A smarter Easy Button called Twine!

February 13, 2012February 17, 2012 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

John Kestner reminds me of Steve Wozniak. He’s always tinkering with a gizmo that could potentially change lifestyles, even incrementally.

There was the Tableau, a coffee-table-like device that was a connected dashboard for your home. Basically an ‘anti-computer experience’.

There was his digital wallet –not a new idea, but it was packed with easy-to-figure out features. You could see his ideas here.

But this latest one, also developed at the MIT lab with co-inventor David Carr, is called Twine. It is a potential killer app, to use the term a bit loosely. It is, in their words, a way for people who don’t know how to program or solder, to be able to listen in on your (digital and analog) world, and talk to the web.

John and David are looking for funding, and on Kickstarter, have already raised over $556,00. Take a look, listen to the simplicity of how it works. I’m not saying all of us want to be this connected, or need to talk to the web.

BUT, if this is just the first iteration, it could end up simplifying anything from digital due diligence (painstakingly carried out with expensive software), to becoming security sensors (miniaturized and embedded in shipment containers). Or, who knows it could be a plug and play box from Best Buy that makes the average soccer mum –the ones who don’t yet know PHP or HTML5– less complicated.

If only there was an Easy button for raising capital!

Twine : Listen to your world, talk to the Internet from Supermechanical on Vimeo.

Since students are digital, are classrooms too analog?

January 29, 2012January 29, 2012 / Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

I just spoke to a parent of a student, frustrated that the standard in a so-called ‘high achievement’ school seems to be dropping. The unspoken question seems to be “why are schools still stuck in the Reading, Writing, “Rithmetic rut?” Or, as some wonder, why are schools not educating the whole child?

A reports earlier this month in TIME magazine, Why it’s time to Replace ‘No Child Left Behind’ is enough to make one agitated!

Many studies say that rut in question, is an obsessive exam mentality that needs an overhaul. School systems have become fixated with preparing children to pass exams, but don’t have the resources to prepare them for the other exam out there –the exam known as Life! Which is exactly what that parent was anxious about.

US policymakers have been alerted to this. A recent Harvard study of student achievement on global perspective (EducationNext.Org) found that unless we fix math and reading skills, the outlook in the global economy looks grim.

Not that this is exclusively an US problem.

Europeans, too are worried. A recent study on how education and training is meeting the needs of the digital world and the European economy (‘The Future of Learning: Preparing For Change’) say that schools need to make a fundamental shift if Europe is to remain competitive. Students will need to be competent in “problem solving, reflection, creativity, critical thinking, learning to learn, risk-taking, collaboration, entrepreneurship.”

Should we take our curriculum back to the drawing board? Should we redesign the classroom?

Yes, but... If there are is one thing I am frustrated about, it is the rush to plunk computers in front of students, and think this will solve all our problems. The argument goes like this. Our kids are digital natives, so getting them to take down notes on ruled paper, and listen to a teacher is not the best way to engage them.

I work in digital and analog environments, and have been a big advocate of bridging the gap between these two realms. That does not mean replacing one with the other. A tablet will not automatically make a child collaborative and yearn for deeper knowledge, just as (to paraphrase an old saying) owning a library card will not automatically make a person well read. Preparing students for a 21st century workforce requires us to make them much more than just digital. The European JRC European Commission study calls for education to be more “personalized, collaborative, and informalized.” One could write an entire paper on these three areas.

Sure let’s redesign the classroom, but let’s not discount the importance of a value added teacher who brings extra-curricular knowledge into his/her material. In fact, the term ‘High Value Added Teacher’ is now being used by one Harvard study –see video below.

Also, on a more optimistic note, there’s a great experiment about ‘Active Learning Classrooms’ worth watching. I like how it is not just the students, but the teacher who is adapting to the new learning classroom as well. Inspiring video!

Will tablets and smart phones kill conversations?

January 22, 2012January 24, 2012 / Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

A few weeks back, I passed a sad tableau of an Asian family: a dad and two sons waiting for Mum outside a Chinese grocery store. All three of them were silently thumbing away on their iPhones. In cars, in waiting rooms, the tablet and the smart phone has become the new baby sitter.

Over the past five years, having reported social media’s many benefits I often have to step back and wonder about what it means to be too much digital.

We have become so used to being ignored while having a conversation with someone with a Blackberry that we sometimes take it for granted.

It’s not just an etiquette problem as some have alerted us to in the past few years. It’s a social problem that will have deeper ramifications –too much ‘media’ perhaps – as we marvel at how connected we are.

It generates caricatures such as this and this.

Smart phones don’t automatically make us smarter. (Perfectly captured in that Geico commercial that poses that rhetorical question.)
Likewise one more screen in the home won’t make us better informed. While we do see attempts to engage students better using tablets, social media and other digital platforms, parents and educators need to add some caveats. Teaching children media literacy would be a start.

There is a connection between learning to have ‘conversations’ and learning how to learn by deconstructing information presented –a.k.a. discourse analysis. I am planning to connect my Robotics class with a class in Thailand, soon, and have given much thought to the balance of a traditional class with a digital experience where students will talk to each other with and without digital devices. More on this later.

I will leave you with two great pieces :

“Tablets are good, content is better, and teachers are the best.”
How the iPad2 will revolutionize education – Fast Company‘s feature from last year

Enjoy! And do send me your thoughts, comments.

When PR gets muddied, the big mops come out

January 14, 2012January 14, 2012 / Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Let’s hope the PR industry cleans up its house 2012.

Two stories at the end of last year really hit home that it’s time to bring out the big mops to clean out the stables.

The British case of executives in a lobbying and PR firm, Bell Pottinger, bragging that they could influence politicians and ..Google search results through some ‘creative’ tactics. Hmmm! Here’s how The Independent newspaper in the UK reported on the sting operation:

“Reporters from the Bureau posed as agents for the government of Uzbekistan – a brutal dictatorship responsible for killings, human rights violations and child labour – and representatives of its cotton industry in a bid to discover what promises British lobbying and public relations firms were prepared to make when pitching to clients, what techniques they use, and how much of their work is open to public scrutiny.”*

The sting was conducted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The claim that it could do some ‘image laundering’, and what they called ‘dark arts’ struck me as nothing new. Bell Pottinger is in good (bad) company.

If you look closely at lobby firms, they seem to dabble in this pseudo science. Why? because dictators and bad governments are gullible enough to believe that their record could be scrubbed clean with a bit of good

The Livingston Group, which is a lobbying firm offering PR, proudly lists the foreign ministry of Libya as a client; other clients include universities corporations and other countries –such as the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Turkey. Here’s a short list:

Muammar Qadaffi had a PR agency back in 2008, called Brown Lloyd James. It specializes in Government Relations.
During the first Gulf war, the government of Kuwait was known to have used about 20 PR, law and lobby firms. One of them, with a strong reputation for Government Relations, was The Rendon Group. It practically stage-managed stories around the ‘liberation’ of the country.
China uses a PR agency for what it calls calls “external propaganda work and culture exchange.”
The Podesta Group was an influential lobby for Hosni Mubarak’s regime. It calls itself “a bipartisan government relations and public affairs firm with a reputation for employing creative strategies to achieve results.”

Fortunately, regarding the Bell Pottinger PR scandal, the most reputable organizations, including the CIPR (the UK PR bocy) and the PRSA (the US equivalent) have come out and condemned this practice. They rightfully call their claims idiotic or unethical.

And the other story?

A minor skirmish, but it involved the world’s largest agency, Edelman. The agency parted ways with its client, Twitter after a few months. But the fall out was not so much about PR practice but how they handled the break-up. Edelman was in the news last year when it took on Rupert Murdock’s News Corp.

As for the PR industry, there is an interesting move worth following. The PRSA is in the process of updating the definition of PR. This was the definition, in place since 1982:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

The new definitions, being voted on are here: worth reading, and watching out for!

Two interesting sidebars to the Bell Pottinger story, above:

* Bell Pottinger also mentions representing the government of Sri Lanka as one of its clients. The transcript speaks for itself.

* The chairman of Bell Pottinger, Lord Tim Bell, was the former media adviser to Margaret Thatcher, and chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi. As you know, the movie The Iron Lady is now showing.

2011 dominated by people rather than technology

December 31, 2011January 3, 2012 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It’s impossible to overstate how tumultuous a year 2011 has been.

Every year we seem to think that we have been shaken, twisted around, rudely awakened. Usually it’s about technology. But usually it’s about some life-changing technology, or a new ways of doing things. Refreshingly, this year there was a large human dimension to it, some of which I covered here on this blog.

It was as if we were looking through a camera and switching between two filters: Pro-democracy and Anti-terrorism. But we also saw a share of media events, some even about the media!

The people’s revolutions in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Russia, Libya…
In a surprising move, the US captured and killed of Osama Bin Laden — ten years after he declared war on the US.
Then there was Occupy Wall Street, a movement pooh-poohed by many but seemed to catch on, franchise-like, sprouting arms, posters, and megaphones…
The shooting (and amazing recovery) of congresswoman Gabby Giffords dominated the early part of the year. At least here in Arizona.
The media scandal in the UK rocking Rupert Murdock’s empire.
The Kate and William extravaganza in the media -a.k.a. the royal wedding.
The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan in April.
The passing away of Steve Jobs –perhaps slightly exaggerated as an ‘event’ (even on this blog!) But it made us consider how one man could have impacted so many.
Aung Su Kyi returned to the political arena, registering to run in upcoming elections