One Book, One World

Nancy Pearl, the book commentator on NPR, has a great claim to the title America's Librarian. Her "Booklust" radio columns are classics, and have been collected in two wonderful volumes. I discovered so many books in these classic book lists that I now read in Nancy Pearl's shadow.

A while ago Pearl conceived the brilliant idea of encouraging cities, through their public libraries, to choose a single book for all citizens to read. The concept, Pearl argued, was a tool to get all citizens, regardless of their differences, regularly to share at least one significant experience in common.

One Book One City has spread like wildfire.

Enter Jeff Howe, a contributing editor of Wired Magazine and author of Crowdsourcing, one of the great books of 2009. In Crowdsourcing Howe argues, in passing, that we are all now surrounded by very cheap, hyper-powerful, mobile, easy to learn and easy to use tools that put all of the world's knowledge in everyone's hands, robbing the schoolmaster of the power to distribute and control it. IMHO Crowdsourcing is one of the most important books for contemporary educators.

Howe argues in a post from April 23 2010 on his blog, also called Crowdsourcing, that because geography is no longer in the age of the Internet as salient a feature of group formation as is affinity, Pearl's One Book, One City concept is dated. With Global tools like Twitter the contemporary concept would be One Book One World.

With that grandiose vision, Howe has started a global book club, called One Book One Tweet, or #1b1t (note the Twitter hashtag). Yesterday's blog post spells out the rules for the discussion group on Twitter.

I am of the 'think globally act locally' school, and am hardly convinced that a global Twitter book club makes sense. Further, I think Pearl's project contributes to local community life in just the right way; it gives us something to talk about with our neighbors: our barbers, tree doctors and the folks we run into at the book store or cafe. Twitter keeps us home in front of the computer cut off from these folks.

I am, however, a pluralist and an optimist and I wish Howe's project well.

Blogging is Better than Schooling

Debbie Harbeson at Blogging Tips states that Blogging is Better than School.

The mental habits we pick up in school are deadly when blogging, she explains. "People think blogging is hard because they get stuck in schoolish thinking . . . which kills curiosity and makes many people lose confidence in their ability to learn."

She adds:

In school, teachers are necessary for learning . . . But you can learn to blog without a teacher.

In school, there is only one correct answer. . . but in blogging there are many solutions to the same problem.

In school, mistakes are bad. A big part of the success and fun of blogging is experimenting, and mistakes are just another way to learn.

In school, you don’t get to choose the topic you are going to study. When blogging, you get to choose a topic you are truly interested in. Plus, you can go as deep as you want into the subject because there will be no teacher or bell to make you stop and move on to the next class.

You get the point.

But one thing Debbie doesn't consider is that blogging in school is a way of cutting through some of the problems of schoolish thinking.

Courses built around blogging instead of those phony "research projects" may just get some kids involved in creative ways, in learning (mostly) by themselves and their peers, in choosing topics to study based around their interests, in finding their own answers and discovering their own styles, in making non-fatal mistakes and learning through creative fast failure.

Can you think of uses for educational blogs in college classes, or in teacher training?

Blogging Tips

The Commission on Social Issues and our blog, Social Issues, aim to help scholars and progressive educators contribute to the discussion and resolution of social, cultural and educational issues.

Blogging is an important channel of communication about these issues. The public, engaged scholar-intellectual of today can get ideas circulating by joining the blogosphere.

Social Issues will frequently share ideas about blogging, and encourages its readers to blog, both here at SI and on their own.

We have already mentioned Chris Garrett as a source of great ideas on blogging.

Another source is Lorelle VanFossen, who blogs at Lorelle on Wordpress. Although much of the content is about the wordpress blogging platform, Lorelle is full of great ideas about blogging and writing in general.

In her post today Lorelle writes about the popular author Peter McWilliams and his motivational books Life 101 and Do It, demonstrating how McWilliam's style and approach to his topics offer great lessons for bloggers.

She says:

Blogging is about confidence, confidence in your subject matter and self-confidence that keeps you returning to your blog, persistently publishing . . . Blogging is about overcoming your fears. It’s about making mistakes and learning to live with it. It’s about the courage to say what needs to be said, no matter what anyone else says or thinks.

Life 101 and Do It! address the issues of what gets in our way and stops us from moving forward, especially when the path is a creative one that requires courage and faith in our abilities. It’s so easy to turn back when someone says something nasty . . . or insults your expertise

All of us hoping to advance progressive ideas in our conservative and frequently corrupt society have something to learn about the courage to move forward.

Making SOCIAL ISSUES a Useful Blog

Chris Garrett, a trustworthy source of blogging advice, offers very helpful tips about how to make a blog useful .

He notes that some readers will be regulars, while others will have come to the site through a link while searching for:

1. Specific information
2. A solution to a problem
3. News and commentary about current events
4. Ideas, concepts, tips, education
5. Further details of the information they have found
6. General information on the subject area

Keeping this in mind supplies us with a checklist of six types of useful posts.

Chris adds that to make the visitor happy, a blog post should:

1. Promise benefits in your titles and headlines and actually deliver on it.
2. Make your navigation suit the missions your readers are on.
3. On your homepage provide links for first time visitors who want to explore and long time visitors who read via the web and not RSS.
4. Individual articles should provide the content they promise, then provide links to more on the same subject.
5. Add clear signposts to all your best or most publication-defining "flagship" posts, while keeping your visitor on the scent of their hunt with series, related articles and category links.

Blogging in a Silo

Susan Gunelius asks this key question: are yoiu blogging in a silo? She writes:

There is a term used in business and marketing called the “silo effect” which refers to a lack of communication or coordination between business units and/or marketing efforts. Instead of working together, each team focuses solely on their own goals with little regard to everyone else’s efforts. It occured to me this week that bloggers should ask themselves whether or not they’re guilty of the silo effect on their blogs.

There are many blogs expressing progressive viewpoints on social and cultural issues. Many individual academics and scholarly socieites have blogs or newsletters. The question is: how effectively are they cooperating to get their ideas in circulation beyond the academy -- or in some cases, beyond their authors' field of vision?

Most scholarly socieities do not have an "engaged scholar" mission written into their mission statements. The Dewey society does. For this reason it can be a useful partner for engaged scholars and engaged members of scholarly societies.

After reflecting on the report about the March workshop at AERA Barbara Stengel writes:

I'm wondering about generating/investigating a network of "Deweyan" blogs, i.e. blogs that already exist out there that would "sign on" to the set of principles or whatever gets developed. Then put the JDS logo on the blog and put the links to other Deweyan blogs there as well. This might help folks find similar sorts of analyses of other issues and create a sense of community in the bargain. (If we looked for blogs with a Deweyan tone, we might even be able to recruit new members who didnt' know about the society . . . So add this to the list of possibilities.

So the task is for SI to stop blogging in a silo.

Please comment on any individual or organizational blogs or newletters with which we can partner in this way.

Writing to Make a Difference and Change the World

Tired of writing to hear your own voice? No longer excited to see your name in print and want something more?

Two books offer advice about how to make a difference and change the world. Both address the concerns of engaged scholars.

The first is Writing a Book that Makes a Difference, by Philip Gerard. It's designed to help you find your own big idea, check out its worthiness, develop it, and connect to the reader. Written in 2000, it does not touch on the new media formats such as blogs and e-books. It is strictly about writing books.

The second is Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher, author of (among other influential change books) Reviving Ophelia. Pipher's book is to my eye simpler and more direct, perhaps because she devotes a lot of attention to the sorts of simple and direct communications found in blogs, short articles, and op ed pieces.

If you want to un-learn the writing habits of academia and learn new ones that allow you to connect and make a difference try one or both of these valuable guides.

Change This Newsletter

The Website Change This newsletter has a nice idea about how to use a publication platform to spread ideas about social change.

The site publishes Manifestos in copyright-free form, and encourages their distribution. The manifestos are well written and beautifully formatted, and are limited in length, so that they are suitable reading for policy makers and influencers.

A good sample manifesto is Change the Way to Change the World


Readers are invited (no, make that strongly encouraged) to copy them, e-mail them to everybody, put them on their web sites, print up their own editions to pass out on the street. The costs to Change This and their authors are contained: no costs for paper, ink, postage, etc.

The manifesto authors include many of the 'coolest' people: Tom Peters, Seth Goodin and their ilk. They include educational ideologues like Michael Strong and Chester Finn. However, the pages of Change This are open to many others: there is a proposal process similar to what one might encounter from a print publisher.

The Editors state their goal as follows:

ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread.

We're on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds.

This idea has a very direct relevance to the Dewey Society's mandate. Here's why:

Some years ago the Philosophy of Education Society UK initiated a publication series called Insights. The various volumes, all authored by card carrying philosophers of education, have been devoted to specific 'hot' policy issues in British education. They have been widely distributed to policy makers, legislative staff personnel, educational administrators, and the press. They have served to maintain the visibility and credibility of philosophy of education there.

Since I read the first Insight volumes I have longed for an American version. Given the mandate of the John Dewey Society, I have considered the Society to be the natural publisher of such a series. Budget limitations, however, have crimped the Society's ability to move ahead with this form of publication.

Change This offers an alternative model. Building from the Change This template, the society could move forward with web-based Insight-like publications on a limited budget.

What would this involve?

The creation of an editorial board by the Board of the JD Society or alterrnatively, byu the members of the commission on Social Issues;

An RFP (similar to that of Change This that could be distributed through the publications of the Society;

The distribution via e-mail alerts to members of the Society + a list of policy makers and staff, influencers, thought leaders, administrative personnel, and the press.

Please take a moment to look at Change This and Change the Way to Change the World then comment on this idea.

Columns and Blog Posts

One aim of Social Issues is to help readers express themselves in public and policy-oriented forums.

Dewey Society members are mostly teachers or professors. They can all write coherent sentences. Their school or college newsletters and newspapers are looking for fresh voices. Same for the newspapers in their towns. Same for Blogs like Social Issues, and many other vehicles aimed at public or policy communities.

From time to time Social Issues will recycle good 'how to' advice about writing for non-academic audiences.

In this entry the controversial BBC and Observer columnist Andrew Marr (pictured above), winner of Columnist of the Year in the British Press Awards, offers some useful advice on writing columns.

A good column and a good blog post share many virtues.

Marr says:

A column is not just an opinion – it has elements of reporting. Unlike news, columns can contain context, analysis, metaphor, historical analogy and humour, but consider telling the reader something new they may not have read. Look at the facts again to bring a fresh angle to a story. It’s the ‘actually’ bit that makes a good column sing.

Like any argument, a good column is something that can be expressed in one sentence. If you can’t, then it’s likely to be dull. If you have problems with this, use a colleague to sound it off against.

Tackle something different. A feminist will provide an interesting take on hooligan boys.

Five Rules For Bloggers

The Primary Task of Social Issues is to encourage scholars and educators to communicate with concerned publics about social, cultural and educational issues, and to assist them in so doing.

OK. How do you do that??

We will seek useful guidance from our experience, books, and the web and other blogs

In this post entrepreneur guru Tim Ferris (The Four Hour Workweek) offers five useful tips for bloggers

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/09/26/the-top-5-uncommon-timesavers-for-bloggerswriters-plus-video-of-me-kissing-a-hairy-coo/

1. Decide how you’re measuring success before writing a post—what’s your metric? Form follows function.

2. Post less to be read more.

3. Define the lead and close, then fill it in.

Decide on your first or last sentence/question/scene, then fill in the rest. If you can’t decide on the lead, start with the close and work backwards.

4. Think in lists, even if the post isn’t a list.

5. The best posts are often right in front of you… or the ones you avoid.