The Tipping Point Review

Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" attempts to explain why certain sociological events are subject to dramatic and often unexpected changes. He opens with several examples where he observes that these phenomena, (teen smoking, crime, & Hush Puppies sales), do not follow a slow and steady decrease or increase as easily definable predictors could explain. Instead they reach a sort of critical mass where the idea, behavior, or product suddenly explode and begin to spread much like a disease or, more specifically, like an epidemic. This point of critical mass he calls The Tipping Point.

In order to explain these social epidemics, Gladwell defines three rules of epidemics:

1. The Law of the Few
2. The Stickiness Factor
3. The Power of Context

The Law of the Few states that there are special types of people in the world who are crucial to spreading certain ideas and defining popularity and trends:

• Connectors are the "social butterflies" of the world.  They know a lot of people from very diverse fields and backgrounds.  They are responsible for spreading ideas from subculture to subculture because they belong to and feel comfortable in all of them.  In the language of epidemics they are the "carriers".
• Mavens are the experts of their fields.  They may not know a lot of people, but they know a lot of stuff.  While connectors may collect acquaintances, mavens collect knowledge and information.  But they can't just collect a jumble of facts and figures, they also organize, internalize and share their information.  Many mavens may appear as "know-it-alls" but the best ones derive just as much pleasure from sharing their information as they do in collecting it, often in trade for any morsels of knowledge you may have.
  
• Salesmen are the persuaders of the world.  The maven may have collected a great idea and know what to tell others, the connector may know who to tell, but the salesmen know how tell others so they will be convinced of the wisdom or benefits of the idea.  Most conversations are a dance of facial expressions, gestures, and body language and that accompany words and Salesmen always know how to instinctively take the lead in that dance.  Between 50 and 70 percent of communication is determined by nonverbal cues and Salesmen are masters of nonverbal communication.

Teachers must master all three of these to be most successful.  They must connect to students from all types of backgrounds and experiences.  They must be mavens of their particular field of study in addition to modern educational theory; constantly gathering new information and data from all sources (including their students).  They must be salesmen to successfully convey both their new knowledge as well as its value to truculent students.  But rather than specialize in any one ability, the best teachers should learn to balance all three abilities.

The Stickiness Factor states that some ideas are more interesting, engaging, or memorable than others.  Gladwell uses several examples to illustrate the subtle differences between ideas that stick, and others that fail.  From his examples I have identified four different elements that contribute to the "stickiness" of an idea:

• Clarity: A message cannot be remembered and passed on if it is not understood.  The best ideas are often simple ones.  The makers of Sesame Street discovered this while studying the relationship of the attention spans of preschoolers to the contents of their show.  If the skit was too clever or abstract, then the kids would look away from the show or get frustrated.  The same goes for any student from pre-school to adult education.  New ideas and concepts must be clearly explained using concrete examples. The learner must be able to connect this new idea with existing knowledge and integrate it into their world view.  Metaphors (even bad ones) are paramount for communicating new ideas. 
  
• Repetition: The more times a message is repeated, more of it is remembered. Gladwell describes how adding a map and hours of operation to a tetanus pamphlet was best able encourage college seniors to get vaccinated.  The seniors should know where the clinic is located after 3 years, but the reminder more than doubled the number of appointments.  Any math teacher will attest to the effectiveness of traditional "skill and drill" exercises in helping students remember basic concepts and processes.  But there is also a familiarity and comfort level that is established with repeated actions and experiences.  Eventually these good feelings are attributed to the message directly and confidence in the idea is built.
  
• Interactivity: A message is better remembered if the recipient is challenged and rewarded for getting the message.  The television ad campaign described by Gladwell was wildly successful because it asked viewers to complete a particular task, namely find the "Gold Box" with the free CD in the TV Guide magazine.  This approach was effective for a couple of reasons: 1) viewers had to get up and accomplish something and 2) viewers were then rewarded for their success.  Active participation in the delivery of the message creates a sense of ownership.  Successful fulfillment of the task builds confidence and the reward reinforces those positive feelings.
  
• Sequence and the Power of the Narrative: Messages are best remembered when expressed in the proper order.  Gladwell describes the "Narratives from the Crib" project that discovered the importance of stories to preschool children.  Storytelling is one of humankind's oldest art forms and was the primary means of recording history in pre-literate societies.  Anecdotal evidence often outweighs pure statistical data because the listener understands and relates emotionally to a concrete story despite the accuracy of abstract numerical proof.  

The wildly popular children's show Blues Clues was able to incorporate all of these factors to create the ultimate "sticky" message.  They simplified the message of the show by embracing a literal and concrete language. They called the blue dog Blue and the chair used for thinking the Thinking Chair.  They utilized repetition by playing the same show five days in a row and structuring each episode identically.  They encouraged interaction by challenging the audience to solve puzzles directly and inserting extra long pregnant pauses to allow children an opportunity to think and interact.  This structure was always built around a single story where the puzzles were constantly increasing in difficulty.  Blues Clues mastered the art of building intellectual confidence in the kids while also building emotional confidence in their product.  To create engaging and memorable lessons teachers can just as easily apply The Stickiness Factor to their lectures.

The Power of Context states that our environment, conditions and circumstances affect the impact and nature of an idea on its recipients.  Again Gladwell employ's his own "sticky" methodology of specific examples to illustrate several concepts:

• The Broken Windows theory states that if a window is left broken on a street then passersby will assume that no one is watching or in control.  So a relatively small amount of vandalism will embolden opportunistic criminals to commit increasingly heinous crimes.  This also means that crime can spread from street to street, much like an epidemic.  The city of New York took advantage of the Broken Windows theory by cleaning the graffiti off of the subways and arresting fare-jumpers.  By cracking down on these extremely minor (seemingly innocuous crimes), NYC police were able to actively prevent crimes because they created an environment where absolutely no criminal behavior was tolerated.  This approach was also highly effective because criminals who are bold enough to commit muggings or murder are much more likely to have already committed a low-risk crime such as fare-jumping. 
  
• Transactive Memory states that some memories are stored outside a person, often through relationships with other people who are best suited to remembering certain types of information.  This phenomenon explains why social constructivism is so effective.  Students working in groups develop relationships and use the knowledge about each other to determine which members of the group are best suited to remember which types of knowledge.  This same concept can be found in "The Wisdom of the Crowd" or The Law of Large Numbers.
  
• The Magic Number: Gladwell also discovered that most people are only able to establish functional relationships (where transactive memory can be used) with at most 150 people.  The Hutterite religious sect discovered this magic number of 150 in their communities.  Whenever a community reaches that threshold of 150 members, clans begin to form and relationships begin to weaken and falter.  So classes or any sort of learning community must consist of less than 150 students in order take advantage of the benefits of transactive memory and social constructivism.
  
• The Impact of Peer Pressure in these small, well-connected groups is then a much more effective way of maintaining high quality and accountability.  In small groups peer pressure is often a greater motivator than any sort of pressure applied by an authoritarian figure or boss.  Once the relationships and peer groups are established, individual members will self-police to correct themselves and live up to the group's expectations.
  
• Concrete Examples always have more impact because our brains are better equipped to deal with real life situations than abstract concepts.  However we still fall victim to the Fundamental Attribution Error. This means that humans will always place greater value on other humans than the situation or environment.  Gladwell's examples imply that the opposite is in fact true.  Small key changes to an environment can create a snowball effect (for better or worse) so even minute details must be scrutinized for their value to the environment and the group.

Malcolm Gladwell makes good use of his theories in reaching out to connectors, mavens, and salesmen and translating his work between all three.  His book is very "sticky", using simple language and repeatedly using stories to illustrate his ideas.  In fact the greatest testimony to his ideas is the success of his book, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference".  The pedagogical implications of epidemics is every bit as salient as selling TV shows and reducing crime. 

Why Google Docs Fail

Anyone familiar with the history of computing recalls power of the "Killer App". In fact PCs would not exist on everyone's desktop today were it not for this funny little app called VisiCalc. And despite the growing prevalence for mp3's and portable players prior to the iPod, it was the sleek design and intuitive interface that helped Apple dominate the market. So the difference between extraordinary success and abject failure can and often does boil down to some small detail. A seemingly insignificant "bug" can spell absolute disaster and bankrupcy, while attention to detail and usability leads to absolute market domination and a privately funded space race.

Which leads me to my point: I was trying to send feedback to my students last week about their discussion posts. As always I try to be a little tech savvy even in my grading procesdures and had created this brilliant spreadsheet with a post-by-post breakdown of the student's grade and individualized feedback on what was missing from their assignments. When I was working full-time in the office I could take this Excel spreadsheet, merge it with a Word document and then use Outlook to e-mail it to all of my students. They each see a customized break-down of their grade with personalized feedback and I only have to write 1 message. Brilliant right? It's fast, easy, and valuable to my students.

So naturally I want to find a way to translate this process into the cloud. So let's see I have a spreadsheet app, a word processing app, and an email client that all have to play nice together. Hmmmm who else has a spreadsheet, word processor, and email within a single service? Google!! And since Google is always about being slick, bleeding edge, and easy to use surely they'll have gmail and google docs fully integrated, right? Right!? RIGHT!!!?!?!?!

No.

After doing extensive searches, surfing through help docs, blogs, groups, dog piles, etc. the best answer I found was just simply No. Or somewhat if you use openoffice.org, or this crazy convoluted idea about spreadsheets and formulas that had nothing to do with email at all.

This isn't to say that Google docs is a complete failure. After all they did manage to master the astounding feat of integrating forms with spreadsheets. Something Microsoft still has yet to master despite Infopath's wholehearted XML-ean attempts. So which is more important? The ability to push data into your spreadsheet, or the ability to pull it back out again. And why the hell can't I find a tool that can do both!