Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom

Missed this article when it first came out last summer.


August 19, 2009, 1:08 pm


Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom

By STEVE LOHR

 
“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

 

“The technology will be used to create learning communities among students in new ways,” Mr. Regier said. “People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”

 

"Get to know your ..."

Another physician-patient story in which I keep hearing the word student instead of patient. 

From Thursday's Morning Edition, a piece 4-minute piece by Richard Knox that is well worth listening to.
Crusty Patient Helps Shape Doctor's Career. 

Mitchell says Dick taught her the difference between medical treatment and medical care.

"To be willing to follow your patient to where they want to go is an uncomfortable journey, and it changed me forever," she says.

She's no longer afraid, she adds, "to allow my patients to take me on their journey. Whatever expertise we have, the patient holds the wisdom of their life. And we need to be with our patients — really be with them."

Mitchell often tells the story to medical students and young doctors in training. Sometimes they say, "How will we have time to get to know our patients?"

Her response is: "How can you afford not to? How can you afford not to connect to your patient before anything else happens

The younger one's student is, the harder it is to be true to what Suzanne Mitchell says here. But if one believes it to be true for adults, then it must be true for everyone.

"What is a great teacher?" [take two]

Can you believe that Steven Anderson is copying me? 

A few weeks ago in "What, exactly, makes a teacher effective?" I posted a wordle derived from descriptions that students from around the world used in a UN-sponsored book. 

Not long afterwards, Steven Anderson had a twitter edchat on "What Makes a Great Teacher?"  His wordle is derived from words used by educators.

His offers an intersting picture of the other side of the coin.[Sadly blogger won't let me juxtapose them here]

"Scholarly Investments"

NY Times:  Fashion & Style


Scholarly Investments

By NANCY HASS

Published: December 6, 2009

Charter schools have become the “hot cause” for New York’s hedge fund managers.
 
 
Without understanding the politics of charter schools, I am for them based on their principle.  Similarly I am not against the concept of capitalism, at least in the way I understand it.
 
All the same, this article about the financial support that New York charter schools get from hedge fund managers was disconcerting in a way that I don't yet understand.  I will have to explore this in greater detail.

Robo.to

Robo.to is to video what Twitter is to text.  Say it in 4 seconds.  Sorry, GTG.

Do you realize that 4s means you will only get to see me brushing one tooth? [That should have been a second boot.  Or is it root?  Or maybe toot?

Pan balance manipulatives

In class today Tom, Jan and myself had a really productive discussion about binary operations on negative numbers.  We tossed around a whole bunch of analogies of how one could explain this seemingly elusive concept.  It was interesting how each one of us had our own internal image of the audience we would be teaching to, and and our own preferences for what we felt we'd find effective.

When I got home, I spent some time searching for tools to develop an applet for an idea I had.  If you search on the web, you can find a whole bunch of virtual manipulatives of the two-pan balance.  But I could not find any that allowed me to add a negative number to one side.  If you use a balance with shapes, imagine the negative numbers as helium-filled balloons.  So I want to develop or adapt an applet that can add balloons.  (Scuba divers will easily appreciate how bouyancy and ballast interact.  Thanks for explaining, Kaylan)

But then I discovered this thing I had never heard about before.  The four-pan balance. 

In the picture above, the inner pans represent adding negative numbers;  the outer pans positive numbers. The difficult-to-see white pointer on the central support points to the heavier side.  Adding negative numbers moves the pointer away from your side - i.e. your side just got lighter.

There are all sorts of games one can make up using this really nifty gadget.  Here's one I am mulling over for two players.  (Warning: it is not a beginnners' version)

1.  Each player gets 20 poker/checker counters.  10 black, 10 red.  You also need a 6-sided dice.
2.  A black counter is +1, a red counter is -1.  So your starting score is 0.
3.  On your roll, you have to move that many counters on or off your side of the balance.  For example, if you roll a '4', then you add or remove 4 blacks (+4,or -4).  Or add or remove 4 reds (-4, or +4).  Or you can add 3 reds and 1 black (-3 + 1=-2).  Or you can add 3 reds and remove 1 black (-3 - 1 = -4).  etc.
4.  Black counters may only be placed on the outer pans.  Red counters only on the inner pans.
5.  On your turn, if you equalize both the sides, then you get to take all the counters in the 4 pans, or give them all to your opponent.
6.  First person to a predetermined score (say 10) wins.

Feel free to make or suggest your own rules.

HW#9 - Weekly Ed.Tech post

What was the most significant thing you learned in class this week?

I liked what Carrie said about designing in the classroom keeping in mind universal interface design principles.  This makes a lot of sense especially when designing 'explorations' in math and science. 

Robin made a good point that how I believe people learn, will determine how I teach so that people can learn.

What questions do you have and what do you want to learn more about?

Going back to what Robin said about Theoretical frameworks and Pedagogical frameworks, I had hoped that this course would open a window on current cognition research and pedagogical models for the applicaton of the research, in the context, of course, of technologies more current than markers, whiteboard, and DVD players.  We have covered a lot of ground in the course so far, but I don't have a sense that I am any closer to a framework in my mind that will allow me to utilize all these ideas with my students (at least not without a lot of trial and error).

Here's a 1997 example of the things I'd like to explore more - Educational Technology's Effect on Models of Instruction . A more contemprary version of this that will tie all the loose ends together. 



What applications do you see to classroom practice based on what you learned?

I was impressed with the response time of the motion sensors ($100) we attached to the TI graphing calculators. Jim and I used them to measure a falling object. I wanted to see if they could be used to find the acceleration due to gravity (2nd derivative of distance), and for the students to then see if it was the same or not for a range of objects.


Although we weren't successful, it should work in principle. Here are some tips: The resolution is 1mm, so do not sample faster than that. Don't hold the probe, you will introduce too much noise.

Here are more links from Vernier

Sample Experiments


Looking for ideas of how to incorporate Go!Motion into your classroom? Here are three exciting sample labs to get your class in motion!

Air Ball! - Elementary Level

Graphing Your Motion - Middle School Level

Air Resistance - High School Level

Uncover more great ideas with our curriculum for math, physics, physical science, and more!

[I wonder if the prevalence of laptops/netbooks in the classroom means the demise of the graphing calculator.  At $200+ some of the TI graphing calculators are bumping up against the price of a 8.9" netbook.  Vernier has a series of USB sensors, which means students can do data collection and analysis directly to their laptops just the way real scientists in fancy labs do.  The motion sensor we were playing with was in fact USB, so we had to plug it into an adaptor just so we could use it on a graphing calculator.]

If there was a genetic test that predicted poor parenting/teaching skills, would you take it?

An excellent article in the Science section of the NY Times covers some of the recent research on oxytocin in humans.

The Biology Behind the Milk of Human Kindness


New research suggests that oxytocin underlies the twin emotional pillars of civilized life, our capacity to feel empathy and trust.

November 24, 2009 - By NATALIE ANGIER - Science
 

In their sample of 192 male and female college students, the researchers found that those carrying the so-called A version of the oxytocin receptor, which previous reports had associated with autism and poor parenting skills, scored significantly lower on the eye-reading task and higher on the stress-prone test than did subjects with the G variant of the receptor.

What, exactly, makes a teacher effective?

The Gates Foundation just gave $290M to education.   A separate $45 million research initiative will study 3,700 classroom teachers in six cities to "develop objective and reliable measures of effective teaching"

When I googled "What makes a teacher effective?" one of the first hits was a sample of quotes collected for a UNESCO book entitled What makes a Good Teacher? (1996). Over 500 children from some 50 countries aged 8-12 contributed their opinions.

Sensitization - keep whispering it

You don't have to teach everything.  Sometimes just whispering it is enough.

Yesterday my wife got a 4-page mailer via her employer. It was subtitled "Healthy Employees, Healthy Companies."  The cover story was "Appreciating the Moment: Defining Mindfulness." 

I would have normally tossed this mailer into the recycle bin without another look, but the Mindfulness theme caught my eye, and I ended up reading the entire thing.



By design, or otherwise, the back-page article was "A Guide to Multitasking" - which to me represents the other side of this coin.

We all recognize meditation (of any variety) as a common strategy for practising Mindfulness.  So imagine yourself meditating your way to multitasking.



[Btw, one of the articles was about the Power Nap, something I have come to strongly believe in.]



Just as I was getting out of the car after class last night, I caught this teaser on KUOW. "Multitasking Zen University of Washington professor David Levy wants to know if meditation can make multitasking at work less stressful. So he's conducting an experiment with a Zen teacher, a neuropsychologist and a volunteer group of office workers. [The original interview aired on the 14th, but I believe it is going to repeat today at 2:21pm. ]

See how just one article on Mindfulness sensitized me to two other articles that I would surely have otherwise missed?

As if to underline this, yesterday both NPR and the NY Times carried articles on a report in Science magazine Strengthening Individual Memories by Reactivating Them During Sleep.  One of the authors quoted in the NY times piece - Sounds During Sleep Aid Memory, Study Finds  - speculates this can improve SAT scores, and maybe even help footballers learn the playbook.]

“It’s not really that you reminded them of what they needed to know,” Mr. Stickgold [one of the scientists interviewed for the article] said, “but rather you reminded them of a larger memory that they needed to know. ”


So here's a classroom application.  As a student falls asleep in class, as they all surely will, don't wake them up.  Think of it as a power nap, and just whisper a cue that will help them consolidate whatever they heard before they fell asleep.

 [Note: the new beta editor in blogger is so sloooow.]

Cultivate mindfulness.

While we deal with many of the same pressures that my mentor felt -- decreasing autonomy, increasing administrative requirements, less control over our practice -- the demands on our attention have gone, well, viral.

 Pauline Chen in her NY Times column: DOCTOR AND PATIENT; Practicing Mindfulness as Well as Medicine


So here's yet another similarity between teachers and physicians.

In this ever-widening sea of distractions, all that once gave meaning to our work -- ..., the lifetime relationships -- have turned quaintly insufficient.

Doctors who are burned out are more likely to depersonalize their patients, to treat them as objects rather than as individuals suffering from disease. These physicians exhibit less empathy and are more prone to making errors. And they are more vulnerable to depression and more likely to leave a profession that is already facing severe shortages in specialties like primary care

Part of the solution? Cultivate mindfulness.
 

The doctors became more mindful, less burned out and less emotionally exhausted; several of the improvements persisted after the course ended. And those changes correlated with a significant increase in empathy and other attributes that contribute to patient-centered care.

HW#8 - What are the principles behind 'engagement' in game design?

This week each team reviewed their game. Carrie left us with the question "What are the design principles you see in these games that you can use in your class?"   This is good question.  

I also briefly chatted with Jim (a coach) about 'challenge' in games (video/computer or otherwise).  In a previous conversation Jim cut through all the jargon and called it the 'carrot'.


The thing I have been mulling over is how elusive 'engagement' is.  

I do know that it is extremely difficult to design continuously increasing challenge into a software game. Part of the art of game design probably lies an intuition of what constitutes 'challenge.'  At the same time, I am assuming that 'engagement' / 'challenge' has been deconstructed quite extensively in Game Design Schools (e.g. Nintendo).  

I'd like to get an overview of the literature (from gaming or pedagogy) on engagement/challenge, especially with regard to keeping the carrot ahead of the horse.  Also, what are the parallels between the gaming genres and the classroom.  What is the overlap with 'learning styles?'  [responds to What questions do you have and what do you want to learn more about?]


Jim pointed out that you get to choose the comptuer game you want to play.  What engages one person is quite different from what engages another.   Games fall into specific genres because of that.

It struck me that in school the students don't get to choose the 'game.'  They have to play all of them.  So, as a game designer, the teacher can't cater just to the fan-base of one particular genre. [responds to What applications do you see to classroom practice based on what you learned?]



The most significant thing I learned in class this week was, however, not related to gaming. Rather it emerged from Collins & Halverson's summary of the reasons that technology does not gain a foothold in classrooms.  The summary itself was not noteworthy, but it certainly helped consolidate a perspective that I am exploring for the first time [see my last few blog posts].

Pedagogical ideas and tools operate in a marketplace.  Although things like production (e.g. research, policy, etc.), advertising and marketing (e.g. blogs), and fashion are aspects that describe the marketplace, in the end the consumer/purchaser is the teacher.  And the teacher is notoriously tight-fisted.


[If my native spelling shows through in this post, it is because Google removed the spell-check in their new WYSIWYG editor.]

T2T - The Teacher to Teacher marketplace

In an earlier post I had commented that teachers will use those technologies that improve their efficiency or efficacy.

And, lo and behold, in today's NY Times Winnie Hu describes the emergence of an online marketplace for Lesson Plans [Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions .] This is so exciting, as it represents the thin edge of the wedge. If teachers are shopping online for anything to do with their pedagogy, that cracks the door open just enough for any manner of technologies to start streaming into their classrooms.

Out of curiosity I went to the two sites mentioned in the article (Teachers Pay Teachers, and We Are Teachers) and searched for the following terms:

• Geometer's SketchPad: (11 items on TPT. On WAT there were 23 hits, but all from the publisher)
• Yola: (zero hits)
• VocieThread: (0 on TPT, and 3 on WAT)
• Wordle: (5 on TPT, 0 on WAT)
• SchoolTube: (zero hits)

[Note: there is an entirely different discussion on what one feels about teachers selling lesson plans. Which I personally believe is a waste of time - the discussion, that is.]

The search-bar as address-bar

Over the past 5 years I have noticed that people who have grown up with Search Engines will type web addresses into the search bar.

By this I mean, that instead of clicking on the address bar and typing "Google " or "YouTube " they will type "Google " in the search bar, and then select a link from the resulting page.

Obviously I find this real strange. Today I finally realized why this strategy works. If you are typing in the search bar, then you can type as fast as you want and not have to worry about misspelling or about backspacing to correct mistakes. e.g. You can type "goggle" or "gggle" or "ggle" and even Bing will return Google.com at the top of the list.

Seriously, why even bother teaching spelling anymore?!

[I just now reflexively ran spell-check on this post before hitting the publish button, and discovered that I had misspelt misspelling]

Bumps in the road to using Technology in education

In class this week, we read chapters 2 & 3 of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson.

[This book, by well-regarded authors , came out this Sept. It has received favorable reviews/comments by many important names in the field. ]

Chapter 2 sets up the primary arguments from the proponents in this discussion. The first of the points made in this chapter can be summarized by this sentence. "Enthusiasts argue that trying to prepare students for the 21st century with 19th-century technology is like teaching people to fly a rocket ship by having them ride bicycles."

While it makes sense to lead with this argument, given how widespread it is, to me it is like suggesting that we should be worrying more because the education system is not preparing children well enough to drive cars. There are some skills one can learn when one needs to - like driving a car, or learning to use a word-processor (I am fairly sure that none of these authors has been complaining much that their education did not prepare them adequately for learning to use word processors once they were invented). Separately, of course, there are literacies one must acquire. There, again, the education system of the past has not prevented academics like these to move from blue-tinted 35-mm slides to bland Powerpoints, to multi-media, and so on. While some people seem to suggest that these are literacies, I think that misses the distinction between presentation and content.

Chapter 3 then presents the skeptics point-of-view. Predictably, given their primary theses, Collins and Halverson don't do as good a job summarizing the reasons why it is difficult for Technology to get a foothold in the classroom. Here are the primary barriers they see to technology use in schools.

• Cost and Access
• Classroom Management (also see Authority and Teaching below)
• What computers can't teach (Many social skills, and Teacher as Counsellor)
• Challenges to instruction (taxes already stretched teachers)
• Authority and teaching
• Assessment (emphasis on standardized tests holds back transformation of the system)

I have not read the rest of this book, so I don't yet know what they propose. But the tone in the first two chapters unnecessarily sets up a Us versus Them confrontation. Why do people keep doing this? If you want to change the status quo, support what is good in the present system and tap into people's existing wishes to improve. Why bash them for being dinosaurs? Notice in the list of 6 items above that there is only one item which suggests that teachers can do somethings better than computers.

I feel the authors missed at least two other points.

1. The primary flaws in US education are not related to Technology.

Among the camp that believes that the primary purpose of education is to prepare a skilled workforce (and thus maintain an economic advantage in a competitive global economy), there is widespread concern about how the 'quality' of US education is steadily deteriorating when compared to the emerging threats. While Technology can certainly help recover some of the lost ground, it is not the primary solution - for the simple reason that India and China and Singapore are S.Korea are not closing the gap with Technology.

2. Universities are setting the agenda for High Schools.

For all the the reforms and transformations that are proposed in schools, educators on the ground are stuck with having to 'prepare' their students for college, not for the future. Whatever one may say or hear about the workplace of the future, just-in-time learning, and the like, it is the colleges that call the shots on the pre-requisites for admission and that in turn determines what schools will do (in large part because of the earlier mentioned reason that a college education is necessary for economic advantage).

Pragmatically, what technologies will end up in my classroom

" Given the view of schooling in the readings for this week, which technologies do you think are most likely to be taken up in schools? Why? Which technologies push your thinking about teaching and learning? Why? Do these two lists necessarily line up? "

1. Teachers will use those technologies that improves their efficiency or efficacy. Technologies that either distract the teacher or distract the students are unlikely to be used.

2. Technologies that allow customization, either by personal engagement with individual students, or by individualization of content to the students need,

• Online Rubrics - No I would not use this. Too much work for too little benefit
• Online Grades - Yes, I would use this, but I expect to use what is already in place at each job-site

This list was so, so, so comprehensive, I did not know where to start as a beginner (plus you can't click on the links!!)

http://file2.ws/web16

Jim recommended this site, so I will try it.

Web Tools 4U2 Use - www.webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com

What value video games? Engagement v. Apathy.

David Domke: The Journalism Revolution Is Now

Domke, Chair at the UW Dept of Communications, bemoans all the unwanted changes that have resulted in the new 24/7, blogospheric, talking heads style of journalism. One of his gripes is that journalism is no longer reflective.

But then he turns the coin over, and says that public engagement in issues of the day has gone up substantially. And that he'd take engagement over apathy any day.


The parallels one can draw from this talk with regard to education depend on where you stand....

The notion of what is 'news' and what is 'truth' has changed substantially in the last 10 years. From a time when a few institutions controlled what is the news, and we chose which ones to trust, we now have thousands, if not millions, of view points. It is 'journalism of the many' and 'how do you know what the truth is anymore?' But, at least, people are engaged.


Have the consumers of education become apathetic?

Is it worth it to trade 'being reflective' for 'engagement' in the classroom?

The scariest part is should the institutions of the past (schools) surrender control of what is the truth, in return for student engagement? Will they no longer be viable, like today's print newspapers?

Sasha Barab and other Educational Video Games

Jumping off point =
Educational Video Games With a Mix of Cool and Purpose
NY Times, November 2, 2009 - By STEFANIE OLSEN - Technology




Gamestar Mechanic is an educational video game that asks players to solve a set of puzzles in order to win enough power to design and create their own video games

Quest to Learn (see links from Institute of Play), a New York City public school focused on game-based learning that opened in New York City this fall. A nonprofit group called the Institute of Play set up the school, and its executive director, Katie Salen, helped design the game with financing from the MacArthur Foundation.

Despite popular titles like Math Blaster, the educational games industry eventually collapsed because of price wars, misguided consolidation and an inability to keep pace with changes introduced by the Web.

James Paul Gee, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who was an early adviser to the software company Tabula Digita , said that in the last two years the company’s 3-D multiplayer games for math and science have evolved into exercises for improving children’s test scores as the company sought wider adoption.


Quest Atlantis, one of the most widely adopted critical-thinking games in schools, has a science section that deals with water quality. Inside a 3-D national park where the fish are dying, students must interview local interest groups, test water samples and figure out what is happening to the fish. Quest Atlantis was created by Sasha Barab , a professor at Indiana University, with backing from NASA, Food Lion and the MacArthur Foundation. Mr. Barab said the game covers some of the core science curriculum for tests.

Kurt Squire - Games, Learning & Society

Interesting stuff....

From: http://website.education.wisc.edu/kdsquire/

"Kurt Squire is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Educational Communications and Technology division of Curriculum and Instruction and a research scientist a the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab. Squire is also a co-founder and current director of the Games, Learning, & Society Initiative, a group of over 50 faculty and students investigating game-based learning. Squire's research investigates the potential of video game-based technologies for systemic change in education. Squire's work integrates research and theory on digital media (particularly games) with theories of situated cognition in order to understand how to design educational environments in a digital age. Squire earned his doctorate in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University and is a former Montessori and primary school teacher. Before coming to Wisconsin, Squire was Research Manager of the Games-to-Teach Project at MIT, Co-Director of the Education Arcade, columnist for Computer Games magazine, and co-founder of Joystick101.org.




From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Squire

"..., best known for his research into game design for education.He writes a regular column for Computer Games magazine,

[Sadly, the archive of the Computer games columns is not easily available online.]



The 2010 Games+Learning+Society Conference (GLS 6.0) was held in Madison Wisconsin in June.

The Games, Learning, and Society group is a collection of academic researchers, interactive media (or game) developers, and government and industry leaders who investigate how this medium operates, how it can be used to transform how we learn, and what this means for society. As such we seek to understand what cognitive work goes into playing Zelda, World of Warcraft, or Civilization, how these design features might be leveraged to improve learning via the design of learning systems, and how organizations such as schools will need to respond.

Google's "Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age"

Google hosted this 1.5 day worshop earlier this week

"Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age"

Sessions inlcuded

Session I. The Next Revolution in Learning: How Digital Culture is Shaping Where and How Children Learn

Session II. Literacy 2.0: Creative Strategies to Prepare 21st Century Learners Presentations

Session III. New Learning Designs: Scaling Innovation to Reverse the Dropout Crisis

Session IV: Teachers for a Digital Age: New Strategies to Transform Practice

"Tech Playground "
The Tech Playground is a demo space curated by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Join us for a look at some of the latest, most promising digital innovations from academia and industry that support children’s learning.

No light at the end of this tunnel

Something is happening that I just do not understand.... anyway here goes.


[Your 'electronic portfolio' SHALL be a website.
The default is http://www.yola.com/
Also consider yudo.com]


Your mission, should you accept it, is to find 10 resources that you will want to refer back to later.


Here are some links to save for the future:

1.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/
Free Technology for Teachers - Richard Byrne's site.

All the 'resources' on the left side bar link to software, not blogs, articles, etc.

2.
Bryne used yudu.com to publish Twelve Essentials for Technology Integration

3.
35+ Educational Games and Games Resources - This is from Byrne's site.
At 35 the list is too long, but there are likely to be some good sites to allow 5 minutes of games before class starts (if you can control access through something like LAN School)

Here's another one for a quick game time before lesson starts
Ghost Blasters is a fun mathematics game that I learned about last week through Anne Marie's Talking Smartboards blog. Ghost Blasters is designed to help students learn to multiply and divide quickly in their heads


4. {Posting or creating content seems big on Byrne's site - make sense I guess)

This initially looked interesting, but then I realized it is just another video editing tool.
Unlimited Videos For You and Your Students
It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life.

Something called Jing, that does something, that I can't yet understand.
http://jingproject.com/
Jing is a streamlined approach to content creation. It is perfect for adding a quick and simple visual elements to your day-to-day conversations. If you need more, Jing allows you to export your images or video to Snagit or Camtasia Studio for further editing.

http://voicethread.com/#home
VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too.

If you want to rip video from youtube etc
http://zamzar.com/

Robin says to use Animoto.com to create videos
http://animoto.com/

And she likes VoiceThread - you or your students can add comments to videos. Interesting.

The best way to keep up with these applications would be to go to Byrne's sit, and search for VoiceThread, or any of these apps, and you get updates on new ways to use them in the classroom.
e.g http://www.freetech4teachers.com/search/label/Voicethread

This site is generally not blocked, and you can share stuff in education circles
http://www.schooltube.com/


Make 'posters' at http://www.glogster.com/

5. Mary Tackle really liked this site that plots worldwide statistics, by category
http://www.sacmeq.org/statplanet/StatPlanet.html

Some really cool graphs that you can use for research or getting attention

6. Byrne blogged about Purpose Games - this sounds exactly like the thing I am looking for.
Purpose Games - Create and Play Games
is a free service that allows users to create custom games, share games, and play games.

Another one from Byrne
ClassTools.net is a free service teachers can use to create their own educational games.

Game Classroom is an educational games website catering to the K-6 market. Game Classroom offers mathematics games and language arts games. Games can be found by selecting a grade level and then a subject area. Both the mathematics and language arts categories are subdivided into specific focus areas. Some of the games are unique to Game Classroom and some are games that are used on other sites.


7.

Technology and _____

Here's another parallel between medicine and education. Technology in diagnosis/assessment, and technology in treatment/pedagogy.

Back in June I posted about an article in The NY Times [Well-Chosen Words in the Doctor’s Office ] that caught my attention for the similarities I saw between doctors and teachers.

Researchers who conducted interviews a few years ago with 192 patients at the Mayo Clinics in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Rochester, Minn., identified seven “ideal physician behaviors.” Patients want their doctors to be “confident, empathetic, humane, personal, forthright, respectful and thorough,” the researchers wrote in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2006.

_____ urges _____ to build rapport with their _____ by greeting them warmly by name, asking briefly about important events in their lives, maintaining eye contact, focusing on them without interruptions, and displaying empathy through words and body language.

In today's NY Times, Abigail Zuger reviews two books that broadly cover the effects of technology in the practice of Medicine. And the same thing happened - I am reading an article about medicine, but hearing the words inside a school.

Dr .... [listening to his stethoscope] grumbled at his patient: “Shhhh. I can’t hear you while I’m listening.”

In his collection of essays, Technological Medicine, Stanley Joel Reiser begins in 1816 with the stethoscope, and moves forward in time to the present. In her review, Zuger summarizes

Technology may spawn elevated philosophical discussion, but it also has mundane needs. It needs a home — hence the morphing of the ______ from a ______ to its present gleaming industrial self. It needs expertise — hence the evolution of the ______ sub-sub-specialist and the slow demise of the generalist. It needs regulation — injudicious use can be, in the words of ______, “extraordinary violence in desperate occasions.”

And of course, technology needs to be paid for ....

Looks like the stethoscope had about a 100-year head start on the Standardized Test.

Arne Duncan criticizes teacher training

[From this NY times article: Teacher Training Termed Mediocre]

Speaking at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Arne Duncan said

By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom.

Looks like, in addition to criticizing the education system including all those who work in it, now it is time to criticize the system that trains them too.

This is interesting, since it may continue to work its way back to the very root of the problem, wherever that is.

HW#5.a Random thoughts from today's Technology & Education class

a. What was the most significant thing you learned in class this week?

1. Multi-tasking
   
   @mickdc566 made an interesting point about teenagers who were able to multi-task while playing Halo on XBox Live. And I thought about how, as one learns to drive a motor vehicle, you gradually begin to look further and further ahead in time/space, until finally you are able to buy yourself enough dead time to multi-task while driving. That put multi-tasking in a new perspective for me.
   
   I also realized that I probably am just qualifying for my 10,000 hours as an active/involved parent. (3 1/2 years since I quit full-time work).
   
   Which fits in well with what @rangotti said - after 3 1/2 - 5 years of full-time teaching one should be able to multi-task in class. That does not seem so far away suddenly.
   
   


2. Where should the best teachers teach?
   
   Obviously where they are happy.
   
   But was talking to @tzouct about my theory that a place like MIT or Harvard is successful in large part because it can cherry-pick its intake. Just get good enough to have an acceptance rate of less than 25%, and then you no longer have to admit the very best applicants. You just have to remove the obvious incompatibilities from the bottom, and then take any handful from the rest and you are likely to be 'successful.' Which becomes self-fulfilling after that, because more and more people apply to your program.
   
   Public institutions (esp. schools) have it much harder because they cannot cherry pick. Which makes me wonder what would happen if MIT faculty and your local community college had an exchange program for faculty?
   
   


3. The art of fly-fishing
   
   The conversation with @edielie and @kiknudson really helped generalize the concept of 'window of opportunity'.
   
   E.g. You are in a book store, you pull a book off the shelf, and do or do not decide to turn it over. Then you do or do not decide to open the book. Now take that concept and expand it to every single learning opportunity a student has.
   
   As a teacher, if you are taking the trouble to construct a learning opportunity, you also have to pick/make your lure and cast it in a way that they will take it.
   
   


4. Technology and Education
   
   @outofusernames underlined the point that we all like our information to be visual. Historically, limited technology options in the classroom meant that it was a largely auditory environment.
   
   We have the opportunity to change that.
   
   


5. Cross-disciplinary collaboration
   
   @rangotti made the point that as engaged citizens (we, and our students) must be able to see data (wherever it comes from, e.g. news) and see a story in it that makes sense to us, and, ideally, makes us ask more questions. This is a point very close to my heart. But I generalize it to include logical arguments. Citizens should have a reason they support organic food, or stem-cell research, or global warming. In some cases there is data. In some cases it is a logical argument based on a set of premises rather than data-based.
   
   Today I realized that humanities' teachers do spend a good deal of time developing these 'critical thinking' skills. The way we then teach math, somehow conveys to the students that the math set of skills is something very different. That these are somehow not connected.
   
   Getting back to what I have said about teaching not being collaborative enough, .... This calls for working collaboratively with humanities teachers. Encourage the humanities to include more data in their work. As math/science teachers, accept that the arguments will lose their clarity when ethical/moral/subjective standards are over-laid.
   

The purpose of Education

[The living version is a Google Doc. Ask me for permission to collaborate]

[Origin of this project: http://longistood.blogspot.com/2009/10/purpose-of-education-confluence-and.html]

What is the purpose of Education?

1. What is role of the individual?


2. What is role of education with regard to the individual?


3. What is the role of school in education?


4. How should a school educate?

What is role of the individual?

I believe that the role of the individual is to be, to be best of one's ability, an enthusiastic participant in civilization - the ethical and material refinement of one's culture in a sustainable manner.

What is role of education?

I believe that the role of Education is to assist the individual in fullfulling his/her role

a. by making available the collective history of civilization in a manner that he or she may utilize it

b. by nurturing, especially in pre-adults, an ambition for his or her role

What is role of school?

I believe that the role of the School is to assisst the community, from its smallest scale as a family to its largest scale as humanity, in the Education of the individual.

To this end, I believe that the School, on behalf of society, must take on the responsibility for collecting, interpreting, and disseminating the history of civilization. Further, in order to nuture the ambition of the individual, the School must a) actively model the role of the individual and b) provide a setting in which the individual's ambition may progressively grow.

I believe that the School is a trustee, but not the only one, of the legacy of all prior generations.

Comments:

Incoming: Books, movies, etc.

03/22/2010
The Four Agreements - don Miguel Ruiz
[Book I want to check out - in the context of 'managing' student behavior]

10/21/2009
You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned: John Wooden's Teaching Principles and Practices
[Book - purchased]

Quotes that caught my attention

Deborah Loewenberg Ball - Dean University of Michigan's School of Education (& a math teacher)

Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think.  It requires the ability to step outside of your own head

John Dewey

We only think when we are confronted with problems

This only rule governing the conduct of students at Wabash College

The student is expected to conduct himself at all times, both on and off the campus, as a gentleman and a responsible citizen.

The two basic rules that govern the behavior of Hampden-Sydney students

The Code of Conduct,

The Hampden-Sydney student will behave as a gentleman at all times and in all places

The Honor Code, is in fact a subset of the first

The Hampden-Sydney student will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do

from my nephew Arjun Jassal

Due to cost cutting, the light at the end
of the tunnel has been switched off...

Khalil Gibran

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

HW#4 - Week in Review

a. What was the most significant thing you learned in class this week?
Last week's class was devoted to learning Geometer Sktechpad (GSP). I've seen it used before, and it is pretty intuitive to learn to use - although not entirely so.

I was excited during class about the idea of getting images from the Web, or movies from my camera, and fitting curves (e.g. Parabolas) to them.

This ended in disappointment. It turns out you can do this by combining GSP and Fathom, but not in a way that is going to make the task enjoyable to students. It is one thing to fight Excel to the death when one is doing a PhD. It is quite another when you are trying to use it to convey a key concept to students.

On the plus side, just that afternoon I had the opportunity to teach 8th grade parallel line construction with compass and pencil. During class I did the GSP exercise on parallel lines. Later, with Robin's perspective, I was able to come to a point where I so each as supplementing the other. Namely, get the students to use pencil, straight edge, and compass to do the first construction. Then transfer this construction with minimum friction to GSP. In GSP they can explore the properties of parallel lines (or whatever) and ask all the what-if questions that solidifies their understanding. The sheer hassle of pencil and compass construction makes it almost impossible for them to ask the same questions without GSP.

I saw a similar thing today, when too quick a transition to a graphing calculator deprives the student the opportunity to grapple with linear inequalities.


b. What questions do you have and what do you want to learn more about?
After the last class I chatted briefly with Robin about my thoughts on story telling. Story telling goes very very deep in all our cultures. I am guessing that it is deeply tied to the evolution of our brain, and from there to the evolution of language.

We introduce children to their new world through stories, and for almost everyone the life-long fascination with stories continues unabated.

Is it just a lack of imagination that over all these centuries we have not introduced our children to numeracy through stories? Or is there something very fundamental about math that to learn to like it is to learn to like an abstraction that is different from the narrative form?

If not the literary arts, then what about the visual and performing arts? There is a lot of abstract symbolism there, with juxtaposition and contra position used to define relationships and hence meaning. How do we nurture our children to love these arts?


c. What applications do you see to classroom practice based on what you learned?
Over the last year I have been forming my own theory of learning, based around the delta of effort needed to achieve the next delta in skill. In theories of Adolescent Development last week we covered Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which got me very excited because it is so close to what I have been thinking.

This makes me even more convinced that there is a very real need for a practice problem generator that that can be tweaked in real-time by the teacher.
This is no science fiction fantasy that I am asking for here.

Imagine your 7th grade class (in what ever physical shape and location) is using the next 30 minutes to work on simplifying algebraic equations (maybe about 10 of them).

They are working with paper and pencil, and you are circulating watching the individuals or groups work through the material. Now imagine the class is small enough that you know each child really well, and you know the material really well, and you have a stack of problems that you know really well. As each child/group finishes a problem, you slip them another one that is just right. They finish 10 problems, each one that challenges them just right. Before they leave, you give them 20 more problems as homework to reinforce the material.

There is nothing fancy here - sports coaches have been doing this for ages.

Fast-forward to the future. They are working with stylus and slate/table-style portable computers. At your desktop computer you see a panel of little windows, each one containing the child's workspace. You can switch to their web-cam view to see their faces when you want to. The module you are working on can generate fresh problems on the fly. Multiple axes exist, either identifying the concepts being worked on, or collating the most common mistakes seen with these problems. There is a slider along each of these axes that you can tweak as they solve each problem. When they have finished for the day, it is only a few mouse clicks to generate twice as many problems for home work for that child. If they work the portable computer at home, you can actually replay the screen for each homework problem they got wrong, and tweak the sliders yet again before the next class starts.

There is nothing fundamentally different between this case and the earlier one (except possibly the class size, but I not arguing for a large class). Of course the technology has changed between the two cases. But adapting problem difficulty based on current performance is something 'educational' software like Reader Rabbit has been doing for 4 year-olds for at least 10 years now. So it is not as if the technology is new.

What would be really new is using everything that computer game designers have learnt in the past 10 years about keeping games just challenging enough. [But for the most part they seem to have come to the conclusion that matching the player against another player in a massively online game is far preferable to matching the player against the computer. The matching problem, although difficult, seems easier than teaching the computer to play a game that a human finds interesting.]

In the news recently

Satire from the Newyorker magazine, teases at what is to come if the today's youth don't grow up to be discerning consumers of media and users of technology.

Shouts & Murmurs
Subject: Our Marketing Plan



A slew of articles in Monday's NY Times,


1.
A very nice graphic in the Op-Ed section comparing various ways to divide the ages of man. I read the whole thing because of the Theories of Adolescent Development course I am taking.

Op-Chart
By Ben Schott


2.
A Twitter-like application called Foursquare that encourages "planned serendipity" had me wondering if I'd ever post

"I'm in aisle 24 at the supermarket. Anyone you want to get groceries together?"

Face-to-Face Socializing Starts With a Mobile Post


3.
An example of how impossible it is to keep control information anymore - it knows no boundaries, legal or otherwise. No doubt this has implications on education - which directly or indirectly claims ownership of civilization's collective knowledge.

Link by Link: Twitter and a Newspaper Untie a Gag Order

NY Times: Fast-Track Alternative to a Teaching Job

I don't know why this article was in the Money section of the NY Times.

It does not say much, although it does point out how quickly and cheaply one can become a teacher. (500 people @ $3,150. 1900 people @ $975.)

Your Money
A Fast-Track Alternative to a Teaching Job
By ELIZABETH OLSON
Published: October 15, 2009
About 600 alternative certification programs contribute roughly 20 percent of the country’s new teachers each year.

What's the shape of a rainbow?

I just used Geometer's Sketchpad and an image that I pulled down from Google to investigate the shape of a rainbow.

Now I understand why conics is called conics!!!

This is really heady stuff. (I feel like a 14-year old, wanting to emphasize every sentence with italics, bold and exclamation marks.)

Yesterday after class, I was talking to Robin about telling stories with numbers, and one word in our conversation just stuck with me. Rainbows.

It took about 10 to 15 minutes of web searches to figure out how to set an image as a background in GSP. Unfortunately, GSP is not that intuitive. (And this functionality has been there since at least 2003.)

It took another 5-10 minutes to get GSP to do this reliably. Actually this was the most frustrating part of the process.

5 more minutes to find an image I liked from Bing / Google. (I liked Google's selection better).

Under 2 minutes to superimpose a circle and a parabola on the image. This was super easy.

Okay, my image is not a circle or a parabola.

You'd think it should be related to a circle in some way, should it not?

5 more minutes of searching on the web to verify what the shape of a rainbow should be.

Now we are in some really serious terrain. I am going to have to figure out how to do projections in GSP. And I have to figure out a mental model of how exactly a rainbow works.

All this in under 45 minutes, or one class period.


The really scary thing is that 2 minutes ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that I know how rainbows are formed. But did I really know?


Tune in next week to find out. [My evaluation version of GSP won't let me export or cut-and-paste images, so I can't show you until I'm back on campus.]

I wonder if I can use this for my class final project...?

[Update, Sunday 10/18: I can now visualize why it is an ellipse. Looks like I will need to use both Fathom and GSP. Fathom can't import images. GSP does not have sliders. Plotting things like conics seems easier in Fathom. Having to move data back-and-forth between applications is always frustrating. I really dislike having to do that. ]

HW#3.5 Tuesday's encounters with technology

Two worries about technology today


1. My biggest worry (spurred by an email reply I wrote on software engineering, see below) is that the pace of innovation may never slow down. This does not allow stabilizing institutions to form. One example of what I mean is that far too few people generating the infrastructure for Web 2.0 understand how fundamental standards are. They are not to blame, because Web 1.0 did not set any sort of example of developing national or international standards. Are we doomed to eternal frustration with new technology?

One of the biggest uses of a PLN today seems to be to have enough people around to help you figure out the technology.

btw, I use 'standards' in an engineering sense, not an education sense. When you go into two hardware stores and buy a nut and a bolt from each, they will still fit together. Or when you walk into a car rental and pick up a car, you can drive it off the lot once you have adjusted the mirrors, and you can figure out the rest in under 5 minutes. Technology needs to be like that if people are going to use it.

It is far from clear if the Software industry is in early stages and will settle down, or if things are going to continue to be chaotic until the planet implodes.


2. The other observation is that education as practiced around the world is not exactly collaborative, even though we have the tools and understanding to be doing so. This idea took seed a while back, but has not done much germinating since then. I wrote about it back in April after attending an MIT open-house for Math and Science teachers.

This course has given me pointers to lots of activity in schools that utilize Web 2.0 in interesting (and hopefully successful) ways. But even while we are encouraging our students' urge to be more social, I don't see any examples yet of how we as educators are modeling that for our students. And I mean more than just co-teaching. Okay this probably requires a whole post of its own, so I will just re-post (RP?) what I said in April, and save the rest for later.

From MIT Open House - musings.

3.One of the graduates has been teaching two years after getting her MIT. She's a career-changer, having previously been a chemist. It struck me as strange have lonely she sounded.

I am still trying to get my head around this. But I really have been very surprised how individual the school teaching enterprise is. I am surprised how little I hear the word 'we' compared to 'I' when teachers talk about their work with students. It is not that they don't say "we," I just expected much more of it.

Part of this might be logistics - if you want to maximize a teachers contact time with students, then they are not going to have much time to collaborate. Plus classroom schedules don't allow any mixing and matching of student and teacher contact time.

I have run into rare examples of co-teaching. But that is rare. And even more rare is where more than 2 people are collectively responsible for a group of students. Okay, so I expected more of a team attitude, and am not feeling it. But what is strange to me is that there is some much buzz these days about collaborative work. How children have to learn to work together, how learning is collaborative, etc. There is a huge push away from a one-to-many delivery style of lecturing. At the same time, I don't see the teachers setting an example of this with their children.

It is like sitting through a 1 hour lecture about inquiry-based learning. 'Do as I say, not as I do.' I need to explore this much more.

Is there a mashup available that will take 33 blogs over one week and
1. plot blog length vs. time?
2. make a Wordle?


Was able to use the 'search' functionality on my blog to find a comment from a friend/follower that highlights one small advantage that accumulates, and her approach to counteracting it.

From neena's comment on What pushes your buttons

My co-teacher and I have been teaching together for 7 years and we have a strategy that came to us in the first year of our teaching together. This is probably absolutely unethical but because the outcome has always been so darn healthy, we do it every year. Around the 2nd month of school (once the honeymoon period is over and the kids begin to show their true colors)we each write down the names of 1/2 of our class. The names have to be of those kids that we love the most. Believe me this is so hard to do because you'll truly feel like you love them all. We then compare lists. We check which kid/s didn't make either of our lists and then we make a point of spending as much time, energy and LOVE into recognizing those children for the rest of the year. My theory is that the children who didn't make it into our lists will probably not make it into any one else's lists and the ones who did make it in our list are the generally popular kiddos anyway. Even though we think we give equal attention to all of our students, the truth is that we actually give more positive attention to those who seem sharper, cuter and more aware. So it is up to us teachers to understand the children who can otherwise fall through the cracks and then love them dearly. Once you have accomplished that, you can teach them quantum physics in Kindergarten and they will understand (well, hypothetically).

The rest of the day.....

Heated frozen pizza pockets in the oven for the children's lunch.

Children and wife are better now - all are back at school and work, which also means I have not excuse not to load the dishwasher when I get back home after the school drop-off.

Was able to email both class teachers to say that we were running late today.

Read some reviews online for exercise/fitness/yoga balls to replace my office chair. Ordered one on Amazon. Avoided the bright pink one.

Did the usual email.

Used Bing and Wikipedia to reply to a long email about the lack of engineering in Software Engineering.

Sent out an excel spreadsheet to help a 9 year old build his confidence in math - it just uses RAND() to setup simple addition problems.

Checked in with the teacher I am helping with Math Club after school.

Checked when soccer practice was now that the days are shorter.

Reminded wife to pay the babysitter while driving to class.

Used Bing to look up new terms during class.

Wondering if a Wordle is good or bad. (Of course there are not absolutes)

Like Google Squared, but am yet to use it.

So all in all what I would call a normal day - at least in Web 1.0 land.

Dichotomies to ponder in Education

Mulling over a couple of things that will need more complete posts later. Of course they are not pure dichotomies, but different ways of seeing things. Like all of Life, it's about finding the balance that works.

1. Scholarship v. What Works
Educators have strong bias towards scholarship. It is what a lot of them do. And it is a significant way in which the collective memory of a culture is interpreted and passed on to the next generation.

But an Education is a preparation for Life. And Life, especially commerce, increasingly does not care for scholarship. It's more about having the creativity to come up with what works.

And you can see that in the classroom. I sense that boots-on-the-ground educators bother less with the scholarship in Pedagogy, and rely more on what works for their students.


2. Conservative v. Progressive

Education as a profession is conservative. It needs to be, since it's mission is to conserve 100s if not 1000s of years of collective cultural memory. You don't mess with such things lightly.

Yet, Educators are Progressives. Like it or not, they have a future vision of society. Their students are their arrows that will travel swift and far.

Or as Dewey begins his 5th (& last) article of faith, The School and Social Progress "I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform."

HW#3.4 Monday's encounter with Technology

[Today's post intends to get to the 'teaching' of technology via Gladwell and 1st grade soccer. But it continues to mine the earlier theme of relative advantage.]

6-yr old: "Dad, who invented soccer?"

Dad: "I don't know. I think it started in S.America, with people kicking rubber band balls. Let's google it."

I didn't know that

The game of soccer, as we know it today, was officially separated from rugby during the second part of the 19th century

The ancient game could have been from the far east, the Mediterranean, or the Americas. Here's the one I was thinking of.

According to historians, the Meso-American ball game Pok-A-Tok has been around since 3000 BC. However, the earliest found playing court (Paso de la Amada, Mexico) dates back to 1600 BC. The Paso de la Amada court was refurbished and expanded over a period of 150 years. It consisted of an 80-meter-long, flat playing alley bracketed by elevated "bleachers." Scientists believe that this particular court was a part of a network of similar courts throughout Meso-America.

On Monday, after soccer practice one of the Moms approached me asking what to do about the fact that her daughter does not like being on the team. There's many issues here. First, the daughter has never played soccer before, anywhere. Second, she's playing it with a bunch of boys who have been playing it passionately at school recess for at least a year. Third, their coaches are talented semi-professionals who are cutting their chops on 6-yr olds for the first time. All told, the 4 girls are not having much fun compared to the 16 boys and two men.

This is truly a shame. Since when does a child have to start doing anything at age 4 or 5 if they are to stand any chance of enjoying it later in life?

There seems to be a growing industry in outside school instruction for young children. I remember when me son was FIVE, one of his classmates already had 9 distinct after-school instructional activities. Off the top of my head, here are some I have encountered 5-8 year olds doing in the past year - sometimes very competitively. Soccer, gymnastics, skiing, baseball, sketching/painting, musical instrument, choir, chess club, math club, ultimate frisbee, indoor rock climbing, lacrosse, swimming, hockey, Kumon, tennis, golf. The list just goes on and on.

The only hope that a 12 or 13 year-old has is to wait for all the kids above to get bored and drop out, and then come in with passion and determination. Or to pick something that cannot be done physically or legally by anyone younger than 12.

Here's where Gladwell comes in. Gladwell begins Outliers with a detailed analysis of why professional ice hockey players in the Canadian league are most likely to have a birthday in January or February. Basically, since the cutoff date for the various children's divisions is Jan. 1st, the earlier you are born in the year, the bigger and faster you are compared to your 5 or 6 or 7 year-old peers. The early advantage then accumulates year on year.

Gladwell suggest that one way to double the pool of potential professional ice hockey players is to have two cut-off dates (Jan 1st, and June 1st).

Now I see this at school in other subjects, as I will just describe. But you can take the argument all the way into the core curriculum and back, and argue that specific socio-economic and physical advantages that a child comes to Kindergarten with, predispose them to later success. [I am sensitive to this since my son is one of the youngest and smallest boys in his class.]

Technology=Tools.

Teaching technoloy is to teach tool use. However, you can't do that in a vacuum. The tools must be used for something. So you can only teach tool use by using tools. (Duh!) But for a tool of any sophistication, and especially with a cultural history, that takes you into a culture with its own norms, vocabulary, language. Enculturation is the word, I believe. So where exactly do the specific advantages begin, and how do they accumulate?

Phys Ed: At my boys' elementary school, as in schools all over the world, PE is the most popular subject. I find the teachers truly creative about bringing in 'games' that no one in the class has played before. These games develop the same set of skills, but the take away any advantage that soccer or baseball or other outside school coaching has given some of the children in the class.

Music: Music is another story. The proficiency that some of the children bring to the classroom is much higher than in sports. At the same time, the cultural view of what music is supposed to be seems to limit teachers and parents on the vehicles (i.e. instruments = technology) through which music skills can be taught. This leaves some students, some parents, and many a teacher frustrated.

Art: Fortunately for art teachers, fewer young children take art outside school compared to sports and music. (For how long, I wonder?)

Computer-based Technology: I am assuming that most elementary schools don't yet teach basic Computer skills as part of the curriculum. If they do, it is more as a nod to a need/demand, rather than as a well planned and integrated part of the curriculum.

However, when they do start doing it, they are going to slam full-speed into the issue above. Some kids are already creating sophisticated content at home. Some kids can't spell their name or password well enough to log-in. What are we going to do?

Gladwell's analysis suggests that if we continue doing busines-as-usual, then the kids who are going to succeed 20 years from now in the global, professional, digital-content league (a.k.a some significant part of The Real World), are the ones whose early advantage the system nurtured at the expense of others.

Is that going to be true?

All is not lost, however, as we do have the past to build on, or at least learn from in some small way. Don't kids come to their first day of school with a wide spread of literacy and numeracy skills? And don't we somehow manage to squish them all into the same round hole called a Grade?

HW#3.6 Wednesday's encounters with Technology

Gosh, this daily blogging is really leaving me weary. Having to think all day about it, and then make the time for it. I wonder what it feels like to be a columnist at a major news publication for decades. {Does it pay well?}

This got me thinking about the parallel between a modern technology (Blogging) and a much older one (Pencil). My 9-yr old son is still learning to write. He keeps his written work rather short. One reason that I can see is that he tires quickly. He's holding his pencil too tight. He's pressing it down too hard. The small muscles of his hand are fatiguing.

Or like one first learns to drive - I remember holding onto the steering wheel like it was some sort of life preserver.

How long before I don't feel 'tired' anymore? Does the world have to be subjected to my struggle?

[Rant]
On a different note, reading other classmate blogs and twitter posts, I find one thing that seems to bother many of us is the number of different logins and sources of information we need to keep track of daily. It might feel natural to today's high school and college students (still have to ask them), but it certainly does not to me. My own feeling is that they just accept it as the cost of doing business and don't think much of changing it, while I feel that it is pretty dumb.

Sure I could devote half of next Saturday to figuring out how to aggregate all these onto one page, but who wants to try since success is far from certain.

Here's a quick summary of the webpages or applications I have to check in at least once a day. Some of them I have to have open for large chunks of the day. Each of these has its own associated login, password, and associated headaches. And I don't even use IM. And I am not counting anything to do with my personal life (kids' school, affinity groups, alumni groups, etc.)

• Outlook (or equivalent for 2 primary email accounts)

• Twitter

• Facebook (self and 2 groups)

• Technology and Education (on PBWorks)

• Adolescent Development (on UW Catalyst Tools*)

• College of Education (bb.com)

*fortunately the landing page for the university has a link to Catalyst Tools. But they don't provide functionality for adding your own links. Or do they?
[/Rant]

You know, I should take this rant back. I needed to look up some financial information for a form, and ended up logging into 3 bank accounts, one mortgage account, 2 investment accounts, and I did not even go anywhere near the 6 different people we have retirement accounts with. And I did not grumble one bit! I guess because they are managing my money and so I see it as a service. But then I don't do this more than a couple of times a year. Not every day.

HW#3.3 Sunday's encounters with Technology

Educator Zen: Be in the present.

I think that I now have a context in which I can see the need for Technology in the classroom. [Yes, my own learning style has a very high need to form a big picture within which I can then organize knowledge and goals.] Hopefully by the end of this post I will be able to articulate this context, and call out why I, as an educator, need to be alert to getting ‘stuck in time’

It’s Monday afternoon, and I am trying to write with 3 sick people in the house. Sunday’s experience with Technology revolved around being thankful for the ‘invention’ of acetaminophen (or paracetamol, as I know it from my childhood) . There are flu-like symptoms floating around, and modern pharmaceuticals have saved the day, again.

My first reaction when I reached for the Tylenol was “Dang! We are just weeks away from a H1N1 vaccine being available.” Which then made we wonder if there were any families who might opt out of the vaccine*. That led down a whole diversion on the ‘controversy’ regarding the potential link between autism-spectrum disorders and infant vaccinations.

[Update: 10/13/09 - On Tuesday, an NY Times Op-Ed Nothing to Fear but the Flu Itself cited this Harvard School of Public Health finding that 41% of adults said they would not get the H1N1 Vaccine.]

In grad school I was in a Dept. of Bioengineering. It really bugged me at the time that my classmates, by and large, were not inclined to discuss the societal impacts/implications of the type of careers we were going to enter into. (This is a distinct failure of higher education in science and engineering, if you ask me.)

I believe that we, as citizens, will be confronted with more and more debates that involve the intersection of science/technology and society. This is not going to be just with regard to Bioengineering, but that is the area I am sensitive to. Here, for example, are some of the types of public debates I am thinking of.

• GMO foods
• Radiation of perishable foods
• Terri Schiavo
• Stem-cell research
• Universal health care
• Autism and vaccination

This meandering stream of consciousness then ran into the growing seedling planted by John Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed.

Dewey’s piece is really fascinating, and will take me a long, long time to digest and internalize. But right now the thing that has me most in awe is how Dewey has managed to distill the essence of education to its truly time-less themes. If one did not know when it was written, one would be hard-pressed to guess.

Dewey’s opening sentence in answer to the question What is Education? is

I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race.

In the second section What is School? he opens with

I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends.

and a few lines later

I believe that the school must represent present life” [Emphasis mine]

Technology, therefore, belongs in the classroom as it exists in present life.

Okay, so I now have my context, and I should leave well enough alone. But of course it’s Sunday, and my family won’t leave me alone with the NY Times, so what else can I do but let me mind wander while I lose at table football to a 9 year-old.

First, here’s more Dewey, just to give you a taste of how 21st century he is.

I believe, therefore, that the true centre of correlation of the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child's own social activities.

If education is life, all life has, from the outset, a scientific aspect; an aspect of art and culture and an aspect of communication. It cannot, therefore, be true that the proper studies for one grade are mere reading and writing, and that at a later grade, reading, or literature, or science, may be introduced. The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience.

It is not hard to imagine where Dewey would have stood on Web 2.0

Now I am an émigré (isn’t it so snooty to use that instead of emigrant?); you’ll see why I chose that word over immigrant in a moment.

The first thing that stands out to me as an emigrant is that I have a new appreciation of my past. It seems to me that if you can give yourself some distance from your situation, then you begin to appreciate many aspects of it that you can’t see in the present. (It’s for this reason that I am a strong proponent of the concept of a sabbatical.)

Another thing that really stands out to me about emigrants is that their past/culture/values that they work so hard to preserve in their new world ends up becoming a static snapshot of that which they left behind. They get stuck in time. A person who returns to the parent culture 30 or more years later can barely recognize it because it so different than from what they saw being preserved at ‘home.’

What is the point of all this?

Well, in a sense, when we begin to teach we leave the real world and begin to live in an imitation of the real world - one that is necessarily constrained and simplified to match the developmental age of the children we are working with. The longer we live in this imitation world, the greater the risk that we get stuck in time. This is something that we as educators need to be alert to.

I think the model of medical education is really apt, because future doctors are trained by current, practicing doctors. Not ex-doctors. This is true for many professions, but not so much in fields of ‘scholarship.’

So if we define the general profession that we are training children for as ‘participants in the social consciousness of humanity’ then, by definition, we, as their teachers, need to be current practicing professionals of the same. Teaching does not give you a free pass from civic involvement, rather it requires it.