Excellence for What?

Very pleased to have a chapter in the just-released Routledge collection, Global Perspectives on Teaching Excellence entitled "Excellence for what? Policy Development and the Discourse of the Purpose of Higher Education." The collection is basically a reaction to recent legislation in the UK that attempted to measure and mandate teaching excellence in higher education. My wife and I wrote a critique using my discourse analysis model of the purpose of higher education applied to the new legislation to suggest that the government's definition of 'excellence' might be somewhat problematic from the perspective of students and learning.

TED: Lessons Worth Sharing

TED's latest initiative, Lessons Worth Sharing, proposes to take the best lectures by the best lecturers, and animate them. This is a pretty neat idea, as illustrated by the short video explaining the concept. I am grateful to Nicola Simmoms for bringing this initiative to the attention of the online forum for Society of Teaching and Learning In Higher Education, to which I subscribe. In subsequent discussion, another member of the forum made the comment, "I cannot fathom a down side".

I agree that it is hard not to love anything connected with TED. But, um: being a sociologist, I can pretty much find the latent dysfunction of anything….

The subtle catch with the implementation of the best lecture concept is that each "lesson" is restricted to be ten minutes or under. So we get the best teachers, animate their ten minute lecture and post it as an example of great teaching. This then becomes the gold standard of teaching, against which all of lecturers are now going to be judged by their students. But one cannot reduce teaching to 10 minutes of lecture.

Sound Bite Thinking

Some concepts take longer than 10 minutes to develop. The bulleted points of web pages and powerpoint presentations, or the trend towards fast-cutting video, have already eroded our students attention spans, and sapped their patience for sustained argument. But many subtle ideas require students to really think their way through complicated, even convoluted arguments. Bringing data to bear on a problem, for example, allowing students to shift through and understand that data, requires more than 10 minutes. If TED implies to students (and instructors) that ten minutes is the longest tolerable length for lecture, I'm not convinced that that approach is necessarily going to promote critical thinking or sustained engagement.

Entertainment vs Engagement

I love the idea of someone animating my lectures…though my particular subject matter (say, the construction of multiple-choice test questions) may not always lend itself to that medium. But the problem here is that animated lectures are entertaining and perpetuate the idea that learning always should always be fun and effortless. Just as Sesame Street taught a generation of children that learning is fun -- with the unfortunate corollary that school should be likewise always be fun, and that if one's teacher isn't as entertaining as Kermit the Frog, one should change the channel -- there is a danger that viewers will expect their own instructors to be as entertaining as a TED Video.

This is a wrong idea: lots of what we have to do to achieve our learning goals is not fun. Practicing scales on the piano, learning the times table, reading scholarly articles, are inherently tedious but nonetheless necessary tasks. Instructors who focus on entertaining their students may do well in course evaluations, but it is not clear that their courses contain any actual content.

I work hard to make my classes engaging, but that is a very different matter than being entertaining. I hope that my passion for my subject shows through, and that at least some of my students catch something of that same enthusiasm, even as they engage in those activities that include an element of drudgery.

This is not to suggest that one should turn off Sesame Street or block TED video: obviously, the Lessons Worth Sharing initiative is producing a marvelous resource of which we should all avail ourselves. What I am suggesting is that we need to be aware that this is a medium we should exploit but not necessarily attempt to emulate in our own classrooms. It is not necessary, or even desirable, that we all start breaking our lectures into ten minute segments or hire animators.

Whose Knowledge?
I'm sure TED talks will cover all the great ideas of science, etc. But what about the social sciences, humanities, and so on? The whole point of having local campuses (besides allowing students direct access to instructors), is that we may not all agree with, say, American supply-side economics. Whose vetting what goes on TED's channel? Who is in charge of social construction of what constitutes really cool knowledge? Is TED going to include the lunatic fringe? Only the Mainstream? Is Somoa or Alberta going to see their ideas reflected on TED, or only America content? (TED hasn't done a bad job in the past of bringing speakers from around the world, so perhaps this need not be an immediate concern...but what we're watching bears watching.)

Contextualization
Another problem with crowd sourcing lectures is that without the larger context of a program of studies, concepts are presented out of order, without important qualifications, and without the necessary links/connections being drawn for the audience. Again, the TED Lessons might be a fabulous supplementary resource for teachers around the world, and for individuals seeking clarification of particular concepts, but it is important to understand that this is not sufficient to serve as a stand alone replacement for schooling. I do not say that TED has ever claimed that it would be, only that others will invariably ask, "Why can't it all be like this" and contextualization is part of the answer.

Good teaching is more than lectures
Good teaching has to be more than lecturing. I'm good with having a large resource of fabulous 10 minute introductions to big ideas available to my classes…but that does rather imply that the classroom instructors will be left with doing all the boring bits with their students. Students will therefore be inclined to make invidious comparisons between the fabulous animated lectures available online, and the dreary classes they have to endure on campus....

TED: Lessons Worth Sharing

But, you know, just saying.

Mostly, the TED initiative looks pretty cool to me.

Irfaan in Belize

Irfaan, one of my favorite students, is currently doing his student teaching in Belize. His blog is worth following because he is a good writer as well as an all round interesting guy.

Ideology and Blame

Allow me to quote from a press release on a recent article:

Financial Literary Bailout for the Younger Generation

Hanover, NH-June 2, 2010-In the aftermath of the global financial crisis,
financial literacy is still low among young adults. According to a new study
published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs, only twenty-seven percent of people aged 23-28 can answer three basic questions about interest rates, inflation, and risk diversification, and other basic financial concepts. Furthermore, this result was amplified when studying the answers of young women, African-Americans, and Hispanics, and those with low educational attainment.
...
The research, headed by Dr. Annamaria Lusardi, shows that financial literacy
is largely influenced by parental education levels and financial habits.
...
Lusardi says, "If we do not address financial illiteracy among young people
through high school literacy classes, we will fail to equip young people
with the tools they need to make financial decisions, and we may pay the
cost down the road. Not everybody has an opportunity to learn from their
parents or their friends. Young people at the start of their career, or who
are in the process of buying their first home need to be financially
knowledgeable before they engage in financial contracts."

It is the final paragraph that is most interesting. It is a fascinating example of the sort of thing I teach in my sociology of education course: the ideology of individualism focuses our attention on the individual and blinds us (well, average Americans, anyway) to the true structural problems. What we see here is the structural problems of capitalist economy, and specifically the recent economic collapse due to unregulated sub-prime market etc, translated into the individual consumer's fault! If only consumers were better educated, there would not have been the problem! It is a wonderful example of 'blaming the victim'!

And the solutions to economic problems -- education! Great how problems in the economy caused by bad (unethical) business decisions suddenly become the fault of consumers and the 'failed' education system.....

The Query Project

Another clever idea by Joshua Palmatier, the Query Project had a baker dozen authors post query letters they used to sell books or solicit an agent . I heard about this first by reading Canadian SF author and radio columnist Edward Willett's blog. For anyone interested in writing, this glimpse behind the scenes is extremely enlightening. There are a few "how to" books around that talk about guiding principles, but it's a bit different seeing the real thing and seeing a dozen different takes on what's important etc. My hat off to all the participants.

http://www.paulcrilley.com - Paul Crilley
http://chrisdolley.livejournal.com -ChrisDolley
http://difrancis.livejournal.com -Diana Pharaoh Francis
http://frostokovich.livejournal.com -Gregory Frost
http://halspacejock.blogspot.com -Simon Haynes
http://www.jackiekessler.com/blog Jackie Kessler
http://glendalarke.blogspot.com -Glenda Larke
http://johnlevitt.livejournal.com -John Levitt
http://jpsorrow.livejournal.com -Joshua Palmatier
http://janni.livejournal.com -Janni Lee Simner
http://smokingpigeon.livejournal.com -Jennifer Stevenson
http://edwardwillett.blogspot.com -Edward Willett
http://www.autumnrain2110.com -David J. Williams

(Of course, payment for exposing the private side of their business this way is to bring people to their blogs who might not otherwise have encountered them. I know that I found a few names below I hadn't known about before, but seeing their book covers and/or other blog entries certainly peaked my interest in pursuing looking up their books.)

Runte's Law

After a couple of weeks with the kids (Kasia 3 and Tigana 8) home from school full time, I was reminded of Runte's Law:

"The willingness of a child to help with chores is inversely related to their ability to do so."

Slip of the Tongue

Guest Anecdote

I received this email earlier this week from an alumnus, thought it well worth sharing:

I was teaching approximately 30 students and we were working in a computer lab.  At the end of the session, I reminded them to log off the computer so that another learner could use the machine.  Unfortunately, 'learner' and 'use' sort of blended together in my mouth and I ended up telling the class to log off so that another group of 'losers' could use the machines!!  Now, I must say that I don't remember this sort of moment being covered in my B.Ed program as to how to handle such things gracefully?!?  Fortunately the class had a good sense of humour and thought it was hilarious - I was mortified but managed to recover and laugh about it - and I'm sure that they'll remember that particular class!!
 

I hope that you're both well and enjoying the start of a new semester!

Theresa Bell

College Instructor

(Reprinted with permission)

Excuses, excuses

"Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday."

from "actual excuse notes from parents (including spelling)" from the Office of Educational Assessment at the University of Washington, cited on
"Strangeplaces", which I found referenced on Life Weirder than Fiction

Who Needs the Education Faculty?

A guest editorial by teaching activist, Richard Hake (Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University)

Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:18:45 -0700

Anemona Hartocollis (2005), in her provocative New York Times article
"Teaching for Teachers: Who Needs Education Schools?" [Hartocollis
(2005)] wrote in part [my CAPS]:

. . . .If Emporia State is a throwback to an earlier time, when
preparing teachers for the classroom was a high calling, it is also a
reminder of how many teachers' colleges have strayed from the central
mission of the normal school. For decades, education schools have
gravitated from the practical side of teaching, seduced by large
ideas like "building a caring learning community and culture" and
"advocating for social justice," to borrow from the literature of the
Hunter College School of Education, part of the City University of
New York. With the ambition of producing educators rather than
technicians, in the words of Hunter's acting dean, Shirley Cohen,
schools have embraced a theoretical approach. But critics say that
ill prepares teachers to function effectively in the classroom.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Just what do education schools teach? In a report published last year
that put many educators on the defensive, researchers found that top
education schools were not equipping their students to deal with the
standards movement - nor giving them an understanding, going back to
classical sources like Plato and Aristotle, of what constitutes an
educated person.

David M. Steiner, co-author of the report, is director of arts
education at the National Endowment for the Arts and on leave as
department chairman in educational administration, training and
policy studies at Boston University. With his associate Susan D.
Rozen, he reviewed the curriculums of 16 teachers' colleges, 14 of
them among the nation's best, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.

Since there is little data on which educational approach translates
into effective teaching, they looked for a balance in material.
Instead, they found little effort to present opposing schools of
thought. The general posture of education schools, they concluded,
was countercultural, instilling mistrust of the system that teachers
work in. Among the texts most often assigned were Jonathan Kozol's
"Savage Inequalities," an indictment of schooling in poor urban
neighborhoods, and writings by Paulo Freire, who advocates education
to achieve political liberation. Theories of how children learn, like
the multiple learning styles advocated by Howard Gardner of Harvard,
were more likely to be taught than what children should learn, like
the Core Knowledge curriculum advanced by E. D. Hirsch, a professor
emeritus at the University of Virginia.

Finally, Dr. Steiner wrote, PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS WERE NOT BEING
TAUGHT METHODS THAT WOULD HELP THEIR STUDENTS DO WELL ON STANDARDIZED TESTS. Most texts used to teach reading had been written by proponents of whole language methods, and there was only fleeting exposure to the kinds of scripted, phonics-based curriculums, like Open Court, that are increasingly being adopted in the nation's schools.

"There is a vision here," Dr. Steiner said in an interview, "and it's all just one vision. IT IS A SYNTHESIS OF WHAT WE CALL THE PROGRESSIVIST VISION AND THE CONSTRUCTIVIST VISION" - that is, the theory that it is better for children to construct knowledge than to
receive it. But, he added, "The counterview has an equal and much
longer tradition - the responsibility to engage the student, but to
engage the student as the authority." To suggestions that his report
was itself ideological, and conservative, Dr. Steiner says he's
actually an old-fashioned liberal.

On Aug. 15, Dr. Steiner will step directly into the fray, as new dean
of education at Hunter College. At Hunter, he says, he hopes to
prepare teachers who "are scholars of their craft," both proficient
in methods and curriculum and able to think in a sophisticated way.

Given all the sound and fury, there is surprisingly little
disagreement with that.

"One of the biggest dangers we face is preparing teachers who know
theory and know nothing about practice," acknowledges Arthur Levine president of Teachers College at Columbia, one of the leading
avatars of progressive education. Historians note that Dewey himself
had such concerns in the 1920's. But, Dr. Levine says, that is not
what happens at strong - and philosophically diverse - education
schools like Stanford, the University of Virginia, Alverno College in
Milwaukee and Emporia State.

"They have a clarity of mission," says Dr. Levine, who is conducting
a two-year study on the quality of education schools that will be
published in November. "They know what they're trying to do. THEIR
DEFINITION OF SUCCESS IS TIED TO STUDENT LEARNING IN CLASSES TAUGHT BY THOSE TEACHERS."

(end quote)

See the complete version.

There is no indication that Hartocollis or any of those she quotes is
aware of education research *outside* schools of education [e.g.
Heron & Meltzer (2005)] that is devoted to the assessment of student
learning deemed so important by Arthur Levine.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana Universit

See homepage at Hake or see physics

REFERENCES

Hartocollis, A. 2005. "Teaching for Teachers: Who Needs Education
Schools?" New York Times , 31 July 2005; freely available online (probably only for a short period)

See also Steiner (2005).

Heron, P.R.L. & D. Meltzer. 2005. "The future of physics education research:
Intellectual challenges and practical concerns," Amer. J. Phys.
73(5): 390-394; online
here, scroll down
to "invited papers," or
download directly(56kB).

Steiner, D. 2004. "Skewed Perspective," Education Next, Winter 2005;
online here Education
Next is a publication of the Hoover Institution

---

Reprinted with Richard's kind permission

Thinking Outside the Box

So I take out the sorter toy and place it in front of Kasia. I demonstrate how the red cube goes in the red square opening, the green triangle goes in the green triangular opening, the yellow cylinder goes in the yellow circle opening, and so on. I repeat the demonstration, open the sorter up and dump the blocks out on the floor, close it up, and hand it over for her to do.

Kasia gives me one of those "You're an idiot, Dad" looks, reaches over, opens the back of the sorter, and stuffs all the blocks in all at once, closes the toy, and hands it back to me.

What can I say? Apparently there was an easier way to do it....

This kind of thing happens a lot. We buy toys for kids that make sense to us as adults, but mean something completely different to the kids. Take Kasia's pirate ship bath toy. To me, it is a cool pirate ship. To Kasia, it is a convenient holder for her bathwater drinking cup. Now, I hadn't actually wanted Kasia to drink from the bath tub, and was pretty sure that was a rowboat attached to the pirate ship, but apparently it is the perfect drinking cup. The only other thing she uses the pirate ship for is to step on to help her climb out of the tub while I am trying to wash her hair.
But, when I stop to think of it, what experience of pirates does the typical toddler have? I mean, if they had met pirates, they probably would not subsequently want to be reminded of the experience by bath toys.

So why do we choose the themes we do for toys? Why is it we fill toddler's rooms with toys of farm animals and teach them the words for 'cow' and 'pig' and teach them to go 'moo' and 'oink' as four of the first twenty words they learn? This might have been essential vocabulary for kids a hundred years ago, but the closest my urban kids are likely to come to cows or pigs these days are the styrofoam packages in the Safeway meat counter. You know?

So who decided that Kasia's pjs should have ducks on them? "Quack" was literally her first 'word' after 'mama'. Is this essential learning?
Or is that the whole point, to pick easy and comfortably irrelevant content? I guess ducks are less political than having, say, pictures of Marx.
Okay, Marx wasn't all that cuddly, but you take my point.

Grade Inflation

(Okay, I'm really catching up on stuff tonight.)

Spent the last three years or so chairing a Faculty Task Force on Grading, focused mainly on the issues of Grade Inflation. I found it hard to get motivated since I basically don't believe that inflation is a significant issue for our faculty, since the vast majority of our instructors use criterion based grading where the whole issue largely does not apply. So, most of the work for the first two years was done by a colleague who was herself greatly concerned with the issue and so took care of the literature review. The Dean wanted the final report this year, so I did a preliminary presentation to Faculty April 16, then -- based on input from a survey of faculty that meeting -- did a final presentation at our Faculty's annual retreat last Thursday. The results of the committee's deliberations can be found at the Grade Inflation Website I threw together in about 10 hours as a briefing for faculty who missed the initial meeting. I think I managed to create a balanced report that incorporated the views of both myself (and the rest of the committee who basically shared my perspective) and my colleague, even though they were essentially opposite positions. Going through the website one direction gives you my argument; going through the other gives you hers. (My route assumes readers from the digital generation clicking through window-sized 'sound bites'; her route gives one blocks of text you have to scroll through to get the sustained argument. Although I wish to avoid stereotyping here, I think matching the traditionalist message with the traditionalist medium and vice versa was a nice touch, if I do say so myself.)

I'm happy to talk about these issues with anyone who is interested...if there is sufficient interest in academic circles I will probably spend sometime expanding the website to be more complete. The first planned addition would be the survey results that reveal that while there are significant number of faculty concerned about grade inflation, none of the think the problem is with their grading! Quite amusing, really.

====
Comment from Dr. Wasserman:

I take exception to your remark that the concept of grade inflation does not apply to criterion-based grading.  I have yet to see, and cannot imagine, a real-life application of criterion-referenced scoring that can be applied by everyone with absolute consistency over time to different assignments or other work.  In my years of working with standard setters, the description of the characteristics of borderline students were pretty much the same, whether the standard setters were describing students in Grade 3, 6, 9, or 12.  It is only when descriptors are matched with exemplars that the concept of a borderline student takes on any operational meaning, and since the exemplars change with the particular task, there is plenty of room for drift.  If the standards drift down, one could call it grade inflation.
 

At any rate, your statement that everyone sees grade inflation as something other people do, while he or she is perfectly reliable, is right on the money.

===
Robert Again:

(I don't know what has happened to my comment function...it seems now to have completely disappeared...no time at the moment to fix it, perhaps after I get back from Toronto conference next week. In the mean time email runte at uleth.ca with your comments, if any.)

Kids Today

So Tigana brought home a CD-ROM from school with her latest project on it, a powerpoint presentation on her family for Social Studies. The on-line version doesn't really do the presentation justice, since Tigana had put a lot of thought into sound effects (applause for Mom, fairy sounds for Kasia, and so on) and animation (fades, transitions, etc.) which do not show up on the Web version posted here. But what does show up demonstrates a lot about modern education. Tigana's spelling mistakes might offend a lot of traditionalists, though clearly she has the principles of phonetics, if not some of the details. What the traditionalists are mostly silent on, however, is that Tigana clearly has command of a whole set of skills (point form, powerpoint, graphic design) that were never part of traditional curriculum. Powerpoint Presentations in Grade 1?! My elementary school didn't even have typewriters!

The implications for my student teachers are, of course, obvious: When they complain that too many of my assignments require familiarity with technology (blogs, web sites, powerpoint, search engines, etc.) all I have to do is point to this Grade 1 assignment, and ask them (a) how is it they do not already have the skills now commonly taught in Grade 1, and (b) how do they expect to be able to teach kids in Grade 6 or 12 or etc. if the kids they will be facing are more computer literate then they are....

Not Just Us....

Tigana had her birthday party this weekend for the kids from her old school, and it was the first time we had seen many of the parents since making our decision to move Tigana to another school. We learned that another three children were being pulled from the same class this month. We aren't particularly close to the other parents involved and hadn't discussed our dissatisfaction with them prior to making our own decision, so we were all making the decision to leave independently. Which should be sending a message to someone somewhere. How is it possible to lose 3 students in one month and not recognize that there may be problems in the school? Even if the administration believes that we are all over-reacting, I would think that managing 'difficult parents' was part of the job. Dissatisfaction with the school among parents is itself a problem, even if one believes their concerns are groundless. Which, obviously, I do not; in my view the problems are sufficiently real and pressing for me to get my daughter the heck out of there. I wonder what it will take before someone in authority is willing to acknowledge that there are problems and respond appropriately? And I wonder how long the problems will fester before blowing up in some incident. Hopefully, they'll get lucky and nothing spectacular will happen – I'm in no hurry to say "I told you so."

Stress of Parenting

I haven't talked here much about the stress we have being going through lately, but we've certainly been feeling it.

Kasia

As I related earlier, our 15 month old daughter, Kasia has reflex anoxic seizures. This is in itself extremely stressful, since having your daughter's heart stop beating, her breathing stop and her eyes roll up into her head -- for all intents and purposes dead for three or four minutes -- is terrifying, even knowing that the condition has never proven fatal and that there is (apparently) no long term damage to heart, lungs or brain. But in testing to determine that diagnosis she also turned out to have fairly serious anemia. When that did not respond to aggressive iron supplements, the doctor started testing her for Thalassemia, a process that took weeks and left us terrified by what we had read up on that genetic condition. The tests eventually came back negative, but we still don’t know if the anemia was just a blip, or a symptom of something even scarier (everything on the list after Thalassemia is mind-numbingly scary.)

When Kasia was first diagnosed with the cyanotic breath holding, we were grateful she didn’t have the even more frightening pallid attacks; when she developed the pallid form as well (our pediatrician didn’t know it was possible to get both kinds in the same patient before meeting Kasia, since they are different mechanisms – but apparently a very small percentage do get both), we could at least take solace that the condition is not life threatening (as long as appropriate precautions are taken). And after all the tests Kasia has had, the doctor was able to rule out epilepsy, so bad as the seizures were, they weren’t that.

So then two weeks ago, Kasia had her first grand mal seizure. I was surprised at how calmly I was able to deal with this, though later Mary reminded me that I am used to dealing with Portia, our epileptic dog, so perhaps the familiarity got me through it. Nevertheless, I called for Mary and we got Kasia to the hospital in under three minutes, which is pretty good since we live about 10 minutes from the hospital. (The doctor subsequently told us that we should always bring Kasia in after a seizure of this type, but next time to drive slower.) Our pediatrician happened to be on call at the hospital that evening, and after observing Kasia for four hours concluded that this seizure was not part of the reflex anoxic seizures we had already been dealing with but something new and different. We waited for him to tell us that these new grand mal seizures were also not life threatening, since we know our dog is fine and just requires some comforting to get her through it, but he unfortunately could provide no such assurances. He also told us that 80% of such seizures are never diagnosed and that we may never know what caused it, but that we would have to re-run all the tests for epilepsy and tumors etc that we had already been through before.

Currently, our best case scenario is that this was a severe anoxic seizure -- though Kasia’s color was wrong for that diagnosis – since a percentage of those with the pallid form do also suffer convulsions. But there is really no way to know in the short term, and the uncertainty is eating away at us.

Tigana
Meanwhile, our six-year old daughter was having ongoing problems at school with bullying. Mary and I had tried several times to get the teacher or the principal to take the matter seriously, but we found both to be more defensive then helpful. I understand that it is difficult to take the problems of six year olds seriously, especially if you have not witnessed these incidents with your own eyes, as we had on several occasions, but it seemed obvious to us that Tigana’s schooling was suffering. For example, when Tigana started her writing portfolio in September, there was an outpouring of productivity; indeed, I had wanted to use her portfolio in my assessment course to demonstrate how successful these techniques could be. But all of a sudden, Tigana's entries just stopped. The last two entries are the one reproduced below (with the student names whited out for obvious reasons), and the final one that says: "I think I have a problem."

The illustration shows a tiny, intimidated and weeping Tigana, while a giant rival laughs and points at her. The object on the left is the tire swing on the school playground.

The problems kept escalating from there until last week when Tigana's nemesis approached another child on the playground to solicit her help in planning how to kill Tigana. When that child told Tigana what had been said, we again took it to the classroom teacher who again refused to accept the word of a six year old witness, or that there was a significant problem. Mary appealed to the Vice Principal, who ensured that a counselor was brought in. His initial belief (framed by his briefing from the school) that it was a very minor problem changed as he listened to our concerns, and later when he actually talked to the students involved. Although he appeared to make some progress with the children, we felt it was too little too late and pulled Tigana out of that school.

I must confess that I was concerned that we might be over-reacting, since that was the message we kept getting from the school. So Mary and I went to two of my colleagues (a psychologist and an elementary education specialist), whom we trust, and asked for a second opinion. Listening to what we had told the school, they both independently recommended pulling Tigana immediately.

When we broke the news of our decision to Tigana, her overwhelming reaction was one of immense release. It was only seeing how relieved she was to be leaving her old school that we really appreciated how much pressure she had been under. Of course she is sad about leaving her friends and a classroom she knows, and nervous about the transition, but she is also extremely excited.

Tigana's new principal immediately impressed us with his attitude and professionalism. And from all accounts, the teacher to whom he has assigned Tigana is a pretty good fit for our daughter. (As soon as we mentioned her name to another parent, she told us that last year that teacher had invited her grade 1 class to her wedding and set up a table of activities for them. Any teacher who would think of her "kids" on her wedding day is okay by me!)

We are doing what we can to ease the transition, and since her birthday comes exactly in the middle of the move, we've told her she can have two parties: one with the friends she's leaving, and one with the girls in her new class. (Since we didn't think it appropriate to have kids bring presents to a child they had just met that week, we're going to do a gift exchange for the second party where everyone brings a gift, and then some sort of game that assigns the gifts randomly so every child leaves with a present. And we're taking the girls to the local rock climbing wall which we hope isn't an idea that has already been done to death in her new school. Hopefully the party will be a good way to meet the other kids and parents in Tigana's class.) Tigana has a few friends who attend that school already, but it remains to be seen if any of them will be in Tigana's class.

So, on the bright side, we are cautiously optimistic that we have taken the appropriate action to address the problems facing Tigana; on the down side, there is little we can do about Kasia's health problems but wait to see what develops and what diagnosis we're handed.

Collapse of Charter Schools

Interesting story in NY Times on collapse of Charter Schools. Of course, as any sociologist could have told you, publicly funded but privately run schools represent the importation of private sector logic into the public sector and is therefore essentially inherently contradictory. So no surprises here! But it is validating, if slightly depressing, to have my predictions proved correct once again. Too bad no one ever listens to us before the disaster hits....

Generational Knowledge

When I started teaching at UofL only 5% of my students (or anyone else for that matter) had even heard of the Internet. One of the things I used to like to do to shake up my student teachers was to show them a picture of my 2-month old playing on the computer (literarlly before she could walk or even sit by herself) and suggest that if they wanted to keep up with the students they would be teaching, they had better start becoming computer literate now. Well, that 2-month-old is now a six-year-old entering Grade 1 with an easy familiarity with computers that many senior teachers have still yet to master, and computer literacy has become a defacto entrance requirement to the faculty. But I found a new item to get my student teachers' attention: a Discovery toy DNA sequencer.

I have to admit, this one even makes my brain hurt. But it shows you that the next generation of kids will come into our classrooms taking for granted knowledge and skills that barely existed when we were in school.... Consequently, it is not enough to equip teachers with the latest current skill set; they have to be able to anticipate and start preparing to teach the next generation of kids skills that don't even exist yet-- which means the teachers we graduate have to be lifelong learners and willing to retool every few years.

Comment by P. Freeman, High School Physics Teacher
(Comment was too long to fit in comment function.)
What strikes me as strange is that this DNA sequencer is being offered at
the same time that it has become effectively impossible to buy, say, a
chemistry or mechano set.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this works against there is an
implicit assumption in the demonstrations you refer to (whether
computer-baby or DNA sequencer) that the alteration in background is a
progressive or intensifying one. I'm not convinced that there is significant
alteration in DEGREE of learning (or in the kind of world) here... I think
that this (quite remarkable) toy is another point on a random walk in
'toy-space'.

What knowledge and approaches kids are presented with changes over time, but
is driven by trends in the perception of science and by fear of same -- not
by any progressive trend in society (or science itself), or any plan by
toy-makers. If something bad happens to create a negative emotional
association with DNA (and we can all think of several possibilitiesl) then
this toy will vanish, to be replaced by something else that will press the
"cool science" buttons of parents without triggering the "evil science"
alarm.

Thus the tools for learning which a child is exposed to will randomly change
with time, but not in a predictable way. It does not, therefore, follow that
kids in the future will have "knowledge and skills that barely existed", but
rather that they may have a randomly different set of knowledge and skills
than we do (or the students we think we will teach have).

This does not void the requirement for flexibility (For instance I'm already
having to look for a replacement for the "pikachu functions" I've been using
to teach quantum the past few years -- as pokemon fall from grace). What a
'random walk' means is that we cannot say simply "you must be lifelong
learners" but rather "you must learn *what your students have learned*". It
means that you cannot "anticipate and start preparing to teach", it means
you have to 'participate and keep winging it!' :)

New Technology and Education

You can't win in this technology race. I introduced a new weblog assignment this term, thinking that I was, if not cutting edge, at least near the front of the pack. Yesterday Holly Gunn, frontline correspondent of the technology wars, sent me an alert on the NEW BIG THING, swikis:
Swiki Swiki
and
Seiki/Coweb

Trying to predict the long term consequences of these emergent technologies on education, learning, and schooling is challenging. But one thing is clear. The Internet has now entered the second phase of technological innovation: in the first stage of any new technology, the new form tries to fill the existing niches; in the second phase it stops trying to pretend that it was another version of some existing technology, and comes into its own. For example, when metalurgy first appeared, people tried to make metal pots look like pottery ones or faked wood finishes etc. It took awhile for people to value metal AS unapologetically metal. Same thing for plastic. Early plastic stuff had to pretend to be metal or wood paneling -- no one wanted a plastic dashboard in their car, they wanted the wood paneling so we get plastic wood. Eventually, plastic stops trying to pretend to be wood or metal and we get the IMac.

Same thing with new communication technology. Up until now, all the on-line courses I have seen have tried to duplicate classroom conditions as closely as possible. There has been a lot of nonsense spouted about creating virtual classrooms, about how listserves and chat rooms can recreate classroom discussion for on-line courses, how using video conferencing can create classroom like conditions for distance learners and so on. This was largely wrong-headed. The technology never REALLY recreated the classroom, because touching a screen is NOT like touching a person. But more importantly, one has to ask what was so great about classrooms we'd want to recreate them? Classrooms weren't doing the job for large segments of the population. There is not a lot of concrete evidence that people learned best in classrooms. classrooms were the industrial era's response to the need for mass education, and as a factory, classrooms worked adequately but may not be the best format for post industrial age. So why all this energy expended to recreate classrooms? I have argued (not that many technology in education conferences wanted to listen) that by trying to recreate the old forms in the new, we were limiting the real potential of these technologies, though I admit I wasn't clear on what that potential might be. But we begin to see in Blogs, and even more with Swikis, how students could work collaboratively to create a community of learners without the need for classrooms, classroom teachers, or schools. What that means for our world in the long run is something for my SF writer colleagues to digest, but it is pretty obvious that the world is changing.