Tinkerings

This morning, as many mornings go, I was looking at YouTube videos recommended to me by the unseen forces of video sharing.  One of them was a 5 minute clip of Seth Godin speaking on the power of Tribes.  If you have read many of my blogs, or seen status updates on my Facebook account, you will know I am a fan of Seth Godin.  Seth is a marketing expert, motivational speaker, and author.

Today, the video was looking at the history of advertising.  My focus was drawn in when he got to television advertising.  Companies who sell products spend a lot of money each year to do one thing: interrupt you.  For years the major method of advertising a product or brand was through a continual interruption of other things you would rather be doing.  In this case, the network creates something you want to see, even see passionately, and marketers create something with which to interrupt you.

And for years it worked.

Now, however, the social power of the Internet, and the humongous failure of the Jay Leno Show, has diminished the power of interruption.  Tribes have taken over.  Marketers find a small cadre of passionate followers and help them spread the word to their friends and friends of friends.  We are no longer interested in being interrupted. We now seek out the advice of our friends.  These friends are our Tribe.  We find them on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Diigo, and more.

Take Facebook as an example.  Marketers are piling ads up down the right column of our pages one after another.  They’re even using the power of Google Ad Words to place just the write captions in those ads.  In the time I’ve had a Facebook account, I think I’ve clicked on two of them just to see what the scam is really all about.  I don’t want them to interrupt me.

BUT…

Let a friend post a link to a website or video.  Let a friend post new pictures.  Let a friend write a new Note.  I will gladly stop what I am doing to take a look.

In fact, one of the main reasons I use Twitter is for the Twibe (in education we call this Personal Learning Networks).  I go to find the links provided by my friends.  I go there to add my own.

Marketing has changed forever.  And if TV networks and newspapers and magazines don’t figure that out, they will go the way of all dinosaurs.

But what about teaching?

Many are still stuck in the interrupting paradigm of teaching.  Stop using your cell phone and pay attention.  Stop passing notes and look up here.  Stop talking and listen to me.  I’m guilty.  We interrupt kids from doing what they want to do and try to get them to do what we want them to do.  It is easy.  It is the “sage on the stage” syndrome, and many days I have it.  And it is ineffective.

BUT…

What if teachers found the right mix of students to form a tribe?  I’m not talking about the kids making straight A’s.  They are going to learn the material if the teacher never came to class in the first place.  They are self-starters.  Self-motivators.  Think lower.  Think about the disinterested kids.  The ones who struggle.  Not to learn, but to pay attention long enough to learn.  What if we captured just 3 or 4 of those in each class?  What if we developed a passion in them about learning and living and leading?

What if we form a Tribe?

What do you think?