I’m doing more podcasting over at Thinking.FM in 2015.
There, I wrote it so I have to do it.
ThinkingDaily will be going back strong as of January 1st. I hope you’ll listen.
As a part of that, I was asked by Elisabeth Kauffman and Merianna Neely Harrelson to join them on their awesome Thinking Out Loud podcast. They talk about reading, writing, books, and the business of publishing every week and it’s one of my favorite podcasts (and I listen to a lot of podcasts). This one was really fun and a fast paced listen. We talk about Kindles, the philosophy of reading, leisure time, and pros/cons of this very ancient practice. You should go listen.
I’m excited to be doing more of this next week đ
Soylent Green is people (but seriously, this looks terrible)!
Students have posted their photos of mystery slop and scant portions after Mrs Obama spearheaded the United State Department of Agriculture’s "Let’s Move!" initiative to crackdown on obesity by reducing fat, simple sugars and salt in school food.
Excited to see Blair getting recognition for his initiative to get our flight simulator program going (not to mention all the other things he does for Hammond from our athletic program to hammondschool.tv to keeping me full of ideas for ways for us to be innovative):
Through the generosity of Columbia native Austin Meyer, Hammond is the fortunate recipient of state-of-the-art flight simulation equipment used in the aeronautics industry. Â On a recent Friday afternoon, Senior Blair Epting successfully took flight. Along with guidance from physics instructor Hazel Mohammed, Blair has successfully navigated the X-Plane software and tried his hand at everything from helicopter to futuristic plane launches and landings. Â Keeping him grounded is going to be a difficult task!
Last night, my six year old daughter started playing Minecraft on my Windows desktop. She was clumsy with the keyboard / mouse combination that a desktop Minecraft experience requires. Telling her that “W” moves your character forward, and “S” backwards while you use your mouse to pan and active click (oh, and spacebar to hop) was interesting to process.
But she did it. And within a few minutes, she was flipping into her inventory (by pressing “E”) and back out with the right door or fence or block that she needed to build her underground home.
I tried to stand back and let her do her thing without acting like I wanted to build for her. But I knew I had to. I want her to learn how to use a keyboard.
Pro-Tip: I learned how to use a keyboard and type in the early 90’s working on my IBM clones and playing classic games like 1993’s Star Wars X-Wing and 94’s Tie Fighter.
These games did more for my keyboarding (and eventual programming) skills than any typing class in school that I had to take.
I want the same for my children, and I hope they realize the inherit power of a keyboard over an onboard software keyboard experience via iPhone, iPad etc.
Of course, I may be wrong. But I don’t think so.
In my mind, Seth Godin nails it…
Many people are quietly giving away one of the most powerful tools ever createdâthe ability to craft and spread revolutionary ideas. Coding, writing, persuading, calculatingâthey still matter. Yes, of course the media that’s being created on the spot, the live, the intuitive, this matters. But that doesn’t mean we don’t desperately need people like you to dig in and type.
The trendy thing to do is say that whatever technology and the masses want must be a good thing. But sometimes, what technology wants isn’t what’s going to change our lives for the better.
To me, the crux of the issue of using devices in a classroom comes down to the culture of a specific classroom… is there a teacher at the front of the room sharing information and knowledge with an audience of students, or is there a collaborative environment (or something of a hybrid)?
This is written from a college professor’s point of view, but still valuable for k-12 educators and a good read (especially the elephant and elephant driver metaphor):
This is, for me, the biggest changeââânot a switch in rules, but a switch in how I see my role. Professors are at least as bad at estimating how interesting we are as the students are at estimating their ability to focus. Against oppositional models of teaching and learning, both negativeâConcentrate, or lose out!âand positiveâLet me attract your attention!âIâm coming to see student focus as a collaborative process. Itâs me and them working to create a classroom where the students who want to focus have the best shot at it, in a world increasingly hostile to that goal.
Defying all conventional wisdom and their parentsâ warnings, most English majors also secure jobs, and not just at Starbucks. Last week, at the gathering of the Associated Departments of English, it was reported that English majors had 2 percent lower unemployment than the national rate, with an average starting salary of $40,800 and average mid-career salaries of $71,400. According to a 2013â14 study by PayScale.com, English ranks just above business administration as a âmajor that pays you back.â
Remember, crisis comes to us from the Greek word for “choice.” The humanities will always have a love for crisis / choice and that’s what makes it a remarkable human endeavor.
You’ll inevitably ask “what should I be when I grow up?” when you’re in high school if not before. You might not say it out loud to me, but you’ll whisper it to yourself. I already see it in both of your eyes when I tell you about my clients or you see Merianna preach or you visit Mommy at the hospital. You’ll have plentiful options.
So, here’s my advice (my mom gave me this gift, so I’m passing it on to you)…
Merianna and I were having a long conversation about education and learning on the way back home from a trip to Asheville last weekend when the topic of high school came up. I hadn’t thought much about high school lately, mostly out of embarrassment. My dad always thanks Wofford College for turning me into a young man. It took some time, but I think I realize what he meant in that I was just not a sentient being in high school. I remember glimpses and events, but I was a different person in high school in terms of personality and countenance.
All that to say, I do remember enjoying my classes in high school. As I related to Merianna, I don’t remember doing much homework but I was always interested in what I was learning to the point of taking classes my senior year rather than taking half the day off (yes, I was a dork).
It was during that senior year that I had a teacher I always respected tell me it was time to focus and start figuring out my specialty. Despite going through most of school in a fog, I remember this conversation clearly as it continues to impact me today. He was well meaning, but his advice caught me off guard as I loved the idea of studying physics, world history, art history, computer science, and philosophy all at once.
His advice was sound. I had a great opportunity to go to a prestigious college despite my circumstances. My family made many sacrifices for me to have that possibility and I had seemingly worked hard for the chance. It was time for me to figure out if I was going to be a doctor, a lawyer, perhaps a scientist or businessman.
When I got to college, I started down the path of a chemistry and computer science double major. That seemed logical and allowed me a couple of options in terms of career and life. All of that changed during a class on the Old Testament with Prof Bullard. At Wofford, a college with a strong identity of liberal arts learning for all students, there was a requirement for a number of history, literature, and religion classes. I was enjoying college so much after my freshman year that I decided to stay and take summer classes for those requirements (to get them out of the way, and all) rather than head home.
The first day of Old Testament class, I realized I had made a mistake. I was not going to be a computer science / chemistry major. I wasn’t going to earn a B.S. degree and move to California and start my own “internet cyber-economy company” (hey, it was 1996…we talked like that). Instead, I was going to be a religion major.
I walked to the registrar after the first day of OT class and changed my major. My family was supportive but didn’t seemed thrilled. Even I was confused. However, I knew it was the right path for me. I didn’t want to specialize.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Walt Whitman
Along with my religion classes, I had the chance to take whatever fancied my liking from Shakespeare to more computer science classes to sociology explorations of MLK to ancient art history. I was not following my high school teacher’s advice. I was embracing all that liberal arts had to throw at me, and I loved it.
However, what was I going to do after graduation? Well, graduate school of course!
I had an amazing opportunity to go to Yale and spend two years learning about religion, art, archaeology, and life outside of South Carolina. When I finished my studies there, I moved back to South Carolina and decided to teach (10th Grade English). That led to a series of teaching jobs in middle school (mostly 8th grade Physical Science, American History, Algebra, and English). In the midst of that I worked for a few marketing agencies, started my own, and went to seminary (and taught adjunct Old Testament for grumpy freshpeople at 7am).
I didn’t specialize. I didn’t whittle down my career choices or my specialties. It hasn’t been easy, but I love that my bedside table has books on a number of different subjects.
What prompted this reflection was a comment last week from a follower of mine on Twitter asking if they should follow me if they were only interested in hearing about a given subject. “Nope,” I responded. Life isn’t a content consumption project, and the content I produce ranges from tech to marketing to religion to history to NASCAR to whatever else I like to enjoy and learn about. That’s not some form of ADD or having a “scattered brain.” It’s curiosity. And I embrace it (and encourage you to as well).
Don’t settle, don’t feel like you need to ever narrow yourself down to a certain subject to gain more listeners or followers. Be yourself and embrace knowledge and curiosity.
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didnât go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
It won’t be easy. You’ll have to make your own “job” but you’ll eventually enjoy it. Our economy in 2014 is already pointing towards a future where your generation will be tasked with doing just that as we transition from industrial to internet revolutions. But you’ll be fine. Study, read, and keep imagining. Look for ways to take what you’ve learned and improve the lives of others. You’ll create your job and live happily.
Let’s make sure our citizens are literate first and capable of doing basic math before we try to sell the next “American Dream” as being a app maker to our kids.
I love coding. I loved when my students were interested in coding as a middle school teacher. However, I made it clear to them that while hard work will get you halfway there, there’s a lot of persistence, skill and luck involved in developing the next Angry Birds.
While we realize the hard work involved in something insanely complicated like electrical wiring, we tend to gloss over the difficulties involved in computer science careers because “it’s just computers” and not a physical thing that you have “to do” in order to see results.
Code is only the latest in the classic American / Horatio Alger dream that hard work and the right education will by the golden key that ensures everyone has a job. Go west, get a farm. Learn chemistry. Become a mechanic. Learn how to fix computers. So on and so on and so on. Now: Learn to code! It fits very nicely with the current disruption/app/techie focus of the economy and suggests that the companies and donors that comprise it are necessarily the country’s future. They’re not.
I’d argue the same is true for ministers and most any level of professional job given our current economic mega-recession and the tendency of those inside the core to overstay their welcome…
The academic job market is structured in many respects like a drug gang, with an expanding mass of outsiders and a shrinking core of insiders.
Interesting piece with nice graphics on the PhD market…
Make sure to check out the cheat sheet at the bottom. Math is pretty awesome when you use it…
Many contestants fail to win anything on The Price is Right, of course. But as I watched the venerable game show that morning, it quickly became clear to me that most contestants haven’t thought through the structure of the game theyâre so excited to be playing. It didn’t bother me that Margie didnât know how much a stainless steel oven range costs; that’s a relatively obscure fact. It bothered me, as a budding mathematician, that she failed to use basic game theory to help her advance. If sheâd applied a few principles of game theoryâthe science of decision-making used by economists and generalsâshe could have planted a big kiss on Bob Barkerâs cheek, and maybe have gone home with ⊠a new car! Instead, she went home empty-handed.
Science Magazine has posted the 12 finalist videos from its annual Dance Your PhD contest. The contest asks scientists from around the world to send in videos of themselves interpreting their research in dance form. As usual, this year’s finalists have gone all out with some wacky, fun, and just plain bizarre videos. You can vote for your favorite, with the winner and reader’s choice announced on November 21.
I just re-checked the Apple site because I’m utterly confused as to why the L.A. school district would be buying $770 iPads when the $499 models are perfectly fine for school use (helped with a few deployments myself over the past few years).
I’m guessing they went with the 64 GB wifi models ($699 retail) for some reason (oh but students will need lots of space because more is better and the cloud is insecure!) instead of the perfectly reasonable and much cheaper 16 GB $499 models?
Weird.
According to the L.A. Times, a new school district budget shows that iPads will cost $770 each. Appleâs discount on the tablets doesnât kick in until the District buys at least 520,000 of them. That will cost approximately $400 million. In a statement to the Times, officials said that earlier cost estimates, âpreceded the actual procurement process.â The District went on to say, âThe negotiated discount [i.e. $678] does not go into effect until the district has reached the $400-million spending threshold.â
As a fan of economic theory (by no means an expert), I’ve always tried to rationalize the chasm that exists between private school and public school teacher pay.
Having been both a private school and public school teacher, I’ve had to rationalize this on a whole different level.
Though there are lots of generalities in this article, I do agree with the concluding paragraph here:
The biggest lesson public education can draw from the salary gap isnât to cut wages, or quash unions, or hold open auditions for unlicensed teachers. The lesson, in fact, has little to do with salaries at all. The moral is that not all teaching jobs are alike. Different school environments make for radically different work, and many teachers find private schools offer a more rewarding experience. Attracting and retaining teachers, then, means more than just raising salaries. It means taking disciplinary obstacles and bureaucratic nonsense out of teachersâ paths.
My only caveat is that not every private school is the same Dead-Poets-Society engendering experience for teachers. I taught at three very different private schools over the last decade and I had three very different experiences. There were varying levels of responsibilities, overhead, bureaucracies, call for standards etc.
In general, I’ll say that the best schools are where the teachers are happy and passionate about their jobs. How to accomplish that? Get out of the teachers’ way and trust them as the professionals they are (or at least they are hired to be).
Why Great Teachers Are Fleeing the Profession – Speakeasy – WSJ: “Teaching is essentially a part time job. They âworkâ an average of 6 months out of the year. That number is further reduced in the northern climes by snow days (about 10 a year) which are NEVER made up. They have long holiday breaks, generous sick and âpersonalâ time provisions and average-length work days. For this they take home $50,000-$100,000 + a year. They contribute almost nothing to their health insurance and pensions. THEY ACTUALLY HAVE PENSIONS! This puts their compensation on par with (or above) that of someone who graduates #1 in his class at harvard law with a job at a top law firm.”
If the community where I was teaching were openly receptive to helping me support my family as a single parent, I’d still be a teacher.
I had to wince to make it through this article and visibly groaned when I read this:
Teacher Knows if Youâve Done the E-Reading – NYTimes: “CourseSmart is owned by Pearson, McGraw-Hill and other major publishers, which see an opportunity to cement their dominance in digital textbooks by offering administrators and faculty a constant stream of data about how students are doing.
In the old days, teachers knew if students understood the course from the expressions on their faces. Now some classes, including one of Mr. Guardiaâs, are entirely virtual. Engagement information could give the colleges early warning about which students might flunk out, while more broadly letting teachers know if the whole class is falling behind.
Eventually, the data will flow back to the publishers, to help prepare new editions.”
As a teacher, I definitely understand the well meaning intention behind something like CourseSmart. I use Khan Academy a great deal with my 7th grade students for similar intentions.
However, the reason I use Khan for reinforcing math skills we’re discussing or for enrichment is to increase a student’s “number sense” and basic quantitative reasoning skills. We have conversations about their work on Khan, we do track progress a little (though it’s not used as the basis for a grade) and I am able to see where a particular student might be struggling, bored, competent or proficient on certain math skills that we’re covering. It’s a handy tool just like worksheets or pencil and paper. In the end, my job as a teacher is to converse with each student and see where they are in their math work on an individual basis. Khan along with many other tools helps me do that more authentically. I don’t “helicopter” students but want them to realize that they can take charge of their own learning for learning’s wonderful sake.
Khan, Code Academy, iTunes U, Coursera etc have made me a much better teacher over the last three years because I fundamentally believe that conversation (meaning more than verbal but conversation in the truest sense of the word possible) with an individual student is still the best test.
Nonetheless, what CourseSmart is doing from a teaching point of view is taking something like reading and making it into a quantitative model of “engagement.” Rather than a student being able to engage with material that suits them best, they’re being pigeon holed into an algorithmic expectation of highlighting and note taking in a way that up-ends the teaching process. Services like CourseMart are yet another example that boxed one-size fits all education at any level does not work.
Plus, the connection to corporate edu is so disturbing. Pearson and McGraw-Hill have become the Facebook and Google of education with their takeover of the education cloud.
