Moving at the Speed of Creativity

The Media Awareness Network (MNet) is home to one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of media education and Internet literacy resources. The website has a wide variety of free resources for teachers (en)(fr), parents (en)(fr), and students (en)(fr).

One of their special initiatives is the Be Web Aware (en)(fr) program, which includes many helpful tips for teens using social software, instant messaging, blogs, and web search. The resources are available in both French and English.

Related Resources

• Media Awareness Network (en) (fr)
• Tout savoir sur… les blogues
• Are You Web Aware? - Blogs
• Be Web Aware (en)(fr)
• Yahoo! Safely
• Connect  Safely

I am in a quandary and wonder what you think I should do. I’ve volunteered to co-teach a 2 part workshop with my wife for adults (mainly targeted at parents) at a local Oklahoma City Church later this month. The title of our workshop is “Internet Safety for Families: The Benefits and Dangers of Social Networking.” As you likely know if you’re a regular reader of my blog or listener to my podcast channel, I’m very passionate about our need for ongoing discussions about not only safe Internet use but also the constructive potential of the Internet to help people make positive connections with others, with ideas, share their voice safely on the global stage, etc. My desire to advance an agenda of dialog around these issues was the reason I started the Digital Dialog Ning several months ago.

My quandary is that only four people (by last count) have registered for this workshop. Do you think we should cancel or go ahead and teach this? Our frustration is that this information and these topics are VERY important for families, yet not many people are willing to sign up for a workshop like this. This is a function of how over-programmed and overly busy many of us are in our lives as well as other factors I’m sure. Perhaps we titled and described this workshop poorly as well? I don’t know. We tried to offer this last spring at the same church (it’s not our church but I know the person who coordinates this adult education series, and she’s asked me to teach) but we only had two people register, so we did cancel. We taught this as a six week series at our own church last spring and had 5 or 6 parents attend. This should be a topic of high interest, but for reasons that are unclear it’s not something many people want to commit to learn about, at least in the contexts where we’ve tried to share this.

We will be able to have WiFi Internet access during the workshops this year, and having small numbers could be postive since I can scrounge up several laptops that participants could actually use to be “hands-on” during the workshops. I’m just wondering if we should cancel or proceed.

This could be a “long tail” moment, where there certainly is a lot of interest in this topic across the Internet population and edublogosphere specifically, but perhaps not at this particular church or in this particular community. The frustration is, of course, that these topics SHOULD be of high interest to all parents since their kids (especially teens, but younger kids too) are likely frequent consumers of media and users of the Internet. I’d like to proceed with the class, but at this point we’re not sure.

I’m wondering if it would be possible / desirable to invite people online to join our class discussions asynchronously as well as synchronously, using a tool like Ustream.TV? I definitely want to be a catalyst for continuing conversations about digital dialog, digital discipline, Internet safety, safe digital social networking, etc… and one of the reasons I agreed to co-teach this class was so my wife and I would be sure to work together this fall on supporting local education efforts on these topics.

What do you think? I’ve cross-posted this on the Digital Dialog Ning, if you want to reply feel free to comment here or there.

Technorati Tags:
internetsafety, socialnetworking, education, parent, parenteducation, quandary

It is quite challenging to return to “normal life” and work after a week-long trip and face email inboxes.Since starting David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” several months ago, I’ve started applying several of his core organizational principles with limited but positive results. Since it is quite hard to change long-established organizational and information-processing habits, I’m not overly frustrated at the slow pace of my success with his “GTD” strategies, but I am optimistic that I’m on a constructive road of more efficient behaviors.I was interested to read about David Allen and his new age roots in the article “The Guru of Getting Things Done” in the October 2007 edition of Wired magazine. (Which incidentally doesn’t appear to be online yet.) The article, in addition to providing surprising background about David’s past life and work, provides a succinct summary of Allen’s GTD philosophy as a single axiom and three basic rules. One of the key elements of GTD in the context of digital information processing is “inbox zero,” or an empty inbox. I continue to work toward this goal in both my personal and professional inboxes. Since getting an iPhone and connecting my personal Yahoo email account to it, keeping my personal inbox empty has become an achievable goal. Staying away (largely) from my email inboxes last week when we were in China led, of course, to a stack-up in emails, but I am hopeful to return to “inbox zero” early this week.Merlin Mann is another vocal advocate of the “inbox zero” philosophy. In July 2007 Merlin shared an hour-long “Google Talk” titled “inbox zero: action-based email” which gave him an opportunity to share his thoughts on this and other subjects related to organization and “getting things done.” Merlin is the founder of the 43 Folders website and this presentation was based on work Merlin has done in the past on this topic for 43 Folders:The slides Merlin used in his presentation are also available on SlideShare. His actual presentation is 32 minutes long, followed by about 30 minutes of Q&A.Like Merlin, my involvement with email started in earnest in the mid-1990s with a PINE email account. In 1988 at the US Air Force Academy, we had an internal email system, and I remember that someone in my 4 degree class got in trouble for accidentally emailing an unprofessional message about our commandant of cadets (a 1 star general) to the entire wing using wildcard characters– but other than that incident my memories of using email in the late 1980s and early 1990s are very limited. Email was sharply limited then in its inter-operaibility with other email systems, so its use was less widespread and it was inherently less powerful as a communication modality. That changed in the mid 1990s, and has certainly continued to morph as we enter the closing months of 2007. I never took a course or even a workshop on email management, yet being able to efficiently manage email has become a critical life skill for me and many others.Merlin contends that “one of the most important soft skills you can have in business today is being able to deal effectively with a high volume of email.” To do this, Merlin contends (as David Allen does) that you must be able to put in place a simple, effective system that allows you to have “a life outside of email.” Merlin suggests that an email system needs to “build walls” so people will NOT “live in their inbox.” Merlin defines knowledge workers as “people who add value to information,” and proclaims the sanctity of “edges” when it comes to dealing with all sorts of information, and in this presentation, email specifically.Merlin points out that there are NO BOUNDARIES inherent in the demands and requests which other people can put on your TIME and ATTENTION. He is absolutely right about this. In my last job at a university, I experienced this dramatically in the five years I worked as a support staff member for both faculty and staff. The lack of natural boundaries in the time and attention DEMANDS which others placed on my plate became, at times, quite overwhelming and almost debilitating. Thankfully, for much of my time at the university, I had excellent folks working with me on my team, and that was a great asset. The dynamics which I experienced are likely similar to those experienced by many others, and this can be a challenging situation to say the least.The key, according to Merlin, is making sure your time and attention are always “mapping” to the things you “claim are important.” Merlin acknowledges that many of his ideas around “inbox zero” come from David Allen and his GTD philosophy, which David calls “advanced common sense.”I heartily agree with Merlin that for those people who think every email needs a response, “that is 1993 talking.” He is SO right about that. Over-responding to email is a common problem, and leads to more problems in the form of more email!Merlin’s five “verbs” which he applies when processing email do sound like advanced common sense.” These are:

1. delete (or archive)
2. delegate
3. respond
4. defer
5. do

The key is getting into the mindset of converting email data into actions. Merlin uses the software OmniFocus to keep “ticklers” of things he has delegated and needs to follow-up on later.Merlin contends “your inbox should be for emails you haven’t read yet.” Simple, straightforward, but probably a concept many of us are not applying.”Liberate activities out of your inbox.” Merlin exhorts his audience to use a software application to serve as a task manager / task list.”If you keep your email box tidy, you will respect it more.” Merlin contends keeping your email box clean is a way of showing your own respect for your time and attention.Merlin summarizes “life hacking” as overriding the things the dumb part of your brain wants to do, and instead doing the things the smart part of your brain tells you to do.The key to all of this is regularly processing email according to a set of sharp edged rules. Merlin suggests turning off your email for periods of time while you go and work on something else. Merlin suggests scheduling “email dashes” when you check email on a periodic basis, maybe 10 minutes every hour. As much as you can, try to “shut off” email and then periodically check in with it.Merlin encourages us to periodically consider, throughout the day, whether or not we are spending our time and attention on things that map to our priorities. If there are ways we can make email “less noisy” and still remain productive, then we should do those things. We need to recognize the negative, disruptive function of email and limit or remove entirely its attention-demanding tyrannical nature from our daily lives. This dovetails nicely with thoughts I’ve written about previously relating to “digital discipline.”The dynamics of “access” to people, their ideas, and their attention have shifted with email, and Merlin addresses this in the Q&A time following his presentation. As he observes, email somehow conveys an idea to people that they have unlimited access to your time and attention. Where people would not likely call you after 9 pm on the phone to ask a question, they have no problem sending you an email about it. These are important issues to consider, and then decide how to “process” and handle with those “sharp edges” Merlin discussed earlier in the presentation.Managing people’s expectations of your response time to email is also important. Merlin relates his own history of learning how “over-delivering” in advance of deadlines can create negative feedback loops. I resonate with this as well. It’s as if being highly responsive and highly skilled creates a negative feedback loop of ever-increasing expectations for ridiculously short time suspense responses that require an enormous quantity and quality of work. That feedback loop is not sustainable for knowledge workers. Here is my attempt at a visual of this dynamic:Having boundaries with sharp edges is an essential skill. Perhaps this has always been true, but the near-ubiquitous access many knowledge workers now enjoy (?) or experience has likely multiplied the importance of this skill in the last ten years. I am writing about these ideas not because I have mastered them or found a “solution” to all these issues, but because I am actively working on them and seeking solutions.I think both David Allen and Merlin Mann have a lot to offer in the elusive quest for “inbox zero” and the larger goal of living a life characterized by peaceful effectiveness, despite the chaotic cauldron of information and attention demands which is constantly storming the gates of individual consciousness.Technorati Tags:merlinmann, attention, email, inbox, gtd, davidallen, gettingthingsdone, organization, overload

Partly recorded on the airline flight from Detroit to Tokyo and partly recorded from our hotel in Shanghai for the Learning 2.0 conference, this podcast features four additional implications of our 21st century “attention economy” for teachers and students. This is the last part of a three part podcast series focusing on Michael Goldhaber’s 1997 article on “The Attention Economy” and what the implications of those ideas are in educational contexts.

SHOWNOTES:

1. Podcast187: Podcast187: Implications of the Attention Economy for Schools (Part 2 of 3)
2. Podcast174: Relevance in the Attention Economy Part 1: Key Ideas
3. Michael Goldhaber’s 1997 article, “The Attention Economy and the Net”
4. Images from GameInformer Magazine Gave Me Nightmares
5. Habits of Mind from Ted Sizer and Essential Schools

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Technorati Tags: educationreform, education, reform, economy, attention, leadership

This podcast is the second of a three part podcast series focusing on a 1997 article published by Michael Goldhaber on “The Attention Economy.” In this episode I explore the first three of six implications I see of the attention economy for schools, teachers, students, and learners of all ages.

SHOWNOTES:

1. Podcast174: Relevance in the Attention Economy Part 1: Key Ideas
2. Michael Goldhaber’s 1997 article, “The Attention Economy and the Net”

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Receive an email alert whenever a new Speed of Creativity podcast is published!

Technorati Tags: educationreform, education, reform, economy, attention, leadership

I’m about a fourth of the way through David Allen’s outstanding book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.” I mentioned this book to a friend yesterday with the comment, “This book is going to change my life by helping me really get more organized and efficient with my use of time,” and I wasn’t kidding.On page 23 of the book, David shares the following paragraph which I think really defines “stress” for me and perhaps many others today, and also provides good insights into how that stress can be best managed. I don’t say “eliminated” because although we often use the word “stress” in negative references, we all do need a basic level of stress in our lives to keep our lives interesting and ourselves challenged. It’s only when perceived levels of stress get out of balance (or even out of control) that problems set in. Here’s what David writes:

The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you need to do something, and store it in your RAM, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time. Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, it thinks you should be doing right now. Frankly, as soon as you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated potential failure, because you can’t do them both at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pinpointed.

As I’ve noted before, I think we often over-estimate the ability of young people to multi-task cognitive challenges and accomplish them with high levels of quality. Just because a young person is carrying on instant message conversations with six different people, watching the television, listening to an iPod, playing a GameBoy, and attempting to read a chapter in a school textbook does not mean that s/he is accomplishing anything which is cognitively challenging with a high degree of intellectual quality. The fact that a clown can juggle three balls while spinning a hula hoop around his/her waist and another one around his/her foot does not mean s/he is capable of simultaneously thinking original thoughts that might win them the Nobel Prize, or composing an original musical composition that will win a Grammy award next year. I think at many educational technology conferences, the apparent “awe” with which attendees are invited to regard the young for their abilities at multi-tasking is misplaced. Being able to be simultaneously distracted by six different sensory inputs does not necessarily mean thoughts or ideas of quality or lasting value have been conceived or communicated.Those thoughts on multi-tasking aside, I think David Allen’s point about stress being related to the number of “open loops” which your brain is trying to track at once is an excellent one. The solution he proposes to this challenge is a system which permits people to “take control of their lives” with a five-stage workflow model: collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing, and doing. I’m really enjoying his book, and think his ideas may have a great impact on my immediate as well as future “productivity” both professionally and personally. The July 2007 issue of MacWorld included a favorable review (on page 42) of the software program Midnight Inbox, a software implementation of David’s GTD (Getting Things Done) principles. I’ve downloaded a copy and will give it a spin.If you know of other GTD-based software programs you’d recommend, please let me (and others) know about them by commenting here and sharing a link.Technorati Tags:organization, gtd, gettingthingsdone, davidallen, information, overload, informationoverload, stress, solution

One of my favorite rhetorical questions to ask during workshops is, “Is anyone here NOT receiving enough email?” I don’t know an adult soul who spends time online (my own children and other kids who don’t yet have email accounts are not counted in that group) who suffers from a LACK of email. Remember “the old days” of email, when people actually got excited when they received a new email message? Those were the days of PINE email. Were we better off in those days in some respects? We certainly didn’t know how good we had it in terms of spam! According to some new research, spam accounted for 90% of all email messages sent in the month of June 2007. Good grief. In many ways, I do long for the simpler days of PINE email!I discovered the relatively new book “Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload” by Mark Hurst today, reading Steve Johnson’s article in the Chicago Tribune, “Before you click send: The rules of etiquette apply to e-mail.” According to Johnson:

…the bigger point of “Bit Literacy” is his evangelical belief that e-mail is part of a new, digital-era phenomenon, the streams of data, or “bits,” also including photos and data files that can overwhelm us if we don’t aggressively manage them. “The basic theory in e-mail and all other bitstreams is: To surmount the problem of information overload, one has to let the bits go,” Hurst says. “It does not mean that everyone should just turn off e-mail. What it means, rather, is that people need to get in the habit of looking for ways to delete, defer, delay or otherwise avoid bits because we’re effectively in an age now where bits are infinite.”

Tim Wilson recommended David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” to me in February, but I haven’t made time to read it yet. I continue to deal with bit-overload each day, however, and I think I need to read both the GTD book as well as Hurst’s thoughtful book on managing data streams. Again according to Johnson’s article:

“‘Bit Literacy’ says bits are heavy, actually, and an infinite number of them has infinite weight, and it crushes people, their productivity, their morale,” Hurst says. “Having 3,000 e-mails in your inbox is unsustainable because that’s 3,000 things asking for your attention. There’s no way to prioritize. I don’t see that there’s any possible solution but that people should learn to achieve emptiness. In e-mail, people should try to get their inbox message count to zero once every day,” Hurst says

I can count the number of days I have “lived the dream” of a “less than 10 message inbox” in the past year on one hand. Having access to email via an iPhone may help this, but as with most things involving technology I think the hardware and software solutions are just part of the remedy which is needed.A key part of this “remedy” is helping people use the correct communication modality for their purpose and context. I think many, many people are OVERUSING email today. Many people who email daily jokes to their entire distribution list would help everyone’s information overload quotient by starting a joke blog, rather than sending out email blasts. People who need an immediate response to a question are better advised to use instant messaging or the phone (yes, THE PHONE, many people seem to forget its utility in our digital world) instead. I agree with Johnson and Hurst’s observations that the LACK OF TONE in email often leads to problems which a phone call or face to face discussion could avert:

Don’t use an e-mail when the telephone is better, especially for achieving compromise or a deal or broaching a sensitive topic. E-mail, he says, is terrible at tone, and for that reason, “Send” is actually in favor of emoticons.

Johnson includes a great series of “eight reasons you might not want to e-mail” at the end of his article, quoting from Hurst’s book. Hurst’s encouragement to watch what you write/say in email because everything is archivable / forwardable and can become part of a searchable record to which you may be held accountable is important. So is the following observation about email:

You can reach everyone, but everyone can reach you.

In a post last week from NECC, I reflected on some fundamental differences between email and blogging. I wrote:

Email is potentially a “one-to-many” communication modality, but you have to have all the email addresses before you click SEND. (Or they have to be included in a distribution list or listserv.) Email is a “one-to-finite many” communication modality.Blogging is different. When someone publishes ideas on a blog, they are using a “one-to-infinite many” communication modality. I have no idea how many people will read this post, or how many people will respond. The fact that a theoretically infinite number of people could respond (or more accurately I guess, an unbounded potential number of people could read and respond) is earth shattering.

I do need to get a better handle on email, and I’m working on improving my “productivity” and “effectiveness” on that front. I think, however, we’re headed for uncharted waters when it comes to information flows that will require new levels of “bit literacy” for all of us.As a closing “sign of the times” story, I’ll note that many months ago I came across Michael Goldhaber’s 1997 article “The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net.” I have scanned the article briefly, but have yet to make time to read it in its entirety. This concept of our information landscape as an “attention economy” is something which has and continues to influence my daily thinking, however, despite the fact I have yet to make time to read the full article. Ironic.I think I’ll print out the article and read it this evening, and then make time to start David Allen’s GTD book. I’m hypothesizing both Goldhaber and Allen will have some relevant thoughts for me as I seek to improve my own “bit literacy” skills!Perhaps the #1 thing I’ve changed in the past year or so regarding my digital consumption and sharing of ideas is use the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. At least when I save and “tag” websites during the day as I process information, I help insure I’ll be able to re-locate “that website I saw” sometime down the road. I think my use of del.icio.us has significantly improved both my personal productivity in the digital information environment as well as my value to others as I’m able to simultaneously share my knowledge/ideas (via those tagged and commented web links) with others. The fact that “an infinite many” others can add me to their own del.icio.us networks represents a staggering potential for connected learning I can barely fathom.It’s been a long time since I’ve been bored, and I don’t think an iPhone is going to help that cause. It may be time for another 40 day evening technology fast!

Technorati Tags: email, information, overload

Many kids (both the chronologically young and the young at heart) love video games of different varieties and flavors. What lessons can we learn from this common tendency, and what action steps should our thoughtful observations and research provoke? In Atlanta last week for NECC, I read the front page headline article, “Millions of kids hooked on video games? Doctors to urge study.” The article begins:

Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of Atlanta is worried that millions of American youngsters may be as psychologically hooked on video games as some people are to gambling, hard drugs and alcohol. She’ll be among 550 members of the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates expected to vote today to urge the American Psychiatric Association to consider labeling video gaming as an addiction. The AMA is expected to recommend that the psychiatrists study the issue to decide whether video-game addiction should be included in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of mental illnesses. Inclusion in the manual would mean that more insurance plans would have to cover people treated for addictions to video games.

Video game playing is certainly on the rise, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise these activities are attracting more attention. The size of the video game industry in gross revenues, for example, dwarfs the Hollywood film industry and has for some time. Is watching movies on DVD, VHS and at the theater an addiction for some people that should be should be formally “labeled” an addicts in a upcoming issue of the DSM? Personally I do not think so, and this article appears to focus more on hyperbole rather than facts and reasoned conclusions. (Sadly normal for the mainstream media when it comes to articles about kids and digital resources.)

The article does quote one research project on youth and gaming:

Dr. Douglas Gentile, director of the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University, said one of every 10 youth gamers “shows enough symptoms of damage to their school, family and psychological functioning to merit serious concern.” Young people classified as addicted were making lower grades than their peers, were more likely to have video game systems in their bedrooms, were spending much more time playing games each week —- an average of 24.5 hours —- and were also more likely to have been diagnosed with an attention deficit problem. Dr. Suzanne Martin, youth and education researcher at Harris Interactive, said the prevalence of video gaming among youths “is great cause for concern and highlights the need for further research in this arena.”

The problems this trend seem to highlight may have more to do with PARENTING rather than a psychological addiction. The main medical doctor quoted in the article seems to suggest this, although the article author does not make this connection or point this out:

Fryhofer, an internist, said most parents “have no idea their children are spending so much time playing video games, and there’s reason to think it’s addictive.”

If some or “most” parents don’t have any idea what activities are consuming large amounts of their children’s time (online or offline) that’s a parenting issue. One of the key assumptions of “Digital Dialog,” a parenting workshop series my wife and I started this past spring and are going to teach again in July for a local Oklahoma City Church, is that adults and kids need to be in more regular communication about multiple issues, including gaming and online social networking. Declaring gaming to be “an addiction” sounds alarmist and unjustified by evidence to me at this point. The suggestion might make for a good attention-grabbing headline in Atlanta and elsewhere, but I don’t think that makes it good medical science.

Certainly we have a need for continuing research in the area of gaming, learning, behavior and human psychology. What is suggested by the “symptoms” highlighted by Dr. Douglas Gentile, however, needs more scrutiny. What does “damage to their school” mean? Is this a misquote, and was he saying that kids who report high frequencies of home game playing show poorer performance in school? He states subsequently that frequent gamers seem to have “lower grades than their peers.” So do video games CAUSE kids to have lower grades, or are kids who are generally more bored with School and the lack of intellectual challenges they find there more likely to find meaningful, engaging activities in electronic games? As is typical in many media articles, authors seem to misunderstand (or at best, not fully explicate) the terms and differences between correlation and causation.

At least there is a slight glimmer of reasoned advice included in this article. Of everything written by author Bill Hendrick, I find the following two sentences the most reasonable:

William Vestal said he allows his two children to play video games and worries more about the television they watch. He said he keeps track of how much time children Codie, 8, and Kelly, 6, spend behind the screen. “I don’t look at it as a bad thing,” said Vestal, 37, of Avondale Estates. He said Codie plays racing games and Kelly games with themes. “There’s no violence in them,” he said. “I consider it somewhat healthy.”

William doesn’t seem to be a medical doctor, as no medical credentials are mentioned in the article for him, but I think he may have the most balanced view on the issue of gaming and kids of those quoted by Hendrick.

As human beings, we generally need to seek “balance” in everything we do. Most things, taken to an extreme, can take on a negative and harmful influence. Watching too much television? Eating too much fast food? Spending a huge number of hours on the golf course away from your kids and family? All of these activities can take away from other potentially more important and beneficial ways to spend limited heartbeats in life. Time is zero sum. We need to all monitor the ways we’re spending our time and make sure we’re following the priorities we have for our lives, based on our own values and the values of our families.

Video games certainly CAN be highly engaging. Perhaps this tendency toward high-level engagement is at the root of this article and what alarms many adults about video games, because many adults may not be used to seeing kids spending large amounts of time on console games or behind the computer screen. Why do video games, as well as many other computer-based activities like social networking, have such a high potential for brain engagement of youth and others? I think Seymour Papert, in the beginning of his chapter on “Yearners and Schoolers” in “The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer” offers some excellent insights. On page 4 he writes:

Video games are toys– electronic toys, no doubt, but toys– and of course children like toys better than homework. By definition, play is entertaining, homework is not. What some parents may not realize, however, is that video games, being the first example of computer technology applied to toy making, have nonetheless been the entryway for children into the world of computers. These toys, be empowering children to test out ideas about working within prefixed rules and structures in a way few other toys are capable of doing, have proved capable of teaching students about the possibilities and drawbacks of a newly presented system in ways that many adults should envy.

Papert goes on to write more (page 36) about the “mediating role” which computers play between children and ideas. This reminds me (and is likely closely related to) a quotation from Nicholas Negroponte, shared by Alan Kay two weeks ago in Anaheim at EduComm, that:

Computers are instruments whose music is ideas.

I’m not issuing a blanket endorsement of all video games here (including first person shooters) and suggesting kids of any age should be allowed to play video games all day and night long. To the contrary, I think a healthy balance in time devoted to video game playing is very important just as balance in other activities is.

I do want to highlight, however, the qualitatively different experience which video games offer to people young and old which is powerful and fundamentally different than many of the experiences we’ve been able to have as human beings up to this point in our history. The complex worlds into which many computer games, as well as increasing numbers of online social networking environments invite people, are attractive not because they offer an addicting chemical like nicotine or crack cocaine, but rather because they offer opportunities to ENGAGE THE BRAIN in powerful ways.

Some of the lessons we should draw from the passion (which approaches the level of “addiction” in the views of some) kids young and old demonstrate playing video games and interacting with others online include:

1. As human beings, our brains want to be engaged in meaningful activities involving complex activities, challenging environments, immediate feedback, and interaction with other sentient beings (real and/or virtual.)

2. When we see people (young or old) highly engaged in sustained activities over a long period of time, it is appropriate to ask, “What is going on?” Rather than assume the dynamic in question is evil, bad, and worthy of a negative label like “addiction,” we should take a more scientifically objective view. Just because kids are not doing their homework, let’s not assume they are engaged in sinister and malicious work detrimental to their own health and the greater good of our society. Let’s face it, what adults do you know who would actually choose to do the mind-numbing worksheets some teachers continue to send home as homework instead of playing a video game or interacting with other interesting human beings?

3. Let’s remember the value of balance in our lives. We need balance in almost all aspects of our lives, and video-game playing is no exception.

4. Let’s remember the importance of good parenting. Open and regular communication has always been important for parents (and other care-givers) and children, and that has not changed in the 21st century.

5. Let’s not underestimate the powerful potential of creative, digital technologies to both engage human beings and also help them LEARN. Many adults seem to be “running scared” from all video games, Internet-based social networking websites, and other digital technologies. I wrote several months ago about how this group might be described more accurately not as “digital immigrants,” but rather as “digital refugees.” (Amazingly, as a related aside, if you do a simple Google keyword search for “digital refugees” you get the above blog post link as the first result of almost 2 million. Wow.)

Whether you are a digital refugee, are suspected by others of being one, or know some, I think we’d all benefit from sitting down with “these game-addicted kids” and have some thoughtful conversations together. Have the kids show you want they are doing in their video games and/or online, and talk about it. If the kids are spending all their time in graphically violent environments where they are killing others, that should be a point of concern. Talk about how much time they are spending playing said-activity (whether that is a video game or a website like Webkinz or Club Penguin) and how many hours per day seems healthy and fair to dedicate to face-time with that screen. This goes for TV watching too.

We need to be more intentional in the ways we all choose to consume, create, and interact with digital content. That is a key message of “digital dialog,” and is a key element of a concept (and possible future book) I’ve thought about for many months: Digital Discipline. Most people don’t like to think about or practice “discipline,” but it just as important to success in life as ever.

Digital discipline in the context of gaming should not equate to adults making blanket generalizations of all young people spending time in front of screens playing games as “addicts” on equal footing with addicts of illegal drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or even gambling. That view makes headlines, but it offers a poor template for parenting, teaching, or living life more generally in our digital 21st century information landscape.

Technorati Tags: digitaldialog, digitaldiscipline, digitalnatives, engagement, games

I was interviewed at the Kansas State Department of Education’s annual conference in April 2007 following my spotlight session on “Copyright, Liability, Cyberbullying and Social Networking.” The video of this interview is now available on the KSDE conference podcast page in both Quicktime movie and MPEG-4 formats. The interview runs 16 minutes and 4 seconds. Other interviews with keynote and spotlight speakers are also available, including one with the inspirational Dr. Lorraine Monroe! (She was the conference keynote speaker, and I obtained permission to share the recording of her message as a podcast– check that out too if you haven’t already!)

The books I mentioned during this interview included:

- “Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World: Seven Building Blocks for Developing Capable Young People” (H. Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelsen)
- “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” (Neil Postman)
- “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” (Neil Postman)
- “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World” (Lawrence Lessig)

These books and others I’ve read (and recommend) are included in an Amazon book store of recommended books I created recently. I have added this as a sidebar link on my main homepage under “links.”

Technorati Tags: digitaldialog, digitaldiscipline, education, educational law, internetsafety, kansas, ksde, ksde07, leadership, myspace

This podcast features a recording of Kevin Honeycutt’s presentation on April 26, 2007, at the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) annual conference, “Know the Child, Optimize Learning” in Wichita, Kansas. The title of Kevin’s session was “Building 21st Century Achievers.” The conference program description was: We all teach kids and try to prepare them for a successful future, but what does that mean today? Join as we delve into the specifics of what it will mean to have the tools for success in the 21st Century. We’ll explore digital tools and their seamless use in our classrooms. It’s time to stop trying to teach technology and begin to teach with technology. Visit Kevin’s website at http://kevinhoneycutt.org.

SHOWNOTES:

1. Kevin Honeycut’s website
2. ESSDACK: The Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas

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Technorati Tags: ksde07, leadership, education, cyberbullying, myspace, schoolreform

 

 Podcast148: Building 21st Century Achievers (Kevin Honeycutt) [58:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1329)

Steve Friedman wrote an article about his experiences in the virtual world “Second Life” (SL) in the article “Living the Life” in the April 2007 issue of Southwest Airlines’ Spirit Magazine. The article is probably the first introduction for many airline passengers to the virtual online environment which some believe will transform the way we view the Internet, transact goods and services, and live our lives in the real world. I have dabbled a bit in SL and need to spend more time there to learn more, but I think the following paragraph from Steve’s article reveals the growing importance for “digital discipline” in the lives of many:

Wow, I think, this is kind of fun. What’s not fun is realizing that after 16 days I have developed a serious case of carpal tunnel syndrome and eyestrain, and that I have headaches from not sleeping enough. Plus, so caught up have I become in flying and teleporting and chatting with my new friends (also, to be honest, some harmless flirting at the Goddess of Love Dance Club, which I visit occasionally now that I’ve figured out how to bust some dance moves), that I haven’t really done much empire-building or wealth-amassing.

SL really is an incredible idea and a mind-blowing virtual environment. Like the old west, saloons and brothels are in great supply. More than anything else, at least at present, I think what SL represents is a removal of boundaries. Because you choose your own avatar and the things your avatar does in SL, the following boundaries which generally apply in the real world don’t apply in SL:

1. You can look and act like anyone you want.
2. You can, in many ways, remain entirely anonymous and unaccoutable (at least in RL or real life) for your actions.
3. If you can imagine something, you can build it. Owning land requires money, but you can program new virtual objects and powers in SL for free.

I’m sure many readers of this post have logged many more hours in SL than I, and therefore have much more developed perceptions about the possibilities, benefits as well as drawbacks to “living in SL.” In many ways, SL is an exciting new frontier of possibilities which naturally invites creativity and innovation to be applied in ways that were impossible before SL existed.

My main thought after reading this article was, “Boy do we all ever need to have digital discipline today.” The access of many people to digital devices and digital connections with others is growing at an astonishing rate. Like other tools, some people are going to choose to use these new avenues for communication and creativity for “good purposes” and others for more questionable ones.

What are we going to do with SL, and the potential it presents for learning? Clearly everyone who is in SL is learning a great deal about many things. I wondered today if K-12 Online 2007 should have an entire thread this next year that focuses on SL and even meets there for live events? Why not? Particularly if we can record and archive meetings and activities that take place there, and provide participants with slower dial-up connections with downloadable versions of those interactions, I think this could be a great idea.

Whether we are in SL or RL, we need to have digital discipline to insure we are living our lives according to the priorities we want to genuinely follow. I spoke with a parent the other day whose son is addicted to playing “Halo3″ every night at home for many hours late into the night on their family computer. I suggested a 40 day computer fast for him, in which a different activity is substituted for Halo3 playing. My own experiences with an evening technology fast last year were very positive. I didn’t emerge from the experience determined to never use technology in the evenings again, but I certainly did obtain a better perspective on the limits and boundaries of technology use which seem to be more supportive of healthy F2F relationships with my own family members.

Digital discipline. We all need it, and I think we’ll be needing more of it in the years to come. Conversations about digital discipline are worth having, whatever our age or level of technology use. I know plenty of folks who spend WAY too much time watching television (in my admittedly highly-subjective opinion.) Technically speaking, most television signals today remain analog and are not actually “digital,” but the transition is on to digital television as well as digital radio. I consider conversations about television watching habits to fall within the definition of conversations about digital discipline. Digital discipline means being intentional about one’s use of technology options and tools. Digital discipline doesn’t prescribe a fixed amount of time for everyone to spend watching TV, playing video games, interacting with others in SL, or anything else, but it DOES suggest that everyone should strive to be thoughtful and intentional in the way they expend heartbeats with digital things.

On my latest trip to Michigan to speak at a conference, my wife Shelly was able to come along. In the car driving from Holland back to the airport in Chicago, we resolved to write a book about “digital discipline” together. I think ideas are born to be free, and I want to give this book away as a free PDF file download as well as find a traditional print publisher for it. (That may end up being Lulu, or a more traditional publisher.) Both Shelly and I sense that the need we have in our society as a whole for digital dialog and conversations about digital discipline is high already, and likely to only increase in the months and years ahead.

I was glad to learn about TV Turn-Off Week April 23-29 (starting tomorrow) sponsored by the Center for Screen-Time Awareness, via this post from Jeff Utech’s wife. Since I took a 40 day evening technology fast back in November/December I’m going to pass on this week’s TV Turnoff campaign, but I wish everyone who is participating well in the endeavor. The goal of becoming more intentional about our consumption of digital content (which comes to us via various screens) is a GREAT one.

Technorati Tags: digitaldialog, digitaldiscipline, tvturnoffweek, secondlife, sl