Category Archives: Daily-Ink

Having choice

There are billions of people in our world that are constrained by not having enough choice.

How many people in the world don’t have a choice of what their next meal will be? How much they will get? How nourishing it is?

How many children must work, and do not have the opportunity to go to school?

How many children do not have a choice of more than one thing to wear? Or are forced to wear something for religious reasons?

How many people pray to an unjust and cruel God, for fear of the wrath of their own family or community, (and not God), to ask questions?

How many people are not given the chance to speak out against their ruling government for fear of imprisonment or death?

Basic human and civil liberties are something that have improved over the past 50 years, and simple metrics like reductions in poverty and in deaths by malnutrition tell us this. But in an ever shrinking world brought together by the internet, inequalities are far more visible. And the sensitive nature of some of these topics are such that people speaking out can face ridicule, harassment, and might even fear for their lives.

Some people are given less choice about how they get to live their lives: The language they speak, their geography, their ethnicity, their gender, their sexual orientation, their parents, their social and economic status, all these can in some way limit or privilege the choices a person has. But for many, they are not limited in their ability to see what others have, and even show off, that they do not have. Affluence and privilege is flaunted openly and excessively. This creates an even bigger divide, because the rich and the famous so obviously have choices that others do not. Agency feels relative when comparing those who have much of it from those that do not.

How important is the right to basic survival (food and shelter)?

How important is the right to a good education?

How important are civil rights and freedoms?

These are all vitally important when they are not available, and easy to undervalue when they are readily available. When we are given the freedom and choices others are not, what is our obligation to speak up and to help the less fortunate?

What obligation should the wealthiest people of the world, those with the most choice, have towards those with less choice?

If you earned $1,300.00 a day for 2,000 years, you still wouldn’t be a billionaire. If you spent $36,000.00 a day for 75 years, you still would not have spent a billion dollars. How is it that the number of billionaires in the world are growing? What does this small group of people need this much money for?

Inequalities are so blatantly obvious in our world today. Some of these are being addressed in amazing ways, but globally inequalities are being exaggerated. Geography, wealth, culture, and history matter significantly and these all factor into the choices people have and, in many cases, the choices people don’t have. I think the most powerful choice we can make is to choose what we value, and devote time, effort, and compassion to those with less choice than us… and not valuing fortune, fame, and financial affluence. This is a choice we can all make.

3 ways that people are digitally evil

I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I think it is a tool that has a challenging entry point, but with a little help and advice, it can be a powerful place to learn and build a great PLN.

It can also be used for evil.

Now, to be honest, I don’t see this very often because I don’t look for it. I see a whole lot of good in my Twitter feed, but here are 3 ways people use Twitter that are digitally evil, and would probably be less likely to happen in a face-to-face conversation:

1. Ad hominem attacks.

Ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”),[1] short for argumentum ad hominem, typically refers to a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

Examples include making fun of someone’s weight, looks, background, or social position, rather than looking at the actual issues. If you think about this, by attacking the person, rather than their ideas, you actually diminish the points you make against their arguments. Let’s say you hate the ideas someone is sharing, and you call them fat and ugly on Twitter. Would their argument be better if they were skinny and handsome/pretty? Are you suggesting their ideas are dependent on their size and looks? That these things matter? Should you be judged on the merits of these kind of arguments? It is hurtful and derogatory, and insulting not just to the person you are attacking.

2. Sarcastic questioning.

This is a passive-aggressive move. It is the asking of a question that your question already suggests you understand what’s going on, but you ask it anyway.

“Is it just me or… ?”

“Why is it that… ?”

“Why on earth would… ?”

“Can you believe that… ?”

These openings can be fun and lighthearted, or they can be accusatory and underhanded. I used this strategy above by asking, “Should you be judged on the merits of these kind of arguments?” But it wasn’t an intentional attack, it wasn’t comedy at the expense of people.

3. Full on rants.

I will confess to ranting against poor customer service in Twitter. I don’t do it often, but I’m also not guilt free. That said, there seem to be a subset of Twitter users that use it as a venue to regularly rant. This seems unhealthy to me. It is something I try to avoid, but often angry tweets are retweeted, and so I might see them not because I follow the person, but because someone I follow retweets this person.

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Sometimes I think digital conversations give rise, and permission, for ‘inside voices‘ to be externalized. The medium allows people that may not normally have a voice to be heard, to speak to (or at least at) a CEO, politician, or movie star. A hashtag gives anyone an audience. Someone might only have 5 followers, but #companyname, #election, #event, or #movie will find them readers of their tweets. For those that already have a large audience, there is an even greater responsibility not to be intentionally evil.

I try to be thoughtful. I pause before tweeting a complaint or a rant. I think about the point I want to make… and I’ll still make mistakes. But at least I‘m making an effort not to be mean, and I unfollow people that don’t seem to have this kind of filter. I filter my timeline as best as I can from digitally evil people.

PS. That doesn’t mean I ignore people with different opinions, or shy away from good, challenging questions.

Being intentionally kind

Be intentional with your kindness:

• Look a person in the eye and smile, as you hold the door open for them.

• Turn and listen, after asking ‘how are you?’

• Say ‘please’ to start your sentence, rather than as an ending afterthought.

It’s easy to confuse politeness with kindness, but while kindness is almost always polite, politeness isn’t always kind.

Being present, recognizing and acknowledging the person you are with, and showing genuine appreciation, is kind.

There is no mistake that you are being both polite and kind, when you are being intentionally kind.

appreciation

Appreciating this moment

We have so much to be thankful for. So much to appreciate. And so much to offer to others.

A smile.

A nod.

A pleasant greeting.

A hand.

A hug.

A patient ear.

We have so much to be grateful for. We are alive, we have a new day ahead of us that is filled with potential.

Yesterday is gone. It lingers only as much as we allow it. It can weigh upon us, or it can lift our spirits. It can take possession of our attitude in positive or negative ways, or it can be released to give us the freedom to enjoy the present.

Tomorrow can be a prison of anxiety and worry, or a reason to be excited; something to look forward to. But tomorrow is best left where it is, other than when making concrete plans.

That leaves us with now. The present is our present, our gift of being alive. It lets us seize possibilities if we allow it. We are so lucky to have this moment, right now… Thank you for sharing your present with me, for taking the time to read these words. Thank you for the good that you do to support others. Thank you for being kind.

I appreciate the moments you have shared with me. What comes next? What will you do with the gift of time that you have? How will you share that time with others? What can you do to seize the present moment? What can you now give that will also give you joy now?

Good-enough-meme

Good enough is good enough, now share it!

Writing every day for the past few months, I’ve noticed that some days I’m not completely happy with what I’ve written, but I made a commitment to write every day and to share it here. Sometimes I write something that is pretty good and it gets very little uptake, sometimes the ‘good enough’ posts get more attention than I expected. However, if I’m completely honest, most of the ‘good enough’ posts are not ones that I am proud of, should be proud of, and they really don’t get any attention at all… And that’s OK. It really is.

At school, I watch perfectionism crush students. It completely overwhelms and debilitates them. It’s sad to see highly capable students buried under the weight of something not being good enough to hand in, when while it may not be their best work it actually is good enough. Last year I was actually challenging a student to hand in some mediocre work. “What’s the minimum you need to do to hand that in?”

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when I push for students to do more, and to give their best, but for some students the bar of excellence they place on their own work is so high, they are continuously challenged to attain their own high standards. And when that bar is placed on everything they do, that becomes an impossible task.

Writing here every day, I’m not going to be publishing masterpieces. But it’s a slippery slope to say to myself, ‘I just won’t post something today’. Because tomorrow might be another one of those days, and the next day I might consider the post good, but not great. Then my daily blog is no longer daily, and my passion for writing dwindles again, as it has in the past.

Sometimes good enough is good enough. We don’t have to produce great work all the time. We don’t have to impress others and showcase only our best. Social media is filled with that, with kids taking 30 selfies because the look isn’t perfect and deleting their Instagram photos because the ‘Likes’ didn’t come fast enough. Our schools have student that do not hand in an assignment because it’s not A+ quality. And adults don’t publicly share their work because they don’t have anything of value to say… not realizing that what’s obvious to them, might actually be amazing to others.

Your work is good enough… share it.

Be careful what you ask for

Turns out that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not always very intelligent.

See: The danger of AI is weirder than you think | Janelle Shane

I’m reminded of the saying,

“Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it.”

Parents know about this: Ask a kid to clean their room and you get a disaster in the closet where everything gets shoved in, dirty laundry mixed with clean, etc.

Teachers know this:

If we are not providing the correct parameters to AI machines, the solutions these machines come up with will not necessarily meet the outcomes we intended.

While this can be humorous, it can also have serious consequences, like the examples shared in the Janelle Shane video above. We are still a long way from AI being truly intelligent. While computers are beating humans in strategy games, and although when AI gets as smart as us, computers will be instantly smarter, we are still tackling the really hard problem of putting the right information into more intelligent machines. The rules of a game are easier to define than the rules to hiring good people or interpreting unusual circumstances that a self-driving car will come across.

The challenge is that we don’t know our hidden biases, and our human biases that we are missing when we ask an AI to observe and learn. For instance, a dog, a cat, and a human all see a plate of food falling:

The dog sees access to delicious food.

The cat sees it fall and the crash of the plate sends it fearfully running away.

The human sees a waste of food and is angry for carelessly dropping it.

What would an AI see, especially if it hadn’t seen a plate accidentally drop before? How relevant is the plate? The food? The noise? The cutlery? The mess?

Is the food still edible? What is to be done with the broken plate? Can the cutlery be reused? How do you clean the mess left behind?

What we ask AI to do will become more and more complex, and our perspective of what we want and ask AI to do has inherent biases, based on how we view the world. What we ask for and what we actually want will be inherently different and that is something AI will take some time yet to figure out.

How long until we are all cyborgs?

We already have cyborgs living among us. Glasses and contact lenses are not built into us, but they allow those with poor sight to do more than if they didn’t have them. My uncle had a mechanical heart. My friend’s dad has had a pacemaker for decades now. Some diabetics have sensors embedded in them, either fixed or temporarily. These are not enhancements as much as accommodations to aid a deficiency, but how long will it be until we are all cyborgs in some way?

Imagine sensors in your eyes identifying someone from 150 feet away and letting you know their name before they come into focus. Imagine hearing a phone message from within your ear. Imagine a sensor telling you that you are having a mild heart attack before your body gives you any sensory indication of the oncoming issue.

There are apps that exist that can already tell you when people you know are nearby. Bluetooth let’s you have voices go privately to your ears without your phone being close to your head. Fitbits and Apple watches monitor your health regularly and more closely than we’ve ever been able to be monitored before. Apple watches are already saving lives.

How long until these external tools are embedded in us? Part of us? Enhancing us? We will be cyborgs in the future, because to choose not to be will be to choose to have a deficiency compared to those around us.

Talents, Time, and Space: Passion Projects in Schools

In every school there are athletes, musicians, dancers, artists, designers, and creatives in the areas of coding, electronics, mechanics, and even gaming, who do not get to express their full potential in school. And while it is not our job to be everything to everyone, we can create the time and space for students to work on passion projects that let them shine.

It’s time for all schools to let go of rigid block schedules that corral students through the entire day from teacher to teacher, where every moment is determined and controlled by adults.

This isn’t about the teachers and teaching in some of those blocks, we have amazing teachers that are engaging and excellent at teaching the curriculum. This is an issue with the schedule, and design of the day, in such a way that classes after classes fill a students day with courses that limit their ability to shine… Shine in fields they are passionate about that schools could but don’t always allow students to express themselves in.

When students have time in their day, they can do some amazing things, like write an entire musical, design an app to help homeless people and their support workers locate resources, and build a non-partisan app & website to help people make an informed vote, (actual projects at Inquiry Hub).

Teachers are still essential, they are the compass that helps guide students. And teachers still have classes and curriculum to teach at different times of the day… they just share that time with other times and spaces where students can follow their passions.

Learning doesn’t have to only happen in a guided way with the teacher leading the way. If that’s the approach, letting students follow their passions will be overwhelming. The task would be too great for teachers. To do this the schedule needs to build in the time and space for students to lead their own learning, with the ever important teachers and mentors helping them find their way.

12 years on Twitter

The early years of Twitter were wonderful. Back when I was following between 150 and 300 people, and most of them were following me back, Twitter was a conversation. I can remember coming home from work, going to my timeline, and following it all the way back to the last tweet I’d seen earlier in the day so that I wouldn’t miss a tweet.

I ‘spoke to’ Claudia from Argentina, Alec, Kelly, and Dean from Saskatchewan, Kim from Thailand, Wesley from Oklahoma, Sue from Australia, Rodd from Ontario, Miguel and Shelly from Texas, and Bryan from my own school district.

When these educators and others that blogged as well as tweeted shared a link, we would all go to it, read it, comment on it and retweet something that we added to the ‘conversation’.

I’m not a fan of nostalgically romanticizing the past, but that era of Twitter was so exciting and engaging. Now, I rarely get comments on my blog posts, and quite honestly I’ve reduced my own commenting too. Now I share a link and it is retweeted faster than the article could have been read.

My main timeline is ignored, with tweets flying in faster than I can possibly read them. The volume of tweets worth reading has decreased, with misleading but catchy, and retweetable headings and motivational quotes taking over from conversations and learning.

I still love Twitter, and it is still my go-to place to connect and learn from others when I’m online. But, 12 years in, I miss the power of this network to engage me in deep learning filled with rich conversation. However I also recognize that my focus has changed too. I transmit more than I converse, I dabble more than I engage. If I’m honest, I probably could not have maintained the engagement I gave Twitter at that time for 12 years.

For those new to Twitter, I hope that my book, Twitter EDU, can help you get the most out of it.

For those who have been here a while, how has twitter changed for you?

Metrics for a truly prosperous future

What if…

• Shareholders were Careholders?

• Profit was Pro-employee?

• Progress was Pro-human?

What if…

• News Agencies downplayed Violence?

• Social Engagement was less valued than Social Wellbeing?

• Joyful Memes spread faster and farther than Viral Anger?

How do we put our 5-star ratings on good ideas rather than just on good products? What metrics do we need to measure, and to value, to create a truly prosperous future?