iPad review and suggestion

I dropped my loaner iPad the other day and it is dented. How? Maybe it has to deal with the device being front operated grass, with rear operated stability. You hold it like a book, except the book has a slippery curved back side. As someone who has dropped a book, this opens the device up to failure, either designed or un intended.

So I thought of two things, fix it or own it. I'm in an own it mood having just successfully defended my thesis. So here is the dealy-o: make the device future glass all see through, until you have an app come on screen. Place the keyboard and other os controllers on the back of the glass so I can do something with my fingers, possibly reconfigure character spacing and text dynamics. The result, a workable keyboard and increased interaction potential for the entire device. They gotta do something because apple is gonna be looking like Compaq if gglass goes mainstream.

As for the device, I do not recommend buying the iPad 3. The iPad 2 is better, with the exception of front camera and other minor os stuff. This thing is bad on battery life and wifi Internet is always disconnecting, and as I noted in the beginning, the thing dented from a 3 foot drop. That is unacceptable for a device that is being used in elementary schools for the purposes of classroom instruction. 2 was better, but is already lapped with apple routinely updating iOS to the point of rendering older devices into mp3 only players (or other limited use). I dunno about 4. Pictures at some point.

Turning "real life" into a PBL assignment

This week's presentations made me realize the importance of audience teacher relationships. I enjoyed the aspect of presentations that made students feel welcomed; those presentations that produced a want to learn. There was a certain room shift at one point, and I think that is one of the things that will occur in the classroom, given colleges' current time/spatial complexity in the United States of America compared  to homogeneous communities. People are meeting people for the first time, and stuff still goes wrong.

Anyway, I figured that students could possibly get away from identity politics if they focused on those strengths we had discussed a few classes ago.


Feel free to add link, it may happen later.



Maybe if we tailored the education to the individual, while still in a group setting, providing opportunities for participatory outlets in the strength format, we could simply tailor the assignment to something extremely daily. Instead of hypothetical's, we get students to fill out their bureaucratic paperwork; get students to get in groups and purchase clothing online; get their trip home tickets; stuff like that. The assignment is to simply incorporate course material, which appears to be along the general lines of X is screwing up student's life in this way. You make the assessment a project deliverable with deliberation, either group or instructor focused, that way the student has an opportunity to discuss the merits of outcomes.

Naturally, lawyers will hate this.

random video, check your youtubes before going to apply for jobs. You may get a case of mistaken identity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn0DTGSfFC4

goes either way, I guess......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fld90L6Hkw

Analytics of adult puppies in comparison to horrible music.

I am using the iPad blogger app for this post, please bear with me. I am in thesis land this weekend and I have limited resources to explore gedi training, at the moment. I do have a computer in my hands so I wanted to see what could happen. This is what happened: Pictures of adult puppies and terrible music. I had an adult puppy, an iPad, and a dream of monetized ad revenue. I also only had a few minutes to put this all together, but my hunch is that people will enjoy the dog in comparison to my horrible music.

Update #1

So I learned this week that analytics for youtube to blogger doesn't work that well. One reason is the views that occur off of the blogger site. This came up in someone's earlier blog post, or in class, regarding proper linkages to content to ensure accurate representation. Once these systems become more integrated to trans-platforms maybe these areas of qualitative/quantitative analysis would provide some measure of learning. The horrible music video has since been removed to spare other course mates the horror of having to listen to intentional garbage.  

Grades? We don't need no stinking grades?

This past week, our group had a discussion regarding grading in the performance of coursework, which got me to thinking, why grade? Not a metaphysical, what is the essence of grades, question, instead I was curious why we didn't go Great Books. Great Books institutions such as St. John's College have grades, but they don't matter (per se). At St. John's College students are required to attend yearly don rags instituted by Scott Buchanan during the implementation of the New Program at the college. Don rags enable the student to engage in a conversation with the tutor/s (faculty are not instructors or professors) regarding course conduct. This made me think. I hate talking to professors, I always have the feeling that I am wasting their time. We can debate that point, but there is no real incentive for the professor to talk to the student, other than continued employment (assuming the professor is pre-tenure), and any time they spend talking to a student is time that could be spent on other capital ventures. To move beyond this self sustaining negative feedback loop, instead of grading, maybe we should spend more time talking, or communicating.

Edited to reflect some semi balance of grammar.

Whitmore's Auto-ethnography of the syllabus assignment. Part 1 or: My attempt at a lazy allie brosh whilst explaining the problem of limited accessibility of teacher administrative resources

So today I was thinking of doing work before 9:00 AM, which many people claim to do, but are often times doing it thanks to drugs:

                 *The brown stuff is coffee, or just speedballs, who knows, right?
circa http://www.linesofescape.com/2013/01/the-diary-of-working-adult.html

I was all about working and doing all the things and junk.

Which gave way to false weather report induced mania:

This may be why Weather Channel music is a combination of House and Ambient techno filled in with some smooth Sax.

So I am running on all cylinders, I don't need no V8 Ketchup juice! But right out the gate I hit the wall. I have no idea what a syllabus has to look like, because I don't have anything to compare.

I haven't taken an undergrad class in about 10 years, meanwhile things like youtube, cell phone cameras, skrillex, substance D, HD TV, and the death of Michael Jackson have all occurred. No worries, just see what is on the web.

That is when tragedy struck.

The only repository I could find was at Clemson. https://syllabus.app.clemson.edu/ Take a look, it is pretty nice, but think about what this means. Other lazy professors who wake up before 9AM may also be squeezed for time to make a syllabus and just use one of the Clemson pieces. This could lead to Clemsoning of higher educational practice, where Clemson courses become the standard. This is unacceptable! As a Hokie, I demand that Virginia Tech should be remodeling the entire university educational system.

While drifting closer to the 11AM after having conceived and processed this portion of the update, I wonder how the role of the syllabus, as a tool, is changing. A centralizing document isn't really necessary in a decentralized, democratic, system, right?

Planning the Class Event

Is the professor responsible for everything that occurs in the microcosm of the class event? Yes, says the reflective planner. The competency of the practitioner to recognize problems within the course of the practice is a given. Things are going to go wrong, and the practitioner should be able to recognize non-optimal performance. Failure would result in incompetent practice.

A practitioner should also know when bureaucracy is getting in the way, and the actions that will be required to fix problematic operating variables. This is a basic telling of the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. To save time and warp your brain, here is 1,000's of pages of material condensed into a quick example.

Example: You drive your car to school and the tires go flat; this happens every time you drive to school.

Incompetency: You do not recognize this problem and continue driving.

Single Loop learning: You realize that car tires going flat is a problem and you fix the tires.

Double Loop learning: You realize that car tires going flat is a problem and you also realize that fixing the tires repeatedly isn't solving the problem.

If you want more info but hate the tl;dr aspect of grad school here are some sites for more info:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm
http://www.aral.com.au/resources/argyris.html

This idea goes even further nowadays though, incorporating an even higher level of learning, that actively changes the practitioner into a post modern mess. I'm not sold, but here is some info:

http://www.coachforauthenticleaders.com/how-we-work/triple-loop-learning/
http://www.thorsten.org/wiki/index.php?title=Triple_Loop_Learning

So what does this have to do with pedagogy class?  Professors are going to get things wrong. Things are going to happen in the classroom that require different teaching applications. Thinking about why things are going wrong and making necessary modifications to your teaching practice is going to help you in your daily work life, or at least help you better understand your daily work life.

Dr. Karpanty's Pyramid Scheme

Last Wednesday, Dr. Karpanty provided direct insight into the practice of case based learning, based on her direct observation in the performance of her teaching pedagogy. While some may have gained understanding of the practice, I was left more confused than before the class began. One item of contention is the need for Teaching Assistants in the operation of the course. The claim was made that teaching cases is the wave of the future, where more professors will have to provide these learning opportunities to students. Do you see the problem?

Where are we going to get teaching assistants? The cost of education continues to increase while funding decreases. Is it safe to assume that Grad students will continue to multiply? 

My take is that this pedagogy is stacked pyramid scheme thinking. Sure, we can set up this type of learning environment, but it demands that we have access to skilled low cost labor, TA's. Then when these TA's become professors they too will have to have an increased crop of low skilled labor to enable competent practice. This is a system of exploitation, whereby the original professor is going to be a position to create more gain than the outer leveled professors or TA's. 

Lets go further. What happens when all of the good research gigs dry up and professors have to take on higher teaching loads, without TA support. If i'm teaching a 6x6, in what world will I be able to place 8 to 10 hours into every course hour? That means I may be spending 144 to 160 hours a week setting up my cases for class. In this scenario, I may get 24 hours to exist in all other areas of my life, that includes sleeping, eating, doing research, going to departmental meetings, and teaching classes. The time requirement does not make sense.

I'm sure students love this approach, but it is not feasible. This is a trap at best.

The Coming Poverty

I had an interesting discovery that has been making me think about the role of teaching in a University setting, I'll share. On Monday, I learned that I was accepted in the PGG PhD program (yes!), with no funding (wtf?). Since that time I have been working solely on finding funding and/or an acceptable homeless living arrangement with the town (whole nother thread!), all other projects have been put onto the back burner. I know I am not giving proper weight to any of my assignments or responsibilities. Why should I? Any investment I make with my current education will be squandered without future funding. I don't have that much leverage and life must prevail over these Earthly wants of an education.

This made me think about PBL and now CBL and the responsibility of the instructor/professor in providing a learning environment that works for the student. Reviewing Dr. Karpanty's syllabus brought the issue home. Non-stand and deliver teaching techniques are complex learning environments that are demanding to the instructor, in a normal funded setting. What happens when guaranteed funding goes out the door? Where is the economic incentive to produce these types of learning environments? My understanding is that the incentive to the professor is to produce a sustainable practice, i.e. continually get paid, and the students are a tool for doing just that. But if that motivation stops, won't the learning environment have to change to adapt to the decreased economic incentive for the professor?

I'm thinking the following clip is a more practical learning environment for the volunteer instructor model of education we are moving towards. Why bother with students, if we are on a race to the bottom.

TERC Math

I'm thinking Problem Based  Learning, this week's GEDI topic, is a double edged sword. The idea is to have students work on complex problems based in part, or in full, on real life topics. One of this weeks reading's noted the importance of Problem Based Learning in medical schools, which makes sense. Yeah I want a doctor to have memorized everything about medicine, it just makes sense, but if that doctor can't apply that knowledge, their customer faces higher chance of mortality. 

Ok, yeah, let's get students to start thinking differently about problems that way we have competence in our working class. STOP. 

While I agree the concept is great, the actual practice gets a little more complex, and it reminds me of a TERC math scenario in the making. What's TERC? It is Investigations in Numbers, Data, and Space. What does it do? The idea is basically to teach people to teach themselves. Sounds great right? It is... kinda....not really.

As you can imagine, parents love it.

As you can imagine, the people and corporations that fund higher education, want their investment to pay off, and that means successful classroom instruction. Problem based learning could be great, but it implies that the approach being examined by the student is correct. Sometimes the way we do things will be wrong. We shouldn't teach people to do things incorrectly, but that is where Problem Based Learning opens the door.

The Complexity of Racism Based Action

This was a difficult blog to write because diversity, and by way of otherness, is such a grotesquely simple topic that provokes a wide range of crazy. I was going to go through and list protests that have occurred at Virginia Tech, such as the 2003 affirmative action case involving Attorney General Kilgore's opinion about the legality (he said it was invalid) of Virginia Tech's affirmative action policy,  that one didn't work out well. I wanted to talk about Professor Christopher Clement, who's scholarship and educational background were grounds for employment termination. There were others, and I welcome other memories in the comments, but without challenging our everyday assumptions that enable institutional racism, these protest memories will keep being posted. So I don't know how to do this post, other than post a racial toned Louis CK explaining whiteness, and Angela Davis explaining violence.

Pseudo-Authority in the Time of Culpability

At last night's (2/13/13) GEDI class included a discussion regarding Authority versus Authoritarianism in the classroom and the role of the instructor of setting a tone to complete class business. This discussion was based, to some extent, on a reading by M. Wimer. In the reading the author makes a case for a democratic pedagogy, with student centered learning enhanced via increased student power, in the classroom and in class business decision making. Many things were said about the piece, that I will not get into here, but news out today renders the discussion slightly moot.

Take a moment to read the following: (it is short)

Northampton County judge rules there's enough evidence in suit over student's poor grade to move forward

Think about that case. Here you have a professor, being sued, as a result of their authority. It made me wonder if professors and instructors actually have authority in the classroom. If students have the ability to force professors to pay out of pocket expenses for court cases involving grades, who actually has the power? If anything, wouldn't the student have more power, by default, than the instructor? Adjunct's are historically known for their poverty*, would they become a target? Would they be more inclined to give everyone A's? Would wealthier students simply bring a legal team to campus with them? Are they actually students or are they officially, customers?

As you can see, this cases raises a bunch of questions for me. What are some of your thoughts on the matter and do you think students should be able to find faculty and staff personally liable for grade related damages. 

*proof

Systems Education or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

So I am watching the New Learners of the 21st Century PBS documentary and I was in awe during the segment by James Paul Gee on systems. I was in awe because he wasn't talking about General Systems or Complexity Science, Chaos Theory, or even Complex Adaptive Systems. No instead Dr. Gee is talking about Game Theory as Systems Theory. This is problematic because Game Theory, an incremental bureaucratic for decision making created by the Rand Corporation during the design of the atomic bomb (States have an interest in determining the optimal time required for extermination), involves absolute-rationality. What do I mean by that? Well, it means that the practitioner (student in this case) is assumed to know everything in a complex environment and can take that information and complete the necessary processes for optimal (not correct) outcomes.

I hope you see the problem. The student, by default, does not know everything. The student is already limited with the application of this learning style. This style would require an all knowing teacher/facilitator, something not guaranteed.

This reminds me of planning, and my research, as it relates to decision making. Planners historically operated as "systems" practitioners. Everything was great until the 1950's, but the problems were apparent. Charles Lindbolm's The Science of Muddling Through released in 1959 highlights the rigor that practitioners actually operate, and the incrementalism that is encouraged with real world applications of game theory. Writing later, John Forester's Bounded Rationality and the Politics of Muddling Through, presents the practitioner dilemma found above. For Forester, the practitioner doesn't know everything, is well aware of this, but still operates using rational decision making. In the end, planners aren't systems practitioners, instead they fall into a Weberian self-sustaining, caged bureaucratic existence...

There are alternatives! Learning systems that promote knowledge generation, encourage practitioner/student participation in learning, and enable social change. That is what I think is necessary in a 21st century learner.

The following is the trailer for Koyaanisqatsi, notice the built environment of rationality compared to the organic.

Hermeneutical Challenges in Unstructured Learning Environments

You are looking at a screen. This screen is not the absolute of your life, there are other things going on behind that screen and behind your head. You may be aware of this issue. So what does this have to do with GEDI? Simple, you are judging this blog, the author/publisher, and all elements related to the dissemination of the said author/publisher's thought. But how are you judging this post? Is it a good post? What if the diction read differently. Are you one to hate mispellings and grammar, errors? What about the use of specific words? I know I hate the word "guts," it literally makes me feel queasy. If I read a blog that has that word, I get sick. How do you think that hypothetical author's work is going to be judged by me? How about we go even further. What screen are you looking at? Is it one of those expensive screens that says droid when it lights up? Or are you broke and looking at this in the library? How do you think that is going to affect the review of the material? Richy, with a three grand phone is probably going to have different objective standards than the person who ate cat food for lunch. What is the weather like when you are reading this blog? Do you hear anything? Are you racist? Do you have a driver's license? When is the last time you bought shoes? Do people even read blogs the same as they do, say a magazine? Most student papers can be assumed to be black ink on a piece of papyrus that is about 8.5 by 11 inches. This is a screen. The "newness" of blogs is alluring, but it seems to me that they present to much unknown for everyone involved, leading to potential student troubles related to questionable posts and end of semester grades. This is my problem with having free range learning with limited structure and the item of blogs in particular. Review, at least the bureaucratic sort we force students to go through at Virginia Tech, requires placing students in categories of merit. We wax about how the goal is for students to learn and that failure is ok, but that is false. The student may be taking out huge sums of money for an education. Failure represents a monetary loss for the student. Without a guaranteed plan for success, the investment potential from the class is diminished or completely non-existent. As the university is a corporation, it probably wants its endeavors to be economically feasible (at least for Virginia Tech). With no way to guarantee future results for the student, even heightening the students financial risk, the course becomes less marketable in the long term. Why would the University want to keep the program on payroll. You have probably gone back to facebook stalking.