Beyond School

I’m off to Bangkok for the Apple Distinguished Educator 2007 Asia Institute in 24 hours, so I’m crazy rushed: sub plans for 3 missed classes, packing, the usual teachery stuff (gradebooks and other banes), prepping a presentation for how 1:1 is working (and sometimes not working?) at our school. (I really look forward, more than anything Apple, to simply re-uniting with International School of Bangkok’s Kim Cofino and Justin Medved to hone our collaborative visions about the 1001 Flat World Tales and Project Global Cooling, plus whatever they’re cooking up that I might support from Korea. I’ve missed these two since seeing them in Shanghai for the Learning 2.0 Conference in September.)

But here are a few things on my mind before I go:

The Wrong Kind of Selflessness

I don’t care how wealthy, “elite” (silly word connoting “more shopping power” in today’s age), and conventionally “well-educated” a student body is. If the emphasis is on GPA, SAT, Advanced Placement overload, and hyper-extra-curricularism for the sake of college application bullets (“I was in student council, Model United Nations, Cheerleading, Basketball, Debate Club, and Future Workaholics of America”), the result is often painfully obvious: all of those extrinsically motivated pursuits are a Faustian Bargain.

What is lost in this mad rush for the killer college app is this: the soul itself.

Okay, I don’t believe in this Iron Age concept. Let’s be modern and call it “the self.” It’s every bit as precious, without the theological baggage. I’m talking about the sense of who you are, of what you want to do, and the path of learning and creating based on those two senses – learning about the world the individual self is called to, and creating a worldview on that basis, and creatively contributing to that world at some point. I’m talking about your freaking life story.

It’s an opportunity cost thing. Our time is finite. 24/7 is a reality we so far haven’t transcended. And if you are being force-fed college application steroids every waking moment – classes in school, schooly extracurricular activities after it, SAT prep night classes after school and on weekends, other tutors and AP prep classes ditto – then what is not being fed, again, is the Most Important Thing: the Self, the Essence of your own genetic thumbprint, the special meat-package of who you are as an individual.

You may gain the Ivy League, but you lose your soul. You lose your voice, your creativity, your sense of wellness, wonder, and self-impelled exploration. Outside of that GPA, there’s not much there there. “Bookful blockheads,” to quote Samuel Johnson, with “heads stuffed full of facts” (to tweak Eliot).

My evidence? Try this: 30 students with MacBooks, most of whom are sincerely committed to a Project Global Cooling, but who are bewilderingly unable to produce a single short film about it, a single podcast, etc, in over three months. Let me translate: they have the money, the wealth, the grades, the intelligence; but when it comes to a simple “create something, play, produce, get fertile”? Nada. Too busy outside of our 40 minute/week activity block with all those Faustian pursuits. And, I suspect, too conditioned by a life of “schooling” to relax and create with that true artist’s acceptance of failed sketches in pursuit of the successful one. Too success-driven (conventionally defined) to be creative. Too fearful of “failure” to create something that doesn’t work. Too over-scheduled to have time to even try. Shocking, really. And sad.

We celebrate one kind of selflessness, and rightfully so; but this is the wrong kind. It’s a selflessness, ironically, born of selfishness – of the desire (probably more parental, institutional, and cultural than anything) to get into a “top” college. What a devil’s conveyor belt we’ve built with our schools. Sell your soul, go to Harvard.

The Wrong Kind of Morality

Other bloggers know that curious fascination that comes while skimming your sitemeter stats for the search terms that bring visitors to your blog. Me? Since posting my “Teaching the F-Bomb” about my AP Lit students’ modern translations of the constant (but more sublime than today’s) cursing in Shakespeare’s King Lear, I’ve gotten a surprising number of hits from people who apparently consider student cursing a moral issue worth researching.

Again, how Iron Age.

Can’t we aim for a modern moral framework here? Instead of expending energy trying to stamp out certain vowel-consonant combinations that do no harm beyond ruffling a few Victorian sensibilities – and I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach the proper times and places for the use of colorful language – can’t we instead focus on student habits that do much more damage? How about:

• the throw-away packaging addiction (bottled water, fast food, etc)
• the consumer habits that support socially immoral practices (like buying diamonds, for example, or Nestle products that rely on child slavery in Africa – aren’t these worse than saying “f&#k” a million times?)
• driving two-ton pollution machines without a thought to reducing their use

I’m so tired of that hackneyed argument that “science without morality is dangerous.” The problem is more located in our morality itself. Whatever culture you’re in, it’s a safe bet that your moral framework comes from some variation of Iron Age goat-herder or nomadic warlord. The moral issues they faced are different from ours. Joseph Campbell said it well:

For a civilization that has sent a man to the moon, it’s absurd to follow moral imperatives written before the invention of the wheel.

Or something like that. I paraphrase.

We’re in dire need of a revised Ten Commandments if we want our species to survive the 21st century at all. Resisting coveting my neighbor’s ass isn’t going to slow global warming or reduce the population explosion. (Actually, if “ass” meant what it means today instead of what it meant in Moses’ time – sorry, King James’ – maybe it would reduce population growth.) (That was a joke.)

But really. We’re educators. The next generation learns from us how to think critically about right and wrong, good and bad. Can’t we think critically about it ourselves? (And if Google brought you here because you’re looking for a way to wash your students’ mouths out with soap, I hope instead you’ll consider a bit of a moral paradigm shift, some soap for your own moral mouthings.)

More on the Edublogs Award Question

Darren Draper has an interesting comment thread about the value of the Edublogs Awards. I’m learning from it, and enjoying the debate. Worth a look. There’s constructive discussion about how the e-b folks can improve this shindig in future years.

Students 2.0 Coming Soon

I have a privileged, behind-the-scenes view of the planning going on for the Students 2.0 edublog launch. These young adults – disguised as mere “students” – are so brilliantly fun, smart, and creative, they intimidate me. And I’m learning a lot as I get to know them. (News flash: they’re smarter than me in a good number of ways.)

Watch out, edublogosphere. They won’t be raising their hands and asking for permission to talk here. Stay tuned for more.

Photos: 96dotsperinch and meeware1

I’ve chronicled my fantasies (and here) and ice-water reality-baths about this project so far. I told you last week or so how my initial approach – to invite buy-in rather than “assign homework” – didn’t work. Too many students were simply not writing. That carrot failing, I went “teacher-y” and used the grade stick.

It’s a couple weeks later now, and I’m beginning to like what I see. I mean really like it. As in “enjoy reading it.” Rather than write about it – no time now – I’ll just point out my system for sharing with the world all student bloggers who are doing exemplary work.

It’s this: I’ve got two folders in my Bloglines. One, “AP Lit Blogs,” is marked “private,” so it doesn’t show in my blogroll here. That’s where all my students have started.

As soon as I see a student blogger writing regular posts, done well, exercising good judgment, showing quality in all the ways I’ve written about here and here and elsewhere, I move them out of my private Bloglines folder and into my public “Student Bloggers” folder.

Then my Bloglines widget in my sidebar automatically adds the “new releases” for your viewing pleasure – at least if you visit from your RSS reader.

The “connective” part of the “vision” – linking to, commenting on, and ultimately networking with real-world adults who share their (a)vocational interests – is not, with a few exceptions, happening much at all. It’s part of their grade to do so, so that’s a choice they’re making. It’s an interesting one. I hope one of my students (a few are starting to poke in and comment here, which is nice) will share why that’s so hard to do. The psychology interests me.

On the other hand, there are nice connected discussions going on amongst my students that are a baby-step – but they’re seventeen, not babies! - in the right direction.

It’s my way of exercising quality control. And of inviting any of you to drop in on some new writers with talent that homework “writing” will never demonstrate.

Photo credit: chadmill

Re: This:

First response: “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.” — Groucho Marx

Second response: “The people in my blogroll (see left sidebar) are my own nominees. What’s the meaning of such an exercise?”

Third response: “But the edublogs folks have done a lot of service to the edublogging community, so they merit some sympathy. Give ‘em the benefit of the doubt.”

Fourth response: “And I’m a nomad. From doing this

for 20,000 solo miles across the USA during my college twenties (and god in heaven, that photo above is certainly not me), to joining the army to escape the States and live in Europe in my thirties, to beginning teaching and an Asian odyssey in Shanghai and now Seoul for the last eight years, I’ve never stayed put. Nomads need all the resume bullets they can get.”

So: I’ll take the badge, thanks. Mixed feelings and all. It might come in handy at the next job fair. Nomads have to eat, too.

And honestly, it’s nice to know that 400 posts in eleven months weren’t written to the wind.

So, to whomever nominated me, thank you. That was kind. Kindness is an important thing.

But again, so many people – what is it, 30,000 edubloggers now? – are doing good work. These awards are clearly random, somewhat luck-of-the-draw affairs. Who’s not nominated simply because everybody thought somebody else would do it? I can think of several glaring omissions when I look at the finalist lists.

And most of what you read on these pages, really, as I try to get teaching and learning beyond 20th century “schooling” – a completely different game – is, to quote some Asian wisdom, an endless story of “falling down nine times, getting up ten.”

And of enjoying writing more than ever in my life. There really is something magical about blogging.

Photo Credits: Groucho Lisa by sandrino, hitchhiker by macwagen

If you’ve got an hour to burn, you might enjoy watching Will Richardson and Gary Stager in this moderated keynote discussion at NYSCATE recently. (h/t to David Jakes for “bootlegging” it with his laptop for UStream.)

Stager’s skepticism about much of the edublogosphere discourse is a healthy corrective for the “cheerleader 2.0″ bandwagon we’re all riding to some degree.

Highlights for me included, at 16 minutes, one of the two mentioning that “there are no models of good student blogging” to set a standard (my frame, not theirs) for the use of blogs in literacy development. The launch, now one short week away (knock wood), of the new “Students 2.0” edublog featuring Kevin Walter (Chicago), Anthony Chivetta (St. Louis), “Arthus Erea” (Vermont), Sean “the Bassplayer” Law (UK), Nicole Kim (Korea), Stacy Zheng (New York), Lindsey (Hawaii), and Dillon Decicio (Washington State) will hopefully serve as one such model. And while the jury is still out on the “visionary classroom blogging” project with my own seniors, it’s only two months old – and any project worth its salt will always face obstacles, challenges, and bumps. Good connective bloggers aren’t built in a day.

At 28 minutes, Stager nails the pitfalls of most (American, as he points out, as opposed to more enlightened Australian) approaches to 1:1 staff development. Stager’s opinion that teachers should be trained to experience the tools and procedures – the types of learning – their students will be expected to practice in the classroom encouraged me to continue my own recent attempts in that direction, such as the so-far-underwhelming experiments I’ve done this week with digital storytelling. (I’m so glad I didn’t inflict this on my students. I would have, had I not tried it first.)

At 42 minutes (part of a topic concerning teaching computer programming as a basic, core subject), Stager wins the “quote of the day” award by saying (and I paraphrase),

It’s like somebody decided that all students would not be required to learn to program the machine that will dominate their futures, but would be required to learn to write a haiku. When was that meeting?

(Another Stager quotable: “Instead of the machine programming the students, why not the students programming the machine?” In that connection, I’ll note that the only students I’ve literally paid by the hour for their valuable knowledge were a couple of the Students 2.0 contributors, who gave me some lessons on SSH shell commands and other server administration points that no adults in my network could give. I’ve never offered students money to tell me the third longest river in the world, by comparison – or to write me a haiku.)

At 49 minutes, an interesting discussion begins on “hitting a wall as a blogger.” There’s a lot of that happening around the e’sphere these last few months. It points to the fact that we are all not only theorists or researchers, but are also part of the data itself. We seem to have reached a point of possible burn-out, over-heating, or bubble-bursting in our 2.0 evangelizing and experimenting. If it’s happening to us, what are the implications for our classrooms? (Any of you notice how frequently the top tier bloggers, for example, don’t respond to comments on their blogs, thus arguably violating the “blogging as conversation” pact implicit in the act of blogging?)

At 59.30, Stager expresses his frustration that few people seem to be “moving the ball further down the field.” I don’t know if that’s fair, but will say that I, for one, don’t feel much need for the raft of “a million tools” type catalogues that we’re seeing so much of. As Alan November pointed out in Shanghai back in October, this approach is mere “snapshots of an avalanche,” since 28,000 new applications are in development as I write. Here’s to subscribing to sites like Mashable and Kollabora for those bulletins, and reading more edublog posts about attempts to “move the ball forward” in our classrooms.

It was good, finally, to see Thomas Friedman taken down a notch. Again, Stager:

Friedman wrote the book. We bought it.

(And I’ve railed more than once about our catastrophically myopic framing of education and our students’ futures in Friedman’s economic terms – it’s all about more competition, bread-winning, and consumerism, and not a lick about citizenship and environmental stewardship. Karl Fisch et. al.’s otherwise compelling “Did You Know” needs a re-mix to expand that frame accordingly.)

Anybody who could have such a pathetic grasp of foreign policy as Freidman – read his “Iraq: Suck. On. This.” of 2002 (and thanks for selling the American Left on the invasion of Iraq, Tommy-boy), or his latest bit of idiocy, the “Obama/Cheney” ticket idea – should have his edublogger idol status revoked. No, on second thought, invading Iran – as Friedman wants us to keep as a close-at-hand “solution” in case Iran chooses its own sovereignty over American demands – is just what the US educational system needs. It must be true, because Tom says so.

Shim, a senior in my AP Lit class, started a mini-debate with his post, “Students or Slaves?” Nicole linked and extended, then Jane disagreed, then Daniel jumped in with this

Think about it as Lego. If one wants to build something, the basic pieces are needed. Without the pieces, a building cannot be built. In our lives, education provides us with these rudimentary pieces.

I, as a student, want education to be supposedly “open-minded” and to facilitate creativity as well. But let’s face reality here. We’re ignorant. Before we become supposedly creative and all, we need to learn the rules before we play, just as in sports. We need to learn the laws of Newton to contribute to the scientific field, and we need to savor the works of past literary geniuses in order to become writers.

They’re still not, as a rule, boldly connecting to their (in six short months) adult peers in the blogosphere, but at least they’re connecting with each other. (Ah, the psychology of it all: identity as “student,” not as “young adult.” Self-willed self-walling. “Infantilization.”)

I want to add to the debate with this, from Forbes online (emphasis added):

If the success rate of directed research is very low, though, it is true that the more we search, the more likely we are to find things “by accident,” outside the original plan. Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research. What academia seems more masterful at is public relations and fundraising.

This is good news–for some. Ignore what you were told by your college economics professor and consider the following puzzle. Whenever you hear a snotty European presenting his stereotypes about Americans, he will often describe them as “unintellectual,” “uneducated,” and “poor in math,” because, unlike European schooling, American education is not based on equation drills and memorization.

Yet the person making these statements will likely be addicted to his iPod, wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans, and using Microsoft Word to jot down his “cultural” statements on his Intel-based PC, with some Google searches on the Internet here and there interrupting his composition. If old enough, he might also be using Viagra.

America’s primary export, it appears, is trial-and-error, and the innovative knowledge [I really like that label - CB] attained in such a way. Trial-and-error has error in it; and most top-down traditional rational and academic environments do not like the fallibility of “error” and the embarrassment of not quite knowing where they’re going. The U.S. fosters entrepreneurs and creators, not exam-takers, bureaucrats or, worse, deluded economists. So the perceived weakness of the American pupil in conventional studies is where his or her very strength may lie.

The American system of trial and error produces doers: Black Swan-hunting, dream-chasing entrepreneurs, with a tolerance for a certain class of risk-taking and for making plenty of small errors on the road to success or knowledge. This environment also attracts aggressive tinkering foreigners like this author.

Globalization allowed the U.S. to specialize in the creative aspect of things, the risk-taking production of concepts and ideas–that is, the scalable part of production, in which more income can be generated from the same fixed assets through innovation. By exporting jobs, the U.S. has outsourced the less scalable and more linear components of production, assigning them to the citizens of more mathematical and culturally rigid states, who are happy to be paid by the hour to work on other people’s ideas.

Sort of an aside, sort of related: I’m in my first year teaching senior AP Literature – an externally-assessed course, for-college-credit via timed multiple choice and essay exam brought to you by the creators of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) college entry exam. This is also my first year of teaching seniors, period. I am amazed at the stress, chaos, and lack of academic focus of seniors due to the demands of both the SAT and the College Application process – as well as the demands of too many AP courses strictly, it seems, for the purpose of having a more competitive transcript than the next college applicant.

The irony is, the creativity of the “Black Swan hunters” is the last thing that is rewarded on the SAT.

Are there any moves afoot to unseat the SAT as the arbiter of academic merit in our (American college-bound) young? Do other countries – Australia, New Zealand, the UK – have better forms of college-bound assessments?

[h/t to Stephen Downes' OLDaily for the link to this article.]

All you have to do is look at a picture and you’ll find out. Report back here?

Just want to share a comment I left on Taylor the Teacher’s blog. I don’t think Taylor took my flip post questioning her gender ungraciously, but at the same time found the fact that such a gesture surprised her a bit of food for thought. Here:

This is all so interesting – not sure if it’s a tempest in a teapot, or no tempest at all, since you, Taylor, seemed to take the play overall as a good sport in your post.

But the reactions, and the afterthoughts, are, again, interesting. Lots of psychology and “rhetorical triangle” stuff to think about.

For example, the “persona,” in choosing a playful game of hide-and-seek by choosing anonymity, invites (arguably) the same sort of playfulness, by that choice, from his/her audience. So if it comes as something uncomfortable for the author, when that happens, that’s interesting. I’m not evaluating or judging here – just noticing the interesting dynamics, psychologically.

Then there’s the psychology of blogging when you use your real identity. This has made me think of that too. Because I blog with my own name, my photo, and a fairly self-revealing style, I’ve been unconsciously assuming that readers “know” me. But that’s a flawed assumption because there’s no telling how many readers actually follow my blog regularly. So when I assume that my readers, since they “know” me, will take yet one more playful post in the spirit it was meant (and again, no intention here to imply that you didn’t, Taylor, since that doesn’t seem to be the case), I’m open to my own discomfiting discovery that some might take it otherwise.

It’s all funny.

Unlike Ken, I, as a writer and reader, love the possibilities inherent in a “nom-de-keyboard.” It goes back to Nietzsche, Foucault, even Derrida (when I could stomach him), and the whole “masks” meme they loved so much.

It seems to me there is a freedom in anonymity, in writing behind a mask, that allows for the expression of ideas far more dangerous and (buzzword alert) “disruptive” than is possible when we attach our name.

And that also allows for surreal forms of play with gender, age, and other markers that again, set my imagination on fire.

We should be careful, if we choose anonymity, that our identity is airtight, though. I discovered last week or so that a simple “whois” inquiry reveals everything about the site and URL owner, down to address and phone number. This is preventable, but only if you know to do it.

Anyway, thanks for the ride. Fun so far. Happy thanksgiving.

After my first outing doing a rather “schooly” self-assignment for AP Literature, I got what I asked for: friendly and constructive criticism – “assessment”? – from Dean Shareski, Bud Hunt, AnneO, Diane Cordell, and my flat world team-teacher/blood brother Chris Watson – all whom I thank for taking the time.

So you’ll notice these changes:

1. No scrolling text. Instead, I used iMovie’s “Music Video” editing option. One bothering limitation in that option is a ten-second maximum duration for each block of text. Another is the slider for text size – a numeric text-size option would be nicer for uniformity’s sake. (Dean suggested no text at all, or subtitles. Since I want my students to have the option of reading along as they listen, I chose to stick with the text. But I didn’t like the scroll either. Subtitles would have taken forever to add, line by line. Thus the “music video” devil’s bargain.)

2. Less jumpy transitions. On my first try, I learned the time-consuming lesson that all text edits over images are erased if you put transitions before or after a clip. I also learned something about measuring the duration of some lines of recital first, and then adding images with those durations set. I also reduced the use of the Ken Burns effect, because that effect consumes a lot of time, and is often damaged when fades or dissolves are added to them.

3. (This one was tough:) I added some editorial and “teacher-y” stuff in there for my students. It goes against the opposing desire to make this an entertainment piece for all. (And it just occured to me I could have easily exported a straight recitation, then added the teacher stuff to a second schooly version. Damn.)

So here’s the next installment, this time on YouTube instead of Google Video (for you comparison shoppers out there):

Paradise Lost, Book 4 (episode 2): Satan Enters Paradise

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYgp7r_p0cI[/youtube]

This one is about four minutes long. It took me about four hours. Feedback still welcome! (And feel free to read my AP Literature students’ feedback on our open class Ning.)

To Reflect a Bit More:

I’m still wondering about the overall value of digital storytelling. I know that for me, at least, I record the readings over and over, never quite satisfied, discovering an inflection better placed here than there, and so forth. But I have to say, it does get tiresome. Maybe that’s the fault of the parameters I’ve set: reciting someone else’s work, limiting it to still images, voice-over, and text. Not what I’d call a very in-demand real-world skill. (Or am I wrong?)

(I’m also curious how many of you out there who have assigned a digital storytelling project have tried one – or more – yourselves. And what your impressions were after the attempt. Comments?)

I really want to start playing with actual filmmaking: scripts, shots, storyboards, the whole bit. That would be far less schooly, and surely far more engaging. Yet I look at so much “crap” when students (and others) are given a camera and told to make a real film, I don’t think I would assign that to students without some very tight scaffolding and staging. But somebody – was it Dean? – mentions the “Don’t give them a camera until they’ve given you a storyboard” rule in this year’s K-12 Online Conference, don’t they?

When you work at a 1:1 school – really, when you’re a teacher who assigns any digital storytelling projects to your students – it only seems responsible to know whereof you assign.

So I assigned myself a language arts project for my AP Literature class:

Task: Using illustrations from historical editions of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, recite roughly 100 lines of the epic in a quality short film. Time limit: 5 minutes.

Here’s what I came up with:

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1108920305959251748&hl=en[/googlevideo]

Along the same “Do as I do, not as I say” lines, I’ll add this: making attempts at creativity and performance public is not the easiest or most comfortable thing in the world to do. I feel the need to excuse this effort as “an attempt,” in order to elicit gentleness from my audience. I’m uncomfortable with the quality of my interpretation, a few editing decisions, and more. It’s good to feel this myself, since present and future students will be feeling the same way.

Extra Credit for My Readers: For 5 extra quiz points, guess: how long did this take to create?

Why is this question important? Picture being a student with five teachers simultaneously assigning such a project.

Check the comments on Saturday for the answer.*

Extra Extra Credit: Constructive Feedback?

As I wrote on my Google Video page:

Constructive feedback welcome. Better without scrolling text, for example? Cathedral voiceover effect good or bad? Is this even worth doing to enhance understanding or enjoyment of one incredibly difficult poem? Anything else?

–

*Oh what the heck. I was always an easy tester. You want to know how long it took? Seven hours. Please pass this on to teachers assigning 5-minute movie projects with a quick turnaround time.

Graham Wegner tweeted about her a couple of weeks ago. I followed. And now, I am snared. I can’t get the vamp out of my mind.

Who is . . . “Taylor the Teacher”?

I can’t help but suspect that, like the Yes Men I wrote about a while back, those fantastic satirists and impersonators with a cause, Taylor is not the doll she seems at all.

In fact, I suspect she’s not a “she” at all.

Visit Taylor at your peril. You are warned.

(And “Taylor,” sorry I leeched your header image. Those eyes just slay me.)