AssortedStuff

By way of io9, the geeky science fiction (or is that redundant? :-) blog, comes The Evil Futurists’ Guide to World Domination: How to be Successful, Famous, and Wrong.

So what advice do they offer for those who want to have a career in spouting predictive BS?

Be certain, not right.
… no matter what you do, no matter what you believe, be certain. As Tetlock put it, in this world “only the overconfident survive, and only the truly arrogant thrive.”

Sounds like advice for anyone running for public office as well.

Claim to be an expert: it makes people’s brains hurt.

And research proves it!

No expertise, no problem.
… knowing you’re not an expert should make you more confident in your work. And confidence is everything.

One simple idea may be one too many.
Having a single big theory, even if it’s totally outrageous, makes you sound more credible. Having a Great Idea also makes it easier for you to seem like a Great Visionary, capable of seeing things that others cannot.

Get prizes for being outrageous.

Does calling something “award winning” have any meaning these days?

There’s a success hiding in every failure.

Don’t remember your failures. No one else will.

Fact checking is a lost art that desperately needs to be revived.

The author claims “The citations are all real. But no, I don’t really mean a single word of it.”.

I’m not so sure. Maybe he will in the future.

Image: Future City by ILMO JOE, used under a Creative Commons license.

experts, future, prediction, satire

As 2009 was mercifully ending, I nominated a short list of phrases for deletion from public discourse.

Now, upholding a more than 30 year tradition, the word “czars” (the public relations department) at Lake Superior University have released their annual List of Banished Words.

These are 15 words and phases selected from thousands of nomination because of their misuse, over use and/or general uselessness.

I can’t quibble with any of them, although I’m not ready to give up “teachable moment”. It may have become over used but I don’t think it’s reached a point where the meaning is lost.

As for “sexting”, that term still has some meaning. Basically as an all-purpose trigger for panic in clueless adults.

And then there’s “chillaxing”. I must be traveling in the wrong social circles, but I’ve never used the word and don’t know anyone who does.

cliches, list

Right about now this rantfest has begun it’s seventh year of existence.

Since I had no clue what I was doing in those early days, my first couple of months of posts have been lost (although that’s not really much of a loss :-), so I can’t nail it down to an exact anniversary date.

But I do know it was sometime during winter break, just after the start of the new year 2003.

I know that, in the larger history of the internet, this is really nothing of any importance.

However, since I’m running things in this little corner of the web, I get to make note of the occasion, right?

Thanks for indulging my annual ego post.

Image: 7 by Leo Reynolds and used under a Creative Commons license.

blogging, ego post

While people in countries that use the Gregorian calendar are celebrating the start of a new year this weekend, to me it feels more like intermission.

And here in the overly-large school district, the first half of the show has been marked by a lot of chaos and change (some good, some bad, some just different).

But the really big alterations in my work life are yet to come.

The first occurs in less than a month when my friend and colleague Karen retires.

For nearly eleven years (with one notable hole), we have collaborated and conspired on a variety of projects, throwing ideas, discoveries, and toys back and forth as we tried to help our colleagues understand the place of technology in teaching and learning and adapt to all the changes it brings (or should).

Beyond that, working with Karen has been a wonderful experience since she is also someone who’s not afraid to let me know when I’m headed in the wrong direction, regularly calling BS when I’m about to go over the top and/or get myself fired and/or arrested.

While retirements often seem like funerals (mostly you never see the victim again :-), I’m pretty sure Karen is not going away completely (except for a few months in Yellowstone).

At the very least, she will remain in my back channel, continuing to let me know when I’ve screwed up.

Ok, that’s the big one, but definitely not the only major shakeup waiting in the wings.

Another goodie arrives in mid-February when our little group will be moving to an office building somewhere closer to the center of the county.

Just setting up shop in a new place is not a big deal. I’ve done that many times in my life.

However, what makes this different is that this will be the first place I’ve worked in my professional life that wasn’t a school, a former school or some other institutional space (Circle K doesn’t count).

Instead of a converted elementary classroom, with their somewhat quirky characteristics and relative privacy, we will be in what can only be described as a cube farm (just call me 2-110) straight out of Office Space.

What makes this really unique is that by the end of the second half, almost all the central office people I work with (most of three departments) will be in one building instead of spread around five or so. With many of the big, big bosses in the executive suite downstairs.

So, among other things, we will need to be careful about impromptu inter-cube discussions, not to mention where I fire the screaming monkeys.

Between the large hole that Karen will leave and the strange new work space, the dynamics of my work life will be very different. My primary goal going forward needs to be figuring out how to find the positive in that difference.

Of course, adding a continuing surreal feeling to the balance of the year will be the on-going conflict over drastic cuts to next year’s budget (with all the accompanying doomsday rumors), and the uncertainty of how they will affect the school-based trainers we work with (and us).

Unfortunately that soap opera is not likely to end in June. We’re already being told that the academic year beginning in July will likely also be a bad one.

Anyway, that’s a brief summary of how the second half of my year is shaping up.

And why January 1 is no beginning around here – just a short break in the circus.

Image: Farewell to Tai by Techmuse (Karen, who has become an excellent naturalist photographer in the time I’ve known her), used with the expectation that she won’t mind if I do.

change, cubicle, new year, office space, olsd, work

As 2009 and the aughts come to a close, lots of people are presenting retrospectives on the year and decade past.

A few pundits and experts (not necessarily the same thing) are offering predictions of what to expect ahead.

This rant is neither of those.

Instead I have a request in the form of a short list of phrases that need to be retired from the public lexicon as we begin 2010.

21st Century skills

As we enter the second decade of the century, this is a cliche that has lost whatever meaning it might have had. Mostly it’s used by politicians and education experts as a catch-all for whatever concept they’re currently pushing.

The skills most often included – creativity, critical thinking, communication, etc. – are nothing unique to this century.

And they are, for the most part, the diametrical opposite of the test-driven crap that has been passed off as education reform during the past decade.

digital native/digital immigrant

As outlined in the original 2001 article, Marc Prensky’s concept of how kids differ from adults in their use of technology had some validity.

Today, it’s degenerated into another edtech cliche, far too often used by adults to excuse themselves from having to learn about the every expanding array of tools for communication and collaboration that have become part of daily life for many of us, not just kids.

web 2.0

New rule: anyone who wants to use this term, must first identify what on the web isn’t “2.0″. That should kill it fast.

And finally…

back to normal

This phrase has been used excessively during discussions about the economy but it is also invoked by leaders of companies and organizations (including those in our overly-large school district).

However, isn’t “normal” where we were when the wheels came off the bus?

In education, “normal” is the traditional system most people remember growing up with – and which isn’t working for a growing number of kids.

When it comes to teaching and learning (as well as the rest of American society), instead of longing for something called “normal” we should be working to rebuild into something better.

Ok, that’s my list. What would you add or delete?

21st century skills, cliches, normal, web 2.0

As we approach December 31, it’s time for the news media to wallow in their annual end-of-year lists and other reviews.

Except that 2009 also marks the conclusion of the decade (the aughts?) so we also are forced to look back at the past ten years.

Time magazine calls it the Decade From Hell, and after reading their long retrospective, I’m inclined to think that’s an appropriate title.

It’s pretty depressing to read in one article all the crap that happened in a relatively short period of time.

It’s even worse to realize that almost all of that long list of disasters “came about at least in part or were greatly exacerbated” by four societal attitudes.

Attitudes that, unfortunately, only seem to be getting worse as we head into the next decade.

Neglect. Our inward-looking culture didn’t heed the warning signs from around the world — and from within our own country — that Islamic terrorism was heading for our shores.

Possibly a better word in this case would be hubris, the swaggering attitude that the US is too big to fail.

Greed. Our absolute faith in the markets, fed by Wall Street, combined with the declawing of our regulators to undermine our financial system.

Don’t stop at Wall Street. On Main Street there’s also the rampant attitude of “I refuse to pay for anything outside of my little bubble”.

Self-interest. The auto industry disintegrated while management and labor tangoed from one bad contract to the next, ignoring their customers and their competition, aided and abetted by their respective politicians.

Auto industry? What about the naked self-interest demonstrated daily by many (if not most) of the politicians who are supposed to represent us and the news media that’s supposed to hold them to that responsibility?

Deferral of responsibility. Our power grid needs an upgrade and our bridges are falling down because we have not mustered the political and popular willpower to fix them. New Orleans drowned because authorities failed to act before Katrina busted the inadequate levees.

Which also applies to anything else that requires commitment, change to the status quo, and/or money (other than the military and other stuff that goes boom, of course).

I’d like to think we as a society might have learned some difficult lessons from the past ten years.

However, that kind of optimism requires more energy than I can muster right now.

Maybe next year.

decade, retrospective, society, time

Presenting this year’s collection of holiday music now in heavy rotation on my Shuffle. Seems to be more traditional stuff than in the past. Maybe I’m mellowing or maybe I just haven’t found as many off-the-wall items recently.

1. Christmas Is Interesting – Jonathan Coulton
2. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Carly Simon
3. Hey Santa! – Straight No Chaser
4. A Cold, Cold Christmas – Stephen Colbert
5. Christmas In America – Melissa Etheridge
6. Slower Than Christmas – The Boxmasters
7. Who Spiked The Eggnog? – Straight No Chaser
8. Trains and Winter Rains – Enya
9. You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch – Brian Setzer
10. Sleigh Ride – The Ronettes
11. Joy To The World – Symphony Brass of Chicago
12. Come Darkness, Come Light – Mary Chapin Carpenter
13. Please Be Patient – Feist
14. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear – Josh Groban
15. The Christmas Can-Can – Straight No Chaser
16. Funky New Year – The Eagles
17. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year – Brian McKnight
18. Podsafe Christmas Song – Jonathan Coulton
19. My Dreams of Christmas – Billy Bob Thornton & The Boxmasters
20. I Can’t Wait for Christmas – Mindi Abair
21. O Come O Come Emmanuel – Carter’s Chord
22. The Nutcracker Suite – Les Brown & His Band Of Renown

I think everything can be had at iTunes and/or Amazon. If you really want them.

amazon, christmas, holiday, itunes, music

Jay Mathews and a colleague at the Post are soliciting suggestions for their lists of the ten best education blogs of 2009.

I had the honor of being placed on Uncle Jay’s list of favorites last year, primarily due to my

frequent rants about the pseudo mathematics behind his “challenge” index, with side trips into criticism of his regular AP and KIPP fan club postings.

So, what might the two of them be looking for in their list of the “best”?

Well, Mathews notes that he has a “weak spot for blogs that target me as the spawn of the devil and consign me to a different circle of hell every week”.

Plus he admits that “people with egos as inflated as mine love the idea of being heckled. In our twisted view of reality, it proves we exist”.

Basically, I guess you need to mention him frequently and feature lots of links to his work. :-)

For the record, however, I have never compared Mathews to Satan in this space. And, as for residing in hell, working for the Post is probably close enough for anyone these days.

Anyway, it’s time for some other edubloggers to receive Mathews blessing. Use the comment section on his post to offer your recommendations. Or, if you don’t want to register with the Post, email him directly.

blog, education, jay mathews, washington post

Back to the continuing budget mess here in the overly-large school district.

The superintendent and others have been holding meetings with employee groups and community members (and distributing poorly worded surveys) to get suggestions on what programs and people should be cut to make things balance financially.

However, he’s asking the wrong question.

Instead the discussion needs to be framed around what we are all willing to pay for.

Just about anywhere you go in the US, it’s pretty much a political given that no elected official would even talk about raising taxes.

And around here, they would likely also be tossed out at the next election for suggesting that schools, or anything else, are more important than adding more asphalt and concrete for people to drive on.

Given those constraints (more like a straightjacket), the larger community should, instead of talking about cuts, be addressing the very difficult question: what will you pay real money for?

Do you want full-day kindergarten? Do you really believe art and music programs are essential or are they just a frills?

Will you pay for the training and support necessary to keep “well-qualified” teachers in every classroom or is that just something we can only afford during good times?

Is technology really a priority or is all that talk about the “future” and “21st century skills” nothing more than nice sounding decorations for political speeches?

Because in many ways, this money discussion is all about the future.

And that that brings me to the title of this post, which is stolen from a recent edition of the Business Week cover story podcast.

In that program a reporter makes the observation that, during economically rotten times like we have now, corporations are “cutting the future” through drastic reductions in their research and development budgets.

We do the same thing as a society with public education.

We slice things that will make future classrooms better – teacher training and technology being prime among those – in order to make administrators and politicians look good now.

So, maybe the bottom line question that needs to be asked about the education budget is: what are you willing to cut from the future to make the status quo look better?

I wonder how all those folks who keep sending me political crap mail and want my vote tomorrow would respond.

Probably not the way I would.

21st century skills, budget, education, future

Since EduCon 2.2 proposals were due today, of course I submitted mine just a few hours ago. Nothing new… I usually do my other homework assignments at the last minute as well. :-)

EduCon is something unique among the many education-related conferences out there.

Sessions don’t involved being lectured at or about playing with the coolest new tools. It’s all about the “opportunity to discuss and debate ideas” dealing with just about anything to do with education and learning.

Anyway, my little proposal borrows ideas from the book Disrupting Class, in which the authors note that we’ve spent a lot of money on computers for classrooms while getting very little change.

In the book Disrupting Class, the authors make the observation “While people have spent billions of dollars putting computers into schools, it has resulted in little change in how students learn.”

They also ask “Why haven’t computers brought about a transformation in schools the way they have in other areas of life?”

Excellent question. Certainly there are plenty of answers, including this one also from Disrupting Class “…the way schools have employed computers has been perfectly predictable, perfectly logical – and perfectly wrong.”

But the focus of this session will not be about placing blame. Instead let’s discuss what we can do and what is being done to change things. Come join us for a discussion centered on these ideas and bring any and all ideas, whether from your personal experience or elsewhere. Invite your friends and colleagues who aren’t attending EduCon to be part of the conversation from wherever they are.

With any luck, the program will see fit to include that in the agenda. I did a session at the first iteration of EduCon and it was a great experience.

If you haven’t made your plans to attend EduCon, do it now. If you’re not able to come to Philly in January, watch for how to participate from wherever you are through a variety of back channels.

conferences, educon, philadelphia, proposal