The "New Normal"?

This was originally posted to an email list of educators who are ruminating on the future of educational technology in the light of Blackboard's acquisition of ANGEL.

Riffing on Neil's #5 (you only make one major change like this in your career / no one ever got fired for choosing IBM) and Joe's note re long-term company viability....

The comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" had a story arc (still ongoing) involving a character who developed terminal cancer. When she entered hospice, she remarked to her husband, "So... this is the 'new normal'."

"New Normal"...hmm.

I'm creaky enough to remember a startup company (a spinoff of the implosion of Control Data) that marketed a cool little CBT authoring application for the Mac called "Course of Action." For developers of interactive multimedia computer-based instruction, Authorware was *not* the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It beat sliced bread hands-down.

Partly as a result, Authorware was soon purchased by Macromind, Inc. (a larger company that had a world-beating animation program for the Macintosh called Director); the merged company being called Macromedia. Macromedia was HUGE. They OWNED the market for interactive multimedia.

Then Tim Berners-Lee and a few friends came up with HTML and HTTP.

Authorware and Director did not do well over HTTP.

Anyone here still use Director or Authorware?

Now, most of us are used to the idea that Things Change. We're pretty much okay with that, and we're pretty good at explaining changes - that's why we went into this business, right? (Okay, it's why *I* went into this business. YMMV.)

But we went into this gig expecting the changes to be incremental, not fundamental. We did NOT expect the world to turn upside-down every few years (Howard Rheingold and John Perry Barlow excepted).

But look what's happened:

The World Wide Web

cellphones

broadband

iPods

wikis

blogs

VOIP

RSS

YouTube

iPhone

UStream

Twitter

Skype

Wordle

et cetera, et cetera, in saecula saeculorum, ad confusium eterna...

Stop.

Take a deep cleansing breath.

Nothing has changed. Nothing (really important) will change.

Really. People are still people. We all have the same basic physiology and psychology as the ancient Greeks. We all have the same basic hopes, fears, and aspirations. Our tools are different than those of our forebears. But like all tools, they're just tools. They let us do some things (affordances) and don't let us do other things (constraints). But regardless, they are merely tools. It's what we do with them that matters.

The tools we use for learning still let us:

* Examine and explore content,

* Communicate and collaborate, and

* Assess and report our understanding.

We need to remember that the differences betwen tools we used a few decades ago, and the tools we use now, are superficial. We (and

faculty and students) need to focus on the processes of teaching and learning.

But as we know, people tend to have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees.

So how do we get the folks we support to stop panicking over the beetles in the bark, and lift their heads up above the forest canopy to note that the sun still rises in the east?

As I see it, that's the real challenge.

An observation about the Maersk Alamaba incident

Reports indicate that the Navy did not act immediately against the pirates - even when the boat containing FBI negotiators was fired upon - because President Obama had made it clear that only a "peaceful resolution" to the incident was acceptable. He later amended that to indicate that deadly force could be used if the Captain's life appeared to be in imminent danger.

The way the situation ended should make it clear that the U.S. Navy does not deliver ransom to hostage-holding pirates unless it is authorized by the President.

But when so authorized, the Navy delivers it quickly: At 2,900 feet per second.

Business Aviation gets the JetBlues

Small commercial carrier JetBlue jumped on the "Flying CEO" zeitgeist with a series of clever YouTube ads that poke fun at the image of CEOs who don't want to mingle with the hoi polloi. You can see them here, along with the unamused reaction of one self-decribed flying CEO.

The alphabet groups that promote business aviation seem to be taking a dim view of the ads. That's an entirely understandable, perfectly predictable response.

And it's dead wrong.

It perpetuates the popular image of CEOs as whiny rich men who are only interested in their money and their toys, with the business aviation industry being the chief toymakers.

Might I suggest something such as the following:

Scene - outdoors, general aviation airport. Middle-aged man in suit (carrying jacket, tie loosened) is walking across tarmac to an airplane, speaking to camera.

"Hi. I'm a corporate CEO. That means I make decisions every day that affect the people who work for my company. If I make a bad decision, they suffer the consequences. So, I try to make smart decisions - and wasting time is not a smart decision."

*looks directly at camera*
"That's why I don't fly on JetBlue."

*gestures at aircraft behind him*
"This little airplane gets me into more than five thousand small airports across the country. That's where my customers and suppliers are - nowhere close to the big airline hubs. And when I need to get someplace right away, I don't have to wait around for the next available flight. As a matter of fact, a customer in another state called me early this morning with an urgent problem. If I had to fly commercial, I'd be lucky to get there before noon, and really lucky to get home in time to put my kids to bed tonight. Most of my day would be wasted at the airport. But with this business tool, I can see my customer this morning, and be back in the office this afternoon. That's a smart decision."

*boards steps, looks back at camera, shrugs*

"I get to keep my shoes on, too."

Hat Tip Benet Wilson, via Twitter

Links at LinkedIn leave me a little sad

I recently realized that the professional SN site LinkedIn has discussion threads.

So today I was looking at this discussion about this article, and in the course of the discussion someone asked about this study, which she described as having "debunked reading and math software."

Now, five years of my career was spent making reading and math software for schools and para-schools. Really good reading and math software. Software we worked extremely hard on. How hard? In the project plans, I budgeted forty-five minutes for each multiple-choice question. Why so much time? Well, each individual incorrect answer choice was designed to tease out a specific misunderstanding of the topic at hand. Further, each incorrect answer choice was specifically remediated in the wrong-answer-feedback, without giving away the correct answer. After being written (a tough job in its own right) the question text had to be tagged, coded, compiled and tested. 45 minutes each.

We also developed an umbrella-sort mechanism using the magic of Regular Expression text-string comparison to do a reaonable job of analyzing free-entry text responses, going far beyond the typical exact-match of text-entry items. (Did I mention this was done on DOS on a 386 CPU, not using semantic cloud computing or neural networks?)

As I said, really good educational software, not just PDFs of worksheets or arcade-game drill-n-kill exercises.



So when I read that some study had supposedly "debunked reading and math software" my hackles stirred enough to send me to read the executive summary of the study. I read a lot of educational research. Not counting the journals I read tyrying to keep up in my field, I'm a reviewer for an international journal of education technology, and over the past several years I've reviewed more than fifty articles submitted for publication. SO I think I'm at least competent to read a piece of research and tell whether its any good.

The ED study is pretty good, though it has some major limitations, which the authors themselves note. It certainly does not "debunk" educational software.

Here's what I wrote in reply:

"Debunking" is rather a strong, and IMO inappropriate word. At worst, the survey reports no significant difference in learning outcomes. That's not necessarily a bad thing. As it happens I also have open on my desktop the site http://nosignificantdiffernce.org , which provides a meta-analysis of hundreds of comparative-media studies. The bottom line is that comparative media studies *usually* report no significant difference in outcomes.

And why should that be surprising? If Medium A and Medium B are both *designed to help learners achieve the same learning objectives*, we should *expect* to see no significant difference.

That said, the ED study reports a good deal of trouble in data collection. There was a serious lack of continuity from year one to year two - over 70% of the teachers dropped out of the study. There were no classroom observations in year two. The survey team administered their own tests where the districts did not, and it is not immediately clear whether the software that was evaluated was aligned to those tests, or whether the instruction given to the control group was tailored to the test.

In other words, is the software taking a hit because it didn't teach something that was on the test? Many of these software packages are highly modularized and can be adapted to fit state or local standards. If the software wasn't set up to teach the content that was going to be on the test (assuming it could have been), it's hardly the fault of the software developers.

In addition, the study authors issue some strong caveats about the limits of their own research. The summary notes: "Characteristics of districts and schools that volunteered to implement the products differ, and these differences may relate to product effects in important ways."

It concludes, "Products in the study also were implemented in a specific set of districts and schools, and other districts and schools may have different experiences with the products. The findings should be viewed as one element within a larger set of research studies that have explored the effectiveness of software products."

If the study authors themselves issue such caveats, it's a little over the top to call it "debunking." Just because it's not a magic bullet doesn't mean it's of no value.

Successful implementation of learning technology does not seek to replace the teacher (except in situations where there is no teacher to replace). Rather, it seeks to free up the teacher by assuming the role of content-provider. This enables the teacher to do what a machine cannot - to connect with the student as a person, to coach and encourage, and when necessary to admonish and correct (can we even do that anymore?)

The commentor to whom I had responded thanked me for my response and replied that she had gotten her information from a comment on a post on the liberal multi-author blog Huffington Post. I followed the link and found her reference in the comments section, which was filled with vitriolic partisan ignorance that is beyond my ability or desire to attempt to remediate.

I really feel sorry for people who are filled with fear and hatred for ideas that are different from their own. Can we not disagree agreeably?

The Upside-down Pop Quiz

Remember pop quizzes? "Class, take out a sheet of paper. I assume you've all read Chapter Three. So let's play the Read-My-Mind Game, also known as Gotcha! Bwahahahah...." Even if you'd done the homework and read the chapter, you never knew if what *you'd* gotten out of the chapter matched what the teacher thought was important. Oh, how we hated them.

A couple of years ago I was designing a new course with a History professor, and inspiration struck. Instead of punishing students for not reading the book (or not getting the "right stuff" out of it), why not provide a positive incentive? We want them to read the book. What do they want that we can provide? Grades! A simple transaction, really: You do what I want, I give you something you want. It's worked for generations of parents and corrupt government officials (until they get caught, anyway). It's called BRIBERY: Read the textbook, and it's worth a letter grade to you.

So we turned the pop quiz on its head. We created untimed, open-book online quizzes for the text chapters we assigned. The questions came directly out of the book, and were designed to be answered while looking at the text. (After all, life is an open-book test.) The quizzes were posted on the class website (Blackboard) the week before the discussion of the readings. Students could take the quiz as many times as they wanted. The feedback to incorrect answers directed students to the appropriate page of the text. We did not give the correct answers. The sum of all the quizzes amounted to 10% of the final grade.

Questions were a mix of high-level, conceptual, big-picture items that required students to integrate ideas across an entire section, and nitty-gritty detail questions that could not be answered apart from the text. Case in point: The text contained a passage from an original source document listing government jobs in Massachusets in 1690. The list included baker, brewer, collector of tithes, person to keep dogs out of church, rebuker of boys, and so on. So we put this question on the quiz: "According to the text, all of the following were government jobs in Massachusets in 1690 EXCEPT..." and then we listed the jobs above, inserting the red herring, "Admonisher of young ladies." Sounds reasonable, but it wasn't listed in the text. (I suppose colonial girls were better-behaved than their brothers.)

Now, I guarantee you, if you ask a question like that on a closed-book test, the students would be lighting torches and sharpening pitchforks, and with good reason. Expecting students to memorize a list like that is completely unreasonable. But it's perfectly reasonable to ask them to read that paragraph closely at least once, in order to kickstart a class discussion of colonial attitudes about the role of government.

Ok, fine, sounds great. Innovative teaching strategy, hoo-hah hurray, golf-claps all 'round. But does it work?

Yes. Emphatically so.

The data showed that most students took the quiz more than once, some up to four times in order to improve their scores. The time-stamps on successive quiz attempts showed how students were driven to the text, forcing them to ferret out the answers. The instructor could see which questions the students had missed, showing which concepts needed extra attention in the lecture and discussion.

In class, the discussions made it very clear that the students had read the assigned chapter, and read it carefully. And since the quiz questions reflected what the instructor thought was important, they were all on the same page regarding both the big ideas and the details. The instructor didn't need to spend time rehashing the chapter content; it became a starting point for the discussion.

So, I commend the upside-down pop quiz to you. Give it a try, and if you'd be so kind, let me know how it works for you.

Yak Shaving Razors - Take Two

List five useful things you know that others might find useful, but might not know. #yakshavingrazors

I got waylaid in my attempt to finish the earlier post, which lead Tojosan a bit off the path I'd intended. The idea wasn't to detail our own struggles with unshaven yaks, but rather to share ideas, tips, and tools that make the yak shaving - or any other activity - a little easier.

Think "Hints from Heloise" or the "lifehacks" tag in delicious.

So... My Five Useful Things to Know:

1. A dash or two of Tabasco improves almost any sauce, soup, or stew. It brightens the flavors. This is especially true of rich, creamy sauces such as alfredo.

2. Saliva is a remarkable cleaning solution. In reading about the recovery and resoration of rare artworks, you sometimes see the phrase "a mild, aqueous enzymatic solution," as in, "centuries of grime were carefully removed from the priceless painting with a soft brush and a mild, aqueous enzymatic solution." That's not magical mystery mix, but good old fashioned spit. Saliva is mostly water (aqueous) but contains lots of enzymes that break down and soften all manner of organic compounds (aka "pre-digestion"). So before breaking out the tolulene or MEK, rub a little spit on that spot. (Unless of course, you dip Skoal.)

3. Stretch out your guitar strings when you change them. The pitch of a guitar string depends on its length, unit mass, and tension. When you're tuning up a new string, the length and unit mass (.55 low E vs .10 high E) are constant, so the only variable is tension. Problem is, when you tighten the string up, it stretches. It literally gets longer, which reduces the tension, making it go flat.
Most materials (including guitar strings) stretch when they are under tension. You can graph the stress (tension) versus the amount of stretch (strain). At first, the stretch is like a rubber band - when you let off the pressure the string returns to its original length. But at some point, the "set" becomes permanent. The string will continue to stretch up to a point, then it won't stretch any more. That's the point you need to get to in order for the string to stay in tune.
So here's how to pre-stress your strings. Tune the new string up to pitch, then pick it up at the 12 fret (the midpoint). Pull it out an inch or so so you can feel it "give" a bit. Waggle it back and forth, then tune it back up. The stretched-out strings will stay in tune.

4. Experienced cooks know this, but here's how to make a nice pan gravy by "deglazing" the pan. Say you're browning some chicken, or pan-frying steaks. By the time the meat is cooked you've got some stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan. (We're assuming it's not burned, just browned.) I used to scrub it out with a scrubbing pad - such a waste of effort AND flavor!

Remove the cooked meat - it needs to rest for a couple of minutes before you serve it anyway. The pan probably still has some fat in it; drippings from the meat. If it's really dry, add some butter or oil, about a tablespoon. Heat the pan till it just barely starts to smoke, then pour in about a quarter-cup of liquid - enough to cover the bottom of the pan about 1/4 inch deep. You can use water, broth, wine, whatever. Use a spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan - the browned bits will come up easily and dissolve in the liquid.

Now you have several options. You can toss the pan in the sink, having saved yourself some elbow grease with a Brillo pad. (Booo! as the CommonCraft folks say) Or you can:

• Serve the pan sauce as is and call it "au jus"
• Boil the liquid down to concentrate the flavor (this is called "reducing").
• Mix a tablespoon of flour with some warm water, then add that and cook until the gravy thickens. You might add more broth for volume or to thin it. (Note - adding dry flour directly to the hot pan tends to form lumps - the hot broth cooks it up into little dumplings before the flour can get dispersed.)

5. Write offline. Whenever you're going to write a lengthy post for an online forum, do it offline in Word or Notepad. Because if you're typing right into Blogger or WP and your network connection crashes, you'll lose everything.

Twitter Tag Meme - Yak Shaving Razors

Today my postcard-sending pal Tojosan got tired of the "Several Things About Me" Twitter-tag meme that's been going around. He asked for a more useful topic. I replied, "OK, how's this: List five useful things you know that others might find useful, but might not know. #yakshavingrazors"

Yak Shaving Razors?!?!! Say WHAT?

Yes, Yak Shaving Razors. The term isn't my own, I first ran across it years ago on Joe Carter's old Evangelical Outpost blog. Yak-shaving is something that you have to do in order to do the thing that you actually need to do. For example, I want to move a study desk from the garage into the boys' room. But before I can do that, I have to clear out the back of the van. Why? Because the desk is going where the dresser is now, and the dresser is going to move into the closet, where the old TV is now, and there's a bunch of recycling int he back of the van where I plan to put the TV to take it to get it fixed so it can be used as a dedicated game console... you see where this is going?

So a Yak Shaving Razor is a tool or a tidbit of information that helps you get things done.

With that introduction out of the way, here's my list of Yak Razors.... dang. Lookit the time. I need to call in an order of Chinese takeout so we can eat before taking the kid to basketball practice...

Hey, who let that yak in here?

I'm nearly famous on #TCOT

So I signed up at Top Conservatives on Twitter. Much to my shock and dismay I started out ranked in the 50's but as more folks joined I've moved down, currently 159. Out of over 1600, tough, that's not bad. Plus, I gained over a hundred followers on Twitter. Whaddya know...

They've put up a Drudge look-alike site (http://206.130.122.75/ - the DNS isn't resolving yet) and lo and behold, I'm on the blogroll. (Just for the record, @michaelpleahy, I've never liked the look of Drudge's site. IMO that Courier-bold font is just plain ugly and hard to read. YMMV)

Well, that was scary

So we get home after a long night. I'm just a bit winded, so I reach for the inhaler in my pocket. As usual, I blow into it before taking a puff - learned that trick after inhaling a bit of pocket lint. Puffer to mouth, squeeze, inhale-

The instant I take the puff, I feel SOMETHING in the back of my throat.

DEEP in the back of my throat.

IN a VERY BAD PLACE deep in the back of my throat.

Much hacking, gagging, etc. ensues. "Dad, are you OK?"

"No!" I gasp. (I note that I can move air, and that this is a Good Thing. I had been contemplating how to give myself a Heimlich.)

A laundry basket, then a trash can appear in my tears-on-glasses-blurred field of vision. The noises I"m making, it's clear Dad's gonna blow chunks. Or eject a hairball. Or something, but get the man a trash can.

Cough, hack, hack, cough... the THING goes down. Sort of.

"Water!" It appears, is consumed, helps somewhat.

"Kids, I think I just swallowed a quarter." I contemplate driving myself to the ER, leaving kids home alone all evening. Suboptimal.

I do a FOD check of my pocket contents and the little dish into which I dump pocket contents. I also check to see if a US Quarter will fit sideways into the opening of an inhaler, because it feels like I just swallowed something that size. (It doesn't.)

FOD check reveals that of the four tire-valve caps I had had in my pocket (I'd put air in the tires earlier, but did not replace the valve-stem caps), only three can be accounted for.

After several careful breaths, I'm fairly sure that I did not inhale one of them into my lungs, but rather swallowed it (THANK YOU, epiglottis!).

I do hope that stomach acid dissolves that particular kind of plastic.

Cleaning up under Obama

I was looking at Obama's transition-team site change.gov, looking for some hope. I came across a section of promises to families where Obama says that a person who works full-time should not have to live below the poverty line. Sounds noble enough. Current minimum wage pays around $13,000 for full-time work, and the poverty level for a family of two is $14,000. So, Obama wants to increase the minimum wage. Sounds good for the worker.

But let's run some numbers,and see how this works out for the person who employs the worker.

Since the plumbing business is in a slump, let's look at a hypothetical office-cleaning service with 55 employees. 5 employees make $30,000 - they're the office folks who keep the business running, doing the the account management, ordering supplies, accounting, etc. 10 employees make $10/hr, or $20,000/yr - the shift managers. And there are 40 workers who are paid minimum wage. (Let's face it - while cleaning offices is honest work, it's not particularly difficult or demanding work.) That's $6.55/hr now, going up to $7.25 next summer. Assume a full-time worker works 2000 hours a year.

So the administrative and supervisory team has a combined payroll of 5*30k + 10*20k or 150k+200k or $300,000. The workers have a combined payroll 40*2000*6.55, or $524,000.

There are 20 teams of two workers each, with a shift supervisor responsible for two teams. Each team works all night cleaning office buildings. The cleaning service charges $200 a night. Labor and supplies costs run about $150 a night, which yields a profit of $50 per team. Times 20 teams, that's $1,000 a night. There are 260 business days in a year, so that's a tidy profit of $260,000. Nice, huh? Too bad he'll have to pay an extra 3% in taxes.

Wait - the front-office team has to get paid. Their payroll is $150,000, so the net profit is down to $110,000.

At least he doesn't have to worry about that tax bump from 36% to 39%. But he does have to pay taxes, which cuts profit down to $70,400. Social security takes another 7.6% of the gross, reducing profit to $62,000. Worker's comp insurance comes out of that. Let's say that the premium is $5 per employee per week. That's 5*52*55 or 6875, round it to $6800. So the net profit is now $55,200. That's what the business owner takes home.

In exchange for providing over four dozen jobs and keeping twenty office buildings clean, he gets a decent middle-class, just-above-the-median paycheck of about $55,000. Livin' the American Dream.

But next summer the minimum wage is scheduled to go up to 7.25/hr. That will bump the payroll of the hourly workers to $580,000, an increase in direct costs of $56,000, or about 9%. As you can see, the business is going to have to increase what it charges the customer by about 9%. That's gonna be a tough sell, because the buildings are not going to be 9% cleaner.


Now let's look at what Obama's plan does to this business. He wants to raise minimum wage to $9.10 an hour. The minimum-wage boost increases the payroll of the hourly workers to $728,000, an increase of over $200,000. That $200,000 will have to come from somewhere.

The business owner could raise his rates, say from $200 a night to $280 a night. But increasing his rates by 40% just might result in his customers reducing their demand on his services - after all, they have budgets, too.

He could cut payroll. Each worker now makes $13,000 a year. A shift supervisor is needed for every four workers, earning $20,000. He could lay off six teams - 12 workers and 3 supervisors, saving $216,000. Of course, that reduces his ability to earn money, because instead of having 20 teams now he has only 14. So his gross is now down to $700 a night, $182,000 a year. The administrative payroll is $150,000... looks like someone in the office has to go, too.

Change? You betcha.

Hope? Notsomuch.

The Formation of a Fiend

This is based on an original short story by DrummerBoy. The original was dashed off in 40 minutes for a middle-school writing competition last year. (Students are given a short prompt such as "transformation" and have to write a story in 40 minutes based on that prompt.) I could not resist taking a couple of hours to fine-tune things, give the tale just a little more punch. But although many of the words below are mine, it's still his story. Enjoy.

-----

The blade loose in my hand, I approach the operating table. It is draped in absorbent, disposable paper. The paper is dry now, but soon it will be soaked and stained. Spread out nearby, an assortment of shining instruments; each with its own edge, its own point, its own purpose, its own part to play in tonight's work.

Grim work, yes. Grisly work, certainly. But needful work, oh yes. Most needful. Tonight a Fiend must be summoned. And that summoning requires a sacrifice.

Immobile on the table, round and ruddy, turgid with new life, she awaits. I selected her carefully from her among her sisters, chose her especially. My free hand gently caresses her gravid curves. I examine her closely on all sides, seeking imperfections, irregularities, sources of inspiration. Ah, here… So. Mmm, there… Yes.

I pick up a marking pen and begin tracing lines on the smooth skin. The dark ink will guide my bright knives. I smile in anticipation as the shape of the Fiend emerges onto her flesh.

Now, the plan complete, I lift the knife to make the first cut. There must be no hesitation. No trepidation. No doubt. No pity. I place the point of the knife on the mark and plunge it down. There is no scream of terror, just a vaguely wet sound as the blade sinks in. I work the serrated edge up and down, around the curve, following the inked line in a circle. Within moments I have freed a section the size of my palm. I lift it, revealing the hollow space beneath.

The sight that greets me could turn the strongest stomach. The orange cavity is filled with stringy flesh, slick with juices. Pale encapsulated embryos cling to the fibrous strands. A rich, sickly-sweet aroma fills the air. It is not the smell of death and decay, though that will come as surely as the first frost of winter.

I lift a shining, curved tool that could be a large spoon, were it in a kitchen. The sharp edge loosens the clinging strands from the interior cavity as I work it around. I scoop out the loosened flesh, plopping it wetly into a basin to be discarded.

My work is grim, but it is not without purpose. Tonight, the veil between this world and the next becomes thin. When night falls, my oh-so-normal neighbors will be transformed into hideous creatures, prowling the streets in search of plunder, mischief, or worse. Spirits, demons, monsters, and darker things will emerge from the shadows. Even the children – especially the children – will be taken up in the madness. This Fiend, carved by my hand from living tissue, is the only possible protection for my home and loved ones. As the sky begins to darken, I hurry to finish.

My arm is weary from the labor of emptying the thick-walled womb. Finally it is left a hollow shell. Taking up a small knife, I begin to shape the face of my Fiend. Tracing the marks, I alternately slice, shave, and saw. I lay my tools down and assess my work. The eyes have no trace of humanity, no pity. The mouth – a leering, fanged slit – threatens to open wide and devour anyone who approaches too closely. It is not perfect, but then, no work of Man ever is. My prayer is that it is good enough. It must be, for the sun has slipped below the horizon.

One last, critical step remains. To bring the Fiend to life and enable it to guard my keep this night, I must invoke the First Power of the Ancients – that discovery that first set Man apart from the rest of Creation. Where my previous labors had borne with them the risk of shedding my blood, now I must take care lest my flesh be seared.

I take the Fiend outside into the gathering gloom. I position it carefully so that it can be clearly seen from a distance. (While many Guardians do their best work unseen, the Fiend is useless unless the foe can see – and fear – its glowing eyes.) Already I hear the mobs, assaulting my neighbor's homes, demanding tribute. No more time!

Quickly I kindle the ancient flame and plunge the burning brand into the belly of the fiend, where a prepared wick awaits. The flame leaps up and threatens my fingers. No matter. The consequences of failure are far worse than a few blisters. The wick sputters, then ignites.

The Fiend springs to life, its eyes casting an eerie glow across the night, defending my domicile against the ravening hordes that even now approach my door as I sit back, safety now assured. Warily they approach to the edge of the Fiend's light, creatures of nightmare, refugees from Faerie, half-imagined horrors bearing sacks already bulging with sweet plunder. In ragged unison they raise their shrill voices.

"Trick or treat!"

Plumbing the Numbers on Obama's Tax Hike

Senator Obama told Joe the Plumber that if Joe made more than $250,000, his taxes would go up by 3%. That money would then be redistributed to folks with lower incomes in the interest of "fairness." For the moment let's leave aside the "fairness" of the government taking money from people who are willing to work longer and harder than most in order to give it to people who perhaps aren't. (Yes, I know there are folks who work their tails off and just can't seem to get a break, just as there are folks who were in the right place at the right time and stumbled into a gold mine. Set that aside for now.)

What bugs me is this: if Obama is going to raise taxes on JUST the top 5% and give the money to the poor, how far will that really go? Will it really make a difference?

Being a lazy blogger unwilling to find undisputable, authoritative data via Google and Wikipedia, I'm gonna SWAG some numbers: There are about 300 million people in the US. Given the large number of kids and retirees, let's say that 1/3 of them earn income. (It keeps the math simple.) Obama is going to raise taxes by 3% on the top 5%, those making more than $250,000 a year. That's 5% of 100 million, or five million "rich" people who get to pay more taxes. (Note that this is Obama's definition of rich, not McCain's.)

Five million business owners and successful investors will get their taxes raised by 3%. What will that cost them? Well, obviously, it depends on how much they earn. But we want to keep this simple. We know that the very, very rich - the people who earn billions - manage to shelter and hide most if not all of this income from the taxman. And let's face it, there are darned few of them. The vast majority of those five million are small and medium sized businesses who have a handful to a few dozen employees. So let's pick a number, say, $500,000 to represent the average income for this group.
Obama's going to take an extra 3% from each of them. For every hundred bucks they earn, he takes $3. For every $100,000, he takes $3,000. So (taking an average) Obama is going to collect $15,000 a year from each of five million small business owners.

What will that cost them?
$15,000 is a year's wages for a person earning $7.50 an hour.
It's half the starting salary of a college-educated professional employee.
It's the cost of an advertising campaign that keeps a several marketing professionals employed for a month, and feeds business to printers, bulk-mailing service providers, newspapers, radio and TV stations, and so on.
It's two years' depreciation on a piece of capital equipment that will help a manufacturer compete against offshore companies with lower labor costs.
It's the cost of a year of college for their kid - or themselves.
$15,000 taken out of their pocket.

TIMES FIVE MILLION

What will that cost our economy?

But, but, but! Obama says. The money that the government takes will be used to Do Good! It will be redistibuted to the less-fortunate, to those who are unable (not to say unwilling) to earn those Richie-Rich (or upper-middle-class) incomes.

Okay.

I'm all for a social safety net. Again, leaving aside the "fairness" of the Robin Hood mentality, HOW MUCH GOOD WILL IT DO?

Five million taxpayers involuntarily contribute $15,000 each. That's $75 billion. Seventy-five billion dollars taken out of taxpayers pockets to be redistributed. $75 billion taken out of the economy.

How far will it go? Let's say that 10% of all Americans live below the line that Obama will draw. So ten percent of 300 million, or thirty million people, will get checks drawn on the Bank of the Upper Middle Class. Thirty million people will share $75 billion (this assumes zero cost to administer the program). (75*10^9)/(30*10^6) = (75/30)*(10^(9-6)) = 2.5*10^3.

Thirty million people get $2,500 each.

What can you do with $2500?

If you are a fiscally-responsible individual, you might spend it on...
Several months' rent in an apartment.
A couple of mortgage payments.
A couple of months of child care.
A few month's worth of groceries.
A semester or two of community college.
Downpayment on a halfway-decent used car, or cash for a "beater".

These are well and good things, but will they really make a fundamental change in someone's life? Yes, it'll help in the short run. And for some this would provide enough breathing room to get their legs under them. But for most folks living on the ragged edge, it's not really a game-changer. (I know; I've been there. It astonishing how far a thousand bucks doesn't go.)

However. I really hate to say this, because I know how it's gonna come across, but...

I've known folks who tend to make poor financial decisions (and therefore will never get into the middle of the middle class, much less the top). So I know that a good percentage of that thirty million will also decide that $2500 buys:

A hi-def TV
A good dirt bike
A killer stereo and light package for the car
Several months' worth of beer and smokes
A stack of lottery tickets
A "blow-the-wad" trip to the local casino

Call me classist if you wish, but I've LIVED with folks who make these sorts of buying decisions with much smaller windfalls. Folks who let the water or gas get turned off, but they pay the cable bill and keep the beer fridge full.

Yes, you could argue that the money is going back into the economy, stimulating "trickle-up" economic activity. But if we want to plow seventy five billion dollars into the economy, who do we want making the spending decision? People who have experience handling money? Or people who don't? People who are going to use it to pimp their ride, or to grow a business and create jobs?

Does it make sense to take $15,000 from a business owner and employer and divvy it up between six other people, none of whom have his business savvy, some of whom he wouldn't hire to sweep the floor? If YOU had $2500 just laying around to invest, would you rather give it to Trailer Park Tommy, or Joe the Plumber?

I dunno about you, but I'd go with the guy with the plunger.

Online calculus

A couple of profs in the Math department here are kicking around the idea of creating an online Calculus course.

When I took calculus (shortly after Newton invented it), it was taught in a huge lecture hall. The professor spent the period with his back to the class, writing equations on the chalkboard and saying things like, "It is therefore intuitively obvious that..." (Have I ever mentioned that Calculus was one of the reasons I switched majors from engineering to education?) That's not the way it's done here. Class sizes are small, and the profs really interact with their students on the fly.

That's one of the reasons that Calculus is one of the courses that students like to take at a community college. Still, we could reach more students if we could put the course online, or perhaps in a hybrid format.

One of the profs (call him Luke) is using Adesso CyberPads in his F2F classes. Students can hand-write their homework on paper using the special pen and the electronic pad. The CyberPad creates a digital image file that the student can then sent to the instructor. This is very handy for classes that meet once a week or Monday-Wednesday. If a student has a question on Wednesday night she doesn't have to wait until Monday.

Luke has proposed that we create an online Calculus course around this tool. He's got serious questions about how to structure the instructional content, because his teaching style is extremely hands-on. We hashed thing over during lunch last week with two other professors from the department. One of them (call him Vince) was vocal in his opposition to "canned" online courses that consist of nothing more than a publisher's Blackboard cartridge. yesterday he wrote:

It may have taken me a couple weeks, but here's my opposition to on-line courses as they are currently done at LCC. There's a TV in my classroom. What do you say if instead of me lecturing in Calculus, I just put in the DVDs that come with the book and we watch them as a class? What would people say about that kind of education? In many ways, it's better than on-line, isn't it? At least the students can pause the DVD and I can explain things to them. At least the learning is "synchronous" and they can interact with each other. Plus, I'm available during office hours and via e-mail. Somehow, I don't think people would think very highly of this kind of learning environment. I'm sure students would complain, and people like Jim would lose respect for me. Could I honestly say this is in the students' best interest? Would people honestly believe that this is academic freedom? Somehow, I don't think so. So, how is on-line, especially how it's done in our department, any better than this?

Valid issues. I asked him if I could open the discussion to the wider community (that's you) and he agreed. Here was my initial response:

Vince raises some very important issues.

There is currently no central authority regarding the content, format, or quality (however that is measured) of online courses at Lakeland. The quality of an online course is up to the instructor and the department. As a result, we see a wide variety of online coruses. Some instructors create their course sites entirely from scratch, including self-produced multimedia elements such as narrated powerpoint presentations, recorded lectures, or videos. Some departments have developed standard templates for high-enrollment courses, and instructors have little leeway in the way they facilitate the course. Some instructors use a publisher's course cartridge (which can vary in quality from abysmal to outstanding), and do little other than monitor students' progress. Others extensively modify and rearrange the pre-created content, putting their own spin on it, and use the online forums to facilitate deep, reflective, substantive class discussions.

Classroom teaching shows the same range. Some instructors read out of the book or off the powerpoint slides, some just work problems with their backs to the class, others are dynamic and engaging, responding to the students.

The online environment isn't any better or any worse than the classroom. It's just a different set of affordances and constraints. The question is, is it possible to leverage the affordances (and work around the constraints) in the particular knowledge/skill domain? What do we give up, and what do we gain? What CAN we give up? What must we NOT give up?

A common reaction is, "I can't give up the ability to respond in real-time to a student's question." But let's drill down - what's *really* at issue there? The root principle is that we want to identify the moment that a student gets lost, and at that moment, bring them back on track. But it's not always necessary to repeat information or give an alternate presentation. Sometimes the student just needs a little more time to work out how you got to Point B from Point A. Can we do that online? Sure. It's just a question of how we want to do it.

So - what do you folks think?

CCK08 Connections

Well, it's about time I got off the dime and wrote something longer than 140 characters...

For the past couple of weeks I've been following along haphazardly with George and Stephen's Excellent Adventure, aka CCK08. Now, my attitude towards theories of teaching and learning mirrors that of M. David Merrill (see P. 59, #10), so I've been letting a lot of the heavy discussion pass by. But last week's notion of overlapping networks has sort of stuck. I'm a big fan of James Burke's "Connections" series, where he shows how seemingly-unrelated things are actually deeply intertwined. I like that sort of thing, even when the connections are a bit tenuous.

John Connell writes about a young man expressing himself through the medium of music and video, linking it to the notion of "postliteracy." In the comments, Jenny Luca asks whether it is just literacy, as practiced in the 21st century.

In the video John lnked, a young person is playing Pachabel's Canon on an electric guitar. I've seen the video before (as have several million other YouTube viewers), but this time the context caused some lights to go on.

John describes the video as having "low production values." I disagree. The video is very well-made for its purpose. The image is well framed. If you are a fairly-skilled guitarist wanting to learn this piece and you have the tabulature, this video gives you very useful information without attempting to be a typical "guitar instruction video." The scene is backlit so strongly that it is almost washed-out. As a result, the player appears in a golden halo of light, with few details of the room discernable. The player's identity is obscured to the point that even gender is not obvious. The hat is pulled low over his or her face, concealing his or her identity except probably to a few close friends. Instead of the typical amateurish "sitting back from turning on the camera" and "reaching forward to turn it off", there are opening and closing credits (with music!)

As an example of a YouTube video, it's *extremely* well-done. Or to put it another way, it demonstrates the "literacy" of making video for YouTube guitarists

The video is also ironic in the connections it makes - and breaks. Pachabel's Canon is a venerable piece of classical music that requires only moderate playing ability, but the modern rock arrangement in the video requires a fair amount of technical skill. In addition, the fast legato arpeggios are played with a sweep-picking technique that mimics violin bowing (many rock guitarists are fans of the great 19th-century violinist Niccolo Paganini).

Now - how many folks are geeky enough to pick up on that bit of irony? Probably not a lot. Was that connection intended by the young performer? Almost certainly not. And that brings us to the connection between Norse Sagas, the Bible, and Weezer.

You might dimly recall from some grade school literature unit that the Medieval Norse (aka Vikings) wrote these long, bloody poems called "sagas." (It would also be accurate to describe them as "bloody long" poems.) The sagas made great use of a literary device called kennings. A kenning is a metaphorical set-phrase such as "sea-steed" (sailing ship) and "swan-road" (ocean). But the kennings were not just general poetic riddles; they had very specific cultural connotations - baggage, if you will. So a kenning that refers to a shipwreck doesn't refer to just any shipwreck, but the shipwreck that tragically took the life of the young man who was fleeing his father's undeserved wrath and and and... they packed a lot of meaning and emotion, these kennings. You can think of them as a sort of cultural zip file. The listeners (sagas were originally an oral tradition) "got" the deeper references because they were literate in the context of their culture.

I'm thinking that this cultural awareness is a pretty key concept.

For example, a great deal of Western culture (and I don't mean rodeos) is based on the Bible. But a lot of folks nowadays aren't all that familiar with The Book. Case in point, the phrase "The writing's on the wall." Where does that phrase originate? The situation has gotten to the point that schools are starting to teach classes called "The Bible as Literature" in order to acquaint students with their greater cultural heritage. These students may not understand "mene" but they sure understand "meme."


So what does this all mean? Good question. I think I'm still constructing that.


Oh - for a different take on Pachabel's Canon (complete with its own set of musical memes),watch this.

This post was lovingly handcrafted in Notepad, since Blogger's crummy WYSIWYG editor doesn't work right, and doesn't put target="_blank" in its hyperlinks. And folks wonder why I don't post more often...

Salami-Scented Puppy Poots

Also posted at Dadosphere.

Ah, the fun of getting into the back-to-school routine. The packing the backbacks. The setting out of the clothes - and the shoes - and the socks - and the underwear. The making of lunches. The parental verification of said lunches to ensure they do not consist solely of Rice Krispy Treats and Little Debbie Nutty Bars.

Actually, the kids are pretty good about their lunches. Herself (the 5th grader) and Mr. Brown (the 3rd grader) got out the new half-pound package of salami and made their sandwiches (two slices of salami between two slices of bread, no condiments). They packed some fruit, filled their water bottles, and packed it all back in the fridge. As I said, good kids.

Good, but not quite perfect. They put *almost* everything back into the fridge. But something was forgotten, something left behind.

But it was not neglected for long.

I came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, and found Duke the Amazing Canine blissed -out under the table, loving licking the inside of the now-empty salami package. He was in hound-dog heaven.

I summoned Herself. The following conversation ensued:

Herself: "Duke! You're not supposed to eat the salami!"

Duke: "Buurp!"

I kid you not. It was *perfectly* timed. That dog has a future in stand-up comedy, I tell you.

That's a good thing, too. Because now, several hours later, it's quite clear that Glade *won't* be hiring him to develop new air fresheners. :-/

Hello!

I really didn't intend for a month to go by with no posting. I've actually been pretty busy given that it's summer.

Word art

Wordle.net is a cool site that creates a word cloud based on text that you give it. Here's what happens when you feed it the text of Ephesians 1, and the text of Romans:



The fish shape just sort of happened on its own.

Sometimes the lights go on after lights-out

Sometimes you Just. Want. Them. To. Go. To BED!!! But you should never (Never!) pass up an opportunity to talk to your teenager. Even when you know that tomorrow AM will Not Be Fun as a result.

The Karate Kid boarded the Clue Bus tonight:

Last year he was State Champ in his martial arts division. But as he approached his teens he decided that he was bored in karate class, and didn't really want to go, and, and, and. He hasn't really focused on martial arts in about six months.

So tonight we're talking about this and that and the other thing, and I offhandedly remind him just how gifted he is in martial arts. (He really and truly is, and that's not just Daddy pride.) He gets inspired to get physical. Ignoring the fact that I've told him to go to bed already - twice - I help him stretch (his foot reaches over my head!?!)

He then heads downstairs to work off some energy on the punching bag.

Ten minuntes later he comes back upstairs, red skinned, sweating, in tears. His leg angle is All Wrong! His foot is like This and it should be like That! "I. Can't. Do. Anything!!!" he wails. That's right, kiddo. No matter how gifted you are, if you don't use it, you lose it.

I give him a cool wet washcloth for his face. Send him to bed. A few minutes later, the light is still on. He says needs to listen to some music and write down his goals for the summer.

That's cool by me.

I'm not an edupunk

"edupunk" is an idea that's been tossed around recently on Twitter and various blogs.

It seems to resonate with a lot of folks, embracing the ideas of do-it-yourself, anti-authority, share and share alike, and so on. The anti-corporate part of it resonates with Blackboard-bashers as well.

But though I share many of these values, I'm just not comfortable with the label. It carries a lot of baggage. We don't really want total anarchy in the classroom, do we? We do have goals and objectives for our students, don't we? We may rebel against giving multiple-choice tests, but we do want students to know that the Civil War happened before WW2, right? Is CBGB really a learning environment that we want to emulate, with used needles littering the vomit-stained floors? (Given, there are some students stuck in facilities not much better.) Is Sid Vicious really a better role model than Jaime Escalante?

I just can't get into punk as a model for learning. I never was a punk; I never wanted to be a punk. But what if we took some of those ideals and recast them slightly?

• We can protest against injustice and foolishness when we see it.
• We can use the good things of the past, and update them to be relevant for today.
• We can collaborate to create new things out of old things.
• We can share and learn together.
• We can celebrate our individual unique styles.
• We can join our voices in harmony rather than screaming and spitting on each other.

Yeah, that's it. I'm not an edupunk. I'm an edufolkie.



Besides, at my age it's a lot easier to grow a ponytail than a mohawk.

I wrotez another poem!

A friend at work had a baby shower not long ago. It's her second child. I found out about it at the last minute - she works in another department and word didn't filter over to me until the very last minute. I didn't have time to run out and buy her a present, so I sat down and wrote her a little poem:

You're an old hand by now
You know how it goes:
The burping, the bathing,
The playing with toes.

You've got all the gear
A new parent can use
The teether, the toys,
All in soft pastel hues.

You've been there and done that,
It's same-old, same-old.
Same song, different verse,
You're on a parenting roll

You don't need my advice
So I'll say not a peep,
But just leave you with this:
While you can, get some sleep!

On persistence in job-hunting

This seems to be the time of year when lots of folks are job-hunting, especially new graduates and educators looking for a new gig. You send out resumes and cover letters by the ream, it seems, and get enough rejection letters to wallpaper a room.

Way back in 1988 I finally escaped grad school and moved out of state with five hundred bucks cash. I lived with my sister until I was able to find a place of my own. I put my newly-minted M.Ed to good use bussing tables and washing dishes on the night shift at the local diner. (This was actually a great gig - I ate free, had the days open to job-hunt or work temp, and it was a block from my sister's apartment.)

I signed up with a temp agency and got steady if varied work doing data entry and other semi-menial office tasks. (The upside is that I worked with many different computer systems in many different companies. This gave me a real feel for the user experience in interface design, as well as exposure to a wide range of working environments.)

I also joined the local NSPI chapter to get to know local professionals. I looked for companies that were looking for instructional designers. I finally found one that seemed to be doing what I wanted to do. So I applied for a tech writer job and was turned down after the interview. I applied again or another writing job - and was turned down.

I really wanted to work for these folks - they were rising stars. An opening appeared for an instructional designer. But by this time I despaired of ever getting in with them. But a wonderful wise lady at an NSPI meeting suggested that I try one more time. About the same time I had read the Bible story of the widow and the unjust judge. The old lady essentially pestered the judge into hearing her case.

So I applied one more time, and this time I got the job!

A couple of years later I'm working on a project at about 9 at night, and my boss Larry is puttering in his office. (Larry = cross between Gene Wilder and Albert Einstein with a dash of Groucho Marx.) He calls out, "Hey, Corrie - I was clearing out my resume' file, and came across yours. Now I know why we hired you!"

"Yeah? What's that?" I asked, wondering what golden phrase on my resume' had finally opened the door.

Larry replied, "There are six copies of it in the file!"

A thing of beauty

Tweetwheel shows you a picture of your twitter connections. Here are mine:

Falsifiability and Christianity

For the past day or so, fellow twitterers "Peter Rock," Clay Burell, and I have been having a mostly-civil discussion of religion over at Pete's blog. At one point I noted:

Just produce a corpse/set of bones/ossuary/occupied grave (with good provenance, of course) that can be positively identified as belonging to a 1st-century CE itinerant rabble-rouser/rabbi/healer/preacher named Y’shua Ben Y’suf, of Nazareth (or Capernum), where the body is that of a robust man in his early thirties, and has been scourged and crucified in the Roman manner.

Clay suggested that the falsifiability argument is silly - we can't find Adam's grave, either.

But it's not silly. Not at all. You see, it's not possible to disprove any other religion. You can argue that their teachings are silly, or dangerous, or inconsistent with archaeology, but it is not possible DISPROVE them. But it IS possible to disprove Christianity. It may nt be probable, but it is possible. There've even been novels written exploring what might happen if someone discovered the body of Jesus.

Why is it such a big deal?

Because the Empty Tomb is absolutely central to Christianity. Paul wrote, "If Christ is not risen, then all our teaching is in vain, and I am the most miserable of men, for I have been spreading false hope."

But how did this belief get started? The earliest written documentation of the belief in a literal resurrection are the letters of Paul, written ~55CE. They clearly show that belief in a literal, physical resurrection was central to "The Way." The earliest copies of the first Gospel to be written, Mark, include the discovery of the empty tomb.

Jesus was not buried in some common grave in a potter's field. He was buried in a rich man's tomb, and a guard was set over it by the Romans at the specific request of the Sanhedrin. And then the tomb was empty.

So what happened?

Muslims believe that it's wasn't Jesus, but someone else who was crucified that day. There was a last-minute switch. The only evidence they cite is the Q'ran. That's the only evidence they need. Mohammed said it happened that way? Case closed.


It's been suggested that Jesus wasn't really dead, and that he revived in the cool tomb. This of course flies in the face of modern trauma medicine and what we know about the physiology of crucifixion. (Not to mention the fact that the professional executioners were so sure he was dead that they didn't bother to break his legs.)


Maybe the disciples stole the body? Interesting hypothesis. Not a shred of supporting evidence, unfortunately. First of all, the record shows that the disciples didn't understand that Jesus would rise again. They thought he was dead and gone. Second, they were unsophisticated country folks, not exactly the sort of calculating crew that could pull off a truly world-class burglary and cover-up - and do it almost literally overnight. Besides, as Watergate felon Chuck Colson notes, conspiracies *always* fall apart. The conspiracy idea also omits the fact that the disciples were devout Jews, who would NOT about to defile themselves on the first Sabbath of Passover by handling a dead body.


There's an argument that the story is derived from Mithraism, which shares some interesting similarities - a demi-god hero who goes to the underworld and returns, a ritual meal, baptism. The first problem with this idea is culture. Mithraism was a secret cult popular among Roman soldiers. The first followers of Jesus were Jews - the last people you'd find adopting practices of the Roman soldiers. The second problem is time. Jesus died in the year 30CE. Paul wrote his letters around 55-60, after spending five years or so travelling around (sometimes with Luke).

Twenty years is nowhere near enough time for the folklore of Mithras to get jumbled up with the folklore of Jesus. There are folks *today* in the hills of Kentucky who sing songs their ancestors brought over from Scotland and England, and the songs are nearly identical to the "folk songs of the British Isles" collected by F. J. Child in the late 1800s.


There are a couple of other twists to the story that I find interesting. Both speak to the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts of Easter morning.

First, no one is recorded as having witnessed the moment of the resurrection itself. This is THE most dramatic moment in human history. If you were writing fiction, wouldn't you have someone there who could later say, "I was weeping next to the body when suddenly there was a blinding light and the sound of angels singing..."? But instead, we get two women who find the tomb empty and are bewildered. Women were not considered reliable witnesses in those days. They could not even testify in court. So not only do we not have any witness to the resurrection itself, the witnesses we do have are suspect.

It may seem counterintuitive at first, but those facts strengthen the case for the Gospels being collections of eyewitness testimony. If they're fiction, they're pretty bad fiction.


When the disciples started seeing Jesus alive again, they got excited and started talking about it. Just a few weeks later at Shauvot (the Jewish harvest festival akak Pentecost) they caused a big ruckus. (See Acts 2.) The Romans and the Sanhedrin had plenty of motive to haul out the body of Jesus and shut down these fanatics. It should have been easy - if they could have located the body. :-)

It all adds up

My wife was having a conversation with The FMO (age four-and-a-half) the other day:

FMO: "Mommy, is one hundred and three the biggest number?"

Wife: "No, honey. You can add one to one hundred and three and get one hundred and four. Infinity is the biggest number."

*pause*

FMO (with furrowed brow): "*How* old is Daddy?"

The obligatory "How I use Twitter" post

"Twitter lets me subscribe to the brains of smart people who are kind enough to think in public."

That's the line I use to describe the wildy popular and addictive Web2.0/SMS/SocialNetworking phenomenon that encourages you to "Connect with your colleagues, friends and family by answering one simple question in 140 characters or less: What are you doing?"

But if you're new to Twitter, have few followers and no idea how to find folks to follow, you may not "get" the whole Twitter thing and give up on it.

A number of folks have made excellent blog posts about how to use Twitter. For example, GeekMommy's post on blocking vs. following is a keeper, and Caroline Middlebrook's Big Juicy Twitter Guide is encyclopedic.

But I'm not looking to use Twitter for marketing or as part of an internet business. It's part of my Personal Learning Network, which feeds my efforts at Viral Professional Development. So here's how I use Twitter:

I became aware of Twitter quite some time ago via several blogs I read, notably Alec Couros and Alan Levine. I'm a late adopter - I wait to try out something new until I see that folks are talking about it consistently. (Kind of a "Keep up with the Jones' - eventually" mentality.) Late last summer I finally decided that it was something I needed to get involved with. So, I looked up Alec and Alan on Twitter as soon as I set up my account and followed them.

When you follow someone, you can see all their posts, including the @username posts directed at another user. On twitter @username posts become a conversation. Quite often, the half of the conversation I see is interesting. (I follow smart people, and they follow smart people.) So I'll click on the @username link, which takes me to the tweetstream (list of posts) of that person, which includes their Twitter profile - name, link, and bio.

When someone follows me (that started happening when got to about 25 follows/followers) I get an email with a link to their tweetstream / profile page as well. I just click the link in the email and in a few seconds, I can see whether or not I want to follow that person as well.

Here's what I look for:

• Posts with @'s - that means they're having a conversation with other people.
• Posts with links - that means they're sharing resources
• Posts that are interesting to read. I like witty. I don't like snarky.
• Posts @ people I already follow
• A profile that includes a description of what they do - I pretty much automatically follow folks in my profession (educational technology)
• A profile that links to that person's blog or website
• Reasonable numbers for "following" and "followers." A few hundred is manageable. More than that, they're not likely to engage in conversation.*
• A ratio for "following" vs "followers" that's close to 1:1. Someone who's following thousands but has only a handful of followers is a broadcaster or a bot, not a person I want to be feeding data to. That gets blocked tut suite.

If I like what I see, and want to see more, I just click the Follow button. Simple - another brain subscribed to. I don't follow everyone who follows me, or who @s with someone I follow. Some folks only Tweet about their personal lives. Some are way-technical geeks whose tweets are over my head - or al about systems and tools that I don't use. Remember, I use Twitter mostly as a professional-development tool both for myself and the faculty I serve. Yes, it comes with a nice side serving of social chitchat, but I look at that as water-cooler chatter.

So, that's how I use Twitter. I hope to @you there!


*I do make a few exceptions. For example, Howard Rheingold has a gajillion followers, but he actually engages folks and his observations are of course interesting. Besides, it lets me name-drop shamelessly: "I was talking with Howard Rheingold about this last week..." :-)

Schooled Bully

This is a true story. Obviously, names have been changed. Details have been reconstructed and simplified somewhat, and some dramatic license has been taken in imagining inner dialogues. But it happened pretty much this way, as far as I can tell.


There are two boys. One we'll call Eric. The other, Kenny. Both are in 7th grade at a very good suburban middle school.

Eric has a good reputation. He's a straight-A student, active in extra-curricular activities and sports, and a popular kid. He's funny, cool, easy-going, enjoys playing the class clown and high-fiving people in the hallways. But he's just a little too busy, involved in just a few too many things. It doesn't help that he's a perfectionist. So... he has stress. Most of the time he keeps it deep down inside.

Kenny also has a reputation. He is well-known to the school administrators, but for all the wrong reasons. He undoubtedly has stress, too. But he lets it out in all the wrong ways. He is failing his classes, and proud of the fact. He enjoys vandalizing school property and picking on other kids. He is widely disliked by the other students.

Kenny decides that Eric is to be his new victim. He starts tripping Eric as they pass in the hallway each day. Eric doesn't report this to an adult - that would violate The Code. When you're 13, you're expected to solve your social problems yourself. Eric does his best to ignore Kenny. Day after day, he just picks himself up and goes on. Turns the other cheek. Restrains himself.

He's not giving Kenny much amusement.

So Kenny ups the ante. He posts obscene comments about Eric online, which Eric's friends forward to him. Eric doesn't tell an adult about this, either, despite having several caring adults in his circle who'd hear him out on any subject. When you're 13, certain subjects are on the uncomfortable teetering edge between really gross and quite interesting. The only thing you're really sure of is that you don't want to talk about them. And you sure as heck don't want some jerk you hate spouting off about you and... certain subjects.

Eric is on a slow simmer the next day. The very last person he wants anything to do with is Kenny. But there he is in the hallway, coming Eric's way. Eric grits his teeth and says nothing. And as they pass, Kenny trips Eric and saunters away, grinning.

Now, Kenny almost certainly did not know that Eric is a black belt in karate. A state champion, in fact, with a shelf-full of trophies.

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Eric's foot lands squarely between Kenny's shoulder blades and knocks him into the lockers. Kenny's a tough scrapper, though, and comes back swinging. The boys grapple as the crowd backs away. Kenny throws a haymaker punch at Eric's head and knocks him across the hall, slamming his head into a locker. But Eric takes control of his momentum as he bounces off the lockers and spins around, landing on his feet in a low crouch.

His head *hurts*, dammit, and now he's mad. Really mad.

All that stress he's been carrying is about to come out.

His landing out of the spin has wound Eric like a spring. He's poised to launch a flying roundhouse kick and plant his foot on Kenny's ear. Eric has broken boards with this kick, many times. He's knocked over the large, heavy punching bag at the dojo with this kick, many times.

Kenny weighs half of what that bag does. He's not going *into* the wall. He's going *through* the wall.

Eric is *not* thinking that he could do permanent, severe physical damage to another human being. He's not thinking of the possibility of his family being sued into permanent penury to pay for Kenny's lifetime nursing-home care. Eric's not thinking at all, really. He just knows that Kenny has been begging for a first-class ass-kicking for a very long time, and the time has come to deliver it.

Kenny *is* thinking, though - about just how wrong his earlier thinking had been. He had thought that Eric was just a short, skinny kid that he could push around. And when Eric fought back, Kenny had thought that he could stop him with his best shot. Head punch, right across the hall, face-first into the lockers. Eric *should* have crumpled to the ground. Instead, he *bounced off the wall* and came up locked and loaded.

With eyes full of flame. Kenny looks at Eric and sees his doom. A low murmur ripples through the crowd.

In that instant, a third boy jumps between the two and stops the action - a very brave move, all things considered.

After a long moment, Eric picks up his backpack and glares at the white-faced Kenny as he shoves past. Later, goes to the nurse to get an icepack, and the administration finds out about the altercation. Eric will serve a Saturday detention. Kenny is a repeat offender and will face harsher penalties.

Later that day, Kenny comes up to Eric and offers friendship. Eric's not interested, but he knows that Kenny won't be bothering him again.

A postcard from Twitter

Todd Jordan (aka Tojosan) is one of the smart people who think in public whose brains I subscribe to via Twitter.

The other day he tweeted an offer of a postcard to the first ten people who responded via DM. I couldn't DM him because he didn't also follow me, so I tweeted @him directly. (If you use Twitter, you'll understand what I just said. If you don't use Twitter, you probably think my rye toast was tinged with ergot.)

He was good enough to immediately follow me, so I DMed him my work address.

Today, I came back from somewhere on campus to find a postcard propped up on my keyboard. I'd post a scan of it, but I'm at home right now and the postcard is at work. (Lame excuse, I know.)

Here's the point, though:


Forget Soylent Green. The Internet is People!

Digital identies redux

It's bad enough that Al Upton got his class blog yanked, but now a teacher has lost his job over his online presence.

FWIW, this was the fellow from Doha, Qatar, who joined me and Clay Burell on an amazing Skype chat a few weeks ago.

It's not as if he posted pr0n or hatespeech, or that he posted anything offensive at all - according to his account, the problem was the fact that he linked his personal life to his professional life.

It's horribly ironic that recently a number of us were talking about the very same thing, and I concluded that I've pretty much given up trying to separate my "public and professional" online identity from my "private" online self. I think I even left a comment on the post that Jabiz felt obliged to take down.

How can we teach our students to be transparent, integrated, whole human beings if we are forced to compartmentalize ourselves?

Just feed them through the bunghole

Oh, for crying out loud.

Australian educator Al Upton has been ordered by the government to shut down his class blog. Apparently a parent - despite previously giving permission for their little darling to participate in an innovative, authentic learning activity with other students and teachers from around the globe - got upset that said little darling's picture was not removed faster than it was technically possible. Said clueless parent threatened legal action and contacted the Aussie Feds.

Look, I have kids, and I understand a parent's concerns. And if you read this blog you'll understand that I am hardly a libertine. But the risks to kids from online predators have been grossly overstated. And besides, these kids are in Australia! Are the little darlings really at risk from people who live on the OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET?!?! Hull-lo?

Let's just put the kids in a barrel and feed them through the bunghole. Then they'll really be safe.

Addendum:
Nancy White has a typically wiser and more thoughful response over at Full Circle. I'm still a bit too cranky to be wise and thoughtful at the moment.

Something in the water

In the news today: AP probe finds drugs in drinking water

Not exactly news - I blogged about this last May.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

I posted the following as a comment over at ReadWriteWeb in a thread about the Economist debates on whether Web technology is making our lives better.

A man universally renowned for his wisdom once said, "There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity and chasing after wind."

Human nature has not changed since the beginnings of recorded history. Look at the Greek or Norse gods, Native American tales, Gilgamesh, the Baghvadgita, the Bible, Confucius, the Arthur cycle, the Edda, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc., etc. You will see the very same human wants, needs, faults, and foibles as we see today.

Want to see a struggle to improve one's lot in life? See the ancient African tales of Anansi the Spider, or the Native American tales of Coyote. Noble sacrifice for a great cause? Look to the Spartans of Thermopylae, Roland at Roncesvaux, or today's Medal of Honor recipients. Soap-opera infidelity? Peek at Guinevere and Lancelot, or King David and Bathsheba.

Human needs have not changed. What *has* changed is the way we go about meeting those needs. For entertainment we download MP3s - remix our own - instead of waiting for a traveling minstrel to come through town. For news we have an RSS feed piped to our Blackberry. To communicate long-distance we use Twitter or Skype rather than couriers carrying sealed scrolls.

The ends are the same, but the means have changed. On those means, though, are industries and empires built and lost. There's not much of a market for sealing wax these days. But build a killer Facebook app, and you might make a buck.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more that things change, the more they stay the same.

Four Barriers? Really? - Fireside Learning

Reason # 954 why I love Twitter. BudTheTeacher did one of those irresistable "Excellent discussion. http://tinyurl.com/2jfxep" tweets, which led to this post on Nathan Lowell's blog. (Nathan is one of the Smart Folks to whose brains I subscribe.)

He seeded a class discussion by outlining four barriers to educational equity (the "digital divide") and let the students have at it. Great stuff.

Election 2008

Gen. George Patton vs Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Discuss.

The Long Tail doesn't have to be lonely

A couple of days ago Kelly Christopherson wrote a thoughtful piece entitled, "Let’s meet them at the door." In it, he mused about what it's like being an edublogger who isn't Dave Warlick, Will Richardson, or one of the other "big names."

Diane Cordell gave the post a shout-out on Twitter. I'm a sucker for Tweets that say, "@whoever - great post! tinyurl.com/abcxyz," so I clicked through.

The post was indeed teriffic. As were the comments - reflections on how this amazing new way of connecting with peers and mentors has transformed the way so many of us think about our work.

The blogosphere is often described as having a Long Tail - If you sort the readership of all the blogs, there are a few with lots and lots of readers, and lots and lots and LOTS of blogs with just a few.

The Long Tail is often depicted like this:

stretched out along a long, lonely line.

In reality, though, thanks to tools such as Twitter, the long tail becomes something like this,

intertwined with itself, overlapping and intersecting at many points.

We may be "the little folk."
But there are a lot of us, and we talk together, we do.

We do.