TechIntersect

Late last year I wrote about reading “Human Connection and the New Media“ ©1973 edited by Barry N. Schwartz. It was fascinating to see a glimpse of what people at that time expected the future to be like.

The book is a compilation of essays about the “future” and how new media impacts the human experience. One of the best was by Buckminister Fuller, whom I first learned about in a Chad Davies physical science class as an undergraduate. Fuller writes:

Born utterly helpless, and gaining independent competence only slowly, youth’s reflexes are preconditioned to expect some older authority to be responsible for its welfare. Youth assumes that the political authority is a public parent. When dissatisfied, youth protests to the authorities assuming the authorities can, if they wish, make everything satisfactory. Often, the “authority” lacks such capability….

It’s a question of problem ownership

Hmm, an insight I had not before considered, but almost certainly true. Thirty-five years hence, nothing has changed with these youthful expectations. I have been watching with great interest the US presidential election of Barack Obama. People are excited and incredibly optimistic about everything he is going to fix. I predict a certain amount of disillusionment because some problems simply are not as solvable by political authority as they are by the person(s) closest to the problem.

Stephen Covey in “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” calls it the “Circle of Influence” Dave Ramsey simply says, “You fix you!”

In It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy author Michael Abrashoff writes about his experience as a destroyer skipper who went against the traditional Navy hierarchical approach to decision making by empowering the sailors closest to a problem to solve that problem. It is an ingenious approach that makes a lot of sense but is a little scary to the leader who feels like they might be giving up control.

But as Jim Fay explains with his Love & Logic philosophy, control is at best an illusion. Fay says that control is a bit like love in that you only get it when you give some of it away. The notion of letting the owner of a problem solve the problem is a classic Love & Logic approach to teaching responsibility, yet how many times do we see authority figures using top-down management techniques that do not empower the owner of the problem to solve it for fear of “losing control”?

Hierarchies vs Flat Organizations

Much has been written recently about a “flattening” that is happening thanks in no small part to the popularity of Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat:A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century“. Friedman discusses how technology is enabling participation in the global economy of anyone, anywhere at anytime.

Hierarchies tend to remove the leaders further from the people doing the work and solving the problems, leading to bureaucratic inefficiencies. With all of the improvements in communications technologies, I find it amazing that still today the number one problem most organizations face is a lackof communication.

One of the best books I have read about combating the tendency of buck passing and general lack of personal responsibility is “QBQ The Question Behind the Question” by John Miller. If it is an issue where you work and live, I highly recommend this read!

We have started a tradition at the Genereux house on New Year’s Day. We started a year ago and the kids have been talking about it all year, looking forward to this day.

I’m talking about our New Year’s Day Breakfast tradition, where kids make the decision about what to eat. Anything goes as long as the food they want is in the house. Last year, the kids asked me what was so special about New Year’s Day and not having a satisfactory answer for a 3 & 5 year old, I told them that on New Year’s, kids get to decide what to eat for breakfast. Anything we had in the house, they could eat for breakfast! Well they had a blast picking out crazy things to eat for breakfast, most notably they wanted to eat ice cream! Ok, I told them, kids decide on New Year’s.

You may think it’s crazy, but it’s crazy like a fox! Jim & Charles Fay at the Love and Logic Institute recommend giving little kids lots of choices about things we don’t care about, so when it comes time for the parent to make a decision about what will happen, the kids feel a sense of shared control in their lives. All we are doing with the silly New Year’s Day breakfast is making a deposit into the bank account of control. For me, it was spontaneous, unplanned, but completely in keeping with the Love and Logic philosophy that we have been studying & practicing since our first child was born.

A video that has been very helpful to my wife and me is the Painless Parenting for the Preschool Years DVD. Dr. Charles Fay’s ideas on parenting small children are pure gold! Our kids (and their parents) aren’t perfect, but looking back we’ve done enough right that by and large the kids are pretty well behaved.

(Oops, I gotta go… Thomas just poured melted ice cream on his sister’s head.)

Ok, I’m back. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Love & Logic is great help for raising happy and responsible kids. There’s no guarantee that everything will work out perfectly, but by doing enough things right, we increase our odds that things will work out well.

I have to go now and see about how my son plans to put the energy he’s drained from the family back!

Happy New Year!

Tags: family traditions, holidays, parenting

I have challenged my Visual Literacy students to think about the question of where creativity comes from. What things do creative people do to be creative?

At SXSW Interactive 2008 earlier this year, I sat in on a presentation by Jim Coudal, of Coudal Partners on his personal Theory of Creativity. The reason I’m telling you about this presentation is because it was here that I first began to consider what I do in my classes that I teach, in particular those course in which I expect a degree of creative expression, such as the “Visual Literacy” course.

In the past, I have been diving in with these students, many in their first year of college, expecting them to be creative from the start. Part of the problem, however is that I have been giving assignments that are too open ended. Many of my assignments are very open-ended with very few constraints, but according to Coudal, creativity comes from having constraints and limitations to work within.

There is nothing more intimidating to a beginning artist than to stare at an empty canvas and wonder what to paint. The same goes for the beginning blogger who wonders what to write. Experienced creatives know how to set up their own boundaries and constraints to work within. My students usually lack this experience and need to have some of these put in place for them, and need to be taught how to make their own boundaries and constraints within which they can work.

Coudal also suggests that creativity comes from finding a connection between the known & unknown. This is a fundamental principle of learning. Students learn by connecting their known experiences to the new information. So too, creativity does not materialize from nothing; it must have a foundation from which to arise.

Fill your tank

I encourage my students to read all they can and to see as much work of other designers as they possibly can. For my own personal reading this past summer, I began working through a list of books suggested by Chris Crawford in his fascinating book On Game Design. I find it interesting that Crawford recommends to would-be game designers to seek higher education outside of the USA, because American schools are much too narrowly focused to prepare for the work of game design. Thus comes his voluminous recommended reading list, in case you cannot for some reason swing a well-rounded European education. Last year I worked with the librarian at K-State at Salina to make sure we had most of Crawford’s recommended reading available to K-State students. Now if they will only take advantage of it.

Our library also has begun subscriptions to several exceptional periodicals dealing with creativity. Two of my favorites are Communication Arts and Make magazines. I will be encouraging my students to check these resources out as well.

No, this semester we won’t be diving in to being creative right off the bat. I think the students need to fill their creativity tanks up first before they attempt to do anything creative. In the words of the Monty Python doctor replying to the pregnant woman asking what she should be doing, “You’re not qualified!”

Students who haven’t yet examined where creativity comes from, and who don’t have an understanding of getting inspiration and ideas by exploring the work of others are simply not qualified to be creative.

For me, I am at my most creative during times of great stress and/or oppression. After my grandfather died in a tragic accident, I created a digital postcard of a girl playing cards and entered it into a contest in which the juror selected to be included in the Kansas Artist Postcard Series. When I was in the Navy and feeling put-upon, I would often write little sarcastic songs or poems to make me feel better. One time, I created and sold an entire line of t-shirts mocking the weapons officer’s attempts to drive away all enlisted happiness from the ship. They were a popular item for a time with my shipmates. (I hope I am a bit more mature now, but sometimes my orneriness persists!)

Of course you cannot always expect to wait for adverse conditions to be creative. That is why you always must fill your tank with new inspiration. You never know where ideas will come from, but one thing is certain– they do not come from nowhere. Being creative is hard work. Creativity comes from taking talents and abilities that you are born with, and then while exploring the ideas of others, expanding and connecting with new ideas to come up with something entirely new.

More judges should hand consequences like this one. A quick overview: It is known as “Fire in the Hole.” Teenage punks film a prank for YouTube at fast food drive through windows. They throw their drinks at the window attendant and speed off.

In this case, the kids were arrested and the judge ordered them to post a YouTube video including pictures of their arrest as well as an apology to their victim.

I think it’s appropriate that the long arm of Web 2.0 be involved in meting out the logical consequences when it is misused for evil purposes.

Have you ever come across a bit of information that works like magic in the classroom? Mine is the one-sentence intervention, explained in the Teaching With Love & Logic book by Jim Fay and David Funk. I highly recommend adding this book to your summer reading list if you’ve never read it before.

The authors suggest experimenting with your most uncooperative student. They suggest going to that student at least six times during the next three school weeks using a “one sentence intervention.” The intervention is simply you noticing something personal about that student. “I noticed that you are wearing blue sneakers.” “I noticed that you got a hair cut.” “I noticed that you like pro wrestling.” “I noticed that you really like to draw pictures.”

There should be no value judgments attached to these statements; no praise or evaluation of what you observed. Just a simple matter-of-fact statement about the student. If they say “Yeah, so what?” you say, “Well, I just noticed that about you.” According to the authors, if you offer praise or comment that you like what you noticed, students can feel manipulated, so simple observation is best.

What this does is work on the old adage that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.

After doing this for several weeks, you can test whether the student is becoming more cooperative by asking “Will you try that just for me?” or “Will you stop doing that just for me?” If your relationship building efforts are taking root, you may be surprised by the outcome of these simple requests.

The thing I like about Love and Logic is although the target audience is parents and teachers of K-12 age kids, it still works with older students as well. I have successfully used this technique on building relationships with college aged students. My problem is that I get so involved, I sometimes forget my techniques. I’m posting this in my blog not only to share with you, but to remind myself about this in the future.

My memory was jogged about this simple intervention by Paul Bogush’s post on his blog. Thank you Paul.

Tags: , difficult kids, teaching

Well, the end of semester crunch has caught up with a couple of students in one of the classes I teach. A major research project that has been ongoing throughout the semester was a favorite learning experience for many, but a stumbling block for a few. The assignment was called “The Dead Artist Project” and the task was to research a famous person in the arts who died before they were born.

Most of the students selected someone they were interested in but knew little about, making the research meaningful and worthwhile. Two in the class decided to short-circuit the learning experience by cutting and pasting a hodge-podge of information found on websites on the internet. Because it was a final project, I had the unpleasant task of dealing with this duo right when I should be celebrating the conclusion of another great semester

But I keep reminding myself that I do no favors by rescuing or excusing this behavior. These are college students, one step away from being in the “real world.” As Charles Fay of the Love and Logic Institute puts it, the price tag for poor decision making is low when kids are small, but it goes up as they get older. In college, we are talking significant costs in terms of time and money.

I am thankful that at K-State we have an “Honor System” which provides a meaningful learning experience for students who do not understand the importance of integrity. The focus is on education, not punishment. All K-State students take the honor pledge which states they have not received unauthorized aid. When students violate this pledge, there are a number of things that can occur. My students will have to take a Development and Integrity course to help them understand the error of their ways. This course will cost them both time and money. Unless they take the D & I course, they will fail my course and a “XF” grade indicating a failure due to honor violation will remain on their transcripts.

I discussed the situation with each student privately and neither would directly admit to any wrong-doing. However they had plenty of excuses for the behavior such as pressures with work and family. When I told one student that the English faculty would call this “plagiarism” the student actually replied, “I would never write like that in their classes.” Wow, you didn’t do anything wrong, but you know not to do it that way in an English class. What’s wrong with this picture?

As a rookie teacher, chances are good I would have looked for ways to rescue these students, letting the excuses sway me from allowing the natural consequences to happen. But lately, I have really been working on doing not what is easy or feels good, but instead on doing what is best for students. Unfortunately for these students, they have been allowed to go through life without experiencing enough consequences of bad decision making; and the price tag has gone up.

Tags: , academic integrity, cheating, honor system, responsibility

K-State Professor Michael Wesch achieved international recognition a year ago when a small video he made for YouTube caught on and was viewed by millions of people. His video, “The Machine is Us/ing Us” is about how the modern Internet, sometimes called “Web 2.0″, is learning from the people who use it and contribute to it.

The Internet is no longer a passive experience for many people, but instead it allows anyone to share ideas and contribute to the body of human knowledge. This has always been possible on the Internet, but until recently you needed a certain amount of technical knowledge to be a contributor. New technology developments have made it possible for more people to contribute. Anytime that you are able to put your ideas and creativity on the Internet without working directly with web pages and HTML, there is a good chance you are using a Web 2.0 application.

As a teacher, I am very excited about the new ways of teaching and learning that are becoming available with this new technology. As a resident of a small, rural Kansas town, I am really jazzed about the possibilities it offers for revitalizing our community. When else in human history could you start a home-based business far from any city, yet still have the entire world as your potential customer base? The potential is unlimited and I challenge the good citizens of Clifton and Clyde to dive it and start learning. There is no reason for us to miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. The technology of the Internet has reached a point where absolutely anyone can now be a contributor as well as a consumer of information on the web. This has enormous implications for anyone wanting to make a living on the Internet, since you no longer need to be a web developer to get started.

However, if as Dr. Wesch points out, “the machine is us/ing us” then it follows that the machine will reflect all of the characteristics of the human race, even our ugly side. This became apparent to me as I learned of the story in Florida where a teenage girl was beaten senseless by a gang of thugs she thought were her friends. These sick kids video recorded the beating with the intention of posting it to YouTube. Our culture has become infatuated with celebrity and it seems that some will pay any price to earn a place in the spotlight; even if it results in a jail sentence.

The girl’s mother was on CNN this week and she made an assertion that I find frightening. She said that parents pretty much have to operate on the information provided to them by their kids. She said that not much can be done if kids are hiding information from you. She mentioned that as parents, they were uncomfortable with some of the social networking sites such as MySpace and that they tried unsuccessfully to get MySpace to close their daughter’s account. She even stated that the family implemented filtering software on the computer that the “clever” daughter was able to circumvent.

Here’s an interesting idea– maybe the problem is not with MySpace. Maybe the parents should be removing some computer privileges if the daughter is not willing to follow some established ground rules. Parenting experts Jim & Charles Fay recommend that children not be allowed to have computers in their rooms. It seems to be pretty drastic, but look at the dangers. Most parents simply have less computer knowledge than their kids, and parents really need to be on top of what the kids are doing online. That is pretty hard to do when the computer is hidden away in the bedroom.

Wendy and I have noticed that our daughter is starting to explore a little on the Internet beyond Webkinz world. We are planning to set up a computer in a prominent location in the house so we can keep an eye on the kids as they use it. I will also probably soon be looking for some filtering software to help keep them safe. But we will not rely on software as a complete solution, only one piece of the puzzle in setting some limits.

I expect that my kids will become computer savvy enough to someday find work-arounds to defeat filtering software, so in the mean time we will have to work on building our relationship and helping them learn to make good decisions. We wear seat belts in the car for the same reason; to be safe, not because there is a law that requires it or because we cannot get away with not wearing them. I want my kids to grow up wearing seat belts simply because it is a smart choice, not because someone forced them to. I believe that a similar attitude towards the computer will help them make good decisions using that tool as well.

Kids do not outwardly appreciate boundaries and limitations, but at a very deep level they cannot understand, when they discover the boundaries, they feel loved and secure. Too many kids are growing up with few limitations, and it’s not healthy. I can’t help but wonder if the young girl in Florida was growing up with little supervision and few boundaries and limits. Maybe I’m naive, but I think parents can do a pretty good job of keeping tabs on their kids if they develop good strong relationships from the beginning.

I really want to encourage parents to look into the online activities of your children. If you don’t know what they do online, maybe you should ask. Be curious. Ask them to show you their site. See how many Facebook or MySpace friends they have. Don’t let your lack of interest or knowledge of technology keep you from taking an active role in their online lives. I’m lucky that my daughter is young. Right now, she begs me to play with her on Webkinz. My hope is these early online experiences will continue as she grows older and that she will want to keep me in the loop. One can only hope, right?

Tags: internet, technology, web 2.0

This week, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius signed into law a measure requiring Kansas schools to implement anti-cyberbullying policies. While admirable, I believe this is largely feel-good legislation that looks good on paper but does nothing to help solve the problem. What would such a school policy have done for the poor girl in Florida who was savagely beaten and videotaped for posting on the Internet this week?

We need to equip our kids with methods that work when dealing with bullies. Sally Ogden’s program, “No Thanks, I Just Had A Banana” is full of these methods. I heard Sally at a Love and Logic summer conference in Wichita a couple of summers ago. It really helped me to prepare my daughter for her entry into Kindergarten and how to deal with people who are unkind. And you know what? It’s even helped me to deal with adults at my job who like to push people around!

Lawmakers, if you really want to help the children of Kansas, you might want to consider enacting some programs that will help teachers equip kids with knowledge of how to handle bullies.  And you might want to take a close look at the technology requirements in our state’s teacher education programs. I would expect that it might be pretty difficult to help kids with cyber-bullies if you don’t even understand the technology on which it occurs.

Tags: bullying, legislature, Love and Logic, technology

We had to review some parenting techniques this week. My wife heard my 4 year old son saying a new 4-letter word while he was watching TV (see the adorable Kai-lan video from NickJr). It’s becoming his new favorite word. So I popped over to the Love and Logic articles page to review their stance on childhood swearing.I had the attitude down, but could not remember all of the techniques. The basic attitude is to don’t freak out!. Putting on a show of emotion over a poor choice of words is the last thing we want to do. It provides entertainment for our kids, and encourages them to do it again. An emotionless response takes away the perceived power of the words, making them less fun to use.

Love and Logic recommends having an “energy drain” in which the offending word has caused us to lose energy that needs replaced by our kid doing chores. It’s funny that I forgot this part, because we use “energy drain” pretty often in our house.The other thing to do is simply to require that all swearing be done alone in their bedroom. You don’t have to listen to it and it isn’t nearly so fun to swear if no one is listening and reacting to the word. While it is pretty hard for a teacher to send a kid to their room, a teacher could certainly have an energy drain when this happens in class. I suppose you could send a kid to the office, but what fun is that? You diminish your authority, and lose respect and control in the classroom when you let someone else handle classroom management issues for you.

On a related note, do you think the Kai-lan writers intentionally wrote this story to have fun with unwitting pre-schoolers and their parents? I do.

Tags: cursing, energy drain, Love and Logic, swearing, teaching

I just received the lastest edition of the Love and Logic e-mail newsletter entitled “Kids, Money, Loans”. In it Jim Fay describes the Love and Logic philosophy towards kids and money.

Jim Fay and Dave Ramsey are two heroes of mine, and I frequently follow their advice, however with the issue of kids and money allowances the two are not in agreement. Ramsey does not recommend paying kids allowances, but instead recommends implementing a commission system; kid works, kid gets paid, kid doesn’t work, kid doesn’t get paid. Fay does recommend allowances, arguing that as parents we often provide tools for our kids to learn lessons about life, and an allowance is one such tool.

In the newsletter I just received from Love and Logic, Jim Fay goes so far to recommend that parents be willing to extend loans to kids to help prepare them for the real world of personal finance and obtaining loans. Fay says that hopefully kids can learn about interest payments, loan defaults and repossessions at an early age. His philosophy is always about teaching them when the price tag is low. After having paid thousands in credit card interest over the years, for me I would have preferred to learn about interest payments as a kid. The price tag learning that lesson was much higher as an adult.

However, it was following Dave Ramsey’s advice that helped us to pay that it all off and cut those things up! We don’t have credit cards and interest payments in our house anymore. I believe that Ramsey would not support extending loans of any kind to a kid (or anyone else for that matter.) He’s just philosophically opposed to debt as a way of life, so he would probably recommend teaching your kids just to stay clear of debt all together and to demonstrate how to do so as parents.

I can certainly see both sides of to this question of teaching kids about loans and money management. It would be good to teach kids to avoid getting loans in the first place and save up instead. But I don’t think it keeps with the Love and Logic philosophy to set kids up to do something that you believe is unwise. They recommend giving a kid a task you know they can do then hope they mess it up so they can learn from their mistake. Maybe a Love and Logic / Dave Ramsey approach might be when asked for a loan might be something like this: “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Loans aren’t something I usually recommend for people to get into. If it were me, I wouldn’t do it, but if you really want to, I might be able to give you a loan so you can understand how home mortgages work” (These are the only loans to which Ramsey does not object.)

In essence, the two are not nearly so far apart as it might seem. Both are interested in teaching personal responsibility. Ramsey wants the hard lessons to come when the kid doesn’t do his chores and doesn’t get any money. Fay wants the hard lessons to come when the kid squanders her money in a foolish way, or doesn’t live up to the loan agreement.

If you have thoughts on these two apparent opposing viewpoints on this issue, I’d love to hear them.