Tag: learning

The Power of a Common Functional Vocabulary

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I worked closely with a number of colleagues this week to prepare curriculum for a new IB English course, IB Language A: Language and Literature HL in full jargony regalia. During the course of our efforts, a cloud descended as we discussed strategies for grading an internal assessment done early in the students’ first year. I spoke of grading and scoring, another colleague used grading and marking, and our third colleague used all three. As such, great confusion arose as we sought to decode what, exactly, anyone was talking about at any given moment. When I spoke of scoring, I meant using IB rubrics to put IB-dictated numbers on a piece of work with corresponding feedback, but by grading I was referring to the letter grade we would assign to specific scores on the IB scale. Perhaps you’re already confused.

Any debates over the merits of grading and/or externally assessed courses like IB/AP notwithstanding, this time-sucking, frustrating conversation ended in laughter as we figured out how we had linguistically tied ourselves in knots. If we had a pre-defined, shared set of function words referring to specific teaching practices distinct from one another, the conversation would have shed 28 minutes of slowly escalating befuddlement and we could have made a decision and moved on. This is no different for students. In content areas or skill acquisition, teachers should agree on a common set of nonnegotiable, essential vocabulary that allow students to function within the discipline and stick with those. In the composition classroom, we have dozens of ways – generally inexact – of referring to concepts like voice or organization in writing and students must adjust and catch up year by year in the absence of a shared, explicitly taught set of functional vocabulary agreed upon by consensus. In reading and literacy instruction, dozens of like terms have bred, begetting myriad crazy labels for processes simple and complex. The truth is that it doesn’t matter what words we use as long as the definitions are clear, shared, taught, and regularly applied. Of course, many academic contexts or subject areas have common functional vocabulary, so it’s silly to force kids to learn “order of operations” as “fun with figurin'” in fourth grade, only to confuse them in fifth grade when the teacher uses the standard terminology.

The idea is to get past linguistic hurdles, give knowledge and skill steps clear, common labels whenever necessary, and move on to the doing of learning. In our conversation, we lost half an hour to inexact functional language – not Earth shattering, but a solid lesson in the power of a common functional vocabulary!

The iPad 2 for Learning: First Impressions

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I have received an iPad 2 prior to a pilot program that my Digital Journalism class will be a part of this year and after a few days of playing, I see possibilities, but wonder if the iPad 2 can rise above its functional design concept.

In short, the iPad is clearly a window for consumption, consumption of media, consumption of goods, and primarily for consumption of iTunes downloads. Compared to my Android phone, the iPad suffers from a dearth of high-quality free apps. Some exist, clearly, but the initial flow of all information is via iTunes and the structure of the iPad’s OS relies heavily on their proprietary software. That’s kind of a drag after experiencing Android for the past six months. I may find killer free, open source apps for the iPad yet; it’s still new to me. However, that’s not the design concept.

Additionally, the iPad is tough to be beautifully creative with. It’s possible, but it’s not as easy as a comparable laptop computer . Free online resources like Aviary become a number of costly proprietary programs like iMovie and Garage Band. My biggest shock so far (I obviously am not a golfer) is that the iPad doesn’t run Flash on Safari. Wow. Again, the design concept won’t allow it, or savvy people would never buy Garage Band. Apple’s desire to control the usage of it’s products has led me away from iPods and all things iTunes, but now it’s all back like Ferris Bueller’s sunglasses and fedoras thanks to the iPad. The iPad interface is locked down and all conduits to information are via Apple. It’s worth considering the medium and the message when we give these fun toys to kids.

On the plus side, the iPad takes good snapshots and video. It’s no Leica, but the possibilities exist, especially for crowdsourced content for student online journalism. My initial impression is that the iPad should be wed, like all media machines, to media literacy with an emphasis on media creation. This will require an upfront  capital outlay on Apple software that will allow for such creation or as a viewpoint of the iPad as a capture device first, with student laptops as the media studio, which is what I am leaning toward. Additionally, the iPad seems fairly well equipped to become a nice journalism tracking device for informed media consumption. Student journalists should be able to follow a wide variety of journalism in print, podcasts, and video form through RSS feeds, but I haven’t found a really great free, ad-free reader. With ads, plenty of options exist and work fairly well, although I haven’t seen one with folder capability yet. The design says consume, and so they shall.

All of this notwithstanding, the iPad is going to get student attention. And then immediately demand more of it. That’s a joke, for the most part. First impressions: minor frustration, resigned acceptance to the Apple business model, and tenacious curiosity.

Edit: Feeddler RSS is a perfect Googler Reader style app for free and without ads so far. Google docs is another story…

Learning Outside of the Classroom

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In the midst of our first day of a “Classroom Without Walls” trip, one of my English students who is on the trip looked at me as we surveyed the landscape of canton Schwyz in Switzerland and said “It’s really amazing how fast we learn. I mean, this morning we had no idea about any of this.”

Amen.

Not the inside of a school building

We began the morning slowly after a night fitful sleeping, as it turned out, by everyone. We ran and bounced our way through a cow pasture to begin with, practicing the run, brake, lean-and-run-quickly technique for launching. I learned run, brake, left, and right in German. Slowly, each paragliding student, myself included, worked her or his way up the hill, getting longer and longer flights. Eventually, we launched from the highest point and practiced turning. I learned that I am the Greatest American Hero of Swiss paragliding, landing much like Mickey Mantle coming into third base. This is my goal for tomorrow. The kids flourished, learning at different rates and succeeding or struggling with different parts of the technique, but all completing the day with successful flights and a high level of stoke for tomorrow, and for each successive day. The stoke is for flying, for doing something new, for succeeding, for learning easily, quickly, and authentically. When a boy’s glider collapsed and spun him around, no teacher needed to tell him that he hadn’t lifted off from the ground. When a girl launched five meters off the ground on her first try, she didn’t need a grade to prove that she had nailed it. It’s learning to do something personally valued, even if not valuable on the open market, that brings on the stoke.

I’m lucky to be teaching at a school with amazing resources through which kids are granted these kinds of opportunities. I wish all kids got them. At the end of the week, I’m not at all sure what quantifiable metrics we’ll have fulfilled, but that should clear up much of what we need to know about quantifiable metrics and learning. Sometimes, oftentimes, teachers and students alike need opportunities to soar and opportunities to make hard landings in environments that don’t look like school, but are.

Learning Spaces & the 1 to 1 Classroom

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Recently, it seems like the idea of using and not using technological tools during interactions with other people is ripe and alive in the media. I have just finished listening to a podcast of “On Being” from American Public Media entitled “Alive Enough,” and featuring a conversation between host Krista Tippett and Sherry Turkle, who is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. The title of this show/podcast refers to a moment Turkle had with her daughter at a Darwin exhibition while they looked at a Galapagos turtle. Her daughter, who had been exposed to animal robots from an early age due to Turkle’s work, remarked that a robot would have been “alive enough” to substitute for the turtle, without anything really getting missed. Reflecting on what works and what doesn’t for me so far in a 1 to 1 classroom, the idea of “alive enough,” and a number of other key points raised in the broadcast illuminated interesting questions for me. In any classroom, space matters, as I learned from Harry Wong’s classic The First Days of School. Space should be managed cooperatively between students and teachers, and the laptop opens a window the size of the Earth in each student and teacher’s personal space. What are the best ways to teach, learn, and cooperatively manage this new space? Additionally, I’ve been realizing lately how often I engage in conversations in our staff office while reading an article, or scanning emails, or flitting back to the screen from eye contact. I’m not fully present in the conversation, and both I and the other end of the conversation lose something as a result; the same happens in the 1 to 1 classroom, and I wonder what the best ways are to create moments of maximum human engagement, or if others are thinking about this. Finally, as our personal computing technology and network technology matures, what does this mean for education?

Obviously, in the 1 to 1 classroom, we can close the laptops and bring everyone out of the technological space and into the physical space, from an attention standpoint, at least momentarily. Of course, students have been distracting themselves from classroom instruction and activities since the dawn of classroom education, and a big reason for this is teacher-centered activities. When students are working on engaging, authentic, and self-directed activities to build their own understanding of topics and fluency in skills, they are more likely to be attentive, technology or no. However, the rise of “multitasking” and its attendant challenges has led, in my informal observations, to students who cannot stop the mini-distractions that arrive through their connected laptop and who don’t fully engage with something that I really believe they would otherwise. It is clearly arguable that the task isn’t engaging enough in such a case, but come on – they distract themselves from Facebook with Skype, so I’m going to state that something new is happening here. Tippett and Turkle discuss “sacred spaces” in their conversation, and the ideas could easily apply to our connected, 1 to 1 classrooms:

Ms. Tippett: You do use this phrase “sacred spaces.” One moment of insight that I had about technology was when I was talking to Jon Kabat-Zinn. Do you know him?

Ms. Turkle: No.

Ms. Tippett: He’s a scientist, but he’s worked on bringing meditation into medicine. He made this really simple observation that technology goes 24/7, but we don’t. I mean, biologically, physiologically, we can’t. It’s this boundarylessness. I mean, this gets back to your point that it’s not just a matter of choices. At some point, it’s a matter of survival we have to set boundaries. When you talk about sacred spaces, what are you talking about there?

Ms. Turkle: To make our life livable, we have to have spaces where we are fully present to each other or to ourselves, where we’re not competing with the roar of the Internet and, quite frankly, where the people around us are not competing with the latest news off the Facebook status update. They may not have anything new. They may just be there being in a way that needs attention… Anyway, I guess I’m saying that sacred space is for me the places in your daily life where you want to keep them for yourself and the people who you need to give full attention to.

Note, this isn’t a discussion of paying attention to stuff, like how to punctuate an end citation, but to each other. I’ve had great success with motivating and engaging students through cooperative projects, and I’ve had some success with cooperative projects using technology like Google docs. However, when students are having a guided small group discussion in a self-selected space, I so often walk upon them and find one student ignoring their peers partially or completely through their laptop. This runs counter to what I expect from teenagers – the drive to be a part of the group. Sometimes, I’m sure it’s an escape from interpersonal friction of some sort, but how serious? How minor? When the space between students is thinned or undervalued and the cyberspace escape is before them, choosing the escape is totally predictable. Prioritizing the interpersonal is essential in all classrooms, but I can see clearly that this must be addressed explicitly in the 1 to 1 classroom. How? Probably modeling. The discussion continued:

Ms. Turkle: I have very simple rules. I mean, so far as I have rules for how to know you’re close to one or in one or should be having one: It’s dinner, it’s sharing meals with your family, it’s that moment at school pickup when your kid looks up and is trying to meet your eye. You know, you’re looking down at your smartphone and your child is trying to meet your eye.

I have enough data from children who’re going through this experience to know that it’s a terrible moment for them. It’s on the playground. Very bad when your child’s on the jungle gym and is desperately trying to have you look at them, for them to be taking hands off the jungle gym to try to get your attention — accident time. I mean, be in the park. Be in the park with them. Spend less time there, but make it a space. Make it a moment. These are important moments.

Ms. Tippett: It’s so interesting that you’re talking as much as or more about adults not setting boundaries with this, right? I mean…

Ms. Turkle: Oh, absolutely. Well, this is data-driven. I mean, this is data-driven in the sense that this is one of the surprises to me in doing the research. I thought when I started this research that I was going to be telling a story of children driving their parents crazy.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah.

Ms. Turkle: And I’m not. It ended up that it was a story of parents — as much a story of parents leaving their children feeling lonely and alone and modeling the very behavior that then they came to find irritating in their children.

While the focus in this discussion is parenting, the parallels to the classroom are clear (and fascinating – what are we modeling?). Even in this piece, I am struggling to define the anti-social (in anal0g) behaviors that I do, such as partially ignore a colleague in the staff office, while tracing the contours of similar student behavior in the classroom. So, what are the signals for interpersonal space, for interpersonal digital space, for solo space or solitude for thinking, or for solitude in digital space, which can be so hard to find in Web 2.0? Tom Ashbrook, in a recent “On Point,” discussed texting in a fairly facile conversation, but he covered the expressive abilities of teenagers to signal with an eyebrow that they are still listening, but need a moment to read and respond to a particularly important or provocative text message. Should we create explicit classroom structures that delineate specific times for specific spaces, as listed above (or including spaces I haven’t considered), sending the “eyebrow message,” if you will, that it’s time to work alone on a short written response, and that this alone time should mean close the browser, shut off the Skype alerts, turn off the music, and everything else for a little time alone with your mind? I think this could do a world of good. As they continued the discussion, they addressed the idea of what schools and universities could be doing in this regard:

Ms. Turkle: That’s great, you know, but knowing how to do that and getting good at doing that, this is the art and science of 21st-century communication arts and sciences. It needs to be nurtured and developed, and I think that’s the problem that we’ve had in education where, you know, you set up the ability for people to have WiFi in classrooms, you put them in big lecture halls, and they shop [laugh]. You know, I mean, was it just because we put them on WiFi that we thought they were going to be setting up exciting fora in which they would be bringing things to a higher level?

One university after another is rethinking this and, as I go around the country, you know, we talk about it, we laugh about it because everyone who’s a professor today pretty much, you know, a senior faculty were there when this was set up and we remember what was on our minds and now we stand in the back of those classrooms and watch our students, you know, ordering from REI Sports and Amazon and on Facebook and on J. Crew. You know, we didn’t give it enough thought, so that’s what I mean.

Ms. Tippett: So that’s part of the growing up.

Ms. Turkle: Just this is part of growing up. Just because we grew up with the Internet, we think the Internet is all grown up and it’s not.

You know, what are the things that, if we don’t pass them on, even with this new technology, we’re going to feel we didn’t do our job? (emphasis added) And I know the ones for me. I mean, I have the ones that are important to me. I feel very strongly about privacy, a very important conversation. You know, I can’t necessarily make that conversation come out the way I want it, but I want to make sure that my voice is heard in the mix. That’s very important to me, and then solitude, the importance of solitude.

Ms. Tippett: And this question of where leadership lies in starting these important questions about how we shape technology to be humane and sustainable, and the possibilities of that answer are more interesting because of the nature of this technology, right? There’s a possibility for everyone to be a leader on their Facebook page or as they reshape their family lives. I don’t know.

So, because I value thoughtful classroom spaces, I value shaping classroom structures that mimic thoughtful human interaction or solitude in digital spaces. This is new territory for students and teachers, and I can imagine an action research project in which we work together to shape these new classroom norms. Using syncing technology to block internet connectivity for digital personal space doesn’t feel right to me, because it is authoritarian and inauthentic. Nobody learns how to take care of themselves more humanely in an authoritarian structure. If students work with me to shape these spaces, they will be censoring their own flow of information and connectivity, which seems like an essential skill for our brave new world. Connectivity is like cookies, and ultimatums like: I will no longer eat cookies! tend to go nowhere. We need to work together to find a way to moderate our cookie intake to something healthy and protective of the essential deliciousness of the cookie (too far with the metaphor?). As pointed out in this program, the internet itself is new, and Web 2.0 is newer; we’ve gorged. Now, as the web matures, technology matures, and we mature as users and people, what new practices are best for the connected 1 to 1 classroom? Many practices, like student centered, constructivist approaches will always be fantastic. However, my thoughts for next year are as follows:

  • Work with students in transparent action research to create  signals and processes for creating cooperative interpersonal space in the physical classroom, cooperative interpersonal digital space,  solo physical space or solitude for thinking, and solitude in digital space for thinking.
  • Model interpersonal engagement during interactions, and avoid the eye flit, the microdistraction. In short, be present with others.
  • Prioritize a cooperative environment in the physical classroom through cooperative structures, as I may have been blinded by the technology and let this slip a bit.
  • Continue reflecting on what I value in learning and build classroom structures that support that.
  • Reflect and respond to the maturing technology in ways that support learning. I am really thinking a lot about Google Chromebooks, and have thoughts on this that will follow soon. But, that’s for another day.

Thinking About Feedback

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As I rounded essay number 45 or so and headed for third base today, my eyes were dry and I had the familiar essay ache that doubtless plagued my students at the end of their timed write. I enjoy reading student writing, and actually look forward to assessments like timed essays because it gives me data, information on what kids have learned, improved upon, missed completely, or ignored outright. I write a lot of feedback on student writing, and I push myself to be specific every time. I also try to focus on no more than three areas of growth, tied to our writing rubric, for each kid each time. There are many balls to keep in the air, including goals from previous writing assessments, but I dig it and enjoy the interactive nature of reading student writing and providing specific, targeted feedback.

So I read, I write, and I give students back their writing. They flip to the grade, roll their eyes, give high-fives, gasp in delight or horror, and ignore everything else. In the past, I had students who were much less grade driven and/or had classes with very few students, in which we could all sit down individually and discuss each student’s performance at length. I’ve made some minor changes to providing feedback, asking students to write metacognitive responses prior to seeing feedback or grades, but in larger (but by no means large) classes, I haven’t found the magic trick that will move students past simply looking at grades and shutting down or throwing up defensive walls. Of course, the same thing that works every time takes a long time to establish: a mutually respectful, open, and honest collegial relationship.

So, I have some ideas about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to feedback and focusing students on feedback. What doesn’t work:

  • Grade Centrism – Grades just get in the way. In a perfect situation in which any rubrics handed down from upon high are very valid, used with and by students regularly, and common across curriculum areas, grades become measures of performance. In less than perfect situations, grades quickly turn into arbitrary judgements of the good and the bad, the smart and the not-smart, or whatever the teenaged mind might read into the ambiguity between performance and grades. Not good, feedback doesn’t get through here.
  • Competitive Academic Environments – Collegiality counts. If you are an obstacle to my success, if this is a zero-sum situation, we’re in trouble. Related to the above.
  • Shifting Language – As a writing teacher, it’s a little crazy to me how many terms teachers have for the word “thesis.” It’s equally crazy how many different ideas teachers have for what a thesis should be. If I laud a student’s voice, and another teacher applauds that student’s style, and another teacher cheers that student’s tone (but without meaning tone, as I define it, as the speaker’s relationship to the subject), the student will think she is doing three things well. If one of us gives negative feedback on voice/style/tone/etc, how will she fix the problem? This even happens in math, I think, when kids learn different terms for operations at different levels. We have to know this means learning the same thing differently, time and again. Getting our language aligned can streamline learning and certainly make feedback laser focused.
  • Vague Feedback – I learned this from Grant Wiggins. “Good job!” Every time I write “Yes!” or “Great!” it’s a clarion call to keep writing: “Yes – sensible identification of tone in narration and effect on the theme of confusion in the text!” or “Great use of a signal verb to introduce a detail from the text!”
  • Dropping It Like It’s Hot – Got, got, got to go metacognitive, ideally before they see my feedback at all. This can be tough sometimes, but it must be done. This can go hand in hand with portfolio assessments, which is why I say we’ve got, got, got to be doing e-portfolios, but that is for another day.

There are more things that don’t work. What works reads like a flipped list:

  • Performance Feedback, not Grades – Sure, grades, I get it. It’s the way we do things. Sweet. Still, let’s change school cultures to focus on performance, through authentic performance tasks for assessment. Let’s show kids what great is, how to create great, and then assess the result with lots of specific feedback.
  • Cooperative Academic Environments – Nobody is an obstacle to your success – they are either an asset utilized or ignored. It’s a paradigm for mutual success. If this is working, everybody can provide constructive, specific feedback at any level in any direction and everybody learns, including instructors and administrators.
  • Aligned Language – Make the language match across the disciplines. Wow, does this take a lot of work. It’s worth it, though. Ancillary benefits are clearer expectations and a greater conversation around big ideas like differentiated instruction and assessment, what that means, what non-negotiable performance benchmarks might be. I don’t know what bad outcomes of this slow process can be.
  • Specific Feedback – Specific and aligned to expectations shared in advance of, as part of, or through instruction. Language must be non-judgmental, but also clear in terms of what has been done well, what hasn’t, the implications, and the path forward.
  • Spending Time with Feedback – Here’s a great opportunity for metacognitive response, conferencing (portfolios!), revision, peer discussions, and so much more. My action research for my MAT focused on student-created rubrics from model work or exemplars – it wasn’t all perfect, so perhaps model could be a misleading term for some. Students can create powerful assessment tools and, through so doing, truly internalize the expectations and produce amazing products as a result. It’s like a feedback loop inside a feedback loop.

Anyway, here’s a quick breakdown of what works from Grant Wiggins, as published by New Horizons.org:

Elements of a an educative assessment system:

1. Standards

· specifications (e.g. 80 wpm w/ 0 mistakes)
· models (exemplars of each point on the scale – e.g. anchor papers)
· criteria: conditions to be met to achieve goals – e.g. “persuasive and clear” writing

2. Feedback

· Facts: what events/behavior happened, related to goal
· Impact: a description of the effects of the facts (results and/or reactions)
· Commentary: the facts and impact explained in the context of the goal; an explanation of all confirmation and disconfirmation concerning the results

3. Elements of evaluation

· Evaluation: value judgments made about the facts and their impact
· Praise / Blame: appraisal of individual’s performance in light of expectations for that performer

4. Elements of Guidance

· Advice about what to do in light of the feedback
· Re-direction of current practice in light of results

There is more outstanding information at the Wiggins article linked above and here regarding how to create a feedback cycle. It’s genius in its simplicity and power. At any rate, as I read, wrote, and reflected, I wondered what makes me effective as a writing teacher. As I consider all of the things I’m doing differently now from last year, it’s the commonality of my feedback on student writing that helps students learn and improve more than any one thing. At least, that’s my thought for this busy Sunday, and it’s what led to the reflections herein. I wonder what works for other people in terms of providing feedback for student learning.

On Game Based Learning

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Of course, anytime Bill Gates decides to shower money on public education, it’s news. And, while it is hardly surprising that the manufacturer of the X-Box supports “game based learning,” I find it surprising that anyone takes this as a sign of the efficacy of game based learning.

So often, as games are touted as educational wonders, one hears tales of flight simulators, battle simulations, biohazard and terrorism response simulations, and Myst. Myst. Seriously. Students narrate their fantasy world of Myst and explain their problem solving along the way, and that’s a great language arts lesson. Perhaps I’m a Pollyanna, but I believe that students have real, analog lives worthy of narration – real or imagined (remember imagination?). Surely young people are solving problems in life, maybe even in our classrooms, in more compelling ways than choosing which door to walk through or decoding digital runes in a make-believe land with gentle background music. So, while spinning up student interest in writing about reality may take real, concrete instructional steps including instructor modeling (What? Me, write?), and involve a fair amount of non-sexy time in which students work together, talk, share, laugh, play, get off task, come back to the task, and ultimately write, I can’t help but wonder how electronic game play beats life?

Answer: Because stuff blows up engagingly in video games. Let’s keep in mind the overwhelmingly martial usages of game-style simulators, which have become most authentic these days via Predator drone attacks currently being flown remotely from southwest American desert bases in far off countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya to name only the most obvious and least classified. In the case of Predator piloting, I totally see the logical link between game play and actual authentic tasks. I can also see a time in which students play “Operation: Baby Pig” on their iPad app instead of doing actual dissections, which has no authentic benefit over the real thing. Martial simulations are acceptable substitutes to combat because nobody gets hurt in video games, and we can always get Elf food and drink or locate a cache of extra lives and ammunition under a stairwell. Academia should be a simulation of sorts as it is, an opportunity to explore, to try, to succeed, to fail and try again with a new approach. Adding an additional, electronic layer of simulation to a simulation that is already becoming wildly divorced from that which it is meant to replicate, at least in some ways, seems silly at best.

The benefit quietly touted is cost savings, using resources as best we can – and those resources are always financial. Would Bill Gates go to a doctor who had done his cadaver work on his PC? Done residency with a team through “Scrubs for X-Box?” Probably, but probably not a physician who worked on iDissect; count me out for both. When the dust settles, game based learning is likely to mean that every kid gets to fly a simulated plane, but no feet will ever leave the ground. Every kid gets to be a Guitar Hero, but the orchestra pit is vacant. Every kid gets to write about her Second Life, while the first atrophies from a paucity of attention. I believe everybody wins when “FIFA 2011” is turned off and a game commences in the backyard, and I believe our kids should be making actual products and messages with their technological tools, rather than wallowing in the virtual ether, unaware of what they are missing.

Why Consider a Gap Year?

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When I ask students about the idea of a gap year prior to entering university, I almost always hear the same thing – I can’t fall behind, I don’t want to miss out, I don’t want to lose a shot at the best school, or, worst of all, what would I do? Only once – this year – have I ever met a college bound secondary student interested in a gap year, which may be defined as a year of minimal structure and maximum exploration prior to entering university. Well, for any student concerned about what the bigwigs are thinking about gap years: here’s Harvard College, a medium sized institution of higher learning in New England of some repute, weighing in on the topic.

Among the many rather non-startling revelations in this piece from Harvard are that high stress, high pressure environments aren’t successful for everyone, or enjoyable for many. Under the subtitle of “Fallout,” the good folks in Cambridge, Mass, hauntingly point out that

It is common to encounter even the most successful students, who have won all the “prizes,” stepping back and wondering if it was all worth it. Professionals in their thirties and forties – physicians, lawyers, academics, business people and others – sometimes give the impression that they are dazed survivors of some bewildering life-long boot-camp. Some say they ended up in their profession because of someone else’s expectations, or that they simply drifted into it without pausing to think whether they really loved their work. Often they say they missed their youth entirely, never living in the present, always pursuing some ill-defined future goal.

Yikes.

And yet, again, not surprising. Now, while it’s tempting to blame Harvard for its own success, I won’t. Harvard doesn’t make people crazy to get into Harvard, people make themselves and other people crazy to get into Harvard. Or Brown. Or, or, or.

I went to a good university, but not an epic top-tenner. Still, I would have benefited from a year of travel or directed service because I would have matured. I wonder what the result of that might have been – probably not too dramatic, but I might have made better use of some of my course selections and would have surely saved myself an extra semester, which would have saved thousands of dollars. Not a stunning hypothetical, I know, but what of the unmeasurable? My Peace Corps experience changed and improved my life, for sure, and so I think an opportunity like that before college would have been a net positive. A new gap year program called Global Citizen Year offers something that looks very much like a Peace Corps-esque opportunity for young people. It looks like a winner, and Harvard seems to agree.

Metaphors, Poetry, and Thinking – “Poetry for Everyday Life”

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David Brooks is continuing his incredible run of synthesis between the social and cognitive sciences with his latest piece in the New York Times entitled “Poetry for Everyday Life.” Brooks begins by paraphrasing data from a

fine new book, “I Is an Other,” [in which] James Geary reports on linguistic research suggesting that people use a metaphor every 10 to 25 words. Metaphors are not rhetorical frills at the edge of how we think, Geary writes. They are at the very heart of it.

Examples follow, building to the following conclusion:

Most of us, when asked to stop and think about it, are by now aware of the pervasiveness of metaphorical thinking. But in the normal rush of events. we often see straight through metaphors, unaware of how they refract perceptions. So it’s probably important to pause once a month or so to pierce the illusion that we see the world directly. It’s good to pause to appreciate how flexible and tenuous our grip on reality actually is.

Certainly, any good scholar of postmodern literature can appreciate this conclusion – language creates and defines our realities, a truth with deep political and personal implications. Whether it is to help with  “understanding new things,” understanding the ways our own brains work and function best, understanding how our personal affinities create the conditions and contexts in which we operate, understanding God or spiritual experiences, or discerning between what we believe and what we are manipulated through metaphor to believe, consciousness of the power of metaphor is a central awareness for successful thinkers. Brooks states

Most important, being aware of metaphors reminds you of the central role that poetic skills play in our thought. If much of our thinking is shaped and driven by metaphor, then the skilled thinker will be able to recognize patterns, blend patterns, apprehend the relationships and pursue unexpected likenesses.

Indeed, it is the recognition of patterns, blending of patterns (and subsequent creation of new ones), and mapping of relationships between patterns that lends heft to the study of literature in a world focused more on 140 characters than 140 pages. Metaphor is, of course, at the heart of poetry and fiction; Brooks doesn’t accidentally co-opt poetry for his discussion of metaphor. Through exploring metaphor – one – and connecting this understood metaphor to another, and another, and another within a text, or even between texts, we as readers build universes from the disparate clutter of words on pages. Ultimately, if this understanding of metaphor awareness is true in any fashion, then the resultant skilled thinking is transferable from literature  to life beyond texts, to other disciplines of study, to journeys of spirit, to any and all human endeavors. Behold the metaphor at work in the brilliant “Avocado” by Gary Snyder, electric scribe genius monk extraordinaire in his beautiful book Turtle Island:

Avocado by Gary Snyder

The Dharma is like an Avocado!
Some parts so ripe you can’t believe it.
But it’s good.
And other parts hard and green
Without much flavor,
Pleasing those who like their eggs well-cooked.

And the skin is thin,
The great big round seed
In the middle,
Is your own Original Nature –
Pure and smooth,
Almost nobody ever splits it open
Or tries to see
If it will grow.

Hard and slippery,
It looks like
You should plant it – but then
It shoots out thru the
fingers –

gets away.

Now, that ain’t pedestrian, but if you get it, or even a piece of it, this message will resonate through you somehow – maybe not in the same way it does me, due to my constellation of connections differing in altitude, amplitude, and assonance from yours – the next time you’re making guacamole (2 ripe avocados, 1 medium tomato, garlic powder, cumin, salt, paprika; mash and eat it all, quickly). To David Brooks, the last word:

To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called “pedestrian poetry.”

Truth & The Examined Life by Cornell West

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The way to truth, sustaining the journey to truth – deducing from evidence, drawing reliable conclusions, surrendering one’s arrogance and pride – “ways of acknowledging our finitude and fallibility,” with Dr. Cornell West, Class of 1943 Professor at Princeton University, “a blues man in the life of the mind, I’m a jazz man in the world of ideas.” Dr. West blends philosophy with the “funk of life,” music, poetry, examination. Why do we read, write, view, struggle? To understand ourselves and the world! I love what he has to say about reading and intensity – “to throw [books] against the wall,” which happens, the overwhelming by truth and reality. Anyway – here is one of Earth’s smartest men talking honestly. Check it out – it’s seven minutes well spent.

http://www.twitvid.com/embed.php?guid=QLSRN&autoplay=0

 

Thinking About “Tools for Thinking”

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Now is an amazing time to be alive, but the context of now is clearly that of the past. A case in point – what you think of the uprisings of “the Arab wave” will likely be determined by how you view the world, based on your upbringing, education, and myriad other factors. The United States is behaving in these conflicts like a griffin of sorts – half Cold War beast, half Bush doctrine hawk – and the result is a superpower behaving unpredictably. Why, exactly, does this happen?

David Brooks suggests in a recent column entitled “Tools for Thinking” that such behaviors may be attributable to certain intellectual traps, like the Einstellung effect, which he describes as trying to “solve problems by using solutions that worked in the past instead of looking at each situation on its own terms.” Beyond simply applying solutions that have worked in the past, I would argue that we often view the present as more of the past, past 2.0. Of course, the context has changed over time, wildly differing causes can lead to remarkably similar effects. Knowing this is only a little helpful, however, as it takes a truly divergent thinker to break with deep-seated instincts like the Einstellung effect.

The Einstellung effect is somewhat related to another trap labeled Path Dependance, which “refers to the notion that often ‘something that seems normal or inevitable today began with a choice that made sense at a particular time in the past, but survived despite the eclipse of the justification for that choice.'” Brooks gives the example of the QWERTY keyboard, which we use today across the English speaking world. The QWERTY keyboard was designed not for ergonomic ease, but to slow the typist, reducing jamming of typewriter keys, which I think we can all agree will never happen on an iPhone screen. We use the QWERTY keyboard because it’s what we use, not because it’s what we should use. The difference is clear, yet…Path Dependance rules the day.

How does this relate to the classroom? In a number of ways, I’d venture. I have a Smartboard and projector in every classroom I enter, and I use it like a chalkboard from the nineteenth century roughly 80% of the time (that may be low). We want technology in the classroom, so products are designed based on existing, low tech products – like chalkboards/whiteboards – and the problem is solved! Sort of. Not really. Part of this disconnect is the path dependent design of the tool, and part of it is my own experience and sense of classroom context. Can the Smartboard be used to get the teacher out of the front of the classroom, or students away from PowerPoints, acting as teachers in front of the classroom? I don’t see it.  Breaking the model, changing the path – here lie innovative solutions. Here we are, 1 to 1 – why use a Smartboard to share information? We could use Google docs and Dropbox over coffee and conversation in the hallway.

If you, as a student, use your tablet computer as a notebook, a textbook, or even Scott Klososky’s “outboard brain,” how engrained is the path? Can you make your tablet into a sidecar easel, a portable printing press, an onboard media studio and darkroom, a compact global network? As a teacher, what are ways for me to facilitate the path shift? I think, first and foremost, we need to bring an attitude of play into each class, removing the life-and-death, fear of failure paradigm wrapped up in our AP/IB courses and start blazing divergent paths to the top of this mountain we’ve chosen to climb (worth it or not). Creative learning is learning, and if the tests have any validity, they test learning. If they don’t have any validity, we should be smart enough to change the path.

In our brave new world, a successful thinker is a free associater, one who can draw connections between broad sets of information and create new, valuable information for wide or specific audiences. Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, has something to say about this, as well, in his “Six Verbs for the New Web.” Check out the last one: Generate! If you want to make a mark, and have an audience, you must generate something new and useful, or at least fun. Can you take a fresh look at the world, de-Einstellung yourself (so, the solution is not on a single Wikipedia page, bout could be in 15 taken together), break with the path dependance of tools (see iPad), and make something new?

Can we? I’d love to hear any and all thoughts on this one.

Additional, tangentially-related, and fascinating discussion with Kevin Kelly via the good folks at Radiolab in a roughly 20 minute podcast here.