F.R. “Fritz” Nordengren (beta)

Information R/evolution Video link

From the last 12:10 Conspiracy lunch and learn, here is the Michael Wesch video Information R/evolution. In the producer’s words:

This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.

Did you hear the one about the educator, the recording executive, and the cell phone executive

Okay, here it is: A record company executive, an educator, and a cell phone executive all go to a meeting in at the Venetian in Macau….

Clearly by now, you’ve figured out the joke: educators don’t have a travel budgets that let them go to Macau. So the educator wasn’t there! So instead, we rely on media and blog reports of the event.

Media Post, MacUser, a PC World staff blogger, and Slashdot picked up the quote from Warner Music Group CEO Edger Bronfman about their company’s mistakes in understanding content and consumers.

Take it from us music industry folks. We used to fool ourselves. We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding.

And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find…and as a result of course, consumers won.

Today there’s a new consumer war being waged on the mobile front. And the perceived wisdom that consumers are “complacent” or that the “stickiness” of mobile services—established billing relationships, breadth of network coverage, brand loyalty—is enough to grow or even preserve your subscriber base without continually providing compelling consumer experiences, will prove to be wrong, dead wrong.

Bronfman’s corporate mea culpa was urging the mobile phone industry leaders not to imitate the failed business model of the recording industry. When I substitute “higher education” for “music industry” and “lifelong learners” for “consumer” or “customer”, and I see amazing parallels and similarities to what we do.

A group of my colleagues were involved in an email exchange over the weekend which included a citation that is similar to my earlier blog on EDUCAUSE Connect about the “producer” role of faculty. My colleague shared this from Lynch’s The online educator: A guide to creating the virtual classroom.

“To use a theater analogy, the traditional instructor serves as the lead actor- the one who must carry the show, even though there is allowance for other characters to interact. In contrast, the online instructor is more like the director- one who ensures that all the characters play their part and that the show moves smoothly from beginning to end, adding his or her expertise only when the actors seem to need assistance”

As educators, much of what we do is the creation of knowledge (content) and the delivery of knowledge (content). Whether the new role of the educator is director, producer, or some new iteration, there is significant strategy to learn from the missteps of the music business.

If you like, you can grab a .pdf version of Bronfman’s speech directly from Warner Music Group’s web site.

On teaching vs learning

George Siemens mentions the idea of teacher as curator in todays blog at elearnspace. He cites his own more detailed description of a curatorial teacher:

A curatorial teacher acknowledges the autonomy of learners, yet understands the frustration of exploring unknown territories without a map. A curator is an expert learner. Instead of dispensing knowledge, he creates spaces in which knowledge can be created, explored, and connected. While curators understand their field very well, they don’t adhere to traditional in-class teacher-centric power structures. A curator balances the freedom of individual learners with the thoughtful interpretation of the subject being explored.

I think there is genius in his phrase “expert learner”. What he describes, to me is very much the role of a producer in a video or recording project. Think of George Martin for the Beatles, Quincy Jones for artists from Sarah Vaughn to Michael Jackson, or Mutt Lange for Shania.

While I like the idea of curator in the classroom, and especially in the online learning environment, there is room to consider administrative need for accountability and outcomes measurement. In balancing these roles, the analogy of producer rings true.

I confess, it is my experience base as a producer for most of my working career, which is why educators, librarians and digital media professionals are pairing up to deliver new and exciting forms of learning.

FAQ

Learning Partners,

As many of you know, this is my first official blog in my new role as Education Technology Strategist. Without a doubt, the longest job title that will physically fit on a business card.

First, what exactly is an Education Technology Strategist?

Let me see if I can answer that by using examples from other practices and work worlds:

The role of a strategist is part architect, part engineer, and at times, part day laborer. Most everyone who reads this has learned and discovered that the rate of change of technology in our learning environments is accelerating…perhaps exponentially. Just like the role of an architect and engineer is to translate the client’s wants and ideas into a plan that can lead to a finished space, the role of an education technology strategist is to translate the clients wants into a virtual learning space.

That makes sense, why is this the best time for an Education Technologist Strategist?

There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of technology solutions marketed to both students and to faculty. Many, if not most, are excellent products….but like people…not all “play well with others”. Equal with the number of solutions is the number of expectations. There are probably as many different technology expectations on campus as there are people.

Those of you who saw my interview presentation saw the Apple® Macintosh® television commercial from 1995 where the presentation won’t load and the audience starts shouting out “tips” (“try typing sysedit.exe”). 12 years later, the audience is still shouting out ideas: “try this software”, “we need to be like Facebook”, “we need more Flash®”…So where do we turn?

This is what I hope to bring to the table ….

my role is to help all of us, as learning partners, choose the path for our use of technology in the learning environment.

Just as Mac® and/or Windows 95® were not the perfect answer in 1995, there are few perfect answers today in 2007. Some learning situations, indeed, should be totally self paced and available on-line. Other learning situations, are difficult if not impossible for most people to learn without one to one in person contact.

So what you can expect from me:

Weekly (or so) I’ll publish a blog covering learning environments and technology. I’ll try to include a tip to two along the way. I can send it to you by email so it arrives in your Outlook. If you want a different way to receive the same information, you can subscribe to the blog as an “RSS” feed (RSS is a way you can have information sent to you when a web site changes.) Many people use RSS to receive updates on news and their favorite sites. If this all sounds like hi-tech mombo jumbo…..no worries….. for now you’ll get this via email. and if you choose later, we can spend some time sharing how RSS works and you can decide it it will make your world any easier.

I’m also working on a series of digital media presentations that help explain the basics of digital media so that you can understand how to make better use of clip art, photos, video, and some common software tools.

I’ll seek your help and guidance on what you are interested in learning and working with. (Seriously, some of it is pretty dull like pixels, and lossless or lossy compression algorithms) but in the end, it helps explain why your photo suddlely looks awful in PowerPoint, or why it takes 12 minutes to download a video that taks 30 seconds to watch.

Trivia.quiz contest question of the week: the first DMU learning parter to email me the correct answer wins this week’s prize: a beverage of their choice delivered to their desk, courtesy of me!

QUESTION: If MySpace was a country, it’s membership population would place it between which two countries in world ranking?

• Between Brazil and Pakistan ( 7 and 8 )
• Between Japan and Mexico ( 12 and 13 )
• Between Turkey and Congo ( 19 and 20 )

Fear of iPods

First, thank you for your kind attention during the presentation Thursday. I think I reverted to my old journalism roots and thought I was being paid by the word - so I ran longer than I anticipated

At the end, some very astute observations and comments were made by our learning partners in the meeting and I’d like to share and clarify some of my thoughts with you.

First, as we were talking about the Generation M’s and I claimed they were perhaps the best students ever — let me restate what I meant. I don’t see them as the best “achievers” ever, but I do see this as the best time to be an educator. The “M”s are quick to get the didactic facts - but where they need our help is in the synthesis, relationships, connections. So as an educator, we can spend much of our programs talking about the higher level skills (which we all recognize they often lack) rather than teaching fundamentals.

The iPod let’s them isolate themselves (compare the iPod to the 1980’s BoomBox that was the size of a suitcase). SO we need to draw them into F@F and virtual social capital exchanges.

There is an entire conversation we could have about “spoonfeeding”, too, it would take a good weekend to complete!!!!

Next, please remember, you do not have to be a techno-guru-voodoo-king-or-queen. Think of the Apple commercial with the two men standing. Very simple, very un technical, very clear. Your digital story can be just as simple and still be effective.

Text messaging on the cell phone is not technical. In class it is nothing more than passing notes in grade school.

Finally, our colleague Dr Stebbins sent an email to me last night which describes exactly the Generation M experience.

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My 20 year old niece (employed part-time at Walmart) and her boyfriend (21, not sure if he is the father and is employed as a dishwasher) just had a beautiful baby girl. She is so precious…but I hold my breath and pray that they use this blessing to get serious in life. Oh my!

We went out for pizza with the new mom and dad and my brother and his wife. It was interesting that the young couple stay across from each other and “played” with their cell phones…text messaging (not sure if it was to each other), taking pictures of the baby, and making/taking phone calls. Hummm… signs of a different generation.

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This is generation M. It’s not just in school, this is how their live is. They take pictures and document everything they do. As an learning partner, can we encourage part of their comunity assessment to be sending photos from the community in real time? In Behavior, can the students go out and “capture” risk taking experiences on their cell phone?

Could you send a weekly quiz to students via text message and offer rewards for the first correct answer or posting to Blackboard?

This is how they live……..and thank you for your time, again!