Last week WordPress 2.7.1 came out and my blog started telling me I needed to upgrade. I always put it off because I have bothering with it, but this time I decided to just do the auto upgrade option. I’ve never done it and was a little nervous, but after backing up my database I went ahead and just clicked the auto backup button. About 10 seconds later I saw the following … that’s the way things are supposed to be!
I’ll follow along with the exploits of Alan, D’Arcy, and Jim by posting my top 10 commenters over the last year. Clearly those guys get more comments than I do, but it is nice to see that we (for the most part) appear on each others’ list — Sorry Rev, I will get better this year. The thing I notice about this list is how local it is to State College and Penn State in general. On my list there are only four people who are not PSU folks — I just find it interesting. At any rate, there it is. 222 different people left comments this past year and I can tell you that is plenty to keep me happy! Sort of blows my mind when I think about it. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to share your voice in 2008!
There are days when I am just so interested in hiding. Days where all I want to do is blend in, sit, and be. Days when I think about how much more straight forward things would be if I wasn’t pushing against the walls. Walls have a tendency to push back and there are days when it would so much easier to sit in the middle of the room and laugh at the crazy people on the edges. There are days.
The problem is that I’m just not wired that way. I have this problem with taking risks, I like them. When I was younger it meant I needed to do insane things on my bike, on the soccer field, or on a basketball court … its different now, but only the context has changed. I’m no longer able (or willing) to put my body through that kind of torture, but I am still willing to let it all hang out. I like to challenge myself and those around me. I know I drive people crazy with it all, but it is what it is — and it always has been.
Cole One Footed Back in the Day
I remember a half dozen years ago when I was at IST and I started the Blogs at Solutions Institute experiment. I asked everyone at SI to write in the open — to take the plunge, to risk throwing their voices into the wild, and to see what came back at them. I had recently read the Cluetrain Manifesto and was convinced that the web was going to be the platform that democratized education and I needed to see first hand what it all meant. I was interested in pushing at the walls until they caved on me and I can say they didn’t. But damn, it was scary.
I remember one of my colleagues at the time telling me it took him four hours to press the submit button on his first blog post because the World was going to read it. It had to be perfect.
On the web, as with riding a ramp, there are no do overs. Once it is in the wild the RSS is out there and the Internet is very unforgiving. I can go back in time and see what my early days on the web look like … long after I’ve pulled my thoughts down. It is a place where things seem to live a lot longer then we think they do. So I understand why it feels like a risk.
But you know what? Its the way things are. Time moves in only one direction. As much I’d love to be taking risks on that old orange GT freestyle bike, it just isn’t going to happen. Those days are over … the Internet is my skatepark and I plan to continue to push it and myself to the limit. I grow tired of arguments that push in the other direction and tell me that it is too hard to participate, that there isn’t time to be a part of it all, and that its going nowhere. All I can say is that there are really only two sides of history — the right and wrong. Where will I fall? I have no idea, but just like back in the day falling is part of the equation. You think learning how to do one footed 6 foot airs off the top of an eight foot quarter pipe comes without a cost? Think again. Sometimes we get humbled and other times we pull off something close to epic. Is epic worth the potential fall? For me? Every. Single. Time.
I’ve been working in higher education for nearly 11 years now. The idea that I could come to a place like PSU and actually feel like I could honestly make an impact was very difficult for me when I first showed up. The University is so big and so intimidating as an outsider — I can’t even imagine how students feel when they show up! Combine that with the fact that I grew up not being a big Nittany Lion fan and you had a bit of an unwilling participant.
Since that time I’ve been lucky to have held positions as instructional designer, manager, director, instructor, and now after all these years, a student. I feel good to have had the opportunity to be a part of the early days of the World Campus when it was just spinning up. I learned so much as I watched people make real decisions about issues that were so new. I’ve been lucky to have been in the right place to be a part of the launch of the College of IST and become the Director of the Solutions Institute. An amazing time when we were acting like a real start up inside higher education. I’ve been lucky to teach both undergraduates and graduate students. Applying what my teams have been creating first hand has been an incredible opportunity and learning experience. Now I spend my time helping people to think about larger issues that impact a big University and I can’t be happier with that opportunity.
But, with all that said its taken being a student at PSU for me to see the whole picture. I was talking to my colleague Chris Stubbs yesterday about this very notion. Its such an odd feeling going from one side of the podium to the other — it is very strange to be sitting in seats that I routinely work to make decisions about. Let me say that I’ve learned so much more in the last few weeks than what is on the syllabus. Looking at our technologies through the eyes of a student can give us such a stronger sense of what we need to be doing to make the experience really work. I can say that teaching hasn’t quite done that for me, but being a student shows me how much work we have to do to keep up with what students need to be successful long term.
I’m already rethinking much of what we do as an organization and how we make decisions. Having a chance to sit in so many seats for one Institution has given me fresh perspective and motivation to work on old challenges. I’m looking forward to seeing what it all means as summer comes and I have more time to really reflect on how to move new ideas forward, but for now I’m just happy to be a bigger part of the whole system.
As a kid I always liked finding quiet places that were small and isolated. I liked to spend time in places where I was actually alone … where I could get lost in my own thoughts and not have to think about what other people thought of me. I liked being alone about as much as I liked being around others.
What is funny to me is that I still like it. I still like stealing time to myself, but increasingly I can’t seem to find those quiet spaces where I am really alone with my thoughts. In the back of my mind is this feeling that I am letting someone down when I am really alone. When we’re really alone we have no connectivity — no access to the networks that are at the center of nearly everything we do. If I look back at my quick Twitter poll from last week it is obvious that the people who responded aren’t spending a whole lot of alone time either. If we call it the social web for a reason we’re not alone when the first apps we launch connect us to other people’s thoughts, activities, and updates.
Just a quick example … I am sitting here with my Bose noise canceling headphones on so I can concentrate and all I hear are little bells, bings, and other alert messages telling me I am not alone. Bing, new email. Bong, new Tweet. And it goes on. I’m alone in my office, but not alone at all.
These thoughts are circulating after reading an insightful post from colleague Alec Couros. I love the Boston Globe article he links to and I really love the video that goes along with it that I’ve embedded below. The one thing Alec discusses is the notion of teaching students to be curious, but to choose wisely in their connectedness. I’m not naive enough to say we should all just shut it off — it doesn’t and can’t work that way. As one of the people in the video says, “if you aren’t connected people think you are negligent” and that bothers me, but it is a reality. Does the video speak to you? Does it make sense to let it all go? Can we?
I had a crazy day yesterday … not that I am complaining, as I spent it with smart people near or at the top of the decision making chain here at PSU. I spent all morning and into the afternoon talking to a couple of groups about social media, social networks, and their potential for impact on students. I was asked over and over again how we as administrators and as an Institution should take advantage of Facebook (and blogs and twitter, and …). The rooms were filled with people of varying levels of comfort with social media sites so you could almost draw a line down the middle between “these sites make no sense” and “we absolutely need to be there.” The interesting thing I kept hearing was that students don’t want us there and that has me thinking about one simple question — Should Universities maintain an official Facebook presence?
Before I get too far down the path let me say that I am not talking about individual professors adding students as friends. I am talking strictly about an Institutional commitment to taking part in the network. As an example I can point you to my alma mater, West Virginia University, where they have (as it appears) made a serious decision about embracing everyone’s favorite social network.
WVU on Facebook
What I wonder is if we need to be there? Should we use our resources (in time and people) to build a strong brand in FB? What does it yield? A place for alumni to reconnect (do they need us for that)? A place where we can do targeted marketing (can’t we do that in FB without a space)? A place to alert students of issues on campus (I hate to think we are relying on FB as our broadcast engine)? I’m just not sure.
There’s been all sorts of chatter about how to deal with the rapidly expanding demographic and how to personally segment the network based on who you want to see your updates. To me what that means is that we are seeing a network that is growing up. What was once the haven of a few geeks and a whole bunch of college kids has turned into a social network with an emerging identity crisis. It is no longer the land of twenty somethings … my Mom, Mother-in-Law, as are parents of my friends are on FB and know how to use it relatively well so something is afoot. Take into account the following from iStrategyLabs as an example …
The biggest surprise (perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising) was that Facebook’s 35-54 year old demographic segment not only continued to grow the fastest, but it accelerated to a 276.4% growth rate over the past 6 months.
Basically what I’m saying is that it isn’t just for college kids anymore … there are now lots of people to think about. So, I’ll return to my question, should Universities maintain an official Facebook presence? Anyone have any thoughts?
I’m sure many of you have seen Discovery’s advertising campaign, “The World is Just … Awesome,” in which lots of people sing a modified version of I Love the Mountains, called Boom De Yada. Discovery’s version is really inspiring, so much so that if you go to YouTube you’ll find hundreds of versions of it from people all over the world.
I spent a little time over the weekend watching a bunch of them and once you start exploring it is tough to stop. So many of them are really inspiring, but the one that really made me smile is an original version from a fourth grade class.
Now, you can say this is just people imitating other people but if you ask me there is something deeper going on here. I am of the mind that the web is a platform for starting conversations — and I’m not just talking about online conversations. If you follow what probably happened in the example above you can begin to see how powerful this is … perhaps their teacher saw the commercial and got the idea that his class could make their own. This simple thought (enabled by technology) motivated that group of kids to work together to create something original, new, and challenging. They had to work together to make it happen … and then by sharing it with the World gave a whole other set of people the inspiration they need to try something new together.
So that’s exactly what happened after I showed the two videos above to Madeline and all her cousins Saturday night while we were in Bloomsburg … they instantly wanted to make their own. Over the course of an hour or so, they each wrote pieces to the song and decided who was going to do what. It was so cool to see all of them working together to make something. In the middle of it they wanted to find a way to include two of their cousins who live in Florida so they wrote them in as well. It was amazing watching them come up with the words and perform it. I think it made the whole house a really happy place! I know I had a blast getting to spend time with them while they laughed, sang, and edited with me.
Nothing earth shattering for a Sunday, but this picture says so much. If you’re not paying attention to the power of RSS syndication, its time to get on the bus …
Flickr photo by nessman