CC blog

Wikinomics

So I finished Wikinomics yesterday - while mowing the runaway lawn - thanks for the audio loan, Josh :-)
Do some of you want to get together sometime soon to discuss over a coffee?

I thought this was a great suggestion for reading... a very optimistic book; made me excited about where
we're headed. The "yes, but...." argumentative streak in me has a few questions too, though... sometimes I wonder whether all the promises of near-limitless wiki-fostered-prosperity aren't a bit of a Ponzi-scheme. After all, we're not making new people, or extra time. In other words, the global talent pool *is* finite. In the old model, an employee would give 100% (or close) of their energy to their employer. In the new flattened wiki model, that may no longer be true, and the problem solving will often cross institutional boundaries.... but the net sum of the problem-solving capacity is still the same, no? What company A gains from outside input it will loose again as its own workers now contribute to company B. I know, there are huge gains through efficiency and motivation - but are these exponential? Limitless? Aren't the real winners (such as the Gold Corp example , and perhaps even some web 2.0 companies) the ones who manage to get more from the global community than they are contributing back?

So - there's a first talking point to get a discussion going. Coffee, anyone?

Speaking of books - how about this one for a future discussion:
"Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives" - came out last month and is authored by the folks at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School

What I've Been Reading

Everything I've been reading nowadays tells me more about how little I know.  It turns out that our brains are poorly constructed to understand why we do things or why things occur.  That our lives are ruled by chance and randomness, assigning causality to events is a waste of time, and that even if events have  causes our built in biases and poor probability reasoning tools will blind us to reality. 

Behavior economics and social psychology are great disciplines to help us correct our natural tendency to overrate our knowledge.

The Black Swan : The Impact of the Highly Improbable  by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I think that Taleb is probably an S.O.B. and a nut....but his argument that the world (and our lives) is in reality ruled by unpredictable large-scale events (black swans) is intriguing and forcefully argued.  Taleb's background is in quantitative trading...and while arrogant beyond belief his arguments seem hard to dismiss.

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer

The original academic and body of research that Gladwell based his best-selling "Blink" on.  Gigerenzer experiments on "fast and frugal" decision making have many implications for situations we face all the time in our lives - I just have not quite worked out if I'm so easily swayed and nudged (see below), and my mental probabilistic machinery is so poor (again see below) when I should trust my gut feelings and when I should do the opposite. 

Sway : The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior  by Ori Brafman, Rom Brafman is a sweet, short popularizer of the current social psych and behavioral econ research.   

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein covers many of the same studies and experiments, and then puts a public policy slant on the conclusions.  I'm finding in these sorts of books that the same academic studies and examples pop-up time after time, which is good as it takes me about 5 times to get them straight.  Where Sway helped me understand why I'm susceptible to make bad decisions, Nudge helped me understand how I can use the principles of "choice architecture" to influence events and decisions.  Both worthwhile reads for folks like us who have a vision of education we are trying to implement, both in terms of why people do things the way they do, and some "libertarian paternalistic" ways to shape decisions and actions.

My last (and best) book in the sequence is The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow.  The author, a physicist at Cal Tech, is among those rare academics who both write beautifully, and can manage to make complex explanations understandable.  This book definitely changed how I understand some fundamental aspects of my life and the lives of those around me, as getting a handle on randomness and probability (which again, our brains don't seem to be built easily to accomplish), helps illuminate some of the fundamental errors in judgment that I seem to make all too often.

 

Authors@Google - Great Model for the College

Nowadays I don't really miss being TV-less....as the whole family seems to get enough screen-time thanks to online video.....One example is a talk by Sam Gosling - who wrote a book I just finished Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You talking about his research at a June 17 authors@Google Talk.

It is so wonderful to get to see a book talk from the comfort of my own couch - as the seeing (and listening) to the author seems to add so much to the experience of reading the book.

I also watched a very good talk from Richard Florida - author of Who's Your City: How the Creative Economy is Making Where You Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

Seems like this would be a great model to copy here at the College - if Google can get so many authors to come in and give talks and then post them up on the Web (with questions from the audience)...seems like we could do the same....(and get them out there on YouTube). 

What I've Been Reading - Dispatch from the Hanover Inn

Hi everyone..I'm sitting on the rocking chairs of the Hanover Inn, waiting for the July 4th parade (my girls are marching in the parade with their camp).  I dropped them off at 9am - giving me some nice time to sit here, do e-mail (and Remedy! - yes there was a ticket!), and blog.   

Anyone who wants to book club I'd love to pass along an audio book .......

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You  by Sam Gosling
You will never go into someones house or office in the same way again.  A psychologist who pioneered the field of personality research based on peoples stuff.

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker
Fun book from the NYTime's Magazine Consumed column...delves into the world of "murketing" - the new method of connecting with consumers who are immune to traditional mass marketing.  Some interesting connections on how we could "market" educational technology.

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind  by Gary Marcus
Fascinating extension of the evolutionary psychology framework.  Argues that our brains have evolved in often "klugy" ways, meaning that evolution favors what works (and what comes first) and not what is optimal.  I learned a good deal about things like memory, emotions, and perception...and now I know why I can be so dumb sometimes.  Well written....a fun read.

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by William J. Bernstein
Wonderful, sweeping economic history of the world by one of my favorite writers (Bernstein also wrote "The Birth of Plenty").  These "big" history and "big" thought books are a great antidote to the short time frames and disposable knowledge of our blogging and information overload world.  Helps to have a long-term framework to understand our own material lives.  Excellent counterpart to Friedman's The World is Flat.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Roach is one of my favorite science writers....she is reliably hillarious and supremely curious.   

For the love of short books - Bryson's Shakespeare

The world, or at least my world, needs more high quality concise books.  Bryson's new Shakespeare, from the Eminent Lives Series, is one of the genres better examples.

The Modern Library Chronicles is another imprint with some excellent texts.  To quote from their page:

"Modern Library Chronicles feature the world's great historians on the world's great subjects. Lively, accessible, and brief (most under 150 pages), these authoritative short histories are designed to appeal to general readers as well as to students in the classroom".

Knowledge of your favorite concise texts (or imprint/series) would be greatly appreciated.

As always, anyone is welcome to sample the Bryson book (or any other) from my Audible collection - as this is an excellent way to determine if you would like to purchase the book in audio or print form.

Educause Live at Your Desk - Another Great Wired Article - Books

Been collecting some sites/links to share - thought I'd put e'm-all-in-one to avoid hogging the blog.

Educause Live - At Your Desk.  I always like these things as I can learn something while multitasking.  I just signed up for one at https://www.educause.edu/LIVE0810/ 
Digital Visual Literacy: Interdisciplinary Skills for the 21st-Century Learner
May 6, 2008 1:00 p.m. ET  runs one hour.   

Another great Wired article from the latest issue - this time on Cloud Computing and Amazon http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-05/mf_amazon
Worth staying up on this area as we ponder the shift towards renting commodity/utility services and concentrating our efforts in our world on education and innovation.

Finally...wanted to share the last couple of books that I finished, with the offer to burn for your preview if you want to listen and then think about these for your own library (bring me a few CD-Rs).  The books are:

America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T, and the Making of a Modern Nation by Jim Rasenberger

Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle between East and West by Anthony Pagden

The educational/tech connection for the Rasenberger book is that we tend to think of our time as being swamped by change and new technologies.  It is good to remember 1908, the year that saw the Wright brothers fly and the first Model T to be introduced.  Illuminating to think about how folks have dealt with technological change in the past.

The Pagden book may have a less direct connection to Educational Tech - only that sometimes it's nice to get lost in the past when we spend so much of our time in todays problems and figuring out the future.

You can see my Audible book collection (and Barbara's) at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df8pbk4g_75gvgkks  if you want to preview a book you know where to find me.

Audiobooks in the public domain

One example is http://librivox.org/

I looked up the Autobiography of Ben Franklin (I'm sort of a Franklin nut)

They had it...http://librivox.org/the-autobigraphy-of-benjamin-franklin-ed-by-frank-woodworth-pine/

And I'm listening to the introduction now Download franklin_00_pine_64kb.mp3

Text to speech

Follow-up on our conversation of having audio twins to text curriclum in Blackboard courses.

One that I saw is NaturalSoft http://www.naturalreaders.com/

The demo is at:  http://www.naturalreaders.com/demo.htm

Seems PC only....can export to mp3.   The enterprise version is $100 and the developer version is $300.

Does anyone know a Mac version?

increase of web-based learning materials with books

Just finished great book....Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely  http://www.predictablyirrational.com/

I'm not blogging just because I recommend the book (I do, it's great) - but because it comes with a companion site that offers lots great teaching and learning materials. 

For instance, some great videos, interactive exercises and visuals:  http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?page_id=7 

as well links to all of his research papers  http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?page_id=8

This would not only be a great book to use in an intro to econ class, a behavioral econ class - or even yes - a sociology course - it would be great to use because of the terrific Web based teaching materials that you get with it.   As authors and publishers get smarter about books they are increasing the amount of this type of material available.....a growing gold mine for teaching. 

If we can be aware of these materials we can recommend them - work with faculty to utilize them - while increasing the utility of the technologies that support these materials in the class (while improving learning).   

Could CC develop a public list of both cool tools and cool curriculum to use in the class?  Should this be a Wiki - so that any teaching person who finds stuff could share? 

Idea for pilot project - audio content - portable curriculum - extending Blackboard content for mobile devices

Barbara’s e-mail this morning about her audible.com book collection provides an opportunity to discuss an area that I think Curricular Computing should think about investing time and resources – portable curricular content for Blackboard and the connection with mobile devices.

*After writing this...I realized that this is a proposed Blackboard project - so I wrote up a more focussed proposal and put it in our Proposed Project Wiki    http://blackboard.dartmouth.edu/webapps/lobj-wiki-bb_bb60/wiki/org.blackboard.reports/_854178_1/pilot_to_have_portable_audio_

I edited the original blog post to save folks the time.