fox in sox all-stars

In case you need any inspiration this weekend :)

picture day (part 2)

This just in from #School:

hack to school night in review

What a great day.  Our Open-Source Learning Network jammed yesterday-- lots of people caught up on posts, found great books to read, and made plans for the weekend.  (If you're not one of those people, the long weekend is a great opportunity to catch up!)

I drove home, ran a few miles on a beautiful trail, hit the gym, ran home, got cleaned up and came back to school, where I met some really wonderful, caring, enthusiastic families who support our success.  If you and/or your family came to school, thank you.  If you didn't, I hope that you share your learning journey with people who care about you.  See you in class!

august 30

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "Time" by Pink Floyd]

How do you feel when you have LESS time than you thought to complete a task?  Inspired?  Motivated?  Stressed?  Please explain.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Wrap up the week / prepare and post anything you haven't yet

HW:
Begin reading your Literature Analysis #1 book and post your first impressions on your blog (title: THE FIRST 50 PAGES).  This should be published and visible on your blog by the time you arrive to class on Tuesday, September 3.

a 7 year-old can pass this course

(Originally posted 8.24.16)

Today I'm home with my daughter.  So what am I up to?

Playing Legos and making chili con carne.

I have also been posting to the course blogs and answering emails from students.  Earlier my daughter was looking over my shoulder and saw the picture of her fish.  She read the post and cracked up (I already told her the story at dinner, but she didn't know it was online: "Daddy, you TWEETED that?")

When she saw the post my daughter noticed something else on the blog.  "Daddy," she said, "Why did you type that you never learned to read?"  I explained the reading assessment idea and showed her the video of me reading Fox in Sox. We had just finished a conversation about how learning should always be fun, even in school.  "Hey," she said.  "I can do that."

I answered with a smile: "Yeah? Prove it."

So she did.  And check out the look she gives me at 0:09 when she pronounces Dr. Seuss' name correctly.





Do your homework. For the grading period I may just make it simple: can you do what a 7 year-old can do? And the most important thing in this video and this post is what she DOESN'T do.

She doesn't get distracted by the dishwasher. She doesn't even look up when the timer goes off. And she never, ever, EVER gives up.

literature analysis sign up

literature analysis #1 sign-up

Please comment to this post with the book and author you chose.  Mahalo.

hack to school night

(my t-shirt from OSCON)


To be clear: the word hack has been associated with definitions ("sharp cough, "cut with unskillful blows," & "illegal/unauthorized computer access," e.g.) that do not describe what we do.

We make connections and facilitate conversations that help people learn.   We build, analyze,  evaluate and modify tools and working conditions to make them better.

You know how they say, "[So'n'so] just can't hack it?" Well, maybe [So'n'so] can't.  We can.

So, at Back-- er, Hack to School night tonight (8/29), we are at it again. Get here whenever you can. Bring whoever you want. Offer them the benefit of what you know and find a way to learn from them too. Share new ideas about technology and how you can use it to get ahead in life.

Here is the program:
1. Learner-led conference (see below)
2. Periodic "Intro to OSL" presentations
3. Sign-ups for "friend of the course" events and "digital drop-in" nights

Here is the process:
1. Think about these questions and your answers to them;
2. Bring someone who cares to Hack to School Night;
3. Have them ask you these questions, be suitably brilliant in your replies, and demand that they take notes so that you know they're paying attention;
4. Turn in their notes to me, get your extra credit, listen to me brag about you briefly;
5. Go home and finish your homework.

Here are the questions:
1. What is this class about?
2. What is the easiest part of this class?
3. What is the hardest part of this class?
4. What have you learned so far?
5. What is your Big Question?

august 29

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "My Old School" by Steely Dan; "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon]

Are you going to Back to School Night tonight?  Are your parents?  Why/why not?  Describe your team -- who are the people who support your academic success?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Hack to School Night
3. How we read
4. Literature analysis

POST:
1. Answer the Hack to School questions (whether you plan on going or not/ title: HACK TO SCHOOL)
2. Describe your reading experience and preferences (title: HOW I READ)
3. Your Fox in Sox video (title: THIS BOOK IS DANGEROUS/ due Tuesday, September 3)

august 28

JOURNAL TOPIC:
[Choose your own topic.]  Today you can write about whatever is on your mind.  If you need suggestions please ask Ms. Anderson (she's a writer!).

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. You know all that stuff you didn't do yet from the first two weeks?  Do it now.

POST/HW:
You know that stuff that you didn't finish in class today?  Do it now.

literature analysis questions #1

Here are the initial questions for your literature analysis.  When you read your first novel, post your answers to these questions on your blog (title: LITERATURE ANALYSIS: [TITLE OF BOOK]). 

We will refine this list and add to it after reading the first round of each others' analyses.

1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel.
2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel.  Avoid cliches.  
3. Based on the author's tone, describe how you imagine the author's morning routine.  Does s/he get up early or sleep late?  Coffee, tea, or no caffeine?  Yoga/meditation/exercise?  Groggily stumble to the toilet and wish s/he wasn't so hungover?  Breakfast?  If so, what kind of food?  No, I am not kidding.  There is no shortcut for this, only your own imaginative thinking based on how you read his/her work and interpret his/her tone.  Include no fewer than three (3) excerpts from the text that illustrate your points.
4. Describe five (5) literary techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the theme and/or your sense of the tone.  These techniques may include characterization, figurative language, or anything else you've ever studied.  If you can't come up with five, do your best to remember and then look up "literary techniques" online and see if something rings a bell.  Include three (3) excerpts for each technique that will help your reader understand the technique and how it helped you gain insight.

august 27

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "You Talk Too Much" by Run-D.M.C.; "Communication Breakdown" by Led Zeppelin]

So many phrases say the same thing: Talk is cheap. A picture's worth a thousand words. It's not what you said, it's how you said it. Since words are so easy to create we tend to mistrust them. We use our intuition to "read between the lines" and determine what someone really means.  Describe how we listen, read, and learn without depending on words.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Vocab Q & A
3. Big Question: Next steps
4. Literature Analysis/ find a novel by this Friday (8/30)
5. "Conscience of a Hacker"

POST:
How does "The Mentor's" use of diction, syntax, and tone effectively convey his message? (title: COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES OF A HACKER)

this fish is smarter than me

I will never understand this. Yesterday I cleaned my daughter's fish tank. I caught all the fish in a small net to put them in a baggie while I siphoned out a third of the tank, cleaned all the algae off the glass, and put in new water with a couple chemicals. Simple.

Not simple.

One fish eluded the net. This one.

"OK," I thought as I came back to the tank. "Fine.  Be too quick for me. I'll just clean the tank with you in it."


But when I returned from putting the other fish in the bathroom, he was nowhere to be found.It's a small tank. With glass sides.  Multi-colored rocks, a bubbler, a shell and a fake coral-looking thing on the bottom. That's it. As you can see, this fish is the color of an emergency crew jacket. Shouldn't be too hard to find. I even looked on the floor.

Gone.

I was totally confused for the entire 45 minutes it took me to clean the tank, replace the filter, change the water, and wait for the chemicals to filter through. Then I put the other fish back in.

And had my mind blown.

The fish was back in the tank.

Sure, I could joke about fish magic, or that dimension where the other sock sometimes goes, or Hamlet's will-puzzling undiscovered country, but this is for real. 

I don't know how he did it.

Thank goodness I had a witness or this would all sound nuts.  Ms. H was in the house and saw the mystery for herself.  He was really gone, and then he was really back.

That is one smart - or otherworldly - fish.

about this blog, your health & success in this course

Part of the reason I use a blog instead of a website is that a blog is more personal, more journalistic, and more likely to create opportunities for conversation. When we meet in person, each day's agenda and works-in-progress are documented here. But in-class interaction is limited in time and space, and learning happens everywhere all the time, so even though we only had something like 185 days of class last year, there were 398 posts to the course blog. I frequently create posts like this to raise issues and/or invite discussion; feel free to comment and begin a conversation thread by contributing an idea, resource/link or question.

We all get a lot of information from a lot of different sources-- and some of it is worth passing along. I'll post items about college, financial aid, study/learning strategies and resources, and occasionally random stuff like an eight-year-old girl who builds rockets or a guy playing piano for elephants in the middle of a jungle.  Just now I ran across this article about young people finding yet another substance to give them an achievement "edge." I find this terribly depressing. What is it about [products/substances/things we can buy] that make us believe they can solve our problems more effectively than we can? For the record, the only substances that will help you in this course of inquiry are: water, clean proteins, fats and carbohydrates in moderate proportions every few hours. And the super-secret bonus ingredients? SLEEP & EXERCISE!

We live in a culture that emphasizes shortcuts: don't believe the hype. Every athlete or intellectual/professional at the top of her game is a living testimony to a simple equation: [Passion] + [Diligence] = [Excellence]  If you've ever loved doing something enough to completely lose track of time, you're already familiar with the idea of flow.  If the idea is new to you, I hope you can discover something through this course that will lead you to it.  I'll give you some ideas to get you started.  Your Big Question is also an open door.

Grantland Rice gave us the idea, "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game."  He also wrote a verse called "How to be a Champion" that Coach Wooden used to quote all the time:  

You wonder how they do it, 
You look to see the knack, 
You watch the foot in action,
Or the shoulder or the back. 
But when you spot the answer 
Where the glamours lurk, 
You’ll find in moving higher 
Up the laurel-covered spire, 
That most of it is practice, 
And the rest of it is work.

You're about to have a lot of work to do, and there is no way out but Through. This doesn't have to be a bad thing or a stressful burden. In the first couple of weeks we'll talk about balancing your academic and extra-curricular obligations as you prepare for life after high school. In the meantime, please feel free to comment to this post with any ideas, questions, concerns or observations about these topics.  

Sapere Aude.

august 26 questionnaire

On a (full-sized) sheet of notebook paper (without all that spiral strand stuff attached), please write:

• Your name and class period in the upper right-hand corner
• Answers to the following five questions:

1. What is your personal contact email and mobile phone number?
2. Why are you taking this course?
3. What do you hope to get from this course? (What do you want to improve, or accomplish?)
4. What letter grade do you hope to achieve at the first progress report, and at the end of the semester?
5. Please describe something peculiar* about yourself.  (*interesting, private, but not scandalous - I'll give examples in class)

august 26

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "Wake Up" by Rage Against the Machine; "Games Without Frontiers" by Peter Gabriel]
The word hack has been associated with definitions ("sharp cough, "cut with unskillful blows," & "illegal/unauthorized computer access," e.g.) that do not describe what we do.

We make connections and facilitate conversations that help people learn.   We build, analyze,  evaluate and modify tools and working conditions to make them better.

Describe something -- a habit, an assignment, a machine, a relationship-- that you can hack today in order to make it better.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Please Note: if you have not posted either "Richard Cory" or "The Laughing Heart" on your blog, you are behind

**because we missed each other on Friday, I'm inclined to substitute the game we would have played for 3 & 4 -- this will mean a bit more work on your own time tomorrow afternoon/evening, so let's make a decision together in class **

3. Vocabulary
4. "Conscience of a Hacker"


POST:
Your initial response to "Conscience of a Hacker" (title: CONSCIENCE OF A HACKER)

today's class ain't happening

We will not meet today because the school demands you stand around on a field and yell.  Apparently this builds something important.  Have fun (?) and I'll see you Monday.  In the meantime, feel free to explain the benefits of the event in a comment to this post.

read a book you love

...even if you've read it before.  I've been saying this for years, and it's nice to see someone agree.  You can read the full story here.

august 23

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "The People in Your Neighborhood" written by Jeff Moss & performed by Bob and the Anything Muppets/Sesame Street; "Won't You Be My Neighbor" written and performed by (Mister) Fred Rogers]

How well do you know your neighbors?  Members of your community?  School?  The people in this class?  Does knowing people well change your experience of this environment?  How?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Ubuntu & interdependence
3. #TreasureHunt
4. Wrapping up the week

POST:
Write about the importance of knowing the people around you and describe today's class experience (title: GETTING TO KNOW YOU)

our vocabulary

Using the word vocabulary is a lot like using the word diet.  Although some people think of a diet as specialized, really the word just means what you eat every day.  If you eat junk food, your diet consists of junk food.  Whatever words you use in your conversations and your writing, that's your vocabulary.

At the same time, it's true that paying special attention to your diet will probably lead you to make different choices about what you spend money on and put in your face.  A person who drives a Ferrari doesn't put sugar in the gas tank -- that would ruin the engine!  A person who drives a Ferrari puts the best fuel in the machine so that it performs the way it's supposed to.

So it goes with your speaking and writing.  When you speak or write, especially for a professional or academic audience, you want to use the words that get the best results.  You want to be understood, so you need the best tools for the job.

Since we met last Monday, we've used a few terms that are specialized for the study of literature or the use of the internet.  You've also heard and read a few words that may not be familiar from everyday life.  Together, we will build a list of words that are new and/or important to understand, and at the end of the semester we will make sure that we understand them ourselves.

To begin, please comment to this post with any words you've heard in this class that are: new, unfamiliar, specific to literature, specific to culture/technology, or memorable for any other reason.  If you have a reason, definition, or example, please include that too, but if not, just the word is enough.

Here's one of my favorites, and it's not even English: Mahalo. -dp

august 22

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "Question" by The Moody Blues]
Why do people ask fewer questions as they grow older?  What question/s would you ask, if you had more [time/freedom/motivation/money]?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. What is Your Big Question?
3. Comment to the post
4. Our Vocabulary
5. Comment to the post

POST:
1. Reflect on class today and post your thoughts/notes (title: TODAY I ASKED A QUESTION)

HW:
Memorize/recite/post your video of "The Laughing Heart"

results

Sometimes it seems like the results of learning are far off in our future.  Well, rest assured: your future will come soon enough.

Just this morning I received messages from two former students.  It feels like just yesterday we were in class together. 

This is what success looks like:

what's your big question?

Our minds are naturally inclined toward associative and interdisciplinary thinking.  We connect the dots in all sorts of ways, often when we don't fully comprehend the experience (and sometimes when there aren't even any dots).  

We have questions about the nature of the world: our experience of it, our place in it, our relationship to it, what lies beyond it, and everything else.  When we're young we ask questions all the time.  We are insatiably curious.  It's like somehow we intuitively understand that the more we learn the better we get at everything--including learning.  We don't worry about curricular units or standards.  We have no test anxiety.  We test ourselves all the time.  We love risk and we don't care if we fail.  It's always somebody else who's saying, "Hey, come down from there, you're going to get hurt!"* [*Often, they're right.  In any case they're probably more experienced in estimating the odds of that was fun didn't hurt vs. itchy leg cast for a month outcomes.  But sometimes you just KNOW you can do it and it's frustrating to be told you can't.  Pushing the edge is what learning is all about.** {**As a teacher/responsible adult I must explicitly remind you to do this (i.e., learn/push the edge/create new neural pathways in your brain that actually change your mind) in ways that will not break laws or harm any sentient beings-- most especially you-- or offend, irritate, annoy, upset, or anger your parents.***} <***If you think this is a lot of footnotes, or whatever we're calling the blogger's equivalent, you should read David Foster Wallace (especially Infinite Jest).  In fact, this is the perfect time for you to consider his commencement speech (which doesn't contain footnotes, but does contain the sort of wisdom that more people should hear while there's still time to do something about it.).  At any rate, if you're still following this sentence you'll do fine in this course.>}]  Not only do we love climbing learning limbs when we're young, we know it's what we're best at.  Most of us learn whole languages best between the ages of 5-12.  Our amazing brains manage the torrential inflow by creating schema. 

august 21

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "Life is Life" by Noah and the Whale; "Golden Slumbers" by The Beatles]  According to author Salman Rushdie, "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep."  Do you agree?  To what extent does Bukowski accomplish these goals in "The Laughing Heart"?

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/salmanrush107281.html

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/salmanrush107281.html

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. The purpose/s of language
3. Poetry-as-argument
4. Argument-as-search-for-truth
5. Why you are not entitled to your own opinion

HW:
1. Memorize and recite Bukowski
2. Finish reading/analyzing "The Right To Your Opinion"
3. Catch up on anything you're missing/ help a friend catch up

POST:
1. Anything you haven't yet.
2. A paragraph explaining to readers why no one is "entitled" to an opinion (title: YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO YOUR OPINION)

the latest dumb idea that turns out to be a REALLY dumb idea

“This is the headline we’ve been trying to prevent,” Joseph Allen, an environmental health scientist at Harvard University, told Popular Science. Allen is a co-author of a study published earlier this year that found fungi and bacteria in some popular brands of e-cigarette liquid. Allen also warned that flavors in vapes that may be safely ingested through the digestive tract aren’t tested for safety when aerosolized and inhaled.

“When you have millions of kids inhaling this cocktail of chemicals that were never tested for inhalation safety, this type of headline is predictable, and also avoidable,” Allen said.

You can read the full article HERE.

august 20

JOURNAL TOPIC:
A famous comedian once observed, "It seems like all the things I thought were good for me turned out to be bad for me, like red meat... and school."  Describe something that you once thought of as a good idea and then changed your mind about once you learned more.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Blog audit
2. Socratic seminar (part 2) / focus: "The Right to Your Opinion"

POST:
1. Your notes from today's Socratic seminar (title: A SECOND HELPING OF SOCRATIC SEMINAR)
2. Your perspective on the reading and the argument (title: I AM NOT [?] ENTITLED TO MY OPINION)
3. An explanation of how using one or more of the memorization strategies we discussed helped you learn "Richard Cory" (title: NOW I REMEMBER)

walking the walk

Today I asked everyone to post notes on our Socratic seminar, so here are some of mine:

• Socrates was an educator who asked a lot of questions
• Argument isn't a competition or a conflict; it is a search for truth
• Love is a popular theme in art because it is mysterious
• We're interested in love because we want someone special for ourselves
• We suffer from dishonesty and mistrust
• Love is understanding
• Why is love such a human trait?  Why do we associate love with being human?
• It's one of the first feelings we feel when we're born
• It's closely associated with hurt
• Sometimes people fail at love because they're in it for the wrong reasons, like not wanting to be alone, instead of wanting a genuine connection with another person
• Loving requires vulnerability
• Question: Can you love someone but still hurt them? (Consensus answer: Yes)
• Do you love someone if you act against them and cheat on them?  
• Some people think that it's the sexual cheating that counts, but it's really more emotional

august 19

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "Si Tú No Estás Aquí" by Rosana]

Why is love such an important theme in music, poetry, short stories, novels, and movies?  There are so many works of art dedicated to the topic, and yet, in real life there are so many bad breakup and divorce stories.  Why are people so interested in love -- and so often, so bad at loving?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Quiz
3. Socratic seminar (part 1)

POST:
Your notes from today's Socratic seminar (title: A SOCRATIC SEMINAR)

tomorrow there will be a quiz

I'm curious to know who's reading this blog and when.  So, here's an announcement.  Tomorrow there will be a quiz.  The quiz will contain one question.  The correct answer is 42.  See you in class.

put a creative commons license on your blog

This week we're going to talk about creative inspiration and collaboration and how writers get ideas.

As you probably know, the internet has made it easier than ever to find and use others' work as we create our own.  It's important to understand what is available for free, and what we have to license and/or pay for.  So, we will also talk about intellectual property and who owns what in the digital world.

For Monday, please post a Creative Commons license on your blog.  You can do this easily:
1. Open the Blogger dashboard
2. Open the Layout page
3. Click the blue +Add a Gadget box (mine is in the sidebar-right-1 section); this will open another window with a list of gadgets
4. Click the blue/white plus sign next to HTML/ Javascript; this will lead you to a screen that looks like a blog post, with spaces for the title and content
5. You can leave the title empty
6. Paste the code below into the content box

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>.

7. Click 'Save'

When we meet, I'll explain more about Creative Commons and this particular license.  Each of you can then decide whether to keep this license or to change the permissions you want to share with the people who see your work.

how to get youtube embed code on an android

Some of you have had challenges getting the embed code from YouTube so that you can post it on your blogs.  I just did some research and figured it out!

Check out this website for more information:

http://www.tomsguide.com/faq/id-2327797/embed-youtube-video-website-android-smartphone.html

how to get youtube embed code on an iphone

To show this one, I'm embedding a video from my iphone!  But, to tell the truth, I only watched the first few seconds of this video, so please comment to this post and let me know if it helps.

week 1 by the numbers

"Figures don't lie, but liars figure." 

-Mark Twain

"I shall try not to use statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts, for support rather than illumination." 

-Andrew Lang

Do you remember Shane Battier?  Unless you're a passionate basketball historian and/or a statistics geek, probably not.  Battier played basketball at Duke University and went on to play for several NBA teams, but he was never a leader in scoring, or rebounding, or assists-- in fact, none of his statistics were all that impressive.  Still, Duke won a national championship with Battier.  The Miami Heat won a championship with Battier.  Twice.  In fact, Battier is the only player in NBA history to be part of two 20-game winning streaks, on two different teams (the Heat and the Houston Rockets).

So how come Shane Battier was not considered a superstar?  Battier himself said, "They (other players) think of me as some chump."  According to a 2009 article in the New York Times, "Here we have a mystery: a player is widely regarded inside the NBA as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars.  And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win."

What's the deal with this guy?

It turns out that Battier did a lot of things that are essential in basketball.  He instinctively ran to the empty spaces to balance the court and get high-percentage shots.  He almost always got a hand up in a shooter's face.  He stripped the ball from a shooter's hands on the way up for a shot.  When shots went up, he boxed out the other team's best rebounder -- even when he wasn't guarding that player.

The question we should be asking is: Why didn't more people immediately recognize and reward Battier's actions?  What's the deal with basketball statistics?  Everything Battier did was visible (if you knew what to look for), describable, and measurable -- so why didn't they count in the box score?

Many students do things every day that don't get recorded in their academic records.  You help a classmate with his homework.  You ask the question in class that everyone secretly wanted to ask because the teacher's explanation made no sense.  These actions are important-- they help you learn and they help the people around you learn.  People see your efforts and benefit from them.  But it still doesn't help your G.P.A.

We tend count the things that are easiest to describe and measure.  It's easy to count a player's point total or how many free throws she attempted.  But nowhere in a traditional box score will you see a statistic for diving out of bounds, or separating your team captain from the referee just before she gets a technical foul, or a thousand other discrete actions that contribute to a team's success.

This has changed in recent years.  Many professional and amateur sports have developed different analytics to better understand their games and make decisions that support success.  Baseball made such a science and an art out of analyzing data that there's even a movie about it starring Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt.  As an early innovator in "moneyball", baseball executive Theo Epstein was credited with using data and evidence-based analytics, including lots and lots of computer-crunched statistics, to guide the Boston Red Sox to a World Series Championship in 2004 (their first since 1918) and the Chicago Cubs to a World Series Championship in 2016 (their first since 1908).  Baseball has gone so far to adopt new categories of statistics to analyze player performance.  New stats such as Wins Above Replacement, On-Base Plus Slugging, and a heap of sabermetrics help managers and team executives decide everything from which players they need to where to place their fielders for a specific pitch.

Analyzing data can certainly give us insight.  However, numbers -- no matter how cleverly they are arranged and described -- don't do a very good job of helping us understand intangible things like curiosity, or creativity, or passion, or resilience.  After a graduation speech he gave at Yale, Theo Epstein himself put it this way:

"One of the great ironies of the digital information age is there is so much information out there, so much data, so many statistics, that it's easy to attempt to precisely quantify a player's contribution. But you can never really quantify a human being, can't really quantify character, and that stuff does matter, especially in a group situation where players really do have an impact on one another. … I still think data is important; it can give you some empirical facts about a player. Objectivity is important, but you have to combine it with an understanding of the player as a human being. Chemistry is really hard to pinpoint. It's really hard to discern the magic formula.

So what do the lessons of Shane Battier and Theo Epstein have to do with how we evaluate the learning performance of K-12 students?

In school, we tend to count the things that are easy to count.  Usually this boils down to completed work and fractions consisting of right answers over total answers that we can convert into percentages for the sake of grading and comparing people.  It's easy to count the number of paragraphs a student creates and measure that against a five-paragraph essay assignment, but apart from following instructions, this indicator is so superficial that it's nearly meaningless.

This is a problem.  Statistics -- in schools, this means test scores -- are poorly understood and frequently used to persuade unsuspecting customers, voters, and others.  The things that are easiest to count, such as a baseball player's batting average or the number of points a basketball player scores, or even a student's answers on a test, is a poor indicator of that person's talent, effort, character, future performance, or fit with a organization's culture or "team chemistry."

The number of items a student answers correctly on a test tells us nothing about how she thinks, or how well she's learning, or how well she can apply the knowledge from the test to something meaningful in her life, or how well she can solve problems, or see opportunities, or... you get the idea.

It's worth taking a moment to ask: What can we tell from a correct multiple choice answer on a test?

Only that the student colored in a particular bubble or made a circle around a particular letter.

We have no idea WHY the student answered this way.  Maybe the student knew the correct answer and selected it with confidence.  Maybe the student had a pretty good idea and guessed correctly.  Maybe the student had no clue and got lucky.  Maybe the student read everything wrong and selected the right answer for the wrong reasons.  Maybe the student was bored out of her mind and was taking a mental vacation on a beach somewhere while she doodled the same answer for every question down the whole column on the answer sheet. 

Most tests don't offer much in the way of insight or progress over time because they are summative, i.e., students can't take them again with the benefit of additional instruction or practice.  Putting these sorts of test scores together is just a string of moments without any thread to connect them.  This practice makes it easy to create a semester grade online, but it seems woefully inadequate to authentically describe anything about learners or the work we do to improve.

That's the problem with statistics and learning.  Here's the solution.  On the first day, our learning community decided to adopt Open-Source Learning principles to guide our practices this year.  We decided to run the course openly and curate our learning journeys online. 

Since we Open-Source Learners use a variety of digital media to tell our stories, we create a mountain of data in the process.  This includes both quantitative data (things we can count, like how much we post/write/comment) and qualitative data (things that are not numerically describable, like how well Jeronimo recited "Richard Cory" from memory in class).  Let's begin thinking about elements of reading, writing, literature, Mental Fitness, Physical Fitness, Civic Fitness, Spiritual Fitness, and Technical Fitness are important enough for us to evaluate (both quantitatively and qualitatively) as we move forward.

To start the conversation, here are some numbers from our first week.  Have a close look and please let me know what (if anything) you think they mean by commenting to this post.  What matters in evaluating performance?  What numbers should we look at, in momentary snapshots and/or over time?  What qualitative data should we consider?  Looking forward to your thoughts.

Course blogs: 2
Members with blogs listed on the Member Blog pages: 167
Members without blogs listed on the Member Blog pages: 10
Members without blogs listed on the Member Blogs pages who haven't been absent at least 2 days: 2
(Can't wait for Monday to ask Maira Gonzalez & Jesse Ruiz how I can help them.)
Total (attending & non-attending) student participation: 94%
Total (attending) student participation: 99%
Course blog page views during first week: 3436
Course blog posts: 33
Course blog comments: 78
Course blog followers: 40

pure awesome

Here's Jeronimo reciting the poem in class this morning:

back to school night

[NOTE: We are going to transform this into "Hack to School Night" -- watch for a post late next week.]

2019_08_16_08_06_09 by dpreston1441 on Scribd

august 16

JOURNAL TOPIC: ("My Back Pages" by Bob Dylan/ covered by The Byrds)

Why is it that so many young people want to be older, and so many older people want to be young? How do you feel about your age? Be sure to explain your answer.

1. Journal/ TURN IN
2. Work day:

• Finish any leftover journals for the week
• Make sure your name/blog URL info in "Member Blogs" page is accurate
• Make sure you've commented to course blog 
• Make sure your blog has following posts:
• Welcome
• Video of "Richard Cory"
• Response to "The Socratic Method"
• Response to "The Right to Your Opinion"
• If you've finished everything and you're satisfied/confident, you can spend some time designing your blog.  Add features, graphics, and anything else that you think will make it more interesting and fun for your audience.

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Next week we will discuss and use what you've learned so far.  We will have a Socratic seminar (topics: remix/creative commons; socratic method; right to your opinion; "Richard Cory"), we will discuss fair use on the internet, you will license your blogs, and we will get into some student-written literature.  We will also explore the power of the question, and I will ask you to consider a Big Question you want to pursue this year.  (If you'd like to learn about this ahead of time, you can see some former students' ideas HERE.)  Have a great weekend! -dp

august 15

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: Fela Kuti's "Teacher Don't Teach Me No Nonsense"]

What qualities of a book make you interested to read it?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
* A word about blog features

2. The Right to Your Opinion (intro/ post a response on your blog)
3. "Richard Cory" LIVE: shift, voice, theme, genre
5. Plan on reading

HW:
1. For Monday: "The Socratic Method" & "The Right to Your Opinion" & "Richard Cory"
2. Blog posts: Welcome message and responses to readings

• Title: SOCRATIC METHOD
• Title: THE RIGHT TO YOUR OPINION

(UPDATE: Your response to the reading is up to you.  I just want to know you read each text enough to form a first impression, ask a question, express an opinion, and post to your blog.  I will use what I see on your blogs to launch our classroom conversations on Monday.)

how to create a blog post

*Before you begin, ask yourself what kind of tone you want to set for people reading your blog.  This is going to be your one and only chance to create a first impression, so try to imagine how people will perceive what you write.  Take a(nother?) look at the first post on this blog for an example.* 

1. Go to your Blogger Dashboard
2. Click on "Create New Post" (orange box with the pencil icon)
3. Give your post a title
4. Write your post & include any pictures, videos or links you want us to see
5. Proofread!
6. Publish your post and make sure you like the way it looks
7. Sit back, relax, and enjoy that sweet, sweet feeling of success

august 14

JOURNAL TOPIC: (today's tunes: "Move on Up" by Curtis Mayfield)

Hunter S. Thompson observed, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."  How do you respond to challenges that arise from circumstances you didn't predict?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Your blog status
3. Quiz
4. A strength program for your memory
5. Memory exercise

HW:
1. Finish memorizing "Richard Cory"
2. Skim "The Socratic Method"

OPTION/POST:
Read "Train Your Brain Like a Memory Champion" & write a post for your blog with your reaction to the article (title: TRAINING LIKE A MEMORY CHAMPION)

create your blog

Right now you're probably using the internet to connect on social media platforms like FaceBook, YouTube, Instagram or Snapchat. If you've used the internet for school, you're probably operating in a "walled garden" like OneDrive on the school-issued tablets.  The problem with social media is that most of you haven't yet learned digital branding or security-- that's not your fault, but it can be your problem if you don't understand who owns or uses the content you create.  One problem with walled gardens is that you don't own your work, and no one outside the garden-- like employers, college admissions officers, and scholarship judges-- can see your work, any more than they can walk into your classroom and see how well you take a test or answer a question.

Spoiler: if you're not telling your own story online, you can bet that someone else is.  It's time to learn how to present yourself in the way you want to be seen, so that your work creates value and opportunities for you.  In the old days, you'd write an essay that one person would see, mark up, and return to you privately.  Now you can write online and get feedback that will actually help you, while your progress and your ideas impress everyone who sees it.

In this course you will create an online presence.  

See the Member Blogs page tab just below the title image?  That is where we will maintain a directory of everyone's blog. (You can get an idea from last year's classes here.)  If you're already familiar with social media and blogging, and you feeling comfortable diving in, go ahead and use Blogger, WordPress, Postach.io, Tumblr, or whatever platform you think will most effectively help you tell your learning story. 

This blog was created on Blogger, which I recommend because it's quick to set up, it works well with gmail and all things Google, and it's easy to customize.  Go to blogger dot com and get started in class today.  You can name your blog anything you like (I'm a fan of alliteration, e.g., "Isaiah's Ideas" or "Alicia's Academy") and you can change it later if you get a better idea.  For the URL, please use this formula: [first initial] [last name] [smhs] [21].  For example, Jayleen Chavez would use the URL jchavezsmhs21.blogspot.com (Blogger will fill in the last part automatically).

Once you have your blog set up, go to your blog online to double-check that the URL works and your blog is visible.  Then, please copy/paste your URL and email it to me at dpreston.learning@gmail.com.

If you're new to this, or you need help, or if any of this makes you nervous, let's talk.  We can do this in class during the first week of school, or if you don't want to live in suspense you can email me anytime at dpreston.learning@gmail.com.  Mahalo.

pro tip

Now that we've decided to operate as an Open-Source Learning Network, it's time to start thinking about how we can make this experience work to our advantage.  As we move forward, I'll share some ideas that students have created in the past.  Please feel free to use what works for you and ignore what doesn't.

As you can see from the course blog so far, there is going to be a LOT of information here.  Sometimes that can make things difficult to find.  A few years ago when I taught AP Lit Comp, students decided to create a resource to make things easier.  It looked like this:

Please feel free to start thinking about tools and strategies that you can develop to "hack" the course and make it easier for you to navigate.  I'm here if you have questions or need help. -dp

august 13

JOURNAL TOPIC:
Describe your most memorable moment from this class yesterday.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Blogs
3. "Richard Cory" & memorization
4. Preview "The Socratic Method"

HW:
1. Email Dr. Preston with: a) confirmation of your name in the Member Blogs roster; your class period; and 3) your blog's URL.  If you run into any challenges please let me know.
2. Get a spiral notebook or a composition book and bring it to class tomorrow.
3. Get your "Richard Cory" on
4. Be ready to discuss the Socratic Method in class on Thursday

will this blog see tomorrow?

It's an open question.  Think about our first in-class discussion, ask yourself what you really want out of this semester, and then comment to this post with your decision and at least one reason for it.  (NOTE: As Benjamin Franklin famously observed, "We all hang together or we all hang separately." We won't move forward unless all of us participate.) 

I've created an approach to learning in which students use 2.0 tools to create their online identities, express themselves, and show the public what they can do. 

I call the model Open Source Learning and I define it with a mouthful: "A guided learning process that combines timeless best practices with today's tools in a way that empowers learners to create interdisciplinary paths of inquiry, communities of interest and critique, and a portfolio of knowledge capital that is directly transferable to the marketplace."

Students use Open Source Learning to create a wild variety of personal goals, Big Questions, Collaborative Working Groups, and online portfolios of work that they can use for personal curiosity, self-improvement, or as a competitive advantage in applying for jobs, scholarships, and admission to colleges and universities.  You can see a sample course blog here, some member blogs here, and sample masterpieces here and here. 

Several members of the first Open Source Learning cohort made this video about the experience:



In an era when it seems like all you hear about school is how much it sucks, it's nice to see student achievement make positive waves.  Check out this Open Source Learning interview with students and Howard Rheingold, the man who literally wrote the book on The Virtual Community 20 years ago. 

The defining characteristic of Open Source Learning is that there is no chief; all of us are members of a network that is constantly evolving.  Another key element is transparency.  What we learn and how well we learn it, how we respond to setbacks, and even some of our favorite inspirations and habits of mind are right out there in public for everyone to see.  Readers will rightly perceive what we curate as the best we have to offer.

And all this is Open.  In thermodynamics, an open system exchanges substance, not just light and heat.  To us, the important idea is that the network can change in composition and purpose.  Every time you meet someone new and exchange ideas, you're not only enriching each other, you're changing your minds and contributing opportunities for others to do the same.  In other words, you're learning and teaching* (*one of the most effective ways to learn).

We're not limited to one source for curriculum or instruction.  We have a full slate of online conferences scheduled this year including authors, authorities on the Internet and social media, entrepreneurs, and others.  A few years ago a mother/daughter team presented a lesson on class distinctions in Dickens & Dr. Seuss online.  Ricky Luna invited a champion drummer to talk with students online about music and its connections to literature and life.  If we read something that makes an impression we can reach out to the author.    As you get the hang of this you'll come up with your own ideas.  Testing them will give you a better sense of how to use the experience to your greatest advantage.

No one knows how learning actually works--what IS that little voice that tells you what you should've said 15 minutes after you should've said it?  How does a subneuronal lightning storm somehow account for our experience of being conscious?  We are not sure how to account for the individual experience and demonstration of learning.  We are also not sure what exactly the individual should be learning about at a time when factoids are a search click away and the economy, the environment, and the future are all increasingly complex and uncertain.

Maybe this is why learning still seems magical.  Maybe it shouldn't be.  Maybe if we learned more about how we think we'd be better off.  After all, how we think is a powerful influence on how we act.  If you think of your blog work as a list of traditional school assignments/chores, you will treat it that way and it will show.   Your friends will miss your posts and worry that you've moved to The House Beyond the Internet-- or that you're still at your place but trapped under something heavy.  At any rate you'll be missing the whole point.  This work should help you connect the dots between the interests that drive you, an academic course that derives its title from words hardly anyone uses in casual conversation, and practical tasks like applying for scholarships and college admissions.  The general idea is for you to: do your best at something personally meaningful; learn about how you and others learn while you're in the act; and fine-tune your life accordingly.  In addition to mastering the core curriculum, improving your own mind is the highest form of success in this course of study.

As you well know (Put that phone away or I'll confiscate it!), many people are worried about the use of technology in education.  They are rightly concerned about safety, propriety, and focus: will learners benefit or will they put themselves at risk?  The only way to conclusively prove that the benefits far outweigh the risks is to establish your identities and show yourselves great, both online and in meatspace.  As we move forward you will learn how the Internet works, how you can be an effective online citizen, and how you can use 2.0 and 3.0 tools to achieve your personal and professional goals.  You'll also learn a lot about writing and the habits of mind that make readers and writers successful communicators. 

Because Open Source Learning is a team sport, this is all your call.  You have to decide if you want to pursue this new direction, or if you want to invent another possibility with or without digital and social media, or if you prefer the familiarity of the traditional approach.  There is admittedly something comforting about the smell of an old book, even if it's a thirty-pound textbook that spent the summer in a pile of lost-and-found P.E. clothes.  My perspective may be obvious but I'm just one voice.  Please add yours with a comment below. 

august 12

JOURNAL TOPIC: (today's tunes: "Move on Up" by Curtis Mayfield)

Hunter S. Thompson observed, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."  How do you respond to challenges that arise from circumstances you didn't predict?

AGENDA:
1.  To be an Open Source Learning network or not to be an Open Source Learning network?
2. Journal
3. "Richard Cory"

HW:
1. Memorize "Richard Cory"-- due in class Friday, August 17
2. Why "Richard Cory" now, when most World Literature courses start in chronological order with ?  Because one year I taught this course, one of the funniest, most beloved people ever killed himself the day before school started.  And I'm concerned-- between 2007 and 2015, teen suicide rates doubled for girls and went up 30% for boys.  According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, on average there are 123 suicides in America EVERY DAY.   Please click the links & read the articles by the beginning of class tomorrow (Tuesday, August 14). Think about Richard Cory and come to class prepared to discuss how literature reflects the versions of ourselves that only we know.

Q: I can't think of anything more important to learn than living.  Can you?

A: Nope.  But living is a loaded topic.  In order to learn how to live well, we'll need to better understand our popular culture and economy, digital technology, politics, and the environment.  We also need to learn about our own Mental Fitness, Physical Fitness, Cultural Fitness, Spiritual Fitness (slow your roll -- it's not what you think), Civic Fitness, and Technical Fitness.