Talk It Up!

How smartphones are making us smarter

Pew study shows Americans use their mobile devices to connect and research

Americans are using their smartphones to text their friends, send photos to their friends, and look up information on the internet. Doesn't sound like we are becoming more isolated or more stupid from using a smartphone.

Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project did a survey this spring of over 2,000 American adults, asking about how and why they used their mobile devices. The phone survey revealed that the two most popular activities for both smartphone and feature phone users were texting and sending pictures to friends. The third most popular activity was accessing the internet to look up information on the spot, and that activity was differentiated among smartphone users (84%) and feature phone users (15%).

Not more alienated; more connected

The first two activities would counter the argument that constant access to a communication device and the internet is making people as a whole more alienated, less connected and inclined to ignore the world around them. While some folks may be running into lamp posts while looking down at their cell phone, the activity that is driving them is communication with another human being. While they may not be as engaged as they used to be in walking down the street, one can clearly make the argument that the primary activity they are driven to do is to connect with other people. Sending a text is communication; sending a photo is communication.

Score one against the mobile device alienation camp.

The teachable moment

What I found most telling was the #3 activity: looking up information real time on the internet. I find this the best habit I've picked up from having a smart phone. Over the past few months, I've looked up the following in the course of casual conversation:

•   What year Pat Benatar recorded Heartbreaker
• A photo of a goat
• What a cheese press is and how to make one
• When the Victoria Clipper leaves
• How champagne is made and designated as "champagne"
• The population of Seattle (over 600K, BTW)

Lazy and stupid? Hardly. Having the information at one's fingertips does provide what in the pedagogical world we called "the teachable moment." By way of background information, I spent two years teaching French at the University of Texas at Austin and five years thereafter developing French textbooks for Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

And as any teacher will tell you, the act of looking something up oneself makes that bit of information more likely to be retained. Instead of wondering what the facts are during conversation or relying on the other conversant to supply them, now mobile device users can actively look up the information themselves and get the facts immediately. And what's fascinating is that the act of looking up the information oneself makes the user more inclined to embed and recall that information at a later date, versus passively absorbing the information through lecture or conversation. The fact that mobile device users now take the time to look up data means they are more inclined to absorb the information and use it later.

In short, stuff we look up ourselves in a relevant context is more likely to be retained.

Score one against the "internet makes us stupider" camp.

What have your experiences been? Do you feel more informed from having instant access to information? Or do you feel more alienated when others text during live social interactions?

Setting kids up to fail: does education squash creativity?

Last night, I attended my first Biznik event in Seattle. It was focused on The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, a new business book by John Hagel and John Seeley Brown (abbreviated in Tweets as JSB). I haven't read the book yet, but I'm very much looking forward to it.

Hagel and JSB had some solid information to share on the power of pull and what draws people together, whether it be through the medium of social media or in other life channels, including my favorite tidbit of the evening: passion begets passion. Passionate people seek each other out. (To which I added my own geeky insight: visit any Trekkie convention for proof!)

However, one of their insights made me a bit tetchy. The statement was made that the educational system in this country is steadfastly designed to squash creativity. Heads nodded, and the conversation continued, as if the statement were an accepted truth, such as "we all pay taxes" or "no one trusts Congress."

As a student who was always encouraged and challenged by nearly every teacher, professor and trainer that I've ever come in contact with and as a former devoted writer of high school textbooks, I was taken aback at the universal acceptance of this statement. Is this truly an accepted truth? I had always assumed that those who'd muttered this type of educational put-down were those whose thinking was either so far outside the norm as to be disruptive to the learning of others--a select few. Does everyone really believe this, or is it just something that no one bothers to argue with? Was everyone other than me treated with disrespect by every teacher? Was no one else encouraged to think critically, to push themselves, to be creative and rewarded for doing so?

I had fantastic teachers. In elementary school, they gave me extra work because I'd ace the spelling test the first time in. In middle school, they challenged me to think differently about Texas history and what a Pringles can is for. I loved high school so much I didn't want to leave: Mrs. Burrows, 9th grade English, got me so passionate about literature I found out which books the non-AP kids were reading and read all of those, too. Another one dressed up like Charles Dickens and subjected herself to our literary grilling. Mrs. Sinnamon, my beloved French teacher, got us all college-level books so we could start writing thoughtful essays and doing projects instead of just grammatical work (that was during a time when the pedagogical trend in language instruction was grammar-based, not communication-based). I still have my 12th grade British literature book to this day because the textual explorations with Mrs. Dale were what I looked forward to every day. My god, we memorized the intro to The Canterbury Tales and loved it! And Mrs. Bartlett instilled in me a deep love and appreciation of European history and art history that influenced both my French major and art history minor in college and led me to a master's degree in French literature.

I spent the first eight years of my professional career in the educational publishing industry, working as a staff French textbook writer for Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, textbook sales to high school teachers at Heinle & Heinle and then an English and grammar editor at McDougal Littell. Every staff member I worked with was a former teacher, driven by passion to create classroom materials to help busy teachers to inspire students to creativity. At Holt, the French department was a small team of devoted former teachers, all seeking to make the classroom fun for students and instructors. We'd spend staff meetings arguing the grammar/rote versus communication approach for the textbook series we were scoping. At McDougal, I proofed samples of real student sample essays showing innovative approaches to the literature and critical thinking skills, encouraging student to not just grasp the story but offer and support personal insights on its message.

In my experience, dedicated teachers, both in the classroom and writing textbooks, are what has helped form our educational institutions. And there are a lot of dedicated teachers out there. I  know; I've worked with dozens of them. I'm not claiming that every school or every teacher is perfect. I've no doubt there are some bad apples out there. So I wonder: is the institution really all that broken, or are there just some bad teachers out there?

Ignite 9 in Seattle

When I came in to the office today, our project manager extraordinaire, Kristina Miller, raised an eyebrow and said, "Wow. You were really busy last night," in reference to the prolific stream of Tweets coming out of Seattle's Ignite 9.

I can't help it. How often are you in a room of so many exponentially intelligent people, dishing out ideas in five-minute blasts?

Ignite Seattle is like a mini-TED conference, with speakers given exactly five minutes and 20 slides, rotating automatically every 15 seconds. With origins in O'Reilly and Make, it's a celebration of geekitude and innovation of the cleverest kind. The events have become so popular that organizers started charging a minimal entry fee ($5) to cover costs and to keep the King Cat Theater from overflowing.

Last night's event brought speakers on topics from How to Have an Argument to Kite-Powered Wind Energy to No SQL. If you didn't like a speaker, hey, no problem--another one will be up in five minutes. If you did, speakers all provided contact information in a final slide. Or you could gather for the afterparty and pick brains while sipping a beer.

My favorite speakers of the evening were Monica Guzman and Jason Preston offering How to Have an Argument, and Becky Anderson giving Business Lessons from Star Wars:

The other benefit of attending Ignite Seattle (apart from the yummy brain juice) is that all the cool kids come out to play. Our favorite exotic-accented podcaster, Paolo Tosolini, was conducting interviews for the Live Stream, and the cream of the social media crop came out to play:

 

Colleen Carrington and Cheryl Nichols

 

The live stream--Paolo is the blur!

Icebreaker activity pre-Ignite

Don't follow your passion

Image by andrewhyde.net via CrunchBase

Last night, I had the pleasure of finally meeting Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend, currently working at TechStars, the premier venue for starting a startup. He was also a judge and reviewer for last year's Knight News Challenge, helping the Knight Foundation to choose the best innovators to receive $5 million in grants.

And he told me something interesting last night. He asked if I'd seen Mike Rowe's TED talk (I hadn't). Mike Rowe, host of the TV show Dirty Jobs, makes it his living to apprentice to those men and women with the filthiest, smelliest, hardest hands-on jobs out there--the ones that "make civilized life possible for the rest of us," as the show's intro proclaims.

In his TED talk, Mike Rowe gives advice that is counter-intuitive to most of us, in particular the Gen X'ers:

'Follow your passion' is the worst advice I ever got.

I blinked. What? Aren't we supposed to love what we do and never work a day again in our lives? Aren't we supposed to rise ourselves out of the sleepwalking daze of working stiffs to live every day to its fullest? And isn't the only way to do that to follow our passions?

Not so, says Rowe:

The ones who really get things done in this world, Rowe insists, are the ones who don't put their passion (or their safety) first. They put the job first. They see a need, and they get things done. They don't worry about the money (although oddly enough, it tends to follow them). They focus on the business of work.

And Rowe brings up another point: as a society, we've declared war on work. We've placed a value on doing less work, and we portray hard workers as heroes or punchlines but nothing in between.

Personally, I'm not likely to be castrating any sheep with my teeth any time soon. But as someone who grew up with the follow-your-passion mantra, Rowe's talk gave me pause. We can't all be idea people. We shouldn't all be creative people. And working hard doesn't mean you're a sucker. Or any less creative, for that matter. It's not about finding your dream job; job satisfaction comes from seeing an opportunity and working your butt off to make it happen.

That doesn't necessarily have to happen on a pig farm. But we'd all do well to remember that it can.

Want advice? Ask a kid

You want an original idea or a new twist on a boring, old idea or tradition? Know the best place to go? The pool. Know the best person to ask? A kid.

Yup. A kid. I was in the pool at the gym yesterday, doing some water aerobics and bored with everything that I already teach. The rest of the pool was occupied by a dozen kids under the age of 10 and all of their toys. And by "all of their toys," I mean everything the gym stocked--dozens of red, yellow and blue kickboards; orange, yellow, blue and green styrofoam noodles; and a half-dozen blue pull floats. They weren't using the kickboards to kick; they were placing five of them side-by-side, like multicolored lily pads, and jumping over them from the side of the pool, like Evil Knievel jumping cars on his motorcycle.

They weren't using the noodles for floating, either; they would have an adult hold one up in an arch as they kids would try to jump through (or sometimes, over) it from the side of the pool.

I think I spent more time watching them than I did with my own workout! But I was curious--I'd never used the pull floats in class. Hmm. So I asked one pre-teen girl who was splashing around:

Me: "How do you use this?"
Her: "Um... I think you put it between your knees and swim using just your arms."
Me: "No, I mean how you you use it?"
Her: "Oh," she giggled, "I try to stand on it and not fall off."

I grinned and tried it. It was hard! "My class will hate this!" I said gleefully.

So I stopped working out and started playing like a kid. I came up with three new exercises to work abs and arms--all fun, all easy, all new. And all inspired by kids.

Want a new outlook on an issue? Watch kids. Then ask them what they would do.