The Education Business Blog

Fresh hot blog links to education topics here. These are some of the posts that caught my attention recently - enjoy.

Facebook for Teachers. This article is sad - lots of promise and money invested by people who just don't get it. One district can not support their own social network - it takes hundreds of thousands of users to make these communities vibrant. How about we look at what is actually happening on Facebook for teachers? I Am Teacher - a Facebook plugin from We Are Teachers - already has almost 10,000 active users and over registered 50,000 users.

Video Games Improve Cognitive Skills. The title says it all. Go read about it on Richard Carey's blog.

John Rice has a nice summary of Seven Question to Ask Before Using a Video Game in the Classroom. I do disagree with John on two points.

• I don't believe the majority of teachers want to modify games - even in the commercial game world modding is restricted to small group of devotees.

• I also don't believe Edugames need to match commercial grade production values. Look no further than the casual games kids are playing on the web by the millions for evidence. Game play trumps graphics (see the Wii too).

Millions for new schools does not improve academic performance. Crap - there goes another excuse for missing AYP. From years of walking into schools (good and bad) my survey-of-one agrees completely with the thesis that the leadership of the Principal is one of the most important characteristics of high performing schools. The money quote is from the former Board President -

"I suspect a lot has to do with the principal - whether the school is together as a unit...I never believed you solved the problems with a better building."

WTF? Why didn't you stop this then? If I lived in Milwaukee I'd be voting for a little accountability this fall.

A kid booted from Little League because he is too good? Eduflack has a suitably angry take on this. This story is "man bites dog" rarity - but the overall point is well taken. Punishing gifted kids is how you turn a country dumb.

The Ignite Presentation Method - this is a pretty cool concept. 5 minutes to present your idea and the 20 slides automatically change every 20 seconds. One idea per slide - razor sharp focus on your message. See my post Powerpoint=Billboard on a related topic. Imagine the power of teaching kids to communicate with this level of focus and discipline?

Videogames in the Library? Wouldn't installing a Wii or an xBox bring a lot of unruly teenagers into a refuge of quiet and intellect? It turns out that putting computer games in a library brings in a huge wave of new patrons and dramatically increases circulation - of books!

Two recent items support the thesis that games can benefit libraries and patrons. The most interesting aspect to me is that it may move libraries from being relatively static storehouses of knowledge to dynamic studios where knowledge is crafted, shaped, and extended.

The American Library Association is sponsoring a study to gauge the impact of games on learning and literacy. Why? The gamer blog 1Up has the money quote from Dan Barlow:

"...once teens come to library because of gaming, they also find time to study, to check out books. Most importantly, they also find time to learn. They learn about information technology, they develop research skills that will serve their life-long learning needs.

"Gaming in libraries? You bet! with an investment of about $900, (less than 1 tenth of 1% of budget) we have over 3,000 new young adult library users."

30-40% of libraries already circulate games so this movement is well under way. It is a natural extension of library support for leisure activity - but it is becoming a learning activity.

Maggie Hummel presented at this year's Games Learning & Society conference gave a detailed preesentation on how the Park Ridge Public Library outside of Chicago transformed their relationship with teens by incorporating games. She made several excellent points:

• Public libraries can't force kids in -they don't have the leverage a school does - but they share the same mission of learning.
• As a result they are freer to experiment and try new things (yes lots of innovation is going on in school libraries)
• This was a tough sell to the board - they feared that kids would only come to play
• Actual results - they doubled book circulation for young adults. Their summer reading program went from 280 to 420 in one year.
• They moved to sponsoring competitions - which has brought out whole families
• In a natural progression the library is now sponsoring game writing workshops and youtube movie workshops taught by High School students.

This progression makes sense. In their most traditional sense libraries are where you went to dig up research, to find things out. You almost always wanted the information so that you could do something - build a porch, quote Cicero, or while away a summer afternoon with a good story. But the researching and the doing were in separate places. Digital media unify the research and the action in one space - the computer and the web. I can take what I learn in a game and turn around and build a game like it. I can go read a book on urban planning and then play SimCity with a whole new set of insights.

It is important to note that this is all additive - the existing role of the library does not go away. The library experience is richer not poorer when games are added to the mix.

Impact on School

What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth? - Cicero

The implication for schools is fairly direct. Find something the kids are engaged with, provide a space for them to explore and play with it, then use the other resources at your command to encourage them to dig deeper. Reading, discussing, and creating are all natural follow on activities to playing games.

If you can't convince the School Board to allow games in the library perhaps the Library Board will be more open minded - the evidence says they should be!

Additional Reading

Study on penetration of games in Libraries

Powerpoint slides are "glance media" just like billboards. Today's post by Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen is an excellent synopsis of how billboards can inform slide design.

His post builds on Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology where she sets the standard for glance media - "Ask yourself whether your message can be processed effectively within three seconds."

In a marginally related segue I've been reading Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". Today's best insight:

"My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it."

In this spirit Garr provides 8 tips for how to put the billboard insights into practice with your slides.

1. Make it visual - "vision trumps all other senses"

2. One slide, one idea

3. Make type big

4. Contrast rules

5. Don't be afraid of bleed[ing off the page]

6. Rule of Thirds

7. Empty space

8. Have a visual theme

Whether you are in sales, marketing, raising money, or making an internal pitch your presentation can benefit enormously from following these guidelines. You will increase the odds of communicating the message you intend to share ("we need to buy that thing") vs. the message that you actually communicate ("this guy is confusing me").

I love his mock up of a billboard as designed by the average Powerpoint user - its funny and informative.

The world would be a better place if people applied these rules to their slide decks. All too often they do exactly the opposite - ugh.

Information is expanding exponentially. Applying database concepts to your information diet can mean the difference between overload and sanity, chaos and productivity. Database fluency is mandatory in a digital world. Students and teachers should be practicing and refining this skill so that today's learners can make the most of the sea of data they swim in.

Almost anything you encounter in digital format can be managed using database techniques. At their root Facebook (relationships), iTunes (music, movies, tv, books, etc.), del.icio.us (bookmarks), flickr (photos), Moodle (lesson plans, learning management), and We Are Teachers (referrals) share a common database DNA. Even blogs through their categories and tag clouds are databases.

Email is an example. Treat the sender's address as a data point. Then set up rules (database queries) to have all your boss's emails sent to a high priority folder and Aunt Mabel's political ravings sent straight to the trash. This approach allows you to target the urgent items amidst a sea of dross.

The Education Need

Educators and educational publishers have a vital role to play in our move to a database driven world. Why?

• Students need to develop database fluency if they are going to get the most out of their digital lives. Learning Management Systems (LMS), social networks, and on-line research are all core tools for 21st Century education. Database fluency should become part of the curriculum along with textual, numerical, and visual fluencies.
• Teachers need access to networks of peers, experts, and content to be able to deliver on the promise of individualized instruction.
• Administrators and Policy Makers need to measure results across groups and efficiently allocate resources.

Every one of these needs is best met by a database and fluent users.

The Goal

The end result should be personal growth, valued relationships, and effective organizations. But in the first flush of widespread adoption we are losing sight of this. Consider the statement "I "friended" 1,000 people on Facebook therefor I have 1,000 friends." Wrong. Many people are confusing the database with their relationships.

A teacher could take the Facebook example above and build an interesting set of discussions around the meaning of friendship, how to find a small network of people who are interested in the same things you are, what you can do to contribute, and how to manage the relationships that emerge. It isn't creating huge numbers of meaningless connections that matters - it is finding the needles in the haystack of humanity that you want to build bonds of friendship with.

Database Fluency

What is database fluency - what are the core skills proficient users need to master?

• Ubiquity - See every digital file you touch as a potential data point. Emails, MP3 files, Word documents, student records, and your photos are all potential data points.
• Searching - Understanding how to craft logical questions that return useful information takes ongoing practice ("and", "or", "greater than", "before", etc.). Learning to to harness the advanced search features almost all applications have is another part of this skill.
• Homing - The ability to find what is meaningful and valuable in large data sets by asking the right questions at the right time. Is this a reliable source? How recent is the data? Does this address the question I set out to answer? Is it usable or a tangled mess? How does it compare with other results?
• Tagging - Users tag data elements to personalize them. This can be through formal taxonomies provided by the database author ("Male, Female") or informal folksonomies created on the fly by users (flickr tag clouds). Since tagging is so open-ended having some basic rules in place can help insure you are able to use the tag cloud later to search the data.
• Cleaning - Any collection of data gets messy after a while - knowing how to clean your data just like you clean your room is an essential part of working with large data sets. Without maintenance your searching and tagging get bogged down.
• Reporting - Creating clear usable reports that make the point you are after is an important part of turning data into information and eventually into wisdom. When is a table better than a bar chart? Should I focus on 5 or 500 names?

None of this involves database programming. That is a skill more akin to auto mechanics - I don't need to know how to tune my engine to drive a car. I also don't need to know SQL to use a social networking site. However, for driving and networking I do need to know the rules of the road and how navigate where I want to go.

How these elements appear in different applications varies widely - understanding the underlying dynamics helps harness their power across many environments.

RSS readers click through to see the full article - 3 detailed examples that bring these concepts to life and some suggestions on where to start.

Continue reading "Database Fluency - Core Skill for the 21st Century" »

Schools are inundated with paper and instructional materials at this time of year. Those of us who build education products and create marketing collateral should be cognizant of is how wasteful so much of this is.

In our personal lives many of us go through the "more shelves or less stuff" debate all the time, and all too often we end up at Ikea with another Sbrorg shelving unit strapped to the top of the car.

Please stop.

If you think you need to ship that much crap into schools to compete you need to look at your business model. They don't want it, don't need it, and won't use it. Somewhere someone in your organization has not made some choices about what to create. They punted and tossed it all in.

I recently had lunch in a restaurant that bragged that virtually everything they used was recycled or composted. The only things that go into the trash are coffee cup lids, salad dressing packets, and tea bags (metal staples). This is a fast food BURGER joint. Their prices were in line and as a consumer I appreciated that they had put that much thought into their processes. I'll be back - and not just because the burgers were great.

The thought and care you add to your products will come back to you, but sometimes it means taking a little more time to think things through and a couple of hard decisions about what is truly essential in your products/materials. You will have to push hard and hold firm for this to happen - the pressure and temptation to put more in will always be there.

"I did not have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one instead." Mark Twain

Resolve to cut 20% out of all your marketing materials and something amazing will happen. You will save money and your message will be crisper.

In the end less stuff is the only sane way forward.