Professional development (two words and you already know this isn't going to end well) is starting. We are to write down information about our students. Now we have to speak about what we wrote. One says, "My students strengths are (1)(2)(3) and my students weaknesses are --" and is promptly cut off by the "expert."
"Your students don't have weaknesses. They have needs. You can't call them weaknesses."
You can't make this up.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Remembrance
A documentary about the Last Day of WW1, presented by Michael Palin.
(not HER husband, you ninnies. The Monty Python guy. Sheesh.)
(not HER husband, you ninnies. The Monty Python guy. Sheesh.)
Saturday, November 8, 2008
I think I've used this excuse before.
"No, really, Officer. I was doing research in the lab with my assistant. We were making diamonds with tequila. Hic." "Tell it to the Judge, Sir."
From SlashDot:
Researchers, oddly enough from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, have found a way to make diamond films using tequila. They were originally testing methods of creating the films with organic solutions like acetone when it was noticed the ideal ratios of water and ethanol turned out to be about 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. "To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."
I love science. I just need to figure out how to tell my principal that this is a great example of critical thinking and that we should replicate the experiment. You know, peer review ...
From SlashDot:
Researchers, oddly enough from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, have found a way to make diamond films using tequila. They were originally testing methods of creating the films with organic solutions like acetone when it was noticed the ideal ratios of water and ethanol turned out to be about 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. "To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."
I love science. I just need to figure out how to tell my principal that this is a great example of critical thinking and that we should replicate the experiment. You know, peer review ...
Friday, November 7, 2008
Mme. Duck quacks and complains
Labels:
Daily Silliness,
Overwork
We're in the first semester of a new daily schedule here at Curmudgeon HS. We moved from the old 4-period blocks to a hybrid 4.5 block setup. It's kind of complicated, with some blocks being split into half-block with full credit courses running all year. Other 40 minute half-block run for a semester and generate a half credit. The majority of the courses are full block, one semester, courses.
It's going to take some time to get fully used to it, but it has definite potential. The biggest upside is the increased chances for electives. We were all given the opportunity to propose new courses that we would like to teach. It was great. The Spanish teacher also knows Russian - how cool is that? Forensics got the nod, as did SAT prep and other non-traditional courses.
Needless to say, Mme. Duck is not amused. "I have so much work." "I'm just overwhelmed." "The students hate me even though I tried to help them. It just goes to show you how ungrateful they are."
Gee, Mme. Duck, I'm not an expert, but the probable cause is that you offered a course which is not in your area of expertise, you demanded that it be a requirement for seniors, and you forgot that many of the seniors are probably not finding your class too useful or meaningful, and that they've hated the way you teach for about 4 years now.
Why is that?
It's because you hand out photocopied workbook pages, plop down in your chair, and then don't teach them anything. It might also be that you chose a ninth grade level consumer-math skills book (designed for pre-algebra abilities) and everyone is feeling just a weeeee bit insulted. They don't think that learning to make change is something worth spending three days on. Many already have a car, with insurance and payments, they have a credit card and bank account. You don't need 12 pages of culturally diverse vignettes describing how to fill in the lines on a check.
I'd be more sympathetic, but when the math department pointed out a few of these problems, you rejected us and ran to the principal. Principal PJs couldn't figure out how long D period is -- 9:37 - 10:18 -- addition and subtraction are not his strength. He went along because "Everyone needs consumer skills."
The guidance counselor and scheduler, Mr. YankeeFan, got upset when you went over his head and basically forced him to redo the entire schedule in the first weeks of JUNE because you and Principal PJs suddenly wanted this a GRADUATION REQUIREMENT. At the last bloody minute. Mr YF got great glee setting you up with exactly the classes what you demanded before he waltzed off to a new job.
You have what you demanded. Your students are barely hanging on to their sanity. Your complaints are ringing in our ears.
Epic FAIL.
It's going to take some time to get fully used to it, but it has definite potential. The biggest upside is the increased chances for electives. We were all given the opportunity to propose new courses that we would like to teach. It was great. The Spanish teacher also knows Russian - how cool is that? Forensics got the nod, as did SAT prep and other non-traditional courses.
Needless to say, Mme. Duck is not amused. "I have so much work." "I'm just overwhelmed." "The students hate me even though I tried to help them. It just goes to show you how ungrateful they are."
Gee, Mme. Duck, I'm not an expert, but the probable cause is that you offered a course which is not in your area of expertise, you demanded that it be a requirement for seniors, and you forgot that many of the seniors are probably not finding your class too useful or meaningful, and that they've hated the way you teach for about 4 years now.
Why is that?
It's because you hand out photocopied workbook pages, plop down in your chair, and then don't teach them anything. It might also be that you chose a ninth grade level consumer-math skills book (designed for pre-algebra abilities) and everyone is feeling just a weeeee bit insulted. They don't think that learning to make change is something worth spending three days on. Many already have a car, with insurance and payments, they have a credit card and bank account. You don't need 12 pages of culturally diverse vignettes describing how to fill in the lines on a check.
I'd be more sympathetic, but when the math department pointed out a few of these problems, you rejected us and ran to the principal. Principal PJs couldn't figure out how long D period is -- 9:37 - 10:18 -- addition and subtraction are not his strength. He went along because "Everyone needs consumer skills."
The guidance counselor and scheduler, Mr. YankeeFan, got upset when you went over his head and basically forced him to redo the entire schedule in the first weeks of JUNE because you and Principal PJs suddenly wanted this a GRADUATION REQUIREMENT. At the last bloody minute. Mr YF got great glee setting you up with exactly the classes what you demanded before he waltzed off to a new job.
You have what you demanded. Your students are barely hanging on to their sanity. Your complaints are ringing in our ears.
Epic FAIL.
PD has me PO'd.
Labels:
PDev,
Technology,
Tools
Dangerously Irrelevant wants to revamp Professional Development, to which I say "Hoo-Ah." Then I read the rest of it.
"Big idea 1: Most current staff development is awful."
Okay, for a Big Idea, this isn't much on the Wow scale. I thought this post was going to have some Ideas.
"Big idea 2: School vision statements are feckless."
Ummm. okay. I've never really felt that 50 words tacked over the door was much more than hokum, but this post isn't ringing my bell so far.
"Big idea 3: Schools have a great deal of internal expertise."
Ummm. okay. Sometimes though, this is the root of the problem ... many of those who are willing to get up some initiative are also those whose ideas are riddled with false intellectualism and educationese. You know, the ones whose jargon is meant to confuse rather than clarify.
Big idea 4: Students are experts too.
Ummm. no. They're not. They're willing to play with toys, but that doesn't make them experts any more than typing this blog makes me a Pulitzer-winner. Most of the students I've seen are technologically useless except when it comes to texting and IMing and Myspacing out. Games and toys are fine amusements for the young. Hardly what I'd call the qualifications of an expert.
All of this leads me to… Big idea 5: Have students deliver technology-related training!
Sure. Doing what, exactly?
Using the SmartBoard? If a teacher doesn't know how to use it, he should read the F Manual and work at it. You know, like we tell our kids to do - work at it, read the instructions, follow directions, practice, explore the software.
Excel or Powerpoint? Please. They do just enough to answer the question and then stop. Mostly, they play and attempt to copy off each other.
MySQL, Access? No.
PHP, ASP, JSP, AJAX? Right. In this lifetime?
FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, C, C#, PASCAL, VBASIC? No7. This is too much like work.
Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash, Premiere, Final Cut? Maybe, but only if they can morph the teacher's head onto a naked body and dub in the sound of giggling.
The rare few with the maturity to make art or programming that's useful in some way are greatly outnumbered by "I'm a digital native because I can listen to an iPod" clowns. These few would probably make a nice presentation for the tech illiterate. For me, though, and those like me, the preferred stuation is for that kid to sit down and "Check this out. Look at what I made this do!"
The last thing I want to do is to sit in PD while a student attempts to teach me something I learned years ago or that I could learn easily if I had the need. A fundamental problem remains the teachers' lack of motivation to learn the most basic tech without screaming for "more training" and "I'm not working on this at home."
If the computer teacher spent her time actually preparing for her classes and writing her plans instead of whining constantly about how overworked she is ...
If the slackers spent less time making stupid surveys from SurveyMonkey trying to change the schedule ...
Give me a break.
------------------------------------------
I'll post the entire article for reference:
Student-delivered PD: An idea whose time has come?
A collection of thoughts about P-12 professional development, with a (hopefully) whiz-bang ending…
Big idea 1: Most current staff development is awful.
We have known for decades what leads to powerful adult learning and what constitutes effective professional development. Yet the 3– or 4–days per year, ‘sit and get,’ one-size-fits-all training model still persists on a large scale. Shame on us.
Big idea 2: School vision statements are feckless.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a school organization that doesn’t have a vision, mission, or purpose statement that says blah blah blah life long learning blah blah blah. And yet we don’t really model ‘life long learning’ very well. Administrators feel that they can show no weakness in front of staff or parents. Teachers feel that they must be the experts before they can ‘teach’ students. No one has tried to operationalize the concept or delineate what it actually looks like. In terms of impact on daily practice, it’s a meaningless feel-good aphorism (much like all kids can learn). Shame on us.
Big idea 3: Schools have a great deal of internal expertise.
At the risk of impacting my occasional consulting income, I’m willing to say that most districts would be better served by having in-house experts deliver training rather than paying some outside guru big bucks to come in for a day (or hour). There’s a tremendous wealth of in-house expertise that goes ignored within school organizations. Shame on us.
Big idea 4: Students are experts too.
Tapscott & Williams note in Wikinomics (2006) that this is the first time in human history when children are authorities on something really important (p. 47). In other words, when it comes to digital technologies, our kids often are (or, given the chance, could rapidly become) the experts. We ignore this expertise in most school organization. Shame on us.
All of this leads me to…
Big idea 5: Have students deliver technology-related training!
Put Big Ideas 1 and 3 together and it’s clear that school organizations should do a better job of peer-to-peer training. Throw in Big Ideas 2 and 4 and we see that many school organizations could easily structure technology training opportunities for educators, parents, and students where children and adolescents were the instructors or co-instructors. The kids get the learning power and social/emotional benefit of being teachers and leaders. Adults and other students learn from the true experts.
All we have to do is walk away from our egos and our fear and embrace our mission statements, the ones that say that we all should be learners and say nothing about from whom we must learn.
How about it? You ready to start doing this?
"Big idea 1: Most current staff development is awful."
Okay, for a Big Idea, this isn't much on the Wow scale. I thought this post was going to have some Ideas.
"Big idea 2: School vision statements are feckless."
Ummm. okay. I've never really felt that 50 words tacked over the door was much more than hokum, but this post isn't ringing my bell so far.
"Big idea 3: Schools have a great deal of internal expertise."
Ummm. okay. Sometimes though, this is the root of the problem ... many of those who are willing to get up some initiative are also those whose ideas are riddled with false intellectualism and educationese. You know, the ones whose jargon is meant to confuse rather than clarify.
Big idea 4: Students are experts too.
Ummm. no. They're not. They're willing to play with toys, but that doesn't make them experts any more than typing this blog makes me a Pulitzer-winner. Most of the students I've seen are technologically useless except when it comes to texting and IMing and Myspacing out. Games and toys are fine amusements for the young. Hardly what I'd call the qualifications of an expert.
All of this leads me to… Big idea 5: Have students deliver technology-related training!
Sure. Doing what, exactly?
Using the SmartBoard? If a teacher doesn't know how to use it, he should read the F Manual and work at it. You know, like we tell our kids to do - work at it, read the instructions, follow directions, practice, explore the software.
Excel or Powerpoint? Please. They do just enough to answer the question and then stop. Mostly, they play and attempt to copy off each other.
MySQL, Access? No.
PHP, ASP, JSP, AJAX? Right. In this lifetime?
FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, C, C#, PASCAL, VBASIC? No7. This is too much like work.
Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash, Premiere, Final Cut? Maybe, but only if they can morph the teacher's head onto a naked body and dub in the sound of giggling.
The rare few with the maturity to make art or programming that's useful in some way are greatly outnumbered by "I'm a digital native because I can listen to an iPod" clowns. These few would probably make a nice presentation for the tech illiterate. For me, though, and those like me, the preferred stuation is for that kid to sit down and "Check this out. Look at what I made this do!"
The last thing I want to do is to sit in PD while a student attempts to teach me something I learned years ago or that I could learn easily if I had the need. A fundamental problem remains the teachers' lack of motivation to learn the most basic tech without screaming for "more training" and "I'm not working on this at home."
If the computer teacher spent her time actually preparing for her classes and writing her plans instead of whining constantly about how overworked she is ...
If the slackers spent less time making stupid surveys from SurveyMonkey trying to change the schedule ...
Give me a break.
------------------------------------------
I'll post the entire article for reference:
Student-delivered PD: An idea whose time has come?
A collection of thoughts about P-12 professional development, with a (hopefully) whiz-bang ending…
Big idea 1: Most current staff development is awful.
We have known for decades what leads to powerful adult learning and what constitutes effective professional development. Yet the 3– or 4–days per year, ‘sit and get,’ one-size-fits-all training model still persists on a large scale. Shame on us.
Big idea 2: School vision statements are feckless.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a school organization that doesn’t have a vision, mission, or purpose statement that says blah blah blah life long learning blah blah blah. And yet we don’t really model ‘life long learning’ very well. Administrators feel that they can show no weakness in front of staff or parents. Teachers feel that they must be the experts before they can ‘teach’ students. No one has tried to operationalize the concept or delineate what it actually looks like. In terms of impact on daily practice, it’s a meaningless feel-good aphorism (much like all kids can learn). Shame on us.
Big idea 3: Schools have a great deal of internal expertise.
At the risk of impacting my occasional consulting income, I’m willing to say that most districts would be better served by having in-house experts deliver training rather than paying some outside guru big bucks to come in for a day (or hour). There’s a tremendous wealth of in-house expertise that goes ignored within school organizations. Shame on us.
Big idea 4: Students are experts too.
Tapscott & Williams note in Wikinomics (2006) that this is the first time in human history when children are authorities on something really important (p. 47). In other words, when it comes to digital technologies, our kids often are (or, given the chance, could rapidly become) the experts. We ignore this expertise in most school organization. Shame on us.
All of this leads me to…
Big idea 5: Have students deliver technology-related training!
Put Big Ideas 1 and 3 together and it’s clear that school organizations should do a better job of peer-to-peer training. Throw in Big Ideas 2 and 4 and we see that many school organizations could easily structure technology training opportunities for educators, parents, and students where children and adolescents were the instructors or co-instructors. The kids get the learning power and social/emotional benefit of being teachers and leaders. Adults and other students learn from the true experts.
All we have to do is walk away from our egos and our fear and embrace our mission statements, the ones that say that we all should be learners and say nothing about from whom we must learn.
How about it? You ready to start doing this?
Speaking of Obama
Charles Krauthammer wrote:
With him we get a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
We found Him
Labels:
Daily Silliness,
SpecEd
Mrs. Curmudgeon, also a teacher, reports that her school has finally found the ONE. You've heard the stories, the rumors, the whispers. You never thought you'd ever meet him. He's the ONE. He's loud, obnoxious, bounces around in class. He doesn't do any work, teases and taunts other kids when he can get away with it. Hyperactive behaviors. The works. Special Ed has tested him left, right and center ... Took hours of time and bunches of money.
And can't find anything wrong.
No diagnosis of ADHD or ADD. No ED. No OCD or ODD. No bad home life. No learning diasabilities, no dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dysfuntional. He's not autistic, or Asberger's, Tourette's, nope. Average IQ on the WISC-R or Woodcock Johnson.
Nothing.
They can't give him an IEP, 504, 157, EST, VIP, MVPFB or any other alpha-numeric excuse. He's solely responsible for his bad behavior.
Didn't see that one coming, did you?
And can't find anything wrong.
No diagnosis of ADHD or ADD. No ED. No OCD or ODD. No bad home life. No learning diasabilities, no dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dysfuntional. He's not autistic, or Asberger's, Tourette's, nope. Average IQ on the WISC-R or Woodcock Johnson.
Nothing.
They can't give him an IEP, 504, 157, EST, VIP, MVPFB or any other alpha-numeric excuse. He's solely responsible for his bad behavior.
Didn't see that one coming, did you?
Time for Words of caution
Labels:
Politics
Every once in a while I feel the need to step back and let someone else do the talking. Especially if the words are spot-on.
from Michael Crichton on opinion and the media
Hear, hear.
from Michael Crichton on opinion and the media
I grew up in the 1950s, supposedly the heyday of conformity, but there was much more freedom of opinion back then. And as a result, you knew that your neighbors might hold different views from you on politics or religion. Today, the notion that men of good will can disagree has disappeared. Can you imagine! Today, if I disagree with you, you conclude there is something wrong with me. This is a childish, parochial view. And of course stupefyingly intolerant. It's truly anti-American. Much of it can be laid at the feet of the environmental movement, which has unfortunately frequently been led by ill-educated and intolerant spokespersons--often with no more than a high-school education, sometimes not even that. Or they are lawyers trained to win at any cost and to say anything about their opponents to win. But you find the same intolerant tone around considerations of defense, taxation, free markets, universal medical care, and so on. There's plenty of zealotry to go around. And it's hardly new in human history.
The media might stand as a corrective, cool and a bit detached, showing by example how to approach information and controversy. Instead, the media has clearly caught the fever of our intolerant times. Formerly, news people would never openly state their allegiance; young reporters understood it was poor form, and a senior person would carry the caution born of the experience that at least some of what one believes in the course of one's life turns out to be wrong. But it's a new era. Now, media reporters are proud to pound the table and declare their advocacy. Since so few of them have any training in science, they don't really know what they are pounding about, when it comes to global warming. They couldn't tell you even in general terms how the global mean temperature is calculated, for example. But it doesn't matter anyway. They just want to declare they believe what "everyone" believes. Who values such a news source?
Hear, hear.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Technology might be the answer, but not to this question.
Labels:
Math Reform,
Tools
Dangerously Irrelevant posted the other day
I'd like for all of the people reading this to follow that link and see if you see what I saw. Then come back and finish here.
Interesting that none of the viewers of this pleasant little graphic actually learned enough to notice that one of the slides in the presentation was incorrect. The commenters on Dangerously Irrelevant were all effusive in their praise of this wonderful new tool for education called technology. The commenters on wisc-online were as well - it's so much better than school!
Aside to people: if you're going to praise something, check your grammer. Typos can be forgiven but incoherence is another matter.
Shudder.
Interesting, too, that wisconsin-online has not corrected the slide.
The real problem here is that this style of education - this Death by Poweroint animation model - is touted as the paragon of education. "Bam! Ten minutes later my daughter and I had learned what a radian was (the animation was much more helpful than the mere definitions that we found), answered correctly all of the self-assessment questions, and were ready to move forward."
or
"It’s going to become unbelievably easy to find a variety of ways other than text to learn about almost anything we want."
Well, not really. You found a definition and answered three multiple-choice questions.
Let's look in more detail at the "wonderful job" this thing does.
page 3 says "click next to learn why they chose 360" - and shows a circle divided into 72 sections. Hmmmm.
Page 4 puts out a reason that is NOT the most likely, isn't the one accepted by scholars or even Wikipedia. It doesn't mention any other reasons, reasons which are more likely and more reasonable if you credit the Babylonians with any brains at all. Unfortunately this animation just assumes they miscounted the number of days in a year, something they knew quite well. Interesting.
I can't complain about the animations too much. The animations ARE useful. I would probably use one myself if I hadn't already had several versions of it. Mine don't have the straight red line extending a bit as it gets wraps around the circle but most kids wouldn't notice that happening.
I also don't like the habit of filling in the sector to represent the angle. It's an unnecessary multimedia "feature" that doesn't help understanding. I'm probably just quibbling, though.
page 12 is really quick with no additional explanations - I can't see students accepting that fact without questions or discussion.
page 16 is just wrong. Think about it -- page 14 just got done saying that pi radians is a half-circle. (That's 3.14 radians for those asking) The page 16 figure has three radii as being MORE than a half-circle. This is such a simple error to fix, yet no one has. WHY? Can it be that the creator did not realize the error himself and that no one has pointed it out? Again, why has no one pointed it out? - because all the information on the internet is true, as far as most students are concerned. Who dares question the great shiny box?
This is the problem with computerized learning, internet information, wikipedia, and many other "modern" methods of learning -- it seems so good because it's colorful and mostly accurate, yet contains mistakes that are fundamental and should have been obvious. These mistakes arise because the programmers are not math people, and math people are generally not programmers. More, those programmers are very often teenagers with an imperfect grasp of the material, but have the time to waste creating Wikipedia content.
It seemed somewhat amateurish, like something I'd get if I assigned it's creation to my 11th graders. The fact that it's held up as the model for the next generation of teachers is disturbing and bears witness to the folly of depending on the top results from Google to answer much more than trivia questions.
By the way,
All of the math teachers I know who have seen this recognized the errors as fast as I.
-------------
DI replied:
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Of course textbooks have errors too, and often teachers miss those as well. We can't blame the medium (Web or print), only our authors and fact-checkers. I appreciate you giving me some food for thought for today!
-------------
As quick reply and follow on, then I'm going back to checking homework papers.
Fixed stays fixed.
I agree that books have errors, but mostly in the problem solutions or in some area that is left to the graduate students to flesh out. The teachers I know take great pride in finding those errors and the students great satisfaction at noticing and correcting an error in the supposedly perfect text. An error, once found, remains corrected. Internet errors, especially Wikipedia errors, have an amazing ability to resurrect themselves. I am reminded of the case of a man who couldn't correct his own biography - the teenaged uber-user kept rewriting it and finally locked him out. How many other errors are there?
Rarity
The second issue with "Textbooks are wrong, too" is the frequency. True, textbooks have errors, but far fewer than the information I typically find on the web.
Intent
Book errors are usually due to oversight or grad student miscalculation. They are rarely errors in fact or method. The errors on the web are due to not only typographical or "understandable" mistakes - I would include page 16 above - but also of the intentionally misleading (what politics calls spin), intentionally incorrect and nasty (see martinlutherking.org) or just plain boneheaded nonsense.
I don't mean to pick on your one line, but the flexible and ever-changing nature of the medium demands that factual and methodological errors be fixed as soon as possible. I don't see that happening in very many cases.
Does internet reference ever work? Wolfram, yes. Wikipedia, only when it's a fact-based question that can be easily checked. Wisc-online - as far as I can tell. General websites, almost never - you just can't trust the answers unless you already know them.
Internet learning can be valuable - fix the errors above and that would be a good explanation of radians. But how are students supposed to know what's good and not? The previous commenters and reviewers and website users all took that little tutorial and none realized the errors. And that's a single page on a generally good site.
These ARE the fault of the medium as it is today and we must lay the blame at its feet or the medium will never change or improve. Is it a deal killer? No, but it worries me.
The whole lipstick on a pig thing.
But then, I don't want to be political.
Can a computer lecture better than a human?
I’m going to prime the pump a little bit for my K12 Online presentation next week… My fifth-grade daughter’s math homework this weekend required her to find out what a radian or a grad was (hint: both are ways besides degrees to measure angles). We hit ye olde Google and quickly found this helpful (and free) learning activity from Wisconsin Online.
I'd like for all of the people reading this to follow that link and see if you see what I saw. Then come back and finish here.
Interesting that none of the viewers of this pleasant little graphic actually learned enough to notice that one of the slides in the presentation was incorrect. The commenters on Dangerously Irrelevant were all effusive in their praise of this wonderful new tool for education called technology. The commenters on wisc-online were as well - it's so much better than school!
Aside to people: if you're going to praise something, check your grammer. Typos can be forgiven but incoherence is another matter.
"This website is what our entire culture will be like in the future when society is truly and educational and deschooled (read Ivan Illich) one, straight talk free and available to the public, instead of academia building walls around information. How many thousands of dollars would I have had to give a bank to get a school to tell me, pretending theres no other way, what this site alone has taught me? Many thanks."
Shudder.
Interesting, too, that wisconsin-online has not corrected the slide.
The real problem here is that this style of education - this Death by Poweroint animation model - is touted as the paragon of education. "Bam! Ten minutes later my daughter and I had learned what a radian was (the animation was much more helpful than the mere definitions that we found), answered correctly all of the self-assessment questions, and were ready to move forward."
or
"It’s going to become unbelievably easy to find a variety of ways other than text to learn about almost anything we want."
Well, not really. You found a definition and answered three multiple-choice questions.
Let's look in more detail at the "wonderful job" this thing does.
page 3 says "click next to learn why they chose 360" - and shows a circle divided into 72 sections. Hmmmm.
Page 4 puts out a reason that is NOT the most likely, isn't the one accepted by scholars or even Wikipedia. It doesn't mention any other reasons, reasons which are more likely and more reasonable if you credit the Babylonians with any brains at all. Unfortunately this animation just assumes they miscounted the number of days in a year, something they knew quite well. Interesting.
I can't complain about the animations too much. The animations ARE useful. I would probably use one myself if I hadn't already had several versions of it. Mine don't have the straight red line extending a bit as it gets wraps around the circle but most kids wouldn't notice that happening.
I also don't like the habit of filling in the sector to represent the angle. It's an unnecessary multimedia "feature" that doesn't help understanding. I'm probably just quibbling, though.
page 12 is really quick with no additional explanations - I can't see students accepting that fact without questions or discussion.
page 16 is just wrong. Think about it -- page 14 just got done saying that pi radians is a half-circle. (That's 3.14 radians for those asking) The page 16 figure has three radii as being MORE than a half-circle. This is such a simple error to fix, yet no one has. WHY? Can it be that the creator did not realize the error himself and that no one has pointed it out? Again, why has no one pointed it out? - because all the information on the internet is true, as far as most students are concerned. Who dares question the great shiny box?
This is the problem with computerized learning, internet information, wikipedia, and many other "modern" methods of learning -- it seems so good because it's colorful and mostly accurate, yet contains mistakes that are fundamental and should have been obvious. These mistakes arise because the programmers are not math people, and math people are generally not programmers. More, those programmers are very often teenagers with an imperfect grasp of the material, but have the time to waste creating Wikipedia content.
It seemed somewhat amateurish, like something I'd get if I assigned it's creation to my 11th graders. The fact that it's held up as the model for the next generation of teachers is disturbing and bears witness to the folly of depending on the top results from Google to answer much more than trivia questions.
By the way,
All of the math teachers I know who have seen this recognized the errors as fast as I.
-------------
DI replied:
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Of course textbooks have errors too, and often teachers miss those as well. We can't blame the medium (Web or print), only our authors and fact-checkers. I appreciate you giving me some food for thought for today!
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As quick reply and follow on, then I'm going back to checking homework papers.
Fixed stays fixed.
I agree that books have errors, but mostly in the problem solutions or in some area that is left to the graduate students to flesh out. The teachers I know take great pride in finding those errors and the students great satisfaction at noticing and correcting an error in the supposedly perfect text. An error, once found, remains corrected. Internet errors, especially Wikipedia errors, have an amazing ability to resurrect themselves. I am reminded of the case of a man who couldn't correct his own biography - the teenaged uber-user kept rewriting it and finally locked him out. How many other errors are there?
Rarity
The second issue with "Textbooks are wrong, too" is the frequency. True, textbooks have errors, but far fewer than the information I typically find on the web.
Intent
Book errors are usually due to oversight or grad student miscalculation. They are rarely errors in fact or method. The errors on the web are due to not only typographical or "understandable" mistakes - I would include page 16 above - but also of the intentionally misleading (what politics calls spin), intentionally incorrect and nasty (see martinlutherking.org) or just plain boneheaded nonsense.
I don't mean to pick on your one line, but the flexible and ever-changing nature of the medium demands that factual and methodological errors be fixed as soon as possible. I don't see that happening in very many cases.
Does internet reference ever work? Wolfram, yes. Wikipedia, only when it's a fact-based question that can be easily checked. Wisc-online - as far as I can tell. General websites, almost never - you just can't trust the answers unless you already know them.
Internet learning can be valuable - fix the errors above and that would be a good explanation of radians. But how are students supposed to know what's good and not? The previous commenters and reviewers and website users all took that little tutorial and none realized the errors. And that's a single page on a generally good site.
These ARE the fault of the medium as it is today and we must lay the blame at its feet or the medium will never change or improve. Is it a deal killer? No, but it worries me.
The whole lipstick on a pig thing.
But then, I don't want to be political.
Dance of the Lemons begins anon.
Labels:
WTF
I went visiting some old friends from another school the other day. These guys had been through a lot with bad principals in the last few years - a wimp then a loser, followed by touchy-feely throw around a ball of yarn dude, replaced by borderline psychotic paranoid woman. So they breathed a pretty big sigh of relief when the down-to-earth guy arrived.
Who has been seen recently with the science teacher's hot wife ... in a setting and with behavior that didn't suggest routine "networking". Yup, the married with kids Principal canoodling with the married-with-baby, science teacher's wife. Quiet so far, but sooner or later, scandal will out.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends.
Who has been seen recently with the science teacher's hot wife ... in a setting and with behavior that didn't suggest routine "networking". Yup, the married with kids Principal canoodling with the married-with-baby, science teacher's wife. Quiet so far, but sooner or later, scandal will out.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends.
Politics and math -- what a concept!
Labels:
Politics
I love when conservative bloviators try to make government sound really terrible, like this one did a few days ago on a Vt-based blog:
Sounds pretty mean of the state, doesn't it? "The gummint is just trying to ruin small business here in our state," I hear them cry.
The blog entry referenced another article for more details. A sentence from the article: "The settlement ... requires Bove's to donate $50,000 worth of food to the Vermont Foodbank and pay a fine of $5,000"
That's not a six-figure fine, at least not to people who do math. Maybe he's using the two digits after the decimal point? And that not much of a fine, really. That $5 grand won't cover the state's cost in lawyers and wouldn't be a fraction of the company's lawyer fee.
What was the point? "The attorney general said it is manufactured in Rochester, N.Y. and contains California tomatoes and "only one type of cheese ... made in Vermont." The product has other ingredients whose "geographic origin ... was unknown to the company," the attorney general's news release said." Puts a different spin on it, doesn't it?
As for the $50k part? It doesn't mean company cost of $50k but rather retail price - the company is probably paying $8k-10k out-of-pocket at most. Finally, it's being given to the Food Bank, for chrissakes.
More Orwellian, though, the company will call all of it a donation, like ad-copy for the holidays: "We're donating $100,000 of food product to the Vermont Foodbank." - actual quote.
Yikes, indeed.
--- update:
Later this afternoon, it also occurred to me that the company will write off both the fine and the required donation of $50k from their taxes, gaining more than the cost of the product involved. Add the voluntary donation and the write-off. Good for the accounting department.
It then all becomes a huge ad campaign: $100k of product labeled with your name being given to thousands of hungry folks in your sales area - those are not the folks who are going to be offended by the "not made in Vermont" tag. The people who do buy into the "buy local, eat local" are the only ones who will be affected -- but many of them will be swayed by the "Gummint messing with po' little us" argument here.
You are keeping your employees happy by maintaining their jobs in a bad time. They've already started the "We're wonderful for giving $100000" spin.
Protecting the Vermont Brand
The label says "Produced for Bove's of Vermont." The sauce is produced for Bove's of Vermont. What more truth in labeling can there be? But Bove's of Vermont will have to pay a six-figure fine. Yikes! We wish Vermont would get as tough on real crime as it is on business.
Sounds pretty mean of the state, doesn't it? "The gummint is just trying to ruin small business here in our state," I hear them cry.
The blog entry referenced another article for more details. A sentence from the article: "The settlement ... requires Bove's to donate $50,000 worth of food to the Vermont Foodbank and pay a fine of $5,000"
That's not a six-figure fine, at least not to people who do math. Maybe he's using the two digits after the decimal point? And that not much of a fine, really. That $5 grand won't cover the state's cost in lawyers and wouldn't be a fraction of the company's lawyer fee.
What was the point? "The attorney general said it is manufactured in Rochester, N.Y. and contains California tomatoes and "only one type of cheese ... made in Vermont." The product has other ingredients whose "geographic origin ... was unknown to the company," the attorney general's news release said." Puts a different spin on it, doesn't it?
As for the $50k part? It doesn't mean company cost of $50k but rather retail price - the company is probably paying $8k-10k out-of-pocket at most. Finally, it's being given to the Food Bank, for chrissakes.
More Orwellian, though, the company will call all of it a donation, like ad-copy for the holidays: "We're donating $100,000 of food product to the Vermont Foodbank." - actual quote.
Yikes, indeed.
--- update:
Later this afternoon, it also occurred to me that the company will write off both the fine and the required donation of $50k from their taxes, gaining more than the cost of the product involved. Add the voluntary donation and the write-off. Good for the accounting department.
It then all becomes a huge ad campaign: $100k of product labeled with your name being given to thousands of hungry folks in your sales area - those are not the folks who are going to be offended by the "not made in Vermont" tag. The people who do buy into the "buy local, eat local" are the only ones who will be affected -- but many of them will be swayed by the "Gummint messing with po' little us" argument here.
You are keeping your employees happy by maintaining their jobs in a bad time. They've already started the "We're wonderful for giving $100000" spin.
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