So the ning business is finally going to morph into a real business and stop allowing people to use their goodies without paying for them.

Wow, brings up a whole host of stuff when it comes to writing in the online world.

Is the sale of ad space really expected to power the entire forward progress of the whole world wide web? I don’t think so. Then again, if ning doesn’t give it away free first and foremost, do they grow into the company they now are? And if they now start to charge, how many nings fold up and think, “Well, it was good while it lasted”?

Is this what the next stage of the internet looks like? People give away items at no charge until they become apparently worth something, and then they start to charge for their services and people fold up their tents and drift off to the next latest and greatest thing. (You know, the one that people can use free of charge until enough people start using it to make these folks see “gold in dem dar hills” whereby the model changes to a fee based-structure… and everyone then flees again… and on and on and on?)

Jim Burke said… People need to wake up to the idea that they cannot expect companies to be non-profits. We have grown increasingly addicted to the idea that everything should be free, that we should have to pay for nothing. That is not sustainable.

Indeed. But as soon as Twitter starts charging me per tweet, I think I am gone.

And I think they know this… which is why they do not charge me for tweeting. Which is why so many millions of folks do tweet.

But charge even one dollar a month and, “Nah, I am not so sure it’s worth it” creeps into my consciousness. I mean there are so many other free things I can do on the web, with mobile technology and so on, that, on second thought, Nah, I just don’t think so.

The fact is, most human beings pretty much do not like paying for things that were once free. We feel ripped off. (Even if they are actually worth the money.)

If once upon a time you charged me, and you raised the price, then hey, I get that. But if was free and now you want money for it… that doesn’t really compute so well. I mean “I think I only wanted it because it was free anyway,” is what I tell myself. Then I move on.

And on the flip side, people tend to more highly value that which actually costs them more. Look at the diamond industry. DeBeers is absolutely brilliant in the way that they make us believe diamonds are precious stones worth X amount of dollars. And by controlling 85% of all the diamonds on the planet (they have vaults and vaults and vaults of them locked away so that they can manage world wide inventory and empower all these diamond dealers to say, “but they are rare and precious”) they create the illusion of high value – and the reality of high price – in the mind of buyers.

And we buy it.

Engagement rings, earrings, and so on. “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

Hook, line and sinker, we drank the Kool-Aid on that one.

But NY Times news? I think the cat is outta the bag on that one. Sure, some will buy it – older folks who grew up indoctrinated into the “fine journalism” being offered will stay the course. (They also have more disposable income.) But now, news and commentary are free… and if the NY Times wants to start charging for what they originally gave away online, heck, I’ll go to the Wash Post or L.A. Times or BBC and so on.

Heck, the Huffington Post will go out and scavenge the free news for me. And they are not alone.

And if they all decide to charge at the same time, they are gambling with their very existence… cause there is no guarantee to say enough people will pay to keep them afloat.

Are they willing to risk bankruptcy? Do they really want to know if they call our bluff and insist on charging us that we are actually going to pony up cash for their goods versus simply seeking another source for our news and bail out on them?

TIME magazine charges. Newsweek doesn’t. Is there enough of a difference that I buy TIME? Right now, not really.

The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, Hollywood’s Trade Magazines, got it right. They charged for content right away (after giving away small teasers.) People were used to paying for print, they immediately got used to paying for online from the get-go and now, they more or less, seamlessly transitioned to the online journalism world.

Right now, newspapers don’t really have the guts to pull the “free” plug because they know if they do, we might not come back to them and prove them obsolete. (It’s any business’s darkest fear – to recognize that the world can get along just fine without them and have the world recognize that.

Of course, all of the newspapers are hoping Apple and the Kindle will help to save their butts… but ESPN.com does sports for me and the AP wire still provides news and Joe down the block blogs about the tree root situation plaguing the local sidewalks on my street and the idea of one-stop news shopping is something that is already dead to many of us anyway. (Like textbooks providing one-size-fits-all curriculum – that ship has SAILED!)

I get my news from 15 sources, not one and until all 15 charge, I can live with only 14.

So, I won’t get to read Friedman. But if enough people stop reading Friedman, he’s going to try and deliver content to his audience another way… or else he stops being Friedman and someone else’s voice will rise up to replace his. Books still make sense. (I want to read the writing of the folks I want to read: Stephanie Meyers, Stephen King, they could publish on toilet paper and people would read it by the roll.) Newspapers don’t. Magazines… they seem to be on an edge. Can’t call it one way or the other yet.

Ultimately, I am completely at a loss for how this will all work out but I do feel that it sure would be hard to get people to start paying for my blog now that I have been giving it away at no charge for a year and a half.

Most of them would probably say, “Hasta la Vista… it was good while it lasted but I am onto other things.”

Real businesses know customers value what they pay for much more than they value what is free.

Like the dot.com bubble, so is the Free bubble.

The book FREE proposed that free was the way of the business future – at least to get a foot in the door. Actually, I think the real way of the business future is to 1) provide something excellent and 2) charge for it right out of the gate.

People will always pay for quality and if you are giving it away at no charge, how much is it really worth anyway?

Nings seem to have blown it if they want to charge. Someone else is gonna fill their void if they do because most people will not pay for the same thing they used to get at no charge. They will pay for something new, better, enhanced and so on.

Nings aren’t proposing that. There is no Ning II that’s a platinum version they will be selling. Ning just wants money now… and I am not sure how many folks are gonna roll with that.

However, I would chip in a buck to keep this ning alive. And if we all did, maybe the ning folks would let us keep rolling, huh?

This article in Education Week calls attention to potential “conflict of interests” between educational publishers and those that are behind the scenes of the national standards push.

Essentially, here’s the thrust of the article…

The Literacy Research Association sent a letter Oct. 21 to the groups overseeing the development of common standards that, among other points, expresses concern that many of the authors are “representatives of multiple commercial entities that stand to profit enormously from selling curricula, instructional materials, assessments, and consultancies as the standards are rolled out.”

On one hand, can you really be surprised? When billion of dollars of government money is on the line, there are going to be commercial wolves salivating for the cash. (It happens in defense, construction, telecommunications and so on.)

On the other hand, the people who are authoring the national standards are some of America’s foremost thinkers and experts on students, achievement and blah, blah, blah. I mean where else would the Dept. of Ed turn for this authorship? And the educational publishers need these type of people to author their materials as well… so where do you think they are going to turn?

To the same people.

The conflict of interest was inevitable.

The solution seems kind of obvious to me. Make the contract read, if you write the standards you can’t author/consult/and so on for commercial educational publishing/testing materials for say, 5 years. (Or, if you have accepted money for authoring/consulting educational publishing materials, you are automatically excluded from national writing standards.)

Either way, should we be shocked that some people want to set it up so that “the folks in Congress get to vote on their own pay raise” (cause it’s kind of analogous)?

In parts of school and educational policy these days, all you have to do is follow the money.National standards means national standardized testing… and who will profit off of the implementation and administration of that I wonder?

The chumminess is troubling — even more so when it gets obfuscated behind closed doors, through back channels and what-not. But, hey, Joe and Jane parent… whadda they know. After all, they are entrusting both their kids and their tax dollars to us so that we can, as professionals, make these “best decisions” for them..

Hard to make a best decision for somebody else’s kids when you are staring at 10 figure contracts on the line.

That’s right BILLIONS are hanging in the balance.

But the internet makes for an amazing watchdog, does it not? People with hands in cookie jars… they gotta be more careful than ever, don’t they?

Time to be spooked. Parents should be spooked. Teachers should be spooked. The national workforce should be spooked. And kids (who are going to be on the wrong end of this stuff) ought to be very, very very spooked.

I mean, is this the wave that is inevitably going to wash over us all?

Really, how long before all of us — and by all of us, I mean ALL of us — are being mandated to teach this type of curriculum?

Essentially, it’s a curse of study — oops, I mean a course of study — explicitly designed to teach to the test. As the news article points out, all 29 elementary schools in one district are now being mandated to use the same literacy materials. (What a sale for the publisher of these materials though, huh? Betchya the commissions on that purchase order set a few heels to clicking!) And what literacy materials, you ask? Well, as the article says — and this is a direct quote — Reading Street (catchy name, I’ll give them that) uses, “workbooks” by means of “prescribing set amounts of time for different activities”.

As if Timmy at one school, Johnny in another, Sara in yet a third, Joe and Jackie in another and Paul in yet another school (I am too lazy to type up the names of 29 different kids) are all going to benefit equally from being fed the same mental nutrients as served up by a corporate behemoth who hasn’t even met Timmy, Johnny, Sara, Joe, Jackie and so on.

In the search for equity, are we not being unfair to almost everyone? If you are going to try and pull this off with every student in all 29 elementary schools in one district, will not the top get slowed down, the bottom get passed up and administrators concentrate most heavily on working towards the great, glorious movement to the middle where everyone understands the same concepts at the same time in an equal and measurable fashion?

And though I have not seen Reading Street in person (their website has lots of good buzzwords though with lots of fancy sounding near guarantees for success) I guess this also means if the test doesn’t test it then the question will inevitably arises as to why a teacher might teach certain content? (Forget the fact that their professional experience tells them it is of value… I mean, this is exactly how the test makers are shaping the direction of America’s schooling. He who makes the tests, makes the rules. (The new Golden Rule of Education.)

Good way to manage the widgets, that’s for sure? The folks in North Carolina are nervous… and in my opinion, rightfully so. Yet like I said, I have not seen Reading Street, haven’t touched it, haven’t used it, hadn’t ever heard of it til this week… thankfully!! But when I read this quote from a parent of a child at the magnet school in the district (and aren’t magnet schools supposed to be our shining lights in this haze of mediocrity we call U.S. public education?) I get spooked.

“I don’t feel that a top-down, corporate, admin-heavy approach is what’s going to improve learning for our children. I feel that our children learn from qualified, inspired teachers,” said Julie Maxwell, a Club Boulevard parent.

Really, who is going to argue with that? Other than the top, down, corporate, admin-heavy supporters of course… of which there are few — but they have power… a frightening amount.

Like I said, He who makes the tests, makes the rules!

Be spooked!!

Folks, there is a revolution going on — and the kids at Effingham High School are on the cutting edge. WOW! It’s almost unbelievable some of the things I saw in Illinois.

First off, it’s easy to see why Joe Fatheree is NEA’s 2009 Teacher of the Year. From the relationship he has with his students to the rigor he demands in his curriculum, Joe is on the top of his game across so many areas of the teaching spectrum that it’s truly a joy to know this fellow is an American educator. He’s the real deal.

As for the theater, it was unreal. 1500 seats and the place was PACKED!! Just a sea of people and there is no doubt that the entire event had the feel of an Academy Awards for teenagers. The buzz was palpable all evening long.

Obviously, the highlight was the work of the students. From animated shorts to scripted narratives with humor, pathos, drama and even fear (BTW, the song Ring-Around-the-Rosy was brought to the theater with such a sinister twist I actually felt myself squirm in my seat), this student film festival had it all. It’s truly amazing what kids can do if they are given the opportunity. And I know I always say that wherever I go but to visit the city of Effingham was to see it firsthand.

Kudos to the folks who staged the AHA Film Festival. I don’t think a person who attended will ever forget the experience.