Work With Hope

It is a story that never fails to warm hearts.  A town endures a natural disaster.  Buildings, power, water, and other necessities are cut off or limited.  Children and families are suffering.  What happens?  The community all pulls together to comfort, repair, and rebuild.  Local communities contribute supplies and resources.  Terms like “the real meaning of Christmas” and “finest hour” are generously and rightly applied.  It something inate in the human character that we jump in with both feet when natural disaster strikes.

This is a newer story.  A school endures a network disaster.  The network goes down for days.  Communications grind to a halt, and tech based lessons are lost.  Students are not able to submit work, and teachers are not able to complete activities and share resources.  Though school life goes on, it is for a short time dramatically changed and limited.  What happens?  In a short period of time, everyone turns on everyone else in a bizarre Lord of the Flies distopia.  Everyone from teachers, to administration, to consultants, to ISP’s to Tech Directors are pointing fingers, and though all of these sides ultimately do what needs to be done to resolve the crisis, but it is done in an atmosphere of anger and recrimination, everyone not entirely believing that somewhere up the line there is a switch to resolvethe problem that is being guarded by an evil gnome.  Other schools contribute, usually advice as to why their systems are superior to the struggling school.  “Everyone really pulled together and remained positive during the Internet outage last week,” is said…never.

Why are these reactions so completely opposite? Why do natural disasters bring out the best in people while technology disasters bring out the worst? I’m sure there are enumerable reasons, but I’m going to briefly explore three.

The first has to do with scale.  Though I have often heard a user exclaim that he or she is “dying” because of an outage, we all know at heart that no lives are being lost.  Despite inconvenience to lesson plans, we also know that probably the students’ overall education is not being severely impacted.  Ironically these “lower” encourage the reactions that a life-threatening emergency tends to suppress.  There is little sense of “Who am I to complain when so many are struggling,” during a tech disaster.

The second realates to cause.  Obviously a natural disaster has no human agent at the switch, hence the title “acts of God” (pretty lousy that this expression is always used for negative things).  While one can (and often does) look to place blame for destruction after an earthquake, fire, or flood, at heart there are forces outside of anyone’s control at play.  Technological infrastructure, no matter how complex, has human hands in every part of  creation and operation.  So there is always a feeling that someone is to “blame,” when often major tech disasters are not the fault of a single person or group of persons, but the nature of work with unbelievably complex ecosystems.  The problem was created by people and will be solved by people…not quickly enough.  Often this is where previous differences opinion on systems and infrastructure come to the surface, including the expected smug, “If we didn’t use all this technology, this wouldn’t happen.”

Finally, there is a feeling of helplessness that pervades a tech disaster for the vast majority of persons involved.  There really is no way to “pitch in and help.”  Users cannot work together recoding systems or even rewiring a building.  In fact sometimes the ability to “chip in” is one of the greatest protection against the feeling of helplessness during a natural disaster.  What can a teacher do except continue to check if things are running yet and adjust.  I will often receive emails (when email is working) from frustrated teachers expressing the depth of their challenge, somehow believe that someone “out there” just doesn’t under stand how important in this is.  I used to be offended by this type of communication, but today I see this as an empowering action for a person who we have affected.

Please be clear, I am not criticizing anyone in this chain.  I have played all roles in this scenario multiple times, and short of developing perfect systems (we won’t) recurrence is inevitable.  I do think, however, that this disparate reaction to disasters is interesting, and that examination of the causes of human behaviors might help us mitigate challenges when they occur.  

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image:  https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3358/3604999084_abe6ebba70_b.jpg

Today is the second Sunday of Advent, invariably my favorite Sunday every year.  This Sunday represents the perfect balance between being squarely in the holiday season while having plenty of time to still enjoy it.  More importantly, the theme of the Second Sunday of Advent readings, comfort and hope, resonates with me more than any other theme of the year. 

For many years I was cantor at my parish church and on the Second Sunday of Advent, we always sang a good Protestant hymn, “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People.”  Here is the first verse

Comfort, comfort ye my people,

Speak ye peace, thus saith our God;

Comfort those who sit in darkness, 

Mourning ‘neath their sorrows’ load.

Speak ye to Jerusalem

Of the peace that waits for them;

Tell her that her sins I cover,

And her warfare now is over.

These powerful, dramatic words, coupled with an equally majestic tune spoke to me at a depth that few if any Christmas carols could.  As someone who has dedicated most of his professional career to envisioning a different future, the hope for something better coming (every valley shall be exalted) resonates deeply in me, but this isn’t the key reason I love this hymn.  

The intitial assurance of comfort; what more could anyone want?  Despite our many wants and needs as struggling human beings, at some level we all mainly want to be told, “It’s going to be ok.” This year this message is particularly poignant to us as a people and personally.  Collectively we live in a world where we daily see outrages that would seem to be leading to nothing but destruction, and personally (at least for me) we manage lives that often teeter between pretended competency and chaotic panic.  We never truly give up the child part of us, wanting to call out to a parent in the night for some assurance that there are not monsters under the bed (though I fear that is no longer true), that despite darkness we are safe, that morning will come.  This Sunday and this hymn always have been that voice to me.

Sadly, when I moved to a different parish, they didn’t sing this hymn, and in my subsequent moves I have discovered that we were probably the only Catholic parish in the area that used it.  I don’t know if I will ever sing it in church again.  So on the Second Sunday of Advent (and frankly other times as well) I sing it by myself.  

Maybe we should all sing it.  

As always, I welcome your comments .

If you want to hear the melody https://youtu.be/nPJUtHnw0u8

Image:  https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/57/35/14/573514083deccac8454bb166d1031b3d.jpg

One blessing and curse of modern living is that we are more and more separated from the “sources” of our lives. It goes without saying that we are completely removed from the realities of food production as we purchase grown, harvested, selected, and shipped “organic” produce from Whole Foods.  We buy food that has gluten removed…and we don’t know how it got there in the first place.  We keep animals in our lives, but like in a reality show, these are “safe.”  We hear about the occasional person who raises and eats his own chickens (Don*) and we are happy this eccentricity is nearby, but have no interest in participating (I’m sure this is just me, but I know I would have a moment of discomfort if I sat down at a friend’s table and learned the Chicken Kiev is actually Chicken Orange Park Acres).

In more recent years this separation has grown, as we move further and further away from sources.  Barely a week goes by when I don’t receive a box from Amazon at my door (including a growing number of staples). My first thought when needing anything is to grab for my iPad, not head for the mall.  Even when I do go to the grocery store, I am irritated if there isn’t a self-checkout station where I can manage the entire transaction without any human contact.  

Christmas, too, comes more and more prepackaged.  Malls are decorated overnight (usually in October) and Christmas is delivered, not made.  Tomorrow I will be attending a traditional tree-lighting ceremony nearby, but even this is enjoyed because of the “throwback” feel, not out of a true community spirit.  If you are lucky, you might see the truck delivering trees to a lot (probably a tradition whose days are numbered), but it isn’t like the yearly Wells Fargo commercial with the entire town coming out to greet the stage carrying the community Christmas tree (I know this is phony nostalgia, perpetrated by one of the most venal companies of the year, but it still speaks to me).  

So today when I was listening to a podcast about Turkey Drives, I knew I had to learn more. Up until the early 20th century, turkey farmers had no practical way to bring turkeys from farm to town except to walk them there.  Prior to the holiday season, farmers in England and America would drive massive herds (flocks?) of turkeys into large towns.  Some of these drives would cover over 100 miles and take over a week (one can picture the lonely “turkeyboys” camping on the rustic countryside, singing sad songs and drinking rotgut …Wild Turkey?). There were, however, real dangers inherent with marching a relatively defenseless, abundantly meaty caravan across country.  Turkey herds were often significantly thinned by predators, and though I can find no record of turkey stampedes, one can only imagine.  Once the turkeys reached town they were delivered to markets or to individual houses.  Imagine opening your door to see a hundred turkeys ready for your selection.  Not even Amazon drones can match this picture.

I was surprised to discover that turkeys were actually well suited for long distance travel and few ever succumbed to the rigors of the journey (with the foxes they weren’t so fortunate). Their feet were not optimal for this journey, however, so many farmers would put tiny leather “shoes” on their feet (I am desperately upset that I cannot find a picture of these shoes anywhere I look). Farmers would drive geese in the same way, but “you can’t shoe a goose” so they would dip their feet in tar.  One other challenge is the sensitivity of turkeys to light.  Apparently in larger towns the herd could come under the shadow of a large building and numbers of turkeys would fall asleep and have to roused by the drovers.  

So, aside from a great bit of trivia, what can be taken from this.?  The preparation for Christmas can be completely prepackaged, food, decorations, even emotions.  Perhaps thinking about this frighteningly real “Turkey Drive” can help us to look more closely to the sources of our season, the reality of food, the challenge of decoration, the complexity of emotion.  We can be modern turkeyboys bringing real Christmas into town.

As always, I welcome your comments. 
* I honestly don’t know if my friend Don eats his own chickens.

To learn more about turkey drives, you can read http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/back-when-your-thanksgiving-dinner-walked-hundreds-of-miles-to-market

Image:  http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/farmer-driving-his-flock-of-turkeys-down-a-norfolk-road-to-news-photo/3312877?#circa-1931-a-farmer-driving-his-flock-of-turkeys-down-a-norfolk-road-picture-id3312877

Today I attended a training session for teachers and administrators who will be serving on accreditation teams in the spring.  All of the schools in our diocese are accredited through the Western Catholic Education Association (WASC) as well as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).  Every six years, schools do a self-study, gathering and analyzing data, evaluating how their school meets the standards of a successful Catholic school, and developing an improvement plan for the next six years.  I’ve participated in all aspects of accreditation, preparing a school’s self study, serving and chairing visiting teams, and reading visiting team reports as a commissioner.  I enjoy all parts of this process, and despite usual criticism about the work and time involved, I believe that schools are better for this process.  It is our chief guarantee to parents and the community of the quality and vitality of school programs realative to student growth.

That being said, this process (and all school evaluation) is hampered by the myopic culture of success.  No parent would ever send a child to a school that isn’t doing well, so every school, by definition, must be doing well.  For a school administrator to admit that there are major areas of growth is tantamount to organizational suicide.  Areas of growth have to be contained within acceptable areas with clear plans to address them, like the need for more technology training or need for more data analysis.  Neither of these two truly admits a need except to get better. 

So there is a tendency for schools to write reports that are defensive rather than truly analytical.  If the final outcome (we are a good school) is decided before any data is gathered or one word is put to page, what is gathered, how it is seen, and the story it tells is of limited impact.  Our culture (particularly the culture of non-public schools) can’t accept a less than shining result.  So results are shining.  Teams likewise, reading reports and visiting schools, feel subconscious pressure to affirm wherever possible the story that the school is telling itself.  Though many teams make strong recommendations and point out flaws in the report, the default is to fall into the school narrative.  To veer too dramatically is to put at risk the school’s actual viability.

The problem with this is that it is an anti-growth model. If structures put themselves at risk by admitting too much, then the structures will only look at and deal with superficial issues.  Change doesn’t happen.  If there were a way for schools to be assessed on how clearly they find and understand true short and long term needs, and if our culture could comprehend that it is the organizations that are squarely facing their weaknesses that will have a better long term pattern of success, true growth would take place.  The terror of seeming weak in any way is a recipe for mediocrity.   Wouldn’t it be world shaking is the model moved from, “prove that you are good,” to, “prove that you really understand yourself.”  As is there is a tendency to get reports that read like the old interview response, “My greatest weakness? Well, my greatest weakness is that I just work too hard.”

Let me be clear again, I think the accreditation process as we have it is the best tool for school improvement that we have, but even the best of tools can get better.

As always, I welcome your comments.  

Image:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/71195909@N03/16239281418

Welcome to 24 Days of Blogging, a yearly excercise in observation, comment and self-examination as the year comes to close (and an artificial way to boost the yearly post count) on themes of Christmas, technology , education, and whatever else comes to mind.  I hope you enjoy the journey with me.

As I stepped out of my car this morning, I glanced down and saw a dollar bill on the pavement.  Looking around, I saw no one near, and no obvious owner, so I pocketed the bill and continued on my way (if you feel this was act of thievery, I don’t know what to tell you…perhaps you had better stop reading because some of my other moral judgments will disturb you a lot more). As I walked on my way I felt an unmistakable sense of joy and excitement, that the whole day was blessed by this random act of currency.

Thinking about this reaction I had to wonder.  I mean, honestly, what is a dollar to me?  The single bill will have absolutely no impact on my day.  So why am I feeling like I won the lottery?  Sometimes I will get a nice check after a talk or workshop, but the excitement of that number doesn’t compare with finding a five in my pocket after the wash (a bill I will likely leave in another pair of pants later in the week.

The most obvious explanation is that it is the joy of surprise.  I expected the check, I need the check, so though it is a blessing, it has been already integrated into my life before I receive it.  I can feel satisfaction for a job well done or relief that I’ll have money to pay upcoming bills.  However, this is the logical cause and effect of life. Though I am very lucky to do the things I do and to have people value them, I “deserve” the check or my salary.  This dollar on the ground was unmerited and unexpected, so it can’t help but feel like a cosmic “atta boy.”  It is a undiluted bright moment in a day filled with its own concerns and worries (including what I was going to write about this morning…which it also seems to have answered).  It is the surprising hand of joy in the midst of the mundane.

A second thought I had my though, and this is something I was thinking about yesterday and will be writing about in a later post, has to do with our reactions to the micro and the macro.  It seems at times our reactions to small experiences are more authentic (and often more intense) than our reactions to large events.  Receiving a nice check will make me feel good, but not really joyful.  This dollar on the pavement drew me completely out of everything I was thinking and was an unmitigated positive experience, beyond questioning or analysis (ok, I hear you saying “so what are you doing in this post, then?”). There are no thoughts as there are with the check of what it can be used for (or the darker side, wondering if it should have been more).  Tying ideas from my last post of 2015 to this, this is an example of mirth, unexplained, undefined, unmerited joy.

It is my dearest hope that maybe one or two of these posts might prove that “dollar on the pavement” for the (exceedingly small) audience that reads them.  I leave them to be found, hoping they will bring joy.

BTW…I decided to put the dollar into the tip jar at my Starbucks…it feels it was meant for them.

Whew! the first post is always the hardest…right?

As always, I welcome your comments.

Beginning tomorrow the Work With Hope website will feature the 5th annual “24 Days of Blogging.” From December 1-24 I will be writing a new blog post every day.  Based on past years these posts will be an informal mishmash of education, technology, Christmas traditions, carols, and anything else I can desperately think up to write about (suggestions for posts are greatly appreciated.
I know this has been the sparsest year to date on the blog for several reasons, some of which I’ll discuss in the days to come and some I won’t, so I’m sending up this preview to remind people that the blog continues to exist and (God willing) there’s a lot more to come!

As always, I’ll welcome your comments

Image: http://www.nicola-walker.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/NW-advent-2012.png

I was listening to a podcast last week, and one of the hosts as a joke suggested that he obtained all of his knowledge from Microsoft Encarta.  I laughed at the multi-leveled humor of his statement, both that anyone would still use Encarta and that anyone ever did use Encarta as a primary source.  However, hearing the name brought back memories, and also helped me make sense of a lot of what has happened in between.

For my treasured millennial audience, let me explain.  In the mid 1990s desktop computers began to come equipped with a Compact Disc Read Only Memory (CD ROM) Drive.  These CDs could hold comparatively enormous amounts of data.  Programs which in the past had taken multiple floppy discs to load now fit on a single disc.  The size of this storage disc also allowed for the inclusion of audio and video clips that were never practically distributed prior to this innovation.  The Internet was in its infancy for most users, and it was accessed by strangling dialup modems which made knowledge possible only to those willing to wait…and wait.  For a brief moment, it appeared that the CD ROM was going to be the gateway to oceans of knowledge for all computer owners.

Into this sprung Encarta.  Microsoft developed Encarta as a CD ROM encyclopedia and included it free with most purchases of new Windows computers with a CD ROM drive (one could cynically say that they were building the market for new devices by giving away media that only worked on the latest machines).  Encarta was the future of the encyclopedia, easy to access, colorful, and including sound and video clips that could bring subjects to light.  Why simply read about King’s “I have a dream” speech, when one could watch it in blurry video? Mozart’s biography would be accompanied by clips from his greatest symphonies. Articles about Vietnam could be illustrated with battlefield clips.  The compact size, coupled with the new features that couldn’t be replicated even in venerated Encyclopedia Britannica made Encarta the clear path for the future.  I remember early computer labs with machines equipped with Encarta amazing parents with the blurry MLK clip.  Clearly education was going to be different. 

But Encarta not only didn’t change the world, in the big scheme of things, it barely got used beyond the play stage.  Everyone took Encarta out for a spin and they were amazed with its look, its sound, its tricks, but soon most found that they seldom if ever used it after this.  Because the problem was that Encarta, for all of its amazing, status quo challenging abilities, was not a very good encyclopedia.  A single disc could not hold nearly enough information to give articles the depth necessary even for cursory research (exacerbated by the space taken by video and sound) and later two-disc versions were cumbersome and even still were lacking the depth to create value.  Even the video and audio clips were organized around a limited number of high-profile subjects and not uniformly available for less glitzy topics.  In a variation of Twain’s “A classic is a book that perople praise but don’t read,”  Encarta became the disc that everyone had but no one used.

Encarta’s failure was that it was simultaneously groundbreaking and not good enough.  The subsequent history of online reference (including Wikipedia) shows that many of the features of Encarta were the direction of the future, but it’s fundamental lack of content and depth made it useless.  In many ways it mirrored the CD-ROM itself, incredibly large storage for its time, but not nearly enough for the demand it was to face.  

In the evolution of digital resources there have been other “Encarta enigmas” devices and programs that are so amazing that they appear to be a sure success, but they fade from impracticality or lack of interest, or they are quickly surpassed by something else.  I think of this today because the new frontier of classroom technology is the digital space.  Which of the tools in the “Maker spaces” will become the education tools of tomorrow, and which are exciting shiny “one hit wonders” that look amazing in demonstrations, but in practice do the same thing over and over and never evolve into a true multi-use tool?  

As always, I welcome your comments.

A while ago a friend sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal.  The article suggested that business managers should encourage team members to take notes by hand, rather than on devices.  This advice was based on a study of college students that demonstrated that those who took notes by hand retained information better than those who took notes on a laptop or tablet.  The article was, of course, not sent to me to encourage good business practices, but a good-natured jab.  I’m used to these joyous demonstrations that technological tools are not all that.

After reading the article, I replied that I was not surprised in the least by these results.  College aged students today probably received the worst training ever in using technology as an effective learning tool.  They were taught to use the machine as a straight substitute for pen and pad and to take notes in the same way one would do so in a notebook.  Although this might work sometimes, informal note taking requires greater speed and flexibility than are easily provided with a keyboard-based device, and stylus inputs are still somewhat limited.  The students working with keyboards were probably focusing more on typing than anything else.  Note taking on a device is a different skill from note taking with paper and pen, and these students never learned it.

Larger than this, however, is my frustration with this type of article that makes blanket suggestions that traditional tools are best and new methods aren’t all they promise.  This is the type of article that will be half-remembered and trotted out on a dozen campuses to argue against adoption of new tools.  In the minds of many readers, this is the end of the story.

The term I have made up for this type of thinking is  the Fallacy of the Eternal Today. The moment captured in this study becomes frozen in the mind of a reader as a permanent reality, not recognizing that the use of new tools is evolutionary and adaptive.  The retention based on different note taking styles is clear…for this group of students today, but it is far from clear that it will always be that way.  If we make future decisions based on current limitations, we are tied into an eternal today.

This is not a new phenomenon. Early models of the automobile were not as fast and were less reliable than horse drawn vehicles. I’m sure someone sent an auto manufacturer articles about college students who got to class faster riding horses than in cars.  If we had believed that the current reality would be true forever, we would have a radically different world.

Another area where the Fallacy of the Eternal Today is present is in early assessments of e-readers. When I talk about the inevitability of electronic books becoming the norm, there is usually someone who points to a study somewhere that shows that some people retained less when reading an electronic book than a retro (paper) book. Whether this is true or not is somewhat irrelevant to me, as my question is, “Will it always be this way?” Reading an electronic book is a very different experience from reading a paper book, and our eyes, hands, and brains are still adapting to this new medium. Today’s truth is not tomorrow’s destiny.

This is not to say that critical assessment of new tools isn’t important, for amidst the true, transformative innovations there is a lot of hokum. But we should not limit our vision to only what is immediately in our sight.  Rather we should ask three questions:

• Are the limitations of the technology tool based on lack of practice, lack of familiarity, or lack of development?
• Is the tool primarily limited by current hardware or software?
• Do the limitations of the technology tool reassure us that traditional, comfortable tools are better?

If the answers to any of these questions is yes, then we may be falling in to the Fallacy of the Eternal Today.  The paradox of education is that we must use the means of today to prepare students for tomorrow, and educators cannot be so tied to present limitations as to see future possibilities.

As always, I welcome your opinions.

Oh, and keep those articles coming.

Image:  https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5243/5351621035_417dff7338_z.jpg

OK, this is the post where I finally go over the edge and alienate everyone who has ever read this blog.  What I’m going to talk about is a repudiation of much of my youth and a horrible attack on much of what I have held sacred. But as painful as it is to say these things, I have to “speak what [I] think now in hard words.” (Emerson)

Let’s start with my credentials.  I’m a bookstore guy.  I put myself through college working at Brentano’s Bookstore in South Coast Plaza.  On my application to work there, I cited my love of bookstores in general with the plea, “I have ALWAYS wanted to work in this store!” During my interview, the woman who was to be my manager and friend for many years asked why I was willing to give up a well-paying job in a drug store for a much more modest paying job at a bookstore.  Years later she would tell me that she remembered my plaintive cry, “Have you ever worked in a drug store?”

Working in a bookstore was the most remarkable professional, social, and personal experience of my (admittedly short to that point) life, and in many ways formed me beyond any other influence.  I loved the job, loved the people, and loved the books.  It was such a pleasure to spend full days sorting, stacking and stocking books, talking to people about what they had read and wanted to read (sometimes working hard to conceal an eye roll), and reading. Each of the employees had a “library card” to take out any book for personal reading (I never knew if this was a company policy or a generous violation by our manager…anyway, I’m sure that the statute of limitations has run out) so I could read any book and as many books as I wanted.  If you purchased a novel from Brentano’s in the 80s (well, a good novel), it is likely that I read it first.

Long after I moved on from Brentano’s (and Brentano’s sadly closed its doors, harbinger of the rest of the industry) I still took refuge in bookstores.  After Brentano’s closed, I would visit Rizzoli’s or Scribners (both gone now), spending hours looking at books and listening to music (this was before the bookstore-coffee shop became popular…I would have spent even more time if this were available). In recent years I’ve frequented the local Barnes and Noble semi-regularly, enjoying the feeling of being around books and other readers.

But somewhere in the last few years my relationship with printed text has changed.  After finding the first few ebooks I read to be challenging to navigate, I started to fall into the flow of reading on my iPad.  I loved having a book with me whenever I wanted, marking and annotating text without defacing the paper (and finding these easily), and going beyond the book looking up definitions and other references on the web.  The last time I read a paper book I found it cumbersome and limited.  I stopped buying books.  In fact, when I would go to Barnes and Noble, it was only to find books to download.  But I still loved being in the store, even if it was only a showcase for my real virtual store (oxymoronic, but accurate).  It was a nostalgic visit to a house where I grew up but didn’t live in any more.

That is until last week, having a chunk of time between appointments, I stopped by a Barnes and Noble, seeking the familiar reassurance from the shelves.  However, as I walked through the cases, glancing at titles and familiar authors, I saw something I hadn’t before, and it hit me like a trade paperback between the eyes.

Friends and fellow readers, I saw WASTE.

One of the dirty little secrets of all retail and particular to bookstores is that far less than half the books that are received are ever sold (and this number is inflated by best sellers).  Look across a shelf of perhaps 30 novels in the fiction section maybe one will sell, maybe two (unless one is The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird…thanks to schools, those always sell).  The others will sit there for a time and then (unless they somehow achieve classic status) they will be returned to a publisher.  For every box of 100 books received, a box of 60-80 is returned.  Mass market paperbacks (the conventional small size) are not even returned.  The cover is ripped off an returned and the book is discarded (I still have a sizable library of “strips” as we called them, retrieved from the trash bin…once again, I think the statute of limitations has run out).

The model is built on a twentieth (or pre-twentieth) century concept of retail, have everything someone might want so you have the one or two things that they do want. This concept of “disposable overhead” was a necessity for a completely physical marketplace but seems less and less practical in a digital world.  My Barnes and Nobel may have several hundred thousand titles, but Amazon has over a million titles, and the ability to control production and limit waste can increase this number over time.  There is no practical reason why every book every published shouldn’t be available for instant download (I know there are challenges of rights and legalities, but these are technical, not practical details).  Far fewer physical books are shipped to where they are not wanted only to be shipped back and destroyed (and recycling of paper is not a zero sum game). More books are available to more people more readily.

However, as with most digital conversions, there is a cost that comes with these benefits.  The loss of the bookstore will indeed be a loss of many cultural touchstones, only some of which can be replaced. The feeling of browsing, touching and looking may find replacement in the Amazon site, but it won’t be the same.  The recommendations of a knowledgable bookseller may be replaced by Goodreads recommendations, but it loses the human touch.  People can read in a Starbucks, but it won’t be the same as reading in a Starbucks in a bookstore.

I guess the question is whether reducing the waste and impracticality of the current bookstore is worth these trade offs. During my last visit (I’m not sure that it will truly be my last visit, but who knows?) for the first time, the scale tipped in the other direction.

As always, I welcome your comments.

 

Millennials and Xers need read no further, unless you want to be entertained by Boomer ineptitude.

 

 

 

 

“Why don’t you try Snapchat?” a friend said to me, “It’s a great way to connect with friends.”

My initial reaction was hesitancy, Snapchat? wasn’t that the thing that kids used for all sorts of unseemly purposes? Snapchat? How can I take on another social media platform when I can’t keep up with tools that I already use? Snapchat?

But then I thought about all the times I’ve encouraged teachers and adminstrators to try something new, and all the times that I tried to help them past their fears and hesitancy, promoting the importance of our participation in the digital revolution if we are to retain our relevance. I’ve stood in front of groups preaching the gospel of safe social media.  What kind of a hypocrite am I if I’m not willing to try something new?

So I downloaded the Snapchat app, created an account, added friends, and almost immediately hit a wall.

For those who have not used Snapchat, it’s basically a photo and video sharing app. Selected friends or groups receive pictures and short video clips. There is a photo editor to customize the photographs, and a chat feature.  Along with this is the ability to create a “story,” a set of pictures and videos that can be seen by all of the followers.  The signature feature of the app is impermance. A receiver views pictures and videos once or twice and then thy are removed from the phone (I know there are ways to save these, but that’s not the spirit of the app), likewise, chats and comments are removed once they have been read.  The clips in the “story” stay there for 24 hours and then disappear.

I found the app terribly confusing.  What do the different screens and controls do?  I couldn’t find things I sent, and more than once I missed something sent to me.  The “one shot and then it’s gone” aspect exacerbated every mistake.  Bigger than this, I had no sense of what this tool was or how I could use it. I considered asking my daughter (to her utter horror) how to use the platform.  Ultimately, though, I surrendered to the modern Mecca of all professional development, YouTube. I watched a video that explained all the screens and controls, but most of these I’d figured out already through trial and error.  What it didn’t answer was why I should use the platform and what I could do with it.  I became certain that Snapchat was going to be added to the dust pile of social media that wasn’t for me.

But this morning during a ride, it suddenly occurred to me that I could take pictures and videos during the ride and people could see them in order on my story.

CLICK

Suddenly the whole function became clear to me and this unweildy gadget suddenly became a tool.  My whole approach to learning and using the controls was directed to the things I wanted to do.  My learning curve jumped, and my skill (though not great yet) improved.  Now I’m looking forward to finding new abilities and uses.

So, why do I tell this story? Not to encourage everyone to use Snapchat, and not to illustrate my ineptitude (there are plenty of examples of this on these pages). I think this experience says something about training.  It’s easy to show people how to do things, it’s harder (but more vital) to show them why.  Without vision, a tool is a gadget, and without motivation learning is just so many tricks.

As always I welcome your comments.