F.R. "Fritz" Nordengren, MPH

The folks at NextGenWeb.org  and USTelecom asked for my thoughts on broadband and higher education and published this report.  Please give it a listen and share your thoughts.

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.

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.

George Siemens mentions the idea of teacher as curator in today’s 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.

NOTE: Tomorrow’s Lunch and learn at 12:10 is on using RSS in research and the classroom.

Previously, I wrote about the 12/10 conspiracy. You’ll learn more of my thoughts on why 12/10 is a conspiracy as we go along, but to get us started, what is it?

Simply, 12/10 is a challenge and opportunity to you to try 12 new (free) tools in ten months. Tools that are good not because the are new, but can help you be a better researcher and learning partner. The goal and challenge I want to share with you is to try each of these tools, chart your progress, and when you’ve completed 12/10 we’ll reward you with a USB flash drive emblazoned with the 12/10 conspiracy logo. (Heck, it’s better than a “certificate suitable for framing”)

So here is the list and you do not need to complete these in any specific order. and if you have done some already, mark them off. A key here is this, you are welcome to keep your academic hat on and do these in a serious frame of mind — but I encourage you also to have some fun and play. Play is one of the best ways to learn and discover and if it happens to help you be a better researcher, or teacher, well, I won’t tell if you don’t.

1. Learn about RSS feeds and subscribe to at least one feed (And what do you know, tomorrow’s 12/10 lunch and learn is about: ta da RSS feeds!  Link to learn more
2. 43 things …
   1. Explore 43 things web site, You can create an account, and track your 12/10 progress. Share and cheer our learning partners on (You”l see what it is about when you get there: http://www.43things.com Link to learn more
3. Create a FREE Google Account https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
   1. Use Google documents to share a work in progress with a colleague Once you have your Google account, you’ll see the link to Google Documents. Link to learn more
4. Take that fancy new Google account and create your own blog using Google’s Blogger (Or use WordPress.) Create your first blog entry. https://www.blogger.com/start
5. Page Flakes is a web page aggregator. It uses the RSS feeds and other tools of any number of web sites so that your sites come together in one url to quickly review. http://www.pageflakes.com/ Create your own view of the Web.
6. Search and alerts: use Google Alerts to be updated on content. Want to be notified by email when your favorite research topic in included on a web page or news article? Want to do a little “vanity” surfing? Google alerts will send you an email and a link whenever it finds new information.
7. Tagging .
   1. Use technorati to tag content you read or create. Dewey had a system. The web puts the taxonomy system in the hands of the viewer. Visit technorati www.technorati.com and explore tagging and what it means to the process of categorization.
8. Podcasting what it is and how it is different from streaming media. Use iTunes (installed on my DMU computers and find a list of podcasts on iTunesU.
   1. Subscribe to a podcast, listen to a lecture
9. Social Networking is the trend du jour. But the concepts of social networking web sites do have some influence on designing effective classrooms online.
   1. Make a profile on Facebook http://www.facebook.com
10. Wiki
    1. Create an account on a wiki (Wikipedia or other) and add content
11. Visit flickr. Sharing photos of everything is the purpose of flickr. You can upload and share photos with family, friends, co workers. A group of slides can be shared with a class or colleague. http://www.flickr.com Link to learn more
12. FD labs flickr toys
    1. Make a movie poster, set of trading cards, or another creation. (Many projects are free, some do cost.) http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

There is it, the 12/10 list. You can do as many or as few as you like, and in any order. But I think if you set your reluctance to try new things aside, and quietly, in the privacy of your home or office, just peek at some of these tools, you might find some new ways to learn, share, and have fun.

As you complete a 12/10 conspiracy item, drop me a note. — OR — send me the link to your 43 things page so I can cheer your progress.

Our goal is to do do these 12 thing in 10 months , the last day of the 12/10 conspiracy is July 31, 2008.

Trivia.quiz

Last week’s question we didn’t have a winner. It was:

According to the Educause study, what percentage of the 2007 report students indicate they prefer a “moderate rather than an extensive” use of IT in courses:

69%

59%

49%

and the right answer was 59%.

This weeks question: What is the 12/10 conspiracy?

a) a chance to better understand some learning tools by trying 12 tools over 10 months

b) figuring our this whole “web 2.0″ thingy

c) a deranged concept by the ed tech strategy guy

d) a way to win a cool USB drive

e) all of the above

Right answers to me