Computer Science Entrepreneurs
I would like to tinker with the idea of creating software development entrepreneurs. I have done some of this the past two years so I believe that this would be interesting and engaging for the students as well as profitable. (Maybe, using the profits, we could celebrate with a class outing.) This would also help our community of learners, parents and educators. This idea also would adhere to REAL standards.
The experience would be that the students would be responsible for the development of educational software that could be used by elementary school students. The class would be divided into teams with each team responsible for a different component.
- The first component is the user requirements phase. This phase would require the students to interview teachers, parents and even the students to ascertain what type of software is most needed. (Which learning concept do these students need to know?) Also during this phase they would determine the requirements and basic structure of the program. (Will it be a game or drill and practice or something else?) The entrepreneurs could use a Wiki site to update the user requirements for the software.
- The second component is the design phase. The students could work with the advanced art department graphics designers and music department and design the screen components, animation, music and other visual features. The tecnology used here would be the internet, cd burners and midi technology. Also students might find volunteers in the community to help with the project. The final design would be approved by the elementary teachers and students.
- The third component is the coding phase. The students would write the actual code for the program using the computer. Extensive testing would be done before the next phase.
- The fourth component is the user testing phase. The students would organize a small test team consisting of elementary parents, students and teachers that would completely test the program and make recommendations for improvement.
- The final component is the roll out phase. Here the students would roll out the final product to the pilot school and then market it to other elementary schools in the US. This phase would require good salesmanship and marketing skills and solid accounting of funds in order to determine profit. Also during this time ongoing management would be going on to improve the software to meet changing needs of the customer.
The students could develop a website to advertise the software and could even set up an online version of the software and deliver it that way. We could have a media relations team that would be responsible for delivering press releases to the papers and TV. Blog sites could be used for team communication as well.
Last Spring we did this on a small scale where the teams created fun educational software geared towards elementary school children. Then the teams were judged by guest judges from the school and community. It was a positive experience for all. Now we can take it one step further and develop our own software entrepreneurs. Bill Gates watch out!!!
Introduction to Music Industry
I am going to focus on the topic of teaching my classes some beginning skills in music industry. Through this project, students will be able to gain some different perspectives on how this industry operates. Each class will have a different assignment and because the classes don't meet together, they will have to use electronic communication to keep track of the overall project, each teams progress, and the various information that each team must have to function. Such teams will be a production team in charge producing a music album, an advertising team responsible for getting the word out about the product, the sales team responsible to selling the product and keeping track of the financial information, etc.
Through this project the teams will be able to use various forms of technology. They might use a blog site to keep a timeline of what is going on and comment to each event with pertinent information. They will be able to use recoding software, CD burners, desktop publishing software and many other programs. The teams might use a wiki for keeping track of sales information so that information can be changed as each shift (class) comes to work.
This project lines up with REAL's experiential learning by having the student interact in a very hands on way. They will be able to actually create a product and see what steps have to be taken to get that product on the market. They will also see how important advertising is and how it effects the overall product sales. The students will be able to gain a great insight into what takes place to make a CD available for purchase at the music store.
community-mind leveraging
"As we discuss in our recent book, The Social Life of Information, we—as technologists—have tended to focus on information and individuals leaving out context, communities. Open source is a beautiful example of how the expert system often lies in the community mind. With the rise of the internet and tools for supporting virtual communities we may now be in position to really leverage the community mind."
John Seely Brown, in
Interview with John Seely Brown, Wired Magazine.
Entrepreneurs shifting to small towns
The
Small Business Trend's blog discusses the trend identified by BusinessWeek.com (July, 2005)
of entrepreneurs bypassing big cities in favor of small towns. This is further evidence of the change wrought by the digital knowledge economy but one finally in favor of small towns and rural areas:
"With the old-line manufacturing economy almost a thing of the past and service and information economies taking its place, the enticements that make a city attractive for entrepreneurs also are changing. The traditional menu of tax incentives, low office rents, and favorable regulatory environments remain in play. But more frequently, observers say, a host of variables that emphasize quality of life, population diversity, infrastructure, and a culture of creativity have become weightier matters to consider when choosing a city."
Conceptual Thinking Needed
Lee L. Chazen (Spaces in Between) points to
Daniel Pink, in A Whole New Mind, and
Tom Friedman's The World is Flat, which argue for growing needs in conceptual and creative thinking to compete with significant new economic centers in 2nd and 3rd world countries.
Open innovation and absorptive capacity
Schools build classroom communities. Most of a teacher's time is spent with a group, not one on one with a student. Entrepreneurship curriculum (and all curriculum areas) need to carefully study the social and management environment that builds the creative individual so needed for 21st century economic growth. The
Managing for Creativity article (July-August, 2005) from the Harvard Business Review highlights two key concepts that need weaving into the curriculum and our use of computer technology.
"While most students of the creative process have focused on what makes individuals creative, a growing number of thinkers such as
Andrew Hargadon at the University of California, Davis, and
John Seely Brown, former chief scientist of Xerox, are unlocking the social and management contexts in which creativity is most effectively nurtured, harnessed, and mobilized. Eric von Hippel of MIT and Henry Chesbrough of the University of California, Berkeley, have called attention to the critical role played by users and customers in the creative process and to a new model of “
open innovation.” Duke University’s Wesley Cohen has shown that corporate creativity depends upon a firm’s “
absorptive capacity”—the ability of its research and development units not just to create innovations but to absorb them from outside sources."
The SAS Institute puts these concepts in practice by also valuing the work over the tools, rewarding excellence with challenges, and minimizing hassles.
In turn, the tools with which we teach, including distance education tools, need to foster open innovation and absorptive capacity. Creating a cascade of voices that bridges traditional composition with new tools that do precisely that would include blog sites, wikis and other newly emerging tools of the Internet.
Entrepreneurial Enterprises
What steps might one take to teach digital skills and entrepreneurship within a distance education environment? Be specific about which page or pages in chapter three that you are basing your thinking on. Use the Comments link for your contributions.
Keep in the back of your mind the thought that the distance education environment might be also becoming a metaphor for functioning as a business in cyberspace.
Team Building - Part II
Use the blog site that you created in our last class meeting. Create a blog posting that works out a basic lesson plan for converting another team building activities into a distance education activity using WebCT. Be creative.
Later your classmates will be asked to use the Comment link to give you some feedback.
When you have carried out this work at your own blog site, return to this third blog posting, and use the Comment link to add a terse summary of which team building topic you addressed, and include the web address of your blog site. It would be a good idea to also send an email to your classmates indicating which team building topic you have chosen for this as I don't want you to duplicate each others work.
Socializing in Distance Education
REAL's second chapter on Process Skills and Team Building Activites address one of the major concerns of distance education, building classroom community. It is not easy in a face-to-face environment to help a diverse population of students see that they are all in it together, that team spirit not only helps but is important to the learning process. Look through the 18 examples. Each of you will work with two of them, converting the experiences into activities that could take place solely in cyberspace.
Note that what is important to the learning process, is important to the social and conversational skills needed for operating as an effective team in a business. As David Winderberger noted in the
Cluetrain Manifesto, dialog is also important in a much deeper and more powerful way. Markets
are conversations. The Web did not make this true, but in making it clear and vastly easier, this feature is transforming the world.
For the first one, use the comments link to this posting to explain how you would use WebCT to carry out one of the team building activities in a distance education setting.
Post a comment as soon as possible about which one you are working on so that others do not grab the same one. You may not do one that someone else is working on. It would also be effective to send all in the course an email indicating which one you have taken.
A second posting will address what to do with a second team building activity.
Digital to REAL
Digital culture has clarified and better articulated information sharing and communication, composition, calculation, publishing and more. This has provided numerous opportunities for creativity and inventiveness that are being applied in nearly every field. Mixed with the global networks of cyberspace, it is has transformed and rewired many business, corporations and their practices. There is little that is just virtual about its effects for it has contributed mightily to the movement of factories and other places of employment, erasing careers and creating new ones. The impact of these rapid changes has been gut wrenching for many people and communities. Digital cultures one significant failure is that it has not clearly articulated how to create jobs, businesses, places of employment and the wealth or income to survive and thrive within this digital environment. Where is that software program or set on online processes? Even more striking is the almost covert nature of this economic knowledge within public school and university curriculum. For a capitalist democracy, this hidden agenda seems most peculiar. This blog site considers how one might go about fixing this.
How does one build the curriculum to move the digital culture towards better support for the entrepreneurship that can deal with this?
