Jordo Media RSS / Atom Feed Directory

A hello to Savvica staff who are replacing nuuvo with Savvica

I've done quite a bit of Web 1.0 instruction online. It's time to move on to work at the Web 2.0 level --- I would like to encourage DEEPER involvement of students in knowledge building, group learning, knowledge structuring and organization.

Here's a partial list of Web 2.0-inclined newcomers, (thanks to ReadWriteWeb):

• elgg.net a Social networking, open source, application. While it is not set up so much for education... it can serve a distributed network as it talks over and collaboratively develops knowledge. The following from the University of Brighton:

  Elgg is now being used formally within course and modules and less formally to bring together people with similar interests - enabling people to share information, reflections and comment across course boundaries and develop something very different to anything we've had before. I firmly believe we're taking the first steps from a Virtual Learning Environment to a Shared Learning Environment."

• nuuvo -- now savvica (evidently in beta). Here documentation for nuuvo. Presumably there will be resemblance; though that's not guaranteed. Nuuvo became Savvica via a purchase (Often the purchase can sever originator vision from the product. Would "repurposing" be an appropriate description of what often takes place?)
• Digication
• Chalksite a system for teacher communication with students and families. Can include a web site.
• Haiku LMS Includes teacher and class website creators, gradebook, assessment, dropbox for online submission of homework, and much more. The only classroom feature that is not obvious is a testing module.
• Sakai Is like Blackboard, WebCT (now owned by Blackboard) and Moodle [to a lesser extent, I would arguw] in its relatively traditional organization of instruction from the teacher out. They're teacher centric, if you like. A student centric , or at least a more balanced approach, would start with an individual student, or group of students and the voluntary choice of a knowledge or competence target. The teacher would serve as an advisor on the learning path, the method and the recognition of sufficient competence.

To be honest, given my comments on Sakai, you might not be surprised to know that I'm not sure that there is a student-centric knowledge acquisition system out there. Bits and pieces but not yet the whole system. Once its constructed it will resemble a generic research application with a strong focus on verifying that knowledge acquired satisfactorily matches all specifications initially given by the student. Perhaps the teacher could serve as a honest reflector upon the accomplishments. It can be easy to rationalize the product as 'just right' , even when it is short of or different from the original goal, because of fatigue or even an honest change of mind that has come because of engagement with new knowledge bits and engaging knowledge-making processes.

PS. After above thoughts I think I should dig into the definition of Web 2.0 Learning systems. Distributed ownership is terrific but is not the same as, is not necessarily accompanied by, learner centric instruction.

Does the group disband or does it look for an expert … someone who will volunteer or who will, for pay, get them through the wall?

To make this situation more imaginable let's first start with a within-class learning group. It could be online or it could be face to face. The group is working within one subject and with problems that are within the reach of the expertise of the teacher. Teacher sets up a problem series and the groups independently tackle the problems [using within class materials and those they can find in the school and class library as well as what they can find online. Often, early in their skill development, occasionally when the group has become more sophisticated at solving posed problems, the group will hit a wall. For the wall we have the teacher. The teacher, who has picked the problems that he/she can solve or has solved, steps in to offer the timely and useful hint … just, barely, enough to get the group over its problem-solving hurdle. The group solves that problem and learns content and problem solving skills in the process. As the class progresses more and more complex problems are solvable by the group, partly because of advances in content expertise and partly because of its growth in problem-solving sophistication.

Take a look at my original model, below.

Now imagine that this class is online. The learning environment is, for the most part, Moodle, say, or Blackboard. In the Illustration we may be midway in the group problem solving experience; that is, the group decided at an earlier time, last week, as an example, to partition the original, BIG, problem into S1, S2, S3 ... and S5 … smaller problems. The teacher stands either as the coordinator (RC) or is paired with the coordinator -- when it's becoming obvious that whoever has rotated into coordinator position is "stuck", and it is obvious that the other members (R1-R5) aren't able to help. This too seems to be a "doable" approach to within-class problem-solving-based instruction.

In "real" life, the group may not have access to the teacher who happens to have problem solving skills appropriate to their problem. From the perspective of a spontaneously organized problem-solving group ... the classroom is "rigged".

After all, in real life the problems haven't yet been solved. The group has organized in the hopes of surmounting a problem that they aren't sure can be solved. Yet, determination, frustration and solidarity, perhaps, have them joining together to try anyway.

Now another, big jump … to non-structured learning situations in which the group has not been organized around a class and acquiring competence in some school-ish way but is, instead a) self-organized and b) motivated by an issue, each member having some reason to be invested in addressing, talking about, learning about, and/or resolving that issue. Picture the situation in which a group of people have locally self-organized around this issue. Each person is computer-comfortable and in communication with the others. Between them they have either partitioned the problem into subproblems -- or have each tried to tackle the problem separately. Each has kept her/his own weblog of work to date. And, using GoogleGroups, they have discussed and attempted resolution without, as far as they can see, any workable synthesis that "solves their problem". Their assigned leader has reviewed their steps to date and all agree that they DO still have the problem/issue but DON'T have a workable solution. Their individual weblogs (W1-W5) as well as their joint group weblog -- GW in the picture above -- reflects their lack of satisfactory closure. They're stuck!!

In the class the teacher would come at the sign of a waving hand in the air or in response to an email asking for help. In real life, the part that isn't in a classroom, who or what fills the role of the teacher? Perhaps a content expert. Better yet, a content expert who can help the group "discover" the answer [Discovered answers can often sink in deeper and hold on longer]. Given the reality of "need and expert" the group needs some means to get the volunteer or paid services of an expert who will provide enough expertise to get them over this hump... and to be available for the next one.

This will be the first draft.. less subtlety than I'd like. At the very least it's a place-marker for what I consider to be a worthwhile "philosophy, technology and the times" entry. While keeping my original title for the sake of continuity I find "Team Knowledge Development" to be too obscure. The phrase conjures up sports and hi-tech think tanks... that is too small a venue. The possibilities are far huger than that!!

Why? Think: do we need more knowledge (def. that which allows you to satisfy basic needs in a constantly changing, always demanding environment)? Yes. Where can it come from: any one of the 6 billion entities that call themselves human. So anything that advances the ability to adjust and adapt and shape for humanity is needed. Sure. No argument, one might say! But, I am also arguing that computers linked via the internet and these free knowledge-making venues , if generally and broadly available and applied, offer us the chance to accelerate the development of useful individual and social behavior. Individual and group and community, for that matter, knowledge construction is becoming accessible to those who access to the internet via the 100 dollar computer, the internet, and, of course, some kick-off training to develop the taste for it (there is always a need) and a starter set of skills. The taste and the starter set may be more of a challenge than the technology. But, once developed, will have I think, HUGE potential repercussions.

Take 1 group blog on blogger.com and a wiki from wikispaces or from an inexpensive open-source provider (see, for example, www.siteground.com - 4.95 per month) and you have either a free or very inexpensive group knowledge-making environment.

Three years ago it was an operational reality in well-heeled think tanks or online classrooms like Blackboard and Moodle. This was utilization in one --even unrecognized as a "knowledge-making venue" because doing so in the guise of traditional teaching-- of a far broader list of potential individual and social knowledge-making activities. Research as a general knowledge-making activity was by-and-large untouched. This year, while it isn't commonplace, it is possible for all and sundry and has developers and forward-looking venture capitalists recognizing the possibilities.

Now we have to create the social processing that allows us to do what the tools now allow.

Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case --well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)-- is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I've left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.

In my above-referenced entry I noted:

…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a "surface" process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group's acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.

I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard's blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.

Those notes led to my construction of this entry's diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle--preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.

At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) "situation". Each has researcher's assignment has two aspects: first is to "getting a good answer" to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.

Each researcher's notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members--via the evaluated member's wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members' wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.

There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki's from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.

In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).

For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.

A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)

[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]

[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]

[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]

This will be the first draft.. less subtlety more like a placemarker.

Take a group blog on blogger and a wiki from wikispaces or from an inexpensive open-source provide and you have a low cost/no cost group knowledge-making environment. Three years ago it was an operational reality in well-healed think tanks.. but not that well disseminated. Now, while it isn't commonplace, it is possible for all and sundry.

Now we have to create the social processing that allows us to do what the tools now allow.

Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case --well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)-- is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I've left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.

In my above-referenced entry I noted:

…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a "surface" process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group's acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.

I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard's blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.

Those notes led to my construction of this entry's diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle--preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.

At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) "situation". Each has researcher's assignment has two aspects: first is to "getting a good answer" to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.

Each researcher's notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members--via the evaluated member's wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members' wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.

There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki's from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.

In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).

For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.

A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)

[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]

[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]

[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]

One core, resonant idea at the center: our transactions with others glow with moral purpose. Buber notes that if we treat others as an instruments in our own, self-centered life plan, we are [OE]it[base ']-ing those others, reducing each into a set of qualities that are valued only as far as they help in our own life plan, like puppets in a Punch and Judy play. Buber offered a deeply argued other approach.

There is, he suggests, also the possibility of Thou-ing another. Addressing that other in her or his fullness now and in the future, in both actuality and potentiality. This meant to me that my approach to another should respect her or his wholeness, her or his integrity as now seen and as envisioned in the future.

This meant that a great act of teaching would bring a person[base ']s understanding and actions in better alignment with the translation of actuality, what is at every level, and potentiality, what could be.

What a [base "]Thou[per thou]-based teaching relationship would not be:

• simply being nice, ie wooing or by other means making the other person comfortable
• teaching elements of a common curriculum or of [OE]cultural literacy[base '] for their own sakes (as opposed to as incidental to a thou-centred plan for becoming or enablement)
• comfortable, necessarily. What I am, most fundamentally and now is not necessarily accessible to me. What future versions of me that might be best interpretations of the core [base "]me[per thou] might, at this present moment, be incomprehensible, strange, even repellent to me.

I conclude by saying that I believed then, as a 22 year old, and as I do now, more than forty years later, that helping others become what they have the will and potentiality to become is a great and good thing. It gave me goose bumps to think of the possibilities -- still does!!

I still think that this pursuit is a noble calling, a great quest. Noble because difficult and challenging. Noble because Thou-based. Noble because, if successful, it yields great works of living human art, one miracle at a time. It[base ']s a quest because the goal is not always realized and because the fulfillment is the journey as much as it is the destination.

Oh. Last thought: the sign on my teaching shop was going to be the title of this entry. Teaching: Your Thing.

One of my first jobs, I realized, way back then, would be to figure out what on earth that meant!

First off -- I'm not big on mass education of character. It's better than nothing and probably has some positive effect. No argument there. But, I believe that the emphasis should always be on working from the center [of the person] out, when it comes to personal development. We must be about developing the individual perspective and skills and commitments and resources. A litany of phrases is not the same as an active and dynamic set of beliefs that integrate what has previously been lived with the life one is living now or the vision of a life towards which one reaches.

In what remains of this entry I will break out concerns and possibilities by a person's age, attaching observations, comments, arguments and thoughts about possibilities to each age range:

Picture the number of unsolved problems we -- as communities, or nations, or as the world -- presently face. Now picture the number of people for whom those problems need solution. Now tell me that a faltering delivery of basic skills to an increasingly disinterested and even hostile client population is a sufficient response!!

• The Biggest Reason for School Reform: The Loss of Our Children
• Learning in Groups: Maybe Schools Should Be More Businesslike??!!
• Learning to Learn (deuterolearning, metalearning):Knowledge About Self and Learning --> High Proven Payoff
• Weblogs in Educational Settings: Undergraduate and Graduate
  

In our present Survivor it looks like Terry's downright excellence at competitions plus a decent strategic sense will have him winning the competition. He could lose, however, if Cerie's superior strategic sense can get someone other than someone jury members detest opposite him in the final two.

It's been the same since the show began: good competitive skills, good strategic thinking and a dose of luck have separated the winner from those that fell by the wayside.

The subject matters and venues are different in the Apprentice and American Idol. And so are the means of selection/elimination. Fellow contestants vote at all stages in Survivor; the public votes in American Idol and Trump votes in the Apprentice. But the end result, i.e., that there will be only one at the end, is fixed. Clearly the success of the shows indicates that there is a deep appeal of such a format and such an end!!

For me, at any rate, the competition certainly has appeal. I was raised to it in a culture which seems to honor competitiveness above most other natural drives. I say natural because I believe it's "wired in" from birth. I see it as being shaped rather than created in familial and cultural upbringing.

Take jealousy for example (Is jealousy the parent of competitiveness or vise-versa?). Jealousy exists without help; it shows itself amongst brothers and sisters and in groups and classrooms. How does it show itself? As a concern over signs that another has been recognized or rewarded more than oneself.

Also two dog-derived ideas (legitimate source: we can can find the bottom-line roots of human behavior in the behavior of other pack animals! Packs are just early mammalian tribes, prototribes, as it were.):

• first clue: the sweet talk refrain used by a dog trainer with her charges -- "You want to be the only one", and
• second clue:, the comment yesterday made about a longtime family dog as she politely snubbed the newbie dog who had been adopted two months before -- "She'd prefer to have been an only child". [She's quite civil about it, but her preferences are clear]
  
• third clue: the evidence of puppy behavior as the litter approaches even two months -- to have adequate physiological support appears to be almost less the drive than to get more than anyone else.
  

To summarize my response and to take it back to Reality TV:

If our tribal behavior is pack derived and thus legitimate enough to be expressed,

I don't want it to be just bravado-laced,

unscrupled cleverness as in Richard

Hatch's example.

I would prefer the competition to be fair
and principled as in the behavior of

Colby Donaldson (#2 in Survivor 2)

or Sally Schumann (recently voted out Survivor 12)
,


For me the most recognition should go to those who are nurturing

as well as competitive.

Tina Wesson (winner Survivor 2) is a prime example.

(Interestingly she won only because recognized as "the real winner"

by Colby Donaldson; that was, to me, true excellence on his part!!!)

<>.

It seems to me that we could put together programming which is not only entertains us but teaches and inspires. I don't know if Survivor can be reshaped. But a show could be so structured that longer term necessities are taken care of -- and probably be built around other instinctively natural behaviors to boot!!

That is, we need to give some scope to competitiveness but also to encourage the development and display of skills (and drives) which afford a people-friendly, environment-friendly survival for the whole group. In the real world elimination of competitors is an antisocial high cost strategy which, when I think about it, has to be the lesser of the set of strategies which support a longer term societal success.

Given this reasoning I think you'll have to agree that you and I, fellow Survivor watchers, may be spending too much time watching the struggles of Survivor participants. Why? Because their victory-targeted strategies are only a small subset of the total set of strategies, skills, understandings that we as individuals and as a society must apply. That total set needs to be applied at home, in school groups, at work and in our communities. When we have done that we will all prosper in ways that ensure our families and communities survival. That survival will have with quality, and it will continue into a future that lasts many generations.

Summary: A multimedia and in depth learning ecology lesson is available. Slides and Audio. Whether you are after content learning or metalearning, George Siemens offers understanding and advice on how you creates a learning ecology -- and supports the subsequent evolution of quality . His ideas will apply online or off.

PS. You can navigate in nonlinear fashion --attending to voice, or slides or graphics, as you like.

His graphic above (slide 19 in his audio and video sequence), captures important segments of the depth complexity of a learning ecology.

PPS. Nota bene. This delivery demonstrates what can be done with powerpoint. Further, because he has used "Articulate" - a Windows-friendly powerpoint-augmenting software -- you get more features and don't have to worry about downloading, compressing or decompressing. :o]

[George's Material came to me via Will Richardson's Weblogg-Ed ]

Summary: The resources abound for technically inclined teachers and motivated and technically inclined learners.

The picture makes sense when you've read the Jan 25 entry on Bee-Coming A Webhead. It's all really happening.

Michael Coghlan is now presenting Hearing Online Voices in EFL/ESL on Yahoo Messenger for the BaW 06 Evo Session. 30 people present, among whom 3 Brazilians (Carla Arena, Erika Cruvinel from Brasilia and myself in Sao Paulo). Aiden is explaining how she participated in an audio exchange with Michael and how the students became the main protagonists in the chat. Michael describes how Chris Jones (Arizona), Anne Fox (Denmark) conducted exchanges online with their classes. Buthaina (Kuwait) had webheads listen to students' oral presentations and ask questions. Aiden and Michael have recorded wonderful messages for my blogging workshop on the Summer School Podomatic.

It's almost to the point where people are "taking it for granted". Scary -- cause we still have to pay attention to whether we are teaching!!

[technorati: weblogging, edublogging, onlinelearning]

The parental take on the "short and sweet" is probably neither short nor particularly sweet to any of the others involved in the question of what and how to teach.

[See my earlier entries in the What to Teach sequence of entries. The first entry is here , and the second is here . ]

This entry and the one which will follow will focus on parental and individual takes on exactly the same profile of skills.]

* A reminder: Bill Wong is a hypothetical person. His profile does represent, however, the very real complexity that each person, each learner brings to the discussion of what to learn/what to teach.

Summary: I have written admiringly of John Taylor Gatto before. I am provoked to do so again by Mike Kilen's moving summary and critique of mandatory schooling (aka the factory model of education). There are large dangers to 'factorified' education; the worst, IMHO, is each student's loss of relationship to her or his potential. What's left? The sole decision: as to how much one commits to, or resists, becoming an "appropriately trained" worker participant in a one-size-fits-all vision of existence .

To quote Gatto (via Mike Kilen in today's Des Moines Register):

"To raise kids to get a job rather than find a way to be useful in the world[italics mine*, SPH] is an act of murder," Gatto said.

"In a perfect world, he would close all government schools, use the money to pay parents or other experts to teach kids and sponsor apprenticeships."

"It's not going to happen although a growing number are taking education into their own hands by home schooling.[sigma]

[sigma]So Gatto would start by taking the profit out of teaching kids the relatively easy tasks of reading and arithmetic. He'd eliminate the administrators and school boards. He'd have small, neighborhood schools and measure performance by individualized instruments while teaching themes instead of subjects. He would allow flexible time and space for students to think critically and perform creatively, all within a framework of core values of work, duty, obligation, loyalty, service and fun.

Links:

• Gatto's web site
• His acclaimed and Insightful The Underground History of American Education
• An audio clip from "The Paradox of Extended Childhood"
• His link to World Prosperity - " A group that is dedicated to defining the root causes of social dysfunction, the most fundamental of which is a dysfunctional educational system."

The parental take on the "short and sweet" is probably neither short nor particularly sweet to any of the others involved in the question of what and how to teach.

[See my earlier entries in the What to Teach sequence of entries, First entry here , and the second here . This entry and the one which will follow will focus on parental and individual takes on exactly the same profile of skills.
* A reminder: Bill Wong is a hypothetical person. His profile does represent, however, the very real complexity that each person, each learner brings to the discussion of what to learn/what to teach.

Summary: Real Person and I talk about the Meaning of Life and Learning For Bill Wong. RP and I begin to talk about developmental profiling in general and as it would benefit instruction in the classroom (in RP's case a High School classroom). (This will be the first of a series of entries on how classroom activity and the learner's cutting edge can or should relate to each other.)

Summary: Readiness theory would have us predict that learning will be real and non-trival to the extent that what is being taught about and how it is taught matches the content and learning strategies already "owned" by the learner. It seems that the education profession is quite comfortable with this as a general statement; however, the useful application of this maxim in classroom situations, i.e., something that results in improved student learning, is appallingly small . Class lectures and/or reading one chapter at a time from a text, as representative examples of current practices, are not good ways to maximize student learning. In this entry I offer one basis for understanding why this is so and then I sketch several ideas for making the ideal into the real.

Moving to Personalization from Large Group Instruction is a BIG Deal:

Assume that you have the objective sequences, tests, and instructional activities for several content areas planned; that map is lying in front of you. If you are teaching in an elementary school as a classroom teacher, you may have to teach each of thirty pupils in each of these content areas. If you are a secondary or adult-level teacher working in a typical situation, you may have as many as two or three content areas to cover for perhaps ninety to one hundred and fifty students.

Let's look at the elementary classroom. In that classroom, as stated before, you might be responsible for thirty students' progress in five curriculum areas. You would probably be responsible for reading, language arts, arithmetic, social studies, and science. As is illustrated in the first table, your personalization problems would be considerable. In these five areas you could, if each student had different objectives from all of the others in that area, have responsibility for personalizing in a classroom with instruction required for 150 (5 areas x 30 students) objectives.

Thankfully, since there are usually several objectives which are needed for more than one student, the required instruction would probably come closer to a distribution like that illustrated in the table below example (where instruction is required for approximately 85 objectives as the year begins ).

In such a situation there is no way that "whole class" lectures alone could be a useful instructional activity for each of the students depicted below (as x’s in the table below) . Even if your lesson was perfect, that lesson could only say the appropriate thing to a small fraction of your students (those who had sufficient skill levels to be able to learn from the concepts that you were using).

The other students might sit still, might even acquire pieces of the information here and there, but would not learn in the sense that you assumed or were hoping for.

You can probably see that this same sort of reasoning applies to any secondary or college classroom situation that you might describe. While there might be fewer subjects taught during the day, there would be more students. The likelihood of one textbook page or one lecture being appropriate for all students is virtually zero. The difficulty of managing the delivery of personalized instruction is at least as difficult for the secondary or college teacher as it is for the elementary teacher. And , if maximizing the rate of student mastery of (not exposure to) material is the goal , it is equally crucial to the success or failure of the secondary and college enterprise

Organizational Assumptions

Normally, we interact with people spontaneously, and in a 1, 2, 3, 4 at a time fashion. However, teaching and personalization are not "normal" relationships. The relationship in each is purposeful and planned. Personalization, when it occurs, requires the simultaneous distribution of a teacher's purposes, plans, and interactions among thirty people, at maximum; and at minimum (as in the reading example in Table 1), among four to six individuals or clusters of individuals.

In order to have the maximum impact upon all thirty individuals in a classroom, there has to be a radically different organization to instructional activities than there would be, say, to a conversation.

Each personalizer has many forces with which he or she must deal in order to personalize. All of those forces mandate high organization in order to accomplish individually prescribed instructional objectives. A list of these forces is given in the following table.

With these factors in mind, you can see that personalization requires a high level of classroom organization. It follows that a lecture format does not allow personalization and thus is not productive in terms of student learning. Implementing a high/middle/low grouping plan will allow finer tuning of instructional delivery. Everything else held constant this will enhance average learning of objectives per week but will be far short of what is possible.

The cause of personalization will be advanced considerably by moving the teacher out of the role of a bottleneck in the flow of instructional information and organizational and operational communication (One thing about large group lecture, choral recitation and all doing the same thing—fewer decisions for the teacher . When the teacher organizes the personalized classroom s/he is building in a necessity for many more moment to moment decisions. Why? Because decisions are no longer the same for all nor do they occur at the same time. Thus the need for careful planning and organization in the personalized classroom. The bottleneck is found when every or most instructional messages and organizational decisions must be created on-the-fly by the teacher. When the bottleneck exists the classroom pace grinds down to a snails pace within moments of the beginning of class.

On the other hand, if the volume of decisions is planned for, these decisions are anticipated and thus built into the structure and processes of the classroom. Class members act independently as signaled by place, circumstance or time. Once these signals are planned and then learned and practiced, the multiple organizational and instructional decisions will be carried out independently by members of the class. During class hours the teacher spends time on planned instructional delivery and on individual learning concerns that have not been built into the carefully designed personalized learning environment.

By having much of the organizational decision-making and instructional communication capable of occurring independently of here-and-now teacher action we eliminate the bottleneck. All students will have access to the instructional communication and organizational decisions that they need. Thirsty people will get to drink when they need it, or, in ‘instructionese’, each person will get the lesson that is appropriate to her or his level of readiness.

Teaching a System as Well as Subject Matter:

Your major trick will be to set up an instructional system that eliminates the bottleneck, and to teach students to use it. In such a system, you would reserve for yourself those instructional communications and organizational decisions that could not be made by students or materials. Naturally, the fewer of these on-the-fly the less likely there will be bottlenecking.

Components of Your Organizational System

The major idea of your system is the division of the total activities of the class into subactivities which are carried out at centers. For example, the centers might be as follows:

1. direct instruction/individual counseling
2. tape and filmstrip,
3. group study,
4. reading,
5. individual work,
6. mastery testing,
7. daily monitoring of progress in each (orspecially targeted) subjects.

Each center has its organizational rules which govern its use and which are posted for all to see in its location. This particular subdivision of classroom activities is not the only one possible. Subdivisions could be based on subject matter (e.g. science, reading, math, etc.), or topics, such as environment, creativity, etc. in which all basic skills have a part. (For example, the environment center might have required math, reading, writing, and social activities associated with its objectives.)

Effective reform must translate directly into classroom change, one child, one objective and one lesson at a time. (And yes, NCLB doesn't work because, while it may generate just criticism, it does not simultaneously generate effective change.) What could fit these "good change effort " specifications is curriculum based testing in multiple developmental areas. The pay off for such a monumental test development and administration effort is that, even if the results do not flatter our present instructional efforts or systems, we will have created a precise "what to teach next" estimate for each individual in each of multiple developmental areas.

One motivator: A local demonstration the reality that individual growth isn't yet touched by what we do now. One approach to such a sketch, cousin to the present dysfunctional consumer of state funds, could take flesh as a statewide assessment of a representative sample of schools. This assessment would actually help has to in two ways that our present mandated system does not: a) it would be curriculum referenced and directly translatable into retargeted, individually tailored instruction, and (b) we would then have a sense of what is possible (from trial teaching and summer teaching) and what is real, right now. We could use these discrepancies to focus our reform efforts.

A piece of such an analysis is sketched and explained below.

Columns A-F report state averages whereas columns G and H report national averages.

Columns A-C and G report report average positions within learning sequence at state and national levels, respectively.

Columns D-F and H report average growth per week at the state and national levels, respectively.

First, let's note column D . It's values are the computed average weekly growth rate during the school months (roughly 36 weeks of school distributed over 40 weeks of the year). We find that in the state of Floriana students master an average of 2.8 objectives of general cultural material, 4.8 objectives having to do with receiving and understanding information that made accessible in books, lecture, television, conversation,etc,3.5 objectives per week having to do with social interaction skills (manners, reading body language, negotiations, games, are examples) and 3.6 objectives per week having to do with moral/ethical behavior (for example, behaving in such a way so as to benefit others and to support, say, social order and what society considers "a good life"). In short, progress is made in the sixth grade; there seems to be markedly less learning in the area of general cultural understanding, however.

Comparing what we've just learned from column D with the information from column E allows us to compare the impact of school with the impact on non-school life as they each affect the growth of sixth graders. This comparison makes it obvious that, in the State of Floriana, non-school has a decidedly stronger impact on growth in all areas but receptive communication. What this means will require further research by Florianan policy makers.

However Florinian analysts end up calling the divergence from national norms, the differences between Summer growth rates and School Year growth rates needs understanding. What is it that accelerates the summers (or depresses growth in the school year)? Are there factors in classrooms , curriculum choices, preprofessional or inservice training or supervision that could be altered. However this analysis turns we can check growth rates again next year and determine if our chosen solution was effective. That is, we can check if we adopt and use the criterion-referenced, curriculum-referenced test system that was initially developed to assess the system as a whole.

Don't worry, in the criterion-referenced view, teaching to the objectives is fair and appropriate. Just don't teach memorized answers from a purloined or otherwise copied master test.