Stager-to-Go
Here is my latest article to be published in a forthcoming edition of The Creative Educator magazine.
Vanity Fair writer and widow of Tom Russert, Maureen Orth, wrote a charming article about a small school she built in the Colombian Andes while a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. Last week she returned to the school to present the school named for her by the local villagers with 230 XO laptops from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation.
From Orth's article, The Long-Term Dividends of Volunteering:
Today, seeing how excited the children are about their small, green-and-white computers, which they are allowed to take home every night, is one of the greatest rewards I have ever had. I walked into the first grade classroom and had never seen kids so eager to learn. Their teacher, who had pooh-poohed the whole idea of computers and was on her way to retirement, was plunging right in.
I have long been fascinated by experts, expertise and the commonalities between them. I have learned much about learning by being in the presence of people who are great at what they do. In fact, I believe that reality TV is a manifestation for our basic human desire to engage in apprenticeship experiences.
In my humble opinion, Jo Boaler's, recent Education Week column, Where Has All the Knowledge Gone?
The Movement to Keep Americans at the Bottom of the Class in Math, is one of the most important pieces of education journalism in some time.
Is this just a coincidence? Can President Bush really have been so badly advised as to ignore almost all of the research that could have informed the report, or was there something more deliberate at work? How acceptable is it for a government to control the forms of knowledge that are released to the public?
Dr. Boaler is a former Stanford University Mathematics Professor who clearly and succinctly documents how "science" and "research" are used as a blunt weapon by the United States Department of Education. Boaler describes how the President's National Mathematics Advisory Panel was constrained from publishing the best advice for improving mathematics education. Such ideological interference in mathematics education is consistent with the Reading First mess at the center of No Child Left Behind.
Over the past six months I've discovered the BBC television phenomena, Top Gear. I first heard about it when Jay Leno publicly criticized NBC's desire to produce an American version. Top Gear is hosted by three blokes who love cars, build insane contraptions, challenge one another to drive across the English Channel and tease one another mercilessly.
Top Gear is an enormous international hit with its own magazine, children's books, DVDs and international editions, such as Top Gear Australia.
I've watched a couple of dozen episodes of Top Gear and have my DVR programmed to record new ones, not because I love cars or am even interested in them. I hate cars and would be pleased to never drive again. I watch the show for the hijinks, witty repartee between the hosts and because it is fantastic observing expertise.
The primary host of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson, is also a columnist for England's The Sunday Times and The Sun. Clarkson's co-hosts, Richard Hammon and James May also write entertaining columns for British newspapers.
During a recent trip to Australia, I thumbed through Clarkson's most recent anthology of columns and found a stunning piece of writing about education, Schools are Trying to Break Children.
All of us wrap up our children when it’s cold. We put them on booster seats in the car and make them wear helmets when they’re on a bicycle. We strive constantly to keep them out of harm’s way, and then we send them off to school so they can be tortured and killed.
Apparently, schools the world over are a lot more similar than the international comparison wielding politicians would like us to believe.
Read Jay Leno's review of and affection for Top Gear.
Dr. David Thornburg will lead two workshops at Constructing Modern Math/Science Knowledge January 22, 2009 in Philadelphia prior to Educon 2.1.
Read more and register here
Is this a precursor to Wednesday night's debate?
For all you mashup fans...
Gotta love Qantas!
I love Apple and their products, but this is beyond crass. Field trips to the Apple Store for your class! Parents with their American Express cards are also welcome.
When I first saw this advertised in the Sydney Apple Store last week, I chalked it up to the novelty of there only being one or two Apple stores on the entire continent of Australia. However, in an age where you have to dig for fossilized remains of field trips gone by, bussing kids to the mall to look at Apple products seems distasteful. Of course, all of this is at the school (or parents') expense with Apple contributing nothing, but Skippy, the minimum wage sub-genius, to supervise the proceedings.
The real tragedy here is that educational computing in schools remains so immature and unsophisticated, that many schools will rightfully view this (commercial) opportunity as a way of enhancing their students' education.
I'm sure ISTE is scrambling to figure out a way to make a buck off these field trips. Perhaps they'll publish guide books, post-mall quizzes or standards for visiting the Apple Store.
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Read my recent article related to ridiculous field trips, Enrichment Programs: The winners win more at the expense of their classmates.
For the past month or so, I've been the big old meanie who could love the messenger, but hate the shallow superficial condescending message of the wonderful Dallas Independent School District 5th grader and web video star burning up the YouTube charts.
You can read my concerns and see me flamed by educators deeply moved by the performance despite it having been created by the school district's cynical desire to exploit a talented young child for central office propaganda purposes here. Can anyone else recall a school district writing a script for a kid in which he admonishes professional educators, rehearsing him for months and then placing the video on the district's web site along with a calculated public relations campaign?
I wonder if Dalton Sherman's appearance on the Ellen Show was an approved school absence?
Well, guess what? Young Dalton's performance was indeed - dare I say? - lipstick on a pig.
While I still receive emails telling me that I MUST watch this amazing video on YouTube, the Dallas Independent School District is laying off 1,100 employees, including 400 teachers lectured by the fifth grader.
According to Education Week:
More than 400 of the lost jobs include teachers in the core subject areas of math, science, social studies and English.
Perhaps the school district would be well-advised to focus on fiscal management and education, rather than stagecraft. At the very least, Dalton's next speech could be to the legislature asking why his teachers are prohibited from union organizing.
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) -- The father of a measurement known as the "Smoot" returned Saturday to be honored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the school where he and his fraternity brothers invented it 50 years ago.
Read the rest of the story at
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/10/04/smoot.day.ap/index.html
Kids LOVE this story!
So sad... school field trip to the Apple Store
Microsoft's "I'm a PC' campaign created with Macs and Adobe software.
However, not even Microsoft itself can wean itself off the Mac, as the metadata discovered by Flickr user LuisDS points out. Microsoft was not only using Macs but also Adobe's software in place of its own Expressions Studio, which the company bills as software that "takes your creative possibilities to a new level."
Read about this and other Microsoft marketing problems difficulties here.
BrainPop gives me a headache.
I have long tried to make sense of BrainPop, a web-based library of short cartoons covering "hundreds of standards-aligned topics within science, social studies, english, math, arts and music, and technology; all supported with engaging movies and interactive assessment tools. Web-delivered and searchable by state standards,"
For quite some time I've wondered what a teacher would actually do with BrainPop or BrainPop Jr. Why would you show cartoons in the classroom? Who is the author of the content? How do you know that the information is unbiased, valid, factual or interesting? Shouldn't "Internet Age," learners engage with primary sources from a variety of experts with differing perspectives. How can complex issues and concepts from every discipline be reduced to a short cartoon? What do students do after watching one of the cartoons?
My ambivalence regarding BrainPop got more confusing this week after I received a press release announcing SEPTEMBER 11TH IN THE CLASSROOM: BRAINPOP RELEASES FREE MOVIE THAT HELPS ANSWER CHILDREN’S DIFFICULT QUESTIONS. BrainPop is giving away access to a 5:44 minute cartoon explaining the attacks of 9/11/2001. I'll take the company at its word that it is not exploiting the national tragedy for cynical commercial reasons, but "help teachers communicate with students" about a "sensitive topic."
With much trepidation I hit the play button. The simple 2-D cartoon features Moby the BrainPop robot and his human friend telling the story of 9/11 in a chronological narrative about the attacks and a bit of background information on the terrorists. The cartoon sticks to the facts with little nuance and one politically-correct perspective. The content was not particularly objective even if you think that children should relive 9/11 even in cartoon form.
My viewing of BrainPop cartoons suggests that too many topics are addressed in too little time, with complex issues, stories or concepts reduced to the most trivial level of education - vocabulary development. The excessive volume of vocabulary introduced in the short 9/11 cartoon almost guarantees a trivial handling of complex and potentially controversial issues. Front-loading vocabulary without context, relevance, and most importantly, experience with the underlying ideas is one of the biggest pedagogical error made by educators. Knowing the names of types of angles without experience working with angles is not mathematics -it's memorization.
The 9/11 cartoon covers the chronology of the attacks, Al Quaeda, the Pentagon, terrorism, the Department of Defense, Osama Bin Laden, Islam, religious fundamentalism and more in just five minutes! In such scenarios, understanding is unlikely or purely accidental.
Fans of products like BrainPop justify its use by saying, "The kids love it!" By that peculiar standard, why not let the kids go home early or fill them with candy while in class? They love it compared to what? Given the choice between thinking, working or watching TV, most kids will choose the cartoon. The fact that the delivery of BrainPop cartoons is via the Web is inconsequential. This is TV cartoons without the artistry, storytelling or whimsy of great animation.
It is disingenuous to suggest that BrainPop cartoons are just tasty appetizers used to introduce a topic or inspire student interest. In order to justify the annual school subscription of $700-$1,400/year requires the company to make outlandish claims about state standards alignment and that the cartoons meet "the needs of multiple learning styles." How many learning styles are supported by watching a cartoon?
Like most shallow easily pitched curriculum products, part of BrainPop's appeal is based on its built-in assessment scheme.
That's right! You guessed it! If you enjoyed the cartoon about the horrific tragedy of 9/11 you will love the multiple choice quiz that follows.
Turning 9/11 into a game of trivial pursuit in the name of standards alignment or assessment is most vulgar. Asking students to select the first World Trade Series that collapsed first is not a measure of understanding. It is a test of recall and nothing more.
Reducing a recent national nightmare to a cartoon may be in bad taste, but the multiple-choice test that follows reveals our real priorities.
Check out this fabulous bit of video of Daily Show "reporter," Steve Carell following John McCain's last campaign for President.
It's well worth watching through to the end.
From New Yorker's "Annals of Entertainment: Is It Funny Yet?" by Tad Friend, from February 11, 2002:
"In late 1999, one of the show's correspondents, Steve Carell, boarded Senator McCain's campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, and asked the candidate to name his favorite movie and his favorite book. Then, with no change in his expression, he asked McCain how he could reconcile his criticism of pork-barrel politics with the fact that "while you were chairman of the Commerce Committee, that committee set a record for unauthorized appropriations." For a long moment, McCain was speechless. Carell started laughing. "I'm just kidding!" he said. "I don't even know what that means!""That's a true fact, that question," [then-head writer Ben] Karlin said. "And McCain was caught in the headlights. But we punctured it with a joke, so all you're left with is funny and awkward. It's bittersweet."
Thanks to this article in the Huffington Post for calling my attention to this video gem.
Genius game designer Will Wright's new computer game, Spore, is available today. Will Wrights it the inventor of SimCity and The Sims.
According to the fascinating description in Wikipedia,
[Spore] allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.
The flexibility, customization and extensibility of Spore may make it truly worthy of the "edugaming" hype touted by many educators. Spore benefits from the efforts of a singular vision. It's many forms of gameplay may be attractive to a wide range of users.
Take a look at Spore here.