Dec 8, 2008
Posted | 2 comments
Well, I’m sure not a relativist, especially when it comes to utility. Some things work better than others, some things are more useful than others.
You’d be surprised, though, at how much value you can get out of playing with a little e-resource even when its value appears dubious.
I was looking at a site - http://internethighschoolguide.com/ - which claims to be a directory for Online High School searchers [no doubt gearing up for that Florida ruling I heard about?].
There’s not a lot there right now. It’s mainly a PPC/directory that tags sites, RSS feeds, etc. and organizes them into categories - some clear and useful, some not.
I read a blog entry earlier that used the phrase “Internet School” and I thought, “I haven’t heard anyone use that phrase to brand distance education.” Doesn’t matter, though. It’s not the branding that matters so much, it’s pulling in searchers who use those keywords.
I click around this site for about 5 minutes and got to some places I otherwise wouldn’t have seen - just like a regular, not education-obsessed websearcher would. That reality check is an important one, especially when we’re used to that echo-chamber called the education blogosphere.
What we read daily isn’t always what the gen-pop are seeing when they search, and we’ve got to remember that.
Dec 6, 2008
Posted | 2 comments
I wanted to highlight a neat article by Bob Lettis that appeared this week in a Cooperstown paper. He reminisces about some of the great Cooperstown teachers of his day - Red Bursey, Nick Sterling, etc.
Perhaps one day I’ll write my own version of this article. Tom Good, Ted Kantorowski, Dave Fundis and another Mr. Tabor populate a very short list of Cooperstown teachers of my era who possessed uncommon teaching ability. Cooperstown Central School has a laughable “Greatness by 2010″ plan - lipservice to improvement, really - as they move further away from these masters of development.
But enough of that - here’s Bob Lettis’ take on the great Cooperstown educators of his day, courtesy of The Freeman’s Journal.
Apologies for the wonky formatting, it’s part of the e-original.
BOB LETTIS’ TALES OF COOPERSTOWN: INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE
Red Bursey Never Mentioned That Cigaret
By BOB LETTIS
Cooperstown was a wonderful village for a boy to grow up in. Being somewhat handicapped, the village was especially protective of me. It was a great place for all its children, but I seemed to get more attention than most.
Many special people guided me as I grew up. I cannot mention all those that were helpful, but I will try to pick out those that I felt were the most important and influential. All, I think, are dead now, but regardless of their circumstances, all will have a special place in my heart reserved for exceptional friends.
Lester Bursey was my gym teacher, coach and friend. He made sure that my polio affliction never stood in the way of an opportunity to participate in games and sports. From the time I went to the summer playground as a young child until I graduated from high school, having played varsity sports in football and baseball, Lester “Red” Bursey was my mentor.
When I was a 120- pound sophomore, trying to make the varsity football team, he wrote
in the local paper: “Bob Lettis can lick his weight in wildcats.”
I made the varsity that season, and Red encouraged me all the way. I was his varsity catcher on the baseball team, batting fourth in the batting order, which is the spot for the best hitter on the team. His advice and inspiration allowed me the chance to play sports at a very high level. Without his confidence in me, I might never have been given the chance to even try out, let alone play, baseball (and certainly not football).
As wonderful as he was to me, I’m afraid I let him down very badly.
He was always encouraging his athletes to maintain a healthy life style while participating in high school sports. When I was 16, I started smoking. I felt, as most smart-ass teenagers do, that I could smoke and play sports without any adverse effects.
One day I passed him on the street with a cigarette in my hand. He never said a word, either then or later, but I knew that he saw what I had done.
I’m very ashamed of that violation of his trust. I now know that it made a difference. Perhaps not physically, but psychologically it made me ashamed of having let down such a dedicated and warm human being. He had given me the opportunity to become a good athlete, despite my handicap, and I felt that I had been a disappointment.
•
While Red was very influential helping me with sports, there were others who had an intereste in my artistic development. I had several wonderful art teachers when I was growing up.
At an early age in elementary school I had Miss Bea Prine. Alongside several other talented students, she saw potential. She proceeded to nourish this talent by giving us special attention and encouragement. Our work was always well displayed and we were continually talked to about going on to art school to develop our skills and talent.
When Miss Prine retired, she was replaced by a beautiful young woman, Marcia Matoon. Miss Matoon had graduated from Syracuse University, where I eventually obtained my undergraduate art training. She continued the encouragement begun by Miss Prine years before. She entered my work in national poster contests, in scholastic art competitions and I won several awards.
She wrote a letter of recommendation that went into my school records, and, when I attended Syracuse University, it became part of my entrance credentials. After graduation from high school, I went into the army and Miss Matoon wrote to me several times while I was in training and serving overseas.
However, the most influential art teacher that I had was Helga Edge. I not only learned a great deal from this wonderful, dedicated woman and professional artist, but was also encouraged by her to pursue art as my life’s work. She was British, though had come to the United States just prior to our country entering World War II and stayed here for the rest of her life.
I took private art lessons from her for several years, paid for by my patron, Grandma Hail. After high school and my stint in the army, I attended Syracuse University because Miss Edge thought that it was the best art college in our area. After graduation, she was instrumental in my getting my first teaching position, at Worcester Central School.
During my years as an art teacher in Worcester and Cooperstown, I maintained close contact with her. We worked together in her studio in Toddsville and my son, Daniel, took art lessons from her at that time. Upon her death in 1980, she willed her entire professional art library and her small etching press to me.
•
During the years I attended elementary and high school, many teachers took a special interest in my life. I’ve already mentioned Miss Prine and Miss Matoon. Mabel Wagner, a drama and English teacher was also one of them. She came to our village as a beautiful young woman who immediately gained the attention of all the single men in the community. We as high school boys thought she was pretty terrific as well.
At that time, I had a slight speech impediment that she helped by giving me lessons in oration and allowing me to compete in several speaking contests. She cast me in several plays and encouraged me to enter an essay and speaking contest. Miss Wagner was the kind of a teacher that every one of her students could fall in love with.
Alas, Robert Atwell, a young and upcoming civic leader, won her hand and her heart, for they were married a few years after she came to our village. They had two beautiful children, Bobby and Neil, both of whom were students of mine when I came to teach here.
Nick Sterling, another teacher, was a special person in my life. He became principal and superintendent of our high school when I was a sophomore. While I never took a class from him, he always treated me with kindness and respect. I was on the ski team at the time and Mr. Sterling became our coach.
When I was teaching art in Worcester and Schenevus, I chaperoned a group of students to a basketball game in Cooperstown. I met Nick again for the first time since I was in the service. He had become superintendent of Cooperstown’s schools by then. After asking me how my teaching was going in Worcester, he said that he was looking for a high school art teacher and asked if i might be interested.
After talking it over at home, I decided to accept his offer. And so for the next eight years I taught at my old alma mater. Besides teaching, I coached junior high baseball, was adviser to the Student Council, taught ski lessons at Mount Otsego and collaborated with Bob Squires, another teacher, on high school theatre productions. I did sets, lighting and costumes while Bob directed and took care of the drama end.
As well as working on high school theatrics, Bob and I were instrumental in starting a community theatre group called “The Back Stagers.’’ Both in high school and the community we managed, in just six or seven years, to stage many productions ranging from musical theatre to Shakespeare. (Nick Sterling gave us a free hand to do all these things.)
I need to say at this point, Nick Sterllng was the finest educator and energetic community leader that Cooperstown has ever had.
•
I’ve mentioned these people because they stand out in my mind. There were others, as well, who were not quite as central, but nevertheless played a role in my life within this village.
To name a few: Greeny (I do not know his real name), Smith Tolmie, Harold Wall, Bob Wright, Jake Schaffer, Ellamae Hanson, Mrs. Denton Stillwell, Angelo Pugalese, etc. Not all were teachers. All helped me through my difficult years as a polio kid. After my mother and father separated, all acted as friends and mentors.
The cliché, “It takes a village to raise a child,” was certainly true in my case, at least.
Dec 4, 2008
Posted | 9 comments
I‘m part of a discussion group that shares and analyzes all sorts of education-related information. When a good article comes up [or a particularly bad one, I suppose] we talk about it.
Dan Willingham, whose work I think is top-notch, has a piece on the Britannica Blog called “Education for the 21st Century: Balancing Content Knowledge with Skills” - and it’s worth reading. He makes the case that there’s a conceptual pendulum that swings between content knowledge and skills [which I prefer to call 'process,' so consider the terms interchangeable here]. I’ll go along with the ‘pendulum’ imagery because I can’t think of an example that expresses the push/pull dynamic that I think is appropriate - and a ‘tug of war’ doesn’t fit [vectors in physics? Maybe...].
I’ve pasted below a note I wrote this afternoon that exposes some of my thoughts on the issue. Parts are tangential because it was in the context of a broader discussion. I edited out a few sentences for clarity.
Food for thought below the scroll.
re: “Speaking about the pendulum, Dan Willingham was talking about the pendulum of content and critical thinking and how it always seems to sway too far one way or the other. We need both content and the ability to analyze it… Anyway, we are now, clearly, at the analyze it - without any content knowledge stage which is terrible.”
I think this pendulum, if there is one, is driven by the lack of talent in the prospective teaching corps and the dolts who run the ed schools… over decades we’ve gradually moved toward process and away from content in a way that matches perfectly the abilities and limits of those involved in education. This is why I rail on about GRE scores and the like - if we get more highly-capable, talented people in education, they’ll a) come with more content and b) be able to handle even more.
Then ed schools and professional development can focus on effective ‘process’ - and I mean actually focus on it in a transparent, accountable way. Fill their halls with students who at least have solid content knowledge and we’ll see more accountability for some of these useless, baseless ideas in ed.
Poof! Process/content pendulum balanced. [BTW, "poof" is Olde English for "over 3 decades, several professional wars and depending on a cultural shift."]
I find some faults with Willingham’s piece here, but it reminds me of how I like to explain how content matters with ‘critical thinking.’ I use movie critics. How can a Kyle Smith or an Ebert critique movies meaningfully? They’ve seen hundreds, thousands. They’ve got a mass of content knowledge that allows them to *gasp* think critically about the subject. No content, no criticism, no analysis, no value.
It takes about 13 seconds to explain this to a kid and see the light bulb go off. Play them some new song, whether it’s a rap song or Britney Spears’ new album [the song "Womanizer" is surprisingly catchy, btw] and ask them if they like it. It’s awesome, it sucks, whatever - ask them why and they’ll tell you in a sentence or two.
Play them… the Hee Haw Gospel Quartet or Kenny Rogers and ask them to evaluate it. They can’t go beyond “HAHA THAT SUCKS” because they’ve never heard the genre. They retreat to the ‘process’/analytical side because they simply have no content knowledge to reference.
Britney or Lil Wayne? They can compare it to thousands of similar songs and evaluate it accordingly. That’s using content knowledge along with process/analytical ability to get a result.
No content knowledge, no worthwhile result.
No “21st century skills” here, either.
Dec 3, 2008
Posted | 13 comments
Steve Dembo at teach42 posted about crowdSPRING, a site on which creative projects [logo, website design, etc.] are posted for all to see. Then designers, hobbyists and, as Dembo points out, students can respond to the ad with a design that may be chosen. In “Real World Art,” Dembo writes:
“The site is called CrowdSPRING and what’s amazing about it is that people aren’t competing to win a contract to create the logo/design, they’re actually going ahead and doing the work and hoping to be the one selected as the winner.”
Dembo sums up crowdSPRING better than they do. He goes on:
“At first I was just way impressed at the idea of the site, and that so many professional and amateur graphic designers were participating. Then i started wondering whether any student graphic designers were jumping into the game. After all, why not? If they enjoyed doing design work and wanted to practice in some real world situations, why not try their hand at some logos for real potential clients?”
I’m impressed by the idea, too, and a quick look at something from crowdSPRING’s project tab shows that range of hobbyist to professional. Imagine if Sunkist, who recently tweaked their logo, opened up a similar competition? Very cool possibilities.
Unfortunately, this stuff ruins the world.
First, the crowdSPRING model is a kissing cousin of spec work - and here’s why that’s bad. The professional association for design, AIGA, takes the following position on spec work and design competitions:
“… organizations sometimes initiate contests as a way of developing logos or other identity work. Unlike disciplines in which the designer can bill for implementation of the proposed design (e.g., architecture), in communication design, the submitted solution already represents the bulk of the intellectual work. AIGA encourages organizations to issue a request for proposals from qualified designers. This sample letter may also be sent by AIGA members to help educate organizations offering contests.
AIGA believes that doing speculative work seriously compromises the quality of work that clients are entitled to and also violates a tacit, long-standing ethical standard in the communication design profession worldwide.”
You can see how spec work and design competitions can weaken the sector - but that’s not the big issue here. Especially in education - for developing students’ interests in and capabilities with design - we need to look at the opportunity cost.
The solution is direct, local charity. Walk down the street and give away a design.
If a student researches a crowdSPRING design, mocks one up and submits, he misses out on developing most of the skills that make a designer successful. He’ll have a logo for his portfolio, but he’s not a better designer than he was the day before. That, and he hasn’t done much good in the world.
So how can a student interested in design make a bigger impact on his own development and on the world around him?
1. Identify a business or organization that could use your help. This isn’t hard - it’s fairly obvious who does and doesn’t need a bit of rebranding. Stroll down Main Street, pop in, introduce yourself and offer to do a logo/website design for free. No obligation, no payment necessary. Just ask that you can use the design in your portfolio.
2. Work with them on the design process. This is the skill that matters the most - dealing with the people behind the designs you’re creating. Find out what they want, what they need, and figure out how you can do it. There are loads of free resources that can guide you in that process. Here are a few:
- The Logo Design Process of TOP Logo Designers
- Logo Design Process From Start to Finish
- The Logo Design Process From Concept to Completion
The student learns how to communicate with a potential client and plan/execute project management. It doesn’t get much more relevant than that.
3. Ram home that you’re part of the community - then add to it. These small projects are great opportunities to connect with the people around you. Explain that you’re taking a design class at your high school or that you’re a local student looking to develop a small business in design. You’re part of the community, they’re part of the community. It’s a lot more valuable than an anonymous crowdSPRING design with no feedback process, no connections and no conversations.
Schools especially need all the help they can get with positive PR. Engaging taxpayers, parents, and/or business owners with the fruits of their school taxes - and a bit of promise that local youth aren’t leading their community to Hell in a handbasket - can have a tremendous effect on garnering support of a school’s endeavors.
This isn’t one of those 21st century skills - it’s just old-fashioned, 20th century charity that happens to use Photoshop.
If a business/organization uses crowdSPRING for its logo project and it takes each designer 3 hours to research, sketch and develop a suitable entry, 100 entrants nearly wastes 297 hours.
Hey, one guy’s time will be made worthwhile with his selection and a couple hundred dollars.
My model? 100 students/amateurs go through the design process, build their portfolios and develop professionally. 100 small businesses or charitable organizations get free, high-quality design. 100 schools districts get good PR and 100 communities grow a little.
crowdSPRING’s problem is opportunity cost. It’s a very cool idea, and their PRO section may work out well as a business model, but it’s far less helpful than it seems.
Their idea does nothing to prevent the erosion of communication and community. My model adds to both. You decide.
Dec 1, 2008
Posted | 7 comments
I’ve undergone a bit of rebranding and started up a few new projects - had to go on a posting hiatus.
But I decided to push the button on the left, so the Aughts will resume tomorrow.
