It has been long overdue, a good thrashing from my favorite nitpicker, Tom Hoffman. In his early morning writing about my recent post on The Long Tail, he was very careful to say that he did not quite consider what I was doing to be plagiarism, though he also seemed quite eager to use that word. But that’s really not the point.
Chris Anderson says in his book (The Long Tail) that he used his blog as a way of learning about the data he was collecting and synthesizing. He’d toss ideas out and then learn from the comments and co-bloggings. It’s one of the reasons why we blog. It’s one of the most important parts of the blog — what you don’t say, what’s left to be said. Hoffman very rightly pointed out to me that I had not explained enough about what I was doing with the long tail graph. It is important for you to know that, and I thank him, and have thanked him in his blog.
Anderson has taken a great deal of research and data to give us a picture. It is a data-driven graph, but it is also a picture, that he calls the long tail. It very compellingly describes a rapidly changing information landscape where new content is available to us in new ways coming from new sources. This should be of great interest to educators, as education may be the most information-intensive endeavor that our society engages in.Â
So I am trying to use this picture as a platform on which to examine education. I do see our system of textbooks, standards, and central authority as being slap-up against the spike, teaching for the greatest common denominator — and there is certainly a place for that. But our children are down in the tail, accessing the living content that was produced yesterday, learning the skills of this conversation, and learning, learning, learning. This concerns me, but it concerns me even more that we are ignoring it, trying to block it out, and go on with business as usual.
This could be all wrong. If so, more people will tell me so. But I’m wondering where teacher blogs fit along the tail of content, where Moodle fits, and Elgg, and MySpace, and YouTube. Is it just play. Can we ignore it?Â
I plan to give you a chance to play, so stay tuned, and be sure to attend the K12 Online Conference to Unleash the Potential.
technorati tags:warlick, longtail, flatclass, education, technology
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Couldn’t get into it here – not and post a graph as well =) – so please check out my comments on Infomancy.
Chris,
As you’ve heard me say many times, We have to get our minds wraped around the fact that the future we are preparing our children for is the future that they will choose and create. I’m not asking schools to respect the long tail as authoritative, but to respect it as real, a real part of the information landscape.
If literacy is a central core to what and how we teach, then we need to expand our definition of literacy to help our students find value in the entire information environment so that they can use that information to answer questions, solve, problems, and accomplish goals. ..and we can only do that if we acknowledge and use all (safe) parts of the tail.
Thanks for continuing the conversation. 😉
You write, “Hoffman very rightly pointed out to me that I had not explained enough about what I was doing with the long tail graph.”
Actually, what Hoffman said is, “But Warlick’s long tail graph has entirely different X and Y axes (from Anderson’s)… As far as I can tell, this has precisely nothing to do with Anderson’s work or thesis, aside from stealing his catchy phrase and image.”
I think Hoffman has a point.
Ok! Somebody explain to me how I got the X Y axes wrong. I must be missing something really obvious here.
Also, we’re not allowed to talk about the Long Tail. I’m not taking claim to the phrase, I’m just talking about it within the context of the current state of education.
I’m listening!
Dave’s point is well taken. We do live in an “information” rich age but that “information” contains biases at best and often inaccuracies. We need to celebrate the long tail as a tool for teaching our students to think critically and question the motivations behind the content.
The problem is with our current model of education which revolves around the dissemination of knowledge rather than the acquisition of said knowledge. Textbooks are about telling it like it is. They teach students that if the books says it, it must be true.
Dave writes “education may be the most information-intensive endeavor that our society engages in”. I argue that part of this “information” must be that which resides on the long tail. Today, education is information rich only vertically – we expect our students to know a great deal – just take a look at the standards. However, it is not information rich horizontally. There is little time for (nor is it celebrated) examining ideas in breath and discuss other views.
We are fortunate to be living in an era where access to the long tail is effortless. Our model of education needs to embrace this instead of fear it.
ROB
It’s been a while since I read Anderson’s book, but I think the y axis represents demand and the x axis represents volume/quantity. Thus Amazon is able to tap into the long tail of books because it has virtual shelf space. iTunes is able to tap into the long tail of music, etc. There does exist an opportunity for us to tap into the long tail of lesson content. Today, the content found in published textbooks/workbooks only represents a small portion of what is used. That is because teachers search/adapt or create their own material to augment the published stuff. Round up all of these individual efforts and we have a nice long tail!