Beyond School

(Thanks, Karl!)

Here’s Karl’s html text for “Did You Know…?” Links below. This piggybacks on the “The Machine is Us/ing Us” text v. multimedia comparison of my last post.

Here’s Karl’s text:

Text for Did You Know Presentation

Several folks have asked for just the text of the Did You Know presentation. You can find it below. The original presentation (http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/08/did-you-know.html) includes slides at the beginning that are specific to my school. (You can also find sources for the information and the original context of the presentation there.)

Scott McLeod’s Remix (http://scottmcleod.typepad.com/dangerouslyirrelevant/2007/01/gone_fischin.html) removes AHS-specific slides and adds one MySpace slide. There are also various other remixes on the web that have different slides (typically specific to local schools/states/countries).

1. Did You Know . . .

2. AHS has 249 new computers this fall.

3. 212 of them are from grants.

4. AHS has 33 new LCD projectors this fall.

5. 33 of them from grants.

6. AHS has a wireless network running right now (802.11 a/b/g).

7. District wireless devices have full access to the network (Internet, file servers, and printing).

8. Anybody’s 802.11 a/b/g device has access to the Internet (but not file servers or printers).
   

*Scott’s version starts here.

9. Did you know . . .

10. Sometimes size does matter.

11. If you’re one in a million in China . . .

12. There are 1,300 people just like you.

13. In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.

14. The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ’s . . .

15. Is greater than the total population of North America.

16. In India, it’s the top 28%.

17. Translation for teachers: They have more honors kids than we have kids.

18. Did you know . . .

19. China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world.

20. If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China . . .

21. China would still have a labor surplus.

22. During the course of this 8 minute presentation . . .

23. 60 babies will be born in the U.S.
    244 babies will be born in China.
    351 babies will be born in India.

24. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs . . .

25. By the age of 38.

26. According to the U.S. Department of Labor . . .

27. 1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company they have been employed by for less than one year.

28. More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company they have worked for for less than five years.

29. According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley . . .

30. The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.

31. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist . . .

32. Using technologies that haven’t been invented . . .

33. In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

34. Name this country . . .

35. Richest in the World
    Largest Military
    Center of world business and finance
    Strongest education system
    World center of innovation and invention
    Currency the world standard of value
    Highest standard of living

36. England.

37. In 1900.

38. Did you know . . .

39. The U.S. is 20^th in the world in broadband Internet penetration.
    (Luxembourg just passed us.)

40. In 2002 alone Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development.

41. The U.S. Federal Government spent less than half as much on Research and Innovation in Education.

42. 1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.

43. There are over 100 million registered users of MySpace.(August 2006)
    *Scott updated to 106 million for September 2006 and added this slide:
    If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th-largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico)*

44. The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.

45. Did you know . . .

46. We are living in exponential times.

47. There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.

48. To whom were these questions addressed B.G.?
    (Before Google)

49. The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.

50. There are about 540,000 words in the English language . . .

51. About 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.

52. More than 3,000 new books are published . . .

53. Daily.

54. It’s estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times . . .

55. Contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18^th century.

56. It’s estimated that 1.5 exabytes (that’s 1.5 x 10¹⁸) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.

57. That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.

58. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.

59. That means for a student starting a four-year technical or college degree . . .

60. Half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

61. It’s predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.

62. Third generation fiber optics has recently been separately tested by NEC and Alcatel . . .

63. That pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber.

64. That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second.

65. It’s currently tripling about every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.

66. The fiber is already there, they’re just improving the switches on the ends. Which means the marginal cost of these improvements is effectively $0.

67. Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.

68. 47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year.

69. The $100 laptop project is expecting to ship between 50 and 100 million laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries.

70. Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the Human Brain . . .

71. By 2023, a $1,000 computer will exceed the capabilities of the Human Brain . . .

72. First grader Abby will be just 23 years old and beginning her (first) career . . .

73. And while technical predictions farther out than about 15 years are hard to do . . .

74. Predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.

75. What does it all mean?

76. Shift Happens.

77. Now you know . . .

The Fischbowl: http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com

Fischbowl Presentations: http://www.lps.k12.co.us/schools/arapahoe/fisch/fischbowlpresentations.htm

~~~~~~~Now let’s compare to Scott McLeod’s remix of Karl’s work:

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

Bud Hunt at Bud the Teacher recently posted a link to the text version of the now-viral “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video and suggests classroom (and teacher) reflection on the differences between the pure-text medium and the web 2.0 version.

I’ve had the same idea for a while–ever since presenting Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know?” video to my school admin in early January. I kept pausing Karl’s video to invite the administrators to reflect on how much more effective the video was as a communication medium over the traditional way–printing out Karl’s text and handing copies to everyone to read and discuss.

My superintendent–a wonderful literacy enthusiast–chimed in with some great comments. She noted the critical thinking involved in Karl’s isolation of only the most powerful information for inclusion in the video, and articulated how much skill it takes to separate the wheat from the chaff in this way. “That’s critical thinking,” she said.

She also noted the power of the timing of Karl’s text, and how radical this ability to control the readers’/audience’s pace of reading was–thanks to web2.0. It was a great thing, having these conversations about web2.0 as new literacies, and not as technology.

Yes, we all know that, but ritual repetition creates new realities. So it bears repeating.

SO…Bud posted the link to the text for “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” I’m just going to copy and paste it below, followed by the video itself–so now the “lesson” is all in one place. (And Karl, I can’t find an embeddable version of “Did You Know?”, nor a text version, to add to this exercise. Can you help out by showing me where they might be? It’s so worth doing!)

Here’s the text (with some formatting glitches I tried but failed to fix, sorry):

Now here’s the video:

(By the way, I posted it on my class blog–not as an “assignment,” just sharing–and here are two unsolicited, and pregnant, student comments from ninth graders:

2 Comments

1. wow, this is a cool video
   it really does show that text on screen can do so much more than lead on paper.

   — February 4, 2007

2. awesome!
   it clearly shows that networking is far more efficient then writing!
   The these stuff confuses me
   hope i can learn them and be an expert in computer networking

   — February 4, 2007

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

Bloglines’ official response from this (different) Bloglines forum:

Re: Image Wall is [...] Wall

Posted by: dloc(IP Logged)

Date: February 19, 2007 06:36AM

The Image Wall is meant to be a snapshot of what is out there. It can be used both as a tool to find new interesting feeds as well as just to watch and see what people think is cool.

However, unlike a purely Flickr wall, we are pulling images from RSS feeds all over the internet. This means that just as you will see adult images, you may also see various political, current-event, sports related, technology-oriented, or miscellaneous images on the internet.

If you find an image to be offensive, please report that image. We go through our logs daily to cull out domains that store images our users find offensive.

And my reply (am I missing something?):

Re: Image Wall is [...] Wall

[My reply]

Date: February 19, 2007 08:53PM

Educators and people at the work place won’t be able to use Bloglines because of Image Wall. And marking pictures as offensive? a) We’re all busy; b) There will always be more.

Not a good idea, this. Boycotts are being discussed.

It’s not a great feature anyway.

I really urge a cost-benefit analysis. So far, I’ve seen more people responding with “Great–I can’t use Bloglines at work or school any more” because of this, far more than people saying, “Wow. Image Wall is so great I’ll drop my service with (name you’re far more widget-friendly reader) just to sign up with BL for this great top-down widget.”

Why not let USERS choose widgets? This is what Netvibes does.

I don’t mean to be rude, but you seem to be behind the times in your approach to web 2.0.

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

I really don’t want to leave Bloglines. It’s been my morning (and afternoon, and evening) read for at least two years. It’s comfy shoes. Google Reader? Netvibes? They have a lot more, but they miss a few things. And who wants to re-make all those tutorials?

But Miguel’s call for a boycott (and Barbara’s post and Clarence’s comment on the headaches this whole thing is causing) gave me this idea:

Why don’t we use the Bloglines forums and give them a chance to change?

To concentrate things, you might just follow this link and reply there. Here’s what I wrote:

Date: February 19, 2007 06:56PM

Subject: Get Rid of Image Wall

See this link: [www.mguhlin.net]

Do a search of “image wall” and maybe “education” and you will see that the image wall is causing headaches for teachers and educators around the world.

We all have to quit Bloglines and migrate our students to another aggregator because of this bone-headed idea.

Please just get rid of Image Wall. It’s just a silly gimmick anyway.

The Bloglines Boycott it’s causing seems to be having the opposite effect.

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

Sorry about those last few posts. Impulses.

Here they are in correct order (and of course, I’m thinking of students and newbies here as the beneficiaries, not most of you out there who are actually teaching me):

1. Creating a Bloglines account, subscribing to recommended feeds, and organizing them in folders is here.

2. Skimming feeds and using “keep as new” is here.

3. Searching for posts and feeds related to your research is here.

4. Setting Bloglines as your default RSS aggregator on Firefox is here.

5. Subscribing to tagged searches on del.icio.us using Bloglines is here.

(NOTE: Bloglines went discreet with its new feature, but you can always use the same basic steps for Netvibes or Google Reader. It’s just that neither of them have “keep new”, which is what keeps me using Bloglines.)

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)