Why Every Company Needs To Be More Like IBM And Less Like Apple

While Apple has been wildly successful, IBM’s Social Business is much more attainable and sustainable than what Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky describes as Apple’s genius led, culture of fear. For the genius is always, as Benjamin Disraeli and later Peter Drucker predicted, succeeded by a “lieutenant of Marines” who understands the business but nothing else. So the company is only left with an innovation vacuum.

In IBM’s social business culture, the genius lies in the 400,000 employees who are free to create...Read more

Of course, Apple is mostly a consumer organization, and consumers want things that "just work". IBM's mission is quite a bit different, providing custom solutions to organizations across the planet. Still, interesting thinking. Check the ROI chart.

Getting Started - RAILS!

As we work toward open micro-assessment platforms, a couple of tutorials.

Ryan Bates has really hit a new level of excellence with Railscasts lately, and he hasn't forgotten the brand-newbie, either. Last week he ginned up #310 Getting Started with Rails, a fantastic how-to from "where-to-find-Ruby."

Of course he lists other tutorials among the resources.

A commenter also pointed out the promising-sounding The Intro to Rails Screencast I Wish I Had by Jeffrey Way.

 600 Years Ago Today (6th Jan. 1412) – Birth of Joan of Arc

How many of today's grads even know who this is?

Learning Registry Updates

One project I follow loosely is a USG interagency Learning Registry. To be honest, I'm still not clear on why or what it is, and it reminds me (at the surface) of many a similar project of the past.

Today, the good folks there have pre-published a bit of a graphic, which may help:

There's also a video: http://youtu.be/gT7YKwmwOoA

Education: Prescription or Subscription?

Can education take a cue from the relationships people have developed with WebMD and other health sites? Dave Edwards looks at this over at GettingSmart.

Even the professional development (PD) models in many schools still reek of “this is what you should know/be doing . . . ” and teachers aren’t given ample time/opportunity to provide feedback and more importantly, input for change. Our students feel like school is “boring” because they have very little choice in how and what they learn. Teachers feel like because of standardized testing, they are told what to teach and how to teach it. This trickles down and students become very disengaged.

I'm focusing these days on creating such a service; to also help push the "time-in-seat" method of granting K-12 credit over the edge.

How to hire a product manager
Thought I'd share this, worth thinking about if your project is more than a small interactive or app.

PoorBlackKid.com
Guy sees article in Forbes he thinks is stupid.
Guy tweets that he thinks its stupid.
Guy is asked by CNN to write a column on how it's stupid.
Response is so great he creates a web app.
Web app gets props on UP with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

All within a week.

Not sure the point of my story, save that the Web makes for blazingly fast--and creative!--disputation. The original column achieved its goal: a discussion on how education results in a better income (we knew that already) and if you're in poverty, it may be a way out.

Some of the responses on various blog sites are astonishing.

As to PoorBlackKid.com, here's an excerpt:

is it hard to learn HTML and CSS on the streetz?

Not as hard as you might think! Once I focused on finally getting the whole reading thing down, it probably took me two hours to learn how to operate a computer and code. I’m working on my Python skills this weekend.

History:Maps of World

What do you think?

The Decline of the Software Age?

Has the software age seen its peak? College grads might be saying so.

Although the number of college graduates increased about 29% between 2001 and 2009, the number graduating with ...with computer and information-sciences degrees decreased 14%.*

There are potential market-side reasons these students might be foreseeing the future. We could imagine that all the 'old' industries--banking, airlines, shipping, distribution, law, government,...--have been brought into the desktop and handheld electronic form. The labor demands here out might be more for tweaking than for software architecting, scaffolding, forging.

And the demand for programmers who build programming tools might be declining. Things like DBMS and operating systems, which once cost thousands, are now free and open source for most costumers.

This might be why students are skipping CS school. But I doubt it.

More likely, would-be programmers have already learned more about programming before they reach university than they would while there. Consider a CS major I met at an Carnegie-Mellon function.

Me: "Oh, CS, you say. I do a little bit with computers and software myself. "

"Cool.", she says. "What languages do you use?"

"Mostly Ruby. Javascript, You know".

"Oh", she says. And at this point her eyes fall and she looks at me like I have just slipped off the wheelchair into my bowl of Ensure. "We use", she says only half-apologetically, "modern programming languages.

 "Java. Have you heard of it?"

This is a CS major at the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, the number one such school in the world. She is cute, small, fragile. I really don't want to break her heart.

Obviously I don't tell the young lady that I tried Java in 1994 and found it to be ridiculously disappointing, even in that olden day.

I do tell her that Ruby is of the lineage of AI languages. SmallTalk and LISP. That it is much more friendly to program. That it makes code beautiful and coders happy.

And that she might give it a try.


So here's the point. If you are 20 and want to write software. Really want it, and at least grew up with a computer nearby. You will have found most of how to do it on your own. You'll have found a group of peers online. Some from Pittsburgh and some from Mumbai. You'll have the full development stack--complete with web server, RDBMS, test tools and IDE--on the laptop you sit down with for lunch.

You probably have a number of web apps to your name, and an action game or two as well. You've animated something with ActionScript. Probably wrote an Android app.

The thing is, those are the software of the present, and near past. So I hope students are learning at school the things they'll need for the future. Like control laws for robots. Feedback loops and systems theory. Natural law.

* Generation Jobless: Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay

Credit Flexibility--A Powerful Tool

Today I write on GettingSmart (EdReformer) about the real change agent in Ohio--and it's not Issue 2.

Credit Flexibility is a new (2010) law designed to give students many more options in what they learn and who they learn it from. In it's first year, CreditFlex students have chosen to

• Learn advanced music from a local youth symphony 
• Learn business and agricultural management skills by growing and marketing popcorn. 
• Get Physical Education credits outside the school day 
• Work with edible and medicinal plants and their relation to healthy living (under an International Baccalaureate instructor and professional herbalist). 
• Learn programming and build robots Research environmental and global issues 
• Learn Latin from a private instructor outside the public school 

For more examples, check out the news videos and newspaper coverage at Ohio Credit Flex on FB.

Big DIY: The Year the Maker Movement Broke

At a meeting, today, I offered the maker movement and educational software as two  emerging and parallel forces.

I wonder about the parallel part. Maybe they're more entwined than we might think. Knowledgeworks' institute for the Future certainly thinks so. 

It's no surprise that when I visited Carnegie-Mellon last fall, labs and classes were filled with students programming soccer robots, cubicle-wandering robots, snake-like robots, self-assembling robots, and more. What's more interesting is the movement of robots, 3-D printers, modified robotic vacuum cleaners, and much more into the home and k-12 setting.

Will it impact how students learn history? Stay tuned.

"The Congress of Ohio...Or Whatever"

The pre-service teacher waiting for her Caribou Coffee meets a friend who gleefully notes that Ohio defeated Issue 2.

In her best whine, she replies, "It doesn't matter.

"Like,... the Congress of Ohio,..or Whatever? It is already working on another law to .....[oppress teachers].

Really. The "Congress of Ohio"?

We can't expect all 22-year-old graduates to have a command of the intricacies of education and administrative policies. university is for learning frameworks of analysis, research skills, calculating and writing, that sort of thing.

But even if you are a music teacher, shouldn't we expect more of the person teaching our children than 'the Congress of Ohio'?

Occupy the Ivory Tower

Have the snows driven out the Occupy protestors?  It doesn't matter; they're in the wrong place anyway.

The protestors, though they have brought attention to issues we all feel, are in one sense fighting yesterdays battle. The bank and car bailouts are over. What they should be fighting is the root ideas that caused those debacles. Ideas and, yes if greed is a vice, then morals.

For that fight they shuold look to the Ivory Towers.

William McGurn takes this on this morn, in What's Your Kid Getting From College?

"The average college debt load is about the price of a new Toyota Prius—$28,100 for those with a degree from a four-year private school, $22,000 for those from public schools."

Which isn't bad, actually.  It's better, in fact, (adjusting for inflation) than I got. And since the rates are low and the return in wages high, if a graduate forgoes the new car and skimps on the dinners out, life should still be far superior to anyone working their way through as a waitress or roofer.

McGurn suggests another question, though. About the non-loan part. The part we as a society pay for them.

With one year at Ohio State budgeting out at $27,000, society will pick up almost $100,000 for the average incoming freshman.

It's fair to ask what they are learning that benefits us all.

Video Tutorial: Create a Game with Impact (HTML5)

Create a pong type game for the browser in a 15 minute tutorial? Create a more complex game that runs on any platform with HTML5?

OK, the games (example: BioLab Disaster) you can create with this seem to me dreadfully boring, though lots of people enjoy them. What's most interesting here is the platform and library nature of the tools.

A library like this allows mini-games to be embedded in larger learning apps. Which is what we aimed for all along. If your individual style of learning can be reached by the addition of such games, you should get it. HTML5 and Javascript are light and ubiquitous enough to make it effective.

Impact isn't the only such library, and you may want to check out others. Yet it seems off to a good start. Game developer Mag says "Impact is the first truly professional-grade JavaScript and HTML5 game engine to hit the market."