If you have not seen the movie Julie/Julia you should. Not only because it is fun and Meryl Streep is always great, but because it is a great example of why the Internet has changed the way we live, work and learn.
The movie’s main plot revolves around Julie Powell, who lives in Queens with her husband, and her attempt to cook every receipt in Julia Child’s cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. The other half of the movie follows Julia Child, who is living in France in 1949, as she learns to cook and struggles to write and publish the cookbook.
Julie Powell starts a blog, this is 2002 just when blogging starts to become popular, as a way to chronicle her life and cooking. As the movie moves back and forth between the two women and their lives you start to see how quickly life has change due to computers and the Internet.
It takes Julia 2 years using a manual typewriter to do the first draft of the cookbook. Julie uses a computer to write her blog everyday. Julia has several false starts as she and her co-writers try to get a publisher interested in their cookbook. Julie’s blog starts to be read by hundreds of people and she is featured in a NY Times article. This exposure gets her several offers from book publishers. Julie write a book, Julie and Julia: 365 Day, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which is popular and becomes the movie Julie/Julia.
As I was watching Julia Child struggle to publish her book I was struck how different it is today. Julia, like Julie, could have self-published through a blog or wiki. She could have made videos and posted them on YouTube, or use a self-publishing tool like Lulu and sold it on Amazon. Today anyone can become an author or a make a move, it is just that not all of them will be at Barnes & Noble or at the movies.
I was one of about 80 people that tuned into the Will Richardson interview of Clay Shirky today. Will used Ustream to conduct the interview so that it would be streamed live and recorded for later viewing. Of course a chat was going on along with the interview, and Will invited questions from the “audience”. As most Internet technologies are today, it was glitchy and at one point Will lost his Internet connection and had to reboot.
The interview only lasted about 40 minutes and Will only got to two questions. Clay is a very practiced speaker and was to the point in the discussion. The topic of the discussion was about how the concepts in his book affect education. The main point I got from the interview, which I plan to watch again, was that we have had a revolution in the way knowledge is transferred or taught.
If you wanted to learn from Plato you had to go where he was and speak directly with him. After he died there was no way to easily access his teachings and his knowledge died with him. As writing further developed a limited number of book were written, but they were still difficult to access and not many people could read them. Transfer of knowledge was still limited in time and place. When the printing press was invented it made books more available and time and space became more flexible. You had access to knowledge from people who were not even in your country or alive, but direct access to the alive person was still very limited. It could be years before a book became available new knowledge may have been developed by the time the book was published. The telephone, film and TV has made access to knowledge and education even more immediate and accessible. But, from most people the access to knowledge still happens in an education setting.
Clay is suggesting that the reason for physical schools is that it is the most cost effective way to distrubite knowledge to the greated number of people. He goes on to say the a “tectonic shift” is occuring in the way groups are formed, business is conducted and knowledge is trasnfered because of the Internet and social network tools. Today’s interview is an example of the breaking down of the time/place/access to knowledge. Clay was in New York City, Will Richardson was in New Jersey, I was in Belchertown, MA, and the other 80 participants were all over the world. We all participted in a live event that was coordiated by one person for free. Beside observing the interview we were able to ask Clay and Will questions and there was a chat going on with the 80 participants. I did not have to sign up for a class with Clay Shirly at NYU or travel to London to attend a lecture. I am reading his book now and I have read his blog and watched two recordings of lectures he has given. I doubt that I would have had access to the video recordings of his lectures before the Internet. Even if a televison station would have thought it was worth their time and effort to record his lecture, the recording would have been show once or twice and then put in a vault some where at a university for some curious grad student to view it in 10 years.
As the the cost of orgaizating access to distributed knowledge decreases, will students be satisfied with having to travel to a central building to sit in rows and listen to a one-way conversation of a pre-determainded curriculum?
I have finally started listening to Wikinomics (download from Audible). As much as I enjoy listening to the book on the ride to work and home, I miss being able to highlight and make notes in the margins. I do bookmark with my Zen Micro so that I can go back and make notes later. I should have read it a year ago and I would now have a better idea of the changes happening in front of our eyes. The industrial revolution took hundreds of years to develop and make significant changes in peoples lives. The digital revolution is happening in one life time and most people are not aware of it. It is still rare that when I mention wiki to someone they know what I am talking about. I keep assuming that I am the one who has missed the boat and other professionals are blogging and podcasting. Listening to the book I am more convinced that the education system is a relic of the 18th century and just by a force of nature it will change. The choices are that we make the changes conscience and as smooth as possible or unconscience with disruptive changes.
Speaking of podcasting it is time I had my own if I am to teach other how to create and us podcasts. We did create classroom podcasts last year at Glenbrook Middle School, but those are gone now. I want to podcast some blog entries like Wes Fryer and do some interview.
Having the cluster map has maked posting to the blog much more interesting, now I know someone somewhere has at least looked at the blog. They may have been searching for windhorse (a Buddhist term) and this popped up, what a disappointment.
Both Nena and I recently read Three Cups of Teaby Greg Mortenson. For those who don’t know about the book it is the story of how Greg, who was attempting to climb K2, the second highest mountain in the world, ending up building dozens of school in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The book is on the best sellers list and we have been telling everyone we can to read it.
His story is so compelling for two reasons. The first is the old theme of a person’s struggle to overcome adversity. In Greg’s case the adversity takes many forms; personal, physical, and cultural. The second reason is it tells the story of the people living in tribal areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Greg give these people a humanity that balances the demonization of them that has happened in this country since 9/11.
His book is compelling because it show how the efforts of one man can change the lives of thousands of people. He has not only changed the lives of the people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the lives of anyone who reads the book. By bringing some understanding and humanity to people half-a-world away, maybe we can find ways to solve problem without using violence.
Greg started the Central Asia Institute to build school using local resources and labor. Many of the schools are for girls. The girls are more likely to stay in remote villages as the young men leave. By training the girls in basic hygiene, the death rate of children can be cut significantly.
As a teacher I was struck by the story of the children gathering in a open field to do their lesson; they were writing in the dirt because they did not have any writing materials. The village was so poor they had to split the $1.00 a-day fee for the teacher with another village.
If you do not read The Sun you have to. The Sun is a non-profit, ad-free monthly magazine that publishes an eclectic mix of personal essays, fiction, interviews, poetry, and photographs. Once you start reading The Sun you will wonder how you ever got along without it. It is one of the few publications that features black & white photographs.
A special feature that is always intriguing is Readers Write. Every month is a different theme, February’s is Help. The few paragraphs that the readers write tell so much about the lives of people.
To get a taste of The Sun click here for a link to Thick a short story by Akhim Yuseff Cabey.
Sy Safransky, the Founder and Editor of The Sun, has to be supported because he refuses to sell ad space, even under difficult financial circumstances. The Sun is a gem, get it, read it, pass it on.
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