Technology - Interactive with what?

Technology is great.

Technology is the wave of the future.
Technology is a tool, allowing us to do more.
But so far, technology doesn't seem to be helping with the whole "Interaction" thing.

We'll have to figure this thing out before it kills us.

Every kid, staring at a screen.

More staring ... but at least he's not letting his head fall over.

Ah, now the teacher is watching them stare at screens. So META.

Staring in a circle.

Seriously, Rocketship Academy? This is Edutopia? This cubicle-farm with rows of cells?

We have to do better.

Putting everything on wheels and moving them around daily so the "teacher doesn't even know where to stand" isn't going to improve things much.

Yeah. They get enough at home. Mindlessly fiddling with crap isn't education.

See, lecture isn't a bad thing, in moderation, and when done well. But changing to Khan Academy lectures on the computer to replace the teacher's lectures in the classrooms isn't much of a fundamental shift.

Your guidance counselor spent untold time arranging the schedule so you and your unique teacher skill-set could be present at the same time as the students who needed that exact same set of knowledge and ability. Use the time. Be the teacher.

Leave the screen time for when you and the other kids aren't around each other. FLIPping the classroom is fine. Assigning the Khan for outside work is fine. Watching them day after day, huddled in their solitary confinement of a sensory-deprivation cubicle with walls to block sight of other students, headphones to block the sounds of other students, and a computer to overwhelm all thought ... isn't education and isn't an improvement.

No matter what Rocketship might say.

Maybe a quick glimpse of my road will calm us down so we can be objective about this.

Nice.

Smart is the New Invisible.

Actually, Smart kids have always been ignored in most schools.

Joanne Jacobs passes on this about Smart Kids:

Exceptionally smart students “are often invisible in the classroom, lacking the curricula, teacher input and external motivation to reach full potential,” writes Science Daily, citing a Vanderbilt study that followed gifted students for 30 years.  The 320 high-IQ students went on to become business leaders, software engineers, physicians, attorneys, and leaders in public policy, reports Who Rises to the Top?, published in Psychological Science.

Despite their remarkable success, researchers concluded that the profoundly gifted students had experienced roadblocks along the way that at times prevented them from achieving their full potential. Typical school settings were often unable to accommodate the rapid rate at which they learned and digested complex material. . . . This resulted in missed learning opportunities, frustration and underachievement, particularly for the exceptionally talented, the researchers suggest.

 This has been a constant irritant for me, for many years. We focus on the "bubble" kids, the weaker students who might pass if we give them a little more attention, and we tend to ignore the very weak as well  as the motivated and the smart.

"Heterogeneous classrooms" is the mantra where I teach, resulting in the kid up front twitching in boredom while the weaker students nod off, zone out, and then need the retakes and the constant nudge to hand in work, finish work, start work, etc.

Honors classes were replaced with CP "College Prep" because Everyone Must Go To College.


"That's the way those One-Room Schoolhouses did it. Why should we single out and spend more money on those kids? They'll be fine. They'll get their As."

It makes me cringe. Yes, they'll get a A, but the weaker kids don't get what they need, and neither do the strong. If you're going to have 5 sections of Algebra 2, why not simply let one of them be comprised of strong students?

Is it wrong of me to note that the people who ask why we should single out smart kids are invariably the parents of, or who were themselves, weak students?

Is it wrong of me to note that I haven't been able to get a whole class to participate in the Norwich Bridge Building Competition, only a few here and there?

"The smart kids can help the weaker kids ... collaboration is 21st Century teaching, you know, and it's the way the Real World works."

Let me channel my inner teenager ...

What if I don't want to do the teacher's job? What if I don't like many of my classmates. Why should I be forced to "teach" my classmates stuff they couldn't be bothered to learn in class the normal way?  Why should my grade depend on someone else's motivation?

Don't give me that "It's Real World" crap because I know that in the RealWorld, the dead-beats would be fired. No one pays people to sit around and wait for the one team member to do all the work. No one gets to wait until someone else is finished and lean over, "So, what did you get on number 1? And how about number 2?"

Should we Offer Access to Online Education?

What benefit do you see to offering students access to free online education tools like Khan Academy? Any drawbacks?
— The Stream (@AJAMStream) December 25, 2013

.@AJAMStream KA equiv to a 1st-year teacher recording their lessons then reusing them each year w/o reflection or modification or feedback.
— Frank Noschese (@fnoschese) December 25, 2013

And this is why KA and other online education options won't ever replace brick and mortar. Students, by and large, simply will not do online education on their own. 

"Offering access"?  How am I "Offering access" when KA is on the Internet? A more appropriate question would be "Even had I wanted to, how can I stop them?"

The brick and mortar schools will be in trouble when the question becomes "How can I take all this stuff I learned online this summer and get credit for it in school?"  Since I have yet to have a student actually learn a lot of math online, I have no fear for my job. They need a teacher to nudge, cajole, question and respond, demand and reply. Sure, there are some who can learn online, but they're not in public schools and, if they are, it's rarely math that they can learn this way.

On the other hand, for me, it's not about WHERE you learn algebra, it's how well. If you transferred into my school and showed us that you had mastered algebra I, we'd put you into algebra II  .... so why would we care if you mastered algebra I through KA or some other over the summer?  The answer is, we don't.  If you show up CLAIMING to have learned it all in summer school, we're skeptical, but that's only because we have seen and worked with an awful lot of students.

It's sort of like Teach for America ... I guess there are SOME people who can learn everything in a six-week summer course, but it sure does seem as though the traditional methods are still better for most.

Relevance and Student Engagement

I hate discussions of relevance in math class. "When will I use this?" is not a question that should take precedence over building a mathematical foundation. Students cannot learn foundational material by getting hit with RealLife™™ questions ... at least not until the later stages of the unit or section.

Follow the center of gravity.

Students who are taught in an appropriately scaffolded fashion will understand better, retain material understanding longer, and apply the material more intelligently in non-standard situations. They will see the action, realize the math behind it, and "use this in RealLife™" in ways that neither you nor they can possibly predict right now.

Throwing them immediately into the deep end, however, by giving them the incredibly messy RealLife™ questions with all of the ramifications and qualifications, coupled with seven different solution methods, actually blocks acquisition and development. The Gateway Arch is not a parabola but saying that in the quadratics chapter won't help the students.

The takeaway: Make the numbers fit the first few times. Your R²-value should be 1 until the kids get the hang of things. Your numbers should work out evenly for a while. Give them the messy stuff after they've mastered the simple.

It's not that simple.

That's why math books tend to look simplistic and abstract, why they have false-seeming questions ... they know that the kids can't handle the complex stuff yet. Word problems are deliberately simplistic - to make them realistic would lead only to needless frustration. That's why the students don't see five years down the road, why they can't see the long-term implications and utility of what they are seeing right now ... because they're still learning to drive this car and haven't gotten the basics of its operation down yet. Watch a young driver and think about that teenager learning algebra: they are overly focused on the minutiae of the work and not yet ready to drive fast and react to changing road conditions. If there's another teenager in the car, they'll get themselves killed ... that's why learners permit and first-year drivers are so restricted.

FalseRealLife is even worse. If you attempt to overlay a fourth-order function on a photograph of a cloud formation or a transcendental function on ivy-covered bushes, you destroy, in the minds of every student in the room, the utility and purpose of  a regression -- there is no possible natural reason for that edge of that cloud to have any relationship with a fourth-order function or for the series of leaves to follow that curve. If you attempt to overlay a parabolic function on a Norman Window (semicircle on rectangle), you demonstrate the uselessness of mathematics by being somehow unable to come up with an example of data that is appropriately modeled by the regression you chose.

The takeaway: If you want students to see the utility of math, you have to use math in a useful way, using actual numbers and actual results. Bringing in your extensive knowledge of physics and other sciences here is worth the time.

For this reason, I include Bad Numbers in the FalseRealLife™ category as well. When "Johnny" winds up to be 71 meters tall, you have done yourself and your students a true disservice. This gem from a worksheet encapsulates this perfectly: "Math Problem 16. My sister greedily lapped up 483 liters of maggot juice from a saucer. I slurped up 5 times as much creamy maggot juice as she. How much delightfully delicious maggot juice did we drink altogether?" Besides the stupid attempt to engage the boys with "gross" humor, we have to ask ourselves how we expect the students to ever get a handle on the metric system or their own sense of "reasonableness" if we give them problems with numbers like this.

The takeaway: If you want students to relate, it has to be relateable, it has to be understandable, and it has to be real.

When it's clearly not a fourth-order and you try
to put a quartic on it, what message are you sending?
That your math is bullshit.

But, then there's FantasyLife which uses crazy situations and wildly weird math to model it. If you use this at the very end of a section, it can lighten the mood while opening minds. It's so bizarre that the students can't apply their RealLife knowledge to it and they then can focus on the math. The math is so inappropriate to the situation is draws laughter and silliness.

I bring you "Love Mathematically."

Khan Academy post briefing

My account - quite a mixture for the
suggestions. How is this generated?

From the Los Altos School District, a discussion of how Khan Academy worked and didn't work, it's strengths and weaknesses and the insistence of the media in misinterpreting the information.

Unfortunately, the idea of flipping the classroom that Sal mentioned in his TED Talk resonated with many members of the media, and we were unsuccessful in helping some of them divorce this idea from what they saw in Los Altos.  As a result, our educational philosophy, teaching practices, and Khan Academy implementation have been misrepresented, in varying degrees, by a few major media outlets.

What is it good for?

Teachers in our district have determined that the greatest value of the Khan Academy lies, not in the videos, but in the exercise modules and data generated as students work practice problems.

I would have to agree but with reservations.  I signed up for an account and was thrown into a morass of possibilities that didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason and certainly didn't seem to be scaffolded in any meaningful way.  Where do I start? My suggestions list included a riff on tau vs pi that seemed to be based on Vi Hart's much more succinct video. If I'm truly just starting geometry and I have the Angles 1 thing done, is this a great thing to listen to next?

Why can't I indicate my current course somewhere and leap right to it, landing in a sequential list of things presented in an organized fashion? Do I have to begin with telling time just to check those off my bucket list? Can my teacher (excuse me, my COACH) direct me to a specific topic? Haven't seen a way yet.  I guess you're on your own ... homeschooler or unschooler, but not following anyone's lead.

And then there's the actual work: video, then practice. The video is very rambling ... I guess it's okay but then you're dropped into practice that ranges from tough to simplistic without a noticeable scheme. Take, for example, Order of operations ... a fairly straightforward kind of thing. You expect to be given examples that test the use of the rule and that progress from simple to complicated.  Instead, the ten expressions ranged all over the place. Early on, I got a complex, 4-step, thing that wound up to be -394 but that was followed by a much simpler one. I recorded a couple in the middle of the pack.  In order,

And no exponents. Weird.

I intend to have students do some out-of-class review in a structured way and we'll see.  Not afraid for my job, though.

Leadership in Education - Surveys of 42,000

So, we're listening to Bill Daggett, president of the International Center for Leadership in Education, and he shoots off some statistics and statements that leave me puzzled. I can't put them all in one post, so I'll be spreading them out a bit.

One of his memes is the idea of research by polling. His team went out and asked a lot of people to rank the topics that are listed in the math standards with a question that approximated "Which of these topics is the most important to you, is the topic that you feel is most useful in your daily life."

The answers came back and led to a fairly consistent set of answers. "Knowledge of the right triangle and the relationship of the sides using Pythagorean Theorem" came in at about 38th for almost everybody. The subset of  Math teachers, on the other hand, said it should be 4th. Daggett's point was that the math teachers weren't on the same path as the rest of the world and that we needed to change.

I found this troubling for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to know the actual question ... how was this phrased? Did they just quote the standard or did they interpret it? Can this group really understand enough about specific math topics to be able to rank them?

I wondered whether engineers and technicians and other folks who use math often were separated out from those who didn't claim to use math daily, who claimed "I was never any good at math." It troubles me because a huge percentage of the American public has chosen careers to avoid math, has chosen to turn away from math because they don't like it, has chosen to trust someone else to do their math for them. That majority has already denied math in all of its forms ... should we ask teachers to have an opinion on the best surgical practices for dealing with appendicitis or ask mechanics to comment on law?

Why should their opinion of what's important matter to me as a teacher?

Secondly, should I really ratchet my classes to the point of average knowledge?  Should I tell my students that because the majority of Americans thinks that Pythagoras is useless then they aren't going to see it?  What of the percent of my class who could become one of "The Few, The Proud, The People who can Add without Whingeing"?

Show me what happens in the daily lives of people who use math daily ... now that would be helpful.

Of course, it would be nice to actually see the rankings, flawed or otherwise, instead of being told that there is a disconnect. We never did get that bit of information.  I guess we didn't pay him enough for that.

It's just an arbitrary rule ...

Okay, so there's an easy one for your students, right? I thought I'd try it with mine and let them argue a bit over what the answer is and why they came up with it.  When someone asks, I'll tell them that this is why we developed the arbitrary rule of PEMDAS - so that there would be no confusion, so that anyone who approached it came back with something we could all agree on.

But that's too easy, you say?

Well, following the break (Sorry to those reading in Google Reader) is a small portion of the Facebook feed. This is 100 or so of 254,542 ! According to the poster, only 30% got it right.

Brain-Dead Teenager to be Euthanized

Naturally, the Onion was on the case first.

Credit Recovery or Fraud?

From Joanne Jacobs:
Three Los Angeles seniors who failed a required class, were able to transfer to a credit-recovery school for two days, pass and return to graduate with classmates, reports the Los Angeles Times. Teachers are annoyed.

The students withdrew from STEM Academy of Hollywood as late as June 13, a Wednesday, attended the adjacent Alonzo Community Day School the next day, and checked back into STEM to graduate that Friday.

Teachers are annoyed indeed.

It makes you wonder a lot of things: the idea that the other school was "adjacent", the idea that you can "drop out" with two days to go, the idea that the second school's standards are so low that the kids failing at school #1 can take a few quizzes and tests in 2 days and pass and then re-enroll in time to graduate, and the idea that STEM "has" to accept the credits.

 Alonzo, the alternative school, is intended for students who are at risk of dropping out. Although it has a traditional school day, it measures credits only by work completed, not the time the students spend in class, said Principal Victorio R. Gutierrez.

How about growing some cajones and refusing to let them re-enroll?  It's obvious to all but the most insufferable twit that they are gaming the system.  At least delay the acceptance of the credits until after some paperwork has been done -- just long enough to keep them from walking with the rest.

Those Digital Natives are not Teachers

Just because it's a computer
doesn't mean it's remarkable.

Is it just me or has the phrase "digital natives" started to sound a lot like the "noble savages" idea of some years ago? I get this sense that we have no idea of how limited most students are, tech-wise and otherwise, and so we attribute mythical abilities to all students due to their being just a single step up the tech knowledge ladder from most teachers, present company excluded.

Anyway ...

NEAToday sent me "5 Tips for Tech Terrified Teachers", and I'm thinking to myself, "Holy Crap, Self! How can there be any Tech-Terrified Teachers left?" and then I get depressed because I know it's true.

How is it that any teacher isn't tech savvy by now? All the new teachers are part of that digital native group we've been placing on a pedestal these last ten years, while the more experienced ones are adapting to it. Are there really that many older teachers who are still terrified of tech and refuse to embrace it? Are there really that many people who are afraid to RTFM and learn some new software?

I'll tell you what I think: we still have too many stupid, pig-headed, teachers.

Read this list, if you don't believe me. Consider that some teachers need to read this and change, that some teachers are still resisting tech, and that the union felt it necessary to write this and publish it. Then you can laugh about the odd phrasing, simplistic advice, and especially #5.

1. Remember, it’s not about you! Your discomfort with technology impacts your students’ futures. Teachers need to be preparing students for the world we live in today. So many jobs are dependent on a basic understanding of technology. Always ask yourself, “am I teaching something that is obsolete, or something that will help my students in the future that lies ahead?”
2. Don’t resist your tech guru teacher-friend: It is difficult to ask for help but partnering up with a tech guru teacher-friend can provide a support system that can help ease your transition from tech terrified to tech curious.
3. Realize it’s okay if you are not in control: In reflection, I realize that a major reason that I resisted tech for so long is because I feared what would happen if I was no longer in control…but it is okay if the tech malfunctions. In fact it can lead to some pretty teachable moments.
4. Let your students teach you something: Newsflash – if you think you are the omnipotent force in your classroom, think again! Kids know a lot these days and it can boost their confidence and engagement if you call on students for support.
5. If you find a product you like, ask someone from the company to come visit – Tech startups want you to use their products so most likely if you send an email, they will answer any questions you have or maybe even come visit your school to teach you how to use their product.

About #5: Tech startups will send someone to talk to Dan Meyer, Sal Kahn, or someone who will really make use of their software and make some valid contributions.

No company will send someone out to talk to a tech-terrified teacher with some toys sitting around the classroom gathering dust because loser child can't be bothered to figure out how to turn them on.

An excellent response to the Facebook Kerfluffle

Well, this is interesting. Since some colleges are requiring student athletes to give up their Facebook passwords, I have begun counseling students to create a second Facebook page now, in high school. It should be all clean and pretty and contain nothing but links to foodnetwork.com, friends with Grandmother, and nothing controversial. Then, turn on all privacy settings on the other, real page, change the displayed name, alter the phone and address, delete and information that true friends already know and replace it with information from Game of Thrones. It's the 21st Century version of your Mother saying "This is not a Locker Room, young man. Keep your rough-housing and vulgar language for outside this house." There's a time and a place for that sort of thing ... it's the OTHER Facebook account.

There are other tactics, of course, and I hadn't thought of these but it is very true that this openness can cut both ways. Many companies have implemented policies requiring HR managers to shoulder-surf as prospective employees read through their Facebook accounts, or worse, require that those prospects give their passwords to the HR manager. Who is then bound by various laws on confidentiality and, more importantly, non-discrimination ...

Here's one Director's response ... he quit. The reason why is what's fascinating:

I hereby resign

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you very much for honoring me with the position of Director of Software Development. I value your trust and have enjoyed my first two months on the job immensely. You have a world-class team and are executing on a daring vision. It pains me to tell you this, however I am forced to resign my position as Director and from here on, I must cheer your team from a distance.

The situation is simple. As you doubtless recall, the new COO has issued a new set of employment contracts. The legalities of arm-twisting employees into signing a new employment contract when they already had a contract with the firm is her responsibility, I’ll just have to trust her when she says we can fire anyone without notice if they refuse to agree.

One of the new terms is that every prospective new hire allow their manager to “shoulder surf” as they browse their Facebook or better still, to voluntarily log their manager into their Facebook account. If I recall correctly, she claims that we have the obligation to do a “background check” on prospective hires. I’m extremely vague on the correlation between faux-promiscuous sex or drinking and employee performance, but as she is a seasoned veteran, I have to trust her when she says that things like this overrule my judgment as to who is and who isn’t fit to be a programmer in our employ.

I was willing to go along with things and see how they panned out. But today something went seriously wrong. I have been interviewing senior hires for the crucial tech lead position on the Fizz Buzz team, and while several walked out in a huff when I asked them to let me look at their Facebook, one young lady smiled and said I could help myself. She logged into her Facebook as I requested, and as I followed the COO’s instructions to scan her timeline and friends list looking for evidence of moral turpitude, I became aware she was writing something on her iPad.

“Taking notes?” I asked politely.

“No,” she smiled, “Emailing a human rights lawyer I know.” To say that the tension in the room could be cut with a knife would be understatement of the highest order. “Oh?” I asked. I waited, and as I am an expert in out-waiting people, she eventually cracked and explained herself.

“If you are surfing my Facebook, you could reasonably be expected to discover that I am a Lesbian. Since discrimination against me on this basis is illegal in Ontario, I am just preparing myself for the possibility that you might refuse to hire me and instead hire someone who is a heterosexual but less qualified in any way. Likewise, if you do hire me, I might need to have your employment contracts disclosed to ensure you aren’t paying me less than any male and/or heterosexual colleagues with equivalent responsibilities and experience.”

I got her out of the room as quickly as possible. The next few interviews were a blur, I was shaken. And then it happened again. This time, I found myself talking to a young man fresh out of University about a development position. After allowing me to surf his Facebook, he asked me how I felt about parenting. As a parent, it was easy to say I liked the idea. Then he dropped the bombshell.

His partner was expecting, and shortly after being hired he would be taking six months of parental leave as required by Ontario law. I told him that he should not have discussed this matter with me. “Oh normally I wouldn’t, but since you’re looking through my Facebook, you know that already. Now of course, you would never refuse to hire someone because they plan to exercise their legal right to parental leave, would you?”

What could I say? I guess we have another hire whether he’s qualified or not. Here’s the bottom line: My ability to select the best candidates for our positions has been irreparably compromised by looking into their private lives. I’ve been “tainted” by knowledge of their sexual orientation, illnesses, religion, political affiliations, and other factors that expose us to anti-discrimination legislation. We can't even claim that the employee improperly disclosed these matters to us, as we are the ones initiating the investigation of their private doings.

Worse, I cannot manage these people once they're hired. I would be diffident about censuring them or passing them over for advancement for fear of incurring a lawsuit that would be a distraction to our business and damaging to our reputation as fair employers.

Therefore, please consider this my formal resignation. The COO does not tell me how to write software, so I will not tell her how to set HR standards, but I would ask that you review this policy and ask whether it is truly in the company’s interest to indiscriminately dig through a candidates’ private lives. Either that, or we should move to a jurisdiction where we have zero exposure to legal consequences for discrimination.

Yours very truly,
Reginald Scott Braithwaite

Now it's Canada's Turn for Deform

Harrison wasn't allowed either.

Yes, the times tables are vitally important.
Yes, algorithm is important.

No, those new-fangled methods aren't really new. In fact, they are hundreds of years old. They were in use for centuries until the algorithms were developed. Then, everyone switched to the new algorithms because THEY ARE MORE EFFICIENT and EASIER TO USE. Education deformers who lacked any sense of history and never learned those algorithms have developed the old ways all over again: lattice multiplication, grouping by thousands and hundreds.

Isn't that incredible? It's like arithmetic archeology posing as cutting-edge but acting like the Handicapper-General in Harrison Bergeron. Why should today's kids use what works efficiently? If a Deformer couldn't learn this "long division" thing, why should America's kids? The Deformer was a "C" student so everyone must be limited to the same inadequate and tedious multiplication methods. "You MAY NOT USE the easy method."

MARGARET WENTE: Why Alex can’t add (or subtract, multiply or divide); Globe and Mail

A parent I know went to an information session about math at his kid’s school. After listening to the visiting curriculum expert explain how important it was for students to “understand” the concepts, he asked: “So, how important is it for them to learn the times tables?” The expert hemmed and hawed and wouldn’t give an answer.

The elementary teacher
is a math-phobe.
Where did you think the kids got that fear?

Parents across Canada might be surprised to learn that the times tables are out. So are adding, subtracting and dividing. Remember when you learned to add a column of numbers by carrying a number over to the next column, or learned to subtract by borrowing, then practised your skills until you could add and subtract automatically? Forget it. Today, that’s known as “drill and kill,” or, even worse, “rote learning.” And we can’t have that.

Nope. Can't do it. Practice is right out of the math classroom. It's much better do have the kids hop onto the computer, log in to their Khan Academy account and do rote learning and drill there. It's a computer, don't you see? That means it's not really drill. It's shiny and new so it must be better than making the kids learn math.

“The designers of the new curriculum have decided it would be a really good idea not to teach these things,” says Robert Craigen, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Manitoba. He sat on the province’s math curriculum committee for years. Unfortunately, nobody was interested in what he had to say. So today, he’s got calculus students who never learned long division. “The undergirding motive is: We want to teach understanding, and all this mechanical detail gets in the way of understanding.”

Because nothing allows you to think like knowing nothing. Lots of room for all those thoughts to bounce around. When you open your mouth, pretty much anything comes out.

The common methods used to add and subtract are known as standard algorithms. They are efficient and foolproof. But, instead of being taught these methods, students are encouraged to find “strategies,” such as breaking numbers into units of thousands, hundreds, tens and ones and working horizontally. It works, but it’s not efficient. And every time a student sees a new problem, he has to start from scratch – and pick his “strategy.” It’s like playing the piano without ever learning scales, or hockey without basic drills.

If Practice is so Bad,
why am I constantly hearing about
Teaching's Best Practices?

But that's how NHL players are made, aren't they? Don't those little kids just skate around the rink devising new ways to score? We should let them invent the rules they want to play by. There's plenty of time to learn skill. We'll use a video game. Yeah, that's the ticket. A video game.

The loony thing is that Canada is way behind the times. After a decade of disastrous experimentation in the United States, this approach to math education has been repudiated. The leading U.S. heavyweights in math came out decisively against it in 2008. Sadly, it seems this news has not yet reached Canada. Here, curriculum developers and boards of education are pressing forward, undeterred by the objections of math experts or the bafflement of parents and children alike.

Ooooooh, you went there. Except that the information is not quite right. There are plenty of experts in the US who still believe that Practice is the Road to Hell and that Engagement at any cost is Royal Road to Mathematics.

Meh.

Apparently, drills are fine on the football field but not in the classroom.  Maybe that's why we're so much better at football.

Monster blog has monster sized misconceptions

Monster blog has this article about Gen Y Talent Myths. I am amazed at the nearsightedness in evidence here. Not to knock the guy -- he has spent over six years as a career counselor at a top-flight research university so he must know the habits and talents of the entire Gen Y demographic, right? Anyway. I was amused.

First, he feels that Gen Y is CONFUSED rather than LAZY. Okay, not all of them are lazy but the truth is that they would rather be playing video games and chatting and Facebooking than working. This is not a particular surprise since every generation back to prehistoric times has said that about it's teenagers.

That being too complicated a thought, he felt it was due to "the world and technology constantly changing and becoming more complex, members of Gen Y are just trying to decipher how to navigate their way around" and "Generation Y lacks the experience and foundation to best utilize these various technological resources." On the other hand, "Generation Y is the most experienced and qualified to understand and decipher the social media landscape".  Proof by confusing contradiction?

He then feels that if we aren't "moving at the speed of these technologies, we are already behind before we’ve even started." You say, "Touche", I say "Cliche." Come on, dredge up a better one than that. "Moving at the speed of these technologies" doesn't even mean anything.

Generation Y seems to "Lack Morals". According to David, they merely have "Different Values" because they were the product of the ‘Me Generation.’ I guess that excuses them from sharing the values of the society at large or something.

Conservative AND socially conscious.

Now we get weird. Correlation, causation and all that. He claims that Gen Y got Obama elected (really!) and so we think they must be more liberal. They're not, though, because they "prefer to seek opportunities to make a difference in their communities". Wow. They're not liberal because they like to make a difference? That's just funny.

"How else do you explain the rise of social entrepreneurs (Tom’s Shoes?), the growth of core value-laden companies such as Zappos and Google (witnessed by Google’s core principle 'you can make money without doing evil?'), and the new found commitment/interest in non-profit organizations?" Actually, dude, those companies weren't founded by, and aren't run by, GenY.

The last bit of fun comes when this guy claims that GenY thinks it's smarter than the older folk, and therefore is smarter. How dumb can you be?

Every generation thinks it's smarter than the previous one. This one isn't smarter, but they think they are. David feels they are smarter "as long as they utilize reputable sources" and points out that "Five-year-old children are able to find more information on a smartphone or tablet than their parents."

Holy crap, what kind of evidence is that? Are you sure you're at a university? A five year-old on an iPad makes for a cute picture but it’s less of an indication of brilliance than a 1990 kid on a Commodore 64 with an encyclopedia nearby.

The next line is the funniest. In his day, "one could get a quality college education with an SAT score of 1100 … care to guess the average now?" Uh, 1538.

Does genius boy know why the average has risen ... all the teachers reading this do. Ding-ding-ding! Three sections! 1538/3 is 513 or so per section. Back in his day, the per-section score was 550. OOPS, not so good on the math, either. Must be more of that top-flight research university training, huh?.

I guess I know why so many kids come out of college they way they do.

Obligatory Nov 5 reference:

The article below the fold:

Education Nation is Full of Narcissistic Fools

SO NBC, that bastion of level-headedness, has this thing called Education Nation. I did not watch the two segments.  After reading the following list, I couldn't do it.  I feel somewhat sick already and didn't want to push it.

The Innovative Educator thought this was all peachy-keen and listed out some of the talking points that resonated in its empty head.

Apparently, no one listens to the students and that's bad.  Of course, most of us do but that's not the Reformer Way of Describing Teachers so we obviously don't do that and obviously The Students Are Always Right When They Complain.

" In their discussion, young people provided insight into their own experiences with education and what they think needs to be done to ensure that every student receives a world-class education."  Because we all know that students are the Font of Wisdom and teachers are morons.  Quick note: Sleeping through class does not make you an expert on education.

But let's let their words speak for them ...

I have to critically think in college, but your tests don't teach me that.

They're not supposed to teach you that. They're supposed to help form and guide your learning and measure it, give that college some idea of what you can do.

We learn in different ways at different rates.

SO? Even though you really aren't all that different from your peers.  It's funny how I easily I can predict what each student will be able to achieve and what time frame it will take to do it.  Amazingly, the whole class is within a short time of each other.

I can't learn from you if you are not willing to connect with me.

Bullshit. Teachers can connect but it's a two-way street and you're not playing. If you can't learn without the touchy-feely crap then you'll never learn from Salman Kahn, a computer, an online program, a disinterested presenter or any teacher who is even slightly less than your ideal of perfection.  That's a damn shame.

Teaching by the book is not teaching. It's just talking.

Minor point. Teaching by the book is accepting that someone smarter than I and with more time and help from his graduate students, has put together a pretty damn good calculus book.  Why would I change it radically?

Caring about each student is more important than teaching the class.

Bullshit. Caring about you is not the reason I get paid nor the reason you're in that class.  Teaching is a profession and one that I enjoy but I am not your parent, your priest or your counselor. I am the teacher.

This is my job.

Every young person has a dream. Your job is to help bring us closer to our dreams.

Nope.  My job is to teach math the best I can. See all that stuff to the right? Your job is to see to your dreams. You're the only one who can force you to put in the effort to reach your dreams.  This is an internal incentive.  External forces don't work here.

We need more than teachers. We need life coaches.

Really? "Life coach"? When did teachers take the place of your parents? Do you really want me to (A) know about all of your off-campus shenanigans and problems and (B) are you willing to let me solve them? Did it ever occur to you that I might not have an answer for why your religion is retarded or why your mother is drug-addicted? I might not be the best person to counsel you on what to do with your life. How can I possibly know what you want? You can't even tell me what you'll be doing next summer, forget what you'll spend your life doing.

Or do you want someone's shoulder to cry on and pat you condescendingly on the head? If you want my advice as a Certified Life Coach: stop being a navel-gazing narcissist and grow up. The world really doesn't give a damn about your "life coaching".

The community should become more involved in schools.

Meh.  If there's anything less appealing, it's having a whole bunch of people around who are convinced that they know everything because they went to school.  You don't second-guess any other professionals in your life, why the eagerness to second-guess teachers?

Even if you don't want to be a teacher, you can offer a student an apprenticeship.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Us youth love all the new technologies that come out. When you acknowledge this and use technology in your teaching it makes learning much more interesting.

I love them, too. Now get out your iPads and load up the Kindle version of the textbook and get to work. If you can't connect to the school's network, then set up a wi-fi hotspot off your iPhone, go to wolframalpha.com, find the answer to the first part of the question and incorporate it into the Excel spreadsheet to further analyze the problem, dump the results to Powerpoint, send it to your portable printer or convert it to one of the four acceptable electronic formats.  Then, don't send it to my email account but rather submit it to the class Moodle in the proper forum.  You know how to do that, right? By the end of the week, I'll want you to be able to explain all this and apply your knowledge to something completely different, so you need to get cracking.

You should be trained not just in teaching but also in counseling.

Really?  Cool. That'll get me an additional $50k per year, and I get to send the rest of the class away for the period while we talk. Feel better now?  Made much improvement in math while you sorted out your ego?

Tell me something good that I'm doing so that I can keep growing in that.

You're a big boy, now.  If you don't know your strengths, my telling you over and over isn't going to help. I give praise when it's deserved and to encourage students.  I don't give out gold stars because that's demeaning. You need to do something difficult. You need to fail, and then pick yourself back up, fail and finally succeed.  YOU need to tell YOURSELF what's good. You're not supposed to be dancing to my tune on that.

When you can feel like a family member it helps so much.

Not it doesn't.  I'm not your parent. Our relationship is on a friendly, but professional level.

We appreciate when you connect with us in our worlds such as the teacher who provided us with extra help using Xbox and Skype

I'd appreciate it if you paid attention in class and made the most of the limited time we had. Since we only have those 60 minutes and there are quite a few equally needy souls in the room, how about we dispense with the games and focus on the math you signed up to take?  My understanding was this was pre-calculus. I know a whole lot more than you do about what you'll need in the workplace ... XBox, not withstanding.

Our teachers have too many students to enable them to connect with us in they way we need them to.

Grow up.  Seek out the teachers.  The good ones will be there. Just wait until you get to college and have the privilege of sitting with 400 of your closest friends in a lecture hall listening to a TA with a heavy foreign accent. Nobody is connecting until you show up at Office Hours and ask an intelligent question.

Bring the electives that we are actually interested in back to school. Things like drama, art, cooking, music.

Those things should never have left. Don't blame me for the morons in the community who made that decision. HOWEVER, student interest should never drive their education decisions ... they have no idea what they'll need and waste the limited time they have on things that are easy and un-challenging rather than on things they will later wish they'd done.

Education leaders, teachers, funders, and policy makers need to start listening to student voice in all areas including teacher evaluations.

Nope. Until you have some experience, your "opinion" is worthless and people will blow you off.  When you have that experience, you'll find we already do listen.

You need to use tools in the classroom that we use in the real world like Facebook, email, and other tools we use to connect and communicate.

You need to put away your childish toys and realize that gossip and passing notes is something we did when we were young, too, and that Facebook and twitter are simply the new version of that. There's a reason why older folks don't communicate as often - they communicate BETTER.  Quality will someday replace quantity.  In the meantime, continue sending 300+ texts a day .... I'm sure someone is reading and thinking deeply about them.  At some point, though, the two of you sitting on each end of the couch texting each other might consider putting the phone down and "talking".

You need to love a student before you can teach a student.

Awesomely silly.   and false.

We do tests to make teachers look good and the school look good, but we know they don't help us to learn what's important to us.

I don't like those tests either.  If I had my choice, you'd have four tests per semester and an end-of-course exam. Five scores. That's it. No homework grade, no participation grade, no effort grade, no attendance ... nothing but "Do you know what you're doing"?

I'm glad we had this talk.

Actively disengaged at Charter Schools

Dangerously Irrelevant, of the blog-group Big Think:
"I love this video. How much of this occurs in your school on a day-to-day basis? What would your kids say?"

I know what my kids would say. "Pretty funny. Cool music (but dated). I could never get away with that unless I was having one of those days and the teacher took pity on me but he'd try to talk me into doing some work to distract me."

What is my reaction? It seems that every classroom depicted was filled with students in uniforms of some kind, or at minimum a strict dress code, which means that they are all charter and private schools. Maybe that's the real problem?

Let's face reality here. The camera is in the classroom. The students are acting. There is nothing "real" about this. Several of the clips are from anime cartoons and others are line drawings! How is this supposed to make the point that education isn't working and that we have to change to the more tech-driven, 21st Century Skills model that Dr. Macleod is always pushing for?

The music selection is likewise flawed. Using Floyd's tune in a video on disengagement is akin to using Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son" as the basis for a diatribe against Spanish cruelty against the natives of Central America in the 1500s. The song has absolutely nothing to do with student boredom or disengagement, but the creator (and possibly Macleod) are too young to know that.

Clever? Nope.
Critical thinking? Nope.
Makes a good point? Nope.
Sound basis for changing education? Nope.

Parenting, Chinese mothers, and Stereotypes.

Very Interesting article from the WSJ.

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
By AMY CHUA

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

 More after the break.

The Root of the Matter.

Psychologists say NO to Learning Styles

I'll have to read the rest of this NYTimes article carefully, but this paragraph stood out:

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.

Hallelujah. Striking and disturbing, indeed.

Technology and the Digital Natives

We hear all the time about our digital natives, their need for 21st century skills and their total immersion in 21st century technology. This morning, the following thought occurred to me:

Our kids don't need any training / help / instruction / encouragement with social networks and tech. They've got that in spades already. What they need is to control their social life and learn the unsocial 21st century skills.

My son was sitting on the coach with his wireless laptop, playing World of Warcraft with Facebook open in another window, his band's Myspace open in another and an IM session running ... then his phone rang. The TV was showing iCarly or Spongebob.

If anything, kids need to be pulled back and calmed down when it comes to social media and web 2.0. They've stayed at the banquet table too long and gorged themselves on every privacy exposure they could find. There are ways to reduce your public exposure, but many settings were deliberately left obfuscated so kids wouldn't understand what they were throwing away. Marketing, of course.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt in Wall Street Journal: "In the future, the passage from teenage life to adulthood will include an automatic name change 'in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.' "

I don't think it needs to be that way and it's not too late. Everyone should simply change their names now on all social media accounts. As I said last month, put up a fake persona. We all need to do that: our social life gets a fake persona ("Harold the Magnificent"), work and serious life gets the true stuff, and never the twain shall meet.

Back in the classroom, what our kids really need for the "real world" and for "work in the 21st century" is to learn and make better use of the non-social tools. You know: spreadsheets, word documents, email, writing, publishing, graphic arts, WolframAlpha and calculators, online references and other tools ... whether Excel, Google Docs, blogs, OpenOffice, forums, wikis, etc.  They need to consider their words, slow down their minds and stop blaring out any random fluttering thought.

We need a catchier word for it. though. What's the opposite of "social media?"

Anti-social ... no.
Non-social ... that doesn't seem right either. It's serious but needs to be shared.
Web 2.x ... not descriptive enough.
unsocial ... oh sure, make a geek joke, why don't you?

College Degree isn't working out for everyone.

via Joanne Jacobs: The Class of 2010 borrowed lots of money to attend expensive universities and graduate with skills the labor market doesn’t want, writes Joe Queenan in the Wall Street Journal.

SO?

The whole "college degree gets you a million more over your lifetime" thing was bull all along. It was based on a selected sample comparing apples and oranges.


Here's a bit o' truth for all you students out there.

• All college degrees are NOT created equal. Sorry.
• "Womyn's Studies" and "Black Studies" and "I don't do math so I'm going to be an elementary ed teacher." Don't expect to paid like a rockstar if you can't play a lick.
• This is what happens when you slack your way through classes and start your drinking on Thursday (We don't want Friday classes).  Too much selfish and childish behavior - fewer hours spent doing homework and more spent on your little iPhone and on those video games and TV. Most college students are lazy slackers more interested in beer than work.
• This is the result of searching for the professor who gives out easy As or who rewards the girls with the biggest chest, instead of those who learned something. Choosing a school based on the nearby beach or the quality of the babes doesn't translate to learning anything, you know.

Maybe you SHOULD have been a plumber. Tech school WAS an option, you know. So is the military, though their standards may be a little too high for someone of your obvious talent and sensibilities.

If you're stupid enough to take lame and useless courses and expect a rapid payoff once out of college, I frankly don't care if you have that millstone around your neck. (I'd have said 'albatross' but too few students would get the reference - lack of employment is a punishment for hubris- driven college course selection).

I'm not sorry for having this opinion, kids. You set up your education - this was not a snap judgment. You were not forced into doing this. You demanded your parents hard-earned money for some of this education cost and you took out the loans for the rest. You slept through class or skipped it to go to Spring Break. What did you expect?

You get what you pay for, or in this case what you worked for (or didn't).

If you did take rigorous courses and worked hard, got a good degree and still got laid off, then I do sympathize and wish you better luck. My guess is that you'll be able to get a good job much faster than that other idiot. You'll also be able to work up the ladder faster, too.

The slacker in college is still a slacker in life. He's screwed either way. Don't be that guy.