web2.0
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Even if my recent “Politics Around the Web” posts have turned you off, I hope you noticed that they are a model of a very simple activity for any number of classes - current events, politics, science and math news, more - that want students to read and exhibit critical thinking about what they read. I say “simple” because all it takes is a Google News account, a Diigo account, and a blog.
This screencast shows you how it works, compliments of screencast-o-matic and Blip.tv:
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If you like this post, please spread it: 
(But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
7 Comments
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At October 19, 2008, M. Walker wrote:
Clay,
Very nice! I'm speaking to some student bloggers on Tuesday, reading from a blog and sharing my thoughts, and I may have to share this with them. I'm thinking of using some of the Michelle Bachman material coming out of Minnesota...can you say Joe McCarthy?
Mike
M. Walkers last blog post..Wordle
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At October 19, 2008, Seadey Says 10/18/2008 « Seadey Says wrote:
[...] Creating Critical Readers: A Too-Easy Diigo-Google News-Student Blog Assignment | Beyond School - Annotated [...]
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At October 19, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Did you see VandenHeuven's reply / debate after that interview?
You're right, it's the perfect current event to connect to McCarthyism. Ooh, and she's from your state, isn't she?
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At October 19, 2008, Louise Maine wrote:
I would never characterize what you present as wacky ideas as you continue to stretch our minds on the possibilities. As my students are working with another class on animal classification and research into an endangered or exotic animal on a wiki, the natural extension would be on threats to biodiversity. Generally, they would prepare a statement as to their thoughts on the subject. Your approach would show reasoning on both sides that led to the students decision and is a great way to show and demonstrate critical thinking. As always, The true gain is in your thoughts and generosity in showing the process despite the issue.
Louise Maines last blog post..NEBSA Source for Learning challenge
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At October 20, 2008, M. Walker wrote:
Yes, she came out of our state legislature, where she led the charge against gay marriage and other "anti-American" activities. Famous for molesting Bush after a State of the Union Address...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqSjtIivjnQ
Mike
M. Walkers last blog post..Wordle
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At October 21, 2008, Maggie wrote:
Great idea, Clay! A great way to entice students to stay engaged with current events and cultivate research and critical thinking skills!
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At October 22, 2008, Creating Critical Readers: A Too-Easy Diigo-Google News-Student Blogging Project | Beyond School wrote:
[...] is a cached version of http://beyond-school.org/2008/10/18/diigo-blogging-current-events. Diigo.com has no relation to the [...]
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Earlier this week, I had the honor of giving a talk at the opening of the Microsoft Research New England Lab. I have uploaded a crib of that talk, entitled "Understanding Socio-Technical Phenomena in a Web2.0 Era" for anyone who is interested in what I had to say. The abstract is here:
Web2.0 signals an iteration in Internet culture, shaped by changes in technology, entrepreneurism, and social practices. Beneath the buzzwords that flutter around Web2.0, people are experiencing a radical reworking of social media. Networked public spaces that once catered to communities of interest are now being leveraged by people of all ages to connect with people they already know. Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook enable people to map out their social networks in order to create public spaces for interaction. People can use social media to vocalize their thoughts, although having a blog or video feed doesn't guarantee having an audience. Tagging platforms allow people to find, organize and share content in entirely new ways. Mass collaborative projects like Wikipedia allow people to collectively create valuable cultural artifacts. These are but a few examples of Web2.0.
Getting to the core of technologically-mediated phenomena requires understanding the interplay between everyday practices, social structures, culture, and technology. In this talk, I will map out some of what's currently taking place, offer a framework for understanding these phenomena, and discuss strategies for researching emergent practices.
Videos of my talk along with the other talks at the event can be found here. For those interested in computer science education (or CS in general), I strongly recommend the one by Erik Demaine (where he makes a compelling case for how computer science is everywhere). For those into design, definitely check out the talk by Bill Buxton (where he refutes the notion that everyone is a designer). Both of these talks had me giggling and smiling for hours.
talk msr
John Larkin in Oz nudged me to consider playing with the idea he so creatively played with on his own site: “How Far I Roamed as a Child.”
John’s post gives the full background of the idea, and a nicely visual guided tour of his own childhood using personal photos and satellite imagery from Google Maps1. But this excerpt from John’s post brings out the historical and educational thrust of the idea:
[An] article in the Mail online, ‘How children lost the right to roam in four generations‘, is particularly telling. It sets out quite clearly how from one generation to the next children are not roaming as far as their parents and grandparents.
Firing up Google Maps and revisiting my elementary and junior high years’ stomping grounds in Tennessee was a blast - and as John seemed to understand by inviting me to play with his idea, it has all sorts of engaging applications for the writing classroom. One example is all I have time for at the moment, and it’s this: By typing in my childhood home address on Google Maps, then clicking “street view” and zooming and panning around a bit, I found, of all unremarkable things, the street-drainage ditch in front of my house, with its tunnel under the street to the other side, which I crawled through as a child surely hundreds of times - and up the hill from that, in what was once my yard, the grandest hickory tree you could ever imagine, whose autumn leaves I and my brother and sisters and parents and dogs raked into piles (okay, the dogs didn’t rake), dove into, splashed around in like leafy surf, on and on. Here’s a screenshot:
The Ditch, the Hickory, the Memory Flood
Wouldn’t This Work in the Writing Classroom?
The photo above may not do anything for you, and it shouldn’t. But me? I can hear the flung rocks echoing from the tunnel, smell the algae in its puddles, remember the sense of mystery of the world opening out at tunnel’s end. For autobiography and personal narrative, again, this beats the utter hell out of brainstorming with pencil and paper about my childhood. Never in a hundred years would I have even remembered that ditch and tunnel. But now that I do, the related memories wax exponential. That ditch, for example: after a heavy rain, it was a child’s river, and so, with my best friend Gary (who drowned with his father a few summers later), we named that “river,” in a bit of blood-brother name-combining, the “Clary.” Again, just an example of how this goes beyond brain-storming to brain-flooding.
How Far I Roamed
Anyway, like John, man did I roam as a child. I must have walked four or five miles a day on average. Here’s Google Maps, with my first attempt to use Adobe Illustrator for labels and arrows, to show the details (click image for larger view, and note the key in the lower left corner):
How Far I Roamed: Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1960s and '70s
(And for the students out there who read this, let me know: do you roam as far these days? Or have you “lost the right to roam”? And Dad: you can comment too, you know. How far did you roam as a child, on a daily basis?)
If you decide to play with this meme, by the way, please link it to John’s original post. It’s his baby, and it’s a good one.
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If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)
- including the astonishing “street view” which, as the name implies, puts you in the perspective of a photographer standing on whatever spot of road you choose, and allows you to pan 360°, tilt up and down, zoom in, “walk” up or down the street
12 Comments
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At August 19, 2008, davidcosand wrote:
I grew up in a very rural setting; my parents still own about 80 acres of Oregon farmland. Some of my favorite memories involve the nighttime "maneuvers" my friends and I would go on. We'd don our stealth clothes and play intricate games of hide and seek in the surrounding fields. My mom always called the neighbors – especially Mr. Arbuckle, who had a quick trigger finger – to let them know that any strange noises were probably the result of boys sneaking around.
Now, as the father of two boys and two girls, I have a hard time imagining giving them the same freedom to be out at all hours of the night without adult supervision. Sure, the world has changed…but I have no doubt that my children are missing out on a rich tapestry of memories.
Reading your post, along with Larkin’s original, I’m inspired with new angles of approach to our class focus on personal and regional histories and the authentic writing tie-ins possible. I’m interested to discover the roaming ranges of my students and what those paths mean to them. I love how real life and the connections of conversation so eloquently inform and deepen learning. Thank you for an exciting new line of instructional possibilities.
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At August 19, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:
Once again, an intriguing post, and one that has both my neocortex and amygdala firing away. I may need two cups of coffee before I'm through.
First, the neocortex:
What's not to love? Brain-flooding based on new technology tied to instructional strategies keeps the schools humming.
Progress! Writing! Google! Budgets justified, curricula met, classes engaged. I'd have to wipe a tear of happiness from my eye as the principal walks in to witness this miracle in the classroom, having interrupted his day when he learned of the miracle in the science wing.
(Despite my crankiness, I have to admit I'll likely try this in the classroom before the year is out--it's a great tool.)
So why is my amygdala doing its own brain-flooding, clouding my brain with emotional energy, emitting vague noises that my neocortex interprets as obscenities? Here it goes:
1) Clay, those of us who wandered in the 60's and 70's have memories tucked away worth flooding. We're grown-ups. Our memories are not screen memories, not ear bud memories.
We wandered all over, and we did wonderful (and wonderfully stupid) things. We played with living and dead animals, we nearly drowned (and some of us did) or nearly got killed on a bike or a sled (and some of us did). We got lost without phones or GPS or even (gasp) a dime to call home. We ate unwashed fruit off the trees. We had our Suicide Hill. We ate apples and homemade popcorn balls made by strangers on Hallowe'en. We mixed blood as blood brothers.
We lived.
Most of us, anyway.
And each of us will die. We are mortal critters.
The myth, the Great Myth, is that the world is more dangerous now. It is safer, far safer, at least in this part of the world, but it can never be truly safe, and we lose something trying to pretend otherwise.
Growing up, kids in our occasionally died growing up--one kid ran his sled under a parked car (no supervision), another kid got killed by an errant bat (no helmet), another broke his neck diving into a tidal creek at low tide (he died a few years later--a fine reminder for the rest of us to get a grip on tides), a classmate died of leukemia, another on a skateboard.
A morbid list, but not a prelude to return to the Olden Days. The point is this: not one abduction by a stranger, not one death from the razor blade hidden in the apple, not one drug pusher said "Hey, kid, try this..."
Our biggest fear was The Stripper, a man who supposedly lived in the woods and would make you take off your clothes. ("Don't walk alone in the woods," pretty good advice when you're eleven.)
Were there sexual predators? Of course. Are there now? Yep, with even better access to children.
2) I read your post, and as I got deeper into it, I'm nodding and thinking, yes, Clay's going to say something pithy and confirm my world view (why else wile away summer morning hours on a machine?)
(You write so well I bet I would enjoy a tech manual on how to replace a timing chain written by you.)
I thought you were going to suggest that we push the children outside, and let them roam again, so that they have brain-floods of thoughts beyond photon memories, memories framed by whatever size screen their family or district could afford.
What I fear now is that kids will find their homes on the "street view" and somehow feel "more" validated.
And the amygdala fires off another neuron or two.
3) Administrators will have to block your site because you advocate unsafe mixing of bodily fluids.
4) I love Google. I fear Google. Having a whole class of students type in this kind of information from various sites is powerful data.
Google's not getting rich just because of a fancy pants search engine. A good chunk of their "value" comes from big investors who get the data thing.
How confused am I? I want to be a Google certified teacher. I use Google in the classroom, and not just the search engine. I get lost for hours playing with a variety of their tools.
Google knows more about me than my mother did. And only a ragged remnant tucked in my amygdala even cares anymore, and my neocortex cannot remember why anymore.
And in another generation, the first generation raised by the generation that spent most of its conscious hours at work or at school or in front of a monitor, will no longer even ask why we do not roam anymore.
(And now a completely off-topic apology--I am sorry I linked your thoughts with John Taylor Gatto's. I might even fix the reference if I am ever caffeinated enough to sustain goal directed activity for more than 47 seconds.)
Michael Doyles last blog post..A Bloomfield menagerie: praying mantis
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At August 19, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Sorry both of you to shoot off a brief reply. Busy tonight.
@David, it was nice to roam with you through Oregon past. Nicely written (and so much more evocative than your original Twitter respones ;-) ).
@Doyle, my Apple dictionary says the amygdala is associated with the sense of smell, so I'm sort of lost. But that's okay and not unusual anyway.
The "how far did you roam" frame sort of implies the "get outside and roam" message, or so I hoped.
And Google? A scary beast, yes - but we're all mortal, and to me, I'll add it to the list of fears to ignore in order to enjoy the present. You know, traffic, baseball bats, parked cars, etc.
Funny coincidence: I was reading your latest posts while you were apparently commenting on mine. Such a lovely voice,
to unintentionally quote Blake's "Little Lamb.". (Update: oops, Blake used "tender," not "lovely." Never mind.) -
At August 19, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Oh, and Doyle: I'd love to talk with Gatto. Agree with much of what he says, but just wish he'd consider his basic ideological assumptions more critically than it seems to me he has. Overall, I admire the guy, to be clearer.
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At August 19, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Oh and #2: Doyle, can you tell me where I advocate "unsafe mixing of bodily fluids?" I'm laughing as I type!
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At August 19, 2008, Michael Doyle wrote:
#1)More about the amygdala soon, I'm off to meet with a teacher about overhauling our curriculum, but for now, know that it is the part of the primitive brain that has long neural connections to the cortex, and is indeed where smell "sensations" pass through (and back) on the way to our "higher" part of our brain, It also appears to be the seat of fear and rage, as much as anything can be seated in our brain.
If you remove a rat's amygdala, it will not run from a cat. (Which brings memories now of my mother singing "...and up on his haunches he sat, singing in the pale moonlight, bring out the goddamn cat" or something like that.;)
#2) Given our generation, I took the "blood-brother name-combining" naming of your stream literally. And, of course, memories rushed in of the moments just before you prick yourself, to mix your blood with your eternal friend, becoming blood brothers.
Or maybe we were just stupid literal kids with too much time on our hands--I think eventually every boy in the neighborhood had mixed blood with every other one within a grade or two in years.
But if I'm an administrator, I'm playing it safe and removing it anyway--cannot have too much safety in this world.
(Shoot...late...hit submit and run!)
Michael Doyles last blog post..A Bloomfield menagerie: praying mantis
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At August 20, 2008, Claire Thompson wrote:
This meme really seems to have grabbed people, myself included. When I was a kid my family moved around a bit (each of my dad's promotions meant a new town) so tonight after reading your post I hopped onto Google maps to check out each of my old neighbourhoods. I thought I'd like to see in which town I had the longest walk to school. To figure out the distances quickly I used Gmaps Pedometer. It's a great web app I started using a while ago to figure out how long my run routes are.
I wasn't surprised at my longest walk; 3.6 km (2.3 mi) when I lived in North Vancouver, BC. But I could have sworn that the walk to my elementary school in Prince George BC was longer than 0.7 km (0.4 mi)! I guess the pretty cold winters (-20C was usual) coupled with high snowbanks and short legs skewed my sense of distance ;-)
Anyway, I just wanted to share the Gmaps Pedometer link with those who are interested in taking on this meme. Thanks for the term 'brain flooding', and for the prod to take some walks down memory lane.
Claire Thompsons last blog post..Combatting Teacher Burnout
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At August 20, 2008, John Larkin wrote:
Thanks Clay for taking it up. Your stories of the ditch and the drain bring back memories of Cabbage Tree Creek for me. We sued to ride our bikes down a path and into the creek for a few metres up. Crazy. Riding one's bike down the main target hill of the old rifle range was also a bit hairy too. I think I soiled my BVDs on my first effort. After that you could not stop me.
David: Loved reading your story of stealthy adventures. We used to play Phantom Agents as kids. My brother Peter even made some star knives. http://home.alphalink.com.au/~roglen/phantom.htm
Michael: Great stories. Real stuff. Life. Happiness. Tragedy. We used cardboard or masonite sleds to ride down sand, not snow. If there was a hill we would find a way to slide down it.
Claire: Those walks did always seem so long yet as we grow older those same walks become our old friends.
Cheers, John.
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At August 20, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Thanks for that, Claire. I just used the pedometer instead of eye-balling the distances and like you, found them shorter than I thought. I guess years and miles grow shorter with age.
There's no way I'm going to fight Adobe Illustrator to correct the text on my map, though ;-)
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At August 22, 2008, Jason Green wrote:
Clay,
This was an odd memory stirrer for me, because rather than thinking of my own childhood, I noticed that my first place in Chattanooga (by which point I was married and in my late 20's) was just off your map. BTW, Eastgate is a ghost mall now. Everything has moved northeast around Hamilton Place.
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At August 27, 2008, Far From Home « Edumacation Of Moi wrote:
[...] today in a blog I just found, about how far one roamed as a child. The bloggers (John Larkin and Clay Burell)who wrote the original posts are probably in the 30-40 age range, solidly marking them as an older [...]
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At August 27, 2008, Your page is now on StumbleUpon! wrote:
[...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]
Last night, I went to bed watching girls' gymnastics. I found myself very irritated. There were 24 girls in the finals, but NBC focused only on those that they thought would medal. The result is that there was tremendous downtime that the announcers filled with speculation, gossip, and historical reminiscing. I was quite irritated because what I wanted was to see more gymnastics. Anyone who is at the Olympics has to be fascinating to watch - why only focus on those who are likely to medal?
Come to think of it, everything about how NBC has covered the Olympics has been abysmal. Last weekend, I was with a hardcore copyright conservative who kept arguing that people watching the opening ceremonies online were cheating NBC out of money. I countered that what these people were doing was indicating what the market wanted. Many were happy to watch the Chinese CCTV version live instead of waiting until what NBC declared to be "primetime." Personally, I was quite annoyed with NBC starting around 5.30AM when we woke up to watch the opening ceremonies only to learn that they weren't covering it live. So, logically, we went to NBC's homepage to see if they were streaming it live. No. That's where I think that NBC fucked up royally. I don't know why they decided that the Today Show was more important than the opening ceremony, but they did. Still, there was no reason to not stream it live on their website. I would've happily sat through dozens of commercials to see it live. Instead, I TiVoed it and watched it sans commercials. Big win on NBC's part, right?
What NBC has tried to do is configure its viewers. They've told everyone how they should watch the Olympics and are peeved when people have a different idea of how they want to watch this symbol of nationalism. Normally, the people have no choice. Yet, because of the Internet, there's a lot of push for alternatives. Of course, personally, I'm just angry and annoyed. I can think of so many ways that NBC could've handled this better. What I want is Olympics 2.0.
I want an Olympics where the "best" is broadcast on TV, like now. But I also want an interactive version. Take gymnastics. I want to know on each apparatus who is up live. And I want to be able to switch between different cameras and choose my own view through the stadium so that I can watch whichever competitor I want. I want to be able to watch live, all day, on ALL sports (even judo and the other weird ones where Americans are not so present). I want interactive live and I want to be able to pull down and follow any individual Olympian or team through their events at a later point. I want the Olympics to be treated as a bunch of spliceable objects that I can remix live for my own viewing pleasure. And I want to be able to see it ALL. Is that that hard to ask for? Hell, I'd be willing to pay for such interactive watching options. And I'd certainly be willing to watch ads to see things LIVE. But boy does it annoy me to watch a "live" NBC broadcast that is already well reported on in the NYTimes.
So can I please have Olympics 2.0? And dear International Olympic Committee, please don't sell exclusive rights to the next Olympics to an organization who is doing more to curtail and configure access than to engage the market the way that they want to be engaged. And NBC, would you stop being so antiquated and leverage new media for what it's good for?
olympics media
Web Legacies Audience
1. Why I Like the Assignment
Again, this series was originally assigned by Dr. Tonya Huber, for a multi-culturalism in education class I took in Mallorca, Spain, five or six summers back. It was an intensely engaging project, so let me summarize the process for anybody interested in the pedagogy:
- Select any personal belonging as an “artifact” of who you are - or were.
- Write about it in the personal narrative genre, but connect it in some way to teaching and/or learning.
- Identify key factors of culture represented by your artifact, and the experience for which it is an emblem. Touch upon those when you write.
That’s about it. Though not part of the assignment, my own decision to select “artifacts” from early childhood to all later stages of my life made the assignment much richer. At the end of the ten pieces I wrote over eight weeks (and I decided against publishing the last two here because they seemed sub-par), I’d sketched out a series of memoirs that formed a skeletal autobiography. It’s not every class that affords an opportunity to write your entire life. And this is why, I think, those papers didn’t suffer the fate of most of my college writings, which I’d never dream of inflicting upon general readers. This assignment was different; it didn’t suffer from . . . what’s the word? . . . oh yes: schooliness.
2. How It Felt to Write Personal Narrative Instead of Edu-Stuff
Crickets aside, I have to admit it felt good. It raises an interesting dilemma for a guy who feels a bit cramped by the “edublogger” pigeonhole: Deliver what the imagined audience expects, or what the writer feels like writing? Just writing that opposition makes the dilemma less interesting by far: it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? As soon as I begin writing for someone else, I lose the essence of writing. So I suspect there will be more of these tangents in the future, and let the readers fall where they may.
Because I have to say: More and more, I feel like we get the technology and 21st century skills thing, and it’s threatening to become old hat. In a nutshell, with 30,000 or so new applications in development as we speak - and the number will surely only grow - it seems a fool’s errand to try to grab at them all. Further, all our tools seem reducible to a few modes (visual, textual, aural, kinesthetic), and a few skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening, and info-finding, -evaluating, and -managing). More and more I wonder if a few tools for each of these purposes aren’t easy enough to find at will, or simpler still, if most of us don’t already have a sufficient number in our tool-belts. I feel like I do, anyway, at least somewhat. And I feel a pull to pull back from the tools, and gravitate more toward meaning when I write.
I’m really much more interested in thinking critically about cultural factors that retard education than I am about tools that, used retardedly, enable us to learn conventional unwisdoms more efficiently. In other words, I want to fight the idols of the mind that we worship instead of question. Since I’ve quit education school-teaching and won’t work for schools again, I can speak the unspoken without fearing for my livelihood - which is the only explanation I can find for the deafening silences in educational weblogs about such idols as religion, patriotism, consumerism, workaholism, and the educational system itself. It seems to me that “21st Century Education” needs to question ideologies from the Hebrews and Romans to the Cold War far more than it needs to teach the uses of Twitter.
Still, I do use technology when I teach - have been using it in new ways over the last two weeks in my freelance teaching, in fact - so I’m sure I’ll share the occasional item about tech from time to time. But be warned: I have a box of old journals from the past 30 years. I suspect they’ll be fodder for more Web Legacies, more reflections of my history, and the roles of education and ideas in that history.
3. A Few Take-Aways I Offer from This Series
If you hadn’t noticed, I revealed in these posts that I was a pot-smoking, school-skipping, low-achieving high school student. For those of you who think punitively, that’s cause for suspension and a “bad boy” label. If you got nothing else out of reading this, just notice that that behavior was a mechanism for dealing with the hell that was life incarcerated in a public high school institution. If I’d had the choice to escape the two-years’ bullying by simply absenting myself from that environment, I quite likely would have felt little need for the pleasures of sedation brought by that weed. (It’s also interesting to note that the popular kids were all heavy drinkers, but that was somehow morally less scandalous than smoking marijuana, though to this day I don’t get the double-standard. I’ve always argued that “stoned drivers” at worst are a hazard because they drive a little too slow, as opposed to your daredevil drunk drivers. And rarely do you find a belligerent stoner getting in your face and wanting to fight1, the way our worst drunks do. Instead, you get a giggler or navel-gazer, who I’ll take, if forced to choose, every time.)
You also might notice that the only hero in the bad high school years was a closeted gay athlete. Yet another “bad sinner” to punish or, goodness help us, “convert” - or good young man to understand. Your choice.
I also revealed that I became an above average language user during my teens not by doing homework or assigned readings - I rarely did either, though it was easy enough to get that “A” on that Iliad paper by writing an essay on the Classics Illustrated Comics version of the epic - and that my literacy grew instead by reading (stolen) comic books and sci-fi/fantasy - and later, after high school, literature - with my friends, outside of school. So again, I’m left questioning the value of mandatory high school. I still lean toward the position that it retards growth, rather than accelerating it.
That’s about it for now. Finally:
4. Links to the Entire Web Legacies Series
1. Fear and Trembling at Camp Joy: Unborn Again
2. The Hulk Leads to Hamlet: Reading Despite Teaching
3. Of Jocks and Fags: The High School Bullying Years
4. In the Crumbling Temple of the Dead White Males: The Beatnik College Years, pt. 1
5. Human Sacrifice: The Academic College Years, pt. 2
6. Learning the Enemy’s Language: The Army Years, part 1
7. Teaching Killing: The Army Years, part 2
8. Stereotyping Soldier-Students: The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Classroom
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9 Comments
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At August 9, 2008, Harold Jarche wrote:
"In other words, I want to fight the idols of the mind that we worship instead of question." Could you imagine if schools only focused on one cognitive skill - critical thinking? You could still cover a myriad of topics, without the constraints of subject mastery. No matter what the subject, it's just grist for the cognitive mill (stole that line from Kieran Egan). If the mill can't process the stuff, it's of no use.
Harold Jarches last blog post..Blogs and social media for beginners
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At August 9, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Harold, That's so sane it's radical.
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At August 9, 2008, Paul C wrote:
'So again, I’m left questioning the value of mandatory high school. I still lean toward the position that it retards growth, rather than accelerating it.'
Summerhill school in England has the motto: 'where kids have freedom to be themselves.' They have a great site to see how essential decisions about their education rests with them. Spend some time at: http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/
Thanks for your Web Legacy Series; great introspective writing!
Paul Cs last blog post..Unleashing a Child's Creativity
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At August 9, 2008, Paul C wrote:
'So again, I’m left questioning the value of mandatory high school. I still lean toward the position that it retards growth, rather than accelerating it.'
For some, I think you are right. But for others depending upon the program and teachers, of course, it can lead to empowerment, to finding one strengths, and life long interests. Shaping a program to fit every student would be the ideal.
Summerhill is an interesting school in England which addresses the genuine interests of all its students. Their motto:where students are free to be themselves. It's worth taking a look at their website:
http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/
Enjoyed your 'web legacies' series very much.
Paul Cs last blog post..Unleashing a Child's Creativity
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At August 9, 2008, Nate Stearns wrote:
Thinks for sharing your ideas. It felt very English-teachery with all of the narratives and reflection. It's a great way to start thinking about school next year.
I've always thought it was interesting that you think that teachers don't comment on "such idols as religion, patriotism, consumerism, workaholism, and the educational system itself." My readings have suggested that if there was really a common thread on those topics it would be a pretty liberal, skeptical take on most of what you listed. How often do you read an edublogger saying, "Hey, American schools don't do a good enough job in persuading kids to love their country." It's possible that the great mass of edublogs are in this vein--but my RSS feed is missing them.
We teachers tend to be (but aren't always) garden-variety liberals (so am I) and your viewpoints seem to be reasonably similar but perhaps taken a bit farther. Is that fair to say?
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At August 10, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Paul, I agree that schools work for some (though perhaps no school would work for them as well?), and I share your interest in schools like Summerhill and Sudbury. I'm hoping to focus on them in depth in this space soon, and satisfy that curiosity.
@Nate, I can't say I'm aware of many e'bloggers that address the flag and the cross with anywhere near the levels of skepticism (or outright debunking) that they could receive. School reform in terms of technology, pedagogy, and so forth? Yes, we read a lot about that around here. But the sacred cows are rarely spitted for a bar-b-que. Or am I unaware of some feeds in your reader?
(BTW, "loving your country" is nothing objectionable, in my book. But jingoism and American exceptionalism are. That's what I had in mind with the "patriotism" reference.)
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At August 13, 2008, Legacy 9: On Traveling Blind (or, “The Reproductive Life of Stereotypes”) | Beyond School wrote:
[...] my Web Legacies Wrap-Up post, I said I'd decided against publishing the ninth and tenth "Culture Clip" pieces I wrote that [...]
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At August 14, 2008, On the Meaningful, in Quantum Contexts | Beyond School wrote:
[...] I feel a pull to pull back from the tools, and gravitate more toward meaning when I write. –Web Legacies Wrap-Up, 9 Aug [...]
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At August 16, 2008, Bill Farren wrote:
Clay: It does seem like many people get the tech and 21st century skills stuff, but unfortunately, that group (those who bounce around the edublogosphere, mostly) is but a very small minority of educators. It's scary how many people in positions to legislate what happens educationally, have absolutely no clue. Their sole goal seems to be, as you say, to perpetuate conventional unwisdoms more efficiently. The unquestioning masses (too often those charged with getting students to think critically) are only too happy to see any measure toward efficiency and novelty as a sign of progress.
Until schools decide to become places devoted to curiosity, joy, solving real problems, and the fostering of well-being, there will be plenty to write about.
Keep it coming.
Bill Farrens last blog post..Myth Busted
Isaac Newton famously stated, "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." This metaphor is commonly used to highlight the way that knowledge is not a single-author process. We build on what others do, explicitly and implicitly. While folks generally understand this, our culture focuses on the contributions of individuals. In the world of publishing, there is often a single author on the cover and little is known about the large and small contributions of a whole team of folks - the editors, the grad students, the reviewers, etc. (I especially love books "by" politicians where the ghost writer is never acknowledged.) More problematically, when people are measured by what they can attribute to themselves as individuals, there is pressure to either avoid collaborating with others or to steal credit. Neither of these are healthy.
I'm a big fan of collaboration and collective knowledge production and public good projects. This is one of the reasons that I love Wikipedia. Not only are Wikipedia entries the product of collective contributions, but both the small and large contributions are visible to all. Of course, contributing to Wikipedia needs to be an act of love because there are no traditional structures that reward such contributions. Wikipedia has its faults, but it is fundamentally the collaborative creation of a public good.
Google's Knol takes an entirely opposite approach to knowledge production. Knol's entire structure is built around single authors, control and individualism. There aren't even mechanisms for multiple authors and the tools available for collaboration are extremely limited. "Collaboration" still assumes a primary author. Linking between knols doesn't appear common and so there's no network of information. They key is authorship.
Since Knol launched in beta, folks have been comparing it to Wikipedia (although some argue against this comparison). Structurally, they're different. They value different things and different content emerges because of this. But fundamentally, they're both about making certain bodies of knowledge publicly accessible. They just see two different ways to get there - collaborative anarchy vs. controlled individualism. Because Knol came after Wikipedia, it appears to be a response to the criticisms that Wikipedia is too open to anonymous non-experts. The implication is that Wikipedia is the dribble of the unwashed masses. These same folks praise the control-centric Knol. Yet, I think Doc is right. A knol is quickly becoming a "unit of spam" instead of a unit of knowledge. Y'see - a system that is driven by individualism quickly becomes a tool for self-promoters. (And men...)
We're quite a few months into the Knol experiment. What I find particularly fascinating is that most of the knols that they promote on their front page are health-related, primarily by people who claim to have health-related expertise (doctors, nurses, professors) who appear to be copying/pasting from other places. Why health? What's motivating these people to contribute? (And why are they too lazy to fix the formatting when they copy/paste from elsewhere?)
Frankly, from my POV, Knol looks like an abysmal failure. There's no life to the content. Already articles are being forgotten and left to rot, along with a lot of other web content. There's no common format or standards and there's a lot more crap than gems. The incentives are all wrong and what content is emerging is limited. The expert-centric elitism is intimidating to knowledgeable folks without letters after their names and there is little reason for those of us with letters to contribute. While I don't believe in the wisdom of a crowd of idiots, I do believe that collective creations tend to result in much better content than that which is created by an individual hermit. (Case in point: my *$#! dissertation vs. any article I've co-authored.)
What makes me most annoyed about Knol though is that it feels a bit icky. Wikipedia is a non-profit focused on creating a public good. Google is a for-profit entity with a lot of power in controlling where on the web people go. Knol content is produced by volunteers who contribute content for free so that Google can make money directly from ads and indirectly from search traffic. In return for ?
When are we going to learn that the Internet is really good at collective action? When are we going to learn that getting people to develop and maintain bodies of knowledge on the Internet is an art? When the incentives are all wrong (e.g., Yahoo! Answers), the result is pure crap. When are we going to learn that experts alone never produce the best content? Hell, even a high school kid can improve most articles with some simple editing.
I don't think that Wikipedia is the end-all, be-all, but I do think that they've learned a lot over the years. And I think that we need to take what they've learned seriously and improve on it. I do think that Wikipedia could benefit from the contributions of experts and I would love to see folks think about how such contributions could be incentivized and rewarded. That said, I don't think that experts are enough. I think that they are only one part of the puzzle. I also think that Wikipedia is limited by its own scope. I'm glad that there are other projects under the Wikimedia Foundation, but I think that there need to be more and they need to be managed in context. For example, it's pretty clear that we need a WikiHealth. Of course, I think that this area needs to be addressed cautiously.
There are huge costs to having inaccurate information available when it comes to health. It's one thing to get the wrong diagnosis for your computer problem and accidentally destroy your machine. It's an entirely different reality to get the wrong diagnosis for your health problems and brick your body. You can say that people shouldn't take advice from the Internet, but be realistic. Our insurance/health system is so broken that most people can't afford to go to the doctors... and besides, doctors are amazingly good at being wrong. So what's the right structure for collective knowledge production around health? And no, Google, the answer is not people who self-report as doctors writing "definitive" entries about topics.
So, if I were to evaluate Knol, I'd give it a D. Maybe a C for effort, but points off for being so arrogant. Your thoughts?
knol wikipedia knowledge publicgood information
A little behind-the-scenes glimpse at the bridge-building I’ve been doing to market my tutoring service, and at the same time to share another Web 2.0 offering with teeth: the video-subtitling site called dotSUB.
One of the biggest challenges I face on this limb is communicating with Korean parents who I am, and how I’m different from most of the “I’ve got a college degree and speak English, but have no teaching experience at all” English teachers in Korea. The parents, understandably skeptical about foreigners claiming to be teachers, have a million questions that bear on their decision to hire me. But they don’t speak English, and I don’t speak Korean, so my poor wife is caught in the crossfire playing two-way interpreter. Since she’s not a teacher-geek, it’s both hard on and unfair to her to shoulder her with explaining blogs, wikis, Skype, etc, to parents - or even to explain my background and experience as a teacher.
Enter the wonderful world of Web 2.0, and dotSUB particularly.
I’ve got so many movies on this space, on YouTube and Google Video and BlipTV and Archive.org, all explaining and demonstrating my background, character, skills and abilities, and all of them would serve admirably to put many parent questions to rest - if only they were in Korean.
Well, thanks to a full day’s work transcribing my own videos first, 3-second clip by 3-second clip on dotSUB, my wife is now plugging in her own Korean translation on the site under each time-stamped subtitle. Here are the results of the first one, the first half of a teacher-training video I made a few years ago at Shanghai American School (where Jeff Utecht and Jonathan Chambers first served me the Koolaid) about collaborative team-teaching in the mainstreamed ESL classroom. (I was the ESOL department head and teacher-trainer then. Ignore the Southern Baptist look; I must have been feeling nostalgic for Camp Joy.)
Cooler still, anybody at dotSUB can freely add a translation in their own language - which others can edit, wiki-like. All translated languages would auto-add to the drop-down menu in the media player’s “languages” bar. Very cool.
I’ll show you a few more things as they come. But what do you think, I wonder, about applications of this site for foreign language classrooms? Food for thought there….
If you like this post, please spread it:
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In the Crumbling Temple of the Dead White Males
Artifact: Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Dates: 1980-present
I escaped high school and the American South the summer after I graduated. I arrived in Los Angeles on a Greyhound bus, educated in comic books, Tolkein and Frank Herbert, album-oriented rock music, the Ten Best Reasons to Escape the South, and the effects of a few popular recreational drugs. I also had the high school diploma I’d earned by not quitting school. I’d never seen a big city before. I’d never even been out of the South.
It took me a year to settle into Los Angeles enough to enter college. Midway through my first year I left class one day and didn’t go back. I don’t remember why, though I’m sure life got in the way somehow. So much for higher education.
My education in the literary classics actually began, true to pattern, outside of school. Beth, a girl in my apartment complex, was infatuated with an English grad student who to me seemed pretty infatuated with himself, judging by the reading list he gave her. Next to his entry on the list of Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” he had written some cryptic note to the effect that if Beth understood this story, she would understand him. She thought he was so important that she asked me to read the recommended books with her. Maybe I would help her unlock the mystery of this sage’s being.
I didn’t have anything better to do. Looking back, though, it’s hard to imagine Hemingway as a grad student.
Anyway, first on the list was Kerouac’s On the Road. This was fateful for me–fateful. I read it in complete, unguided isolation. Beth was too star-struck to read anything on this list critically, and all I knew, equally uncritically, was that I was reading a classic, I was reading Literature—and classic literature meant wisdom to me, and wisdom meant truth. So my first taste of truth and wisdom came from the seductive pen of this drug-addled hedonist’s glorification of the great speed-freak Neal Cassidy, as the two of them hitch-hiked across America seeking alternately mystical or sexual kicks. I bought it. Soon I was dressing like a French Beatnik unstuck in time, and writing narcissistic free verse poetry bad enough to make the angels weep.
I shared Kerouac with John, an L.A. surfer dude I worked with who had never read anything. But he enjoyed my influence (and I his), and off we went. We devoured the Beats that year and, as soon as I wrote his final junior college essay for him and he was out of school for the summer, we strapped on backpacks and hitch-hiked across America. And back. (It was the first of many such summer trips that decade, usually alone.)
Hitch-hiking didn’t work so well in the Yuppie ‘80s as it did in the post-War Beat ‘50s. The first day out of Los Angeles, we covered about 100 miles to the Mojave Desert, where we spent the next two days stranded on the side of the highway under the desert sun, sunburnt and sandy-eyed, watching hundreds of cars pass us with no interest at all. We were Beat alright. We split up at that point and crossed the rest of the country solo to meet on the other side. I was amazed at how many male drivers of blue and white collar backgrounds—husbands and fathers as a rule: a Mormon preacher in Utah, a real estate executive in Omaha, hard-hatted tobacco-spitting construction worker in Kentucy, truck-drivers from Nowhere and Everywhere—took me as a safe opportunity to slip out of the closet and suggest a little sex of one sort or another. Kerouac never wrote about that. Luckily, in the end they were all gentlemen who took no for an answer. (I was especially glad this was true of the rodeo cowboy in Colorado who wrestled bulls and broncos for a living. At 6’5” or so of steel-framed beef, he could have lifted me over his head and snapped me in two if he’d wanted to. Instead, he began sobbing, apologized for any offense, and told me that he would be rope-tied and castrated by the other cowboys if they ever found out. I wonder how many cowboys would actually have embraced him instead.)
At any rate, two or three years went by delving deeper into classic Beat wisdom. John and I starting smoking cigarettes as a stamp of culture. We were bona fide existentialists. We started reading different stuff—introductions to Buddhism, Hermann Hesse, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and such. Each book was wise and right and we had no doubt about it. We were young enough (only 20) to know that we knew everything.
At about that time, I sat one night in a Ship’s coffee shop (the closest thing to an intellectual French cafe L.A. had to offer at the time), chain-smoking with a bottomless fifty-cent cup of coffee, and improving myself through literature by reading, I believe, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. In walked a striking young African-American man (who turned out to be a fashion model, the son of a famous singer from the Jazz Age, and brother of another famous R&B female vocalist), who noticed me reading and struck up a conversation.
“No, no, no,” he said, “you’ve got it all wrong. Why are you reading all this 20th Century crap when you could be reading Homer and Shakespeare, the Bible and Spenser and Milton?”
“Tell me more,” I said. And he did. And did. And did. For several months he did. (He finally dismissed me to find a pupil who wasn’t straight, essentially.) He gave me a copy of Homer’s epics and we discussed them (rather, he talked and I listened). He gave me Plato, which was such a revelation and a joy that I took immediate action to create the maximum free time to study his works. I moved out of my apartment and into my beat old VW bus—it had a comfy bed in back and good closets and sound system—and I reduced my schedule at the restaurant I worked at to provide just enough money for gas, food, coffee shops, two types of smokes, and the complete works of Plato (plus savings for the next summer’s hitchhiking). My Beatnik influence was powerful enough to sanction this unconventional move. I parked on the side of the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu every night and read, and woke in the morning to emerge from my van onto the literal sands of my prime beachfront property. (It really wasn’t bad–I had a cooler and a beach chair. What more did I need?) I got through the complete works and left hazy marginalia on every page. I had a couple of mystical experiences becoming one with Plato’s forms.
My elitist mentor/suitor also gave me Beethoven symphonies, Mahler, Wagner (“Why are you listening to that modern, plebeian rock crap?” my mentor said. “Really, Clay.” He literally clucked as he shook his head). I sponged them up, and passed them on to John (who lived with his parents but often spent the night parked next to me in his own van). We discovered that Beethoven and Mahler - good god, Mahler! - were gods. We listened to them on the beach with double headphones in one Walkman. The finales would crank us up so much we’d normally run into the surf and clash like sumo wrestlers. We couldn’t imagine how our culture had cheated us of these treasures all our lives, and given us Ozzie Osborne instead. We pretty much abandoned rock and pop at that point, and I’ve never been able to get into it again since–though Jazz has long since eclipsed classical for me.
The awareness dawned on John and me that, if literature roughly began with Homer around the 7th Century BCE, we should be able to start there and just read right through until we reached our time period (thank god for the ‘Dark Ages’). So we tried it. It wasn’t easy, of course. It was impossible. We finally surrendered and admitted that we needed a framework and an experienced guide to give us context and titles so we’d get ‘the’ ‘whole picture.’ This gave us a reason to go to college. John changed his mind and decided to travel around the world that year, but I had no savings so I couldn’t join him. I went back to college alone.
I loved it. I finally had that love of literature—not just comics and science fiction anymore. It made me want to study literature and want to write about it. (It is worth repeating that it was not the university but rather reading as a shared social act that made me value the classics.) I loved meeting students who also wanted to study literature, who were there voluntarily like me. We did little else but read, talk, write, and dream literature. We were all still goofy young boneheads, sure, mistaking traditional authority for truth and beauty, but by god it often was at least profound, and as often stunningly beautiful.
I took a Survey of Western Philosophy course under a woman of mystical bent who led us from the Pre-Socratics to Kant over a full year. She was hip, smart, enthusiastic, and beautiful. When she assigned papers on these philosophers, we all leapt to the task because we saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate our understanding of the internal argument of the philosopher. We were proud to be able to demonstrate this because I think we were all surprised that middle-class students like us could ‘get’ this stuff. Never mind that one week I fully agreed with Thales that motion and change didn’t exist—I remember riding my bike home from school one day convinced that everything was an illusion and all was a changeless monistic One, so my getting hit by a truck was not really my getting hit by a truck—and the next week agreed with Heraclitus that we can’t step into the same river twice and all was flux. Never mind that Plato’s idealism and Aristotle’s materialism were both true. Let Augustine prove God’s existence and Nietzsche announce His death.
The redemptive fact in this comedy of confusion is that we boneheads were unconsciously preparing for the moment when all these contradictions would impress themselves on us consciously, and we would recognize the historicity of all human knowledge and values. I am so thankful that this professor didn’t do what later, and to me misguided, professors did: introduce these texts as tools of oppression to be mistrusted and opposed. Instead, she let us suckle these creeds outworn and search for truth through them, trusting all the while, I suspect, that their collective incoherence would speak for itself eventually, and we would reach that conclusion ourselves through experience.
John came back from the world the next summer and we took a ride in my van so I could fill him in on the history of Western philosophy. That fall he enrolled in college as a philosophy major. Again we were off.
Eventually we both transferred to the University of Oregon. I loved too many subjects to consider abandoning any of them, so I declared Interdisciplinary Arts and Letters as my major. The first year in the program required survey courses in at least four disciplines, all chronologically taught. This meant that all five of my classes in term one were devoted to Greece and Rome from different angles (eg, literature, philosophy, history, art, religion); the next term treated the Middle Ages in the same interdisciplinary way; and the final term surveyed the Renaissance to the Modern Age. I had found that framework for ‘the’ big picture I was looking for. (At the end of Term 1, I wanted to be first a Classicist, then a monk after Term 2, and finally a Marxist revolutionary by the end of that year.)
I didn’t realize it then, but the curriculum at the time was embattled by feminists, Marxists, traditionalists, and post-Structuralists. I’m glad it was a hidden battle, because the inclusion of Other perspectives in our canon—primarily Marxist and women thinkers and artists—was not surrounded by controversy. Instead, we students experienced that inclusion as natural.
By the time I took my upper division classes, however, the tone changed radically (literally). Ideologues of every sort in the most extreme cases unapologetically bashed the works we had earlier studied with the categorical baseball bat for “Dead White Males.” This type of generalization was unspeakably thoughtless to me: were Oscar Wilde’s homo-eroticism, Defoe’s feminism, Blake’s liberalism, Nietzsche’s ecstatic critique of Christian history and metaphysics all to be tossed because of their sires’ gender? Were the wisdoms of only late-20th century far left thinkers to be studied, when their knowledge too is historically constructed and determined? (Wasn’t I still smoking because of the classic modern wisdom of the Beats and Camus and Sartre?) Was indignation to be the only respectable motive for research and exploration? Was all of that pleasure of the mind I’d so come to love from my earlier studies suddenly invalid and unwelcome? Couldn’t I do good simply by being a conduit for Keats to all students who want to love him? Was aesthetic rapture banned by the new regime? I know these are gross generalizations. But that was my impression of American intellectualism in the mid-‘90s. I didn’t have the stomach for it. I graduated as quickly as I could and left academia.
Looking back on this now, it seems to me that the problem I had with the new –ists was not with their –isms, but with their pedagogy. Simply put, they were uncivil. They showed no concern for, and made no attempt to learn about, my background. Instead they attacked what I loved and consequently as much as told me I did not belong. They were radical Gradgrinds in post-modern hard times. They often employed the same traditionalist pedagogy they theoretically opposed by deciding for me what they must teach and I must learn, when constructivist explorations could well have succeeded in bringing me to see and experience something probably close to their perspective. They often seemed to accept that all truth was constructed - except their own.
In short, they forgot about the learner in their zeal to be teachers. This is why their teaching failed to win me. And this makes me reflect, while looking at the Holistic Circle of Learning, that a teacher can be dazzlingly interdisciplinary, can teach for all the multiple intelligences squared, and can be impressively perspectivistic and multi-modal and multi-cultural until the cows come home—they will still probably fail. Unless…they start with knowing their learners, with respecting and esteeming them, and whatever cultural scripts those learners bring into the class.
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*The Legacy Series So Far:
1. Fear and Trembling: Goodbye to Christianity
2. The Hulk Leads to Hamlet: Reading Despite School
3. Of Jocks and Fags: The High School Bullying Years
9 Comments
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At July 31, 2008, /gradster(1)/ wrote:
Captivating. Despite the hardships, I almost wish I'd been there.
Have you ever considered writing for programs such as This American Life? You would fit right in there.
Truly an understanding to aspire to.
/gradster(1)/
/gradster(1)/s last blog post..Knight Spent Fighting Crime
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At July 31, 2008, Harold Jarche wrote:
Been there, read that and gotta agree with the conclusion. As a young Army officer, I also decided to read all that crappy Ayn Rand stuff too; but I digress.
Harold Jarches last blog post..On literacy
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At July 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@gradster: I just want to say thanks for the kind words. Coming from a student, that means a lot. (Are you the _same_ gradster from last year?)
@Harold: College daze indeed ;-) Never read Rand, though I liked Kazan's directing in The Fountainhead (?) with whoozits, the old James Dean contemporary.... Sleepless, braindead, can't come up with his name!
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At July 31, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Harold - and also got the impression she was some sort of soulless Nietzsche (who I do greatly admire, but only after reading his complete works and a couple of biographies).
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At July 31, 2008, /gradster(1)/ wrote:
@Clay - The short answer to that question is yes.
The long answer is no. The fingers typing these words are the same ones, and the eyes seeing them appear on the screen are too, and the body holding those fingers and eyes and everything else up are as well - but I am infinitely not the same person.
The changes you'll most often see are that I don't make grammar or spelling "mistakes" anymore (mistakes including abbrs). Of course, there's no such thing as an absolute and all that, but when I do it's genuinely a mistake and quickly corrected.
One thing you may not see is my writing. I have yet to decide whether to post it on my blog, as it's rather personal.
This is sounding rather more long-winded than I usually am, so I'll stop here.
/gradster(1)/
/gradster(1)/s last blog post..Knight Spent Fighting Crime
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At August 1, 2008, Legacy 5: Human Sacrifice | Beyond School wrote:
[...] Leads to Hamlet: Reading Despite School 3. Of Jocks and Fags: The High School Bullying Years 4. In the Crumbling Temple of the Dead White Males: The Beatnik College Years, pt. [...]
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At August 1, 2008, Jon Becker wrote:
Clay, of the things I wish I were, two at the very top are "well-read" and creative. You, sir, are both of those and I am VERY much enjoying this series. Write on!
Jon Beckers last blog post..Drill & Kill and Digital Equity
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At August 2, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Jon, Scanning your blog, the same seems true of you :)
Thanks for the kind words. I'm getting little to no response to these posts, but as I said in the first installment, it's really more for posterity than anything else, so I guess the silence is okay. (And honestly, I'm tired of writing about education right now. There's more to the world than that!)
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At August 2, 2008, Your page is now on StumbleUpon! wrote:
[...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]
Contents:
1) Dry but necessary (and interesting, really) background to computer-assisted “corpus linguistics”;
2) Application of Vocab Profiler to a little “Scribe 2.0″ medieval satire I had fun writing way back when;
3) Tutorial on some uses of Vocab Profiler to aid in scaffolding classroom reading comprehension;
4) Caveats and Take-Aways
Dan Meyer just posted a refreshing little jeremiad against Wordle and Animoto, with which I largely agree - they’re fun, sure, but require all the mental and creative activity of slipping some coins into a Coke machine and then pulling the can from the tray.
Anyway, that post spurred me to share an old tool I’ve used since teaching ESL in Shanghai a few years ago. It’s one of a muscular suite of tools made freely available at the Université du Québec à Montréal’s “Compleat Lexical Tutor” called VocabProfiler.
To appreciate what the VP does, it helps to have a bit of background in corpus linguistics, the computer-assisted analysis of word frequency in the English language.
OVERVIEW OF CORPUS LINGUISTICS FOR VOCABULARY TEACHING:
By scanning millions of words from a broad representative sample of English texts - newspapers, textbooks, novels, and more - and then counting the frequency of both words and word families (like Latinate words and their derivations), linguists could identify which words in the English language are necessary to know in order to comprehend an average adult text.
ESL research posits that for a text to be suitable for a reader (at the reader’s “instructional level”), that reader should know 95% of the words in the text. In other words, if the reader is unfamiliar with more than 1 out of 20 words in the text on average, comprehension breaks down, and the reader is cursed with a text at “frustration level.”
Corpus linguistics helps us figure out which words and word families are necessary to know to reach that golden 95% of lexical knowledge that enables reading comprehension. What it shows is that learning the 1,000 most frequent words and word families in the English language allows a reader to comprehend around 74% of words in an academic text (and the percentage is higher for newspapers, fiction, and conversational English).
While 74% lexical comprehension is a powerful payoff for learning those first 1,000 words (the “1k list”), you’ll note that it still leaves us 21% short of the magic 95%.
Learning the second most frequent 1,000 words and word families, though (the “2k list”), covers an average of 5% more (in academic texts). So knowing the the first 2,000 most frequent word families in the language brings us up to 79% lexical familiarity with academic texts. That’s powerful and efficient vocab work, but it still leaves us 16% short, still doomed to frustration-level reading - “barking at text” without comprehending the meaning.
And here’s where things get interesting. Logically, you’d think learning the 2,001st-3,000th most frequent words would be the sensible thing to do after learning the first 2k, but that’s not true. You only gain a percentage point or two. (Think of the Long Tail applied to English vocabulary: we all use the top 2k, but after that, the hundreds of thousands of other words in the language flatten out.) Instead, your next big vocab-learning investment should be in a group of 570 word families that, once learned, add another whopping 8.5% of lexical comprehension to academic texts. This group is called the Academic Word List (AWL).
The AWL is that group of words that show up frequently across the entire range of academic disciplines - words like this list from a text of my own I just crunched: “accurate, achieve, conclude, conduct, create, deny, error, final, focus, ignorant, instance, labour, normal, plus, task, tradition.” [Update: An excellent set of online quizzes for all 570 of these AWL word families, arranged in sublists from easier to harder, can be found at this University of Victoria site.]
So let’s recap the math:
Lexical Coverage of Average Academic Text from Learning the 2,000 Most Frequent Word families + the 570 Academic Word List:
1k list ≈ 73.5%
+2k list ≈ 4.6%
+AWL ≈ 8.5%
total comp: 86.6%
(Here’s a nice graphic (source) showing the coverage of those word/word families for conversational English, fiction, and newspapers, respectively:
Before moving on to the tool I promise to show you, let’s deal with the question: How do we know what words to teach to bridge the gap from 87% to 95%?
The short answer: we don’t (or I don’t, anyway). One helpful approach is to focus on the specialized academic language specific to any discipline. Words like metaphor, simile, paradox, hyberbole, and so forth, for example, are not on the AWL because they’re specialized literary vocabulary, so if you’re a literature teacher, you know the specialized literary words that are high-frequency to your content area. Teachers in math, science, social studies, art, music, and so forth similarly know the high-frequency vocabulary of their disciplines. Those specialized subject-area lists are an obvious first step to bridging that gap. BUT HERE’S THE BEAUTY (cue segue music): you can use the vocabulary profiler to identify any words not in the 2k and AWL that are in your course readings, and pre-teach them to enable 95% comprehension of your specific class texts. (You can use it for much more, but one thing at a time.)
So let’s move on to the Vocabulary Profiler.
Let’s pretend that you are assigning my post “Adventures of Scribe 2.0” - a bit of satiric fiction I abandoned after that post in the second month of this space, when only Diane Cordell, Patrick Higgins, and Christopher Watson were reading me 
.
Here’s the text:
Monk Expelled for Creating “Devil’s Workshop”
29 December, Anno Domini 1527
Wittenberg, Saxony
The Catholic PressVisionius Neocogitus, a 21-year-old neophyte in the hallowed Benedictine Monastery in Wittenberg, was expelled from the Order yesterday for disobeying the Abbot, dishonoring the time-honored traditions of the ancient Order, and “making pacts with the Devil.”
The young neophyte was charged by his Abbot, Father Orthodoxius Paleologus, with shirking his sacred duties in the scriptorium, malingering, and spreading heretical ideas.
“Young Neocogitus is not suited to holy work,” said Paleologus. “From the moment he entered the Brotherhood, he was a force of discord and disobedience. Not an hour passed without Neocogitus doing something to disrupt the solemn traditions of the Order. After much soul-searching, fasting, and praying over the problems caused by this wayward youth, the Holy Spirit finally spoke to me, and said, ‘For the good of the Order, Neocogitus must go’.”
A Promising Beginning
The trouble began on the first day the young neophyte was brought for training in the scriptorium, the vast chamber in which monks of the Order have been hand-copying the Holy Writ for the last 600 years.
According to Friar Heironymous Tuck, the monk charged with training young Neocogitus in the science of holy transcription, the neophyte was arrogant, sarcastic, and insubordinate within a minute of entering the hall.
“Neocogitus beheld the glorious sight of these dozens of God’s servants, backs bowed and heads down in pious, meditative labor, dutifully performing God’s work,” said Tuck. “And he had the audacity to snicker. I smelt a whiff of sulfur, and knew we had a heretic in our ranks.”
But Neocogitus mastered his spleen, said Tuck, and went on to prove himself an unusually able apprentice.
“There’s no denying the young man was uncommonly quick to learn,” Tuck continued. “All of the finer points of the book-copying arts–copying in neat script, in straight lines, spelling correctly, and above all, staying awake and alert–Neocogitus mastered within a day.”
Indeed, by the end of his first eight-hour duty, the young man had produced a flawless reproduction of the Book of Genesis–a task that took three times as long for far more experienced scribes.
More remarkable still, by the end of his first month as an apprentice scribe, Neocogitus achieved what had never been done before: he had produced an entire copy of the Bible–all 66 books, plus the Apocrypha.
“It was a miracle,” said Tuck. “It had never been done before. And it was perfect, flawless: I personally checked each and every line for errors–and there were none.”
Abbe Paleologus heard the news with joy. “It seemed a sign from heaven,” Paleologus said. “There were so many heathens living in the darkness, helpless to see the light without God’s word. Yet, because there were so many more heathens than there were monks to copy the Holy Writ–and because it normally took six months for a scribe to produce one correct copy–it seemed we would never be able to rescue all the heathens from their ignorance.”
“But this young monk, Neocogitus,” the Abbot continued, “seemed sent to improve our chances. I had heard that his conduct was often troublesome, irreverent, and lacking in humility. But at the time, I thought this was one more instance of God’s mysterious ways. This whelp would help us spread God’s word with godspeed.”
“Little did I know,” he concluded, “that this was not God’s work at all–but the Devil’s.”
The Devil’s Work
Neocogitus’ first Bible aroused curiosity throughout the monastery. The Order was abuzz with talk about its inerrancy, legibility, elegant script. Above all, however, the talk focused on this question: how had the young man produced it so fast? Was it really possible to produce an accurate copy of the entirety of the scripture in one short month?
To get to the bottom of this mystery, Father Paleologus summoned Neocogitus to his chambers for a private interview.
[WHAT is the secret to Neocogitus’ miraculous powers? LEARN THIS, and more, in the NEXT EPISODE! ON SALE AT BLOGSTANDS SOON!!!]
–There’s a lot of specialized vocabulary here from Medieval history, religious studies, and more, so you know your students won’t be familiar with much of it. Solution: crunch it through the Vocabulary Profiler. After copy/paste/submit, this is what you get on top of the screen: an overall breakdown of the percentages of words from the lexical bands relative to the entire text, as you see here (click this and all further images for larger view):
How is this helpful? Several ways, primary among which is the simple breakdown it gives you of the percentage of words not in the high frequency bands. If that percentage is high, then maybe it’s simply not a text suitable for the readability level of your class’s age group. This is a common problem in high school, where content teachers untrained in literacy research go overboard by assigning college-level texts to students incapable of comprehending their lexical (and syntactic, but that’s a different beast) complexity.
Scrolling down that same screen, the next thing you see is a color-coded breakdown of where each word in the text falls in the word frequency range from corpus linguistics. (Blue = 1k, Green = 2k, Yellow = AWL, Red = Lower-frequency “off-list” words) (click image for larger view):
While it ain’t as pretty as Wordle, it’s much more useful for teaching (and learning, as I’ll show later). You can simply have students scan the red words themselves to look them up before reading, or you can prep the pre-teaching vocab lesson yourself.
“But wait a minute,” you say. “What if it’s a long text - say, a 20 page chapter from a novel?” Good question, and VP helps you with the following breakdown as you scroll down the screen (click image for larger view):
–what you see in this “type list” (”types” are the individual words in the text) is an alphabetized list of each word, grouped in the four frequency bands, and followed by the number of appearances each word makes in the text. This is key . In the above example, we can see that the words neophyte, monk, heretic, and abbot in the red “off-list” (low-frequency) range show up several times in this short text, and thus decide to give them more emphasis in pre-teaching the text’s vocabulary. (If this were a longer text, this frequency count of off-list words would serve the same purpose.) You’ll also note it gives you a handy list of the general purpose academic vocabulary from the AWL that will benefit all students across the curriculum.
TAKE-AWAYS, CAVEATS, and REQUEST FOR CAVILS:
What are some other take-aways from this little tutorial?
Students can use this tool to analyze (learn about) their own lexical sophistication. Have them drop their latest essay or story into the profiler, and let them see how many of their word choices are sophisticated enough to fall outside of the top 2000 words. The colors won’t lie.
Teachers (and students) can create vocab quizzes on Quizlet (better than Mystudiyo, I’ve decided - check it out) or elsewhere using this to help them identify which words to prioritize in vocabulary study. If you don’t know any words in the blue list, by George you should. Ditto the green and yellow. Beyond that, we’re talking less frequent, thus less crucial words to know by heart.
Corpus linguistics ain’t perfect. Some words - homonyms, for example, but also words with varying meanings depending on context - skew the results in the analysis. But that’s life for now.
Syntax is still important. Knowing vocab isn’t enough. Sentence structure and grammatical functions need attention too (duh - but you’d be amazed how many people think language learning is all about vocab).
Fancy SAT words are well-and-all, but many students don’t know many words in the 2k + AWL, and they’re more important. Teachers can help them fill the gaps in their knowledge of these words with the VP. “Utlilize” is less important (and to my demotic tastes, less elegant) than “use.” English teachers take note.
This tool is especially helpful for online texts. Copy-paste novel chapters, textbook chapters, etc into the profiler, and your pre-reading activities are instantly enhanced and guided by literacy research.
The Compleat Lexical Tutor is great for making cloze exercises and all sorts of other things.
This post is way too long. Sorry. But it should be a spell more useful than Wordle.
What about you - anything to add?
References:
Nation, P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
14 Comments
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At July 15, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Wow! Thanks for sharing this... it looks incredibly useful and far more statistically justifiable than Wordle. There's no point in having a pretty visualization if the underlying statistics aren't useful.
Also, I'm with you there on Quizlet: I've been using it for a couple of years for all of my low-level-subject quiz testing. However, the one thing it doesn't support is multiple choice questions (which Mystudiyo does).
Finally, just for kicks I plugged in a few blog posts into the profiler (both by me and others): over 15-20% of words were on the Off-list, but this is skewed by the pervasiveness of buzzwords (Twitter, digital footprint) which the average person doesn't know, but anyone worth their hosting in the Edublogosphere does.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The 140 Character Lesson
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At July 15, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Arthus,
Glad you see the value. And good point about buzzwords and proper nouns. You can exclude them by entering them in the "exclude" box on the site before submitting to get more valid results, and for purposes of readability level evaluation, maybe should.
Or you could just count the number of buzzwords, subtract them from the breakdown, and mentally calculate the new ratio of offlist words, I guess. I'd have to ask somebody who can add, subtract, and figure percentages to do that for me, though.
The really cool thing about Quizlet, as I'm sure you know, is that it was created by a high schooler, not a British Ed. D. candidate. ;-)
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At July 15, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Clay,
Yup, I've actually talked with him on quite a few occasions. He might possibly be the only high schooler on the 'net who is smarter than me. :P (just kidding: we all know that is Lindsea)
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The 140 Character Lesson
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At July 15, 2008, Tod Baker wrote:
For English language learners and native speakers, this looks like a tool that can help teachers differentiate effectively. I'll look into it further. Thanks.
Tod
Tod Bakers last blog post..Layout Frustrations
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At July 16, 2008, Robb McCollum wrote:
Thanks for the explanation and link (my wife passed on your blog from a twitter feed she got). I've been trying to use corpus research more in my teaching including Mark Davies corpus.byu.edu
However, it's nice to have a fast and easy-to-use tool so that graduate ESL students can start taking responsibility for their own vocabulary development. WordCruncher is powerful, but web-accessible and perhaps too complex for casual users. Besides, the connection to the AWL and other word lists is very helpful. Great tool!
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At July 16, 2008, Corrie Bergeron wrote:
Excellent! Sending it along to my English and medical terminology faculty (big nursing/allied health programs here), as well as the manager of the ESL tutors. Good stuff!
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At July 16, 2008, diane wrote:
A little gift from a long-time admirer ;-)
http://animoto.com/play/YrgMD4CVkDohywg3QPhV9g?autostart=false
dianes last blog post..Where in the World? Part 2
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At July 16, 2008, Nate Stearns wrote:
Interesting. I plopped in Act I, Scenes 1-2 of Macbeth and got a cool little red list (alarum_[1] anon_[1] assault_[1] attendants_[1] bade_, etc.) of vocab words to preteach. Vocabulary has never been my bag, baby, as I was traumatized by stupid lists as a child. Still, I do like the idea of using the Vocab profile to have kids check out vocab list beforehand. Many of the major works we teach are often online in full text form and--theoretically-you could have kids drop in the chapter, do a post on the vocab, do the reading, and then revisit the vocab...Doesn't sound like a total blast, but worth trying.
Nate Stearnss last blog post..Edu-flash Mobs, why not?
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At July 16, 2008, OLDaily ~ by Stephen Downes wrote:
[...] to develop quizzes, among many possible uses. -HJ Clay Burell, Beyond School, July 15, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [...]
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At July 16, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Nate,
Shakespeare is so close to a foreign language in comparison with contemporary English, it's no wonder you're going to have a massive list of offlist (red) words.
Couple that with the research on readability, and you have the main factor in kids not loving Shakespeare like we do: far less than 95% lexical familiarity.
I _always_ pre-teach words like "anon, e'er, soft, aye," and a million other high-frequency Elizabethan words - let's not forget thee, thou, thine, the royal we and our, on and on - before even starting any play. I put them on a word wall and revisit them regularly.
But think about what would happen if you input the ENTIRE play into the profiler: you'd get a list of the most frequent words in the play, and that should be a valuable guide in helping you identify which words in that sea deserve most emphasis.
Gotta run.
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At July 16, 2008, Biblical Studies and Technological Tools: Vocabulary Profiling wrote:
[...] To understand what this tool does, it helps to understand a bit of corpus linguistics, but this blog posting will give you a quick background. I've talked about this kind of stuff before with reference to [...]
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At July 19, 2008, A World History Book for All Ages and Reading Levels: Gombrich’s “A Little History of the World” | Beyond School wrote:
[...] Like many English language learners, they’re wonderfully bright, but challenged by the readability level of their assigned high school texts. And like many students generally, all their years of [...]
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At July 21, 2008, PaulV8 wrote:
Thanks for posting this, Clay. I've enjoyed your blogging. You are an inspiring teacher. I'll have to try this out since I may have 11th and 12th grade remediation English classes this year. Heck, this will help any classes.
PaulV8s last blog post..iPhone Updates: Prologue and Mdot
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At July 21, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Paul,
Such a nice gesture to receive in a rough week. Thanks for that.
Clay
Just doinking around with Mystudiyo. They say they’ll never make me pay for this when they leave beta, which is cool - but I always wonder what will happen to this sort of work if the company goes out of business. Is all my labor lost?
That being said, I love the ease of use. [UPDATE: Two things: h/t to Steve Dembo for sharing this tool; and note that you ((and students)) can add their own quiz items to this quiz.]
Have at thee, geeky wordsmiths. Fastest guns score highest.
3 Comments
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At June 24, 2008, Paul C wrote:
Wow, I like the race against time. Should keep students engaged making up questions for each other and the teacher. Thanks for the demo!
Just in time for summer (practice,practise)?
Paul Cs last blog post..Grieving a Random Loss
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At June 25, 2008, Pat Hensley wrote:
That was fun to do and I think kids would enjoy it too.
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At June 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Paul, Pat: Another cool thing I discovered is that quiz-takers can also challenge questions with the "bad question" feature. My wife didn't like my "ambi-" choices, and she was right!
(I was asked to respond to some of Clay Shirky's posts on Talking Points Memo Cafe. I figured that this would be a good excuse to blog since I've been a bad bad bad bad blogger lately. What follows is my first blog response.)
Original Post on TPMCafe: markers of status: different, and yet the same
Speculating on social status in an age of networked participation, Clay Shirky accurately points out the ways in which metrics for status have become diversified. It is possible to gain satisfaction from achieving high status in World of Warcraft, even if popularity there is quite niche. In our ethnographic study of new media and youth culture, the Digital Youth group at Berkeley and USC also found that many youth involved in interest-driven digital practices rejected traditional status markers in preference for those that could be achieved in subcultures. Becky Herr and Mimi Ito examined different aspects of fan communities; Patricia Lange and Sonja Baumer looked at vid practices; Matteo Bittanti observed gaming culture. In all of their studies, they found diverse ways in which people marked and negotiated status, confirming Clay's suspicion that networked participation can alter the markers of status.
Now, here's the caveat... Just because status markers can be rearranged does not mean that they universally are. While we found tremendous examples of alternative status structures, the vast majority of youth that we studied used networked technologies to reinforce more traditional markers of status and hierarchy. While there are certainly youth who engage in a variety of geeky practices, the vast majority of youth use tools like MySpace, Facebook, instant messaging, and mobile phones to socialize with peers from school, church, and activities. The social hierarchies that exist in everyday life are replicated and reinforced online. While social categories do play a significant role in teen life, neatly defined cliques are not that normative. Still, gossip and boundary marking are part of everyday teen status struggles, online and off. In his book "Geeks, Freaks and Cool Kids," Murray Milner Jr. suggests that teens' particular obsession with status is because "they have so little real economic or political power" (2004:4). He argues that hanging out, dating, and mobilizing tokens of popular culture all play a central role in the development and maintenance of peer status. Just as these activities take place in school, they also take place in networked environments.
For most teens, the status that matters is that which is conferred in everyday life. Everyday friendship and dating matter more to them than the connections that they make online. This isn't that surprising because, for as much time as teens spend online, they spend very little engaging with strangers and far more connected to people that they know. Finding interesting music videos or gross-out content online may heighten status amongst peers if this content is valued, but becoming popular with strangers online does not transfer to popularity offline. This was best explained by Dominic, a 16-year old from Seattle: "I don't really think popularity would transfer from online to offline because you've got a bunch of random people you don't know it's not going to make a difference in real life, you know? It's not like they're going to come visit you or hang out with you. You're not like a celebrity or something."
Some of us have become celebrities online, or at least micro-celebrities. Both Clay and I have benefited tremendously by our presence online. We have achieved status through our knowledge of these spaces. Yet, we are by no means normal (in any sense of the word). I think that we'll continue to see fantastic examples of individuals achieving status through their networked participation, but I don't think that this will ever become mainstream. We will continue to see people achieving celebrity through online (e.g., Tila Tequila, Star Wars boy, Perez Hilton, etc.), but just as celebrity is rare offline, it will be rare online too. For those who invest massive amounts of time in particular subgenres of networked culture, we will also see tremendous achievements of status. And this will be tremendously rewarding, especially for those marginalized and ostracized people who never did and never will fit into more normative culture. But this is the marker of any good subculture. And we will continue to see new subcultures with new markers of subcultural capital. Still, my belief is that, for most people, status will continue to be about getting validated by peers in everyday life. I think that some of the ways that validation can occur is through mediated interactions, but I don't think we'll see fully mediated status. Of course, time will tell...
status hierarchy youth culture socialmedia
[Apture rocks. Click the icon beside Shirky, and the one beside “addons”, and then click each of the icons that I loaded, and watch the magic. I don’t have to spell out how rich a tool this is for every use, educational and otherwise, you can think of, do I? It’s in invitation-only beta right now, so get over there and get it before it runs out. ***UPDATE: A nice person from the Apture team left a comment saying the invitations are out, BUT–if you send an email telling them you saw it on this post, they’ll make an exception for you. So leave a comment saying “I want one, please,” and we’ll try to make that happen. And don’t I feel special? 
]
Sitting in my Hong Kong hotel, dinking instead of reading more of the Shirky I bought today. Dinking, particularly, with Apture. To demonstrate its usefulness, I’m going to share a few lesser-known Firefox/Flock addons I’ve installed on my new MacBook this week. Just click the little icon and see how Apture works.
A screenshot of the Apture popup and search editor (click image for large view):
11 Comments
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At June 18, 2008, Lucia wrote:
This is so cool. I've applied for the beta. Thanks for sharing this!!
Lucias last blog post..groovin’ with garageband
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At June 18, 2008, Theresa Johnson wrote:
Clay,
Thanks for the spotlight on Apture, and welcome to the Apture Community! Your Apture windows here are some of the most creative and helpful I've seen on the web. We love to get early-adopter feedback, so send us an email to feedback@apture.com with anything you think we should add, change or improve.
For all of Clay's readers, due to overwhelming response, our beta invite system is now closed. If you really, really, really want Apture, please send me an email and reference this blog post, and I can manually approve your account.
Cheers,
Theresa
Developer Advocate/ Community Outreach
Apture.com
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At June 18, 2008, glen wrote:
I've been using Apture on a couple of my blogs too. Loving it!
glens last blog post..Copyright and Compensation
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At June 18, 2008, Soojin wrote:
Mr Burell, heard you were leaving! well... good luck in your new place :)
and thanks for the post, that looks really convenient for researching
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At June 18, 2008, Louise Maine wrote:
I have played with Apture on one of my blogs too, and also used it successfully on one of my wikispaces pages as well. I plan to use it next year with my classes as well and on more of my blog posts. It is a great tool and so easy to use!
I am also a site reviewer for Teacher's First and did a review of the tool here.
Louise Maines last blog post..For a few days...I am unplugged...
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At June 21, 2008, John Larkin wrote:
Not bad Clay. Shall check it out. Hope the interface allows for more user control. I am an old fan of a HCI that allows you to decide when the popup appears.
Cheers, John
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At June 24, 2008, Elliott wrote:
Thanks for the tip--I've been lurking on your site for a while, and have very much enjoyed your thoughts. I'm currently working with two other teachers at my school to develop new ways of integrating technology in a somewhat-Luddite environment, and cruising through your archives is proving quite useful.
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At June 24, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Thanks for that, Elliot. The archives are all experiments, some more successful than others, but nobody said this stuff would be easy :)
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At June 24, 2008, Eric wrote:
It is great isn't it Clay?!? I am playing around with it on my own blog and am very much looking forward to using it in the fall on my class website. Apture looks like a promising tool for both my students and their parents.
I am happy to have found your site and look forward to perusing your archives in the coming days... :)
Erics last blog post..Apture: Another Tool to Use
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At June 24, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Glad you like it, Eric. It certainly adds to both information richness and easy usability. Too bad it doesn't work in RSS readers, though (which is almost a perennial complaint of mine ;-) ).
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At June 30, 2008, Apture Links the Web with One Click wrote:
[...] Clay Burrell, another education blogger, said:
Standing on a corner
in Hong Kong -
It ain’t so good to be alone
in Hong Kong.
–Screaming Jay Hawkins, “Hong Kong” (psst…do yourself a favor and click the little icon for a classic Screaming Jay number on Youtube, and a Wikipedia link, thanks to the very cool Apture tool)
Just a quickie to show the local flavor of Kowloon, Hong Kong, to Stacy Zheng of Students 2.0, who tweeted, “I’m insanely jealous of you right now. Hong Kong tops the list of my “places I want to visit”. Have fun! :)” - and to show my wife the typical “I don’t speak your language so I’ll take whatever haircut you give me” ‘do I just got in a local barber shop across the street from my hotel.
It’s nice to be back among the Chinese people, among whom I lived in Shanghai for five years, and came to admire more than any people in the 25 countries I’ve traveled. It’s so crazy: they don’t have near the money to spend on English lessons the way Koreans do, yet they speak English so comfortably, with broken grammar but still so communicatively, they far outstrip the Koreans in this respect, who seem so fearful of making a mistake - the internalized grader at work in that so-grade-fixated culture - that they literally do not speak English at all, despite spending more per capita on lessons than any country in the world.
So here’s a bit of fluff from a Kowloon noodle shop [Update: I just discovered Youtube now allows us to annotate our own video uploads, and did that for the below. It’s in beta and doesn’t work in embeds yet, so you have to click through to the Youtube page to see it. Kinda cool. Think of the educational potential….]:
3 Comments
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At June 18, 2008, Stacy wrote:
I am so so amused by the guy who turned around, stared at you, and then went back to his business.
It's also funny knowing what the people behind you are saying. I have such a soft spot for Cantonese.
Russell Peters has commented that everyone in Hong Kong speaks English.
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At June 18, 2008, diane wrote:
Love "overhearing" the conversation between you and Stacy about Hong Kong. We Americans, even the ones who try not to be Ugly, tend to lump Asians together - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. which is obviously a very narrow and screamingly inaccurate world view. I've traveled in North America and Europe. Perhaps it's time for me to consider exploring other lands and more ancient cultures.
dianes last blog post..ACCESS DENIED!
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At June 19, 2008, Charlie A. Roy wrote:
@Clay
I appreciate your posts. I'd have to agree with Diane that many Americans lump all Asian cultures together. I'm reminded of an episode of "King of the Hill" where Dale keeps asking Kahn whether he is Chinese or Japanese even though he has stated over and over again that he is from Laos.
We have some friends that have relocated to China and will be there for five years with Caterpillar. We are looking forward to saving up to visit them in about a year and a half if we can make it work. Looks like a great place to be.
All the best! and happy travels.
Charlie A. Roys last blog post..Changing Behavior
A quickie: A couple weeks ago, I posted about the fatal weakness of RSS readers - their exclusion of a feed’s comments. Derrick Kwa replied with an offer to send me a no longer available WordPress plugin that shows a post’s comments underneath it. Derrick was kind enough to follow through (and by the way, check this post for an amazing example of how hyper-linking saved Derrick from the Singaporean Army and got him an internship with Seth Godin, if I understand it correctly - a literal case of how life-changing writing online can be).
I’ve installed the plugin, and noticed that it works in Google Reader, but not in and Bloglines. I don’t know about other readers.
Here’s how it looks on one of my posts in Google Reader:
–I’m ambivalent about the plugin right now. Is it too inconvenient for readers when the rare post generates 50 or 75 comments? Or is that a price worth paying for elevating the conversations to the higher status they deserve? I lean toward the latter right now.
If you want me to send you the php file, just comment below, and I’ll shoot you the plugin file in an email.
Another option is AideRSS, a Firefox extension that modifies Google Reader in a number of ways. John Larkin was kind enough to share it in the same comment thread. It’s invitation-only, beta, right now, and I haven’t looked into it. But I share the link anyway.
8 Comments
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At May 26, 2008, Derrick Kwa wrote:
Yeah, that is one thing about the plugin that I'm unsure about as well - the scalability as comments increase. That said, my posts tend to not get any more than 5-10 comments per post, so it's generally okay for me.
Oh, on another note, the virtual internship didn't really save me from the army (the army's a compulsory thing that all guys have to go through), but it did give me something to do while I wait to go into the army. And it's an awesome experience so far. =).
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At May 26, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Another alternative is the superb Better Greader plugin from Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/software/exclusive-lifehacker-download/trick-out-g...
Beyond offering some awesome restyling of the Google Reader admin (http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthuserea/2516505671/), it can embed the full (original) page into the reader. You can turn the setting on selectively, or have it automatic. The great part of this is you see the original article, complete with comments, and the comment form. That way, you can comment without leaving the comfort of your feed reader!
There are some alternative methods, but the great thing about this is it combines the efficiency of Google Reader (the only reader capable of easily processing thousands of items in a short amount of time) with the ability to comment and view conversations selectively.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
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At May 26, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
By the way, I posted the above comment from within Google Reader! :) Screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthuserea/2522830639/
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
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At May 26, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
AideRSS actually doesn't do anything with comments. Instead, it assigns a sort of "ranking" to posts based upon comments, bookmarks, popularity, views, etc. Then, you can sort Google Reader or create a custom feed based upon those ratings.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
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At May 26, 2008, Derrick Kwa wrote:
Arthus: the difference between the likes of the Google Reader plugin and this plugin is that this is done on the blogger's end. Which means that your readers don't have to do anything to see the comments in the feed. The Google Reader plugin is good, but it requires more work from the reader - to install the plugin. And not all your blog readers will be using Firefox, for example. This is a way to make it easy for all your readers to follow the conversation - no matter what reader/browser they use.
Derrick Kwas last blog post..What I want Social Media Breakfast: Singapore to be
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At May 26, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Derrick: I get that. I was just giving it as an alternative for us to use on the vast majority of blogs which do not (and probably never will) include comments in posts.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers
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At May 26, 2008, Ilya Grigorik wrote:
Clay, the plugin is an interesting idea, but the one technical problem with it would be due to content caching by Google Reader, or any other reader for that matter. (i.e. it will cache your post, with let's say 1 comment, and display that to all readers, even though you may have many more comments on it now).
The FF plugin we developed at AideRSS does not address this problem directly, but we do provide the most up-to-date count of the number of comments in your blog when you have the extension installed. If anyone is interested in trying it out, use the following URL to get an immediate invite: http://gr.aiderss.com/?techcrunch
Ilya Grigoriks last blog post..Now with 100% more Twitter & OpenID!
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At May 27, 2008, Adrienne wrote:
@Clay
Like you, I am more apt to think that the comments deserve to be included. That's probably because I enjoy the level of conversation that comments bring about -- this is the social aspect of blogging that can go unnoticed without seeing them.
Interestingly, this post and Arthus's first comment appeared in my reader, too -- and I am using Outlook 2007 to view your blog (don't ask me why -- somehow your blog feed got mixed up in all my school portal RSS feeds and I got lazy and just left it there. Curiously, what this means is that your blog, unlike others in my Google Reader, is one I actually read every day b/c I see the feed with all my boring, schooly e-mail. I know you will enjoy the irony in that!). Obviously, at the time the feed was checked by Outlook, Arthus's comment was there, but by the time I clicked to go read the full post, 5 more comments had been made.
This is all helping my case as to which blog reader to "consolidate" all my feeds in, as I'm a bit of a mess right now when it comes to my feeds -- I have them all over the place. Looks like Google Reader is it. Bloglines, although it works for this Plugin, just isn't slick enough for me. However, considering the snail-like pace I am moving at, by the time I get everything consolidated, who knows what newfangled plugin will be working and where...
Carolyn Foote wrote this week about the new Pew study on the effects of technology on teen writing. An article about the study in eSchool News (free subscription - well worth it - required) pulls out a few details that for me, at least, suggest some weird thinking. The “news” that
[t]eens who communicate frequently with their friends, and those who own more technology tools such as computers or cell phones, do not write more often for school or for themselves than less communicative and less gadget-rich teens
seems hardly news at all, doesn’t it? Is it me, or does it imply that some people think that The Vast Percentage of Teens Who, Like the Vast Percentage of Adults, Do Not Enjoy Writing will suddenly, because somebody plops a laptop, tablet, or cellphone in their hands, have some Road to Damascus experience that magically converts them to the Cult of Writing?
That implication seems embedded in the “finding” above, and it’s about as silly as expecting people to all become economists when they’re given their first checkbook.
If you go into a 1:1 program with fantasies that all students are going to become writers because of it, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Nothing makes a writer but the self-compelled need to write. And that’s a limited commodity now as always.
The eSchool news article continues with this further bit of non-”news,” which this time, though still making me chuckle, also quickens my pulse and gets my dander up a bit:
Teen bloggers, however, write more frequently both online and offline, the study says.
–check that language out, that loopy logic: “Teen bloggers,” we’re told, are teens who write frequently “both online and offline.” I’m no expert, now, but why are we calling teens who write a lot, with and without blogs, “bloggers”?
Any of you adult bloggers out there, are you with me in wanting to correct people who call you a “blogger” - some person who “makes blogs,” apparently, like a designer makes designs and a reporter makes reports - by telling them: “Actually, I’m a freaking writer. I just publish my own writing online on a blog. I don’t buy those daily word-counts on my blog at Wal-Mart. I write them.” Such sloppy language!
(Note that I didn’t say “good writer.” Mediocre and bad writers fill the ranks of bloggers as much as they do of newpapers, magazines, and books.)
It’s been a pet peeve of mine for a long time, this word “blogging.” The label cheapens the practice. Writing bloggers are writers, photo-bloggers are photographers, podcast-bloggers are audio producers, vloggers are video artists, etc, in teenhood as it is in adulthood.
So let’s revise that last excerpt for clarity:
Teen writers, however, write more frequently both online and offline.
Talk about a report from Captain Obvious. Give any writer a journal and pen, s/he’ll scribble away. Give him or her a blog, s/he’ll type away. There’s no mystery here.
Things get weirder here:
Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs.
What, exactly, does that unidentified fifty-three percent of “teen bloggers” who do not “write outside of school for personal reasons” actually write on their blogs, then? Wait — hold it – I think I’m getting a whiff of something. Do you smell it?
Bad air! Bad air! It’s a homework blog! Another moronic oxymoron brought to you by Schooliness, Inc. Let’s cross this 53% off the Book of Writing, and focus on that lovely, remaining 47% who blog write on blogs, not because schools make them, but because they’re writers. Breathe in the perfume, folks - we’re in the rose-garden now of flowering young writers.
They’re the ones I want to teach - because they’re the ones who probably want to be taught about ways to improve their writing.
There. I said it: I’m an elitist as an English teacher.
I’m not a democrat when it comes to teaching writing. Just as Thomas Jefferson believed that all people are born equal, but natural differences create a “natural aristocracy” - one having nothing to do with money and everything to do with spirit (and I mean that naturally) - I believe the same is true in the classroom. A rich kid can’t pay me to want to help him become a better writer if he doesn’t show me, through the evidence of steady, self-impelled production, he has a writer in him. A working-class kid who does have a writer in her - who can point to hundreds of blog posts or journal pages having nothing to do with homework - will find not only my door open during lunch and after school, but also my Skype and Twitter at home. As I said in a comment on Carolyn’s blog, it’s
the bloggers mentioned in the survey above . . . who interest me, . . those who have the will to write, the seed of a writer, in them.
Those “kids” aren’t mere students. They’re writers.
Let’s keep looking at that Pew Garden, and try to find the prize roses. I think I see them hidden in this statistic:
Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life.
Pop Quiz: Who are the “teen bloggers” who are the true writers?
a. the 65% of “teen bloggers” who “believe writing is essential to later success in life”
b. the 35% of “teen bloggers” who do not believe this.
If you answered “a,” I give you a zero.
To me, the answer is “b.” Because it implies that these young writers are writing not, as most of the consumerism-drugged “school is for money” customers in our classrooms do (and as the students in answer “a” seem to do), “to get a better GPA, go to a better college, get a better job, so I can buy a better house, car, and handbag.” This 35% in “b” wins my vote. They’re the prize roses. They write for the pleasure in the present, not the payoff in the future. [Update: Freshman Arthus trumps me in his comment. He gets an A+, I get a B.]
They’re writers.
A Revised Position Statement on Classroom Blogging, Two Years into the Fray:
And this brings me to the latest position-statement in my evolving views, after two years of experimenting with it in the classroom, of the value and place of blogging to teach writing in schools:
It should only be required in an elective “advanced blogging” class. But we need a better word than that tuneless aural trainwreck of a word, “blah - geeng.”
“Advanced writing,” though I’ve restricted this article to writers because the Pew study does the same, is no better a title, because “blogging” invites the natural talkers and interviewers, singers and raconteurs
through podcasting; the natural symbolic and visual communicators through photo and computer graphic, fine arts and video blogging. So “advanced digital communication,” then?
You tell me. But I think you see what I mean, don’t you? Simply a workshop of the thirsty, the hungry to improve - the natural aristocracy of self-expression and communication.
Over the door I would post a big sign:
ROSES ONLY. NO STUDENTS ALLOWED.
Then we’d set to working - making perfume.
Images:
- De Petale, by Christiane Michaud
- untitled, by rosemary*
- rose for you…, by Lyubov
Relevant posts:
- 21st Century Education: Thinking Creatively by Anthony Chivetta, Students 2.0
- Dialogue with a New Student Blogger on the Question of Classroom Blogging
61 Comments
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At May 1, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
I guess I have to disagree with your point that "the 65% of “teen bloggers” who 'believe writing is essential to later success in life'" are the GPA watchers. I'll come out and say it: I think writing is essential to my later success in life.
This doesn't mean that is *why* I write: I'm not writing to get into college, get a job, or anything like that. I'm writing because I enjoy writing.
And well, it's the skill I have. I'm not going to make money as an actor. I'm also not going to make money as a photographer. I'll make money as a writer, whatever form that takes.
Really, I think there should be even more distinction of groups:
a) I think writing is essential to future success and that is why I write
b) I think writing is essential to future success but that is not why I write
c) I think writing is not essential to future success
I'd definitely put myself in group b: without my writing, I wouldn't expect to be as successful, but it's not why I write.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At May 1, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@ARTHUS: I like it. I get a B, you get an A. :)
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At May 1, 2008, diane wrote:
I am the proud mother of a natural writer - who drew and wrote on socks if no paper was handy.
While she danced her way through scores of notebooks and journals, her brother devoured sports stats and learned to produce clean, precise copy.
Their father's medium is usually charcoal and oil paint, but he can express his thoughts eloquently when impulse or necessity requires.
We all use words in our different ways, some to dream, some to describe.
I sometimes encounter kindred spirits, of all grade levels, in our school district. I listen to their stories, encourage their parents to let them explore library resources, and hope that they will continue to play at wordcraft.
These children are only mine to interact with for brief intervals, but there may be gardens I have helped to sow, all unaware.
dianes last blog post..Fly on Your Heavy Feet
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At May 1, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
@Clay: and I thought we'd moved beyond grades... :P
Your sign is certainly rather... interesting. "ROSES ONLY. NO STUDENTS ALLOWED." Might get a few snickers about the kids who do go in... but I like it anyways.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At May 1, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Arthus,
Aww, Arthus, I was just being English teachery, tossing petals of metaphor in pictures and words, because I liked it.
I know students too well to try such a thing in skool. :P
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At May 1, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
@Clay
I know, man. :P Was just tossing your petals back at you with a sprinkling of spice.
That being said, might be a great way to get rid of a class you don't like. :P
Arthus Ereas last blog post..Language Transcending Ink
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At May 1, 2008, Jason Welker wrote:
Nice article, hopefully this comment posts!
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At May 1, 2008, ggatin wrote:
commenting with co-comment as per twitter request. I love this blog.
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At May 1, 2008, John Larkin wrote:
I shall steer clear of deep analysis. Yet I do agree with you Clay regarding the term 'blog'. It does cheapen the activity that we cheerfully pursue.
It is also a horrible sounding word. It sounds like bog. Blog. It just lies there, that word. It lies there like an old lump. It is a lump, an old lump. "Blogging" sounds like hard work. Blog is a horrible, unpleasant word. It even sounds rude. Blog. It does sound cheap. It sounds awful.
"What do you do?"
"I'm a blogger."
"Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Are you taking medication for that? Are you receiving treatment? Must be terrible to be afflicted with a blog. Can it be removed?"
Probably a little off task here, but I get a thrill commenting upon your writings Clay.
Cheers, John.
John Larkins last blog post..Lizard saliva dessert dish was a delight!
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At May 2, 2008, Gilbert Halcrow wrote:
Scott McLeod post sent me here (that sounds a bit prophetic), but just to say you are spot on with your thinking. As a drama/media teacher I remember researching (books, back then and VHS tapes –with no director’s commentary) for my major paper about high culture value artefacts and low culture artefacts.
Was an episode of Gilligan’s Island of greater cultural value than an episode of the BBC’s adaptation of Kenneth Clarke’s ‘Civilisation’? Is the Mona Lisa worth more (not fiscally) than a Monet, a Warhol? Is Beethoven’s 5th worth more culturally then ‘Oops I did it again’?
The conclusion is values of art or media artefacts are always representative of prevailing powers within culture, place and time.
That conclusion was based on the fact that those who create media artefacts (I include all art and literature) had gone through a highly competitive narrowing learning journey and had to rely on a highly selective distribution process to reach their audience. Now all that has changed.
The excitement of the re-mix generation is that they can do what they want (the price of production and subsequently failure is cheap) and reach a real audience (who feedback like never before) and develop in response to an audience.
They can evolve in response to an audience, rather than be taught that there is a right way that they must mimic in their writing. Why should I use capitals all the time when I’ve got 1500 RSS of my blog on ‘Manga I love’?
See the old school argument as I posed in my dissertation ‘back in the day’ went ‘the lonely artist’s definitive work vs. the audience responsive commercial product’. The problem for those who worry about standards of writing is they are still framing their argument in those terms.
They haven’t realised that I don’t need to be classically trained before I am consider worthy enough to rebel like James Joyce, Picasso or Einstein.
Our job as teachers is to embrace the new potential of our students and teach them in this ‘audience driven culture’ – Teach resilience in the face of criticism, perspective in the face of praise. Teach them how to find new inspiration (through research) when they are without inspiration. Teach them how to work within and managed groups to maximise output.
Most of all teach them versatility and flexibility – not a ‘right way’ to write – but an understanding that particular audiences have particular values and if you want to communicate with them then you must be flexible enough to write in a way they will respond to.
Shakespeare never wrote to be taught in an English lesson in ’08. He wrote to make money, he wrote for an audience. The high art ascribe to his work is all post mortem!
Bill would have blogged and given a chance most English teachers would have reprimanded him for his approach. Still Bill would have been motivated because he knew he had an audience to please.
Gilbert Halcrows last blog post..Savage Learning. Hunting and Gathering an educational model.
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At May 2, 2008, Barry wrote:
I posted a response on my blog about quasi-research study we are doing in my district about blogs. It isn't quite a "homework blog" (yes, your post made me reflect on that and I guess anytime you assign writing, be it blog, essay, or otherwise, you lose a huge dose of its organic creativity because you are being told to. (Although, wasn't Michelangelo "commissioned" to paint and then used his innate creativity to its extremes?)
Where is the line between pushing students to do things they wouldn't do if left to their own devices (in hopes that they will discover they like it and want to do it more) and leaving students to "be"? (i.e. "Yes, lima beans are good for you, but don't eat them if you don't want to.)
My blog post here: http://plethoratech.blogspot.com/2008/04/student-bloggers-and-pew-intern...
My second thought: I get that roses are far easier (and more fun) to teach than the dandelion or weeds. What do we do with the weeds if they can't come to your class? In public school, very few get to hand pick who they teach.
Great post for thought.
Barry
Barrys last blog post..Student Bloggers and the Pew Internet Paper
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At May 2, 2008, Vicki Davis wrote:
Blogging should only be required in an "advanced blogging" class?
Did I hear you correctly?
Correct me if I'm wrong because I disagree with that statement entirely. We blog in keyboarding, we blog in computer fundamentals, we blog in computer science, we blog in accounting for goodness sakes.
To be prescriptive in saying "blog in this case but not in that" is like saying "use paper in this class or not in that one.
Blogging is a publication medium like paper and can be used well or poorly. Do the students have something to blog about? What is blogging for?
To me, it is not about blogging per se. Who knows if it will be called that in the future. WAYYYY too much time is being taken talking about "blog this" or "wiki that" -- it is -- what is the proper tool for what needs to be accomplished.
And expecting blogging to be some magic charm in the hands of a sorry teacher is wrong. There is no such thing for that. A sorry teacher is a sorry teacher with or sans blog. Period.
I think the focus needs to be on what works and what we're trying to teach. I also thank that it is dangerous to make such blanket statements about where blogs should not be used as some people will take your statement and cut out blogging everywhere except for advanced writing. I think that is so wrong.
Be aware that what you blog isn't just for you and people make decisions based upon what you say. I'm going to look at the pew report, as you've said there are some interesting if not questionable statements there.
Vicki Daviss last blog post..Sites that Caught My Eye Today 04/30/2008
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At May 2, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
This is interesting.
Thanks all for the comments (Vicki, more to you later, as I have to go to work right now).
But here's a new Pop Quiz:
Can you tell which comments were the result of a schooly assignment, and which were natural?
They seem pretty obvious to me.
And Vicki, in the same way, assigned blogs seem obviously different from real blogs.
As I say in the post, you can smell homework a mile a way. Blindfolded.
And Vicki, for somebody who openly supports the view that the Book of Genesis is a science book that competes, for validity, with fossil evidence, physics, geology, chemistry, and genetics, I find your scolding about responsible blogging ironic.
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At May 2, 2008, Jenny Luca wrote:
Hi Clay,
Can't say I agree with you entirely here - you're sounding a bit elitist (dare I say it) about student blogging (sorry, writing). If we discriminate, allowing only our 'good' writers the opportunity to write online, are we potentially denying our weaker students the rewarding experience writing online can be. Students may rise to the challenge and begin to improve their writing skills as a result of seeing their work published for a bigger audience than just their classroom teacher. Isn't that our job as teachers - to afford our students learning opportunities, encourage them with their efforts and guide them so that they refine their writing skills?
There are blogs I read which are not the most eloquent, but that doesn't mean I don't value the efforts of the writer and their desire to share and make a difference.
Jenny Lucas last blog post..Scrapblog - the things your students find!
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At May 2, 2008, diane wrote:
Jenny,
Maybe what Clay is saying is that writing for school, in journal entries, assigned essays, blogs, or any other format, is still done under compulsion and usually must conform to certain rules.
Show students what a blog is, just as you introduce pens and notebooks, but don't expect enthusiasm and creativity if the activity itself doesn't engage them.
Maybe his "self-expression class" should be a studio with art supplies, cameras, musical instruments, notebooks, pens, and yes, computers, available for use. No guidelines, no constraints, just the freedom to produce a product meaningful to the participant.
Wouldn't that be grand!
diane
dianes last blog post.."This I Believe" Meme: The Search for Truth
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At May 2, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Okay, a second quick one after that "wake up and read the Comment Challenge barrage" experience.
To all future comment challenge folks coming in, please be sure that your rush from blog to blog doesn't make you rush in your reading of each blog (this is not a blanket accusation).
That will shoulder each blogger with the burden of having to point out to each person who does read him or her sloppily their mis-readings.
And since the Comment Challenge compounds this by saying, as I understand it, "Read as many blogs as you can, comment on as many as you can, and make those comments long," that can cause a Blogger's Burden.
I can't help but say it - and I'm not trying to make enemies here, but to sincerely make an analytical point: The Comment Challenge seems misguided to me in exactly the same way that schooly "Read three of your classmates' blogs and leave a comment" assignments do.
Pushed comments aren't real. They don't sound real or feel real. They're extrinsically motivated (grades, winning the "challenge").
For the record, the only clarification I want to make here is that my focus was on blogging to teach _writing_.
More later, probably.
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At May 2, 2008, Charlie A. Roy wrote:
@Clay
One issue I've had is the quality of student writing on blogs. I have students who can whip up the traditional paper in MLA or whatever format that is available but then when asked to post on a blog the writing reverts to a display of unimpressive grammar. We are working on some rubrics to help in the process but then again we don't want to make it to schooly
Charlie A. Roys last blog post..Cell Phones in the Classroom?
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At May 2, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Gilbert,
I like your summary of the evolution of what I'm wanting to call "performance expression," and its revolution in the Berners-Lee Age.
I really like your treatment of the explosion of audiences and writing contexts the New Age brings.
To me, it stills comes back to the basic need of the student to "perform an expression" of something authentic to them, a passion.
If that passion pulls them into this vortex, then they want to learn how to improve their methods of reaching an audience. They've become authentic learners.
If passion doesn't pull them in, then by and large we have a web-based equivalent of dashing off homework, teacher (and now, god help them, students assigned to "comment") covering it with digital red ink, and student not caring about it any more than they care about red ink on paper.
I really like your comment when it states:
Our job as teachers is to embrace the new potential of our students and teach them in this ‘audience driven culture’ – Teach resilience in the face of criticism, perspective in the face of praise. Teach them how to find new inspiration (through research) when they are without inspiration. Teach them how to work within and managed groups to maximise output.
I've tried doing pretty much that for over two years now, and the result has been a few roses I'll continue "teaching" forever (as long as they keep wanting readers and comments and feedback), and a crowd of students who, conditioned so deeply to see anything assigned as a task to get off their back (my Korean context may be decisive here - the recent NYTimes article about Korean educational burn-out due to over-schooling is spot on).
Again, though, I'm with you in the large view. I just more and more think the path to switching students on to "expressive performance" online is to start with the naturally expressive ones - the ones pulled to this medium.
Their successes, I suspect, would pull far more students into wanting to enter this world than the pushing force of all the teachers in the world combined.
Magnets, not rods. Seductions, not threats. Choice (including the "I don't want to blog" choice), not prescription. Free audiences, not captive ones led in on a chain-gang.
Thanks for your comment. Now to check out your blog with my CommentLuv plugin link :)
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At May 2, 2008, Jenny Luca wrote:
@dianne I see your point, and I think a class like this would be wonderful to see in our schools, but I would hate to see a situation arise where we as teachers make decisions about students as learners and predict their capablities. We should be opening up opportunities for all rather than weeding out those we view as not up to scratch.
Jenny Lucas last blog post..Scrapblog - the things your students find!
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At May 2, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Jenny,
I said "to teach writing." Let students blog for homework, blog to demonstrate learning and content mastery, blog socially, whatever.
But the ones who want, more than other students, to become Writers? (Again, notice, I explicitly said in my post, "blogging to teach writing".) The ones who will value teacher and reader input, and work to apply it to a better product next time?
Why not be "elitist" (which I acknowledged in my post, so of course no offense taken) for those students, in the same way we are for "Advanced Writing" classes, "Creative Writing" classes, etc?
I don't believe in giving feedback equally to students with unequal motivation to improve. That short-changes the meritocracy in the name of democracy.
We have Gifted and Talented programs, and Advanced This and That programs. Students have to show they deserve a place to be allowed in.
It's not based on money, it's not based on grades, it's not based on mastery (they need no teaching if they've already mastered an art): it's based on demonstrated engagement, passion, and productivity they bring with them.
That's all I'm saying: To teach the Natural Aristocracy - more democratically, the Meritocracy - don't water their classes down with the fake blog writers and fake blog commenters. Take the attention from the students who don't want it, and in this class - this class, mind you - give it to those who Want More.
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At May 2, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Vicki,
You did hear me wrong. If you read more carefully, you'll see I wrote "to teach writing."
Blogging for homework? Fine. But really, if blogging is really writing, and writing is really about writers, and writers write what they choose, and readers read it for their own voluntary and authentic pleasure, can we really call "Homework" of "Schoolwork" blogs authentic? Do visitors return to them to see how the keyboarding is coming along, or the accounting?
As for the rest:
A blog post, to me, is written for me, and for readers who want to think about what I write - if a reader "make[s] decisions based upon what [I] say," that's the reader's poor critical thinking to blame. I'm not the Pope, and I don't set myself up to be.
I'm writing my journey. I believe in, and embody, Evolution. My post, read closely, even frames my "position statement" in terms of "latest," if you read it sensitively, which implies "evolving," "more later, surely."
A diversity of views is good, for thinking people, and for the advancement of thought. I'm not adding an echo to the chamber, and I'm not being authoritarian.
I'm reporting from the trenches of the English and history classroom in a Korean high school.
And I'm reporting as a guy who thinks most students learn very little of present or lasting value from most exercises schools put them through.
You're much more conservative than me, Vicki. It's no wonder we don't agree. In fact, I would say it's good :)
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At May 2, 2008, Paul C wrote:
Hi Clay,
Great post about the denigrating terms of blogging or bloggers. The terms "cheapen the practice." Rather than homework blogs let's call it 'students who write on blogs." Or let's use the term "advanced digital communication" for teaching students how to develop their writing skills.
Good blogging is the celebration of great writing.
In the four months I have blogged I must admit I have spent a lot of time refining my writing; that's after 30 years of teaching English. Writing is a process. Just think what an enriched learning experience it can be for students who face the similar challenges we edubloggers face every time we try to put out a quality post. Students writing for an audience, wanting to get their ideas expressed in just the right way.
What a motivator for refining writing skills. What an opportunity to teach what great writing is all about. What a defining moment for teachers of English.
Keep up the great posts. I am going to add you to my blog roll. I hope you can pay me a visit occasionally.
Paul Cs last blog post..Ryan's Well: Clean Water for Africa
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At May 2, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Barry,
Great questions. Here are some provisional (always) responses:
wasn’t Michelangelo “commissioned” to paint and then used his innate creativity to its extremes?
Yes, but he wanted to (I would say needed to) paint, sculpt, etc. It was in him.
Where is the line between pushing students to do things they wouldn’t do if left to their own devices (in hopes that they will discover they like it and want to do it more) and leaving students to “be”? (i.e. “Yes, lima beans are good for you, but don’t eat them if you don’t want to.)
I'm trying to say that teaching writing doesn't require student blogging. Pencil and paper work well enough for that. Allowing students to opt in to blogging because they really want to express well seems an interesting compromise here - or making blogging an extra credit or something.
I agree with your point about the role of process leading to discovery. It's just that I hear so often that students "game" blogging, with no seriousness, that I feel it short-changes those who really are serious.
"Quick, give me something to write about! My blog post is due when class starts in ten minutes!" is a common report I hear from students about the behind-the-scenes student attitude toward classroom blogging, and that's what makes me want to create a separate class for those who are different, and have decided they want to put their best into it.
I get that roses are far easier (and more fun) to teach than the dandelion or weeds. What do we do with the weeds if they can’t come to your class? In public school, very few get to hand pick who they teach.
I've touched on this here and there, and even in this post, when I said I would "teach" students writing at home via Skype, Twitter, etc, 24/7, if they had a writer in them wanting to improve.
I meant it. I do it often. It's not a job, and it's not graded, but it's teaching and learning. And I think that's the future of learning. David Eggers' TED talks (search my blog for Eggers and you'll find my post about it) points to the same thing. So does all the talk of networked learning, PLNs, etc.
Good questions and thoughts, Barry, and I know my replies didn't put them to rest. It's all about "food for thought," as you say. And constantly digesting it.
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At May 2, 2008, Peter Rock wrote:
Hmm. I've always been rubbed a little the wrong way by the label "blogger" and never could pinpoint why. But you make a strong point. I wouldn't call a writer who writes on paper a "paperer".
This is a habit I will make a genuine effort to change. I make the mistake all the time of saying "blogger". Maybe this is why my frustration with the term "edublogger" is even worse. It's wrong on multiple-levels!
And you know some will accuse you of being overly anal for criticizing the term but I agree that it cheapens the worth of the writer and is simply inaccurate...the term should be used for those who actually make blogs...like, actually *code* the structure that writers can then use to contain their words. So a "blogger" would then be a certain type of web programmer.
Damn insightful and yet so obvious. Thanks Clay.
Peter Rocks last blog post..Vicki Davis on Science and Intelligent Design
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At May 2, 2008, M. Walker wrote:
Clay,
I appreciated your comments about 1:1 and writing. As our district explores a 1:1 program, I need to stop fantasizing and stay grounded in reality.
As for the rest, I think Barry and Vicki have it right.
Isn't your goal as an English teacher to try to get all of your students to become good writers, not just the 35%?
If so, isn't it possible, that by introducing students to writing via a blog as part of a homework assignment, whether it's in "Advanced Writing" or a Science or Social Studies course, we may motivate them to become better writers in the process?
To me, what makes blogging a more authentic tool for communication is it's ability to go beyond the classroom walls.
This year a high school language arts class here was studying a poet. Students posted about some of the authors poems, and low and behold, the author commented on the student posts!
This dialog could not have happened, had the students submitted their comments on paper to the teacher.
In fact, were I to actually be a "Writing" teacher, one of my assignments would be to blog/comment about your post! Too "Schooly"?
I agree that the term "blogger" whether teen or adult should be writer, but I would take it a step further, and refer to it as communicator.
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At May 3, 2008, Linda Bilak’ Blog » This I believe… wrote:
[...] writing. It is what I believe. It had poured out of me in a moment of expression without the schooliness of being assigned writing. Clay-I hear you, and say amen! Posted on May 2, 2008 in Uncategorized by Linda [...]
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At May 3, 2008, Corrie Bergeron wrote:
*applause*
I'm going to send this to my son the writer and to the English teacher he adores.
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At May 3, 2008, Scott McLeod wrote:
I'm going to try this again. Hope it works!
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At May 3, 2008, Soojin wrote:
"It’s been a pet peeve of mine for a long time, this word “blogging.” The label cheapens the practice. Writing bloggers are writers, photo-bloggers are photographers, podcast-bloggers are audio producers, vloggers are video artists, etc, in teenhood as it is in adulthood."
my favorite quote from the post. Bloggers often have a connotation of a computer geek, especially in our school! Writer labels those people better, for those who write beyond paper (thus saving trees)
I am very looking forward for your new class next year!
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At May 3, 2008, Gilbert Halcrow wrote:
Hey Clay thanks for the good words.
I like the concept of ‘performance expression’ and that it occurs when the learning resonates or has authenticity for the student. Following this idea through the comments here I start to think this debate is less about ‘blogging’ and about how to motivating students into deeper learning.
I was involved in the introduction of a traditional literacy program; broadening the responsibility for literacy across the school, not just the English department. One of the most contentious issues was that of audience for the variety of texts produced by students.
Many staff had never considered framing written task (notionally always for the teacher) for a particular audience – engagement with this strategy immediately motivated students writing to be more considered and improved. The wake up and ‘smell the homework’ happens when these written task (paper, blog, fuzzy felt) put content (curriculum regurgitation) over, form (lets do a poster, lets do a blog) and not even consider audience.
This strategy is perhaps old news for many of you - but it amazes me how many post-16 students get to me in Media without an explicit understanding of the interplay between form, content and audience in the creation of effective text. Even more amazing is how quickly they start to apply it in deconstruction and construction of Media texts once I introduce it.
Your approach is spot on because good writing (good communication) is about synthesis. Taking what you want to say and make choices about how you are going to say it based on what will attract and maintain a specific audience. This type of ‘meta’ learning is occurring more around the world, but within an ‘Asian’ education context the journey is just starting and I think your approach is not elitists it is just smart differentiation - ‘Leave no child behind’ never stipulated that had to all leave at the same time.
What really worries is not that you are not focussing on your whole class with this approach – it is that those teachers in the other subjects who run blogs are not engaging with basic literature skills and many blogging task are discontented from any sense of audience and very little understanding of form (particularly how our students consume the medium).
What upsets me is that far too often writing in schools is functional and not engaging.
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At May 3, 2008, Peter Rock wrote:
M. Walker says:
"Isn’t your goal as an English teacher to try to get all of your students to become good writers"
I would think it is a goal to help all students get better relative to where they are at, but trying to get them "all" to "become good writers" is a useless and unrealistic goal.
Peter Rocks last blog post..Vicki Davis on Science and Intelligent Design
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At May 4, 2008, Joon wrote:
I think blogs are a fun way to write because what we write are actually getting attention. A short classroom writings just get recycled after the teacher grades them. Thats so stupid!
But blogs not only get "published" for people to see all over the world for free, but it also saves paper!
Check out my blog! http://joonplee.kiswrites.org/
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At May 4, 2008, The Well of Inspiration at Students 2.0 wrote:
[...] For the Roses: My Latest Position on Classroom Blogging | Beyond School on the post 21st Century Education: Thinking Creatively [...]
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At May 4, 2008, Adrienne wrote:
I am late to reply to this (as usual -- where does the time go?!) but wanted to share what I think are two key points: 1) blogging is just another way of writing and therefore another way of communicating. If this means we use it in classrooms as a "must-do" at times, then so be it. Perhaps some will take to it, and some won't. Same goes for all kinds of writing, really. 2) Your post, Clay, reminds me of this article which I saw a few months ago over at the National Writing Project. (While the research is primarily concerned with concrete tools, a blog is listed in this research as being a "creative application" of writing.)
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At May 5, 2008, coComment - Group wrote:
[...] view blog [...]
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At May 5, 2008, M. Walker wrote:
@peterrock
I am corrected. "all students becoming good writers" would imply that I embraced NCLB, which is unrealistic. Students becoming better at any skill, relative to where they are at, is more realistic.
I am reminded however of a parent conference I had years ago when our district instituted the University of Chicago math series. A parent lamented that her son, an average student, was only getting a C. I suggested that he use a highlighter in the notes he was able to use for his tests, to label vocabulary terms and key examples. She replied, "That is something a good student would do."
As I said to her, "my goal is to try to make your son a better student."
M. Walkers last blog post..Scratch Workshop
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At May 5, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Just for the record, everyone, before this post fades into oblivion:
My title says "Latest Position on Classroom Blogging," but the post itself is clearer about the qualifier, "to Teach Writing."
A week or so since writing it, I just want to add that the positive idea of this post (one I still stand by) is that what we might call "talented and gifted" communicators deserve a class in which they're not competing with Those Who Treat This Stuff as Homework for the teacher's attention. At my 1:1 high school, in which every student is required to maintain a blog as part of their English class, I've heard too many reports from the Few Who Do Care that the Majority Who Don't put no thought or care into their production. Blogs are homework to be dashed off.
That being the case, these students are parasites sucking the teacher's energy away from the students who Do Care.
Give those students an elective class. Make it by interview - selective. Require applicants to demonstrate that they were born to express productively.
As for blogs for homework and classes and all of that? Sure. I've used them to good effect for schooly stuff in the past, and of course they serve their purposes.
But schoolwork isn't something that satisfies students who want to express their own world. They were my focus here.
Clay Burells last blog post..A Sunday Science Sermon
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At May 6, 2008, Your page is now on StumbleUpon! wrote:
[...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]
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At May 7, 2008, Chris Watson wrote:
Hey Clay, (Yes, I'm still online) As you know, we move in parallel when it comes to blogging in the classroom. I'm to the point now where I don't have my class blogging (I only have one class of freshman; blogging is reserved for students I work with individually, like Lindsey and my senior independent project student). Instead, we use a lot of wikis and other collaborative, connective tools. Next year though, I'm trying to wrap my head around how (and why) I can push sophomore blogging initiative because I think it's a tool that can help the non-writing students explore different ways of being empowered as communicators, whether it's the writing, the speaking, etc. You know that feeling of seeing red dots grow on your Clustrmap. Seems to me that every student has something to say and wants to be heard (just watched a re-run of Raising Cain by Michael Thompson). I guess it's the public school/community college in me. The easy part is teaching the motivated writers. What about the others?
Chris Watsons last blog post..My Wife Wrote The Post I'd Been Working On. And I Had A Blogger Format Blowout
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At May 7, 2008, diane wrote:
Chris,
Speaking of Lindsea...perhaps you should consider making your student blogging part of a cross curricular program and let students follow her lead in combining images, text, audio & video in their posts.
In creativity, as in the changing (!) room, one size does not fit all.
diane
dianes last blog post..Happy Birthday to Me!
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At May 7, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Chris - You tell me. The hard part is giving as much attention to those whose hearts aren't into it to those whose hearts are.
Maybe make it optional or extra credit, as I say somewhere in this comment thread.
But as things stand now, I hesitate to shoulder teachers with the burden of dealing with most digital content of any non-schooly nature (that requires "genius," in the Greek sense of some special quality and drive). It's just more of the grading game for them to wrestle with, and more of the homework game for so many students to sham through.
That's why I can't let go of this conviction that an elective course is the way to go.
Otherwise, individual blogging as a student requirement? I'm just really conflicted about it right now.
This could be very, very contingent on my local context. My almost all-Korean student body is obviously different from that of most of my readers.
I don't want to ask a teacher to spend time treating half-assed student work with the dignity and investment equal to that of the student who seeks the teacher out saying, "I want to make my writing better. I wrote this piece and really like it, but how can I make it better?" (Substitute your non-textual communication mode for writing in that last sentence, btw.)
Here, most students game the grading system. Blogs are nothing but another thing to figure out how to do most quickly for the grade. (I'm talking high school.)
BUT: You're right. Some might catch fire, though only after doinking around in this world for a long time. So the push you're tempted by will serve them.
I just suspect they're a slim minority.
So how compromise? "Everybody blogs, but grading and assessing is very, very minimal. Only students wanting and seeking feedback get it. The rest? Nope. Just an extra credit grade at the end of each unit/quarter/whatever."
Is that a fix? I don't know.
Good luck. Good to hear from you.
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At May 7, 2008, Adrienne wrote:
Clay,
You said, "The hard part is giving as much attention to those whose hearts aren’t into it to those whose hearts are."
Isn't this true of *anything* we teach? There will always be those who love it and those who hate it... those who need it, those who don't... those who understand it, those who don't. Such is the nature of teaching. And such is the reason why we differentiate. Maybe for some kids, blogs are the answer. Maybe for others, they aren't. Regardless, you'll have both in your classroom and I don't think an elective is the solution (what about the middle schoolers?). Give the attention to those whose hearts are in it, and give *different* attention to those whose hearts aren't. They need a different medium -- maybe they can do a podcast instead? As teachers we should just be using what works to do the job, period.
"the burden of dealing with most digital content of any non-schooly nature"
Why is it a burden? Oh wait. In the next sentence, you said it: "more of the grading game". Dangit, those silly grades! Let's just get rid of 'em! Hmm. Methinx this is a solution for the blogging conundrum. To grade, or not to grade?
I say NOT. Why would anyone grade a blog, seriously? I honestly cannot think of one real, authentic reason. Let's examine the down-to-earth simple purposes of a blog: reflective, seeking feedback, communicative, connective. Hmm, to me all those just have to do with the learning process, period. Sure, one (or more) could be developed into something bigger and more cohesive, and maybe that is the task you give to the kid who will live and die a writer. But for the rest? Why can't it simply be an unassessed reflective medium for learning?
The compromise you suggest at the end of your comment sounds reasonable to me EXCEPT with the "extra credit" idea. I am generally opposed to the extra credit philosphy because it encourages students do things for all the wrong reasons (ie., the grades). My solution (which I think I will implement next year, on a trial basis): everyone has to keep a blog. No, it's not assessed (ever).* It is a tool for you to keep track of, reflect on, and seek feedback on your learning -- of anything. Consider it a completion check, and nothing more -- are you doing it? Yes, check. No? Let's chat about why not and see what comes of that conversation...
Incidentally, I will always, always "spend time treating half-assed student work with the dignity and investment equal to that of the student who seeks the teacher out" because that is part of my job. Sometimes, those kids doing the half-assed work are the ones that need my attention the most. And sometimes, through that half-assed work (and my feedback) they realize, "Hey, maybe I want to try this differently next time."
... am I being too critical, or perhaps idealistic?
*Ok, I will assess something that comes out of it that you (the student) chooses for me to assess, but only if you have developed something cool that shows your ability to write in this medium. And that's a big "if". But I promise I will.
Adriennes last blog post..Commenting Self-Audit
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At May 7, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Adrienne, Good feedback. By the numbers:
Maybe for some kids, blogs are the answer. Maybe for others, they aren’t. Regardless, you’ll have both in your classroom and I don’t think an elective is the solution (what about the middle schoolers?). Give the attention to those whose hearts are in it, and give *different* attention to those whose hearts aren’t. They need a different medium — maybe they can do a podcast instead? As teachers we should just be using what works to do the job, period.
We seem to be saying the same thing, to a degree. Blogs shouldn't be required of all. I still don't see why you say you "don't think an elective is the solution," when it would invite only those for whom it is an authentic, self-motivated learning opportunity. Your point about middle school is well-taken - and your suggestion of differentiation (including "those who don't want to don't have to" seems a riff on the elective idea in a sense, since it still invites only the willing and eager.
So I'm not sure we disagree here. I do value your highlighting of the range of differentiation strategies between all or nothing for any given student. Maybe a group blog, for example, instead of an individual one. Or maybe some students are only comfortable with (or ready for) a role as commenters. On and on.
My solution (which I think I will implement next year, on a trial basis): everyone has to keep a blog. No, it’s not assessed (ever).* It is a tool for you to keep track of, reflect on, and seek feedback on your learning — of anything. Consider it a completion check, and nothing more — are you doing it? Yes, check. No? Let’s chat about why not and see what comes of that conversation…
How is "check/no check" different than grading? What does a check mean in your system, and the lack of one? Does it affect the grade?
Otherwise, I love the idea. It's even better than the extra credit idea, though that check still whiffs of the same infernal carrot and stick.
I will always, always “spend time treating half-assed student work with the dignity and investment equal to that of the student who seeks the teacher out” because that is part of my job. Sometimes, those kids doing the half-assed work are the ones that need my attention the most. And sometimes, through that half-assed work (and my feedback) they realize, “Hey, maybe I want to try this differently next time.”
This is the one I have the hardest time with. Conversations about half-hearted student work, I have no problem with. I agree they're good. "Let's sit for a spell and talk about your performance here." I do that often, and on a metacognitive level see lights come on when I ask, after a skim, "How many examples of nice, short sentences do you see in this piece?" (This for the kid who writes sentences the average length of the human intestine.) "Show me your favorite metaphor/simile/exaggeration out of all the ones you've used." (This for the kid who writes literal, denotative sentences only.) "Which paragraph has the nicest rhythm?" (For the student who has yet to discover the wonders of the comma and its music.)
But I'm going to be picky and say I don't want to go as far as investing energy into the student who shows no attempts to apply previous lessons and feedback advice to his/her latest work on an "equal" level with the students who clearly have put orders of magnitude more work into their own performances. I want to give them much more time, simply because they're not lazy, and are thirsty.
It's the law of the harvest: you don't tend to your crops like a good farmer, you're not going to get as much come harvest time. (I guess I just hemmed myself into somehow being a fruit with this metaphor.)
I'm being picky about the word "equal," I think. But it seems important to me. Again, in an elective class, only the conscientious farmers caring about their crop would be there. They'd get equal care from me.
What am I missing?
Thanks for the push, and the ideas. I enjoy your comments so much.
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At May 7, 2008, Adrienne wrote:
@Clay
You bring up some great points in this last response. I especially concur with you about the "blog participation" differentiation idea (yes, we agree). It brings me to my next point for clarification: Differentiation is different from an elective because in a regular classroom, the idea of the blog is "mandatory" on some level. Every student must participate in a blog environment in some way, shape, or form. Leaving it to an elective shuts out those who might not have discovered the "blog medium" otherwise. (Quick somewhat-related diversion to illustrate point: I think of my own experience when I had to choose between music and art in high school; having had no exposure to art in any class since 1st grade, I chose music. Something like 15 years later, when I'm living in London and visit the Tate, I see art that can be nothing like what I thought "art" was in school, and I think, "Hey, maybe I could have done that if I had had the opportunity. That's pretty cool.")
I realize not all teachers believe in this kind of inclusion, but I do, and I think every student should have the opportunity to "try it out." I daresay it, Clay, but to me the idea of an elective vs. a "regular" class in this context seems almost... schooly, and that's because it sounds a little like streaming. Keep in mind that I teach mostly MS, and I'm often feeling like they get 'left out' of things or lumped together, unjustifiably, with the HS kids.
"How is “check/no check” different than grading? What does a check mean in your system, and the lack of one? Does it affect the grade?"
It doesn't translate to a number, for starters. It's a non-negotiable, but it does not factor into the grade. A type of formative assessment, if you will. It doesn't have to be check / no check; it could be my written or oral feedback, or maybe some peer feedback. But it has to be done, kind of like an exit ticket. (In MYP lingo, these things are sometimes called an Approach to Learning, but I used assessments like this long before I came upon MYP.) Keeping it open and un-assessed keeps it accessible and a playground for risk-taking. I don't want my students to feel like *everything* is about the grades, so this is one of those things where I just don't need to grade it. (Unless for the special occasion I mentioned in my previous post.) An old-fashioned schooly version would be a journal ... something I still use now, because my MS-ers are not on a 1-to1 programme, and access to technology at our school is dismal at present (though set to improve very soon, so things are looking up).
"I don’t want to go as far as investing energy into the student who shows no attempts to apply previous lessons and feedback advice to his/her latest work on an “equal” level with the students who clearly have put orders of magnitude more work into their own performances."
Maybe I should have clarified. I wasn't implying that I should spend heaps of time worrying about the ones who aren't putting in the effort. Absolutely not. Some time, yes. But after a certain point (and it's different for each student), you gotta just let it be. So I agree with you here. What I meant was the kid who was doing the half-assed job still deserves *some* feedback. I am perhaps foolishly optimistic in thinking that one day he'll figure it out (even if that "one day" is 10 years later). And the thirsty ones? They'll come to you begging for more feedback, and of course they deserve it. I'm not sure about the word "equal." I do think that I presently give equal time to both the half-assed and the thirsty ones, and perhaps I shouldn't. Maybe I am wasting my energy. Then again, maybe one day that energy will result in that student realizing he just maybe is capable of writing well because Ms M keeps pushing him to do so... ? I really don't know the answer to this one.
I am laughing at your harvest / crop / fruit metaphor. :) And definitely learning from the dialogue.
Adriennes last blog post..Commenting Self-Audit
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At May 7, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Adrienne,
And I am so learning from our conversations too. I'm so thankful we somehow connected.
I have nothing but *nods head* and *hmmm...I see* as reactions to your last comment.
C.
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At May 9, 2008, C. Tschofen wrote:
Christopher Sessums recently posted a
video of teachers/instructors commenting on their blogging experiences with their students. What struck me most (admittedly after only one viewing) was the underlying assumptions these teachers were bringing to their requirements and future plans for student blogging: that they could "strengthen the ties" between their students by requiring them to blog; that every student was going to be sincere in their required blogging; that requiring students to comment on each other's blogs would enhance the process next time. Interestingly, one teacher comments at the end of the video that perhaps blogging should come with a "health warning," which I think begins to get at some overlapping issues that pop up directly and indirectly in this discussion: concerns about student privacy, authenticity, future repercussions, the role of intrinsic motivation, and even the potential freedom to NOT share one's thoughts in a tell-all world... Would that everyone had teachers who thought about this at the level reflected in the posts here!
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At May 9, 2008, Hannah wrote:
I feel the need to comment, even though I don't quite know if what I'm saying is relevant. Anyway...
I've seen "homework blogs." They're horrible. If the purpose of switching from pen and paper to a blog format is to open up the classroom to the world and international thoughts, then homework blogs fail miserably. No-one (okay, maybe some do, but NOT MANY) wants to read an analysis of a quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream. A reader wants to feel that the writer believes what they're typing (or I do, at least). Typing up homework assignments will not draw an audience.
As for the label, "blogger," I'm not too picky. Call me what you will, I still know for myself what I am :)
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At May 9, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@C. Tschofen: Great comment. I went through all of those stages in my classroom over the past two years, and decided to communicate what I was seeing, instead of what I'd hoped to see. I still haven't given up on it, but I'm very skeptical about the uses many teachers put it to. (But that's just me, Vicki.)
I'd add we need to add "cyber-addiction" to the "health" agenda you mentioned. One student at my school told me he's "addicted" to Twitter. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, when almost all students (and adults) are addicted to TV and other lazier things. But still.
@Hannah: Amen, sister. But labels do matter in the public perception they create. Words have color and music. Ugly words evoke ugly impressions.
Hitler's family had a weird history that almost resulted in him being named not Hitler, but Schicklgruber (or something like that). A respected historian speculated that, had the coin dropped on the second name instead of the first, Adolf Schicklegruber's name would have destined him to a much humbler history. In that case, too bad. But you get my point.
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At May 9, 2008, Hannah wrote:
Godwin's Law :D
Names are different than labels. Your name [i]is[/i] you. A label is someone else's opinion of you.
However, I do agree that writer is a more appropriate term. As someone wrote earlier, writing pen on paper does not make you a 'paperer.' You are what you do, not what you have. So yes, a programmer who specializes in blogs would be a blogger!
Hannahs last blog post..Space
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At May 9, 2008, Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Where Oh Where has Cool Cat Teacher Gone? wrote:
[...] of mindstuffed shirts wouldn't make it a day in my class, I find.Debates swirl about this and that,what will work and what's old hat.While others debate teachers have jobs to do,until the final bell rings, we're [...]
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At May 9, 2008, Gilbert Halcrow wrote:
Names are names and labels are what you others think of you, but what others think of you is what you think about yourself.
What about Johnny Cash’s seminal work on the conditioning effect due to the social interpretation of a person’s name – ‘A boy called Sue’?
Gilbert Halcrows last blog post..False belief 1 - If I redesign my school's Structure then we're Future Proof
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At May 12, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Vicki, That trackback poem you wrote to this post implies a couple of strange things. Let me see if I read them correctly:
1. "Mind-stuffed shirts wouldn't make it a day in [your] class." So you're saying I'm a stuffed shirt? And you'd fail me for that? (This brings up a danger of things like "Comment Challenges": people doing that sort of extrinsic blog-touring - a commendable enough thing, done carefully - can drop into a blog they've never commented on before, read one post, and think they're qualified to characterize both the blog and the writer of that blog by virtue of that one hasty Pac-Man point-grab.)
I read a lot and think a lot, and have done so a long time now. Humanities teachers tend to be that way. But if you were a regular visitor instead of a one-visit affair, I think you'd see that my style is a pretty good indication I'm not "stuffy" (I like to call it "constipated," when I describe writing tone to my students, and I call it "schooly" here). Another "Challenge" for you: search this blog for the word "however". I bet you won't find it in more than a dozen posts out of the 500 plus I've written here.
I've always considered "however" instead of good ol' "but," and "utilize" instead of the good old "use," two marks of a stuffiness.
I give students who argue with me with good logic extra credit. I love that mental pants-stuffing, or whatever your metaphor was.
2. As for the rest: Teachers "debat[ing] what works and what's old hat" is, to me, the essential value of this medium. (Though with the right interlocutors, it's less debate than shared inquiry.) So dis that as you will, but I can't see much validity to that judgment.
Finally, you seem to insinuate that "good" teachers can't be good if they're "debating," because those "good" teachers will be spending every waking hour grading homework or something.
That's silly. Some teachers come home and watch TV. I don't (less than five hours watching the tube in the last 18 months). I spend that time at home doing stuff like this.
Anyway, this in not a very cool cat-fight. Something about the tone in your comment above - I believe the first you've ever left here - was sharp, and I didn't find the reasoning compelling either. So you got some sharp back.
But to question the professionalism of people who "swirl in debates" about different approaches to teaching on this or any blog? That's terribly ironic, coming from an educational blogger like yourself.
If I got you wrong, please clarify and I'll be the first to apologize. But it's hard to interpret that ditty on your trackback post in any other way, as far as I can see.
You say you're taking a break or something. We all need them sometimes - I think I wrote like 9 posts one month out of that need. I hope yours serves its purpose and you come back rested. (But I suspect you won't be able to stay away from your blog very long ;-) )
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At May 12, 2008, I can see it growing: Blogging and Writing | connect. create. question. wrote:
[...] been reading a few things about writing. And I’ve been reading a few things about both blogging and writing, and I’m starting to think I’m missing something. Or need clarification, at the very [...]
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At May 12, 2008, hendron’s digest » Blog Archive » Teen Blogging wrote:
[...] Clay wrote earlier this month about the state of teen blogging, taking apart some recently published statistics. To boil it down, he only recommends blogging in a [English] course that’s advanced: for kids who really like to write. The reason? Blogging, computers, and the technology don’t instantly make writers out of kids. If they didn’t want to write with paper and pencil, why is the technology going to change that? [...]
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At May 13, 2008, Sarah wrote:
For the record--I'm "doing" the Comment Challenge and unapologetically too. I'm glad others are too, because by reading this entire thread, I've actually changed my mind twice about student blogging. I don't change my mind nearly as often as someone who considers herself "open-minded" should. Also, I've visited Clay's blog many times, but I haven't commented before the challenge because, well, before then I almost never commented. I also didn't tend to spend nearly as much time sifting through information that made me question anything I'm going in the classroom.
I'm a big fan of Bill Farren's, and I think his blog is one of the few I commented on before the challenge.
My students are *required* to journal via a modified blog about their thoughts on the books they read for independent reading and to comment to each other's blogs. They are also 10, 11 and 12 years old, and our blogs are limited to the 72 students in the grade, the teachers in the grade and our school librarian for legal reasons. I grade them in the sense that they have to do it, and if they don't, I sit them down and they write under duress. I don't like doing that, and I don't have to do it often, but it has happened 2 or 3 times this year.
I'm not going to get far into how reading this post and series of comments has changed my mind, because I'm not done thinking it through yet. However, I am now engaged in being reflective and metacognative about my methods of getting students to read, write and communicate about reading. I really like what has happened this year with this activity, but that doesn't mean I'll just repeat it next year.
If you haven't taught this age group, it's an awful lot of fun, but it can be wild. Some are still at the point where they don't bathe/brush their teeth except under duress. Others are in full-blown puberty by the end of the year. I think Clay's points about selecting which students get the most attention apply to older students more than younger ones.
So--no nice synthesis here to wrap it up; however, I'm going to do some more thinking about whether coerced writing can be authentic. Yep, I'm tagging this post too.
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At May 13, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Sarah, This has to be real quick because I have to head off to school (you're my morning read), so:
a) I hear you about the importance of context and agree. I think I've said more than once in this thread that our contexts - age group of students, educational culture, socio-economic background, etc - are important to recognize, and that I suspect the high school students at my school are a different breed than that of most others here.
b) I hope to write about this, but the summary: I visited a class of 10-year-olds to read a story to them during literacy week - I read the last Winnie the Pooh story from the second of the two books - and their receptiveness and eagerness to hear blew me away. It confirmed what you say about middle years students. I was talking here about my normal context.
c) Re: the comment challenge, like all things, it depends on the individual participating. A lot of people are skeptical about it for a lot of reasons, and a lot aren't. I think it's a temperamental thing. When it works for all around, then it's great. When not, there's room for criticism.
That's all I have time for now. Off to work.
I lied: Bill Farren's blog is one of the most vital things out there. I'm glad you mention http://ed4wb.org . His latest video makes me wonder where he'll be in a year. Amazing developments over there.
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At May 13, 2008, diane wrote:
Clay,
I was fascinated by Bill Farren's "I'm Afraid Not"
and showed it to my high school Current Events students.
Their interpretation of the video was very different from mine.
diane
dianes last blog post..She Never Existed Before: Mother's Day 2008
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At May 16, 2008, Phew for PEW at Newly Ancient wrote:
[...] aside those issues, I have to agree with Clay that the researchers really don’t grasp the nature of teen blogging. That’s the only [...]
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At May 21, 2008, To All The “Blog Graders” :: Don’t Forget The Audience wrote:
[...] think you’ve read my “For the Roses: My Latest Position on Classroom Blogging” post. A great conversation is going on at the bottom of that comment thread with a woman named [...]
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At May 24, 2008, Bør vi tøyle dem? « Mitt hJØRNe av web’en wrote:
[...] annen blogger som for lengst har kommentert Pew-studien, er Clay Burell på Beyond School (”For the Roses: My Latest Position on Classroom Blogging“). Med sedvanlig engasjement langer han ut mot både studiens framstillinger og skolens [...]
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At May 30, 2008, Maybe I Can Teach Something: :: Don’t Forget The Audience wrote:
[...] should not be graded. It should be required, but at the same time, there should be no rules (read this post by Clay Burell about blogging at school). Just tell your students to start by writing about [...]
First, a mini-photo essay on my own point of view about privileging writing over speaking when grading in the collaborative, networking, multimedia century:
Three weeks after the Diigo stampede, I’ve been concerned that the new trend of putting Diigo annotations on posts instead of leaving comments in the thread was a negative thing. Only Diigo users would see the conversation, and the post’s comment thread would be left poorer for that.
But after a wild four-hour storm of 74-and-counting comments on my Muhammed Ali post about privileging writing over other communication strands when we grade, it occurs to me that Diigo might come in handy here. There are so many incredibly insightful comments there, and the issue is so relevant to the futures of our students, that I fear the sheer bulk of comments might dissuade new readers from discovering the gold shining here and there.
Diigo highlights and annotations of the thread might help. If you want to take part in this experiment, go at it. It could be a great way to demonstrate the value of Diigo highlights and annotations as a complement to, instead of a substitute for, blog comments. Because the debate - particularly the one between Benjamin Baxter, who maintains that writing should constitute the bulk of a student’s grade in English/Language Arts and history classes, and opposing viewpoints that grades should more equally credit speaking, graphic language, and more, as articulated by Arthus Erea, Adrienne Michetti, Kirstin “Keamac,” Dean Shareski, Claire Thompson, Sylvia Martinez, Carolyn Foote, and many others - that debate never seemed to reach any resolution.
It sounds like I’m piling on Benjamin here, but I don’t mean to. Fifty million people saying something is true doesn’t make it so. Moreover, Benjamin works in an inner city school, and his arguments are rooted in his perception of what best helps his students’ futures. It differs with mine, but I’m in a different context. And we’re all running on varying assumptions about things like the future of work, the purpose of schooling, and more.
But that thread drifts into so many tangents - the high school freshman Arthus v. high school teacher Benjamin debates are priceless, but sometimes distracting (or am I wrong?) - that I see Diigo, again, as possibly helpful here. Highlight and annotate the strong assertions, the weak rebuttals, the evasions of direct questions and the red herrings, and let others add comments to those annotations.
(This connects, by the way, to a conversation with “Uninspired Teacher” Tom and Charlie A. Roy on the “Schooly Speeches versus Real Talks” post, about using juries instead of judges in mock trials - or better, real ones - to improve that old practice.)
Peter Rock said it took him an hour to read that post and thread (but he also said he read it slowly). That scares me. So many comments in that thread don’t deserve burial in the noise.
So head on over to that thread, if you’re a Diigo convert - especially if there’s a Diigo group on assessment - and have at it.
At the same time, far be it from me to dictate rules. If you want to just comment instead, of course that’s okay.
—
Photos:Toksik by The Sizemore McCabe Project, Continental Paper Grading Company by quinn.anya, Spring Branding Near Crane Oregon 1982 by mharrsch
5 Comments
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At April 29, 2008, Diigo is for teaching. wrote:
[...] http://beyond-school.org/2008/04/28/diigo-help-wanted/ [...]
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At April 29, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Heh. Thanks for the link, I guess.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Which Should I Choose?
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At April 29, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Erm. You're welcome, I guess.
I think I've finally discovered the upper register of the generation gap, as I stare at 46 a week away.
But I can't tell if it's an age thing. It could be other differences.
Anyway, I thought I made clear the spirit of ideas this was made in. If you take offense, my apologies.
Erm.
The English Teacher
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At April 30, 2008, Diigo | EDUC 628-Spring-08 wrote:
[...] Burell writes in his Beyond School located here the following: Three weeks after the Diigo stampede, I’ve been concerned that the new trend of [...]
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At April 30, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
No offense taken.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Choosing Field Workers’ Kids Over Posh City
[Update 2: Goodness! A 75-comment debate exploded in less than a day. Best sustained conversation among all commenters (not just responding to the post) that I’ve ever seen on this blog. A true “cocktail party” about an important subject: Assessing with a bias toward writing, versus assessing to reward non-written communication skills equally in grades.] [Update: Good comments in this one. Thanks to Adrienne Michetti (whose new team-blog looks promising), Claire Thompson, Sylvia Martinez of Generation Yes, and Arthus for rooting this post in the basics - which still aren’t basic for so many. And do yourself a favor: watch the Ali video embedded below. It’s the evidence of the argument, and a breath of fun to boot.]
I went into a restaurant downtown - you couldn’t do that back then, because things weren’t integrated yet - and I sat down with my [Olympic] gold medal around my neck, and the waitress came up, and I said, ‘Yes, I’d like, uh, a cup of coffee, and a hot dog.’ And she said, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t serve negroes here.’ And I got so angry, I said, ‘And I don’t eat them, either. Now bring me a hot dog!’ — Muhammad Ali, 1971 TV interview (YouTube embedded below)
You never could have made me believe years ago, when I got out of high school with a D- average - and they gave me the minus because I won the Olympics, 1960, I graduated in 1960 and I won the Olympics in 1960 - . . . . and if you would have told me that I would be offered a professorship to teach philosophy and poetry at Oxford, and speak at Harvard, I never would have believed it. — Muhammad Ali, Harvard graduation speech 1975 (YouTube here)
In 1964, [Muhammad] Ali failed the U.S. Armed Forces qualifying test because his writing and spelling skills were sub par. — Wikipedia
An Historical Argument Against Writing-Privileged Assessment
It’s been a sleep-in Saturday after a long week. I woke up and took a rare cruise through YouTube. It started with laughs with Ali G, and ended with inspiration from Muhammad Ali.
This post is for any student who, like Ali in the epigraph above, has a low GPA (and thus a low self-image), but a brilliant mind. It’s also for teachers of those students who wish they could do their part to make that GPA more accurately reflect that student’s abilities.
Listen, in this YouTube interview from 1971, to this “sub-par” English student’s brilliance with language*, and laugh at the limitations of assessing writing and spelling to measure verbal intelligence:
And teachers - English teachers, especially, but any teacher using writing to assess understanding and merit in your classrooms - ask yourself, in this age of user-created video and audio, if it makes any sense to keep giving the Muhammed Ali’s of our classrooms a D- because they can’t write well, when they can speak well enough to be honored, like Ali was, at Harvard and Oxford. The English teacher in me is uncomfortable with this question, but the history teacher in me thinks it’s justified: Writing is no longer supreme since the Digital Revolution. It’s now on equal footing with Speaking and Graphic Communication. Isn’t it?
If yes, then why, in most classrooms I’ve seen (and taught), is writing still weighted as around 75% of the final grade in the Language Arts classroom? And how can so many teachers who themselves are capable thinkers and creators, but horrible writers, justify this sort of assessment policy in their own practice?
Ali’s language could “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” and with it this man “shook the world” - but neither his high school nor the Army could reflect this in their assessments. Instead, they labeled him “below average” and “sub par.”
It’s been more than 50 years since Ali left high school. Can we leave that assessment philosophy now? (I hear the answers already: “Not until the SAT allows oral instead of written essays.” Just kill me.)
Story Time: When I Met Ali First, and Second
I met Ali in 1982 or so in a West Hollywood restaurant on Sunset Boulevard*, serving him as his white-boy waiter. I was about 20. I told him my name was Clay, and that when I was in first grade in the ’60s and he was still known as Cassius Clay, people called me “Cassius.”
When he heard that, this gentle giant smiled, put up his lethal dukes, dodged and weaved for a split second while he said,
“Oh. So you a fighter.”
Then he offered a handshake, and my hand disappeared into it.
I was an English major in college then, but I didn’t take mental marks off of Ali’s performance for omitting the “are,” didn’t say, “You mean, ‘You are a fighter.’” And this wasn’t just because he could have lifted me over his head and snapped me in two. It was because his language, bad grammar and all, was far more electrifying than many a grammatically perfect professor I had at the time.
I was unschooled in Ali’s history at that time. All I knew was that he was a heavyweight world champion of my childhood, and now had some sort of neural disorder (he often fell asleep at his table, and his wife would wake him up). I wish I’d known then what I know now - that he was one of the great men of the 20th century - so that I could have told him that. Instead, I just laughed with the stupid giddiness people often have in the face of celebrities, and served him his pasta.
Only years later, after watching Leon Gast’s riveting documentary, When We were Kings, did I realize just how great Ali was - not only as a boxer, but also as a citizen and man of conscience for a nation adrift. Punished with the loss of his boxing license at the prime of his career for his political dissent and his refusal to fight in Vietnam, he became an American pariah.
Fifteen years after meeting him, I had another Ali moment. Having lost all desire to become an academic, but not having lost the lifetime of college debt I’d accumulated in that (for me) fool’s quest, I was in a personnel processing center at Fort Leonard Wood, Arkansas, with a freshly shaved head and a duffel bag, ready to start Basic Training. There was a wall-mounted TV in the corner of the room, with live coverage of some important-looking outdoor ceremony. I was out of all media loops that summer, and didn’t even know the Olympics were going on. It was the Torch-lighting ceremony on that TV that I was watching - and it was history. Ali lit that torch in his final, moral comeback. The audience and media adulation was for once justified. It brought tears to my eyes and gave me faith in America.
–
*The critical thinking about race in religion and in US history are not too shabby either. And yes, while Ali shows a lack of critical thinking in his wholesale swallowing of everything Elijah Muhammad preached to him, we shouldn’t be too hard on him. Lack of critical thinking about one’s own religion is the norm in most people of any religion, from what I can see. As I read somewhere - maybe Sam Harris, maybe Bertrand Russell - everybody’s an atheist when it comes to others’ religions. Full non-theists just take them one further.
**Los Angelenos, is “The Old World” restaurant still there? On the corner diagonal from Tower Records, across the street from Spago?
94 Comments
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At April 27, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
While I absolutely agree with you that we need to have multiple (equal?) methods and mediums of assessment, I don't think it should be done by simply replacing some writing assessments with (for example) graphical assessments—that does a disservice to those of us who excel at written assessment.
For instance, my current language arts teacher is a great fan of painting: so almost all of our exams involve painting. Sure, I agree that it is important to give gifted painters the opportunity to share their talent. Yet, shouldn't we also have the opportunity to paint a picture with our words if that is our preferred medium?
In an ideal classroom, students would be able to chose the medium of assessment. For instance, one of our exams was to paint a picture of summer. Instead, the assignment should simply be to create something about summer. If you are a graphical artist, paint. If you would rather write, a poem. Give a speech if you want! Hell, do interpretive dance if that tickles your fancy.
This is obviously not a new idea, but I still think it is important.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..HabariCon
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At April 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
I'm with you on that, Arthus. In most cases I've seen, though, the students who can't write well but can think and communicate well are the ones who get the short end of the assessment stick.
The problem with all of this is that teachers are hemmed in, in many cases, by external factors when they create their assessments.
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At April 27, 2008, sylvia martinez wrote:
From LA: Neither Spago, Tower Records, or Old World are there on Sunset anymore. If you want to, you can drive down Sunset Blvd (8800 block) with the streetview on Google maps. Funky Hollywood moved east, fancy Hollywood moved west, so this area is pretty boring these days.
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At April 27, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
I agree, they generally do. Just pointing out that we can't just flip the assessment stick over, since that'll just give the writing students the short end.
Unfortunately teachers don't have much room to change assessment strategies, particularly in regards to the "big" assessments/exams. Luckily, I'm starting to see some reform here in the US with teachers being able to diversify assessment strategies. But it'll be a while before we see any real change.
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At April 27, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Writing is no longer supreme since the Digital Revolution. It’s now on equal footing with Speaking and Graphic Communication. Isn’t it?
If yes, then why, in most classrooms I’ve seen (and taught), is writing still weighted as around 75% of the final grade in the Language Arts classroom?
cuz in teh end dis is wat imployers hate 2 see.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..SmartBoards for Poor Schools, Too
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At April 27, 2008, Claire wrote:
When I first started teaching, I knew a few 'renegade' teachers who refused to teach to the test, in this case the grade 12 provincial exams. The exams count for 40% of the student's mark. As a new teacher, teaching a provincially examinable course I thought they were crazy! How could you not spend huge chunks of time exposing your students to oodles of multiple choice, short answer, and essay questions, just like the ones the students would see on their tests?! But over time I certainly couldn't dismiss their results--students who were critical thinkers, had a love of their subject, and , by the way, who did well on the big tests.
Is there research out there comparing test results from the 'big' tests (SATs, provincials, etc) with the methods employed by the teachers (teaching to the test, vs teaching for understanding and for critical thinking)? Just curious.
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At April 27, 2008, Mr. Music wrote:
HAHA! That's gotta be one of the best lines ever: And she said, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t serve negroes here.’ And I got so angry, I said, ‘And I don’t eat them, either. Now bring me a hot dog!’
Thanks for that. I'll keep it in my hat ;)
Mr. Musics last blog post..Top Ten Rock Albums Of The 1960s*
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At April 27, 2008, Adrienne wrote:
Ah, assessment. One of my favorite topics. I really, seriously must question ANY English / Language Arts classroom where there is a primary focus on writing -- and I say that *even* knowing all I do about AP, IB, and all the rest. Any teacher who has been "in the know" for the last 15-20 years MUST know about Multiple Intelligences, Learning Styles, DeBono's Hats, blah-dee-blah-dee-blah. Right?
I fully agree with Arthus when he says, "In an ideal classroom, students would be able to chose the medium of assessment." I try to do this as often as possible. Sure, there are times when it's impractical or difficult to do, and yes, this is true more the higher the grade level you teach. But *even* in restrictive programs like the IB Diploma, or Canadian provincial exams (what I think Claire was talking about) there is always space for a teacher to be creative in designing assessments. I would even argue that is part of your job, to differentiate in this respect.
Yes, writing is important. But it is not the be-all-end-all. And, what about different TYPES of writing? One of my writing coaches in my university ed program* pointed out to us that most HS students are asked to write using Standard Academic Discourse, otherwise known as S.A.D. (nice ironic acronym, huh?) And he pointed out that S.A.D. is a language that we all understand but that no one actually uses to communicate daily. So why is it pushed as "necessity" in HS English classrooms?
While I agree with Benjamin Baxter that employers want to see good written communication, I believe it is not the only communication skill needed to succeed. Speaking and Graphic Communication are *very* important in the 21st century. Has anyone noticed the increase in popularity of graphic novels and manga in the last 10 years? My students were thrilled that on my last trip to a "real" bookstore, I discovered and purchased 3 Manga versions of Shakespeare plays. They all use the original text -- pretty dang cool if you ask me. The graphics *aid* the written communication. Surely we can expect the same of our students.
Isn't every Language Arts classroom meant to weigh all 5 (or 6) of the strands equally? Those strands being Writing, Reading, Speaking, Listening, Viewing -- and in some places Representing is added to that list.
*I convocated more than 10 years ago, so this line of thought is not "new", though education seems to change at a painfully sloooow pace.
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At April 27, 2008, oreneta wrote:
I think that when you argue about student assessment based on writing, you need to be careful about both the age and situation of the students you are discussing. For a student teacher for instance, an inability to craft a comprehensible and reasonably well framed page of text is a serious problem. There are any number of other careers in which writing skills are vital. I would argue that writing as an assessment tool is valid, but should be paired with other systems of evaluation. It also means that students with different facilities...so that the gifted speaker, the student who is active and engaged and demonstrating understanding in class and the clear writer all have a chance of being assessed for their real abilities.
In some fields, and some classes however, writing skills are simply necessary.
orenetas last blog post..Books once more.
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At April 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Thanks, all, for some interesting comments.
Benjamin, it's sometimes hard to tell how seriously you mean your comments to be taken, but I'll bite:
1) spell-check reduces the seriousness of bad spelling today (unless your over-the-top caricature of bad spelling includes an over-the-top scenario that the hypothetical workplace is one in which employees hand-write their texts);
2) employers today understand collaboration. Even heads of state collaborate on their speeches by *having other writers write them*. If Ali's report card said, "Poor spelling, poor writing, spell-binding speaking" (or at least, respectively, "D-, D-, A+), employers looking for presenters and speakers would be able to spot this future commencement speaker at Harvard and honorary professor of philosophy and poetry at Oxford, and give him an interview. Instead, they hire good writers who probably aren't stellar speakers - this English teacher sees it all the time in his students.
3) it's easy enough to teach the difference between writing and chat by grade 7. My point was to reward all language arts at least more equally, if not completely so.
@ADRIENNE I love that: S.A.D. - it's exactly what drove me from becoming a lit professor. I aced all my lit classes from freshman to graduate school, but the longer I played the game, the less enchanted I was with the idea of a life of writing S.A.D. The irony is crushing: to be a doctor of literature, you have to devote your life to writing the opposite, and watch your writing perish through (academic) publishing. As you say, it's the least real-world of all writing modes.
@Oreneta: I agree with you. Again, I never suggested to do away with writing instruction. My main thrust was to do away with labeling students failures by virtue of their weakness in this one 'strand,' as Adrienne put it, of Language Arts (and communication across the curriculum, more broadly).
I'll repeat, though, what I see in teacher emails daily: often "sub-par" writing. Yet they still get in. Why are they failing students who share their weakness, instead of helping them find paths to success through alternative assessment?
Thanks again, all.
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At April 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Forgot to note MR. MUSIC caught my touchdown pass with that opening epigraph: Ali's pun on "serving negroes" shows such an instinctive grasp of language, from grammar to idiom to diction, and it was all impromptu speaking on his part in that interview.
If you watch the YouTube embedded, he employs so many stylistic, figurative, and rhetorical techniques naturally that most of my A students haven't learned to use in their own writing after 12 years of English classes.
Yet Ali is a D- student.
Lest you're tempted to argue Ali was much older in this video than he was when he made bad grades in HS, you can find films of interviews with him when he won the olympics the year of his HS graduation. He had the Gift even then.
It's like teachers can be blind and deaf to the student, and only able to see the student's written homework.
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At April 27, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Mr. Music: By the way, I followed you comment to your site. Nice! It would actually make a good model for students who want to blog about music. Good stuff.
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At April 28, 2008, sylvia martinez wrote:
I don't know that any thinking person would want to NOT teach writing, that's just setting up a straw man argument that's easy to knock down.
I do know that most writing required by current jobs is not taught in schools. There is not one person making their living writing five paragraph essays. In fact, essays in general are the most often taught and the least useful in the real world. Most writing is factual, technical or sales-oriented. The hardest writing is short and edited well.
Critical, thoughtful editing is a crucial part of learning to write, and that's overlooked as well.
sylvia martinezs last blog post..Quote for today
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
I teach seniors in a history-English block. These seniors can't write worth beans. It will come back to haunt them.
I have no problem with graphic communication, or teaching students the elements of design. That's just not something that should be a focus of an English class. English means literary analysis, written communication and oral communication. For the students I see every day, they still need practice and they still need to be drilled on writing better.
Spell check won't catch "u" or "2," and employers really do complain about it. Spelling and grammar errors are, according to one Google-handy blog, the No. 1 thing employers hate to see in resumes. I'd suppose they'd continue to hate it throughout the employee's career.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Benjamin, I beg to differ.
First of all, spell check most certainly will catch "u" - most decent word processors will actually convert "u" to "you" automatically.
Secondly, the difference between "language arts" and "english" is paramount in my opinion: English deals with the language of English. Language arts deal with the art of language. Language Arts can deal with multiple languages. Graphics are a language. Symbols are a language. There's no reason they shouldn't be stressed just as much written English.
Hell, plenty of employers would be mighty impressed by a video resume. Or a stellar interview. Or a stellar design portfolio. In the future, creative economy, it's not what you've got written that matters it's what you're ready to create.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Benjamin - again, nobody is saying "Don't teach writing."
And I don't think "design" popped up in this thread with the same sort of emphasis as "speaking" ("oral communication," as you put it).
I'll make the point again: Ali apparently couldn't "write worth beans" either. But he could speak better than most. His poor writing - despite the best efforts of his writing-biased teachers - didn't "come back to haunt" him. His Gift for speaking saved him.
I'm not sure you're hearing what I'm saying (or others in this thread). It's not an either/or, it's a question of emphasis.
And the "what employers want" argument? It's troubling on a few levels. Which employers, first. Second, while employment is of course important, does telling students, via grades, that they're "sub-par" because they're not strong in writing - when, to repeat, they are strong communicators in other ways - does this help them get a job? Or does it make them think they stink at language (and language arts) because they can't write S.A.D. (academic English), and turn them off of literature, literacy, and belief in their own abilities?
Listening to Ali in that interview, don't you agree it's absurd to call him a "failure" or "sub-par" because he doesn't do a good literary analysis?
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Math is a language, too, as is music. But they have their own courses. Let graphics communication have its own course, too.
To place the emphasis on something new, something that has never been taught, will crowd out other, important parts of the curriculum. That's what makes my argument look like an either/or.
The ability to think --- for which literary analysis is a good exercise and relying on the spellchecker isn't --- would have certainly helped Ali analyze Elijah Muhammad's sermons a little better, rather than accept them tacitly, and without argument.
My counterproposal: Teach students how to think. That's one skill that will never go out of style. After all, if writing is really going out of style, who says that graphic design won't, either?
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Ben,
I covered Ali's critical thinking in the footnote, Ben. I thought it was quite good in terms of race, sociology, history, and (non-Islamic) lay theology. He just fell down when it comes to his own religion. But again, see footnote.
I'll repeat the questions I wish you'd address:
And the “what employers want” argument? It’s troubling on a few levels. Which employers, first. Second, while employment is of course important, does telling students, via grades, that they’re “sub-par” because they’re not strong in writing - when, to repeat, they are strong communicators in other ways - does this help them get a job? Or does it make them think they stink at language (and language arts) because they can’t write S.A.D. (academic English), and turn them off of literature, literacy, and belief in their own abilities?
Listening to Ali in that interview, don’t you agree it’s absurd to call him a “failure” or “sub-par” because he doesn’t do a good literary analysis?
And let me beat you to this punch: Yes, Ali depended on his boxing to save him too. But his speech is what made him an historical cultural icon - and his strategically brilliant use of it. The man was a marketing genius, and explicitly discusses how he knew what he was doing when he performed "slam poetry" for the cameras. And he knew what he was doing when he addressed race in America, and Vietnam.
Elijah Muhammad, by the way, was no fool. Much of what Ali parrots is not easy to dismiss. (Yes, sure, some is.)
But can you address the "fail 'em if they can't analyze and academicize" argument in blockquotes above?
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Okay, let's give graphic communication its own course. (Some might call it art)
I'm 99% positive it won't be a required course. In most schools, "art" isn't. Yet, math and English are.
Oh, give me a break. If you think that writing a "literary analysis" (at least the type in 99% of English classes) is the best way to teach thinking, you'll need some analysis (and not of the literary type). From my experience, most literary analysis involves writing a S.A.D. essay about a specific trait of a character, which could be said in a single sentence. There's more than one way to think.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, diane wrote:
Clay,
I like Arthus' distinction between "English" and "Language Arts". Each is important.
When I first entered teaching (as a second career) the Whole Language movement was in full swing. Lower elementary classes stressed creative expression and shunned phonics in favor of reading children's literature and emphasizing a free flow of writing without slowing students down to edit spelling and grammar. As a result, many of the students never learned "proper" English and in middle school were resistant to proofing their work.
I believe that English classes should introduce and reinforce "proper" grammar and usage while Creative Expression classes might investigate all the other venues for original thinking, including art, dance, poetry, cartooning, game design, computer programming - whatever speaks to the skill of the individual.
Spell check won't tell you if you've used "duel" when "dual" is what you really meant, or distinguish between "there" "they're" and "their" when all are properly spelled.
And, believe it or not, there are still instances when electronic tools are unavailable and a handwritten response might be in order.
diane
dianes last blog post..Fly on Your Heavy Feet
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At April 28, 2008, Sarah Stewart wrote:
Hi Clay and everyone
I have really enjoyed reading your post and the responses but I have to say whilst I fully understand what you are saying and agree to some degree, I have wear an 'industry' hat. My profession is midwifery (and my issues will be equally as relevant in nursing, medicine and so on) and I teach students as well as practice as a midwife. We have just had to bring in numeracy and literacy testing, even though students enter our program with education levels of NCEA Level 3 (NZ) ('A' level in UK). And I know this is a global trend. Students are not writing at a level that is required at a professional level. Critical thinking is vital but being able to document is equally as important.
I was told only a couple of days ago about a friend who is trying to become a corrections (prison) officer. We are crying out for POs in NZ so there's a big recruitment drive. He's got life experience, the physical attributes and attitude, but he failed the report writing test.
So please don't give up teaching and assessing writing skills.
Sarah Stewarts last blog post..Story telling in Second Life
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Sarah, nobody is saying "give up teaching and assessing writing" here.
Diane, does an English class really need to be so about conventions, grammar, and SAD that non-academic writing has to be relegated to a "creativity" class? And shouldn't a retreat from the Whole Language excess in early years remedy the problem before secondary?
I had basic grammar, spelling, and conventions down before I ever hit high school.
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At April 28, 2008, Carolyn Foote wrote:
I agree with Sylvia's comment about the types of writing that are often taught, which aren't often all that reflective of "real world" writing.
Most writing done in schools (other than creative writing) is academic in nature--and so while it hones writing skills perhaps, it doesn't really address other kinds of work-related writing.
I would also posit, as a former English teacher myself, that English teachers don't get much training in teaching the "communication" portion of language arts. (at least not when I was trained).
So it's clear why that would get short shrift--it's not getting that much focus at the college level either (or again, it didn't used to) so teachers don't see that as part of their English language arts job (not to mention "visual communication").
Part of having more student-led activities, assignments, and projects is that the communication in them becomes more "real world" and prepares them for a more natural, less stilted attempt at communicating. The best learning situations are where all these elements come together for students.
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
diane,
While admittedly computers do have their flaws, they continue to improve. Honestly, by the time todays high school freshmen are out in the workforce I fully expect computers to be able to correct "dual" vs. "duel" accurately by analyzing lexical context and the rest of the document for similar words.
Additionally, most people can tell the difference between two words when the two spellings are given. As for the technology not always there for you argument, it really is getting flimsier and flimsier. Seriously, I have a piece of technology capable of typing on me at all times.
Honestly, basic grammar skills are easily learned. The nuances aren't. But, I think English teachers tend to glorify the usefulness of perfect grammar. Sure, you shouldn't have any mistakes in a job application: but most people are intelligent enough to diligently check every sentence of their applications. For the rest (mostly emails/IM), you just need to communicate your point: nothing fancier.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Teaching such that you teach S.A.D. is the wrong way to teach literary analysis, or conduct research.
I'm all for teaching non-S.A.D. writing in English classes, as long as writing is still the emphasis. Maybe you have a different perspective from being in a different school or kind of school, but where I teach writing is still a major weakness of my students.
turn them off of literature, literacy, and belief in their own abilities?
Inflating their ego about their own abilities won't help them. Encouraging them to succeed in areas that they're already good at won't help the grow as genuinely interested learners.
Look at it this way: the only decent judge on American Idol is Simon. He doesn't waste time with boosting egos needlessly, convincing people they have talent in areas that they don't. Students need to have a realistic assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, and simultaneously be encouraged to continue working at it.
It isn't an either/or, after all.
Moreover, I make a distinction between literary analysis and S.A.D. as commentors here know it. I hate S.A.D. just as much as the next guy --- it's simply the wrong way to teach literary analysis. I believe that there is a way to teach real literary analysis that isn't S.A.D., and that it requires provocative, interesting prompts. It's possible, if you use texts that are already both, or near enough.
For examples, I've used one of Jeremiah Wright's sermons in my history class, and I have great analysis coming out of some students, even though they have a pretty poor grasp of grammar and spelling.
Of tangential note: Their arguments will, whatever the content, look foolish if the arguments lack decent grammar or spelling. That's a whole other issue. This is the way to teach how to think.
Back to the idea of provocative and interesting: Why should we encourage students to do only work or assignments that interest them, and not teach that sometimes learning is work? Hard work, without immediate and tangible rewards.
Careful: S.A.D. is bad, and not because students hate it. Students hating it should not be a criterion.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, diane wrote:
Clay,
My husband, my two children, and myself all have a good basic knowledge of grammar, etc. But we all attended parochial schools for early grades and standardized testing didn't rule the school calendar then, as it does now.
Teaching to the test takes up a huge portion of the school day. Ideally, the creative expression component would be embedded across the curriculum. However, many teachers don't want to give up their pet projects (Create a pamphlet on a state. Include the state bird, tree, capital city, main products...) and are unwilling to invest the time and effort necessary for alternative assessment.
Our whole (US) educational system needs an update/overhaul. Both teachers and students are stressed and learning is not occurring with any consistency.
diane
dianes last blog post..Fly on Your Heavy Feet
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Why rely on computers? Why? How is this a good idea?
most people can tell the difference between two words when the two spellings are given.
In the real world, if you're trying to proofread an essay, two spellings are not given.
Also, look at it this way: How to kids learn to differentiate between the two at all, especially the English Learners? The teacher teaches them. That's how this works.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
(Could the powers that be fix my blockquotes, please? Thanks.)
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Sarah,
You make a crucial mistake by taking assessment and application as being mutually dependent. If students fail the assessment, but are fine with day-to-day literacy, then what is the problem?
You complain of students not coming in with the proper writing abilities, but this is measured through "numeracy and literacy testing" - not actual day-to-day ability.
I too work in an industry (web development), albeit not full time. I get jobs from my portfolio, which has minimal text to it. Most of my communication with clients is via email (where spelling/grammar isn't paramount), IM conversations, and Skype calls. S.A.D. helps not one bit. Sure, this isn't the norm for most jobs today (particularly your standard HS graduate), but the trend is heading towards more informal, global workspaces.
----
Benjamin,
If you don't care about S.A.D but rather care about literary analysis, why not give students the opportunity to analyze in the medium of their choice. Why not let them create oratory analysis, or visual analysis?
Why rely on computers? Why? How is this a good idea?
It is a good idea because: a) computers are efficient and do not waste paper or ink and b) if you know how to use them, they don't crash. Hell, a machine is more dependable than a person any day of the week.
In the real world, if you’re trying to proofread an essay, two spellings are not given.
You're kidding me, right? Two spellings sure as hell are given. I type my essay. I proofread by reading it. If there are spelling errors, I can see them. I right click, there are two spellings. Something tells me you're the type who prints out stuff to read it...
Also, look at it this way: How to kids learn to differentiate between the two at all, especially the English Learners? The teacher teaches them. That’s how this works.
*ahem* By reading. Seriously...
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, diane wrote:
Arthus,
Maybe that flies in your Vermont school, but in NYS there are penalties for schools that exceed set drop-out rates...and students who don't finish high school in four years are considered drop-outs, with only a few exceptions.
Our students don't have high speed computer access at home and those who have phones use them mainly for talking, not composing essays or spell checking.
There is no digital equity. Your world is not their world.
diane
dianes last blog post..Fly on Your Heavy Feet
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Something tells me you’re the type who prints out stuff to read it…
... and somehow that's an insult? Computer screens are not the ideal medium for proofreading --- any copy editor would tell you that.
Something tells me that you haven't tried to proofread large amounts of text on a computer screen. Computers are not the end-all and be-all, and should never be.
It is a good idea because: a) computers are efficient and do not waste paper or ink and b) if you know how to use them, they don’t crash. Hell, a machine is more dependable than a person any day of the week.
Computers are only as useful, efficient or dependable as the person using them. Moreover, we don't have many working computers at our school, nor can we rely on students to provide their own. What they know of technology is what they've picked up by themselves.
I can't guarantee that students know that the red squiggly line means they have a spelling error, or that a long green squiggly line means that their sentence is missing a verb.
By reading.
... and how do they learn how to read, in a world filled with parents with no knowledge of English, where the full responsibility for language acquisition tends to fall to a student's social life and schooling?
Here's a hint: Students dislike dictionaries, and can't afford computers.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Arthus, I wish you hadn't stopped teaching with me ;)
Ben, you're avoiding my thrust with a red herring. I didn't say "boost their egos." If their writing needs work, work it. But if their speaking is their strength, don't negate that by a) not assessing it equally to their writing, and b) not "boosting their egos" validly by encouraging them to continue in their area of strength.
It's like the great math student who, because s/he is not so great in English, is made to sacrifice after-school time working on English that s/he could instead be spending advancing her math - her strength - even more.
Great speakers shouldn't get a D in Language Arts because they're not great writers. Writing should be assessed and taught, but why not as a less-weighted homework category, for example, instead of a major test bias? (Most major assessments in most English classes I've seen have privileged writing over other communication acts.)
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
On justifying an emphasis on writing:
Writing is what exists online, in its most reliable form. We're not talking to each other, we're not creating visual representations of our arguments. We're writing. By far, the form of communication that dominates online discourse is through words.
It's like the great math student who, because s/he is not so great in English, is made to sacrifice after-school time working on English that s/he could instead be spending advancing her math - her strength - even more.
Students need to recognize, and then work on, their weaknesses. To do otherwise is, to my mind, an exercise in ego inflation.
"Don't worry about your weakness in writing, or math. It doesn't matter, in the end. As long as you have one marketable skill, settle for it."
I believe that students need to be well-rounded. If they're struggling in one subject, they should have extra school time to grapple with it, rather than just take another route --- oratory, graphical-visual presentations --- throughout the rest of their school career, and their life.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
diane,
Maybe what flies? I don't think any students should be dropping out of school (well, unless the school really is that bad). Please point out to me where I advocated for students to drop out of school. In fact, if there were more differentiated communication mediums I imagine we'd see drop-out rates drop like a stone.
Our students don’t have high speed computer access at home and those who have phones use them mainly for talking, not composing essays or spell checking.
Does the school have computer access? Do students have computer access at home at all? (No need for it to be high-speed) You can word process on Windows 95 just fine.
Still, you make a valid point about digital equity. I really think the government should be doing more to roll out internet and computer access to all students (instead of waging wars), but that's a whole different cup of tea.
---
Benjamin,
… and somehow that’s an insult? Computer screens are not the ideal medium for proofreading — any copy editor would tell you that.
It is in my world. To start with... that is a huge waste of paper. Sure, maybe an "copy editor" who has been working in the field since before computers will tell me that, but that's mostly because they're never bothered to adjust their methods. Also, talk to many editors at major newspapers: most of them don't have the time to communicate changes via paper.
Something tells me that you haven’t tried to proofread large amounts of text on a computer screen. Computers are not the end-all and be-all, and should never be.
So the written word should be the end-all and be-all. Actually, I have edited significant amounts of text on computer screens (every assignment I have ever turned in). Additionally, I have edited almost every article posted on Students 2.0 (using Google Docs). We can communicate changes instantly, talking about sentences that need revising and conference.
Computers are only as useful, efficient or dependable as the person using them. Moreover, we don’t have many working computers at our school, nor can we rely on students to provide their own. What they know of technology is what they’ve picked up by themselves.
That would be where the straw house of your argument falls down... if anything, computers amplify people. How is a person writing by hand any more "useful, efficient or dependable" than the person writing. Of course any tool depends upon a good user, but a good user can do a lot more with a computer than with a pen.
The fact that you don't have many working computers is a problem which should be fixed. As I said to Diane, the government should be doing more to provide every student with a working computer.
I can’t guarantee that students know that the red squiggly line means they have a spelling error, or that a long green squiggly line means that their sentence is missing a verb.
Oh, please. How long does it take to say that in class? I reckon maybe 20 seconds.
… and how do they learn how to read, in a world filled with parents with no knowledge of English, where the full responsibility for language acquisition tends to fall to a student’s social life and schooling?
Nobody said we should stop teaching reading. Most (useful) content in the world is written, so reading is a useful and needed skill. Writing is output, and you can chose your output. Think of this: how many successful graphic designers are there vs. successful writers?
---
Clay, I couldn't agree more. If a student is bad at writing, say it. Seriously, don't lie and inflate egos, etc. But, crucially, give them the option of working with a different medium.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Ben - more: I teach mostly non-native English speakers in Korea (and in Shanghai before that). I'm married to a non-native English speaker whose accent and grammar are non-standard. But:
She communicates more than fine. I love her English all the more for that.
English as a world language should not insist on native English proficiency. Any United Nations session demonstrates as much.
I first noticed then when watching Yasser Arafat on CNN years ago. His speaking shook the world, but was by no means grammatically correct. Communicatively, though, it more than did its job.
I also studied Arabic at the Monterey Defense Language Institute, and learned an interesting linguistic fact there. Linguists divide languages (at least there) into five levels of difficulty, "5" being the highest. The only Level 5 language? English. From its spelling (as GB Shaw pointed out, only in English can "ghoti" spell "fish" - lauGH wOmen naTIon) to its ridiculous verb system, it's a losers game to try to master as a non-native. Only a few who enter the language after age 10 or so ever will.
Grammatically correct is the wrong focus. Clear and effective communication, grammar aside (and again, now I'm speaking mostly about non-native English learners), is more realistic, humane, and interesting.
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Then Ben, you should be an expert mathematician, chemist, and musician?
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At April 28, 2008, Kirstin wrote:
Hi Clay
I remember watching him on TV as a little girl and thinking what an awe inspiring person he was. I used to love the way he bantered with the journalists and the crowds of onlookers. I was about 5 or 6 at the time and yet even then he struck a chord with me. Once I got over my thoughts about how cool it was that you actually got to meet Ali I decided that I would just have to add my thoughts to this discussion.
If I understand things correctly I think what you are trying to say is that we shouldn't label our students as failures purely because they lack ability/skill in a particular curriculum area/facet of a particular curriculum area. The message that I am getting is that we should place weighting on each facet rather than all or most weighting on one e.g. rather than assigning a grade for English, assign grades for oral language, written language, visual language, etc. Am I correct in this thinking or am I off beam?
I am a teacher...I am also a wife and mother and thought I might share my thoughts from the perspective of the latter two (remembering that I am a teacher).
As a mother, I have watched my bright, creative, intelligent and very articulate little boy have his thoughts and ideas ignored or undervalued because he has difficulty spelling and punctuating. Yet if you take the time to listen to what he has to say or read the content of his written contributions his ideas are amazing. Now as a teacher I fully realise that "it's good manners for your reader" to punctuate and spell appropriately. I also realise that the lack of these things will often prevent a potential reader from bothering to engage with your writing.
The down side is that worrying about mechanics can also "paralyse" a writer to the point where they are so worried about the mechanics that they are reluctant to write or their message becomes stilted as the flow of ideas is sacrificed to perfection.
What I have also seen is that my clever, articulate, intelligent little boy has gradually become less and less interested in school and has started to label himself as dumb and stupid - a vicious cycle.
As a wife I am married to a clever, articulate speaker who has a real gift for engaging the attention of his audience. He failed high school. He writes poetry. His spelling and grammar in written form are interesting to say the least. I am his editor in chief - I fix the mechanics so his message can be heard. His poems have won competitions or at the least been highly commended. He is also the Duty Manager for a a large company and is responsible for over 100 staff. One of his roles is hiring new staff. I asked him, "As an employer do you decide who to employ based on their spelling and written ability?" his reply, "No."
So I asked what he looks for as an employer. He said that it helps if their application is legible, but that doesn't necessarily count them out - computers take care of that issue. He said that it has more to do with the balance of their strengths and weaknesses when viewed against those of other applicants. Interestingly, they do group interviews, 4 at a time. They have to interview a fellow applicant and then stand up before the other applicants and 3 potential employers and "sell" their partner. They are then given a mystery item to "sell" - again orally. They look for employees who are confident, articulate, able to think quickly, a good communicator, and dress in a professional manner as is fitting with company standards. Why? Because they are interacting with the public all day long - foreign exchange.
So I agree that a future teacher needs to have a good command of written language. However, this is only one possible eventuality, not everyone will grow up to be a teacher or academic. I think I like what Arthus suggests - diversify the assessment strategies, allow choice. I'm sure my husband could present as multifaceted and carefully thought out analysis of "Romeo and Juliet" orally as I can in writing ( and I was an A student). His difficulties with writing do not preclude him from being able to think about, analyse and understand something he has read.
Kirstins last blog post..Encouraging Self Reflection and Thoughtful Decision Making.
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Kirstin, you nailed my points so well I should just shut up from this point. Seriously, every single point you made gets it right, and leaves nothing out. Your examples are perfect too. Thanks for that.
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Then Ben, you should be an expert mathematician, chemist, and musician?
No. Just competent.
As far as your second comment, I honestly hope I am not misrepresenting your argument as a straw man when I sum it up like this: Emphasizing English is bad for English Learners, as it isn't an international language.
Response: Over here in the States, English doesn't have to be an international language to make it important. Yasser Arafat isn't from an English-speaking country, so English fluency isn't expected from him.
Because I'm teaching future U.S. citizens, grammatically correct is an essential focus. If I were at an international school, it wouldn't matter as much. I'm not.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, diane wrote:
Arthus,
You said to Sarah "If students fail the assessment, but are fine with day-to-day literacy, then what is the problem?"
The problem is that, unless they pass NYS Regents exams, our students won't graduate, no matter how articulate they are. It may not be right, but it's the reality we work with.
diane
dianes last blog post..Fly on Your Heavy Feet
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
diane,
Oops! Missed that... I was actually referring to "higher" levels of assessment which she seemed to be referring to.
Of course teachers need to make sure students can pass within the system (no matter how bad the system is). Still, that doesn't mean the aim should be for all students to get an A+ in writing (while ignoring other communication mediums)
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Ben,
As far as your second comment, I honestly hope I am not misrepresenting your argument as a straw man when I sum it up like this: Emphasizing English is bad for English Learners, as it isn’t an international language.
Response: Over here in the States, English doesn’t have to be an international language to make it important. Yasser Arafat isn’t from an English-speaking country, so English fluency isn’t expected from him.
Because I’m teaching future U.S. citizens, grammatically correct is an essential focus. If I were at an international school, it wouldn’t matter as much. I’m not.
--your straw man is a straw man indeed. You replaced my "grammar" with "English," in a bizarre substitution implying you equate effective communication with perfect grammar.
Research in English Language Acquisition (I'm an ESOL specialist besides being an English and history teacher) have shown that 5 to 7 years is required to reach academic English competence. Pushing that river only leads to an increase in what Chomsky and Krashen call the "affective filter" - the emotional-psychological negative feedback that inhibits learners from comfortable language practice because they're too conscious of being "wrong" about what they're far too early to get "right."
Research has also shown that English is acquired through extensive reading on the Vygotskian Zone of Proximal Development for each individual. Check out Krashen's The Power of Reading.
Research has also shown that direct instruction in grammar is no more effective, compared to control groups that simply spent that time reading texts in their instructional (Vygotskian) level, than reading. (I've got a summary of 100 years of research on direct grammar drill instruction v. reading at school. I'll try to find the link tomorrow. I'm not at work today.)
I understand that US schools are shouldering teachers with impossible language proficiency expectations - and not giving most teachers adequate ESL specialist support - but does that justify using discredited direct instruction for the sake of a test?
As for my students - they're almost all US college-bound.
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At April 28, 2008, diane wrote:
Arthus,
I understand what you're saying, but consider this: we are waging a (polite) war of words here. All of us know how to use language well. Would you respect my opinion as much if it were poorly phrased or incoherent?
Clay,
Would the parents of your students be happy with anything less than "a good command of the English language" even though English is not their native tongue?
When you have children, would O.K. be good enough for them?
If we narrow students' options too much or too soon by tagging some skills as less valuable than others, we leave them ill-equipped for a rapidly changing world. I would never have guessed that the typing I took in high school would translate into valuable keyboarding fluency when I got older. Who knows what will be needed in the future?
diane
dianes last blog post..Fly on Your Heavy Feet
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At April 28, 2008, Sarah Stewart wrote:
Arthus Erea
Yes, but what do you define as 'day-to-day'? I am talking about a standard of writing that will inform health consumers in a way that they can read and understand, inform professionals and professional decision making and ultimately stand up in a court of law. Whilst there are many instances that a video dissertation will be a lot more effective than a written piece but there are still many professions and jobs where day-to-day ability will not suffice. The diagnostic tests we use are designed to support students identify their 'weaknesses' so that we can put things into place to help them build their writing and maths skills.
Sarah Stewarts last blog post..Story telling in Second Life
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Sure, maybe an “copy editor” who has been working in the field since before computers will tell me that, but that’s mostly because they’re never bothered to adjust their methods.
I've been working in the field since computers, and I prefer printing out that which I'm about to edit. It's still, by far, the simplest way to mark up a proposed article intuitively, rather than typing out explanations in Word's horrible markup protocol.
Everything at my own blog is edited by computer, if only because I don't have a printer at home, and because I don't have to worry about professional, in-time-for-the-printer standards. I find most of my mistakes after I revisit what I've written later.
Oh, please. How long does it take to say that in class? I reckon maybe 20 seconds.
Actually, never. Remember: There are no working computers over here.
How is a person writing by hand any more “useful, efficient or dependable” than the person writing.
It isn't. That's the point.
Whatever negligible advantages computers have over the written word --- which, by the way, assumes we have computers to begin with --- they do not compensate for the intellectual laziness associated with "letting the spell-checker catch it."
Why try to write it right the first time?
As I said to Diane, the government should be doing more to provide every student with a working computer.
I predict that the government will do this by the time I retire from teaching. It hasn't yet, and it won't for some time.
I don't teach in the future, or in a rich district. I teach where essential writing skills will separate those who pick the fruit and flip the burgers from those in the office and those who get their four-year degrees.
And, with respect to Kirstin, the sort of work she describes is not, for better or worse, where we aim our students. We aim them at college, because that's what we're told to do.
That's another thing that's not about to change any time soon.
Think of this: how many successful graphic designers are there vs. successful writers?
Pure graphic designers versus successful writers? Might as well compare successful musicians versus successful pro athletes.
My point: Good writing skills help every those working toward the promotion in any white collar job. Good graphic design skills? Not so much.
I'll concede that both are rare enough that either will help students find success in their own way, but bolstering students toward success in a single field is not the expectation of schools. Schools are expected to bolster students toward success in all fields, and all talents.
Disliking that expectation is your prerogative. Changing it, on the other hand, isn't.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Diane, I think we cross-posted. See my comment about the research on reading being the road to that "good command of the English language."
I swear, after learning the basics by grade 4 (age 10?) or so, I got more valuable "writing instruction" from addictively reading comic books and science fiction in my spare time. That, and talking to my friends and their older siblings. Language is acquired naturally more than through instruction. It's osmosis.
My sense of humor, my love of irony and language play, came more from my k-10 friendship with classmate Scott Ratchford than from any teacher I ever had.
Still - I do address individual error-patterns in my students' writings, but normally in very short conferences during lunch or after school.
But so many of my grammatically perfect ESL students are snore material because their ideas and risks are also too "proper." Give me a spirit in need of a proof-reader over a snorer in no need of one any time.
Tangent: Transcribe Ali in that interview, and you'll only find a couple of erors in it. It would be an A paper for a certain type of assignment.
Point: He does have a good command of English.
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Fair enough
On equating:
effective communication with perfect grammar.
Yes, I do. In an English-speaking country, and in the eye of the average American, your comments will be considered much more effective than Kirstin's. For the sake of argument, and to continue to take the "prepare students for jobs and later life," let's make this a hypothetical professional outlet.
Few readers will have the patience, in any setting, to ponder every nuance and point of a long, drawn-out discussion. They'll skim. On the surface-est level, your double-indented and grammatical --- or, at least, nice-looking ---- responses will, whether you like it or not, be considered better-argued.
Schools are required to prepare students for that professional outlet, whether or not students are headed for one.
I don't dispute your research, though I would like to read the study.
To clarify: I don't teach English Learners, just low-performing students. Mentioning English Learners was a reference I made, admittedly, out of ignorance. We have a lot of Hmong immigrants and their children over here, and I made the mistake of lumping together ELs and the kids I actually teach.
(See, for all the training they give us in the teacher training program, we don't actually read any research. We just learn about scaffolding. That's another rant.)
For the most part, I teach low-performing kids at a poor, inner-city school. For the most part, their grammar sucks. For the most part, local employers who pay salary rather than wage will judge them because of it.
Oh, and just to be certain: I still genuinely intend civility.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, diane wrote:
Clay,
If only we could convince students of the value - the fun - of blogging and tweeting!
Our student bloggers: Lindsea, Kaelie, Stacy, Arthus, and the rest, all exemplify the creative, articulate student we'd love to have in our classes. Their Voices are strong and true and give me hope for our future.
diane
dianes last blog post..Fly on Your Heavy Feet
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At April 28, 2008, sylvia martinez wrote:
I think Clay's original point still stands, that we are labeling kids as failures because of the narrowness of current assessment practices. Any narrow assessment scheme that is used punitively will end up hurting someone.
The scary part is that even if you wanted to focus purely on teaching writing, right now authentic writing assessment is diminishing because it takes too much time. So even those of us working to open up assessment to more authentic methodologies are swimming upstream. I don't think an argument about what percentages we ought to have of graphic, oral, or written communication is useful. Because ALL of these are being lost to standardized, high stakes assessment that supports NONE of these.
sylvia martinezs last blog post..6 degrees of professional development
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At April 28, 2008, Carolyn Foote wrote:
I'm going to blog about this tomorrow but thought you all might be interested in the Pew Internet Survey on Teens and Writing.
Some interesting findings:
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Writing_Report_FINAL3.pdf
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Sylvia: Thanks for underlining that main point. It keeps getting lost.
Ben: No worries. Thanks for hanging in. And I will look for that research summary tomorrow. This is a good mix of viewpoints.
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
diane,
I understand what you’re saying, but consider this: we are waging a (polite) war of words here. All of us know how to use language well. Would you respect my opinion as much if it were poorly phrased or incoherent?
The fact that we all know how to use language well can be attributed to the face that this is.. well.. an English teacher's blog. (Sorry Clay) I would actually respect your opinion if it was poorly phrased, because I practice doing that all day with many of my peers. However, incoherent arguments are less a flaw of writing and more a flaw of thinking.
---
Sarah,
You do have a good point: particularly since you know the exact career. Really, we should be giving all students a grounding in all methods of communication, and allowing them to chose/favor specific methods in line with their abilities as they get older.
The point of secondary and primary education shouldn't be to prepare students for every possible career. It should be to prepare students to prepare themselves for the career of their choosing.
---
Ben,
I’ve been working in the field since computers, and I prefer printing out that which I’m about to edit. It’s still, by far, the simplest way to mark up a proposed article intuitively, rather than typing out explanations in Word’s horrible markup protocol.
Well then maybe Word is at fault. (Give GDOCS a try) But still, it's a matter of personal preference. I have tried both, and it is easier for me to edit virtually. Don't try to force a specific method that works for bleary-eyed adults upon all of us.
It isn’t. That’s the point.
Even if we decide to regard the pen and the computer as "equal" tools, why should a specific tool be forced. Seriously.
Whatever negligible advantages computers have over the written word — which, by the way, assumes we have computers to begin with — they do not compensate for the intellectual laziness associated with “letting the spell-checker catch it.”
Why try to write it right the first time?
You honestly think most students would bother to go back and fix those errors at all if done by hand? As for this being "intellectual laziness" that's pure horse manure. It's efficiency, not laziness. Don't go all high and mighty, ivory tower upon the argument. If it gets the job done, then the tool works.
Do you use a microwave? That is culinary laziness. Do you still do it anyways? Hell ya.
Laziness is just another word for not doing pointless things.
Stop being so intellectually lazy. Get out a pen and paper to hand-write all of your comments before you type them back to me.
---
Clay, I couldn't agree more. I have "mastered" the English language through informal interaction, reading (a lot), and writing (informally) online.
That is to say, I have learned far more outside the classroom about English than inside of it.
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
For the record - I edited Kirstin's comment after Ben pointed out the lack of double line-breaks b/w paragraphs. I only added the breaks. Her comment is possibly my favorite one on this thread :), and deserves a close read.
(By the way, Ben, I agree with you on this one. But notice: that's mere presentation - design, almost.)
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Even if we decide to regard the pen and the computer as “equal” tools, why should a specific tool be forced. Seriously.
I'm not forcing either pen-and-paper or computer-based writing. As an educator, I'm charged with the responsibility of preparing my students for both venues, like it or not.
But notice: that’s mere presentation - design, almost.
I'd argue that grammar is a linguistic design, but that would just twist your words beyond their intended meaning, wouldn't it?
Grammar, in an English-speaking country and assuming and a native English speaker, is certainly a matter of presentation, too. In mainstream, non-EL classes, it deserves its heavy weight owing to the high expectations of writing.
Which brings us back on-topic.
To nonetheless digress again, as teachers, we are not charged with teaching students what they're good at. On the whole, and in tandem, we're charged with teaching students the foundations of everything, so that their future will be full of the widest possible opportunities.
This occurs, perhaps, at the expense of specialization, but occurs because we know that students cannot be expected to decide what they'll do for the rest of their lives during high school. I know masters degree students who don't know what they want to do with their lives.
Writing, and grammar, don't have to be taught through S.A.D. As a future English teacher --- long story --- I plan to emphasize the journalistic styles. I expect that teaching that simple, direct language will be easier on myself and the students, while still teaching the purely essential skills associated with English classes.
But I still emphasize writing, and I still consider it the essential-est skill in English classes.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
In a world filled with written words, speech and graphics stand out.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Any narrow assessment scheme that is used punitively will end up hurting someone.
I agree with this essential point, as do the other dissenters. Perhaps it's more credit to Clay that it gets lost --- I don't think commentors much disagree with him or anyone else about this, if only because it's an idea that's been pretty thoroughly hashed out in our "edublogosphere."
(Don't ask me why, but I hate that term.)
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
I’m not forcing either pen-and-paper or computer-based writing. As an educator, I’m charged with the responsibility of preparing my students for both venues, like it or not.
No you are not. Handwriting instruction is only a curriculum requirement in well.. kindergarten.
Seriously, the future isn't going to see us using pencils and pens to craft anything. They're just around for people who are more comfortable with them.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
I envy your college and its lack of blue books.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Benjamin,
I'm not in college. Actually, I'm an HS freshman.
The point isn't that there shouldn't be books. It is that by doing something besides the usual (writing), you can be more noticeable.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Kirstin wrote:
Hi Clay
appreciate the editing of my post. In this case the passion out weighed the punctuation, my message being more important to me then the mechanics.
With respect to Ben, my husband was born into a blue collar family. When I first met him he was unemployed. He has been a truck driver, cab driver, milker, box maker (in a factory production line) among other blue collar jobs. Where he is now is a position of power and influence in a multi million dollar, international company. What got him there? No university degree. No ivory tower. He was head hunted for this job by a previous employer because he was recognised as having excellent people skills, a calm and patient manner when dealing with others (something I'm afraid his wife needs to learn at times), creativty, organisational skills and the ability to persevere and learn from his mistakes.
I also come from a blue collar back ground. My mother says I educated myself out of it. She also says that I would have educated myself if locked away with a room full of books given the chance. What I concerns me though, as a mother, wife, teacher and human being is that labels have a habit of confining people. Sometimes the labels we place on others prevent us for seeing them as they truly are. We miss the potential because someone fits our stereotypes and/or doesn't measure up within the bounds of our one size fits all assessment methods.
I don't for one instant suggest that writing is not an important skill. I also agree that in our current society it holds a lot of weight. We may not be teaching in the future, but we are educating for it.
All that aside, I enjoy debating and I am open to the ideas of others. I don't necessarily agree, but I do respect other people's view points.
I would like to suggest though, that the example I gave of the interview process used in my husband's company goes to show that employers may actually do things differently from how we've been led to believe.
I'm enjoying this exchange of viewpoints. Great discussion topic Clay.
Kirstins last blog post..Encouraging Self Reflection and Thoughtful Decision Making.
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At April 28, 2008, Dean Shareski wrote:
Does the 54th comment even matter?
Our provincial curriculum sees English Language as having 6 strands: Reading/Writing, Speaking/Listening and Viewing/Representing. While the theory behind this is quite progressive, the issue is that in practice, most teachers are so text bias that the other 4 strands take a back seat. Seeking balance here is important.
As well as balance, there's an educational belief that all students should be proficient in all strands. I'm not sure I agree. As you so aptly point out, Ali's gift was speaking. What role did writing play in his life? I"m not suggesting it played none but why does school insist on balance?
A third point is that too often we don't recognize the context of communication. Text messaging is seen as a low level communication because of its lack of grammar and sophistication, when in fact students IM should be seen as alternate form of communication that is valid. I know you've touched on this numberous times in your posts re: f-words, etc.
Now you're obliged to add the 55th comment and in danger of moving from "tight conversations" to "loose ones".(see Clay Shirky...another great Clay!)
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At April 28, 2008, Claire wrote:
Benjamin, you mentioned,
"And, with respect to Kirstin, the sort of work she describes is not, for better or worse, where we aim our students. We aim them at college, because that’s what we’re told to do."
I wonder when our schools will realize that college isn't the be all and end all? I've heard many times that only 30% of high school kids go on to college (I don't have a reference for this %), yet that is where so much of our focus is in the classroom. From your 'for better or worse' in the section I quoted, I'm guessing that you question this focus as well.
Arthus, you wrote about students choosing their career path in high school and taking courses to support that choice. I still think that it makes sense to keep your options open, though. How many young people really know what they want to do for a career? It took me until my mid-twenties to finally realize what I wanted to do. Luckily I was able to pursue my desired career path because I had kept my options open.
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
The point isn’t that there shouldn’t be books.
I don't know anyone who would agree with this. E-books haven't taken off yet for a reason.
It is that by doing something besides the usual (writing), you can be more noticeable.
Or get ignored for not participating in the current form of discourse. Academics don't get lauded for ignoring scholarly conventions as they try to get published.
Blazing your own path isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially if you're competing for competitive position.
With respect to Kirstin:
Not all men --- and certainly not all students --- are as talented and respectable as your husband, and a university degree these days counts for a lot, if not as much as it used to.
If I remember correctly, the unemployment rate for high school non-graduates is twice that for college graduates, and a similar disparity exists between their median incomes.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Claire,
I agree most young people don't know their career.
I didn't mean specifically the career (I hate tracking, etc.) but rather the passion.
That is, if you enjoy music, take music classes. If you enjoy art, take art. Etc. The classes should follow the passion/interest. The career will follow.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
I wonder when our schools will realize that college isn’t the be all and end all? I’ve heard many times that only 30% of high school kids go on to college (I don’t have a reference for this %), yet that is where so much of our focus is in the classroom. From your ‘for better or worse’ in the section I quoted, I’m guessing that you question this focus as well.
I advocate some sort of post-college professional training, once students can choose what they'd like to do for the rest of their lives.
Personally, I also advocate a massive, instant reorganization of the structure of American education, where a high school education isn't required, where a bachelor's degree means something, and where a post-grad degree can focus on research rather than practice.
A high school diploma means less than it ever did, and a bachelor's degree doesn't make any candidates stand out anymore. It's almost a requirement. In a country with so many working poor, it's a shame that proof of completion of a free, high school education is almost meaningless when differentiating between candidates.
How likely is this massive, sudden reorganization? Not very.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
I don't know anyone who would agree with this. E-books haven't taken off yet for a reason.
You don't agree that the point isn't that there shouldn't be books? I'm not advocating for e-books. (Though I think newer devices like the Kindle are showing some good progress)
Or get ignored for not participating in the current form of discourse. Academics don't get lauded for ignoring scholarly conventions as they try to get published.
Yet you assume that academia is the be-all and end-all of success. Some of us don't care to climb that ivy tower... Would you say that a hit musician, or a successful marketer, or a brilliant programmer, or a prized artist are unsuccessful? They certainly didn't chose the current form of "discourse."
Yes, if students plan to climb into academics and publish scholarly papers, they need to be able to write well. But I'd reckon that's not the best path for 95% of students. Including Clay, as he has wrote before.
Arthus Ereas last blog post..The Why and How of Change
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Sorry, that should read: "post-high-school professional training," and should be read as distinction from the seemingly mandatory 4-year bachelor's degree.
Trade school, university or two-year community college --- as long as students have something. I'd play up the first and third, and argue that the second shouldn't be de facto forced on our high school graduates.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
Yet you assume that academia is the be-all and end-all of success.
No. I used it as an example of an overwhelming pattern, albeit one I'm familiar with. You jump to conclusions, grasshopper.
You don’t agree that the point isn’t that there shouldn’t be books?
As I'm sure you're aware, that's not what I meant at all. Watch it: You're getting a little trollish.
Would you say that a hit musician, or a successful marketer, or a brilliant programmer, or a prized artist are unsuccessful? They certainly didn’t chose the current form of “discourse.”
Sure they do. The musician played small gigs and relentlessly sent out demos to whomever would listen. The brilliant programmer probably self-published, as most brilliant programmers tend to do. The prized artist found his path much like the musician did. They didn't choose the form of discourse for their respective fields, but they sure coped with it, anyway.
First: Pay your dues. Second: Become famous. Third: Be refreshingly original. The number of exceptions to this pattern is exceedingly small. Even the Beatles wrote "A Hard Day's Night" before they released "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
While they pay their dues, they have their office job. While they have their office job, they need writing skills.
Even if students never have an office job, they need the abilities to succeed in one. That's the point of school.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Ben, how many times do I have to repeat: Nobody is denying the need for writing.
But if they don't know how to speak, socialize, collaborate, and shine in face to face, I don't care how well they write: most of them will stay in their little cubicles as the more creative and well-spoken (though maybe not as good at writing) will get promoted ahead of them.
And here's a hypothesis: The future is sort of here already. Anybody who knows how to a) make friends, b) help them out, and c) seek their help in return - can now get help editing any important writing required in the workplace (and I don't know about you, but in the office jobs I've seen, there's not a whole lot of that. It's mostly logs and forms). At least for the sort of entry-level office job you seem to be talking about.
So the person who has social intelligence can get by more now than ever before through things as simple as a Google Doc, or hell, even a text message.
But Ben, if you give these poor writers who can speak well a D- because they can't write, they're not going to get into a good college anyway.
@DEAN: I'm with you. Well-said.
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At April 28, 2008, Peter Rock wrote:
Interesting post/conversation. Took me an hour to get through it all, but interesting nonetheless.
Basically, what I got out of the post was that we need to be careful when giving too much academic importance/weight to one medium of communication over another...so those who may be weak in one area are not branded in a way that misrepresents (by lumping and overemphasizing the particular) their overall ability to communicate.
If this is what Clay is saying, then it makes sense to me.
Some hyperbole to make the point: As a tech teacher, it would be dangerous for me to make 75% of a grade based around touch-typing. If I do this, then a poor typist gets labeled as inept with computers - which could be totally false.
Peter Rocks last blog post..mission statement mashup
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At April 28, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Excellent analogy, Peter.
An hour to read this? Should i close it down now?
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At April 28, 2008, Peter Rock wrote:
I'm a slow reader. :)
Keep it open I would say. Why ever close it down?
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At April 28, 2008, Benjamin Baxter wrote:
I understand that nobody is arguing to dismiss writing as a whole. But I believe that its importance cannot be understated, that it is the primary and most important --- as it is the most common, as well as other reasons --- method of communicating.
In my book, it is perfectly alright to give a student unable to prove proficiency in written English or language arts a D-, if that is the grade they earn. Because college, the example you mention, requires decent writing abilities, students unable to perform at that level should not be in college.
Remedial English or language arts has no place in a university setting. That's what community colleges are for, and trade schools.
But if they don’t know how to speak, socialize, collaborate, and shine in face to face, I don’t care how well they write ...
Those are not mutually exclusive properties. It is possible to get students to socialize, collaborate, speak and shine while face-to-face with their peers and at the same time to keep the same heavy weight on the writing portion of the English or language arts course. Hit teaching the form of a presentation hard the first few weeks, and come back to it regularly, to reinforce it.
While social intelligence is no substitute for linguistic intelligence --- if you really do buy into the multiple intelligences fad --- that statement has a caveat: There's a similar truth working vice versa.
Benjamin Baxters last blog post..Unequivocally, the Best Week of Sentences Ever
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At April 28, 2008, Adrienne wrote:
Wowza. What an incredible thread of comments.
Benjamin,
Just an observance: in several places here you make reference to the fact that what happens in other subjects has no bearing on what happens in your English (language arts?) class. For example, in Math it is numeracy (numbers literacy), which perhaps has little place in your class; in Art, it's graphic / visual literacy, and likewise has little place in your class. Yet you go on about how writing is THE most important communication skill in your class because it is what will prepare your students for the future. Do you really think your students look at the world through the box-confining visors of subject areas labelled in school?
The most important skill is for them to be able to communicate, period. Yes, writing is part of that, and as Clay has pointed out, no one is cheering "Down with writing!" It is simply one method of communicating: one of many, and I respectfully disagree that it is the most important. I would argue that *all* methods are equally important.
Such is the reason why English Language Arts* curricula DO exist that place equal emphasis on all strands. Dean mentions one (in Canada, where I am from and taught for 3 years), and there are others such as MYP which I have extensive experience in. Dean mentions that thinking about English Language Arts this way is "progressive" (a term which bothers me in this context, because *my* 7th grade Language Arts teacher also balanced all 6 strands way back in 1987!). But the fact remains -- the world has evolved, and communication has evolved with it: there ARE different and equally valuable methods of communicating, and your students will be using more than one of them in their futures -- this is almost guaranteed.
Perhaps unlike you, I actually think that the future of English Language Arts classrooms might fade into history. Communication is so densely woven into every aspect of our lives that our ability to be skilled in various types is needed everywhere. Yes, even in Math class, Music class, and P.E. class. (Witness the Language-Across-the-Curriculum push in the last 10 years and all the research behind it: We are all teachers of language.) And this communication is more densely woven than in the last 50 years because of the millions of ways we are all conntected now, and because of the near-infinite access to information. This connectedness will only increase as technology advances; we are not going backwards.
There are times when I wonder if in 10 or 15 years, English Language Arts teachers will not exist -- or perhaps we will exist in a different form. Perhaps we will be working alongside teachers of other subject areas (will there even be other subject areas?) and teaching students how to communicate in different contexts, how to understand language in different contexts ... via literature, via blogs, via art and sculpture... maybe even all at once?
(... and then I remember that education is one "industry" that is painfully, heart-achingly, mystifyingly slow to change, and I let out a despaired sigh, realizing that if anything is going to change, it's going to have to be me!)
And so, while I might think it fair to give a student like Moh'd Ali a D (or another poor grade) on a single *writing* assessment, I don't think it fair to
A) make writing the primary communication skill needed in my course, or
B) give a student like him a D in the course because of his poor writing skills, ignoring the other modes of communication he has clearly mastered (namely, in this case, speaking).
My report for Ali might say something like this,
"Cassius is a dynamic and clear communicator when given the opportunity to do so orally. His creative word choice and focused tone effectively complement his message and purpose. However, Mr. Clay may want to focus more on incorporating these aspects of communication into his writing skills, which are in need of attention. Think carefully, Cassius, about how to use sentence structure and diction to make your message clear in your writing."
... and then somewhere, on his report card or assessment portfolio, it would be crystal clear -- because I use criterion-based assessment -- that the oral parts of the course are his strength, while his writing needs some dedicated work. As to an overall grade? Well, I'd need more assessment items in all 6 strands to properly arrive at that conclusion. ;-)
*Note: You might wonder why I always refer to it as English Language Arts -- this is because I don't really feel that there is much distinction, to be honest. Language learning must happen with literature alongside it, and literature learning must happen with language alongside it. Research supports this, as does my own experience teaching both, not to mention the 4 languages I speak / read / write / er... communicate in with varying levels of confidence.
Adriennes last blog post..Lookin’ for a Grade (e)Book
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At April 28, 2008, Jenny Luca wrote:
Oh, so you a writer, Mr. Burell?
You are and don't you ever forget it.
Jenny Luca. (loved some of the writing in this post - you moved me)
Jenny Lucas last blog post..Maximise your use of Skype.
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At April 28, 2008, Diigo Jury Needed to Decide Comment Thread Debate | Beyond School wrote:
[...] after a wild four-hour storm of 74-and-counting comments on my Muhammed Ali post about privileging writing over other communication strands when we grade, it occurs to me that [...]
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At April 29, 2008, navigatum-aestuatum.info wrote:
Muhammad Ali: A D- Student in an F- School?...
Currently, the only way to get Google Reader to display a YouTube video is to include the invalid HTML code provided by YouTube. However, it is possible (and recommended if you care about standards-compliance) to embed YouTube videos ......
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At April 29, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Adrienne, You write so clearly, so compellingly. Thanks for troubling to do it here.
All of you - I'm a firm believer that it is no breach of etiquette to copy and paste any comments you made here into your own blogs, for the record. (If I were several of you in this thread, I would be tempted to do so. Comment threads have a wonderful way of bringing out good writing sometimes!)
Finally, I suspect some of you were quietly trying to take my mind off a hospitalized relative you know about from Twitter, and just want you to know you certainly succeeded. I feel like Ali must have felt after the Rumble in the Jungle fight against Foreman.
Thanks for the most memorable thread in the history of this blog :)
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At April 29, 2008, Of communication, design, writing and many other things | Not So Distant Future wrote:
[...] lengthy debate has been going on at Clay Burell’s blog regarding the weight and value of writing in Language [...]
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At April 29, 2008, Language Transcending Ink at Students 2.0 wrote:
[...] by an inspirational post from Clay Burell, an incredibly thought-provoking comment thread ensued which challenged many of us [...]
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At April 30, 2008, Assessing Assessment | Mr. Hamada's Universe wrote:
[...] been a fantastic free-for-all going on over at Beyond School. I won’t get into the specifics - check it out for yourself;the real excitement is in the 75+ comments - but it has focused on, among other things, assessing [...]
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At April 30, 2008, Assessment — For What it’s Worth | connect. create. question. wrote:
[...] thing is, I think about this stuff all the time. It is only recently, after reading hoards of comments and postings (and all the bits in between) that I begin to understand my naivety. Or is it [...]
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At May 1, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Benjamin - a day late, but I promised to find that summary of almost a century of research on the effectiveness of direct grammar instruction on composition. It's here.
Direct grammar doesn't come out looking good in the summary.
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At May 1, 2008, For the Roses: My Latest Position on Classroom Blogging | Beyond School wrote:
[...] the Pew study does the same, is no better a title, because “blogging” invites the natural talkers and interviewers, singers and raconteurs through podcasting; the natural symbolic and visual [...]
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At May 1, 2008, Language Transcending Ink at Newly Ancient wrote:
[...] that question, the arena for debate must be built around English and Language Arts, including the difference between the two: …the difference between “language arts” and “English” is paramount [...]
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At May 2, 2008, Dangerously Irrelevant: Leadership and Vision wrote:
[...] Muhammad Ali: A D- student or an F- school? [...]
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At May 4, 2008, A. Mercer wrote:
Clay, I think EVERYONE has missed an important point about Muhammed Ali's school experience. He grew up in the segregated South, and although I don't have "facts" about his education, everything I know (and most of us should know) about how African Americans were educated everywhere in the U.S. and in the South in particular should tell us he was probably not educated to his full potential or anywhere close to it.
Before I went into teaching, I was a public library advocate in Oakland, CA. One of the main programs we helped support was the adult literacy program run by the library. They did some incredible work. There were a large number of older African Americans who had grown up in the Jim Crow South. Once a year they would share their stories at the program fund raiser. THERE WAS NEVER A DRY EYE IN THE HOUSE. One woman who had to work in the cotton fields of Arkansas and could only attend school when it rained (and she couldn't work the fields) talked about her missed opportunities, in a speech titled, "No telling what I could have been" where she imagined being the president. Think of that lost potential. It was NOT because she was unable to write, she just hadn't been taught. I have to think that Mr. Ali's experience although a generation later and in a more urban area, was probably closer to that experience, than what any of of the commenters on this blog students receive. There was another generation of students who had gone through the school system as it desegregated, and did not get the education that they deserved either. One young gentleman wrote a really wonderful free verse poem in AAVE comparing people on the bus to a deck of cards (some folks are kings, and queens, some are jacks and jokers). One harridan wrote into our newspaper in a fit of peak in defense of "standards" saying he was "bringing down the language" with his writing. Now keep in mind this was probably a contributing member. I used this as an opportunity to "school" folks in the reality of where adult literacy students had to go through, but it really pissed me off. I remember her whenever I run across someone. I think your example of Muhammed Ali is not good for the point you are making (different measures of achievement for different abilities), but it says something about where we don't want to be with education (people not taught to their full potential, or anywhere close to it).
This (http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/01/man_bears) is a better example of your case.
In addition, your argument in being made here:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-getting-to-universal-design....
and I will touch on this soon, when I blog on what do poor students need.
A. Mercers last blog post..Sometimes it’s better not saying anything at all…
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At May 5, 2008, week19 - Alice Mercer on Diigo wrote:
[...] Muhammad Ali: A D- Student? Or an F- School? | Beyond School [...]
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At May 6, 2008, What DO they need? Part II | The Blog of Ms. Mercer wrote:
[...] Burrell has a very popular post that has generated a huge number of comments at Muhammad Ali: A D- Student? Or an F- School? | Beyond School And teachers - English teachers, especially, but any teacher using writing to assess understanding [...]
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At May 7, 2008, Gail Desler wrote:
I share Sylvia Martinez's concern that "the scary part is that even if you wanted to focus purely on teaching writing, right now authentic writing assessment is diminishing because it takes too much time." I see this trend amplified in our low performing, poorer schools (like the school district cited in Alice Mercer's comment), in classrooms where students typically suffer through textbooks that effectively deny access to meaningful writing activities (i.e. Language!) and in computer labs (not Alice's!) where they sit for online multiple choice assessments with never (or very rarely) an opportunity to create, connect, and share multimodal/multimedia writing.
Gail Deslers last blog post..Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free - An accidental conversation
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At May 8, 2008, Gunnar Schei wrote:
I have read this with great interest. I’m neither an English teacher nor a native English speaker, but I teach pedagogical/educational uses of IT at the University of Oslo (Norway). I’ve found the debate most intriguing from a pedagogical and technological point of view. I’m also happy to see the reference to Vygotskyan research, a major influence on Nordic (Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Danish) pedagogical thinking.
While I find the debate valid today, I doubt it would seem very relevant in 50 years time. Vygotskyan psychology teaches us that the evolution of human societies is closely linked to the use of artifacts, tools. We constantly invent and reinvent tools to make life easier. The complexity of the tools is always increasing, which had led to an ever-increasing division of labour. Professions become ever more specialised.
The tools we use help us to grasp the world, and many tools help us perform complex tasks without understanding the underlying mechanics of things. More and more basic skills are becoming obsolete because a tool is invented to carry out the task. Then we can use the tools to perform complex tasks, without necessarily understanding fully the underlying processes carried out by the tool. They who invent and maintain the tool (e.g. a computer) must fully understand it, but the rest of us doesn’t have to.
The main point is that thinking is not a process that can be clearly separated from the use of tools, or from the social context in which the thinking exists. When we perform a task using a tool (e.g. writing an essay using a computer or a pen/paper) the thinking is only understandable within the social context (school work) through the use of tools (computer or pen/paper). The writing in itself is meaningless (and impossible) without tools.
Within this school of research, learning is a social phenomenon, where thinking is a process intertwined with the use of tools. Seeing that tools constantly develop and become more complex, it is easy to see that in a few years we will have more complex grammar checking programs, able to point out all sorts of wrong syntax, even the “they’re/ their”-problem (which really isn’t that complex). Later on, we will have computer programs which translates spoken language to written language – you will speak to the computer and it will write it down, possibly in a S.A.D syntax as well It’s like that on Star Trek, and that’s just a couple of hundred years into the future, isn’t it?
(this text was written in Word 2003, even though I’m sure it has a few examples of bad grammar – like the use of passive forms (some green lines) – the grammar checking has corrected at least 100 minor mistakes…)
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At May 8, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
@Gunnar,
Fascinating input. I'm trying to make a similar point that the technology my students have today in their MacBooks - simply the webcam, built-in mic, and iLife a/v editing software - already provides modes of communication transcending the traditional writing bias in school assessments.
Reading your vision of the speech-to-text translation technology of the future (or was it speech-to-speech? or both?) came at a coincidental moment that makes me smile. I read your post at a Korean real estate office, as my Korean wife conversed with the agents about available apartments, the local market, and so forth. Right before reading your comment, I swear, I was idly imagining a not-so-distant future when that conversation would be instantly translated into English for me, so I could follow along.
Another coincidence. My current (newly adopted) Wordpress theme includes Google Translator buttons into European languages. I studied enough French years ago to be able to read it fairly well, and recently checked out one of my posts in "Google French." It was a far cry better than translation programs were just eight years ago, when I was an Arabic linguist exploring translation technology to help me in my job. The gibberish factor has decreased impressively in that mere eight years.
Star Trek indeed. "The future is now."
Thanks so much for the input. Quite a mind-zap.
Clay Burells last blog post..Aggregators as Couches, Comments as Salons
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At May 9, 2008, Gunnar Schei wrote:
@Clay,
I think you are correct in your claim that our student already have the means with which to communicate on another level than traditional writing.
I will go as far as saying that if schools don't start employing different learning strategies very soon, then school will become increasingly irrelevant to all students. Kids today live and learn in the world of web 2.0, but most schools don't. This is twice problematic: Students think schools is old and irrelevant, and school can offer no guidance in the use of the web - which students really need - they don't master it even if they think so. Check out a British JISC report about the Google Generation, and their technologiacal strengths and weaknesses:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynot...
Thanks for the tip on the Google Translator, it has much improved since last time I tried it! This tells me that my Star Trek analogy isn't pure fiction, and we will have universal translators in a few decades... Maybe we could give one to Yoda, to correct his horrific grammar ;-)
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At May 13, 2008, Where do you buy your ESL books? at Talk to the Clouds wrote:
[...] Clay Burell on May 12, 2008 10:11 pm Apropos of nothing in particular, it occurs to me that you might enjoy a weird debate on a monster comment thread on this post: Muhammad Ali: D- Student? or F- School?. [...]
[Update 2: Most of the clarification promised in the update below is in the comment thread. I still don’t hear a lot of testimonies that RSS is really sticky with non-geeks, though, even from its strongest defenders. So I’m still wondering if we shouldn’t be looking for other paths to conversion in our PD sessions and classrooms.]
[Update 5 hours later: Yet again, Clay is a victim of his own English teacher-y proneness to a turn of phrase. I’m almost finished with a post clarifying and extending this (and thanking some people for diagnosing my RSS malady). But right now I have to pick up my wife. More soon ]
From a comment I just left on Darren Draper’s blog, in which Darren lists focusing on RSS as a priority for Professional Development workshops :
I suspect that RSS is Dead, but we evangelists don’t want to lose something to preach.
I think Twitter links, Diigo groups, Education.Alltop.com, and such are easier ways to turn people onto the blogosphere.
Just because we believe in RSS doesn’t mean we’ve converted others. I think our track record on that is miserable enough to speak for itself (mine is, anyway, with colleagues and students alike). Can we say “dead horse”?
How many of you out there really do see Feed Readers / RSS Aggregators sticking after you leave the class or workshop?
Faith that RSS is the true savior does not make it so. I think it’s more of a Model T Ford - or an Edsel.
Photo: Nietzsche by escolanomade; beautiful by dawn m. armfield
21 Comments
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At April 25, 2008, Thomas Ho wrote:
BUT isn't RSS STILL VERY USEFUL for creating mashups such as a lifestream using tools such as Yahoo! Pipes?
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At April 25, 2008, Thomas Ho wrote:
BUT isn't RSS STILL VERY USEFUL for creating mashups such as a lifestream using tools such as Yahoo! Pipes?
Thomas Hos last blog post..TwittEarth
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At April 25, 2008, Ric Murry wrote:
Clay,
Chris Pirillo spoke about this too. I saw it earlier, and read your post about 2 hours later. All through Twitter. There is support from outside the education realm with this transfer from RSS to other forms of information-gathering.
Not sure where I am, but interesting mind candy nonetheless. I will likely continue with RSS for the foreseeable future; and I will use other tools as well.
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At April 25, 2008, Jenny wrote:
I think RSS is one option. It feels like a differentiation thing to me. Some people will prefer twitter for finding new posts to read, others Diigo, etc. For some, RSS will make the most sense. I think we need to offer options so that people find what works best for them.
Jennys last blog post..Best Day of the Year
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At April 25, 2008, Rodd Lucier wrote:
Although I used to read posts as my reader gathered them, I tend now to follow relevant links and blogs through Twitter, and to rely on iTunes to aggregate my audio.
RSS is still important and necessary, it's just that it's hidden within the apps we use. Just as we no longer need to know HTML to create web content, I suspect most users will subscribe to content without knowing the acronym even exists.
Really Simple Syndication is getting even simpler... it's now Invisible Syndication.
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At April 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Since I use Bloglines and Google Reader (and have played with iGoogle and Pageflakes, though they didn't stick for me), I know they're useful. But I'm geeky and make time for this stuff.
I'm talking about evangelizing it to the world. I don't see much of a success rate. It's too complex to new people, and requires a change of that intransigent thing, habit.
I don't know which is harder: climbing the highest mountain, swimming every sea, or getting others to, I dunno, switch homepages on their browsers to Bloglines.
Again, more and more of us geeks are coming out of the closet and confessing that we use our own readers far less than we used to.
But to return to the focus - and Jenny, I'll meet you this far - I think pitching RSS Readers as an entry level tool in PD workshops, based on the stickiness (lack of) success rate, is a suspect idea.
Thomas, how many people do you know who use Yahoo Pipes? I looked at it way back, and decided against figuring out the (then) 328 steps to setting the thing up. It felt like a Rubic's Cube. Has it changed?
I'm talking about staff development with non-geeks.
What's our purpose for teaching aggregators? If it's to turn people on to blogs - finding them, managing them - then the suggestions I gave above, in the post, are more elegant ways to do that, IMHO.
Now, once those fews who do convert to reading blogs step forward, then yes, turn them on to Feed Readers. But right off the bat? I think the bat just bounces back onto our heads.
And Ric, it sounds like you and I are at the same evolutionary stage. And this post is a bit of candy - a quick snack of chewy food for thought.
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At April 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Rodd, you make the distinction I should have made: it's not that RSS is dead; Feed-Readers are (or are at least in the terminal ward).
Great analogy with html.
Another argument against Feed Readers is the exponential growth of blogging. Blogging is so sticky, it actually chokes the efficiency of Feed Readers. There are just too many new blogs to subscribe to. We're trying to contain the ocean in a lake-bed.
Damn, I'm feeling metaphorical today. Somebody slap me.
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At April 25, 2008, Charlie A. Roy wrote:
@Clay
I must be doing something wrong. I don't seem to get twitter. Maybe my network is to small but I'm still using the RSS feeds and scroll through what looks interesting. I think i need to learn more about twitter.
Charlie A. Roys last blog post..Unleashing the Power of TED
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At April 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Charlie, I find having about 200 people in your network is a good number. ((I'm following about 500 right now, not sure how that feels yet.)
Then, for me, having Twitbin open in my Firefox or Flock (and Twhirl as a backup for when Twitbin goes buggy) makes Twitter pay off. The network is large enough for the stream to be both resource-rich and fun to play in.
Don't know who to follow? You can go to anybody's page and follow who they're following (click on "following" on their home page. Mine is at http://twitter.com/cburell ). A good percent will follow you back, and you'll get the hang in no time - and the beauty. It's multi-tasking, sometimes mega-distracting, possibly addictive (but so is TV, which is a sucky alternative), but incredibly rewarding.
Hope that little jag helped. Hope I see you there. The art of Tweeting creates a new form of conversation that can be so creative.....
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At April 25, 2008, Arthus Erea wrote:
Yet, you admit that you still use a feed reader. (As do I and most of this crowd I imagine) There is still tremendous use for feed readers, especially for "power" users. Show me how can go through 500+ items on Twitter efficiently. OR even 100. Or even 50. The power of RSS is that *all* the content I want is in a single location, which can easily be browsed. Sure, I could go on Twitter, watch for links, sift through the mundane details of people's lives, and click through to read an article. With Google Reader, I can go from one article to the next (from a completely different source if I want) with the press of 1 key.
That being said, I have discovered lots of little gems of blogs or articles through Twitter. However, after discovery, they are dumped right back into RSS. So, Twitter/Diigo/etc. for discovery, RSS for recovery/reading.
So, it fits that Twitter is best for those newly discovering the online world. I would definitely recommend someone use Twitter before they touch a feed reader. However, it gets to being a certain point where Twitter is too inefficient for managing articles. (Not even counting the signal-to-noise problems since most posts on Twitter aren't the equivalent of an RSS item) I think both Twitter and RSS have their place, but RSS is far from dead.
On a side note: I have found that by far the easiest way to break RSS to people is the humble iGoogle. "Copy this text in here. Oh! WOW! I can read the latest news from The Drudge Report on my desktop! Cool!"
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At April 25, 2008, Adrienne wrote:
Clay, I tend to agree with Jenny about it being one possibility of many for gathering information. And it just happens to be a rather efficient one in terms of the amount of time it takes to set up, use, and then check. You've said it's complex - really? Of all the tools I've shown to my colleagues, RSS has got to be the one they appreciate the most -- "wow, you mean the information comes to ME?" I've not gotten into Diigo yet, but I use Twitter now, and two aggregators daily to "get" my info. (And iGoogle is always, always my starting place, though other people I know do not - like you - find it worked for them.)
In response to your question: "What’s our purpose for teaching aggregators?" I find aggregators especially useful for following all sorts of things that have nothing to do with blogs. Some examples:
- Calendars of various types have RSS feeds. In my present school, this means I know when a laptop cart is available, or when I can book the drama room. I suspect (though am not certain) that other Calendar apps like Google Calendar or iCal have simlilar settings.
- Documents -- I can add GoogleDocs to my iGoogle page and be notified any time there is a change to documents I share with others. Not related to Google, within our current school portal, I have RSS feeds set up for different storage areas so that I know when documents have been changed or added.
- Photos -- RSS can be used to track photos on Flickr, Picasa, and any other number of photo sites, which is incredibly useful for various purposes.
So, no... I don't think RSS is dead yet. :-)
Adriennes last blog post..Meme: High School Daze to Praise
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At April 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Ooh, Adrienne, I think you're converting me. Seriously.
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At April 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Arthus (and others),
This comment from Darren's thread (to Jethro, who took me to task for this post's title, but did it nicely) sort of addresses some of your comment:
@Jethro, (Hi :) ) Did I say RSS was too new? I don't recall that. In a sense, I think RSS is too old now. Newer tools that are easier on the non-geek, I'm arguing, might be better for evangelizing to non-geeks (the large majority of our workshop and classroom audiences).
Again, I'm talking PD (and classroom - let's not forget that the whole point of teaching this to teachers is to get them to educate their students about it). I just don't think RSS will ever "come to life" for most PD and classroom attendees. And I think there are newer alternatives that might hook people more - and get them ready (only the willing) for aggregators.
It's a pull v. push thing, in a sense.
The "RSS is Dead" thing was just a bit of hyperbole alluding to Nietzsche's famous "God is Dead" declaration. I was hinting that maybe we worship Readers too much, and don't notice that the rest of the world doesn't seem to.
Arthus, how do you put Diigo things into RSS? Subscribe to Diigo group entries or what?
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At April 25, 2008, John Hendron wrote:
Clay,
I was surprised with this read. Among all the perspectives out there, RSS is still unknown to some of my teachers, tried and abandoned by some, and used by others.
We recently started a school district social network for the teachers. One asked me, "I don't know if I want to use this unless it has RSS."
I smiled.
I use Twitter, too, but differently that some do. I use it to record the steps of my day; my colleagues use it similarly. Following us wouldn't be too... interesting to most. But occasionally I will throw-out a link.
The larger question is, are you willing to give-up on RSS? Is there not potential for student use (i.e., creating feeds for them?, them creating ones for you?)? RSS, as you later noted, is a technology that likely isn't going away, but newsreaders are?
I'm not sure. Carrying around an iPhone myself, it's very convenient to whip that out and pull up articles that mean something to me. My point is... we each have our mechanisms of dealing with the abundance of information online, and we ought to be teaching these strategies to students. But RSS is not the foe, it's the friend (with, I might add, it's friend folksonomy).
Eh, my 2¢.
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At April 25, 2008, John Larkin wrote:
Hi Clay,
I like Adrienne's and Arthus Erea's ideas. I feel that the old RSS reader is a powerful tool. When I share Google Reader or similar with teachers, etc I emphasize how they can subscribe to a wide variety of material, education and otherwise. It can become a one-stop information shop.
Participants subscribe to news services, sporting teams, information sites, television show sites, flickr pages, del.icio.us links etc. They subscribe to some blogs as well.
I then illustrate how powerful a search of the reader can be in seeking examples or discussions on a particular topic. A reader can evolve into a considerable body of knowledge.
The ability to share and publish subscriptions is useful as well.
True, there is an ocean of new blogs (if you do not mind my borrowing your maritime metaphor Clay) that will seemingly sink our RSS-readers if we attempt to subscribe to them all. We cannot hold back the tide. Unless of course someone invents a new cool tool called Kanute, Cnute, Kanoot, Knoot, or something like that. This new tool would intelligently manage what we read in our RSS reader according to our whims or needs and push back that digital tide.
Of course, we can treat our RSS readers like we now treat the Internet. I only regularly visit a few web sites now. Years ago I surfed to everything. My bookmarks were endless. I use about 10 bookmarks now. I think we need to treat our blog feeds in a similar way. Read what you really need. Nothing more.
Cheers, John
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At April 25, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:
Here's the beginning of a follow-up that I have to interrupt to pick up my wife. More soon - see the update on the post for the thank you - or just take my word for it :).
Here's that draft:
The title is a riff off of Nietzsche's "God is dead" zinger inThe Gay Science (and later Zarathustra). While I knew what I meant by it - a bit of hyperbole to force some thinking about the effectiveness of any sacred cow - it still stinks as a title. My only defense is that I've been teaching titles, introductions, advanced sentence patterns, and the use of figurative language to all of my classes rabidly for the last three weeks - and it spilled over into trying out exercises in allusive titles and such in this post. So mea culpa on snappy writing with flimsy accuracy.
That being said, I don't think it's too unclear in this post that I'm not denying the usefulness of RSS as much as of RSS aggregators ("readers") - particularly in introductory workshops with teachers or students.
I am using my reader less myself. I'm not seeing more than maybe 3% of students and teachers to whom I've presented it using it at all months (for teachers) or a year (for students) later. So I do question the over-emphasis of it in workshops.
Question, mind you. (Can I retitle this "Is RSS Dying?" - and if no, can we settle for "Is RSS an Orphan?")
Good answers come in the comments in the thread below. They strongly defend the uses of RSS, and have given me pause to consider my own issues with it - my own "abuses."
John Larkin's identification of the Reader glutted with too many feeds is probably the most accurate diagnosis of my RSS neurosis: I subscribe to way too many feeds, partly out of friendly loyalty to people, partly out of a feed appetite larger than my stomach can digest. I know it sounds silly, but I feel like I'm betraying somebody when I unsubscribe.
That gets further compounded when all those feeds turn into literally thousands of unread posts. This causes the same kind of feeling in me as does a sink overflowing with dirty dishes or a refrigerator with foods-cum-science projects (remember college days? Mine were that way, anyway.) I just avoid it - and the dishes pile more and the mold grows a 'fro. So I avoid more. Don't open that fridge.
So thanks, John, for advice that snapped me out of this condition. I'm going to thin my reader down to a manageable few, and see if that revives my faith in this cow.
But still. Rodd Lucier....TBC....
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At April 26, 2008, M. Walker wrote:
Clay,
Until I started using Web 2.0 tools myself, I didn't see the value of RSS.
Now, I use Netvibes, and it keeps me organized on who I follow.
I also think that teachers who have their students blog, can create a tab for each class and follow the posts without having to access each one.
My other thought is that districts that do not promote Web 2.0 have shut out a large number of people who would benefit from RSS.
After Scott McLeod's Kickoff talk in our district this year, we had an entire Middle school create instructions for parents and students to access staff posts with RSS. It's the way they access homework updates and announcements.
I am late to Twitter, but can pull that into my Netvibes page as well, and learn about Shareski's golf game, or what's happening in Korea the next day!
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At April 26, 2008, John Larkin wrote:
Hi Clay,
To ease your guilt (were you raised a Roman Catholic?) you can always place 20, perhaps 30, 'essential' blogs in a 'read' folder and the remainder in other folders with titles like 'maybe read' or 'ease my guilt'.
Cheers, John.
John Larkins last blog post..Lizard saliva dessert dish was a delight!
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At April 26, 2008, Bill Ferriter wrote:
Hey Clay,
Adrienne's comments resonate with me because I think the key to selling RSS to teachers doesn't start with showing them how to follow blogs, but instead in following the other content generated by their kids.
And I'm pretty sure that for me, that will begin with showing teachers how to follow edits to student work in our wiki, our blogs and our Google Docs.
Most of the teachers that I know are open to the idea of using web tools to create content and opportunities for communication between students. Their only concern: They want to monitor everything their kids write/say/do and are intimidated by the size of that task.
Considering that the wiki service we use has RSS feeds, Voicethread---another tool that's taking off in our building---has RSS feeds and Google Docs, a tool that we're interested in pursuing through Google Apps for Education, has RSS feeds, I think RSS may just be the hook that gets teachers into using digital tools in their classrooms because it removes the primary barrier that keeps them from using those tools to begin with.
I'm beginning to think that teaching teachers about strategies and tools for information management should be the starting point for introducing Web 2 to teachers. Every teacher, no matter how traditional, is doing research and writing with students in classrooms.
RSS makes that work easier.....and by default, makes RSS a tool non-tech-savvy teachers might just embrace.
Neat conversation...Thanks for starting it!
Bill
Bill Ferriters last blog post..Saint Carl, Civil Disobedience and Irresponsible Discord
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At April 27, 2008, Lindseak wrote:
Just have to say this: Guy Kawasaki (of Alltop.com) is from Hawaii!
Lindseaks last blog post..I float on tag clouds and blog fog
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At May 9, 2008, RSS for Productivity | Pockets of Change wrote:
[...] a response about RSS on Beyond-School, it was respectfully pointed out to me (thanks, dear colleagues!) that [...]
[Since my students just finished reading Nabokov’s Lolita, I thought I’d give their responses to the notion that it shouldn’t be taught in upper secondary. This is the third in the Why We Should Teach Lolita in High School series. See Number One here, Number Two here, with many interesting comments. If you want to comment, please read those posts - especially the comments - first. The 21st century, social media/web 2.0 context is important here.] Just one for the Long Tail: I posted the question below in a forum to my AP Literature students - all 17-18-year-olds, all, except one, ethnic Korean but Westernized anglophones:
I blogged about teaching this novel, and my readers were split on whether AP Lit students should be allowed to read it. What do you think? Should it be banned from high school “college level” literature classes? Why or why not?
Below is every response in the forum, in the order they were posted. I didn’t cherry-pick, and I only removed names. All said AP Lit students should be allowed to read it; two suggested making an alternate available for those uncomfortable with the premise; one expressed discomfort (not as bad a thing in a classroom as it could be elsewhere). Several addressed the benefit of exposure to this before they hit it in solitude in college. And many were plain puzzled that people think the book is any worse than nighttime television or movies. (A few made me scratch my head. Follow-up discussion time approaches.)
It just seemed right to put their voices here. Here they are:
Student Responses to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita:
3.1. I don’t think it should be banned. There is nothing to ban about really. I don’t understand why we have to protected from great literary works just because it has inappropriate concepts like sex. I think AP Lit students should be definitely allowed to read it though I’m not so sure about just the general seniors or other grades that aren’t mature to handle it. It really depends on the maturity level and how the students can handle that inside a classroom. Besides, for AP classes, which are supposed to be “college prerequisite” classes, should be handling students that are ready to take the advanced material for college and should level up to the college level. Out of the shell, I say.
More under the fold . . .
3.2. Practically speaking, we already know this kind of things. Even though we don’t, I think it’s the time to learn to face the reality, to go out of the school’s wall. I can’t even really think of any reason why it should be banned from a reading list, except for the fact that there are many French phrases that are unusually difficult to high school students.
3.3. Frankly, I don’t think it matters whether it should be banned from high school AP classes because it’s not like it has any bold offensive or perverted language. There are parts in which the descriptions and word choices are very descriptive and erotic, but, like [student] mentioned, we’re all at an age where we are not oblivious of these informations. This might sound weird, but in a way, instead of watching porn and fulfilling their sexual desires, it would be more efficient and educational to satisfy their needs while enriching their literary minds.
3.4. I don’t think it should be banned, of course. Honestly before we read this, I thought it would be more provocative than it is because I heard it was a banned novel in many places in the U.S. But it’s not that provocative afterall. More importantly, this is a literary masterpiece. The art far outweighs the maybe provocative aspects of the book. Come on, are we going to ban the painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, just because it is “provocative?”
3.5. I think Lolita should be taught in a college level English class in high school. If were to teach this to students of my own, (if I had any) I wouldn’t know how to approach a book like how we walked through it. Since college level English shouldn’t screen any sort of writing despite its’ content.
3.6. [student] and [student] ’s take on this question is similar to mine. We’re old enough to read this. I mean, we watch soft porn in movies that we watch every weekend, we are exposed to other obscenities in the television every night, so why shelter us from what we already know? There’s no sense in that. It’s better to just accept people’s sexual preferences and instead of shunning them, we should try to understand the psychology of it. In doing so, we will better understand the way our society functions and learn how to handle these kinds of situations should it happen to us. People are still people, diseased with a love for younger people or not. Humbert is a nice gentleman to me. He is not a beast. I would be friends with Humbert. I think that he’s intellectual, humorous, and a genuinely great guy. It’s like AIDS. Just because one has it doesn’t mean that he should be banned from eating at a restaurant. Students should be given the opportunity to widen their take on the world and learn how to become more accepting of good people who have little quirks. And it challenges age old beliefs of what it means to be a ‘child’ so, I believe that students should be taught Lolita. They could read it in their sophomore year even.
3.7. As a high school student who read Lolita, I do not understand why this novel should be banned in high school. Although I might understand that some high school students who are immature and cannot simply feel the weight that the book contains are simply unfit to read this novel, in a high school “college level” literature class, I believe that the students have the capability and maturity to handle this novel. To ban such a novel like Lolita would be limiting the student’s view on world of literature. And we wouldn’t want that to happen. Do we?
3.8. It shouldn’t be banned. It is not like it’s encouraging male adults to have sexual relationships with underage girls. And even if that’s what some might think the whole story is about, then that’s that. Not every books can satisfy everyone’s tastes. And the language is just simpley too beautiful and sensitive to be banned…
3.9. I’m split between banning the book and allowing the book in high school. I say ban the book in high schools (especially the U.S., no offense), because students are not up to the level of understanding the literary and meaning of the book. Also, high schools students themselves are still developing their sense of morality, so by letting them read Lolita, they might interpret things differently. But, I also say allow the book–why not challenge students? After all, high school is a safe ground to practice real life situations, college works, etc.
3.10. At first, I thought Lolita should be banned. At first, I thought it was too provocative. But now, I think the book should be opened to seniors of high school. The novel is more than merely about sex. It deals with the psychological complexities of a pedophile, delving into many psychological aspects that are debatable. The novel provides many topics that would be interesting to have a discussion about. Also, sex is prevalent throughout many literary works (although it is less evident in most books). The book may be shocking to students who first read it but I think once they will overcome the shock as they think more in depth about the novel.
3.11. I don’t understand why it’s banned from college level classes. It is a bit provocative, but it’s not like we are never going to learn about sex. I think there still exists a quite strong feeling against the mention of sex. It’s more weird that people consider it as something weird, since it’s just our way of reproducing, the main reason of life from biological view.
3.12. I’m sort of split on the issue myself. I don’t think it should be banned from high school just because it’s a high school, but I also don’t think students should be forced to read it. If the students are mature enough and decide for themselves that they can handle it, it would be a wonderful experience for them. I think it’s definitely a good idea for an AP Lit teacher to introduce the book to the students, but perhaps it would be even better if another book was left as a back-up option if the student really doesn’t feel like he/she is ready for it.
3.13. Nabokov’s novel Lolita seems to be a should-be-banned topic on the surface, as it is a love story between a forty year old man and a twelve year old girl. But if we take a deeper look, it is not a work that we really should freak out about. Comforting news for the people who think it is not appropriate for students to read is that the novel isn’t really provocative. Rather it opens a new perspective on a topic that people simply label and do not attempt to take a second look. This novel teaches the reader to step back and see the whole forest rather than a tree.
3.14.
…namely that “offensive” is frequently but a synonym for “unusual”; and a great work of art is of course original…
Is it not true that colleges and universities desire student with experience, and open-mind ness for different ideas and concepts? How can they ban a concept, a view, an idea in the 21st century? This is like banning a part of history for us not to acknowledge about the world. This novel cannot be banned from “college level” literature classes. Why do we read and learn about literature? Is it not it to open our minds to new ideas and concepts that we did not think about, to widen our view, and to appreciate different cultures that are “unusual” to us? I have been living in different places, and we all have different cultures. Some cultures might think that not looking at a person’s eye, and looking down while a person is talking is more respectful than having an eye contact. In some cultures, people “PSSSS” at you when they want to call you. These are different minds, different level of viewing the world. 21st century is the ‘Globalization’, and ‘internationalization’ we have passed the time to ponder whether people should be allowed to read books about a black person, or a woman, so why not about human nature? I would understand if Lolita was read to freshmen, or maybe sophomores, who are not mature enough to handle the idea of what is really going on around the world, or maybe average high school English classes in a public school where there are tons of crazy and unpredictable parents who don’t want their children to “grow-up” and “open” their eyes yet. But to college-bound students? That must be a joke!
3.15. I don’t think it should be banned from high school at all. The level of sexuality in this book is not that extreme and even if it was I think that students can handle it whether it is AP Lit or just regular English. Also, since Lolita actually has a moral message, I would highly recommend this book for AP Lit students so they can explore and discredit all those that make Lolita sound like a child molester’s sex experiences.
3.16. I also agree with [student] in the idea that Lolita should be taught in high school. As Mr. Burell mentioned in class, I think it is better for us to be aware of these dangers that lie in the real society. I think simply hiding these factors of society is not helping the students but making them more vulnerable in the society.
3.17. High school is not a “pre-school” to college. The high school curriculum itself also teaches students about health and STDs, whats wrong with a book about “convincing love”. Korean public school students start their sex education in 3rd grade, whats wrong with reading about a somewhat sexual book. To tell you the truth I believe that schools are just somewhat binded by the fact to teach Lolita due to the fact that a middle aged teacher is teaching it to teenagers. Although I agree with the fact that it shouldn’t be taught in normal English classes, to an AP Literature class I think its really a nice choice.
3.18. I think that by the age high schoolers are legible for AP lit, they can handle Lolita. Lolita isn’t a pornographic book, but is rather a book that deals with real-life issues such as child molesters.
3.19. I see no problem in assigning Lolita because high school students should be aware of the power of an unreliable narrator, and Lolita is a great example of that. Some can argue that it is pornographic, but it is not like high schoolers don’t know how a baby is made; in fact, they can hardly suppress their hormones and curiosity.
3.20. High school “college level” means a college course, and I think that the syllabus should follow what the college students study. Lolita isn’t that bad to take, as long as the students are mature enough to not make faces or be obnoxious about the sexual content of the story. Really, I think that high school students should be exposed to these kinds of hard material before they hit college, because if we experience this our freshman year in college with nobody to help, it would be a disaster.
3.21. Those who are afraid to teach the novel are those who have doubts about the mentality of their students. At 18-19 years of age, most AP Lit students should be able to read and understand where the content truly lies. Just by the mere beauty of the wording in this book, it should be taught. It would teach a lot more to read throught this book once on how to be a good writer than to read what Barron’s has to say and write mock essays.
3.22. Hmm. I have to be honest; I was disturbed by some of the parts in the novel. Sometimes the scenes weren’t directly described but the way Humbert Humbert described them—it just gave me the chills. But we got to face it—AP Literature is a college course and is designed for college students. I guess we should have the mindset to learn to read and understand the novel in a mature way although—sometimes it was hard for me to… let’s say, focus on the artful perspective. But my final though is that, we are old enough to handle this. It is a provocative novel but has a lot of deeper meanings inside it that is worth taking a look at.
Photo: Beware of the Book by Florian.B. on Flickr
I just got off a live webcast with Teachers Teaching Teachers - permalink forthcoming when they post the podcast - that was entitled, I think, “How to Make YouthTwitter Less ‘Schooly’.”
The really cool thing about it? There were as many students on the episode as teachers. “Students Teaching Teachers”? I like it.
I learned a lot, seriously, by listening to them discuss how blogging, Twitter, global collaboration, and the whole nine yards felt to them. What worked, what didn’t.
Kudos to TTT for making it happen. I hope it’s the first of many more.
This is the excellent foppery of the world.
–Edmund, in Shakespeare’s King Lear
Remember last summer those Korean Christian missionaries who came up with the bright idea of spreading their gospel in, of all places, Afghanistan? Sure you do. It was all over the news for a couple weeks. They were taken hostage by the Taliban, and a couple of their pastors were executed. Strangely enough, they were from a church in my old neighborhood in Seoul.
I don’t mean to be callous, but my reaction was: “Well, what did they expect?” Talk about “tempting the Lord.” Why not trust Him to protect a scuba dive in a lava bed? “What were these people thinking?” I asked.
They didn’t know what I want to call the First Rule of Evangelizing: Know Your Potential Converts.
I think we web 2.0 evangelists - at least this one - have to come to terms with a similar case of our own foppery: spreading the Gospel of RSS.
Even though we all use RSS readers - and even that’s a questionable assumption as the flood of feeds rises, and I, for one, find myself reading Twitter links far more than RSS feeds these days - can we all agree that our success rate at converting others to do the same is dismally low?
As a classroom teacher who has tried to convert students to the Good News of RSS Aggregators for almost two years now, the picture is even grimmer. All those hours walking students through setting up accounts, finding feeds, and all those additional hours of trying to guide them to the explosive learning that comes from the feed-reading habit? Fast forward a year later, and almost none of them have seen the Light.
Burn me at the stake, dear reader, and rail at this heretic if you must, but I must draw this conclusion: Maybe RSS is not The Only Way. We need a New Gospel.
Buddha is said to have advised seekers of Truth, faced with so many dogmas and doctrines and sects and claims, “Don’t mistake the fingers for the moon.” (For the metaphorically-challenged, the Moon would be the Truth, and the Fingers would be all mortal attempts to formulate it. Buddha is saying not to mistake the attempted answers with the ineffable reality they try to contain. Words can’t touch the Ultimate Truth, whatever that may be. It’s another reason I’ve always thought Buddha was cool. I’d love to hang out with that guy.)
So to riff off The Awakened One: if reading blogs and such is the moon, and RSS is a finger pointing the way to them that the vast majority of humans are too lazy and habit-driven to adopt, let’s be open to other ways.
I’ll share one that I found the day it was launched, and used in a writing classroom the day after. It’s called Alltop.
Guy Kawasaki, former Apple Evangelist, author, venture capitalist, Truemors creator, and Top 100 Technorati blogger, launched Alltop.com about a month ago. True to his mantra-making form, he describes Alltop as an “Online Magazine Rack.” It’s an apt description. As this screenshot shows, Alltop’s main page feels like an online version of the magazine section at a Borders or Barnes and Nobles. Click on the picture for full-size:
You see the main categories -Work, Living, People, Interests, Culture, Geekery, Good, News - that function as the “sections” in a magazine area of a bookstore. And beneath each category, you see the “subsections” - under “Culture,” for example, you have Design, Fashion, Movies, Music, and Photography (since he’s asking for suggestions, I’ve asked Guy to add “Books” to this work-in-progress).
By clicking on any of the subsections, you drill deeper into that subject by going to its subdomain page - for example, culture.alltop.com. Here you get a page of links “top” sites about the topic and, as the screeshot below of the “Interests > Crime” page shows, the latest five feeds from each site. Again, click the picture for full-size view:
I chose to screenshot the Crime page because I have a student in my Networked Learning/PLN elective class who chose to do a project on detectives in real life, and on TV and film. She’s writing crime humor scripts that she wants to direct and film, so she needed to find websites to research real detective life and find plot ideas involving funny crimes. The “Dumb Criminals” and CSI sites were just what she needed for these purposes.
But I had all of my students in this class do an exercise about the importance of titles and opening paragraphs using the main page of whatever Alltop site best suited their self-designed project - sports journalism, restaurant and bar design, comfort foods and recipes, political satire, game reviews - and the final feature of Alltop that has value for teaching writing. You see it in the screenshot below: the popup first paragraph of each feed’s post:
So here’s how the writing exercise went: 1) Go to the topic on Alltop that fits your project; 2) List the three best, and three worst, blog or website titles from the page, and explain why they shine or stink; 3) Select the three best and worst post titles, and explain the same; 4) Hover over the links of posts and find three excellent introductions from the popups, and three lousy ones, and explain your choices; 5) Post your analyses on the group PLN blog (here’s an example from a student: “The Difference a Title Can Make”).
Since doing that exercise - and then assigning students to re-title and re-write the opening paragraphs of all their posts - I’ve seen the evidence that the lesson worked. And I’ve also found that Alltop is a way for my students to find fresh information about their interests - without facing the tribulations of evangelizing RSS readers.
Full disclosure: Beyond School is featured in Alltop’s Education page. But I was using Alltop in class before that. I’d switched my homepage to Alltop from Popurls.com, which featured only social bookmarking hits from del.icio.us, Digg, and so forth, and thus was uneven at best (the Ron Paul crowd learned how to manipulate these sites to push their posts to the top, along with many other sensationalistic titles). Alltop is an improvement for this reason.
Finally, be warned: puritanical classrooms will not be comfortable with Alltop because it features topics like “BLTG” - bi-sexual, lesbian, trans-sexual, gay - and it also features posts with some taboo vowel-consonant combinations. Me? I find it the perfect opportunity to train my students in not freaking out over real-world realities and language, and to get over any hangups about them caused by schooliness - whether Monday-Friday schooliness, or Sunday-schooliness. Let’s be real. They’re in high school, and they’re not strangers to these things.
Similar Posts:
- Another Little Writing Exercise: Varying Sentence Openings
- Open Invitation to Join the Conversation at Our AP Literature Ning
- Two Heretical Posts from a Good Student Blog
- A Pox on Bloglines…and Google Reader
- Call for Crowd Wisdom: What Video, Photo, and Audio Archives Can Students Use for Mash-ups?
Dispensing with the Easy Stuff First: Guest Bloggers Bill Farren and Chris Watson
I wish I could say I was really taking a honeymoon, but it has to wait a week or three. More on that after I announce this week’s guest-bloggers, who have kindly agreed to take the helm while I float back down to earth from Saturday’s nuptial clouds.
Bill Farren will post his third weekly installment on Education for Well-Being (the full series*: my intro “Beyond ‘Did You Know?’ - A Video for Viral Times: ‘Did You Ever Wonder?’“; Bill’s first guest-post, “Education for Well-Being“; Bill’s second guest-post, “The Hidden Curriculum“; and Seoul sophomore Patrick Nam’s outstanding podcast interview with Bill for Project Global Cooling).
Also, Christopher Watson will make his first appearance. Chris teaches at Punahou High School in Honolulu and blogs at WatsonCommon, but is also my closest team teacher. Yes, I’m in Korea, and yes, he’s in the most remote Pacific island on the planet, but we’ve team-taught, brainstormed, and tried to trail-blaze constantly since collaborating on the 1001 Flat World Tales over a year ago. Chris’ imagination, as well as his penchant for organization and management, have made his blog a gold mine for me for the past year. He’s got full license to post as much as he’d like this week.
Now for the Tough Stuff: An Impossible “Thank You”
I shared my Korean wedding on this blog via Ustream for two main reasons: first, to include my family in the States and my friends from Twitter and elsewhere; second, to model the infinite possibilities of blogging to any and all educators and students who can’t see the history, the wonder, the playfulness, the power of it all.
Let me repeat that second point: Ustreaming my marriage was yet another attempt to teach the power of this new medium.
Deliciously enough, though, the result was a new discovery - a new learning - for me. I learned that, simply put, this new medium can unlock new forms of human kindness.
I only have time right now for three examples:
Carolyn Foote sent me a home-made Flickr card before the wedding:
Wedding present on Flickr - Photo Sharing! via kwout
During the wedding, Chris Betcher in Sydney started this “real-world project” Voicethread with my twitter friends (go ahead, click “play,” and be amazed):
And after the wedding, Frank in Mexico (whose blog has my all-time favorite header!) posted the full wedding chat on Ustream - I was “away from keyboard” for obvious reasons (the inlaws vetoed my bid to carry my Macbook to the altar) - and the Twitter history during the wedding as well (and more):
Clay’s Wedding 2.0: Blogged, Ustreamed, Flickr’d, Voicethreaded & Twittered so del.icio.us | Faces of Web 2.0 ★ 21st Century Teachers via kwout
That’s just the tip of the warmthberg - but it already exhausts my abilities to adequately thank (and Diane Cordell, I can’t even begin to describe your constant kindness).
Still, I want to pull one more teachable moment out of this: etymologically, the word “education” comes from the root “duc” - Latin for “to lead” - and the prefix “e-”, “out, away from”. In the Deep Old Sense, then, “education” is “to lead out” (and I’ll milk that vague connection to “Beyond Schooliness” for all it’s worth here, thank you).
What do these historically new acts of kindness have to teach us, we students of life? I’d suggest this: if you think you have nothing to write about as you face the blank screen, remember these people, and their fine gestures, and consider, instead of thinking, simply feeling. And create from that. Create some new form of kindness. Let your education “lead you out” - from yourself. Let it pull you to engage the world from the tip of your nose to the opposite pole.
I’m afraid I didn’t get that right, but that’s okay. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.
–
*Due to a technical error, I lost all the comments to these posts, but will restore them from my comments RSS feed as soon as the dust settles. My apologies to Bill and all for that.
Similar Posts:
- Wedding Songbirds: On the Humanity of Twitter
- In which He Beautifies Himself with Makeup and a Hairdo
- An Invitation
- Our Student Bloggers Ready to Connect: An Invitation
- Quality Student Podcast: Patrick Interviews Bill Farren for Project Global Cooling
[Update 2: The Ustream recording of the wedding is now embedded below. Thanks to all who dropped in and added magic to the day. Words fail.]
Take this however you want: wedding 2.0, cultural anthropology, surrealism (that Ode to Joy in Presbyterian Korean, I swear, is an artifact worthy of cultural studies), or just a sincere openness to considering many of you as in some strange way a part of my life, and thus really just plain invited.If the gods smile, the Ustream will go live here for the wedding (I’m late on that bandwagon, aren’t I?). When? This might help. The date is today in Seoul, i.e. Saturday 8 March 2008. The time:
Now lets see if I can embed the Ustream player and chat:
Okay, so far, that was easy. Go to the linked Ustream page above if it doesn’t work when the time comes. It should, though.And here’s the invitation, if Scrib’d works on this pdf I made with Apple Pages (so easy!):
Time for bed now.
Similar Posts:
- Sci-Fi Schizo-Cultured Cheese: a Pre-Nuptial Lark
- In which He Beautifies Himself with Makeup and a Hairdo
- On Kindness and Gratitude 2.0, and Guest-Bloggers for the (Not) Honeymoon
- Wedding Songbirds: On the Humanity of Twitter
- Overdue Invitation: Student Voices Coming (I Hope)
No one seems to believe that I'm not going to SXSW or Etech or any other tech conference this spring. I was hoping to be far enough along in my dissertation to stop by each for a day or so, but it's not going to happen. Trust me, I really really really wanna. But I'm really really really not going to any tech conferences this spring. That said, you should. Everyone else that I know is going and it's giving me an achy breaky heart to think about all of the fun that I will miss while I continue to fester in my PJs writing my dissertation. Please, do go, listen to amazing talks, play werewolf, and ask the goddesses of late night partying to support me in finishing my dissertation so that I can join you in the fall.
(I will still be attending the iSchool conference because my committee will be there.)
conferences events
When I have attended talks or conference presentations about Web 2.0, I seem to inevitably hear the question: “Is this presentation Web 2.0?” Which is often a legitimate question for newcomers, who don’t really get the logic of Web 2.0 by just listening to someone talk about. So, to try truly create a “Web 2.0″ presentation, I actually built one out they I will be giving this afternoon in a WordPress blog.
It is an overview of what Web 2.0 is, and how it might be conceptualized for education. The cool part is that each of the attendees will sign-on to the blog and navigate around it with me (both the front and backend with full admin rights) so that they can interact and comment on different parts of the site; add tags to posts’ and play with del.icio.us and flickr. More over, they can see how videos, images and RSS work in posts and/or pages with an application like WordPress?
Is this a Web 2.0 presentation? Well, I’m not sure, but I’ll find out in less than an hour.
Related posts on bavatuesdays
Two months ago, I ruffled some feathers with a post called Who clicks on ads? And what might this mean? Lacking any good public research, I pointed to a blog post by an AOL Global Advertising Strategy guy talking about research they did on AOL ad clickers. The report was by no means generalizable to all ad clickers, but it made a significant point: ad clickers are not representative of the population at large. Still, there were folks that were annoyed that I wasn't pointing to pubic data, especially when I continued on to make my own hypotheses about who these heavy clickers are.
This week, in a study called "Natural Born Clickers," Starcom USA, Tacoda, and comScore found that "the 6% of the online population accounting for most of the click-throughs skews toward male Internet users ages 25 to 44 with household income under $40,000." [see news brief; anyone have the full report?] "The study also found that their heavy clicking did not reflect high spending levels offline. They were also more likely to visit auction, gambling and career sites. The findings suggest that high click-through rates don't necessarily boost branding campaigns." In other words, "the click is dead."
This study finds that the age and gender of heavy clickers differs from what the AOL report found. (This probably says more about AOL users than anything else.) Yet, their findings also support (but do not confirm) a portion of my initial hypothesis that heavy clickers are:
- More representative of lower income households than the average user.
- Less educated than the average user (or from less-educated environments in the case of minors).
- More likely to live outside of the major metro regions.
- More likely to be using SNSs to meet new people than the average user (who is more likely to be using SNSs to maintain connections).
Folks tend not to like to hear that heavy clickers skew towards lower income levels, but I still believe this to be true. (For the record, 2006 median U.S. household income was $48,201.) Also, I should note that the population who uses SNSs to meet new people most likely skew male and 25-44, although not exclusively.
Hitwise also came out with new data this week: Yahoo search draws a younger audience, but Google users are more likely to spend more online. What I find particularly intriguing about their report is this graph:
Now, I don't know what all of these labels mean, but terms like "Affluent Suburbia" and "Upscale America" lead me to believe that the Hitwise bubbles are saying that people who spend lots of money offline are also the most likely to spend more than $500 offline.
Now, if you put these two reports together, you get a funny image of what's going on. Wealthier users are more likely to spend money online, but they are less likely to click on ads. Poorer users are more likely to click on ads, but not likely to spend money online except in a few verticals. Wouldn't this then mean that Google is more likely to get the eyeballs of those likely to spend money, but statistically less likely to make money off of their clicks? This would seem to conflict with the TechCrunch post that suggests that the Hitwise data proves why Yahoo is in deep doo-doo. Given that both Yahoo and Google search generate revenue through click-throughs and not impressions, wouldn't these two reports conflict with TechCrunch's assessment?
market business advertising
Last fall, I did an interview for Discover Magazine about my research. I still think that I look strange in video, but I figured others might appreciate it.
research
Learning to moderate desires and balance consequences is a sign of maturity. I could eat only chocolate for all of my meals, but it doesn't mean that I should. If I choose to do so anyhow, I might be forced to face consequences that I will not like. "Just because I can doesn't mean I should" is a decision dilemma and it doesn't just apply to personal decisions. On a nation-state level, think about the cold war. Just because we could nuke Russia doesn't mean that we should've. But, just like with most selfish children, our nation-state thought that it would be infinitely fun to sit on the edge of that decision regardless of the external stress that it caused. We managed to grow up and grow out of that stage (although I would argue that our current leadership regressed us back to infancy).
I am worried about the tech industry rhetoric around exposing user data and connections. This is another case of a decision dilemma concerning capability and responsibility. I said this ages ago wrt Facebook's News Feed, but it is once again relevant with Google's Social Graph API announcement. In both cases, the sentiment is that this is already public data and the service is only making access easier and more efficient for the end user. I totally get where Mark and Brad are coming at with this. I deeply respect both of them, but I also think that they live in a land of privilege where the consequences that they face when being exposed are relatively minor. In other words, they can eat meals of only chocolate because they aren't diabetic.
Tim O'Reilly argues that social graph visibility is akin to pain reflex. Like many in the tech industry, he argues that we have a moral responsibility to eliminate "security by obscurity" so that people aren't shocked when they are suddenly exposed. He thinks that forcing people to be exposed is a step in the right direction. He draws a parallel to illness, suggesting that people will develop antibodies to handle the consequences. I respectfully disagree. Or rather, I think that this is a valid argument to make from the POV of the extremely healthy (a.k.a. privileged). As someone who is not so "healthy," I'm not jumping up and down at the idea of being in the camp who dies because the healthy think that infecting society with viruses to see who survives is a good idea. I'm also not so stoked to prepare for a situation where a huge chunk of society are chronically ill because of these experiments. What really bothers me is that the geeks get to make the decisions without any perspective from those who will be marginalized in the process.
Being socially exposed is AOK when you hold a lot of privilege, when people cannot hold meaningful power over you, or when you can route around such efforts. Such is the life of most of the tech geeks living in Silicon Valley. But I spend all of my time with teenagers, one of the most vulnerable populations because of their lack of agency (let alone rights). Teens are notorious for self-exposure, but they want to do so in a controlled fashion. Self-exposure is critical for the coming of age process - it's how we get a sense of who we are, how others perceive us, and how we fit into the world. We exposure during that time period in order to understand where the edges are. But we don't expose to be put at true risk. Forced exposure puts this population at a much greater risk, if only because their content is always taken out of context. Failure to expose them is not a matter of security through obscurity... it's about only being visible in context.
As social beings, we are constantly exposing ourselves to the public eye. We go to restaurants, get on public transport, wander around shopping centers, etc. One of the costs of fame is that celebrities can no longer participate in this way. The odd thing about forced exposure is that it creates a scenario where everyone is a potential celebrity, forced into approaching every public interaction with the imagined costs of all future interpretations of that ephemeral situation. This is not just a matter of illegal acts, but even minor embarrassing ones. Both have psychological costs. Celebrities become hermits to cope (and when they break... well, we've all seen Britney). Do we really want the entire society to become hermits to cope with exposure? Hell, we're doing that with our anti-terrorist rhetoric and I think it's fucking up an entire generation.
Of course, teens are only one of the populations that such exposure will effect. Think about whistle blowers, women or queer folk in repressive societies, journalists, etc. The privileged often argue that society will be changed if all of those oppressed are suddenly visible. Personally, I don't think that risking people's lives is a good way to test this philosophy. There's a lot to be said for being "below the radar" when you're a marginalized person wanting to make change. Activists in repressive regimes always network below the radar before trying to go public en masse. I'm not looking forward to a world where their networking activities are exposed before they reach critical mass. Social technologies are super good for activists, but not if activists are going to constantly be exposed and have to figure out how to route around the innovators as well as the governments they are seeking to challenge.
Ad-hoc exposure is not the same as a vaccine. Sure, a vaccine is a type of exposure, but a very systematically controlled one. No one in their right mind would decide to expose all of society to a virus just to see who would survive. Why do we think that's OK when it comes to untested social vaccines?
Just because people can profile, stereotype, and label people doesn't mean that they should. Just because people can surveil those around them doesn't mean that they should. Just because parents can stalk their children doesn't mean that they should. So why on earth do we believe that just because technology can expose people means that it should?
On a side note, I can't help but think about the laws around racial discrimination and hiring. The law basically says that just because you can profile people (since race is mostly written on the body) doesn't mean you should. I can't help but wonder if we need a legal intervention in other areas now that technology is taking us down a dangerous 'can' direction.
socialgraph privacy
Background
to a class that might, in its own small way, move educational history forward into the 21st century:
Students
in a 1:1 Apple Laptop school take my Networked Learning elective. They all have Macbooks with iLife for easy podcasting, movie-making, photography, and multimedia blogging.
My open school network
allows access to Twitter, Skype, YouTube, and every other non-pornographic, non-gaming site imaginable. Social networking is seen as a tool for learning and creating. Fun is fine, as long as you can demonstrate purposive learning at the same time. (I mean, come on, that’s the way I behave on Twitter - playful learning and sharing, sometimes pure socializing, other times pure teamworking - so why be a Gradgrind teacher and prohibit the same playfulness for my students when they network?)
Global Personal Learning Networks in the classroom
are being formed by ten students. In my class, they have created Twitter and Skype accounts, and begun networking with willing k-university educators and others in my own Twitter network. (More on the psychology of adult-student relationships later, but a teaser: there’s a curi