The Tempered Radical

What Can Schools Learn from Best Buy's Continuing Troubles?

Not sure if you've been following the news or not, but Best Buy -- like a slew of Big Box electronics stores in the past ten years --is teetering on the brink of extinction. 

The primary hitch for Best Buy is that there's almost NOTHING that distinguishes its thousands of square feet of sales space from online retailers like Amazon that have no overhead and sell us the exact same stuff for half the price.

As Roben Farzad and Kenton Powell explain in this Bloomberg Business Week bit, Best Buy has become nothing more than a digital showroom for most customers:

"Window shoppers go to one of Best Buy’s well-appointed stores to avail themselves of quality face time with gadgets and salespeople (think inventory and salary costs) before consummating the transaction elsewhere—online.

Fueling that growing practice are price-comparison apps such as Amazon’s Price Check, which lets those obnoxiously savvy smartphone users scan a particular item’s barcode at a store and immediately know who has the best deal on the Web. Consumers can then just buy it right on their phone.

It’s like a scene from the vintage cartoon comedy The Jetsons, but traditional retailers with hundreds of costly stores, such as Best Buy, Sears Holdings, and even Wal-Mart, aren’t laughing."

To save itself, argues Alex Goldfayn in this Mashable Business bit, Best Buy needs to improve the customer experience in its stores.  After all, stores -- actual physical buildings that we stop by on the way home from work in order to get our hands on devices -- is what makes Best Buy unique, right?

That's something that Amazon isn't even TRYING to provide, but it is something that customers STILL want -- explaining the full parking lots in front of YOUR local Best Buy every weekend.

Improving the customer experience in stores, however, means reinvesting in employees -- and that's something that Best Buy hasn't been willing to do.  The Blue Shirt Nation employee training program that Best Buy built its reputation on has been neglected for years. 

The results, according to Goldfayn, have been devastating:

"One of Best Buy’s major advantages over Amazon is that it employs people in blue shirts who are expected to help customers. These folks are young (because they cost less this way), but insufficiently trained.

Of course, Apple Stores employ young people too, but Apple’s people are empowered, no, mandated, to help people. Best Buy’s store staffers read the back of the box with you."

Improving the customer experience in stores also means stripping away the hundreds of items that Best Buy currently sells to customers to focus its efforts on a smaller handful of high quality gadgets that people actually want. 

As Goldfayn explains, "Best Buy should focus on the best products, not on as many products as can be crammed onto shelves."  Doing so would make the shopping experience more efficient for customers -- and more profitable for Best Buy. 

I couldn't help but thinking about traditional brick-and-mortar schools when I was reading these two bits about Best Buy, y'all.

More on Using Digital Kits to Structure Student Projects

A bunch of Radical readers stopped by the comment strand of my recent bit on Google Docs and digital kits to ask questions about how exactly I use digital kits in the classroom with my kids.  I figured I'd answer a few of those questions here:

What kind of products do your kids create with digital kits?

In my room, digital kits support students who are creating any kind of final product that requires visuals.

That might be as simple as asking students to create one influential PowerPoint slide -- something that I did in this lesson with seventh graders in Union County, North Carolina -- or something more complicated like the video that my student Kiva club created to advertize our work.

 

What, exactly, does a "digital kit" look like?

Remember those plastic model car kits that we would buy when we were kids?  The ones with like 4,000 parts that we'd take out of the box and assemble over the course of a few afternoons while also wiffing highly toxic glue in our bedrooms? 

They're a GREAT metaphor for a digital kit -- which is nothing more than a collection of content that kids can choose from when putting together a visually-driven project in your classroom. 

Just like the companies that put together model kits for us twenty years ago, you're assembling everything that your kids are going to need in one place before they even start working on a project. 

That means what goes in your digital kit depends on the project that you're asking kids to tackle.  In my room, they most often include lists of statistics and quotes (see here) and sets of PowerPoint slides with Creative Commons images embedded as backgrounds (see here) that are connected to the topic that we are studying. 

That's it, y'all, simply because most of the projects that my kids are doing combine quotes and statistics with influential visuals to change minds.

 

Aren't you making things easier for kids when you assemble all of the content that they need for a project in advance? 

ABSOLUTELY!  In fact, that's the whole point of a digital kit.  You see, while I really want to give kids the chance to incorporate visual content into our classroom projects, I just don't have the time to spend WEEKS and WEEKS in the computer lab as kids search for content on their own.

So a digital kit essentially speeds up these kinds of projects, making them way more doable for a guy with a massive curriculum.

What's more, digital kits increase the likelihood of kids creating REALLY impressive final products -- which simultaneously models what's possible for future projects AND builds momentum for the work that I'm doing with students. 

Finally, I like to think of digital kits as gifts to my students because they free kids to think about the content of our curriculum instead of spending inordinate amounts of time searching for pictures and quotes.

 

What's the point of a project if you -- instead of your students -- are doing all the searching?

People who ask this question are REALLY saying, "Are your kids thinking about content if all they need to do is assemble the pieces that you are giving them in your digital kits?"

And that's a legitimate question -- which is why most of the digital kits that I create contain content that just isn't connected to the topic that we're studying in class. 

By throwing in pictures and/or quotes that don't really fit with the themes that we've been studying in class, I'm forcing kids to make critical choices about the content that they select when making their final choices. 

Typically, I include WAY more content than kids really need to complete their projects in a digital kit.  That means they've still got a lot of high level choices to make.

Think about the Kiva video that I mentioned earlier.  My kids had to pick the pictures and statistics that they thought were the MOST  powerful for our audience.  Then, they needed to organize those pictures and statistics in a way that told a clear and convincing story.

Just because they were choosing from content that I assembled for them doesn't mean that they weren't working to wrestle with their final products.  Unlike plastic models, my digital kits don't come with step-by-step directions for assembly!

Here's another metaphor that might make digital kits easier to understand:  When I took Home Economics in seventh grade, we did a TON of cooking.  Every time that we were introduced to a new recipie, the ingredients necessary were laid out nicely on a table that was in the front of the room. 

That didn't hinder our groups from learning to cook, did it?  After all, we still had choices to make -- did we add enough salt?  Is this the right time and temperature to pour milk into our bowl?  What's missing from our final meal?

By providing the ingredients in advance, though, our teacher made it possible for us to cook in a class period.  There's no way that we'd EVER get a recipe done if we spent half of our time searching the school for beef broth!

That's what digital kits do for teachers who want their students to tackle projects that are dependent on visual content but who don't have the time to turn their kids loose to find their own ingredients.

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Related Radical Reads:

What Do YOU Know about the Creative Commons?

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching Persuasion [Graphic]

In another instance of the role that a well-crafted Twitterstream can play in making your life easier, I stumbled across this great graphic yesterday on the Copyblogger website:

Like this graphic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

 

Considering that I spent part of the day in a Teaching the iGeneration workshop introducing teachers to the characteristics of persuasive evidence and the importance of showing students how to change minds, I'd say that was pretty perfect timing, wouldn't you?

And that's a worthwhile lesson:  Find the right people to follow and you'll make your professional life easier.  It's TOTALLY worth it. 

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Related Radical Reads:

Five Tips for Creating PowerPoint Slides that Won't Bore an Audience

Lathered Brilliance, Superman Underoos and Social Media Spaces

 

Using Google Docs to Create Digital Kits for Student Projects

One of the most valuable #edtech lessons that I ever learned came from Hall Davidson, who suggests that teachers interested in incorporating digital storytelling projects into their classrooms create digital kits that students can use as starting points for their efforts. 

Digital kits are nothing more than collections of content -- still images, video clips, audio clips, passages of text -- connected to the topic being studied that teachers assemble for their kids before a project even begins.  Then, students use the content in digital kits to assemble their final products.

What I love the best about using digital kits to structure student projects is that they speed up the process of creating influential visuals.  Instead of spending days searching for content, students using preassembled digital kits are freed to think about the topic of study immediately. 

That's important for those of us who want to make visual projects a part of the work that our kids do but feel pressure to get through massive curricula. 

Casey Rimmer -- an instructional technology teacher in Union County, North Carolina -- has taken the notion of digital kits a step further.  In a recent training, she had groups of teachers work together to assemble digital kits for upcoming units together.

That's a cool idea in and of itself, isn't it? 

Often, the most intimidating part of creating a digital kit is that it can take a ton of initial time to search for content that works.  When that task becomes collaborative -- something Rimmer's teachers accomplished by using the presentation maker in Google Docs  -- it automatically becomes easier.

#easyisgood

Creating a digital kit in Google Docs has another advantage, too:  When the images that students are going to use in their final projects are stored in Google Docs, they can be made available for download on the web.  That means "giving students access to digital kits" means nothing more than sharing a link to the final product online. 

#reallyeasyisreallygood

But my FAVORITE part of Rimmer's plan is something I didn't even know about until she commented on my recent post about copyright and the Creative Commons:  When you search for images directly in Docs, Google ONLY returns images that are licensed for reuse and modification.

Think about that for a minute:  Because Google Docs returns only images that are licensed for reuse and modification when you are creating presentations, teachers and students can start to act more responsibly when using digital content without even thinking about it.

That's HUGELY important -- primarily because sustainable changes are changes that are actually doable.  Every teacher and student is interested in acting responsibly when it comes to digital content -- but until recently, "acting responsibly" was pretty darn hard to do. That's not the case anymore.

Want to learn how to do this in Google Docs?  Here's a few quick directions.

What Do YOU Know About the Creative Commons?

Quick question:  The last time that you needed an image for a project, where did you get it from? Google, right?  That nifty little Images tab makes it SO easy to find just the right shot for your slide deck, doesn't it?

Here's the thing:  Pictures -- just like text, music and video -- are protected by copyright even when they're posted on the Internet.  That means there's a GOOD chance that when you grab a picture from Google, you're stealing it using it inappropriately. 

That's a lesson I learned the hard way, y'all.  A few years back I wrote a bit here on the Radical called A Lesson Learned from One Fat Ox.  In the original bit, I added a great picture of two oxen pulling a plow that I found in a Google image search.

A few days later, I got an email from the photographer asking me whether I'd already negotiated rights for using the image with her.  After a very uncomfortable conversation, she let me off the hook -- but only after I agreed to teach my students a lesson about copyright protections for images. 

Since then, I've worked hard to learn as much as I can about the Creative Commons -- which is a form of copyright protection that content creators who WANT to freely share their work have started to embrace. 

Need an introduction to Creative Commons licenses? Then check out this video from the minds behind the Creative Commons:

 

When I introduce Creative Commons to my middle school students, though, I typically use this Commoncraft video.  It's a little more approachable and easier to understand for tweens:

 

 

So where can you find Creative Commons content? 

While there are a ton of different online sources for content that creators are sharing freely, my favorite is Flickr Creative Commons mostly because Flickr is such a popular photo-sharing website that there are almost always dozens -- if not hundreds -- of really good pictures to choose from no matter what topic I'm building a presentation around. 

Of course, Flickr is also almost always blocked at schools.  That makes Morguefile useful.  While the collection at Morguefile isn't nearly as large -- and the quality of photos isn't nearly as high -- at least it's not blocked by school Internet filters, right?

The Search feature on the Creative Commons website is also incredibly useful simply because it allows users to search for Creative Commons content in several of the most popular online warehouses. 

While it's not TECHNICALLY a search engine itself, it will automatically send your request for Creative Content to search engines like Google and return results in a new window.

That is a HECK of a lot easier than teaching tweens how to sift through the advanced settings features in search engines looking for the right filters to get content that is available for reuse. 

In the end, teaching kids to use digital content responsibly is probably one of the most important lessons in today's digital world, don't you think?  After all, visually driven mashups are probably the most common type of product being created by anyone who is working to change minds or be influential.

It's hard to be influential, though, when you're stealing other people's stuff!

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Related Radical Reads:

Five Tips for Creating PowerPoint Slides that Won't Bore Your Audiences

 

 

What Can Schools Learn from Kobe's Struggles?

Sports fans LOVE their heroes, don't they?  When crunch time comes for our favorite teams, we just KNOW that our favorite superstar is going to rise to the occasion and single-handedly save the day. 

And no sport creates more opportunities for individuals to become hometown heroes than basketball. 

With five players on either team covering each other man-to-man, isolated match-ups pairing the two best players on the floor against one another in a showdown for sporting glory are easy to manufacture.

If you went with your heart, you'd take that match-up anytime.  "Just give it to ____________," we shout from the cheap seats.  "He'll get the job done!"

But look a little closer at the numbers -- something that ESPN author Henry Abbott recently did in an article titled Hero Ball -- and you'll find that clutch performances by individual superstars aren't as common or productive as you might think.

Practice-Centered Observation Protocol [Handout]

I don't have a ton of time to write tonight, y'all -- trying to catch up after the curveball that life threw at me last week -- but I wanted to share a handout that I think might be useful for anyone working in a professional learning community.

Called a Practice-Centered Observation Protocol, it is designed to guide teachers through the process of observing their peers in action:

Download Handout_PracticeCenteredObservationProtocol

You'll notice that each question intentionally places the focus of a peer observation on the impact that instructional practices -- rather than individuals -- are having on students. 

That's an incredibly important first step for making peer observations a safe practice that professional learning teams can embrace. 

Until members are convinced that peers are collectively evaluating practices INSTEAD of people, peer observations as a form of professional development are too threatening for most teachers to buy into.

Hope this protocol helps in the work that y'all are doing.  I'd love to hear any feedback that you have if you actually use it!

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Related Radical Reads:

Surgeons, Singletons and Coaching in a PLC

What Can the Principals of a PLC Learn from Handwashing

The Power of PLCs

So Much More than a Personal Learning Network

A little over a week ago, my Dad passed away after a four year battle with lung cancer.  Wrestling with the loss, I wrote to him here on the Radical. 

For me, writing to my Dad made sense simply because he read everything that I wrote.  My post was one way for me to say thank you and goodbye to him all at once.  I felt better after finishing it even if I was silently crying in the back of the McDonalds where I was writing.

The interesting twist is what happened next.

Dozens and dozens of readers started sharing kind words and warm thoughts with me in comments that streamed in over the course of three or four days.  Word spread through Twitter after a few people shared my tribute to Dad there, leading to another steady flow of digital love.

Each comment and message meant the WORLD to me, y'all.  I found myself catching my breath during the whirlwind of the past week by reading a few new messages at a time -- and every time that someone stopped by to wish my family well, it made me smile for a minute.

#oweyouone

That got me thinking about the fact that what I've built using social tools in the past few years is so much more than a personal LEARNING network. 

Sure, we learn together.  I write and curate web resources connected to #edtech and #edpolicy for you.  You write and curate web resources connected to #edtech and #edpolicy for me.  We ask and answer each other's questions.  We offer just in time support that makes us all better educators.

But somewhere along the line, our togetherness reached a tipping point that goes far beyond learning together.  We went from a group of people who were simply learning from each other to a group of digital friends who genuinely care about each other as people beyond our profession.

I'm not exactly sure where or when or how that happened -- but I'm jazzed that it did.  You are so much more real to me today than you were a week ago because I know that you care about me -- not just the content that I create. 

Better yet, I'm more convinced than ever that today's kids need to learn how to build their own digital networks too.  Not just because digital networks can make them more efficient and effective professionals, but because digital networks are living, breathing places to belong.

And having places to belong just plain matters to EVERYONE. 

Any of this make sense?

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Related Radical Reads:

This One's for You, Dad

Technology Facilitates Connections

The Importance of a PLN

 

This One's for You, Dad.

I don't think I ever told all y'all, but one of the reasons that I've written as regularly as I have on the Radical is because I knew that my Dad has spent the past several years waiting for new posts.  He loved the stuff -- but more importantly, he loved the conversations that my content sparked between us.

We talked for HOURS about everything #edpolicy and #edtech.  We talked about how poverty impacts education.  We talked about communities that fail to support their schools.  We talked about how teachers need to take risks sometimes in order to drive change.  We talked about how social media spaces are changing learning and publishing and family communication.

But most importantly, we talked -- and I loved every minute of it. 

So this one's for you, Dad.  I know with all my heart that you're still reading and that's why I'll always continue to write. 

With nothing but love,

Bill

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Note to readers:  I lost my Dad to lung cancer yesterday, so I'll be away from the keyboard for awhile.  I know you'll understand.