Rick West

Instructional Researcher, Evaluator, and Designer

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Um, whoops

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Again, another fun tweet from @jonmott. A  secret trip to Iraq was foiled by a member of the group posting multiple tweets regarding their location and activities. Wow. Isn’t the first thing you learn about social networking technologies is NOT to post your specific location at a given moment? (As a parent, I know that one). The funniest (and scariest) part of this is that the whistleblower was the former chairman of the Intelligence panel.

Now if HE can’t figure out how to be safe using social technologies, do the rest of us really have a chance? Am I being too over-confident to think I can keep my children safe with the safeguards I currently use or is it a hopeless endeavor?

Innovation arising from failure

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@JonMott pointed me to an interesting video on how the Honda design team progressed from catastrophic disasters with their racecars to monumental current success. The moral of the story? That innovation can arise from failure, if the community is prepared to learn from their failures. This is something that emerges often as characteristics of innovative groups (see Sawyer, 2008 and IDEO’s “Fail early, fail often” credo).

I’d really love to conduct a study sometime in this area. What kinds of questions could be asked? What kinds of methods? I think it’d be interesting to at least begin by looking at:

1. What are the characteristics of “positive” failures and “negative” failures?

2.  What are the strategies, characteristics, and actions of groups that profit from failures?

3. Can strategies be put in place to help a community currently experiencing failure to benefit from it? How can these strategies and changes be implemented most effectively?

4. What kinds of knowledge and skills are gained in working back from a failed project?

5. Are key individuals essential to profiting from failure?

6. What significant innovations have arisen as direct results of learning from failure?

7. How can we develop educational environments that help and support students to experiment and learn from failure?

8. What is the “rebound” process from recovering from failure?

And so on. Interested in your thoughts!

A letter to the president

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For school, my daughter wrote a letter to President Obama. Short and sweet, it read:

“Dear Obama,

Could you try and have some times when you could be whith (sic) your family.

From: D. West”

Of all the things she could say to the president, and of all the concerns we have with our nation right now, she wrote about having more family time. She represented the concerns of children everywhere, and she knew the most important thing the most powerful man in the world could do is spend time with his children. It made me think of President David O. McKay’s quote: “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”

It also made me think that my lame-o job (compared with Mr. Obama’s prestigious position) should not take me away from my family as much. I need to make sure to spend enought time at home!

What’s wrong with happy?

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One of my deep, dark secrets is that I enjoy American Idol. I know it’s a lame show and manipulated in many ways, but it’s still something we like watching as a family (especially on youtube without commercials!).

So I thought it was funny to learn that the American Idol judges really liked their visit to Salt Lake City for auditions this past year, except for Simon Cowell who thought Utahns were just too happy. According to Paula Abdul:

“We found a lot of talent” in Utah, “And what I found was that everybody was so happy and nice that it bothered Simon. People would walk in and be so pleasant, and Simon would say, ‘What is wrong with all of you?'”

What’s wrong with being happy, eh Simon? I for one am excited to be living in Utah soon as part of “Happy Valley” once more.

Unexpected impacts?

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Reuters reports that 4/5ths of the workers in the U.S. who lost their jobs in the last year were men. Eighty percent! This is because the professions that were hardest hit are predominantly jobs that men have held while professions that employ more women (such as health care) are expanding. Ironically, research shows unemployed persons don’t do any more housework than employed persons, so there might be a lot of unhappy wives right now wondering what their laid off husbands did all day! (“Hunny, I promise watching ESPN is a good way to look for a job!”)

Couple this with a recent post by economist Justin Wolfers where he shows that 26% of wives earn more than their husbands. Finally, more women than men are graduating from college, so the number of wives out-earning their husbands is going to grow.

None of this is really surprising. Most of us men know our wives are smarter and harder working than us! I know mine would definitely make more money than me if she wanted to. I am curious, however, what kinds of changes to our society these trends may bring and what unintended consequences. Will we see more husbands staying home to watch the kids since their wives are the power earners? Will it be harder to let go of a possible second income in the family in order to have a baby when that second income is the higher one? Will this increase the trend towards a lower birthrate, which is projected to have dramatic negative consequences for the economic stability of the nation?

And of course, the critical question: If the wife brings home the bacon, will the husband finally learn how to cook it properly? 🙂

Poptropica – children’s virtual world

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Poptropica is a fun virtual world for kids that can be easily navigated. Inside Poptropica you can play games, solve puzzles, go on quests, and visit different places in the world. I could totally see my children getting hooked on this. I have only tinkered it with it briefly, and saw some learning games, but it still seems a little low on the learning side. However, it might be effective at teaching problem solving skills. If anyone has experience with this program, let me know what your review of it is!

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