Tryangulation

Read 7000 posts in under 10 minutes

Today is my first day back to work since August. I've been away to help our sons settle in the US, work on other family affairs, and to attend to some health issues. During that time I pretty much stayed away from blogging, reading blogs, or keeping up much on anything at all.

About ten days ago I started reading again, and was daunted by the nearly 7500 unread posts in Bloglines, plus hundreds and hundreds of email bulletins and notifications from networks and wikis I'm a part of. I felt a little numb and overwhelmed during the first 500 or so, but I  began to see the trends and, stepping back, saw the emerging higher level patterns (á la one of my favorite books).

So here, in flagrant disregard for scientific data collection and analysis, is my summary of the key edublog topics that I was missing over the last six months, roughly in order of frequency, word count, or heft:

1. Buzz around big edutech conferences, where articulate keynote speakers cast visions, inspire, and challenge us to change the world. This buzz then fans out into auxilary visions for overhauling schools, but not enough, in my opinion, about deschooling.
   
2. (In a near tie with #1) Frustration over how unchanged the world is right now: fellow teachers, school technicians, administrators, board members, parents, whoever, who still don't get it.
3. Good news about students who get it: transformed classrooms full of self-directed, project-based, web 2.0 savvy teacher-facilitated lifelong learners. Bring it on!
4. The latest thing. In this case, Ning, Twitter, Voicethread, XO and "flat" everything.
5. Good news about fellow teachers, administrators, superintendents, board members, parents,  who get it, becoming transformed into facilitators, enablers, coaches, and catalysts. May their tribe increase!
6. (In a distant last place) Good stories about learning that aren't focused on the technology.

After 6 months of not reading, and then super intense scanning (slowing down many, many times to read more closely), I've seen the Pareto principle at work: 80% of the good stuff can be found in 20% of the blogs.  A lot of the rest is echo.

The posts I find myself slowing down for are those by people I've had personal (albeit digital) contact with, and those who say something unique. That has helped me clarify to myself why I blog, and I'd encourage others to think more about their own unique contribution. Along similar lines Terry Freedman had an interesting post about how fewer readers, not more, can help a blogger keep focus.

In spite of a lot of the grousing I've read, I have to say that change is happening out there. Up close, blog post by blog post, the change seems almost imperceptible sometimes, but stepping back, I could see that more and more people are experimenting and reflecting. Even though the technology per se is in focus maybe more than I'd wish, more practitioners are thinking more about teaching and learning, examining themselves, and letting go of preconceptions.

Remember that in the open sea, a tsunami is barely perceptible, yet full of tremendous power that is finally realized when it reaches the shore.

The photo is of my office when I arrived today. My desk will probably never be this clean again.

I think he exceeded their expectations

I'm generally impressed by the calibre of students in our IB program, and often imagine that these students would be excellent with or without the IB, that we're just helping provide some structure for their genius. Here's some support for my theory.

The International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme culminates in each student completing a personal project which is "a significant piece of work that is the product of the student's own initiative and creativity.

Sixteen year old Marco Facciola's personal project was the design and construction of a bicycle made entirely of wood, including the chain, gears and all connectors. He says he just wanted to try something challenging. You can see photos and read more details here.

Well done, Marco!  I hope your diploma programme teachers are ready for you.

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Ban on WordPress enters its 6th month

We're seeing a lot of these screens lately, so you've got a chance to play 'find the differences'. When posting yesterday about the ban on YouTube, I had forgotten to mention the slightly different ban against WordPress that has been in effect here since August 2007.

The ban stems from a libel suit between two Turkish citizens, one of them using WordPress to publish criticisms against the other. A judge decided that since WordPress did not censor the critic and did not observe Turkish court rulings, that WordPress itself should be punished.

I posted about this back in September, but since I use Bloglines instead of visiting the actual sites, I haven't been feeling the effects so acutely -- and stumbled upon a good argument for feed readers as a freedom of speech workaround. Still, this only enables me to read WordPress blogs from outside Turkey; Turkish bloggers cannot access the site to post to their own blogs.

You can find a good summary of the case here:

WordPress Blocked in Turkey | Citizen Media Law Project

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bummer

Update: the ban was lifted on the 24th.

YouTube has been shut down in Turkey again.

Just like I reported last March, the government here has again taken offense at a video uploaded somewhere by who knows who from who knows where, and in retaliation denies us access to the entire site. I guess that by watching videos we are abettors to the crime.

Sort of like banning newspapers when one commits libel. But who's worse, the government for its draconian measures, or Google for caving in and deleting wanton free speech (which they will do, eventually)?

Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir.

 

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Resources on international linguistic rights

The blog of the Law Library of Cleveland State University had a recent post on the UN's International Year of Languages. Along with some other useful links, the post highlights a list of resources available at EISIL (the Electronic Information System for International Law.

These resources include The 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Linguistic Minorities and The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, plus some additional compilations of legal research on linguistic rights.

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Project mentality and project based learning

In project based learning, whose idea of a "project mentality" are we looking for?

Some time ago the project management blog Slow Leadership had a post entitled Measurement versus Trust, about the issues of an increasing demand for measuring and evaluating minute details of projects. The post included a 2x2 matrix of different management styles that varied according to the level of trust between the project team and management.

This brought to mind some other approaches to differences in management and leadership styles, such as the classic matrix by Hershey and Blanchard, which looks at competence levels and how much the leader directs or supports the team members.  Follow this link for a different explanation of this model.

I don't think school-based projects and project based learning are headed toward such detailed analyses any time soon, but still this got me thinking about management styles and student projects.

The assessment of student projects --including peer assessments among team members-- can include several not-quite-quantitative criteria such as the quality of planning, project execution, communication within the group, team work, demonstration of knowledge of the subject matter, and how well the project achieved the stated goals.

The problem is that there are several different ways to manage a project or a team, depending on the situation and the work styles (and personalities) of the team members. In some situations a more directive approach is needed, in other situations a more participatory approach is preferred. This creates a dilemma in project assessment if the assessor (i.e. teacher) expects the students to work with one style (very likely his or her own style), when perhaps the personalities in the team or the task at hand would dictate a different style.

Without putting too fine a point on this, if adults have to deal with these kinds of differences, our guidance and assessment practices should be flexible enough to accommodate them as well.

For an interesting interpretation of Hershey and Blanchard's model for the classroom, follow this link.

 

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Native English speakers are minority in England's schools

A news item from The Telegraph reports that "children with English as their first language are now in the minority in more than 1,300 schools, according to official figures."  Teachers' unions argue that inadequate preparation in English undermines education standards and increases costs, requiring more government assistance and a review of language policies.

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2008 is the UN International Year of Languages

According to the Boston Globe, "while an estimated 7000 languages are spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks." As the number of languages spoken in the world rapidly decreases, the United Nations has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Languages.  Having worked directly among a people group in Central America whose language is vanishing, I'm particularly interested in this theme.

The dynamics around language extinction are complex, involving external factors like economics and discrimination, and internal factors like self perception and attitudes toward one's own group and towards others. Unlike endangered plants, whose seeds can be preserved in seed banks, and endangered animals that can be protected on nature preserves, endangered languages survive only if people speak them. This is particularly challenging when those people have already formulated reasons for no longer speaking their parents' tongue.

Dictionaries, documentary films and ethnographic studies are only snapshots of the way things were, and awareness campaigns usually target non-speakers of endangered languages (like you, dear reader). Even mother tongue education programs can be compromised if there is no corpus of reading material once children leave school.

I'll watch the events around this theme closely, but I won't expect any miracles.  Nevertheless, as part of my own participation in this international year, I have added the category Languages and linguistics to this blog, and I have already retrofitted some blog posts to reflect the change.

Follow this link to the UNESCO site with resources for commemorating the International Year of Languages.

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Past imperfect, future conditional

Back in August I wrote that I would be very sporadic on this blog for a while. With my last post more than two months ago, I'd say that was a good prediction. My leave of absence from school ends in a few weeks so I'm now working at clearing the cobwebs in my head.  After nearly three months of abstinence from blogging, blog reading and blog commenting, I have 7241 unread posts waiting for me in my feed aggregator. So do I try to catch up, or just start over?

I looked through some of my old posts to get a feel for where I was headed before the hiatus. A couple posts that helped were Window to the Edu-Blogger world, where I outlined my reasons for blogging, and The world is not flat, where I laid out some premises for non-western educational blogging. I'm fairly pleased with how I was getting the hang of it, but now I'm not sure if I'll continue on the same track.

Starting over is not as simple as it sounds. The longer you're away from something, the weaker the hold that it has over you. That frantic drive to read everything in sight and blog several times a week is gone. I don't feel the compulsion to be aware, smart and clever. I don't even care much about the stats.  I've had time now to think about what I really want to accomplish, and even whether blogging is part of that or not.

I'm going to give it a go, but I'm not making any promises about where I'll end up. I'm grateful to all who have remained subscribers. I'm glad you've stuck with me, and I'll try to make this new start worthwhile.