Fighting a war overseas on two fronts, an economic recession at home and a government shifting millions to fund the war while shutting down important programs for education. This clip speaks volumes when you look at today’s children at risk.
Tags: Fred Rogers, Education, children, economy, funding, K12, trends
At the 2009 Brainstorm conference I had an opportunity to see SMART’s Microsoft Surface knockoff, the SmartTable. SMART is selling this table for a whopping $8,000.00!
Ask any K12 teacher, Curriculum Director or Ed Tech Specialist if your districts’ approved curriculum is able to run on a SmartTable. Chances are the answer is no. Just like SMART’s smartboards dumboards I’m afraid their SmartTable was even less impressive. Again their custom software cannot be modified easily to meet any district’s requirements. But shouldn’t it be easily modifiable to succeed and allow any educational software to run on their table?
Lets think this through: Your school purchases software from say – Adobe, but has to have their school’s IT staff custom program Photoshop in order to join SMART’s “commonly used software” list and run on their SmartTable? Since when did over extended school districts hire ex Adobe software engineers to recode Photoshop?
I gave the SmartTable a spin at BrainStorm 10.0 and was not impressed with this “dumb” product either. I’ll admit when I first stood in-front of the SmartTable — I was thinking of Microsoft’s Surface. And that is where they ‘get’ you into purchasing. I also suggest reading their technical specifications to the SmartTable.
Many think the SmartTable is a touch screen flat panel display. Actually the SmartTable contains a projector placed on the floor inside the SmartTable (its actually a fully enclosed box) projecting a display against a glass surface. Its nothing more than their Smartboard crammed into a box.
For $8,000 that’s not high tech at all.
I finished Alan Greenspan‘s book The Age of Turbulence Adventures in a New World and learned it was more than I expected from the former Chairman of The Federal Reserve. And with the recession still in high gear it was also good timing.
Beyond his sheer volume of knowledge regarding the economy, global markets and international finance I was most impressed with Greenspan’s simple yet immense observation: America needs an overhauled K12 educational system for our country to have a strong economy in 2030.
The impact of Technology, Globalization & Innovation as he outlines should not be overlooked regarding educational reform. I must admit the real interest for most readers would be to jump the chapter that addresses the recession. Its worth taking the time to read the book in full.
Greenspan’s impact in Washington, the economy and Republican politics spans Presidential administrations from Nixon to W. Bush. Greenspan has enjoyed a pretty interesting life. I was most struck not by his interest in music but rather his high school music partner Stan Getz. His comments about his role in Y2K for the government and financial markets and the impact of fiber optic networks were welcoming for any geek or fanboy.
There is just a huge amount of economic learning you can pickup from his 25 chapters. My favorite chapters surprisingly fall in a row:
19. Globalization and Regulation
20. The “Conundrum”
21. Education and Income Inequality
22. The world retires. But can it afford to?
There are some amazing things you can learn from an economist. His view of W. Bush’s administration and their loss of focus on the economy was eye opening. Bush never changed any economic plans beyond what he promised during his election campaign. W. Bush repeatedly ignored The Fed’s view of the sliding economy and needed changes over the close of his Presidency and handed his successor an economy with financial, housing and automotive markets in crisis.
Chris Anderson visits Google to present his book “Free” This event took place on July 9, 2009, as part of the Authors@Google series. My book review of Free.
From the Google Author Series:
He makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company’s survival.
The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate. Never in the course of human history have the primary inputs to an industrial economy fallen in price so fast and for so long. Just think that in 1961, a single transistor cost $10; now Intel’s latest chip has two billion transistors and sells for $300 (or 0.000015 cents per transistor–effectively too cheap to price). The traditional economics of scarcity just don’t apply to bandwidth, processing power, and hard-drive storage.
Yet this is just one engine behind the new Free, a reality that goes beyond a marketing gimmick or a cross-subsidy. Anderson also points to the growth of the reputation economy; explains different models for unleashing the power of Free; and shows how to compete when your competitors are giving away what you’re trying to sell.
I found Chris’ idea really is not so radical given today’s economy. It will benefit those companies smart enough to recognize the innovative opportunity to grow their customer base.
Tags: Chris Anderson, Free: The future of a Radical Price, marketing, Google Author, copyright, internet, economy, innovation, ideas, business, radical, reading, trends