Harold Jarche

Copyright not good for learning

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Canadian documentaries are better known, and have won more awards, than our feature films have. Documentaries, like education, need relevant artifacts to get their message across. If every image is copyright protected it’s difficult to tell a story without paying off all of the commercial interests first. Michael Geist reports on the Documentary Organization of Canada’s recent letter to the federal government:

The letter notes the growing concern with the effect of copyright on documentary film makers, citing the survey results which found that 85 percent of film makers find copyright more harmful than beneficial and 82 percent find that the law is more likely to discourage them from making new films. The letter notes that copyright reform could be used to address these concerns, yet there are fears that it will actually make things worse. The film makers chief concerns include modifying fair dealing by expanding the current list of enumerated categories, providing film makers with the right to circumvent DRM systems if anti-circumvention legislation is introduced, avoiding a ban on devices that can be used to circumvent DRM systems, reform of the orphan works regime, simplification of copyright clearance, and providing stable funding to Canada’s archives. The letter is signed by 130 of Canada’s most prominent documentary film makers including Oscar winner Denys Arcand (indeed, Quebec film makers represent the largest group of signatories).

The same situation exists for students and teachers putting together educational media. Tools like Creative Commons Search help to find that small percentage of CC licensed work, but orphan works are a huge untapped mine for learning. Let’s see a similar letter from representatives of the educational field.

Saving Winter

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The first walk in the snow is a yearly ritual for many Canadians. For me it marks the end of a season, swapping cycling shoes for ski boots, and brings back memories of sliding for hours after school until supper.

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Last night we watched An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s excellent documentary on the incontestable fact of global warming. I had been avoiding it for a while because I did not want to get too depressed. I found that the film was uplifting, even with its extremely serious message, because we can do something about global warming – now. Please watch this film.

I also purchased the book World Changing, and look forward to reading about and implementing better ways of living with our only planet. Personally, I want our children to continue to enjoy many more Winters, but we are in grave danger of severe climate change. Now is the time to act and we intend to do our part.

The Six Nations Model

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I’ve mentioned the Six Nations governance model before, as described in the book, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity, and am trying to align this with industrial-age corporations. Basically, I’m wondering how this pre-industrial governance structure could be used today. The author describes how it recently worked for the Oneida Nation. Could it be used elsewhere, or does it need a certain culture?

The Six Nations culture had given specific roles to its member tribes, namely Wolves (Pathfinders); Turtles (Problem Formulators); Bears (Problem Solvers). Solving problems (AKA governance) went like this:

  1. Wolves – Set direction, and identify relevant issues
  2. Turtles – Define the problems
  3. Bears – Generate alternatives and recommend solutions
  4. Turtles – Check on the potency of the recommended solutions
  5. Wolves – Integrate the solutions, keep the records, communicate the decisions

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Could this be incorporated into a legal corporate structure (for profit or non-profit) and if so, would it differ from a governance structure with a Board of Directors, CEO and various executives?

The advantages I see with this governance model is that power is distributed but the roles are clear. It also builds in peer reflection through the process.

Proximity

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Graham Watt and I get together for coffee fairly regularly and discuss almost everything, ranging from kids to education to communications theory. Graham has posted several comments on this blog and recently I took one of his comments and made it a post, The Communication of Bias. I thought that it might be a neat idea to have Graham as a guest blogger, so here is a post that has more humour than any of my straight-laced, and always trying to be balanced, blog posts. They may even a become a regular feature.

We don’t have a productivity problem. We have a proximity problem.

by Graham Watt

We’re just too damn close to the U.S. Not politically. Physically. It’s turned us into American junkies. We’ve faced south so long now our asses are frozen solid. We don’t even bother inventing anything any more because they’ll do it sooner or later down there and we can just copy or borrow. Business learned this ages ago.

But it’s not just business. It’s us too. Look at television shows and movies. We’ll take their mediocre lives over our mediocre lives even if they don’t ring exactly true. We can compensate for that. Let them make them down there. We’ll just watch them.

All these problems with our low productivity relative to the U.S. can’t be solved only in economic terms. They have to be solved by addressing our proximity problems.

We have to get a handle on where we are, not who we are.

That’s snow out there, not rose petals. And that tingling feeling in your fingers isn’t stroke onset, it’s frostbite. I once saw a piece in the Montreal Gazette during a cold spell which showed us how to put plastic bags in our shoes to keep warm on cold days (an article taken from a Fort Lauderdale newspaper). I read that and I swear I could hear a whirring sound as all those fur traders buried on Mount Royal started spinning in their tombs. We haven’t got a clue where we are. It’s like we’re ducktaped to the side of a manic rhino lumbering through a swamp (Boy, I hope he knows where he’s going!).

Yes, proximity is a problem, isn’t it?

Who needs research when you can just let those other folks do it. Yet, there was a time when we actually did some neat innovative stuff. That was back in the days when pawsta was pronounced pasta. and Viet Nom was Viet Nam.

We were a big physical country then with very few people and airports, so deHavilland Canada designed Short Take-Off and Landing aircraft (STOL). The Beaver, the Otter, the Caribou, the Buffalo, (Gee, they even had Canadian type names too).They could land on little airstrips and lakes throughout the country. We sold tonnes of them. Most of them are still flying around, because they’re simple and you can fix them easily.

Remember the DeHavilland Dash-7? With the world’s most advanced STOL technology; a 55-passenger pressurized aircraft as quiet as a school bus, that could land in 1000 feet. When they tried to let it fly into Toronto Island airport there was an incredible outburst of indignation. All about noise and danger. You would have thought it was the Hindenburg with a load of plastique in it. The real problem was the Dash 7 was designed and built right in Toronto. Had it been designed and built in, say, California, the Toronto city fathers and those environmentally sensitve mothers in the Beaches would have been clambering over themselves to buy this thoughtful, sensitive and passive technology. Would have reflected well on the city. But hey, all the good stuff is down south isn’t it?

So it isn’t just business, it’s us. We don’t screw up because we try. We screw up because we don’t have to try. And it’s all of us.

That’s the proximity curse.

So forget about productivity. Our problem is proximity. We have great copyability because of it. We’re actually quite nice people, given that we look at the U.S. as if it was the J Crew catalogue.

But does anyone else actually believe proximity’s the problem? Not on your life. A new study from the Conference Board of Canada recommends that we hunker down even closer to the U.S. to get our productivity up. What’s that mean, exactly?

Copy more stuff?

Assemble more of their cars here?

Watch more of their TV programs?

Speak more like they do?

There was a time when we had clearer heads. Must have been a zillion years ago. We liked the squeak of snow on leather. An old fur trade doctor named John Rae once snowshoed from Hamilton to Toronto just for a cocktail party. No big deal. And I’m certain he wasn’t wearing a “hoodie”. In those days, another guy invented a motorized contraption that could go like crazy on all kinds of snow. sold a slew of them. Ended up making planes, trains and boats, and got so big and successful we started hating the whole idea. It wasn’t normal doing that stuff in Canada.

A long time ago another bunch of guys used to get in canoes and go from Montreal all the way to Alberta and back again. All without Vibram soles on their boots or Gore-Tex jackets, GPS’s or Tony Robbins CD’s. And they did it while singing songs. They had nature-tech canoes made of bark and if one sprung a leak they stopped, got some spruce gum from a nearby tree and some bark, patched it up, and got going again.

What was their secret? Well, they did stuff relative to where they were, not some place 500 miles south. And they weren’t doing this because they heard other guys were doing it in the U.S.. They did it for money and adventure. Ahh, you say, but that was then and this is now. Well, I have news for you. It’s only now in the U.S.

The day we understand that the problem is proximity, and we turn around and let our asses thaw, is the day our productivity will begin to grow.

Shake your cognitive tree

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It’s good to come across something that really makes you question things that you probably don’t even think much about consciously. I save up podcasts for long drives and yesterday I spent about six hours in the car, catching up on a long list of archived podcasts. Two of these were absolutely fascinating, and I would suggest listening to both, in this order:

1. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, with The Future of Ideas:

Sam Harris debates many points relating to religion, particularly the dangers that can be brought about by religious extremists — in any faith — around the world, and in our own country. Even religious moderates play a role by allowing the intolerance of extremists to grow.

2. Sue Blackmore on Memes:

Memetics is an intellectually rich but controversial field which seeks to explain how our minds and cultures are designed by natural selection acting on replicating information, just as organisms evolve by natural selection acting on genes. Sue Blackmore, one of the field’s leading thinkers, skillfully unfolds the major arguments for a meme’s-eye view of the world, and explores the implications for humanity. Are our brains best seen as machines invented by and for propagation of selfish memes?

Much food for thought and further conversations (or meme spreading).

Getting to Maybe – Review

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I’ve just finished reading Getting to Maybe. This is a book about social innovation in complex environments (our world). It covers the stories of many social innovators and discusses the various parts of a common path that many take. This is a path with no map and no destination. Getting to maybe, or “if only …”, starts with the first step of realising that here and now is the best and only place to start. A chapter is dedicated to each identified step, but these are more like checkpoints than actual steps in a process.

Next is standing still, which is the requirement to reflect and listen, now that you’ve got the fire burning for some decisive action. The tension between reflection and action is a major theme of the book. Powerful strangers are those who can suddenly help you and your cause, now that you have started the journey and have opened your mind. Some time during the journey you get into the groove and “let it find you”, playing part of a cast, as in a jazz ensemble. The worst point is cold heaven, when you feel hopeless, as the authors say:

“Those who struggle to make a difference have to face two paradoxes. The first is that success is not a fixed address. The second is that failure can open the way to success.”

From cold heaven may come a chance to have hope as well as a pragmatic understanding of the realities of the world, or to “catch the moment when hope and history rhyme”. This is the time to ensure that whatever has been created does not stagnate and may even call for creative destruction as the environmental landscape changes. Finally, the door opens and the end of one social innovation can lead to the beginning of another.

There are no answers in this book but I think that it may be an inspiration for many who are on the journey of social innovation and need to know that they are not alone.

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Cappuccino U

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I love those serendipitous moments on the Web. I happened across Helge Scherlund’s blog via Technorati and noticed a post recommending the e-book, Cappuccino U, available from Spotted Cow Press. This short, CC-licensed book is by Jerome Martin, of Edmonton, Alberta and it is a pleasant flow of a read that discusses formal education, personal learning and the role of third-spaces. It’s a great introduction to learning for the 21st century:

This e-book is about a new style of learning in which innovative people have combined new information technology with traditional ways of learning to develop a new, personally-driven approach to learning. It happens predominantly in “the third place”, a location that is neither home nor office. The third place is usually a coffee house, one which is designed to serve this particular audience.

People gather in their favourite third places to work, relax, visit and learn. They work independently and in groups. Some of them use computers which may or may not be linked to the web. Some are taking courses online; others are writing books like this one.

This is Cappuccino U.

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Canadian Attitudes on Post-Secondary Education

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The CCL has just released survey results stating: “Public to Canada’s leaders: pay attention to post-secondary education“. There’s lots to review in the 80 questions that were asked of Canadians from across the country, summed up by the CCL President:

“What this poll tells us is that Canadians recognize that education and training are necessary to support economic growth and strong communities. They understand what a knowledge society means, and they want Canada to become a knowledge society,” said Dr. Paul Cappon, CCL’s president and CEO. “This is a message to our country’s leaders that higher education and skills training must be a national priority.”

Because I’m the type of person who reads the fine print, I found the responses to Question 54, available in the complete report, much more interesting:

Do you think that a college or university education is necessary for a person to be successful in today’s work world, or do you think that there are many ways to succeed in today’s work world without a college or university education?

  • Yes, necessary – 9%
  • No, many ways to succeed – 47%
  • DK / NA – 11%

Therefore, almost half of Canadians do not believe that post-secondary education is necessary to be successful in today’s work world.

Perhaps they had already read Will Richardson’s post, Dear Kids, You don’t have to go to College.

Update:

Here is another survey that I reported on last year in Work, Education & Taxes, where the results show that Canadians may be getting too much formal education, without any economic benefits. One comprehensive survey showed that Canadians have the highest rates of formal learning in the world, while another report indicated that there is a productivity gap in this country. If education can be directly correlated to economic productivity (as the CCL’s public statement infers) then we have a problem with the effectiveness of our post-secondary institutions. I’m not quite so sure about the correlation, and would not lay the blame on academia, but neither do I think that formal education is the key to economic productivity.

The Police and the Blogger

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We have an interesting story unfolding here in New Brunswick about a blogger, Charles LeBlanc, who attended a conference, observed a protest and wound up being attacked and charged by the police. First of all, I’m not a political blogger or even attempt to be a journalist. As any online writer knows, there’s more than one kind of blogger in the world.

This story is interesting for a number of reasons:

  1. The police used Mr. Leblanc’s blog to do research prior to the conference, so they knew who he was, but the arresting officer said in court that he had no idea what a blog is.
  2. The police say that they didn’t recognize Mr. LeBlanc as a media person and that he was too scruffy.
  3. The police deleted evidence from Mr. Leblanc’s camera.
  4. The judge is not amused with the police actions.

Personally, I don’t know if Mr. LeBlanc is a good journalist or not, as I don’t read his blog. However, the mainstream media seem to be using the term blogger in a pejorative sense, though it is not for them to decide what constitutes a journalist. Neither is it up to the police to decide what constitutes journalism in our society. As the Internet blurs traditional lines of work and authority, I’m sure that we’ll see more confusion when hierarchy meets wirearchy, and media clash. I also wonder how this will affect our educational institutions, especially the schools of journalism.

Michael Geist has more on the legal aspects of this case.

Let’s get to maybe

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Rob Paterson has been reflecting on his reading of Getting to Maybe, and I was so taken by these ideas that I walked down to our local independent bookstore and bought a copy. I’m only a few pages into the book and I come across this paragraph:

Similarly, we organize our schools to be efficient in supplying education to large numbers and largely unresponsive to the wide range of learning styles and capacities that we know exists. Then we diagnose those who cannot learn efficiently as suffering from learning disorders and attempt to treat them, not the system.

Digression: As I write this, our son comes home from school, grabs a quick snack and goes upstairs to do his homework – a number of math exercises; the obligatory, nightly English assignment but no additional work tonight. As he leaves, I wonder how many adults appreciate bringing work home. Do schools assign homework because it will toughen students for the real world, or just to make them miserable?

On the bright side, I’m looking forward to delving into Getting to Maybe as it seems to be upbeat and positive, as described on the jacket:

Getting to Maybe applies the insights of complexity theory and harvests the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations … to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world.