I’m excited to have a new article out in the recent edition of TechTrends. It’s an article written to students, about how they can build an effective learning community from the inside out. I have found that there are a lot of articles written to help instructors know how to build learning communities, but very precious little written to the students in language that they will actually read. I hoped with this article to fill this void. It’s not the most rigorous piece of scholarship in the world, but you know, I like it. I’m excited to see it published and hear what folks think about it.
YouTube – TEDxNYED – David Wiley – 03/06/10
I was fortunate this last year to attend TEDxNYED which was focused on great ideas for improving education. My colleague David Wiley gave a great talk there about how teaching (and learning) is really about sharing, and that we need to create policies and practices that increase our ability to share content and ideas with others. Awesome!
Microsoft’s anti-innovation climate
The New York Times had an interesting guest column written by a former designer for Microsoft. In the piece, Dick Brass remarks that “Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator.” The problem, according to Brass, is a lot of infighting within the bowels of Microsoft, where departments would sabotage and compete against other departments within the company, killing innovative ideas before they could flourish.
Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence. It’s not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.
I find stories such as this fascinating. What is it that creates a climate of interdependence, trust, and collaboration within some companies and envy and competition within other companies?
Creativity or patent selfishness?
Recently in a reading group I participate in, we re-read an article by Banahan and Playfoot (2004) where they argue that the current economy emphasizes and rewards creativity instead of efficiency. They provide several pieces of data to support their position, including the fact that patents have risen dramatically. However, is the rising number of patents an indication of creativity or of the ridiculous practice where businesses use their lawyers to chase after patents for inventions that were not solely theirs? An example is the report today that Dell wants to trademark the term “cloud computing.” What a joke.
So the question is, if patents cannot be trusted as a good indication of creativity, what could we use instead?
References
Banahan, Eoin, and James Playfoot. (2004). “Socio-Organisational Challenges in the Creative Economy.” In Collaborative Networked Organizations: A Research Agenda for Emerging Business Models. Edited by L. M. Camarinha-Matos and H. Afsarmanesh. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
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30+ Places To Find Creative Commons Media
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30+ Places To Find Creative Commons Media
Great sources of CC media, which I use all the time in presentations.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Innovation arising from failure
@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!
What’s wrong with happy?
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.
Swiss Gear backpacks on sale
I’ve never promoted a product on this blog before, but I recently bought a Swiss Gear laptop backpack and have loved it, and they are now on sale for over 50% off.
Happy shopping!
This is getting serious
I’ve heard about 15% budget cuts in higher education in Utah and Georgia, but how about 40% cuts in your state funding? That’s what is happening to Arizona State University. According to the president:
“To deal with cuts of this magnitude, we would need to:
- Layoff thousands more employees;
- Have a massive furlough of all remaining employees for two weeks or longer;
- Increase tuition and fees; (replacing the cuts by raising tuition alone would require a tuition rate of almost $11,000 for Arizona residents)
- Close academic programs.
- Close a campus or possibly two.
Wow. This is incredible. I worry that we are on the brink of dramatic changes to higher education that will not easily be reversed. While with crisis comes opportunity, that’s only if we can negotiate these challenges intelligently. But even smart changes can be painful as change is never easy.