My Wish for 2012

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This year both my mother and my brother died. It has made me stop and think very seriously about how I live my life. My niece posted this article on Facebook in December and I’ve adapted it for myself. It was a list of the top regrets told by people who are dying. I’ve decided to turn the regrets into things to do. Here are my wishes for everyone for the coming year:

(adapted from the Top 5 Regrets of the Dying)

Life is a choice.

It is YOUR life.

Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly.

Choose happiness.

I’ve turned the top regrets into things to do, in order:

  1. Have the courage to live a life true to you, not the life others expect of you*.
  2. Don’t work so hard.
  3. Have the courage to express your feelings*.
  4. Stay in touch with friends.
  5. Let yourself be happy.

#1 and #3 have particular significance in that they both have to do with honesty – a concept that is very important to me. I am one of those people that believes there is no such thing as a white lie – there are only lies (some say it is a disorder). There are many who imply that lying is a normal and necessary part of social interaction. I don’t believe that. While it is not necessary to say everything that pops into your head, it is possible to be honest without being hurtful. I think we have an obligation to never say anything we don’t believe to be true.

This year I have become especially aware of how damaging it is to relationships when people say things they don’t really mean, even nice things. That’s a form of lying too.

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What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success – Anu Partanen – National – The Atlantic

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American public education is like WAL-MART.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success – Anu Partanen – National – The Atlantic.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model — long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization — Finland’s success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation’s education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.

..

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master’s degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal’s responsibility to notice and deal with it.

And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Puronen: “Real winners do not compete.” It’s hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland’s success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.

There are virtually NO private schools in Finland. So much for capitalism driving excellence…

Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence after Sahlberg’s comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don’t exist in Finland.

“Here in America,” Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, “parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It’s the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same.”

Yea. And the most successful shop in America???? WAL-MART of course. So THAT’s what Americans seem to want – and they’re getting it too.

In fact, since academic excellence wasn’t a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland’s students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland — unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway — was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.

 

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Future Work Skills 2020 ~ repost from Stephen’s Web

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A well-written report from The Apollo Research Institute

Thanks to Stephen for bringing this to our attention (again).

Future Work Skills 2020 ~ Stephen’s Web.

Here’s a direct link to the report.

 

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Instructional Media

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This is a continuation of the conversation started earlier.

This link looks like a good starting point – it lists a lot of important considerations related to the evaluation and selection of media.

Sadly, much of it is out of date. It lists computer software as one thing, and digital technology can’t really be lumped together as one thing anymore.

Instructional Media

Instructional Media: Selection and Use
Craig L. Scanlan, EdD, RRT, FAARC

The digital world has changed radically since 2003.

Things that have happened since 2003:
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment Inc., 2004)
Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003)
Facebook
Google became a verb
touch screens on phones, and now, almost everything
netbooks
tablets
..,.

The list is very long.

It’s hard for people to fully appreciate the magnitude of the change. This is the first time in history that the world in which our teachers grew up is radically different (technologically speaking) from the world in which their students are growing up. There have always been changes, and there were always things teachers could point to and say “We didn’t have those in MY day.” but never before have there been such fundamental changes to the ways we can learn and to the choices for learners.

Part of the result of this monumental change is that much research that’s been done in the area of educational technology is stale. Almost everything written about computers and education before, say, 2003 needs to be viewed very carefully, as much of it is simply irrelevant now.

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LA Times: Michael Hiltzik: Looking for a reason to love the iPad – latimes.com

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There’s a link to my blog posting in the LA Times. Cool.

Apparently I am one of a “sizable cadre of bloggers”…

– does that count as a citation, I wonder?

Michael Hiltzik: Looking for a reason to love the iPad – latimes.com.

I don’t “hate the iPad,” like the sizable cadre of bloggers given to proclaiming their distaste online. I’m merely indifferent to its supposed virtues, as I am to many other cultural phenomena I’m expected to find fascinating, like Ryan Seacrest and Pippa Middleton.

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If you fly, you can’t use their dictionary….

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Anyone know a a good dictionary/thesaurus app I can install on my PC?

I used to use the offline version of Websters, which I loved, but it is old and won’t install on my 64bit machine.

Lately I’ve been using WordWeb, but they just cut me off because I have flown on airplanes (apparently, that is all they need to know to determine that I’m not green enough).

How’s that for presumptuous?

All of a sudden I get this pop-up. It asks me some questions about how many flights I’ve taken this year. I have no idea WHY I’m being asked these questions, but I’m honest, so I answer them honestly. I’ve taken several flights this year – for business; to see family; and for holiday.

Once I enter my response, I am told I fly too much and can no longer access their dictionary for free. Presumably I am not environmentally conscious enough.

They didn’t ask if I maintain my own septic field (thereby NOT contributing to the waste management burden of my nearest city).    I do.

They didn’t ask if I use the public water supply. I don’t. I have my own well: the water we drink is untreated, thereby avoiding the energy and resources required to treat reservoir water. They didn’t ask about that.

They didn’t ask how often I take a trip in my car for only one thing – i.e. how long do I save up errands so I can do them all with one trip. I’ve been doing that for several decades.

They also didn’t ask if I raise my own food, which I do. The animals I raise for food have good lives – they are safe; they have sufficient space to play; and they get fresh air and daylight every single day.

 

I wonder if those people who decided I wasn’t green enough look after their own garbage? How many bags of garbage do they produce each year?

I wonder if they even have any idea what life might be like for people living outside of a big city? In other words how to do things for yourself instead of hiring it done.

I wonder if they ever think about what happens to the stuff they flush down the toilet and pour down the sink (I do… I have to because it all stays on my own land).

I wonder how much of their food they raise themselves?

Or how much of their garbage they save to feed back to the poultry, who in turn use it to make eggs and meat. Do you suppose any of them just throw things away?

I am by no means perfect, and I have no doubt I could be doing more to reduce my impact on the planet, but with the same token WHERE DO THEY GET OFF DECIDING I’M NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS ENOUGH ON THE BASIS OF A SINGLE MEASURE?!?!?!?

WTF do they know about my life?

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How Do You Evaluate and Assess Media for Instruction?

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This question was asked on one of the LinkedIn groups (AECT: Association for Educational Communications and Technology) I belong to. It got me thinking….

I decided to move my part of the conversation here because the notion interests me.

Here’s some of what I said:

For me, there’s also a distinction to be made between media and applications (and then also specific instances of particular kinds of applications).

When I am designing instruction, I start with my main objectives and then think about what I could use that would help me do that. Sometimes (often, actually) I have multiple objectives, like: writing a report; practicing collaborative editing, AND learning to use a ‘modern’ tool.

The first consideration will almost always be practical: if you don’t have the equipment, access, funding, and administrative permission (support is often too much to hope for) to use some media, then there’s rarely any point in pursuing that avenue further at this time. Sometimes it will be possible to secure the necessary prerequisites, in which case it’ll be important to have a reasoned argument for why this approach should be supported.

…

To me it all boils down to ROI (return on investment) – and I DON’T mean in a corporate sense. Investment in this case includes time spent – by the administrators, the teachers, the students, EVERYONE. It includes the amount of time needed by teachers to understand it as well as use it. Money is only one part of the picture. Deciding based on expected ROI also includes examining benefit that can be expected from doing it this way instead of some other way.

This assessment is difficult to do because it can not be made objective – so there will always be a grey area between the yes and no (which is often where the debates break out).

There are a whole lot of questions that should be asked which can ultimately help make a decision about what to use. In the end, that is the way to evaluate or assess media. Sometimes it can be done at a fairly high level of abstraction: should we allow wireless internet access in our school? Other times it must be done on a case by case basis: it would be foolish to forbid the use of digital games, but at the same time only some games will be suitable, and then only in some circumstances.

For example, I once spent 3 full days creating an animated example in PowerPoint that took 5 minutes to go through in class. I had 100 students in the class.
Is it worth spending 24 hours making an example that takes 5 minutes to demonstrate? Maybe. Did it help more students understand the concept than other, ‘cheaper’ approaches? It probably did (I didn’t do the studies to verify). Is it re-usable? You bet. Will it become stale? Not this one, as it dealt with a fairly fundamental concept. Was it a good use of my time? Not entirely – I could have designed it and then hired someone to make it, but that was not an option for me in this case.

Perhaps it would be useful to compile a list of questions that need to be asked. For each situation, the questions should be ranked and arranged specifically for that situation. The answer to a particular question could end up being a deal-breaker in one situation, and irrelevant in another so there has to be some flexibility.

What I would find useful is a tool that would allow us to build a database of questions that we could select and rank. The user fills out a small questionnaire, which then automatically formulates an customized assessment form we could use. If you want to get fancy, you can specify minimum requirements.

What do you think such a tool should look like?

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What Do We Do When the Internet Mob Is Wrong? – Slashdot

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What Do We Do When the Internet Mob Is Wrong? – Slashdot.

Something to think about:

“By now most people have heard the news and seen the picture of the boy who was killed over the new Nike sneakers. There are Facebook pages devoted to fist-shaking protests about materialism and greed. Yada yada yada. But while the scuffles over the shoes were real, the death was not. The photo was just a stock photo of some kid in a lab. We know this because of some old school reporters — Steve Earley and Justin Fentin of the Baltimore Sun. In the rush to celebrate crowdsourcing, many of us pooh-pooh the old media as ‘gatekeepers,’ but there are times when keeping that gate locked is a good idea. After all, if one of the crowd discovered the error, the signal would barely rise above the noise. There are people claiming that anyone questioning the facts is being disrespectful. Is there something we can do about the mobocracy? How can we support the best traditions of journalism while fixing the worst? How can we nurture accuracy?”

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