[A fun little conversation I'm having with Laura in this comment thread includes her question about differences between Chinese literary types and Western ones. It reminded me of this post I wrote last year on Change.org, and planned to cross-post here eventually anyway. I hope you agree that its quotes are lovely things.]

~     ~     ~

I just read a passage so striking I have to share it. It’s from Lin Yutang‘s 1936 book on China called My Country and My People, and is quoted in Richard E. Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why (another keeper):

In Chinese literary criticism there are different methods of writing called “the method of watching a fire across the river” (detachment of style), “the method of dragonflies skimming across the water surface” (lightness of touch), “the method of painting a dragon and dotting its eyes” (bringing out the salient points). (p. 18)

Nisbett’s whole point in this book of “cultural psychology” is to show that modes of thought differ from culture to culture, that Enlightenment universalism is belied by the evidence, etc, etc. The point of the passage itself is to illustrate how unlike our abstract and essentialist Greek way of thinking is the Chinese, which resists hard categories and prefers, as Nisbett puts it, “expressive, metaphoric language.”

I’m going to follow the dragonfly method and leave it to you to watch the ripples of that quote, or not. Just two quick impressions before I go:

First, it somehow ties to the notion of Core Knowledge, and underscores to me the need for that “Core” to be wordly, and not ethnocentric, in order to avoid a sort of in-bred genetic shallowness. We can learn much by trying to see through Chinese eyes, for example, and see our own cultural “core” differently, and surely often benefit from that. (Hell, the Greeks learned from traveling to Egypt, Crete, Asia Minor and the Levant, and North Africa anyway. Their knowledge came less from the core than that far-flung periphery, and it’s the synthesis they performed with it all that was the thing.)

Second, as a writing teacher, I cannot wait to share the above with students. Our Western language for teaching writing does seem, as Nisbett claims, abstract and categorical and, when you think about it from the Chinese angle, mind-numbingly dull: “expository,” “persuasive,” “argumentative,” “analytical,” and so forth are not words to inflame a young mind. But “watching the fire from across the river”? “Skimming the water like a dragonfly”? “Dotting the dragon’s eyes”? Oh, yes.

(Third: point two illustrates point one.)

Image by I’mBatman

Originally posted 4/12/09 on Change.org’s Education blog.

12 Comments

• At July 3, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:

  Thanks Clay for this very interesting post. We learn those metaphors when young, in fact in Grade 6 (around 12 years old).

  May I clarify a bit on the “watching the fire from across the river”? “Skimming the water like a dragonfly”? “Dotting the dragon’s eyes”?

  1. Watching the fire from across the river means to be detached from the problem, and be an observer. There are subtle meaning here, but when used in in real life setting, it means that you need to ensure your safety, and so don't get yourself into trouble, in case of conflict.

  2. Skimming the water like a dragonfly refers to light touch on a subject, and has a philosophical tone - especially when giving a speech, where one wants to briefly mention about a topic, but not in depth. Another use would be its application in dancing, where one is dancing with such lightness who seems to float.

  3. Dotting the dragon’s eyes - This relates to an old Chinese story. It was about an artist who drew a dragon, but then when the eyes were dotted, the dragon actually flied away. In the dragon dance, the dragon won't have her life unless the eyes are dotted, which is also part of the ceremony at the start of dragon dance. I think people might have then interpreted such dotted of the eyes as the symbolic meaning of drawing out of salient points in an artifact.

  There have been lots of "interpretations" of those metaphors, analogies in Chinese stories, and sometimes, due to the translation from ancient Chinese colloqualism to English, the meaning might have been shifted, exaggerated, or used with a new context.

  There are many versions of these translations, and I don't think there are universal versions which could provide unique explanation. The Lin Yutang Wikipedia entry is reliable.

  As I learnt these at a young age, so it was based on my memory and interpretation.

  Cheers.

  John

• At July 3, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Wonderful comment, John. If I can persuade you to write about where you were when you learned these as a child, and go more deeply into it, skimming-like, in a memoir piece on your blog, and then to drop a link here so I and others can read it, I'll be a happy man.

  I just bought Lin's book, so I'll be looking into it soon enough.

  Thanks for dropping in,

  Clay

• At July 3, 2010, Laura Gibbs wrote:

  Oh oh oh, you are ringing my bells here... this is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to get at with the ability to let the metaphorical expression of a proverb and its analytical interpretation sit side by side in your mind, not just decoding the form in order to extract the abstract interpretation (and banish the image), but letting them both stand in your mind together and resonate - not forcing the firefly skimming the water to be "only" a firefly but at the same time not losing the firefly even as you let it lead your mind somewhere beyond to other ideas.

  I think you are spot on to identify the Greeks as a crucial turning point in the abstracting and essentializing of things. The word "idea" itself is a great example: Greek eidos and the related word eidolon (whence "idol") were originally words from the realm of the visual, from the seeing of things ("idea" is related linguistically to the "video" we borrowed from Latin). But as the philosophical tradition worked its powers of abstraction and essentializing on the "ideas" they lost their sense of vision and became invisible. Poof: they're gone! Abstracted from the world into the uncertain terrain of our minds.

  Have you read The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain…? Fabulous stuff, I think - very provocative and useful whether you agree or disagree with the directions he goes with that. I learned recently that Shlain has died (http://leonardshlain.com/blog/?p=101)… very sad! I think he still must have had a lot of good books in him that he did not have time to leave behind for us to enjoy and learn from!

• At July 4, 2010, Joan Vinall-Cox wrote:

  Fascinating. I was lucky enough to write an Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry thesis and, although I like theory, that approach allowed me to be metaphorical, poetical, and visual, which was the only way I could truly dot (my) dragon's eye. I guess that's why I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.

• At July 4, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:

  Thanks Clay for your response. I was educated in Hong Kong and learned these in La Salle Primary School. I could elaborate these in my blog at a later stage, if you wish to know more about Chinese philosophy and how it is applied in our life.

  I liked writings very much and you could find some of my writings here http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com and Ning Community Network http://connectivismeducationlearning.ning.com plus my postings on Facebook.

  I like to write about different topics in my blog, and some of my posts relate to Chinese philosophy in education and learning.

  If you are interested in Chinese philosophies, then may I suggest you check these topics out? I Ching, Tao Te Ching, and the Sun Tze 36 military strategies. There are plenty of artifacts on these on wikipedia, Google, Google scholar links, etc. I could also refer you to the officical website from Chinese education authorities if that is of intersts to you. Let me know if you would like to have them.

  You could forward me with an email or via your blog post or mine for further connections. You could check out my other details on Facebook and Twitter too (under suifaijohnmak)

  There are huge potentials in the use of Chinese metaphors - Yin/Yang that is part of Tao Te Ching in understanding nature (see the metaphors on my blogs - with tags of metaphors), in writings, or in education and learning.

  Please note that I am a Catholic and so my belief stems strongly with a Christian belief. However, you may find many Chinese teachings and philosophies align with the teachings of Christ - in passion, in love, in personal integrity (trustworthiness, honesty), and altruism etc.

  Finally, I have read a few of posts before and found them very intersting and inspiring.

  John

• At July 4, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:

  Here is my combined response post with some links to site http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/a-response-to-what-china-can-teach-writing-teachers/

  Cheers.

  John

• At July 4, 2010, Lewis wrote:

  As an American writing teacher in China I can and cannot agree with the title of this post. My college students in Beijing must learn academic writing .While these academic styles may not be "words to inflame a young mind" it is a necessary style to learn for academic writing. For other writing styles such as creative writing or personal narratives, or novel writing , or children's books, etc, the above post title can fit and I will agree with the premise.

• At July 4, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi again and thanks for the reply, JSF.

  I'm pretty good on Chinese philosophy and history - I taught it in Shanghai, where I lived for six years, and I'm teaching it here in Singapore. I'm currently in the middle of quite a few books -- Oxford History of Ancient China (1180 pages!), Brooks and Brooks' Original Analects, Fung Yu-Lan's History of Chinese Philosophy, plus the Book of Documents, Book of Songs, Zuo Chronicles, and Sima Qian's works; and I hope to read the Three Kingdoms, Monkey, Plum in the Golden Vase, and Dream of the Red Chamber and other literary classics before the end of the year -- to dig deeper.

  And while I'm not an adherent of any institutional religion -- I'm an ex-Christian who still has much respect for the teachings of Jesus, but few for the dogmas that Rome and the Protestant Church (not much different in terms of the basic creed) attached to his story -- I do find Zhuangzi and Confucius combined about as rich and credible as any ethical-metaphysical system has been on this planet.

  So I guess we balance each other ;-)

  Anyway, the broad strokes, and many of the finer ones, in Chinese history and culture I get. But the little peeks at such things as its rhetorical tradition and approaches that Lin points to above? These don't find their way into most historical writings. Thus the delight at bumbling across them in a book and wanting to know more.

  All for now and take care.

• At July 4, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Um, Lewis, I can't find any assertion in the post that college students shouldn't learn academic writing.

  But the second half of your comment gets closer to what I did mean to imply.

  Thanks for dropping in,

  Clay

• At July 4, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:

  Thanks Clay for sharing your background experience. I greatly appreciate your intersts in the literary classis. When I was in my high school, we were free to study to Three Kingdoms, Monkey, and Dream of the Red Chamber. However, in our lessons, there were only selected chapters from these three classics, and since they were written in colloquialism, we needed more elaboration from other literature review and teacher's guidance to understand the genre, syntax, semiotics and pragmatics of such colloquialism. There were other rich themes in ancient poets (the 5 and 7 "narrative" poets).

  Relating the Chinese literature, it was divided into the ancient and modern ones, which are based on the modern prose, which is more pragmatic and comprehensible. Nowadays, most communication in Chinese are based on plain simple Chinese syntax, that was all originated from the "evolution" of modernisation of Chinese language.

  I think you could trace back lots of traditional metaphors, though the modern interpretation might be a bit difficult to comprehend, as one must consider the historical context, and why those metaphors were used.

  Relating to religious belief, thanks for the great sharing. I respect your belief, and so I am delighted to see its significance in one's writings too.

  Take care and best wishes from John

• At July 28, 2010, Cristy wrote:

  An interesting post. The native americans in our area describe their language as representative of their religion. I think that is often the case in other cultures. Ours represents the “expository,” “persuasive,” “argumentative,” “analytical,” because of our Judaeo/

  christian heritage. Cristy

• At July 30, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Cristy,

  Sorry to be so late on this, but I'd say those categories are far more Greek than Hebrew. Know what I mean?

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.

.(h/t Hullaballoo)

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The Inspiration Gap: it’s 0ne of the weirdest things about teaching teens. This Gap yawns between the adult who knows this stuff — history, literature, science, whatever — is endlessly wondrous, and the majority of students who haven’t figured that out yet and, worse still, in so many cases are so educationally poisoned they refuse to entertain the possibility that the teacher might also be, you know, a real person. Someone who sincerely wants them to catch a lifelong contact buzz about the subject matter they’re being forced to learn during their one-year incarceration with him. It’s kept the teacher naturally high for decades, after all, so he knows he’s not peddling fake goods.

This teacher has dealt with that sad weirdness in varying ways over the years:

1. The Way of the Repressed Cynic:

Resigned to the hopelessness that anyone will see the beauty beyond the schooliness, the teacher withdraws into schooliness himself, refuses to cast his pearls before the piglets, and chooses instead the more dignified but soul-cheating route of schoolifying the magic rather than cheapen it (“They won’t appreciate this poem/historical interpretation/flight of fancy/whatever, so I’ll just have them do school stuff with it–a quiz here, a journal entry there–though I’m bursting to do more.”)

2. The Way of the Desperate Salesman:

A more optimistic approach, but a tragic one too:  The teacher begs and pleads for the students to buy into the magic for their own good, and often loses more dignity in the attempt, after the pitch is met with dull stares from so many eyes, than Willy Loman on his most humiliating cold call.  (“Please love this, please discover there’s beauty or wonder or gold in some form here that will make you richer for the rest of your life if you’ll just open the door and let me in so I can show you!”)

But this year, depending on the class, I’ve somehow discovered a new Way:

.
3. The Way of the Detached Ecstatic:

This approach overcomes the Cynic’s shyness and the Salesman’s groveling attachment to clinching the sale by simply not caring about audience reception, and not caring about the exposure of the teacher’s Inner Fool to possible ridicule by Those Not Ready. Instead, the teacher simply partners with the subject matter at hand and launches into whatever ecstatic dance suggests itself, Dervish-style.  While it doesn’t have to be caffeinated, I find this helps. Nor, though I seem to be suggesting it (and it’s certainly an attractive and usually reliable choice), does the dance necessarily have to be manic. Seasoned ecstatics know that ecstasy, like Lester Young‘s saxophone solos, can blow cool as well as hot.

I’ll give an example of each, one hot and one cool, in Parts 2 and 3 — because I’ve been bursting to share these stories since April.

Update: Here’s Part 2.

Image Credits:
1. “Swirling Dervish” (top) by nosha on Flickr
2. “Wall” by MegaBuddy on Flickr
3. “Willy Loman” (unknown)
4. “mevlevi” (detail) by neil banas on Flickr

6 Comments

• At June 10, 2010, Sue VanHattum wrote:

  I. Love. This.

  (I don't often do that period thing, but this made me do it.) ;^)

  That's what I do. I might just direct my (community college) students to this post. I'm a fool for math, oh yeah.

• At June 10, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Sue,

  Behind on responding to comments, but how can I not express the happiness at seeing you bust out "that period thing" over this one.

  I expected a few fellow travelers would get it :)

  And I'm jealous of Fools for Math. I was one of Those Not Ready in high school math classes. Have to pull of my socks to count from 11 to 20. Sad. "A Beautiful Mind" brought home what I was missing, and readings it inspired. That, and a Conceptual Physics (i.e., Physics for the Innumerate) class I took in college, which made me realize I was locked outside the Gates of the Kingdom of Physics because I couldn't read the math.

  Boo.

• At June 10, 2010, Sue VanHattum wrote:

  That's the cool thing about being a grown-up - we can learn things we didn't get before. I think you'll like my book. (Not done yet.)

• At June 10, 2010, Punya Mishra wrote:

  The way of the Detached Ecstatic!! What a wonderfully evocative phrase. This is something I have been struggling with for a while now... But I completely connect with the idea of partnering "with the subject matter at hand and launches into whatever ecstatic dance suggests itself."

  I can't wait to read the next two posts.

• At June 11, 2010, monika hardy wrote:

  cool. looking forward to this..

  your description of detached ecstatic - sounds like a video i watched by sal kahn (kahn academy.)

  http://vimeo.com/11731351

  he said people told him that his videos resonated more with them than mit videos because his weren't about - or focused on - the messenger... but the message.

  i haven't watched many of his videos - so i'm going off what he says... but he says ... his focus is on the screen and his thought process... detached from all else..like he's swimming (dancing) in the topic at hand - as opposed to presenting it.

  hope i don't get so caught up in my dance that i miss your next 2 posts.

  you mention beautiful mind - wondering if you've seen proof, with gwyneth paltrow..

• At June 14, 2010, Ecstatic Teaching 2: It Helps to Get Drunk | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] Part 1 here. And trust your friendly Salesman: this post can make you richer beyond your [...]

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But this post is as much about that brilliant young speaker, and how he and the other young prodigies at that event need to learn to showcase their brilliance by harnessing the power of the web. So, first, that Korean kid.

The Spoken

Slouched in the back rows of the auditorium, high above the stage, I looked down on this kid approaching the podium with a bit of amusement. Straight bangs down to his mad scientist glasses, thin and slightly hunched frame, he didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Even less when he took a few beats too many, it seemed to me, to adjust the microphone, pause, survey his audience left, center, right. Had he forgotten his lines? Finally, he hunches forward into the microphone and peers out at the audience from beneath those low-hanging bangs:

To the left: “Tick.”  To the center: “Tick.” To the right. “Tick.” Pause. “Time is passing, and you’ll never get a moment back.”

My cliche-meter activated, I’m already plotting a path to the most discreet exit. But he keeps going: “And that’s why I want to talk to you today about what we’re told is one of the great evils of student life: Procrastination.”

He belts that last word out with such surprising flair, both vocally and physically, wheeling his body in such a way that he takes in the whole audience with his eyes, that I’m inclined to nibble at his bait. I’ll give him a few more seconds.

“You’ve all heard it a million times from a million teachers: ‘Don’t wait until the last minute to start your essay. You’ve got a week: start drafting now.’ Or, ‘Don’t put off studying for that test until the last night.’ ” Pause. “But I’m here to tell you: the teachers are wrong. Procrastination is one of the wisest strategies for living the Good Life.”

The pleasure of the hook piercing the cheek. I relax into my seat to enjoy being reeled in.

The Heard

The student went on to marshal all sorts of evidence that real people often wait until the deadline to do their work, and they do just fine. He’s got me thinking of how I teach writing — the Six Traits of Effective Writing, using the Writing Process to revise, trait by trait, over a number of days — versus how I do it, and have always done it: in one sustained outpouring of words that normally begins around 10 pm with a full pot of coffee, and ends around dawn the next day at the bottom of the second pot. And yes, that day is the day of the deadline.

It worked for me in college, where my professors almost always praised my writing. And it has worked for me since, in all the (admittedly modest) ways my writing has been successful.

So why was I making my students practice a model I myself didn’t practice, had never practiced? Why was I forcing them to sacrifice on its altar so many irrecoverable ticks of the clock, and forcing myself to sacrifice hours as well to assess each of those revisions?

Pitchforks down, readers. I’m a strong advocate of the Six Traits, and sing its praises whenever the topic comes up. It’s a beautifully focused model for zeroing in on the fine points of the writer’s craft, and its internal logic makes it a baby worth keeping. My way of teaching it, though? That’s the bathwater this kid was making me think should be thrown out. (And that points toward my first gut answer to Scot: assessing wikis shouldn’t excessively weight the number of edits. It’s the quality of the final piece that should be assessed. For some writers, excellent quality will take many edits, and for others, none at all. The proof is in the pudding. If the final product lacks polish, the student should be able to show edits as proof of effort. Otherwise, ignore them.)

The Echoes

Then came the moment of the speech that lifted me powerless onto the deck, happily flapping at this young speaker’s feet: “And now let me close by warning you of your fate if you don’t procrastinate: you become that most unhealthy of things in modern civilization” — and he wheels on the next phrase, and spits it out with fire-and-brimstone perfection — “a workaholic!”

Laughter and applause all around as he speeds through the details of a life lost to obsessive perfectionism and a work ethic gone berserk, before putting on the brakes, slowing to a pause, and closing where he started, with the “Tick, tick, tick” of that precious clock that, unless we rule it, rules us: a healthy reminder that some cliches earn their status for good reason.

Toward a Bigger Stage

I left that Original Oratory event the way I had left so many others — the Impromptu Speaking, the Oral Interpretation, the Extemporaneous Speaking — at that Convention: amazed by the talent of the students, and depressed at how boxed-in it all was. That Korean student (Sung Jin J. of Jakarta International School) struck me as nothing less than a young, Asian David Sedaris, able to use his wit and verbal skills to turn his quirky physical package to his great advantage; another student, a Pakistani young man named Raheem of the International School of Manila, spoke in multiple events with such polish and intelligence I would have paid admission to see more; likewise Zach at my own school, with his Original Oratory speech about the degeneration of high school into a breeding ground for “fakes, hypocrites, and cheaters,” an institution devoted no longer to “college preparation,” but to mere “college application preparation”; and an Australian young man whose name I forget but whose speeches I never will: all of these students showed nothing less than genius. And while IASAS deserves kudos for celebrating these prodigies on the same level that we usually (and depressingly) reserve for people skilled at getting a rubber ball through a hoop, across a line, or over a fence, it still falls short of promoting them on a far broader, and at the same time far less labor-intensive scale.

You know what I’m getting at: all that genius disappears into silence or, only slightly better, onto some school website that gets ten visits a month. If they truly had the savvy popular wisdom suggests these “digital natives” do, they could be getting thousands, tens of thousands of viewers a month. And that could lead places for them.

The missed opportunity to showcase them as they deserve killed me. I approached many of them, gave them my card, told them they deserved a wider audience than the auditorium, and I wanted to help them reach it. It was all unplanned, so I cast about in my mind for possibilities: I could propose to my old colleagues at Change.org that they publish these students as guest-writers. I could see about interesting them in reviving Students 2.0. I could feature them on this blog.

But all of those ideas are more complicated, it seems to me now, than necessary. It seems to me that all those students need to do is start their own blog, or YouTube channel for their orations, and share their talents with the world that easily. When they launch, they can tell me, I can tell you, and we can all promote them and send viewers their way. And then the unpredictable possibilities of “Open Living,” to quote Alan Levine — the possible job offers, interviews, feature articles, and the million other serendipities — are given their opening. And maybe these young geniuses can be discovered before they graduate high school.

Image by zoutedrop

5 Comments

• At March 23, 2010, Lynne wrote:

  Wow, I would have loved to have heard those students speeches. I don't suppose there's a recording of it? Speaking of procrastination... I know very few people (in college and at work) who actually follow the writing model. In my case, I need to write a 7-9 pager for my religion and science class. (It's on how we've viewed the universe from Aristotle to Newton, and evaluating if Kuhn's paradigm shifts adequately describe the changes in the scientific thought.) I'll be up late tonight, but I'm confident I'll have a good (if not great) paper by the end of it.

• At March 24, 2010, Diane Cordell wrote:

  I MISS Students 2.0 and still maintain contact with a number of the contributors.

  Please share the links to these young people's blogs, if they ever start writing posts.

  Now that I'm retired, I need to find other ways to stay attuned to student voice.

• At March 24, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Lynne,

  I'm putting out a full-court press to find and persuade those students to do as I propose above. More soon if they take the bait (and a fund-raising drive to pay for their head examinations if they don't--they were so good my head exploded).

  Sounds like a fun paper. Don't procrastinate ;-)

• At March 24, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Working on it, Diane. I've been too preoccupied with the classroom to be active on the network these days, so I wonder if any of the s2oh founders are wanting to revive it?

  After the Change.org experience--writing to the point of burnout--I understand more why they petered out. But between a complete cessation and an arbitrary "write daily" policy, there's got to be a middle way.

  Glad to hear the upbeat tone's still there. I'm dying of the humidity down here and generally droopy as a result :(

• At April 22, 2010, Laura Bridgeman wrote:

  Clay,

  I got completely hooked whilst reading your postings, you have a style of writing that just makes me want to read more - I am very jealous! I'm studying to be a Maths teacher (hence the poor writing skills - more a logical brain), and loved your sentence "Why was I making my students practice a model I myself didn't practice, had never practiced?". This is a concern of mine in the area of Mathematics, where I feel we are losing contact with what students really need Maths for in todays world. I enjoyed Maths at school but mostly because I was good at it - it's going to be a real challenge to keep students engaged in a subject they may only use 10% of in their entire life. Thanks for inspiring me to challenge the current system and to see if I too, like you can teach outside the norm and get away with it!!

  Cheers, Laura

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Learning Technologies 2009 Keynote, Part 1: Click image to view.

The Missing Link: Texas Politics Distorts US Textbooks
(watch before Speech Part 2. Slide to 5.15 for the kicker)

Learning Technologies Keynote Part 2 (click image to view)

~

Prologue: On Time and Other Thieves

Anybody as oblivious to the passage of time and calendar pages as I am knows it can be a source of both bliss and embarrassment: bliss because the hours and days are so damned interesting you don’t have time to notice them; embarrassment because some of those hours and days demand your notice — or else there’s hell to pay.

Common examples: birthdays, anniversaries, blasted holidays.

Less common: the keynote speech I gave to the Learning Technologies 2009 Conference in Mooloolaba, Australia, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, recently — d’oh! — not so recently: last November. It’s time to share it, reflect on it, and say thanks. Where does the time go?

~

The Story of the Speech: A Farce

Exposition: Seth Godin as Textbook

I’ve given smaller presentations before at various schools, at the Apple Distinguished Educators Institute in Bangkok a few years ago, and so forth, but they were always in-house. But this one was by special invitation and, cooler still, for the keynote of the final day. I’ve never given a keynote before, and wanted to rise to the occasion with my best creative effort.

But I had other, more important reasons for wanting to do well: I wanted to use the speech to teach my students. The invitation came in September, at the very time that I had assigned my Western Civ and Chinese history students to give “creative speeches” of their own. As you’ll see if you watch the speech, I had tossed out the ‘schooly’ approach to oral presentations — you know, the Death by Droning Powerpoint  — and replaced it with a different “textbook” for speeches.

That “different textbook” was online. It was TED Talks. More specifically, Seth Godin‘s talk “On Standing Out.” Here it is:

I showed this Talk to all my classes in the first week of school and, in a nutshell, told them that the closer they got to Godin’s delivery and slide creativity, the closer they got to an “A.” It resulted in the best time I’d had watching student presentations in my entire decade of teaching. Not all the students rose to the challenge, mind you. But those that did proved the value of the attempt in spades.

Good for the Gander

So I figured I’d be a good egg and put my money (and reputation) where my mouth was for my students: I’d give my own “Godinesque” presentation in Australia and, knowing it was to be filmed and put online, share the link so they could learn, along with me, whether my TED/Godin evangelism had real-world merit, or was just the latest example of teacher BS. They’d get to see me walk the tightrope without a net, and judge for themselves.

Damned Clocks, Blasted Calendars

There was a small problem. I was already drowning in the waves familiar to all teachers in their first year at a new school — above all,  creating curriculum and syllabi from virtual scratch (I didn’t like the textbooks). I didn’t have a lot of mental space for crafting a speech on something as far afield from that teacher-head terrain as the conference’s theme: “The Power of You.” My head was in the Power of History.

I burnt the candle one night brainstorming an outline for the thing, wrestling the whole time with my confusion over that most important question for any communicator: Who, exactly, is the audience? I couldn’t tell if it was teachers, administrators, corporate types; if they were already techie born-agains, or phobic techie infidels. I muddled on anyway, and saved the file for later.

The next time I looked at the calendar it was the Friday a week before the conference. I didn’t have a single slide.

The Pleasures of Masochism

My long-suffering wife of a workaholic listened to another apology that I had to work through another weekend, and watched me slink off into my office/doghouse. I fired up the by-now old outline I’d banged out, looked at it, and promptly deleted that four hours of late-night work. My head was in the Roman Republic back then, and now it was in the Late Medieval period. I had other things to say now. Our classroom had long since moved on from the student presentations to discussions of the “key concept” of “civilization” and its textbooky “five characteristics,” and I wanted to prove to my 15-year-old charges that this bit of schooly knowledge could be put to good real-world use, done critically and creatively. Plus, our class time-travels, since I’d made that outline, had covered an additional 1,500 years of memorizing one damn fact and name after another for ninth-grade tests and essays, and I wanted to demonstrate ditto for those schooly testable items — wanted to show them that knowing history can be golden when arguing in public for a real cause.

The Madness of Blog-Mining and Flickr-Fishing

Then something beautiful happened.

If I was going to address “The Power of You,” I already had my outline: this very blog. It was all there: my years in Germany, in China, in Korea, in Singapore; my path “down the digital rabbit-hole” as a teacher, and my struggles to be a teacher despite working for schools. I looked at the archives page, so conveniently displaying titles and dates of my journey since starting it on New Year’s Day of 2007, and found a multitude of patterns to shape the speech. Better still, I realized I already had a huge amount of images in the posts themselves that I could use in my slides. That extra time searching Flickr for cc-licensed content to enhance my posts, and attributing the creators, turns out to have been time well-spent.

I went ape-shite. Clicking archive links, copying images to slides, animating them, coloring them, coddling them with my best designer’s care, adding “Godinesque” titles and captions and “chapter” headings, on and on, for hours and hours. I filled the gaps for the new ideas — civilization and its “complex institutions,” Jesus and Socrates and Luther and Gutenberg, Moodle and Blackboard and Ning, other Names and Facts — in this slideshow-cum-outline with new images from Flickr, searched for and found them, all in a life-loving delirium.

More seductions came: the speech would aim to play to the multiple audiences enabled by our Brave New Web — beyond the Aussies in the auditorium to my students, to my readers and Twitterverse, to my wife (See? All that work pays off!), and to you, Seth Godin, in playful tribute. You live right next door on the web, so why not invite you in? We’re all neighbors — and you’ll love the clip in the preso showing your influence on the student who explained Confucian philosophy via a Simpson’s slide.

More ideas pushed forward, nudged out old ones, gave a startlingly higher purpose to the speech than originally planned. The thing began to take on the shape of a major life-work, a symphonic summing up of all before and the unveiling, in the “fourth movement,” of a climactic new chapter in the War on Schooliness. It was nothing short of mystical, in the best combination of inspiration and gut-laughter. It was polite but subversive, pedagogical but political — “serious,” to quote Hakim Bey, “but not sober” – and it so raged against the edu-Philistines that Jesus himself would be proud. It was, in short, completely bonkers — and I had no doubt that it would work.

On and on I tinkered, on and on composed, some god alongside laughing with me all the while. So this was how it could feel to make a presentation of “an idea worth spreading”!  The clock on the desk withered away into air. Sun and moon rose and fell, rose and fell, measured by coffee-spoons that kept sleep at bay.

Centuries later, the clock re-materialized on the desk. The calendar said it was Sunday night. Time, then, for bed, and back to teaching tomorrow.

Mortal Combat, Round 2

After that mad marathon of 50-odd hours, I discovered a slight problem.

I had created a 300mb presentation containing 196 slides. The keynote was slotted for 45 minutes.

(If those figures didn’t make you gulp, you need coffee.)

But no worries, I said. I would arrive in Australia late Wednesday night, rehearse the timing in my hotel room, and be good to go by curtain time Friday morning.

Interlude: In the Classroom

The Chinese history class got interesting that week. It was the week of my war with the Google Fundamentalists in my classroom. Our online forum was heating up with controversy over whether a website I deemed a Mao-smearing disgrace was, or was not, a reliable academic source. Of all the weeks to leave the class to a substitute teacher, it had to be the one with the semester’s best and most  authentic teachable moment — with fiery debate, to boot.

But leave I did, flying off to Australia with all my war gear: my Macbook, my Keynote, my back-up and wireless router and cables and cameras, my kitchen sink. I was prepared.

Taming Time

I arrived in Brisbane, met the driver who took me to Mooloolaba, arrived at the hotel around midnight, found the hotel had no night staff and had left a code for me to get my key from the hotel safe. Front desk staff only worked daytime hours, would return the following morning. I’d never seen that before.

The room was perfect — wireless internet, balcony, ocean view, coffee and coffee-maker — and the night was quiet and balmy. Perfect for rehearsing my slideshow and cutting it down to size.

But since I had wireless, no harm in checking in to the class forum and seeing how that debate had unfolded during my seven-hour flight.

Moth, Flame

The forum was an all-out war of all against all — and quite a few of the students, more glorious still, against me. How delicious: they were pushing back against their teacher with their sharpest arguments and most defiant challenges, not yielding an inch to my authority. Thread after thread they raised their cry: “We’re not convinced — en garde!”

What the hell. It was only midnight. The keynote could wait.

I spent the next three hours on the battlefield, sometimes engaged in direct combat with this or that foe, other times combing through the arguments of student allies in the thread to marshal the force of their best moments in block-quoted volleys across the field. My travel-clock melted away in all the Homeric fun. It re-appeared three hours later, when my laptop warned me: “Your battery will run out in ten minutes. Plug in your computer to avoid losing your work.”

The interruption was annoying, but a good reminder. I needed to get to work rehearsing and timing the keynote.

I dug my adapter out of my suitcase, and then it hit me: I’d forgotten to buy an international plug adapter at the airport. I couldn’t plug my computer in.

The Holy Grail

3 a.m., and no front desk clerk to ask for an adapter. No choice but to strike out into the night.

I discovered Mooloolaba was a quiet little surfer’s resort town at this hour. All the shops were closed and streets empty, the stray and utterly useless packs of drunk teens notwithstanding. For the first time in my life, I prayed for a 7-11 (I usually wish for its destruction) that would have an electronics rack with an adapter, thinking I had decent chances of success. This was a tourist town, after all.

No luck at the first one. I was hungry, though, so I bought a loaf of bread and — “Wait, I’m in Australia, so put the peanut butter back on the shelf and buy the Vegemite next to it instead.” The cashier gave me directions to another 7-11 that I think she had hallucinated. I couldn’t find it.

So I went back to the hotel without the grail, forlornly chewing Vegemite on bread as dawn broke. Two hours later I was at the conference, sleep-deprived, introducing myself and meeting the organizers, begging them for an adapter. I got one.

The only problem was, the conference had started, and I wanted to watch the other presenters, meet the attendees, socialize. That, and I was dog tired. So I put off the editing for later that night.

A Tragic Ending

Of course I crashed that night without rehearsing. I think I even convinced myself that so many of the slides were meant to be rapid-delivery style that it would probably all work out within my 45 minute limit.

The next morning came, and I gave my speech without rehearsal — not a big deal for teachers, who do that every day for a living. It went swimmingly enough, I think — lots of laughs, occasional applause, an audience with great energy — until, halfway through my speech, weird music started playing.

I thought it was somebody’s cellphone, and ignored it as long as I could, but it started getting louder.

Then I was told it was the “wrap-up” signal. Farce had struck.

Have a good laugh at the last 5 minutes of Part 1. I laugh too. I speed through dozens and dozens of slides, saying wistful goodbyes to each as I rush to the end — because I had a new project to launch (I’d given a sneak preview of Students 2.0 to the ADE audience in Bangkok, and wanted to give a similar one to the new project, which is still getting its final pre-launch touches).

So the whole thing came to a crashing, and very awkward end — until.

A Comic Reversal

Teachable moment again: Show the students the value of assertiveness.

An unassertive person would have slinked off like the grandest of dorks, accepting defeat. I figured I’d risk being the grandest of dorks differently: I asked the host — after first asking the audience — if we could make time for the rest of the speech. Maybe out of compassion, maybe out of interest, the audience left him no choice. We scheduled the lunch hour for Part 2.

So we tamed time after all, by forcing our will on it.

Epilogue: The Most Important Thing

As for Part 2? I realized after watching it that I left out an essential piece of the puzzle by skipping the video of the Texas State Board of Education, and how it’s perverting US education by imposing a single, far-right ideology on US textbooks. Thus the Youtube video embedded above.

Luther took on a corrupt Catholic Church with the help of Gutenberg’s printing press, and brought it to its knees. We can take a page from his book and use the web to take on a corrupt textbook industry — by attracting students to find everything the textbooks leave out to please activist extremists dominating the Texas Board of Education.

I’ll be asking for help on that soon. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by.

And thanks to all the wonderful folks in Australia, and to the people I give shout-outs to in my address: Karl Fisch for first blowing my mind, Jeff Utecht for teaching me the tools, Dean Shareski and Scott McCleod and William Farren, and to too many more to ever fit in a list. It’s been a wonderland indeed.

19 Comments

• At February 1, 2010, Dean Shareski wrote:

  You're such an awesome storyteller and then to see my name somehow attached to it was a nice bonus. But seriously I look forward to the presentation but the backstory stands on its own. Well done.

• At February 1, 2010, Miguel Guhlin wrote:

  Great job, Clay! Thanks for sharing!

  .-= Miguel Guhlin´s last blog ..DiigoNotes - Phoebe Prince, 15, Commits Suicide After Onslaught of Cyber-Bullying From Fellow Students =-.

• At February 1, 2010, Jodi wrote:

  Shalom from the last leg of our trip here in Israel, Clay, where we have a "down" day and I'm treating myself to catching up on RSS feeds, including this post AND the accompanying videos (plus a couple of extra TED talks for the hell of it). NB: I don't know if it's just on my end, but the second segment of your speech got all skippy somewhere at the 3' mark, then slow and stretchy, and finally out-of-synch. :( But it was still fun to watch!

  I'm hoping to use the next few months of my own sabbatical to figure out how to re-invigorate my own teaching, even given the constraints of working for my school. :) Though I don't know how you manage it all -- even though I'm pretty handy with the tech tools I still find it takes an inordinate amount of time to get them set up for classroom use and then follow them, too.

  And then there's a certain "Creepy Treehouse" factor that seems to prevent my students from REALLY buying in to the things I set up, even when I've tried to make the work more authentic -- as you point out, exhausting and disillusioning. So I have to re-examine that, particularly how to work within the required confines of my school's program and my province's curriculum, too.

  Sometimes I wish that all us like-minded teachers could just start our own little internet-based school. But then who would fill our bank accounts? :P

  Yeah, yeah... back to being on non-school-related sabbatical. Cheers!

  .-= Jodi´s last blog ..Bunch of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger =-.

• At February 2, 2010, Sandra wrote:

  Hi Clay,

  I was wondering if you had another version of your speeches where we didn't have to download the microsoft programme to watch it. Thanks!

  .-= Sandra´s last blog ..Mi nueva página de inicio. Google se quedó corto al lado de... =-.

• At February 2, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Sandra,

  Unfortunately, all I've got is what the conference published. Wish it were otherwise.

  Clay

• At February 2, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Jodi,

  The tech problems in part 2 are not on your end, unfortunately.

  I'm hoping to make each part of the preso -- all four of them, in other words -- separate "TED"-like talks of high enough quality to do justice to the original idea, instead of the high-speed train-wreck it became due to my lack of rehearsing the timing.

  Not that I cared too much. It was still great fun, warts and all.

• At February 4, 2010, What Did They Tweet? | Teacher Reboot Camp wrote:

  [...] to use the tools we should support and see what they can do. I encourage you to visit his post, My Australia Keynote Speech: A Serious Farce, in One Thousand Acts, with the video links to parts I and II of his keynote. Here is an excerpt from his post: Teachable [...]

• At February 4, 2010, Jonathan Chambers wrote:

  That was a wild ride down 'collective memory lane', Clay. I enjoyed it, and I appreciate the fact that you still have your spirit and your voice. Your discussion of experimentation that you've rethought and reinvented is what I appreciate most.

• At February 5, 2010, Cindy wrote:

  Hey Clay, I also enjoyed it and great to hear about your reflections on the rabbit hole and beyond. Hope you enjoyed your first visit to Australia.

  Cindy

  .-= Cindy´s last blog ..Portal to Media Literacy =-.

• At February 5, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Miguel, just a quick thanks not only for the kind words, but for all the help and fun you've provided along the road. Enjoyed seeing you on the list-serv I recently joined. It's a big, small world now.

• At February 5, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Cindy (you did hear your name pop up in the preso, I hope?). I loved Australia -- as friendly irl as it is in the virtual one. Hope you're well.

• At February 5, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Dean, you're somehow attached to so much of the last three years. I'll be in touch re your email after returning from a school trip to India next weekend.

• At February 5, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Nice to see you, Jonathan. Now get me a job in Shanghai so we can start Chapter 2. Hope you're well.

• At February 8, 2010, Cindy wrote:

  Sure did! I'm great, loving Ho Chi Minh City.

  .-= Cindy´s last blog ..Portal to Media Literacy =-.

• At February 17, 2010, Bill Farren wrote:

  Hey Clay: thanks for sharing this. It was nice learning more about your journey, the learning that comes from success as well as failure. Nice to see how you don't sugarcoat what it is, like too many tech evangelists seem to be doing. But on the other hand, you do a great job showing how anyone (who is curious) can improve their craft by connecting students to real people and real situations.

  (also, thx. for the shoutout).

  Be well.

  .-= Bill Farren´s last blog ..What’s Your Learning Attitude? =-.

• At March 22, 2010, Scot Aldred wrote:

  Hi Clay,

  I've directed my pre-service teacher students to your Blog for a few years now and I'm pleased to say that they find it very useful and are heartened by your honesty and courage to take risks.

  I have a question for you regarding your learning technologies keynote:

  How do you manage your assessment in projects like the Broken World WIKI? You spoke of being burned out--what are the alternatives? Peer assessment--validity? What would be your magic wand?

  Many thanks,

  Scot.

• At March 23, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Hi Scot,

  Thanks for the kind words (on and offline). Re: assessing Broken World, it's been so long, I honestly don't recall how I did it then, so I can only weigh in on how I might do it now.

  But actually, you've given me grist for a new post, so let me try to bang that out now.

  Clay

• At March 23, 2010, On Student Genius, How Not to Grade a Wiki, and Making the World a Stage at Beyond School wrote:

  [...] Aldred asks how I assessed projects like the Broken World Wiki textbook, and I tell him I haven’t the [...]

• At March 23, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Scot, it's up. Thanks for the prompt to help break some serious writer's block. :)

Related posts:

1. On Student Genius, How Not to Grade a Wiki, and Making the World a Stage
2. Video Presentation: A 1:1 Laptop School Baby Book: How It Looks at Four Months Old
3. Notes on Warlick’s Keynote, Second Viewing
4. On the Art of Being Boring

From the excellent China Digital Times, with emphasis added:

Han Han was named as the ‘Person of the Year” in 2009 by two influential publications: Guangzhou-based newspaper Southern Weekend（南方周末) and Hong Kong-based magazine Asia Weekly (亚洲周刊). Here are some excerpts of the relevant articles in both publications, translated by CDT:

By Asia Weekly: Han Han: Youthful Citizen vs Power 亚洲周刊二零零九年度风云人物韩寒——青春公民VS权力.

Han Han is a 27-year-old author and race car driver, and his blog has generated nearly 300 million visits since 2006. He follows and is concerned with public rights defending events. On the Shanghai “Fishing” incident, Hangzhou “70 yards” incident, forced eviction incident and other events his clear and powerful writing has generated an enormous influence on public opinion. As a member of the post-80s generation, he lives authentically and freely, and demonstrates the energy of China’s youthful citizens and the hope of civil society in China.

韩寒，二十七岁的作家和赛车手，博客浏览量近三亿，他关注、跟进公共维权事件，在上海「钓鱼」事件、杭州「七十码」、强拆民居事件中，言论清醒、有力，产生巨大舆论影响力；作为「八零后」一代，他活得真实、自由，展示中国青春公民的能量和中国公民社会的希望。

From Southern Weekend: The Name of Han Han Means to Offend [the Establishment]

In the public eyes for ten years, he is now a household name, and still young, he is called by his supporters “Young Master Han.” This nickname is flattering and lighthearted, saying that he has style and quality, and is not a boring person. Young Master Han is an author, the only National Champion of in both field and rally car race, is an idol, and owns a blog which has the highest traffic in the world. He is so famous, that people often forget how extraordinary it is that one person has all these different titles. But Young Master Han became the Han Han that is now widely respected after he started a blog, and began writing social commentary which resonates with our time. His self-styled commentaries caused controversy, but were also widely popular. One day, even the most conservative people started to realize that this young man was not full of nonsense. Behind the 300 million clicks on his blog posts was a fresh humanist radiating the wave of freedom. [read the rest]

Regular readers will know I’ve become somewhat of an elitist when it comes to urging the young to blog, only wanting to “attract” those rare students who have the gifts but don’t seem to understand the tools we now have to manifest those gifts to the world — and this example is a case in point: Han can write well and think critically, “follows” (surely via RSS?) issues he “is concerned with” and writes about them. In other words, he’s got the gifts of curiosity, passion, a drive for socio-political engagement and reform, and an apparently wicked mind and pen. And a “humanist” to boot.

The most delicious detail in this young man’s delicious life? His secondary school held him back a year, and he dropped out of school without graduating.

Han Han was born on September 23, 1982. He won the first class award in the first “New Concept” writing contest in 1999, and was held back in his first year in the Songjian Number 2 High School in Shanghai the same year. He dropped out of high school in 2000, and published his first novel “Three Gates.” This book has sold 2,030,000 copies since then.

{…}

In 2008, he published a selected collection of his blog posts, “Random Texts.” In 2009, he published a novel, “His Nation,” a collection of essays, “Grass,” and a collection of blog posts, “Lovely Predators”…. Also in 2009, he announced he would publish a magazine “A Chorus of Solos.” [Han Han originally planned to name the magazine Renaissance, but the name was not approved by authorities.]

P.S.–To any students at my school: if you think you have this kind of talent, and want me to help you learn the simple blogging tools, come see me. I’ll work overtime with you, and it will have nothing to do with grades, homework, or GPA’s.

2 Comments

• At January 13, 2010, Jenny wrote:

  The idea of Voltaire blogging has made my evening. Thanks!

  .-= Jenny´s last blog ..Confession =-.

• At January 13, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  I <3 people who read footnotes.

Related posts:

1. A Belated Reflection on the Students 2.0 Experience
2. Surprised by Snail Goop (or, a Colleague Blogs)
3. Quantum Shifts Happening? Students and Administrators Driving
4. Give Tuna a Subscribe: She’s a Natural Student Blogger

Here’s why: the series demonstrates a mastery of content knowledge — in this case, Photoshop technique — while at the same time adding a creative element that makes the content-master stand out from the equally masterful but unimaginative competition. Point blank: in the hands of this guy, something as dull as “how to use layers” becomes a vehicle that screams, “Hire me to write for ‘30 Rock‘!” He proves he can turn lead into gold, which is a real-world skill not many people have. Alchemists like that deserve the chance to display their creative magic in school.

The Mental Work is Hard….

“You Suck at Photoshop” displays that creative magic in the form of fiction (see the Wikipedia entry on the series for  more). The host of the tutorials is a persona named “Donnie,” a loser stuck in a lousy life with a lousy wife. We learn about Donnie’s life through a series of such sometimes-subtle details as his choice of photos for the tutorial — “Say you want to use a photo of the Vanagon your wife meets her high school boyfriend in on Friday nights….wait, I’ve got one right here” (scroll past other photos of — gulp — handguns, and one of the high school boyfriend labeled — gulp — “douche-b.png”) — and such sometimes-over-the-top details as the wife barging in to kvetch at him in the middle of his tutorial, or his loser friend Skyping in with a loser-emergency while Donnie is making his screencast.

The creator of this project not only demonstrates his literary creativity by creating the fictional “Donnie” persona and populating his Photoshop folders with props like the pictures mentioned above; he takes it further with his dramatic creativity as he acts out the role of that persona with his voice-over. The vocal acting covers a broad emotional terrain, from dude in his basement chillaxing with his laptop to powder-keg psychopath struggling to keep the flame from his fuse. The acting is just awesome.

….The Tech is Dead Easy

The beauty of the project technology-wise is that it requires nothing more than a screencasting program like the free Jing or Screencast-o-matic, plus a webcam and microphone — your standard kit in most computers today. So the technical hurdles for students to do such a project are basically nil.

That leaves the whole of their energies to devote to the other two aspects of the project: mastery and critical understanding of the content, and creative concept development to deliver that understanding.

Too Beautiful for School?

So I’m wrestling, as usual, with the ways this wonderfully simple approach to creative learning will be complicated by the forces of schooliness:

• Do I have to make a rubric for it, and if so, does that kill the creativity with its prescriptive check-box drudgery, or limit the infinite creative possibilities by dictating “it must be this and not that, and that and not this”?
• Is it sustainable in terms of watching and grading and giving feedback to 100 students doing such an assignment?
• How do I define satisfactory content mastery and creativity for this assignment?
• How do I encourage experimentation and the healthy embrace of possible failure when I have to slap a low grade on it if it does indeed “fail”?
• Should I make it optional, in following with my increasingly elitist impulse to definitely not “push” the unwilling to attempt genius, and not even “pull” them, but only to “attract” the three percent of “roses” in any student population who might blossom in the attempt?

I don’t know.

Nor do I know how to adapt this for a history classroom. Can “You Suck at Photoshop” become “You Suck at History”? How? How can this be used for Europe from the French Revolution to the present, or the complete history of China?

My recent brainstorm on giving a conceptual purpose to learning Chinese history by “interpreting it for historically-ignorant Westerners” seems to have some openings. God knows, there are ample websites of Chinese and Western art, literature, philosophy, religion, politics, and more that students could tab through on their screencasts as they provide their commentary like “Donnie” does to his open Photoshop on his desktop. But the maker of “Donnie” has the luxury of revealing that persona through the image “props” in his folders, while history students wouldn’t have as easy a task of  revealing persona if they were forced instead to work with history websites in their screencasts.

One solution I’m considering is making it a summative, end-of-semester project, in which students have most of the semester to let their creative juices stew and come up with their own ideas over the first few months. Then give a couple of weeks of class time to a workshop in which they design and execute those ideas.

Otherwise, I’m mostly adrift. Maybe you can help.

But if you watch the three-minute first episode below, you should see why I’m bewitched by the idea:

Do yourself a favor and watch the whole playlist. Then help me figure out how I can make this work?

6 Comments

• At January 4, 2010, monika hardy wrote:

  What a find... I love it.

  (Just like I'm loving tumblr now thanks to your conversation with Roberto. I was needing an easier/cleaner way to post how-to videos.)

  Some current thoughts on your questions....

  # Do I have to make a rubric for it, and if so, does that kill the creativity with its prescriptive check-box drudgery, or limit the infinite creative possibilities by dictating “it must be this and not that, and that and not this”

  Yeah - I wouldn't make a rubric. I would make the assessment process as raw and real as the project. I'd have the feedback come from the peers needing it - ie: those who suck at photoshop... Post it at school - see how many hits it gets. See how others in the class improve. Assess the project on how well everyone else does with it. I'd also have a couple professionals/parents look at it and give some feedback... some people the kids are going to want to impress. [I guess depending on the topic - that type of career/professional might use a rubric. Whatever - it needs to be authentic.]

  # Is it sustainable in terms of watching and grading and giving feedback to 100 students doing such an assignment?

  I think - done like above - yes - if it's a more authentic feedback process. Certainly not the way we have been doing it - where we all sit in a room and watch each other present, etc, not in real context.

  # How do I define satisfactory content mastery and creativity for this assignment?

  I think - for me anyway - I use *something like this video series as a model (*maybe you could make a cleaner school version for us all to use Clay...?) My kids are so good and motivated for these projects, but rarely do they hit both content and creativity. I think that's my favorite take away from this series - that it models that balance perfectly. Not too stuffy with content so as not to be entertaining and not so entertaining that it has no meat. So I guess I'm saying - set high standards for balance - with a good model beforehand. I think focusing on the balance rather than the topic/form a rubric usually focuses on - will allow for more freedom and creativity.

  # How do I encourage experimentation and the healthy embrace of possible failure when I have to slap a low grade on it if it does indeed “fail”?

  Maybe don't make it an end of the year assignment. Assign it from the get go...with several due dates throughout the year. I think we have really messed with what true assessment and feedback are. Kids and parents believe assessment is a marker - if you're good or bad. When it should be an ongoing iterative process... continually pinpointing areas that need tweaking. It should be freeing to the kids... rather than - I failed - I understand nothing.. they have maybe 2-3 specifics to work on. I love that we're living in a publish then edit period. I hope that lingers forever. And I love that we now have the means... via skype and blogs, etc to have experts help give that feedback.

  # Should I make it optional, in following with my increasingly elitist impulse to definitely not “push” the unwilling to attempt genius, and not even “pull” them, but only to “attract” the three percent of “roses” in any student

  I think you make the choice of topic/platform/mode/medium optional. The goal being... they need to make something that will live on and help others learn. If a kid can't do that successfully by the end of a course... (with ongoing feedback from adults and peers) then I guess we all fail...

  Once again... grazie.. for cranking my brain.

  .-= monika hardy´s last blog ..the ideas project =-.

• At January 5, 2010, Adrienne wrote:

  Clay - a rubric does not have to be a checklist, and it doesn't have to kill the creativity and risk-taking factors. Why can't you build these two areas into the rubric? (i.e., those projects which demonstrate more creativity and risk-taking get better grades) This can easily be done by working in some kind of thoughtful journal / video / other constructed response as a reflection justifying choices and process.

  It will no doubt take you much longer to mark than a "regular" project, but IMO, well worth it.

  .-= Adrienne´s last blog ..… and, that’s a wrap! =-.

• At January 5, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Maybe I should start a blog called "I Suck at Assessment." I'm taking a grad course in it next month, so let's hope it helps.

  Extra credit if you bang out a mock-up of the kind of thing you're talking about.

  Happy New Year!

• At January 5, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:

  Monika, read and marked as "return to" after I finish my four days in Thailand visiting an old college friend. Thanks for the input. Gotta pack now!

• At January 6, 2010, Zoe wrote:

  I love the way you've approached this. I've only got a few minutes spare, or I'd fill your comment page up!

  My immediate thought was to suggest that you co-construct your project WITH the students. Work with them to define and agree the success criteria, the assessment methodology and to peer & self assess the project from planning through to end product. In this way, students not only get to design the assessment process and agree the project outcomes but also reflect on the learning process itself.

  Just a thought...great idea and I love the way you're grappling with assessment of mastery & creativity. Look forward to hearing about what happens next!

  Happy new year!

  @fullonlearning

  zoe

  Zoe

• At February 2, 2010, Adrienne wrote:

  Clay - I haven't forgotten about this reply. In fact, I've been thinking of it ever since. I've just been swamped with studies the last couple of weeks. Apologies. I *am* going to get a mock-up to you, come hell or high water, as this kind of stuff is so important (assessing for creativity but not making the assessment dry). I'll post to your email when I do!

  But in the meantime- did you know that the "You Suck at Photoshop" series has morphed (evolved?) into an entire project? Visit http://www.bigfatuniversity.org for some real genuine learning and laughs. My favorite is the series on Music and Garageband. A must see, I think.

  .-= Adrienne´s last blog ..… and, that’s a wrap! =-.

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