Google-doogle-do

Taking control of our learning and our work isn’t really a revolution. It’s more like a reset to the proper default position for the conceptual age. Harold Jarche Resetting Learning and Work

I’m lucky enough to be a member of the NYSAIS Think Tank convened this week to consider professional development and next steps and directions for NYSAIS to continue its extraordinary track record of support for our schools and the people in them. Twitter hashtag: #NYSAIStt11.

Among the assigned readings is Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google do? Along with WWGD? there’s the associated  follow up question: How can schools become more googley?

To get some sense of the book here’s an intro video from the publisher. (There are other Jeff Jarvis presentations on line.)

So here are some of the key concepts of the Google model of doing business per Jeff Jarvis:

• Figure out what you do best, stick with it and link to everything else.
• Connect and relate. Join networks, be a platform
• Drink your Google juice – enjoy the benefits of sharing and being shared widely. Leverage the benefits of being out there and public.
• Trust the wisdom of the crowd and be willing to let others contribute. Exploit the inverse relationship between control and learning to trust the wisdom of the crowd
• Avoid the perfection trap and live life as beta.  Play with prototypes. Put them out imperfect and unfinished. Let others drive how it is finished
• Figure out the real business. Schools used to be in knowledge distribution business. What can they now be in the business of doing? What is the value of the school and who needs it and why?
• In the post scarcity economy where information is abundant – how to enable people to do what they want to do.

Not revolutionary ideas but they do provide a framework for discussion.

So how do we make schools more googley? Assuming that we might want to – it’s an interesting question.