June 3, 2013 Leave a Comment

More Tech is Better, Right Kid?

If you watch any American TV without the benefit of a DVR, by now you’ve seen those AT&T ads featuring a group of cute kids being asked by an adult whether more is better than less, faster better than slower or [insert other quantitative contrasts here].

They grab your attention but I also found something slightly off about them. Larry Cuban is also irritated by the ads and does a good job of articulating why.

I have watched these ads many times and I finally put my finger on what bothered me about them. What got to me was not that the values of speed and quantity were being reinforced with kids – hey, the first-graders’ responses are cute and you gotta smile when you see a gap-toothed little kid jump up and down in excitement. What bothered me was the degree to which the pervasiveness of beliefs in technology and its generous fruits are held in America and is now peddled to all of us explicitly without a blink or doubt… by first graders.

There’s really nothing new in that attitude. Many people (although certainly not all) have always accepted the idea that simply incorporating the latest technology can somehow improve our lives and society. More is better than less, newer is better than old, high tech is better than low.

Certainly that has been true about education in my lifetime as schools enthusiastically bought into film, television, computers, the internet, and now tablets and online courses, based on loud claims from advocates (and corporations) that doing so would revolutionize both teaching and learning.

It hasn’t happened, of course, but not because each of the new mediums didn’t bring important changes. Unlike society in general, which is usually forced to change in some way as a result of the impact of new technologies (sometimes in painful ways), our educational system is very good at blocking alterations to the “normal” classroom structure, regardless of the impact being made in the real world.

By the way, have you wondered whether those ads are really unscripted? Yeah, me too.

Tags: , , ,
June 1, 2013 4 Comments

Replacing Reader

Assuming no change of heart on the part of Google (not likely), one month from today Reader will disappear, taking with it the capabilities of many RSS aggregators on all platforms. As I ranted about soon after the announcement in March, this particular hole in the cloud will wipe out a key component in the information management process of many people, some of whom I think don’t even know they’re using Reader and will be very surprised on July 1.

Google reader icon scalable by lopagof

Of course, RSS as a technology will not vanish with the shut down of Reader and sites will not stop publishing feeds of their content, so it’s just a matter of time, and a lot of work, until robust replacement services become available. But that’s not likely to happen in the next month.

So, what are the options in the meantime?  For my personal needs, I’ll be using Feedly.

They have the advantage of already offering good plugins for the major browsers combined with solid apps for iPhone and iPad (plus Android and Kindle). In a blog post following the Google announcement, the developers claimed that transitioning to their service would be simple as long as users linked to their Reader accounts before the shut down.

The big downside, which will keep me searching for something better, is that Feedly is free to the end user. I’ve become very wary of free software and services that have no apparent plan for supporting the company. Eventually, they either disappear (or get bought and disappear) or start throwing ads at me, in which case the advertisers become their customers, not me.

Other negatives are that this is a proprietary service, meaning that other apps probably won’t be able to use the syncing capabilities with a different, maybe improved interface, and it does not yet support linking to some of the other services in my information flow.

For the long run, I’ll be watching the potential Reader replacement being built by the company behind the social news service Digg. In May they also bought Instapaper, another service I depend on and which has some interesting possibility for an intersection with an RSS syncing service.

I’ll also be taking a closer look at Feed Wrangler and Feedbin, neither of which are free (the under $20 annual fee is reasonable if the value is there). Both also allow developers to connect applications to their services, including some I already use.

If you need more alternatives to explore, there’s Newsblur, another paid service ($24 a year) with a free version limited to 64 feeds (about 1/3 of what I have), although a rather ugly interface. Or The Old Reader, which bills itself as “the ultimate social RSS reader” but has no mobile apps yet. Or for the very geeky, Fever, RSS syncing software you install on your own server.

I’m sure there are more alternatives in the works, likely with a few interesting innovations. But whatever you decide to do for your RSS aggregation needs, one thing that all Reader users should do right now is export their data from Google while you still can. They make it very easy, starting on this page.

Tags: , , ,
May 14, 2013 Leave a Comment

Learning 16th Century Skills

Although the language of education changes over time, some educliches just seem to endure far past the point of holding any real meaning. And one my favorites* seem to be making a big comeback around here: 21st century skills.

Recently our department here in the overly-large school district was given the areas on which we are to focus in the coming year (and maybe beyond, depending on how long the current big boss is in his position), and listed in several places is that phrase. Associated with it is our task: “Identifying strategies for teacher to use to integrate communications, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity skills into the curriculum”.

Beyond the constant use of a vaguely defined phrase that is at least 12 years past it’s expiration date, there are two major problems with this particular element of our discussion.

First, none of those skills are unique to the 21st century. A successful person at any point in human history was skillful at communicating, working with others, critically assessing the world, and finding creative ways to deal with new situations. They also made use of whatever technologies were available at the time to do all that. We want our kids to do the same throughout their lives with the most effective tools they have at hand.

An even larger issue is that last part about integrating all those skills “into the curriculum”.

Our curriculum, as in most K12 institutions in this country, is still very much a teacher-directed, fact-driven relic of the previous century. Or maybe even from the 19th. Everything is laid out in the “program of studies” and “pacing guides”, scripts that set the content and direction of learning from day one through day 180.

However, there’s a big disconnect. Those so-called “21st century” skills (aka the “4 C’s”) are best learned by doing. By interacting with ideas and solving problems that don’t necessarily have one simple answer. By finding and assessing information, and then creating new ways to use and communicate it.

If we are really serious about students learning these “new” skills, the current curriculum is largely worthless. It is chock full of easily googleable trivia and the primary skill being taught is how to play the testing game, to analyze packaged questions and select the “right” answers.

We need to totally rethink the definition of what is essential for students to know and be able to do when they graduate and that will not come from trying to graft a collection of cliches to the antiquated process we now call school.

* If by “favorite” you mean I want to scream whenever someone uses it.

Tags: , , , ,
March 10, 2013 3 Comments

Our Biannual Stupidity

Daylight Saving Time is one of the dumbest ideas ever created by man.

But that’s just my opinion. Here’s what a scientist with expertise in the matter has to say.

Whether or not DST saves energy [it doesn't] is the least of the reasons why it’s a bad idea. Much more important are the health effects of sudden, hour-long shifts on our bodies and minds. Chronobiologists* who study circadian rhythms know that for several days after the spring-forward clock resetting – and especially that first Monday – traffic accidents increase, workplace injuries go up and, perhaps most telling, incidences of heart attacks rise sharply. Cases of depression also go up. As the faint light of dawn starts preparing our bodies for waking up (mainly through the rise of cortisol secretion), our various organs, including the heart, also start preparing for increased function. If the alarm clock suddenly rings an hour earlier than usual, a weak heart can suffer an infarct.

The reason for negative health effects of DST is that, in essence, the entire world is jet-lagged for a few days. Unlike some animals, like honeybees and reindeer, humans have a very robust circadian clock system that resists abrupt shifts.

DST is a relatively recent invention in human history. In the US, Arizona, Hawaii, and some counties in Indiana refuse to go along with the system, and it’s not used at all in most non-western nations, including China, India and Russia.

It’s not likely our Congress critters would consider dropping the tradition since they can’t get organized enough to work on the real business of the country. Besides, too many of them don’t believe in anything to do with scientific evidence.

However, the keeping of time is basically a concept that’s been determined by society as a whole over the centuries. I wonder what would happen if enough of us just decided to leave the clocks alone next fall.

Think about it, people.

* Chronobiology is a field of biology that examines periodic (cyclic) phenomena in living organisms and their adaptation to solar- and lunar-related rhythms.

Tags: , ,
February 25, 2013 Leave a Comment

21st Century is Done

For anyone else who is sick of educational “leaders” mindlessly spouting off about “21st century” something, send a link to this piece from The Huffington Post to all of them.

I’m tempted to send just the opening paragraph to our new superintendent and assorted assistant supers prior to the district’s leadership conference next August.

It’s not rational, but I’ll admit that whenever I hear “21st century classroom” or “21st century skills” — I tense up. Why? Because we are starting the 13th year of this “future” century. It’s empty phraseology designed to sound like we are preparing for the future when we are already living in that future; and no one believes that what passes for a typical classroom today will be the classroom experience even 10 years from now, let alone for the next 87 years. We can’t know what the classroom will look or feel like. We do know, however, that most school districts are organized to deliver education that inhibits rather than encourages innovation. That needs to change.

Real change. Not more of the empty phraseology lurking behind the common-corization, race-to-the-topping of American education. 

Tags: , ,
February 3, 2013 4 Comments

Educon: Unraveling the Textbook

It’s been a week since returning from Educon1 and, although I have managed to read a few of the wonderful reflections written by others, I’m just now sifting through my notes and thoughts about the sixth edition of this remarkable event.

One session that won’t get out of my head was the Unraveling the Textbook2 discussion lead by John Pederson and Diana Laufenberg. Our starting point was the premise that access to information has changed radically in the past couple of decades but the  textbooks used by most students have not.

It’s a topic I’ve reflected on and ranted about in this space and it was great to hear from a variety of perspectives, both about why the current model is broken and how the format needs to change. But we, of course, didn’t find any solutions in only 90 minutes.

However, the comments of one teacher in the group more than halfway through the discussion stood out as both contrary to the prevailing thoughts and as a good reminder of how most of us in the room were a little bit ahead of our colleagues.

She observed, in effect, that everyone wanted to take away textbooks without having anything ready to replace them. It’s a good point and one that would probably be echoed by a majority of teachers. As we’ve experimented with online textbooks in our district, I know many in the schools would rather just have the paper versions back.3

One random idea I tossed out to begin to address that issue was to abandon the term “textbook” altogether. It carries too much baggage with most people and is too often used to define the curriculum for a particular course of study.

So, what do we replace it with? Towards the end of our short session, I wrote down some ideas that I will need to explore and expand on:

A replacement for the textbook should

  • be accessible on any device, anywhere
  • allow users to add comments
  • allow certain users (teachers, trusted students) to add and update materials
  • have a social media component to allow users to discuss the materials
  • have content controlled by educators, not publishers

Nothing particularly revolutionary, just some random thoughts. The whole topic needs the collective efforts of many smart educators like the ones who shared in our discussion at Educon.

1 Really? Where the hell did this week go??

2 Don’t bother clicking on the link for the recording on that page. For one thing the sound didn’t work. But beyond that, most Educon sessions are conversations, not presentations, and capturing those interactions on video are difficult at best.

3 Our math teachers will get that wish as our school board got tired of hearing from complaining parents and voted to buy regular books to “supplement” the online versions.

Tags: , , , ,
September 23, 2012 5 Comments

Some Flipped Thoughts

I spent most of yesterday at a conference dealing with the “flipped” classroom. It’s not an easy concept to explain in one or two sentences but the implementation most of us have heard about is where students are expected to do some basic learning outside of class (often by viewing videos) and then class time is used for more interactive activities.1

Flipped learning is certainly interesting approach to changing the traditional teaching process and all of the teachers I met at the conference are very interested in improving their practice as well as the learning of their students.

Even so, there are still a couple of fundamental things about this concept that bother me.

One is that, even with all the talk of change, the teacher is still in control, both of the curriculum and how it’s presented.  Real change will start with a serious reevaluation of what we expect students to learn during their time in K12 and that process must involve the kids themselves.

The second thought running through my head all Saturday is that the technology is still largely in the hands of the teacher. What about kids creating video, both to express their learning and teach each other? Maybe include projects of their choice, instead of the same assignment done by everyone.2

Anyway, I need to dig into flipped learning more and keep an eye on what teachers do with it. It could be a great way to shake up traditional classroom practice but I don’t believe it rises to the level of revolutionary. So much more needs to change as well.

1 If you’d like to dig deeper into the concept, take a look at the site of the Flipped Learning Network, the organization that presented the conference.

2 I’d love to see the Google 20% concept applied in high school, with the proper guidance, of course.

Tags: , ,
«Older Posts