kismetism

Degrees and Dollars →

I hope you college groupies are paying attention. This goes along well, too, with what should have become obvious with Agony and Ecstasy.

And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. Notably, with production workers in manufacturing down to about 6 percent of U.S. employment, there aren’t many assembly-line jobs left to lose. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. Roombas are cute, but robot janitors are a long way off; computerized legal research and computer-aided medical diagnosis are already here.

What Makes a Great Teacher? →

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Now, as the Obama administration offers states more than $4 billion to identify and cultivate effective teachers, Teach for America is ready to release its data.

A very compelling article about teacher accountability. I didn’t agree with it all… and I admit I didn’t think very much of the included video examples. Part of that reaction is probably why I can’t stomach the notion of teaching at a primary grade level, on topics I hardly remember.

Before you go and read it, though, I must speak about the hours I spent agonizing over this article and a particular, highly acidic response in the comments that 50+ “likes”. The latter made me afraid that I was being taken in by the journalist and not really analyzing the content presented.

In a serious effort to elucidate the topic for myself, I have been crawling over various articles, especially on Michelle Rhee, who I have actually previously linked to on this log. Apparently she is an extremely polarizing figure in Washington DC, or was… a lot of people hate her work, whereas just as many think it’s effective. To be honest, I wasn’t able to come to any conclusion, so I can’t offer any opinion.

Ultimately I still believe in teacher accountability and though I sympathize with teachers who are working with students with difficult home conditions, I don’t feel that it relieves or lessens the potential impact a teacher could have on a student. (In fact, it could be magnified.) But I am willing to concede that it is likely that teachers working in these environments should be measured by a modified metric, designed with those particular issues in mind.

And though I am a sometimes teacher and therefore perhaps sometimes entitled to opinions about teaching, I am mostly thinking of my time as a student. Like all children, even the high school students will know whether or not the teacher is serious about them and their learning. And if the teacher can’t convince the student that they believe they can learn, how can the student do any better?

The Shadow Scholar →

Some of you will probably have already seen this, so I suppose I’m mostly just linking for posterity.

In the past year, I’ve written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won’t find my name on a single paper.

I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

I have so many thoughts about this, but none of it organized and I don’t think I can really add to the nearly rioting commentary. I did attend the “live chat” session with Mr. Dante, which was naturally moderated, so it was totally civil and not totally enhancing.

I do want to note that I am unaccountably depressed by all the comments left by those who are too defensive to do more than express outrage at the author’s ethical standing, too aggrieved that they accuse the article’s author of fabricating the entire practice, too self-absorbed that they believe that their particular way of handling their courses immunizes them from such activity.

(and I’m kind of annoyed that we wasted a bit of time on questions whose answers were in the original article. come on, guys, did you read it or what?)

On my behalf, I had a few questions swirling in my head, but nothing that was phrased already and I knew the backstage was probably already being flooded with content… intelligent and otherwise, no doubt. Kind of like my brain on this topic right now.

The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. →

Matthew Might, a computer science professor at the University of Utah, writes: “Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures.” Here it goes.

Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits →

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.

…

But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

No free lunch →

Thanks, Quad, though not sure how many of us are left to benefit from it. qq.

Sir Ken Robinson is totally my hero. Our views on education align perfectly, only he’s way more eloquent and smart sounding when he says it.

This is a follow-up to his previous TED talk, which I know I’ve linked before, but I’m more than happy to link it over and over and over until the cows come home because it’s that good.

New Media and Its Superpowers: Learning, Post Pokemon →

This is a fairly long article, but I found it to be a decent read. The first half is a little plain, but my interest picked up greatly at “Friendship-Driven and Interest-Driven Participation”.

There’s also a couple paragraphs about a program in NYC called Quest to Learn, which is apparently a program where kids learn with a “games-based pedagogy”, which in light of the my recent flurry of links… I thought it was appropriate.

If you take a small child into the garden and point at the moon, the child will look at the moon. Take your dog into the garden and point at the moon, and the dog will look at your finger. Quizzically.

Other animals sing, but they don’t compose operas. They communicate, but they don’t write plays. They look puzzled, but they don’t write tomes of philosophy. They get depressed, but they don’t listen to Miles Davis and drink Jack Daniels.

—

Sir Ken Robinson promoting his book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, which is about finding your true passion(s) and how the current educational system is extremely poor at permitting students to discover what it is exactly that they are “meant” to do.

Without a doubt, this is thus far the most eloquent manner of describing, I think, what it is to be quintessentially human.

His talk reminds me of what the things I find to be most appealing about ATDP: that is, for the teachers who stick around for progressive years, you know they are there because they love what they do and they are trying to impart their passion onto students who are interested in learning their craft.

Also, this is why it drives me so bonkers sometimes to find parents who shove their students into this class or that class (english! math! science!) because the parents think it’s important that their kids get more practice in said subject. While that may be true, I think it’s a damn shame that the summer time (the supposed vacation time) isn’t used to explore topics that you don’t get any exposure to in the regular school year.

Kids should be exploring their options at EVERY available opportunity and in today’s society, summer vacation is the perfect time to be discovering something new.

As for me, I find that I’m interested in a number of different things and have been fascinated by several reoccurring topics. But it’s hard to say if I’ve really discovered my so-called passion. What a frustrating predicament.

On education