As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been trying to use my blog to draw connections between two things I am currently doing – chatting/blogging with those in LDRS 1016 Exploring Citizen Leadership about things I care about and chatting/blogging with those in GRAD 5974 Cognition, Learning, and the Internet about things I care about. I’ve been concerned that sometimes it might seem forced… tonight though, I seem to have something relevant to both worlds that I can’t seem to shake out of my mind.
I saw some of the buzz about Facebook’s filing for IPO – most of which focused on the massive amounts of money to be made by the many people with stake in the company – the most of which being Mark Zuckerberg’s possible $28 billion based on his 28% share in Facebook (aside from a $500,000 annual salary and use of a private jet http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-filing-revea_n_1248434.html) Though I don’t want to draw any conclusions about how good, evil, neither, or both Zuckerberg and Facebook might be… I want to focus on some words the Huffington post article attributes to Zuckerberg – “We don’t build services to make money. We make money to build better services.”
Do you think anyone integrally involved with Facebook (or Google, or Twitter, or…) ever sits back and just takes it all in? Basks in the happy thoughts of all the friends and family reconnected across geographic and chronological divides? Relishes in knowing the time saved for a busy parent needing a quick recipe to get a meal on the table before sports practice? Savors in knowing the social movement voiced or facilitated by the rapid and worldwide connection offered by the Internet?
I hope so. The topic in LDRS 1016 tomorrow is “Leader as Convener” – this idea that maybe being the one who subtly or not so subtly creates the environment for a community to gather, debate, break bread, cry, or collaborate might be just as meaningful as the one in front of the podium, or the first through the gate. Maybe there is purpose, fulfillment, and joy in Facebook that transcends the obscene amounts of money involved.
A favorite quote by Lao Tzu is “Imagine that you are a midwife: you are assisting at someone else’s birth. Do good without show or fuss. Facilitate what is happening rather that what you think ought to be happening. When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: ‘We did it ourselves'”
Perhaps we should reclaim the value in this type of work. What if a teacher’s measure of success was somehow related to the learning environment created rather than student overall ratings or grade distributions? What if student’s were measured on how they impacted the learning of other students and the classroom environment itself in addition to individual assessment? What if a leader weren’t measured by singular acts, but found deep fulfillment in the success of others and the team? I am not suggesting this as some sort of “be-all and end-all” approach. Rather, what we valued this as much as we value other traits more commonly associated with leadership (assertiveness or charisma for example)? What say you?
I found this post to be very intriguing. After watching the movie about the invention and development of Facebook, it makes me think that they probably never sit back and just think about what they have done. However, that opinion is clearly flawed. I was never there nor am I ever sitting in their offices or homes watching their every move. Like you, I also hope that they do this. In the link that I tweeted about last night, a young adult male participated in what he called “The Amish Project” explaining how he went 90 days without technology- no phone, email, television, facebook, tumblr, twitter, etc. He explains how at first, he hated it. It was so inefficient and hard to communicate with people that he had to go to his grandfather and other older people to learn how to do these things without communication. Soon, leaving trinkets in windows to symbolize tha tyou were home became the norm, he would simply just ride around until he found a friend’s house that had these signals beckoning him to come hang out. Eventually, he says he enjoyed it. He had more time for academics and for play. But, I got the sense that his world was also very limited. Yes, he had more time to play outside with his friends, but he also could not make new connections with people unless they lived within biking distance of him. I feel that technology and establishing your own environment to learn and communicate is vital to life in 2012. If you arent keepign up with your texts and missed calls, facebook messages and tweets, you could miss some genuinely intriguing relationships or opportunities. And I hope that facebook and other social media outlets recognize this. They have expanded our world. International business and long distance relationships would never work if we didn’t have Skype and Facebook or Twitter. So, I think that if we can take the time to create and nourish these environments on our own time, our lives are affected in much bigger ways than reverting back to the painstaking tasks of using chalk to write people messages on their front sidewalk in the hopes that it won’t rain. We should and must create these environments to correspond with people, and these social aspects must be carried into education, just as you have said. Allowing students to create not only their own learning environment, but to be encouraged to facilitate others is something new that I had not thought of before, but after reading your post I recognize that it is something that could definitely benefit younger students, especially those in middle school who need that peer assurance and evaluational approval in order to be confident. I hope one day this can be acheived, maybe someone in here will be the first developer for this new learning style!
I wish there was a more nuanced way to evaluate students, there are many cases that the current structure is insufficient and cases where it even stifles students from learning. In a class I taught last semester there were several students who began the year struggling, some dropped out and some stuck it out. Several of the students that dropped out provided valuable, insightful questions that prompted discussions and deeper understanding of the students around them. The loss of these students impacted the learning of their fellow students. Is this the most desirable outcome? In music school we had juries at the end of the semester, while not ideal they at least tested understanding of the material and not whether or not you did every homework assignment correctly.
On a side note, I personally know that people at Facebook, Twitter, Google, and WikiMedia (they do wikipedia) do think about their impact. They obsessively think about it and talk about it all the time. Sure there are negative aspects of trying to figure out how to get people to click on ads or how to donate money to keep the cite going, but they mostly are concerned with how to make people’s lives better.