Artichoke

Never put a sock in a toaster.

In the interests of transparency I must disclose that I was a bit of a sock whisperer in one  of my past lives, and I have a shoebox full of disemboweled sock puppets hidden at the back  of the wardrobe that I fully intend to repair the next time I have an urge to wield a  darning needle. 

Eddie Izzard’s - Never put a sock in a toaster - advice always captures me  – this statement is overstuffed with potential – it is made for one of those collaborative online (e) quest 21st Century learner rich task  inquiry thingees in that it offers an authentic relevant context, charged with emotional, social and political implication, with no definitive answers. It undermines basic  assumptions, requiring the learner to grapple with rich content that is indispensable to  understanding humanity.  Although it will require careful and lengthy research, it is a statement that can be researched in the context of the learners available resources And best of all the performance for understanding just screams out for a MS PowerPoint presentation

Is why I was dead chuffed to read a Ministry press release this week stating that 

“The latest findings from the ongoing national evaluation of primary and intermediate school  students show they are making progress in key areas of mathematics, social studies and  information skills, Ministry of Education Learning Policy Manager Steve Benson said today.”

I take this claim to mean that all those initiatives in information literacy, ICT connectivity and constructivist inquiry pedagogies since 2001 mean that my students have  never been more able to research and make meaning of Izzard’s” Never put a sock in a toaster” rich task. 

The media release from the Ministry of Education's latest national evaluation results  25th August 2006  goes further than simple claims of making progress.  It identifies key findings from the  research as ...

Comparing the NEMP results between 2005 and 2001, some other key findings are:

• Disparities have reduced between year 4 and year 8 Pakeha and Maori students, and  Pakeha and Pasifika students in social studies and mathematics.
• Disparities between performance of students in mathematics in high, medium and low  decile schools have reduced, particularly at year 4.
• Community size, school size, and school type (full primary, intermediate, or year 7  to 13 high school), and geographic zone were not important factors in predicting achievement in mathematics, social studies and information skills.
• Girls were slightly better at social studies, information skills and mathematics, with the exception of year 4 boys who performed slightly better in mathematics.

Emboldened by this optimistic press release I figure I will start the inquiry with some  questions for students at the unistructural and multistructural levels of SOLO taxonomy.  Getting students to define, describe, label and name both socks, toasters and the process of  “putting in”. 

Once they have had time to be fully immersed in the sock and the toaster contexts, they will be ready  for some SOLO relational thinking.  They will be ready to formulate some of their own  questions using questioning frameworks like 5W&H, 6 Hats, open closed, Weiderhold Matrix,  Fogarty’s three story intellect, etc. to develop questions that  require the curious 21st Century Learner to

• sequence the significant events in the history of the sock,
• classify toasters by the variety of ways that socks are put in them
• compare stuffing a sock in a toaster with stuffing a sock in a sandwich maker;
• analyse part whole thinking about the toaster and or the sock,
• determine the events that might cause a sock to be put in a toaster,
• determine possible causes for pulling a sock out of a toaster

And then, well then they will be ready for some SOLO extended abstract thinking - ready to make generalisations about socks in toasters, draw  analogies between socks in toasters and the 21st century Learner , make predictions about the insertion of other stuff into toasters and socks into other stuff, evaluate Izzards claim and create new sock toaster thinking.

You will have to imagine the Artichokean slough of despond after I downloaded the NEMP research reports and read the summary statements about “making progress” in information skills - statements like

• Many year 4 and year 8 students found it difficult to select/reject information relevant to  a topic and to make decisions or develop arguments based on that information.
• More than 50 percent of both year 4 and year 8 students struggled to ask two or three  ‘strong questions’ for an enquiry, even when working collaboratively.
• Few year 4 and year 8 students could describe a coherent process or strategy for finding and using information for a research or study topic.
• Year 8 students often performed well on simple single step task components but were  challenged by tasks that required multiple steps and simple reasoning.
• The internet is seen as the most preferred source of information for students. The declining use of libraries is a concern given the value of resources they can provide.
• While the internet was the most preferred source of information, there is evidence in the  report that students lacked skills of discernment and discrimination in their use of internet information.

Seems that I'm going to have to rethink this whole sock toaster thing - If this is Ministry speak for  "making progress” in the key area of information skills I’d hate to see what students cannot  do when they are described as “maintaining the status quo”. 

Even more disturbing is the gnawing sense of disquiet that I might be illiterate.

Rosemary Hipkins (2006) in unpacking the new draft curriculum’s Key Competency Using language symbols and texts states

To truly read material from any semiotic domain is to read it as an insider would – that is, you would know the “rules of the game”. When you can do that, you can be said to be literate in that domain.

(Hipkins, R.  (2006) The nature of the Key Competencies.  A Background Paper.  Rosemary Hipkins. NZCER  p27).

Predict I will have to put a lot more socks into toasters before I can be said to have competency in reading the  Ministry of Education Media Release pages.    

Arthur the Human Chameleon and “marked declines”, “substantial decreases” and “slight declines”

And we had hoped to have been bringing you Arthur the Human Chameleon, but this afternoon, he crawled across a tartan rug and died of exhaustion.  Ronnie Barker

I am enjoying the prospect of watching Arthur crawl across the tartan rugs of the Findings From the New Zealand Numeracy Development Projects 2005   in the next few weeks.  I’m watching for a colour palette that includes the colours of “enviable intellectual suppleness”, “moral maneuverability” and "the longest river on earth"

I also want to capture the colours of educators who respond to research results suggesting that a massive nationwide intervention in professional learning for educators has compromised the ability of young New Zealanders to do maths.

The headlines in the Stuart Dye's article in the New Zealand Herald today are easy to interpret  Simple sums our kids can't do

Given the intensity, the time demands and the prescriptiveness of the professional learning that New Zealand teachers experience when their schools sign up for the numeracy contract I am guessing that many of them will be undergoing “Arthur the human chameleon” like colour changes when they read the results of their faithful interventions. 

These colour changes will become kaleidoscopic when teachers realise that "the blame game” has already started.

It seems that Education Minister Steve Maharey said the results were "a bit of a wake-up call".  … “the results were a reminder that core skills had to be taught well and teachers would be reminded of this.

Ministry of Education senior learning policy analyst Steve Benson said the drop in basic abilities was a concern. Adding  "They've taken their eye off the ball in basic facts."

So what advice do we offer teachers who, by faithfully doing what was asked of them, find themselves caught up in this new blame game –

The FAQ` link on the NZ Maths Numeracy Project has suggested answers to teachers fretting over this new challenge to teach basic facts

How do I teach the basic facts?
There is no point in trying to teach the basic facts before their meaning is understood.
For example, in the case of multiplication it is common to see children who knows 6 x 5 = 30 but cannot make up a problem that is answered by this fact. Provided the meaning of operations is understood teachers have many activities that will aid the learning basic facts. Often initially this is by process.
For example: recalling 5 x 5 = 25 and 2 x 5 = 10 a child may deduce 7 x 5 is 25 + 10 = 35 which is a part-whole process. This is fine for children who are not advanced multiplicative in their thinking, but teachers need to be aware that the inability to instantly recall will seriously effect advanced multiplicative thinkers ability to think quickly and accurately.
For example trying to share $377 among 5 people requires a student to 370 ÷ 5 = 7 tens with remainder 2 tens without having to work out the answers to the 5 times facts. Similarly early additive students need the instant recall of the basic addition/subtraction facts. Hopefully this occurs during the advanced counting stage of thinking.

Seems that hope wasn’t enough

Perhaps we will have to resort to “the longest river on earth” thinking.  Perhaps we can argue that knowing that “simple arithmetical calculations are the building blocks for numeracy and are also used often in everyday life” is not important so long as the kids enjoy what they are doing. Perhaps we can argue that ICTs like cell phones will give students all the basic facts calculating stuff they'll need to "lead a good life in a well functioning society" 

It is the past not the dizzy present

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future. Camille Paglia Sex, Art, and American Culture (1992).

I have found myself in a different New Zealand state school each day this fortnight.  Suspect I am peopled out.

I have worked with so many teachers – primary, intermediate and secondary teachers this fortnight that the texture and nuance of conversations held are blurring into the "bridge of the single hair" - that "chorus of the single querulous voice" refrain of a hive mind locked in a "dizzy present" struggle over futurefocused curriculum and pedagogy -

Aligning AO's to the predicted needs of the “21st century learner” is high risk thinking -the "ensuring that achievement objectives for each learning area are clear, appropriate, and futurefocused;" bit on p4 of The New Zealand Curriculum: Draft for consultation 2006

Each day I have shared quite different muesli bar and banana conversations with the lunchroom dispossessed – relief teachers from countries all over the globe trying to gain experience and credibility in a new land.

I have always enjoyed the staffroom dispossessed.  We are joined at the hip by our outsider status, and a shared desire to avoid the seat and coffee mug of the staff despot who claims territorial ownership by dint of overlong and unfaithful service to the institution.

We earjack futurefocused conversations, communicating by a raised eyebrow, over Web 2.0 rants

With one click. On-demand streams. It's all changing. The words aren't what they were. This will change everything. This is newer media. Float this. MSM just doesn't get it. Out of the box. Label what defies categorization. Cry out, blogosphere! Taggable folksonomies. Podcasts. An AJAX-driven GUI. News clouds. Give the users what they want. Always be launching. The buzz is loud and clear. Faster. Faster! Feeds. Single. Word. Sentences! Clustering. Clear that. 2.0 is the new New. It's the wave of tomorrow. "ASL" is geezer speak. We shall transcend borders. We are on the brink of a new age. Roll your own roll-your-own. The new is old. It's all about community. Social is the new push. We're about what Web 2.0 is about. Splog is an aggregate noun. You need someone who gets it. Hack it. 2.0!

connecting with rolled eye over the sharing of incoming pxt from the “Boobs on Bikes” Parade, and exchanging gestures of incredulity over rollercoaster revelations about the “laptop for teachers” programme’s unwitting support for internet dating for the over 50’s.

We share simple hopes and minimal expectations about surviving the afternoon, and a confidence about the end of the day that comes from the absence of any real sense of belonging.

We are but temporary players in the dizzy present futurefocused learning “communities” of eduspeak, unlike the classroom dispossessed who are sentenced to years and years and years of mandated play in these prisons of contemporaneity. 

Rescu(e) myths: (e)learning as saviour and adventure on a glacier.

“e learning has the potential to transform the way we learn.  It’s about exploiting technologies and using ICT effectively across the curriculum to connect schools and communities and to support evidence based decision making and practices in schools.

For New Zealand, the development of a prosperous and confident knowledge society means the development of new skills and knowledge.  It will require a culture of continuous enquiry, innovation and improvement, risk taking, and entrepreneurship.  This can only come from the education system. 

This is a radical vision.  If it is to work it will take leadership.  Each of us has a role in achieving this vision for e- learning and its contribution to education.” Hon. Steve Maharey Minister of Education June 2006 Enabling the 21st Century Learner

I agree with Steve, this a radical vision, so radical a revelation that it borders on hallucination - it reminds me of Grandpa’s claims of escaping the secure facility for moments of reckless adventure with one of the dementia center nursing staff on the Franz Joseph glacier.  [I am always thankful that grandpa’s loosely attached dentures mean that the detail of his dementia glacial narrative escapes the ear jacking surveillance of center staff]. 

The “Enabling the 21st Century Learner” quote reminds me of grandpa’s incredulous tales because both claims make me feel the same paradoxical sense of malignant innocence and promiscuous sensuality.  I know intellectually that both qualify as madness and shameless self/ it industry promotion, but I cannot help being enticed into thinking that both sex on a glacier and e learning developing a culture of continuous enquiry, innovation and improvement, risk taking, and entrepreneurship would be uncomfortable but remarkable experiences.

Is why the focus of the Auckland Regional ict_pd cluster Meeting next week is significant. 

Whilst “Professor Buchanan wants to save the internet from just being "a new way of delivering crap". 

"I'm saying let's stop trying to invent linear story - there is experience and there is narrative - let's explore the experience where you can control the outcome (with) no guarantee you'll get there.”

the Auckland Regional ict_pd Cluster Meeting in contrast is interested in guaranteeing the outcome of the e learning change experience. 

Just a reminder that we will be meeting next Tuesday 10am for the Auckland Regional Development Meeting hosted by Kelvin Road School (Flier and map). This meeting is focused on the strategies and issues associated with facilitating adult learning. We will delve deeper into the concept of "change management" and the strategies for "asking the hard questions".

And just how do they intend to guarantee outcomes – by delving (deeper would be a contestable descriptor) into the antics of Sniff and Scurry and Hem and Haw and some non stationary cheese – an allegory teaching us to unquestioningly embrace change – or rather encouraging us to – “never question the motives of change”

I prefer Mark Brown's four waves analysis of claims for change [Teachers using ICT: Myths and Realities 2006 p11] to the non stationary cheese in the maze thing.

Kwok Wing Lai's article unpacks Mark Brown's (Brown, 2004) "myth of change" present in a 30 year ict use in teaching and learning - a 30 year "same old same old" cycle of

Expectations>rhetoric>policies>limited use, followed by Expectations>rhetoric>policies>limited use, followed by Expectations>rhetoric>policies>limited use, followed by Expectations>rhetoric>policies>limited use, followed by …

Brown unpacks four main waves in last three decades

1.    instructional wave (computer as tutor) 1975 to 85
2.    problem solving wave (students teaching the computer) 1980 to 1990
3.    mind tool wave (computer as a tool) 1985 to 95
4.    media wave (connected computers via internet)1995 to present

Brown's analysis means that I can predict that, despite the valorising rhetoric in "Enabling the 21st Century Learner", NZ will not be rescued by e learning before I am happily thinking and engaging in dementia  detained adventures on the glacier.
[Magnet: Next week then?]

Pulling a blog post; The ethics of friendship, being overwhelmed by the tribe, and coming out as Artichoke

Artichoke played Lunch Lady Doris for a group of primary school educators in Mt Roskill today – the role is physically and emotionally daunting but once I had counted out the sausage rolls it gave me plenty of mind space to continue puzzling over why Hon. Steve Maharey might claim that New Zealand kids are different in the way they think and engage today than they were yesterday.

It was a 20th Century luncheon so whilst I was waiting for the last of the club sandwiches, and asparagus rolls to be scoffed –- I was teasing out all those claims we make in eduspeak about meeting the unique needs of the 21st Century learner

And then whilst getting coffee for our celebrity speaker and the Magnet I was thinking about why yesterday might be different from today, and how much the process by which we build long term memory, the process of learning has really changed. 

How easily can we identify and pull out the 21st Century Learner from a line up of 20th Century Learners?  Will it be as simple as shoulder tapping the learner who eschewed the sausage roll in favour of the sushi?

When I was thinking about this in the context of the unique advantage ICT brings to teaching and learning I had what TG would call an “ethereal moment” - I reckon the difference between yesterday’s kid and today’s kid might well be because “the kid of today” is growing up in a culture/ context of panopticon like ict facilitated surveillance. 

To paraphrase Foucault, 
"Hence the major effect of ICTs in school (Learning management systems LMS, (like Moodle, Knowledge Net) blogs, wikis, email, (e) portfolios, URL tracking, Student management systems (SMS) online assessment, is to induce in the student a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.

[As a kid you can no longer burn the exercise books and bin the ring binders of your institutionalized thinking at the end of the school year, and move on  –the integration of ict means as a student attending school you have been captured online, serial snap shots of yourself are stored online in huge SMS, and LMS educational data bases]

If so is no wonder students of today are posting their most intimate of personal information on Myspace and Bebo - when they are caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearer at school,

How else would you behave outside of the panopticon of the institution?

It seems surveillance is everywhere in the so called democracy and freedom of the Blogosphere. But the most powerful surveillance is self surveillance.

I have recently had reason to explore Insouci’s experience of self censorship   indulging in my first act of self censorship in four years of blogging - apologies to Cherrie and cj whose thinking I also deleted

Now I find myself in a "dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t"situation – I got flak for posting and I am now getting flak for pulling the post.  I have to ask - Do I still own myself?

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I am happy with the call to delete the post because it was a decision made on the ethics of friendship – for if you compromise your ability to drink and laugh till you ache with friends then surely you have betrayed what it is to be human.  But does this mean I no longer own myself?  Part of the critique of the now deleted post suggested that I hid behind my blog … The criticism puzzled me …

How can I be seen to hide when in my professional life I include the artichoke blog URL in my email signature.  When I suggest that ict_pd cluster teachers I work with read artichoke blog posts on relevant topics.  When I give my blog address to educators at conferences I present at.  When I send a permalink of the post to people concerned. When I email Artichoke commenters [who by commenting show that they are interested in the ideas not the identity of the blogger];and when I have asked that my presenters bio at ULearn06 be represented by the Artichoke blog del.icio.us tag cloud? 

I suspect that a call for me to identify my place in the hierarchies of eduspeak, on the grounds that what I blog post can be given credibility [can be judged as not furtive] is based on a need to embrace hierarchical values.  I adopted Artichoke because I wanted my writing to be judged on my confused, contrary, curmudgeonly thinking not on my gender, race, age or connection to a powerful institution etc. 

Over the years being Artichoke has not bothered my fellow bloggers - many of whom have been very comfortable commenting on, criticizing, and challenging Artichoke thinking without needing any online CV, I have far far more comments than I do posts. Every now and again bloggers like HeadspaceJ Blog Jeremy Hiebert will even celebrate what they read.

Bloggers interested in the issues in the identity you adopt when online may enjoy reading  Herring, S.C., Kouper, I., Scheidt, L.A., & Wright, E.L. (2004). Women and children last: The discursive construction of weblogs. In L.J. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and culture of weblogs. 

“…. public commentators on weblogs, including many bloggers themselves, collude in reproducing gender and age-based hierarchy in the blogosphere, demonstrating once again that even an open access technology—and high hopes for its use—cannot guarantee socially equitable outcomes in a society that continues to embrace hierarchical values.”

It seems that identity and credibility online is not as democratic as we might imagine, but the ethics of friendship trumps all.

The draft New Zealand Curriculum 2006 - A quodlibertarian response

The Magnet and I have been lucky on our latest Thelma and Louise road trip.– lucky that the vehicle that tail ended us on the Greenlane motorway exit ramp did not shunt us into the incoming traffic –lucky that the Magnet had a foot firmly planted on the brake pedal, lucky that the whiplash temporarily and not permanently put the Magnet’s back out,….lucky, so lucky, so very very lucky…

The Thelma and Louise road trips are the agony and ecstasy of my working week.  They are in truth what keep me human.  For two to three days of each week we travel around New Zealand – working with teachers and schools in the most remarkable of geographic and geologic settings. 

Working with ict cluster teachers at Omokoroa Point School on Friday allowed us, the agony of the second hand shops in Paeroa and Waihi [Magnets agony when we bypassed the shops in Paeroa and Arti’s agony when we stopped to look for a moment or twenty to browse frayed, chipped, worn out knackered stuff in Waihi]. 

And the ecstasy, well the ecstasy came between the agony and the agony, as ecstasy often does – the ecstasy came on the road between Paeroa and Waihi.

The ecstasy was in gawping, slack jawed open mouthed, in gobsmacking awe at the sheer sides of the Karangahake gorge – at the andesitic rocks formed from the results of violent upsurging and rupture of the crust 10 -12 million years ago. I tried to impress on the Magnet that experiencing a 10 to 12 million year old rock face meant that we did not need to indulge a predilection for second hand tat in Waihi but she proved particularly obdurate on this point.

Driving on State Highway 2 between Paeroa and Waihi – driving on roads rough hewn from the sheer face of the Karangahake Gorge as it drops into the surging rush of the Ohinemuri River are what allow me to eschew the continuing seductive call of the safer “freedom from” life of working for a salary within an edu_institution where I could spend the rest of my life waiting for a “freedom to” agony and ecstasy road trip. 

At Omokoroa Point, Rocky the cluster facilitator had asked us to explore teacher and student questioning – The release of the draft curriculum makes questioning very topical in New Zealand. I asked teachers to use different questioning frameworks to develop questions for the Hon Steve Maharey in response to his generalisation that a new curriculum approach was necessary because

“Students today are different from those of yesterday. They think and engage differently.” Hon Steve Maharey Minister of Education The New Zealand Curriculum Draft for consultation 2006

We got some great questions –The next challenge is to get Rocky to persuade the cluster teachers to post their best open closed, fat skinny,  5W and H, Weiderhold matrix, Jamie McKenzie Questioning Toolbox, de Bono hats, CoRT thinking, Witte Ignorance log, Harpaz Fertile question, Bloom’s taxonomy, Fogarty’s three storey intellect, and SOLO taxonomy questions online.

The New Zealand Curriculum Draft for consultation 2006: A scaffold for dissatisfaction and depression

“College students were more likely to write an extra credit essay and wrote better essays when they had six topics from which to choose than when they had 30 options.  The authors suggested several possible factors that may underlie this effect.  One is the avoidance of potential regret.  The more options there are the more likely it is one will make a non optimal choice, and this prospect undermines whatever pleasure one may get from one’s actual choice….. A` second factor that may make increased choice options unattractive is that they create a seemingly intractable information problem.  It is hard enough to gather the information and go through the deliberations needed to make the best choice among 6 options.  To choose the best among 30 options is truly daunting.  Therefore, rather than even try people may disengage, choosing almost arbitrarily to get the process over with.  Self-Determination. The Tyranny of Freedom. 2000 p86 Barry Schwartz. Swarthmore College.

The Magnet and I have spent the past few days working in South Canterbury schools, sleeping beside train tracks in Timaru, fighting off accusations that we were part of an ERO team at the pub, and admiring mountains of still frozen snow outside the school library in Geraldine.  All the time I have been teasing out the implications from Schwartz's thinking for the newly released attempt at “the world’s your oyster” New Zealand Curriculum Draft for Consultation 2006 – a document that valorises increasing freedom and choice in the curriculum.

“While the New Zealand Curriculum sets the national direction for learning for all students, each school will design and implement its own curriculum in ways that engage and motivate its particular students.  Schools have considerable freedom in deciding exactly how to do this.”  P26 The New Zealand Curriculum Draft for Consultation 2006 MoE 2006

“Freedom” and “reasoned choice” have enjoyed a “good thing” status in education for a while.  All of the educators I work with assume that being free to make choices increases our well being. But Schwartz’s article undermines this belief and encourages us to look again at the market forces behind this theoretical framework and our assumption that increasing the amount of choice is directly proportional to increasing well being.

“The plausibility of the theory of rational choice depends on the existence of markets and of money as a medium of exchange.” Schwartz (2000 p84)  Self Determination: The Tyranny of Freedom 

I was interested to see our current Minister of Education Hon Steve Maharey claim that the “market approach to education is a dead end” in the foreword to the MoE e Learning action plan for schools 2006-2010 Enabling the 21st Century Learner.  I agree – exploring what it is to be a human being cannot be easily represented through market models

But in his next breath he describes a “radical” approach that relies upon the market dependent notion of “human beings as perpetual choosers with all options open and all possibilities compared” He valorises individual decision making as a key approach to learning in New Zealand schools -

“Placing the learner at the centre of the education system (personalizing) is as radical a notion as that conceived by the first Labour Government.  Its about providing a flexible system where teachers schools communities and other groups can identify the needs of the learner and be provided with the tools and support to meet those needs within the broader curriculum.”  Steve Maharey Minister of Education June 2006

By tilting at individual choice Maharey introduces a tension into an education system that claims to value being a New Zealander - a national identity group belonging – those confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners we are always talking about - it introduces a tension because “belonging” only occurs when we rark down the individual to allow significant others to form a part of our sense of self. 

Providing for the diversity of individual choice may well undermine efforts to build belonging because the values and preferences of the group you belong to are in significant respects an important part of you and as such limit and restrain the choices you are able to make.

Ahh Arti’, surely you are not going to take on putting the learner at the centre, liberating the individual student through PLE, tilting at independence, autonomy, lifelong learning, independent student inquiry, - you’d have to be daft to challenge the rhetoric of self determination in education, you’d have to be dippy to dispute a school that purports to value the preferences and values of individuals, through multiple option lines and flexible timetabling or would you?

Perhaps not as dippy as you might think, Schwartz argues that the increasing focus on individual autonomy and control leads to increased expectations of control, which in turn take us away from a deep commitment and sense of belonging to social groups and institutions.  Leads us away from what it is to be human. 

When we have close relations with others our choices are limited by the need to accommodate others needs and desires.  We are constrained by being part of a collective not liberated – we are not free to think as an individual but we are happier and we are more human.

So why should we be wary of approaches that purport to increase choice in education?  Why should we be wary of wanting to have it all in education or for that matter in the spreads we smear on our toast and the way we like our eggs cooked at breakfast

Schwartz argues that after a certain point choices torment us.  So we are overwhelmed by choice of curriculum to implement, subject options to offer, research topics to complete, inquiry questions to ask.  We are swamped and made soggy by too many choices, because we must by definition lack the information and reasoning power to make rational decisions from unlimited options. 

And when we are overwhelmed by choice we disengage from the task, we make arbitrary decisions and then face a gnawing sense of regret that we have made the wrong choices.  This makes us increasingly unsatisfied and we blame ourselves for our failure.  Too many choices lead to “learned helplessness” – a lack of control over significant things, a characteristic style of causal explanation and ultimately to depression. 

Schwartz talks about the 285 brands of cookies, 75 iced teas, 175 salad dressings, 40 toothpastes in his local supermarket, the range of options on the menu at his local Chinese restaurant.  “We are given choices for just about everything, from retirement plans to college curricula. And I don't think this is good."  He points out that Americans have more freedom of choice than ever before, they are wealthier than any one ever, and yet they are sadder/ more depressed than anyone ever before.

He cites research showing reducing choice options in exotic jams and exotic chocolates led people to buy more and be happier with their options - some practical research in Geraldine helped validate this one.   

Offering even more choices in this “the world’s your oyster” New Zealand curriculum draft may not result in the educational wellbeing sought by its architects - too many choices will make New Zealand educators unhappy - we will regret options not chosen and lost opportunities, our expectations for further choice and control will get escalated, and then we will blame ourselves, or more likely the architects for our educational depression.

ULearn06: The breast, pussy and behind edu_game

Cj reminds us that when playing games in education – some games are more interesting than others.  I like games, and immediately want to ask cj- What games are available?  What do you reckon is the most interesting game to play?  What are your criteria for “interesting”?

But Cj’s not around so I’ve pondered this seriously by myself, for at least 30 seconds, and reckon the premier game in the landscapes of eduspeak is the “breast” “pussy” and “behind” edu_game.

“We must stay abreast with change – if we pussy foot we’ll all fall behind
I like the words “breast,” “pussy” and “behind”  Leunig

The "It’s a white out" Educational Gazette Volume 85 Number 7   8 May 2006 where the game play is described as “Interactive whiteboards have proved such a hit in Invercargill that every school in the city is getting one” qualifies as a "breast pussy behind" BPB game because despite the article’s outrageously anecdotal claims more serious researchers suggest

“There is insufficient evidence to identify the actual impact of such technologies (IWB) upon learning either in terms of classroom interaction or upon attainment and achievement.” Smith, Higgins, Wall and Miller (2005) Interactive whiteboards: boon or bandwagon? A Critical review of the literature.  Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 21 pp91-101

cj’s encouragement to seek out more interesting games means I have decided to advertise a “Breast, pussy and behind” (BPB) edu_safari to ULearn06 in Christchurch this year –

Since attempting to stay abreast with change sets us adrift in the unsteady swash of hot and wet hormonal seas – I have carefully scaffolded the safari (e) tourists challenges when observing the ULearn06 “breast pussy and behind” (BPB) game.  And I must acknowledge help from the BBC Science of Love site in the BPB safari programme design.

The first challenge for BPB tourists will be to locate ULearn06 educators with early indicators of Stage 1 the "techno lust" phase - flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, racing heart beats, erect nipples and clammy hands.  Predict the trade displays will be fertile and fecund territory for this.  I have asked BPB tourists to bring 1Gb memory cards because I’m predicting the challenge will be in finding file storage space rather than in finding techno lust fuelled registrants.

After techno lust which sees yearning educators (some times noted as “early adopters”) “out looking for anything (e)”, there comes the truly love struck educator in the “techno attraction phase”. 

Educators in Stage 2 - the “techno attraction” phase can think of nothing else but technology.  They loose their appetite and need less sleep, preferring to spend hours at a time daydreaming about their new lover.  They can achieve states of temporary insanity when pondering (e) learning. 

The ULearn06 tour party will be looking for educators in Goldhaber’s “intense attention as a species of enslavement” phase.  Educators enthralled/ enslaved  by technology -  educators where agency has dropped out and bewitchment taken over.  Reckon the ict_pd cluster and national facilitator presentations will be fertile and fecund territory for capturing gaunt and haunted looking educators showing this behaviour. (e) fellowship presentations may also prove profitable hunting grounds.

Stage 3 educators will be harder to locate.  The Stage 3 “techno attachment” phase takes over after the attraction stage.  Educators couldn't possibly stay in the attraction stage forever, otherwise they'd never get any work done and only be employable as (e) learning policy writers for the Ministry of Education.  Still I think some of the tour party will be up to the challenge in ferreting out examples of “techno attachment” educators.  Since vasopressin is an important chemical in this long term commitment phase it might be smart for the tour party to look for educators with a physical resemblance to the prairie vole.

Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for all the ULearn06 BPB safari tour party applications to flood in.

Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for all the ULearn06 BPB safari applications to arrive.

ow all I have to do is sit back and wait for all the ULearn06 BPB safari applications to arrive.

ow all I have to do is sit back and wait for all the ULearn06 BPB safari applications to arrive.