I’ve been reading Reinventing Knowledge: from Alexandria to the Internet over the last couple of days. It takes an interesting approach, looking at intellectual history through institutions rather than individuals: The Library, The Monastery, The University, The Republic of Letters, The Disciplines, The Laboratory.

After I mentioned my belief that innovation is (generally) built upon standardization in a blog post about the Guardian Innovation in Education event, some people asked me for examples. I’m happy to say the book provided one in the shape of the medieval monastery:

By no means the only rule for monasteries, nor the oldest, nor the most innovative, [The Benedictine Rule] nevertheless achieved authoritative status on acount of its simple practicality and realistic expectations of the average monk’s capacity for ascetic discipline. Crafted for spiritual use, tested by time and repetition, and propagated by anonymous scribes, it bears a certain resemblance to the Christian scriptures themselves. Adhering to such a text enabled communities of monks to survive and thrive desipte the personal quirks and transient lifespans of individual members. In Benedict’s ideals and their evelopment in practice we see how monastic time played upon cycles of days, weeks, and years, endlessly repeating, to ensure the survival and stability of the monastery and of learning itself. (p.56-7)

The author continues a couple of pages later:

The genius of the Rule lay in the recognition that monks needed a specific regimen to make this spiritual goal an attainable reality. It was one thing to declare the entirety of one’s life, every moment, was to be devoted to God, another to know precisely what to do during all the minutes that followed sunrise, day after day. (p.59)

We do, of course, have to be careful. As Cathy Davidson points out in her must-read book for educators Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn, your attention has to be on the right thing to start off with. Otherwise, you get what Clayton Christensen calls ‘custodial schooling’ with seat time trumping a focus upon learning gains.

The idea of a platform for innovation, I think, is sound. It doesn’t really matter what the socially-negotiated/accepted base consists of, just so long as there is one to build upon. The best examples I’ve seen are a school where there was a workflow for everything, and my current employers where we have a team-constructed wiki that serves as a knowledge repository.

Image CC BY bazylek100

Productivity, to my mind, is about doing more of what of what you enjoy doing and doing less of that which you don’t. It’s highly context-dependent, although there are some things that work in most situations – as I outline in #uppingyourgame: a practical guide to personal productivity.

What I’m concerned about is a condition just shy of Digital Taylorism, that twisted notion of productivity that Jean-François Lyotard calls ‘performativity’. It’s a cancer in the knowledge economy:

According to Lyotard, postmodernity is characterised by the end of metanarratives. So what legitimates science now? Lyotard’s answer is – performativity. This is what Lyotard calls the “technological criterion” – the most efficient input/output ratio. The technical and technological changes over the last few decades – as well as the development of capitalism – have caused the production of knowledge to become increasingly influenced by a technological model. It was during the industrial revolution, Lyotard suggests, that knowledge entered into the economic equation and became a force for production, but it is in postmodernity that knowledge is becoming the central force for production. Lyotard believes that knowledge is becoming so important an economic factor, in fact, that he suggests that one day wars will be waged over the control of information.

Lyotard calls the change that has taken place in the status of knowledge due to the rise of the performativity criterion the mercantilization of knowledge. In postmodernity, knowledge has become primarily a saleable commodity. Knowledge is produced in order to be sold, and is consumed in order to fuel a new production. According to Lyotard knowledge in postmodernity has largely lost its truth-value, or rather, the production of knowledge is no longer an aspiration to produce truth. Today students no longer ask if something is true, but what use it is to them. (Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy)

The reason that performativity is dangerous is because it strips out all of the enjoyment and self-actualisation that work can bring and reduces it to a commodity. Instead, as Seth Godin often gets across in his books and his blog, work should be hard but a fundamentally creative endeavour. Talented people leave jobs if they’re overly- constrained:

Whoever says artists can’t deal with corporate pressures because they have frail minds, is missing out on the potential the artistic mind has to boost company morale and increase productivity. Most artists would just as soon quit once they become conscious of their exploitation and that is a sign of strength not weakness. (Martin Dansky)

Our working lives, even if we are self-employed, involve both physical contracts (I will do X amount of work for £Y) and unspoken, tacit contracts. The latter can sometimes be pre-judged on a visit to a potential future workplace, but certainly understood in the first few weeks on the job. It’s the old “that’s the way we do things around here” chestnut.

Whether you’re a manager or not, make sure you’re focusing on productivity rather than performativity. Sometimes the internalisation of such rhetoric ends up having more of an effect that external factors. Focus on truth. Focus on creativity. Focus on happiness. Our time here is short.

Image CC BY-NC tarotastic

If you’re looking for help improving user outcomes, head over to Synechism Ltd.

‘Digital literacy’ in Norway?

The history and status of digital literacy in Norway is complex. The term is presumed by English-speaking researchers and educators to mean, in a straightforward way, the same in Norwegian as it does in English. However, given the difficulty in translating words such as ‘literacy’ into Norwegian, and words such as ‘kompetanse’ from Norwegian, ‘media literacy’ is a term preferred increasingly to ‘digital literacy’.

New literacies (or the lack of them) in Singapore

In this standards-based, heavily-pressured educational culture – a society where, anecdotally, painkillers are stocked alongside exam-preparation books (Bracey, 2008) – it is unsurprising to find the dominant ‘new literacy’ to be Media Literacy. In addition, much of the available research literature into new literacies comes from, or through the lens of, Singapore’s National Institute of Education.

Digital Media Literacy in Australia

The seeming Australia-wide agreement on Digital Media Literacy as the accepted form of New Literacies is explained in part by Gibson (2008). He gives an overview of the ‘literacy wars’ in Australia, quoting Ilyana Snyder on how the press and professional journals keep alive the debates between conservatives and progressives (Snyder, 2008). The battleground over different forms and manifestations of traditional (print) literacy allows, suggests Gibson, Digital Media Literacy to show “some promise of a revival of educational optimism” (Gibson, 2008, p.74).

The USA: a New Literacies desert?

Due to the standards-based, testing culture in US schools, NYC’s approach is understandable. They have adopted the publication of an authoritative body who, in turn, have reacted to an environment created by US educational policy in the wake of NCLB. Such an environment stresses the importance of being ‘information literate’ and focuses on the traditional basics but, perhaps, at the expense of a cohesive programme for New Literacies.

To my mind, that theme is the importance not only of History, but celebrating it in its multiple forms and from a variety of perspectives. In terms of user outcomes, therefore, I think that there’s a delicate line to be drawn between influence and obliteration:

The future is an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and it’s countenance is irritating, repellant, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it. We want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past. We fight for access to the labs where we can retouch photos and rewrite biographies and history. (p.30-31)

“You begin to liquidate a people,” Hübl said, “by taking away it’s memory. You destroy it’s books, it’s culture, it’s history. And then others write other books for it, give another culture to it, invent another history for it. Then the people slowly begins to forget what it is and what it was. The world at large forgets it still faster.” (p.218)

History is a series of ephemeral changes, while eternal values are immutable, perpetuated outside history, and have no need of memory. (p.257)

During the last two hundred years the blackbird has abandoned the woods to become a city bird. First in Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, then several decades later in Paris and the Ruhr Valley. Throughout the nineteenth century it conquered the cities of Europe one after another. It settled in Vienna and Prague around 1900, then spread eatward to Budapest, Belgrade, Istanbul.

From the planet’s point of view, the blackbird’s invasion of the human world is certainly more important than the Spanish invasion of South America or the return to Palestine of the Jews. A shift in the relationship among the various kinds of creation (fish, birds, humans, plants) is a shift of a higher order than changes in relations among various groups of the same kind. Whether Celts or Slavs inhabit Bohemia, whether Romanians or Russians conquer Bessarabia, is more or less the same to the earth. But when the blackbird betrayed nature to follow humans into their artificial, unnatural world, something changed in the organic structure of the planet.” (p.267-8)

This idea of one of the most important changes from our planet’s point of view taking place without us noticing really made me sit up and think. But it was this last quotation which was the clincher for me writing this post:

The best possible progressive ideas are those that include a strong enough dose of provocation to make it’s supporters feel proud of being original, but at the same time attract so many adherents that the risk of being an isolated exception is immediately averted by the noisy approval of a triumphant crowd.” (p.273)

In other words, if you want to change things for the better and achieve improved user outcomes, you need to build a constituency. You need to make an idea powerful enough that people are attracted into its orbit.

As I did with 10 things I learned from ‘Why Don’t Students Like School?’, the following are some choice quotations from the book:

Failure to adapt

In the long run, [the] flattening of the world can be advantageous for everyone. But to realize these benefits, people from all walks of life, including (and perhaps especially) educators, need to let go of doing business and usual and begin adapting to the changing world. Emerging nations have been quick to pick up the gauntlet – perhaps because they had little to lose and everything to gain. Developed nations have been more resistant to making the changes needed to thrive in this new global society – perhaps because they fear they have everything to lose. But not taking action is a recipe for failure for these nations. (p.1)

Need for more use in order to develop effective models

[W]e find ourselves in the equivalent of the frontier. Until we are able to openly explore effective uses of these technologies as tools for teaching and learning, we are not going to be able to cite good models. (p.3)

Effective education and technology

Effective education is the foundation of successful societies. But in recent years, at least in developed countries, the survival of the existing institution seems to have trumped the importance of providing relevant, timely instruction. This trend can be changed, but the time to take action is now. One way to move education forward is to embrace emerging technologies that make it possible to implement programs where students master core academic content, hone applied 21st-century skills, and learn how to find success in an increasingly digital world. (p.3)

The futility of banning mobile phones

How does [routine confiscation of mobile phones] waste time? Because many students are turning over either old, disconnected phones or replica phones, which they have purchased online for about two dollars. Students cheerfully relinquish and retrieve these devices each period while retaining possession of their real phones… It is far better to find positive ways cell phones can be used as tools for teaching and learning by identifying and enforcing realising parameters within which students may have cell phones in their possession than to fight what is ultimately a losing – and unnecessary – battle. (p.15)

Mobile phones and etiquette

Students misuse cell phones in exactly [the same ways as the rest of society]. But how are they to learn better behavior without appropriate adult models who take the time to teach digital etiquette? Granted, parents need to take responsibility for teaching good manners to their children, but so do teachers and other school personnel who often spend more waking hours with students than do their parents! (p.18-19)

1:1 requires pedagogical underpinning

Experts generally agree that purchasing and installing equipment to reach a 1:1 ratio of students to computing devices is not enough to make a difference in academic achievement. For this investment to pay off, teachers need to rethink their approach to instruction by trying out student-centred strategies that focus on collaboration, communication, and problem solving. In short, although online research and word processing have their place, these activities are starting – not ending – points. (p.41-2)

Objections should not be deal-breakers

Unfortunately… objections are often used as deal breakers. Although it’s important that these concerns be put on the table, the driving purpose should be to enable educators to have open discussions about potential unintended consequences. Once everyone’s concerns are out in the open, it’s possible to consider solutions or strategies for working around problems. (p.113)

Exciting times for educators

This is an exciting time to be an educator. The possibilities for reaching and engaging students are growing daily. As new tools for communication and collaboration continue to be developed and made readily available to people around the world, educators continually need to adapt their approach to instruction to ensure that classroom activities remain relevant. Fortunately, these changes are doable. All that’s required is the will to move forward. (p.121)

Offline this week I learned that there’s literally two types of people in the world (Dweck was correct!), that ‘female festive frenzy’ is now a term in general use, and that brandy hot chocolate is almost always better without the chocolate… :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW50

Technology

• If you go to the ‘Advanced Settings’ for Google search, you can now get readability guidance for each result. You’ll be glad to know that this blog comes up as ‘Basic reading level’. Clear writing FTW!
• Dropbox is now available for Teams. Looks like a good deal for small businesses, although I think they’ve missed a trick by not also targetting education. This would be awesome for educational institutions!
• Google have turned on desktop editor for Google Docs. GigaOM also has the best explanation ever of why I use Apple stuff.
• The GSMA Development Fund has published their mLearning report. Interesting reading! [PDF]
• Malcolm Gladwell discusses the ‘affordances’ of paper and why it’s an accident of history that we consider tech in any way superior to it.

Productivity, Inspiration & Motivation

• Here’s 7 things you should stop doing at work. I’m pretty good at avoiding them, but it’s always worth being reminded!
• Want to leave your soul-crushing day job? Here’s how.
• Jason Fried posted this quotation over at 37 Signals this week. Spot. On.

You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they’re unable to work on hard problems at all. (Paul Graham)

• Do you feel like you do ‘fake work’? Here’s how to spot it and deal with it.
• Your job is a platform for what you do. So sayeth Seth Godin (with my blessing, obviously)

Education & Academic

• Really interesting stuff over at SmartMobs about ‘Lévy flights’. Also a useful link to the Cooperation Commons.

[T]here is a class of random walks called Lévy flights, which include occasional long-distance jumps. The distribution of step sizes is described by a power law, which means that there are steps of all sizes and no well-defined “average” step size, at least for one class of Lévy flights. They have been observed in various natural settings, most famously in the search strategy of certain animals when food is scarce. For example, hungry sharks will typically scour back and forth over small areas, but if the search is fruitless, they will intermittently “jump” to new, far-off areas [1]. “People have also [studied] Lévy flights in stock prices, epidemics, and small world networks,” says Ajay Gopinathan, from the University of California, Merced.

• Rueben Puentedura, he of SAMR model fame, has posted three recent presentations he’s given to his blog.
• Jim Groom is running a MOOC on Digital Storytelling.
• Stephen Downes links to Dave Cormier’s videos explaining what MOOCs are (nicely done!)
• UNESCO and EU publications. You’ve got to love them. The former have announced a policy framework around ICT compentency for teachers. Which will be ignored by Gove.

Data, Design & Infographics

• Google have announced their 2010 Zeitgeist of popular searches. What’s even more awesome is that Paul Lewis, a friend of mine helped code it!
• Lifehacker have rounded up their most popular photography tips, tricks and hacks of 2010. Which is very nice of them, really.
• Like retro travel posters? Like superheroes? Then you’ll love these:

• And whilst we’re on the topic of superheroes, this minimalist poster of well-known characters is just fantastic:

• I have issues with the relevance of their data, but MIT don’t half make some pretty visualisations. This one shows the strength of ties between areas of the UK based (I think) on landline phone calls. And who makes those any more?

Miscellaneous

• With the imminent arrival of Belshaw Junior Mk.2 this zero-to-ten year timelapse is begging to be replicated:

• Everyone’s got to have a business plan. Even a pimp.
• I think this may be the most important Wikileak of them all [context]
• Check out the Top 10 Weird New Animals according to National Geographic. These have all been discovered in 2010. The Sneezing Snub-nosed Monkey looks interesting. Shame the only known example was shot and eaten…
• Why did people stop wearing hats?

Quotations

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. (Albert Camus)

The people who matter will recognise who you are. (Alan Cohen)

Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. (Mary Lou Cook)

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image CC BY auspices

Offline this week I learned to fly direct and take only carry-on luggage where possible, that the UK is ridiculously underprepared for snow compared to other European countries, and that thrash metal isn’t as bad as you’d think… :-p

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW49

Tech.

• I’m far from the only one who found the Wikileaks ‘cablegate’ affair more than mildly disturbing. The US government were able to get the site shut down because ‘wikileaks.com’ is resolved via something called ‘DNS’ to a particular IP address of a computer connected to the internet. To prevent such shutdowns happening again, the bittorrent community is working on a decentralised .p2p top-level domain suffix. Awesome.
• In a world of quick tweets and retweets, it’s good to know where the facts are. Check out Channel 4′s FactCheck blog (it’s also on Twitter, appropriately)
• Don’t use Twitter’s version of retweets. It stops real conversation.
• Viber is an iPhone app (Android, etc. coming soon) that integrates your existing contacts, without signup, to allow for Skype-like Voice-over-IP goodness. Engadget has an overview.
• Concerned about people using things like Firesheep when you’re on an unsecured public network? Using a Mac? You need this.

Productivity & Inspiration

• Seth Godin reckons you – yes, you – are the worst manager in the world. Why? Because at the end of the day we’re all really self-employed:

If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you’d quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much as your time as you do, they’d fire her. If an organization developed its employees as poorly as you are developing yourself, it would soon go under.

• Where and when are you most productive? For me, it’s leaning back slightly, coffee and water on-hand with music on. In other words, when I’m by myself. Granted, there’s times when I need to be with others for collaboration and the social element, but not 9am-5pm every day. Check out this TEDx video from Jason Fried, author of ReWork and this blog post. I really like his points about “trading in your work day for a series of work moments”  by going to the office and the relationship between sleep and work. More about this at Michael Hyatt’s blog.

• When I’ve got more information to synthesise than I can possibly handle, I print out stuff and let it ‘stew’ in my study. There’s a time when it all comes together. That’s why I really like this post which can be summed up as “don’t try too hard”. Strange, but true.
• I found this post on three types of procrastination really interesting – especially the third: “we procrastinate because at some level we can’t accept the larger meaning of our actions.”
• Getting people onboard, agreeing with you and motivated to do things on your behalf is an important life skill. Check out this post about the genius of Bill Clinton’s Reality Distortion Field (especially the video)

Education & Academic

• ALT is taking over Becta’s ICT in Education Research Network discussion list (in association with Naace). Scroll down to List 4 here to join (or rejoin).
• As a Philosophy graduate I do, of course, think that everyone should have some grounding in Philosophy. I’ll be using resources like this one with my children as they grow up.
• On the subject of my children (one soon to be born, one four next month) I’m really concerned about the education they’ll receive in England. And I speak as a former teacher and senior leader in secondary schools with a wife who’s still a primary school teacher. What should my four year-old know? asked one worried mother. Check out the response:

1. She should know that she is loved wholly and unconditionally, all of the time.
2. He should know that he is safe and he should know how to keep himself safe in public, with others, and in varied situations. He should know that he can trust his instincts about people and that he never has to do something that doesn’t feel right, no matter who is asking. He should know his personal rights and that his family will back them up.
3. She should know how to laugh, act silly, be goofy and use her imagination. She should know that it is always okay to paint the sky orange and give cats 6 legs.
4. He should know his own interests and be encouraged to follow them. If he could care less about learning his numbers, his parents should realize he’ll learn them accidentally soon enough and let him immerse himself instead in rocket ships, drawing, dinosaurs or playing in the mud.
5. She should know that the world is magical and that so is she. She should know that she’s wonderful, brilliant, creative, compassionate and marvelous. She should know that it’s just as worthy to spend the day outside making daisy chains, mud pies and fairy houses as it is to practice phonics. Scratch that– way more worthy.

• Tom Barrett has been using QR codes with in Early Years. Awesome.
• Simon Bostock is organising a group (including me) to produce a Learning Experience Digest. The idea? To make some of that ‘web-hating stuff’ (PDFs and the like) searchable and linkable. We’re all going to contribute something every month. Do join us. Oh, and I just have to repost one of the images that Simon used to illustrate that post (click here if you don’t get it!)

Bonus: via Simon, the Boyer model of scholarship (scroll down to colourful table at the bottom). I think I’d like to have my finger in all of those pies please.

Data, Design & Infographics

• It’s great when people do new things with webdesign. I’ve certainly not seen anything like this before! (scroll down)
• I’ve seen this before, but was reminded of it again this week: You Suck At Powerpoint! (best viewed fullscreen – click on ‘Menu’)

• David McCandless at Information is Beautiful posted a ‘thought piece’ this week on a potential hierarchy of visual understanding. What do you think? Is he onto something? I do.

• McCandless has also looked at the effectiveness of those recent ‘personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’. Wow!

Misc.

• Adam Curtis has an interesting BBC blog post on how the UK coalition government’s new ‘Behavioural Insights Unit’ is a return to Skinner’s behaviourism (and why that’s dangerous)
• What would happen if you got a bit of every element in the periodic table and rammed them together at 99.99% of the speed of light? Probably nothing very interesting, as it turns out.
• Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, reckons that what goes on in most financial centres such as Wall Street is ‘socially useless activity’. Great article in The New Yorker:

In effect, many of the big banks have turned themselves from businesses whose profits rose and fell with the capital-raising needs of their clients into immense trading houses whose fortunes depend on their ability to exploit day-to-day movements in the markets. Because trading has become so central to their business, the big banks are forever trying to invent new financial products that they can sell but that their competitors, at least for the moment, cannot. Some recent innovations, such as tradeable pollution rights and catastrophe bonds, have provided a public benefit. But it’s easy to point to other innovations that serve little purpose or that blew up and caused a lot of collateral damage, such as auction-rate securities and collateralized debt obligations.

• You can ‘beatbox’ with Google Translate. No, seriously.
• I love this collection of car-focused hack posts at Lifehacker. Especially the Nike+ central locking hack!

Quotations

You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up. (Babe Ruth)

Leap and the net will appear. (Julia Cameron)

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. (Sir Isaac Newton)

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat. (Sartre)

The greatest motivational act one can do for another is to listen. (Roy E Moody)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image by me on Thursday in Berlin

Offline this week I learned to buy more bags of winter grit than I think I need, to do exercise even when it’s too slippery to go running outside, and that a bad seated posture can give you headaches.

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW48

Tech.

• Want to test out Ubuntu Server? Do it for free, paid for by Canonical, here!
• Wow. Rome ‘rebuilt in a day’ using Flickr photographs and a home PC (albeit with 4 graphics cards)
• Roll audio you find around the web into your own podcast using Huffduffer.
• Upgraded your iPad to 4.2? Missing the ability to lock your screen’s orientation? Here’s how to do it quickly and easily.
• Imagine a layer on top of websites that you could write on and leave notes at for friends. It’s here. It’s called Glass.

Productivity & Inspiration

• Recognising the situation you’re in is half-way to solving the problem. Are you a product of Digital Taylorism?
• Seth Godin tells us (some of the places) where ideas come from.
• Create then tweet.
• Gandhi’s ‘be the change you want to see’ is one of the quotations by which I try to live. That’s why I found these 5 life lessons from the great man so interesting. I especially liked number 5:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts.  Your thoughts become your words.  Your words become your actions.  Your actions become your habits.  Your habits become your values.  Your values become your destiny.”

• Want to be creative and productive. Abandon crap.

Education & Academic

• There’s lots of TED Talks. That’s why this list of some of them, divided by subject area, is pretty useful.
• I’m a bit sad that Joss Winn has decided to quit Twitter. But not only did he explain why, but he posted how he works on the web. Some really interesting stuff here, and some things to emulate.
• Summarity is a bookmarklet that auto-summarises text. Potentially useful in the classroom and for academic papers, although it didn’t do so well this this blog. Perhaps I write weirdly.
• McDonalds is launching a degree in business management, accredited by Manchester Metropolitan University. Unbelievable, but true.
• I wouldn’t bother reading Michael Gove’s Education White Paper. There’s a lot of hot air and propaganda and meaningless ‘we know that…’ statements. I’d just read the NASUWT’s response and this Guardian article instead. They tells you everything you need to know about this ‘assault on schools’.

Data, Design & Infographics

• The 4_21 polytype is, apparently, “most geometrically complex and aesthetically beautiful structure in mathematics” and “models all interactions and transformations between known and postulated sub-atomic particles.” It’s so complex that machines can’t draw it (because they can’t draw perfect circles). This is hand-drawn to a tolerance of 1/10,000:

• BBC News magazine has a really interesting article on diagrams that changed the world. I like their description of the power of a diagram being “to crystallise a new way of seeing the world”.
• I love the music of Tycho. But I had no idea that Scott Hansen, the man behind the moniker, was such a talented graphic designer as well! Blog here.
• Like many people, I’m super-excited and can’t wait for Tron Legacy to come out – especially as the music’s by Daft Punk. GeekDad did a post on the art of Tron Legacy. Un-frickin’-believable.

• Nathan Yau of Flowing Data has a handy tutorial on bubble charts. I tell you, a good bubble chart, á la Hans Rosling is all kinds of awesome.

Misc.

• How to count using only one hand:

• I know I should expect it having seen some of them before and watching Mad Men, but 48 ads that would never be allowed today does really make you realise how much society’s changed. The pig slicing himself into ham is disturbingly funny though.
• This VW advert never made it onto TV. As the father of a 3 year-old literally laughed out loud:

• A plaque found above a men’s urinal at a store selling diamond engagement rings. Is it reverse psychology or reverse-reverse psychology?

• Wow. Just wow. Ants imitate liquids – check this out!

Quotations

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. (Goethe)

I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed. (Shakespeare)

Success or failure is caused more by mental attitude than by mental capacity. (Sir Walter Scott)

A problem is a chance for you to do your best. (Duke Ellington)

The way to succeed is to double your failure rate. (Thomas Watson, founder of IBM)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image CC BY paul (dex)

Offline this week I learned that large beanbags offer the most comfortable typing position ever, not to drink cheap red wine, and that the seats by the Chinese books in Newcastle City Library are almost always vacant…

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW47

Tech.

• Not only have we in the UK got a complete muppet in charge of education policy, but Ed Vaizey, the communications minister, seems to be taking lessons from him. He’s not a fan of net neutrality, but at least the BBC are helping us fight back (a bit).
• Finally! You can now (or will be able to soon, when it’s rolled out to everyone) edit your Google Docs on mobile devices.
• If you have ever had to deal with metadata, you will laugh at this:

• Simply logging-off from Facebook isn’t good enough for some teenagers. The ‘super-logoff’ is where it’s at.
• 5 ways the mobile phone is changing the world.

Productivity & Inspiration

• Scott Adams, creator Dilbert has an excellent blog. It strikes a balance between plausible and very, very funny. I actually think his point about creativity flourishing when you’re slightly hungry is spot-on. I often forget to eat when ‘in the zone’ thesis-writing.
• Seth Godin talks about pressure and embracing fear:

James Bond is a hero because the tougher the world got, the cooler he got. Symphony conductors don’t endure the pressure of a performance, they thrive on it.

If being a little behind creates self-pressure that leads to stress and then errors, it’s no wonder you frequently end up a lot behind. If the way you manage your brand inevitably leads to a ceaseless race to the bottom, it’s no wonder that you’re struggling. A small bump gets magnified and repeated until it overwhelms.

• A while ago I linked to the Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘don’t break the chain’ method of productivity. Here it is on steroids.
• Here’s four ways mindmaps help you be more creative. (*note to self: write post on how I use mindmaps + wikis + Scrivener*)
• A great corrective to metrics and quantitative data is 5 Unusual Ways To Measure Your Online Reputation. Got me thinking.

Education & Academic

• The ‘Justice’ course at Harvard is its most popular. Now you can join in and debate where Jack Bauer should torture people.
• Love him or hate him, Stephen Downes knows his stuff:

The person whose voice is most respected in any group is not the person who leads, or is smartest, or is even right. It is the person perceived by the rest to have the least self-interest, the person who is there to help rather than the person who is there to pursue an agenda or toot their own horn. A minute spent helping the other person achieve their ends (which are often not even in conflict with yours) is far more productive than a minute spent arguing with them.

• I love the fact that social networks such as Twitter coupled with the blogs and random stuff people collect allow me to peer into their thoughts. Take Joss Winn’s things that stick, for example, which turned up this gem recently:

Historically regimes do undergo radical change. Succession tends to begin within a network of pioneering organisations, technologies and users that form a niche practice on the margins. Niche situations (e.g. unusual applications,demonstration programmes, social movements) provide space for new ideas, artefacts, and practices to develop without full exposure to the range of processes channeling regime development

…

Niche-based approaches explore problem framings (e.g.mobility, food, energy services) and search for solutions – in contrast to technology demonstration projects that begin with ‘technical solutions’ to tightly framed problems. Niche practices that resonate with widespread public concern sometimes catch on, get copied, become adapted and spread.

• Futurelab has a new report out about the use of console games in schools by the pioneers up at Learning and Teaching Scotland.
• I don’t usually post job opportunities, but Google are looking for a Head of Enterprise Apps for Education in London. I’d consider applying if it wasn’t in London! (let me know if you’d like me to highlight job posts people like you and me would want)

Data, Design & Infographics

• Web typography can be as simple as replacing the font of a website’s title (like Synechism). Smashing Magazine goes further with 100 educational resources, tools and techniques.
• Tilt-shift photography is fantastic:

• 20 Things I Learned is a wonderful example of what CSS3, the power of Google, and some design thinking can bring you.
• Animated gifs created from seminal films. Freaky. And here’ how to create your own.

• View your LinkedIn career history as a ‘tree’. Here’s mine:

Misc.

• Best. Autocorrect. Ever.

• Humans really do have ‘psychic powers’. Says magician turned psychologist.
• Yes, that’s a baby monkey riding on a pig’s back. Which inspired a song. That you can buy on iTunes. We live in crazy times.

• Security or security theatre? The below exchange is unbelievable, but funny. Unlike this.

So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers. The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can’t take those on the plane.

Soldier: What? I’ve had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You’re not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I’m allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can’t use it to take over the plane. You don’t have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f**k out of here. I’ll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns-but nothing that could have been used as a weapon.

• Pointless or profound? You decide. 4’33″ is silence ‘played’ by a full orcehstra:

Quotations

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. (Samuel Johnson)

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. (George Bernard Shaw)

Strength is a matter of a made up mind. (John Beecher)

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake. (P. D. Ouspensky)

(more quotations at my quotabl.es page)

Main image CC BY-SA joiseyshowaa

Offline this week I learned that Twitter is often a quicker and easier place to sell things than eBay, that eagerly pulling decals off a car will can also remove the paintwork, and more than I could ever summarize in one blog post (or indeed the introduction to one) at Interesting North…

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW46

Tech.

• Want a free, Open Source alternative to Garageband for audio editing? Try Jokosher!
• Just as the Wii remote was hacked to work with all sorts of stuff including rolling your own interactive whiteboard, so it looks like Microsoft’s Kinect is going to be more than just an Xbox phenomenon…
• Good news! TalkTalk and BT have forced a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act.
• It turns out I’m not the only one who sends ridiculous (but funny) messages due to my smartphone’s autocorrect.
• BBC’s iPlayer is going global.

Productivity & Inspiration

• I’ve always fancied the idea of having a ‘virtual assistant’ but didn’t really know what to expect. This guest post at Tim Ferriss’ blog is a goldmine for those considering hiring one!
• The secret of ‘great men’? Deliberate practice.
• Some browse-worthy productivity tips at the99percent.com/tips
• I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll be writing a post like this on my 30th birthday too.
• Seth Godin nails it about ‘organizational architects’ rather than ‘corporate chiropracters’:

Organizational architects know how to find suppliers, use the cloud (of people, of data, of resources), identify freelancers, tie together disparate resources and weave them into a business that scales. You either need to become one or hire one.

Education & Academic

• I found this Slideshare presentation by Tabetha Newman very helpful with my digital literacy research this week:

• Simon Schama sets out his stall for the teaching of History in UK schools.
• I came across this from Paul Andrews this week. A useful overview diagram of which edtech tool to use when (click to enlarge):

• Tom Barrett has, for the last few years, marshalled and encouraged the edtech community into producing an excellent ‘Interesting Ways’ series of collaborative presentations. Which is why an Australian company called Edsoft completely ignoring the Creative Commons license they’re released under and claiming them as their own is so wrong.
• Professor Keri Facer will be keynoting the JISC innovating e-learning online conference the week after next. Listen to her call for a debate about the purpose of Higher Education here.

Data, Design & Infographics

• Now this is an awesome idea. A table made out of tear-off paper sheets. Instant brainstorming and collaboration! (unfortunately the image isn’t CC-licensed…)
• Want to create an awesome kinetic typography video like the Stephen Fry one that’s been doing the rounds? Check out this tutorial.
• Talk about a labour of love. This artist meticulously rearranges newspapers so that they read alphabetically!
• Just because someone creates a good-looking infographic doesn’t mean that they’ve checked their facts nor that it’s true. In fact, many infographics are created as ‘linkbait’ to improve the SEO of sites. It’s especially important for those who disagree with an interpretation to engage and disprove it, I think. With that in mind, I give you Contradictions in the Bible.
• TIME magazine have released their yearly list of the 50 best inventions. The iPad, inevitably, features, but the ‘underwater kite’ to generate electricity is what fascinated me!

Misc.

• Dick Van Dyke was rescued by porpoises last week. Fact.
• Ever joked that it would be a good idea to tie a duster to a baby so that it can do the housework as it crawls around? The Japanese have invented baby clothes for that!

• At Interesting North yesterday we played Rock, Paper, Scissors. I prefer Cow, Lake, Bomb [MP3] as featured on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Hilarious!
• The Atlantic magazine has been going for over 150 years. Here’s some good advice about what makes for a good publication.
• Let me congratulate Microsoft on creating the wonderful Windows 7 phone. It’s much, much better than both the iPhone 4 and Android smarphones. At surviving a barbeque:

Quotations

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake. (Confucius)

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. (Mark Twain)

As a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. (Schopenhauer)

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. (G. K. Chesterton)

The best way to teach people is by telling a story. (Kenneth Blanchard)

Main image CC BY-NC-SA Rafakoy