If there's one artist who I can always turn to for inspiration, it would be Thelonious Monk. Everytime I listen to his tunes, I find new pieces, parts, twists, transitive and intrasitive verbs, infractions, derelictions, all in all -- pure genius.
I don't know where I found this, but I wanted to share two pages from his journal:
While this advice was initially penned for musicians, I think it pertains to any person who creates (i.e., you -- reading this post!).
Monk's advice is not merely self-help pablum -- it's about teamwork, about playing together, about cooperation, collaboration, about getting your groove on. Dig?
Words of advice for your new year: "Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along + do it." In other words, you are full of great ideas, of creative genius -- don't wait around and keep all of that goodness to yourself -- share the wealth! Dig? But do it on your time -- you are in charge of you.
Feeling, dare I say, a natural sense of disequilibrium after teaching last semester, I decided to break out my copy of Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society (1970) and reflecting on both my own experience and the thoughts of a renowned subversive, social activist.
Illich's work is designed to challenge our collective thinking about schools, schooling, teaching, and learning. And that it does--by the metric ton. What the text offers is a phenomenological assessment of what has become of schooling in an industrialized, post-modern world -- a world where time is money, efficiency trumps creativity, and teaching is confused with learning.
In an attempt to present a few slices of Illich's thinking and to present a handful of challenges to your perceptions of teaching and learning, I thought I would select a few excerpts for your consideration. While these passages are pulled out of context, they are meant as starting points for further discussion and represent aspects of Illich's arguments as a whole.
Schooling as perpetuation of social ills
School makes alienation preparatory to life, thus depriving education of reality and work of creativity. School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition. p. 47.
For Illich, it appears schools are perpetuating social problems as opposed to being a solution to them. Why do I still feel like many schools are still operating against social needs as opposed to solving them? Is the institution of schooling itself? Is it the teachers, the administrators, the curricula? Is it the world we live in? Or a combination of all of the above? Where should we begin rebuilding schools?
Commodification of knowledge pt. I
Our options are clear enough. Either we continue to believe that institutionalized learning is a product which justifies unlimited investment or we rediscover that legislation and planning and investment, if they have any place in formal education, should be used mostly to tear down the barriers that now impede opportunities for learning, which can only be a personal activity. p 49
Do we expect medical doctors to see 20 patients at one time and to diagnose and treat everyone equally? Is this what's happening in our schools? I know this argument has been made before, but it still feels relevant here. Why aren't teachers' colleges educating teachers to work with students as individuals as opposed to students as classes? Is efficiency still the most important factor a teacher should know?
Commodification of knowledge pt. II
If we do not challenge the assumption that valuable knowledge is a commodity which under certain circumstances may be forced into the consumer, society will be increasingly dominated by sinister pseudo schools and totalitarian managers of information. Pedagogical therapists will drug their pupils more in order to teach them better, and students will drug themselves more to gain relief from the pressures of teachers and the race for certificates. p 49-50.
Did students have attention deficit problems 50 years ago? Is this deficit genetic or man-made? Who should decide what constitutes a meaningful education? Who should decide when we know enough to be ready for the "real world?"
Assessment
School has become a social problem; it is being attacked on all sides, and citizens and their governments sponsor unconventional experiments all over the world. They resort to unusual statistical devices in order to keep faith and save face. p. 49.
Clearly schools need to be able to offer meaningful forms of assessment and feedback to students, parents, teachers, principals, and so on. How can schools do this in a way that is meaningful for students rather than based on standards that truthfully may or may not apply?
Schooling and creativity
People who have been schooled down to size let unmeasured experience slip out of their hands. To them, what cannot be measured becomes secondary, threatening. They do not have to be robbed of their creativity. Under instruction, they have unlearned to "do" their thing or "be" themselves, and value only what has been made or could be made. p.40.
This passage reminds me of the work of Ken Robinson. Are schools focusing too much on the acquisition of factual knowledge while ignoring the individual needs and creativity of each student?
Is schooling really a Faustian bargain?
I have reserved providing passages from the end of Illich's text for the sake of reflecting on the questions above for a while. While Illich does offer a few solutions to the concepts annotated above, I find the questions more important right now than any answers. I believe that asking questions are more important at this stage; they permit us a chance to begin framing the priorities, the real challenges that face us directly. The answers we come up with will ultimately be contextual -- the one size fits all solution has not worked thus far, so why should we believe it will work in the future?
I encourage you to read (or re-read) Illich and to post your thoughts online. Together our collective thinking will surely ignite each other into finding ways to make schools a place more connected to what we as a society need as opposed to the way things were.
[Aside: Illich's work also provides a nice pretext to the notion of connectivism. He states that, "The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern." An example of such can be found on Manitoba's connectivism course and this Wikiversity page.]
Reference: Illich, I. (1970). Deschooling society. New York: Harper & Row.
My name is Michael Chua from Zebra Mobile, and I would like to introduce you to a new, COMPLETELY FREE service called SchoolCentral.
SchoolCentral is a custom-built web based communication platform, built upon the latest Internet and mobile technologies. This platform is not a call system, but serves as a mobile notification system, organizational tool, and communication hub between administration and the community. SchoolCentral will enable administration to improve the districts communication with parents and students, and will measurably impact parental involvement, staff communications, school organization, and community out-reach. Functioning as a supplement, this platform supports existing emergency procedures, providing different options of how important school information is sent and received.
10 Ways SchoolCentral Will Benefit Your School District:
1. Real Time Communication -SchoolCentral has the ability to send up to 9,000 messages per minute, via email, text message, web, mobile web or RSS. Capable of notifying the whole community, faster than any call-system, some districts under 60 seconds.
2. Platform Independence -School administrators and community are enabled to decide how they want to receive and respond to important information. School notifications are sent via Internet or SMS. If a district alert is sent from a cell phone, SchoolCentral deciphers what phone number it is sent from, and where it should be delivered. More frequent messages of less importance can also be sent to notify families when an event such as an awards program is cancelled, or if their child on the soccer team is returning late from an away game. Each member of the community now has the option to select what methods of communication are best preferred.
3. Communication Hub –SchoolCentral is a protected, moderated communication platform that provides each school, and groups within, its own online community. Parents and teachers can connect easily and engage in what is most important to us, our students. 4. Tool For the Classroom – Everyone benefits when using SchoolCentral in the classroom. Teachers are enabled to compliment a student for a job well done, or connect to a parent with underlying concerns. Our filing system allows teachers to store documents of unlimited size, giving students the option to access school material outside the classroom, or to reprint an assignment accidentally forgotten at school. 5. Tool For Athletics –Coaches can instantly notify students and parents, if practice is cancelled, when riding on the bus, or standing on the field. They also can address the community with the winning scores, stats or rosters. Each sports team now has a web presence, and their own calendaring, filing and alert systems. This enables them to share important notifications, drum up support, organize team practice and game schedules, or post pictures of the winning touchdown. The potential is endless. SchoolCentral’s group’s for athletics is a powerful tool, easily engaging parents and students throughout the community.
6. Easy to Use Calendaring –The RSS Feed calendaring system checks for new events or changes, and automatically updates every 60 seconds. It also can be synced with Ical, Gcal, and Outlook. Now all school related events are synced with your personal, work, and mobile calendars. Besides Alerts, the calendar is the second most utilized feature in the SchoolCentral platform. It allows parents with multiple children, to organize their schedule more efficiently with color-coding. It also has a reminder and invite feature, easily allowing reminder and event invitations sent to friends via Email, SMS, RSS, and Desktop Widget.
7. Upload Your School News Letters -Our News Section is a big hit with Superintendents. They now have the option to blog messages addressing the community without third party help. School newsletters of any size can be uploaded, and the community has the option to be notified by text, Email, or neither every time new material is released. This could save the district money by reducing cost on postage.
8. Easy Effort for Schools –This is an End-User-Based Platform. There is no database management, staff allocation, or maintenance required. Each member manages their own account, self-registering through a setup wizard, choosing how they would like to receive their school updates and information. Zebra Mobile custom-builds every platform for each district. Schools can choose what they want to use SchoolCentral for and we will make all the arrangements. We customize the look and feel to your districts needs. You can pick your school colors, and can even choose your own U.R.L. 9. 24 Hour Support -It is Zebra Mobiles commitment to accelerate, and provide your district with superior service and support, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 10. COMPLETELY FREE -We are currently offering this service completely FREE to early implementers, as a thank you for helping us get SchoolCentral started.
Please send me a message to arrange a short (10 min.) web demonstration.
Please feel free to contact my direct line listed below, or send me an email.
Warmest Regards,
Michael Chua Zebra Mobile's SchoolCentral Team Direct line (513) 729-6973
The Open Stack is a term coined by Joseph Smarr to represent the core set of open technologies that web application developers are converging on:
I spent Friday evening at the Digg offices in San Francisco for the first ever Open Stack meetup. Organised by David Recordon (who continues to be a superhero in this space) and Digg’s own Joe Stump, the main thrust of the evening was a set of presentations and demos from the likes of Smarr, OpenSocial’s Kevin Marks and DiSo’s Chris Messina (whose ActivityStreams work could lead to interesting places, and mirrors some of the stuff we’ve been doing behind the scenes with OpenDD). The room was a concentrated hotbed of some of the most interesting people in web technology; now that more and more people are focusing on the same core set of standards, the real innovation can begin.
Joseph Smarr was arguably the star of the show (as Marc puts it, he “just kicked ass”) - PortableContacts is exactly what an open, standard API should be. Using OAuth or HTTP basic authentication, users can move their contact lists from one application to another. It’s a simple concept, and the underlying technology is correspondingly lightweight. It’s nonetheless impressive to see Google export natively to Plaxo. (It also makes me wonder if OpenDD might be better served as an API standard than a format, but that’s a discussion for elsewhere.)
It’s going to be interesting watching the web develop over the next year. Economic conditions mean there are a lot of sole operators, and a lot of people clinging to very large companies for dear life. The model that the Open Stack makes possible - lots of very tiny pieces of functionality that can be wrapped into different combinations for different applications - allows people to put together interesting web tools with very little investment. At the same time, it allows some of the larger providers (eg Google) to stick their fingers into innovative new ideas without any direct financial outlay; investment through bartering, in a sense.
I have recently updated my external blog to WordPress 2.7 - and have noticed that the updates to here stopped at more or less the same time. (The last post to appear was the peunultimate one posted from the old versoin - but I wrote a post & then updated fairly shortly afterwards, so quite likely didn't give Eduspaces time to get the RSS feed)
In resources, my blog's still listed. If I click on the RSS icon, I get to see the new content as well as the old; however, if I click on the "view content" then I only see the old content (i.e. what's showing in my blog). Has anyone else got a similar issue?
Keywords: external blog feed., WordPress 2.7
Posted by Eduspaces Central - Emma Duke-Williams
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I have been doing some serious reflecting on a number of issues associated with young adults and their living and learning with new media. After working with close to 200 young adults in four sections of undergraduate courses on integrating technology into school curriculum, I have found that their responses to how they use new or social media in their lives and learning varies depending on their personal and professional goals.
In my final exams, I ask students to explain/describe what social media tools they use on a personal basis, why they use them, and in what ways do these tools benefit and hinder them. In terms of hinderances, students report that new media are used when they are "bored or looking for a distraction." One student responded:
"Social media tools can be a great tool for teaching and learning new material, but they can also distract students from the material they are trying to learn. Instead of using the tool for the class intended purpose, they may become engrossed in the tools' other features. They could get sidetracked and end up somewhere completely off topic or on another website/feature entirely. It can be difficult for students to focus on just one thing these days, especially when there is so much out there to explore."
This quote struck me on many levels. Specifically, the notion of being distracted in the "other features" seemed to be a loaded statement. Do students consider exploring outside the realm of what is defined as "learning" as a distraction? Isn't exploring different facets of an application just as important as using it for its intended purpose? This led me to consider how many educators have so poisoned students thinking that being "off-task" is even considered to be a bad thing. Have we so stymied students that they believe if they are not formally "learning," if they become "sidetracked," that they are wasting their time? When did curiosity become a negative thing? (When it killed the proverbial cat, I suppose.) As I think about it, if young adults find new media a distraction, then perhaps "learning" has become too narrowly defined. This then led me to wonder how we can "measure" self-directed learning in this new media context? In other words, how can we show the different levels of learning that takes place in these new contexts?
Similar to the findings in the MacArthur report from the Digital Youth Project, only a small number of my students report using "the online world to explore interests and find information that goes beyond what they have access to at school or in their local community" (Ito, et al, 2008). My students report that they mostly use online networks to extend friendships that they already navigate in their familiar contexts of school, religious organizations, sports, and other local activities. They also question the depth of their online relationships and worry that online relationships can often be superficial, lacking the intimacy associated with face-to-face relationships.
Prior to taking my course, very few of my students read or authored a weblog, used a wiki beyond exploring Wikipedia, or even heard of social bookmarking applications. Clearly, educators have tremendous influence and responsibility in setting learning goals, particularly on the interest-driven side where adult hobbyists and educators can serve as role models. Like the authors of the Living and Learning with New Media report, I am wondering what would it mean to truly take advantage of "the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks? What would it mean to reach beyond traditional education and civic institutions and enlist the help of others in young people’s learning" (Ito, et al, 2008)?
Your thoughts and suggestions are encouraged. Lucky for me, I will have the opportunity to keep exploring these opportunities for many years to come. Hopefully other educators will too.
Hi, I am quite impressed with the format of the front page on this ELGG powered system, and am trying to achieve the same. Would the developer(s) of this site be willing to share their knowledge of how they managed to achieve this? Any help or tips would be extremely appreciated. I'm running the latest ELGG. Many thanks. Dean
Posted by Eduspaces Central - Dean Phillips
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This is unrelated to Eduspaces (we're not involved), but we thought some of you might find this event interesting:
The Scottish Book Trust is hosting Creative Sparks, "a conference for learning professionals interested in creative approaches to literature in education," in Edinburgh on February 27, 2009. (It's open to educators outside of Scotland as well.) From their site:
"Join Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen (find out more about the Children's Laureate post), Nínive Calegari from 826 National and some of Scotland’s best writers and literature development experts to explore and discuss the impact of creative approaches to literature and language in education."
You can "find out how engaging with a new approach to computer games can stimulate your pupils’ creativity and get them writing – almost without them noticing." Standard Life is also sponsoring a Best Practice award:
"If you have developed a project in your school or library that you think is innovative and really effective, we would love to hear from you. The 5 best projects will have the opportunity to showcase their work for 6 minutes each at the conference. The winner will be chosen by the delegates and will be announced at the celebratory reception at the end of the day."
I have been reading the New Yorker magazine ever since I was a little guy. I started with the cartoons since articles on Nixon and famous ballet dancers were a bit beyond my compare. This week's New Yorker features an article by the effusive Malcolm Gladwell that naturally caught my eye. The article, titled Most likely to succeed: How do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job? is clearly worth reading by any one interested in educational reform.
In the article, Gladwell argues that the metrics used to select teachers are about as effective as the metrics used to determine which college quarterbacks will be successful in the National Football League (that is, they are not truly effective at all). Instead, Gladwell, a seasoned and successful writer (not a seasoned and successful educational researcher) suggests that a metric used by financial investment consulting companies might be more effective-- that is, let in all comers, then winnow them out based on their performance. His suggestion has a folksy ring of truth to it that's easy to digest--create an apprenticeship system that allows teaching candidates to be thoroughly evaluated. Thus, for every four teacher candidates, one will clearly rise above the fray and serve students in an exceptional capacity. While the implications of such a suggestion have wide ranging effects from union considerations to salary structures, not to mention those students who have to continually face a bevy of poor instruction, Gladwell's suggestion does have some merit. Would it not be worth the cost to have a system that can identify teachers who might not match expectations based on professional metrics (having a teaching certificate or a Master's degree) yet can teach a year and a half's material in one year? Or, as Gladwell states:
"What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?"
The argument comes close to sounding like a bit of a false dilemma. What does it say about a society that values it's ability to invest it's money over educating its young? Perhaps this is a bit of a naive assumption on my part. However, it does trouble me to see how much money we pay our money managers and college football coaches over professors responsible for looking for cures to social and medical problems. In an editorial written earlier this year addressing a similar knotty problem facing higher education--the paying of the University of Florida president a hefty bonus--professor Patricia L. Schmidt argues
If our only goal and mission as a university were to win national titles in football and basketball, then such raises/bonuses would be entirely justified, even if the faculty had to be denied suitable rewards. However, if we truly want to join the ranks of the Ivies and the best public universities, then the criteria by which our president is paid a bonus (if that system continues) must reflect benchmarks related to moving us into the top tier.
Schmidt is not arguing against the paying of incentive monies to support hard work. Instead she argues that a university seeking to be ranked among the best in the country should be investing in recruiting and retaining distinguished researchers and educators. While faculty members who are making significant contributions receive virtually no increase in salary, athletic coaches and athletic directors salaries are eclipsing the salaries of those responsible for educating and training our future teachers, researchers, journalists, scientists, and managers.
While I have regularly enjoyed Gladwell's contributions, he seems to gloss over the overall costs associated with his plan. Training all comers will cost more money than the system has. Even if we switched to an apprentice-based pay scale (i.e., paying apprentices a smaller salary while compensating top-tier educators appropriately), finding the money to do so will more than likely outstrip our current salary systems. This is not to say such systems could not be constructed. Instead, I am suggesting further studies need to be considered before we can realistically consider such a move.
I am further reminded of a statement made by Ken Robinson in his TED piece that goes something like... "Tell someone you work in education and they go running for the door. But ask someone about their education, they will pin you to the wall." I applaud Gladwell in his attempt to thoughtfully address the current educational reform concerns. I believe the more people directing the spotlight to it will generate more meaningful conversation about the subject. But this, of course, does not guarantee any reasonable solutions. There are many more brilliant researchers, reformers, and economists working on this solution than I can count. Yet the results of this work often fly under the radar of popular writers and journalists. (This also one other issue I have with much of Gladwell's reporting--his reliance on one or two sources for his information rather than rigorously researching multiple sources and angles.)
Clearly the need to address teaching, learning, and salary gaps is warranted. Yet the solution should be seen as a social solution, not merely an educational one. The role of teachers, their knowledge, their demeanor, social skills, and temperament is not a one-size-fits-all dilemma. Similar to Gladwell's argument about identifying those collegiate football players who will be most successful in the professional leagues, it is essential we do not mistake a "slice" of pie for the whole pie. Successful teachers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are well trained, some have no training whatsoever. The key is how well they engage students; how well they challenge and support learners of all stripes. Using test scores is one way to measure teacher effect, but shouldn't we be considering other measures as well? Since we know that teacher effects are much greater than class-size effects, shouldn't we be developing and investigating measures that take these into account? Or is teaching too messy, too complex to accurately gauge on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10?
This too reminds of the argument of efficiency and creativity in teaching. The greatest threat to good teaching is often boiled down to teachers trying to be efficient rather than creative with their learners. Of course, creativity is messy and complex. It often takes more time to develop, manage, and evaluate project-based activities over multiple choice tests. Perhaps the real questions lay inside whose interests are teachers looking out for.
In the end, I enjoyed Gladwell's piece for its bringing to the fore a complex situation that I am obviously passionate about. I encourage you to read and share it and keep the discussion going. Perhaps our collective intelligence is the only thing that will ultimately save us.
Photo credits: Fork in the road from here and here. That's Impossible from here and here.
Feeling, dare I say, a natural sense of 
and learning with new media. After working with close to 200 young adults in four sections of undergraduate courses on integrating technology into school curriculum, I have found that their responses to how they use new or social media in their lives and learning varies depending on their personal and professional goals. 
I have been reading the 
