Are You Drinking Water From a Firehose, or Casting a Line Into a Stream?

As part of my research for a high school course on "Thriving in the Digital Age" (course website), I have been reading Net Smart: How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold. In Chapter 2, he writes, "The real-time Web is not a queue . . . but rather a stream. Don't even try to keep up. Learn to sample." He goes on to describe techniques for sampling, by "tuning your antennae for the right signals" and "bringing the right information to you."

I felt a sense of relief as I read this. For weeks, I had been struggling to assess the overwhelming variety of Web 2.0 social media tools. Naively, I was trying to review every tool and learn everything there was to know, and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of information. "So," I thought to myself, "this is why people frequently compare using social media to drinking water from a fire hose." I needed a new approach, and Rheingold's mention of a stream opened my eyes to a different (though still watery) metaphor.

 I began to picture a beautiful stream, beckoning to me, inviting me to cast a line into the water. I thought about my husband, an avid fly fisherman, and how relaxing it is to watch him practice his art. The graceful motions inspire feelings of patience, serenity, inner calm and, on a lucky day, the thrill of the catch. It's not at all like the image of a fire hose, which I associate with scary, high adrenaline experiences: buildings in flames, mobs out of control, intense pressure and violent release. I would prefer my experiences in the online world to be more like catching fish than catching hell. I'm looking for quality, not quantity.

Rheingold writes about the importance of mindfulness when we use technology. To avoid unnecessary distractions, it helps to decide in advance what we hope to achieve in a given day, or year, or lifetime. Sure, those pictures of kittens are really adorable, but how much time do we want to devote to them? When, where, and how do we want to focus our attention? Ideally, online tools should help us to filter, organize, and limit the content that fills up our screens and lives. Used wisely, they can be as useful to us as the right fishing lure is to a fisherman.

An article from Steffan Antonas, "Drinking from the Social Media Firehouse—Six Lessons Learned," offers sage advice on how to use social media in a sane and meaningful way. He reminds us that "Social media interactions are meaningful only if you’re sharing remarkable ideas, being memorable, helping people achieve their goals, connecting to people and (most importantly) converting those connections into real offline relationships."

Obviously, we have to be selective about what we consume and create. The question is: do we want to be the ones doing the selecting, casting our lines strategically, or are we content to wait and see what hits us in the face at random? When I take time to learn how to tailor an RSS feed, set up a dashboard, or use tags and keywords to filter news reports, I feel it's time well spent. Like an experienced fisherman selecting the right lure, I can increase my chances of hooking something of interest while allowing everything else to flow past. Of course, I won't catch everything, but that doesn't need to be the goal for the experience to be rewarding.

Pushing Beyond the Comfort Zone

The only thing I enjoy more than a great TED Talk is a compendium of great TED Talks, all thoughtfully woven together with clever commentary and interesting interviews. That's why TED Radio Hour, hosted by Guy Raz, is without a doubt my favorite NPR program.

The most recent TED Radio Hour, "To the Edge," focused on adventurers who push themselves to their limits at the edges of the world. The program featured a polar explorer, a spelunker, a woman who rowed across oceans, and a high-wire enthusiast. Of all the stories, Roz Savage's ocean-going adventures fascinated me the most. Here was a woman who had been working in an office for many years until, one day, she decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean—in a rowboat. I mean, really, who does that?

Coincidentally, at the moment I tuned into the show, I had just been thinking about ordinary acts of bravery. My homeschooled son was away from home, living and learning for five full weeks at the Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul's School. The program is known for being intense, challenging, and extremely well loved. Past attendees (my younger daughter included) rave about it with a devotion bordering on zealotry. 

Thriving in the Digital Age

I've fallen behind on my postings but have been working steadily on plans for the course I described in earlier posts. The website for the course, Thriving in the Digital Age, is now available for browsing! Although the course is still a work in progress, most of the overall framework is solid at this point.

I've made some changes to my original plans. In Building on TED Talks: A Course for High School Seniors (Part I), I identified four tentative themes for grouping the talks and readings:

1. How We Think About Ourselves
2. How We Think About and Use Technology
3. How We Relate to One Another
4. How We Offer to Help Those Who Need It

I've since changed the themes for the course slightly to suit the needs of the students who will be participating. After discovering that one of my students was planning to take a college course on Global Social Issues this fall, I decided that much of what I had in mind for the fourth theme ("How We Offer to Help Those Who Need It," which included TED talks and related books by Jacqueline Novogratz, Dan Pallotta, Paul Collier, and Melinda Gates) would be too redundant. In a way, this was a relief to me: I was already worried that the focus of the course was too broad, and I was searching for a way to narrow it. Also, two of the books I was considering—The Bottom Billion by Collier, Charity Case by Pallotta—seemed as though they might not be a good fit for a few of my other students. 

So, I set aside the fourth theme, did some reorganizing, and ended up with the following themes instead: 

1. Empowerment, Personal and Political. What makes us feel empowered (or disempowered)? What types of situations or social conditions encourage more people to participate (online, face-to-face, at work, in our communities, or in general)? How does the internet influence who participates—and how and why do people feel empowered to do so? Why are some people effective leaders, able to motivate people to get involved, while others are not? (This theme is essentially a combination of "How We Think About Ourselves" and "How We Relate to One Another" from my initial planning phase, described above.)
2. Harnessing the Power of Distributed Expertise—How can we optimize our use of massive amounts of aggregated data and collective human brainpower? Major topics include Wikis, gaming, crowd sourcing, hive mind, and "cognitive surplus" (a term coined by Clay Shirky). The emphasis here is on intellectual collaboration.
3. Using Technology Mindfully for Sharing and Collaboration—How is technology changing the way our society functions, or how we are meant to coexist within our society? How might it alter the way we acquire, use and dispose of our "stuff"? Major concepts to be discussed include collaborative consumption, sustainability, open source, and (time permitting) "Sensible Cities." The emphasis here is on economic collaboration.

To explore these themes, I've found wonderful TED Talks and RSA Animates (posted on the Videos page), books (listed in the Syllabus), and websites. I'm excited about the idea of using student and class blogs to encourage discussions outside our weekly class meetings, so I've also added a page on Blogging. And, inspired by Howard Rheingold's admonishments to use technology mindfully, I've recently added a light-hearted page on Procrastination (with links to TED Talks by Vik Nithy, who offers advice on how to stay on task, and Dave Windass, who extols the merits of procrastinating). 

Currently, I'm working on developing ideas for class discussions and projects. I'll post more on those later.