One of my greatest pleasures in traveling is meeting people. I just got back from a family vacation in Scotland where I met several interesting people. Not just Scottish, by the way.
You can talk about anything with new people. Starting with the weather. Scottish people don’t really appreciate their weather, which I can understand after spending only 2 weeks there…
But I guess the most interesting meeting I had on this vacation was with a couple from South Africa. As if to complete the interesting conversation we held in a pub, during the final game of the Mondial, the movie I saw on the flight back to Israel was “Invictus”, the 2009 production by Clint Eastwood about Nelson Mandela’s first run as president of South Africa focusing in his relationship with the captain of the South African Springboks rugby team and the clever use of sports to unite the nation. Really great movie.
The South African couple we met love their country passionately. They have 3 daughters there and they are very proud of them all. Obviously, given my interest and their eldest daughter’s, the conversation soon turned to the topic of education. Shortage of budgets make education a difficult task there, as in many other countries around the world. I just keep wondering how is it possible that education falls behind so often, when in fact, it is the key to solving so many problems: in health, employment, personal safety and security and can save governments so many budgets in the future…
We also spoke of entrepreneurship, as their second daughter has recently established a business. They said unemployment rates are very high as many people in their country have no tendency to entrepreneurship or interest in work, and so poverty spreads. This is very sad and something I find hard to understand. From where I’ve been standing, especially for the last 3 years, it seems I am right at the junction of the solution to most global problems: education and entrepreneurship.
Surprisingly last night I came across a nice TED presentation, by Cameron Herold, that speaks about educating kids to entrepreneurship. Well, what do you know? My thoughts exactly!
A new idea came to me this afternoon: I would like to establish a new movement. It actually evolved from a new facebook group titled (free translation from Hebrew) “Parents Yes We Can Reform Education”.
So first I thought, why only parents? What about students who care and have a say? And then I thought about parents to be, and parents who’s kids aren’t in school any more, but they see the deep roots and high tops of the education tree and they want to take part and affect the change.
Then I thought, if such a movement would be established, it should sweep everyone, all sectors in Israel, religious and non religious, Jewish and Arab, and Bedouin and Druse. Those who are interested in politics and those who aren’t – but they are all interested in their kids and their future. Such a movement could campaign in the next elections and win a seat or two – and get more budgets for education – and all those who are expected to cry about the education budget being taken from the police, the defense, health, labor, – all those will hopefully get to see how much money larger education budgets can actually save on all others.
And then I thought, well, actually, this should be a world movement. Nothing unique to Israel here. Education systems are at a critical point all over the world. How different things would be had we invested more in education in the weaker parts of this earth. How much could we have gained in terms of less hunger and illnesses. Less wars and more conversation. It all starts and ends in education, people. And it’s all in our own hands.
It was a surprise ending to our conversation along the nightly walk. When my daughter and I arrived at home we discovered the big news: that the Mathematics bagrut (matriculation) exam, to be held in two days, has been leaked and is being sold to students.
What a surprise.
We were just discussing my new experimental approach to exams. I was telling my daughter I had this idea, aimed eventually at changing learning: enable full Internet access during an exam. The big fear of cheating, I mean copying, is irrelevant, I told her. You’ve got to be a good student and know your way around the material in order not to get lost between the huge amounts of information, advice and opinions available online. If you can get your answers right without learning anything before, you must be a very good self learner and perhaps talented enough in this area not to need extra learning. As I see it, a big part of this test is to test students ability to learn, not necessarily their existing accumulated knowledge.
Shaii, my 10th grader, was surprised at this idea. I mean we’ve been talking for ever about exams and grades being out of date for the 21st century learner. And then we got back to this piece of news, about the Math exams being leaked. “It’s like a very long time extension”, she said, “or a very good preparation exercise. But it shouldn’t cancel the exam”. Of course it shouldn’t. Not should the ministry have worked to put out the back up copies.
In fact, if I were the ministry of education, I would actually use the extra day until the math exam to send a copy of it to every student registered to take the exam this year. This way, all students start at the same starting point. Even if they solve everything and use their friends and teachers to break the toughest questions, I see no harm in their coming to the exam prepared.
You see, as long as we use exams as a tool to grade students achievements in a topic, we must keep it this way – a tool to grade ability, and not a tool to quantify what they don’t know. In other words, if a student was able to solve the exam a day earlier, and it doesn’t matter if he or she used assistance to do it, they will be able to solve their “real life problems” too. And that’s the whole purpose of education. To give them that tool, and this knowledge, of how to tackle a problem and reach a solution. In real life you don’t usually solve all your problems totally alone. Certainly not in this time and age of web and social networking.
Last night, at a diner party, people were discussing the latest online privacy issues concerning the recent changes by Facebook. One friend mentioned what she likes about people’s online presence is the fact that it is so easy to gather so much information about people. The other said she doesn’t have a Facebook account out of fear for her privacy, and mainly of loosing control over her information online.
This morning I found the latter’s personal details online: her name, position, home address, land line and mobile phone number, email, and at least one clear photo with her husbands on some non-profit organization’s newsletter.
Privacy is no longer.
Or at least it is re-defined.
If you live in this online era, you have to understand that defining your privacy on Facebook, even before the recent changes in the privacy settings, is like whispering to a friend when you are in a packed mall. You might think that only your friend heard what you whispered, but you can never be sure that a lip reader haven’t got you from the other end of the passage. You can also never be a hundred percent sure that this friend won’t repeat what you said and quote you.
Being online is being public. Being connected is being part of the public. I am not saying you can’t live without it, I’m just saying that chances are you are friends with someone who is online, and that means that a part of you, belongs to your friend, and is probably already online in a way. I think it’s valuable to gain control over your online presence. People can tag you in a photo even if you are not on Facebook or not connected to them. When you are, and the photo didn’t come out nice, you can remove your tag. If you are on Facebook and you want to see what people can see about you – use this tool. What ever is there – is available because you put it there.
The big commotion in the recent days concerns Facebook sharing your preferences and interests with advertisers, which are 3rd parties. The loss of control can justly freak us all out. Even though you are not obliged to fill out all this information – your preferences, favorites, activities and hobbies – many choose to do it, as a way of declaring their identities to their online friends, some of which don’t really know them closely. The only upside I see about the transfer of this information is that I might actually get to see some targeted advertising, and not irrelevant sometime offensive ads. If I chose to publish my interest to my hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Facebook friends, I see no problem in advertisers using this data. As long as they don’t get my personal data such as phone numbers or email or private address. There I would definitely draw the line, or start using fake data, which would back fire to Facebook.
The other thing is the Facebook “like” button populating other sites. Clicking it shows on this site, to your friends, that you liked the site or the post, and it shows on your profile too. The only difference from the previous share option is that the site may present its likers too. As a blog owner I want to use it too. Unfortunately, wordpress.com don’t enable this yet, and so I have to settle for the lesser version of “getsociallive” and present my likers on their servers.
The Young Problem
The main problem with online presence really concerns kids. Officially Facebook meets the COPPA laws by limiting the age of registered users to 14 and up. Practically, the average user age is dropping every day. Kids lie about their age without a blink, not thinking about it twice, and consider Facebook their own environment.
They connect with classmates, sometimes with older kids, sometimes with younger kids, but they also connect to their parents, or teachers, or guides, or friends of their parents, or older friends of the older sister… I hardly know any kids on Facebook who is not connected to adults.
The connection itself is OK. Sometimes even blessed. It leads to better relationship between youth and adults and opens a sort of a back channel of communications. But many of those kids, sometimes “friends collectors” aren’t fully aware of the face that each status may reach many circles. It’s pretty complicated for a child to manage his connections into groups and then choose each time who gets to see what.
In addition, when they submit information about themselves they often use humor and exaggeration, and not necessarily their true interests, which in turn might lead to exactly the wrong type of ads for them.
Facebook is ignoring this problem. Officially they have no data relating to kids. But at some point they will have to create a young Facebook, to enable safe and legal usage of Facebook by kids.
Judging by the list of events and parties over the past month and the future one, it seems what the Israeli hi-tech industry is best at is – conventions, conferences, unconferences, more events, and parties. Just got a new invitation for an industry event last night, and as someone posted on Facebook – my calendar burst out laughing.
I wonder why this is. I mean, for me, an entrepreneur working on my own at home, every event is a chance to meet my co-workers. Same as you people, who work at your offices, get a chance to chat with the person sitting next to you in the office, or to go out for lunch together. I get this chance at those events, and sometimes much more.
About a year ago I’ve decided there are enough events offered so people like me, the bootstrappers, can settle for free events, and actually do some work between one event and the other. One filter applied. But it’s still hard to choose.
Some events seem more important or even valuable than others: You’ve got to show your face, make sure someone takes a photo of you, preferably in the same frame as someone “famous”, don’t forget to tag yourself on Facebook – that’s how your co-workers the other entrepreneurs, not to mention the surrounding industries, will know you are alive and kicking and just about to make your big announcement. Networking is a big part of any entrepreneur’s job. When the time comes to raise funds or launch, who your friends are might come in handy.
This week was amazing: I’ll start with the obvious – The Marker’s “com.vention”. Two great blogs posts were written about it in Hebrew immediately after the event. Yami Glik wrote on “The co.ils” a post title “a reason to worry” – about how small the local dot-com industry really is and how obvious it was in this huge convention, where every body who is any body had to show their face, but no real networking was possible nor the contents was of any real value or information to the dot-com industry members. Read it here.
Yuval Dror wrote about it a funny blog post – “A twitted summary of the com.vention” – which gives a pretty accurate impression of the event. Yuval didn’t attend the event this year or last year, but what he writes, (read it here ) makes a pretty accurate description of the trend.
The groupies trend.
An urge to see and be seen. To brush against the leaders. To have this important sense of belonging (“for those who missed #techonomy you missed out big time…”), not to mention the even stronger feeling of “being chosen”, preferred, favored, to participate in such events like Kinnernet or TEDx TLV, strangely enough filtered by the same figure, who’s groupies we all are. Or should better be, if we want to have any chance of success in the small, intimate, interdependent community of startups in Israel.
If you are not familiar with it – Ning is offering a platform for quick and easy creation of social networks.
It seemed like Ning’s free service should have lasted forever: you open a network, recruit between tens to the hundreds and sometimes even thousands of members to your network, Ning plant ads on the network’s pages. Revenue goes to Ning.
However, since it’s totally free to create, not all the networks could bear profits. Some networks were created and then forsaken. It’s been sitting there for 2-3 years. Some photos, some blogs, poems, personal pages of 84 members, generating no real income as there are no visitors. However, this network costs. Someone has to maintain the data. It is stored somewhere. It’s taking space, resources.
Less then an hour after Ning has made their announcement the net was flooded with offers for backups, migrations and alternatives to the Ning platform, for educators or for any one. But the Network is now tainted for ever.
Trust no one!
What was accepted and perceived as a Free For Ever service – is not free any more. And if Ning can do it, why not Facebook, or Twitter? Or Gmail?
Leaving the business consideration aside for a moment what really bothers me is the question -what made them do it and why now? Is it the beginning of the content explosion?
I know several people who opened more than a single Facebook account. The most common reason is losing the password, but I know kids who opened several accounts so they can send themselves Farmville gifts, or people who opened separate accounts for connecting with family and connecting with business associates. Each account consumes system resources. Abandoned accounts don’t generate income. And double accounts, sometimes hosting double feeds or photos, take up a lot more space then the revenue they can generate.
And in the meantime we are all reading and writing and referencing and cross referencing and I see how the volume of contents keeps growing infinitely. In a presentation I watched recently the speaker revered about how our grandchildren will be able to share details from our lives in a much more vivid way then we can share our parents’, because all of this information is going to be stored online forever.
Back after a relatively long vacation, school vacation. Partly used their vacation as my excuse to take some time off for myself too. Well, not entirely off. I’ve been playing games. Actually, we’ve all been busy playing games, trying new games, exchanging gifts and tips, me and my kids. It’s been a lot of fun. At the end of this vacation, their off to school and I have a lot of catching up to do on my reading, writing and following and I have to admit that my game-crave is bugging me. I am beginning to think I am addicted to games.
Looked into addiction to games and found multiple groups of Farmville addicts, several addiction calculators and self-tests, and similar items relating to other games too. Here is a post Michael Arrington wrote about his addiction to Fishville about 4 months ago. Games, especially good ones, are addicting.
I started to take in the claim that games are designed to be addictive. Actually, I am pretty sure they are. Especially those with micro payments built in them. Because even if for some of us it seems completely idiotic to spend a nickel on a virtual sofa, other people do not perceive it as spending money on virtual goods, they see it as spending money on entertainment. It’s like my first online magazine subscription more than a decade ago: I remember thinking “Why is it OK to subscribe to a printed magazine but not to an online one?”. We spend money on movies, and books, cable TV, music and toys, we buy video games DVDs in a shop – so why is spending money on online games so difficult?
I cannot imagine going through a whole day without any play. I open my day with Sudoku. It’s my morning exercise, a sharpener. I might be playing more games then others, trying to figure out how to create my own game, but even without the work necessity, looking around me, are people playing games. Kids, of course, are much more play oriented. Many adults, however, feel ashamed or embarrassed about playing games… “Oh, no, it’s not me playing Farmville, it’s my little son, who has no Facebook account of his own…”. Yea, right.
It’s OK to play!
In fact – “It’s got to be serious if the New York Times puts a cover story of their February 17 Sunday magazine about play. At the bottom of this it says ‘it’s deeper then gender, seriously but dangerously fun, and a sandbox for new ideas about evolution’. Not bad… except if you look at that cover – what’s missing??? You see any adults??”, says Dr. Stuart Brown, a pioneer in research on play from the National Institute for Play in a TED conference about two years ago, just before Farmville broke records.
Then he goes on demonstrating the importance of play in the animal kingdom. It must be an existential factor if you see animals ignore their predator instinct in order to play, just for fun. His description of the hungry bear and the playful dog can take me to so many school yards…
And then yesterday I watch Jesse Schell’s amazing TED\DICE talk again (watch the full talk, I recommend it, or go for the excerpt) – about the invasion of games into our reality. An excellent talk demonstrating our ability to transform any task into a part of a giant game called our life. His ideas are as inspiring as they are crazy. And talking about it with some high-schoolers I know he is right. So really, you should face it: you are playing, whether you like it or not, the only question is are you having fun in the process.
This page linked me to Jane McGonigal’s TED 2010 talk about her belief that we must play more in order to better our world. My feelings exactly!
“My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games”, she says. She goes on to present the calculation of how many more global hours should be dedicated to playing games and explains: “Here’s why. This picture pretty much sums up why I think games are so essential to the future survival of the human species. This is a portrait by a photographer named Phil Toledano. … This is a gamer who is on the verge of something called an epic win. An epic win is an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive you had no idea it was even possible until you achieved it. It was almost beyond the threshold of imagination. And when you get there you are shocked to discover what you are truly capable of. That is an epic win. This is a gamer on the verge of an epic win. And this is the face that we need to see on millions of problem-solvers all over the world as we try to tackle the obstacles of the next century. The face of someone who, against all odds is on the verge of an epic win.”
Going back to Dr. Stuart Brown’s presentation I give another look to his slide of the goat: “If you’re having a bad day – try this. Jump up and down, wiggle around, you’re going to feel better”.
I met some very cool teachers yesterday, when I went with my daughter to the parent-teacher day. It was after 8 in the evening. Those teachers have been teaching from 8 in the morning and I expected to witness some exhaustion. But I spoke with teachers who were totally energetic and enthusiastic about their jobs and their students. One teacher said she simply loved teaching. “I hate the compensation. It’s not proportional to the time I invest, but I love teaching and I love the students”.
When we left I said to my daughter that I am pretty impressed by the teachers’ love of teaching. Their enthusiasm certainly has a great effect on the students and the atmosphere of the school (Ohel-Shem High school in Ramat-Gan). She agreed with me. Even if, like many high schoolers her age, she would sometimes rather skip school, she certainly acknowledges the dedication of the teachers she meets.
I need to stress that we do not look at things from a totally objective point of view. Shaii excels at her studies, she’s one of the top if not the top student of her class of gifted students. Still, the school has 11-12 classes of each grade, grades 9-12. And the classes are different from each other. With about 1,500 students learning there diversity is a given.
Still, something works there. However displeased the teachers are from their salaries – which includes probably everyone at the school, they still enjoy teaching and love what they do. They express devotion to their work and gain a lot of respect.
This was a very pleasant revelation for me. After I visited a few local teachers forums I was under the impression this can’t happen.
However, here is a warning: With these salaries this ideal situation, even at the best of schools, can’t last.
One of the things they taught us in business management is that satisfaction is a requirement for the employee to do his job well. They also taught that money alone cannot guarantee satisfaction. However, money alone can guarantee dissatisfaction. In other words, even an employee that loves his job greatly might leave it if he is under paid.
I was talking to this teacher. All bright eyed, her face illuminating when she speaks about teaching and her students. She has a Masters degree in chemistry. Could probably earn about 4 times her teaching salary if she goes to work for a high-tech company. But she loves to teach. “Only problem is”, she admits, “that if the main income is brought home by the husband, and he is forced to leave work early so I can do my work well after school hours, then his work is hurt, and the family is not compensated.” So he is the one pushing her out of teaching. How long can she resist? At the end of the day it the bread that counts.
And I am worried. Because if such passionate quality teachers will be forced out of teaching I am afraid to ask what we’ll be left with?
Really, Seriously, it’s time policy makers start absorbing that without a total change of attitude to teachers’ salaries the whole future is at jeopardy. This teacher might have given up on her high-tech salary, but her students will be earning higher salaries before she reaches retirement. Someone has to come up with a way to reward those teachers, for getting their students those high salaries.
I’ve been so terribly preoccupied lately I didn’t get a chance to complete any of the blog posts I’ve started to write. Each paragraph bursting out of me in a rage of passion to this topic or that. But then I get all entangled with the actual doings, and the post gets abandoned.
Well not this time. This one is going up.
There is a mix of topics I am dealing with. If an outsider would have looked at my browser windows at any given point of time – they might consider a multiple personality disorder…
At this time, for example, I have a bunch of Facebook games I am trying out. Then several windows explaining about World of Warcraft and how to play it, and an additional bunch of windows all related to the use of World of Warcraft at school. There are many recommendations there. I’d start with Lucas Gillispie’s web site http://edurealms.com/.
Then I have another set of windows open and they relate to the efforts to bring some innovation into education in Israel. There is a list of 29 elementary schools in Israel that are considered “experimental”. 21 high schools and 34 nursery school classes. It’s a drop in the ocean really. Some of the experiments described do not present any education innovation at all. But some do, and I cling to then with hope it may hint of a positive direction.
As a side kick I need to check out the weather in far away Thessaloníki in Greece, since my daughter would be traveling there tonight, to participate at a Model UN convention. There are some un-answered email messages about the Eurekamp unconference I am helping to organize. I also have to check out some sources regarding a TV documentary I am planning to do and …oops. My alarm clock just went off. Got to pick up the little one from school. Time for a break.
In less then 30 minutes I will be out the door again, on my way to the violin lesson with my 7.5 year old son. It’s raining outside, and windy, and cold. I would rather stay at home. But to be perfectly honest – the weather is not the reason. The reason is that I have so little time to work.
I feel like running against the wind. Got so many errands and driving assignments there’s barely no time left for continuous undisturbed work. With no other choices I find myself trying to catch up at night, sometimes staying up until 1AM. These are good quiet hours that allow me to read huge amounts of material. But these are slow hours for writing and really not the time for conversations at all.
I have to admit that being a mother AND an entrepreneur is, let’s put it delicately, challenging. I want to be there for my kids, I want to take a part in their lives, I want to play with them, read with them… I also want to live my own life and find time to do some sports, to meet with friends, watch TV. Taking on entrepreneurship is what changes it to super-juggling. Entrepreneurship requires more hours then a day has to offer. I’m in a serious deficit.
Is this why there aren’t so many mother-entrepreneurs?
Yet, I am not ready to give any of it up. To make things even worse – I think I have discovered my calling over the last several months. I feel so passionately about education I just know I have to get involved and start doing things. Well… I actually started to. More news would follow.
Recently an Israeli fresh teacher, who wanted to give teaching a try after a hi-tech career, published his experiences on a blog. Some of his posts where quite shocking. A few months into teaching at a middle school and this new teacher has decided to give up his teaching career altogether. A university professor who tried to teach math at a middle school also gave it up after a few months. Both complained about the lack of discipline or any interest in learning by the students. They also complained about the indifference of school management.
Observers of the education system in Israel are often expressing concern that Israel could be loosing its competitive stand in the global innovation market if the education here continues to deteriorate at this rate.
Factors mentioned in most reports relate to low salaries of teachers, too few teaching hours in the classroom, too many students per class, not enough computers, not enough classrooms.
No one complained that there are too few books… In fact, no report talked about the intensive production of new school books at all. Books are produced by masses and a school year looks in most cases like a race to complete text books and work books.
I am still looking for a single report that would actually relate to contents, curriculum, relevance, methods. To, well, the system. But all reports assume that this is the system, the system is untouchable and the only thing we can do is upgrade various factors of the system.
Click to Play video on Youtube
I think it’s as if we took a 100 year old car and replaced its gear with a new automatic gear, and its engine with a new engine, or in rare cases, when there’s budget, with a totally new hybrid engine… but would it make it a new car?? Would this car run?
No.
The change has to be total.
The whole system has to be different: Teachers should become learning enablers, guides, assistants. Kids should be encouraged to ask, question, discover and choose. Tests and grades should be abolished. Assessments could be accepted if their purpose is to guide the learners and help them, as a feedback system and evaluation of personal development and growth, and not as a ranking system . Some topics should be taught in classes that are formed on the basis of interest, and not on the basis of age. New subjects should be introduced as basic required knowledge. Those are not regular text book subjects but rather things like information farming, interpersonal skills on and off line, inventive thinking, entrepreneurship skills, self teaching skills. The learning environments should change. No more rows of students facing a teacher, but rather groups of students, working together, creating teams, learning the values of social learning, with the help of a teacher guiding through.
Technology alone can not and will not save our education system. Not in Israel nor any where in the world. It hasn’t done it before…
We should all recognize the fact that technology cannot be treated as a collection of tools anymore. It’s an environment. TV is here to stay. Mobile phones are spreading. The Internet is growing. Kids today cannot imagine a world with no web. Same as my generation cannot imagine living without telephones. Or my parents’ generation that cannot remember a time with no cinema.
So what’s next?
Even a total change has to begin with small steps. I’d start with creating more choices.
Look at this scene several times. It’s Michelle Pfeiffer in “Dangerous Minds”, a movie from 1995, where she plays an ex-marine who becomes a high school teacher. In this scene she talks about choices. The choice to learn or not to learn. The choice to go to school or not. She claims that students who are in the classroom actually made a choice to be there. And yes, we sometimes choose what seems to be least damaging – not necessarily the best – option. “It may not be a choice you like, but it is a choice”, she says. I tend to agree. Sending my kids to school is a choice I make. I might be doing it only because I don’t like the other options – but it is still a choice.
Even though education until the age of 15 is mandatory in Israel, people are still permitted to home-school. Very few do. I chose to send my kids to school. When my daughter was disappointed with high school I told her that she is not obligated by law any more to go to school. If she rather complete her final exams out of school she is free to do so. But it was her choice to stay at school, excusing it with the social life, that is as important as contents, if not more.
So next action item is to create more options. To encourage diversity of schools and methods of teaching and learning. To take little steps out of the box titled “education system” and look for alternatives to methods which don’t work any more. The other corner stone to these new steps is to acknowledge and remember that what is a good system and can work for one person, won’t necessarily work for the other.
It’s time to realize this system can’t continue to send fresh teachers into scary classes of kids who aren’t willing to learn, and think this is the god given unchangeable education system. It is not only changeable, it has to change.
After a couple of years of intense and on-going research into education world wide, trends, fashions, innovation, methods, approaches, doctrines, special education, unique education, religious education, private education, public education, with technology, without technology, with money or without – I need to put in writing just a few of my observations and conclusions, to date.
The future of education lies with the recognition of each student as a unique individual.
The acceptance of uniqueness and diversity is the key to a better future for all and greater success in education achievements.
Old news: Some kids are good in Math and lousy in literature. Some are great in Lit and lousy and Math. One kid can excel in Math and Lit, but he sucks in Physics and Art. There are kids who suck at all topics, but are social stars. There are those who excel at everything, but are still unhappy. Oh, there are so many types of kids, and yet there are no types – because every child is his own special one and an only package of can-do and can’t-do, of wants and non’s. Still the teachers get a classroom filled with many different kids. Usually the things that bind those kids together in one classroom is their age and sometimes where they live or the financial background of their families. That’s a very artificial binder. Look around your adulthood friends and make your own deductions.
So this classroom, turns into a class, a group of kids, now has to study fractions. Great. But while some kids get it in a blink, others may find it difficult, or maybe not difficult, but simply boring, so boring they can’t concentrate or get what the teacher is talking about. And at the end of the day they have homework or exams and behold, some kids get less then a perfect score. Fractioning this group titled a classroom into mini groups….
Greg Whitby, the Executive Director leading a system of approximately 80 Catholic schools in greater Western Sydney Australia, talks about uniformity Vs. diversity here:
One of my own eye openers is my youngest son. A second grader he told me that he loves to learn, but only when he chooses and what he chooses. While the professional educators around him criticize his independent thinking and work constantly to turn him into a uniformed student in his classroom, who does everything the same as the rest of the class, I am observing and here are my findings:
He hates his Arithmetic class and homework. It drives him nuts. Yet, when his father went abroad he produced an amazing shopping list – listing the prices of the toys, after he converted them from US dollars to Israeli Shekels. He can also Arithmetic percentage of time, to know exactly when his eggplants will be ready for harvesting on FarmVille.
How important is it, for a kid like that, to go through a methodical, framed, graded system of teaching him Arithmetic? To be honest – there is no simple answer. As we are in an education system – the education is systematic, automatic, and cannot be adjusted to individual persons. Or can it?
In an education system that is based solely on the transference of knowledge or information from a single teacher to a class of kids – there is indeed no room for recognition of the individual.
So, what’s the purpose of the education? Have we forgotten about it?
I think if a child knows how to calculate foreign exchange rates and percentage (on time!) – he is well beyond simple Arithmetic. So what’s the point of insisting on teaching him one booklet after the other of things he is way passed? Is the purpose of the education here is to transfer the specific books into the child, or is the purpose is that the student actually gets a knowledge in the particular subject and knows how to use it?
Well, neither is enough. The major declared goal of education has always been about preparing the young students to their adult life, to acquiring professions and making a living. Arithmetic was important to learn, and very methodically, in a time where trades men managed their own little businesses and they didn’t have computers or even calculators.
But what does today’s education system do to prepare today’s students to tomorrow’s professions? Those professions which have not yet been born? What did yesterday’s education system did to turn me into an internet communications specialist? Or a multi player online game designer? Or my neighbor to a genome researcher or my friend to a researcher of the structure and function of the ribosome? Answer: nothing. Those are individuals who are born with an important quality or two: curiosity and the ability to ask and to teach themselves.
Self teaching is indeed a quality some lucky people are born with, but eventually, all people are in need of this quality. The amounts of information are growing constantly. It is not possible to transfer all this knowledge to any individual. The diversity of occupation is increasing, allowing people to develop expertise in what really interests them. Turning some knowledge they acquired in school irrelevant.
Those who are afraid of the individualism of education often talk about the importance of wide education. But is it really necessary for a physicist to study how to analyze a poem? Or is it enough to assign reading assignments, to those who do not read enough on their own? And while you assign those books to read, how about some classic films? Classical music? Classical rock bands? Tours in various museums world wide and in archaeological sites around the world? If we are talking about expanding horizons let’s do it with pleasure – and not with pressure. Not every subject in school requires grading and marks.
And as individuals are encouraged to learn and expand their horizons let’s allow for one more thing to change in the classroom: let the kids express and teach – teach other kids, teach the teacher. Because only when the teacher becomes a learner, then he can become a learning enabler. A real 21st century educator.
Here Greg Whitby talks about the 21st century new teaching DNA:
“This is a suspicious man”, I told my brother as we were browsing through résumés of potential employees or co-founders for our startup. “How comes?”, said my brother, “he strikes me as an experienced techie, very impressive resume, mentions all the terms we need…”. “Yes, but I can’t find any social networking info about him. That’s suspicious”.
For a minute there was silence. If my brother was here, next to me, and not beyond the sea, in New York, he would probably be staring at me, with the look of “are you for real?” – one lifted eyebrow. But as he was at the other end of a transatlantic phone call I was spared the look.
The silence was disturbed as one of my Facebook contacts sent me an online message about a coming event. As I replied my brother said: “You know what, not everybody has the time to manage a proper online presence. That doesn’t mean he isn’t the professional for us”. “No way”, I said, “Our venture is all about social networking. If this person isn’t a social networking animal we are going to waste tons of time just explaining things to him”.
As this resume was dropped to the floor* and we moved to discuss the next candidate I started to think. Can someone looking for a job, especially technology or marketing related job, afford to not have a properly managed online presence? I can’t take seriously anyone from a tech related profession who isn’t taking part in any type of social networking. It’s like a thing of the past. Who wants a thing of the past when you are looking to move forward?
So here are some tips to job seekers, from someone who is a co-founder/CTO seeker, about some minimum social networking expectations and requirements:
1- LinkedIn – the number one professional social network. Put your résumé online, don’t forget to connect to colleagues, bosses, team members, clients and suppliers to create your work network. Make sure you connections are visible – what we look are mutual acquaintances. Make sure you do not connect with people who may speak badly of you. Try to get references from any connection who can speak nicely of you, first from those people who are widely connected and have strong network presence. Don’t forget to upload a photo. Yes, we do want to know how you look, so when we set up a meeting at a coffee place we can recognize you. The photo has to show your face clearly – a full body on a 40 pixel image is ridiculous – and it will better be up to date, not a 10 year old photo from when you were a lot thinner.
2. Facebook – yes the face photo is probably the first thing you should upload here. Your short version of a resume can also come here – but it’s not a must. The most important thing about Facebook is the connections, the social network you create. Don’t think “the more the merrier” because that’s not true. When I see people with more then 400 connection I doubt the quality of every connection on their list. Make sure you connect with those people who can reference you and even better – if you connect to people who can help you land that next job.
An important tool on Facebook is the events. If you haven’t been invited to any event yet, go into the events application and look for friends’ events. Some might be informal like parties, drinks, breakfasts. Other might be professional – conferences, unconferences, workshops, and others might be social networking events like meetups and group meetings. Choose only relevant groups. Ask your friends for their recommendations. You can start with free events. There are plenty of those and they are not any less effective then paid events.
3. Status updates and Twitter. If you are unfamiliar with social networking or feel you don’t have the time – don’t do it. No status updates, nor Twitter. It’s not necessary. Start by simply following, about once a day, the various updates of your friends and their friends – your relevant network.
What are status updates good for?
You will discover that potential employers publish their want ads first as a status update. Sometimes your friends will re-publish, or re-tweet, a want ad by a friend.
You will also learn how to publish your availability to the potential audience. But don’t rush into it. First follow others to learn what sounds right and what sounds out of place in this new medium called social networking.
**PS: the story is half fictional, for my own literary pleasure I tend to exaggerate. However the guide is 100% true.
The “140 characters – The state of now” – a globally wondering conference by Jeff Pulver arrived in Tel-Aviv this week, and I was proud to be there, even if I couldn’t attend the full day.
As I was wandering about, saying a personal face to face hello to my work colleagues, people who I meet daily online, but only get to meet offline in such events, I thought about this thing that connects us all to this event. Teachers and students, marketing specialist and technology geeks of various sorts, journalists, writers and bloggers, artists and musicians – all were there to socially network about social networking.
Social networking, since status updates and twitter – had become indeed a “state of now” thing. The sense of immediate reach is intoxicating.
But here is the thing: the dimension of now is not really there. Now turns from “in a minute” to “a minute ago” faster then we can blink. We cling to our social networks in the constant pursuit of the illusive state of now.
Journalism is probably one of the first trades to be equally threatened and excited by this new development of the NOW. Old school journalism defined the reporter as a human channel through which the news flow from the happening to the readers, listeners or viewers. In this modern “state of now” we are all reporters.
We are creators of news, transmitters of news and consumers of news. We are also editors – having to choose from the enormous amounts of channels at our disposal. We don’t have to watch the news at 8 o’clock when they are aired in order to remain up to date. We get to watch the news sources hours earlier when someone posts a link or reveals a discussion on our networks. We get to choose when we want to consume our news, what topics really interest us, how much time to dedicate to each piece of information – and Oh! We get to talk back to the news, and not just make faces to the news anchor behind the screen.
Are we infantilizing? “We are like a very young child demanding to get our satisfaction NOW! Right NOW!”, Said Yoav Tsuker from TV channel 1. “If I need help in homework – I need it NOW!”, said Michael Matias, 13 years old, “Yesterday’s news won’t help me”.
And so the attempt to capture the moment continues.
I was a guest listener yesterday at the youth entrepreneurship day, organized by the MIT forum at the Tel-Aviv university. Not sure they really got it. But for the few that did get the message – it was a good event. There were two hi-tech entrepreneurs and one social entrepreneur.
At a the break we chatted about the various entrepreneurship styles and my daughter asked me if artists and musicians are also considered entrepreneurs. I said without hesitation that I believe they are. Then she asked me, “So, how do you define entrepreneurship? What is it really?”
That’s when I realized that everybody, including the organizers, the speakers and the audience assumed they have the same definition of entrepreneurship. But they don’t. Even academic research is not on agreement on this term. This day should have opened with a discussion, engaging the 200 teenagers present, trying to define, receive and transmit, what is entrepreneurship?
I have a problem with this narrow dictionary definition, because it forces me to be a little liberal on the definition of “a business”. An artist spending his time and efforts creating a work of art, sometimes investing money in the purchase of materials and then having to think through marketing his work to make a living, is not less an entrepreneur then our regular hi-tech entrepreneur.
And so is the guy that invests time and sometimes money in making someone else’s life better: the social entrepreneur.
But frankly, what I see in entrepreneurship is much more fundamental then this. I see it as a way of life, a mode of thought. For me an entrepreneur is one that looks at problems through the possibilities to solve it.
Going to young people’s pre-financial era, their childhood, I can recognize entrepreneurial thinking at kids, from a very young age. Stories that may seem totally insignificant at one point may seem different after years. Like this girl who wanted to play with the red bucket that another child grabbed. She didn’t try to grab it back. She simply convinced the other kid that the blue bucket is a lot nicer. Or the kid who, at school, suggested to the kids of the new immigrants, who speak Russian between themselves, to start teaching words to their Hebrew speaking class mates, bringing them all together. Or… think about Tom Sawyer and his solution to his fence painting problem.
Entrepreneurship is all around us really. Some people have the natural tendency to think like an entrepreneur, other may need to learn this way of thinking. We might not all become great hi-tech millionaires as a result, but what we do take, is control over our lives.
