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?