Swift Kick Central

Oh The Irony . . .

The irony of my last two posts, taken together is hilarious. What a mess. Didn't even occur to me. Two honest points with their belief structures, stored on either side of my head.

Laissez-faire About Privacy

After visiting 30 schools and talking to hundreds, if not thousands, of college students in the past two years, my conclusion is this:

Students do not care about privacy in any fundamental sense.

They just don't.

They figure the government just shouldn't or wouldn't mess with them. Corporations aren't even on the radar.

The only reason college students care about "privacy" settings is to prevent their school from seeing their drinking pictures.

Later, they want to prevent their potential employers from seeing it.

This is only because they want to avoid getting in trouble. If they knew that the school would be "cool with it" - then they would throw their arms open wide.

I've studied enough history to be worried about the patriot act, Cointelpro, ATT record keeping / transfer, NYC infiltrating, total information awareness, location tracking, etc. etc. But my digital footprints are everywhere. If I were at all revolutionary in any true second amendment, right to bear arms to balance the power of the government way, I wouldn't last two seconds. I'm not revolutionary. At the moment anyway. At the moment, I'm interested in making education more engaging.

While I'm not currently trying to change anything controversial, I think somebody should be and I think they should have reasonable latitude to challenge.

Unlimited information brings with it unlimited power. This is sure to corrupt.

The laissez-faire about privacy worries me. In a big way. In a "I don't have any idea what to do about it" way.

Most students have a vague notion that wiretapping is bad, but they figure that the government is trying to protect them and they don't have anything to hide any way. That's as far as it goes.

Fred Stutzman is worried about Google on campuses. He's worried about privacy. Fred's a smart guy. I think Fred and others who are interested in spreading the message that privacy matters, have very little chance of gaining traction with college students.

This college generation is gone. In the mainstream, I have heard no discernible thread of resistance to total transparency, big brother (be it corporate or government) enabling technologies on the basis of "privacy".

Out of the mainstream? All of my anarchist, government fearing, commune living, "this phone is tapped" sticker campaigning, GOP/WTO protesting, friends in Denver use Myspace. If they were at all actually dangerous to the status quo they could be rounded up in an afternoon.

1984 is required reading in most schools. The students I talk to dismiss it with a wave.

I feel old. There was a time where I would try to hold Asia in Risk and try to take on everything I cared about. Maybe I have less energy now, or maybe I know my limits. This one is not my fight. Not at the moment.

If it were, boy, I really wouldn't know where to start. How could a history lesson be scarier than the reality of today? Where terrorism is everywhere and anything can be justified under the war on terrorism.

Why Walled Gardens are Wrong for College Social Networking

In the Secrets Behind Myspace and Facebook lecture we do a quick introduction to digital identity:

It was easy, when your digital identity was primarily how you represented yourself in chat rooms, to pretend to be anyone you wanted to be. Your digital identity did not have to overlap with your real identity.

Now, with Facebook's (and now "me too" myspace's) helpful upload pics and tag your friends feature it's pretty much impossible to have friends and pretend to be someone you are not. The more friends you have, the more pics they upload, the more really "you" your digital identity will be.

We tell the students there are two main stages. The stage where you can't, and shouldn't trust yourself - we say "you know you are here when you did something stupid last friday and you are pretty sure you are going to do something stupid this friday too." We say, "If you can't trust yourself, hunker down. Keep your digital identity as small as possible. Use privacy. Keep your online friend group small. Avoid pictures."

If, on the other hand, you are at the stage where you can trust yourself, where you are pretty responsible and focused on doing good things, then the opportunity is to let your digital identity fill up with all of this good stuff.

To expand. To network. To see what is beyond your current horizons. To use the power of the tools you have at your finger tips: youtube, linkedin, del.icio.us, facebook, etc. etc. etc. To let your digital identity stretch out across the world and represent you in the best possible setting. To become searchable. To become a node in the network.

We tell stories about students just like them that have landed full time pay for part time jobs doing what they love. Who have done this as sophomores in college using facebook. It's not rocket science, it's networking using the tools.

The opportunity, when the student is ready, is immense:

I believe expansion of self is a responsibility of higher education. The digitalization of self allows for massive expansion. Sure, this can be bad when the identity consists of racially stupid halloween parties. The same tool allows a student to make a national ass of themselves, but that reality should not push the schools into limiting the rest of the students.

The students will be ready at different rates. This is where education comes in - to help the student be ready and know when they are. And when they are ready, they should have the ability to expand as big as possible.

Restricting the students to an online social network run by the school limits the student's ability to expand. This is antithetical to the aims of higher education.

The Red Rover Comunity List

The following individuals are following the progress of Red Rover and involved in the community.  Pilot schools are marked with a (1) or (2) based on the pilot round they are registered for:

	Dave Leenhouts Coastal Georgia Community College (1) Director of Student Life Facebook E-Mail
	Victor Collazo Valencia Community College (2) Student Programing Director Facebook E-Mail
	Jennifer Blackwell Wesley College (1) Director of Student Activities Facebook E-Mail
	Tom Hicks Coe College (2) Director of Student Activities Facebook E-Mail
	Greg Porter Evergreen State College Director of Student Activities E-Mail
	Amybeth Maurer Elgin Community College (1) Director of Orientation and Student Life Facebook E-Mail
	Sandi Pope Lord Fairfax Community College Student Activities Advisor Facebook E-Mail
	Christine Price Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (2) Assistant Director Facebook E-Mail
	Chuck Steele College of DuPage Student Activities Coordinator Facebook E-Mail
	John Landrum University of Wisconsin - Greenbay Program Coordinator E-Mail
	Alisa Hoepner Chippewa Valley Technical College (2) Student Life Specialist Facebook E-Mail
	Edna Early Wisconsin Indianhead (2) Student Life Director E-Mail
	Jennifer Jarvis Queens College (1) Executive Director of the Student Union E-Mail
	Jeff Foote SUNY Cobleskill (1) Director of Student Life Facebook E-Mail
	Eric Lambert APCA Executive Director Facebook E-Mail
	Marly Greeley Penn State DuBois Student Life Coordinator Facebook E-Mail
	Jason Leader Southeast Louisiana Campus Activities Board Advisor Facebook E-Mail
	KB Thomas Louisiana College Director of Residence Life Facebook E-Mail
	Lindsey Hopkins Hall Penn State- Erie Coordinator of Student Involvement and Fraternity and Sorority Life Facebook E-Mail
	Kari Osborne Huntingdon College Director of Student Life Facebook E-Mail
	Jonathan Winnicki Hudson Valley Community College (2) Assistant Director of Student Life Facebook E-Mail
	Boyd Jones Winthrop University (2) Campus Programs Director E-Mail
	Dennis Koch Texas A & M International Director of Student Activities Facebook E-Mail
	John Spranza Highlands Georgia Director of Student Life Facebook E-Mail
	Cecily Crow Berry College Director of Student Activities Facebook E-Mail
	Staci Weber Juniata College (1) Director of Student Activities Facebook E-Mail
	Leslie Way Brazosport (1) Student Activities Specialist E-Mail
	Lisa Samuelson University of Minnesota - Crookston Director of Student Activities/Student Center Facebook E-Mail
	Jeff Venekamp Augustana (2) Director of Student Activities Facebook E-Mail
	Bonnie Dahlke Central College Director of Student Activities E-Mail
	Danny Mackey Greensboro College (2) Director of Student Activities Facebook E-Mail
	Schnell Garrett Howard Community College (2) Assistant Director of Student Life Facebook E-Mail

Towards A Red Rover Theoretical Foundation

As part of the MacArthur DML application. We are working on framing a historical context in which to place Red Rover.

I talked before about the need for a "cogent theoretical framework" for the application itself, this work is getting us closer to it.

Because MacArthur wants everything quick and to the point, our framework is pleasantly brief. I think it still works:

Alexander Astin’s (1985) and Lee Upcraft’s (1995) research suggest a relationship between quantity and quality of involvement and student achievement. Red Rover will increase involvement by increasing the ease and efficiency of becoming involved thus increasing student success. Kuh (2005) shows that highly effective institutions “clearly mark routes to student success” (p. 131). Thus, institutions are drawn to Red Rover because the path to student success remains but its context now includes a social medium institutions have yet to master (e.g. Facebook). Systematically, Red Rover uses simple interfaces embedded in Facebook and emotionally, it utilizes the feelings of social safety and well being created by Facebook (Ellison, et. al. 2007).

References:

Astin, A..W. (1985). Achieving educational excellence: A critical assessment of priorities and practice in higher education. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

Upcraft, M. Lee. (1995). Insights From Theory: Understanding First-Year Student Development. First-Year Academic Advising: Patterns in the Present, Pathways to the Future, (15-24). (Monograph # 18). Columbia , SC : University of South Carolina, The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.

Kuh, G.D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J.H., Whitt, E. J. and associates. 2005. Student Success in College: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook "friends:" Social capital and college students' use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 1.

Thanks to Kevin Guidry for the push, Art Esposito for the introduction to Upcraft, and Greg Heiberger for adding Kuh and stringing it nicely together.

MacArthur Foundation Submission

We are submitting a grant proposal to the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Competition.

In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, we'll be posting our entry process, final submission and references up on this blog.

Grants are new to us as entrepreneurs, so it's another exciting stretch for us.

We've received valuable advice and assistance from many, including Dave Leenhouts, Fred Stutzman, Stephanie Birdsall (of Campus Compact), Greg Hieberger, Eric Lambert (of APCA) among many others. Thank you, thank you. If we get anywhere it was because of your help.

One interesting / challenging part of the grant application is the limit on the number of words. The main proposal/ outline can only be 1000 words.

Here's what needs to fit:

* Your project, its significance and the contribution it will make to the field of Digital Media and Learning, whom and what it will impact, the current and historical context it derives from, its further potential

* Goals for the project in the 12 month grant-term, goals beyond the grant term

* Project personnel qualifications relevant to the proposed project

* Detailed work and management plan and timeline

Here was the first draft of bullet point one, weighing in at 821 words:

Red Rover is a web application that increases student engagement and success by increasing the number of positive interpersonal connections in a campus community. These new connections create new experiential learning opportunities, mentorships, and learning communities.

Significance:

The project is significant because it breaks new ground in a number of ways.

Red Rover is the first application:

* Working within Facebook for institutions, thereby providing a communication / interface bridge between the institution and the students' dominant social network.

* Designed from the ground up to measurably increase engagement and involvement on campus.

* Providing both institutions and student leaders with real time "dashboard" assessment benchmarking on publicly displayed student data.

* Connecting the institution network with a blend of taxonomy and folksonomy information interfaces, allowing for both school guidance and efficient student self organization.

* Empowering student leaders by providing simple access to best practices and mentors at other campuses related to their student organization.

* Enabling the institution and students to easily communicate through a variety of digital channels: email, social network, or text message.

* Allowing faculty to create instant ad-hoc groups around any interest using mobile technology.

Contribution:

Through an ongoing collaboration with researchers, a frequently updated blog, and tens of thousands of public clickstreams, the Red Rover project will contribute to the field of Digital Media and Learning by addressing vital questions such as:

* Can institutions use social networking to increase real world social capital?

* Does the social safety of social networking increase opt-in rates to real world opportunities? At what rate do online opt-ins convert to action?

* Will students embrace institutions within their online social context?

* Will students effectively use a folksonomy to navigate their connection options?

* Does a social network embedded orientation increase the effectiveness of in person orientation?

* What are some best practices for faculty engagement with students on social networks?

Impact:

The impact of the Red Rover project is potentially enormous. By inserting an involvement increasing interface into the dominant social networks, institutional involvement itself has a chance to become viral. This will greatly impact students at every kind of institution, from private four year institutions to the smallest community colleges. Research suggests that increasing involvement will increase student G.P.A., retention rates, and satisfaction rates.

Red Rover provides all higher education institutions with a simple, free, and open source method to participate in, and benefit from, the massive change that social networking has brought to the current generation of students. Through its application and business model design, the Red Rover application can quickly and massively scale to reach every institution in the country. Through a very small, non-technical investment of time, any person at any school can set up the Red Rover platform for their institution.

Historical Context:

Red Rover derives its historical context primarily from Astin, A..W. (1985) and his research suggesting a relationship between engagement and achievement. This idea has been revisited by Upcraft (1995) who states that it is both "quantity and quality of involvement" that will lead to success. This formula suggests increasing involvement by increasing the ease and efficiency of becoming involved will increase student success. Red Rover facilitates and increases involvement both systematically, through simple interfaces embedded in Facebook, and emotionally, by utilizing the feelings of social safety and well being created by Facebook (Ellison, et. al. 2007).

References:
Astin, A..W. (1985). Achieving educational excellence: A critical assessment of priorities and practice in higher education. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

Upcraft, M. Lee. (1995). Insights From Theory: Understanding First-Year Student Development. First-Year Academic Advising: Patterns in the Present, Pathways to the Future, (15-24). (Monograph # 18). Columbia , SC : University of South Carolina, The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook "friends:" Social capital and college students' use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 1.

Further Potential:

Red Rover surfaces the different identity facets of students through tagging and thereby provides a fertile platform for future innovation. By attaching student data streams, using RSS feeds placed on a student's time line, Red Rover will be able to automatically adjust identity facets as the student progresses. Red Rover can easily expand its current group and connection recommendation engine to include identity relevant education opportunities such as actual schools, classes, internships, learning groups, mentors, mentoring opportunities, and community service. The student's experience timeline would serve as the core of their education digital identity, providing students with a transferable digital portfolio of their growth experiences. This system design would equally apply to high schools students, many of whom are already on Facebook.

Numerous new models of, and interfaces for, self growth will inevitably surface from this new ability to connect and aggregate both experiences and reflective learning. A student's timeline will serve as education "footprints", and, if they choose, the student can allow these footprints to be available to other students so that they may learn from the shared experiences.

Keeping the Focus - Posting our Projects

By design, we move fast at Swift Kick. Our staff is small with 2 full time employees (Kevin and Me), 1 part time (Emma), and a team of ad-hoc consultants (designer, programmer, accountant, etc.)

Kevin and I are always impressed when we look back 6 months and see our progress. A major advantage we have is an endless supply of ideas. The challenge for us is to keep focused like a laser on each idea and not get distracted by the new.

We added a "Our Project List" section to the siderail of this blog in an attempt to help keep our focus and to inform the SK community what are our current projects.

The idea to do this came from reading "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki. Guy talks about how in your office it's uber important to post the company milestones for everyone to see as a reminder since 80% of what you do throughout the day should relate to those milestones.

Since we purposefully don't have a physical office (Kevin's in NY, I'm in Chicago, Emma in Houston, and our consultants are...umm somewhere) and almost all our work is done via the web, this is our adaptation of Guy's idea in our virtual office.

Here's to another 6 months of great growth!

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The Application of Dance Floor Theory (Green Bay!)

One of my last presentations on the latest tour was at Wisconsin Green Bay.  It was three hours or so, DFT 1, 2, and some technology blended in from the Secrets Behind Myspace and Facebook.   

A student came up afterwards and said that she had been discussing the day at their table and that they definitely "got it".  They got segmentation of engagement and meeting people where they are at and spatulas and blenders and megaphones and relationships facilitating engagement . . .  but . . .she wanted to know:

"Does it really work?"

"It sounds good and all, but what do we actually do now?"

So she got all the concepts.  She got the big picture, now she wanted the instruction manual.

DFT is big picture. It is a context piece, an experience that sets the various challenges and goals of educational engagement in a cohesive metaphor.  This metaphor "frames" the possible actions - giving them clear relationships to each other. 

In short, it's "How to think about it." 

"What do I do now?" is applied learning.  It's where all the deep learning takes place.  Deep learning feels hard, because it is going from concept to action (opposed to shallow learning, which is action without concept: i.e. Teacher: "Do this." Student: "O.K.")  Shallow learning feels easy, because thinking and experimenting aren't necessary.  Plus, and this is important, in shallow learning, if it doesn't work, it's the teacher's fault.  This protects the student from fear of failure, which prevents students from feeling the joy and power of getting over that fear.

So.  What now, indeed: 

A note to the Green Bay Max U foks:

I know that excitement without any traction on where to start quickly leads to frustration and this can lead to no action at all.  That would be bad.  In the interest of avoiding this, I'll throw out a few application ideas and then all of you can weigh in with your ideas that will probably be better (because your excitement is what will actually get them done). Here's a starter list:

1) Create a new group on campus that is responsible for doing 12 different blender activities.  This would be a cross-group group, meaning it would collaborate and coordinate with many other groups to pull off the bigger events. 

Start with name tag day.  Then come up with a running list.  Use google docs to collaboratively make plans with dates. 



2) All the RA's / community reps get together for a one hour work session to answer the big question: How can we introduce our folk to each other around common positive interests. 

Discussions, in rounds:

a) What are the common interest categories? (i.e. TV shows (simple one), Board Games, Outdoor activities, Community Activities, etc.

b) How could we find out who likes what?

c) How could we help them organize themselves?  How can we empower leaders of these topic interest groups?  (Mozes.com would be an example of a way to empower the leader with a tool.)

d) How can we work with the flash mob people to get our interest leader folk to get involved in those when they come up?

3) For student government.  Can we designate a couple of folks to be technology leaders to help the other students set up Facebook mobile to get pictures of student activities out into the Green Bay news feed?

4) Make it a ritual to have a quick meeting of leader folks attending / organizing events right at the beginning to coordinate spatula activities to help build relationships outside of normal cliques.  (And help the neutrals who may not even have a clique yet.)

That's the warm up - priming the pump - so to speak.  Now it's your turn Green Bay.  Leave comments, how will you apply it?  What action items do you want to play with?

P.S.  Amazing job on setting up the Facebook Group so fast Mike!!  That is a very quick application!

P.P.S.  Great application from NACA: