Thinky? Sticky? The Thinking Stick

Not to be confused with The Thicking Stink, Jeff Utecht's The Thinking Stick (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/) offers terrifically relevant insight into what roles technology should play in our classrooms. The blog does so through balanced evaluations of web tools, life-based demonstrations of how students have incorporated technology into their acts of learning, and philosophical wax-ations on how we, as teachers, can balance and strengthen our craft within the one climate that Utecht identifies as a constant: that of change.

I think I used to own this same shirt. The wonders of vertical stripes -- amirite?

I find Utecht's blog valuable because ...

It asks questions. Not just rhetorical ones or afterthoughts, and not just the type that artificially serve as a starting point for some discussion that may never happen. These are big questions that we should keep in mind constantly when we think about what our teaching is and how to improve it. Utecht blew the lid off early in the game, back in January of 2008, when he penned "Evaluating Technology Use in the Classroom" (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/evaluating-technology-use-in-the-classroom/). He adapted Marc Prensky's typical course of technology adoption to form four core questions that we should think about as we integrate tech into our curricula:

• Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?
• Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
• Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?
• Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

In our evaluation of tech use in relation to the fourth question, he asks:

• Does the technology allow students to learn from people they never would have been able to without it?
• Does the technology allow students to interact with information in a way that is meaningful and could not have happened otherwise?
• Does the technology allow students to create and share their knowledge with an audience they never would have had access to without technology?

Talk about being ahead of the pack. These questions have as much relevance today as they did five years ago, and I think even this in itself says something that educators should take note of: as teachers, we should create lasting, relevant questions that will be able to shape our students' Big Capital-T Thoughts for a long time to come. Even if the answers change (and they definitely will!), the questions should remain evocative and relevant.

It's Clean and Quick. Just like a solid car wash or a good children's song. Utecht writes concisely and thoughtfully, and he does so in a way that's respectful of web readers' eyes and attention spans. His post "10 Reasons to Trash Word for Google Docs" (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/10-reasons-to-trash-word-for-google-docs/) provides 10 excellent reasons for adopting the cloud-based word-processing suite. Each is well reasoned and doesn't exceed four lines. The content's good, too -- he evaluates Gdocs based on accessibility, user-friendliness, looking-forwardness, and functionality. And he's down with the Cloud. Color me convinced.

He Keeps His Students' Interests in Mind. Utecht understands that life exists beyond high school, and he seems to believe that we should give our students what they need to succeed and enjoy it. His recent post "Millennials and the Job Market" (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/millennials-and-the-job-market/) calls for more explicit training in online portfolio-building so that students will have the knowledge and the electronic track record to qualify for jobs that simply didn't exist ten years ago (he provides the examples of social media producer, social media specialist, and digital marketing intern). We need to keep our kids' futures in mind and devote instructional time to the incorporation of skills and projects that will directly contribute to our students' fit to the types of jobs that are being created.

He Thinks About the Future Through the Past. Utecht compares the role of programmer (coder) to that of the medieval scribe in "Are Coders the Scribes of our Time?" (http://www.thethinkingstick.com/are-coders-the-scribes-of-our-time/). By doing so, he comes to a fantastic question: Just like almost everyone can now practice a skill (writing) that, long ago, very few people were able to practice, will almost everyone someday be able to code? Will coding ability someday be considered rudimentary literacy? This strikes me as an amazing question and as one that has truth to it. So much can change in a century, and as people who will be uniquely qualified to prepare young people for lives that will span decades of change, we must look to the past to see how things have changed over similar time frames so that we can anticipate what skills will have value in the future. Let's aim not for where the target is, but where it will be. We owe our students nothing less.

Play On: Game and Choice in English Classes

At the end of our Teaching with Technology class yesterday, Rory pitched a thinking point to us: "How can we revise our high-school classes to act as games?" That is to say, how can we make our classrooms fun, marked by continuing achievements, and motivating? As James Paul Gee says, "A science like biology is not a set of facts. In reality, it is a “game” certain types of people “play”. These people engage in characteristic sorts of activities, use characteristic sorts of tools and language, and hold certain values; that is, they play by a certain set of “rules”. They do biology. Of course, they learn, use, and retain lots and lots of facts—even produce them—but the facts come from and with the doing." In other words, just like games, academic disciplines consist of goals to be achieved by a player within a given, steady set of parameters; they are complex, difficult, and, optimally, fun.

I'll preface the following thoughts with two reservations. Firstly, I don't like gimmicks in the classroom, and I especially despise them if they aren't well executed. Students can see right through them. At best, they're lame. At worst, they can be downright condescending; the implication seems to be one that says to the student "Yeah, I understand that this subject is inherently lame, and you're not motivated enough to participate in this lame subject, so I'm going to do my best to spice it up. Please enjoy this rap rendition of 'The Raven.' Your essays are due Friday." My second reservation is that I want to be as cautious as possible in my approach to extrinsic motivators. Some fantastically successful video games rely on these heavily; you can earn in-game currency, medals, promotions of rank, etc. We're currently learning how damaging extrinsic motivators can be to a student's sense of self-achievement, so I'm going to try my best to recommend ways in which awards don't have to be the norm, and I'd like to recommend a structure that incorporates extrinsic motivators in short bursts only.

With that, here are some general concepts one could employ to frame a high-school English class as a player's game:

Incorporate Choice
Stephen Totilo writes at Kotaku that "A good video game presents a series of interesting choices for players to make" (http://kotaku.com/5924387/the-difference-between-a-good-video-game-and-a-bad-one). I believe this to be true, and many good video games incorporate choice right from the get-go. Can you imagine a racing game where you couldn't choose your car (the model, the rims, the paint job, the engine)? Do you think World of Warcraft would have been as massively successful if players couldn't choose their character type? What if Starcraft only had the Terran race? Boring. Shoot, even simpler set-ups let you pick the identity with which you engage in the game's universe. Counter-Strike is a terrific example (I used to judge people harshly for being on the "Terrorist" team. Morality something blah blah.)

This lil' guy wouldn't be the Guitar Hero if he couldn't choose "All the Small Things" by Blink-182, now would he?

Similarly, we need to provide students with the choice of identity in the classroom. Even without the framework of a "video game," this is a truth. High school and middle school are so difficult for so many students because there is a fundamental and massive lack of choice; students are required to go to these classes at these times, to do assignments assigned by this teacher. They have no say in the matter if they want to get good grades and the regard of their teachers. I see it as no wonder why so many resist it. For an institution that should teach for self-agency and empowerment, the typical school sure does have a lot of rules.

Within the English class, we can give students choice of identity from the start. It could go something like this:

Each student will choose one of four identities: The Poet, the Prose Artist, the Playwright, and the Literary Critic. Each character type will be required to complete competency achievements of all types, those being creative writing (poetry, fiction, drama, creative essay), professional writing (expository essay, letter, cover letter), and literary criticism (critical essay), but depending on which identity the student chooses, they will be able to specialize in their preferred discipline subset. This is similar to a concentration within a college major. Such character selection allows for the empowerment that comes with choice as well as a method of instructional differentiation. 

Keeping Score
In most video games where score counts as an extrinsic motivator for player achievement, it begins from 0 and rises with each desired action. This seems quite different from the academic grading system, which most students seem to interpret as starting from 100 and decreasing with each undesired action. For this reason, we should stop treating grading as a docking system and treat it as a system in which players earn points instead of having them taken away.

On individual assignments, we should quit setting a maximum point value; students will always compare the grade they receive to what they could have received. Instead, teachers should award points for desired actions (you spelled a difficult word correctly, +1 point; you provided evidence for your argument, +3 points; you used a weekly vocabulary word effectively, +2 points, etc.). Assignments should be returned with a legend that includes ranges of scores in which the student can find their own, and these should be labeled creatively and meaningfully.

For the course as a whole, we do not have the luxury of doing away with As, Bs, Cs, and the like. But we can assemble a system in which earning an A, B, or C depends on the player's performance and effort on individual assignments but does not represent a blind average of scores. Grades should be statistically valid and reliable, but that doesn't automatically mean that we as teachers should be content with plugging numbers into a calculator, pressing average, and mindlessly entering the result into the final report. By looking at students' performance on past assignments, we can assign grades in a more holistic manner that can account for strengths, weaknesses, effort, and -- most importantly -- growth. (Caveat: I don't know how different schools require grades to be calculated; all I do know is that, as important as they are, grades account for shockingly little information about real student performance.)

We should also use principles of video game scoring to create higher levels of transparency in the classroom. For many students, cumulative grades are an abstract concept. They got an A here, a C here, another A here, and a B here, so they figure they must have a B+ or close to it floating around in the big, fluffy cloud of grades. Instead, we should provide students with regular (weekly) reports of cumulative grades, achievements met, progress on competencies, and "Player Tips" for improvement. These reports should be framed in a way that displays scoring and achievement in a positive light.

Reinforce Choice-Making by Using Power-Ups
Incorporate power-ups into the class structure, and let students know that it is entirely their choice when to employ them. The use of these power-ups should be rare (limited to once or twice per year). Here are some examples:

• Double The Fun: Student can choose any assignment except for major ones (long essays, major creative pieces, tests) to count twice in the Final Score. Let students make the choice to double their best score.
• Reboot: Student can choose to retake any quiz besides the mid-term or final exam for a better grade (not to be used on essays, as I feel that students should always have the chance to revise these).
• Freedom Strawberry: Student can choose to opt out of regular journal-writing homework for one night.
• Cloak of Silence: Student can activate the cloak before class for invincibility to cold-calling for the entire class period.
• Turtle of Whitman: Student must clear use of the Turtle of Whitman with the teacher on the day preceding its application; on the following day, the student has 2-3 minutes of devoted floor time to deliver a poem (slam encouraged), short speech, or monologue.
• The Mark of Twain: Like the Turtle of Whitman, The Mark of Twain is cleared with the teacher before class (can be prior to class on the same day). Student will be given 30 seconds at the end of class in which to tell a (classroom-appropriate) joke of their choice.

These are just some starting points. On a final note: it's much less important that we transform a class into a "game" or "video game" than it is that we incorporate elements of great games into coursework. I would argue that choice within a system is the most important of these and, within the context of a school where choice is necessarily constrained by practical considerations, is the element that students will value most.

Free the Rice!

Besides the other 97, I have two problems:

1. There are students whose vocabulary isn't as strong or numerous as it can be. We live in a society that places value on how well a person can express their inner propositions via the written and spoken word. Some part of this skill of expression relies on a solid pool from which to draw the most lively and appropriate words for a given situation. Knowing this, there are students who will be at a disadvantage in their relationships with others and in the job search without a better vocabulary. This is deeply problematic, especially when you consider that this problem can stretch across generations. The more exposure to more words a child has, including those of his or her parents, the better their vocabulary will be, and the better their children's vocabulary will be, and so on. The study of vocabulary may sometimes be considered overly mechanical or may cross the line into pedantry, but I believe that vocabulary is a critical component in human interaction.
2. There are too many people in the world who aren't able to buy this every day: 

It's cheap. For us.

In Michigan, we worry about our children developing moral integrity, a critical intellect, and social and emotional maturity -- but in many other places, people worry about themselves and their children eating enough to survive.

Enter http://freerice.com. 

Free Rice is (by default) an English vocabulary quizzing game in which the user is faced with a multiple-choice vocabulary question. If she gets it right, she gets to answer a harder question; if she gets it wrong, she must answer an easier question. And so on. The questions feature words that are a part of everyday language; "cloth," "last," "pharmacy," "assistant," "worker," "spine" ... and with every correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to the World Food Programme. Much of the elegance of this game lies in its simplicity. It requires no engine other than a web browser, and it requires no controller other than a pointer. It is playable on both computers and mobile devices. Its real brilliance lies in its addictiveness. Because the game automatically matches its difficulty the level of the user's skill, it is always a fair match, and it has the ability to grow as the user's skill grows. Its levels range dynamically from 1 to 60, and every student from the beginning reader to the student rounding home on her second Ph.D. will be able to find a challenge here. 

Another thing that makes Free Rice such a great tool is its versatility in quizzing on other subjects (http://freerice.com/category). The game offers subjects that range from other languages (German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin) to basic math to chemistry to famous paintings and quotations. Some categories are extremely knowledge-based (Literature, for example), but I believe that to be because the game was created originally for English vocabulary, which is primarily knowledge-based. I found the module on flags of the world to be particularly fun.

There are a few other games (in no particular order) that are also fun and somewhat related to English language arts:

Words With Friends (http://wordswithfriends.com/)

I believe that, as chess is to those who favor competitions of logic and spatial dexterity, Words With Friends (and Scrabble, of course) is the absolute monarch of multiplayer games to those who favor competitions of linguistic familiarity with English in addition to those involving logic and spatial dexterity. Granted, playing a word in WWF doesn't indicate that a player knows how to use this word, but long-term players of the game develop a better understanding of which words exist and how they work at the level of the morpheme. With the creative incorporation of required look-ups for unknown words, a language teacher (English, French, Spanish, etc.) could employ Words With Friends as a powerful and fun vocabulary-learning tool. For teachers who which to de-emphasize the competitive aspect of the game, take a look at this quick description of cooperative Scrabble (http://www.ehow.com/facts_7588017_cooperative-vs-competitive-scrabble.html). See more about the potential benefits of multi-player competitive crossword games here: http://www2.scrabble-assoc.com/Images/Images/ourword07.pdf (NB: read this critically, as its claims are broad and not cited).

Word Ruffle (http://www.wordgames.com/word-ruffle.html)

Sounds like a weird chip. But really, it's a simple (and addictive) version of the sort of game where you have a finite number of letters (5-7, here) and you make as many words out of them as you can within the allotted time for each round (three minutes, here). This game likely assists with word recognition. At worst, it's fun, cognitively engaging, challenging, and both requires and develops skills that are likely to transfer well to Words With Friends or Scrabble.

Semantic Wars (http://www.wordgames.com/semantic-wars.html)

Think fast-paced hangman. Weirdo little creatures attack your castle; defeat them by solving Wheel-of-Fortune/hangman-style puzzles in various categories. This game doesn't really get at vocabulary development as well as the above games might, but it's an engaging, fun little number, and those who have sufficient trivia knowledge may find that it helps with spelling skills.

These are just a few; there are many more word games available at http://www.wordgames.com.

For those kind enough to read this post: What's your favorite word game or literature game? Why do you like it? How might it be helpful to teachers?

Have a Coke: Or Don't

In our education-and-technology class yesterday, we discussed the nature of media and its various biases in our culture as well as the importance that critical thinkers of all ages -- students and teachers -- understand that nearly every statement that a human being creates has, by definition, bias. Many of us -- myself included -- have been raised to believe that bias in itself is "bad," or at an extreme, damaging. This sense of bias has its points, I think, particularly in certain frameworks of thinking (such as statistics, mathematics, and the sciences), but I would like to urge that bias isn't always necessarily harmful. Many of us are biased towards basic human rights, the ethical treatment of critters, and the development of a sense of morality and ethics. I think it's useful to consider "bias" as somewhat synonymous with its less negatively connoted cousin, "perspective".

We do, of course, live in a world where certain biases exist in favor of causes that can be destructive to people, communities, and the entirety of Earth's environment. As teachers, we should do our best to teach our students both how to recognize the constant presence of bias and to evaluate the media that result because of biases. Perhaps one of the strongest examples I can think of of one medium that deserves scrutiny and critical appraisal is that which is advertising. Advertising exists for the sole purpose of causing as many people as possible to consume a good or service. This consumption always helps the manufacturer of this good or service, sometimes helps the user of it or other users of related goods, and rarely helps the environment (I say "rarely" instead of "never" because there are goods and services that either more-than-negate their effects on the environment or actually aid people in healthy or environment-supporting tasks. The advertisement of highly efficient solar panels, for example, is still advertisement, but the cause seems beneficial). All citizens, at least of this country, are exposed to advertisement whether we want to be or not. Cultural critic and street-art creator Banksy says it best:

"They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity." (Source: [before clicking, please note that this graphic uses words that may be offensive to some users. As a teacher, I don't condone this language, but I think the message here is powerful enough and valuable enough to support the graphic's inclusion]: http://linneawest.com/wp-content/images/2013/05/bansky-coca-cola-bottle.jpg)

Now, more than ever, our students and our peers need to understand that advertisements are not authoritive statements; if Dr. Booty's Baked Beans posts a banner firmly exclaiming that their beans are the best beans of all the beans, I should not take that statement at face value.

You don't actually have to have a Coke.

Advertisements have goals, often selfish in nature, and they should be witnessed with skepticism. They also contribute to an ever-growing problem: that of the development and maintenance of a culture whose individuals feel the need to buy stuff as a reward and in service of establishing their identities. This is a major problem.

Nel Noddings notes the problem and suggests the solution in Education and Democracy in the 21st Century: "Not only have the schools failed to inform students about the ways in which they are manipulated by advertisers, but they have even allowed commercial companies to provide televisions, ostensibly for educational purposes, complete with the usual ads for which students serve as a captive audience (Molnar, 1996). Instead, schools should promote critical thinking on the topic of advertising (Noddings, 2006)." She goes on to suggest that, to direct future citizens away from the perils of consumerism, we must stop phrasing success in terms of a high income and the ability to buy luxury goods and services. I fully agree with this statement and I think that we, as teachers, are on the front lines in shaping a future society that holds better goals for itself: to embody success as magnitude of heart and mind rather than the accumulation of money and possessions.

BYOD? Nay: Chromebooks for All

Anyone who's ever seen a student's cell phone confiscated in class for texting, poppin' jewels, or watching Family Guy on Netflix understands the rationale that supports keeping students' devices confined to use outside of the classroom. But then, anyone who's also seen a student reviewing a critically thought-out pack of flashcards on their iPhone might give pause at the idea of having a strict cell-phones-put-away policy until the final bell.

I fall on the side with those who insist that a BYOD (bring-your-own-device) school environment, though it has the potential to be educationally stimulating and dynamic, does more harm than good. The greatest harm (and that which has the ability for causing long-term, deep disparity in achievement between learners) is that, simply put, some students have access to better devices purely because they are in a wealthier socioeconomic class. John's three-year-old Kindle can't hold a candle to Jayden's fresh-off-the-line iPad; it's not the fault of either student or their parents, but we can't allow schools to further the achievement gap between families who earn smaller amounts of money and families who earn higher amounts of money. By allowing Jayden to bring his iPad into a school's BYOD environment, his school is contributing to Jayden's academic advantage in the classroom as a cause of what device his parents can afford to furnish for his learning. Furthermore, in a BYOD environment, the teacher must restrict his lesson planning to accommodate students with less capable devices. Both of these points were made by Gary S. Stager in the February 2012 edition of "Point/Counterpoint" in Learning and Leading with Technology.

For these reasons,  students should have access to the same type of device. My ideal interpretation of an individual-device-enabled classroom built for the purpose of transdisciplinary education has these qualities:

Students are provided with laptop-like devices that they can check out at the beginning of the year and return at the end of the year. The best solution for this qualification is, I think, the Chromebook:

So stackable!

These devices are simultaneously versatile, relatively inexpensive, and highly usable in the generation as well as consumption of media. This is a benefit of a device with a keyboard and a large screen, I think. Much of the media that artists and authors generate is created by way of a laptop computer. If we are to teach our students how to be not only consumers of media but also producers of it, then we need to give them an appropriate platform for this task. Additionally, if each of these devices is the same, teachers and fellow students have a better chance of helping a student troubleshoot if he or she is having a problem. If the device dies an instant and irreversible death, it can be switched out easily provided that this next point is embodied in classroom device usage:

Students should each have a fair chance (and the expectation of teachers) that they learn how to use the internet's cloud-based programs to organize their lives, complete their research, and generate and share the media that they create. I specify the use of cloud-based programs because this eliminates the potential for loss of student work if their particular device is lost or damaged. Cloud-based programs include but aren't at all limited to Google Drive (along with Google Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations), Evernote (for note-taking, individual brainstorming, and general organization), and Dropbox (for cloud-based file management and submission), among others, which may include course management systems, online collaboration platforms, and media creation tools. This also reduces compatibility issues for users of different platforms and prevents students from having to download and install resource-intensive programs.

In short, every student should have a tech device. If we expect students to develop as society-changers, we need to emphasize personal creation of media and the use of digital collaboration. These devices, standardized and supplied by the state, should allow for tremendous ease-of-use, should be relatively inexpensive (money doesn't grow on a bush), and should embrace cloud technologies so students can become familiar with the cloud and reap the benefits of systems that can't be shorted by individual device failure.

What qualities would your tech-enabled classroom have? How could tech be employed for the purpose of transdisciplinary education?

(For more information about the many advantages of Chromebooks, check this out: http://www.k12educationtechnology.com/2013/05/15/infographic-class-thinkpad-x131e-chromebook-apple-ipad/)

Twitter, Privacy, and a Taxonomy For Candy

In yesterday's session of EDUC 504: Teaching with Technology, our instructor shared with us an anecdote about a millennial student whose Twitter feed shared highly personal and sensitive revelations about his relationship with alcohol. When confronted by his teacher about these tweets, the student revealed that he had not realized that Twitter was a public medium and that anyone with the URL to his feed had the ability to see information that he thought, erroneously, was private.

It is staggering and curious to me that students who were born in a time when Web 1.0 had already passed and Web 2.0 was starting to take form are strikingly unfamiliar with basic principles about privacy and the web, not to mention how the internet works.

Bane understands.

We spoke in our first class meeting about how many young internet users, despite (or because of) using the internet from a very young age, don't understand what a URL is or how to navigate to a website outside of typing the website name or search terms into a search engine. I attribute this to the user-friendliness and navigational tools that web developers have created over time that make precise knowledge of a URL an unnecessary requirement for website look-up. Why know what a hyper-text transfer protocol is when you don't need to? Just Google it, dude.

(This sassy script comes to mind, for no particular reason: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+does+http+mean?)

But why don't millennials understand what constitutes privacy on the internet? That anyone with a person's name and some free time (see: luxury) can find anything that a person has ever contributed to the internet, provided that the alias of contribution is in some way connected to that person's real name? I have difficulty with this question because it requires stepping into the mind of a person who was born into the internet, who has some concept of how website URLs work, how login protocols work, and what makes a piece of the internet "private." (I would have said "truly private," but in a philosophical sense, I don't think true privacy exists outside of the realm of one's own mind. When a person posts information to the internet, even in a virtual environment that "ensures" "privacy," that information is still stored in an outside location that, while protected and sometimes well so, is never 100.0% impervious to onlookers who have the know-how to gain access.) Many of us grew up with the rise of the internet and the resulting phobia of many of our protectors that there were an abundance of creepers, weirdos, goobers, whatevers, etc. on the web, ready to look us up and come to our houses and offer us good candy* and give us a ride in their sweet-o white van. Thus, our guardians were careful to instruct us to never provide our real names, phone numbers, addresses, and schedules; these bits of information were private, and we were explicitly told this. I'm not sure as to whether kids are being told the same thing by as many people at the time of this writing.

And so I think it falls on us as teachers to tell our students what constitutes private information, why that information is private, and how different websites treat information (that is, whether they make it publicly accessible by default, share that information with other companies, etc.). Some people make the distinction between "real life" and "the internet" when speaking of what is acceptable and safe practice. But for purposes like these, I don't think such a distinction is necessary, and may even be harmful, as it implies that the internet isn't a "real" medium of social interaction. It is, and the past few years have shown this. Acting as a responsible and knowledgeable citizen online is as important as acting responsibly and knowledgeably in "real life" because internet life isn't a separate realm that runs parallel to real life. It's deeply connected to our reality, for better or worse, and we need to treat it as such: as a space in which actions have real and potentially powerful consequences.

---
*I postulate that there are two Kingdoms of candy: sugar candy and chocolate candy. Examples of phyla of sugar candy include lollipops, suckers, taffy, etc.; phyla of chocolate candy include candy bars, pieces (think M&Ms), pure chocolate, and the like. I'd really like to take a poll as to who prefers sugar candy over chocolate candy so that I can understand what makes these people tick. Who doesn't like chocolate candy over sugar candy? Amateurs**, that's who.

**Fun fact: "amateur" derives via French from the Latin verb amo, amare: to love. An amateur is one who does something for the love of it, as opposed to a professional, who does something for dollar, dollar bills.

Dewey and Dichotomies

Reading John Dewey's "My Pedagogic Creed," I was struck on multiple occasions at his arguments for the effacement of boundaries between opposing entities such as learning and "future living", and the individual and the community. Through these effacements, I think, we arrive at one of his central tenets: that knowledge cannot be handed to a learner like an object can, and that "Experience does not occur in a vacuum". We learn best by experiencing, when an idea takes root in our minds.

Dewey states,

"I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educative."

Even in today's high-school populations, the opinion is rampant that learning is an accumulation of tools for use after graduation. In classrooms that don't directly connect content to application, this question is heard too often: "What do I need to learn this for? I'm not going to be calculating molecular masses in Real Life". If we didn't say it ourselves, we had classmates who did. Just last week I saw in my Facebook feed that someone had posted a graphic saying something to the effect of "Today another day went by where I didn't have to solve for x."

I believe (and I think Dewey did too) that effective education anticipates this sentiment and makes it irrelevant by erasing the idea that school is merely training for adulthood. Students should be taught that learning, as an experience, is the beginning of adulthood and has the power to make adulthood meaningful and worthwhile. By placing a boundary between education and adulthood, we sell ourselves short of the realization that both exist in the same space.

Another important dichotomy (and its effacement) marks Dewey's statements. He begins his creed by asserting that "all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race". I realized metacognitively that I was initially pushing back against Dewey's emphasis on the importance of the social sphere as it informs the individual. I came to his Creed with a fight for the importance of deep introspection and the understanding of the infinite universe of the subjective self. It took me a few moments to realize that his assertions do not preclude this. Rather, they postulate what I understand to be a truth: that the "self" cannot exist without the community to define it, and that the community cannot exist without individuals to compose it. He states,

"I believe that the psychological and social sides are organically related and that education cannot be regarded as a compromise between the two, or a superimposition of one upon the other. We are told that the psychological definition of education is barren and formal - that it gives us only the idea of a development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of the use to which these powers are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the social definition of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it a forced and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of the individual to a preconceived social and political status."

We rob ourselves of the truth when we insist that individuals can live fully agent, self-realized lives without finding themselves within a community of others. Through others, we learn about our selves and internalize experiences that come through existing in a community. The intersection of the self and community is not a setting-beside-each-other, a "compromise" or a "superimposition". It is a simultaneous existence that can't be parsed (See Portals > Ubuntu (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Today in our Research and Educational Practice class, our instructor made a statement that I believe extends far beyond the realm of statistical analysis and is in fact a fundamental truth of the human condition: When we categorize, we lose meaning. She was speaking about the act of splitting a continuous number line into discrete categories of cut scores, but I heard a bell at the extrapolation of this; when we take the whole, limitless objective component of reality and place it in boxes, we cheat ourselves of its shades of existence. We have oaks, maples, elms, and ashes; we have tigers, sloths, capybaras, and lemurs; and we have street lights, taxi cabs, pianos, and welcome mats. But what we lose is the hum of it all, the realization that everything came from dust and then time and then stars and then supernovae. We have these things, which by definition means they are not those things, which means they are certainly not us. But they are us, and we lose that, and all through simple words.

As a lover of poems and stories and, yes, those simple words, I feel deeply, sometimes mortally, conflicted. Every word I speak or write or hear or read simultaneously gives meaning to the universe, both objective and subjective, and also destroys its full meaning. It is impossible to separate one from the other, the act of verbal creation and destruction. But this is the point, I think, because that separation is just another set of two categories that must exist at once.

The Beatles had it right: Let it be.

So did Vonnegut: So it goes.

I say: it is what it is. And I hope a smile and a question are enough for this.

Image cred: http://www.widescreen-wallpaper.eu/view-night_sky_tree_universe-1280x800.html

Architecture of an Evolving Classroom

On our first day in EDUC 504: Teaching With Technology, we entered the classroom and observed a prompt displayed on the projector screen at the front --

The Assignment: 

Draw a picture of your ideal classroom with attention to how technology fits in with its design.

My Offering:

My Rationale:

Projector Setup with Large Table at Front:

Firstly, my board handwriting is abominable. I think and hope that it'll get better with practice, but I'd like to be able to post instructions, assignments, tasks, etc. via projector for the benefit of anyone who has to read it. Additionally, I'd like to take into consideration those students whose vision isn't great by using large, bold typefaces. I remember a day in middle school when I'd either forgotten my glasses or couldn't find them, and my ability to keep pace with class was threatened severely. I understand that there are students who need glasses but don't have them, or who have expired prescriptions; I intend to make the visual components of my instruction accessible to all students.

Secondly, I would like the flexibility to display YouTube clips, TED talks, and film scenes at any time and for any reason. I recall my high-school teachers' complaints about not being able to show certain films on certain days because of the logistical issues of getting a TV into the classroom. The appeal of a multimedia-ready classroom is too great to ignore.

Thirdly, I want to equip my students with the various tools of online research. When I don't know about something, I look it up on Wikipedia. Even when I think I do know about something, I look it up on Wikipedia. When I want to know more than Wikipedia can offer, I use other venues of knowledge-sharing. The ability to use the internet to find and digest information is, I think, one of the trademarks of a lifelong student, and I feel unbelievably lucky to live in an age where learning about almost anything takes less than five seconds.

A note about the large table: It's important to me that I never refer to this or think of this as "my table" -- it belongs to the class as a community, and is at the use of whoever requires it. My personal space will be a standard desk at the back of the room. I do not intend to post up at the large table at any other time than when the projector setup is in use; the students' attention will be as much on each other as it is on the teacher. My new mantra: "There is no front."

Computers:

I originally had a couple of terminals at the front of the room but then realized that their users' privacy might be compromised by their proximity to the few student desks at the upper left of the diagram. I crossed them out and moved them behind the students, on the wall opposite the projector screen.

Teacher Desk (lower right):

During whole-class discussions, I intend to sit in a student desk in a position that is very specifically not at the front of the room, and in a position that doesn't call attention to itself. Again: the students' attention should be on each other. My goal is to make them forget I'm there. (Cf. "A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary." -Thomas Carruthers)

General Layout of Student Desks:

Again, there is no front. I went back and forth on the idea of arranging the desks in a single row in a U-shape (without the projector setup, the ideal setup would simply be a circle). The necessity for small-group work, though, pushed me over to a two-row U-shape setup. When partner work is required, the students can either work with the person directly in front of them or next to them; when groups of four are required, the students can arrange themselves without a lot of furniture rearrangement. When a half-on-half debate is required, the arrangement can be split down the middle. I think there's great flexibility to the double-row U formation. I also briefly considered clusters of groups of 4-6 students, but my problem with this setup has always been that some students need to turn themselves around entirely to listen to the teacher, watch films, and observe the class as a whole. I think layouts with clusters have great merit (better than the classical platoon-like layout), but personally, as a student, I've never appreciated them as much as those like the above.

The overarching principles of community and simplicity drove the above design. It is a work in progress, though, and I'll continue to update it as is necessary. 

The Context

Fortes fortuna adiuvat -- No guts, no glory

---

Sometimes I feel that we can't ever overestimate its value. As of this writing, we are on the thirteenth day (seventeenth, including weekends) of study in the Secondary Education Master of Arts with certification program at the University of Michigan School of Education. My cohort, Blue, is comprised of twenty learners; the other, Maize, eighteen. Thus far we have covered a diversity of topics that range from practical classroom-management techniques to developmental and psychological perspectives to education for sustainability to (most challenging, for me) rudimentary statistical principles of educational research. I'm grateful that this is the first course of study in a while in which I've routinely experienced rushes of goosebumps in the course of (most of) the homework. I feel unbelievably lucky to be studying the applied science and art of a discipline that I care so much about and that has the potential to create so much good in the universe.

I feel luckier still that I have met thirty-seven fine women and men who are equally devoted to the work of helping young people learn how to make personal and intellectual investments in themselves and their communities. They range characteristically in a variety of factors, but I feel safe in saying that each of them is a caring individual committed to changing the course of our society's educational practice in a positive way, and I'm thankful that I have the chance to learn from their ideas, experiences, and ways of living.

It's unimaginable where we'll be only a year from now. It's impossible to predict fully where philosophies will change, where friendships will form, where joy will manifest or be interrupted -- but it is a certainty that every one of us will be better for the sleepless nights, the hand-cramps, the bruxism, the eye-strain. We will know even more fully that we do -- or do not -- want to commit to a life of learning and helping others learn.

With effort, patience, introspection, engagement, and a bit of luck -- we will be teachers. And I'm wicked amped about it.

Song of Myself, I, II, VI & LII

by Walt Whitman

I

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

II

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes.... the shelves
   are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume.... it has no taste
   of the distillation.... it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever.... I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, and buzzed whispers.... loveroot, silkthread,
   crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration.... the beating of my heart....
   the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore
   and darkcolored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice.... words loosed
   to the eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses.... a few embraces.... reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along
   the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health.... the full-noon trill.... the song of me
   rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned
   the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
   of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are
   millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor
   look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres
   in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

VI

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess if is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of
the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive then the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

LII

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.