Teach42

Mike Lloyd, Education marketing Manager Microsoft UK. The tile is expanding minds for a shrinking planet. I didn’t realize when I came here that he was working for Microsoft, but I won’t hold that against him. It does explain why he was one of the only people who asked to hear the clips I wanted to play for the podcast prior to publishing them.

He says he’s not here because of Microsoft, but because he’s passionate about education and he feels the education system is broken.

Side note: Looks like something about my Wordpress comments page was bringing down the servers at Bluehost. They reinstated my account, but said that I had to upgrade to the newest version of Wordpress. Looks like I know what I’m doing after the cruise.

Heh, it always cracks me up when people warn me that they’re going to be controversial. Usually it means that they aren’t but think they are. We’ll see whether he really is.

“It is not the strongest that survive, but those that are most adaptable to change” –Darwin.

The background for his presentation is a graphical representation of the internet, sort in a neural net sort of way. Very cool way to grab us in. Dig it.

Another side note: I’d like to pull together a workshop called “Famous for 15 people” that discusses the evolving meaning of fame. Maybe a write a paper that explores the emergence of niche communities, and the inherent strength of them.

He’s going into a little history of globalization. Phase one was when the European countries starting projecting their power overseas for resources and conquest. The second phase was about companies globalizing for markets and resources. The third phase is about individuals and small groups collaborating (think niche markets and communities).

He’s talking about how in this next wave of globalization, loosely knit teams can work on projects together for brief or extended periods of time and then disband, go off their separate ways and then either reform with new members or entirely new groups may take up the same projects.

Moving along to the Long Tail, specifically as it relates to music. There’s more money to be made in “Misses” than in hit songs. Rhapsody has a top 500,000 chart. Yes, you read that number right. Who needs a top 50 when you can have a top 500,000?

This is a great slide. In 1940, cake from four and sugar cost $1, raw materials economy). In 1955, Cake from a mix cost $2.00 (goods economy). In 1970, a bakery made cake cost $10.00 (service economy). In 1990, a party @ Chuck E Cheese (cake included) costs $100 (experience economy). Think about that one for a minute. . . . . . pretty powerful stuff.

Due to modern science, the average age of people in this world is rising. In terms of %’s, a far smaller portion of the humanity pie is under 15, and a far greater portion is now over 65. I’ve said it a few times before, there’s no way 65 year olds are senior citizens anymore.

“In order to stay in place, workers will have to produce 2.5x more per hour than they do today.” Hmmm… I’m not sure I agree on that one. It’s not about being more productive. Productivity is a relative term and expectations change based on resources available and needs. Someone challenged what he meant by productivity, and Mike said that it’s basically about money and gross national product. As I was saying, if someobody told me two years ago that I would be updating a web site several times per week as well as maintaining a regular internet radio show, I’d have said that there’s absolutely no way I’d have time to do that sort of thing. However, times change, technologies change and you could easily say that I am much more ‘productive’ now, perhaps even 2.5x.

Side note: I’ve now seen four presentations by folks from the UK. Their presentation style is incredibly different from ours here in the US. I’d to say that they aren’t as dynamic, but that’s not the right word. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they’re more subtle. They let their slides to the talking, and for the most part are incredibly well prepared. I think you could get a lot more from the Powerpoint presentation of a UK presenter than the typical American presenter.

On the changing nature of work, lifetime employment is simply over. There is no such thing as stable employment, particular at large corporations. Most people will have two or more occupations and more than 6 employers. Many people will spend at least some time self-employed.

Are kids naturally thinking globally anyway? Are they doing it in spite of schools? They’re using the internet as a primary means of communication, playing online games, many find new friends on the internet.

He’s talking about Project Entropia and how someone spent $26,000 to buy a virtual island and is actually making a profit on it. Sounds exactly like what I did in Diablo on a larger scale. Diablo online had a virtual marketplace as well as a ‘real’ marketplace on ebay where virtual items were bought and sold. I traded for items on Diablo, sold them on eBay, used that money to buy other items, and then traded those for items that I could then resell for a profit. I made a few thousand dollars in about a month or two by doing it.

Here’s a scary quote. “We seem to be reinventing everything – except schools” — Tom Peters. We may be trying to adapt them a bit or tweak them, but we aren’t reinventing them. There’s no serious reinvention going on, just little pockets here and there. “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” — General Eric Shineski Amen.

A little sneak preview of what’s going on in Microsoft Labs. Interesting. Something that goes through your mailbox and determines what you’re an expert in. Not sure how much I like that, but the technology sounds interesting. Once it determines where your areas of expertise are, it helps connect you to people you need to address your needs. Actually, that could be useful. So when you have a project, and you need someone who’s an expert in a specific area, you can find the people you need. When I wanted to find an expert in PHP for my site, I was unable to do so. Some sort of social networking technology that could have connected me to those people would have been incredibly helpful.

Alan chimed in saying that there’s a school in England that has 17,000 students social networking together. It’s not unusual to see a 14 year old helping an 18 year old out with math activities, if the 14 year is an expert. I really have to ask Alan for some more information about that one. I’d love to do some research along those lines. I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a Ph.D. sometime soon, and that’s definitely an avenue I’d be interested in traversing down.

Wallop, it’s a blogging technology that shows you graphically the connections between blogs and people.

He pointed out that both of these are internal just to Microsoft. In my mind, very shortsighted. Make a small public beta and they generate hype, get valuable input, and give people an opportunity to try to take it farther, extend it in directions that the original programmers probably never thought of. By showing us that little preview, I think more people were disappointed that they couldn’t participate and see it for themselves, than were excited by what might be coming down the pipe.

Mike’s talking about whether your presence online is an advantage to you or not. Will a Google search for your name help you or hurt you when you try to find employment? John Pederson and I have been discussing this back and forth on our blogs a bit. John really put his money where his mouth was and encountered a spectacularly successful failure (you have to read his post to understand that). Too bad this room doesn’t have wifi or I’d link up to it right now.

Key ingredient for successful education in the global economy: A willingness to “radically re-think”.

He has a slide up right now that says “Ok- so we know what to do.” I’m at the edge of my seat waiting to see what comes next… Is this the realistic, “how do we get there” answer that I’ve been anxiously waiting for???????? The bottom of the slide is “What next”. Hmmm… Onwards, “How to put a convincing strategic plan onto 2 slides”. How do you get the attention of administration/board members to try to change the way we do things.

Ok, I dig this slide. I took a photo of it, but let me try to explain it. Think four qudrants, one with strengths, one with weakness, one with opportunities and one with threats. You can really provide a great overview of a project this, quickly, easily and effectively.

Next slide is GOST. Three colums, Goal/Objective, Strategy, Tactic. There are four rows, from the previous slide, (strength, weaknesses, opportunity, threats), and then you identify the strategy and tactic for achieving them. Strategy is what you want to achieve, tactic is specifically you you’re going to do it.

He had us work in small groups to try this out for ourselves, but the activity kind of fell flat. Great presentation up to that point. I guess controversy is a relative term. If you haven’t been active in the ed-tech blogsophere for the last few years, I could see how some of that stuff would have been controversial. Personally, some of it felt like more the same, but communicated in a very effective way.

blc05

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Enable CommentLuv?
If you have supplied a blog in the URL above, it will include a link to your most recent blog post.