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.


• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.

I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.

Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)

Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

I've thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.

First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

For example, if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid," "worthless" or "a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.

If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.

Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)

Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it's true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.

Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

Don't get me wrong: It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model.

Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.

Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.

"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?

"You just don't believe in her," I accused.

"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."

"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."

"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.

"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."

I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.

Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.

"Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for Lulu—it's so spunky and so her."

Even Jed gave me credit for that one. Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

— Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.

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.

Math Quiz for Presidential Candidates

Darren writes that the President has become innumerate. This immediately brought to mind Paulos's proposed "Math Quiz for Presidential Candidates."

I agree completely. I think students should know most of these, too, so I gave the quiz to some of my classes when I was sick. I told the sub to try it as well, but she refused!

I think 6 is my favorite. (Below the fold)

Since ABC is constantly fiddling with those links, I reposted it here:

The Quiz
Below are just 10 of the many politically neutral questions that might be asked. The answers follow.

1. A crucial number to know is the population of the country of which you want to be president. What is the approximate population of the United States? of the world? What percentage of the latter is the former?

2. A news article claims that 15 percent of all strokes occur sometime between noon and midnight on either Friday or Saturday, perhaps because of increased celebrating on the weekends. Do you check with the Centers for Disease Control? Do you stop campaigning on weekends? What's your reaction to this statistic?

3. You must understand the electoral process, of course, so given the way the Electoral College is set up, what is the theoretically smallest number of actual votes (not electoral votes) a candidate can receive and still be elected president?

4. Approximately how many Americans died in the attacks on 9/11? There's no moral comparison, of course, but approximately how many die in auto accidents annually? from heart disease annually?

5. You're campaigning in a state in which the percentage of employees who subscribe to a particular drug plan has risen 1 percentage point, from 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent. By what percent has this figure risen? By what percent must it fall to return to its former level?

6. In Disproportia, a small Midwestern town, the average tax cut per household is $2,200, but the median tax cut is $150. What does this say about the distribution of taxable incomes in the town? If the founder of a high-tech company were to move into the community, which is more likely to rise, the mean or the median tax cut?

7. Roughly how big is the federal budget? What fraction of it is discretionary and non-military? By contrast, what is the gross domestic product (to the nearest trillion dollars)?

8. If the government spends $1,000 per second, it will take approximately 17 minutes to spend $1 million. At this rate, about how long will it take to spend $1 billion? How long to spend $1 trillion? One comparison: The $87 billion supplementary budget for Iraq is approximately how many times the annual U.S. contribution to the U.N.?

9. An ace pollster on your staff claims that 63.86 percent of 100 Americans surveyed support your foreign policy. What's your reaction to these numbers?

10. If FAWUA, the federal agency with an unpronounceable acronym, deposits $1 billion in an escrow fund at 7 percent, how long until the deposit is worth $2 billion? $4 billion? Alternatively, if the agency borrows $1 billion at 7 percent and makes no payments on it, how long until it owes $2 billion? $4 billion?
The bottom line: A president should be able to put 2 and 2 together, both numerically (the easy part) and otherwise.

The Answers
1. About 290 million. A bit more than 6 billion. A little less than 5 percent.
2. By itself that's not very impressive evidence. The time period after 12 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays constitutes 1/7 or 14.3 percent of the week so, as a first approximation, you'd expect roughly that percentage of strokes over any two days after 12 p.m.
3. Candidate X could receive as few as 11 votes and his opponent, candidate Y, tens of millions. Specifically, if California, New York, Texas, Florida, and the 7 other states with the most electoral votes each had a turnout of 1 voter who voted for X, and the other 39 states voted unanimously in the millions for Y, X would win.
4. Approximately 3,000, 40,000, and 700,000, respectively.
5. It's risen by 67 percent, but must be cut by only 40 percent to reach its former level.
6. By the definition of "median," half the households receive less than $150 in tax cuts, half more, so there are some very wealthy people in town. These people, like the new company founder, drag up the average tax cut much more than they do the median cut.
7. About $2 trillion, 20%, and a bit more than $11 trillion, respectively.
8. About 11.5 days for $1 billion, 32 years for $1 trillion, and roughly 250 times as much, respectively.
9. The question at issue is impossibly vague, the number surveyed is relatively small, and the precision of the figure is entirely bogus. Fire the pollster.
10. About 10 years and 20 years, respectively. It's important to know that the length of time it takes money to double at an annual interest rate of r percent is roughly 70/r. In this case 70/7 equals 10 years, and a second doubling requires another 10 years.

Professor of mathematics at Temple University and adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University, John Allen Paulos is the author of several best-selling books, including Innumeracy, and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. His Who's Counting? column on ABCNEWS.com appears the first weekend of every month.

Football for College Credit.

Everyone seems to be all up in arms about this but I don't agree. I think the football players should be able to legitimately get a credit in football.

One credit. Two. It doesn't really matter.

I got a credits for athletics when I was in college - kayak was 1 and archery was another. We had to have two PE credits. You showed up. You learned a few terms, shot a few flights, took a silly multiple choice exam. It was a nice break from the 18-21 mechanical engineering credits per semester (on top of the ROTC and the stuff for commissioned officers).

What's the big deal? I like it that the rest of the school can have its courses without the lunkheads slowing everything down. They would never have made it to college other than for football, so it's not like they're being deprived of anything. Any players who do have brains will get their education regardless of what the lunkheads do.

With all the people majoring in FillinTheBlank Studies or some other touchy-feely joke, I can't think that 100 football players is going to skew the median all that much.

Facts and International Tests

21st Century Skills, as promoted, are not effective without a command of some basic factual information. If you don't know any factual material, a few minutes on Google may or may not get you relevant facts. Then, of course, the student who has no knowledge cannot evaluate what facts are found, cannot compare the new knowledge to the old, cannot "stand on the shoulders of giants". An hour's worth of Powerpoint and some multimedia cribbed from Google images won't hide that lack, which is why I refer to it as Glitzenbullshit.

One commenter replied to an earlier post that
"There is a reason why the U.S. scores 35th in the world in math. It is because the rest of the world is embracing inquiry and prioritizing 'flexible' thinking...while we are still preparing to compete in the industrial age."

I'd really like to know how he arrived at this cause-effect relationship.

The US averages must naturally include many schools that have made these changes to a 21st Century Focus -- I would maintain that it is precisely because so many of our schools have changed to 21stCS that our averages have declined on tests like PISA and TIMSS. These tests don't measure 21stCS sets; they measure factual information and basic skills.

It is not, perhaps, indicative of a 'good education', but until you define THAT and determine what such should entail, you cannot use a fact-based international test to determine superiority or otherwise.

I would also point out that the whole concept of comparison conveniently ignores the fact (there's that dirty word again) that many nations to which we compare ourselves have much more homogenous culture and demographics, and most have a national curriculum and province-wide, if not national, control over schools. Almost all of the "great" successes have nationwide testing programs to finish off school. The final product is much more amenable to testing like PISA.

When I compare students and programs, talk with ex-students, visit colleges and speak with professors and admissions, converse with tradesmen and businessmen, I find one thing across the board. Success in college, life and careers is correlated more closely with schools that stressed facts and knowledge first and then blended in communication, information, literacy and critical thinking skills. Any school that tried to do it the other way invariably and ultimately did a disservice to its students.

Naturally Speaking

I was at another conference the other day and the presenter rambled on about this and that (don't they always?).

He caught my attention when he spoke about 21st Century Skills: "students won't have to use the keyboards and won't have to learn to type. It's a new form of communication skill - they'll be using Dragon Naturally Speaking instead" and then he spoke of the dramatic improvements to DNS and how it's tuned to the user's voice and that we have to transform our schools and our teaching to take advantage of this different manner of communication.

I nearly snorted in my teacup. I remember when DNS (or it's corporate predecessor) was relatively new - 12 years ago - I got it free with Corel Wordperfect. It didn't work very well then and it doesn't work very well now and it has nothing to do with the program and its capabilities.

First, voice control is always touted as a boon for the student who can't learn to type, for SpecEd, for the less-capable student. The problem is that voice control is a lousy interface model and totally inappropriate for those who don't write well to begin with, uh, like, it thinks, no , back up, delete, tries to uh, get rite the students words but it dozen quite do it, uh, like, yeah. .

Additionally, a student is rarely in a room or environment appropriate for voice control. There are other students around who are problems not because their voices add words to what the program hears but because they are a distraction and the DNS user is a distraction right back. How often would he be trying to think of what to say when he overhears the kid next to him saying something that catches his ear? He'd be constantly trying to get back on task -- multi-tasking is not a human feature.

Can you imagine 25 students in a computer lab using DNS simultaneously, trying to format a paper, correct an error, compose a sentence ... out loud?

Now add in the fact that most students who use DNS are special ed, 504, IEP students. The only time or place they should use DNS is in a solo situation with no distraction -- how often is THAT happening in your school? Then go to college - you can't use voice control in the library, in class, in any populated environment and probably not even in your dorm room. Who wants to be "writing a paper, email, letter out loud in the coffee shop? Force the world to listen to your next great idea? Plop on your headphones or earbuds and then speak WAY TOO LOUDLY and everyone has to shush you so they can hear the TV or the music or their conversation? Your roommate will kill you if he has to listen to you try and compose a paper. The click of the keyboard is white, background noise. Speech recognition is unbearably irritating if you're an innocent bystander.

Try to use voice control at work? Not happening and not worth it. The writing that most people do is not long enough or is too complicated (filling in forms, tabbing through text boxes, etc) to find any improvements with DNS.

In a manipulative sense, it is much less accurate and fine-grained than fingers or pointing device. As Jakob Nielson put it, "it's even less suitable for most everyday interactions because it's a less data-rich channel and it's harder to specify something in words than to choose it on a graphical display."

Is it faster? Yes, in limited circumstances. Is it more efficient? Not unless you can write very well, compose on the fly, organize in your head, and speak in complete sentences that follow the rules of proper grammar.

Lastly, my biggest concern is that, for many of the above reasons, keyboarding DOESN'T go away and the student will not have learned the skill. Now what? Where's your 21st Century Communication Skill now?

Fun on the Stairs = >> Fun in the Classroom

In the Fun Theory, Joanne Jacobs points to this youtube video of people using a staircase piano instead of the escalator ...

We see some people using the stairs instead of the escalator because it's "more fun" and immediately, everyone thought of the connection between "making the classroom fun" and learning. The comments range from gushing enthusiasm for fun in the classroom to a resigned knowledge that the next Professional Development will be centered around "Games, Games, Games!"

Interestingly, (to me at least, but I think deconstructing studies is fun) the researchers claimed that "fun" was why the people took the stairs. I tend to think they did so because they just got off the subway and for twenty seconds or so, they are mindlessly entertained by stepping on the "keys of the piano." I'm sure that many people were interested the first time, mildly interested the second, annoyed the third time and royally pissed off thereafter. "Stop repeatedly pressing that key. You're not being clever!" How many people just wished the thing would go away after three days? How many just wished that there was a staircase they could run up to avoid the "newbies" who thought it was cool? No one knows because no one asked.

How much did people learn? Nothing. What the researchers were trying to do was see if people would take the stairs rather than the escalator - a fitness and exercise question. It took teachers to make the mental leap to education. Thus is educational research performed.

The reality is that learning something new takes concentration and work on the part of the learner. There is no "Royal Road to Mathematics". A Game might spark interest, or might take the student on a temporary hiatus from their concerns, but the hard work needs to be done eventually.

Hard work is not always hateful. Several hours of shoveling a hole for a gazebo foundation can make you feel exhausted but invigorated. For me, three hours of a math contest is fun. The fun comes not from the game, but from the overcoming of a challenge. For others, it's seven straight hours practicing a snowboard trick and finally "nailing it." The ADD kid in one of my classes will spend hours practicing his guitar, fully focused and on-task. For the kid next to him, that would be torture.

As Churchill was rumored to have said, "There is nothing more exhilarating in this world than to have your enemy shoot at you ... and miss." If the "enemy" is the complicated new material, and the "miss" is your succeeding at the task in spite of a perceived "trick question" or a difficult learning process or a "difficulty with math", then the students do in fact achieve learning with that sense of exhilaration that we so often attribute to "fun activities."

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that the "fun" and the exhilaration came AFTER the success and hard work. The success was not caused by the fun.

All that you do by stressing the fun game that happens to teach math facts is to cement your place in the world as someone who is hopelessly lost, clueless and unconnected to the students.

Most of the time, the fun activity doesn't achieve anything other than to be a fun activity and save the teacher and students from working. They aren't going to learn much beyond the first gee-whiz moment. Certainly not any details or deeper understanding.

It's as simple as one blink of an eye. Take a look at these two pictures. Which kids are learning?
See what I mean?

But then I read the comments.

I loved this video! I think there is a lot of potential for making learning fun. Why assign a worksheet on multiplication facts when kids can play a game that reinforces the same concepts?
When I was a psych major in college I had a stats professor who felt that students learn best when experiencing an emotion – he chose fear, which doesn’t seem like the best choice. But why not excitement – joy? Thanks for sharing!

You can hear the ProfDev now: "Math should be fun. The kids should learn effortlessly. Video games will teach them. Why shouldn't we make shoot-em-ups that require the kids to solve math problems?"

What's wrong with this picture? For one thing, this wants to teach without working at it. "Math should be exciting, joyous?" Why does she feel this way? Perhaps it's because, for her, math isn't fun and games are the only thing she can think of. The sheet of multiplication facts might not excite you, but completing one correctly can excite a student.

...With the test in front of me, I started sweating, and my brain began buzzing, but I forced myself to calm down and keep my fingers still. Most of the problems seemed easy now, although I realized all my "shortcuts" had left me weak in long division. There were no red marks this time — I had gotten 100 percent right!

The shortcuts she's referring to are the calculator, counting on fingers, not completing certain practice drills by herself. Drill and kill. It wasn't "fun" so she "cheated."

There are plenty of puzzle-type video games. I happen to know many of them. Why don't kids play them? "Because they are BORING." The puzzles and problems are artificially inserted into the "story" and the whole thing runs counter to the reason most kids play video games. For fun, to conquer, to compete and win, to create and display, to show-off. "To solve math problems" isn't usually one of those reasons.

What happens almost immediately to kids playing a game with puzzles? If it has some fun elements, the kids will play it. If they run into a puzzle they can instantly solve, they solve it and move on. If they can't instantly solve it, they use cheat codes or look up the answer online. Then they go back to shooting monsters.

Great if you're selling a video game. Not a good model for education.

Libraries are changing.

Joanne Jacobs writes of The bookless campus — with cappucino

For $44,000 a year, parents can send their sons and daughters to Cushing Academy, a Massachusetts boarding school that boasts a “bookless campus.” ... snip ...
Cushing is disburdening itself of its library’s 20,000 books and spending $500,000 to establish a “learning center” ...snip...
spending $42,000 for some large flat-screen monitors ...snip...
$20,000 for “laptop-friendly” study carrels. ...snip...
In place of the reference desk, “a $50,000 coffee shop with a $12,000 cappuccino machine.”

When I was in high school in the ’60s, our library was renamed the “Instructional Materials Center.” I got in trouble with the library staff for making fun of the change in the school newspaper. But we still had books.

Stacy felt "It’s idiotic. Throwing the baby out with the bath water. Why not leave the library as is and add additional resources? The students will use what is useful." Richard wondered if they had a copy of Fahrenheit 451 in their library.

Neither of these commenters or Joanne seem to get what is happening here. This private school is running an experiment and we all need to pay very close attention to the results. The world is changing and this is but one of the avenues ahead of us. We need information so we can choose correctly and wisely.

Joanne says "But we still had books." Sure, Joanne, but in the 60s, that is all we had. I remember. I was there, too. School libraries are being deserted. Their old ways of operation need to change or we're going to be hiring a librarian to sit alone amid piles of fire hazard instead of helping kids research, which is what she should be doing.

Should we spend money on computers or more books or a third option I haven't thought of? Which type of books, software, bandwidth? Should they bother with an encyclopedia if no one opens it EVER? Should they purchase the OED for $995 (leather bound, 20volumes) or for $198 on 2 CDs or tell the kids a link to an on-line resource? With every student having a computer and a campus-wide wifi, where would you spend YOUR money?

Without knowing the specifics but having been in public and private schools for years, I would point out that the books in the Cushing were probably great when bought but weren’t being replaced as needed. New books that were purchased remained unused. Somebody made the leap to "Kindle is cheaper."

“The students will use what is useful.” Obviously, Stacy has not been in education recently if she thinks that students will find books useful. There isn’t a student alive who would voluntarily use a book when Google is at hand. The library was most likely devolving into a place for computer stations and tables, with books stored “over there behind the SmartBoard.” Richard has it equally wrong - no one is getting rid of the story, just the paper it's written on.

They probably had several encyclopediae, too — how’s that working out for a library in this age of Wikipedia and Google? I’m not saying that the Internet is preferable but it’s the resource chosen by the students.

If librarians are honest with themselves, they have to admit that their job descriptions are rapidly changing and their collections are becoming outdated and ignored.

I applaud the gamble. At least the experiment is being done with private money in a voluntary setting — anyone who can afford Cushing can afford another, equally desperate for tuition, private school.

It is now up to the public school community to let this experiment to run its course, for the data to be crunched as to its effectiveness and for the surveys to be compiled detailing how the educational experience changed as a result. Did the teachers notice a drop-off that can be correlated to the library changes?

I for one, would like to know. Our library is rapidly changing, too. The librarian is putting in more workstations and the shelves are gradually moving back to the wall and closer together so they take up less space. As she retires books, the ones she purchases are less likely to be subject-oriented and more likely fiction, magazines, and other light-reading material.

While I’m sure I don’t like it, I have no evidence that the kids will miss the books. I also can’t see that the faculty can or will do much about it and don't seem to miss them either. The English department’s been building “classroom sets” for years for all the books they need – they rarely visit the library anymore. History uses the computer labs more than anyone, even science, and neither group has much in the way of “Books that aren’t Textbooks.” Heck, for most classes, the library is the “overflow” computer room rather than a reading resource.

That last paragraph is probably what bothers me the most. The librarian's JOB is to help the kids research. Why is all of that research being done in the computer lab without her? Is this why we're having a bigger problem with plagiarism? I know many of our teachers drop the kids off and "let them go for it" when they never would have done so in the library. Are they really learning how to research from the teachers? Should we ban the teachers from sending their kids to the computer room to do research? Does the librarian know how to really use the Internet or is she just going to sit there at her desk and wait for the kids to ask questions? Maybe the librarians need to take a hard look at their profession and this experiment.

So many rhetorical questions, so little time.

Everyone's Not Proficient. Accept it and Move On.

"All students will be proficient in every public school by 2014."

Really? Proficient in math and science? or math and English? or basketball and poetry? In all subjects? In just two? How about Chinese and marketing?

Can all students understand every subject? Is full math knowledge possible - if so, to what level? I think not. This fantasy of Full Proficiency at all things is an educational holy grail, a pipe dream. It's certainly not going to block success in life. Every person learns to work around his limitations and succeed despite them. For some, those limitations have guided them into fulfilling their talents in spectacular fashion.

Certainly, I know hundreds of people who marvel at my math knowledge, marvel that THEY could never understand all that stuff, not realizing how limited my knowledge really is. I can't tell you how poor the writing and grammatical skills are for the population as a whole - even my principal has a degree in English yet is constantly writing things such as "All students THAT are in the building ..." rather than "All students WHO ..." and using "there," "they're" and "their" pretty much randomly. His math abilities rival a 6th grader's, yet he's pulling down a 6-figure income.

Is it possible to be successful in life if you aren't proficient in English and math? It certainly seems to be so.

Could most teachers pass the NY Regents test in math and English? I doubt it. Even some of the high school teachers OF those courses will have difficulties. I know many successful tradesman and managers and businessmen who couldn't come close to passing. Certainly there are vast reaches of this country where English is a foreign language and rarely heard.

Why should anyone care if the SAT scores aren't rising? Why should anyone reform their schools if AYP isn't met? I'm not entirely sure that they CAN consistently rise nor should we expect them to. It isn't possible to be all things. Over the last few years, I have seen story after story of successful schools whose gains have been the result of cheating, playing games, or practice overkill to the exclusion of all else. I don't want to have schools succeed if that's the method they use. Some of the "miracles" are the result of success by elimination - toss the low-scoring students to the curb and the average rises, which works for the remaining ones, I suppose. Private schools do this quite well. Also, those private schools are never tested in the same ways. Force them to "reform" and to submit to testing before you claim that the public schools are inferior.

Shouldn't we be looking to place students appropriately? Shouldn't we question whether ALL students should be taking the test - shouldn't many of them be looking at vo-tech or alternative placements, avoiding the test entirely? Is having 100% of the students proficient at ANYTHING by 2014 even a worthwhile goal or is it not even close to achievable because students are human, and humans are different?

I know that some will start the chorus of "We need twenty-first century teaching for twenty-first century students." This attempt at reform assumes that changing the teaching method will magically make everyone perfect. Like a million other reforms, this one won't work either because you are still dealing with people. You can reform all you like and you'll scratch the surface and ease the itch. You won't cure the patient and you won't make much difference.

Testing is interesting. It's not very useful, though.

Online Schools not Created Equal

Sure, I know the school was set up and the guy answered all the questions and took whatever tests were required, but it's still funny. Reminds me of the time Suave shampoo had a tremendous deal to launch their product in the 1970s - basically the stuff was free after rebate AND you could get a silver dollar per bottle. Limit three per customer. So the three dogs in various incarnations, each member of the family in various middle name permutations all were a "customer". Mary Setté (the irish setter) was the best name, I thought. It must have taken us fifteen years to use all that shampoo. Anyway, the latest incarnation of the "pet fools the company bit":

Cat awarded online high school diploma

I can haz GED!

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

A cat belonging to a US and Canada Better Business Bureau exec has been granted a high school diploma. Yes, it's an online high school. According to a report by msnbc.com, the two-year-old feline graduated from Jefferson High School Online (JHSO), an institution so confident in its pedagogical perfection that it offers a money-back guarantee.