A recent article in Salon opens with the conventional view of “kids today”:
They live in a state of perpetual, endless distraction, and, for many parents and educators, it’s a source of real concern. Will future generations be able to finish a whole book? Will they be able to sit through an entire movie without checking their phones? Are we raising a generation of impatient brats?
Been there, done that, you yawn. But in actuality the article isn’t rehashing these old ideas but is rebutting them in a refreshing new way. Duke professor Cathy Davidson (no relation) has written a book called Now You See It: How Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn, in which she argues that “much of the panic about children’s shortened attention spans isn’t just misguided, it’s harmful.” That’s not to say that Davidson believes in multitasking:
[W]hen we pay attention to one thing, it means we’re not paying attention to something else. When we’re multitasking, what we’re actually really doing is what Linda Stone calls “continuous partial attention.” We’re not actually simultaneously paying equal attention to two things: One of the things that we’re doing is probably being done automatically, and we’re sort of cruising through that, and we’re paying more attention to the other thing. Or we’re moving back and forth between them.
I particularly like her remarks on the common view that our brains develop more neurons as we get older:
We used to think that as we get older we develop more neural pathways, but the opposite is actually the case. You and I have about 40 percent less neurons than a newborn infant does. A baby pays attention to everything. You’ve probably witnessed this — if there are shadows in the ceiling or sand blades are making peculiar patterns, we adults don’t recognize that, but it can be utterly mesmerizing to a child. They learn what not to pay attention to over and over and over again, and learn what to pay attention to, and that makes for neural pathways that are very efficient. They’re what we tend to call reflexes or automatic behaviors, because we’ve done them so many times we don’t pay attention to them anymore. As an adult, you feel distracted when you learn something new and you can’t depend on those automatic responses or automatic reflexes that have been streamlined neurally over a lifetime of use.
One reason why I liked that passage was that it resonated with one of my favorite quotations: “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” This observation, written by Alfred North Whitehead one hundred years ago, seems to fly in the face of what we teachers always say — students should think before they speak or write — but that’s what makes it so appealing. In fact, what we want is for students to think about the big things but to be automatic about the little things. If you have to think what 2x + 3x is whenever you do an algebra problem, you’ll never be able to pay attention to the Big Ideas.
Here are two more quotations, which I’ll give without comment, since you really should just read the entire article:
[on multiple-choice tests] How do you teach a kid to be able to make a sound judgment about what is and what isn’t reliable information? How do you synthesize that into a coherent position that allows you to make informed decisions about your life? In other words, all of those things we think of as school were shaped for a vision of work and productivity and adulthood that was very much an industrial age of work, productivity and adulthood. We now have a pretty different idea of work, productivity and adulthood, but we’re still teaching people using the same institutionalized forms of education.
[on points and grading]
There are all these really stunning computer scientists that are just frustrated as heck about how badly we’re training scientists. And many of them feel that A,B,C,D and numeric grades are disincentives to exactly the kind of inductive thinking, creative thinking that is the scientific method. Top Coder is the world’s most important certification system for people who are doing open Web development around the world, and they’ve come up with an incredibly complex badging system, where if I’m working with you on code and I see you’re doing a great job, it’s part of my job as a member of the Top Coding community to give somebody points. So if I think you’re doing a great job solving some problem in C++ that I can’t see a solution to, I might give you 20 points. If I’m a third developer, and I say I really need somebody who can help me with some really complicated stuff on C++ , and I see you have a badge with 1,000 points on it on your website, I can click on your badge and it will give me in minute and excruciating detail how you earned every one of those points. There are now a group of computer scientists who are working together to see if we can’t come up with ways that textbooks — particularly online and interactive textbooks; there’ve been some wonderful ones for algebra, for example — could be based on testing that works in some similar way, where a teacher would give you points for succeeding at a problem, where you would automatically get points for getting the correct answer. You wouldn’t even worry about giving negative points because it doesn’t matter; all you do is get points when you do something well. Even saying that is a conceptual breakthrough. When I told my students that we don’t have to worry about trolls and criticism, all we have to do is make really sound, conscientious, articulate judgments about positive things, it was as if a cloud opened.
Several different threads have recently been coming together under the heading of “inverting the classroom.” The basic idea is that modern technology has let some of us come to the conclusion that the traditional model of the classroom has it all backwards:
- Students currently spend a lot of class time in a group of 25 (or 35, or even more, depending on the school) listening to a teacher lecture to them. They could just as well watch a lecture at home — on YouTube, say — where they could pause whenever necessary and watch difficult material many times.
- Students currently get most of their practicing done at home — it’s called homework, after all — where there is no teacher there to help them.
My department head has been fighting this model for several years now, mostly by devoting 90% of his class time to helping kids as they work individually or in groups. Homework becomes classwork.
But that won’t work for most teachers and most classes. I have no idea what percent of class time is typically devoted to lecturing; in my case I would guess 30%, but I fear that the national average is more like 80%. In any case, all of that time could be better spent. The most well-known example of the getting-the-lectures-at-home-through-technology point-of-view is Khan Academy, which offers over 2000 free videos giving short lectures on topics ranging from simple arithmetic to quantum mechanics. I’ve only watched four or five of these, but the ones I’ve seen look pretty good. I think I’ll recommend some of them to my classes this fall. They have their use.
So what’s the downside? The first issue is that “lecture” is usually a misnomer. When I lecture in class, I try to pause to let students ask questions, I constantly look at them to see whether they seem to be understanding, I give them quick exercises to work on, I vary my pace according to my audience. Sometimes we even have a discussion as part of a lecture, or as a follow-up to it. None of that is possible with a pre-recorded video. That worries me.
The second issue is that the public in the current political climate will use this model as an excuse to fire teachers, decrease class time, and increase class size. If that happens, it will be exactly backwards in a different way: after all, if class time is to be used primarily for getting individual help from the teacher, then we’ll need smaller classes and more teachers.
The third issue is that inverting the classroom will make it more difficult for a teacher to create discovery learning opportunities. If I have a carefully staged series of questions that are all designed to let my geometry students figure out a certain theorem, I don’t want them to be watching a video on that theorem ahead of time. This difficulty can be overcome by using a significant portion of classtime for such a purpose, but teachers who think that homework is primarily for practice will have trouble implementing that idea.
Finally, the fourth issue is that the whole approach atomizes a course into bite-size chunks of facts, all taught in a way that can’t possibly integrate into the story-line of a course. If I’m teaching trigonometry, for example, I may want a particular lecture to use radians rather than degrees, arcsin rather than sin-1, and so forth. I may want a linear equation to be y = a + bx, not y = mx + b. Sometimes I even make words up, for well-thought-out pedagogical purposes. How do I control all this if my students are watching Salman Khan give his pre-recorded lecture? The philosophy behind this sort of lecture seems to be that teachers are fungible, but we aren’t.
So…I have many doubts. It’s not that these issues can’t be resolved, but they won’t be unless we put a lot of thought into finding solutions. Inverting the classroom is a great idea, with wonderful potential, and it’s definitely worth pursuing — but only if it’s done right.
My inspection sticker expires this month, so I took the car to our dealer this morning (in case any work was needed) and discovered that our registration had expired two months ago! The current registration was nowhere to be found. What to do, what to do? Obviously I should drive to Braintree or to Watertown and get a new copy of the registration.
But wait! Maybe the wonders of technology will make this task easier. Sure enough, it turns out that car owners can easily download a perfect copy of their car registration in PDF format from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Whew!
Everyone always blames the Registry and the Post Office for poor service, but here at least the Registry gets points for making this process a simple one. But I didn’t know which of the two organizations to blame for the missing registration: did the Registry fail to send it out, or did the Post Office fail to deliver it?
Anyone who has seen my desk can guess the real end to this story.
It turned out that the Registry had indeed sent out the registration in late May, the Post Office had delivered it promptly, and I had “filed” it in a pile of papers on my desk. So now we have two copies of the current registration. Perhaps the extra one will come in handy some day.
The Weston High School Library recently posted a slide show from Rutgers University explaining why students shouldn’t use Wikipedia. This carefully produced polemic deserves a thoughtful rebuttal; I have endeavored to write one here. Be sure to watch the slide show before reading the rest of this essay.
Those of us of a certain age will remember Hamilton Burger’s frequent cry of “Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial!” from the old Perry Mason TV shows. The Rutgers slide show on Wikipedia immediately prompted me to raise the same objection. First, however, I do need to acknowledge the considerable amount of truth in the Rutgers argument. Yes, of course there are many biased statements, inaccuracies, and downright lies on Wikipedia. Yes, it should not be cited as an authoritative source in a formal research paper. Yes, Wikipedia sometimes falls short when we’re looking for accuracy, authority, objectivity, and currency.
But that’s just one side of the picture. The authors of this tendentious slide show fail to meet their own criteria by ignoring the other side! Here, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story:
- Every single example in the slide show comes from a narrow range of subjects in which the perceptive reader should immediately be aware of bias. Indeed Wikipedia should not be relied upon for information about history, politics, or biography — subjects where opinion is likely to substitute for facts, whether intentionally or inadvertently. But there are other subjects where Wikipedia is exceptionally reliable. In two fields that I know a lot about, mathematics and linguistics, it is unquestionably the first place to look for accurate information. Go to Wikipedia to find out about vowel harmony in Turkish, but not about political harmony in Turkey. Go there to find out about number theory, but not about the theory of evolution.
This is not to say that Wikipedia is 100% accurate — of course it isn’t. But so-called “authoritative” sources aren’t 100% accurate either. I recently gave an assignment in which I asked my freshmen to comment on some statements about geometry from presumably authoritative sources; these contained errors that I was unable to find on Wikipedia but quickly found elsewhere. Even textbooks are far from immune. I am reminded of the late Richard Feynman’s famous critique of a middle-school science textbook that contained questions like, “John and his father go out to look at the stars. John sees two blue stars and a red star. His father sees a green star, a violet star, and two yellow stars. What is the total temperature of the stars seen by John and his father?” Of course professors like textbooks; they write them, after all. The rest of us should be skeptical of all sources, even textbooks.
- Regardless of the subject, Wikipedia is a fine location for beginning one’s research. It should be your first stop, not your last. I’m reminded of those advertisements in which a dealership or carpet store says, “Shop us last!” Aside from the newfangled use of “shop” as a transitive verb, which I can’t help noticing, I also observe that the slogan makes more sense than the “Shop us first!” that one sometimes sees. Wikipedia is indeed not the place to cite in your footnotes, but shop there first.
- Finally, the authors of the slide show make misleading use of their own sources. Why on earth do they cite Stephen Colbert of all people — not just once, but twice — as an authoritative source? Their whole argument is undermined by quoting a comedian in this role. Furthermore, although it is cute for them to cite the founders of Wikipedia in support of their argument, they do so in a highly misleading way. They quote one statement, “Wikipedia acknowledges that it should not be used as a primary source for serious research,” without emphasizing the word “primary”; of course it’s not a primary source, but it’s a great place to start in order to continue on to those primary sources. Then they quote Larry Sanger as a “co-founder of Wikipedia” as if he were still on board, whereas in reality he has every reason in the world to be bitter and biased; he is hardly an authoritative or neutral source. Finally, they quote Jimmy Wales (who is still very much on board) in a manner that is clearly incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial: “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t use the encyclopedia.” Go read the original source, and it becomes clear that Wales is talking about encyclopedias in general, not just Wikipedia. He does say that Wikipedia is a good place to start, though you would never know it from reading this quotation that was taken out of context.
Listen in on this conversation:
Teacher 1: I hear that you friend your students on Facebook.
Teacher 2: Not exactly. I accept friend requests from current and former students. But I never initiate them.
Teacher 1: Even so, it’s a really bad idea. They’ll see all sorts of personal things about you. You could get into a lot of trouble for this. Besides, you’re not their friend — you’re their teacher !
Teacher 3: Au contraire, mon frère. Teacher 2 doesn’t put personal things on Facebook. It’s a good thing to have connections with your students outside of school. And anyway, don’t you know that “friend” doesn’t really mean “friend” on Facebook?
OK, what’s going on here? This is a composite conversation, but not a fictional one. I’ve been in the roles of Teachers 2 and 3. Let’s dissect three very different points of view about this issue. The first is exemplified in a recent misguided editorial in the Boston Globe, headlined “Teachers: Friends, not ‘friends’.” Here is an excerpt:
A new policy enacted by the Norton school board that bans teachers from becoming Facebook friends with students on social media sites is a simple lesson in common sense.
…
Some argue that the policy interferes with free speech and assembly rights. Others contend that teachers and students should communicate more, not less. At the college level, that may be true. But from kindergarten to high school, teachers should not need social media to reinforce their lesson plans. If a student has questions outside the classroom, email provides sufficient connection.
What we have here is a fine example of a straw-man argument. Who said that teachers “need social media to reinforce their lesson plans”? The Globe has simply invented a point of view from an imaginary opponent in order to argue against it. The issue isn’t whether we need social media; it’s simply whether it’s acceptable to accept friend requests.
Part of the problem here is the ambiguity of the word “friend.” Facebook users certainly understand the two meanings of the word. Only a naive adult could possibly confuse the two meanings. Only a naive adult could believe that a student who friends me really thinks that I’m his friend in the usual meaning of the word. Many Facebook users have a ridiculous number of “friends”; while I have only 152, one of my former students has 3187. But no one could plausibly think that she considers 3187 people to be actual friends!
I promised three very different points of view. The first one says that accepting friend requests from students is inappropriate; the second says that it’s OK; the third says that it’s something that teachers should do. (As an aside, note that many behaviors can be viewed as this sort of trichotomy. Pick a behavior; you can prohibit it, you can stay neutral, or you can encourage it.) The third point of view came to my attention twice in the past month. The first time was an article in Education Tech News, concerning the principal of All Saints Central School in Michigan. Here is an excerpt:
Principal John Hoving…said he uses Facebook to:
- promote the school
- connect with alumni, and
- increase communication with parents.
Hoving also friends students who send him friend requests. As a result, some parents and students have accused him of using Facebook to monitor students’ online activity.
Notice the not-so-subtle use of the verb “accused” in the last sentence. The article goes on to show why it’s completely the wrong word choice. In reality, the majority have commended him for this connection. (Note that Hoving, like me, accepts friend requests from students but doesn’t initiate them.) Read the follow-up:
Hoving pointed out that students do not have to send him friend requests, but if they choose to — he accepts.
Hoving says if he happens to see students posting questionable content in public forums, he feels it is his responsibility — as a concerned adult — to help students understand the potential consequences of their digital activity.
Several parents and students spoke out in support of Hoving, saying they are fine with his efforts to “look out for” everyone at school.
…
Richard Guerry, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Online and Cell-phone Communication (IROC2)…posed an intriguing question: Would parents who have an issue with the principal’s actions really want him to ignore potential problems — especially when he has an opportunity to protect their children before something happens? Hoving should “be commended for caring and protecting his students,” according to Guerry.
The second time I heard this view in the past month came in a conference with the parent of one of my students. She said that she insisted that her teenage children had to friend her, just so she could monitor what they’re putting on Facebook. (Yes, I know, the privacy settings complicate this claim, but it’s still a good idea.) For similar reasons she was pleased that they friend their teachers. We talked about the anonymous Teacher 1 in the dialog above (who remained anonymous, of course), and both of us agreed that there’s a simple solution to the problem of not wanting students to see inappropriate personal information about teachers. The solution is for teachers to follow the same advice that I give to students: don’t post anything that you don’t want the whole world to see! It ’s called the World Wide Web for a reason. Privacy is an illusion these days; when something is too personal for your teachers to see (if you’re a student) or too personal for your students to see (if you’re a teacher), then don’t post it! That’s my policy, and it should be yours.
In conclusion, I have to say that I suppose there’s actually a fourth point of view: that teachers should initiate friend requests. But I don’t hear anyone arguing for that.
Obviously I’m firmly with Hoving and Gerry on this issue. The Norton School Committee and the Boston Globe are badly off-base.
…I am once again resuming posting in my blog…
A lot of adults are complaining that teens are “illiterate” in their writing, especially in email messages — you know, “kids these days…” and all that — but that’s not what I’m seeing. The abysmal level of teenage writing is usually attributed to their addiction to text messaging, a.k.a. texting. For example:
The youth of Ireland are becoming increasingly poor spellers and writers, and their love of text messaging on cellphones is a major reason why, according to the Education Department.
In a report published Wednesday on national test results in English for about 37,000 students aged 15 and 16, the department’s Examination Commission said cutting-edge communications technology has encouraged poor literacy and a blunt, choppy style at odds with academic rigor.
“Text messaging, with its use of phonetic spelling and little or no punctuation, seems to pose a threat to traditional conventions in writing,” said the report written by the department’s chief examiner, whose identity is kept confidential to safeguard the integrity of tests.
The report branded today’s teens “unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary.”
…
Ireland is among the world leaders in cell-phone use — in part because of traditionally high costs for conventional phone lines — and surveys indicate that a majority of children have their own mobile phone by age 12, with the most enthusiastic texters sending more than 250 a week.
Yes, that happens to be Ireland. But we hear the same kind of complaints in this country as well. However, as I said above, that’s not what I’m seeing. Of course I may have a very skewed sample, consisting primarily of Weston students, but since I’m not pretending to be doing a statistically valid survey I’ll go ahead with my observations, skewed though they may be. Here’s what I see. I’ll stick to email, since that’s where we’re most likely to see overly informal writing:
Most students know how to address adults (teachers, at least) in their writing, even when using email. The big exception is the capitalization of the pronoun “I,” which often appears uncapitalized. Otherwise their grammar, style, punctuation, and spelling are all pretty reasonable. I’m not claiming that we have works of literature here — merely that the quality of writing is close to that of adults.
To gather my evidence, I looked at 20 consecutive email messages written by my students in October. (As I say, it’s certainly not a rigorous survey, nor was it meant to be.) Here they are in their entirety; I have omitted no messages, nor have I edited anything beyond adding message numbers and altering students’ names. Judge for yourself.
1 Hey Mr. Davidson,
I hope that i could get a recommendation from you. I’m sorry i couldn’t get to you earlier about the recommendation letter.
To make it easier for you, i’ll be sending the info you need over email. However since i do not have the finalized list of the colleges that i would like to apply to, is it possible to hold onto the the rec. till i can get you the list of colleges? After i’ve narrowed my list down i’ll be able to give you the letters that you need to send them off in. Thanks a lot.
2 Hey Mr. Davidson,
I am doing a lot better today, yesterday and Tuesday were truly awful though, so although i’m not 100%, I feel “relatively GREAT” and it was very nice to get back to school today. I stopped by your desk after school to talk about what I missed and you weren’t there, but luckily I’ve been getting filled in pretty well from classmates, and borrowed a textbook, so i’m not behind, and just may need some help completing tonights assignment. I noticed a note on your desk that said you will miss tomorrows class, is this true?
Thanks for the check-in, I appreciate it, and I hope to see you soon!
3 Hi Mr. Davidson,
This is Stu Dent in your H block Geometry class. I’m just wondering
what days you free after or before school this week before the 18th?
Thanks alot!
4
On the westonmath website for #6 on tonight’s homework I’m not sure what the &ndash means. Should I assume the question is for (X+2)^2?
5 Hi Mr. Davidson,
I was wondering if there was a possibility I could meet with you tomorrow morning regarding proofs as I am confused going about proving them especially with word problems such as the one with the bus and railroad for example. I’m willing to come whenever you are available (except maybe not 3:00 AM in the morning!).
6 Hi Mr. Davidson
I’m having some trouble with the domain and range part of tonight’s homework, as well as the Dr. scheme questions. Could I meet with you at 7:15 tomorrow morning to go over it?
7 Hi Mr. Davidson
I’m in your Honors Geometry class Block F. I just have one question. For the sample problems you gave in the book, I’m not quite sure what method I should use to solve the last question, number 43. I usually use guess and check, but I know there could be an equation to solve it, but I’m not quite sure what the equation is.
8 Hello Mr. Davidson,
I have registered onto the math blog site and I was wondering how to do I actually post a blog since I have not been able to find the button that allows me to actually make a post.
9 Hi Mr. Davidson,
Tomorrow I have a study hall first and last block. I was wondering if you were free either of those blocks so that I could go over the test with you.
Thanks!
10 Hi Mr.Davidson,
I went over the clock problems with a friend and now I understand it so I don’t need to meet with you! Thanks
11 Hi Mr Davidson,
Could i see you tommorow morning before school starts to go over some test questions and concepts? Thanks
12 Hi Mr. Davidson,
I’m in your F Block Honors Geometry class. I just have one question. On the test, on problem 3, for the collinear points question, I think it was the last one. I got that question wrong because I said the points were collinear. I don’t know why, though, its wrong. Can you please explain it to me so I don’t make the same mistake on future test or quizzes?
Thanks,
13 Hello,
I just submitted the post that I created on the blog website.
I did not remember how to make the math look like math.
Also, when I try to preview it, it says “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”
I probably did something wrong and I’m not really sure how I can fix it.
Thanks,
14 Hi Mr. Davidson,
I think I may have left my math book in your class on Friday. If you have it could you please let me know and I can get it on Tuesday.
Thank you very much and have a good long weekend!
15 It is Stu Dent. I have contacted you because i finished my blog, and saved it, but then logged out, and it seems now that the website could be messed up, because when i try, it says “Cheatin’ Uh.” I will continue to try, but could you please respond, because i would like to have my post up.
16 Hi Mr. Davidson,
This seems like forever ago, but at the end of last year you said you could help me out by writing my college recommendation. I have the form from the school and the forms from CommonApp.org almost ready to give you, so I thought I should let you know where I am/remind you. I am applying to one school Early (November 1), so I also have an envelope from that school, and then I will bring the rest later when I decide what schools I am going to apply to Regular (January 1).
Would you like to meet with me before you write it? Or can I just drop off the packet of papers with you?
I only have one free, so if we met it would probably have to be either in the morning, during lunch, or quickly after school.
Thanks for all your help,
17 Hi Mr.Davidson,
My parents and I discussed my last quiz and test grades we thought
that maybe I should consider taking the CP geometry course. Do you
have any input on this and is there an F block CP geometry class?
Please let me know.
Thank you,
18 Mr. Davidson
So i know it’s been a while since we’ve talked but I was wondering if you need anything from me for teacher recs. I will have the envelopes and teacher rec form to you for Thursday. May I drop it off Thursday after school? I am actually just giving you the info (envelope, due date) for the school that I am applying early to because I still have to finalize my other schools. I will tell you the rest of the schools as soon as I finish my list. I hope that’s okay.
Thanks,
19 hi mr. davidson!
its Matilda. well i was talking to Stu Dent and he tried helping me with the blogging but it wouldnt work. and he said that i had the same problem as him and the admin messed up the account or something like that. i couldnt write the blog! let me know how to fix it. see you tomorrow!
20 Hi Mr. Davidson, I’m finishing up the teacher recommendation package that I plan to give to you tomorrow in school. There are a few things that I can include if you feel that you need or want them: my activity list, parent brag sheet, the teacher rec Basic Questionnaire, etc. Would you like me to include any of these in your package?
After spending a totally absorbing 90 minutes at Harry Potter: The Exhibition, I still don’t know why it’s at the Museum of Science of all places — what’s the connection with science? — but I highly recommend it nonetheless. The exhibition consists mainly of actual props, sets, and costumes from the filming of the Harry Potter movies, supported by small amounts of textual commentary and other related material. By far the most striking aspect of the show is the exquisite attention to detail; every tiny bit of the handmade costumes and other props has been carefully crafted and expertly weathered so has not to look new. The verisimilitude has been enhanced by the context in which the materials are set — sometimes actual scenes but more often just sets that are suggestive of the scenes used in the movies. Even the usual store that you are forced to walk through when leaving the exhibit is entrancing, as it is made up to look like various shops from the movies. The exhibition will be there until February 21; don’t miss it!
Incidentally, it struck me as I was walking through the exhibits that there is a deep connection with model railroading here. I was asking myself why I would be interested in costume design, a subject that actually doesn’t interest me at all. And yet the costumes were among the most fascinating artifacts on display. Halfway through it hit me: even though everything was 1:1 scale, it’s a lot like a model railroad! The attention to detail created a miniature world that selectively reflects the real world but veers off into fantasy in various ways. I once again thought of imaginary gardens with real toads in them. See a post I wrote four and half years ago, which was actually about math but could equally as well have been about model railroading; it’s just that everything is intertwingled.
If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you will recall that I wrote a post four years ago entitled, “Ban Comic Sans!”, in which I linked to the ban comic sans site. Now Gizmodo has a new take on the matter in John Herrman’s list of Eight Regrettable Tech Inventions:
Vincent Connare, and Comic Sans: Font of choice for kitschy restaurant menus, passive-aggressive office notices and the worst websites on the internet, Comic Sans is merely a lame font, made evil by its endless, widespread use. From the WSJ, the creator on his most maligned creation, which was originally intended for use exclusively in Microsoft Bob: “He cringes at the most improbable manifestations of his Frankenstein’s monster font and rarely uses it himself, but he says he tries to be polite when he meets people excited to be in the presence of the creator.” Connare’s penance has already been paid: Microsoft owns the font, so he couldn’t earn any royalties from its viral — and I mean that in the worst way possible — spread.
“Do you know about the Xerox Alto and Xerox Star computers from back in the ’70s?” asked one of my fifth-graders in The Saturday Course.
“Yes,” I replied, “but I’ve never before met a fifth-grader who knows about them!” This mut have been ancient history to him.
He went on to tell me that the Alto was the first computer to use windows, menu, and a mouse, but that Xerox’s marketing department wasn’t able to sell it to home users.
Actually, I wrote once before about a Saturday Course student who surprised me with her wisdom and knowledge — and that was a fourth-grader that time — so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. But this blast from the past was definitely unexpected.
Check out the blogs for all of my classes! We rotate each day that a class meets, so that students take turns posting class notes. So far this has led to a number of positive effects:
- Students who miss class for any reason have a resource for finding class notes.
- Students who were present in class but have inadequate notes (yes, this has been known to happen, even in Weston) have a backup.
- Students get the experience of taking and writing up detailed notes for a real audience to read.
- Misconceptions are revealed to me way in advance of the next quiz or test, as I can sometimes see that a student misunderstood what was done in class.
The first three effects were expected, but I hadn’t anticipated the fourth.
Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, is billed as a “Young Adult” Novel. And so it is. But, like several other “Young Adult” adults, it is worth reading by not-so-young adults. This is an homage to 1984 — hence the title — set in the current world of technology, teenage hackers, and paranoia about national security. The fundamental conflict is between the Department of Homeland Security and a 17-year-old wiz named Marcus, who initially goes by the handle of W1nst0n (no coincidence there) and soon becomes M1k3y. Doctorow, who may or may not be related to E.L. Doctorow, has made the novel available for free download, although in my case I checked the excellent audiobook version out of the library.
Anyway, I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who is interested in politics, technology, education, and their intersections. Marcus is an engaging and believable protagonist, whose conflict with the DHS forms the central theme of the novel. The idea of a teenage hero who successfully fights the establishment is, of course, not new to science fiction, but Doctorow handles it with particular skill and interest. The novel is particularly authentic in its depiction of cryptography, Internet security, and other technical matters — but it still makes a convincing account to those who are not entranced by such topics. As a teacher, of course, I was particularly taken by the issues that Marcus’s school had with him, and by the San Francisco school district’s attempt to fire his social studies teacher, who was only attempting to teach the class about the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights (subversive documents, of course). The result is a somewhat chilling but ultimately convincing tale. Do read it!
Vincent Rossmeier has written a refreshing article in Salon entitled “Is the Internet melting our brains?” Essentially an interview with linguist Dennis Baron about his new book, A Better Pencil, the article counters much of the typical hand-wringing in the mainstream media and academia:
Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We’re facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes.
While I’m sure that many of my students spend too much time on Facebook and too much time texting, I’m equally sure that their social relationships and their use of English were no better before they indulged in such activities. I’ve reserved Baron’s book from the library, and I’ll post a review here (but only after I’ve read it).
How nice to see a website that actually recognizes Dorchester as a neighborhood of Boston! Povo not only lists it prominently, but its description is an accurate portrayal of Dorchester’s many virtues:
Dorchester is the largest geographic and most populated neighborhood in the city of Boston. Home to Dot Ave., it is also Boston’s most diverse neighborhood, with large pockets of African Americans, Irish, Vietnamese, Caribbean, and South and Central American residents. In recent years, the neighborhood has seen an influx of young working professionals, working artists (in areas like Lower Mills, Peabody Square, and Savin Hill), and a growing GLBT community along Dorchester Avenue, while it’s still predominantly a working class neighborhood and a thriving center of immigration. The neighborhood also includes vast economic diversity. Housing varies incredibly from housing projects in places like Bowdoin/Geneva and Franklin Field to stately Victorian homes in places like Ashmont Hill and Melville Park.
Contrast this paragraph with the usual treatment. Other websites almost always do one of the following:
- They ignore Dorchester completely, because they think it has little to offer out-of-towners. For example, here’s Fodor’s list of “Places to explore” in Boston:
- Alternatively, they notice nothing about Dorchester except for its crime, which is so well publicized by the media. For example, here’s a sentence from a movie review written halfway across the country, in Madison, Wisconsin:
The Dorchester neighborhood is a tough one, mostly lower working class, dotted with slummy bars where drug-related shootings are a regular occurrence.
So check out Povo for the straight scoop with a positive POV that’s not written by the real-estate industry.
For years now I’ve been fascinated and bothered by hierarchical systems of organization, starting with the Dewey Decimal System and progressing to typical org charts in businesses and hierarchical file systems on computers. On the one hand, the systematic structure appealed to me; on the other hand, it was clearly much too rigid. Even as a kid I was perplexed by the problem of shelving interdisciplinary books in a library, and I still pester librarians about that issue. (It’s no coincidence that my favorite book is Gödel, Escher, Bach.) A place for everything, and everything in its place…but no, that doesn’t work. And as soon I became an avid computer user I got frustrated by files that belonged in multiple places; alias are nice, but they’re a workaround, not a solution.
I’m still of two minds about this. I like the fact that the email in my gmail account is mostly sitting in one huge pile, where I can use the power of tags and fast searching to retrieve what I want. But another email account, which I access through Apple Mail, is nicely organized into folders and subfolders. Except…does a message from Paul dealing with teaching math at CSA go into the Paul folder or the math folder or the CSA folder? Folders aren’t really right.
Continue reading Everything is Miscellaneous
During yesterday’s Massachusetts Math League meet in Westford, a cell phone belonging to a student from a nearby high school (neither Weston nor Westford) emitted a tone during the first round. She pulled the phone out of her pocket, looked at the screen for awhile, pressed a button, and put it away. The proctor, assuming that she had received a text message, reported the incident.
The girl claimed that it was merely a “low battery” message.
Perhaps that’s all it was. Probably in fact that’s what it was. But it was still a gross violation of the rules, which prohibit not only the use of cell phones when competing but even the presence of cell phones in the room. Students are supposed to keep their phones in the prep room and not carrying them into the competition rooms. They know the rules.
If, of course, a student turns off her phone and puts it in her pocket, no one will know if she has brought it into the competition room. But that’s not what happened here. So she received a zero for the round, affecting not only her own score (reducing her possible total from 18 to 12) but also her team’s score. Perhaps that penalty was not sufficiently severe.
And the moral is…
Yesterday was an “abbreviated Wednesday” at Weston High School, since the afternoon was devoted to a Professional Development Day for teachers. We focused on the subject of interactive whiteboards (IWBs); many of our classrooms have recently been equipped with either an ActivBoard or a SmartBoard, and we badly need training in how to use them effectively. An ActivBoard was installed in my classroom over the summer, and I’ve attempted to use both their own software and the SmartBoard software with the ActivBoard. Although they are competing brands (and the hardware is different), the software is reasonably compatible and somewhat similar.
Somewhat — but definitely not entirely. As a result of the workshop, I have decided to give up on the SmartBoard software and return to the ActivBoard software, which definitely is closer to meeting my needs as a teacher. I wouldn’t pretend to have done anything like a thorough analysis of their relative strengths and weaknesses; all I can say is that there are several tasks that don’t work as well (or apparently don’t work at all) on the SmartBoard. But take this with a grain of salt, since the information that I don’t yet know about either one would fill a book. There is a small amount of evidence (not definitive, but still…) that the ActivBoard software works better on Macs and the SmartBoard software works better on Windows. My conjecture — with no evidence at all — is that this difference arises because the ActivBoard software was probably developed on Macs and the SmartBoard software on Windows; when each is ported to the other platform, it’s never quite as effective as the original.
The bottom line, of course, is whether either of these products helps kids learn better and helps teachers teach better, or whether they are merely cool toys. They both have a somewhat useful feature that one’s notes on the whiteboard can be captured as computer images and then posted on a website. Then absentees can find class notes and students who were present in class can check their own notes against what was written on the board. Frankly, though, I’m skeptical of this feature, at least for the absentees: class notes in a math class are almost entirely cryptic to anyone who wasn’t there to listen to the class and participate in it. Maybe it works in other subjects. As for other features of the interactive whiteboards, the jury is still out concerning their effectiveness. The only study I’ve seen so far is “The Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance Evaluation: An Evaluation of the Schools Whiteboard Expansion (SWE) Project: London Challenge,” which draws the following conclusions (you’ll have to work your way through the educationese):
The main findings are that the SWE scheme substantially increased the number of IWBs in use in London secondary school core subject departments. As a technology, IWBs adapt well to the kind of whole class teaching environment favoured in secondary school core subjects. Their actual use varies according to the teacher, and between subject areas.
The transformation of secondary school pedagogy is a long term project. The use of IWBs can contribute to this aim under the appropriate circumstances. Discussion of pedagogy should precede and embed discussion of the technology. Successful CPD is most likely to be effective if it supports individual teachers’ exploration of their current pedagogy, and helps identify how IWB use can support, extend or transform this. Discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of different ways of using the technology for particular purposes should be part of the on-going work of a department. Although the newness of the technology was initially welcomed by pupils any boost in motivation seems short-lived. Statistical analysis showed no impact on pupil performance in the first year in which departments were fully equipped. This is as we would expect at this stage in the policy-cycle.
…
There are potentially some drawbacks to the ways in which IWBs are currently being used. The technology can:
- Reinforce a transmission style of whole class teaching in which the contents of the board multiply and go faster, whilst pupils are increasingly reduced to a largely spectator role;
- Reduce interactivity to what happens at the board, not what happens in the classroom.
Those with responsibility for the rollout of the technology and training for best practice in its use need to be aware of these dangers and help refocus discussion amongst colleagues on their pedagogic aims so that teachers harness what the
technology itself can do in the light of their broader pedagogic purposes.
Further research and exploration of how peripherals can mediate the focus on action at the front of the class, and create more space for pupil involvement in the creation of lesson content is needed. Amongst practitioners, this kind of exploration currently flows from teachers already committed to using any technology in this way, i.e. bending the technology to their own pedagogic intent.
As I say, the jury is still out. As with so many technological advances, its success may all hang on adequate teacher training.
We’re studying some 20th-Century mathematics in Precalculus class these days. This situation is unusual in high-school math, where most of what we study goes back at least 300 years, not to mention 2300 in the case of most of our geometry. In order to give some historical context, to show why some revolutionary ideas appeared at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, I gave a mini-lecture on the intellectual ferment at the time in other disciplines, including sciences (Darwin, Einstein, etc.) and arts (Monet, Stravinsky, etc.). When I described the riot that developed on the Paris premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the class naturally wanted to hear an excerpt. That’s fair enough, and of course I should have prepared one, but the interesting point is what happened when I said that I didn’t have one with me. “You can find it on YouTube,” said several students at once.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” was my reply. Of course they didn’t really know that it was on YouTube, but they correctly concluded that it must be. I’ve been using the Internet since before it was the Internet (since 1978, in fact), and I’m both comfortable with it and knowledgeable about it, but why didn’t it occur to me to check YouTube? The quick answer is that it has only been possible in the last couple of the 31 years of my Internet use, but still…
Teachers and parents, of course, know that when they have a technology question they should ask their kids. But I’m supposed to be the expert. So it bothers me that I didn’t think of YouTube. I learned last year that we can find math lessons there, after all. (More on that in a later post.)
So, why do I have a Facebook account if I don’t do anything with it?
That’s an easy question. I have a Facebook account because some of my students kept pestering me to set one up. Apparently Facebook is absolutely essential to high-school life. And several other Weston teachers are on Facebook; why shouldn’t I be?
So I gave in. Being mildly concerned about privacy issues as a public-school teacher, I set up some limitations: I don’t show my birthday, my political views, or my religious views; I don’t post my address or phone numbers; and I don’t check “Friends may post to my Wall.” I’ll accept friend requests from current and former students, but I won’t initiate them. These restrictions seem excessive to my students, but I’m comfortable with them.
The problem is that I don’t know what to do with Facebook! I already have a blog (you’re reading it now), and I am totally comfortable with email and IM, having used both since 1978. But the whole concept of a social networking site like Facebook eludes me. One thing that students tell me is that they use it to send messages to classmates — when they’re organizing a class party, for example — and that use makes sense to me. But why do they want all of their “friends” (hundreds of them, in some cases) to read personal messages that might apply to just one person or at any rate might not be public information?
Some day, perhaps, someone will give me a clear explanation of what I want to do with my Facebook account. In the meantime, there it is, and I check it every two or three days…
For other opinions, see Would you track your health on Facebook.
I just discovered a cool poster-creating applet called Wordle. In their own words:
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
You can create an image from text that you type in, or from a URL of a blog with an RSS feed. In the latter case, the applet uses all the text it finds at that URL, excluding some common English words (or whatever other language you might choose).
I rather like the result I got by giving them the URL of this blog:
One of my students asked me why his textbooks aren’t available for Kindle. Currently the typical Weston student’s backpack weighs 42 pounds*; Kindle weighs only ten ounces! Aside from everything else that’s available for it, imagine replacing your math book, your English book, your science book, your history book, and your Latin book (not to mention the extra book for the student taking two math courses or two sciences or two languages…) with a single light-weight device. It would be much cheaper for the publishers, too.
So why hasn’t anyone jumped on this opportunity? Save our students’ backs!
________
*Actually, I made this figure up. But the reality is probably all too close to that.
Having been an enthusiastic iPhone user for the past four months, I’m not surprised that many of my students want to play games on it (at least those students who don’t have iPhones themselves; this is Weston, after all). That’s a good excuse for installing games, isn’t it? Or do I just want to play them myself?
Maybe so, but at least the recommendations still came from the students.
Here’s what I have, in alphabetical order:
- First is Dactyl, a game of hand-eye coordination. Not unexpectedly, I’m terrible at Dactyl and can’t possibly compete with my freshmen and sophomores on the math team.
- Then comes Enigmo, which I haven’t learned yet, so I have no opinion on it. But my students tell me that it involves physics and problem solving, so it must be good.
- Then we have Labyrinth Lite, an astonishingly faithful reproduction of the classic wooden labyrinth game. Tilting the iPhone backward and forward in two directions exactly mimics the physical game, even to the point of accurately reproducing the momentum and sounds of the real-life steel ball.
- The silliest game that used to be on my iPhone is Scoops. Scoops of ice cream fall from the sky, and you move your cone left and right in order to catch the scoops while you avoid onions. Onions? Yes, onions. I’ve removed Scoops, even though a certain sophomore disapproves of my doing so.
- Then there’s Tetris, though I’m currently using the unauthorized knock-off called Tris, which I installed shortly before it got kicked off the Apple Store. Maybe I’ll get the real thing, as Tris rotates the tetrominoes counterclockwise rather than clockwise as nature intended.
- Finally we have my current favorite, Trace. It’s hard to describe this one, but it’s addictive and not time-pressured, so try it yourself!
Of course I also play Sudoku a lot, but that’s really a puzzle, not a game.
What’s next? Scrabble, perhaps? Or SimCity? Is the screen big enough for either of them?
I recently installed an unusual application on my iPhone: Ocarina. This program turns your iPhone into a four-hole ocarina, with the holes outlined on the iPhone’s touch-sensitive screen. But the really cool thing is that you actually blow into your iPhone to simulate blowing into the ocarina! Try it: it really works!
Many of my students agree that this is really cool, although some adults think that it’s a waste of time. I don’t really understand their point of view, since they are likely to spend their time on useless things like watching football games, but anyway….
The reason that I had to demo this product for my precalculus class is that we have just finished studying the use of trigonometric and exponential functions to model musical sounds, and one of the issues that arose is what the dependent variable represents when graphing an oscilloscopic rendering of a tone. Sure, if Middle C is 262 Hz, we notice that the frequency is 262 cycles per second since the period of the independent variable is 1/262 of a second. But what does the y-axis represent? We say pressure, and we may measure it in pascals or mV, but what does this have to do with the loudness of a sign? The direct analog construction of the iPhone ocarina application — with no intermediate abstractions of digital software — provides a clear understanding of this phenomenon, since the user’s breath blowing into the iPhone moves the membrane of the microphone, illustrating pressure in a literal way.
The Josephson Institute Study of the Ethics of American Youth has been widely reported on such widely varied outlets as National Public Radio, Fox News, and Yahoo News. They report “a troubling picture of our future politicians and parents, cops and corporate executives, and journalists and generals.”
I do agree that their picture is troubling, but something about their analysis makes me uneasy. First let’s look at their results:
More than one in three boys (35 percent) and one-fourth of the girls (26 percent)…admitted stealing from a store within the past year.
…
A substantial majority (64 percent) cheated on a test during the past year (38 percent did so two or more times).
…
As bad as these numbers are, it appears they understate the level of dishonesty exhibited by America’s youth. More than one in four (26 percent) confessed they lied on at least one or two questions on the survey. Experts agree that dishonesty on surveys usually is an attempt to conceal misconduct.
The justification, of course, is that “everyone else does it.” That may explain the cognitive dissonance:
Despite these high levels of dishonesty, the respondents have a high self-image when it comes to ethics. A whopping 93 percent said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character and 77 percent said that when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.
So, how do we interpret all of this? As a teacher of teens, I have to be troubled by these results. (I’m ignoring the self-reported accounts of using the Internet to cheat, as that’s a remarkably gray area.) But the report doesn’t quite ring true, despite the assurance that “These statistics have been verified by the Department Chair, Decision Sciences & Marketing, Graziadio School of Business & Management, Pepperdine University.” Maybe I’m in an atypical situation, but I just can’t believe that over half of my students have cheated on a test during the past year. I don’t want to be flippant, but maybe it depends on what the definition of “cheat” is. Maybe I’m just unobservant, but I don’t see students using notes on a no-notes section of a test, and I don’t see them texting on their cell phones, and it’s hard for me to figure out other ways in which they might be cheating. I do hear of the occasional student in other classes who texts during a test or sneaks in notes, but I just don’t see it, and it seems rare and exceptional. I guess I have to look into this matter further.
What’s a meme? Well, those of us who have spent too many years on the Internet (from its inception in 1969, actually, when it was called the ARPAnet) and those of us who have read The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, know what a meme is. Although the Wikipedia article on memes is far too long and leaves a lot to be desired, it definitely includes the correct definition:
A meme…comprises any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.
That’s clear enough, so why is the word used incorrectly these days by so many people, some of whom should definitely know better but most of whom have never learned what a meme really is? Many writers seem to think that a meme is an informal quiz or questionnaire that is passed around by email or by the Web, often of the “you are a _____” variety. Now you can see both the similarities and the differences here: Do they propagate themselves, or do users intentionally transmit them? Are they cultural ideas and behaviors, or are they questionnaires? The word is definitely losing most of its import these days!
As a teacher, I suppose I’d better cite some sources for this claim. I’m sure that some of my colleagues would be aghast that I cited Wikipedia as my source for the correct use of a word, but so be it. As for the current incorrect use, I am reluctant to cite either email messages or websites of friends — for obvious reasons — but I can probably find similar use by strangers without much effort. Let’s see… most of the initial hits from a Google search actually lead to the correct usage (much to my surprise), but I’m sure I can also find the usage I object to… OK, here are a few:
That’s enough. You get the idea. What’s up here?
By this point I’ve taught simplified versions of the RSA algorithm to ten different cohorts of teens: four years’ worth of Honors Algebra II students at Weston High School, juniors for four summers at Crimson Summer Academy, and two years’ worth of college-prep Algebra II students at Weston. Tweaking the details as I’ve gone along, and benefitting from changes in technology, I’ve learned a lot from these experiences.
There are several types of benefits for the students. Some benefits are conceptual, involving understanding ideas about public-key cryptography, ranging from technical questions like how a cryptosystem can use a public key, why that’s necessary, and why it’s secure, to public-interest issues like whether we can trust so-called “secure” financial transactions on the Internet. I could have predicted these benefits; the unit was designed to try to achieve them, after all. And I could have predicted the success of some of the more concrete mathematical benefits as well, since RSA involves exponentiation, prime numbers, modular arithmetic, factoring, representation of characters as integers, and other operations with numbers. But a third type of benefit is more of a surprise: because the technical details are complicated, and even a single mistake can doom the effort to failure, most of my students have been doggedly persistent in paying attention to details and getting them right. Too often we can fall into the trap parodied by Tom Lehrer: “The important thing is to understand what you’re doing rather than to get the right answer.” We give so much partial credit that a student can get a B without ever producing a correct result. Part of the way that my colleagues and I have avoided this trap with RSA is that our sequence of activities and assignments concludes with a two-way exchange of messages: each student sends me a message using my public key, and I reply with a message using the student’s public key. This gives everyone practice in figuring out their private and public keys, enciphering, and deciphering. But fewer than half the kids get it right the first time, since there are so many opportunities to make mistakes. Unlike the usual math problem, they can’t settle for having a couple of points taken off; the message simply won’t work. So they try over and over again — sometimes four or five times — in order to get it right. If they don’t, I can’t read their message, or they can’t read mine.
If you’re interested in checking out how I’ve simplified RSA so it can be studied at the level of Algebra II, take a look at my worksheets, starting at RSA Phase One. (If you keep incrementing the “1” in that URL, you’ll find the next three worksheets at the expected URLs.)
No, this isn’t another one of those essays about the usefulness of technology in teaching math. This is a response to a fascinating post in Heather’s Comparative Childhood blog, in response to a newsletter from her daughter’s middle school. Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter:
Cell Phones, I-Pods, MP3 players, any other electronic devices are not permitted for student use at any point during the school day. If these items are seen or heard during school hours, they will be confiscated and a parent will have to pick up the device from your child’s house office.
This seems pretty reasonable, especially since the careful wording doesn’t prohibit possession of such devices, merely their use or visibility during the school day. And, of course, it is a middle school.
Heather’s post includes the following observations:
Is there ever a circumstance in which the presence and use of an iPod (or cell phone or MP3 player or digital camera or gameboy or fill-in-your-electronic-device-of-choice-here) is justifiable in a school setting? I guess I’m taking the perspective of the teacher on this one. There is nothing more annoying than someone’s cell phone going off during a lecture. And there is nothing more rampant in university settings than “creative” new ways to cheat during examinations. I can’t believe that the use of electronics for cheating begins at the college level.
My understanding on the ban of cell phones in public schools was that it was originally put in place to prevent drug deals going down on the school premises. But now cell phones could be used for anything from covertly cheating by sending text messages to voyeuristic photography in the ladies room to remotely setting off bombs. I won’t waste my space here, but we need only use of imagination to think of the ills of other electronics in the school settings. Nintendo DS’s create their own network within a local range.
These are eminently reasonable comments, but I need to take a different point of view, even though Heather is trying to take the perspective of the teacher. Of course she’s absolutely right that it is annoying and disruptive for a cell phone to ring during class, and she is also absolutely right that they need to be prohibited during tests, as they can be used for cheating (as Weston students know all too well). But there are also too many valuable uses of these electronic devices for them to be banned entirely in school — at least in high school, and I suspect in middle school as well. At Weston High School we ban cell phone use (or even visibility) in the classroom, but not in the cafeteria or outdoor areas; iPod use is left to the discretion of the teacher. Cell phones are a valuable way for students and parents to get in touch with each other, so students should be allowed to use them outside of the classrooom. And MP3 players may help many kids concentrate in noisy situations or just when taking a test; while I certainly don’t allow kids to shut out the world during a class discussion or lecture, I think it can be valuable to do so when trying to concentrate on individual work. I admit that there’s a small chance that a student may use an iPod for cheating, but that’s a lot harder than texting on a cell phone, which is currently the preferred method among high-school students and Boston firefighters. Of course a variant of the method used by the firefighters would be very difficult to prevent in school settings:
…a group of Boston firefighters took turns going into a men’s room at the Quincy middle school and sent answers via text message on their cellphones to colleagues in the testing room.
We can easily prevent this precise method of cheating in school by allowing only one student at a time to go to the bathroom and by banning cell phone use in the classroom during the test, but how do we prevent texting between a student who goes to the bathroom during the test and a classmate who has already taken the test and is currently in the cafeteria during a free period? Temporarily confiscating cell phones at the beginning of the test is the method preferred by some teachers. That works well…except for kids who have a second cell phone hidden away.
And while I’m looking at Heather’s blog, let me recommend several of her recent posts, especially the ones entitled “Wow” and “What would Jesus do, indeed”.
I have just finished reading Double Vision, by Randall Ingermanson. This science fiction thriller has a great concept, but the execution is disappointing. On the plus side, the novel speaks effectively to those of us who have worked in the computer industry, especially if we have any interest in computer science and physics. Knowing something about RSA and factoring certainly helps, but it isn’t necessary. Knowing something about quantum computing might also help — but since I know almost nothing about that field, how could I be sure? Anyway, the idea behind the book is fascinating, and the fact that the protagonist is a computer programmer with Asperger’s makes it fit into my accidental recent theme of Asperger’s Syndrome. However, there’s also the minus side: implausible characterization, poor writing (à la Dan Brown), unbelievable plot, and excessive Christianity. Worse yet, there’s a subsubplot concerning Jews for Jesus, and if anyone can explain to me how that organization is distinct from Christians, please let me know.
In one of those typical synchronicities, two of my students have just asked me how they can create their own blogs — a Weston sophomore yesterday, and a Saturday Course fifth-grader today. The Weston student suggested that I should post the answer in my blog, so here it is, short and sweet:
- Go to www.blogger.com.
- Follow the 3 easy steps displayed on that page.
That was easy®, as they say at Staples.
Another of the great ones is gone. Scientist, science fiction writer, and visionary Arthur C. Clarke died the day before yesterday at age 90. He is best known for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which the eternally rewatchable movie of the same name was based (though they were written simultaneously!). But he made so many more contributions than that. The Wikipedia article on him provides a fairly decent summary, including links to various obituaries. I particularly recommend the article about him by fellow writer David Brin, in the Daily Kos of all places. The NPR story on yesterday’s Morning Edition was an effective four-minute vignette.
I particularly remember Clarke’s observation that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” as well as his agreement with the late, lamented Isaac Asimov that each would refer to himself as “the world’s second best science fiction writer.” As Asimov wrote in his autobiography:
Arthur Charles Clarke was born toward the end of 1917 in Great Britain. He is another science fiction writer who has been thoroughly educated in science and he did extremely well in physics and mathematics.
He and I are now widely known as the Big Two of science fiction. Until early 1988, as I’ve said, people spoke of the Big Three, but then Arthur fashioned a little human figurine of wax and with a long pin.
At least, he has told me this. Perhaps he’s trying to warn me. I have made it quite plain to him, however, that if he were to find himself the Big One, he would be very lonely. At the thought of that, he was affected to the point of tears, so I think I’m safe.
I’m very fond of Arthur, and have been for forty years. We came to an agreement many years ago in a taxi which, at the time, was moving south on Park Avenue, so it is called the Treaty of Park Avenue. By it, I have agreed to maintain, on questioning, that Arthur is the best science fiction writer in the world, though I am also allowed to say, if questioned assiduously, that I am breathing down his neck as we run. In return, Arthur has agreed to insist, forever, that I am the best science writer in the world. He must say it, whether he believes it or not.
I don’t know if he gets credited for my stuff, but I am frequently blamed for his. People have a tendency to confuse us because we both write cerebral stories in which scientific ideas are more important than action.
Both Clarke and Asimov were science-based writers of science fiction; neither was a prose stylist, but both of them stuck to a transparent style that let the content of their writing shine through with great clarity.
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