According to Marshall Kirkpatrick, UStream.tv is about to report 10 million unique visitors last month. That’s a pretty huge number for a site that’s only about a year old, and it says something about the appeal of both producing and interacting with live television. I know that the story I tell in my presentations of Arthus holding court live to the world on the night of the New Hampshire primary is one of my favorites when it comes to a signpost of just how far these technologies have come. Pretty amazing when you think about it, that kids even younger than Arthus can create their own live television shows for global audiences.

Not that this doesn’t come with a certain feeling of trepidation. I will guarantee that it won’t be long before YouTube‘s “worst practices” will be seen as minor compared to what we’ll get through the built in iSight or web cams or even the web streaming phones that are becoming more common (all of which, of course, will later be archived to YouTube no doubt.) But as many of us have already experienced, there are also lots of potentially great uses for live streaming that make it worth thinking about in an educational context.

Ironically, the main problem I have with UStream is that it’s almost too easy to do, and therefore we’re bound to see a lot of pretty bad content coming across our screens. How do we get ourselves and our kids invested in a process that moves us all towards more “quality” in a traditional sense? Or should we even be worrying about that? Will the best content, the best uses bubble up? Should the traditional measures and standards apply, and, if so, to what extent?

Dave Jakes and I (and perhaps some other “special” guests”) are going to be doing a spotlight at NECC next month on this very topic. If you have any thoughts or ideas that you think might fit with the presentation, please let us know.

So with the caveat that I am only halfway through Mark Bauerline’s book The Dumbest Generation, I have some early impressions to throw out there. While I think there is some merit to this side of the debate (much like Keen’s Cult of the Amateur) what really bothers me about this book so far is, as the title suggests, this sense that our kids are at fault. Let me put it plainly: our kids are not “dumb” nor is this generation “dumb” simply because they spend a lot of time in front of television screens and computers or because they haven’t worked out for themselves how to get smarter using the Read/Write Web. And to label them so is demeaning and smacks more of marketing than reality.

Here is a sampling of quotes that I think pretty accurately reflect the tenor of the book:

In an average young person’s online experience, the senses may be stimulated and the ego touched, but vocabulary doesn’t expand, memory doesn’t improve, analytic talents don’t develop, and erudition doesn’t ensue. (109)

For must young users, it is clear, the Web hasn’t made them better writers and readers, sharper interpreters and more discerning critics, more knowledgeable citizens and tasteful consumers. (110)

The major finding: “More than half the students failed to sort the information to clarify related material.” It graded the very communications skills Web 2.0, the Read/Write Web, supposedly instills, and “only a few test takers could accurately adapt material for a new audience.” (115)

And just whose fault is this?

If the argument is that these types of gains are not possible through the Web, that’s one thing. But, speaking for myself, I know that is not true. My interactions using social tools have definitely expanded my vocabulary, improved my memory, improved my analytic abilities, made me a more discerning critic and all the rest. And I would be that many reading this would agree to those shifts in their own experience. Networks push our thinking. Networks can push our kids’ thinking.

Bauerline guzzles the “Digital Native” metaphor and leverages it to the extreme, expressing genuine surprise that our kids aren’t able to figure this all out on their own and then, worse, blaming them for the failure when the failure is ours. It’s our own lack of context and practical skills for what is happening right now that is the failure, not just at school but at home. How many millions of parents have no clue what their kids are doing with their online time, have no ability to counsel or model for their own children the ways in which these technologies can facilitate new opportunities for learning? How many tens of thousands of educators?

And that really is the time challenge that we have, not so much the lack of time in the day to get our brains around this but the time it’s going to take for adults to get on some sort of more than equal footing with our kids in their uses of these technologies. We’ve always known more, been able to do more, been “smarter.” In these contexts, however, we’re not smarter any longer at a time when our kids really need us to be.

We’re the dummies, not our kids.

If Clay Shirky is right, and all us baby boomers are carrying around a boatload of “cognitive surplus“, we better start unleashing it sooner rather than later.

(Photo “Bored” by foreversouls.)