Times Up, Buddy

This is it. The last one. Like it or not, I just looked at what I had to have done in the next five days between school and work, how far I am behind, and what adjustments I can make and... this is it.

So this one about the blog. I can't say that I have really liked doing this: I think I started hating journalling of any sort about 10 years ago when I took a brief look at some mission journals and the odds and from them on and just though, "Who would want to look at all this stuff? If I don't want to read it, who else would? I'm not on any path to glory where someone is going to want to examine the minutia, so, what the hell?" That unfortunately is how I came into this thing, and with the exception of a couple of sentences, I don't think I'll really ever want to look at this again. I don't say that the process is useless, but I'm not sure if all of this needs to be done in public. A kid at school sold me a CD once that he and some friends had put together, and all I could think of while I was listening to it was, "We have made this way too easy." It used to be that to put your thoughts out there, you had to really work for it. Now?.... Five minutes and Google will design a template for you that is "exactly you" and put your words out there for everyone to see. You and all the other unique snowflakes in the world. ( http://despair.com/individuality.html )

(And if you happen to hit that link, look at the one on blogging.)

Anyway. Yep. Done. Learned a lot about the value of planning, carefully. Had some fun with too many nights at the library. (Where I am.) Blathered on to myself and two or three people kind enough to put up with it. I will say, that like any other writing I have done, it does give me a chance to think. And that I do it better this way than others... Well, that isn't true. Working a problem in clay has the same effect. The same thing was true of directing (but writing is a whole lot less annoying to the actors.) (That last string of thoughts is an example. I sort of have to say it, and immediately out of my mouth I know that it wasn't exactly what I meant or that it isn't really true.) But this stuff of the internal monologue being spoken... well, it can be funny as improv, but very tedious in print.

Haiku. Or some other short form. That is what it should be. There should be blogs that are only haiku that act as links. Catch your interest? Peeked by the image? Then you click on the haiku. No? On to the next one. But at least the writer had to do some work. Had to try to get it shorter than a sound byte.

I've said too much. Yessiree. Class was good, info was good, project was tough, talking WITH others was very good. But this? Ah, well. One idiot crying in the wilderness. I hope everyone else liked them.

And the last complaint... responding. So, my little gift. Do exactly this: respond in the following way. "Uh, whatever."

Cheers folks. It really has been fun.

Haiku

Underneath the hood

still searching for the damn jack

but at least I'm safe.

Late Night with... Me.

I've been responsing tonight. A lot of good thoughts out there about what we've been doing. I particularly liked Beth's. If anyone sees this, you should go browse and at least get through the Apple design video. That would be something to really aspire to: design that was so transparent that your response would be, "Of course it's like that. Why would it be any other way?" Bauhaus meets IDET.

Time to go. I need sleep. "(IDET) hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more." This quote!! The first part just popped into the head, and I go out to look it up and find that Cawdor is the second part! There is this little kid from Nigeriain one of my classes that pronounces my name that way! I'm not sure if I should be just amused or very scared?! (More exclamation points than I have used in much time.)

Obligatory haiku:

Patches of bondo

Thumbs with winter's first cracking.

Months of Super Glue.

... and then there was one.

My One week left. The project is in, more or less, minus a few more responses. What did I learn?

My thoughts in one-sentence forms: Assessing attitudes with any degree
of accuracy is a real pain.
I was wondering about the deliverable part, considering the level of
detail that I had tried to do, but I found that even with all that
detail, there was a lot that I didn't understand until I got to
putting together the slides. Lots of details that I didn't think of.
I'm not sure that I would ever take the assessments myself...
Good up-front planning makes the whole thing a lot easier. At least
the focus isn't on what to teach but how.
I really wish I had had time to do that Monty Python style animated
SME.

And a few more: I think the important one was about the planning. Like I said, it was still tough to get the thing done, the issue was delivery more than content. And it was really nice working with the group that I did, Carl and Kevin. I have a tendency to overdo, and they were good about being able to see when I was running too far afield. I was still thinking about that element of not making the assumptions that a teacher does about delivery of content--- (I can fix it on the fly.) It seems a bit double edged having worked through this: I think more about the exact content that I'm going to deliver, but as a result don't always write it down... 'Cause, after all, I thought it through more carefully.... Yeah, well.

I was also thinking about this as I was sketching up the idea for tomorrow's IDET class. I think I'm getting a little better at seeing the problems, but it also means that at some point I just say, "Run it once and find out if you are really seeing problems or just imagining them."

11:40 pm. Oh the crap that is coming up from my lungs today. Guess I better head for home. So I'll probably take one more crack at another posting- make it an even 12... or is it 13?

Tonight's haikus from an "attended" moment walking back from the shed, and an NPR moment that has stuck with me this week:

Southwest sunsetting

winter light warming breath clouds

both fading faster.

Hands releasing from

a fog dewed gun grey railing.

Now I want it? Now?

KILNED

So, on the night before Thanksgiving, I’m stuck at school (job school) babysitting a kiln, stuck in a small hot room since the alarms are on with a computer that I thought had come through a fall/drop okay, which I just found out won’t play a DVD… and it will be off to the Apple Store… on Black Friday… ON BLACK FRIDAY! Kiln? Kilned. Sort of like killed. Dead. Man.

School. The other. I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Buried. Everything is coming due. So today, when I had planned on studying, I instead spent the day loading and firing, and mixing clay. I feel something more than cheated. Maybe violated is the word. I was beginning to feel that I had things under control. A pretty little illusion. I’m looking at the icons for a couple of Powerpoints for Piaget and Vygotsky. Schema Theory and a rhino. And it is a surrealistic moment. All for me.

What am I thinking of in class? One, for all the bad press a SME gets in class, it would sure be nice to be one on clinical trials or have easier access to one. Sometimes, when you are working on some item, it would be nice to just be able to answer the question or at least know if the answer was easily available or if the problem being faced were easy or complex. In other words, to have more knowledge. Two, unfortunately, often I find my own lessons lacking in a way that I never would have guessed. But, it makes me more willing to change it right on the spot, in spite of the plan. Three, watching someone else’s plan in action reveals a little more about thinking through the process. It makes design, good or bad, seem more transparent. And last, carving out a little time of my own is really essential to my sense of any self-worth.

Cone 9 is starting to move. I might be out of here by 11:15 p.m.

Gloves and dark glasses

Searching in brilliant white heat

Minute spire bending.

See him flip her off

She’s squeezing through bending heads,

Who pays her for this?

slogging... no offense

I got through about half of the blogs tonight, and I think that what we should be doing is haiku instead: try to get it all of it into 17 syllables. Seasonal...

Slogging to the car,
In a red sky and blown leaves.
Too many ideas.

Mr's Clark and Kozma,
Verbal cannons fire point-blank.
"Hey, man! 'Ya missed m'...."

superhero, kozmaclark!

It's been fun to watch this "debate" progress this last week or so. From the point where people seemed to actually be of an opinion, to the point in the last couple of days where people seem to be saying that the two sides are really the same thing! I sort of get where people are coming from since we are sort of trained not to have arguments, but it would would be nice to hear someone refer to someone else as "My learned friend from across the isle..." Me, I'm pretty sure that the problem is that we don't really want to say that technology is simple a method of delivery nor do we want to say that the role of the teacher is anything but supreme. One attacks the profession of a lot of us, the other attacks what I would guess was the reason for a lot of us getting into the IDET program... Educational Technology. I still think it's probably somewhere in the middle, but the problem with that position is that it as soon as you agree with that, then tech can have an educational effect of it's own. So, we make both of them right, a position that Kozma seems to accept. I'm less convinced of Clark's compliancy. So, there we are. Some song I've heard recently, "No one is right if anyone is wrong...."

The design phase.... jeeze.

Trivia... There is another design for a manhole cover, though it would be impractical. An equilateral triangle. I know this because I have started to see small utility covers in this shape.

I hate standard time.

Thinking Out Loud: Dumb and Proud

I just wanted to get this out there: a kind-of apology. I found in college, the first time around, that to get through the really boring classes, forcing myself to comment would help keep my head in the discussion (all but the Sociology of WWII class- not the actual title). Then I found that making comments helped me think... that for some annoying reason, if I SAID the thing, I would immediately pull it apart once it was out of my mouth. It was/is often embarrassing, but it did/still does seem to serve the same purpose.

So if I talk too much in class, sorry. Just trying to work things out for myself... at everyone else's expense. (See what I mean?)

Ah well, only 6 more weeks. And a couple of articles before tomorrow. Time to become more self-determined.

And can I just say how much I love Pandora? A station of all Brazilian? Or all instrumental Bluegrass? Or all Palestrina? ALL Palestrina!? Quoting Louis Armstrong, "If it sounds good, it is good."

Objectivity

The reading for this week deals with writing performance objectives. As I was reading through, I was thinking back to college (1979-83, more or less) and trying to dredge up any of this instruction. I mean, someplace back there, someone must have talked to us about it. Three different contents, a bunch of student teaching, a bunch of time spent directing, pedagogy classes, and the education classes... someone must have talked about them. Someone must have evaluated the ones that I wrote. But all I recall is lesson plans. Yes, there is that objective that was written at the beginning of each, but I just can't remember it ever being a big part of what the evaluation was. Why is that? I was trying to think back through the student teachers who have worked with me, I can't come close to remembering them all, let alone names. Most recently, last year, Lucas. The guy across the hall and I split his time. So we spent a fair amount of time evaluating what was happening in his instruction. We saw the evaluations that his mentor from the U did with him. We spent a lot of time talking to him about his approach, dealing with students, getting around the room, refining his approach to content, narrowing is goals.... What is it about doing that and doing "this" that feels so different? Maybe it's just that we aren't to that section yet, but it feel like what happens is that you state the goal, start into the possible presentation, start refining as you go, and four lessons later, you are off of it for another year, trying to recall what worked, what was straight from hell, what context issues these were... the HAM/HAW assembly always shoots the day in glorious fashion... and then a year later, there is that first glaze lecture/demo again.

So this year, last couple of days, I sat down after spending the break trying to get caught up with the glaze prep, wrote it all out again, tried to consider if my goals were in line with my instruction, and if I really had a terminal goal for the day that was coherent with the instructional goal, and after doing all of that could see a big difference in the way that things were presented...

Jump to the other class, I'm looking at the small matrix with the smiley faces and the frowns... I don't feel very helpless. I keep changing things up every time I present, not really believing in perfection. Sometimes things work better, sometimes worse, sometimes the good is me, sometimes just a whole bunch of things that come together at the right time, sometimes Caesare just seems in the mood to be caught up so I get a break. Sometimes, reverse all of the last couple of sentences AND have Levon show up stoned...

I got stuck on a committee at the district once looking at... who could remember what... data driven reform, or something like that. I asked a question of the guru that was presenting, not having any statistical background. How many variables can you throw into something you are trying to measure before you can't really call the results reliable? What did he say? Was it 7 or 8? As I sit here thinking about this whole thing, when is a day that I can control for that few a number of variables?

And still, I don't feel quite helpless, but not exactly in control either.

Can we all be free and self-efficacious and in the same classroom at the same time if our goals are all different? Can you write an objective that takes that all into consideration? "Given a class of thirty-eight students with different levels of English, different levels of creativity, different levels of sobriety, different levels of interest, different goals about grades, different social desires, different levels of..."

Any Spike Jones fans out there? "As (this post) sinks slowly in the the West, we approach the island of Lulu, spelled backwards, Ulul."

SME envy

I feel like I have been arguing the SME thing with myself and others ever since being introduced to the term. On the one hand, I understand that a SME that is unreflective can be about the worst source of instruction out there. On the other, it seems ludicrous to assume that a instruction can be created without one... And the reintroduction of apprenticeship in the last couple of readings...

So, Tuesday, after listening to Malcom Gladwell and having considered one of the readings, I was a little more persuaded that the SME, while not completely useless, was at least less essential. But then I'm thinking back to one of the other reading which suggested that this was one of the places to check to see if an instructional design was on track(Brown and Green, page 115-116..."One of the most effective ways for determining the success of your task analysis during the design and development of your instruction is to ask a SME..." and then I run into this weeks words about sequencing. "At this stage, collaboration with one or more subject matter experts (SME) is indispensable." 

I suppose the conflict is experience vs. instruction. I think most of my teachers that I have admired were all SMEs. They didn't just know about the instruction of the content, they knew the content and its instruction. I think of one in particular since he has been my "teacher" for so long, about 13 years. Part of the process of his instruction involved self-reflection and directed reflection. We would take a break in class, he and the assistants, myself included, and go out and shoot the breeze for a few minutes in a 3-4 hour class. At that time, we usually talked about what was going on in class, particularly challenging problems and our own solutions for them. These discussions redirected our approach and greatly refined the methods used. Perhaps it was, in a small way, the reevaluation suggested in our text... it just seems so much less formal, that it was more palatable. 

So, I'm still arguing the point with myself... That seems like the place I always end up.

What a.... (how public is this?)

blog-o-rama

I was trying to figure out what to do about all of the blogs. What is blogging etiquette? Is there some thing about leaving comments or just hovering out there? Are you supposed to always have an opinion? So tonight, when I arrived at the library to read, walked into the bathroom to pull out my reader contact and tossed it in the can at the end of its two week life, and then walked back to find that I hadn't put a pair of reading glasses in the backpack, (GROAN, SWEAR, 7 STAGES OF GRIEF IN 20 SECONDS), I decided to look through at what people were saying week four, or something. And I decided I really needed a structured break. So, I'm responding in one place to about 10 of the class blogs. And it's a GAME! Guess who the blogger is/was? (Are blogs past news or current, living documents requiring an IS?) Ten bucks to anyone who can name the origins! Sound good? And what an easy response, if we are supposed to do them.

Here we go. (The lady in the "booth" across from me is crunching Gardetto's: they are loud!)

I finally think I have my partners figured out after a project, a presentation, and a discussions of ADDIE. Carl is the long one and knows a lot more about education than he sometimes lets on. And I really admire the thought process. 

Possible addie project: a website that helps kids understand where they might use the math they hate. Especially for people like me who found out that they NEED basic algebra and geometry.

 

What the hell to do with all the blogs. I agree. And the video... This is one not to look at on days where you are having trouble with your lot in life, the day after Parent/Teacher, as you are trying to figure out if you are in fact just a stinking Behaviorist in a Constructivist body. (Oh, by the way, there is a very funny Selected Shorts this week with too many possible connections to our class. And the Sabine Women.) 

 

Tell me if subscribing to a blog delivers it to my email… so can anyone believe that blog is still a misspelled word in Word? (You don't really need to do this. I'll try it out.)

 

This is one of the those things: a reaction to carterchatter (a give-away!): so, if you don’t write your educational goals in learner terms, you are a SME… and that SME’s are the bane of the teaching profession? I'm not criticizing you. But after reading about Constructivism today, and having them refer to apprenticing as tool of hire learning (accidental pun), is the SME the person you hope to apprentice with? Just because there are those who haven't figured out what exactly they're doing doesn't mean all are hopeless failures at teaching... the implication is starting to get annoying. I have been workshopped with too many SMEs who are really good teachers despite any effort to be such to accept this.

 

I FOUND A NEW THING THE WHATEVER-THE HELL-IT-IS CALLED MOUSE PAD ON THE MACBOOK WILL DO! (Streaming before it was.)

 

I don’t know: Sometimes when I think about what I thought something tastes like and go back and find out what it really IS like, I’m very much disappointed. The Confusionism on the wall at the clay store: Getting what you want and not getting what you want can both be disappointing. Wendy's before Italy, Wendy's after Italy? Perhaps my goal was not well assessed, but the 19 year old and the 21 year old Carter didn't really agree on the desired outcome, of having a Wendy's burger be one of the most amazing things that had ever hit earth. Perhaps just a misunderstood learner.

 

3D projectors/films STILL give me a headache. I saw my first one… jeeze, when? 34 years back? Paper glasses then, but… is it really going to make that big a difference? I got sent to a conference a few of years back and another on ID a year ago, I won’t say who put them on, but at some point in the first I was thinking about the cost and heading for the Art Institute of Chicago after giving up on the class session I had just been to and thinking, “What I couldn’t have done with the money in my program?” I wonder if any of those people would ever have the guts to put a money back guarantee on programs… I wonder if I would have the guts to do it? That’s something to think about. But for now and in reflection on what I got from the first conference, I know that going to ARC has made a lot more difference in my teaching than the conference. As to the other conference, and the junk mail that we get from them at school…  Let me borrow the words from a past-student who visited at school the other day (a lawyer for the ACLU on loan in SLC from NYC [who is looking at going back to school to get a medical degree…]. When I asked him about paying back his loans, he said that is was no big deal as the salary he is earning(since it is still the NYC rate) is an “obscene amount.” And as we looked around the room at the conference and calculated what they were making on their ideas? Obscene. Again all I could think about was what I could have done with that money in the classroom. But it was grant money, tied to the event as we were informed by our administrators.

 

Rambling. On. Utah has been a great place to be. Even through the Pretty Great State plate. When I was going through college for the BFA's, I was asked to write a paper on what piece of english lit had made the biggest difference in me trying to get certified to teach English (so, I guess it was after the Bachs'.) "On the banks of the great, gray, green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees.... Oh, best beloved." Out of a parents mouth. Kind of like coaching, I guess. Amazing what can influence you, what can be important.

 

Of all the classes that the kid mentioned above had to take in high school, what is the one that this lawyer above came to rave to me about? My film class… Sometimes, when I listen to what people tell me that I have to do to be effective and what things kids tell me were successful, the correlation is something like apple = orange.

So, 10 bucks. Who's up for it? I'll even give it up for half of the references! 

This kind of blogging I could enjoy... at least for a few minutes. Even if I can't afford it often.

 

carter, one who carts

It is starting to feel a little like a load--- like dragging around the giant elephant in the room. Here again at 1:30 in the morning, feeling like I need to get back to the grades, but knowing that this "thing" is sitting out here unattended. I hate the feeling... So, short. For sure tonight.

Analysis- I've been looking at the stuff that Carl posted up for us this weekend on the wiki. And the very fundamental issue is to decide where your "learner" is and where they should be after the "product" is delivered. What does the recipient want? What does the company want? Are they/can they be the same? Are there any "others" involved? How do you figure this all out? Is everyone honest?

Extension- UbD seems obsessed with the idea of precisely analyzing what the learner "wants" and addressing those wants/needs. It seems based on this narrowness of goal. Most seem really glad of this. As I suppose I should be. But when was the last time a public school teacher had the good fortune of having everyone in the room want the same thing, teachers, students, administrators, state level people, custodians, parents, political leaders and constituents? If that group can't come to consensus, how does the model ever work?

I've got to do the last grades in 3 .5 hours. Some want an A, some just want to pass. Some don't care as they didn't sign themselves up for the class and are still trying to ignore it whenever possible. So, what does everyone want?

Still hauling the elephant.

front end and backward

Sounds sort of like a person spinning. Or falling down a hill. About to hit the rocks.

I'm going to keep this short, but maybe not that it should be. One of the consistent derogatory statements that one hears in a secondary school in relationship to NCLB and UBSCT has to do with teaching to the test. "Is that all they want us to do?" But then there is the issue of really knowing what is on "the test" and whether it's possible to teach to criteria that are not fully understood. The suggestion of these readings makes sense: you should know what it is that you will test, the nature of the specific learning that should be done, the difference between desired status and actual status. But it seems in a very real way to come up against the old notions that used to sound reasonable of "well, if we tell them what we are going to test, that is all that they will pay attention to." Which also seems reasonable to me in this regard: one teaches for, say, 90% of the time, different types of activites, different approaches, compared to the 10% spent in actual testing/assessing. Is it really valid to say that every last thing that is important will be tested? It seems to me that the idea that we are going to test every last important thing that happens in Hamlet is trying to equate it's depth with the job of making a person feel well liked, happy, and part of the family when they come in to see their bank teller. You may be able to reduce the one to a one-page set of criteria that can be posted behind the counter, but the volume of material written about that one play suggests that it isn't always going to be possible or even desirable to reduce that kind of valid content to anything but a spot-check quiz and a hard-to-assess essay. Or is this a case of trying to define a fuzzy goal?

I guess this one falls into the Struggles with IDET. Okay, do teach the kid how to write various types of sentences. Try not to fall prey to the two sins of Trad. Design. But I'm not yet convinced that everything can be reduced to such a clean set of finite goals. I get the point. I want to believe, in a way, but I would like see one of the texts dealing with Art Appreciation, or The Impressionists, or Hamlet. And then have it be just one small part of what you are supposed to be teaching, a part that you find important, that the State says is important, but that the Legislature won't even try to test.

Rambling. Just one more addition. Let me add one more sin to Wiggins and McTighe: throwing out a flippant example (To Kill a Mockingbird), and not offering any positive insights. When the future reader sits down to address one of the hundreds of millions of books sold each year and the author hasn't focused their reading for them so that they can pass the non-extant assessment after they close the back cover, is the reader's experience with the book going to be invalid, insufficiently directed? Get out your pre-assessments, folks. We're about to go take a walk in the woods! And it is no longer enough to enjoy yourself! That is far, far too fuzzy. (While I'm on that, has anyone else ever been over-directed at a National Park?)

A couple of thoughts after class

These would definitely qualify as jump cuts. So don't feel obliged to read on. Perhaps the next one will be worth a look.

It seemed like I had my mouth open a lot tonight, so I eventually started editing. Here are a couple of random observations after the fact.

It seems funny in view of the end of the discussion that part of the minimal film training in editing that I had dealt with the issue of self-evaluation of the great ideas that you had while shooting. Usually, that really good footage that you took that was the thing you loved most needs to be left on the floor in the editing room (old school, I suppose), because it rarely fits with the rest of what you are working on. Same with a lot of "best ideas."

---The issue of accountability to those you are teaching just by the nature of evaluation seems to me to suggest that instruction has to be dynamic. If you realize in the middle of a lesson that there would have been a better way to present that material, shouldn't the next go round include those changes even if the disparity between the first and the last lesson is great? I spent a little bit of the A day this week with the beginning classes doing clean-up because I changed the lesson plan after the first couple of tries. It always seems to be worth it.

---An observation that my brother made after finishing his degree in computer science (he worked most of his life as an electrician before going back for the degree) was that software was one of the only things out there marketed with the understanding that when it got to you, it still wouldn't be working correctly. Perhaps instruction falls in that category as well according to the models that we looked at tonight.

---Final thing: when a new piece of software gets dumped on you that is supposed to be part of your instruction (Oracle based grade/student info system), how much responsibility should the trainers have? I mean, if they didn't cover the stuff in the main menus, if you are still discovering basic stuff about the program five years later when you have time to play with it, should you send a note to your boss and tell him/her that they need to look for someone new in ID, or do you cut them the same break that you get in front of a class every day?

Anyway...

The waste of time tonight, the next blog button. How far before you find someone you could reasonable have run into in the flesh?

firstly...

First, I have to say that I haven't been a great reader of blogs as every time a person asks me to read one, the blog seems to peter out after a couple of days. In conversation today, when I mentioned that I had to do one as part of homework tonight, the other person asked if they could look at it, and I responded that I couldn't figure out why anyone outside of the class would want to read about the difference between instruction, teaching, education, and training.... and they looked at me like for once they would agree.

Particularly, this seemed true as the two readings seemed to perhaps differ as to how the writers each or severally thought about the subject. Sort of in the ball park swinging at the same balls, but wanting to refer to them as if they weren't the same, though mostly related.

Perhaps that is unfair. Teach, instruct, design. Teach, train, instruct. And all of this is education. One chapter each somewhat out of context.

So, reactions. "Systematic and reflective process of translating principles of learning and instruction..." No argument and very little reaction until it comes to dealing with the teacher element of this discussion. It seems that a teacher can be all of the things that are listed in the first part of the chapter and especially as illustrated in Figure 1.1. From the Drivers' Ed. teacher who talks on his cell in the on the range as kids are out getting education to the training that I do regularly as a means of having the student prepared to evenutally get the teaching that we are hoping to do. It seems teachers do all of these things, that reflection often seems a victim of time, and that what we are often hoping for out of technology is another human and that when it falls short, we just avoid it altogether. (That feels like a bit of a soapbox, but this being the first time out, I hope you will tell me how much to react and how much to stay with the subject...) The point there is that functionally I feel like that Figure 1.1 should have been done with an airbrush, that the lines are constantly fuzzing in and out of focus and that this seems to be part of the problem: the technology doesn't do that very well in my experience. This is jumping a little into the other reading, but the assumption that a designer CAN identify instructional goals, analyze learners and contexts and write valid performance objectives and hope for them to be continually applicable is a little pie-in-the-sky. The examples of AP Economics, invalidated by current standards, that will nonetheless continue to be tested as written because it can't be rewritten for a couple more years (technology) comes to mind as well as the constant rewriting of things like the UBSCT. I realize that the reflective and evaluative nature of any of this is part of the game, but the tone of the readings seems to be a bit over confident, sort of a "You get this all down, and you have it made."

(Back to the same old question. Do I reflect, react, or just report on what I read?)

Up next, the teaching that isn't instruction. The notion of this seems to me to be a prejudice of the writers. If the teacher of whatever goes in with the idea of exposure/exploration, isn't that a goal? Or is it just the perception or observation of the writer's that this isn't tight enough? I have the constant problem of dealing with the issue of trying to teach/increase/discover creativity in the students that I teach, particularly those who say flat out that they are not creative. I'm afraid that as much as I fret about, plan, review, ideate (verb form of ideation... both of which come up red in Blogger), and retry, the result will always be fuzzy. But it seems to me that this is the most important aspect that I can teach in art. I doubt that any teacher, even the one that only has a goal of getting through a class goes in with pure experience, pure education, in mind for more than a day or two. The goals may not be seen as valid, but goals they are. And when confronted with some of the attempts to state these fuzzy goals that exist in some curricula that will be in place with no review for YEARS as there are, it is no wonder that what maybe valid instructional goals get interpreted as pure education.

What is design? Well, it isn't the celtic knot, the single strand that follows a very precise pattern in order to have it work that is depicted. Ball of worms, perhaps. Celtic knot? No. At least not to the folks that I knew that used to depict them... or perhaps that is knot to those folks. Anyway, yes, I got the point. I would be great if it were linear (celtic knot, however curved) but it isn't. What I thought of as a possible useful metaphor (since they said these are important) was three building of several stories with walkways that connect them in the center on all levels and stair cases as well. But that image has already been done in more elegant way in the film versions of Hogwarts from Harry Potter with the moving stairs.

I enjoyed this section. I was intriguing to think of all the effort to make this as clean as possible after sitting through as many design (set, show) meetings as I have and having listened to those fights... okay, discussions... as several designers try to make their vision of something fit with the goals of the director and the others involved. And it made me think of the situations we are in working in a PLC at Highland (Fine Art) that has to deal with the vagueries of fine art as something that is supposed to be as precise as instructional design. But perhaps we fall into that category where potential consequences don't really justify great expenditures involved in careful design. The instructional design process congealed out of Rowland by the authors closely mirrors the Four Guiding Question that we use in PLC work at school, except that there are three. We add what action is taken to remediate which is implied and stated in the earlier reading.

Now for one last question/complaint: how can the example of the Digital Magic and and the sentence writing of the appendix in the Systematic text be compared? I know I seem a bit obsessed with implementation but to drop an example like that in when it probably mirrors the planning involved in the appendix example (about which I only have to say, "WHEN did they do all of this, pray tell?") belies what is often repeated about "matching". They describe a system which is fairly complex which is then exemplified by "Digital-Magic?" Okay, again, I get it. But I have to say, when I decided to start reading the Appendix example after the two chapter, I was almost dumbfounded.

Oh. One last thing I really appreciated was Figure 1.2 and it's accompanying text. In particular the follow-on in the section that discussed advantages and limitations of a Systematic Instructional Design system, and the emphasis on congruence. (I just didn't like the celtic knot...)

I gotta get prepped for Monday having realized a major flaw in the plan for my Ceramics 2 and 3 classes this afternoon. So my request: do I write more? Less? More evaluative and less reactive? More formal, or okay? (I wonder if I will ever again say to a student, "Long enough to cover the subject.") I'll cover the Systematic text in more detail if you want, but I anticipate it to be a shorter reaction as it felt more expository than the Smith/Ragan chapter.