I am still on the TK bandwagon this week discussing what I believe is a must see, 60 minute documentary called, “Consider the Conversation.”

And just so you know, it’s not only me who thinks that my friend has put together something amazing and profound… PBS does as well. TK has already been able to get PBS affiliates in a variety of big cities to air his movie.

And hopefully, more will pick it up.

Here are a few links to some reviews.

Not to be morbid but hey, we will all die. And to spend just a wee bit of time with that idea bounces you right back to an even more important question: so how are you going to live?

Like right now? Like going forward? What do you want to experience, who do you wish to be with, what do you hope to tackle and what is it time to let go of?

Amazing stuff here. And let me tell you, a teacher that sees this movie doesn’t head back to the class the next day, cynical and bitter and jaded and ready to phone it in, I tell you that – because once your soul gets stirred like this, you WAKE!

I’ve been a fan of Ray Kurzweil for a while. The dude is just wicked smart and presents idea that are well worth hearing, even if you don’t necessarily agree. But with Watson dominating Jeopardy last week, Kurweil’s ideas are back in the news and making the mainstream media rounds.

TIME magazine just did a story that is pretty WOW reading, I’d say, considering how immense the year 2045 might be to humanity.

Essentially, lots of big ideas get tossed around about the impact of technology. Quotes like this are everywhere:

“…thus, the first ultraintelligent machine [man creates] is the last invention that man need ever make.”

Take a moment for if the Singularity is really near, then why do I/we even need to bother with so much of what currently concerns me/us?

It’s a fun party question to ask, “If you could meet anybody, who would it be?” Me, I love people and couldn’t really narrow my list down at all. Truthfully, I find so many folks interesting – especially the weird ones (who gravitate towards me like a magnet, I might add… no names mentioned). But usually people mean the question in terms of which famous person from history [dead] would you like to meet?

Still, I have a list a mile long. But probably at the top, I’d have love to have met some of the biggie writers. I’m talkin’ canonical Mo Fo’s.

- Dostoevsky

- Victor Hugo

- Hemmingway, Thoreau, Franklin, and Billy Boy Shakespeare!

Could you imagine sipping tea with Poe?

How about going for a row boat ride with Emerson?

A late night cafe con leche with Cervantes?

Me, I think the writers would be fascinating but then again, I’m a book dork. I mean chatting art with Monet, design with Michelangelo, or love (and ears) with Van Gogh would be hot!

And I am not sure if one could beat a clam bake with Dali or a barbecue with Picasso, either

Let’s not forget music. Perhaps there might not be a more tickling reaction to be had as giving me the chance to put a pair of iPod ear buds on Beethoven’s head so that I could expose him to the artistry of Justin Beiber.

But still, if I had to choose a famous dead person I really have no idea which way I’d go. It’d be a “thinker” though, of that I am pretty sure. The military folks never intrigued me as much as those with a philosophical bent. (Not that military guys aren’t thinkers, but I’ve a luvah, not a fighter.)

Lamb with Aristotle? Yes.

Turkey sandwiches with Stonewall Jackson. Eh, I’d take it, but not even a top 100. And though I am sure he’d eat my liver if he heard me say this, Dr. Seuss intrigues me far, far more than Attila the Hun.

Who would you choose? And why? Me, I have no idea. (But secretly I have always wished I was the one who wrote Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure a movie where two high school kids time-travelled and got to have a great time with all kinds of famous dead folks).

Einstein, Voltaire, Plato, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses… it’d be great to share some chips and salsa with any of these cats, too, I think.

I’ve also noticed that my list is notably male. I blame patriarchal history. In a battle of Charles Dickens vs. Jane Austen, I’d take Charles Dickens every time. That’s not to say Jane wouldn’t be a kick in the pants – and only a fool would suggest that sharing a front porch and a glass of lemonade with Emily Dickinson wouldn’t be pretty outstanding – but the guys do seem to dominate my thoughts. Sure Getrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, Mother Goose (actually, she might crack my top 100; I’d just sit there with warm cookies and milk and drool the afternoon away) they all hold an attraction. (And now that I think about it, Jeanne d’ Arc would be a “let’s have some bouillabaisse” pick for sure). But the dudes certainly feel like they are carrying the category for me. (Perhaps there’s an argument for castration to be had in the reason why, somewhere.)

If I could only pick one? No idea. (But W. Somerset Maughm feels like a top 5.)

The “No Cell Phone” policy which so many schools still have in place just doesn’t make sense to me. Why? Because the phone of today is, well… no longer a phone.

Yes, phones are phones. But they are also…

• planners so kids can keep track of all their assignments.
• research tools to quickly find facts, reference info, and the such.
• blah, blah, blah. (Really, if I kept listing and listing all the possibilities of today’s phones, I’d never be able to stop typing right now and get to my bigger idea.)

The point is, the phone of today has evolved into a pocket computer of immense dimensions. In fact, it often operates as the central operational tool for many, many people’s lives. Especially the people who make the “No Cell Phone” policies for our school districts. (Can you even imagine the district personnel without their Blackberries? What would the Asst. Supt do without their iPhone? My goodness, how would so much of the dysfunction continue to amble along if not for these devices? Alas, I stray.)

Virtually 90% of the white collar workers I know who earn six-figure salaries are absolutely dependent on their cell phones. Phones have literally evolved into an indispensable business tool and yet, in all this college readiness talk we hear all the time, we seem to have this wall of hypocrisy separating our stated aims from our actual implemented policies. To be “college ready” means to be able to function in a wired world with proficiency and aptitude. (I am not sure when it happened entirely, I am not sure if they sent out a memo but in this day and age, the two ideas are almost inextricably wed.)

College applications are online, college schedules are online, college financial aid info, professor office hours, and on and on… what isn’t online in today’s college world? The move towards entirely paperless is afoot! Not sure if it will ever reach 100% saturation but it is semi-fascinating to witness the laptop give way to the smart phone and the tablet computer.
And we have a front row seat.

Th irony is not lost that the people who swear that “cell phones in the hands of today’s middle and high school kids is a poor idea” are the same people who would be professionally neutered if you took away their own cell phones.

Is fear of texting really a sufficient reason to ban cell phones? We don’t ban pencil and paper just because the kids may write notes to one another and doodle.

Yet, by this same logic, we ban cell phones. (A ban, which BTW, is hardly working. Kids HAVE cell phones. And their parents are the ones who most often bought these phones for them.) It just seems smarter to teach them how to wisely use the devices as opposed to trying make the students of today “put that thing away before I take it!”
Having a keen facility with these devices is going to eventually be really, really, critical for the students of tomorrow

In fact, in many ways, it already is for the most cutting edge students of today. Let’s harness the educational power of technology instead of suppressing it. Times have changed and the phone of even 3 years ago is not the phone of today.

I have blogged extensively as to how the iPad changed my perceptions about reading, technology, media consumption, educational opportunities and, well… all kinds of things. I’ve talked about how I was a
skeptic until I held the thing in my hands. And then I bought myself an iPad
within the first 2 weeks it was out and I haven’t looked back since.

As it turns out, the iPad changed my perceptions of being a professional writer as well. (An unexpected insight.) Doing something “different” with my newest book Cinder-Smella thus became
an appealing idea to me once I had written the text.

First, a little history about me as an author. I’ve now published in a variety of ways. I’ve self-published, I’ve published with the big dogs in the industry (Disney, Scholastic, RB Education, Penguin) and I’ve
blogged for two years now (a form of modern-day publishing for sure) at a
fairly voluminous rate.

In essence, after having written Cinder-Smella the opportunity arose for me to invert the traditional publishing paradigm… so I decided to go for it with this book.

I’ll explain.

For hundreds of years books have become manifest through being printed and bound. Nowadays, eBooks offer people the opportunity to not print or bind a physical book but rather publish it in a digital text format.

But in the world of picture books, I saw a clear imbalance between the quality of the final product and user experience. While reading a book like Freakonomics or Pride and Prejudice on a Kindle, Nook,
iPad (or what-not) is somewhat of an apples-to-apples user experience (yes,
they are different but the two reading experiences are somewhat in the same
ballpark) reading a picture book such as Green
Eggs and Ham or Knuffle Bunny in
physical form versus Kindle, Nook, iPad, or so-on, is not an apples-to-apples
experience. Clearly, the printed picture book trumps the eBook experience (in
my opinion).

Of course, nowadays we are seeing an explosion of children’s book apps that allow kids to paint within the book, have the story be read to them via the character’s voice, and interact with the text in all sorts of
enhanced, digital ways. But (again, in my opinion) comparing apps to printed
books is not an apples-to-apples experience either.

(NOTE: I am not weighing in on “which is better”; I am just saying they are not comparable as the user interface differential is too great.)

But what if I crafted Cinder-Smella to be an apples-to-apples picture book experience much like Freakonomics is an apples-to-apples reading experience? This idea intrigued me a lot. 

That’s when I realized that what I was really talking about was writing the first children’s picture book specifically designed for the Kindle.

As it currently stands, e-ink screens are awesome… but they are not all in color and reading a picture book is often a lesser experience on eReading devices. But that’s only because I had not yet seen anyone construct a
picture book with the Kindle (and other eReaders) specifically in mind.

And so, with my publishers at eReadia (a new company formed in the past year that believes – and really gets – the digital reading revolution) we decided to try and break new ground.

Indeed, innovation excites me.

The question became, could we format Cinder-Smella so that grandparents and parents with Kindles and iPads and Nooks and so on could read a picture book with their little ones that didn’t feel like a second rate experience?

Clearly, all writers today are thinking about how eReading is going to impact the way our audiences have access to the works we create. So for me, publishing Cinder-Smella in a
digital format first – and then publishing it in a printed book format second –
struck me as an interesting way to dip my toes in the waters of a quickly
shifting landscape while still working hard to publish and author high quality material.

So yes, Cinder-Smella represents my (perhaps, the) first children’s picture book specifically designed to be a kick-butt reading experience on the Kindle. (Clearly, the iPad offers a reading experience that is downright wicked
– the color Nook, as well – but they are designed to be different machines than
the Kindle.)

So far, the reviews for Cinder-Smella have been great but clearly this project represents a new way of doing things in this new era of publishing. Printed books are coming, but the digital has
arrived first with this title.

And don’t think that I don’t realize that without a printed book, there is a “stigma” attached to the publication. More on the perceptions of printed books versus digital books tomorrow.

I like to read stuff from all sorts of perspectives written by all kinds of people. If they are “thinkers in their field” in any way, shape, or form, I will often cut them a wee bit of slack and try to hear what they have to say.

Not that I always agree, but listening to others weigh in helps me in many ways”think about what I really think” in my own life.

And often I see connections to school from what people “think” about life from outside the world of education.

To wit, Seth Godin just wrote a blog post which illustrates this point exceptionally well. (Here’s the link.) Essentially, his basic point is, when someone asks you what you are working on, you ought to be enthusiastic about your reply… or else you are, as he says, “wasting away”.

I am not sure I agree with the “wasting away” part because I truly LOVE what I do for a living but still, there are times where it’s a heck of a lot of blue-collar, roll up your shirt sleeves and execute, execute, execute type of work. (Nothing is ever all glamour and people who try to sell that idea to other people annoy me because persevering through the mundane – after all, God is in the details, right? – is a very under-appreciated quality of success, in my opinion) However, I do agree with the idea that the over-arching energy behind what “you are working on” ought to be fueled by enthusiasm, inspiration and passion.

And when I think about how so many kids go through school these days, I can’t help but be shocked by how absent these feelings are from their educational experience.

Top students, well, we often see how fervent they get when it comes to things like math-a-thon or science fair or moot court or debate club and so on. But if you slice away the top 10% of the highest achievers in any school and you took a measurement of “the enthusiasm for learning barometer”, I fear the ratings would be in the tank.

And who does well in anything that they do not find meaningful, personally relevant or authentically exciting.

Seth Godin is preaching to the business world in his blog post but I think the same thing can be said in education. The kids need to care (internal motivation; Daniel Pink has spoken to this a great deal) and the teachers need to feel enthusiastic and driven about their profession duties as well. (Which of course, can’t ever be legislated, much less measured… another post entirely.)

If you don’t care on the inside, eventually, it’s going to show in the work on the outside.

And in another case of the bubble tests being the tail that wags the entire educational dog, we see that one of the nation’s largest school districts – Los Angeles Unified – wants to start school earlier next year.

Not add more days of school, mind you. (Of course not. That would cost money and perhaps even add value to a child’s learning life.) Nope… they want to start earlier to “give students more time to prepare for the tests.”

That’s not a direct quote. Here’s the direct quote…

“The Los Angeles Unified School District hails the idea as a step forward academically, arguing that students would be better prepared for exams.”

It’s that blatant.
That direct.
That absurd.

Clearly, good widgets do well on good one-size-fits-all bubble tests and bad widgets do poorly on one-size-fits-all bubble tests so – just as clearly, we need to start concentrating on the bubble tests earlier next year as they are, after all, the entire raison d’etre for public education’s entire existence.

It also goes to show how little the time is valued by our schools after bubble test season is over. (I’ve blogged about this before, about how once testing season passes the entire school shifts into “bide-our-time til summer” mode because clearly, once the bubbles have passed, so has the need to “really teach”.)

Why don’t we just let the bubble test makers decide the school calendar and put this baby to rest once and for all? They could schedule our tests, they could schedule our pre-tests, they can schedule our practice tests, our warm-up tests, and our make-up tests.

And anything that’s left over, will just be a furlough day. After all, if we are not preparing kids for the tests, how in the world can it be said that we are really teaching.

Because if it’s not tested, why would we be teaching it anyway?

This will all save us time, money and energy. Since nothing else but the bubble tests matter, why are we even bothering to pretend that anything other than the bubble tests do matter.

Of course, once we parse the data, we’ll know who to keep, who to fire, which kid to shame and which kid to put on the cover of the school district’s newsletter.

It’s a simple solution really. I have no idea why it’s taken them so long to figure it out.