Chris Lott

A couple of us were batting around the idea of Education movie trailers ala the fantastic example created by Alec Couros for his Open Access Course. There really should be more of these.

Even before I saw Alec’s example, I was never able to read George Siemens’ phrase “A World Without Courses” without hearing it in one of those great Movie Trailer Voices, like Hal Douglas or the late, great Dan LaFontaine…

In a world without courses. One man. Stands alone. Connected. Disruptive. And with a pedagogical score to settle…

Following (and during) Dave Cormier’s Open Ed presentation: We Are Not Your %@! Resource:Sustainable Use of Established Communities, Jennifer Jones and I had some Twitter conversation that resulted in her sharing the points shown above.

Community becomes increasingly important as one realizes that open education (if not most education) uses content but involves community. And that was at the heart of Dave’s presentation—conversations about education too often speak about using community and people as if they were content resources.

Jen and I appear to differ in our understanding of community in a way that isn’t uncommon. Let me get the simple agreement out of the way first: I agree completely with her points #1, 2, 4 and 7.

But #3, 5 and 6 get right at our differences in approach. It’s true, though phrased very negatively, that a novel course community is “silo.” But what if it isn’t a silo, but an intentionally short-lived community? I don’t see that any of us belong to “a” community—we belong to many. Our community memberships and affiliations come and go. Some lost a long time, some last for a very short time, maybe only a few days. I not only don’t see a problem with that, I think it’s a positive characteristic of contemporary life… as it has been for as long as people have gathered in groups, but amplified and magnified by the availability of technology that removes some physical limitations to communities we can be part of.

Given that, then lack of sustainability of a course community isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And as I believe that trying on roles and experimenting with positions and philosophies is a critical part of learning, it might sometimes be a highly desirable attribute. Which isn’t to say that I don’t see clearly problematic issues from the simple (resources that are used while part of a community can be desirable long after the community itself no longer is) to the complex (community membership doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game where belonging to community A means withdrawing from—or negatively effects—community B, but it can happen). Learners don’t stop existing in their existing communities when they start existing in those inspired or required as part of an educational experience… a fact that is, in fact, implicit in point 5, which recognizes that learners already exist in multiple communities that co-exist just fine.

Underlying this is also a philosophy of community and education around which Darcy Norman and I were Twitter-debating at the same time: community requirements. If I thought all communities and community engagements operated at the same level, then I could see where requiring participation in a particular community (and thus requiring the same technology) would be much more problematic. But I don’t believe that’s the case. Requiring a student to participate in a particular community is artificial… but time and time again I see what starts as a requirement blossom into an authentic experience that is sustained, either exactly so (when taking part in existing communities outside the class) or in function (when participation in a class community—a flickr group, diigo community, group blog, ning community is continued by students in like form in other places, often using the same tools). This isn’t an unfamiliar practice nor is it limited to community—teaching the arts, for example, often starts with “artificial” assignments which turn out to be precisely what was needed for the learner to become “authentically” engaged.

And requirements—even those that can only be refused at the cost of a grade or whatever mechanism of assessment is being used—aren’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t see requiring participation in a community (constrained, limited, or not) as being any different from other required activities and performances that are part of the teaching and learning process, whether those performances be writing, reading, interviewing, making, building, or what have you.

All that being said, point #7 is very true. When possible/conceivable and desirable—not just technologically, but pedagogically and in light of what I am trying to help students learn, discover, and achieve—taking advantage of the eduglu concept to weave preferred tools and existing communities into the experience is a wonderful thing to do. But I have to push back on the zero-sum approach to community and the idea that "real” (useful, authentic, etc) engagement can’t happen in a constrained and/or required experience.

I’m still trying to gather my own thoughts about it—which goes some way to explaining why this, ostensibly about a paper is actually a tangent—but Dave Cormier and a mysterious posse have created a draft paper exploring a perennially important question: what’s next? Preparing for the Postdigital Era is an attempt to:

shift our thinking away from the simple digital/analogue distinction of technology towards a less divisive and more nuanced context for work; a human context that focuses on the essence of our work rather than the appearance.

I suspect that the ideas in this paper inspired @injenuity’s question for Howard Rheingold:

Ask him what ed tech folks and "integrators" are going to do for a living when technology is assumed and invisible.

I pushed back a little on this concept because it seems to me that “technology” never becomes assumed and invisible… specific instances of it do. So the question is either irrelevant—because there will never be an “after”—or the definition of “technology” needs to be narrowed. My relentless prodding (it’s my lot to be the skeptic, which nets a lot of conversation but very few friends) lead to Jen’s clarification that poses a much more interesting question:

Not questioning advancement of tech. Hoping for age when ppl are curious, engaged and aware to explore without help from specialists.

Setting aside that the term “specialist” doesn’t feel like a good fit with many of the “ed tech folks” and “integrators” I know (perhaps they should be excluded anyway since most of them would love to work themselves out of that particular job, not only to open the door for richer activities, but because they know as well as anyone that the changes which demand their services just keep on coming), I can’t think of a technology that hasn’t involved specialists when it was new… and the more active and participatory a technology is, the more valuable such specialists are. For a while, anyway.

The biggest question might be what happens in a “postdigital” age, but the more productive question is smaller: what happens in a post-current-technology age, when those few technologies and applications (literally and functionally) that survive have become common and commonly-understood enough that specialists aren’t needed (for that set of technologies at least)? To circle back to the reason Dave’s paper is important: nothing. Or at least nothing good. Not unless the actions and states of mind that allow one to be engaged and aware are actively and consciously promoted and reinforced. The lack of curiosity, engagement and awareness that typifies our environment (not just in the single sphere of education) has nothing to do with the complexity of technology. Quite the opposite: it’s reinforced by the affordances of that technology which make it easier than ever to satisfy our need for engagement with the equivalent of junk food.

By analogy: no one really disputes that modern agricultural methods and food production techniques, which have resulted in a greatly higher caloric availability to the average instinctually survival-minded human being, has resulted in an increase in those humans’ average weight. In some countries– like the US– obesity is commonly considered an epidemic and it’s clear from research over the past decade that, in fact, this increase in consumption is directly at odds with our natural instinct to live a longer life. For we lucky ones who live in this environment of plenty rather than scarcity, survival instinct– to eat what you can when you can because you can’t be sure when you will have the opportunity to eat as much (or at all) again– is, in fact, working against our survival.

This doesn’t make me a caloric determinist… in the end we are what we choose to eat. But the effect of the affordances of the technological apparatus that is our food industry does have an effect and it is decidedly not neutral (in any useful sense of the term). In the same way, while we can choose sustained engagement and deep attention, more and more we choose not to. The technology doesn’t make us that way, but the functional result isn’t much different than it would be if it did.

For the most part, people don’t exhibit a lack of curiosity because their natural curiosity is being thwarted by technology any more than they eat poorly because their desire to eat healthy is thwarted by difficulty in finding, obtaining or preparing healthy food.

Dave’s paper is, I think, going in the right direction, reframing the picture in terms of personal, authentic experience—and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the details later—but it doesn’t go far enough in examining the same assumption that inquisitive activity and exploration are natural activities that informs Jen’s question and the damage that has resulted from those assumptions. If anything, I’d guess that biologically it’s the opposite, and culturally our institutions of education and the edifice of many families and peer groups don’t go very far in instantiation/facilitating that mindset when they don’t outright punish people who go in that direction.

I’m sure David Brooks works very hard. In fact, I’m sure he has spent the Gladwell-ian 10,000 hours practicing his craft. Which is why he should look to himself as an example before he starts peddling this kind of twaddle:

"Some people live in romantic ages. They tend to believe that genius is the product of a divine spark. They believe that there have been, throughout the ages, certain paragons of greatness — Dante, Mozart, Einstein — whose talents far exceeded normal comprehension…"

In their constant rush to figure out a way to elevate the ordinary– which must naturally include themselves– writers like Brooks fall into exactly the trap I was describing a few days ago… making a straw man argument of "genius is all" instead of the common (and rather obvious) argument that "genius is necessary." Genius in this context has nothing to do with IQ, of course, and everything to do with what a person can ultimately create and do.

I’m in no way diminishing the necessity for long hours of practice that the studies Brooks and others refer to accurately point out. But is this news? After all, what’s the secret to getting to Carnegie Hall? Of course those at the top of their field and craft have spent an enormous amount of time working to get there. That’s not in question. What’s at issue is whether others could get there if they just practiced as much and with the same effort and deliberation.

Without a gift one can practice any number of hours and he or she will never reach a particularly high level. And without an immense gift, they will never be an Einstein or a Tiger Woods. Call it what you want– genius, talent, innate ability, aptitude, but it exists– as easily evidenced by the masses of the average and the mediocre who nonetheless pursue their goal with admirable persistence. And as much as we might wish it to be so, these gifts aren’t subject to the best selling (and rather sad) democratization the self-help industry tries to impose.

If you took Brooks’s hypothetical young woman who "possessed a slightly above average verbal ability" that was "just enough so that she might gain some sense of distinction" and followed the prescription he outlines you would end up with a slightly above average writer who had maximized her talent through hard work. If fortune were in your favor you might have a mid-list novelist, or one of the many unknown academics who haunt the fringes of the annual MLA conference. Perhaps you would even end up with a New York Times op-ed columnist famous for her wrong-headed political predictions and deceit. But what you wouldn’t have on your hands is Jane Austen.

The necessity of talent to become the next Shakespeare or Michelangelo shouldn’t be discouraging. The reason books denying the necessity of talent sell so well is natural. And what this means for education is important. I’ll discuss each of those in future posts.

 
[photo by shoothead] 

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

A few years ago a friend sent me a version of this ‘Being Poor’ list via email. "Really makes you think, doesn’t it?" he said, "Can you imagine?" 

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.

I could more than imagine… many of the items in the list I could remember.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.

I can remember a lot of the feelings and experiences from that list and add a few more of my own: claiming apathy to avoid field trips that would cost even a few dollars, paying for a meal out with the class using change (not to mention the concept of "small" change), simply not eating at all on a sports trip, working from 3:30a-6:3a before two-a-day practices and homework until 11p, blocks of free cheese, the looks you get bringing out food stamps (and, worse, when you are loudly informed that "welfare doesn’t cover" an item and asked if you want it put back), having someone in school recognize the grab-bag shirt you are wearing that used to be theirs…

But the worst part by a mile is the cultural claustrophobia and aspirational myopia that come with material poverty which, after all, is quite often accompanied by– if it doesn’t necessitate– intellectual poverty. I can tell you how it feels to be the first in the family to make it through high school; among other things it’s the feeling of thinking "that’s it! I did it!" and being absolutely clueless about the next step. I can tell you how it feels to discover years into an undergraduate degree at the only place I thought I could afford, after feigning disinterest in a flood of offers based on high test scores and straight-A high school grades, that when tuition is advertised as X dollars per year you can still get that education even if you don’t have X dollars in your pocket in cash when you arrive; it’s nauseating. I can share with you to this moment how a profound lack of understanding of handling money and credit can perpetuate a cycle of constant fiscal near-drowning the same way academic knowledge of swimming leaves you (if you are lucky) barely able to keep your head above water when you go overboard.

Physical hunger gnaws at the stomach and chest, intellectual hunger gnaws at the head and heart, and in both cases too much desire, too much necessity, too much static in the form of the whispering "need, need, need" makes them inordinately important and ultimately, no matter what you achieve or receive, turns them into demands that can never be met. The insatiable need and the inability to believe in achievement and self-worth– the constant perception of being a fraud– is a constant static, a kind of psychological tinnitus that one can learn to ignore but is always on, waiting to be noticed– and intruding– at the worst possible times.

Last night, a friend Twittered about a book she was reading, The Price of Privilege, which is:

A critical look at America’s culture of affluence explores the epidemic of emotional and psychological problems crippling America’s privileged youth

I don’t doubt her judgment. I don’t doubt that the book is discussing real problems. But I really can’t comprehend it. More importantly, I can’t feel it. I’m sure there’s a price for privilege… I just haven’t been privileged enough to get a chance to pay it.

A few weeks ago I was reading a voyeuristic profile of George Clooney in the New Yorker in which, at one point, he warns the interviewer after discussion of some recent troubling incident that he has to keep it in perspective and that he’s aware how ridiculous and outlandish it can be to hear celebrities complaining about their miserable lives. Even George Clooney suffers! I know it’s true, but it’s more fantastic than quantum mechanics and harder to really internalize than 6th and 7th dimensions.

But it made me think about educators… in particular "my circle" of friends and colleagues and influential acquaintances. How many of them, I wonder, have experienced poverty themselves? For how many of them would the Being Poor post strike a resonant, uninvited chord? And what does that mean to our efforts? "We" are already a select group in this context: college educated, most teaching college undergraduates or higher, working with or in academic institutions. But many of us are teaching or influencing the teaching of students who are struggling to escape circumstances of poverty and lack of privilege. Do we allow for that? Can we? If someone who comes from  relative privilege is as clueless about the needy as I am about the wealthy classes, how do we teach? 

[photo by Thomas Levinson]

I couldn’t find the thread George mentions, but questions about our grading system and the invocation of William Farish are interesting to consider. The history of grading as we know it, as laid in the article that George links to, can use some expansion. In that article, we learn that Farish instituted his grading system in 1792 or later. But there is an interesting parallel (?) development outlined in a 1993 Educational Forum article:

The history of grading in American colleges was eloquently detailed by Mary Lovett Smallwood (1935). She related that marking, or grading, to differentiate students was first used at Yale. The scale was made up of descriptive adjectives and was included as a footnote to Stiles’s 1785 diary.

President Stiles wrote that 58 students were present at an examination, and they were graded as follows: “Twenty Optimi, sixteen second Optimi, 12 Inferiores (Boni), ten Pejores” (Stiles, 1901, vol. 3). In all probability, these may have been the very first collegiate “grades” given in the United States.

Yale took the initiative in formulating a scale. Smallwood quoted the following from the Book of Averages — Yale College: “Record of Examinations,” 1813 — 1839: Rules respecting this Book and its records, 1. This book shall be kept with the Senior Tutor of the College, whose duty it shall (be) to see that the following rules are carried into effect. 2. The average result of the examination of every student in each class shall be recorded in this book by the Senior Tutor of the class.

Also this very same book from Yale gives a reference to marking on a scale of 4. In all probability, this was the origin of the 4.0 system used by so many colleges and universities today. There was, however, still no connection to letter grades. .or example, an A was not a 4.0, for at this point in time, there was no A.

The gap of 28 years between President Stiles’s remarks of 1785 and Yale’s in 1813 is also interesting. It is hard to imagine there were not any records or statements concerning grading written during this time, but apparently none have been found.

The article goes on to outline dates of implementation of various numeric systems at Harvard, Mount Holyoke, etc.

Regardless, the point being made by George and the CCK08 participants is well-taken– grading systems of the kind we are familiar with are relatively new to education. If you could go back in time, you would look in vain for grading scales in the Platonic academies, letter grades in the Lyceum, or calculators (literally) feverishly working out GPAs in the monasteries.

But before we get all medieval (figuratively and literally) on the system, let’s remember that the previous system wasn’t without its flaws. Then, as now, there were charges of favoritism and corruption, cults of personality and pressures to push learners through for reasons other than merit. Frankly, I find the quote George highlights:

"When a student graduated, the most impressive thing she or he could share with a prospective employer was not a Grade Point Average (GPA) or even the name of the institution attended: it was the name of the teacher. Students of the great teachers of history often became famous themselves because of the thoroughness with which their mentors had inculcated knowledge, understanding, skill, and talent in them."

terrifying. Because the truth is that while some students in the past became famous themselves because of the names and thoroughness of the teachers, others became famous because of the names of their teachers end stop. Great names are not necessarily great teachers; studying with a great name doesn’t mean one has learned anything; great names– knowing that the system that their students tend to thrive in are not meritocracies– are under the same kinds of pressure with or without grades to assign.

I’m the last person to defend contemporary grading systems. I much prefer performance- and apprentice- based systems of evaluation and promotion. But in our struggle to fight the man we shouldn’t lose sight of the reality that when it comes to the conferring of value and the measure of learning that grading is meant to stand for, there are many ways to go wrong and a wealth of subjectivity that ultimately will work to a significant degree to undermine itself by virtue of being accepted enough to become a "system" in the first place.

I’ve been following the 2008 Connectivism and Connected Knowledge course (see course blog, daily newsletter, wiki, aggregation page, and Moodle course page with forum) from an intellectual distance enforced by having too many other things going on at the start of a very busy local semester. As with other ventures along these lines (though none that I’ve seen have operated at this scale and, so far, this intensely) the flood of discussion and resources was immediately overwhelming… but the discussion hasn’t spent as much time as I feared going over the same old ground.

At the same time, it’s clear that despite the volume there is considerable disagreement, misunderstanding, and misapprehension about what these two theories do and do not mean. Alan’s recent post talking about the role of memory is a good case in point. My understanding of Connectivism doesn’t suggest that memory isn’t or shouldn’t be an important part of learning, but that it has a potentially different, additional role when what we remember is also information potentially accessible to other "network nodes" in a connected environment– each of which have their own memory as well– and that the primacy of some kinds of memorization in some kinds of operating situations is open to question, memorization sometimes being an artificial constraint that is just accepted as a prior practice. That’s just my take; these kinds of questions and ruminations being considered by a large group of interested, but not all Confirmed Connectivismists will probably be the single greatest outcome of this Massively Open Online Course.

Inevitably, too, there is the question of the scope of these theories. As I see it, Stephen is positing a wider epistemological theory that is intended to supplant, rehabilitate, and colonize more than George’s theory, which to my mind builds on– but is less exclusive of– other and previous theory. Stephen is clearly more politically radical (in terms of being a break from existing theory). The difference is non-trivial, with ramifications for addressing issues like the role of memory that Alan brings up. I’ve always seen Connectivism as adding to a variety of other theories and their resulting practices that are not eclipsed but remain useful; any one of them alone leading to at least insufficiency, if not outright educational travesty.

After an immensely frustrating conversation a few days ago in which various stereotypes were thrown about w/r/t techies, women, leadership and more, this frame from Clint LaLonde’s fabulous intro video for a Brian Lamb keynote (hey, where’s the archive of the presentation?) caught my attention.

I won’t pretend to understand most (much!) of Beckett’s Nohow On, but there are two phrases in it that have stuck with me since the dizzying experience of reading those three slim volumes. The opening of the third movement “Worstward Ho”:

“On. Say On. Be said on. Somehow on. Til nohow on.”

Coupled with its famous closing:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

This extremely loose couplet is Beckett’s exhortation to the tune of “try, try again” or “outwrite the bastards” but with higher stakes than a good poem or story… Beckett is reminding us that to say and do– repeatedly– is to be and and it is imperative that we keep at it until there is nothing else.

I was reminded of this extremely loose couplet while reading “Quantity Breeds Creativity” at Lifehack. There are two obvious educational aspects here which sometimes get overlooked (particularly if you believe, as I do, that the creative process is one of the most important parts of learning):

First, creativity isn’t efficient. There has been a lot of focus in the past few years on network effects, collectives and connectives, learning community and collaboration, much of which has explicitly or implicitly embraced a desire for efficiency. In my experience, creativity is most often fuzzy, vague, messy and characterized by a feeling of not really being sure what one is doing until they have done it. Creativity is driven by a variety of overlapping and sometimes partially opposing forces of experience, knowledge, and desire. In between making something great and making nothing lies a whole lot of making the mundane, mediocre, inessential, and irrelevant. Making something finally real– and thus being in the world– is harnessing the wisdom of the crowd of one… our multiplicitous self.

Second, creativity depends on repetition. This is really an extension of the lack of efficiency. We know from other aspects of our lives that where there is less efficiency there must be more effort to achieve the same goal. There’s a limited– but important!– amount that can be achieved by waiting for the intersection of the perfect moment and the muse. I’m not discounting the inspired stab in the dark, but most creative thought emerges from repetition, and most of that repetition will be, if not failure, something other than success.  Flannery O’Connor once said that she wrote every day because who knew if a day she skipped might have been the day she would choose well?

I see ramifications of ignoring these two facts at work in the classroom all the time. As educators we try to find the most efficient way of teaching, the combination that– when right– will facilitate a particular learning process, frustrated when it doesn’t “work.” It’s not wrong, of course, to want to be efficient– we all have limited time and resources– but I wonder how often we go too far or simply hope for too much clarity in a process that is so individualized. Educators and learners alike often don’t put the tools, concepts, or techniques to work often enough and for long enough to really understand them. If lightning doesn’t strike immediately or consistently enough, promising and productive paths are abandoned.

There’s a bit of magic in the process where wholes become more than the sum of their parts and tools and creativity are melded. No matter how clearly and often I try to explain the value and nuance of blogging, for example, it must be engaged regularly and for a length of time before those lessons become real. It was the same with regular paper journals before and it will be the same when we have cyborg monkey servants in the future. It isn’t luck that these proven models work for some but not for others, it is a product of practice (of the repetitious kind that leads to the Zen kind). To end with a sports analogy to complement the video, think of Arnold Palmer’s famous response to the accusation that a tough shot out of the rough he had just made was luck: “All I know,” Palmer answered, “is that the more I practice, the luckier I get.”

[linktribution: Doug Belshaw]

I have to admit: I’ve never been a big fan of Dave Eggers. Planks of jealousy, I suppose– hard not to be jealous of his juggernaut ride to fame, positive critical reception as a genius author, brilliant and beautiful wife, and the general perception that he is cooler than all the rest of us combined– reinforced with a thick paste McSweeney’s cliquishness and and my annoyance at his barefoot appearance on some C-SPAN BookTV panel. Puhleeeze. But this speech genuinely moved me. Not only is the 826 Valencia project simple and amazing, but the obviously nervous Eggers was endearing, even earnest. I feel guilty at my smallness when it comes to Eggers and how it has colored my feelings about his writing and other work when he demonstrates the passion and sincerity I sorely need to cultivate in myself!