Archive of November 2008
Of all the amazing social media tools in the world, one of my absolute favorites is drop.io. They provide a dead-simple way to share media, but also realize that there is so much more to that than simply sharing files. Not only is it easy to share files, voice and communication can be shared in the exact same interface. Essentially, drop.io supports a plethora of outputs and inputs without complicating things. Drop.io realizes that the point of technology is to make complicated things (like sending a message across the globe in seconds) easy (with the click of a button). Drop.io provides an excellent service with a minimum of effort and cost.1
Given this unique set of features, drop.io is perfectly suited for use in the educational market. The base service is free, so there is no need to purchase additional hardware or software. Additionally, there is no need to register for an account at all – thus, no emails needed. Finally, drop.io is by nature non-permanent and private – drops are erased after 1 year of disuse and will never be monitored or searchable (unless you ask them to be). For this minimum of effort, a lot is accomplished. You can upload any kind of media, whether through the web interface, email, a Firefox extension, or even your phone.2 This media can then be shared through email, RSS, iTunes (dropcast), SMS, Twitter, Facebook, or the plain old web interface. In short, drop.io provides a plethora of ways to share educational content freely.
Once you have mastered the basics of drop.io, you begin to realize its potential. One of the best applications is giving students a way to easily record a podcast without any additional hardware. Though there are other ways to do this, I believe drop.io does it the best as you will shortly see.
First, you need to create a new drop. This drop shouldn’t include any media, but a unique name will help you to remember it. The name can be changed by clicking it. If you would like to block outside access, just click the “additional settings” dropdown and adjust settings accordingly. Once your settings are confirmed, just “drop it.”
Right: You should definitely set an admin password, as it will let you make changes later.
Once you have a drop ready to go, copy down the voicemail address (it is in the top right corner, under “Contact this Drop”). If you give this number a call, you are prompted to enter the extension of your drop and are then taken to a recording section where you can immediately leave a message. Seconds later it will show up in the web interface as an mp3 file.
Right: Just call the listed email to record a voicemail, like I did with this sample drop.
After your content is recorded, it is easy to syndicate it out through other services – like RSS or Twitter. Since this is a podcast, syndication through iTunes is the best method. To do so, just click share, then RSS/Dropcast, then subscribe to Dropcast. iTunes will open up and you will have a simple podcast which can automatically be updated from your phone.3
As you can see, drop.io offers a great way to podcast with your students – all you need is a phone. As helpful as this is, it is only scratching the surface of what drop.io can do. What else can you think of using a ubiquitious sharing service like drop.io for?4
The crucial flaw of NCLB, in my opinion, is that is fails to inspire. The law has many other faults, of course, including its lack of funding and regimented focus on testing. However, the root problem is that NCLB is attempting to use an evolutionary methodology for a truly revolutionary goal – almost total proficiency. There is no easily articulated goal which all citizens can rally around: the standards are convoluted and the metrics for success are continually redefined in contradiction with themselves. Doug Noon perfectly captures this, in the context of Kennedy’s space program:1
If we’d have used an NCLB-style approach to the Apollo moon mission, President Kennedy would have simply ordered NASA to fly conventional airplanes higher and higher until they fell out of the sky, and then blamed the pilots for lacking the will and the know-how to get the job done.
How can we reach for the moon with education?
What is creativity? I doubt many people, including teachers, could give you a good definition. In simplest terms, it is the ability to create. However, I like to use a more specific definition:
Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.
Above: Leonardo da Vinci was a master of mixing creativity and art.
The key to creativity is the ability and act of transcending tradition. Using this definition, I think creativity is exceptionally rare in schools. Students are almost never asked to transcend tradition and think outside the box.
In fact, doing so is punished. This rarity arises from a confusion about what creativity really is.
If you were to ask most teachers or administrators, you would hear a distinctly different story. Most will says their schools/classrooms stimulate and “unlock” creativity1. Doing a word search on school mission statements will turn up an inordinate number of references to creativity. Someone should replace 99% of those occurrences with the word “art.”
What many school officials and teachers mean by creativity is really art. Art is all about practice and method. Art is about the perfection of technique. Art is about applying techniques rigorously in pursuit of a goal. In short, art is studied action; artificiality in behavior.
Painting yet another landscape is art, and neither is solving a mathematical equation. Both of them involve substantial practice and application of traditional rules.2 Make no mistake: both can be very difficult. The level of effort it takes to perfect any art is astounding. However, this is distinct from creativity. Remember, creativity is all about transcending tradition. In many ways, creativity and art are polar opposites.
Actually, creativity and art are not so much polar opposites as two sides of the same coin.3 Creativity is used to think of new ideas and sources of ideas. Art is used to translate those ideas into presentable forms. To create a brilliant work, both creativity and art must be used.
In many ways, schools fail to recognize this. Art is constantly drilled in schools: when not directly transferring content, teachers often focus on teaching new skills4. However, very little attention is paid to the application of those skills in novel ways. Writing thousands of 5-paragraph essays will give you perfect form and will make you a very precise writer, but it will not make you a great and innovative one. Translating notes into a science fair board will, optimally, teach art to a degree. However, none of these things will teach creativity. When schools talk about their wealth of creativity, they usually mean art.
To a certain degree, I do not think creativity can be taught. The very nature of it makes creativity unteachable — you cannot teach someone to positively ignore convention, since in doing so they would simply be internalizing another rule. However, creativity can be practiced. Constantly making new ideas teaches you to see which work and which will not. Searching for pattens helps you to see patterns faster in the future. Luckily, art can be taught — and it should be taught. Without art, nobody will respect your creativity. The point is, creativity can be practiced but not taught.
Right: A great example of tilt-shift photography from Vincent Laforet.
The next time you brag about how much creativity you foster, ask yourself if you really mean art.
We are truly in the information age. Everywhere, data is being constantly collected, distributed, analyzed, and visualized. Increasingly, government data (which has long been collected, but cumbersome to access) is being opened up. Additional social data augments this twelve-fold. In short, the depth and breadth of data sets are rapidly being expanded. Some applications of this data are very useful, such as Google tracking flu activity through search queries.1 Other implementations are far more fanciful, like the hypnotizing Now dashboard from Sprint. The page is filled with data about now, with a background track of various statistics and slogans playing. Despite its limited practical use, the page serves as an apt example of both the data available and the ensuing information overload. As the voice instructively shares, “please keep your hands inside the moment at all times.”2
One of my favorite things about President-elect Obama is that he is the first president to truly understand the power of technology — to a large extent, it got him elected. Already, he is beginning to bring his powerful technology platform into government. I hope by that the end of his term we will see government data opened up with accessible and non-proprietary formats (like XML) which can be accessed by all citizens. The availability of this data will truly give news organizations, technologists, and students new ways to easily and effectively monitor government activity. Ethan Bodnar has written an excellent letter which reflects these principles and offers specific advice on what to do. Thankfully, these changes can easily be implemented, given the right team, and are (or should be) decidedly nonpartisan. I hope President-elect Obama learns from his success with technology on the campaign trail and brings that same edge to government.