Laurie O’Donnell

I left LTS at the end of June to work for myself and am in the process of moving this blog to my new website which will go live early in August.

The back cover of this political thriller sets the scene for Rogue Nation by Alan Clements:

‘The year is 2014. The Republicans have recaptured the White House, the Conservatives have just won a second term at Westminister and hardliners dominate Russia. In a small corner of north-western Europe, the Scots have just narrowly voted for independence, a decision they immediately regret.’

Nothing in the above looks too far fetched. Add in the notion that the English are happy to see Scotland make its own way in the world – breaking the political union but retaining the social union – and we have a highly credible  backdrop for a work of fiction.

The book’s structure makes it easy to read (the pace of Dan Brown meets the erudition of The West Wing) as the author takes us on a journey: from the White House to the Kremlin; through the streets of Edinburgh to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood; from Dennistoun to the BBC at Pacific Quay in Glasgow. Covering everything from party politics, religious sectarianism, nationalism/unionism; the army to the global military power struggle.

The novel is sprinkled with great quotes from Benjamin Franklin – the subject of the main character’s thesis. One of my favourite quotes has a very contemporary resonance to it:
‘Those who would give up liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety’.

A great summer read and an admirable first novel. I look forward to the movie – hopefully starring somebody Scottish!

I am starting to make some progress through my pile of summer reading as detailed in this week’s Times Educational Supplement Scotland and  finished ‘What Would Google Do? by Jeff  Jarvis over the weekend.

Since visiting Google HQ in Mountain View, California last August I have been  interested in how this company, which is barely 11 years old, is contributing to the remaking of our economy, culture and society. Is Google the corporartion of the future?  I described it earlier as like a university run by the students. What are the implications for education if success is measured on the basis of 21st century creativity, innovation and ingenuity rather than passing exams that test 19th century skills and knowledge?

Jarvis writes the new media column for The Guardian and keeps the www.buzzmachine.com blog. His own post on the book talks about reverse engineering the Google approach and then applying the principles to a range of industries.

Jarvis starts the book by picking out what he calls ‘Google Rules’ which include:

• Put customers  in charge  – they can be heard around the world and make a massive impact on companies
• The mass market has been replaced by a mass of niches
• Traditional product marketing has been replaced by conversations
• Enabling customers to collaborate is the new premium service/product
• Build networks and platforms
• Openess is the key to success

Jarvis then considers how Google applies these rules across its business and provides a fascinating insight into how the company works and the trends it is both driving and adapting to. The section on how Google ads work is worth the cost of the book in itself. I found it absolutely fascinating to see the maths behind Google ads. Google has reinvented advertising, disrupting the old economic model that newspapers and tv have relied on in the process.

The section ‘If Google Ruled the World’ is a speculative piece as Jarvis considers how the Google approach might be applied to everything from the media, retail and manaufacturing to education and public institutions. At times the argument is a bit thin and to his credit Jarvis accepts the limits of both the approach and his imagination. Again the attempt is well worth it and full of valuable insights about the trends we can expect to see over the next few years.

As a final thought I noted that Google looks for people with 5 sets of skills:

• Analytical reasoning
• Communication skills
• Willingness to experiment
• Playing in teams
• Passion and leadership

How well are we preparing our children, young people and students for this world? How well would a Scottish school leaver or university gradute be able to compete in this new world?

It is now 5 days since I left the ranks of the salaried public sector to become self employed. At the moment it just feels like the school holidays in the years when I was a teacher … and I am loving it

My plan is to take most of July to get myself organised with email, website, bank accounts etc and also to have a proper break from work after LTS.

I am in the process of setting up my own website/blog  www.laurieodonnell.co.uk (currently redirected to www.ltsblogs.org.uk/laurieodonnell).

Some of my post LTS portfolio is already in place and it looks like a good mix already with more variety to follow (I hope).

Planning to blog about my reading and my future plans over the summer. Have a great summer (or winter if you are in Oz or NZ).

Lx

Just back from an event in Glasgow’s Oran Mor organised by Scotland’s Centre for Confidence & Wellbeing. The speaker was Professor Barry Schwartz.

I have tweeted some of his quotes (@laurieod) and this post is my notes of what he said.

The ‘Paradox of Choice’  – too much choice in certain aspects of our lives (commodities/products etc) can make us miserable whilst  not enough choice in other areas (how we treat/are treated by other people) can also make us unhappy.

The official syllogism
More freedom = more well being
More choice means more freedom

• Consumer goods – choice has exploded into more areas of our lives:
• Healthcare – patient autonomy, direct marketing of drugs (prescription) to patients
• Work – anytime, answer an email or take a business call anywhere
• Liberal arts curriculum (HE in US)
• Close relationships
• Identity

But too much choice can lead to paralysis

• What Too much choice does: Satisfaction (not as much bang for the choice buck)
• Regret and anticipated regret (only way to get out is to defer decision)
• Opportunity costs (missed opportunities)

Escalation of expectations

• People do better but feel worse (Gap between expectations and reality)
• Only a marginal increase of happiness post the threshold of subsistence

Disappointment – Self blame

• Who’s fault is it – shift from the world, the product, the corporation to self

Maximising and ’satisficing’

• Best or good enough?
• Maximisers – consider more jobs, want more options , earn more, did better but feel worse …

How can choice be both good and bad?

• No choice life is infinitely bad, some choice makes life better, but increasing choice after a certain point makes people unhappy … relationship is non-monotonic
• No magic amount of choice (contextual/situational/personal/cultural)

The choices worth having

• We can’t do without character and virtue. Better rules or smarter incentives don’t work. Practical wisdom (Aristotle) is the key virtue.
• We are waging a war on wisdom
• Moral skill/moral will – Aristotelian ‘practical wisdom’
• A wise person knows
  • when and how to make the exception to every rule.
  • When and how to improvise – Wisdom is moral jazz
  • To use moral skills in pursuit of right aims.
• A wise person is made not born.
• Importance of context/situation

Rules and the war on moral skill

• Rules and procedures may be dumb but they are convenient for people who want to avoid thinking or taking responsibility for their action.
• Rules protect against disaster but ensure mediocrity.
• Rules are often imposed after people fail to meet an acceptable standard and designed to ensure a minimalist approach to quality, safety etc
• Rules don’t do the job and make it less likely that people use their judgement. (Hence no opportunity for growth/learning) and hence guarantees no growth in wisdom.
• Examples of completely scripted/lock-step curricula, eg no child left behind. Reflecting no confidence in the teacher and an insurance against bad teachers. But guarantees over time more bad teachers by driving out moral judgement.
• Need rules but need to be able to improvise to reflect context/situation/etc

Incentives and the war on moral will

• Financial incentives undermine moral commitment.
• CEO financial  incentives lead to irresponsible behaviours based. Doing the right think cannot based on monetary reward.
• ‘We must ask, not just is it profitable, but is it right’. Obama 18.12.08
• Banking has become demoralised. All self-interest. Losing morale of practitioners.

Remoralising work

• Ethics is taught in practice not in classrooms.
• Encourage both moral skill and moral will.
• Teachers should become moral heros.
• Teachers are always on stage. We are always teaching in everything we do.
• Work as job, career or calling
  • Job – work sucks
  • Career – positive trajectory
  • Calling – happy and work vital to identity
  • People doing exactly the same work have different levels of happiness
  • Happier to have a calling. Job and career look the same – both unhappy

What creating a calling requires?

• A sense of organisational purpose
• A sense of partnership
• A large degree of discretion and autonomy

Never let a crisis go to waste

• Imagining new possibilities. Reintroduce virtue & the importance of practical wisdom.
• Desire to make the world a better place. Has become hard even in the areas of work where this should be easy (health, education etc)
• Telos of education, nursing clear but more often conflicted as a result of losing the original purpose – hospitals become disease control factories rather than places where people become healthy.
• The telos of banking has become to make as much money as possible. Banking has lost it way.

Great stuff, thought provoking, stimulating and inspiring. Worth watching Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk on the Paradox of Choice  or on The Loss of our Wisdom if you want more …

It seems like only yesterday that I blogged about my decison to leave LTS to work for myself. It felt like a big step on the 25th March announcing to the world that I was moving on after 8 years. I really liked being able to blog and tweet my departure (what did we do before web 2.0?) and have been delighted with the number of friends and colleagues who have been in touch to either wish me well or check out my mental health (’leaving a public sector job with a pension during a recession – are you crazy!’)

Still got far too much to do before I leave on 30 June but last week I got a big boost when my colleague Marie Dougan, LTS Glow Programme Director, was appointed as Interim Director of Learning and Technology. Marie will be great in this role and I wish her all the best in taking forward the major work of the directorate I have led: Glow; the LTS Online Service; and our work in new technologies including games based learning.

These are challenging times for schools, local authorities and the public sector economy in general. LTS has made a major contribution to the learning and technology agenda which will be increasingly important to education in the years ahead.  I have been hugely privileged to have the opportunity to lead and manage some of this work over the last 8 years. More than that I have been incredibly lucky to work with some fantastic colleagues who have pushed the boundaries of Scottish education a little bit further forward. Colleagues who have remained positive and optimistic about the future, despite the many challenges, and never lost sight of the importance of making a positive difference to the work of our teachers and to the life chances of Scotland’s young people.

Interesting new development from Google. Thanks to @jonesieboy for tweeting  about Google Wave

Interesting research commissioned by C4 on how the 12-24s use technology.

Top-line stats are:

• They personally own 8 devices (including MP3 player, PC, TV, DVD player, mobile phone, stereo, games console, and digital camera)
• They frequently conduct over 5 activities whilst watching TV
• 25% of them agree that “I’d rather stay at home than go on a holiday with no internet or phone access”
• A quarter of young people interviewed text or IM (instant message) friends they are physically with at the time
• They have on average 123 friends on their social network spaces
• And the first thing the majority of them do when they get home is turn on their PC

As the father of a 12 and 16 year old I am not at all surprised. My girls have lots of gadgets (no wonder the UK’s electricity needs continue to grow at 4% a year when I see how many chargers we have around the house); they have lots of spare capacity when watching TV (usually because most [not all] of what they watch isn’t very challenging – try doing 5 things while watching ‘The Wire’ and keep up with the dialogue!); in our family it’s a 50% vote for no holiday without mobile comms; I get calls on the house phone from a daughter who is upstairs phoning me on her mobile ; they are connected in a way that is really stunning and; our wireless network is on from before school in the morning until last thing at night.

The survey suggests two questions for me – ones that I think I know the answer to. Firstly, how does the experience of our young people compare with their counterparts across the world? Secondly, how does their school experience compare with their out of school use of technology?

More good news for Glow While I was in Barcelona I was delighted to hear that Falkirk Council has signed the Glow Customer Agreement (effectively the licence to make Glow available to teachers, pupils and parents in the local authority area).

That takes us to 31/32 of the Scottish local authorities. My understanding is that Fife Council is in the process of signing the Customer Agreement and this will be a significant milestone for Glow as we complete the full set of local authorities.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill we are approaching the end of the beginning for Glow. To my mind it really starts to get exciting now as we explore the benefits of having a truly national system.

The IMS Global Learning Consortium press release with all of the winners from the 2009 Learning Impact Summit has now been published. Looking down the list I think our competition was from only 5 continents rather than 6 as previously claimed.

LTS press release with comment from Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop.