Identity, Motivation, and Purpose: An Update on Thriving in the Digital Age

In the course I'm teaching, Thriving in the Digital Age, I seem to be learning and growing as much as my students. As I listen to them struggle to articulate how they feel and think about complex topics, such as identity, motivation, and purpose, I'm often forced to re-evaluate my own assumptions regarding these subjects. It's an extraordinary opportunity: how often do we, as adults, set aside time to think deliberately about our personal and social identities, about all the ways in which various internal and external motivators influence our actions, or exactly how our unconscious values might be directing our lives? These teens, in contrast, are profoundly and constantly aware of these things, and they are helping me to become more aware of them, too.

What I would like to do here is to share some of the materials we've used so far for the course. (For a more complete listing, refer to the Weekly TED Talks and Online Resources posted on the course website.)

We began the course with the book Quiet by Susan Cain . . .



I paired Quiet with Chapter 1 ("Attention! How and Why to Control Your Mind's Most Powerful Instrument") of Net Smart by Howard Rheingold, and this seemed to work out very well. We talked about introverts, extroverts and how to deal effectively with distractions in an "always on" world. We discovered that "distractions" can be a problem for introverts as well as extroverts but not in the same way. The extroverted students sought ways to control their multitasking habits—they loved all that stimulation and found it hard to stop—so they needed help focusing their attention. Meditation was a good addition to their tool set. The introverted students weren't attracted to multitasking; they preferred to do one thing at a time. What they craved was less stimulation, fewer interruptions, so they needed to find ways to access the digital world without becoming overwhelmed by it. The tools that were most helpful to them were dashboards and filters, which controlled the flow of information, and online discussion forums, where they could take as much time as they needed to compose and share their thoughts.

Next, we moved on to Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz . . .



The logical pairing for Schulz's book was Chapter 2 ("Crap Detection) of Net Smart. We talked about why we get things wrong, how it feels to be wrong, and what can be gained from learning to embrace our fallibility. Topics of discussion included "filter bubbles" and why it's important to consult a variety of reliable sources; optical illusions, phantom limbs and other errors in perception; internet hoaxes and other scams; the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the ways in which changes in cultural attitudes toward error have transformed science and industry; forensic psychology and how people in general and eyewitnesses in particular sometimes get things wrong; neuroscience; cults; terminal illness and the stages of grief; and, as a recurring theme, how we feel about being wrong and why it's so hard to let go of our desire to be right.

Currently, we are reading Start with Why by Simon Sinek . . .


I'm combining this with Chapter 5 ("Social Has a Shape") of Net Smart by Howard Rheingold and selections from Connected by Dr. Nicholas Christakis. The primary themes for these four weeks of the course are leadership and social networks, but we're also exploring the connections between the two. How do good leaders participate in social networks? Or, conversely, how do our social networks—or lack thereof—influence our ability to become effective leaders?

So far, I've supplemented the primary readings with talks by:

• Drew Dudley ("Everyday Leadership"),
• Dan Pink ("Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"),
• Mike Rowe ("Learning from Dirty Jobs"),
• Seth Godin ("The Tribes We Lead"),
• and Tony Robbins ("Why We Do What We Do")

These presenters have inspired interesting and sometimes heated discussions. For example, we've debated the differences—sometimes subtle, other times extreme—between motivation and manipulation, particularly when it comes to marketing. Is it the message, the product, or the image of ourselves that influences our choices? We've also questioned the relative merits of "vision" and pragmatism, the pros and cons of going after a dream versus doing a job that simply needs to get done. Where one student emphasized practicality and argued the importance of quality control (the HOW and WHAT of a job), another admired leaders who could articulate a higher purpose for mankind (the WHY of a movement).

I'm looking forward to continuing this course in the months ahead and plan to share in future posts more of what I'm learning from the students. 

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.

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.

Building on TED Talks, Part II

In my previous post, Building on TED Talks: A Course for High School Seniors, I presented tentative ideas for designing a high school course that would be based on TED Talks. Since then, I have received some feedback, talked to parents and students, skimmed a collection of books, and considered various options. Based on my research, I've decided to revise my original plan.

Course Objective
My initial course objective was too vague: "Explore new ways of thinking by studying, discussing and reflecting upon a set of powerful ideas. . . ." What "powerful ideas"? Clearly, I had to be more specific. Otherwise, how could I create a cohesive TED Talk Playlist for the course? With over 1500 TED Talks in the full catalog, it would take me hundreds of hours to preview all of them. Even though I managed to haphazardly select some excellent speakers from nearly every one of the main TED categories (business, design, entertainment, global issues, science and technology), I could see how jumping from Susan Cain to Clay Shirky to Jacqueline Novogratz might be confusing to students if I couldn't make strong connections between these extraordinary speakers.

To improve the course focus, I asked myself two obvious questions:

• Exactly what "powerful ideas" do I want to share with the group?
• What do I hope everyone will learn by the end of the year? 

After considering these questions, I began revising my earlier plan to focus on three concepts: 

1. Democracy in the Digital Age—How does the internet influence who participates (and how and why do people feel empowered to do so)?
2. Collaborative Consumption—How does the internet alter the way we acquire and dispose of our stuff? 
3. Cognitive Surplus—In what way can we harness the power of aggregated data and manpower?

In addition to exploring these ideas, I would like to help students with blogging projects tailored to their own interests and aptitudes. My goal is to help them become more skilled at working with online content so they can (in Howard Rheingold's words) "thrive online." We can use the blogs to promote discussions within our class group; we can also consider how and why we might choose to use blogs to reach a larger audience. Hopefully, the blogging projects will provide "hands-on" experiences that will help to reinforce the major course concepts (digital democracy, collaborative consumption, cognitive surplus). 

Course Content

In a future post, I will provide a complete list of TED Talks and recommended reading for the course. Currently, I'm thinking of working with the following two books:

Net Smart: How to Thrive Online by Howard Rheingold (MIT Press, 2012) 

CreateYour Own Blog: 6 Easy Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro by Tris Hussey (Sams Publishing, 2010)

Have you used either of these texts? Were they helpful to you? I welcome suggestions for alternative texts—ideally, inexpensive and straightforward—that explain how to use free online tools to create effective multimedia content for a range of purposes.