Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

"Let our Congress Tweet"

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Thanks to a tweet from Andy Carvin comes this latest example of how social tools are pushing the old traditional ways of thinking, this time in Congress:

Given the rules in place, this clash between the old ways of talking to the Congress and the potential new ones may have been inevitable. Noyes says Culberson and Ryan are active users of the Internet. “They have been Twittering all over the place,” he says. “They’ve been Twittering back and forth, engaging one another in debates over politics and policy.” The reporter describes Culberson, in particular, as something of a Web maverick and a poster child for the issue.

I love it.

Preparing for Participatory Politics

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My head is swimming with all sorts of impressions from the opening day of the PDF conference. Really smart people talking about really amazing shifts, trying to figure out if they are really transformative or just a better, larger, more immediate way to communicate with people and move them to action. I think the jury is still out (though I’m leaning toward the former) but it gets pretty heady when you think about what we have to prepare our students for in terms of the potentials for participating in the political process (both good and ill) and the extent to which we encourage that participation.

Zephyr Teachout (who has by any measure one of the coolest names ever) opened the day with a compelling question:

How many people have within them the knowledge of how to form a local group and to use that group to change the structure of their society?

And it wasn’t asked in the context of these connective technologies, but the implication was obvious. If we’re not preparing them to do it in their own physical spaces, how can they be expected to do it effectively in virtual space?

There was lots of talk as well about being able to use these tools, especially mobile tools, to capture and document important events and share them with the world. The example of Mayhill Flower, who happened to catch the Obama comment on average Americans being bitter and clinging to their guns came up on a couple of occasions, as did the Hillary Clinton comment about Bobby Kennedy which was captured on a Mogulus stream. Left a lot of people wondering if all of this is a good thing or just a recipe for chaos.

During the session I Tweeted to Andy Carvin who was also in attendance, asking whether all of this meant we should be preparing our kids to be, in effect, journalists. He Tweeted back, yeah, we should prep them to “conduct random acts of journalism when moments arise that demand coverage, debate.” I think I agree.

And then there was a panel titled “Building and Using the World Live Web” which featured Robert Scoble and the creators of Qik, Mogulus and Cover it Live. It was a fascinating discussion and model of just how live things are getting, including live streaming from your phone right to the Web where people can interact, ask questions, leave comments which are then sent back to the phone where you can integrate the suggestions into the broadcast. Stories of politicians who are using the feature to interact with their constituents, me wondering what the potentials are for local board of ed meetings, town councils, graduations, etc. (And, all the not so wonderful content as well.)

Zephyr cited a statistic that said that historically only about 5% of people have actively participated in the political process on a local or national level. I’m heading home tonight wondering if that percentage is going to change because of these tools, and if so, if that will be a good thing or not.

More tomorrow…

Election Special: Technology and Communications

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A bit long (1:20), somewhat esoteric, but pretty interesting for a listen (not a watch…wish this was in podcast form.) Former FCC chairs Reed Hundt and Michael Powell take the Obama and McCain case respectively to discuss broadband, Net Neutrality, and communications technology. Highly partisan, but some compelling back and forth about where all of this is headed and, more importantly, where it could be headed under either administration.

Oh, and yeah, education is mentioned here and there. Sigh. (Update: Powell has an interesting answer about parenting and filtering at 1:12.)

There is another post brewing here along the “walk the talk” lines that wants to answer how much do either of these guys really use technology in their own practice, and along those lines, do they understand the potentials and pitfalls for education. If their campaigns are any indication, at least, I don’t think there’s any doubt who has the greater potential to engage in that narrow conversation.

So what are the salient questions for us to wrap our brains around in terms of this election?

(Full disclosure: I’m a Obama supporter and have contributed to his campaign.