google forms to structure the request for information you want to be brought into the Google spreadsheet. In this case, the inputs consisted of a combination of open ended questions and several forced choice items. You then use Google Sites to create a blank page and then modify by selecting the two column format from Layouts. You insert  the spreadsheet form in the right column (Insert is a menubar item and the item to be inserted is an option under the Insert Heading.). The combination is a sophisticated looking web page that accepts data from users and stores the data in a spreadsheet.

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Planning for the future

Lately, I have generated few posts. I encountered problems with my other two blogs (described here) that I decided I would have to take some time to address in order to make sure my blogs would have some longevity. In brief, my other two blogs were corrupted in such a way that I could not upgrade the software. So, after a couple of days struggling with database issues, I gave up. The only solution was manual. Create a new blog, open the old blog, copy and paste, copy and paste, etc. Repeat approximately 450 times. It took a few days.

If you blog and wonder about this situation, I would suggest you look to see if there is a built-in way to inport and export. Sooner or later your database will become corrupted. WordPress has an input and export tool that makes use of an XML format and allows an alternative to trying to accomplish the same tasks via MySQL database manipulation.

The new blog, Blurts, is what I would describe as my microblog consisting of short posts mostly describing resources others may find useful.

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Lead, keep up, or acknowledge

Cindy retired from the school district last year and now works on consulting projects and with the university. One of her activities at the University involves teaching a section of the “Technology for Teachers” class. For whatever reason, yesterday, she decided to send a letter to her colleagues who teach the same course about the present activities involving technology in the district from which she retired. The message, I think, was that we need to be aware of what is going on out there. There must be some connection to practice that I have described as “lead, keep up, or acknowledge”. In other words, there needs to be some connection between the preparation of teachers and the world these students will soon enter. Clearly, this connection does not necessarily require acceptance of everything that goes on, but the idea is encourage teachers to understand and think through what will soon be their work environment.

I think such connections might be described as questions:

  • What are teachers doing with technology?
  • What aren’t teachers taking advantage of that should be available to them?
  • What are teachers doing with technology that is misguided and why?

Her letter ended up being circulated outside of the group for which it was originally intended and so I decided to do the same.

Good Afternoon,
I had a chance to spend time in the GF Schools this week and wanted to make you aware of some applications being used in the district.

Grand Forks is/has:

  • Adopted Google Apps for Education for collaborative documents, presentations, spreadsheets and form creation.
  • Studied a one-to-one adoption of student devices (presently piloting ASUS Netbooks in Community High School, Red River High School, Central High School, Valley Middle School, Twining Middle School and Elementary, Winship Elementary, Lake Agassiz, and Wilder Elementary). These computer are running Ubuntu Linux operating system.
  • Used many cloud apps such as Voicethread, flickr, Animoto, Glogster, Corkboard, Today’s Meet, Wikispaces, PBWorks, etc.
  • Engaged students in blogging and learning to embed other apps in their blogs as well as work with gadgets and avatars
  • Students are collaborating with schools throughout the world using Skype and collaborative environments.
  • A switch is being made to using Chrome and accessing the Web Store
  • Students are using flip cameras, digital cameras and digital microscopes (some wireless)
  • There are pockets of iPod and iPad projects.
  • There are approximately 200 interactive whiteboards.
  • K-12 Social Studies is in an adoption cycle and they are looking at all digital materials.
  • All teachers applicants apply online, subs are obtained online, classified staff clock in online, IEPs are written online, professional development is registered for online, grades, scheduling and attendance are online, etc.

I think some of these initiatives should influence what we teach in our Technology for Teachers class.

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Mark Writes a Book Report

One of the books I finished over break was Tim Wu’s “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires“. I would describe this as an historical analysis with a message. By the way, Wu coined the phrase (net neutrality) – the origin was new to me, but I have been interested in the issue for some time.

Wu argues information technologies seem to follow a cycle – they begin with the promise of encouraging wide participation and transformation but morph toward monopoly and limited options. He contends this was true of publishing, radio, and television and perhaps now the Internet. I found the analysis and stories fascinating.

It does seem like the progression Wu describes is underway. Google sells books. People complain that the Apple apps will kill the Internet. Everyone complains about the providers. The recent FCC ruling regarding net neutrality must have occurred shortly after the book went to press.

Wu seems to think public opinion matters to companies (at least while some options are still available). To me, the problem is most advanced when it comes to those companies providing access. The latest FCC ruling while protecting net neutrality in one sphere (hard wire connections) allowed greater opportunities for cell providers.

I have been attempting to understand what Wu thought was the government’s responsibility and have checked my own vagueness against what other pundits seem to claim he said (Inside Higher Ed, Laura Miller). Different pundits seem to come different conclusions Wu’s recommendation regarding the role of government. My understanding was that he argued that the role should simply be to promote competition and this could be achieved through his “separation principle”. So, for example, there is danger when the cable company both provides access and has digital content to sell. There would be greater danger if a company generated content, sold the content, and provided access to the Internet. So, if a company provides access with little competition (e.g., the only cable provider in a community), this is a dangerous situation because it is in the interest of the company to both make money on access and also on the content it wants to sell.

Wu seems to think public opinion matters to companies (at least while some options are still available), the convenience may limit complaints until it is too late.  To me, the problem is most advanced when it comes to those companies providing access.

NY Times Interview

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