CyberBullying or CyberAssualt?

A warning, gentle readers...this post is LONG. It is more essay than blog post. It is an important issue for me...as an educator, as a parent, as a global citizen. As one who was bullied and one who bullied. It needs to stop. 

Cyberbullying is a term bandied about, as bullying is a prominent issue in education now. Kids were able to move from schoolyard beatings and stuffing garbage cans with the smaller and weaker to the internet. Oh, and now it isn’t about the biggest and strongest, it can be anyone with connectivity (mobile phone, smart phone, computer, etc) Ah, the joys of technology. So while it is easy to dish out punishments for school infractions, what happens with the attacks are outside of school…not on school grounds; not on school computers; not having anything to do with school, other than the people involved attend school? A big struggle for education systems. I am a big proponent of bullying awareness programs (I have been through training, as well), and believe it is important for schools to address ANY forms of bullying (including teachers). Bullying can range from simple peer pressure all the way to physical and/or sexual assault. Pretty easy to figure out when something physical has taken place (less so with sexual harassment, but there are at least guidelines to follow), the police can get involved if needed, and doesn’t matter if it happened on school grounds or a mall parking lot. Cyberbullying is a lot tougher to figure out. I would argue, that like physical assaults, cyberattacks are matters for law enforcement. I would also argue that cyberbullying is not limited to school age kids testing their limits and not quite understanding the damage they are doing to others…it is something adults play around in, and even news organizations participate.

Let’s start out with the most disgusting case of cyberbullying (is why I think it should be renamed cyberassualt) that I can think of…the case of a young 13 year old girl named Megan Meier. 

In 2006, MySpace reigned as the supreme social networking site for millions of teens and young adults. Although the age to join was 14, Megan, with the permission of her parents, got signed up for an account. For a child with a history of depression and suicidal thoughts (she was in counseling), it seemed like a great way for her to connect with friends outside of school. Soon she got an invitation become friends with a good looking 16 year old boy named “Josh” and an online relationship began. Josh eventually got very mean with Megan (after a long relationship of being kind) and sent a last message to Megan that read, “Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.” Megan committed suicide. That would have been a horrible story about teen relationships gone bad and a terrible loss of a 13 year old girl, as well as a horrific burden for a 16 year old boy to carry the rest of his life. EXCEPT…it was a 47 year old woman…a friend of the Meier family…that created a fake account and pretended to be Josh. Seriously? This messed up woman did this to a kid? Lori Drew garnered national attention with this and MySpace and cyberbullying became a major news item (and Texas cheerleader moms thank her for pulling the attention away from them). After a drawn out legal battle, Ms. Drew was charged and convicted by a jury, but had it overruled by the judge. No jail time/no punishment (from the courts…remember Lori Drew, though. I come back to her in a bit…)

Since 2006 MySpace is passe’ and it is now all about Facebook and the issues followed. In 2010 a 15 year old immigrant from Ireland, Phoebe Prince, killed herself after being cyberbullied. 

The young girl was the target of hazing from girls that were allegedly upset that she had dated an older student. Regular teenage crap, right? Sure…bullying, but something kids learn to deal with as they grow up. Mean girls were around long before the Internet. Except these mean girls did both physical assaults and cyberassualts. Add to that when the meanness continues past the school day and involves not just a few people, but an online community that can include most students in the school? Well, for Phoebe Prince it meant severe depression enough to end her young life. Nine teenagers (thugs) were charged in the case, and the prosecuting attorney called Prince's suicide "the culmination of a nearly three-month campaign of verbally assaultive behavior and threats of physical harm…The investigation revealed relentlessactivity directed toward Phoebe, designed to humiliate her and to make itimpossible for her to remain at school…The bullying, for her, became intolerable." In addition, two of the older boys were charged with statutory rape. Sounds like a pretty clear case. Had these students been adults, sounds like physical assault, threats of physical assault, harassment would be enough to convict. For the two older thugs charged with statuary rape, they WERE adults at the time. Well, Massachusetts didn’t think so. Charges against 4 ofthe 9 were dropped and of the 5 charged, none received jail time (just probation). Justice?

 The latest high profile cyberbullying suicide was an 18year old Rutgers student, Tyler Clementi. 

Mr. Clementi was a shy freshman student who was secretly recorded in a homosexual encounter by his roommate, Dharun Ravi. Ravi used a webcam to stream the incident out over the net. Hell of guy, eh? Funny stuff, right? He posted on his Twitter account: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay” Tyler didn’t think it was so funny. He was so humiliated by the exposure that he posted a goodbye message on Facebook andjumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. This was 2010. It is back in the news now, because Ravi was just sentenced in the case. He got 30days jail time. 30 days jail time, even though he was convicted on all 15 counts brought against him and even though the judge critized Ravi during the trial for never apologizing or even showing remorse. Were the judges hands tied and 30 days was the max he could give? No. He could have gotten much worse (including deportation). Even the parents testimony that from the start, Ravi was rude to their son didn’t sway the judge at sentencing, and was apparent that the court was more concerned with Ravi’s future than punishment fittingthe crime. Cyberbullying? Having ANY encounter streamed out on the web (romantic or not) is a clear cyberassault in my book. 

Rhavi and his lawyer very pleased with the results at sentencing. Scumbags

Judge Glenn Berman...you are pathetic.

Sexting. In addition to being distribution of child pornography (even if done by children), it can be bullying, as well. If you aren’t aware of the term, it refers to sending sexual messages or sexual pictures through mobile phones. Most phones have cameras…texts can carry pictures…why not send naked pictures of yourself to a loved one? As we have learned from high profile celebrity sex tapes, those things always remain private, right? Duh.  It is pretty obvious when you get adults involved that there is a crime. Last week a high school’s teacher of the year was charged with sending a 15year old girl pictures of his genitals and encouraging her to send sexual pictures of herself.  He had started an online relationship with the student through…wait for it…Facebook, that then progressed to sexual images and messages. So this dirt bag is going to go away for a long time won’t ever get a teaching job again. Problem solved for him. What about with kids, though? A recent study shows that sexting is on the rise with not only teens but preteens! How does this relate to bullying? As mentioned earlier, this stuff doesn’t stay with one person. What teenage boy is not going to forward on a picture of a naked girl…even a naked girlfriend? Well, the boy that 13 yearold Hope Witsell sent a sexting picture of her breasts didn’t keep it to himself. 

It went viral through the school. Kids can be cruel, but some went so far to actually create a MySpace page to torment her. The pressure was so intense, the child felt her only option was to kill herself.  Sexting is a clear path to cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying doesn’t just happen in the school yard. Internet vigilantes have taken attacks to a whole other level. Now to be fair, I like some of it. Somebody does something stupid or even illegal…and gets away with. Enter the internet vigilantes to set wrong to right. Like a cyber-cowboy…keyboard a’blazing! My favorite story on I found researching this article…back to the piece of human debris, Lori Drew. The judge may have overturned the jury in convicting her, but the good folks at the website, People You’ll See in Hell, thought differently.  They posted her picture and a very well researched story (including the police report) to show what an utterly disgusting individual Lori Drew actually is…and her picture…picture of her house, etc. 

 Lori Drew is a worthless scumbag. Is this bullying? I hope so.

I guess Lori’s business and community status has really suffered…poor consolation for the family of Megan Meier (who still live four houses away from Drew), but something. So I like stuff like this. My first ever internet vigilante story I remember was the “dog poop lady” of Korea (was actually dog something else, but this is a family blog). I read about the dog poop lady back when it happened. A young woman did not clean up after her dog on the subway…was told to…ignored it…and somebody posted their images online. 

Dog poop lady...and elderly people cleaning it up.

It went viral in Korea (and I actually read about it living on Guam) and the woman was so tormented (people would recognize her in the street) that she quit her job and moved. Okay, had to quit her job and move just because she didn’t clean up after her dog? Well, probably harsh (although, those kind of self-entitled people drive me nuts…and apparently get under the skin of a lot of Koreans, too). It can (and does) go to far, though.

There is also just bullying using the internet that has nothing to do with Internet vigilantes, but do the same approach. Posting embarrassing pictures of people or out of context videos. Another video that went viral was a CaliforniaState University, Northridge student “freaking out” in a library. It is pretty clear that the people that videotaped her were tormenting and encouraging her…and she started yelling in a library during finals week. I hesitated on posting the video, as I think this girl was a victim, but at over 2 million hits, my little blog article isn’t going to make it go “extra viral”. I concur with the “top comment” on YouTube: “I currently go to CSUN and it's finals week right now. I can vouch that although this woman handled the situation badly, she had every right to be upset. Every day I go to the library to study, there is at least one person/group that it extremely obnoxious and inconsiderate of the other 95% of students trying to study. She pays $7000 + a year to study; she should be able to use the library services she has paid for. The other girls sound ignorant and rude” The story also became pretty racist…Asian student acting out, etc, instead of student pissed off that loud people were talking in a library during finals week with no action on the part of the employees of the college. Or even a YouTube-made celebraty like Rebecca Black! The thirteen year old girl that became an Internet sensation with her self-posted video, “Friday.”  She received death threats among the terrible things posted about her. A teenager that just posted a song that somehow got famous. The news is also involved, I think, with a form of cyberbullying. Just yesterday I saw a story posted about a University of Georgia professor arrested for prostitution. Hmmm. Probably news for Georgia, but why a national story? Oh, because the 60’ish male professor was dressed as a woman when he solicited an undercover officer…okay…OH, but there is a picture, too! So this professor, who normally would be an oddity in Georgia, is now an international oddity. Is that fair? Sure it is legal (and sure, I clicked on the link not thinking of this article), but is it right? What about the Texas couple that had their farm dug up on the hunch of a psychic? Police not only moved in on their farm and started digging…but they brought camera crews!  Then…there is one I admit that I really like that is nothing but cyberbullying. People of Walmart. Yikes. I hate to admit it, but this site makes me cry sometimes I am laughing so hard. It is nothing but pictures of pathetic people whose only reason for being posted online is that they are pathetic. Posted for our amusement. Where we used to just laugh in the moment when we see someone like those portrayed (well, those bullies among us laughed), now these folks are distributed for all to see! This one in particular sent me into conniptions of laughter.

Wow.

Okay…funny stuff. Or is it. This is someone’s daughter…perhaps someone’s mother. Certainly there are people that love this woman and there she is…posted on People of Walmart and most certainly somebody will recognize her. Classmates of her grade school age child perhaps? “Your mom is on People of Walmart for back boobs!” Nice. Buzz kill when it is personalized, right? Damn, I hope it is a buzz kill. If not, yes, you are probably a bully. Sure it is legal to post pics of these folks…but again, is it right?

Cyberbullying is a big issue. Bigger than schools…and becoming a big part of our society. Through the Internet people can become instant celebrities…whether they want to or not. There is help out there:

ParentsStruggle with Cyberbullying

WhatEducators need to know about bullying behaviors

“Bully” a Documentary 

Andy's Diigo List on Bullying

Probably the simplest way to stop bullying…cyber or otherwise…treat people like you would like to be treated…online or in person.

Work 2.0

In early 2001 I was introduced to a tool that went on to change the way I thought about knowledge management: Docushare. At that time, I was a young project director of a mid-sized Federal grant, and I had a lot of irons in the fire: I was in the field over 60% of the time, had partner agencies in Micronesia, Hawaii, and the U.S. Mainland, and a lot of reporting to track. This was 2001. Faxes and sending documents FedEx ruled the knowledge management world and emails and PDFs were okay to say, “your signed copy is coming”. All this paper (and there was a lot of it) went into filing cabinets and all the electronic versions of things went on to corporate shared hard drives. If I needed to find a document, I had to hope that the filing system (both physical and electronic) was done in a logical, effective manner. Of course, being in the field over half the time didn’t mean I was immune from reporting. Admin staff had to know where to recover information for reports, and if I was lucky enough to be on the Internet, it was usually dial-up speeds made even slower by going through the corporate VPN. In short, I was hamstrung by the technology. Then, in a meeting with the project’s external evaluators, they pulled up a web page to access the latest report that had been completed in New York a few hours earlier (we were in Hawaii) for us to go over. At that point, I could care less about the report and wanted a demo of this document storage device that was on the web! Docushare. I was in awe. This was years before Google Docs or the other many services available now. Here was a system that would allow multiple users to upload documents to a “shared drive.” Very cool. Much easier and faster than having to go to the corporate hard drive and connect through a very slow VPN…very much like Dropbox, but 7 years earlier.  But wait! There’s more! All the documents were searchable IN THE TEXT…and…wait for it…it tracked multiple revisions. I could now work on reports collaboratively with the team, no matter where any of us happened to be in the world. Security could be layered across folders for different access levels, and it was all secure. If I needed a document from Hawaii that was just mailed in, an admin could scan it through a copier and select a destination folder inside Docushare. It changed the way we did business. More than that, it changed the way we viewed information and information management. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was participating in the flatting of knowledge management.

It is now 2012. Document management systems are the norm, whether it is a school system that has adopted Google Docs, or corporations using improved-upon Docushare (or like) systems. It is taking the old corporate shared hard drives, or even the new cloud-based storage like Dropbox and Google Drive. Knowledge management has changed the way business is done, and some folks are still trying to figure out what happened. How did goods that used to be expensive luxury items (or at least, mid-ranged items) end up in discount stores like Walmart? The call centers down the road that are boarded up…why did that happen? Schools more concerned about making sure every child feels good about themselves, while math and science scores continue to slip farther behind other countries. On a global sense, the world has been continuing to embrace (and understand) the new era of knowledge management, while the United States is slowly starting to awake to it. The irony of it all, is it has all happened (at least, largely in part) to respond to American business.

Breaking it down further, are two articles, The Three Eras of Knowledge Management, a blog article by Nancy Dixon; and A framework for social learning inthe enterprise, a blog article by Harold Jarche. Dixon’s article gives a good summary of knowledge management evolution, and actually corresponds to my own example at the beginning of this article. Going in a timeline from 1995 to 2005, it shows the progression of the “old school” management control of content in 1995, to the transparency of information and content in 2005. A very short 10 year span to change the way businesses manage information. This is not to say ALL businesses have embraced this. Some companies still lag behind with not only technology of knowledge management, but also the paradigm shift to embrace HOW that technology works. It is one thing to put into place the infrastructure to allow for knowledge management in an organization; it is quite another for management to put INTO PLACE knowledge management. I like how Dixon summaries knowledge management as a response to two areas: 1, where knowledge lives within organizations, and 2, what knowledge is important to organizational success. Through an effective knowledge management system, company information can be accessible to people that need information, and often that is far beyond management. Flat. The second article by Jarche really gets into the idea of “social learning” in the workplace. What really jumped out at me was his analyzing of social learning. That there are two types of learning in the workplace: formal (training) and informal learning (observation, conversations, time on task). The “jumped-out-at-me-part” was that informational learning was 80% of on the job learning! He also classified different learnings that should be part of organizational structures, and not necessarily the formal trainings of the past. Of the following learnings, only one (FDL) is actually traditional.

• IOL: Intra-Organizational Learning (keeping the organization up to date on strategic and internal activities)

• GDL: Group Directed Learning (teams of people working together)

• PDL: Personal Directed Learning (individuals taking responsibility for their own learning)

• ASL: Accidental & Serendipitous Learning (learning without realizing it)

• FSL: Formal Structured Learning (classes, training, workshops, both ansynchronous and synchronous)

Even the traditional FSL has changed with knowledge management technology. My company recently undertook a organization-wide project management initiative. Through self-paced learning (asynchronous, web based training), employees that want to manage (or continue to manage) projects must undertake a series of project management modules, and pass tests at the end of each module (10). This is certainly FSL, but there is also a strong PDL portion. Employees were able to start this process in February and have until May 31 to complete it (I finished late last week…yea me). The Personal Directed Learning component was present, as it was up to each employee to manage their time. As more employees had trouble with the training and needed help, management responded by allowing employees to work in teams. Now this traditional model of “training” (FDL), used technology to create interactive, asynchronous training, but also employed PDL and GDL, as well. I am sure along the way there was ASL, and I would argue that that management response to the training could be a case for IOL.

Interestingly enough, it is the very training I finished in the corporate project management that was a direct response to knowledge management in the organization. There are too many pieces of information floating around the company to manage in a traditional way. Technology has made it a necessity to change the way we look at information and manage it. It could be through a system like Google Docs or Docushare (or systems in-between), but organizations that refuse to modernize not only their technology, but the way they view knowledge management will be relegated soon to mediocrity, if not obscurity.

Social Bookmarking: It’s not just for breakfast anymore

There is an awesome list of the Top 100 ToolsFor Learning 2011 that showcase some of the GREAT tools that are out there. I decided to revisit and update an article I wrote last year on Diigo and give some additional background to social bookmarking.

So...this Top 100 list is a pretty neat list of tools. I went through the list and counted 74 of the tools I have actually tried out (although on a regular basis, probably less than half of that are things I use). Some sections I had never even heard of! Noticeboard and Online Stickies, Social Media Dashboards, & Curation Tools…so some exploring to do later. (I have no idea what a curation tool is, and apparently Word doesn’t either, as it comes up misspelled. One that jumped out is my old friend, Diigo.

Diigo. I have used Diigo now in my professional and personal life for two years now and had no idea what “Diigo” meant until I decided to write this post (and this is my second blog post on Diigo). Pronounced “DEE-GO” and is an abbreviation for Digest of Internet Information, Groups, and Other stuff. (That is from the Diigo site and not really sure why it isn’t Diigos…the “s” for “Stuff”) Diigo is under the list, Social Bookmarking.

Social Bookmarking? Social bookmarking refers to the ability to save bookmarks online, but also organize, manage and SHARE those bookmarks. It goes back to 1996 with the launch of an online service called itList. For 1996, it was pretty advanced. It allowed users to create public and private lists. From there a bunch of companies came and went, but in 2003 social bookmarking went mainstream with the launch of Delicious, known as del.icio.us. del.icio.us (notice the clever use of the suffix .”us”) allowed for “tagging” with bookmarks. Tagging is just a form of labeling that helps organize bookmarks and also search for them. Yahoo! purchased del.icio.us in 2005 and it became the social bookmarking standard. In 2010, Yahoo! announced that it would be discontinuing the service and floods of people left to the up-and-coming service, Diigo. Diigo had been around since 2006, but with the announcement of Delicious shutting down, people flocked  to Diigo. Probably helped that Diigo soon implemented a tool for Delicious users to import their bookmarks directly in to Diigo accounts. Delicious wasn’t discontinued, however, and it is number #24 on the Best Tools list. Want a GREAT introduction to Social Bookmarking? The clever folks at the Commoncraft Show (one of my favorite tutorial sites) have a short video on Social Bookmarking! (they have videos on many, many technology topics…wonderful group).

Why use a social bookmarking site? In a blog post I wrote in March, 2011, Social Bookmarking Changed My Life (…well, my teaching) I wrote how I was introduced to the wonderful world of social bookmarking. I never had heard of itList (until I researched this blog), but I remember when Delicious came out! I thought it was ridiculous. Why would I want to share my bookmarks online? Good grief, it was 2003 and I had a Friendster account to connect with people! I wasn’t thinking it through, though. I was, for lack of a better word, foolish. Instead of using Delicious to sort the hundreds of bookmarks I used for work, I instead, hand coded those bookmarks in HTML in websites. !!! If I had been using Delicious, I could have hand coded ONE link: that, to my Delicious account!  I grew up, though, and finally started into the wonderful world of Social Bookmarking when I joined McREL. The instructor, Elizabeth Hubbell, instead of giving out a list of bookmarks, she instead gave her Diigo Links: http://www.diigo.com/network/erhubbell. That list led the group to ALL the workshop links, categorized  into lists and searchable by tags. I could “follow” Elizabeth and when she found interesting bookmarks and indexed them, I would have access. I finally figured out why I would want to do social bookmarking, and within minutes I had my OWN Diigo account (http://www.diigo.com/network/islandandy).

Diigo is a fantastic tool for education, and it’s FREE, although, as with most free services, there is a “premium” service that costs some coin. Education accounts, however, have some of the premium services, plus classroom services, and does not cost a thing. So how do I use Diigo? Well, I do a lot (LOT) of workshops in the United States and the Asia/Pacific around educational technology and in particular, McREL’s ClassroomInstruction That Works (nice plug, eh?). There are 9 instructional strategies, so for my workshops, I have 9 instructional lists! For example, when covering “Setting Objectives,” the first instructional strategy, I have people go right to: http://www.diigo.com/list/islandandy/settingobjectives. To make it easier, they click on it from a workshop website built in Google Sites (#43). So this is what it looks like:

The Setting Objectives list has 16 items in it. Rather than type out 16 URLs on the website AND annotate them, I use Diigo.

How easy is it? Pretty dang easy. Most of the web browsers have Diigo support so you can use it right from the browser. I use Firefox and it has a Diigo toolbar.

I wanted to add the itList information to a Diigo list, Social Bookmarking. I clicked the “Bookmark” button and up pops a window. From here, I can name the site, annotate the site and add it to a list or group.

When I have finished, the “Bookmark” button is now red, telling me that it is a website that I have in Diigo already. I can still click “Bookmark”, though, and edit the information, add to a list or group, etc.

Diigo is pretty slick! But wait! It gets better!

Groups are another feature of Diigo that are great for educators. No one person can keep abreast of the sheer massive amounts of information available on the web. Diigo allows users to participate in groups. Instead of one person finding information, it can be hundreds of people finding information. I belong to several Diigo groups: Web Tools forTeachers, Google in Education, Cliff’s Notes on EdTech, and Cliff’sNotes on Instructional Design. I even started my own group, iPad for Education. It has 199 members from all over the world, and all interested in using iPads in education! Think about that. I find a lot of information I save to Diigo on iPads in education, but this is 199 people helping me find information! Sure, not all of it is great, and not all group members contribute. Overall, though, I get a lot of great information from others and I share some, too. Groups can be public or private. My group is private, so people have to request membership (I want to keep out spammers), but the information is visible to everyone.

As an educational leadership tool, it is wonderful. A group of 2^nd grade teachers all create their own list within their school to share resources. A school has a new 1-to-1 laptop program, so the principal sets up a school group around 1:1 computing. A C&I director sets up a group for the district. It isn’t just around education, either. Health care, IT services, etc would all benefit from sharing resources through a social networking site like Diigo.

Want more information on Social Bookmarking? Well, in researching this article, I created a Diigo list: http://www.diigo.com/list/islandandy/Social-Bookmarking

By the way, I wrote this article in Word (#42), researched it with Google (#15), used Wikipedia (#11), saved it to Dropbox (#6), and posted it to WordPress (#4). With the exception of Word, all free, and all available to anyone with a computer and Internet connection…and could have used Open Office (#61) as a free alternative to Word. Flat.

The World is Flat 2012

When I used to hear “the earth is flat”, what normally came to mind was Christopher Columbus freaking out the crews of three little ships heading across the Atlantic, or even the infamous Flat Earth Society, often lampooned and now themselves sellouts to the global marketplace. Since around 2005, though, I think of Thomas Friedman’s, The World is Flat. First released in 2005, then again in 2006, and finally again in 2007 (Version 3.00): The world is flat; The earth is flat; Flat globalization. The list of “flat” goes on and on and on. While Friedman is the target of many attacks, one thing is for certain: he may not have started the conversation on globalization, but he took it mainstream. He owns the “the world is flat.” Soon after the publishing of the first edition, education followed suit and the “flat schools” and “flat classrooms” discussions occupied the conference scene (I had quite a nice presentation circuit in education conferences in the Asia/Pacific in the mid-2000’s with it, so thank you Mr. Friedman). So why resurrect a discussion on a book that was last updated in 2007? Because while a lot has changed since then (a scant five years), the discussion (and predictions) are still happening!

The first exposure many educators had to idea of “the world is flat” didn’t come from reading the book, but from a PowerPoint presentation posted on YouTube in 2006 now in a Wiki called Shift Happens. The presentation was originally for a faculty meeting at Arapahoe High School in a suburb of Denver. Since that original posting, it has been viewed over 5 million times (I still use Did You Know Version 2.0 in educational technology workshops, too). A high school faculty presentation starting a world wide educational movement rather speaks to the idea that the world might indeed be a tad flat. Shift Happens. The idea that the world is changing very quickly and that geography isn’t nearly the barrier it used to be. Sounds flat. Also inspired by the first version of The World Is Flat, two teachers (both Americans) linked their classrooms in the United States and Bangladesh and from that experience created the Flat Classroom Project. Friedman went on in the next editions of the book to mention their project (in chapter 13). 2012 and the site is still up and active and used by educators all over the world. “How flat is your classroom” is a question (and title of the article) from Education Leadership and goes on to provide resources for “flattening” the classroom. The idea that “the world is flat” is now education mainstream, too.

This first chapter in the books is “While I Was Sleeping.” So what happened while Friedman was sleeping, and more importantly, what has happened since 2007 when he “woke up”? Friedman starts the book with a journey to India. He is amazed at the business from America being outsourced there, and not just call centers. Call centers were obvious – even in 2005 Americans were getting used to the idea of speaking to someone from India to book a flight or get technical help hooking up a printer. But there were also software developers, accounting firms, and even virtual personal assistants. Pretty incredible. He broke down what he calls three stages of Globalization (1.0, 2.0, and 3.0) and gave explanations on how it was possible that Americans could do business inexpensively with India in real time. Globalization 3.0 is our current stage and has been made possible by the huge investments by the United States in telecommunication infrastructure. All pretty interesting and for the time, not something the mainstream was talking about. So what has happened since then? There seems to be an industry of “the world is not flat” authors, dedicated to pointing out that the world is NOT flat. That is not to say that Friedman was right on every point and many of the disagreements others have are well founded. Soon after the publication of The World is Flat, Atlantic Monthly followed up with a 2005 article, The World Is Spiky. Clever name and some good points that the world, while leveling, is really “spiky” with concentrations of people and resources in only parts of the world. In seven years, though, some of the major premises of the article, especially on the world economy, are now wrong. The author states, “Together New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston have a bigger economy than all of China.” Certainly not an accurate statement in 2012. What could have caused this shift to happen (pardon the pun)? Even in an op ed article from a few days ago, The World is not flat, a professor vehemently disagrees with Friedman. Introducing the article he writes, “Thomas Friedman is wrong to say in his celebrated book, “The World is Flat,” that the world is always within one’s reach, or just a click away with the use of a mouse.” Taking the view of The World Is Spiky, the professor describes the millions of people living in poverty that do not have access to the resources that create a flat world. While I agree with the professor on his points on poverty (and misallocated resources), I don’t think Friedman meant “the world is flat for every single person in the world.” Here is the irony with that article: it was written in the Philippines and I read it in the United States. Flat. More irony? Friedman wrote about Indian call centers taking McDonald’s drive through orders in middle America in 2005. In trying to find out if this trend was still happening (which I never did), I read that Philippine call centers have overtaken Indian call centers for American clients. Yet even more irony? I read two articles on this. The first from the Times of India called Philippines beats India to emerge as leader is call centre business, and the second from the New York Times called New Capital of Call Centers…both written by the same author in India. Just five years from the last publication and shift happened again…this time from India to the Philippines. NBC’s short lived sitcom, Outsourced, about an American working in an Indian call center might be resurrected to have the same show take place in the Philippines.

Plenty of critics have come out of the woodwork to take aim at Mr. Friedman. In a scathing article, Friedman Aflame, National Review takes aim to say, “Tom Friedman claims to be simplifying complex ideas and making them more understandable. But what he is in fact doing is taking an already simple idea and making it meaningless (Goldberg, 2010).” Harsh criticism while the article acknowledges in Friedman’s own words that he doesn’t really believe the earth is flat (in the sense of true globalization. He states, “Of course the world is not flat. But it isn’t round anymore either. I have found that using the simple notion of flatness to describe how more people can plug, play, compete, connect, and collaborate with more equal power than ever before – which is what is happening in the world – really helps people who are trying to understand the essential impact of all the technological changes coming together today (Goldberg, 2010).” National Review doesn’t like Friedman. Big shock, but the attacks come from scholars, too. In a historical analysis, the author of The world was never flat: early global encounters and the messiness of the empire, takes on Friedman as if he suggests that the world is moving to a level playing field and will reach some sort of equilibrium. “Friedman’s arguments in his book and on his cover reflect a very powerful and prevalent view of globalization, a view that is similar to and derived from other grand narratives that are presented as inevitable and unlinear…I hope in this paper to destabilize and problematize the image of the inevitability and unilinearity of today’s flat earth (Domosh, 2010).” Did I miss something in Chapter 1 of Friedman’s book that somehow told me that the world was flat throughout history and was certainly flat today? No. Did I need to read 18 pages to figure that out? Although it was an interesting historical perspective, why call Friedman out on this (a good title, perhaps?).
A good example to see the flattening world is to look at shifts in education. In 2004 a hedge fund manager, Salman Khan started tutoring his family over the Internet using YouTube. It took off to become a hugely successful non-profit of the Khan Academy  with over 3,000 tutorial videos covering a huge range of topics. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers up entire courses for free through it’s OpenCourseWare project . Just last fall, Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun created a free class, CS221: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and over 350,000 people from all over the world registered! It has led to Stanford creating a new program, Staford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) http://see.stanford.edu. Not to be outdone in the flattening of education, Harvard has is now offering free online courses, as well. Some in academia (the scholarly world of ivory towers) admit that their world is not flat yet, but moving there, as Peter Felten did in Teaching, Learning, and Globalisation(sic). Regardless of what we think of flattening (in terms of education access), it is happening.

In Terrie Norris’s, The World is Flat – And That’s Okay, (from a completely unrelated field from mine), in the trade journal, Professional Safety, she mentions how her own field and how information and access are coming from many other places than just the United States. Her own contact book and social networking like LinkedIn are now international (Norris, 2011). My own Facebook, LinkedIn, etc are full of people from the United States (my home), but also countries from all over the Asia and Pacific. I regularly Skype and conduct webinars to places halfway around the world as just a daily part of doing business. For myself, the world is flat. I recognize that not everybody has equal access to information, and even in America I know there are “information deserts.” The world is flat, but that doesn’t mean it is fair.

Works cited (that didn’t have web links):
Domosh, M. (2010). The world was never flat: early global encounters and the messiness of empire. Progress in Human Geography. 34(4), 419-435.
Goldberg, J. (2010). Friedman AFLAME. National Review,  62(4), 38-41.
Norris, T. (2011). The world is flat – and that’s okay. Professional Safety. 56(11). 1-1.