This is awesome. And I learned a lot about Kant’s aesthetics.
[from i09]
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For those of you not into higher ed, our resume is called a curriculum vitae, often shortened to “vita”. A loose translation is “course of life.” I like that translation; my CV is the course of my academic and professional life. Unlike a resume, it’s comprehensive. Everything I have ever done (at least everything of a certain status) is on there.
I have a section called “works under consideration”. In this section, I list articles or other written works I have submitted to academic journals or other places for review. If any of those things get accepted, they move up to “works under revision,” because nothing ever gets accepted without needing revision. Eventually, they move up to their various respective places in the “published works” section. For me, that section is still pretty small, but I am working hard to enlarge it. If a work is flat out rejected, I take it off “works under consideration” until I can figure out what to do with it. Do I rework it and send it somewhere else? Or do I just scrap the project and move on to something more interesting and/or promising?
Today, I get to take a line off that “works under consideration” section and, barring some crazy miracle of scholarship, put the project to it’s needed rest. You see, I have had this one article under my “works under consideration” section for OVER TWO YEARS.
In the fall of 2006, a colleague and I presented a paper together at AESA. It was a decent work on epistemology. Trying to get the most bang for our scholarly effort, we then tinkered and revised and worked with an eye toward submitting it for publication. We didn’t have a specific place in mind until my colleague ran across a journal that seemed like a perfect fit. It was a journal that focused on epistemology, but in a non-technical way. We (really, he) spent more time reworking the article for this journal, making sure we incorporated some of the relevant articles that had been previously published in the journal. We mailed it off and crossed our fingers.
Months went by. With academic journals, four months or so is normal, with six months still falling within the realm of acceptability. Eight months rolled around and my partner sent them an email. The response he got suggested that they had forgotten to send the manuscript out to reviewers. Okay, fine. We waited.
Thirteen months after we had first sent in the manuscript, we heard back from the reviewers. It was a “major revise and resubmit.” Given the time frame, we had hoped for fewer revisions, but had some time invested in the thing thus far and, honestly, couldn’t think of where else to send the thing. So, we took the reviewers comments to heart and revised the thing, noting with high irony that one reviewer dinged us for not including a reference THAT HAD BEEN PUBLISHED AFTER WE HAD SUBMITTED THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT. We included it and moved on. The line still sat on my vita.
A month ago, my colleague gave me an update. The journal had moved and the editorship had changed hands. My colleague had exchanged emails with the new editor, who was embarrassed about the way our manuscript had been treated and had promised a decision by the end of October. Yesterday, he got the email saying the journal had decided not to publish our manuscript.
This, of course, irks me. I am fine with being rejected. It comes with the academic territory. But rejected after a revise and resubmit and a process that was stretched out over two years? That just sucks. I am taking the line off my vita and moving on.
If I were Bill Simmons, I’d have some nice sports and pop culture comparison here. Anyone want to help me out on that one?
I walk into class today with my usual bundle of stuff under my arm: my students’ name tents, my textbook, and my water bottle. I also have something different — a videocassette. It’s a tape of a 60 Minutes segment on South Carolina’s Corridor of Shame, but they don’t know that. This new object does not go unnoticed.
“Hey, Dr. Pope! Are we watching a movie?” a student asks as I put my things down on the front desk.
“Yep,” I reply.
“What is it?” another girl in the front says as she settles into her seat.
“The Goonies,” I deadpan without looking up.
The class then erupts in such spontaneous cheering, you would have thought I just told them their next semester’s tuition was on me.
I look up, startled. Someone in the back looks more alive than I have seen them all semester.
“Really?”
“No.”
The groan could be physically felt, a wave of disappointment buffeting me back a few steps.
“Why you gotta toy with our emotions like that, Dr. Pope?”
I suspect this will show up on my course evaluations.
I’ve been hearing a lot about PLN’s (Personal Learning Networks) in the edtech blogs I read and the educators I follow on twitter. Good descriptions can be found here and here.
The gist of it all is that, now more than ever, it’s who you are connected to that drives learning. Social media has made it possible to be connected to more people than ever before. Students and teachers can leverage all this connectivity to create networks of people that can contribute to individual growth. Have a question? Post in on twitter and get crowdsourced answers! Have an idea for a paper or presentation? Throw it up on a blog and get feedback during the process of writing it (kind of like I am doing right now)! Through these connections, we can ask experts and gain perspectives that were never possible in the pre-digital age.
According to PLN theory (I think I just made that term up), a primary obligation of teachers is to assist our students in developing their own PLN’s. In so doing, we also help them become digital citizens. The ought to know how to make meaningful connections, what sort of ethical obligations those connections entail, how to filter out good information from bad, and how to navigate the new inter-personal-digital (I KNOW I just made that term up) dynamics that such connectivity entails. We can’t really do that unless we, too, are so connected.
I am in favor of all this. I conceive of my primary role as an educator as enabling my students to better reconstruct their own experience in ways that are meaningful for them. Their experience is, in part, now digital. Thus, helping them cultivate and interrogate their own digital, connected experience only makes sense. Everyone’s on facebook, but do they realize what that means and what it can do?
That being said, I have some questions and reservations. These questions and reservations aren’t Luddite in nature. Nor are they of the Nicholas Carr variety. Rather, they stem from someone who embraces the technology and what it can bring and asks critical questions only in an effort to really understand and provoke growth. Plus, all this philosophy training has to be good for something.
My questions mostly revolve around the idea of digital citizenship. What does it mean to be a digital citizen? Are there obligations there that are separate or distinct from our normal obligations as citizens? Are there just specialized applications of standard citizenship obligations? What ARE those obligations? Do schools inhibit or encourage student thinking on this topic? What bearing, if any, do those texts and people that inform our citizen-identity have on our digital-citizen-identity? Are people even thinking about this stuff?
My reservations are ethical and stem from, perhaps, simply the terminology used in discussing Personal Learning Networks. Generally, it all seems somewhat self-centered and full of business-speak. It’s a “personal” learning network, which suggests “what’s in it for me?” How can I gain by being connected? How can I grow with the help of others in my network? Granted, much of the writing on PLN’s emphasize that one must write and contribute in order for the PLN to function. But even that language is, well, blatantly capitalist in nature. The above blog talks about PLN Level One “consumers” and Level Two “Producers”. To put this in Kant’s terms, there seems to be a lot of treating people as means rather than as ends. Then there is the “network,” replete with images of one-drink after-work “networking parties” and meetings that must be attended in order to be seen. Why don’t we use “community”?
This may be a case of good idea and poor execution. I certainly want my students to be connected to others that can help them, challenge them, and allow them to grow. But I also want them to realize that any sort of connection also entails certain obligations — not just to not act like a jerk, but to contribute to the growth of others as well. Is that present in the PLN concept?
(Note: This isn’t intended as a thorough review or critique, just a statement of my initial experiences with Edmodo).
This semester, I’ve been using Edmodo as a sort of “course management suite” for my three EDUC 110 sections. Edmodo is free, web-based software, essentially, Facebook for schools. It looks and acts a lot like Facebook — my students noticed the similarity almost immediately. There are “status updates” (called “notes” in Edmodo) that can be posted by the instructor and/or students. Anyone can reply to a note. Instructors can also post assignments, which can be completed in Edmodo via a small dialog box. Files can also be attached and uploaded, both by students to complete assignments and by instructors (to give out handouts, PowerPoints, etc). Instructors can grade assignments in Edmodo, which keeps track of a student’s total points.
Thus far, I’ve used Edmodo in a number of ways. First, I use it to “hand stuff out” to my students. I posted a link to the syllabus (done in Google Docs) and continuously post Powerpoints, additional readings, questions about the reading, advance organizers for the week, and other items which (hopefully) keep the students engaged when they are not in class. I’ve used it to generate further discussion about things we may have mentioned in class but didn’t get to discuss because they were off topic or we just ran out of time. Students were asking questions about the Obama back to school address. I linked to the text of the speech and a short, online discussion followed via replies to the link.
I encourage my students to bring their laptops and, if they want, post things to Edmodo during the lecture and discussion. Granted, there have been some off-topic posts (it looked like a couple of students were trying to ask each other out!), but students also find and post links to articles or Wikipedia entries that are relevant to what we’re discussing. We were discussing Progressive education this week. A student posted a question to the class: “Why was it called Progressive?” Within 5 minutes, another student had posted a link to the Wikipedia article on the Progressive Movement.
This week I also posted my first quiz (due next Tuesday) and used Edmodo for an in-class activity. I told the students in advance to bring their laptops (if they had them) and checked out a few extra from the ITC. The students were assigned an excerpt from The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass (posted via Edmodo) to read before class. During class, I divided them up into groups of about 5 (I have sections of 30-33 students)and made sure each group had at least three laptops. Each group had to come up with two key points or “ah-ha” moments prompted by the reading as well as two questions related to the reading. The questions could be questions they had about the excerpt, questions they thought would bring out important parts of the excerpt, or questions of application (e.g. “How do the obstacles Douglass faced in order to be educated matter to today’s students?”). They then posted these questions to the class via Edmodo. While all this was happening, groups could read the points and questions posted by the other groups, then reply and comment on them. At the end of class, I took five minutes and wrapped everything up. I was very pleased. The students seemed engaged and reasonably on-task. As a class, they certainly hit the key points of the reading; not every group hit the key points, but as a class all the major points were covered. They also asked good questions and did a good job answering each other’s questions; clarification of the reading was accomplished student to student rather than instructor to student. The class also seemed to enjoy the activity. Students who were quiet or not actively engaged when we had the class lecture and discussion were active during the group activity. I’d say it was pretty successful. We also now have a good, student generated on-line record of the key points of the reading.
Hmm. . . this sounds like it belongs in my annual report.
There are some limitations, of course. I am also still working out all the kinks. I’ll talk more about those in the future, but right now I am pleased with Edmodo.
This article from the NY Times is a little old, but I thought I’d share anyway. The jist of it is a charter school in New York City, with significant backing from private money, conducted a nationwide talent search for top teachers. The prize? They get to go work in NYC with students who are significantly disadvantaged. But they get paid six figures (some of them do, anyway). That’s right — the gym teacher makes $125,000 per year. Of course, he also was Kobe Bryant’s personal trainer.
I am all in favor of paying teachers more, so I am interested to see how this works out. For that kind of money, expectations are high, both in terms of student performance and in terms of “billable hours”. My sense is these teachers are expected to put in the 60 hour week of the junior lawyer in a big firm. That’s fine, too, because MOST teachers I know work those sorts of hours during the school year. My general thought is that we should raise teacher pay and tie that to a longer contract year for teachers. This wouldn’t necessarily mean more days of work for teachers, again, because most teachers I know work most of the summer on something school related. I think it would go a long way toward justifying higher salaries in the minds of a public who feel teachers don’t work that much.
I’ve been a bit frantic all day, the kind of frantic that comes from having lots of semi-formed ideas swarming around in my head like wasps. I just came from a meeting with our science methods faculty member, who helped me crystallize some of those ideas. My core concept is still the grammar of schooling, but I wanted to develop that concept in a way that could serve as the basis for an entire course. What I came up with were three key questions for my social foundations courses to focus on:
1. What are schools for?
This question lets me talk about the various purposes of schooling, such as preparation for work, citizenship, moral education, etc. If I want, I can introduce some concepts from sociology here. I have used a nice text that introduces Functionalism and Marxism for teachers. We can also look at some history of education. I have my 110 students read excerpts from Horace Mann that aptly illustrate our initial high expectations of public schooling for dealing with larger social issues like poverty.
This would also be the section to talk about school choice and other structural features of schooling, like age grading.
2. What is a teacher (what does a teacher do)?
In this section of the course, we can discuss the various metaphors for teaching including teaching as a profession, teaching as a vocation, teaching as a calling, etc. We’ll also discuss the peculiar nature of teacher authority and the tension between democratic authority and professional authority and why all of this matters to the daily lives of teachers. In classes that aren’t for practicing teachers, this would also be the section where we talk about working conditions, the division of educational decision making, etc, but I figure practicing teachers know all this stuff already.
3. What does it mean to know something?
This is the epistemological question, of course. It’s also the most “purely” philosophical and, therefore, the one that’s likely to engender the most resistance. Never fear, because standardized testing is the issue that can get everyone talking about this topic. We will also discuss construcitivism and other epistemological concepts like understanding. This is also the logical place to talk about content area standards (and who decides them).
Given that my first course that uses these three questions will be an M.Ed. course for math teachers, I’ll also include something like “what does it mean to be mathmatically literate?” to give the course more of a focus that they can grab on to.
Readings will consist of a bunch of articles that I am still compiling and Tyack and Cuban’s Tinkering Toward Utopia.
Thoughts?
I’m sitting in Augello’s Coffehouse. We just had class here today; we also had class here last week. At first, I just suggested this venue to my class out of a desire to do something cool, leverage some Maymester advantages (extended class time, meeting every day, small class), and support a local business I want to succeed. Today, however, while discussing challenges to the grammar of schooling presented by Elliot Eisner, Walter Parker, and Rosetta Cohen, I realized that I was challenging this grammar by meeting in a coffeehouse. It was unintentional, but having class sitting around a big table while sipping on coffee and discussing articles suggests that school can be different from simply sitting in desks, viewing a powerpoint, and listening to an instructor. It was a nice bit of synergy, even as it was unintentional and not necessarily realized by all my students.
I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much. I still did a lot of talking. I sat at the head of the table, making myself the center of class. I need to find ways to encourage my students to respond to each other rather than just look to me for commentary after a student speaks. We did break up into groups (the coffeehouse makes a nice format for that!), but our class activities weren’t much different that our normal class activities. Maybe they shouldn’t be, but I want to be careful not to elevate my change in venue to some major pedagogical breakthrough.
Still, having class in a coffeeshop is pretty cool.
Today was my first class of the 110 course in Maymester. I’ve never taught 110 in the summer before, nor have I ever taught Maymester. It will be challenging to keep everything focused for 2.75 hours per day, 5 days per week, for three solid weeks. I’m trying to create some fun activities for the students that will break up individual days and weeks. Today, for instance, I did the “biographical scavenger hunt” activity I usually do on the first day of class; that’s a nice way to break up the “here’s what’s in the syllabus” talk, as well as get the students talking with each other. I also introduced the first and most important concept of the course — The Grammar of Schooling. We had a 15-20 minute discussion of the concept, then I sent them out of the class for 15 minutes armed with digital cameras. Their task was to take a few photos that illustrated the concept. The activity worked well, other than the simple logistics of displaying photos from 12 cameras on the classroom PC. That started to drag, so everyone didn’t get to show and tell about their photos; I need to try and resolve that before I try the activity again. Any ideas?
The other thing Maymester affords me is the ability to work closely with a school. We’re partnering with a local elementary school to help them with field day and are spending all class Friday at the school, getting a tour and talking with the principal. I hope that will ground my student’s experiences a little more and give them some additional exposure to schools in a role other than student or teacher.
Here’s hoping it all works.
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