Harold Jarche

School Closure?

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Another school closure today. That’s the second this week, and schools weren’t closed on Monday, when we had the worst driving conditions of the year. Here it’s just a regular work day, with a telephone interview to do and a discussion with a client scheduled. For me, information technologies reduce my dependence on industrial technologies.

Schools are closed today because of the flooded, and now icy, streets with more freezing rain in the forecast. Our school system is more dependent on the state of the roads and whether buses can ship loads of students back and forth than any other factor. The schools, like many businesses, take it for granted that people have to be placed in a central classroom or office  in order to get the job done.  That’s an outdated model in my opinion.

The Provincial government is currently advertising for a “future school infrastructure needs analyst”.

Duties: Reporting to the Director of Educational Facilities and Pupil Transportation, the successful candidate will study norms and standards currently used in the construction and development of school infrastructures and evaluate facilities built over the past few years in order to determine whether they meet needs and expectations; consult with educational services to determine whether space allocation standards meet the needs of the instructional program and support services to education; consult with education stakeholders and other provincial jurisdictions; and study new standards and trends in the field of construction related to energy efficiency, environmental protection, new technologies, accessibility, and security.

I wonder if the Department will question the underlying assumptions of our industrial school system, such as:

  • Is there an optimal (more human) school size? [maybe 150 people]
  • What is the environmental cost of large, factory-style schools?
  • What effect does more than an hour per day of being bused have on learning readiness?
  • What role can information technologies  have in creating more individualized learning environments and connecting with learners and specialists around the world?
  • Add your own question …

Sackville CSA General Meeting 2008

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Last night was the first General Meeting of Sackville’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiative, with about 60 people in attendance in spite of the bad road conditions. Kent Coates, Director of the CSA and a local farmer, gave a good overview of why we need sustainable, local agriculture and what we can do.

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We will have 60 memberships for local produce this year, up from 20 last year, and will stay there unless we get another farmer selling produce. We also have some local cattle ranchers offering natural beef.

As Kent said last night, “Fresh and Local Food requires Canadian Farmers to receive a fair price for their produce. The alternative is non-controlled imported food.” He went on to present these facts about imported food in Canada:

  • Most Imported Food is not Inspected in Canada
  • Less than 10% of imported food is inspected and it is not mandated to meet Health Canada Guidelines for Food production in Canada
  • No Processed Food is inspected unless a complaint has been received
  • The country of origin is not mandated on food labels

There was much food for thought last night …

AIM 2008

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The 2nd Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference.
The Learning Event You Need to Succeed Online.
The Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference, in Moncton New Brunswick, May 4-6, 2008, brings together leading local and international experts to help businesses throughout Atlantic Canada market their companies online and win the web!

I will be a speaker at AIM this year and I thought I’d check out the other speakers listed. A quick search on each speaker revealed only a few who had some sort of online direct communication:

However, all of these blogs are company PR or multi-user blogs, and not much of the individual comes through, so it will be difficult for me to get to know these folks before the event. I do know some already, so that helps.

Since this conference is about marketing online, and one of the best ways to connect online is by having an authentic conversation with your market, I thought I’d meet several fellow bloggers; but not one other dedicated,  individual blogger shows on the list [please tell me if I’ve missed somebody’s blog or podcast or web radio show].

My topic for this event, which has yet to be confirmed, will be on how freelancers and small businesses can use the Web to market themselves, and a significant part of talk will be on the power of blogs. If you’re interested in blogging for business beyond carrying on a one-way conversation with the ether, then I hope to see you there.

One hundred years later

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One hundred years ago was an age of print, when most of our information and knowledge came via books and newspapers. I was reminded of the changes that we’ve seen in information distribution with the release of Before Green Gables on the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables.

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Budge Wilson was commissioned by Penguin Books and the L.M. Montgomery family to write the prequel to this popular series of books whose stories take place not far from where we live [full disclosure: Budge Wilson is my mother-in-law]. The official book launch and other events are happening in Toronto this week.

I have been interested in the entire process as I’ve watched from the sidelines. The way in which a work is commissioned by a publishing company, the fact that the heirs to Lucy Maud still have control over her works 100 years later and the slow process of going from manuscript to published book. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum from blogging, but then Budge’s prose is of significantly greater quality than my ramblings.

So what will publishing look like 100 years from now? The process of publishing this book is not that different than it was in Montgomery’s time. Will it be the same for Budge Wilson’s grandchildren should they decide to become authors? Will copyright, as we know it, still exist and will it be practical to enforce it?

Richard Florida and Our Community

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Just back from a polished presentation by Richard Florida, hosted by Mount Allison University and the town of Sackville. Florida covered many of the basics from his previous books. I picked up Flight of the Creative Class (now in paperback) and will check out his new book when it’s on the shelves – Who’s Your City.

Florida reviewed the basic five pillars of any prosperous community, based on 30,000 surveys, from least to most important:

  1. Basic Infrastructure
  2. Opportunity to do what one wants
  3. Leadership at all levels
  4. Open minded and diverse culture
  5. Quality of place

He also discussed the role that Canada can play in fostering prosperous communities for the post-industrial era because we seem to be more open to experimentation. It was good to see many members of our community attending the lecture and I feel that we may be ready to work hard at creating a more open and diverse town, because as Florida says, “People don’t move to the jobs; the jobs move to the people”. That would put New Brunswick’s recent population growth strategy as a step in the right direction:

The growth strategy has four areas of focus:

  • increasing and targeting immigration;
  • increasing settlement and promoting multiculturalism;
  • retaining youth and repatriating former New Brunswickers; and
  • adopting family-friendly policies.

Not business as usual

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Rob Paterson talks about the power of social media, especially Google Maps and Twitter, in a case study of San Diego’s KPBS Public Radio during the recent forest fires.

Social media are serious tools that can be used to address many of the needs of our communities, but they haven’t been adopted because they are not accepted by the organisational culture. Luckily for KPBS, several decisions helped an already open culture to meet the needs of their community.

The technologies called social media are highlighting the constraints of the industrial mechanistic model premised on Taylor’s, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), which has informed management for the past century:

To explain briefly: owing to the fact that the workmen in all of our trades have been taught the details of their work by observation of those immediately around them, there are many different ways in common use for doing the same thing, perhaps forty, fifty, or a hundred ways of doing each act in each trade, and for the same reason there is a great variety in the implements used for each class of work. Now, among the various methods and implements used in each element of each trade there is always one method and one implement which is quicker and better than any of the rest. And this one best method and best implement can only be discovered or developed through a scientific study and analysis of all of the methods and implements in use, together with accurate, minute, motion and time study. This involves the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.

There is no single best way to address our pressing business, societal or environmental issues. The majority of our challenges are not Simple (addressed with best practice, as Taylor prescribed) nor are they merely Complicated (addressed by good practice) but more of our issues are Complex (addressed through emergent practice) and Chaotic (addressed by novel practice). Here is the Cynefin model:

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The use of social media within and without an organisation allows a free flow of conversation and knowledge-sharing and better enables emergent and novel practices. As Deanna Mackey of KPBS said, “It was not business as usual and the site had to focus on the job at hand”. Social media help you deal with “not business as usual“.

On the Value of Your Own High School Learning

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Clay Burrell has started an open thread on what we learned in high school and since we were in school at about the same time [Grad ’77], I’m following the thread.

English: I remember the opening lines of Julius Caesar …

Hence! home, you idle creatures get you home:
Is this a holiday? what! know you not,
Being mechanical, you ought not walk
Upon a labouring day without the sign
Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?

… but I was more interested in reading science fiction, such as Asimov, Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clark.

Math: Even though I took all the Math courses that were available I remember very little.

Science: I took Chemistry and remember very little but I do know that Force = Mass times Acceleration, from Physics.

I didn’t take Art, which was a big mistake that I still regret. My five years of French did not prepare me for university, scoring straight zeros on the public service French test when I arrived at military college.  I also did not have a clue on how to study effectively, as high school was a breeze for me, so I came very close to failing my first year of university.

The best thing about high school was that I had time for extra-curricular activities such as student council, Reach for the Top;  cadets; cross-country running and track. Those activities I remember quite well and I learned a lot from my coach and others outside the school.

I guess that my high school experience was similar to The 5 Minute University.

Alternate ways of learning

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Gilbert posted a comment to a previous post of mine, but it’s worth its own post, as many people don’t track all the comments [merci, Gilbert] :

Here is a story for those who are interested in alternate ways of learning.

After reading some Marshal McLuhan in the mid 70s I decided to change the way I was learning.

Mcluhan was saying that electronic communications media would restore to Western civilizations many features expressed by oral cultures. In oral cultures you learn as an apprentice under a master and learning is a lifelong process. Being young (17) and naive I thought that this would happen in less than 10 years so I decided to change the way I was learning and thinking to make me ready for this new world. Learn orally under the masters.

During this period I remember reading some Plato and a book called the Art of Memory. This was pre-Western world stuff. I started to see that there were other ways of learning. This led me to read books on old East Indian training methods for musicians and all kinds of different approaches in various cultures. One of the last books I read was from Bacon. In a world made up mostly of books I decided to change the way I made use of books for learning. Here are things I did to make me ready for this print to oral change.

1. I stopped taking notes in the university classroom. Simply decided that I should remember what was being said.

2.  Started to train in old memory and visualization techniques from the Greek period.

3.  Instead of reading modern books I tried to read only original works. I read DesCartes, became a mathematician by reading Newton including hand written manuscripts. Learned my industrial engineering skills by reading original works of Taylor, Gilbreth, etc.

4. I stopped reading books about books. I threw away all my “Understanding McLuhan” and meditated on the Medium is the Message. Reading originals is very close to learning the oral way. I could hear these people talking to me.

4.  Decided to play blindfolded games instead of visual. I remember playing several chess games simultaneously based on oral communication only. Played blindfolded bingo,tic tac toe, card games too. I was warned that if I screamed bingo when it wasn’t bingo that some old lady would beat me up. Later on I used to write computer programs orally by having someone else type them and myself not being allowed to look at the code.

5. Totally neglected my university classes for many years to concentrate on mental training techniques. Went through concentration training, visualisation training, visual thinking training, lateral thinking, synectics, observation training, yoga, shorthand, logical thinking, illogical thinking, and many others.

6.  I decided that I would learn how to play classical guitar. I added the rule that I should never take a lesson, not ever even look at someones fingers as they played. The learning would have to come from the soul or simply from playing pieces. By that time I was into so much mental training that sight reading was mmediate. Took me about 2 minutes to figure out what the symbols meant. I started playing fifteenth century pieces and worked my way to about 1920. Much of the learning was simply done by hitting notes and simply listening. I did use sheet music to learn. At the age of forty I decided to use the fiddle and did so without lessons and did not allow myself to look at any sheet music. Listen and learn or just invent pieces.

7.  After a few years I kind a missed reading the newspaper and magazines so I went to the library and read the news of one hundred years ago and all their copies of Scientific American preceding 1970. Sure gave me a different understanding of politics and propaganda.

8.  I listened to a lot of radio.

During this period I was still reading but only original works. And then I discovered Buckminster Fuller….

I actually decided to study his mathematical work (Synergetics) and forced myself to think in terms of tetragons. Buckminster Fuller’s story of how he relived the history of tool making led me to reinvent many things around me. (Things like inventing my own alphabet and a different arithmetic than what other people used. Gave up on inventing a oral language because my friends were ready to have me interned.) I never read books about Fuller written by other people but I did meet someone who had met him and drank a lot of beer with the guy.

Pretty weird stuff! Did give me an insight into non-curriculum driven learning and also in some McLuanistic thinking.

So for those interested in alternate ways of learning. Give it a try. Take a new subject and try to learn it in a completely different way.

Do it like a caveman would if it suits your personality. It will give you a different perspective about learning.

PS. Learning from blogs is contrary to my learning style because it somewhat similar to reading books about books. The Blog process itself however is reflective and fits in well with this philosophy. Now that I am old it is also entertaining. I never really learned how to watch TV yet. I find playing with the remote quite interesting. Also find watching without sound quite interesting.