I'm a Board member for this awesome social enterprise and count Wiclif as a personal friend. Very honored to be a part of this video (narration) and the growth of the organization we hope it effects.
web strategy, social networks, game thinking, and the future of good
I'm a Board member for this awesome social enterprise and count Wiclif as a personal friend. Very honored to be a part of this video (narration) and the growth of the organization we hope it effects.
I’ve had many parents say, “yeah, but I want them to be able to write and not be dependent on the technology.” The parents are viewing writing as physically printing words. Is that what writing is? Is that my students’ perception of writing? It certainly isn’t my view. I see writing as a way of communicating a message. I see text as anything that conveys a message. It could be sound, moving images, photographs, slogans, stories, poems, recounts, titles under artwork, posters, ads, cards, reports, graphics, music, songs and so on. I use my biweekly newsletters to help build my parents’ understanding of what we are ‘writing’ each week. So is writing merely putting pencil to paper? I think not.
Wonderfully articulated. Technology is not a new intelligence; it is a tool for deeply fundamental intelligence.
And it can be used for well or for ill.
Blackboard's market share has fallen substantially in recent years: "71 percent to 50.6 percent in the last five years." And sensing blood in the water perhaps (yes, another biology metaphor), a whole new pack of LMS startups -- many of which claim to be non-LMS LMSes -- have jumped into the game, building new software solutions that look and function more or less like Blackboard
I don't often post on education, but when I do, I post Hack Education.
Great blog.
The insight here is noteworthy: The established gorillas are dropping almost as quickly as the old curmudgeon of the handset world, RIM. They aren't truly social, they don't have great user experience, and they aren't poised to move quickly into mobile. Meanwhile, the startup scene is exploding with educational goodness that looks less like stuffy edu-software and more like purpose-driven social networking initiatives.
It's a beautiful thing to behold, really.
My house has a fireplace. It's a wonderful invention, the fireplace. I had one growing up for about three years, but a couple decades later finds me in awe of this simple pleasure once more.
Of course, being slightly pyromaniacal, I wanted to build a fire once the temperature started slumping below 65. To my chagrin, the process went something like this:
This process was the norm until I sat to think and realized it didn't have to be such a smokey and frustrating process. I started being more methodical about gathering good dry kindling; considering air distribution needs in the kindling formation; starting the fire slowly so as not to overwhelm the chimney pipe.
This story ends well, though: Over the past six months, I've perfected my fire building skills and can pretty much light up a fire with one match and no paper.
One match and no paper.
It's actually a striking analogy for a healthy startup culture*. The word I hear the most is "bootstrapping." Pull your ideas up by the bootstraps. Or, in this metaphor, use the match you have to start the fire.
Everybody has a match; an idea, a skill, or a passion that could ignite something that warms the world. The trouble is, we waste our matches or replace them with synthetic corner-cutters only to reap a synthetic, unsustainable reward that pollutes our domiciles. So to speak.
In the past three years at HiDef, I've learned that the best ideas are implemented simply and well from the start. You build a tool that you yourself can use. Then you find others in your company would benefit from it. Then your company realizes that other companies might want such a product. That one match ignited a great fire.
Too many times, we try to get right to the big fire by forcing it to start big (the firestick), wasting a bunch of resources to try to start big instead of thinking carefully about starting small and growing from there (the paper).
I was raised in the city and as a kid thought firesticks and papers (and even those nasty-smelling synthetic fire-starting logs) were just the things were done. Now I know the simple pleasure of starting good, warm fires with one match and no paper.
* The analogy starts to break down when I realize that wood-burning fireplaces are not the awesomest in terms of environment and health. But hey, at least mine's a stove.
Microsoft has overhauled its gestures in Windows 8 Consumer Preview. A lot of work has been focused on ensuring the relevant mouse and keyboard equivalent of touch gestures work better than the company’s Developer Preview build. There are seven key gestures in the new OS:
If I appreciate anything about iOS and especially iPad, it's that Apple has introduced gestures slowly to the consumer consciousness. When the iPad first came out, there were no fancy three-fingered or four-fingered gestures as there are now. First things first: realize that consumers have been used to point-and-click interaction, and therefore ease them in slowly to gesture-based interfaces by keeping the gestures they need to know minimal.
Microsoft is taking a huge risk in introducing "seven (7) key gestures in the new OS." That's seven more than the previous version of Windows, which has precisely zero.
There's something to say about thinking long term and developing a path to get from Point A to Point Z without trying to shortcut things.
Supersweet update to an app that was born through our company's innovation program.
