This week we're going to shake our goals up a bit. This goal is YOUR goal. I'm giving this to the wonderful community of Facebookers who are already following us:
500 Likes by the end of the week.
As I write this, we're at 351. If everyone reading this can get one of their friends to like us, we'll reach the goal easily.
For incentive, if we can reach the goal this week, I'll record a short YouTube thank you song for everyone to enjoy. Gauntlet thrown down. Good luck.
"Have you seen this?" I get asked that a lot. Almost daily. Recently it always relates to educational software. Big surprise. In three years this segment has exploded. There may be ten thousand companies working I the space, up from next to nothing in the span of a Presidential term. So there's no shortage of things to see, and each new company is a potential competitor, rival, or scary monster that might do what Thumbprint does only better, faster, bigger. With sprinkles.
Except they never do. There's some overlap, sure, as well as companies with hundreds of times our resources, million-dollar marketing pushes, backing from this foundation or that. But there's always something missing, as well. Something that nobody wants to take on: Crowdsourcing.
If you want off-the-shelf content, you can have it. If you want a blank canvas on which to create something from scratch, you can have that too. But if you want to create a virtuous cycle where everyone creates a little and borrows a lot, you've got...us, apparently.
Now there are several technical reasons why such features are scary. We spent months of design trying to prevent things like data corruption and infinite loops (you know, bad stuff). But I don't think that's why. I think there's still a fundamental mistrust of crowdsourcing, maybe unconscious, buried deep. I think we still look at Wikipedia and see not comprehensive proof that a theory is true, but some sort of random, magical event with no broader application. I think that, once again, technology is outpacing human nature. Which is exciting.
It's difficult when you have a team that's working away efficiently and you're the one that's slowing things down, but that's been my deal this week. I'm currently on day 8 of an incredibly nasty flu that has rendered me next to useless, and been so severe that I've had to cancel meetings, which I never do. Fortunately I'm part of a team that is completely capable of pulling some extra weight while I lie horizontal in a feverish haze.
The goal recap:
1. 1.0.2 on the App Store. This is done.
2. Get three new schools on board. Still at 1, with one meeting rescheduled. Hopefully I'll be well enough to make my Friday meeting and bring us up to 2.
3. Web login working. This was finished late last night. Thanks Devs.
There. Back to bed.
An interesting TED talk on the role of ignorance in science. This is, to me, a flawed presentation that's worth watching in it's entirety anyway. The opening sets us up for an anti-science rant, only to clarify several minutes in that it is, in fact, a pro-science argument made by a practicing researcher. The end of the talk opens the door to the impact of his points on education, but leaves mere seconds to explore what's on the other side of that door. So. Pacing issues.
In the middle, however, are some very salient points on what inquiry is for, how it works, and where it leads us. "The point of knowledge is to be able to ask more interesting questions." This, to me, justifies (at least) the science and education endeavors, and, at most, the human endeavor. It's also something that we've been slow to accept in education. Not just teachers or boards - everyone. If I need to know a fact, I have Google. If I need a description on something settled, I have Wikipedia. But if I need to think outside the box, to solve a problem no one has solved, to ask more interesting questions, then I need something more. And I think I still need a teacher for that.