EDUCATION BLOG

These blog posts on The Wired Classroom had the most traffic during the last 30 days:

• SMART Board Classes
• June 09 Global Nomads Group Videoconferences
• Motivate Students with Activboard Lessons
• Teaching Higher Order Thinking Skills in Elementary Classrooms with Spreadsheets
• iPhone and iPod Touch in classrooms

I can’t find who wrote this but I think it fits perfectly well in the business world:
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I am at my best with the wind in my face,
When overcoming the challenge, with pace.
The pace that requires more effort, more strength.
But once gained momentum endures with great length.
It’s easy to sit back, placid and calm
Comfort is only a relative balm.
It seems an advantage, better than strife,
but is dulled by stagnation, stifling life.
Progress needs movement, energy, drive,
No chance for improvement if you do not strive.
Nothing’s for nothing: cause and effect.
That which you work for, you’ve more chance to get.
So give me the wind, let it blow in my face,
the more I confront, the more strength I’ll embrace.
Steps are not mounted, nor challenges overcome.
Without certain courage or effort be done.

I saw this and thought it was a nice follow up from what I was talking about in my last entry!

To “let go” does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else.
To “let go” is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization I can’t control another.
To “let go” is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another, it’s to make the most of myself.
To “let go” is not to care for, but to care about.
To “let go” is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To “let go” is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
To “let go” is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others
to effect their destinies.
To “let go” is not to be protective, it’s to permit another to face reality.
To “let go” is not to deny, but to accept.
To “let go” is not to nag, scold, or argue, but instead to search out my own
shortcomings and correct them.
To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it
comes, and cherish myself in it.
To “let go” is not to criticize and regulate anybody, but to try to become what I
dream I can be.
To “let go” is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.
To “let go” is not to lose power, but to be open to the power within.
To “let go” is to fear less, and love more.

The discipline of writing something down is first step in achieving it.
Lots of people are afraid of writing their goals on paper because they feel
“What if I don’t reach them and they are on the page for everyone to see”
“What happens if other people see them full stop!”

I believe in putting my goals on the notice board beside me each and reading them out loud each and every day. This helps me get in the zone and stay 100% focused on what I need to achieve each day.

Try it! Coaches tend not to do it even though they know the power of it!

This summer I’m teaching a technical writing class and as I’ve done in previous semesters with this online class, I’m using a wiki. One of the collaborative writing assignments is an FAQ and although I don’t require them to use the class wiki for this particular assignment, I encourage them to do so (and for any other similar sort of group work).

In order to get some sense of the collaborative dynamics, I ask them to write a reflection memo that they usually submit a day or two after they’ve submitted the assignment. Today while I was reading their reflection memos I noticed an interesting pattern: heavy reliance on email. They describe how they used email to exchange drafts, delegate responsibilities, and coordinate other related project management details. Now on its face, this doesn’t seem all that remarkable, but rather entirely predictable; however, with this particular class, I aim to make the wiki a more central feature. And even though I’ve posted various materials that describe the ways in which wikis typically work better than email for group projects, their memos document a gravitation towards that ol’ stand-by.

In mulling over this hesitation to adopt the wiki as their workspace, a couple of thoughts come to mind. Maybe it’s not just out of habit, but also an anxiety of working on projects in a more public space. Working in the wiki not only makes their group processes available to the members, but the other students in the class as well. Another speculation is that they perceive it as another kind of LMS or stratified space that should be managed and maintained by me, the instructor. Or maybe it’s just inertia: email works well enough and the evidence for migrating to a wiki needs to be more dramatically displayed when they’ve got busy schedules and a myriad of responsibilities.

I had a great experience today providing leadership training to a non-profit organization.  Although the distance to get to my client’s office was not unheard of, they agreed to use a Webinar format. (A special thank you to Project Kindle!!!)   So, for the first time I presented a module session on Communication including an Extended DISC assessment for each participant.   The application I used allowed for Webcam, VOIP, whiteboard, chat room, PowerPoint Slide capability, etc.  Really all the features and more than some of the bigger companies out there.  Think WebEx and Go To Meeting.

If you are interested in taking a look at this application, I am supplying you with a link.  There subscription fees are great – Free to start with and no limit on the amount of time you can access this free service.  However, if you would like to upgrade you can do so starting at approximately $10/mo. Not bad.

So, If you are looking for a way to collaborate with clients or staff, look into VYEW.  I think you will be happily surprised.  You may find some kinks, but hang with them.  They get back to you to answer your questions, want your feedback and are always looking for ways to improve their product.

www.vyew.com

Camden Children’s Garden has three new programs in their videoconference catalog. My schools enjoy their distance learning sessions a great deal, so I’m excited to share with them these new offerings!

A Leaf of a Different Color
Why do leaves change color in the fall? Follow a leaf from beneath the bud in winter to a much pile the following fall. For grades 1-4; available by request.

Air Pollution: Inside My House
When we think of air pollution, we usually think of the air outside our homes or buildings, but experts claim that indoor air pollution can be 5 times greater than outdoor air pollution. Explore the many sources of indoor air pollution, their health consequences, plus more. For grades 3-6 as well as library patrons; available by request.

DNA typing
How can the police discover which suspect is guilty of the crime committed with just a sample of saliva? Learn about DNA and how it can be used in forensic science. For grades 7-12 as well as library patrons; available by request.

My “Intro to Old Testament” Fall ’09 session will be something of a hybrid course, incorporating many elements of distance learning. My Summer ’10 session will be entirely online. I have heard it said that, if you want to learn to teach online courses, then take a course online. This makes sense, and I’ve decided that if I am going to take an online course, it will be Arabic.

Why Arabic? Well, I’m already walking around with a pocketful of Semitic research languages (biblical and modern Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Syriac), so I have a good foundation for Arabic. A look at the job postings is also persuasive: I don’t plan to change my whole focus to Islam or religious politics overnight or anything, but who in Hebrew Bible is not looking for reasonable means to broaden her appeal?

Searching for a course, it is not easy to navigate past all the commercial software packs masquerading as online courses. And, as usual, navigating school’s websites is useful mostly as an exercise in controlling one’s blood pressure.

I do find that University of California has a program. The timing is unfortunate (I have a really busy autumn term planned), but the course looks good.

Readers: have you taken a course online, and what was your experience? Are you aware of opportunities for online Arabic that I’ve missed? (Accredited, credit-earning courses only, please.)

Lesson for India

The expenses scandal of the members of UK’s parliament has struck a raw nerve across the public in a way that British politics rarely manages to do.

In the words of Tory MP for Totnes, Anthony Steen, when questioned about £80,000 worth of work to his country estate. “The public are just jealous because I have a very, very large house,” says Anthony Steen. “What right does the public have to interfere with my private life?” What right? What right do voters have to ask how one of their MPs could justify claiming that £80,000 of garden improvements was necessary for the conduct of his parliamentary duties? This arrogant sense of entitlement is what has most outraged voters – ordinary mortals who have to pay for their own houses, their own food and their own taxes; who do not regard £63,000 as poverty pay and cannot understand how MPs could have become so morally deficient, so divorced from reality and so poisoned by greed that they would casually defraud the taxpayer of tens and even hundreds of thousands of pounds, and then claim that the public has no right to question it.

Of course, it is not as original as was advanced by Barbara Amiel, wife of Lord Conrad Black who owns the Daily Telegraph who fiddled not just thousands but millions and billions of pounds of shareholder’s with independent directors of the stature of Henry Kissinger in stall Lord Black has been incarcerated in a US prison to serve 78 months sentence for racketeering, obstruction of justice, money laundering and wire fraud . In August 2008, Black’s wife,defended her husband in a lengthy article first published by Maclean’s then in The Sunday Times. In a blog published on the Financial Times website, John Gapper writes that this defence had “an entertainingly deranged quality since Lady Amiel (sic) admits no wrong, on behalf of either of the pair, and is contemptuous about almost everyone else’s behaviour”.

As parliament’s dignity and authority finally collapsed under the relentless bombardment of sleaze stories from The Daily Telegraph, MPs are in disgrace, afraid to face up to their constituents and some even contemplating suicide. The Speaker, Michael Martin, was forced to resign – the first to do so for three centuries. Not to be outdone, the House of Lords suspended two Labour peers, Lord Taylor of Blackburn and Lord Truscott for offering parliamentary services for money – the first to be so punished in 350 years.

The collapse of parliament’s moral authority has not taken place in a vacuum; it is part of a general decline in standards of public life over the last three decades. We have seen the leaders of great institutions, like Sir Fred Goodwin of Royal Bank of Scotland, shamelessly enrich themselves while they helped to destroy their own companies and undermine the British economy.

The system lacks transparency, accountability and responsibility. The sacking of the speaker of UK’s House of Commons is not going to restore the dignity of the mother of all parliaments damaged outrageously by the graphic accounts of fiddling of expenses by UK’s elected representatives. The question is can we turn this dismal affair to our advantage and use the opportunity to change Britain’s archaic system of governance, accountability and enforcement.

Michael Martin’s shame does not stem from the way he handled the House of Commons office for fee expenses. Indeed as Jim Sheridan, the labour MP, says, “Speaker is being treated as a paedophile. There is no way the speaker knows what is going on in the Fees Office. Lets us get real.” That sums up the British attitude to enforcement of any regulation. They have been best at managing only the gentlemen’s clubs of the past with little ability to uphold accountability in governance.

The charm of good life from tax payers money is too irresistible to be refused. Greed does not distinguish between professions – has no colour, no cast and no creed. Extra cash keeps everyone enthralled.

Nothing of this would have come to light but for the Freedom of Information Act that made it possible for anyone to access information. Indeed, this is where Michael Martin faulted. It is the fire storm at the Freedom of Information request on MP’s expenses that engulfed the speaker.

It was odious to see the House of Commons seeking to exempt MPs from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act that MP’s themselves have passed. People found it outrageous for a speaker to block investigations and resist transparency to clean up the system of expenses.

The public anger at the conduct of MPs underscores huge asymmetry and incongruence between the electorate and the elected representative first noticed when the Parliament approved the attack on Iraq against the will of the people. Parliamentary shenanigans IN last few weeks shows a big hole In he governance of this country and the legitimacy of the war which has caused large scale damage and destruction destroying millions of lives.

Systematic abuse of tax payers money is not something of recent origin. It has been the norm. Everyone is milking it. I discovered it when I joined the London Borough of Enfield in 1976 as part of my research for a PhD in Management by Objectives. Travel expenses were perks that you claimed regardless of whether you incurred. Each year Legal Services Commission of UK reimburses legal expenses amounting to ludicrous sums regardless of whether a case is lost or won and without any reference to the client let alone seeking a certificate of satisfaction from him.

It is interesting to see how “culture of greed” started in a party which was known for its social conscience. Of course all MPs do not come to politics for self-enrichment. The Labour MP, Laura Moffatt, could have cashed in like Hoon, but chooses instead to sleep on a camp bed in her office when the house is sitting late. Not all MPs are waiting nervously for the four o’clock phone call from the Daily Mail. MPs like Stroud MP David Drew travels standard class to London and stays in a Premier Inn. Chris Mullin, the former Labour minister, shot to fame last week for claiming a black-and-white television licence. There are hundreds of MPs who have not been flipping, bending, fiddling and dipping – but if the guilty ones are exonerated, what incentive do they have to stay clean? Where is natural justice?

To trace the love of lucre in Labor party one has to go back to the “prawn cocktail” era in 1992, when the late Labour leader, John Smith, with colleague Mo Mowlem, launched a lunching campaign to persuade the City of London that they were safe with Labour. Thereafter, Labour MPs became much closer to the financial world, and many rising Labour politicians, like Patricia Hewitt, spent time working for City institutions. Mo Mowlem married a banker. Financiers from Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch spent time in the Cabinet office, and took roles in government; they included Baroness Shriti Vadera, Brown’s key City adviser.

Some time after the turn of the century, as the property boom began in the south-east of England and bankers started paying themselves colossal bonuses, MPs stopped measuring themselves against the standards of their constituents and took to comparing themselves to the financial types they had taken to rubbing shoulders with in the City. From Tony Blair down, they resented seeing people with no better qualifications than they had earning mega-salaries. Unable to afford decent London houses, they used their flexible friend, the expense account, to even the score, surfing the housing boom to make themselves feel just that little bit richer. What never seems to have occurred to them was that the property bubble they were benefiting from was crucifying young families with debt.

Now the property bubble has burst and so has their credibility. Labour was captured by the financial interests in the City in much the same way as were the regulators in the Financial Services Authority. They felt both financially and intellectually inferior to the money managers, which is why they allowed the credit and property bubble to inflate to disastrous proportions. Tony Blair, true to form, got out when the going was good, and now has a comfortable sinecure in JP Morgan bank. But the rest of them, now dreading the prospect of having to face the voters in an election, have been left high and dry.

They are loathed by constituents, abused by the media, and laughed at by politicians in countries with lesser claims to parliamentary probity. Members of the duck house parliament will go down as among the most disreputable in the history of British democracy. The only positive is that they have ensured, by their behaviour, that parliament and the British constitution must now be subject to radical and irreversible reform.

The thirst for accountability is not going to end with MPs. British system is archaic in many respect. The worst is judicial system in administration of justice. There is no accountability of judges. Indeed, Britain may be the only country where the laws make it impossible to criticise judges’ findings. The result is that three are numerous cases of judges being wrong on the findings of fact but they cannot be proceeded unless you can shell out £100,000 to firm of solicitors to fight the case in court. You will not get permission unless under CPR 53.3(6) you can show real prospect of success. How can you show a prospect for success if you are not even given a permission hearing. The general belief is that British Justice system serves only the lawyers, solicitors, counsels and the court and not for the litigants. No wonder 48% of the litigants dissatisfied with the solicitors. Yet, their complaints to the Legal Complaints Service invariably get rejected. The Legal Services Commission works more like an insurance claims office whose only job is to somehow reject any complaint. Same holds good with the Bar Council. They take ages to register complaints, issue disciplinary proceedings and in most cases the delinquents get let off because no one bothers.

The strongest currency going around in Britain is ‘pass on the buck’. The Law Society passes on to Solicitor Conduct Board. They don’t do anything themselves. They pass it on to Legal Complaints Service. The Legal Complaints Service has a pathetic record in investigating complaints. All it does is to repeat the case of the solicitor to the complainant. . It is a catch 22 situation. Because Law Society takes no steps to discipline the profession the complaints are flooding. LCS has little staff. So they have hired outsiders with incentives for closures. So the methodology is that if you reject their decision and persist they will bar your email like a bunch of ostriches hiding their heads in sands to avoid facing reality.

The biggest advantage of the expose will stem from the governance reforms it will generate not only among law makers but other professions as well – most of all legal. No society can survive unless it has a well coordinated governance system. Yet nobody wants to hear the truth.

To restore trust in the market we have to start with basics. What are we being taught in schools? Good old day’s schools used to compete with each other on the quality of their mission statements –truth alone brings victory” or “if wealth is lost, nothing is lost, if health is lost something is lost but if character is lost everything is lost”. Today’s schools and more importantly our Business Schools compete only on the packages drawn by their alumni. A journalist who studied in Harvard Business School described it as “a factory of unethical practices”.

Students use educational loan to buy flashy cars and fall into debt trap well before they graduate. Our challenge is to make them aware of the ethical context and sharpen their moral compass. We have to change our metaphors of success “winner takes all” and “success at all costs” and develop a value system that prides in ethics, morality, equity, legitimacy, transparency, value dissent and diversity. Transparency requires courage to say: “We are sorry we made a mistake”. That is the only statement that tells others you are earnest but unless you follow it up with a changed behavior it would not restore the breach in confidence.

Alex Salmond, first minister of Scotland told the general assembly of the Church of Scotland recently that it was a matter of “profound regret” that some core political institutions, such as Westminster, were losing their moral authority.

The Scottish National party leader also admitted that a few short years ago it was Hollywood that had lost respect among the people of Scotland.

“But we recovered, we opened ourselves up to full transparency, we admitted to mistakes and today Scotland’s parliament is stronger – much, much stronger – for that,” he said. “And it is an example for others to follow.” MSPs publish all their expenses – and receipts – on the Scottish parliament website.

All this talk about reform is a distraction from real issues. Shows our politicians are unable to grapple with realities. Overturn the constitution in haste and repent at leisure.

David Cameron’s promise to cut Downing Street’s power if, and when, he became prime minister is really suspect . We heard Gordon Brown say that in 2007 and I swear Tony Blair said the same thing but it never really happens, does it?

Lindsay Paterson, a professor at Edinburgh university, said: “It was uncanny listening to David Cameron . . . his entire agenda of reform could have come from what the Scottish parliament is already doing.”

But the devolved Scottish parliament, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary, has itself gone through the flames. Its first few years were dogged by public criticism over the soaring cost of its new building and various controversies over expenses, involving sums that now seem trivial compared with the amounts revealed at Westminster.

What is the substance in David Cameron’s call for reform. Is it not naïve to think that each time we have a problem we look for a reform without thinking whether we have addressed what was required to be implemented by the previous reform? This brings us into the whole question of what is the purpose of governance.

So, the problem that has emerged time and again is our lack of will towards enforcement. Enforcement, therefore, is a far greater issue of concern than the legislation. We already have far too many laws than we need. What we need is proper regulation, supervision, direction, monitoring and training of our enforcement systems. That is where it is important to look on our instruments of enforcements such as the court and the police and that is where the reform is necessary because the fact is the UK’s own system of justice continues to be archaic and not responsive to the needs of 21st Century. With the rising fees of the legal profession and increasing limits on the grant of public funding it is virtually impossible for a poor man to get justice in the court system.

With a culture that lacks the will to enforce existing legislation calls for reform can often become an escape route for maintaining the status quo and its cosiness. Greed has no party, no cast , no color, no religion  and no creed. It is part of human nature. J K Galbraith described the creation and discovery of bezzle in his famous book “The Great Crash of 1929″. The noted economist says: “In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances, the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.”

That is why we need gover-nance systems to check greed and prevent the concentration of power  through the mechanisms of transparency, accountability, integrity, responsibility and enforceability.  The key word in all this is enforcement. Whilst we have been proactive in legislation and the latest example of all this is  Freedom of Information Act which indeed provided the fire power to the Daily Telegraph, we have been very poor in designing , developing , monitoring and reviewing systems to meet the ends of legislation. The result is the system has been hijacked by those who were put in control and indeed who were supposed to protect and safeguard it’s integrity. What the daily exposure of  expenses reveals  is a complete lack of control mechanism  in defining and approving expenses leading even MPs to become pawns in the hands of the Speakers  fee office whose parameters of approval had no relationship with ground reality, its ethics or morality. The result of all this is catastrophic. It is particularly heart rending for those who cherish democratic values because the exposures have made UK, mother of democracies  a laughing stock of world’s  worst totalitarian regimes. Reported a China news agency:”UK opposition leader dumps lawmaker over duck pond.”

Modernization’s biggest problem is that it has divided the society into professions – parliamentarians, judiciary, police, armed forces, bureaucrats, solicitors, counsels, accountants, doctors, , bankers each inclined to protect their own parochial interests and at times at the expense of others.  In a system where there are no clear control measures it is easy for some to confine power within a coterie through what Lord Penrose described while referring to Equitable, a culture of cosiness,greed, concealment and conceit. .

What we need is a decisive leadership with determination to act ruthlessly against those who are milking the system. The key for that is enforcement and not more legislation. Unfortunately, it the truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. As Martin Luther King Junior said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”.