Dangerously Irrelevant

Internet democracy

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

The nation’s first presidential primary is rapidly approaching here in the state of Iowa. I thought it might be appropriate to blog about new media and politics...

As a former Social Studies teacher, I’ve been intensely interested in how the presidential candidates (and their supporters) are using online video channels in this election season. Below are the top two most-viewed pro-candidate YouTube videos for each major contender (plus I included Ron Paul because he has such a strong Internet following). View counts are in parentheses after each video title. Although all of the videos listed are positive depictions, they may or may not be ‘official’ videos from candidates’ campaign teams. If you watch these, you will see that there are major differences regarding style, depth, and substance of message. It’s very clear that most political candidates haven’t yet figured out how to use this medium to great effect. Compared to television and print advertising, online videos are awfully inexpensive and have few length/time restrictions. Why not make the most of it?

There are a wealth of possibilities here for Social Studies and other teachers. We have unprecedented opportunities to engage in critical analysis of political messages, oppositional videos, media manipulation, etc. Students can discuss what makes an effective political video message (pro or con) and can even make their own (with the concurrent chance to reach and converse with a potentially large audience, which would be its own learning opportunity). I wonder how many teachers and administrators are really taking advantage of this stuff…

Hillary Clinton

1. Join the Hillary Clinton 2008 Myspace (1,186,489)
2. I need your advice (638,232)

John Edwards

1. What are you going to do to bring about change? (375,214)
2. We the people (192,040)

Rudy Giuliani

1. Obama Girl v. Giuliani Girl (1,661,241)
2. Rudy on his 12 commitments (361,158)

Mike Huckabee

1. Mike Huckabee responds to evolution question (1,816,458)
2. HuckChuckFacts (1,264,535)

Barack Obama

1. I got a crush … on Obama (4,407,776)
2. Vote different (4,110,758)

Ron Paul

1. Ron Paul ad – awesome! (1,960,265)
2. Stop dreaming (1,141,756)

Mitt Romney

1.America’s single greatest challenge? (470,279)
2. Interview with Jan Mickelsen (204,938)

Notes

I selected the candidates by using results from the latest CNN poll. Videos were obtained by going to YouTube, searching on a candidate’s name, and then sorting by View Count, All Time. View counts were current as of December 31, 2007.

YouTube ignominy

A while back, a video of Lauren Caitlin Upton's (Miss South Carolina Teen USA) poor response to a geography question went viral (19 million views as of today; the 30th most popular YouTube video of all time). Now there's a YouTube video showing Kellie Pickler's geographic ignorance ('Is France a country?') on Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?.

You just know that Lexington (SC) High School (where Upton had a 3.5 GPA) and North Stanly (NC) High School (Pickler) must be chagrined to have one of their graduates be the object of public ridicule due to their academic ignorance. Can you imagine the conversations that their former teachers are having right now?

Cross your fingers that one of your graduates isn't next (like we do whenever there's a national news story about some school administrator doing something dumb). Oh, and how many of you could have said that Budapest was the capital of Hungary?

How-to videos

There are a number of great sites that host how-to videos: SuTree, 5min, VideoJug, Expert Village, Vidipedia, and many more. Typically just a few minutes long, these types of videos seem like a perfect opportunity for K-12 and higher education students to display their expertise on some topic. If scientists can tap into the power of online video, educators should be able to as well.

My favorite educational how-to videos are the comma rules at Bionic Teaching. There's just something about those commas dropping down that's sheer genius! Wouldn't it be great if we saw more of this in K-12 classrooms? If creating is the highest level of Bloom's revised taxonomy, wouldn't how-to videos be one great way to foster this? Wouldn't TeacherTube (or some similar site) be a great location for students to upload these? I can envision high-school students creating resources for younger students, middle school students creating how-to videos for their parents, elementary students creating videos for each other, and so on...

Anyone out there making how-to videos with students? Give us some links so we can check them out!

Michael Wesch dust-up

A few weeks ago I highlighted some videos made by Michael Wesch and his students at Kansas State University. If you haven’t seen them, I encourage you to do so.

David Warlick liked A Vision of Students Today. Gary Stager didn’t. And Michael was stirred to make a clarification. The comments on all three blog posts are informative and interesting.

The great part of the Web, of course, is that it makes all of this conversation public, transparent, open to participation by others, and, dare I say, even possible. Sure, before the Internet and blogs existed, Michael, David, and Gary could have exchanged thoughts about Michael’s work via mail or e-mail. But this is more powerful (and much more fun).

Common Craft and dotSUB

If you haven't seen these three films from Common Craft, I think they are great introductions for educators, parents, and others who are not familiar with these interactive Web 2.0 technologies:

• Wikis in Plain English
• Social Networking in Plain English
• RSS in Plain English

You'll notice that the links are to the dotSUB versions of the videos (thanks, Wesley!). dotSUB is a fantastic new service that uses volunteers to create video subtitles in different languages. I just uploaded Did You Know? 2.0 to the site. Awesome!

Did You Know? 2.0

Karl Fisch and I are very pleased to announce the new version of Did You Know?

• Did You Know? 2.0

As you'll see, we tried to minimize what some perceived as alarmism about globalism. We also fixed some errors, changed the music to something that didn't violate copyright, and got a complete graphic makeover from XPLANE. Additionally, we added some material after 'Shift Happens' to encourage viewer conversation and action.

More information on the new presentation (including suggestions for usage, a link to downloadable versions, and other resources) is available at

• http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com

As always, comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome!

Comcast Newsmakers

Recently I had the good fortune to be a featured guest on Comcast Newsmakers, a show that runs occasionally after CNN Headline News and is viewed across Minnesota and western Wisconsin. I was part of a seven interview rotation, which meant that I was on the air a couple of times a day for the month of February. You can see see the YouTube video of my five minute interview or listen to it at Cable in the Classroom. Nothing too exciting, but my first time wearing makeup!

Gone Fischin'

Did You Know? (version 1 and/or version 2) has now been seen by over 10 million people online. This is the post that went viral in February 2007. In November 2007 it was nominated for an Edublog award.

FYI, a new version of this presentation is now available:

• Did You Know? 2.0

Listen to this post!

[update: please see my comment below regarding permission rights to use this presentation; also, Karl says that the music is a mix of three tracks from The Last of the Mohicans]

Earlier this month I thanked Karl Fisch for his wonderful Did You Know? presentation. I've been playing around with a modified version of his original files and Karl has given me permission to make the new version available to folks. Here it is:

• YouTube movie (online)
• streaming Flash movie (online)

[Because of bandwidth issues, other versions are available here: QuickTime (.mov); Windows media streaming (.wmv); downloadable Flash movie (.swf); AVI video (.avi); and PowerPoint (.ppt) with accompanying audio file (.mp3).]

I shortened it to 6 minutes, 5 seconds by deleting the first few slides (which pertained to his school) and changing the remaining slide timings; added a slide on MySpace; and made a few formatting and wording changes. If you've never seen Karl's presentation before, you should read my post on the impacts it is making on folks in Minnesota and then watch it immediately. More fun from Karl is available on his Fischbowl presentations page. [update: you also might be interested in the other presentation materials I use along with Karl's video]

I'm using the presentation with a variety of different audiences: preservice teachers, district leadership and/or technology planning teams, doctoral students in colleges of education, other teachers and administrators, etc. As we all do so, let's keep in mind Karl's e-mail message to me:

I'm glad the presentation is making an impact - that was the idea, of course (although mostly for my own staff, I didn't know it would take on a life of its own!). I hope that the conversations it starts don't just stop at conversations, but actually translate into actions for our students.

The results are in!

Listen to this post!

As promised, here are the results of the Dangerously Irrelevant 2007 Education Blogosphere Survey...

1. I made a short Flash video describing the general findings (or you can download the PowerPoint file without my voice narration).
2. I made a privacy-protected Excel file that you can download to do your own analysis.
3. If you just want to read participants' responses but don't want to do any analysis, this subset of the Excel file is formatted for easy reading and printing. Just click on the different worksheet tabs at the bottom.

Some info about the survey:

• While the survey was a nonscientific, general request for all interested edubloggers to participate, there are some good (and interesting) data in there.
• Results represent 160 education bloggers. I have no idea how many education bloggers there are total, so it's hard to know what proportion of the whole these 160 represent.
• As I discuss in the video, it was neat to see fairly strong confirmation that, for most folks, blogs are not, in the words of one respondent, "narcissistic ventures" of self-publication but rather a powerful mechanism for communication, personal learning, and community-building. Blogging to build personal learning networks is as good a meme as any for folks who are unfamiliar with blogs.

Thanks to everyone who participated in and/or publicized this survey. I'd like to do this again next January with mostly different questions. If you have any questions or comments about the survey results, or have ideas or suggestions for next year, please contact me directly or leave them here as a comment.

This post is also available at the TechLearning blog.

Digital kids. Analog schools.

I recently compiled a short list of quotations that have greatly influenced my thinking about schools, technology, and the future. I've been handing it out to K-12 administrators to spark their thinking about schools' obligations to prepare students for a digital society. I'm including it here and encourage you to disseminate it broadly. Pass this out to the staff in a school building, or to a group of administrators, and then ask them what they think! Get a conversation started!

• Digital kids. Analog schools.

On a different front, Consuela Molina is a student at UCLA, a gifted videographer, and a graduate of the San Fernando Education Technology Team (SFETT). Molina's video, Digital Kids @ Analog Schools, should be required viewing for secondary educators, college faculty, and university administrators. Here are some choice quotes from the video:

• We have all this access to technology - something that can help us learn better - something that can help us personalize learning - and professors don't really seem to get that.
• The workforce is ... moving more towards a creative side. We're not preparing students with skills that are necessary for these new kinds of jobs that we have.
• The jobs that colleges are preparing us for are jobs that are being outsourced.
• Anywhere you go outside of the classroom, that technology is being used... and I don't understand why we're not applying it to class.
• It seems like in order to progress in the world you need a document that says you've learned, regardless if you've really learned the skills that you need in the workplace.
• If your sole purpose is just to prepare them for the future, then you have to go outside and see what the future's going to be.
• If this place isn't perfecting my skills for the new business world, then why am I here?

It's easy to substitute teacher or school for professor or college and see the relevance of this video to K-12 schools. If you are not familiar with the work of Marco Torres or the SFETT, you can read the two articles on his Edutopia profile.