Photo by:Â Jurablog
Month: October 2007
Democratic Workplaces
Mark Dowds recommended WorldBlu to me last week. The organisation supports the creation of more democratic workplaces and publishes a yearly list [I’m not sure why a one-page PDF has to take up 6 MB of space]. Three Canadian companies are on the list, 1-800-GotJunk; Axiom News; and TakingITGlobal.
One consulting company caught my eye, Point B Solutions Group of Seattle, which is described as a model organisation, though not on this year’s list. From the Seattle Times:
Point B has no physical headquarters, no rigid work hours, no formal job titles and, unusual for a consulting firm, little travel. More significant, employees are encouraged — no, required — to have a life outside of work. “My first priority isn’t the firm,” says Jenkins, who works out of a small office near the Edmonds ferry terminal. To illustrate this, Jenkins mentions that right now, at 4:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, he’s just returned from a two-day vacation in the mountains with his family.
It reminds me of wirearchy in action, but these types of organisations still appear to be in the minority [in our society] and I’m not certain that a sea change has begun.
Search for search help
Over breakfast yesterday I asked our boys if they had ever been shown how to use a search engine. I know that they use Google all the time, but wondered how much they knew about advanced search features, Boolean operators or even vertical search engines. Both answered that they had never been shown how to do a Web search nor had any of their teachers discussed how to use Wikipedia. I see them on Wikipedia for almost every homework assignment, so I’m sure that it’s more widely used than any other reference source.
Let’s face it, search engines aren’t that new. I was using Altavista in 1995 and now, 12 years later, our local teachers are not helping students understand these powerful tools. We are in an age of search and if schools don’t cover these tools, then who will? I know that I will tutor our boys but what about everyone else? Will mentioned this weekend that we need role models for social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. We also need role models for digital information literacy.
Here is my question to the community at large – is there a suite of websites or especially videos that parents can use to help their children master the basic tools of the web? I’m thinking of the excellent Commoncraft videos on RSS, social bookmarks and wikis. Is there something similar for advanced search? So far I’ve found:
Google Advanced Search help page
Google WebSearch for Educators
… but no cool videos yet.
Learning Signal
There’s a new aggregation site that ranks learning-related blogs, called Learning Signal. It has some similarities with Technorati, and I’ve received a couple of e-mails from the company but haven’t followed-up, as I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add to their intelligence gathering (though it seems benign):
Just in case there was any confusion, I had one more thing I wanted to clarify with you…
The posts you’re seeing listed on LearningSignal.com are not random.
We’re actually assigning a score on every post based on a math algorithm.
Learning Signals could be a practical site for someone trying to get the pulse or zeitgeist of the field, but human-driven services such as OLDaily may provide more context.
Reflections
Last week I headed to the West coast for a conference, all full of energy. A few 16 hour days, some jet lag and a couple of evenings with a couple of glasses of wine, and I was a bit tuckered. Then a quick trip across the Confederation Bridge to PEI and back and now I’m home, having just cleared out my aggregator.
Both conferences were a chance to see people who I was loosely connected to, as well as meet some new friends. I was ready for a little F2F reinforcement, having spent most of the year as a virtual colleague/friend/associate. One of the advantages of being a free agent is the ‘luxury’ of reflection. I have had time to read books in depth, think long about my blog posts and follow online discussion threads to their murky depths. The past week showed me that I really don’t want to lose this perspective.
It seems that most of us are in a hurry today, and I meet few people who have had the time to read even a few good books and reflect upon them. Fewer still have taken the time to digest new ideas and discuss their learning with others. There has always been a need to balance action and reflection, but the latter seems to be losing out in many of our workplaces.
Discussions this week centered around new tools, new literacies and perhaps even a new pedagogy, but few (yes, there were some) were demanding more time for reflection. As the digital surround engulfs us, it may become critical to carve out more reflective time and space. One way to help our children is to stop homework, but what is the equivalent for the rest of us in the working world?