Bud the Teacher

I’m sitting at Denver International Airport this morning, waiting to board a flight to Austin, Texas, and the first meeting of a curators group on a project I’m involved in with the National Writing Project. The goal of my piece of the project is to help create a website, called “Digital Is,” that attempts to show what digital composition looks like here at the start of the second decade of the 21st Century.

As I wait to board my plane and anticipate the work ahead, I’m reminded of my conflicting thoughts on what composition looks like today. Howard Zinsser wrote in his book, On Writing Well, that:

“The new information age, for all its high-tech gadgetry, is, finally, writing based.”

I found that quote in a new report exploring what writing looks like in several classrooms today. In that same report, the authors write that:

Writing has never been more important than in this digital age. It is almost inconceivable to achieve academic success without good writing skills. And, while the fundamentals of good writing remain constant, new forms of writing are quickly evolving. Words are now regularly joined with images and voices.

Writing, or composition, isn’t all that different from the writing of generations past.¹ Since we first started making markings on clay or stone or paper, we have been trying to capture thoughts in a way that would make them understandable to ourselves as well as others. We write to remember, to share, to understand. We compose to be heard, to stand up and say “This is True,” or “I am here,” or “This was scary” or “hard” or “dangerous” or “exciting”, or “emotional”, or whatever we would like to convey.

And although I make my marks today on an iPad,² a device that makes the making of marks very easy, and almost immediately shareable to anyone who can get to the Internet, I am reminded of just how hard it is to say something in a way that accomplishes my goals as a writer, that captures what I am, or was, thinking, that lets you into my head and thoughts.

That we now have more tools for making marks, and that we have new kinds of marks – photographs, videos, complex visualizations – doesn’t make the essential task of making meaning any easier. In some ways, as our options for composition increase, it gets harder to decide, to choose which way of making marks will get the point that we wish to make across. Harder, too, is what we must do in classrooms to convey the power of language and to help make our students critical participants in the literacies and literatures of our/their/our futures/our pasts.

And what counts as “writing,” or “composition?” Is a tweet a text, or a piece of a larger text?³ Is a rambling audio podcast, recorded from the driver’s seat of my car, a composition on par with a Master’s thesis, or an essay? So long as a test or assessment or evaluation of a text occurs within a limited definition of what counts as writing, are these other forms valid? How do we who is a “good” writer? What is “good” writing?

Is “connective writing,” a term that Will and I and others use to describe blogging, a new form?((The more I think about it, it isn’t. But it’s a useful way to talk about and describe some types of “good” writing.)) What’s new? What’s different? What’s useful? What’s good? Who gets to decide such things?⁴

And how in the world does a language arts teacher, sitting in an airport tapping away on a virtual keyboard, find himself in a place to ask such questions, or to attempt to answer them for others via this particular project?

Just a few questions, questions I always wonder about, that are surfacing for me as I prepare to embark on this work.⁵

1. Is it? Would love to hear your take in the comments. [↩]
2. Finished and published on a laptop, because the iPad isn’t quite the writing device I need it to be. [↩]
3. I’d say yes to both. [↩]
4. And how does federal education policy muck with these questions, in sometimes good and sometimes not so good sorts of ways? [↩]
5. I am humbled, as always, when I think about the power and majesty of language and teaching and learning and the fact that even a guy like me can use the Internet to talk to the world about these big ideas. [↩]

In today’s podcast, recorded during my drive home from ISTE’s final activities, I talk a bit about Tuesday and Wednesday of the conference.  There’s talk of the filtering panel I was fortunate to get to sit on, Howard Rheingold’s resources on crap detection, and also some of my thinking about how we must work to model the things that we want to see in our schools.  Always.  I thought ISTE was a good and useful conference.  Thanks to those of you who made it so for me.

Direct Link to Audio

In this podcast, recorded on my way in to the ISTE 2010 conference this morning, I talk through my conference experience so far.  I mention the Leadership Bootcamp, some of Chris’s thoughts about events like those, a conversation I’m having with Dean about digital writing, and some other highlights, as well as a concern I have about how we (don’t) read so well, perhaps.

Direct Link to Audio

So yesterday was the first ever ISTE/TIE Leadership Bootcamp, an event that I was happy to get the chance to assist with.  Before it gets too far away from me, I thought it’d be useful to get a few thoughts down about the day, events like it, and what’s next.

The event itself was pretty straight forward – get a bunch of smart people together and talking with each other, as well as sharing some suggestions for how we might best move forward in our various leadership capacities.  Prime folks ahead of time and invite lots of folks to come along in various capacities.  The frame of thinking about leadership as communication I thought was a good one, although perhaps understated.

Of course, at the Leadership Bootcamp, “leader” was defined pretty broadly.  As it should be.  There were teachers in the room.  Superintendents.  IT staff.  Librarians.  Plenty of other folks.  Point being – leaders aren’t just the folks running the ship there’s plenty of leadership for all of us to be engaged in and doing, no matter our roles and/or job titles.  Jeff Piontek got the day started, but I didn’t feel like we were in high gear and rocking and rolling until the first presenters got going.¹

From there, it was a non-stop roller coaster ride of content and conversation across several strands.  Of course, the best part of the day for me was the fact that twice folks were put into roundtable groups to process what they were hearing, seeing and thinking about.  I don’t think a formal “Stop.  Write.  Reflect.” component makes it into our professional learning opportunities.  But, as Chris reminded us during his lunch keynote, if you believe something’s important, but you don’t have it built into the structures and schedules of your organization, then you don’t really think it’s terribly important at all.²

The protocol for the roundtables wasn’t too complex, but it’s worth sharing.  So here it is.  Help yourself to it if you find it useful.  Here’s the graphic organizer that we used to help structure folks’ reflections.  Just a few minutes in a very busy day, but I think those were pretty important minutes.  If you were there, I’d be curious as to your take on that portion of the day, specifically.

The day ended with a panel where we were challenged, and rightly so, to figure out how to keep building momentum and moving forward to make the positive changes that we believe we should be seeing in education.  Chris even suggested that it might be time for a string of little events, Educons everywhere, as a way of keeping things moving.  I like that idea, and it’s one reason why we began Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation three years ago. ³

I hope that little events like the Leadership Bootcamp keep happening.  I hope that folks who attended saw that, yeah, they might could organize such events, too.⁴  The resources, in terms of schedule and process, are freely available.  They need only be used. ⁵  Again, if you were there, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the event.  There will be a follow up webinar to talk through what folks did with the day in October – I’m looking forward to that.⁶

Thanks to all of the presenters and facilitators and behind the scenes folks who made the day a useful one.  Special thanks to Michelle Bourgeois and Alison Saylor for co-ordinating the entire event. There were aw awful lot of really smart folks in the group. Let’s hope it, or something even better, happens again.  Lots.⁷

If you were there, let me know how it went and what could’ve been better.  Or tell ISTE directly – they’ve set up an evaluation survey for your feedback.

And now, on to ISTE.

1. And, I’ve got to be honest, I still don’t understand the “I wrote a book on blogging, but I don’t find it to be valuable and so I don’t do it” position that I’ve now heard Jeff articulate a couple of times.  I hope that I can hear more from him on that at some point, not because I think everyone should have a blog, but because I think if you’re going to value something enough to write a book about it, specifically one that encourages folks to use that thing, then perhaps you should be engaged in that thing, at least from time to time.  Help me understand that if you can. [↩]
2. And writing as a learning tool is terribly and wonderfully important, which is why I’m sitting here writing right now rather than heading off to visit or do something else. [↩]
3. Maybe it’s time that event became Learning 2.0: A Colorado Educon, instead.  I’d be okay with that. [↩]
4. “No one is coming to save us,” Chris says.  He’s right. [↩]
5. Which is, of course, the hard part. [↩]
6. Although, I worry, as I usually do, about whether or not folks will attend.  Seems to me like as much as people say they want to engage in longitudinal PD, it doesn’t happen much.  We seem to have “one shot day” stuck in our brains, and may, by then, have moved on to other things.  Let’s do better. [↩]
7. And, heck, across the street was another group of really smart folks at EduBloggerCon – it was too bad that the events were held at the same time – but it was neat to see so many people moving back and forth between the two.  I was one, if only briefly. [↩]

Anne Collier‘s sharing a new report on online safety and technology, “Youth Safety on a Living Internet.” I wasn’t eager to see yet another report, as I’ve read a few – but as I skimmed the first several pages, I understood why she was excited by the work.  She was the co-chair of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, the folks that produced the review, and there’s plenty of thoughtfulness baked in.  I’d encourage you to take a close look.  It’s indicative of a shift in thinking about how the Internet should be viewed and used by kids, teachers, parents and schools. (Notice – How.  Not if.)

In particular, I found the frank discussion of youth risks, while not new, to be refreshingly written.  Here’s a taste:

So, based on the research and the opinions of several experts, one of the biggest risks to children may be adults who try to shut down the informal learning involved in their use of Internet technologies at home or school. (p. 18)

Quite right.

There’s lots to like here.  I hope someone in a position to do something about the working group’s recommendations is taking good notes as they review the report. Anne’s got a full wrap up of coverage on her site.  The report’s below.

Online Safety and Technology Working Group Final Report

This is first draft thinking if ever such a thing existed. And it’s selfish. And personal. And close to home.

Ani goes to Kindergarten in the fall, so we spent the winter investigating schools around our town. We were looking for places that felt right for us – evidence of care and thoughtfulness, ties to particular district programs that we think are valuable or hope that Ani will have an interest in in the future, that sort of thing.

We settled on a short list of three elementary schools in our school district, the district where my wife is also a teacher. One of the schools, our first choice, was full up and we didn’t get selected into it. Of the two that remained, it was a draw. Until I attended parent nights. I could tell that both schools cared about kids, but I had a real concern about one of the two schools: the use of Accelerated Reader (AR).

While I was at the parent night where I learned about the school’s use of AR, I tweeted some of my questions and concerns, and began to hear back from many people about the pros and cons of AR.¹ Actually, that’s not true. There were a few lukewarm responses. But most of the replies, many of them private, were about bad² experiences that folks and their children had with the program. Phrases like “it sucked the joy out of reading” were sent to me by friends, colleagues, and near strangers from all over my Twittersphere.

And I swore to myself, as I listened and thought and considered, that I wouldn’t expose my daughter to such a program.

And yet, Ani will begin next year in that school, where AR is a large piece, according to the principal, of the formative assessment used by the Kindergarten teachers.³

That said, I’ve got some baggage around Accelerated Reader and programs like it. And I worry that my baggage is unfounded, particularly when people I know and respect choose to use the program. I don’t get it. And that bugs me.⁴

I know that motivation that springs from external sources isn’t terribly motivating when the external motivator is gone. In fact, I know that such external motivation can decrease one’s intrinsic motivation for the thing that being fiddled with. I was reminded of the tension between what I know about motivation and what I see thoughtful people doing when they use AR when I stumbled across this article in Time on Saturday.

The piece is a profile of some work being done by Roland Fryer, Jr., an economist at Harvard, to see what effect money can have on student performance. The angle that’s interesting is that he’s not looking at how to incentivize teaching – he’s looking to see if financial incentives can impact learning. Specifically, he’s paying kids to do certain things. And it’s fascinating work, for several reasons.

For starters, he ran into considerable trouble from grown ups when he proposed doing such studies, in part because folks (like me) get hinky whenever you talk about paying kids to do well in school.⁵ More on that in a moment.

I’m also curious because of the way he set his tests up – there are several different models in his study, ranging from paying 2nd graders $2/book to do some reading up to paying high school students a certain amount for every good grade they earn.

The author of the article, Amanda Ripley, does a good job summing up some of Edward Deci‘s work on motivation, which I’ve relied on in the past:

The most damning criticism of Fryer came from psychologists like the University of Rochester’s Edward Deci, who has spent his career studying motivation. Deci has found that money — like other tangible rewards — does not work very well to motivate people over the long term, particularly for tasks that involve creativity. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that rewards can have the perverse effect of making people perform worse.

A classic experiment in support of this hypothesis took place at a nursery school at Stanford University in the early 1970s. There, researchers divided 51 toddlers into groups. All the kids were asked to draw a picture with markers. But one group was told in advance that they would get a special reward — a certificate with a gold star and a red ribbon — in exchange for their work. The kids did the drawings, and the ones in the treatment group got their certificates.

A few weeks later, the researchers observed the children through a one-way mirror on a normal school day. They found that the kids who had received the award spent half as much time drawing for fun as those who had not been rewarded. The reward, it seemed, diminished the act of drawing. So instead of giving kids gold stars, Deci says, we should teach them to derive intrinsic pleasure from the task itself. “What we really want is for people to value the activity of learning,” he says. People of all ages perform better and work harder if they are actually enjoying the work — not just the reward that comes later.

In principle, Fryer agrees. “Kids should learn for the love of learning,” he says. “But they’re not. So what shall we do?” Most teenagers do not look at their math homework the way toddlers look at a blank piece of paper. It would be wonderful if they did. Maybe one day we will all approach our jobs that way. But until then, most adults work primarily for money, and in a curious way, we seem to be holding kids to a higher standard than we hold ourselves.

1. I also recorded a podcast about the experience. Give it a listen if you want to learn more. [↩]
2. terribly, horribly, awfully, no good, very bad [↩]
3. This post isn’t about the school, or their methodology. I’m excited to have Ani go there, although I am nervous about the experience. We’ll stay on top of it. I hope. [↩]
4. It fills me with terror and anxiety, actually. If I’m wrong about AR, what else am I wrong about? And AM I wrong about AR? [↩]
5. And we might be right to get hinky about such things. [↩]
6. I’m butchering the conclusions – you should really read the study for yourself. I’m planning on it. [↩]
7. Or a pizza, or a toy, or a whatever [↩]
8. Big suppositions, but I’m thinking out loud here. And about to ask you to help me think out loud better. [↩]

During the St. Vrain Valley School District‘s school board’s meeting this week, our boss, Executive Director of Instructional Technology Joe McBreen, shared with the Board a draft of our freshly revised and significantly re-written policies regarding computers, responsible behavior, and the Internet. The policies are still in draft form, and will change a teeny bit between now and formal adoption by the Board, but we wanted to share those drafts with you now, both to keep you posted and to help you prepare for the changes they contain.

If you’d like to watch the Board conversation regarding the policies, here’s a link to that video. The portion of the meeting regarding these policies begins at the time code 119:20 where Joe discusses the policy drafts.

You can find the three policy drafts here:

EHC (Overall philosophy statement) PDF

EHC-R (Responsible Use Guidelines) PDF

EHC-E2 (Student Responsible Use) PDF

We are pretty excited about a couple of things in these revised policies. For one, we’ve tried to re-write them in simpler and easier to understand language. For another, we are starting each list of responsibilities with positive actions, rather than a big list of “Don’ts.” And, of course, we are emphasizing behaviors over specific technologies in all of the documents, as we know that technology will change, but responsible behaviors and high expectations shouldn’t. Also, you might notice that we’ll be moving, in the future, to allowing students and staff to connect their own personal devices to our network for educational purposes.

We’d love to hear what you think about these draft policies; again, we’re excited about them. Please drop us a line in the comments. Remember that these are still drafts until approved by the school board.

(Cross-posted from the St. Vrain Instructional Technology blog)

photo credit: Bud the Teacher

I’m typically the guy who pays attention to the latest gadgets from a distance, reading up on them and learning about what they can or can’t do, but not striking on the first day of any new thing, for a number of reasons. For one, I’m cheap. I also don’t do well in lines or crowds. And buying most stuff on day one is buying into a public beta period, and often the better deal is a few weeks or months down the road as hardware is revised and software is tweaked.

But I had an extra few minutes on Saturday around noon, and I had a hunch about Apple’s iPad inventory. Namely, I figured they’d have plenty of devices to fiddle with at the Best Buy on my way home from the gym. So, with Ani and Teagan along for company, I wandered in to take a look at Apple’s iPad, released earlier that day.

I should interrupt my story here to tell you that, just prior to the visit to the store, I happened across this article on children and mobile devices for learning¹, so I’m certain that my brain was thinking about my children and learning when we made it into the store.

I spend lots of time thinking about how my kids and the kids in our schools will think, learn and live in a world that will be digitally quite different from the world I grew up in. And I find myself jumping back and forth from the positions of “It’s all the same – the stuff is different, but the world is the same place” and “Holy cow. There has never been a time or place like this one.”

And both are valid positions, but they coexist. I spend lots of time in the spaces between those two poles. I’m that guy who sees that there’s value in highly structured and sequenced learning as well as time for exploration and play without outwardly driven purpose. Most of the important things in life aren’t binary, they’re much more complex than that. And I digress. Still further.

The implications of the iPad have weighed heavily on my mind this week, as I’ve read pieces like Cory Doctorow’s:

Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Dale Dougherty’s piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard’s gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.

Plenty of other folks have, in the last few days, said some pretty interesting things about the iPad either being the end of the world as we know it or the beginning of a new revolution of creativity and interactivity – and I’m just² a dad trying to figure out how I want to introduce my daughters to the world of possibility and wonder that awaits them. I want them to tinker, to play, to explore and to dream. I want them to grab hold of the stuff of the world and make new from raw ingredients.

I worry that such making will happen in a locked down world, the world that Howard Zittrain saw when he wrote The Future of the Internet³, one where the generative devices that spawned the Internet become, like the iPad and the iPhone before it⁴, locked down and controlled by the people who make them, not the people who own them.

And even as I say that the iPad is a locked down device, I know that there’s creative opportunity and potential from within constraints, and that what’s locked down may or may not be a problem so long as there’s still a space for open, so long as there’s a multi-platform world where the languages spoken by one ecosystem are understood by others. My iPhone is a powerful tool. I suspect the iPad is, too.

But again, I’m a dad who’s struggling to figure out how to bring his children into the world of information and digital stuff while keeping roots in the good stuff of language and learning and literacy that came before the digital. ⁵

When we entered the store and fidgeted in a short line to play with the demo iPads, the girls were not interested. In the line. The moment they could get to the iPad, then begun to touch and poke and pinch and explore. They were immersed in the content, in words and letter and pictures and touch this to do that. I was struck by how powerful the experience was for them, more so than a random kids-touch-the-buttons experience. They were trying, as they could, to make meaning. I got what reviewers meant when they said that using the iPad was like interacting directly with the content, and not with the device the content’s delivered through. And, again, I know that it was the article and the pressure and the fact that I was a little high on the Apple expectations myself.

But I bought one. Against all my typical instincts and dispositions. Right then and there. What better lab for their experimentation? What father wouldn’t do such a thing?

I came to my senses about ten minutes later, just before I had to try to explain to Ms. the Teacher just what it was that I did, and just why it was necessary. She’s my grounding influence oftentimes, and she reminded me of a few things. Namely, I’m cheap, my kids have access to lots of the analog and digital world already, and, well, it’s early yet. There’s more exploration for me to do before I’m sure this is a useful tool for my girls. The right tool. Or one of several, which is more likely. I returned the iPad, unopened, later that night.

If you’ve made it this far, then you might be hoping this is the paragraph where I have the epiphany, the jewel that makes this experience worthwhile. And I’m so sorry to let you down. I’m finding that, often, there are few certainties when it comes to what technology is the right technology for helping kids to learn, or societies to remain free, or work to get done, or whatever it is that you want to make the tool do.

But my kids and I are going to be exploring this world together in a way that is new for me. As Ani heads out to Kindergarten next school year, and as Teagan’s not far behind her, there’s lots of work for us to do as co-learners together. Gadgets and gizmos and questions and tinkering. There’s much to do.

And there’re plenty of voices in the wilderness calling out to us with suggestions about how to do this thing.

We’re listening. But I’m also remembering what Ani’s face looks like in that picture at the top of this post, her tongue set between her lips as she digs in, determined, to play, to explore, to make. That’s a learning face. That’s what we’re aiming for.

And the clock⁶ is ticking.

1. Written by Anya Kamenetz, who’s also written this book on DIY Education that I’m very much looking forward to reading. [↩]
2. Just. I couldn’t understate the importance of that job more. [↩]
3. Yes, that’s a wonderful book that you can download for free. Read it. Please. [↩]
4. Two devices I find fascinating and yes, I use two iPhones. Daily. [↩]
5. Language that, itself, is a tool and a technology, like books and magazines and pencils and pens and ink and pretty much everything that folks think about when they think about the “good old days.” It’s all technology. I know. [↩]
6. Digital, analog, or otherwise [↩]

I sent slightly different versions of this letter to my legislators this afternoon. (I didn’t ask my senators to sign on to a House letter, for example. Nothing substantive.) If you support the National Writing Project, I hope you have done, or will do, the same. I would have written sooner – but this all happened as I was getting acquainted with Quinn. This is one of the first times I’ve been able to put fingers to keys in order to compose more than a few tweets. (Again – the iPhone is NOT the right long form writing device.)

Speaking of tweets, I should talk a bit about my latest gentle request for information from @EDPressSec, the official Twitter account for the U.S. Department of Education’s Press Office. It’s now been more than a week since I started asking why the ED had decided to eliminate the National Writing Project’s funding. I still don’t have an answer. As Zac has accurately pointed out, the press office stated in their 2011 press release on the appropriations proposal that programs removed were done so either because they “duplicate local or state programs or have not had a significant measurable impact.”

I don’t get it, and I have requested that @EDPressSec provide me with the data that they used to make the determination that a national network could be duplicated at the local or state level, or that the NWP has had no “significant measurable impact.” I’m hopeful that they’ll provide me with that information. Soon. But, if not, I’m asking my legislators to help me get that data. Seems like the right question to be asking. Thanks to those of you who are asking it along with me. The question should be easy enough to answer, and my fingers are crossed that this is certainly some big misunderstanding.

(If you’d like to see the entire conversation between myself and @EDPressSec, I’ve created a Twitter account and favorited the exchange. Start at the bottom and read up. I’ll keep updating as the conversation continues. I hope it’ll be productive. I really do respect that the press office is on Twitter, and I hope they work to create more opportunities for teachers and policymakers to actively be in meaningful conversation.)
________________
Dear Rep. Markey, Sen. Bennet, and Sen. Udall:

I have grave concerns regarding the proposed elimination of the National Writing Project’s federal funding from the current Education Appropriation Bill. I cannot tell you of a program that I believe is more essential to good teaching, learning and thinking in our schools today.

In light of that opening, I am writing today to seek your assistance with two items:

1. I would like for you to show your support for the National Writing Project by signing on to Rep. George Miller’s Dear Colleague letter of support for 2011 funding for the NWP.
2. I have asked the press office, via Twitter, of the Education Department for information regarding why they removed funding for the National Writing Project from their appropriations request. I need your assistance in obtaining that information, as they don’t seem able to provide it to me. I was hoping your office might help me navigate the issue.

I work as an instructional technologist for the St. Vrain Valley School District. Prior to my transition to providing professional development to teachers in a district support role, I was a classroom language arts teacher for five years with the same school district. I am certain that I have experienced no better model of professional development than that of the National Writing Project. Since I first learned of and participated in a local project at Colorado State University, my students have benefited from my exposure to the NWP, as have the hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students similarly impacted by their programs.

Writing remains essential to student and societal success. The National Writing Project, through its network of local affiliates spread out across the country, makes a substantial difference for students everyday. We would be foolish not to support them.

(My colleague, Zac Chase of Philadelphia, PA, has written a brief letter explaining some of the data regarding NWP’s success. You can view that here.)

In Colorado, three NWP-affiliated local writing project sites work to promote the same ideals of teachers teaching teachers. Each of those programs would be in jeopardy if not for the support of the national network and their matching funds.

I do hope that you will consider signing on to the “Dear Colleague” letter.

I would be happy to speak further with you about the National Writing Project. I’d also love the opportunity to invite you and/or your staff to a NWP or CSUWP event in the near future. There’s always room for more writers. We’d love to see you.

I look forward to discussing navigating the Department of Education’s decision process soon.

Sincerely,

Bud Hunt
Instructional Technologist
St. Vrain Valley School District
Teacher Consultant
Colorado State University Writing Project

Jaron Lanier, in his new book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, writes:

Every save-the-world cause has a list of suggestions for “what each of us can do”: bike to work, recycle, and so on.

I can propose such a list related to the problems I’m talking about:

• Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.
• If you put effort into Wikipedia articles, put even more effort into using your personal voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people who don’t yet realize that they are interested in the topics you contributed to.
• Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won’t fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.
• Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view.
• Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.
• If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine.

These are some of the things you can do to be a person instead of a source of fragments to be exploited by others. (p 49-50 of the B&N eReader edition.)

I’m thinking that Lanier, so far, is overselling his case that we are, in fact, becoming locked-in to a particular way of thinking, being and doing because of the technologies that are shaping our world today. Yes, I think such lock-in can occur – but only when we don’t pay attention to it.  Television and movies provide similar opportunities to fiddle with reality.  And have for some time.

But I think his calls to action are dead on.  And not so terribly new.  We’ve been creating culture through media for a very long time.  I wonder who has written similar calls to action against becoming so swept up by professionalism or industrialism or society’s particular rules of okayedness that folks forget to feel. (Yes.  That last sentence was sarcasm – much of the literature that I find fascinating is a reaction in some way to whatever the writer finds to be an artificial limit placed on humanness.  I’m thinking this book fits in the “literature” category more than the “nonfiction” shelf.  But it’s early yet.  I’m only a couple of chapters in.)

I wonder who will write about that next.

This book is, so far as I’ve gotten, as much poem as argument.  He writes in the preface that “You have to be somebody before you can share yourself.”  He’s right.

How are you supporting your somebody before you’re racing to share?