Artichoke

"Holding her firmly with his antennae"

It has taken me a while to figure it out, and I am the first to admit it is hardly a Kubler-Ross like - Denial / Anger/ Bargaining/ Depression/  Acceptance analysis   yet  it is grudgingly apparent that  my summer holiday patterns in a similar way each year....

First I go through of the time of the desperate workaholic withdrawal jitters marked by an empty email inbox and excessive posting to the blog, this is soon overshadowed by a period of the sort of alcohol consumption seen only on the crayfishing boats moored in Milford Sound –( I know I know but it is the only way to survive those mandatory festive interactions with ones relatives.)

Then comes the time of Auckland's heat wave - much like living on the fringes of a blast furnace, followed by living with excessive humidity and then living with a population explosion of flies, an interlude requiring the 24/7 inhalation of insecticide laced air,

Next comes the time of the New Year resolution purge – eschewing colonic irrigation I choose instead to make repeated visits to the Salvation Army bearing boxes of stuff that no longer fits in the house, and to order a 6m cubed skip to accommodate everything the Salvation Army will reject.

The New Year bank statement and the need to launch an Edward Scissorhands attack on all credit cards is matched by creative efforts to disguise ground hog day meals of left over Xmas ham – a time all too soon confronted by the need for post scissoring empathising with those made distraught by examination  failure in the right subjects, and examination success in the wrong subjects.

And then just when I am empathied out, I am rewarded with the summer infestation of fleas. 

I have always much admired the sensuous flea, most especially  the use of the male flea’s antennae during copulation to reject the missionary ”status quo “- After all who could you resist that lateral flattening when it is combined with all that “during copulation, the male flea takes up a position beneath the female flea holding her firmly with his antennae from below”;talk.

"Holding her firmly with his antennae" would be a great title for a science fiction novel or a blog post.

But the lines of flea bites circling my torso and ankles (one is much longer than the other), means it is time to launch my own confrontational pro insecticide attack upon two dogs, two cats, and all floors and bedding in the house, followed by a reckless anti-itch histamining of all the profoundly itch irritated occupants of the house.  A time that makes me wistful, about the return of DDT. Forgive me Rachel, forgive me.

Surviving the fleas sees me forced to confront the very real approach of the day job, and the knowledge that I will be expected to have an articulate and defensible position on all the latest educational imperatives that have arisen over the summer  -  things like the Ministry of Education’s Antisocial Test for three year olds  (I wonder if this is a good thing given the number of parliamentarians who on the basis of their unnecessarily gladiatorial behaviour as adults would surely have failed as three year olds)  and the Massey University lunchbox research showing only one in ten kids has food in their school lunchbox that meets the nutritional guidelines for children.   

The Massey lunchbox research is interesting in that it goes further than simply measuring what is in the lunchboxes – and includes tracking data for what is thrown into the bins. A thought that makes the day job seem quite attractive.

“Worse news was to come after lunchtimes, when Dr Dresler-Hawke emptied all the rubbish bins in the schools to assess what was actually being thrown away. More than 80 per cent of the unconsumed items were sandwiches, fruit and dairy products.
“We collected all the unconsumed food, spread it out – it was incredible, the amount of healthy food like sandwiches, not even unwrapped. Good, nutritious fillings including tomatoes, cucumber and cheese sandwiches. Bananas never peeled, yoghurt not even opened – a real waste.””

With all this focus on identifying antisocial three year olds and measuring the lunchbox sandwiches in rubbish bins, I predict it will not be too long before teachers will be arguing that the disengaged, and disruptive should be excluded from receiving any schooling from the state education services – using the same arguments that family and hospital doctors in the UK are using to moot that the health services should not treat the old and the unhealthy.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.
Fertility treatment and "social" abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

Hang on a minute this is not much of a prediction .... this kind of thinking has already started amongst the staff and board at Westlake Boys in Auckland. only at Westlake it is homework, punctuality and attitude that will be targetted.

"I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair..."

When the tantalising Madge (Bette Davis)  toys with Marvin’s testosterone in The Cabin in the Cotton (1932)  there is a delicious mismatch between correlation and causation captured when Madge claims "I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair..."

I know I cannot talk for the rest of you (and I know Marvin didn’t suspect a thing) but whilst I accept that “the kiss that didn’t happen” and “the just washed hair” are correlated,  there is something about the way Madge looks at Marvin (check it out and see if you agree ) that makes it hard for me to accept Madge’s claim for causality.

I just wish that other dubious claims of causality were as easily to reject.

For example

Engagement”, “authenticity” and “belonging” are correlates of learning.

But the widespread notion that enhancing student engagement, authenticity, or a sense of belonging will cause enhanced student learning outcomes is unfortunate.   Whilst these attributes may be correlated with enhanced learning they are not causal agents for enhanced learning outcomes.

“Engagement”, “authenticity” and “belonging” may all be important in their own right but they do not cause enhanced student learning outcomes.

Enhancing student “engagement”, “authenticity of task”, and or “belonging” does not cause improved student learning outcomes anymore than “just washed hair“ prevents you kissing someone you desire.

And I suspect that this confusion between correlation and causation is responsible for undermining the credibility of many of our e learning initiatives in school.

I'd prefer to argue that enhanced student learning outcomes are caused by students learning how to learn.

And how can students take control of this learning process and learn how to learn?  They could start by reading Stephen Downes on 7. "How to Learn”

When learning to learn students must take control over finding pattern and making connections.  This requires students to plan, monitor and evaluate their pattern finding activity.  They need to be flexible; and to make choices about what to do next.  It is through taking this control that students develop self efficacy. 

And this is what I reckon is critical in causing enhanced learning outcomes. When students set specific, proximal and hierarchical goals for themselves, they can select specific strategic methods to enhance their learning outcomes.  Then when students self evaluate they can compare their learning outcomes to their set goals, explaining the success or failure in terms of the learning strategies adopted.

If no goals have been set than students have to explain success of failure of their learning outcome through social comparisons with their peers, introducing notions of fixed ability. – “I’m no good at writing essays.”  "X is smarter than me." 

All of which helps me understand that disturbing research from the UK a few years ago - on the percentage of failing students who will fail next assessment against age - by the time you are 14 there is a 95% chance that a failing student will fail the next assignment compared to the 50% chance that a failing student will fail again when the student is 7 years old.

If we don't make the effort to teach kids to learn how to learn, it seems we risk teaching them to learn how to fail.

Can we use ICTs to enhance the conditions of value when students learn how to learn - when they plan, monitor and evaluate their pattern finding activities across unistructural, multistructural, relational and extended abstract learning outcomes? 

We certainly can …and we will do so so much better when we can see past all the "I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair..." claims

“He might well be a Roman emperor in ten years time”

There is a resident at Grandpa’s dementia centre who is constantly moving – his zimmer frame (the seat shamelessly loaded with purloined goods) clocks up the sort of kilometres each day that would impress someone preparing for the half marathon.

However, what impresses me most is not the total kilometres covered each day but the liminality of the route travelled.  The zimmer frame tracks the fringes, the outer edges, the borders, the periphery, the outer reaches of the furniture and the people in each room.

The zimmer frame travels so close to the margins that it constantly nudges other residents – this nudging, a little like those toys that bump into an obstacle and immediately reverse motion 180 degrees and then try again, this repeated nudging can, and does, precipitate verbal and physical confrontation between nudger and nudgee.

It is simply not contestable to suggest that Grandpa has never been especially tolerant (of anything), and zimmer frame nudging is a seen as a highly provocative act... when visiting I suggest that the nudger is to be tolerated ... "he is simply exercising Grandpa – the equivalent of a dementia gym bunny" –

Grandpa is quick to point out the fallacy in my argument – he uses a thin end of the wedge argument to explain that if I don’t allow him to thump the margin traveller then “he might well be a Roman Emperor in ten years time”.

I observe the zimmer frame wanderer with new interest ... am I looking at a future Caligula?

Neglecting the obvious time frame problems in Grandpa’s argument, the truth is that, even if thumped, the zimmer frame wanderer would continue to explore the margins – he has long since lost the ability to learn from experience ...

Learning – behaviour that is changed as a result of experience.

Perhaps the Georges Perec “common thing”  that I should be thinking about with respect to learning is what counts as experience in schools - for in the classrooms I visit it certainly isn't movement - with or without a zimmer frame

What’s really going on, what we’re experiencing, the rest, all the rest, where is it? How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs everyday: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual?

To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is not longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?

How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are.

We fuss and froth so much about school, (well I do anyways), about the educational impact of funding, of tax breaks, of the quality of teaching staff, of the curriculum, of pedagogy, of disparity, of class sizes, of the impact or not of social technologies .... perhaps I should simply question something habitual.

What seems habitual to me from watching the zimmer frame wanderer is our acceptance that learning in school (apart from in specialist disciplines) does not require movement. 

It starts with learning to sit on the mat to listen to the often patronising discourse of the new entrant teacher  ... and finishes when as adults we attend conferences and sit contentedly through patronising keynoter discourse from the over priced professional 21st Century edu_tainers on the circuit.

Furthermore it seems that learning in the 21st Century happens when you are not only stationary but also staring at a programmable light source rather than something more real and less representational - like the real desert locust or frog pinned in a wax tray, like a LED, a piece of coarse fabric, fermenting milk, the precipitate in the bottom of a test tube,  a canvas dripping with paint or even another  human being.

I note here that I am not ready to talk about the role of those Barbie and Ken doll like SL avatars in all of this ...

So I want to think about

• How is learning advantaged when we are stationary and gazing at a screen?
• How is social connection advantaged when we are stationary and gazing at a screen?
• How is society advantaged when learning and social connection is what happens when the learner is stationary and gazing at a screen?

If I was Ewan: The “X will bring large changes to Y” debate.

If I was Ewan and I was arguing that “X will bring large changes to Y”

And X = social networking technologies

And Y = educational methods

Then I wouldn’t be relying on simplistic crowd pleaser Jetson analogies for my argument ...they are way too easy to counter ...

Jane Jetson: Elroy, why aren't you ready for school?
Elroy Jestson: I don't feel good, Mom. I think... I think I'm coming down with Venus Virus.
 Jane Jetson: Venus Virus, eh? Last week you said it was Martian Mumps. Anything to get out of taking that space calculus test.

I’d be looking far more thoughtfully at what makes an educational method – both the cause and the effect ....and teasing out the most persuasive arguments for bringing change to these through social networking technologies ...

In New Zealand teachers are influenced in their choice of educational method by the Best Evidence research  from the intellectually mesmerising mind of Adrienne Alton- Lee and her  – Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling  

This best evidence synthesis Quality teaching for diverse students in schooling is intended to contribute to the development of our evidence-base for policy and practice in schooling. The purpose of the synthesis is to contribute to ongoing, evidence-based and evolving dialogue about pedagogy amongst policy makers, educators and researchers that can inform development and optimise outcomes for students in New Zealand schooling.

So if I was Ewan I’d reframe the question as - will social networking technologies bring large [positive] changes to the conditions of value for any of the following?

And then I’d kick ass …there is heaps to base an argument around ... and heaps to disguise ... in the nexus between the Best Evidence Synthesis and social networking technologies.

1. Quality teaching is focused on student achievement (including social outcomes) and facilities high standards of student outcomes for heterogeneous groups of students.

Research-based characteristics

• Quality teaching is focussed on raising student achievement (including social outcomes).
• Quality teaching facilitates the learning of diverse students and raises achievement for all learners.
• The teacher establishes and follows through on appropriate expectations for learning outcomes and the pace at which learning should proceed.
• High expectations are necessary but not sufficient, and can be counterproductive, when not supported by quality teaching.

2. Pedgogical practices enable classes and other learning groupings to work as caring, inclusive, and cohesive learning communities.

The learning community concept has arisen out of the research literature and denotes both a central focus on learning and the interdependence of the social and the academic in optimising learning conditions.

Research-based characteristics

• Pedagogical practices create an environment that works as a learning community.
• Student motivation is optimised and students' aspirations are supported and extended.
• Caring and support is generated through the practices and interactions of teacher(s) and students.
• Pedagogical practices pro-actively value and address diversity.
• Academic norms are strong and not subverted by social norms.
• The language and practices of the classroom are inclusive of all students.
• Teachers use class sessions to value diversity, and to build community and cohesion.
• Teaching and tasks are structured to support, and students demonstrate, active learning orientations.
• Teaching includes specific training in collaborative group work with individual accountability mechanisms, and students demonstrate effective co-operative and social skills that enable group processes to facilitate learning for all participants.
• Students help each other with resource access and provide elaborated explanations.
• Pedagogical practice is appropriately responsive to the interdependence of socio-cultural and cognitive dimensions.

3. Effective links are created between school and other cultural contexts in which students are socialised, to facilitate learning.

Research-based characteristics

• Teachers ensure that student experiences of instruction have known relationships to    other cultural contexts in which the students have been/are socialised.
• Relevance is made transparent to students.
• Cultural practices at school are made transparent and taught.
• Ways of taking meaning from text, discourse, numbers or experience are made explicit.
• Quality teaching recognises and builds on students' prior experiences and knowledge.
• New information is linked to student experiences.
• Student diversity is utilised effectively as a pedagogical resource.
• Quality teaching respects and affirms cultural identity (including gender identity) and optimises educational opportunities.
• Quality teaching effects are maximised when supported by effective school-home partnership practices focused on student learning. School-home partnerships that have shown the most positive impacts on student outcomes have student learning as their focus.
• When educators enable quality alignments in practices between teachers and parent/caregivers to support learning and skill development then student achievement can be optimised.
• Teachers can take agency in encouraging, scaffolding and enabling student-parent/caregiver dialogue around school learning.
• Quality homework can have particularly positive impacts on student learning. The      effectiveness of the homework is particularly dependent upon the teacher's ability to construct, resource, scaffold and provide feedback upon appropriate homework tasks that support in-class learning for diverse students and do not unnecessarily fatigue and frustrate students.

4. Quality teaching is responsive to student learning processes.

Research-based characteristics are specific to curriculum context and the prior knowledge and experiences of the learners.

• Teachers have knowledge of the nature of student learning processes in the curriculum area, can interpret student behaviour in the light of this knowledge and are responsive, creative and effective in facilitating learning processes.
• Examples of teaching approaches that are intended to exemplify this characteristic  are the dynamic or flexible literacy models, the numeracy strategy focus and the Interactive Teaching Approach in science education.
• Classroom management enables the teacher to be responsive to diverse learners.
• Responsive teaching is important for all learners and particularly critical for students with special needs.

5. Opportunity to learn is effective and sufficient.

Research-based characteristics

• Quality teaching provides sufficient and effective opportunity to learn.
• Management practices facilitate learning (rather than emphasising compliant behaviour or control).
• Curriculum enactment has coherence, interconnectedness and links are made to real life relevance.
• Curriculum content addresses diversity appropriately and effectively.
• Quality teaching includes and optimises the effective use of non-linguistic representations by teacher and students. (This assumes the concurrent and rich use of oral language and text as central to literacy across the curriculum.)
• Students have opportunities to resolve cognitive conflict.
• Students have sufficient and appropriate opportunities for practice and application.

6. Multiple task contexts support learning cycles.

Research-based characteristics

• Task cycles match developmental learning cycles of students.
• Task cycles enable students to engage in and complete learning processes so that what is learned is remembered.
• Optimal use is made of complementary combinations of teacher-directed groupings, co-operative groups, structured peer interaction and individual work (including homework) to facilitate learning cycles.

7. Curriculum goals, resources including ICT usage, task design, teaching and school practices are effectively aligned.

Research-based characteristics

• Curricular alignment: The use of resources, teaching materials and ICT is aligned with curriculum goals to optimise student motivation and accomplish instructional purposes and goals.
• Curricular alignment optimises rather than inhibits critical thinking.
• Pedagogical strategies are evaluated in relation to curricular goals.
• ICT usage is integrated into pedagogical practice across the curriculum.
• Quality teaching is optimised when there is whole school alignment around evidence-based practices.
• The school maintains an 'unrelenting focus on student achievement and learning.
• There is whole school alignment and coherence across policies and practices that focus on, resource and support quality teaching for diverse students.
• Pro-active alignment across the school supports effective inclusion of diverse students within the school community.
• Whole school alignment optimises opportunity to learn, particularly in language immersion, literacy, ICT, social studies and health.
• Whole school alignment enables a common language, teacher collaboration and reflection and other synergies around improving teaching.
• Whole school alignment minimises disruptions to quality teaching and sustains      continuous improvement.
• School policies and practices initiate, and support teachers in maintaining, school-home partnerships focused on learning.

8. Pedagogy scaffolds and provides appropriate feedback on students' task engagement.

Research-based characteristics

• Tasks and classroom interactions provide scaffolds to facilitate student learning (the teacher provides whatever assistance diverse students need to enable them to engage in learning activities productively, for example, teacher use of prompts, questions, and appropriate resources including social resources).
• Teaching develops all students' information skills and ensures students' ready access to resources when needed to assist the learning process.
• Students receive effective, specific, appropriately frequent, positive and responsive feedback. Feedback must be neither too infrequent so that a student does not receive appropriate feedback nor too frequent so that the learning process is subverted.

9. Pedagogy promotes learning orientations, student self-regulation, metacognitive strategies and thoughtful student discourse.

Research-based characteristics

• Quality teaching promotes learning orientations and student self-regulation.
• Teaching promotes metacognitive strategy use (e.g. mental strategies in numeracy) by all students.
• Teaching scaffolds reciprocal or alternating tuakana teina roles in student group, or interactive work.
• Teaching promotes sustained thoughtfulness (e.g. through questioning approaches, wait-time, and the provision of opportunities for application and invention).
• Teaching promotes critical thinking.
• Teaching makes transparent to students the links between strategic effort and accomplishment.

10. Teachers and students engage constructively in goal-oriented assessment.

Research-based characteristics

• Assessment practices improve learning.
• Teachers and students have clear information about learning outcomes.
• Students have a strong sense of involvement in the process of setting specific learning goals.
• Pedagogy scaffolds and provides appropriate feedback on students' task engagement.
• Teachers ensure that their assessment practices impact positively on students' motivation.
• Teachers manage the evaluative climate, particularly in context of public      discussion, so that student covert or overt participation is supported, scaffolded and challenged without students being humiliated.
• Teachers manage the evaluative climate so that academic norms are not undermined but supported by social norms.
• Teachers adjust their teaching to take account of the results of assessment.

But anyone who knows me knows that I am patently NOT Ewan ... and because of my social networking technologies I am rescued from the rather pedestrian arguments evident on The Economist debate by finding out about Georges Perec  and as a result focussing instead on how “To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us” –

I have struck an immediate problem in interrogating my teaspoons, the chaos of my household means I have to first locate them, so I am thinking instead about what "I have ceased forever to be astonished by" because I have chosen to make time with Grandpa at the dementia centre part of each day.

"if you worked a bit harder, you too could afford to be me."

It is hot and sticky in Auckland, people are drifting back to their day jobs and I am fighting the realisation that my summer break is nearly over ...instead of preparing for the hiss and roar of the professional development days we are booked for in January I have been distracted by thinking about what sort of education system I would develop if on top of the fees I could charge I had 100 million pound in tax breaks a year to educate 7% of the wealthiest children in Britain.

Or 7% of the poorest children in the country? Or 7% of the [fill with your own gross demographic ] children in the country?

The new Charities Act 2006 public benefit test will require independent schools to prove that they are providing educational services to children who cannot afford their fees. And I am enjoying reading the debate over the charitable status tax advantages offered to independent schools in Britain and the possible outcome of calls for greater accountability.

Do more for poorer children or lose your charitable status, private schools are told

Independent schools forced to be more open

Seems there are tough times ahead for Britain’s independent schools who also cannot have enjoyed the recent academic research claims that private schools reproduce inequalities

Researchers discovered that while independent schools have increased their share of the available teacher pool by 14%, they were responsible for teaching less than 8% of the pupil population.

Teachers in independent schools are more likely to have postgraduate qualifications than their colleagues in the state sector, according to the results of two studies.

Private schools are also more likely to have teachers who specialise in subjects such as maths and science - where there is a national shortage of qualified staff. Their pupils are also more likely to be taught in smaller classes compared to the state sector.

Co-author Stephen Machin, research director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and professor of economics at University College London, added: "Since selection into the [independent schools], despite some bursaries and the assisted places scheme, is primarily based on families' ability to pay, and given the substantial returns achieved, it is hard to escape the conclusion that private schools have served to reproduce inequalities in British society."

And then there is the private school head who has described as misguided private schools' attempts to justify their charitable status through offering bursaries to children of the poor.

“Private schools are perpetuating an "apartheid" system of schooling, creaming off the most able students and leaving state schools to flounder, according to an influential independent school head who today launches an outspoken attack on his colleagues in the independent sector.”

"They ... pluck children out of their social milieu as well as taking them away from their state schools, depriving those schools of their best academics, musicians, sportsmen and women, and future stars," The Guardian January 15 2008

Tracking the opinion pieces on both sides of the discussion could be black comedy in different circumstances.  Take Dr Martin Stephen High Master at St Paul’s highly risible or frightening (I cannot decide which) comments in the Telegraph

It is folly to assume that teachers joining the independent sector would be equally likely to join maintained schools. A major reason why top graduates choose the independent sector is not pay or discipline, vital though these are. It is because those graduates see their strength as teaching pupils who have the ability to study their subject at university.

It is not about class, or privilege. It is simply a recognition that certain teachers are brilliant at inspiring those of similar ability, but far less good (and far less satisfied in their job) when asked to teach the less able. Dr Martin Stephen

So the state sector in the UK (check the nuance in the use of the descriptor "maintained schools") is bereft of able students ...to the point that no one who loved their subject disciplinary knowledge would want to teach there.  Wealth equates to ability - and poverty to being "less able"  - I just cannot imagine any educator in private or state education in New Zealand who would feel comfortable about making a claim like this.

What is happening in Britain makes me want to track more carefully the reported rise in independent school enrolments in New Zealand – as discussed in Conversations over incinerating meat .  Luke and Dorothy’s comments on the post made me realise that sanctimony over what you can provide for your children extends beyond the schools they attend to the food that you feed them.  This was affirmed when I read Zoe Williams lovely piece in the The Guardian about the perils of being sanctimonious about chickens.   

It is, frankly, obnoxious to see a rich person demanding impoverishing consumer choices from a poorer person. These chef-polemicists consider themselves outside politics, because they're being straightforward - let's eat what came out of the ground naturally, what was raised in a happy way. Let's just do as nature intended, and by gum it will be tasty, and what could possibly be political about that?

They're right, it isn't political, in that it has no consistency of ideas, indeed, doesn't even comprehend its own implications, but it encapsulates rather well what happens when rhetoric becomes unmoored from structured ideology: you get all the worst bits of the left - the proselytising, the sanctimony - and all the worst bits of the right - the I'm-all-right-Jack, the "if you worked a bit harder, you too could afford to be me".

The fact is, ethics that come out of your wallet are not ethics. All these catchwords that supposedly convey sensitivity to the environment, to animals, to the developing world - fair trade, organic, free range, food miles etc - are just new ways to buy your way into heaven, the modern equivalent of the medieval pardon. Anyone with a serious interest in this would be lobbying the legislature; arguing to tighten laws on animal cruelty. When we just preach to each other, it turns into the most undignified scramble - who can afford to be the most lovely? Well, you can, Jamie and Hugh. You've got loveliness to burn.  Zoe Williams  Wednesday January 16, 2008  The Guardian

Ahh the worst bits of the left with the worst bits of the right .... there’s a thought ....how easily environmental sensitivity (aka being sanctimonious about chickens) becomes twisted into consumerism games for the affluent – becomes just like the meat on the bar b cue and the private fee paying education system - an opportunity to flaunt “if you worked a bit harder, you too could afford to be me" thinking.

“I wanna be somewhere familiar, I wanna know where the exits are, and I wanna be allowed to smoke. ....”

“If we hole up, I wanna be somewhere familiar, I wanna know where the exits are, and I wanna be allowed to smoke. .... “ Ed in “Shaun of the Dead” 2004

My favourite heroic character in the rom zom com Shaun of the Dead is Shaun’s flatmate Ed.

There is something compelling about a character of such torpor who tracks the essentials so closely, and besides which he reminds me of other 21C sofa occupants I have known, loved and despaired of...   

[Shaun walks into the living room and finds Ed sleeping on the sofa]
Shaun: D'you want anything from the shops?
[Ed responds with his eyes still closed]
Ed: Cornetto

Ed is so connected to sleeping on the couch and playing video games in the flat (or drinking pints and playing arcade games at the pub) that he appears to be deeply disconnected from the events around him – living the zombie hidden within us all...   

And yet Ed’s throw away comments reveal that all the time he appears to be in a state of social hibernation he is closely reading his flatmates conversations and appraising their motives.  Not unlike grandpa’s ability to feign sleep whilst collecting all the gossip from the dementia caregivers ...his eyesight might be naff but his hearing is very acute 

But what I want to think about is not how Ed reads what is going on around him, but rather how he decides on what he needs and what he wants.

Psychologists would have us understand that Ed’s need for “somewhere familiar” is because we are “wired to be risk adverse” -

Apparently being risk adverse was a genetically advantageous trait in the times of the smilodon and woolly mammoth  

The downside of all this risk adverse coupling in the time of the smilodon is that when it comes to innovation and creativity and entrepreneurship in the 21st Century we feel more strongly about avoiding loss than seeking gain – 

We are intimidated by uncertain or unfamiliar outcomes, we like systems, we like narrative, we like certainty, we like what we know, we like institutions, we like school.   

So most of us live risk adverse versions of Ed’s pre-zombie attack life - subconsciously mumbling “The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.” interspersed with “make mine a Cornetto ... “

But a few of us don’t –

I have a friend and a mentor – an educational change maker - a verve filled woman whose life-story shows her to be a throwback - for she is a risk seeking individual – someone “prone to tilt” - someone who has never allowed institutional rules and “reasons why not” to determine her path ... someone who has catalysed a number of significant educational adventures in New Zealand....

I have been reading Chrissie Fernyhough's latest tilt – co-authoring The Road to Castle Hill  a book about her adventures running a high country station at Castle Hill in the unforgiving landscapes of the South Island’s Canterbury Alps. 

But it would be a mistake to imagine that the book is about a city dweller who has transformed herself into a high country farmer – this is a book about someone who is hungry to learn – and someone prepared to take risks – learning and risk taking seem to go together

It all makes me wonder – can we learn to be less risk adverse? – is being risk adverse a modifiable trait?
Or is it our genetic destiny to proclaim “I wanna be somewhere familiar, I wanna know where the exits are, and I wanna be allowed to smoke. ....”

And just what does our tendency to being risk adverse cost the 21 Century learner?

Keep your eyes on my nipples ... living on the fringes of conversation.

I am taking tips from grandpa ... whom the New Year finds more frail, more mad, and more outrageous than ever ...

When I arrived at the dementia centre today he was deep in sleep - his top teeth detached and filling the gap in his open mouth like some medieval portcullis dropped to repel access by invading flies.  When he awakened he complained that he had been lost underground for three days with no liquids and was dying of thirst, but when I rise to get him a drink he abuses me loudly - claiming that my efforts are self-serving - designed solely to make it look like I am “Mother Theresa made flesh”.

He wants to stand up but needs help to get out of his chair, and once up struggles to persuade his feet to shuffle in sequence from the dining chair to a sofa, and he hates this new vulnerability – he reacts by cursing and berating me for being mobile – for being able to offer help.  A nurse aide rescued him by suggesting he holds her hands and keeps his eyes on her nipples – lust must be one of the last memories lost in dementia - he fixed his gaze salaciously and shuffled slowly after the nipples to a nearby sofa.

Once settled on the sofa, he complains through loose dentures that “when you are at sea the structure of the cabins means it is hard to communicate meaning” - “the echoes mean you are always on the fringes of conversation” – I am sympathetic having often felt on the fringes of conversations myself – and after inventing an elaborate fabulist explanation of the rice flour grinding facilities of the flat bottom barges on the Kaipara Harbour he is exhausted and withdraws by shutting his eyes and pretending to be asleep. 

And yet despite feigning fringe deafness he monitors the communications in his environment closely - somehow managing to negotiate a share of the nurse aide’s fresh oysters – and all without opening his eyes.    

I am cramping his flirtation with the nurse aide - he wants me to stay and he wants me to go ... “how far away can you go?”  he whispers hoarsely, “and still be in my presence?”.

Grandpa is making me think about the many ways in which we understand the communication of ideas ...

And I have been enjoying thinking about this in the context of the internet through another vacation read - Lawrence Lessig’s  The Future of Ideas  – The fate of the commons in a connected world . 

Lessig introduces Communication Systems through Yochai Benkler’s Three Layers definition (page 11)

Physical Layer: the computer, or wires, that link computers on the Internet.
Code Layer: a “logical” or “code” layer – the code that makes the hardware run – includes protocols and software
Content: a content layer – the actual stuff that gets said or transmitted across these wires.

Explaining that each of Benkler’s layers can be seen as a resource that can be controlled or free (note commons arguments – rivalrous and non rivalrous resources), for example:

Speaker’s Corner – Content: free, Code: free, Physical :free
Madison Square Garden – Content: free, Code: free, Physical: controlled
Telephone system – Content: free, Code: controlled, Physical : controlled.
Cable TV – Content: controlled, Code: controlled, Physical: controlled

Reading Lessig makes me wish I’d had this thinking when I was trying to explain why the walled classrooms of LMS left me cold.  But more significantly I realise that the communication analogy works with Grandpa - the physical wiring of grandpa’s brain and even the code layer and linguistic protocols are becoming increasingly controlled by his dementia – and given the progressive nature of the cognitive breakdown – it is inevitable that in time the content will also be under the ownership control of the dementia – cable TV approaches.

I’d always quite liked the new ways of looking at collaboration and authorship to communicate new ideas provided by Lev Manovich’s take on new media in the early 2000’s 

New media culture brings with it a number of new models of authorship which all involve different forms of collaboration. Of course, collaborative authorship is not unique to new media: think of medieval cathedrals, traditional painting studios which consisted from a master and assistants, music orchestras, or contemporary film productions which, like medieval cathedrals involve thousands of people collaborating over a substantial period of time. In fact, romantic model of a solitary single author occupies a very small place in the history of human culture. New media, however, offers some new variations on the previous forms of collaborative authorship.

(1) Collaboration of different individuals and/or groups.
(2) Interactivity as collaboration between the author and the user.
(3) Authorship as selection from a menu.
(4) Collaboration between a company and the users.
(5) Collaboration between the author and the software.
(6) Remixing
(7) Sampling: New Collage?
(8) Open Source Model

But this breakdown failed to address the very real issues of copyright online that challenge our teachers and students, which is why I have enjoyed the following collaborative content classification of online videos from Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video

Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, co-director of the American University School of Communication law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, have a study  suggesting that “many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration”.

They identify “nine kinds of uses of copyrighted material, ranging from incidental (a video maker’s family sings “Happy Birthday”) to parody (a Christian takeoff on the song “Baby Got Back”) to pastiche and collage (finger-dancing to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”) that “creatively use copyrighted materials in ways that are eligible for fair use consideration under copyright law.”

1.    Parody and satire:  Copyrighted material used in spoofing of popular mass media, celebrities or politicians (Baby got Book) 
2.    Negative or critical commentary:  Copyrighted material used to communicate a negative message (Metallica Sucks)
3.    Positive commentary:  Copyrighted material used to communicate a positive message (Steve Irwin Fan Tribute)
4.    Quoting to trigger discussion: Copyrighted material used to highlight an issue and prompt public awareness, discourse (Abstinence PSA on Feministing.com)
5.    Illustration or example:  Copyrighted material used  to support a new idea with pictures and sound (Evolution of Dance)
6.    Incidental use:  Copyrighted material captured as part of capturing something else (Prisoners Dance to Thriller)
7.    Personal reportage/diaries:  Copyrighted material incorporated into the chronicling of a personal experience (Me on stage with U2 … AGAIN!!!)
8.    Archiving of vulnerable or revealing materials:  Copyrighted material that might have a short life on mainstream media due to controversy (Stephen Colbert’s Speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner)
9.    Pastiche or collage:   Several copyrighted materials incorporated together into a new creation, or in other cases, an imitation of sorts of copyrighted work (Apple Commercial)

Is no wonder that I continue to find myself on the fringes of conversations online and offline ...   there are so many things to think about in this – and I am uncertain how best to connect them for our cluster teachers so that they escape the echoes in the cabin ..

A world without doubt

I struggled to enjoy the E-learning Symposium07  at RMIT in Melbourne in December. 

The essentially insiders’ audience at the LbyD school presentations meant it felt more like a congregation “singing from the same hymn sheet” than a group of educators attending an educational conference.  And when the response to a question about evidence based reflection was highly defensive we decided it wasn’t smart to ask any others.

This was unfortunate because I had been captured by its advertised focus on “thoughtful planning” and “Learning by Design” and we had chosen the conference for our 2007 professional learning.  We had wanted to critique the learning outcomes from the Learning by Design approach in Australian schools with what we are observing in our New Zealand schools using similar pedagogical approaches.

However when I re-read my conference jottings today I find that much of what made me uncomfortable at The  E- Learning Symposium was not related to the “group think” nature of much of the content communicated but rather to a pervasive "Hell Comes to Baltimore" conference atmosphere.  I was made uncomfortable by the relationships between the academics, pedagogical leaders and teachers attending. 

“ ... the intense vulnerability mixed with epic proportions of social awkwardness and incredible power imbalances” of an annual eastern meeting of the American Philosophical Association” Hell comes to Baltimore Philosophers Playground Blog

The continuing “... and then I met Bill and Mary” reverential referencing of academics Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis  in the Plenary sessions was unnerving and led to a sense that we were attending some kind of Bill and Mary Revivalist Cult rather than an e Learning conference. But what was more uncomfortable was that every time a school presented, the university researcher associated with the teachers kept jumping up to interrupt what had been claimed by the teachers presenting – to make what he referred to as “metacomments” interpreting what had just been said.  It must have been embarrassing/ and probably frustrating for the teachers presenting – it was certainly “cringe worthy watching” for those of us in the audience who were not part of the LbyD schools research project. 

The tension in the power imbalance between teacher practitioner and academic researcher was palpable. Though I guess it cannot be comfortable to be a researcher (whose academic credibility and kudos comes from the ability to interpret some more senior academics model) when the teachers doing all the work develop a level of understanding of the practical application of the theory that makes you increasingly redundant.   

And all that made me wonder in a new way about the power relationships created when funded alliances are forged between universities and schools. Something I had thought  quite positively about up to now.

However, all was not lost - one idea that did capture my thinking at the conference was a casual observation made in the Plenary Session: Reflections on Multiliteracies:  Learner Diversity, Professional Learning and Multimodality.

A session speaker suggested that an issue for educators working with students using multimodalities lies in the absence of a rigorous meta language to talk about modalities other than those of linguistic literacy.   She claimed that “we are struggling as a profession” to develop meta languages so necessary if our students are to work meaningfully with visual, audio, gestural, and spatial modalities and their various combinations.

The Magnet vehemently disagreed with this sentiment over pasta in Lygon St that evening but it certainly supports what I have observed when students performance for understanding involves filmmaking, podcasting, and game and web design. Remaining polarised in our arguments by the time dessert arrived we agreed to disagree which explains why I was dead chuffed to find some support for the claim in “Twilight of the Books – What will life be like if people stop reading?”- a brilliant read in the December 24 2007 issue of New Yorker Magazine – (Thanks to Confused of Calcutta for the link)

You need to read the whole article but the bit that seemed to fit here was associated with the observation by Walter J. Ong

“that television and similar media are taking us into an era of “secondary orality,” akin to the primary orality that existed before the emergence of text.”

The article suggests that with a return to secondary orality we may see a change in the way people (teachers can read 21st Century Learner ) think about the world 

Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to Ong, the best way to preserve ideas in the absence of writing is to “think memorable thoughts,” whose zing insures their transmission. In an oral culture, cliché and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk. There’s no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument. Opponents in struggle are more memorable than calm and abstract investigations, so bards revel in name-calling and in “enthusiastic description of physical violence.” Caleb Crain in Twilight of the Books

This just has to be a frightening thought for educators viewing the plethora of zing filled stories created by students online as part of their “performance for understanding” especially as a predilection for storytelling has already been exposed as leading to false sense of certainty by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

[In “The Black Swan”,  Taleb argues that we are already terrible at predicting future events of any consequence because of hindsight bias and our predilection for storytelling - looking at past events and ‘connecting the dots’ makes us believe we understand causalities that just do not exist.]

If as the plenary speaker suggests a  meta language for critiquing multimodalities ( like the audio visual content created online) is lacking, then the New Yorker article suggest that building one may be more difficult than we might think.  It seems that a barrier to developing a better meta language for the visual and auditory multimodalities may be the intimacy created between the viewer and the content onscreen.

“Emotional responsiveness to streaming media harks back to the world of primary orality, and, as in Plato’s day, the solidarity amounts almost to a mutual possession. “Electronic technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement,” in McLuhan’s words. The viewer feels at home with his show, or else he changes the channel. The closeness makes it hard to negotiate differences of opinion. It can be amusing to read a magazine whose principles you despise, but it is almost unbearable to watch such a television show. And so, in a culture of secondary orality, we may be less likely to spend time with ideas we disagree with. Caleb Crain in Twilight of the Books

That Web2.0 and the internet means we are spending less time with ideas we disagree with is a recurring thread in my reading these days. If we do not have a well developed meta language to critique visual and auditory content created online AND this content has an emotional closeness that precludes critique per se then the 21st Century Learner is facing an interesting personal and political future ...   

Self-doubt, therefore, becomes less likely. In fact, doubt of any kind is rarer. It is easy to notice inconsistencies in two written accounts placed side by side. With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information. The trust that a reader grants to the New York Times, for example, may vary sentence by sentence. A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching. Like the peasants studied by Luria, he thinks in terms of situations and story lines rather than abstractions.” Caleb Crain in Twilight of the Books

A world without doubt