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 like taking a 100 year old car and replace 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.
I admit it. I gave in to my youngest child and let him get an account on Facebook. Farmville was the trigger, and though he is apparently the first among his 2nd grade classmates to play it I am not convinced he is the first one to have a Facebook account. He started by playing Farmville with his brother (6th grader) and sister (10th grader). But his network of neighboring farms is expanding to include their friends and more distant family members.
CNN titled it “Social networks and kids: How young is too young?”
They mention, among other things, Susan Greenfield who was quoted on “The Mail”, an article which I already covered in my February post. How young really? My daughter joined on 8th grade. My son at the beginning of his 5th grade. And then my youngest at the beginning of his 2nd grade. That’s probably as young as possible for a text based network.
But here are two new facts to consider:
First, the PEW report published a day after the CNN item. It’s titled “Social Isolation and New Technology” which “finds that Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. People’s use of the mobile phone and the Internet is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people’s full personal network – their strong and weak ties – Internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks.”
The second is this item, published on National Geographic about 2 weeks earlier, titled “Googling Fights Dementia, Study Suggests”.
So let’s stop and think for a moment.
What do kids find in social networks?
I think that … big surprise, the same as adults: Accessibility. Of people, of course. Why is it OK for me to use social networks to connect with colleagues who I never met and may never meet face to face in my life, from other parts of the planet, but it’s dangerous for kids to use social networks to connect to classmates or school mates or soccer team members who they cannot meet on a daily basis after school hours?
Well I am no fool. Some people jump at this question with the dangers theme. There are many dangers lurking around the cyber corner and these are more meaningful to innocent young kids then they are to adults with some life experience or to teens with some networking experience.
Yes, some teens are more network savvy then some adults I have met. They understand what details one never reveals, what information to present or not to present in the first place, how to block unwanted communications… They know the network’s right and wrong as well as they know the streets’ right and wrong and sometimes even better. Those streets that bear dangers to innocent young kids too – so what’s the difference?
The difference is that we know the streets, we feel that we can see the streets and imagine we can anticipate street behavior. However the network is perceived as not visible and unpredictable. Personally I might be a different mom. I fear I cannot see what is happening with my kids on their way home from school. It’s about 300 meters walk, through a path between trees, and it’s scarier in my view, then the time they spend online – either chatting or on social networks.
The Internet, as I see it, is a channel of communications which is here to stay. The question we are facing now is not how young is too young, or how to control the younger generation’s use of the network, but rather – how do we make it more visible and more predictable to us, their parents.
I keep remembering this “House on the Prairie” episode “Cross Connections” where they introduced the telephone and switchboard in the town. There will always be those who abuse the innovation, but can you imagine our world without a telephone connection??
Imagine you just had the thought of inventing a Mangorangeberry, a product that doesn’t exist yet. Sure there are oranges, there are mangoes and there are berries, there are even fruit salads, but no one has thought or produced anything similar to your idea of Mangorangeberry.
You begin to explore the market and see what they could be thinking about such an idea, without giving away the exact map of your Mangorangeberry. You encounter many people who are talking about the need for a combination of these flavors, these textures, the colors and the shapes of oranges, mangos and berries.
You read articles of great scholars explaining the need for change in the fruit market, especially the combination of oranges, mangos and berries. You encounter professional chefs aching to get their hands on such a combination. And thousands of hungry people seem to be just waiting for your Mangorangeberry to appear.
You know the concept is right.
You know the timing is perfect.
You know what should be done.
Yet…
You need to buy the land, buy the seeds, hire professional lab researchers to develop the combination’s seeds, plant the seeds, grow the plants, harvest and then, begin the tasting phase. You have a great idea, but you can’t make it happen all alone. You will either need money to buy the land, seeds, lab work and field work, or you need to get partners: one with the land, one a lab pro, one with the seeds… OK, with the planting and harvesting you can manage.
Now the search begins.
And potential partners are all over the place. They are interested. They are enthusiastic about your idea. But still, you haven’t found the partner with the land, or the partner who’s the lab pro and are available to join you.
Those partners, who will contribute their new set of skills, totally different from the set of skill you bring in, are hard to come by. Or they are too busy. Or they can’t afford to invest their time and effort in your startup.
Or maybe you aren’t looking in the right direction? Or perhaps you have been making the wrong offer?
Addressing younger Israeli scientists, Ada Yonath, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry said – curiosity was the key to scientific progress. “If one has curiosity, then one stands the chance of attaining a high level of scientific inquiry.”
Read more here.
I took this quote and asked my friends and colleagues on firesidelearning – the social network that’s doing conversations about education, what room is there for curiosity in the classroom.
Got some interesting replies, including a surprise visit from my 15 year old daughter, who was happy to share her view on this topic.
Ian Carmichael, from Tasmania, Australia said – “…So, in classrooms there needs to be space – and a record – for fruitful questions – and that means space for unprogrammed questions. There also needs to be space for the pursuit of those unanswered questions…” He then adds: “And if there’s no space for curiosity, fruitful questions and their pursuit, then my classrooms will contribute nothing to creativity, invention or understanding. I may have a future Nobel prizewinner pass through – but my classes will have added nothing to them.”
Mike from the US added: “For me…. CONNECTION is a key component to education vs factory schooling. It is next to impossible to connect with 140 kids a day…. that is an assembly line…. good for making cars…not being with people…”
The my daughter joined in and admitted: “Well, the truth is I like studying- I just don’t like to study at school. I’m just bored, and I think it’s hard for me to wake up in the morning not because I didn’t sleep enough, but because it happens to me too often that I sit in the classroom and think ‘what did I wake up for? staying in bed would be a better use of my time than sitting here and getting bored..’. …”
She goes on and amazes me with this: “I think of school and how we learn now, and it’s just amazing to think that what was said about education more than 2000 years ago is so true for today-Socrates thought that humans have a basic nature they are born with: curiosity. He thought it’s wrong that the education system, instead of developing and using this curiosity to teach the children, they kill this curiosity and instead of teaching they make the kids memorize, and while learning and understanding through thinking and researching will help the humanity develop, memorization is a great way for staying in one place.”
Are we staying in one place?
Following Mike’s questions she writes: “It’s fun to ask questions and think about them, and finding the solution gives a good feeling – but after you find the answer, the only thing you can do with it is ask more questions.”
Well she refuses to stay in one place.
Ellen Pham, an elementary teacher from the US, suggests a more realistic view of this room for curiosity in the classroom, or lack of it. She writes: “…I don’t think the purpose of today’s public education is to develop large groups of free and creative thinkers. How would industry keep them in line for the menial tasks that await them? And in any system, these menial tasks have to be done by a large group of people. I think it helps the individual soul when these tasks are at least essential, and not just for making someone else profit.” And adds: “The way I see it is that realistically, in the system we have, it is up to the individual student to keep his/her curiosity alive. Parents, concerned teachers, and students can fight for more engaged and creative curriculum, but it remains an uphill swim.”
Latest input to date came from Janet Navarro, who teaches literacy education courses to pre-service teachers in Michigan and is a mother of 2 teenage boys. With an optimistic note she writes: “…I said to a friend, just the other day, that in my teacher education classes, if the only thing the students take from the class is the disposition to be curious (especially about the children they will teach) then I’ve done enough.
Bottom line, I said, it’s not really about the content I’m teaching: with curiosity, they can learn to teach children how to read strategically (it’s all in books and it’s all on the Internet). It’s about the development of a way of being in the world – the world we live in, the world we will help to create – or destroy – the world beyond the one in which we were raised, and the worlds of the children they will teach.
It’s better to be curious about whether or not you are teaching this child the things that will move him/her forward, whether or not you have the right books, strategies, tools set up for them, than to be able to pass a test on what those strategies are….
Yes – whoever coined the adage “Curiosity killed the cat” started us in the wrong direction. Maybe we could say, “Curiosity fed the cat!”…”
I’ll start by saying this is good news. But Pete Cashmore on Mashable wants an explanation. “Are women just more social in general, or is there some other explanation? ” he asks, in response to the “Chicks Rule” new statistics published on Information is Beautiful.
To sum it: equal numbers of men and women use sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and DeviantArt. However in more social websites it looks like men are outnumbered. These are sites like Twitter, Facebook, Ning, Myspace, Friendfeed, Flickr, Bebo and more. In fact, of the leading social web sites, Digg is the only male dominated.
The thing that surprised me when I read this was how I rarely use Digg as opposed to most of the other web sites.
Had to dig into those networks to try and figure it out. With some I am already familiar. I am a heavy user of facebook, linkedin, twitter and ning.
Some of them I know but am not using very frequently. Some required new registration. After looking deeper into more of them I got the “Digg” answer.
But first I took out an old book of mine. I never read it through. I sort of got the gist of it from the first 20 pages. This is the famous “Men are from mars, Women are from Venus”, by John Gray. Reading only the chapter titles might produce the explanation Cashmore is looking for.
Chapter 2: Mr. Fix-it and the Home Improvement Committee
Chapter 3: Men go to the caves and Woman talk
Now think social networking: Really, if we apply the Venus-Mars motto, Social Networking is clearly a feminine phenomena.
First of all it’s talk. Away with the caves! Gray didn’t use the term “gossip” – because he referred to the different methods-of-unburdening that men and women use. Still, gossip is one way to do it. And social networks are institutionalized sharing and gossip establishments. Interesting enough, lots of men who use social networks actually use it to talk out, release frustrations and – going back to chapter 2 – try and fix things. Like opinions. However the feminine “home improvement committee” is a lot more dominant in social networking than the “fix-it” and the conversation between the two approaches improves communications by both men and women.
Going back to the Digg website I find the answer. Sorry folks, not enough conversation, not enough communications, not enough interaction nor socializing. It’s mainly a digging place for me, and less a fishing place. More a cave then an invitation to talk.
When I set out and decided I am going to pursuit my dream and become a full time entrepreneur I couldn’t imagine this. That endless number of hours spent on thinking. I mean, of course you’ve got to think. I think there for I am. But we’re used to thinking and acting. Thinking and doing. Thinking with team members.
Yet here I am, a struggling early-stage entrepreneur and I find myself spending a lot of time on thinking, as in reflecting. Not writing, though sometimes scribbling. No team work, though I often talk it out with my colleagues or mentors. Still most of the work is thinking.
I want to be able to be totally focused when I finally go out there and recruit or raise funds. I want to be able to have an answer for every question. I don’t want to postpone dealing with these questions to a later stage. I know, from my experience as a consultant, how wrong it can be so start up with not enough ready answers.
So thinking it is. Strangely enough, though it is time consuming and energy draining, it doesn’t “feel like work”. There is no actual product for every hour of work. And that thinking job consumes every minute of my being. When I shower, when I drive the kids to their afternoon classes, when I do my daily Sudoku, when I eat, or talk with my friends, when on vacation. There isn’t a stone on the street that won’t be able to generate inspiration when I am on the job. It just gives a whole new meaning to a full time job.
3 kids at school. A new and promising school year. Some thoughts to start with.
Kid #1 will spend 38 hours at school, 5 days a week, an average of 7.6 hours per day, of those 8 breaks adding up to one hour recess time. She will be studying, if I am not mistaken, 12 or 13 topics. She goes on to study math in an afternoon program for additional 3.5 hours. She is 15 years old.
Kid #2 will spend 40 hours at school, spread on 6 days, of it an average of less than one hour per day recess time. He will be studying about 13 topics. He is 11 years old.
Kid #3 will spend 24 hours at school, spread on 6 days, with an average of 40 minutes recess time per day. He will study 8-9 topics. He is 7 years old.
Coming home from school they are pretty exhausted. So they eat, and rest, watch TV or play. They hope to squeeze in their afternoon time their choice of class – sports or arts, meeting with friends and playground time.
But they also have homework to prepare.
Kid #3 spends an average of 10-20 minutes, depending on how angry he is for the fact that he has to open his books at home.
The older kids spend anything between 20 minutes and 2 hours on their homework on a daily average.
Work Laws In Israel
In Israel the workers unions are very strong. There are very clear work laws, who relate to number of working hours per day and per week. Also specific rules exist for employing kids (ages 15 and up).
And the law specifies:
A work day will not be longer than 8 hours in a 45 hour working week (6 days) or more than 9 hours per day in a 43 hours working week (5 days). Kids can never be employed for more than 40 hours per week, and never longer than 9 hours per day. Kids under 16 can not be employed later than 20:00 unless with a special permission. In a 6 hour working day a teen is entitled to 45 minutes break, at least one break is of 30 minutes minimum.
School time is our kids’ working day. It’s what they do. Their occupation. If I look at their week in light of the employment laws I can’t help wondering how much more can they bear.
My 15 year old spends 41 hours in the classroom and is required to spend an average of 10-20 additional hours on homework.
The 11 year old spends 40 hours in school, and I can understand his frustration when he is required to spend even 5 additional minutes on homework. He is only 11.
The 7 year old, a second grader, only 15 months ago spent most of his time playing at the nursery school. He is still shocked by the fact that most of his daytime is spent in a classroom, sitting at a desk. No need to describe what he feels about homework.
Last January a fifth grader from New York wrote an essay claiming homework is illegal slavery. His essay was published here and he got immense publicity such as this.
Still, homework seems here to stay in the crazy race to the top. Top of the class, best school, highest grades…
There are more topics taught today, so more class time is needed. Instead of using the growth of new topics to allow better personalization of learning by the students, there is less choice and schools are actually competing on giving more and more. Enrichment is a key word in the marketing of schools and if it’s not enough that we are drowning in a sea of information we are doing the same to the next generation, who find themselves skipping, skimming and unable to perform real research and exploration during their school years. We don’t use the accessibility of information to help fine-tune school experience and teach the kids to reach relevant information. We simply flood.
It’s a tough choice, really. Looking at my daughter’s list of school topics I see perhaps 3 or 4 she could do without. She wants to major in Physics, Chemistry and biotechnology – so why does she need to do a final exam in literature or bible or grammar?
Obviously the repeated answer is that kids who graduate from school need to demonstrate a level of general knowledge and fine culture. But hey, how about leaving them some free time, so they can watch movies and read books and develop their taste and personal observation of culture, while actually enjoying it?
The Annual Convention of Education in Israel will take place again in Holon in less than 2 weeks. A very interesting convention about education, considering not a single teacher is going to speak there.
A first look at the agenda reveals a series of attractive topics like the gaps in education (social-economic gaps), the marketing aspects – mainly branding – of the state of education, the role of technology in education, and separately – Internet, a global look at education (how is it done in other countries), co-existence and education (Arab-Jewish), literature and education and also historical view.
Being curious about these subject I am drawn to listen. But then again, I am trying to figure out what is the purpose of this convention. It isn’t a real convention, as in meeting place, or a place for discussion, if all you have here are politicians and business people lecturing to …to whom, really?? Teachers? School managers? Or other business people and politicians.
Some very important keys are held in the hands of these two segments: the politicians as decision makers, and the business people as those who have the ability to impact decisions and finance ventures.
But where are the executers??
What good is it to hold a lecture and refer to some YouTube clips showing embarrassing school moments, when there are no teachers nor students to refer to those events or clips??
What is the point in talking about the importance of technology in education when there are barely enough computers at schools?
Branding education or the teaching profession? Sure, that’s very important. A great work can be done here. But you know what? You never start with branding, you start with the product.
And that brings us to the final lecture of the day – “the state of education” (strangely enough, on all Hebrew formats, this title is displayed in English). Branding can’t change the state of education. It is my belief that a process of change must begin before we approach branding. A goal must be marked before any branding work can begin.
It was a strange call from reality. The whole time I have been planning my startup and working on its development I felt a little protected from reality. That big wide world I will eventually embark on, in a quest to turn my plans into a real business. But that call last week was a much needed shake.
Sivan Biran, a young and vibrant entrepreneur and the founder of her own company – Sergata – told me about the Internet-startup reality-style competition they will be running – exit09. For 4 weeks the general public will choose their favorite startup idea. The public will eventually choose 4 finalists, and a team of judges will choose their 4 finalist, and 2 of the 8 finalist will win a week work on the development of whatever you can develop in a week. The two developments will compete on the final prize – 100,000 dollars plus hardware to start it up.
I must admit, I might be a competitive person, but I am not the competitions person. I am even less a reality shows fan than I am a competition person. I wish the daring competitors all the luck and success they deserve. Of course I can’t help wondering what would have come out of twitter, for example, if it had to go through a popularity competition to justify its launch. How many votes from the public would it have received? I am not even sure about the judges votes.
It’s pretty scary out of the box. There are things there which we do not completely comprehend. Not to mention expect. I mean Twitter, again. I’d expect all the contest’ judges to have an account there. How can they judge a competition of Internet ventures if they are not ON the Internet?
No names, but here is a quick research, excluding Sivan. Judge 1 – cannot be found on either twitter or FaceBook. Too private? Judge no. 2 has a FaceBook account with a nice photo and exactly 4 friends, and no twitter presence. Judge 3 is a lot more web active, still couldn’t find a twitter reference. Judge 4 is on Twitter, yey! Private twittering though. FaceBook page doesn’t reveal number of friends. Judge 5 has a FaceBook account, with more friends than judge 2 but a lot less then judge 3 and no twitter. Judge 6 is a mystery. Judge 7 is probably the wildest web animal of them all.
Now to the general public. Do they even know what’s a browser?
Going back to my roots I am examining the communications strategies. Reality shows communications strategies are very simple: they work like the basic popularity contests, much like in high school. They are great when you want to be a pop star. I’d even go for it when you want to market a pop product. But is the general public ready to step out of the box and into the online reality?
