Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher

I read this blog post about the "social media divide" in the MA Senate race recently and have been thinking about it. I wonder how much of this social media stuff really makes a difference in an election. My question is did the social media stuff create the movement (or some of it) to Brown or did it merely reflect what what happening in the real world? Correlation is not automatically causation. I’m not sure how we know for sure.

What I do believe is that the online activity probably helped energize the believers and get them to do more and be more active. That’s a result but an indirect one. I don’t think the social media stuff won over many people but it did empower those who were already won over. Even if that is all there was that is still a powerful thing though. I think candidates ignore social media at their peril these days.

Several years ago I was helping out at a school book sale (private school, parents bought textbooks) and was standing behind the computer science books so I could answer any questions. A parent of an incoming student stopped by and said that their child knew a lot about computers. “Probably more than his teachers.” If I thought he knew who I was I would probably have taken great offense. But I wrote it off with the assumptions that a) he had no idea how much the computer teachers knew and b) he had no idea how little his son actually knew.

Students, at least in high school and earlier, generally know less about computer technology than they think they do. They generally know far less than what their parents and other adults think the students know. That’s not to say that there are not students out there with extensive knowledge of computers out there. There are. But knowing how to IM, download from iTunes, find funny videos on YouTube and turn on a computer doesn’t make someone an expert. Often the knowledge that students have is more limited than meets the eye. Recently a teacher I know asked a long time iPod using student for some help setting up her iPod. The student was all over downloading music but had no idea at all about downloading applications or podcasts.

I used to watch students taking a placement test for a computer applications course. These were students who self-selected and declared themselves more than knowledgeable enough to skip that course. Generally about a quarter of them were right. On the other hand I saw some amazing things. A spreadsheet “expert” taking out a calculator to add a row of numbers so they could enter the result into the computer. No really! Honestly I think I could teach the average adult who was a willing learner enough to pass that placement test in a couple of hours. They may not have retained it all much beyond the test but they would know enough to figure things out again later. It’s not really so complicated.

I think many of us let technology intimidate us. We think we’re too old to learn new things. Plus we see kids pick up a lot of technology as if they were natives to it. (I don’t believe they are and a real expert, danah boyd, says much the same thing) This scares us still more. But really most adults have the skills, the background, the intelligence, the ability to learn that makes catching up with students not so bad. Most of us just need the will, the attitude, the motivation and perhaps a patient tutor.

And if students know something we don’t, so what? We learn other things from them all the time so why not technology? Students don’t mind sharing what they know. They do it with peers (do you think all those kids figure their iPods out on their own? Not hardly) and they are willing to help adults. This can actually build mutual trust and respect.

If students start going off in new directions or beyond what their teacher knows, so what? Rather than see this as a threat many teachers I know see this as an opportunity to learn with students, to model lifelong learning, and to build teamwork between teacher and student. What’s wrong with saying “OK we’re going beyond what I know so let’s learn it together.” Seems just about ideal to me.

Knowledge in the world is expanding far too quickly for us to limit our students to what their teachers already know. It’s an exciting new world out there but we need to face it together and with some courage. And, yeah, perhaps some humility and a sense of humor.

So apparently Tiger Woods may or may not have been cheating on his wife. How in the world is that my business? How is it your business? Is it interesting? I suppose so in a sort of train wreck sort of way. But not everything that is interesting is any body else’s business.

Angelina and Brad may or may not be having family troubles. Likewise Tom and Katie according to differing tabloids. How is that my business?

Right to know or right to privacy? When in doubt I lean towards privacy. The news media is probably the most hypocritical society in the world. According to them you have a right to know everything. Well except you have no right to know their sources. Or how they work things internally. Or their private affairs.They protect their own usually.

But getting back to Tiger, Brad and Tom. Sure they are public people with a very public job. That gives me a right (probably) to know what golf tournaments they play in, what movies they star in, and what public appearances they are making. It doesn’t give me any rights into their bedrooms.

I wish the media would let people have private lives. I can’t imagine but that a lot of this tabloid media so-called journalism is really more about making news (or making up news) than reporting news. The added stress caused by speculative and imaginative “reporting” probably kills as many relationships as any other outside influence.

And it benefits no one but the media who makes money selling sensationalism. There is little doubt in my mind that much of it is harmful to the reader as well as to the victims of the “reporting.” It shatters illusions, encourages others to emulate bad behavior, and encourages people to try to take advantage of others for fame and attention. Bah!

Blogging is dead! Microblogging (ala Twitter) has replaced it!
Microblogging has “jumped the shark” and is going down hill while blogging is returning!

If you haven’t heard both of those sorts of statements lately you’ve almost certainly heard one of them. There seems to be some sort of idea that there is a zero sum game going on here and that for one of these platforms to grow the other has to diminish. I don’t buy it. Not completely. I do agree that both take time away from the other on the part of both readers and writers but I think what is happening in real life is that the size of the pie is growing. That is to say that more people are participating.

People who are not of the type to write a blog are on Twitter (and Plurk etc). There they are discovering interesting blogs as often as they discover interesting microbloggers. People who do blog are expanding their reach and also the range of input they are getting by participating on twitter. The future is for people who are active in both worlds and who connect the two worlds.

Both of these platforms have their advantages and disadvantages. neither can completely replace the other. For example I Twittered today “The role of debate in learning The comments are important. This is the edge that long form blogs have over Twitter.” The message links to a blog post by Mark Guzdial who is a fairly prolific blogger and occasional Twitterer (@guzdial). He expressed a number of good ideas is a well thought out and detailed way. You can’t do that in 140 characters. But more than that there is a continuing discussion, at length, in the comments. You just can’t do that sort of detailed discussion in Twitter. For people interested in this topic (and almost anyone in STEM education should be) it just doesn’t get much better than this. Plus as a blog it is less transient than Twitter messages so you can come back to it again and again.

Twitter is great for quips, short bits of information (like links to blog posts), status updates and even the random pithy idea. Conversations are possible as well but you’re just not going to get the depth of discussion that you can get in a blog post with comments. I love Twitter for the quick sharing of information. I get and send a lot of links myself. (In fact I collect many of them and post them on my computer science education blog once a week) I see the blog and Twitter as mutually supportive. Twitter is a lot more to me than a platform for promoting my blog (though I do my share of that). I suppose I am blogging less often lately. This blog clearly has been suffering a lack of attention of late for example. But I don’t blame Twitter in the least. Rather I credit Twitter with keeping me going though what I see as a blogging slump caused more by too much blogging for too long. Twitter has helped me not give it up completely. For others it may well be different of course. Life is like that.

What about you? Twittering more (or less) and blogging less (or more)? Or have you avoided (or given up) on both?

PS: You can follow me on Twitter @AlfredTwo and I hope you will and that you’ll let me know you’re out there.

Imagine you were a school teacher and the room you were teaching in didn’t have any heat. So suppose you call up the maintenance people and say “it’s 32 degrees in my room. The class fish tank is ice. The students can’t learn and I need you to fix it.” Imagine then that the maintenance person says “well we’re pretty busy here. You’ll have to work around it for a while. In the mean time if you find out what is wrong and it doesn’t take too much effort for us to fix it we will. Maybe.”

Never happen right? Someone would get fired pretty quickly. The school board would be in a tizzy, parents would be calling the school and the newspapers would have a field day.

Now imagine you are teaching computer science and the tech support has locked down the computers so tightly that your students can’t compile or even save their programs. You call up tech support and say “my students can’t do their projects because the systems are locked down so tightly that they can’t save their work.” And tech support says “well you’ll have to find a work around but if you can find a solution that doesn’t take too much effort for us to do we’ll fix it. Maybe.” That scenario seems to happen all the time. You would be amazed at how often I get email from teachers looking for solutions that tech support is unwilling to do any research on themselves. The people whose job it is to make the computers work so that teachers can use them to teach refuse to correct, or even look into, problems that are making life difficult or close to impossible for teachers.

Is it as bad as no heat in the building? Probably not. But teaching computer science or programming without being able to save and/or compile programs is like teaching writing without students having pens and paper. It’s like teaching reading without books. It’s like teaching how to speak a new language without allowing anyone to talk.

Do you hear any irate school board members? I don’t. How about irate parents? Me either. Are the newspapers covering it? Not that I can see. But I’m irate.  I just don’t know how to solve the problem. So in the mean time I do what ever I can to help teachers find solutions that tech support will either implement or allow teachers to implement. I do what I can to find workarounds and alternatives for them. But really we need to solve this problem in a way that scales.

I was reading through the comments of Mark Guzdial’s post What if computer science was required? this morning and wondered to myself “what if taking math were not required?” Would students take it on their own? Would parents make them? Of course math is important but a lot of people hate it. Same with English or history or geography. What subjects would students take if they were not required to take the “hard” ones? If school were not required would they even go?

Many would of course. Educated parents would especially make sure their children were educated. But could they keep pushing them there as they got older? Teens are notoriously poor decision makers. I think some would see the value and would continue but given how many students drop out in high school now I suspect even fewer would make it into high school if they were allowed to drop out earlier. This would be a societal disaster I think.

I’m thinking this would make an interesting book. Fiction I hope.

I guess I’m a little frustrated at people who view social media as something to hire people to do for them. They don’t have time you see. So they hire someone to blog for them. Or Twitter for them. Or “Facebook” for them. It somehow just seems wrong to me. I was thinking about that today and Twittered the following:

If people on Twitter are important enough to you for you to pay people to talk to them aren’t they important enough for you to talk to?

If you are looking at social media for marketing purposes you are looking to communicate with people, generally decision makers, and get them to buy your goods or services. These people are (or should be) important to you. You should see their time as important and valuable. I’m guessing most people think of their time as important and valuable. Are you broadcasting to them or conversing with them? Other than low level consumer products I doubt many sales are made without conversation. But even with consumer sales a company wants to create an attachment – a relationship – with their customers. Can you do that by broadcast alone? I’m not sure you can. At least not reliably.

The beauty of social media is that it is social. It is multi directional. Sure you can hire people to do this conversation for you. But all too often the customer binds to the person you hire rather than to you or your company. Think about whose personality is coming through. Is it the company image you want to project? If so maybe it can work. That’s probably more reliable as a plan if the person is a real full-time employee though.

I’m not a purist on this though. I’ve seen some cases of “hired guns” doing a good job. I just can’t see myself doing it. It seems risky. So I’m still trying to figure this out. Looking for opinions here. Thanks.

As I see it the Internet has the possibility to radically remake who we discover artists, consume art and support art. By this I mean most forms of art. Books, painting, music, theatre and on and on. Perhaps I’m stating the obvious but maybe not. I’d like to use this opportunity to state some of my observations and get feedback though.

First off it seems easy for established, main stream media people to make it big on the Internet. Oprah creates a Twitter account and it rapidly jumps to over 2 million followers. Ashton Kutcher has over 3 million followers. Wil Wheaton has over a million followers on Twitter but really started making a name for himself on the Internet with his blog - WWdN: In Exile. In his case I think that his Internet fame grew more because he is a very good writer and an interesting guy than that he was on TV for a while. But clearly his TV fame helped kick start things off. These people all see some value in interacting with their fans but is it key (or even really important to their careers? I think the jury is still out on that.

Where I see things getting interesting is with the so-called long tail of artistic endeavors. What does the Internet mean to people who are not big name mass media famous? For many I suspect it will mean the difference between subsistence level living and enough success that they can continue as artists as their main work.

MySpace was the first big platform for artists that I’m aware of. Musicians especially seem to have been early adopters there. By using it as a space to share their music, connect with fans, and promote themselves I think many of them helped themselves along.

I know more than a few visual artists – painters, sculptures, photographers, etc – use their own web pages to promote their art. Hugh MacLeod started building his fame online as a marketing guy before he made art creation his main gig though. These days he sells all his work online. (I own this piece and love it BTW) Hugh continues to promote himself (all selling is basically selling ones self) online through Twitter, his blog, his books and interactions with other online personalities. And make no mistake about it Hugh is himself a personality. The Internet gives him the opportunity to get his personality across. People like his art work in part because they like Hugh. This (people getting to know his personality) would not be possible on any reasonable scale without the Internet. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that for most people the value of art is much more about the artist than the intrinsic nature of the product. Rational or not it seems to be the case.

Which brings me to another point. Selling art is not a matter of simply putting up a web site and having people find it. For the Internet to be really helpful for an artist it has to be a tool for the artist to communicate with people. IT has to be an extension of how they communicate who they are, why they do what they do, and what sort of personal connection they make with people through their art. Then you can get people to support you directly by buying art and indirectly by providing feedback, emotional support and in the cases of performing arts – attending performances. The Internet is, as it has been since the world wide web and even before, about making connections and weaving things together.

I’ll give one more example of this. John Herman is a New Hampshire artist. I’m not sure how to characterize him because he is in to so many things. His home page banner says “Artist, writer, teacher, web adventurer” while his Twitter page (@JohnHerman) says “Artist, Writer, Teacher, Media Strategist, Creative Content Producer, Founder of NH Media Makers” From his home page or from his Twitter feed interested people can branch off to a surprising number of artistic endeavors. I have no idea if he makes money from any of this artistic work BTW. He makes a living as a high school teacher which is how I first heard about him. But clearly the Internet and modern technology gives him creative outlets and connections to people that would be all but impossible otherwise. I suspect that there is more of this going on than I am aware of but I also believe there is a lot more of it to come.

Is it sustainable? I hope so. We need art and other creative outlets for people.

One of the places I learned the most about teaching and about education and actually many other things over the years was in the faculty lounge. Oh sure we’ve all heard stories of “toxic” environments in faculty lounges where all that goes on is complaining and gossip and negative things. But for me the faculty lounge was mostly a very positive experience.

It was from more experienced teachers that I learned how to handle teaching issues – what do you do with cheater? What do you do about tests or assignments that don’t work? How do you evaluate students with special needs? And on and on and on. The lounge was also a place to learn about current events from a deeper background. There are an awful lot of teachers who have a wealth of knowledge to bring to a conversation. History teachers bring one perspective; science teachers another; world languages teachers still another. And the list goes on. There are not many learning environments like a healthy faculty lounge.

Today my virtual faculty lounge is Twitter. Yes, Twitter. It is there where I engage with and learn from teachers, not just from one school, from all over the country and the world. Lately I have taken to asking questions there. Just throwing out items for discussion. Questions like “what is basic goal of HS?” which is the basis for another blog post I’m working on BTW. I’m getting perspectives from all over and people are explaining not only their views but the ones they hear expressed locally.

I’m also hearing (ok reading) observations from other teachers. For example one teacher is taking a week long workshop and feeling a bit overwhelmed. The questions she is asking though are along the lines of how can she help her students avoid that feeling? Teachers are working through issues with the help of others and they are doing it online and in a somewhat public forum. There is a huge benefit to this I think.

I am reminded of a cartoon I had hanging in my classroom for a couple of years (I wish I hadn’t lost it). The cartoon showed a classroom of students. All were thinking the same exact thing in the thought balloon overhead. Panel one “I am so lost” Panel two “Everyone else understands this so well” Panel three “I dare not ask a question and appear stupid in front of the class”

Doesn’t that happen all too often in life? Not just in school BTW. It happens in business meetings as well. The value of Twitter, well one of them, is that we have people feeling safe enough to pose questions and express concerns. In return others are providing answers (at best) and sympathy and sounding boards (at worst). Everyone participating benefits and learns.

What is the value of Twitter? Conversation, support, learning, community, friendship – well I guess I’m finding multiple benefits.

Note: You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AlfredTwo I do chat a lot though. :-)

The new TV show Royal Pains is bringing some attention to an area of Long Island the media likes to call “The Hamptons.” I was born there and growing up we referred to the area as “the south fork.” Or perhaps “the east end [of Long Island]” When I was growing up there were summer people – artists, writers, actors, miscellaneous rich people – who had big summer homes but there were also baymen and farmers – lots of farmers – and it did not get the media attention it does today.

Today there are sort of two dimensions (dimensions in the science fiction sense that they occupy the same physical space but hardly interact) to the Hamptons. There are the rich and famous who occupy one dimension and the other people who live in another. For ease of use I refer to the first group as summer people and the second group as year-round people. Strictly speaking many of the “summer people” come out more than just in the summer and may even live here (I am in East Hampton as I write this) most of the time.

The media (TV and movies) mostly presents a fictional view of the summer people. The year round people are kept in the background. I can’t say I am very familiar with that dimension of the Hamptons though. The year round people a bit more. While I haven’t lived in the Hamptons full-time for 50 years I do visit regularly and my father still lives here. I like to think of myself as a “displaced Bonacker'' who knows something of the area.

The TV show Royal Pains is fairly unique in that it does show some local, year-round people types. The hospital administrator who was born and raised in Southampton (not explicitly stated but the only hospital in the Hamptons is in Southampton – I was born there) for example. The most recent episode showed the star helping a sick fisherman. Why they didn’t add some authenticity by finding a way to refer to him as a bayman I don’t know. Baymen is a general term for people who make their living from the bays and ocean around the Hamptons. That is a word I would have liked to see in the show’s “Hamptons Glossary” but I guess as it is a local word not a summer people word it didn’t make the cut.

It’s going to be interesting to watch this show (Royal Pains) to see how it treats the year round people. My suspicion is that the writers and the people working on the show are more generally influenced by summer people. There are many of them in the TV business. I’m not sure how much interaction they have with year round people other than to buy from them, hire them to do work around their houses and see them in the streets. Will they take on the number of immigrants (legal and otherwise) from south and central America? How about the summer workers from Ireland who come to the area in droves? And what more of the hard working baymen will we see?

I actually wonder how they will handle the rest of the year – not the summer. Will the late season events like the Hamptons International Film Festival (October) be an opportunity to have a bunch of high profile cameo appearances?  Will the Hampton Classic show some international beauty (ever notice how many gorgeous young women need treatment on TV shows?) falling off a horse?

Yeah, I guess I like the show. The doctor is a good guy. The young rich kid he befriends is really interesting. The hospital administrator is more attractive than most of the rich people but is still a strong and complex person one can respect. The brother and the physicians assistant add something good to the mix. The USA Network does seem to do characters well. Plus I like to keep my eye open for places I know. :-)

Note: Strictly speaking a Bonacker is from Springs, a village in the town of East Hampton, but more general usage tends to include the most of the town including the village of East Hampton.

Note: If you go to the East Hampton Village page on Wikipedia you will see a picture of the old Hook Mill windmill. That picture is very close to the view from my bedroom window when I was a small child. Our current house is close by but doesn’t have that view.