Comments, teaching & HuffPo Divorce

My most recent post on the Huffington Post has gotten the most comments to date.  (about 290 in 3 days).  Most of my other posts generally only got less than 50 comments.

The comments vary widely.  On the one hand, you now get to hear what the students in the back of your class are whispering to each other during the lecture.  For example, in response to the title of my post "Are the courts biased in favor of mothers, one commenter, wrote,  "When someone tells you there are no dumb questions, refer them to this headline."  Funny and snarky.

Overall, this post got some very thoughtful and interesting commenters.  [These are probably like the students who sit in the front of the class.]  For example, 715W posted the following,

The solution is to put divorce into an administra­­tive system rather than the judicial system.

To each divorce case, assign an administra­­tor trained in mediation/­­conflict resolution­­.

The commenter goes on the explain more about how this system of managing custody issues would work with this system.  

There were also a number of commenter who cited specific research and/or other scholarship that enriched the discussion.  Chris Sirhc writes, 

"The court's ability to determine the best interest of the child is limited. See Robert Emery's review of custody evaluators­. He is particular­ly daming: 'There is essentiall­y no psychologi­cal science to support the measures and constructs designed specifical­ly for the assessment of child custody arrangemen­ts for individual children.' "

http://psi­.sagepub.c­om/content­/6/1/1.ful­l

 In many cases these publications we new to me or added significant new perspectives to the discussion.  This is the type of discussion that I would hope my work fosters.

The third type of postings are the personal stories.  In many of the cases in this particular post the stories are by men who appear to have had particularly challenging, perhaps unfair treatment by the court system.  Michael Morrison wrote,

"I'm one of those odd-ball men who was awarded custody of his daughters. A couple of years later, Mom landed in jail, and decided that she wanted custody of the kids...Rem­ember, she was in jail.

Every few weeks, I'd be subpoenaed to appear in court. The experience was absolutely surreal: She would appear in her finest orange jail garb, and explain to the judge why she thought she should have custody. I would then have to explain why I thought custody shouldn't be awarded to an inmate.

This went on for months. It was absurd, and the court would never have countenanc­ed this sort of lunacy had the genders been reversed."

Overall, I think this was a good discussion.

Huffington Post Social Media & Web Strategy-- Mix Education with Tabloid

A central challenge in all teaching is to get the attention of the student.  So how is this done on the web? 

Bob Garfield, On the Media, asks this question of Farad Manjoo of Slate.  Here is what he says about the strategy at the Huffington Post:

"One of the brilliant things about what Huffington Post does is it really understands this sort of mix of tabloid news and straight news and politically sensational news better than almost any publication on the Internet. And it has this mix down really well, so that it publishes stories about politics, about legitimate news stories and then it also publishes the kinds you just cited."

 So what should this tell the rest of us about education?  What is the combination of topics that we might be using to get the attention of our students?  In parent education, should be include a place to share cute baby pictures and diaries of new parents?  What is the "sensational news" we could include about parenting? 

Of course, some will ask, is this appropriate?  Again, what should we do here?  What compromises our integrity and what is just savvy marketing? 


There are a number of good articles at On the Media on web strategy and search engine optimization, strategies for the "most emailed stories"  that are worth listening to or reading.  Also, note the multiple delivery methods used by On the Media with its content.  They did a very thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons of the impact of the internet on society. 

Outline of an Educational Blog Post on Divorce

In writing for the Huffington Divorce page, I am trying to develop blog posts that have the following structure:

a) interesting/engaging/provocative opening sentence
b) a couple of interesting practical ideas that could be helpful to someone
c) links, directions, ideas about how learn more or do something to more.

This is one of my better posts in which I feel like I executed my approach well:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-hughes/are-children-of-divorce-d_b_799355.html

Additionally, I cite the research literature when appropriate and I use scientist's names to link to ideas or findings. I am also trying to take a hopeful, but realistic perspective on these issues. To do this I try to distinguish between what can be changed and what can't be changed in order to provide a broader perspective.

Blogging for Huffington Post on Divorce

For the past month or so I have been writing for the Huffington Post Divorce page. This work gives a chance to return to my primary professional work which is as a educator regarding issues related to families.

For several years I have admonished and cajoled colleagues about the need for scientists and teachers to use the web as a platform for teaching. (See my comments about the importance of scientists and professionals blogging about the link between autism and vaccines.) When I was approached by the editors at the Huffington Post about being a blogger for their newly launching web page on divorce , I knew I had to do this. I have now posted four posts (about one per week). (See my Huffington Posts work here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-hughes )

My first post on the role of religion in shaping attitudes about divorce got the most (151) comments (both thoughtful and odd). My most recent post on the role of conflict in preventing divorce got the smallest number of comments (2). It is hard to know why one post gets more comments than others.

I will continue to try this medium. Here I will describe my various reactions to "teaching" in the Huffington Post.

What Would Google Do?

This is the title of a new book by Jeff Jarvis that provides a good overview of how the web has changed the ways in which companies and organizations operate. If you have ignored all the hype about the Web 2.0 and are just curious about how people are thinking about developments in search, social networking, sharing free content, engaging with the public and so forth, this would be a good book to get a thoughtful summary of this thinking.

Here are Jarvis' basic themes that define the ways in which Google and other web savvy companies and institutions will succeed in the years to come:

Customers are now in charge. He suggests that organizations will need to organize the delivery of products and information in ways that meet customer needs. Obviously, this basic idea has always been true, Jarvis asserts that the we are going to have to be even more quick to be responsive to customer demands.

People can find each other anywhere and coalesce around you-- or against you. Organizations that are good at engaging the public around their ideas, products and people are going to be more successful than those who fail at this. He provides important examples of how customers also can organize against companies that fail to respond to problems. It is no longer an idle threat to say, "I am going to tell a few million of my closest friends about how horrible your product or service is?"

The mass market is dead, replaced by the market of mass niches. Alot of commentators have made this point in the last several years (see Chris Anderson, The Long Tail). Some good examples of this idea are Amazon (lots of small book sellers and lots of obscure books) and the Huffington Post (lots of excellent writers/commentators in one place.)

Markets are conversations. This idea was first offered in The Cluetrain Manifesto and extended in Naked Conversations. There are good examples of this idea in this book, but this is still a fuzzy idea. Ok, so I get the idea of talking to customers. What do I really need to talk about? What are the important conversations? And who is really the "customer?" There are lots of customers and lots of topics. How do you find the right conversation? This is much easier said than done.

We have shifted from an economy based on scarcity to one based on abundance. This idea has a variety of implications. How do you manage too much information? How do help people manage and organize lots of ideas and options? Another question related to this situation is what value do you add when everyone can find any product, service or idea a click away?

Enabling customers to collaborate with you-- in creating, distributing, marketing and supporting products-- is what is creates a premium in today's market. This idea is an elaboration of the marketing as conversation and customers are now in charge.

The most successful enterprises today are networks and the platforms on which those networks are built. Today this means Facebook.... tomorrow this means....?

Owning pipelines, people, products, or even intellectual property is no longer the key to success. Openness is. This may be both the most important idea and the most troublesome. Note that Jarvis does not say that pipelines, products or people are "valueless," only that "openness" is the key to success. He notes however that Google does not practice this value in much of its operation. This is a complicated idea. What needs to be open? In what ways is it valuable to be open?

This book provides a good basis for an extended discussion of many important ideas that will shape business, education, media, government and much more. We are only at the beginning of understanding how to think, work and act in this world.