By Sherman Dorn on May 16, 2013
There are three forms of social aggression that can infect an academic department or college and be hard to root out. I have been mulling these for a while and have only half-formed thoughts; it’s probably best to think of the following as a tentative classification. I hope to have time to discuss possible responses over the weekend.
Continue reading “Lashon hora, microaggression, and the academic asshole”
Notes
Posted in Personal, The academic life |
By Sherman Dorn on May 15, 2013
In response to the LTI App Bounty challenge issued yesterday by several LMS companies, here is my wish-list for software that has a simple function, does not yet exist, but should:
- A mashup of the Creative Commons search tool, Zotero, and simple image editing that would allow one to search for a CC-licensed/PD image, snag it and its source, and watermark the image with the citation, with as few clicks as possible.
- Variant on the above: instead of a watermark, a thin margin strip added to the image with citation and possibly a tiny QR (the only justified use I can imagine of QR codes today).
- Further variant: similar tool, but the target would be the Digital Public Library of America.
- A (more clever) variant of browser form-entry saving that you could use for commenting on student work: you set up prompts for comments on work, and when you start typing in a comment, the browser add-on would display (and allow you to pick) comments that you have already written.
- A variant on the above: the add-on would build, export, and import libraries of comments and prompts.
- Another variant: exporting the data in a .csv file (or other spreadsheet format). Or, given the LTI challenge noted above, something with an LTI hook.
- A server utility that could feed a page’s text in small bites to a cell-phone user (i.e., someone who does not have a smartphone but can receive SMS).
- A utility to gate a cell phone’s SMS messages into an LMS or similar (i.e., let someone contribute to a gated discussion from an LMS, not just let messages go outbound).
- An essential-systems cloning device — not a complete unit (you don’t need legs or hair for this) but enough to participate in an instructor-permission role online.
Okay, the last one is a joke, but the rest are serious. We need these, coding friends.
Posted in Teaching, The academic life |
By Sherman Dorn on May 13, 2013
Jeff Selingo’s new book, College (Un)bound, came out last week. Very brief version of this post: buy it if you want a compilation of good reporting on higher education. You should expect to enjoy it as long as you bring the salt shaker for when Selingo becomes prescriptive.
Continue reading “Quick review of Jeff Selingo’s “College (Un)bound””
Posted in Education policy, Higher education |
By Sherman Dorn on May 11, 2013
I am starting a local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Metaphors. Part of my motivation is the release of another Dan Brown novel. But it didn’t hurt my motivation to read the awful thumbnail history in Arthur Levine’s column this week on teachers unions.
Teachers’ unions are under siege nationwide…. What’s caused the uproar is that the world is changing. America is moving from a national, analog, industrial economy to a global, digital, information economy. The two economies differ dramatically in their expectations for schools and teachers…. Industrial societies focus on common processes, epitomized by the assembly line. Our schools—products of the industrial age—rely on such processes… Herein lies the cause of current conflicts with teachers’ unions. They, like schools, are products of the industrial era.
How many errors?
- Chronology: teachers unionized after World War II, concentrated in the 1960s and 1970s during the shift in the economy from manufacturing to domination by service occupations.
- Category: education is the epitome of the service economy… with all its flaws. Teachers unionized during a large shift of union organizing towards service industries. Teaching happened to be one of them.
- Rhetoric: Levine uses the typical crutch of global competition as the driver behind economic change. But most of our economy is still selling things and services to ourselves, inside the country.
Worst is Levine’s dismissive catchphrase industrial era. “Industrial-era education” is the convenient whipping boy for everyone from Jeb Bush to Cathy Davidson, commonly used for one of two rhetorical purposes:
- Claiming that schools are obsolete in the brand-new world of spanking-clean robots that do all our work for us or would if we would just learn how to program them correctly.
- Claiming that schools are rigid, dehumanizing institutions.
The term “industrial-era education” is thus a rhetorical gesture, not generally a serious historical claim. A few do make serious historical claims, such as Cathy Davidson, and I have elsewhere explained why I think she is in error on the history. Levine’s use is more clearly an ahistorical foil that assumes, damnit, schools should be getting with the program and not being left behind in the Brave New World which is inevitable and thus must be accommodated because you will be assimilated, and resistance is futile. It is Borg Policy Logic.
Notes
Posted in Education policy, History |
By Sherman Dorn on May 10, 2013
Style note to education beat reporters: an algorithm is not “personalization” of education, no matter how many people make the claim. As computerized algorithms currently exist, here are the things that an algorithm cannot identify in an educational context:
- An algorithm does not know when to pull a student aside at a quiet moment to ask about her mother. When a teacher knows and reaches out, that’s personalization.
- An algorithm does not know when a joke will disarm a tense moment for a particular class. When a teacher knows and launches the joke, that’s personalization.
- An algorithm does not know how long to wait before the student in the second row will not be able to remain silent for one minute longer and just has to speak up. When a teacher knows and waits, that’s personalization.
- An algorithm does not know when the uncomfortable student leaning out of his chair needs to go use the bathroom. When a teacher knows and gives permission, that’s personalization.
- An algorithm does not know who needs to be persuaded against starting a fight at lunch. When a teacher knows and talks the student down, that’s personalization.
- An algorithm does not know when the blank look means “you lost me a while ago and I hope my friend understood what you just said,” and when it means “I’m not buying what you’re selling today.” When a teacher knows and responds to that student, that’s personalization.
This is not a slam against all algorithms — they have their uses. But the claim that an algorithm can personalize education? Not currently possible.
Posted in Education policy, Teaching |
Recent Comments