Category Archives: education

All too accurate

via Stephen Downes:

…and he gets it in one:

…the selection of what constitutes a core is ineliminably political, and therefore all (so-called) ‘common’ core initiatives are (thinly disguised) political campaigns…

At the moment I’m seeing the Grand Problem as one of motivation, given that learners of all ages HAVE magnificent and unprecedented tools at the tips of their fingers. Who will they choose to emulate? Who provides the spark that ignites an individual learner’s creativity? For most of us, that person was a Teacher, formal or informal, in school or out.

addendum

In spite of my cold-oatmeal attitudes toward Education and IT, I do continue to follow the doings of people whom I know to be On The Right Track, among whom I include Stephen Downes, Bryan Alexander, CogDog, GeekyMom, and Brian Lamb. The most recent posting at Abject Learning quotes Stephen Downes and is worth reading for itself, but it also echoes what I’m finding in John Thorne this morning:

I have written before –most specifically when recounting my wood-fired bread oven adventures– that I do not take instruction gladly. Push a book in my hand and tell me I just have to read it and chances are it will be a decade before I can bear to pick it up… Facts only interest me when they are pieces to a puzzle I have already decided to assemble, and I would rather find them after hours of rooting around in a junkyard than have them handed to me on a plate. (page 29, Mouth Wide Open)

Cooking, learning… pretty much the same Thing, innit?

On teachers, and teaching

I still find myself gnawing on the old bones of what it is to Teach, and to Learn. Now and again a ray of clarity breaks through the fug, and today’s case in point is Daniel Holz’ Ave atque Vale in honor of John Archibald Wheeler, the link for which was forwarded to me by Nick. I’ve known a couple of Teachers of that too-rare sort, and it’s worth considering why there aren’t more of them… what it is about the institutions that (occasionally) contain such wonders that doesn’t nourish their development, and reward their enterprise.

Didja say where you got it? (a propos of Appropriation)

If I still had a classroom to work in, I’d devote several classes (hell, why not a whole course? …though under which rubrics I ain’t sure…) to the issues discussed in the Plagiarism episode of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, featuring interviews with Jonathan Lethem, DJ Spooky [That Subliminal Kid], Judge Richard Posner, and Malcolm Gladwell. The hour of talk and examples is absolute must listening for those whose lives are entangled with teaching-and-learning.

I’ll also remind you of a posting from almost a year ago, pointing to Christopher Lydon’s interview with Jonathan Lethem, and (if Harper’s will let non-subscribers see it) to Lethem’s article The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism (Harper’s, Feb 2007).

Just a few teasers from the WPR show:

“Art comes not out of the void, but out of chaos” (1:35)
Barthes to Twain to Emerson to Lethem (1:55)
“the software that we use to edit is just as much a part of the artwork, you know?” (1:00)
“it’s like playing with respect for the history of things” (0:55)

snowball gathers mass and speed

Here’s what occurred as I unfroze pipes and washed dishes: cultivate the Art of Contextualizing Juxtaposition, spinning out the stories liberated by juxtapositions, and encouraging others to play at doing the same. In the context of teaching-learning, it’s encouraging students to MAKE things; whether they’re haiku or collage or mashup or essay matters less than the evolving taste for making and mooting own expression, in [semi-] public space. The essential is that the instructor be seen to be doing the very same thing.

A snowball perched on a hilltop

Sometimes a confluence of quite disparate influences provokes a blog posting that bursts out into a new vector of interest and attention. One never knows when that’s going to strike, and sometimes it comes to nothing: having stricken, moves on. At the moment, the bits that seem to be shouldering their way to the fore are:

  • Scott Atran’s rumination on fictive kinship (perhaps you have to be an anthropologist to jump at a title with ‘fictive kinship’ in it, but read on…)
  • Scott Horton’s quoting of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” at harpers.org (dunno if you have to be a Subscriber to see it, but if so the text is here), which is known to one and all as a cliché [“Good fences make good neighbors’], but not generally attended for its other Messages, or for its geological and New England landscape Verities
  • the delicious richness of Gardner Campbell’s working toward the coming term, and the wonderful prospect afforded by his vow to blog daily. His use of sound clips is, well, exemplary, and his choice of quotations goes unerringly to my heart. I mean, jeez, who else juxtaposes Jerome Bruner

    A curriculum is more for teachers than it is for pupils. If it cannot change, move, perturb, inform teachers, it will have no effect on those whom they teach.

    and Paul Greenglass

    …freedom, improvisation, the moment, the… the thing that happens in front of your camera that you didn’t predict…”

These seem to be parts of a bigger Something that’s taking shape in my mind. Stay tuned while I figure this out…

Stephen Downes, yet again

I continue to marvel at the continuing evolution of Stephen’s style in presentations, both his Web presence(s) and his conference stuff. Recent case in point: A Kaleidoscope of Futures: Reflections on the Reality of Virtual Learning, video-with-slides from a late-October presentation. The video is an hour, perhaps more than one needs if Stephen’s schtick is already familiar (though he’s different every time), but what a wonderful way to distribute content…

On Rearward Horizons

Two years after the moment of Retirement, a glance in the rear view mirror suggests that Things are indeed Larger Than They Appear, in the sense that they’re disappearing into the distance. They may be Larger, but increasingly I don’t much care, or anyhow don’t care in the ways that I once did. Reform Teaching and Learning? Faugh. Take on and remediate the technological cluelessness of librarians and college administrators? I thumb my nose in your general direction. Carry on campaigns for GIS and Web 2.0? Somebody else can break their teeth on those bones. But still I occasionally find statements that stir some of those former enthusiasms, usually in the edublogs I’m still following (though in ever more desultory ways). Today’s case in point: don’t miss the beloved Stephen Downes’ latest, Stager, Log and Web 2.0 for its array of home truths and eloquent Aux Armes! that are his specialty. A few crisp outtakes:

…the main lesson is, I would say, school reform won’t work. Schools were designed for a particular purpose, one that is almost diametrically at odds with what ought to be the practices and objectives of a contemporary education, an education suited not only to the information age but also to the objectives of personal freedom and empowerment…

…it’s not just that the textbook is an inefficient paper-and-ink publication. It’s the whole idea of standardization and lesson plans and curriculum that the textbook brings with it. We should stop using textbooks because they cost too much. We should stay off textbooks because we get a better education as a result…

As Dave Pollard says, “Bucky was right: ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’ We won’t win zoning battles or economic control battles or electoral system battles or proportionate representation battles in the courts or the election campaigns or the markets that are controlled by the elite. We must instead walk away from these corrupt and dysfunctional systems and build new ones, responsive and responsible and sustainable alternatives that others can look at and say ‘yes, that works much better’.”

…people have pretty much given up on trying to reform the existing institutions. We’ve seen a lot of people try. Meet the new boss… same as the old boss. Why bother to fight the restrictions. School web is blocked? Just use your iPhone. Policies are overly restrictive? Just ignore them. I mean – what are they going to do, fire you from your $25K job? Why rock the boat when it’s going over the waterfall?

People are not just opting out of traditional education. They are also opting out of traditional business and traditional government. Making their own decisions instead of trying to sway bodies that purport to make decisions for them.

Trouble is, I’m not so sure myself who should be caring about this. I used to think I knew…