Center'd

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from a guy called Mike over at Center’d.com asking if I’d do a review of their site. Now I don’t usually do that sort of thing, but I do always like checking out the sites that are forwarded to me. I must say though that I was rather impressed with Center’d when I took a look… so much so I decided to take the plunge and write a quick post about it!

I suppose it’s best to start by explaining what Center’d is, and for that I’m going to cheat and copy it from their site (There’s a one sentence summary after the italics if you want to skip it);

We just love it when a plan comes together. Unfortunately, that rarely happens without heroic efforts, hundreds of emails, and a fair amount of anxiety.

Who is going, where are we going, when are we going. Easy, right? Well, not so much. In fact, no one has created an experience that combines the best of planning tools with the best of local search. And until someone does, we will either continue to endure, or stop making plans altogether. Sigh.

But wait! At Center'd, we’ve been thinking about how to solve the challenges that exist in making plans. From the smallest get together, where you just can’t decide on where to eat and oh-my-goodness-I-can’t-take-it-anymore-maybe-I’ll-just-stay-home-and-wash-my-cat, to the large fundraisers and school activities that require signups and hundreds of emails and weeks of meticulous planning, one thing is clear: We can help you spend less time planning, and more time enjoying yourself.

We do this by focusing on three categories:

People - Connect to people you trust, and get their opinions and information to help you find that perfect place or make successful that successful plan.

Places - See what the crowds think by seeing ratings and reviews from across the web, or find out what your trusted friends think.

Plans - Easily invite friends, find out where everyone wants to go and when with place and time voting, empower volunteers to sign up for tasks, and stay on top of it with reminders and notifications.

So basically, Center’d gives you a platform to create and manage events with minimal fuss (as large as you like or as small as you like), but within that there is a platform for finding places like bars, coffee shops, halls etc and add the locations to your event. What I like about it is the simple and clean interface, and the overall ease of use… I was able to put together a demo event in a minute or two, which is brilliant for those small meetings or spontaneous events that come up. You can find the demo event here by the way, feel free to mess around and have a tinker.

I have to say, the thing I like most about Center’d though is the fact that you don’t need an account to be a part of an event, and to take part in the organization of it once it’s been created. This really saves time for those who just want to click on an email link and say “yup, I’ll be there”, but also means that those who want to be a little more involved in the event don’t actually need to have an account to do so. Although I had to make an account to create the demo event, it only took the same amount of time to do so as it did to make the demo itself, which again, is another bonus.
Creating events themselves is very stress free, and includes all the things you could need; Event name, description, location, time, whether you want to make it invite only or public etc, whether you want to track RSVP’s and whether you want to be able to ask volunteers to sign up for your event. It even lets you add a little picture for the event, you can choose from the default ones, which are taken from flickr or you can add your own from the web or your desktop. I should also mention that you can choose to have a vote on the time and location on the event.

Once you send out the invites and links to the event page your invitees will see a cool little page that details the time location etc and allows them to vote on these if you have requested a vote. It has a google map to map out the event location(s), an attendees section and also a comments section. Along the top it gives you the options to add tasks for the event, share the event, and send messages (as of yet I’ve only tried the sharing bit).

There’s not much bad to say about Center’d (apart from the fact we spell centered like that in the UK so I’ve had to correct my spelling every time I’ve typed it!), what I will say though is that I had difficulty adding my locations into the event and found I had to type a specific place otherwise it would take an American bias… but apart from that, I love it and as event tools go it’s a very good one. I must also say though that it’s got a lot of potential to be used in a school environment, they even give you templates for typical school events (which can be found here). Overall a very nice little tool for a multitude of situations!

The Bass Player

(p.s. If you think I should do a few more of these please say in the comments)

Business and innovation

Take a minute to imagine the education system as one big business. It shouldn’t be too difficult, I mean at the end of the day it has a lot of similarities to a business. It has a product (teaching), which it delivers to its clients (students). It has the same sort of staff hierarchy, it has its sets of rules and its policies and it has a reputation, which can be considered proportional to its success. There are however the differences; no foreign call centers, no company cars and definitely no multi-million pound/dollar bonuses (or is that just banks that get those…).

But I suppose the biggest difference of all is the fact that because of the way the education system works it just wouldn’t survive in the cut throat world of business when put up against the likes of Google, Sony or Apple. Why? Well, the main reason is innovation. Companies thrive on innovation, it’s what makes or breaks them. Unless you innovate in business you get left behind, and are overtaken by your competitors. This is something that the education system just isn’t used to, and because of this it’s been stuck in an endless loop for decades. Granted, there are glimmers of hope here and there, when the government tries to mix things up a bit, but there are never any notable changes.

It’s just a shame there isn’t a structure in place where schools are in a way made to innovate, as if they were a business and as if they had competitors to try and stay ahead of. It’s a shame because it’s only once a structure like this is in place that our schools governing bodies will even begin to think about stepping outside the box, and consider letting our teachers improvise rather than supervise. I guess this is where my comparison between the education system and a business really rings true, because these governing bodies I speak of are no different to CEO’s and Presidents of global companies. They only care about the facts and the figures that - every year - equate to better results. Results that they can boast to shareholders about… or in this case, tax payers. They won’t deviate from a system that is getting them the kind of results they can put in headlines and say “look, the number of people passing English is up by whatever percent”, so they need something else to make them change things, and properly for once. We need to put something in place that gives them the statistics they so desperately crave, but actually helps the students learn skills that will be useful in todays society, not last centuries.

So here’s my idea; I think we should put in place some sort of scheme, where a districts funding (or part of a districts funding) for education is dependent on how well they can innovate, and introduce new things to the classroom. Not only this but they should have to dedicate a reasonable amount of time to preparing our young students for life outside of school. Money should be taken away for turning that bit in to any kind of formal lectures or talks, and money should again be awarded for creativity. I also think that districts should be allowed to keep any money they save by switching to open source software, or by moving things like student planners online. I do however think, that one of the main points on the list should be making sure our students feel like they are a part of something, and actually making them a part of something. While all this is happening though the districts need to keep a good level of achievement with exams etc to thus satisfy the statistic lovers. Feel free to object, and make suggestions but I believe this to be a good compromise, and a good method for not only opening up our education system and modernizing it, but allowing it to continue along a similar vein to which our Governments wish to keep it.

We need to understand that our schools have been safe, and stable with the current structure for decades upon decades. What I’m worried about now is how much longer the structure will hold? Do we stand by, watching and waiting till the global education crisis creeps up? Where what teachers are told to teach becomes irrelevant, and our text books simply aren’t fact anymore. Where exam results mean nothing in a world where free thinking and true learning outweighs the ability to regurgitate information. Our Governments need to prepare for this, and stop relying on a system derived at a time when people didn’t even know what electricity was. We need innovation in education.

The Bass Player

Photo 1. by what what on flickr

Photo 2. by Rob Shenk on flickr

Think Different

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Some of you may recognise that as the famous Apple ‘Think Different’ text, others may not, but I guess whether you’ve read it before or have read it for the first time there, we can pretty much all agree that it’s an inspiring piece of text. The thing that surprised me was that when reading through it I realised that all you need to do is change one tiny piece of the text to change the whole context of it.

“We make tools for educate these kinds of people”

In my mind, that’s now one hell of a motto for a better education system.

Let’s face it; the current education system just doesn’t know how to handle these kinds of people. “The round pegs in the square holes,” as Apple refers to them. The system doesn’t understand creativity. It robs all students of their creative consciousness and replaces it with structure, structure, and more structure, only to prepare them for a 9-to-5 job, Monday to Friday, every week of every year for the rest of their lives. Art, Music, Drama… you name it, the current system has a course for it. But that course doesn’t do any form of justice to the many greats that have over hundreds of years created amazing works and done incredible things, demonstrating how beautiful these arts can be. Students aren’t told to let passion drive them forward, or let their inspiration flow and their imagination stop at nothing. They are told to follow the rules, and do whatever it takes to get a ‘pass.’ Where would we be if Bach was told his Brandenburg concertos ‘didn’t quite meet the required standard’? What would have happened if Van Gogh was told his paintings just ‘didn’t make sense’?

It doesn’t stop at the arts. The suppression of creativity is seen in all fields of learning within the current system, giving no room for our real geniuses to shine. And why? Because the system has an obsession with testing, and at the end of the day you can’t test real genius, because you just can’t grade it. Who really has the right to say that a piece of music is an A or B or whatever else? Why should someone sitting in a fancy government office be able to sit there and write the rules that decide whether this piece of writing would make the grade or not? Why can’t the people deciding our futures for us be content with having some classes that have no exams? Classes that are solely there to help stimulate the different skills we all possess, without having to put us under the constant pressure of being bombarded with test after test and grade after grade. Do they see this as ‘non-educational’?

Think of the wealth of talent that is being and has been squandered due to this system. How many people would have become the next great composer if they had been given just that little bit more leeway? How many people would have had the courage to write their own novel, because they wouldn’t have been told they ‘weren’t good enough’? How many people failed to ever recognise their own potential because they were too busy striving for the best grades possible? Only so they could get a ‘good’ job in an office, with a ‘good’ salary.

Don’t get me wrong, we need the people in offices to do the things that keep our public services running and our economy going, but we also need the people who create, invent, and change things. We need the people who “sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written,” because Apple is right; they push the human race forward, and have done for as long as the human race has been around. But they can’t continue to do so if we don’t help them realise they are capable of doing so. They can’t invent the cure for cancer, or compose a great symphony, or write a magnificent piece of literature if our education system tells them exactly how everything should be, and what they should learn, and what they are aiming to do with their lives. Give them the opportunity. Let them decide.

We make the mistake of thinking that the people that do well in school are the ‘smart’ ones, but that isn’t always the case. These people may just be good at retaining information and reciting it back under pressure, or may just be good at problem solving. Our schools teach these kinds of people well, because they know how to deal with them. All you need to do with these people is throw facts and figures at them and tell them they need to know them to pass, and get become qualified to get a good job... which is not even proper learning. There is no regard there for our creative ones, or even the ‘smart’ ones who can probably do so much more given the opportunity. There is no other option, no fork in the road, not even a way to have the best of both worlds. Just one path for everyone to follow, with the same goal in mind—to fit in, and become another round peg in a round hole.

Let me make myself clear right now that this is not a dig at teachers, who do a superb job. What it is, however, is a cry out to the people in suits who decide what we learn and how we learn it to change their philosophy. To realise that some people can achieve more, and that the people who will eventually find the cure for cancer, or create the next breakthrough piece of technology, or discover new planets and galaxies are in our schools. These children/students or whatever you want to call them are waiting on these people to realise and do something to help them on their way to greatness. To give them the opportunity to shine, and achieve things that both us and them can’t even imagine yet.

It really is time for our education system to start ‘Thinking Differently.’


The Bass Player


Photo 1 by nilson

Photo 2 by tim7423