I have been rethinking the idea of digital native vs digital immigrant. We commonly think that students today, having grown up with digital technology at their side, are better attuned, and so more comfortable, with technology. This has not necessarily been my experience.
Students are exceptionally good at sending text messages and looking at YouTube, but actual creative activity is really very low, and that which is created is no better than other generations have been able to muster. Students are fairly good at finding shortcuts to accomplish their work, and I am not completely against this, but the amount of knowledge that soaks in seems no greater than we have seen in the past, and often is less.
Finally, I think that game design is an excellent way to teach content, but generally speaking, the tools involved in game design have a steep learning curve, that only the most dedicated students are willing to climb.
I'm thinking about that Friedman piece, in the Times last week, where a researcher said that a major problem is student motivation. One response was to ask what if we made school engaging enough to generate that motivation?
And that is true, as far as it goes, but schools have other problems that force them in this direction or that. I'm thinking of this nonsense that the LA Times has pushing regarding ranking teachers by the test scores of their students. They talk about "value added" to suggest that the tests ranking only look at progress from one year to the next. It is a fantasy.
I started teaching in a middle school in Pacoima, where the average sixth grader read at a third grade level, if I was lucky. Now let's suppose I'm a fantastic sixth grade teacher, and I can move them two years in the space of one year, arguably a great job. Now they are reading at a fifth grade level, but they have to take the sixth grade test, which they fail miserably. Now my pay and my reputation are at stake, even though i've done a great job.
The solution--don't take chances, and don't work in a low performing school. That means no games or projects in class, only content that is sure to get my kids to score better on the test. Nothing else matters. Every time they come out with new ideas for teaching, but fail to change the way they test, teachers look at it and say "no, thank you".
My own research has shown that increasing technology in middle class schools has only a marginal benefit, but introducing or expanding technology at low socio-economic schools has a significant effect on learning, but has nothing to do with the tests. So who is going to do that if their job is at risk?
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The reports of blogging's death have been greatly exaggerated
The latest from Cory Doctorow. http://bit.ly/a2IZBL
Monday, July 12, 2010
Google continues to democratize the web by letting everyone get in on the fun.
Google has released software that will enable regular people to create applications for their Android mobile device (phones for now, presumably tablets in the future). http://nyti.ms/9kWJ4X
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Walled Garden Proves Successful
Apple successfully guarded its "walled garden" by banning a malicious developer. http://nyti.ms/d8HRwM This validates Apple's policy, and should be a warning to those who would download carelessly, from an app store or anywhere else. Apple has protected its customers, even if they don't want the protection, but it has also protected its brand. While I think Android is very cool, it may be destined to be the Windows of mobile OSs--big, but vulnerable.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
iPhone vs Android
The whole iPhone vs Android debate is reminiscent of the Mac vs PC discussion, with the same types of issues. With iPhone (and I include iPad) you get the so-called walled garden, in which you can do anything you want as long as it is approved by Apple. This is is similar to the dearth of application available for the Mac compared to Windows. In recent times, that has changed some, but the overwhelming majority of new application are created for the PC. It will only be a matter of time before there are exponentially more Android phones than there are iPhones, so the two situations will be twins. It turns out that just like Windows being more likely to get a virus or to get hacked (not because of any design flaw, but it's a numbers game for hackers), Android devices are already seeing hacks and viruses propagate throughout their ecosystem.
If one were to advise a computer buyer about purchasing a laptop, one would usually ask if the computer was to be used at work or as a personal machine, whether it was for business (number crunching, correspondence, etc.) or for graphics, movie editing, photos, ease of sharing, etc., the advice would almost certainly be to buy a PC for business and a Mac for personal. This argument seems reasonable for the iPhone/iPad vs Android debate. Part of the reason, perhaps the main reason, that a Mac "just works", as opposed to a PC, is that Apple only has to design for a single platform, and they control all the variables in hardware and drivers. Whereas Windows must account for thousands of different hardware configurations, thus it requires more work on the part of the consumer to make it all work.
In the coming months I believe we are going to see an analogous situation between iPhone and Android. Those who like getting their hands dirty are going to opt for Android, while those who just want their device to work as advertised will opt for the iPhone. It comes down to what I have been saying for years--do you want the computer to work for you, or do you want to work for the computer?
If one were to advise a computer buyer about purchasing a laptop, one would usually ask if the computer was to be used at work or as a personal machine, whether it was for business (number crunching, correspondence, etc.) or for graphics, movie editing, photos, ease of sharing, etc., the advice would almost certainly be to buy a PC for business and a Mac for personal. This argument seems reasonable for the iPhone/iPad vs Android debate. Part of the reason, perhaps the main reason, that a Mac "just works", as opposed to a PC, is that Apple only has to design for a single platform, and they control all the variables in hardware and drivers. Whereas Windows must account for thousands of different hardware configurations, thus it requires more work on the part of the consumer to make it all work.
In the coming months I believe we are going to see an analogous situation between iPhone and Android. Those who like getting their hands dirty are going to opt for Android, while those who just want their device to work as advertised will opt for the iPhone. It comes down to what I have been saying for years--do you want the computer to work for you, or do you want to work for the computer?
Saturday, June 12, 2010
What People Want From Products
This article is a great metaphor for implementing technology into the classroom, the office, or the home. Follow the link for more from the authors.
Published: January 16, 2006. What Customers Want From Your Products
Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall
Editor's Note: Marketers have lost the forest for the trees, focusing too much on creating products for narrow demographic segments rather than satisfying needs. Customers want to "hire" a product to do a job, or, as legendary Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"
With Levitt's words as a rallying cry, a recent Harvard Business Review article, "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure," argues that the marketer's task is to understand the job the customer wants to get done, and design products and brands that fill that need. In this excerpt, the authors look at designing products that do a job rather than fill a product segment.
With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.
To see why, consider one fast-food restaurant's effort to improve sales of its milk shakes. (In this example, both the company and the product have been disguised.) Its marketers first defined the market segment by product—milk shakes—and then segmented it further by profiling the demographic and personality characteristics of those customers who frequently bought milk shakes. Next, they invited people who fit this profile to evaluate whether making the shakes thicker, more chocolaty, cheaper, or chunkier would satisfy them better. The panelists gave clear feedback, but the consequent improvements to the product had no impact on sales.
A new researcher then spent a long day in a restaurant seeking to understand the jobs that customers were trying to get done when they hired a milk shake. He chronicled when each milk shake was bought, what other products the customers purchased, whether these consumers were alone or with a group, whether they consumed the shake on the premises or drove off with it, and so on. He was surprised to find that 40 percent of all milk shakes were purchased in the early morning. Most often, these early-morning customers were alone; they did not buy anything else; and they consumed their shakes in their cars.
The researcher then returned to interview the morning customers as they left the restaurant, shake in hand, in an effort to understand what caused them to hire a milk shake. Most bought it to do a similar job: They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to make the drive more interesting. They weren't yet hungry but knew that they would be by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.
The researcher inquired further: "Tell me about a time when you were in the same situation but you didn't buy a milk shake. What did you buy instead?" Sometimes, he learned, they bought a bagel. But bagels were too dry. Bagels with cream cheese or jam resulted in sticky fingers and gooey steering wheels. Sometimes these commuters bought a banana, but it didn't last long enough to solve the boring-commute problem. Doughnuts didn't carry people past the 10 a.m. hunger attack. The milk shake, it turned out, did the job better than any of these competitors. It took people twenty minutes to suck the viscous milk shake through the thin straw, addressing the boring-commute problem. They could consume it cleanly with one hand. By 10:00, they felt less hungry than when they tried the alternatives. It didn't matter much that it wasn't a healthy food, because becoming healthy wasn't essential to the job they were hiring the milk shake to do.
The researcher observed that at other times of the day parents often bought milk shakes, in addition to complete meals, for their children. What job were the parents trying to do? They were exhausted from repeatedly having to say "no" to their kids. They hired milk shakes as an innocuous way to placate their children and feel like loving parents. The researcher observed that the milk shakes didn't do this job very well, though. He saw parents waiting impatiently after they had finished their own meals while their children struggled to suck the thick shakes up through the thin straws.
Customers were hiring milk shakes for two very different jobs. But when marketers had originally asked individual customers who hired a milk shake for either or both jobs which of its attributes they should improve—and when these responses were averaged with those of other customers in the targeted demographic segment—it led to a one-size-fits-none product.
Once they understood the jobs the customers were trying to do, however, it became very clear which improvements to the milk shake would get those jobs done even better and which were irrelevant. How could they tackle the boring-commute job? Make the milk shake even thicker, so it would last longer. And swirl in tiny chunks of fruit, adding a dimension of unpredictability and anticipation to the monotonous morning routine. Just as important, the restaurant chain could deliver the product more effectively by moving the dispensing machine in front of the counter and selling customers a prepaid swipe card so they could dash in, "gas up," and go without getting stuck in the drive-through lane. Addressing the midday and evening job to be done would entail a very different product, of course.
By understanding the job and improving the product's social, functional, and emotional dimensions so that it did the job better, the company's milk shakes would gain share against the real competition—not just competing chains' milk shakes but bananas, boredom, and bagels. This would grow the category, which brings us to an important point: Job-defined markets are generally much larger than product category-defined markets. Marketers who are stuck in the mental trap that equates market size with product categories don't understand whom they are competing against from the customer's point of view.
Notice that knowing how to improve the product did not come from understanding the "typical" customer. It came from understanding the job. Need more evidence?
Pierre Omidyar did not design eBay for the "auction psychographic." He founded it to help people sell personal items. Google was designed for the job of finding information, not for a "search demographic." The unit of analysis in the work that led to Procter & Gamble's stunningly successful Swiffer was the job of cleaning floors, not a demographic or psychographic study of people who mop.
Why do so many marketers try to understand the consumer rather than the job? One reason may be purely historical: In some of the markets in which the tools of modern market research were formulated and tested, such as feminine hygiene or baby care, the job was so closely aligned with the customer demographic that if you understood the customer, you would also understand the job. This coincidence is rare, however. All too frequently, marketers' focus on the customer causes them to target phantom needs.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Published: January 16, 2006. What Customers Want From Your Products
Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall
Editor's Note: Marketers have lost the forest for the trees, focusing too much on creating products for narrow demographic segments rather than satisfying needs. Customers want to "hire" a product to do a job, or, as legendary Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"
With Levitt's words as a rallying cry, a recent Harvard Business Review article, "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure," argues that the marketer's task is to understand the job the customer wants to get done, and design products and brands that fill that need. In this excerpt, the authors look at designing products that do a job rather than fill a product segment.
With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.
To see why, consider one fast-food restaurant's effort to improve sales of its milk shakes. (In this example, both the company and the product have been disguised.) Its marketers first defined the market segment by product—milk shakes—and then segmented it further by profiling the demographic and personality characteristics of those customers who frequently bought milk shakes. Next, they invited people who fit this profile to evaluate whether making the shakes thicker, more chocolaty, cheaper, or chunkier would satisfy them better. The panelists gave clear feedback, but the consequent improvements to the product had no impact on sales.
A new researcher then spent a long day in a restaurant seeking to understand the jobs that customers were trying to get done when they hired a milk shake. He chronicled when each milk shake was bought, what other products the customers purchased, whether these consumers were alone or with a group, whether they consumed the shake on the premises or drove off with it, and so on. He was surprised to find that 40 percent of all milk shakes were purchased in the early morning. Most often, these early-morning customers were alone; they did not buy anything else; and they consumed their shakes in their cars.
The researcher then returned to interview the morning customers as they left the restaurant, shake in hand, in an effort to understand what caused them to hire a milk shake. Most bought it to do a similar job: They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to make the drive more interesting. They weren't yet hungry but knew that they would be by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.
The researcher inquired further: "Tell me about a time when you were in the same situation but you didn't buy a milk shake. What did you buy instead?" Sometimes, he learned, they bought a bagel. But bagels were too dry. Bagels with cream cheese or jam resulted in sticky fingers and gooey steering wheels. Sometimes these commuters bought a banana, but it didn't last long enough to solve the boring-commute problem. Doughnuts didn't carry people past the 10 a.m. hunger attack. The milk shake, it turned out, did the job better than any of these competitors. It took people twenty minutes to suck the viscous milk shake through the thin straw, addressing the boring-commute problem. They could consume it cleanly with one hand. By 10:00, they felt less hungry than when they tried the alternatives. It didn't matter much that it wasn't a healthy food, because becoming healthy wasn't essential to the job they were hiring the milk shake to do.
The researcher observed that at other times of the day parents often bought milk shakes, in addition to complete meals, for their children. What job were the parents trying to do? They were exhausted from repeatedly having to say "no" to their kids. They hired milk shakes as an innocuous way to placate their children and feel like loving parents. The researcher observed that the milk shakes didn't do this job very well, though. He saw parents waiting impatiently after they had finished their own meals while their children struggled to suck the thick shakes up through the thin straws.
Customers were hiring milk shakes for two very different jobs. But when marketers had originally asked individual customers who hired a milk shake for either or both jobs which of its attributes they should improve—and when these responses were averaged with those of other customers in the targeted demographic segment—it led to a one-size-fits-none product.
Once they understood the jobs the customers were trying to do, however, it became very clear which improvements to the milk shake would get those jobs done even better and which were irrelevant. How could they tackle the boring-commute job? Make the milk shake even thicker, so it would last longer. And swirl in tiny chunks of fruit, adding a dimension of unpredictability and anticipation to the monotonous morning routine. Just as important, the restaurant chain could deliver the product more effectively by moving the dispensing machine in front of the counter and selling customers a prepaid swipe card so they could dash in, "gas up," and go without getting stuck in the drive-through lane. Addressing the midday and evening job to be done would entail a very different product, of course.
By understanding the job and improving the product's social, functional, and emotional dimensions so that it did the job better, the company's milk shakes would gain share against the real competition—not just competing chains' milk shakes but bananas, boredom, and bagels. This would grow the category, which brings us to an important point: Job-defined markets are generally much larger than product category-defined markets. Marketers who are stuck in the mental trap that equates market size with product categories don't understand whom they are competing against from the customer's point of view.
Notice that knowing how to improve the product did not come from understanding the "typical" customer. It came from understanding the job. Need more evidence?
Pierre Omidyar did not design eBay for the "auction psychographic." He founded it to help people sell personal items. Google was designed for the job of finding information, not for a "search demographic." The unit of analysis in the work that led to Procter & Gamble's stunningly successful Swiffer was the job of cleaning floors, not a demographic or psychographic study of people who mop.
Why do so many marketers try to understand the consumer rather than the job? One reason may be purely historical: In some of the markets in which the tools of modern market research were formulated and tested, such as feminine hygiene or baby care, the job was so closely aligned with the customer demographic that if you understood the customer, you would also understand the job. This coincidence is rare, however. All too frequently, marketers' focus on the customer causes them to target phantom needs.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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