Tracked Change

"Change is the only constant." -Heraclitus

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THIS SITE IS MOVING

Dear Everyone: As I mentioned in Friday's post, I am in the process of trying to relocate this blog over on my Wordpress site. I find that Wordpress is a little more suitable than Tumblr for long form, narrative content. Please follow Tracked Change at http://michaelboezi.com/trackedchange. The main reason, however, is that I'm trying to centralize. It's a challenge for me to maintain multiple outlets. Ultimately, centralizing is probably better for you, the reader/listener as well. So here's the new organization: My writing: http://michaelboezi.com/trackedchange My music: http://michaelboezi.com/cmm Or finally, all posts in one stream: http://michaelboezi.com

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If you prefer Tumblr, I'm still here! Please find me at mboezi & controlmouse. Photos, music, media—what Tumblr does best.

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Content Strategy: Applying the Five Ws

Who / What / When / Where / Why / How. The "Five Ws" of journalism can help you plan your content strategy too.

Who: Know your audience(s). What: Choose your format(s). Why: Real Teachers share. When: Timing (and frequency) are everything. Where: Pick your platform(s). How: The devil's in the details. Read the complete piece here, published by the EdTech Times this week. It's an overview before diving deeper into each of the 5 Ws (and the H!) in more detail over the coming weeks. You can catch up on the entire "Good Content Series" here on EdTech Times: http://bit.ly/GoodContentSeries.

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PLEASE NOTE: I am in the process of trying to relocate this blog over on my Wordpress site. I find that it's a little better than Tumblr for long form content. Please follow Tracked Change at http://michaelboezi.com/trackedchange.

If you prefer Tumblr, I'm still here! Please find me at mboezi.

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The Author as Publisher: The New Functions of You

Clay Shirky says that publishing is a button. The publisher in me bristles at the idea, but he may be right. You can fight this concept, or you can embrace it. If every writer can now publish his/her work using the New Tools, and connect directly with an interested, engaged audience, then haven't things changed? It's time to be realistic. This is bad for publishers, but potentially very good for you. You are an author. You are a content creator. The 21st century will be good to you, if you know how to make use of the tools it has to offer.

You can read the whole piece here; it's from an article I wrote that was published by the EdTech Times this week. It's the third in a column called the "Good Content Series." Though this series is focused on educators, I've tried to keep it general so that it can benefit anyone who's producing content.

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What Makes Good Content?

Content is connection. Whether in narrative writing, a blog post, a podcast, or a video, you are seeking connection. Good content connects. Poor content impedes connection.

In the digital world, you are creating content with everything you do. Anything that's out there for public consumption is published, and it's permanent. Have a strategy. Make sure that it counts. Make sure that it says what you want it to say.

So, what makes Good Content?

You can read the whole piece here; it's from an article I wrote that was published by the EdTech Times today. It's the second in a column called the "Good Content Series" (and note the new logo!). Though the series is focused on educators, it can certainly benefit anyone who's creating and deploying content.

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Creating Good Content: Considerations for Educators

In the digital world, connection happens around content. As a Real Teacher, you are creating content in almost everything you do. Your content is a reflection of you; Good Content makes you more va...

You are a Real Teacher. You share your expertise, you inspire, you lead, you motivate, you urge. You are a guide. You listen, you struggle, you offer. In its best moments, it's rewarding, isn't it?

In the digital world, connection happens around content. As a Real Teacher, you are creating content in almost everything you do. Your content is a reflection of you; Good Content makes you more valuable. Why not share your content more widely?

This is from an article I wrote that was published by the EdTech Times today. It is the very first piece in a series of "Considerations for Content Creators," focused on educators—Real Teachers who want to do more with the content they are creating.

Read the whole piece here, and let me know what you think.

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No Excuses in the New System

Amanda Palmer. I'm not sure why this woman needs a backlash. She writes smart songs, and does performance art. She's articulate in her opinions. You might like her work, or you might not—that's a matter of taste. A backlash is different. The System doesn't work anymore. Musicians can't just hope to get chosen for "jobs" that are so scarce that they almost don't exist. And for the few that do get selected, The System extracts far more value than it provides to the artist. So she helped create a New System, one that works in her favor. Or more accurately, she assembled and reconfigured and rewrote and stole the work of others to put the pieces together in a new way. JUST LIKE ANY OTHER ARTIST. The Rules are different now, and I say thank goodness. You don't need a gatekeeper anymore. You can share your ideas. Whether they are worth sharing is another matter entirely. That part's up to you. But if you are producing good work, good art, good content—then you deserve a chance at getting heard. Waiting around to get picked by a gatekeeper is a relic of the 20th century. So why the backlash? She's not the first to call bullshit on The System. Maybe the fear comes from her crystal clear articulation of a known problem, and her acumen and unmannerly persistence in backing up her ideas with her actions. As an artist, you have an excuse if The System fails you. You have an "out," a way to make yourself feel better. You make good art, but you didn't get picked. In the New System, you don't have an excuse. You only have yourself to blame if you didn't get an idea out there. A backlash isn't going to help you with that. Seek connections with your audience instead. In the interest of making connections, please allow me to introduce you to Amanda Palmer, if you don't know one another already. She gave the keynote speech the "Muse and the Marketplace" literary conference for aspiring writers here in Boston a few weeks ago. I am introducing you because in my opinion, she has earned the privilege of your time with her eloquence and intellect about WHY WE WRITE. I'll quote from her keynote to explain why I write, too: "The heads nodded in the distance at what I wrote, and that's all I needed." My head is nodding too.

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Sir Ken Robinson: "How to Escape Education's Death Valley"

Sir Ken Robinson: "Change the conditions," and schools will "spring to life."

Bet on teachers. 

Bet on curiosity vs. compliance. 

Bet on creativity vs. standardization.

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Predictions for the "Creative Destruction" of Higher Education

Investor view of the higher ed landscape of the future; fertile and favorable for entrepreneurs:

In the immortal words of economist Joseph Schumpeter, higher education is headed for “creative destruction,” a profound structural and economic shift in favor of employers, students and parents. The future will be grim if you run one of the 4,100 colleges or universities in the United States and are unwilling to embrace dramatic change.

Source: John Backus, writing for The Washington Post: "Commentary: Creative destruction meets higher education"

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Yahoo to Buy (and presumably ruin) Tumblr for $1.1B

Yahoo’s move aims to make up for years of missing out on the growth of social networks and mobile devices.

I like how Yahoo is described as "the faded Web pioneer" in this article.

Wordpress, anyone?

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MOOCs: Protectionism vs. Progress

The Resistance Stage has begun. The hype about MOOCs was bound to boil over. Let the record show that it began in earnest on April 29, 2013, with a bold statement by the Philosophy Department at San Jose State University (SJSU) in the form of an Open Letter to Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel. The first shot fired: the department's refusal to pilot Dr. Sandel's JusticeX course offered by MOOC provider edX.

This is from an op-ed piece I wrote that was published by the EdTech Times today. I struggled with this one—I really didn't want it to sound too harsh on the good folks at SJSU. I wanted it to be a solution, even inspirational. I'm not sure I succeeded.  Read the whole piece here, and let me know what you think.

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The Resistance & Chaos Stage

Audrey Watters is on a roll this week. Not only did she offer a well-written piece on the narratives of Ed Tech innovation, but also a challenge-the-press-release piece about the The Education Enclosure Movement. I posted this as a comment to Audrey's article, but I thought I would share it with my network too. Good writing is powerful, and must be shared:

The Education Enclosure Movement. That's a powerful way to state it. The good news is that MOOCs right now will not be the MOOCs of the future. Phil Hill, Michael Feldstein, and Stephen Downes can say it better than me, so I'll just say thank you for pointing out the Satir Change Model with respect to MOOCs.

While we're in the Resistance/Chaos stage, maybe we can just "rename" or "rebrand" them as: M - Massive O - Opportunistic O - Online C - Courses Looking forward to the Integration stage. But whenever there's fear emanating out of the Status Quo, you know you're on to something. It doesn't guarantee success, but it's definitely worth the churn.

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Well-written, provocative article about the importance of rolling your sleeves up and doing the real work of teaching.

Good content is a starting point. It can be great support for what you do. But as always, Real Teachers are what matter. 

If we take ourselves out of that dialogue, out of the give and take of draft and response and revision, then we are no longer teachers but content providers. Well-designed assignments and curricula are important. But they are only the very start of good teaching. A textbook is not a course. And I don’t see how a MOOC can be much more than a digitized textbook.

Source: Joseph Harris: Teaching 'By Hand' in a Digital Age - The Conversation - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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A great article by the great John Kotter examines the difference between "management" and "leadership" in the Harvard Business Review: Management Is (Still) Not Leadership.

The difference, Dr. Kotter says, "is not about attributes, it's about behavior." Both are critical roles, and have not very much to do with your position in an organization:

Management helps you to produce products and services as you have promised, of consistent quality, on budget, day after day, week after week.

Leadership is about vision, about people buying in, about empowerment and, most of all, about producing useful change.

I am more of a leader than a manager. There are plenty of others who are better managers than me. And I am better leader when I am surrounded by great managers. Creating change almost always requires the help of others.

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Here's a succinct article that helps explain the "Unrealized Promise" of digital textbooks that I've been writing about: "Steve Blank on Why Big Companies Can't Innovate" by Ron Ashkenas, Harvard Business Review, 2/19/13.

I particularly like the correction offered by Prof. Steve Gordon of Babson College, who suggested instead, "Why Most Big Companies Don't Innovate."

This is at the heart of my argument as to why we haven't seen broad uptake of digital textbooks yet. The big players have virtually unlimited funding with which to build a better product, yet instead they govern the pace of change, keeping their core traditional product viable for as long as they can.

This is not surprising; you see it in any industry with a lot of established players. But as I said in my last post, "you shouldn’t expect change from those who are rooting against it." Innovation will be controlled, meted out in small increments.

What of the new players trying to fight their way into the conversation? Mr. Ashkenas makes the comparison:

Finding a viable business model is not a linear, analytical process that can be guided by a business plan. Instead it requires iterative experimentation, talking to large numbers of potential customers, trying new things, and continually making adjustments.

But with little tolerance for risk, established firms want their new ventures to produce revenue in a predictable way — which only increases the possibility of failure.

Someone will ultimately sneak into the palace and dethrone the king. There are a number of new players who are doing the "iterative experimentation," getting closer to the sought-after "viable business model." [See: Inkling, Kno, Knewton, Soomo, etc.]

And no, it won't be a dethroning. Companies like Pearson are big enough and smart enough to withstand an assault from the outside. Having near-unlimited capital doesn't hurt, either. But it will force change upon them, and make them do their business differently. Then you will see some real innovation out of them, once the control is redistributed.

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Here's a link to my piece in Publishing Perspectives on 2/22/13: Digital Textbooks: Publishers and the Unrealized Promise

And a follow-up piece on 2/26/13: More on the "Unrealized Promise" of digital textbooks

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More on the "Unrealized Promise" of digital textbooks

I'm appreciative of the attention I got last week for the piece I wrote about digital textbooks [Digital Textbooks: Publishers and the Unrealized Promise, Publishing Perspectives, 2/22/13]. I thought I'd do a follow-up, just to attach some specifics to my sometimes provocative claims. First of all, I wrote the editorial as a response to a question raised by George Lossius [in 5 Academic Publishing Trends to Watch in 2013, Publishing Perspectives, 1/21/13]:

“[I]t is widely acknowledged that the e-textbook market is yet to fulfill its promise and potential… Publishers are fully aware of the benefits of e-textbooks; the ability to easily refresh out-of-date content, functionality that allows books to be dissected, more interactive content, metrics that can measure the usefulness and popularity of resources, and of course pricing. All of this technology is available yet end user adoption levels are relatively low. Is it merely a question of students having the right technology at their fingertips and institutions buying into this method of working, which is surely just a matter of time? Or is there a wider issue preventing adoption?”

Yes, there is a wider issue. The digital product offered to date is generally not a good value. Nor does it solve the issues of affordability, access and control of content. With a few notable exceptions, you get some simple ebook functionality (search, take notes, highlight text), but it has not been re-imagined in any way. It meets baseline expectations, at best. 

If it were all in the name of cost savings, I could get behind it. But it's a red herring. As an example, Organizational Behavior by Griffin/Moorhead rings in at $156.49 from CourseSmart, one of the leading distributors of digital textbook content (the publisher's list price is $284.95). This book is for a one-semester course. You get access for 6 months, and then it expires. So you don't own anything when you're through with the course. 

If it were all in the name of student success, I could get behind it. You have to talk about student success. Are students really going to learn and succeed more with these products they can’t afford and can only use for a limited time? That is the question we should be answering. Interactive, flexible content, embedded with metrics that can measure its efficacy? That sounds like something that might help improve student outcomes. 

With all of the known benefits that Mr. Lossius lists above, why such limited progress, then? There are countless stories about how students aren't ready for digital textbooks—just Google “students prefer print” to read 21M articles on the topic. Market endorsement of the slow pace of change? Could that be it? 

There's a much simpler answer, using the above example. The Big 5 (Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Cengage, Macmillan and Wiley) have the market power and control the content and the channel, so I wouldn’t expect any innovation anytime soon. What’s the incentive to do anything but hold their position?  

Renting you a PDF equivalent for $100+ for 6 months' access? No one's going to label that innovative. This is an issue of control. They have the control, you don't. It's about which stakeholder you choose to serve: students, educators, institutions or shareholders. The legacy publishers have to serve their shareholders, but does it have to be at the expense of students and their chances of success? 

I don't mean to lay this all at the feet of the Big 5, but they a have major influence on this issue. That should come with some responsibility, in my opinion. But of course, it is not the whole story, either. This is a complex, nuanced market that's undergoing tremendous (exhilarating!) turbulence right now. There are a bunch of other new players trying to solve the problem, but the lesson is, you shouldn’t expect change from those who are rooting against it. 

Performance-based funding is in place in 12 states, with 4 more transitioning. There are formal discussions underway in 19 additional states. You are about to hear a lot more about student outcomes, as they are now tied directly to the institution's bottom line. Now is not the time to circle the wagons and defend the current model. It's time to help institutions and instructors offer the students they serve a quality learning experience at a price they can afford. 

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Digital Textbooks: Publishers and the Unrealized Promise

I am so honored to have a feature article in Publishing Perspectives this morning! They are one of the best, most respected industry magazines.

Please share: http://bit.ly/UnrealizedPromise 

Main page: http://publishingperspectives.com 

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The Textbook Problem, Part 2

Your class is not going to do as well as you think they are. A high percentage of them are at a significant disadvantage before they even start. Why? They are priced out when it comes to the core materials.

Here's an overview of the impact on your classroom.