I should begin by admitting that while I consider myself an independent, I have voted Republican in every election since John Anderson in 1980, with the exception of 1996, when I voted for Bill Clinton’s Cabinet more than him. There was a statistic recently that said military officers were primarily Republican, and I fit that stereotype. So it is a shock to my family and my friends that I have been a Barack Obama supporter (in name and financially) since early in this contest.

So my viewpoint is not without bias.

My online class consists of 21 K-12 teachers in the Visiting International Faculty program, all from other countries spending three years in this country teaching in our K-12 schools across three states, while simultaneously working on their Masters in Education from VCU. My class focuses on instructional strategies for using the Internet in K-12 education. This is my second year with VIF students, and I find them delightful and engaging. Jeff Nugent and I were discussing our Fall classes today and as with most teachers, we are finding a wide range of knowledge and experiences in our students.

This is the first week in which my students post comments in the Discussion Board, and the comments are falling into two categories - despair and hope. I have to admit that I hit them right off the bat with Michael Wesch’s The Machine Is Us(ing) Us video, which overwhelmed many of them. It forced them to confront their lack of knowledge about the web. Some felt scared, others energized. Some said “Where Do We Start?” and others said “Jump In!” My role thus becomes one of reinforcing the positive vibes and rechannelling the negative vibes in a positive direction.

So far, I am seeing similar vibes in the two conventions. I came away from Barack’s acceptance speech energized and excited by his focus on the future and the positive. I have not been as energized by Sarah Palin‘s or John McCain’s speeches. They seem to spend more time highlighting the fears and negatives with little focus on issues of substance. By McCain’s own admission, he was a hell-raising junior officer until he was shot down. He should be honored for his service and sacrifice as a POW, but he spends more time looking back than looking forward.

I hope this country channels the positive and mitigates the negative as we move forward. We have survived Millard Fillmore and Jimmy Carter, we as a country will survive either candidate that wins. But my vote and my energy will be focused on the candidate that appears to thoughtfully move forward to the future rather than shooting from the hip.

Probably my only political post…I intend to reflect more on what my students are beginning to do. But I needed to get this off my chest!

For those in America reading this, what ever you do, don’t remain on the sidelines - get involved and make your voice heard!

{Image Credit: farlane}

Faculty bloggers don’t have formal beats the way that news reporters do, but we do have areas of the college that we have inside and specialized knowledge about. Some of those are formal and tied to our jobs–I think a lot about emerging technology, classroom design, project management and learning theory because my understanding of those topics shape the decisions that I have to make every day.

My “beat” also includes lots of contacts in lots of places that aren’t tied directly to the job. I spend about six hours a week on the Arc Trainer at the Rec Center, some quality time on path or in the halls chatting with other social scientists and a little time most days at the Daily Grind. Those non-work related contacts provide some of the most interesting insights into life at William and Mary, like this one overheard at the Daily Grind.

Student A: One thing I want to be sure to do while I’m here is to take a class from Scott Nelson.

Student B: He’s great. When I grow up, I want to be like Scott Nelson.

Student C: That’s nothing. When I die, I want to come back as Scott Nelson.

Learning from Scott Nelson, priceless--Scott, his book and the Boss.

I don’t follow golf, so I’m not sure what exactly the LPGA is thinking on this one (are English speakers losing too often to their international counterparts?) but it seems ridiculous. Other sports leagues which draw large numbers of international players (hello, MLB) seem to do just fine. Does anybody know more about the politics behind this, or about other sports leagues that have instituted similar rules?

This wasn’t a mistake, however; it happened several times in a row. Apparently this is how the support system at this company was designed. Everyone at this ISP shares one main phone number, and even the second-line reps don’t have any internal switching system. I listened in horror as one particularly kind gentleman, in an attempt to track down the root of my problem, was forced to navigate the exact same voice menu I used to get to him. WTF?!? When organizations don’t provide proper support and resources to employees, how can those employees possibly provide proper support to anyone else?

We as consumers aren’t helping the issue, either. We expect businesses to provide us with more, better, faster, and cheaper. We measure success in terms of financial growth from quarter to quarter, not customer satisfaction or retention. We’re always on the go, and we don’t have much patience when things go wrong. We are rude to waitresses, bus drivers, and checkout clerks, and they are rude right back.

In short: we as a society devalue human interaction. It is a necessary evil to get what we want, when and how we want it. The problem is, human interaction is at the core of true service. True service isn’t about money or fame. It’s not even about fixing, or helping:

When you fix, you assume something is broken. When you help, you see the person as weak. But when you serve, you see the person as intrinsically whole.

(from this incredibly powerful essay by stan goldberg.)

Serving is about investing your time, your energy, and your whole self into something. It’s about listening, it’s about caring, it’s about giving and keeping your word. It takes strength, passion, humility, vulnerability, and a healthy dose of respect for yourself and for others. It’s not easy to do, but service, as the essay above explains far more eloquently than I ever could, is its own reward. Whether it comes from a philanthropist, an educator, a geeky mom, or a b-movie enthusiast, individual service provides the foundation upon which community can be built.

So, on this Labor Day, with the beginning of the semester, a presidential election, and oh yeah, a couple of thunderstorms rapidly approaching, I’m curious: what does service mean to you? How can we improve the service we give, and the service we receive, as technologists but also as people? I look forward to hearing your thoughts …

As we here in the US savor what for some is the last weekend of summer and calm before the fall semester frenzy begins (*sigh*), please sit back, and enjoy.

This time of year, I spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out “how bad is it”–not as a way of setting up a joke, but in trying to figure out what problems are important enough to solve “at the root” rather than just dealing with the symptoms. For example, we’ve opened a new building on campus and one of my staff members just spent about a third of last week dealing with issues have nothing to do with academic technology–she’s chasing down questions about wire molding, conduit, network connections, door locks and other stuff that clearly is not her responsibility. (I guess these things are technology related in some broad way–they all do have wires.) She gets the questions because she knows all faculty in the building and because there is no clear communication path established as to who really is responsible. When we try to figure out a way to deflect those questions so she can focus on things are clearly are her job she comes back to the relational question: “If not me, who?”.

In complex, decentralized, underfunded organizations, figuring out who actually does have the responsibility for even something (relatively) simple like coordinating all those building changes (and then documenting the process) may require hours of phone calls, meetings, memos, negotiations and communications–even staff training. Deciding whether or not to try to fix the root problem is a judgment call that we make dozens of times a day, and, more often than not, it’s easier to just spend extra time to solve the immediate problem rather than to try to dig down and fix the root. Our faculty are busy folks and they’re generally very appreciative when someone–whoever–helps them.

But I have to wonder what the long term cost is when “fixing the symptom and ignoring the cause” becomes ingrained in the organizational culture and it becomes the accepted way of doing business. In my real (non-William and Mary) life, I much prefer to deal with organizations where the simple things are simple. No matter how helpful, friendly, and courteous someone might be in helping me navigate the corporate run-around (think Cox or Comcast here), I much prefer not not to get embroiled in a mess in the beginning. I’m wondering if we’re as much a part of the problem as the solution?

A quick disclaimer, I may have took notice because I was one of 192 professionals that submitted our top ten tools to Jane, who compiled them into her Top 100 Tools for Learning. Given the number of submissions and the depth of expertise of the submitters, this list strikes me as pretty balanced and interesting. But I may be biased.

However, in reading Stephen’s post, I was struck by a feeling that I have not had since my Pentagon days - one of “NIH” - or “not invented here.” NIH was a condition that sometimes struck officers of one branch of the military if an officer from another branch suggested a solution. Stephen seemed to be unimpressed with many of the tools because he had already written a script or code that did similar functions and saw little utility in the tools listed. He basically downplayed or outright stated that he had no use for 15 of the 25 tools.

I would suggest a different take. Most faculty (and I include myself) are not as inherently gifted at coding or programming as Stephen is, and instead are simply looking for tools that solve problems in their very real world. Many of the tools in Jane’s list meet these needs. They have for me.

What I find interesting in Jane’s list are the possibilities it has suggested. Rather than saying “I do not use this tool”, I looked at the list for suggestions on tools I might use to solve problems I have with my online teaching (and my students’ online learning). I now routinely use 21 of the top 25 tools (though that was not true two years ago). The four tools that make up my PLE (delicious, Google Reader, blogging with WordPress, and Twitter) are all in the top fifteen. I am using Camtasia and Wikispaces in my online Blackboard class. Firefox is my default browser. Pictures in my blog come from Flickr or SnagIt, and I routinely network with others through Ning and Slideshare. In fact, I continue to be blown away by the fact that one of my powerpoints I uploaded on a whim to SlideShare, Teaching In A Flat World, now has over 7,000 views in just the last 5 months - not to mention nearly 600 downloads and 16 embeds in others’ websites. Long winded way of saying that I find tremedous value in these tools.

What is your take? Do you find Jane’s list unhelpful (does it not fit your world)…or is it helpful - does it open up new possibilities for teaching and learning? Be interested in your thoughts!

{Photo Credit: LexnGer}

This Saturday, I will be doing some guest lecturing in our Fast Track Executive MBA “mini-camp” here at VCU. They have asked me to demonstrate “collaborative software.” I am looking forward to this session, but the language they have used demonstrates how the world is evolving. We really do not use “software” anymore for collaboration - it is now done on the web.

I was struck by this in reviewing a post today from Read-Write-Web entitled “Back to School: 10 Great Web Apps for College Students“:

1. Evernote

2. Google Notebook

3. Google Docs

4. Zoho

5. Zotero

6. EasyBib

7. Google Calendar

8. Remember the Milk

9. Rate My Professors

10. Meebo

Evernote and Google Notebook are listed as note taking applications. Google Docs and Zoho are online office suites. Zotero and EasyBib help build bibliographies. Google Calendar and RTM help keep students organized. Rate My Professors helps pick the right class (debatable…but the students do use it!). And Meebo is an instant messaging app for staying in touch.

The list above generated quite a few comments, with some suggesting the addition of some favorites of mine, including Jott (even though it costs) and Facebook.

In my presentation to the Executive MBA students, I plan to do some quick polling to get a sense of what they currently use, and then suggest some quick tools built around Google applications. From Google Sites to Google Docs to Google Calendars, and of course, Google Reader, MBA students (and students in general) have a rich variety of web tools that can enhance their collaborative work and build networks for the future.

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

So, building off the question Frederic Lardinois asked in his RWW posting, what am I missing? What tools would you suggest to Executive MBA students to bring their collaboration into the Web 2.0 arena?

Photo Credit: www.CentralDesktop.com

Image by Andrew Feinberg via Flickr

How’s that title for an attention grabber? It basically translates to saying, unless you’re a bad parent, you should drop what you’re doing and pay attention. In blogs, newscasts, and almost everywhere else that you turn we hear the warnings. Scary warnings about food, travel, drugs, and now the de rigueur warning about the hazards of the Internet and [insert dramatic music here] Internet Predators. The latest example is by way of Will Richardson who points to an incident that happened in a Wyoming high school. An officer from the nearby Cheyenne Police Department came to the school and spoke to students about the dangers of predators on the Internet. He used MySpace as an example of where students post their personal pictures and therefore leave themselves vulnerable to those bad people watching out there. Now, while there is some debate about what the officer actually said. Richardson’s point that it is the absolutely wrong approach is right on. He has a suggestion:

Go to your principal or superintendent right now and ask her/him this: Would you really rather have your students learn about safety online from some “authority” figure who drops in and attempts to make them fearful, or from people who they know and trust and see every day in their classrooms who over the course of time in appropriate and balanced ways can educate them instead?

Now I know a few police officers, good men and women all, but I know that their perspective is somewhat clouded by the fact that they see the end result of the "bad Internet". To them it must look mostly bad. So this fear approach to Internet safety doesn’t work any better than other types of "scared straight" education. This results in nothing more than articles like this one from 2003, which starts out like a bad novel. "Christina Long’s life was full of promise." I mean for cripes sake, what purpose does this serve? Christina Long was indeed the victim of a crime, but the Internet was no more of a perpetrator than violent TV, or slash and burn video games. Another example is this pitiful article from Katherine Ramsland.  After referencing the story about Christina Long, she refers to a June 2006 article in Science News:

[The] article reports that nine in ten adolescents utilized Internet resources in 2004, and at least fifty percent went online every day. A lot of them are contacted by predators seeking a viable contact whom they can draw into their net. Most predators have a number of fetishes and paraphilias, so for some, almost any kid who responds will do.

Guess which part of that paragraph were Ms. Ramsland’s words (hint, they’re in bold), because they are, in fact, wrong. Watch the PBS Frontline program Growing Up Online and see how the teenagers talk much more rationally about online life than the adults. Maybe we need to correct some of their laissez faire attitudes, but for the most part they know where the good Internet ends and the bad one begins.

So what is a good source of information that is easily digestible and dispels the myths of online predators? Well, start with the Crimes Against Children Research Center’s fact sheet from the University of New Hampshire. A quick read of this resource will demonstrate loud and clear how much hype there is when it comes to Internet dangers. Kids know when they’re being lied to, especially when we try to scare the crap out of them.