The Dysplastic Brain

The Investigator Found in Shallow Water

2010-07-29T10:43:00.016-04:00

The Investigator, a ship my Great Grandfather was on and with the rest of the crew, left stranded in the Arctic has been found. Various articles follow:
The latest underwater photos from the BBC.
National Post article.
Dept of Parks, Canada expedition homepage.
Department of Parks photos from the expedition. They have both the Franklin search and the McClure discovery on this page. The page has changed over the last month and shows no organizational (obviously named directories) effort to make it permanent, so tell me if you have to chase the images down on the Parks Canada site.
Expedition video with voice over in mpeg4
More Expedition video of Marc-André Bernier, Chief of the Underwater Archeology Service at Parks Canada.
BBC article.
Video from television stories shows copper sheathing on the stern.

Here is a link to a brief biographical note on Sir Alexander Armstrong, the ship's naturalist and surgeon and a very concise description of the voyage. I'm not going to steal it by copying into my blog. It's definitely worth a few minutes to read it. Armstrong was one of the naturalists the Royal Navy sent on voyages in similar fashion to Charles Darwin. Armstrong's journal is published as a book and is considered by historians to be the authoritative record of the voyage.

My Great Grandfather, John Calder was Captain of the forecastle on the Investigator's last voyage. The Investigator was under the command of Robert John Le Mesurier McClure, one of two vessels commissioned to sail in 1850 to the western Arctic by way of Bering Strait in search of the expedition belonging to Sir John Franklin, missing since 1845. The second ship was Enterprise; her commanding officer was Captain Richard Collinson. The ships were heavily reinforced for Arctic exploration and were even screw driven.

[deleted/corrected 12-5-2010 - I have been told John Calder fearing court martial, stayed in North America ending up in Chicago.] Correction from Cousin Linda Smith:

Great-Grandfather did in fact, return to England with the crew of the Investigator, Resolute and North Star on the North Star. He lived there for around a year, married Fanny Cattle on 20 Feb 1855 and they left for America the following day on the 'Cultivator'. (According to the Free BMD Marriage index 1827-1915, John Calder from Langport, Somerset was married in Jan-Feb-Mar of 1855. This is recorded in Volume 5c on page 635. Fanny Elizabeth is also listed on the page according to the index.) They settled in Chicago, however, according to Mom, he left Fanny in NY for a while until he got things arranged in Chicago.

His discharge paper listed the ships he served on, along with conduct notes from each captain ... all of his were good ... no problems, no mention of mutiny. Mom never mentioned any fears or problems either. And considering that he was awarded two medals and a large sum of money from the Queen, I cannot think that he had anything other than good conduct.

Our grandfather did in fact receive the medals and money for his father while he was attending school in England (His mother took him there when he was 9 so he could receive a proper education. He attended Failand Lodge School and is found there on the 1871 English Census.) He returned home to the end of the Chicago fire. According to what Mom told me, his aunt sewed the medals and money into his coat. During the crossing, he became sick and was taken care of by the Captain's wife. She discovered the money and medals when cleaning his coat and left them there. They were said to be the ones who watched over him after that and kept him with them for a few days for safety. I believe the ship was the 'City of Baltimore', which arrived in NY on the 16th Oct 1871.

Landing in Chicago in 1871 during the great fire, he is supposed to have been kept on a friend's yacht for safety. Here is an addition from Fred Calder dated 12-07-2010:

There was an ancillary family story accompanying the one about the ship's captain and his wife taking care of grandfather when he arrived back in the U.S. ill. This story was that he also stayed with them because of their concern for his safety because of aftermath of the Chicago fire. This story is supported by his arriving on the "City of Baltimore" October 16, 1871 after the Chicago fire. The fire occurred from October 8 to early Tuesday October 10, 1871. So, true story - surely, he would have been kept until the ships captain heard that it was safe for him to return.

12-6-2010 Fred Calder (brother) sent this explanation of his research in the Admiralty records:

When I visited the Royal Navy library in Portsmouth I discovered a privately printed volume on naval medals (Morris-Douglas, Kenneth: Naval Medals 1793-1856: London, Privately Printed, pp. 409 - 412) identifying the Meritorious Medal.
This publication names the following 4 "Investigators" recommended for the "Meritorious Medal". They were as follows:
Biggs, James - Private Royal Marines;
Calder, John - Captain of Forecastle;
Davies, John - Quarter Master;
Milner, George L. - Gun Room Steward.
There is also 1 medal awarded to Woon, John - Color Sergeant "For Exceptional Bravery And Intrepidity".

Years later, Great Grandfather Calder was interviewed so we have some of the story in his own words. Here is a transcription from the old newspaper clipping compliments of cousin Linda:

Chicago Daily - Sunday January 18th 1891, p. 26

IN THE FROZEN OCEANS

THE ONLY LIVING MAN WHO HAS BEEN AROUND THE AMERICAS

John Calder, Who Farms Down Near Alexis, Has had Many Strange Experiences -- He Was with the Expedition that Discovered the Northwest Passage -- Memories of the Party That Went in Search of Franklin.

John Calder, a farmer living near Alexis, Ill., was with two Arctic expeditions sent out by the English Government in search of Sir John Franklin. For fourteen years before he settled in Chicago in 1855 Calder led a seafaring life. He is the son of a Somersetshire farmer, and after girdling the globe a time or two and taking a good look at the rest of humanity he returned to the occupation of his ancestors. Calder, if he were not buried in the obscurity of the quiet life he leads, would be famous for one thing at least. He is probably the only living man who has been around the Americas. The crew he was with on his second voyage was the first to make the trip, but they left the ship behind.

Capt. Robert J. L. M. McClure, the commander of her Majesty’s ship Investigator, which weighed anchor in Plymouth sound Jan. 20, 1850, with its consort the Enterprise, and spread its fresh sails for the Polar Sea by way of the Straits of Magellan, his Second Lieutenant, S.G. Cresswell, and the Surgeon, Dr. Alex Armstrong, discovered the Northwest passage from the summit of a hill on the north shore of Prince Albert Land, Oct. 10, 1850.

The primary object of the expedition in command of Capt. McClure was the relief of Sir John Franklin and his party. Two years previous the Investigator had sailed on a similar mission, with orders to proceed to Baffin Bay and enter the Polar Sea from the eastward. It was commanded at that time by Sir James Ross, but returned in 1849 without having found any traces of the lost explorer. The Investigator was built for Artic service, and was a sailing vessel, bark-rigged, of 422 tons. It was especially fortified to cope with the ice. Its crew consisted of sixty-six men, all selected for their physical capabilities, great courage, and efficiency for an expedition of this character. Many of them had visited the frozen regions of the north more than once and fully realized the gravity of the undertaking. They were all volunteers.
On the memorable day when Capt. McClure and his officers from their high point of observation, discovered the route that England had desired, four on his men half-way down the ice-covered mountain were preparing a meal. One of the number, Captain of the forecastle, was John Calder. He probably is the only survivor of the crew. Capt. McClure died in 1873. The crew was rescued by her Majesty’s ships Resolute and Intrepid and reached England in 1854. A year later Capt. Calder, with his bride, sailed for America.

Capt. Calder at Home.
One cold afternoon last week a Tribune correspondent found the Captain comfortably seated by a bright fire in his pleasant home in Kelly Township, Warren County.
“It’s pretty cold,” said he, as he asked his visitor to take a seat by his inviting fire. “Not for a man who started out in earnest to find the North Pole, is it?” “O, that was forty years ago,” he replied, “and I have forgotten nearly all about it.
There is a good deal in what a man is used to. I have seen almost every kind of climate and I don’t know but what Illinois is as good as any. I first shipped when I was 21 for Australia and for ten years following I traveled pretty much all over the world. I struck a climate down in South America once that just about suited me, but the natives were fighting so much among themselves that there was no comfort living there and I got out. Guess they get along better now.”With the last expression the old man raised his other foot up to the fire. “You want to know something about my Artic exploration do you:” he said, after his shins and those of his visitor had been well toasted. “I ‘spose a good many things occurred up there you’d like to know about, but there’s a good deal that I don’t care to tell."

“My trip with Capt. McClure was kind of an accident. I’d been up in the Artic regions with Sir James Ross and hadn’t been back a great while when the McClure expedition was equipped. I didn’t hear a word regarding the sailing of the Investigator until just the day before she started. I (saw) a friend on the street who told me he had read in a London paper that another expedition in search of Franklin was about to leave. I went to London that night and found the ship next day at Woolwich. I shipped as Captain of the forecastle. We had everything that was supposed to be necessary for our comfort and convenience. We were well supplied with rations, clothing, and fuel. I remember one man, who had never been in the Artic regions asked me what he should take with him. I replied: ‘All the moral courage you can get hold of.’ Next to food and raiment this is what a man needs most.

“I presume if I were to refresh my mind I could recall a good many incidents. I understand that several books have been written about this expedition, but I have not seen any of them. Early in the sixties I met a man in Chicago who was a member of the crew. Since that time I have not heard anything from any of the party except Capt. McClure whose death I saw chronicled in a Chicago paper. For all I know I am the only member of the Investigator’s crew who is now living. As you have probably read in the histories of the Investigator sailed for Baring Strait by way of the Straits of Magellan.

Our consort, the Enterprise, we soon lost sight of after striking the Pacific. There was little in the trip around South America that is worth mentioning. We hurried along as fast as we could for the Polar Sea. Capt. McClure and all the crew were very anxious to reach that latitude with as little delay as possible. I remember one morning along about the 1st of August we were off the northwest coast of Russian America when the Plover was sighted. She was an English vessel surveying along the coast. A heavy wind came up from the west and started the ice toward it. It was in imminent danger of being crushed, but we had no time to delay. All on board were ordered to bend their efforts to send our vessel onward.

“We cruised along past the Mackenzie River, and at Point Drew we touched shore. There we saw some Esquimaux, but found no trace of Franklin. We pushed along through the ice till we entered the Prince of Wales Strait.

“The ice about us rendered it necessary to be very cautious. This was in September and we soon discovered we were in a drifting pack of ice. Our position was hazardous. One night we came in contact with a large floe piece, which struck the starboard quarter, carried away a big hawser, and started all the anchors. We were in this perilous condition for several days, not knowing at what moment we might be crushed to death. The winter of 1850-’51 was spent in the strait near a small island.

Traveling Parties Start Out.
“The vessel had only been frozen in a short time when Capt. McClure organized the crew into three traveling parties. One of these went southward, the other went up Baring Island, and Capt. McClure’s party, with which I was connected, went northeastward on Prince Albert Land. I have slept under a tent many a night when the thermometer registered between 50° and 60° below zero.

“It was on this trip that Capt. McClure discovered the the northwest passage by observation. McClure was very ambitious to make this discovery, as he felt that it might prove an advantage to commerce. He was as brave a man as ever headed an Artic expedition. No matter how intense the cold or how much he suffered, a word of complaint was never heard from him. These traveling parties often endured great hardships.

“You would hardly believe it, but I have cut holes in my boots to let the water through which we were traveling flow out and in to prevent it freezing around my feet. I remember an incident of another one of these traveling parties. We were proceeding along the northwestern coast of Banks Land and two of our men whose condition became very serious caused us to start back for the boat. On our way back we shot a polar bear. We at once removed the hide, and, as customary opened the stomach. A piece of court-plaster and a few raisins were all that it contained. These articles he had evidently got from civilized man and the question was whether he had picked them up from some other expedition. It was quite evident they had not been in the animal’s stomach very long. When we returned to the ship Capt. McClure sent out several fatigue parties, but after a day or two the investigation was dropped.

Perils in the Ice.
“That spring we started around Baring Island or Banks Land, passed Nelson Point, and cruised northward. One of our most dangerous experiences occurred just out of Burnett Bay on the west of Baring Island. The vessel was raised at one time eight or ten feet out of the water. About everyone on board concluded that his time had come. The ship got in an ice gorge but like other miraculous escapes we came out all right. We met with another narrow escape at Cape Austin, and in September we encountered a severe northwestern gale and drifted into Mercy Bay, doomed to spend another winter in the ice. It was probably the most perilous voyage made in the Polar Sea. During the winter we killed a few reindeer, wolves, and a musk-ox.

“It was the hope of Capt. McClure to have reached Melville Island before winter, but when circumstances forced the abandonment of this idea another traveling party was formed, headed by the Captain himself, and started for Melville Island. The party reached Winter Harbor after a journey of eighteen days, hoping to find one or more ships composing Capt. Austin’s expedition, but we were disappointed. Sir Edward Perry wintered here way back in teh winter of 1819-’20.

Relic of a Former Party
“I ran across a peculiarly-shaped rock. It was about eight feet high and almost square. On the top of the rock I found a flat tin case containing a record of a visit of a party under command of Capt. McClintock June 6, 1851. The record stated where the Austin expedition wintered, and said that a depot of provisions had been established at Cape Spencer, distant nearly 600 miles. There was not a word about Franklin or any information regarding our long-lost consort. The expedition we supposed, had returned to England, as we afterward learned it had, and the Investigator was the only vessel in Artic regions at that time. We left a dispatch in the tin box when we returned to our ship.

“By the beginning of 1853 we were getting to be in pretty bad shape. Our provisions were getting short and we had been troubled a good deal with scurvy among the men. On the 5th of April the first death occurred. John Boyle, an able seaman died from dysentery, and the melancholy occurrence depressed the spirits of the crew to an alarming extent. I tell you things looked pretty bilious. The next day I was in the hold getting ready to go on duty on the ship, when I heard the greatest commotion on deck. One of the men came running to me and told me that Lieut. Pim of the H.M.S. Resolute from Melville Island was aboard. There is no use for me to attempt to describe the feelings of that crew or the way the men acted. Their joy and gratitude were beyond expression. Lieut. Pim had come across from Melville Island on his sledge, drawn by five Esquimaux dogs and two men. On the arrival of the Resolute and Intrepid at Dealy Island, off Melville Island, the year before they found our record, deposited at Winter harbor by Capt. McClure in April, 1852. After the rest of a day or two Lieut. Pim and a party from our crew went to Melville Island, and June 2, at 6 p.m., two months later, the Investigator was abandoned and the entire crew was taken to the Resolute and Intrepid. For all I know the Investigator is still imprisoned in the ice in Mercy Bay.

Back to England.
“We wintered on the Resolute and Intrepid, and late the following spring sailed for England, and landed at Ramsgate Oct. 6, 1854. Our crew was clear around the Americas, and is the only crew that ever made the trip. It was a perilous undertaking. Up in that country one finds two months of winter and ten months of very cold weather. I don’t know what would have become of us if we had not been rescued just at the time we were. The question of rations was becoming a serious one. Game was scarce and hard to shoot. It is surprising how little subsistence those animals of the polar regions require. The bears get hold of a good many walruses, but reindeer and the musk ox have a slim chance. They seem to get enough, though. But it is a fight for life with every kind of living creature up there. Of course you see some beautiful scenery. The ice formations sometimes are simply grand. I suppose I have see the most beautiful things ever seen by any man. I refer to the aurora borealis. I couldn’t describe it.

Discomforts of the Explorers.
“Yes, we could tell the difference between night and day in the winter season and kept close track of the time. While it is pretty dark when it is daytime here there is a kind of dawn up there you can see to get around. A peculiar feature of Artic life is the discomfiture one feels sleeping in the ship after having been out on a land expedition and having spent many nights on the ice. It is caused by the difference in the atmosphere. It is pretty airy sleeping under a canvas tent when the thermometer registers 60° below zero. The coldest I ever saw was 66° below zero, but it was when I was with Sir James Ross. We wore the same kind of clothing people do here, only it was heavier and more of it. The best overcoat I could Find was to make a garment out of this heavy ducking and line it with a heavy blankey. It kept out the wind and cold.

“Nature works some funny freaks up there. I have seen logs of wood 600 feet above the surface. This was up along the north shore of Banks Land. It was probably drift wood from the McKenzie and Copper Mine Rivers that had got mixed up in an ice gorge. We came pretty near getting boosted up a time or two ourselves, but it is a good big gorge that piles the ice 600 feet high.

Mrs. Calder, who is a well-preserved, motherly little woman of 60 years, tripped into an adjoining room, and in a bureau drawer where a number of sacred souvenirs are kept found a couple of medals, of which both are justly proud. One was given Mr. Calder by the English Government as a special recognition of his services, while each member of the crew received one similar to the other one. The inscription on the first is as follows:
MERITORIOUS SERVICE ARTIC EXPLORATIONS 1854.
Capt. Calder, as he is always called, is 70 years old, but is still rugged as ever.

Green Dot saves the Planet

2010-06-26T15:42:00.002-04:00

Sam Dillon writes in the New York Times about Locke High School's turn-around in Los Angeles.

As recently as 2008, Locke High School here was one of the nation’s worst failing schools, and drew national attention... Now, two years after a charter school group took over, gang violence is sharply down, fewer students are dropping out, and test scores have inched upward... But progress is coming at considerable cost: an estimated $15 million over the planned four-year turnaround, largely financed by private foundations. That is more than twice the $6 million in federal turnaround money that the Department of Education has set as a cap for any single school... Locke High, with 3,200 students, sprawls across six city blocks in south-central Los Angeles. The school’s principal in 2007 complained publicly that the Los Angeles Unified School District had made it a dumping ground for problem teachers... In spring 2008, only 15 percent of students passed state math tests.

The school's normal budget is 30 million.
The school is twice the size of a normal high school.
The budget is 9,375 per student - I'm assuming that's normal for Los Angeles schools.
The "massive" investment represents a one-eighth increase in the annual budget.
The principal has to accept employees foisted off as less competent by the district manager. Who knows why? Most principals don't have to hire people unless they like them.

What was the problem the charter take-over cured? That's what you have to ask yourself, because the "charters save the planet" story is who, not HOW.

After eliminating upper management (the mayor) and making the facility function properly (clean, neat, adequate space) and tailoring the faculty to the needs of the students (not mentioned directly) the school is able to function normally. Increased investment necessary was one twelve and a half percent of the normal budget.

How realistic is that? First take a look at the quote about only fifteen percent of students passing math tests. Doesn't that mean that nearly three-quarters of the population needs remediation? Probably not. Let's say half. That leaves us with the population of a normal high school performing at the level of the lowest quartile of a normal high school. That means the school-within-a-school has specialized staffing needs. If those needs are met, then the institution should be capable of functioning. I have a friend who is an adolescent psychiatrist in Boston. When I told her that our code for "lowest quartile" means reading at a 4th grade level, she retorted sharply that those kids had developmental disabilities. Do you still think the school doesn't need a specialized staff? The fact is that when a school does get the staff, the specially trained staff is barely capable of making headway.

If those needs are ignored and the school becomes a dumping ground for people that are ejected from other sites, the institution should fall on its face - which is what apparently happened prior to Green Dot's management.

Does this say that changing management in a similar way will be effective at other schools? Maybe, if the school has exactly the same situation.

What situation is that? Management that closes its eyes and desperately wishes for problems to disappear and management that will hand-wave (consultants and committees) when confronted by reality. Management that wants to placate wealthy populations by allocating resources in their favor and shifting funds in their general direction. Management that sweeps up children and drops them into a limbo it created for them.

Education Policy is Health Policy

2010-06-23T11:48:00.000-04:00

What would you say if I told you universal health coverage will create a fabulous surge in educational attainment? At the very least, it will result in less family stress in low SES families. In fact, it may have already happened to some people. Read on MacDuff!

It is entirely possible that the earned income credit will turn out to be the most effective education reform in history. At least that’s the way it looks from my notes on this symposium:

Notes from symposium: The Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty - AAAS Meeting, San Diego

People:
Greg Duncan

Katherine Magnuson

W. Thomas Boyce at U of British Columbia, Vancouver. Paper titled: Neurobiological pathway of Poverty Associated Lifetime Risk of Health Achievement

Social data comes from:
PSID Panel study of Income Dynamics. Births in 1968 thru 1975 measured to 2008 (To age 37: outcomes for school, employment, out of wedlock births, parental aspirations.)

First caveat – Poor health, arrest, non-marital birth are not strongly correlated in the study. But adjusted education and income are most strong.

Adult earnings are affected by early impact of family income and the highest correlation is during the period under age 5. The effect gives 17 percent higher wage total for every $3,000 increase in family income. This indicates the earned
income credit which provided families in the study approximately that amount of money may have as much effect as some educational interventions.

Norway had an analogous study where there was a 7 percent impact and in the American Indian population where gambling revenues were shared on a per capita basis, recipients experienced about the same benefit as main group at 17%. Furthermore, ability to sustain full-time employment seems to be impacted, resulting in 152 hours per year additional hours worked and higher lifetime income.

Magnuson: Achievement and health during childhood produced about .3 standard deviation on tests. American Indians had tax credit and casino money on reservation, experiencing a similar effect. When welfare was cut back, some states analyzed the results of about 33,000 subjects. (notes unclear) Indian parents’ income increased to near national average from 1993 to 2000 during the study.

Stress effects measured:
Linver, Brooks-Gunn and Kohen 2002
1/2 a std deviation or 1/3 of the total effect is due to home learning environment.

W. Thomas Boyce U of British Columbia, Vancouver
Paper titled: Neurobiological pathway of Poverty Associated Lifetime Risk of Health Achievement

Epigenetic confirmation: stress response systems have effects on organ systems.
1. cortisol levels higher in low SES socio-economic status
2. natural killer cells lower
3. cariogenic bacteria higher (teeth)
4. HPA activation affects cortisol
5. visual cortex – P1 and N1 activation in visual
striata react to novel stimuli differs from controls
6. PID NF Kappa B and cortisol affect toll-like receptor 4

Here is something for people interested in the consequences of violence or bullying; social dominance increases stress responses – ie subordinate children have more stress problems and SES exacerbates it.

What Should Interest Legislators?

2010-06-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

In England, budget cuts to food subsidies for students is reported in the Guardian:

A coalition of senior doctors and nurses have written to the education secretary, Michael Gove, expressing "deep concern" at his decision to axe plans for free school meals for half a million primary school children from low-income families.

While in the U.S. research points to the school lunch program as a proven intervention:

The study finds that the program leads to a significant increase in educational opportunity and attainment, but an insignificant increase in health levels from childhood to adulthood.

Other research points toward the "earned income credit" being the most significant education intervention in history. (W. Thomas Boyce U of British Columbia, Vancouver
Neurobiological pathway of Poverty Associated Lifetime Risk of Health Achievement.)

Are there things the government can and should be doing that will help grant all citizens equal access to early development? Should these things create a foundation of public policy? I think so.

School Safety and PerceptionBoth Public and Student

2010-06-18T17:30:00.007-04:00

We generally accept a child's description of his or her school environment without question. After all, that's where they spend the day and it's the polite thing to do. Likewise, we accept a parent's description of the same things. We also readily accept another parent's description when that person has never set foot on the premises. Parental opinion is affected by students who, knowing a fight is in the offing or feeling the pressure of incomplete homework, stay home. Fights are the most common incident in general and have the largest effect on perception. It's hard to say whether students that stay home because of violence are actually close to it rather than at arm's length.

When it comes to our own perception of safety, we are often wrong. So often are we wrong, it's the subject of books and articles. Rather than recapitulate, here is a Steven Pinker TED talk. (I was going to do a fancy embed like everybody else, but it's really a distraction from my point, which is that we misjudge danger routinely.)

Here we go:

I was looking at state of Florida DoE statistics to see whether a sample of high schools with wealthy client families underreported incidents of crime and misbehavior compared to a sample of high schools with lower income clients. The following information is in no way representative of *all* schools. Broward has around forty high schools, but I only chose twenty large ones.

From what I gather in my sample, incident counts at high schools in Broward County range from 2.1 to 8 per hundred students. There are some very small schools that cater to special needs that I didn't count, and some other schools I didn't look at because I wasn't interested in them. This applies to a subset of twenty schools I looked at because I was suspicious of the way they report incidents.

The school where I work is Dillard High School in North-West Fort Lauderdale. It has a reputation that makes many parents who would otherwise send their children to the Performing Arts or Emergent Technology magnet programs, send them to other schools. The students themselves think Dillard is more dangerous than other schools.

The reality is different. Out of the twenty I sampled, Dillard is seventh safest. For those of you with outstanding curiosity, I will post a link if you are interested in seeing the numbers. But who would have thought that Coral Springs was safest? Who would predict that Dillard is safer than Nova, Cooper City, or West Broward?

Admittedly this is anecdotal, but when I ask my students to predict where Dillard sits in relation to other schools, they say it is more dangerous than most others.

The conclusion? Obvious. Another study is desperately needed!

As promised, the link to the statistics. You can get more from the FL DoEd link at the top of the page. Go ahead and change the selection criteria to get Palm Beach or a specific school.

High Stakes Testing

2010-05-31T14:17:00.000-04:00

Regarding measurement of learning, I tend to be of the J. Gould camp. (Like you didn't know already.) But if there is a huge natural variance in humans, there could also be a huge variance not in what people know (obvious), but HOW people know.

Furthermore, it is possible that folks involved in measurement conflate the two, dismiss the difference, or miss it to one side or the other precisely because it is a moving target.

In order to get to information stored in another's brain - stored in an idiosyncratic fashion - a strict path cannot work in 100% of cases. Let's say I ask my class to reflect on why something is generally true. Nobody can answer, so I work backward from it and repeat the question till somebody gets it. Then I reflect on whether I left out a key bit of context or if the students were unable to make the connection I asked of them. BUT sometimes I am surprised by what they think and how they think it.

This doesn't happen often, but it may be happening more often than we think which is what makes me think my examination of student's knowledge isn't very good.

Supporting this is the social observation that people just don't make allowances for the way other people who are equally knowledgeable see things. Sure there is emotional investment, but there are inevitable differences of opinion engendered by what we call viewpoint. Am I saying viewpoint is a lot more dangerous than we suspect in testing? That makes me wonder about professors who give credit for well-argued opposing viewpoints.

Glen McGhee pointed out Ray and Mickelson's paper: "Students "read reality with more care than they read textbooks" (14, also 11-12) "Part of their world is the realm of work ... they observe their adult kin grappling with the financial difficulties ..." Applies now to college students, too."

This is a simple fact of viewpoint. Students want to work and react with what they think is appropriate strategy. Business leaders react in dismay, thinking students are out of touch with reality.

Comedy American Enterprise Institute-Style

2010-05-06T18:43:00.003-04:00

Charles Murray speaking about evaluation of Charter Schools in the New York Times.

Ok, so charter schools are not a school reform technique anymore. Poof! But why blame it on testing? Sure in England, schools are boycotting state sponsored high stakes tests. Sure they're ineffective because when you constantly measure people, they adjust their behavior in very distinct ways. But heck, that's not why charter schools aren't special.

Murray goes on to rhapsodize over his ideal charter school's curriculum, bemoaning the probability that his students wouldn't do better than students at competitor's schools. Here is what Murray misses. Testing doesn't miss the wonderful warm goodness-filled charter education any more than it misses anything else.

Larry Cuban has a wonderful explanation of what is really happening. There is no one best way of schooling youth is what he concludes based on evidence from prior to the Second World War. Today, Charles Murray discovered something quite similar, but took home quite a different conclusion.

Asking Entirely Too Much From Testing

2010-04-10T07:59:00.004-04:00

Matthew Nisbet has a comment about interpreting the public's understanding of science over at Framing Science

Consider what a split-ballot comparison in a 2004 University of Michigan survey revealed about the nature of responses to these long standing questions about evolution. In this survey experiment, one half of the sample was asked the following traditionally worded question:

True or false, human beings as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.

When asked this way, 42% answered true, a result that has been incredibly consistent across surveys since 1985.

The other half of the sample, however, was asked a slightly different version of the question:

True or false, according to the theory of evolution, human beings as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.

When asked this way, 74% answered true.

The implication is that context matters: Americans are not ignorant of what science says about human origins, in fact, as the second version of the question reveals, 3/4 of the public are familiar with the scientifically correct answer.

I believe it may be that the issue demonstrated by the two versions of the question is not one that allows a metric to be constructed.

What it does point out, is an important limitation in questioning people about anything at all. Questions are likely to be construed differently by a variety of responders due to differences in their perception of the semantic underpinnings of language and their personal learning history separate from the facts or belief systems. Time also plays a significant part. As people are introduced to a new concept, they put it in context with something they know. We understand by analogy which is limiting, but effective in helping make decisions.

But when someone asks us a question about it, the analog can either get in the way, or facilitate. Two people can be at a similar point on the path to comprehension, but react to a question differently.

As soon as you start asking questions using English, the variety of correct answers widens in the subject though the perception of the questioner does NOT. If a thought generated by the question can take you down more than one path and still be correct, the question will be less accurate in terms of what it beings back to the questioner. A second ambiguity may destroy the accuracy of a certain percentage of responses. And if the survey is littered with these, statistical correlation will not generate a warning.

The question's statement on lineage suggests to me that humans evolved in a linear way and it makes me uncomfortable to say that it is unambiguously correct. I just don't like it because I would never frame a statement using those words. Thus I am tempted to say "No." What is more, I may have never actually passed the first question through the filter if it had not contained the hint "according to the theory of evolution." That addition is a billboard telling my consciousness to stop and think about my understanding of the "theory of evolution" and wonder if the questioner is asking about current understand on natural selection.

If you fall back on definitions, as most scientists do, you fail to understand the nature of language and the nature of human cognition. The fact is that people generally don't parse questions carefully. Scientists do, but they aren't normal people in the sense I'm talking about. Scientists have trained themselves to pass any statement through a series of semantic filters and knowledge frameworks prior to admitting the question to consideration. Thus, Nisbet sees the question as presenting natural selection so that the appropriate answer will follow a particular logic pathway. I feel that it is not particularly accurate to say humans will subject any given question that includes sufficient ambiguity to any predictable logical pathway.

We may never know how many people fail to parse the question at all in terms of differentiating the framework of science versus faith because we desperately need to think these types of questions give us answers.

Social Production Models vs Prescription

2010-04-08T17:03:00.001-04:00

I was listening to Yochai Benkler's interview with Russ Roberts on his podcast discussing regulatory frameworks for national infrastructure and realized that conservative arguments often include a call to principles for guidance whereas researchers demand examination of evidence.

Roberts is a libertarian and Keyensian economist who makes an assumption that regulation is always going to stifle innovation. But Benkler proved by using evidence between 2000 and 2010 that lack of regulation has taken the U.S. from first or second to about fifteenth in network speed, access, and cost.

In education, we are faced with a similar situation. Probably not for the same reasons. Unfortunately, education reform has a history of panic and prescription.

Careful examination of evidence can allow us to create a community from which to foster change. It is our ability to create community, the freedom to do so, that is important. Not restriction, but freedom that creates the ability to innovate.

In a highly restrictive environment, any tiny move can be seen as a huge one because we are focusing on conflict rather than cooperation. These tiny moves have no cumulative effect because they are not mutually reinforcing.

Accountability and Measurements of Effectiveness

2010-04-04T14:06:00.004-04:00

You could also call this "The Mismeasure of Teaching" - My thoughts on evaluation of work product. You have two kinds of work: 1. Easily-measured productive work and 2. Creative work that is hard to measure.

Typical evaluation techniques such as checklists are used for production. Counts of assignments, distribution of test grades, presence of "essential question" on whiteboard, presence of vocabulary related to lesson on wall, number of students off-task over a quarter hour, actions taken by staff, presence of discussion, student evaluations - typical list-based management of the outward and visible signs. But is it possible to use the theological next step? Signs of the inward and spiritual state? Does it follow logically and can it be reliable?

For creative work, Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks chapter on Economics of Social Production - mentions the inherent difficulty of measuring a distinction between quantity of labor and quality of labor when it comes to creative output. A widely based traditional model of production can't produce an increased qualitative output is his conclusion.

If you look at The Structure of Educational Organizations by John W. Meyer & Brian Rowan, 1978 pp 79 through 109, Meyer et al identify lack of evaluation procedures as resulting from a lack of will-to-measure and consequent reliance on credentialism.

Benkler hypothesizes peer review as an effective method of measuring creative work in a collaborative environment. This may be networked and collaborated in an environment outside work, so internal measurement by a checklist will miss it completely. Peer review takes into account publication, and involvement in publication, workshops, symposia, production and collaboration with persons outside of the institution.

To the extent that teaching is simple production, evaluation using simple metrics should suffice. But to the extent it is creative, the checkoff sheet will fail measure creative and networked production.

I believe management technique may identify creativity improperly in the k-12 environment as "enthusiasm". So while it is being taken into consideration, it is mismeasured. Another problem is professionalization. To the extent lawmakers

Great Britain - Educational Bellwether

2010-03-09T10:44:00.006-05:00

If you are a school having a problem with kids not hitting the mark on high stakes tests, what can you do? An article on schools housing problem children gives a hint of what we have to look forward to.

Nationally, the number of young people classified as having behavioural problems is rising fast – there were 150,000 last year; a 25% increase in four years. So this local row raises questions that resonate well beyond the bridges that carry the traffic away from Canvey Island. Is it becoming increasingly common for people to refuse to live alongside these difficult pupils? Are we perhaps even experiencing a wave of nimbyism that extends not just to the sometimes unlovable "EBD" child but to other children and young people in general?Article

In New York City, the good results charter schools obtain appears to be due to a dearth of special ed students. The same appears to be true in England too.

Hundreds of the best-performing comprehensive schools appear to be covertly selecting pupils from more affluent backgrounds and blocking those from more deprived families.

(Added 3-12-10) Research commissioned by the Sutton Trust paints a picture of a secondary education system deeply socially segregated and in which large numbers of schools attempt to skew their intake.article

Higher Education has its woes as well. Some things are fairly uniform up and down the line. The British industry council on higher education that presumably worries about hiring recent graduates issues a report that says standards have fallen over the last twenty-odd years so that people who should not graduate are getting degrees. The report concludes that Tony Blair's desire that universities be open to half of all entrants resulted in the present lack of standards.

One of the experts called in to the council of industry powerhouses has written a response saying they did not pay attention to his reasoning. He lays it out here: Geoffrey Alderman

I believe that there has been a decline in academic standards overall in British higher education over the past two decades, but not for the reasons advanced by the AGR. The evidence for this decline is contained in the 2009 report, Students and Universities, of the then select committee on innovation, universities, science and skills. In my written and oral evidence to this inquiry, I identified the following factors as fundamental to this decline:

First, the league table culture that has permeated the senior leaderships of many British universities, resulting in intolerable pressures on academic staff to pass students who should rightfully fail and to award higher classes of degrees to the undeserving.

Second, pressures to maximise non-governmental sources of income, primarily from "full fee-paying" non-European students, to whom it is deemed prudent by these same senior leaderships to award qualifications to which they are often not entitled, so as to ensure future "market share".

Third, the increasing and increasingly stupid use of students' course evaluations as pivotal factors in the academic promotion process. To put it bluntly, a conscientious academic with poor student evaluations may find it difficult or even impossible to obtain promotion because her/his students do not like getting the low grades they may well richly deserve.

Fourth, the breakdown of the external examiner system, due partly to the near-universal modularisation of degree programmes and partly to the abysmal remuneration for work of this sort. The evidence given to the select committee of improper pressure on external examiners makes exceedingly grim reading.

Fifth, the relative leniency shown towards academic dishonesty, coupled with the tendency of university administrators to insist that plagiarism be viewed through the prism of what I believe is termed "cultural relativism".

If this sort of thing - I include Diane Ravich's more or less 180 degree turn - persists, I am going to have to settle back with popcorn.

Do You Value Freedom of Religion and Constitutional Rights?

2010-02-14T17:29:00.005-05:00

I need to show you guys something. Not too long ago, I started getting fan requests for viewing a video at FaceBook on putting Christ BACK in schools. I want to point out the intellectual legacy of this idea. It is distinctively anti-government in a way that should be disturbing to people who value the Constitution.

Please visit the Founding Father of Home Schooling, R. J. Rushdoony on this youtube page:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPOrKVU_0dw
Read about his theories of governance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousas_John_Rushdoony

And you may conclude with me that in order to confirm his paranoid bias, he reinvented history.

In addition to creating home schooling and (wanting to) demolish the legal system of the United States, he directly inspired murder. How much nicer can a guy get? Does he invite direct comparison to any radical muslim clerics you know?

Here is piece produced for a religious audience. Christian Reconstructionism By Dr. Bruce Prescott - Interfaith Alliance forum on Religious Extremism - Westminster Presbyterian Church April 11, 2002
http://www.mainstreambaptists.org/mob4/dominionism.htm

What I find interesting is the direct explicit intent to establish control in Republican organizations.

This is a Rushdoony legacy foundation link to a page of readings for the advancement of LIBERTY!
http://www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article.php?ArticleID=464
Which I find funny since they wish to eliminate the structure of the government.

In closing, I presume you may be aware that Christ was never in schools in the first place. If you have any ideas to the contrary, don't consider looking at anything but the American Bar Association's page on it. I have put several links into this post already. Find it yourself. :-p

The Manufactured Crisis and the Bloomberg of 2010

2010-01-31T13:31:00.004-05:00

And by extension, nearly every state that complies with today's popular education repair manual looks foolish. The overwrought cries for charter schools and cessation of waste. The vain belief in the purity of accountability standards. The outcry against the evil unions that ruin public education. Fix this! Fix that!

It looks like there are quite a few things that taken individually, ruin public education. So why is it that by notable measures, today's kids are smarter than their parents were? (Hint: Kids can still get a good education in most public schools.)

"The Manufactured Crisis" was published a few years ago (1995) and has had some time to percolate through the minds of those who cared to read it. Unfortunately, the tone was not conciliatory enough to get the attention of those who most needed it. *cough* Legislators! *cough*

This week at EdWize, Jackie Bennett posted a story with supporting graphics that reflect the current conditions in New York City schools.

I would like to think Berliner and Biddle, the authors of "The Manufactured Crisis" are smiling, but the fact that this is happening despite their pointing out the obvious is probably curdling their satisfaction.

One hopes that the balance of states will look on and learn.

What we see in the graphs may be the beginning of the end for the Reagan era education reform movement. (Not that Clinton and Obama didn't join the race-to-nowhere. Aptly named since it's been a race to nowhere for years.) Unfortunately the fierce "will to destroy" originating in the Reagan Department of Education was wedded to the Democrats' "will to manage" birthing a monster. This isn't a Dorn-style Frankenstein. This monster is more like Mothra because we are likely to see a metamorphosis.

So much for what hasn't happened.

What *has* happened is that a real problem has had time to blossom and bear fruit. The problem is inequality fertilized by fiscal conservative tendencies, a tax rebellion at the local level and a market value crash in housing.

This semester, I'm going to ask my students to do a mashup that shows the distribution of income distribution, household language and schools with low ratings.

Calling all Interactive Design students in room 801. Yeah, you. ;-)

Home Schooling

2010-01-07T18:27:00.002-05:00

I ran into this comment. I think it's awesome and gives us hope.

I was homeschooled by young earth creationists...too many stupid things. My father got kicked out of college for being an asshat to his math teacher and never pursued anymore education and my mother got a writing degree from a community college.

Needless to say their grasps on history, science, and pretty much every subject was...interesting. It's sad when you go to a Christian college and your professors are telling you that your parents taught you some crazy shit.

response from another commenter:

You went from a crazy Christian home school right into a Christian college? That's like fleeing from Auschwitz only to go to Alcatraz and say to yourself, "Hey, man, this is living."

original poster:

Actually the professors at the college were really good oddly. At the time it was the most liberal Christians I'd met (despite the staff, students and reputation being extremely conservative) and they really challenged me to think about my faith. I went from being a young earth creationist ministry major to an agnostic who believes evolution is by far the most likely scientific explanation for the origin of our species who majored in film. And through that they were the few people who really respected and championed me (I wasn't an asshole agnostic but I also came out openly and some staff tried to kick me out for it).

So the whole Christian college professors telling me my parents are crazy is more funny then something showing a disparity between two same-sided extremes (since the professors were mostly liberal people who believed in evolution and that this country is much worse off for some much Christianity being involved in it). It's funnier though, I guess, if you imply the professors were young earth extremists also.

Why Education Isn't a Key Factor in Decision Making

2009-12-28T17:36:00.006-05:00

What population of educated people are making poor decisions? The answer? Most of them.

The anti-vaccination community boasts that its level of education proves it is making rational decisions. That claim is solid. Solidly wrong.

We all make poor decisions but I am wondering why mothers who refuse to vaccinate their children make decisions like high school students.

I asked my students why our H1N1 vaccination rate was so low. We talked about the flu. We talked about spreading it. We talked about mortality and chances of side effects. We talked about spreading it to elderly relatives and younger siblings. What key piece of information did I miss?

After thinking about it, one of my students volunteered what he thought should have been obvious to me. Staying home sick is a plus, not a negative. He has utmost faith in his doctor to cure whatever comes. The rest of the class nodded and looked at me like I was dense (which I am) and I realized once more they are not living in my head.

When a person's heuristic fails, he or she may not realize it. Education can't help when you don't have adequate information and don't realize it. If a decision is "good enough" to give comfort, it's the one you keep.

Looking at each step in the decision and objective measures of confidence is the only real way to do it. Sometimes this takes too long which is why we satisfice. But there is no excuse when there is ample time and ample good quality advice available.

So why, in the face of advice to the contrary do people hold tight to decisions that are poor?

The controversy surrounding climate change may provide some insight into why people deliberately ignore evidence. Better yet, let me recount a sales technique that is useful to persuade people to make decisions they will hold despite evidence to the contrary.

Probing for social attitudes in a friendly manner that has nothing to do with the goal, you find a common enemy. Then all you have to do is connect the common enemy to the decision. Finally provide a way to take advantage of or injure the common enemy by persuading the person you wish to manipulate that what you want them to to is smart, cool, or acceptable.

Everybody knows that big insurance companies are out to screw you right? You have paid unreasonable premiums to them for many years, right? Then why not tell them your stolen computer was a Mac and not a lousy e-Machine?

When you talk to a climate sceptic, you will find they dislike Al Gore. It doesn't make any difference that Al Gore has nothing to do with the global warming community, you will find that he is strongly connected emotionally in the person's opinion. If you ask an anti-vaccination nutcase about pharmaceutical companies, you will find that they are one of the reasons vaccinations are bad. Because they make too much money.

When is it Religion and When is it Prejudice?

2009-12-16T20:39:00.004-05:00

A story in the Guardian describes:

Judges today ruled that one of Britain's most successful faith schools had racially discriminated against a 12-year-old boy who was refused admission because the school did not recognise him as Jewish....M's mother converted from Catholicism to Judaism under a non-Orthodox authority, meaning the Chief Rabbi does not recognise her as Jewish...."The majority held that JFS had directly discriminated against M on grounds of his ethnic origins."...the judges did not consider the Chief Rabbi to be racist.

It happened in Great Britain and not in the U.S. so there is nothing here to speak of, legally. But having read _Holy Hullabaloos_ recently I was left with a vacant spot in the dialog. And when I read this story I was reminded of it.

When does religion become prejudice? The panel of judges deliberately stuck in a disclaimer to stop people like me from yapping about it. I don't think it should stop me. Largely because it doesn't make sense.

The parents got married and to keep her husband happy, the woman became an official member of her husband's faith. But when they sent their child to a school run by a similar-but-not-identical faith group, he was judged racially-cum-religiously impure which is OK if you're of the similar-but-not-identical faith group.

It reminds me of the job application process at several conservative Christian schools that asks you to "Describe how and when you were saved." It isn't part of Christian doctrine that adults have a non-baptismal-saving (I love hyphens tonight) ordeal in order to be Christian. The official description of Christianity is described by the Nicene Creed as "one baptism for the remission of sins..." so the job application contains an odd requirement. Perhaps even un-Christian.

Sorry.

What bothers me is that in the U.S. we must allow the free exercise of religious beliefs when they interfere with inculcating the faculties of reason and judgment in our young. Luckily, the young are able to withstand most of it the way they withstand the onslaught of education in general.

Open Letter to Senator LeMieux

2009-12-15T15:34:00.004-05:00

Dear Senator LeMieux,

This statement from your recent letter disappoints me.

"I have talked with Floridians from Pensacola to Miami and without exception, people are concerned about this bill's proposals to raise taxes, increase health insurance premiums, and cut access to quality care. Citizens tell me they want Congress to scrap this proposal and start over. I agree. We cannot afford the government we have, much less the government this bill seeks to create. We need to be smarter about approaching health care reform and target those areas where we can reduce costs and expand access to health insurance."

I'm sure you are listening to people. The question is, "Who?" Your language is not conciliatory. Your language does not look the way it should after hearing the arguments for universal health care over the last few months. In fact it looks combative. Do you really need to mirror the angry white guys who yell at their TV sets? Are they the citizens whose wants and needs you are representing?

It makes me sad to see you take this stand in opposition to data from countries like Japan that have health outcomes similar to our own but have a mix of public option and multiple payors while maintaining much lower cost structures. These things exist and have been successful. We are in fact one of the last countries in the world with a high standard of living that does NOT include health care as part of that high standard.

You have had access to testimony from public health doctors whose job it is to evaluate and compare health delivery systems across national boundaries, but you have chosen to listen to the voices of special interests. You have had the unique opportunity to hear from a former Aetna manager what he did the last time publicly funded health coverage was brought up in D.C. You have seen the same strategies used a second time, knowing who funded the astroturfing.

I owned a general lines insurance agency from 1974 to 1994 and was among the most profitable independent agents in the U.S. for my size. I understand insurance. I also understand the people. Some of them are generous, smart, and successful. Unfortunately many are fearful and lack the confidence to move into a new economic model.

If we think there is a reason to have national education standards and we want children to grow up to be productive citizens, they must be healthy before they become productive. If we want citizens to be productive, we must keep them healthy and not support a system that by its very design prices out a significant portion of the otherwise productive population in order to keep costs in check. The current system fails to address the more difficult issues, consequently driving a system that has the highest cost in the world.

Colin Marshall Hits the Nail (School) on the Head

2009-12-14T20:34:00.002-05:00

The Humanists: Frederick Wiseman's High School (1968)

More important than any overtly political point is a purely mechanical one, to wit, that our educational machine isn't working as desired, or at least as advertised. The mismatch between large-scale education's declared aims and its actual function should come as no surprise to anyone who's spent any time in the system, but here Wiseman has assembled an effective reminder indeed.

Wiseman's notes and contact information.

Standup Comedy & Backchannel Intimacy - (informal talk)

2009-12-06T08:31:00.006-05:00

We went to see Jamie Kennedy at the Palm Beach Improv on Friday night. He was interesting and pretty good but not as fluid and adaptable as Dave Attell. But if he had been more adaptable, I wouldn't have noticed the parallel between what was going on in the comedy club and what danah boyd and Joe McCarthy said about backchannel snark.

Previous discussions have centered on Internet identity issues and intimacy. I'm thinking that there may be a stronger influence in the speaker-audience member relationship and how it is cultivated by (1.) the venue and (2.) the speaker. In this situation, the Internet acts as an amplification device.

Here is the short version: As audience members got more lubricated, the conversational gambits used by the comedian to increase intimacy with his audience became less easy to resist.

Joe McCarthy -

I'm trying to imagine conferences in which "the audience is of equal importance as the speaker". Speakers are typically paid - or at least invited - to present, whereas audience members typically pay to hear and see what the speakers have to say and show. The relationship is, by definition, unequal, which becomes evident when one considers the relative impacts of an attendee not showing up vs. a speaker not showing up. Attendees in the audience may have considerable expertise and experience in the topic(s) the speaker is talking about - in fact, ideally, there is such an alignment - but that does not give the audience the right to be rude, and certainly doesn't give them the right to gang up to tear down the speaker.

danah boyd mentions she thinks that backchannel snark is to be expected when the presentation is entertainment as opposed to informing. (This from her post about offensive chatter during a Web 2.0 meeting.) However the actual content of her presentation concerns attention in the sense of that which seizes one's attention.

Stimulation. People consume content that stimulates their mind and senses. That which angers, excites, energizes, entertains, or otherwise creates an emotional response. This is not always the "best" or most informative content, but that which triggers a reaction.

Thus, the character of the snarky commentary on Twitter is geared to attract the attention of other audience members which is a separate issue from the speaker/audience relationship.

From the speaker's standpoint, the audience member is competing with her. This stands out in a comedy club where the venue is fairly intimate. The lighting and ability of the comedian to overcome the audience chatter is key.

Jamie Kennedy did something unusual that attracted my attention. In his quest for audience contact, he kept shading his eyes from the stage lighting so he could feel he was making better contact with them. When he did that, he spoke directly to one of us, again to increase interaction.

I want to point out something here. I don't think the audience at a comedy club is supposed to actually interact directly with the comedian. Our job is to provide feedback by laughing loudly enough to satisfy the performer. The alcohol-fueled members of the audience lose sight of this and buy into the illusion that the comedian wishes to stop performing and discuss the commenter's views. The situation degenerates, beefy men appear, and chairs are thrown.

This may be off topic but there are physiological issues going on as well. I'm not sure how to attack it but the degree of intimacy may provide a key to understanding the phenomenon. For instance, have you heard about the way a puff of air on your skin from intimate speech can change your perception of 'b' and 'p' sounds? Although the synergy of sensation is not new, research into how it changes our understanding is. Moreover, the lack of it may provide insight into dysfunction.

In the meantime, let's post a notice at the door. "Intimacy Level Expected" 1-5 where 1 means the speaker wants you to keep your mouth shut and honestly doesn't give a damn what your opinion is and 5 means you can run around naked.

Phil Jones Hadley CRU admits hiding data of temp decline

2009-11-21T12:19:00.003-05:00

When I want a laugh, I go to the comedy club like I did last night.

Believe it (sic) if you wish, but I normally do this:

1.) Do a search for a significant string of quoted text at which point I see the sender got it at DIGG. If you think Kevin Rose ever did anything worthwhile in his life, I guess you can use it but I happen to think DIGG encourages serious methodological errors to happen because of the way it is built. If it were human, DIGG would have every social disease known to man.

2.) Look at the story and then search for repeats in Google to see if there are any stories matching it in mainstream news. NONE. Delinpole of the Telegraph thinks there is a "greatest scandal in science ever" at least once a month because he doesn't understand how science makes progress.

3.) Go to a website I consider reliable to see if the story has been picked up and discussed. in this case:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853

If you read that link, you can see that there are some folks at RealClimate whose emails are in the released archive and they are very nice and normal people who have been screamed at and insulted at meetings for years by the some of the same people who show up at town hall meetings screaming stuff about the president being a alien who wants to eat our children.

Let's forget the specifics for a minute and concentrate on method and how I filter crap.

Here is a link to an article by a friend, Howard Rheingold. Howard is the guy who identified the way people in other countries were using their pagers to enable civil disobedience. Later he coined the term "flash mobs" of which you may have heard.

Please read this:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/rheingold/detail?entry_id=42805
Howard has included some of my own material in this article, but it is insignificant.

It is important to note that if you compare SlashDot and DIGG, you can see that DIGG's information is essentially unfiltered. It is my belief that Rose's sense of humor is at the root of this because he is entertained by watching idiots. Slashdot has a three level filtering system attached to its ranking system that prevents morons from becoming important community members. No such protection at DIGG. That is not to say that bad stories don't get published at SlashDot, but they aren't the norm. Bad stories at DIGG are common. Why? Entertainment, not evaluation.

Howard posted a link to this totally cool Firefox extension I haven't tried yet:
http://disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu/

One of the things he doesn't go into in the article is the ecology of information. There is a definite issue of timing that reveals a lot about the motivation behind revealing a story. Obviously pushing an event story such as a political speech or a fire resulting in death is done in the normal course of journalism as quickly as possible. But stories from researchers who normally publish in peer reviewed journals who have chosen instead to tell the newspaper FIRST are pretty common. These stories often turn out to be about poor science because the researchers' work would never make it to a reviewer's outbox.

Then there is the issue of reliability. Let's use the Huffington Post as an example. Ariannna Huffington uses a system of unpaid volunteer bloggers as a significant source of copy. She gets the benefits of inflammatory language to attract visitors and deniability against critics, plus it pays her bills. It's a win-win for her pocketbook but a huge "lose" for readers who have no crap filters.

More subtle is the think tank problem. The social ecology of think tanks is only beginning to be studied. Their social function appears to be as a source of rapid response for government committees because thinking that goes through peer review is too slow. Thus, think tanks attract academics whose work has been slow to be accepted in their own communities. Their funding comes principally from industry but is not disclosed as is required by academic journals. Danger Will Robinson!

Have you considered that the conservative sites you are visiting are deliberately publishing lies? That is another issue entirely. My own thoughts are that there are BOTH deliberate lies and paranoid delusions evident. I'm not saying there are no bad people trying to manipulate political events on the pro-global warming side. Much like the presidential elections, there are entities that fund both sides as well.

I noticed that Coca-Cola is a big mover in the global regulation scene. I would guess that it's pretty obvious they have a huge stake on account of their global distribution system and sourcing of things like sugar. But did they hire people like John Milloy to coordinate and publish lies like Exxon did? We can prove Exxon paid a network of think tank academics as "contractors" in their annual reports. Those people's utterances were picked up by a network of bloggers and low quality news sources like Fox and the Telegraph within minutes across multiple timezones which indicates there was coordination.

If you think the global warming issue had liars on both sides, you are of course correct as they are all human. But when it comes to making "fine" distinctions between people who shoplift and people who release ~~saran~~ sarin into a subway, I think I will go with the shoplifters.

Next time you find something amazing that reveals the black hearts of the evil liberal climate scientists, do what I do. Run it through crap detection.

Open Access, Federation, and Why it's Like Healthcare

2009-11-15T10:18:00.001-05:00

Let's look at access to research like access to healthcare.

I hope there won't be many dissenters if I posit an increase in GDP resulting from a healthy populace.

I'm not just talking about outsiders being admitted to the community. I'm saying that information as an ecology has resources that if opened to the community, could provide insights that are unlikely to happen in the current situation. So access is a generally healthy thing, but access for all will be unpredictable in terms of productivity.

Federating all data, irrespective of scale will happen in the near future. Denying access is something I wouldn't want to be remembered for.

Universal Health Coverage - Why and Why

2009-11-08T10:42:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Saturday 11-08-2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a landmark bill that starts the nation on the trek toward universal health care.

At the same time, I encountered this article by Greg Miller at the AAAS site:
An Infectious Problem for the Brain
In which he says "...immune system signaling molecules--like those triggered by infections--can muck with the brain and cause memory deficits and mood alterations."

It gives me permission to speculate on what a healthier citizen might achieve.

Certainly Hans Rosling's provocative statements regarding the effects of good public health allowing a population to create economic value faster than a country without it are an indication that health care has profound economic effects.

On one hand we have the costs of poor health and on the other we have increased productivity caused by more time working. But Miller's article seems to indicate that we may have improvements in general cognitive condition as well.

On the Moving of Cheese

2009-09-24T17:16:00.005-04:00

A colleague has taught word processing, spreadsheet, bitmap editing, and presentation skills as a basic computer course for freshmen in high school for fifteen years.

A couple of times, the course title has been changed. This year, it was changed yet again. But this time, the curriculum code was moved into a different department/certification code. The teacher can no longer qualify as "highly qualified" under the state's legal guidelines. As a result, a letter "warning" parents that an unqualified teacher could be messing around doing something bad with their babies may be sent out because the Legislature wants to protect you from this kind of danger. Even though the teacher may be quite good.

No doubt there are far too many schools employing unqualified personnel in Florida. What I AM saying is that the link between what a teacher actually knows and what a teacher is allowed to teach are disconnected.

I am allowed to teach a range of subjects, doing some of which might be a bad idea. A biology teacher is allowed to teach physics, for instance. Can all biology teachers really do it well? Can physics teachers teach biology well?

Perhaps teaching licenses should be based on what you have actual experience doing. Right now, I can teach subjects I took in college - OR - I can teach subjects I took state licensing exams to actually perform for the public. "Either or", not "both and". How odd.

I'm sure there are perfectly good reasons for this. The state would probably have to hire a couple of people to look after this. Maybe even merge licensing databases and push a button.

How about improving professional knowledge? That's a sore spot with me.

I have NEVER EVER gotten credit for any of the money or time I have spent improving the quality or depth of the subject matter I actually teach. I have taken plenty of courses that I received credit for, they just haven't included knowledge that was relevant to my own.

Reason: Classes offering credit are elementary.
Reason: If I take a college course, I won't be compensated.
Reason: If do my own research, I won't be compensated.
Reason: If I go to a professional meeting, I have to log every single item of knowledge, photocopy all of the catalog, and incorporate it into my courses.

Not that I don't actually do these things. I (unreasonably perhaps) object to trying to explain it to someone who doesn't understand what I do. The meeting I attend every year includes over one hundred symposia and workshops. I have learned amazing things and shared them with my students. How do they value keynotes delivered by Nicholas Negroponte, Susan Soloman, Peter Agre or James Gates? The system doesn't value anything it doesn't create. That's the soft gooey center of credential obsession. We make it, therefore we value it. If you make it, we don't.

I don't get professional credit for doing it.

Do you think this generally discourages public school teachers?

Google Reader

2009-09-05T16:10:00.003-04:00

Google Reader's new look includes a message when you open the page:

New! Want to see what Huffington, Boing Boing, or Lifehacker read?

Why would you wish to see a feed from the Huffington Post?

Isn't using a news reader *by definition* expressing a desire not to be dumped on by the idiots of the world? SORRY! Meant to say "the indiscriminate" of the world, as in those who can't tell fact from fiction.

Boing-boing is overwhelming and LifeHacker is trivial, but the Huff-Po is like a 10 year-old in the back seat. There, I've said it and I feel better already.

Kudos to the reading department

2009-09-02T07:06:00.001-04:00

http://www.collegeboard.com/press/releases/206201.html

eSchool news interpreted it:

Average SAT scores were stable or rising most years from 1994 to 2004, but they have been trending downward since. That's likely due in part to the widening pool of test-takers. That's a positive sign that more students are aspiring to college, but it also tends to weigh down average scores.

The parents-didn't-attend-college group went up a bit and they said it was important, which is probably is but it was only four percent of test takers. The CB attributed it to multiple changes. But from a state Dept of Ed perspective, the increase in ELL student numbers is way up:

Language diversity is increasing as more 2009 SAT takers report that English is not exclusively their first language compared to previous years — 25.2 percent versus 18.3 percent in 1999.

It amazes me that reading didn't fall more than it did. Kudos to the reading department.

Twitter Followers & No Notifications

2009-07-26T16:55:00.004-04:00

Every day I get a couple of followers I end up blocking. Today I got five.

They all have names like Buffy5782, that is "girl"+"numeric" username.
They never have a link on their Twitter profile. A normal 20-someting at least has FB.
They have few commercial Twitters during a week in their hisotry.
They have twitter streams that indicate more or less that they have nothing interesting to say.

AND when they follow me, I NEVER get an email from Twitter.com telling me about it even though I get notified when normal people follow me both before and after these mystery followers.

Why do I block them?

I guess it's just paranoia because I can't see an advantage for them unless it has to do with gaming some Twitter filter that uses community embeddedness for some reason.

Of course I get my share of "Marketing Professionals" who just happen to have a great application that can monetize my twitter stream and get me "millions of followers" and who can change my life et cetera. Meh.

I wish someone at Twitter would explain what is going on like Mark Cuban did when the spam-bloggers were messing with Ice Rocket.

Vanish Gives Your Speech Life (A Short One)

2009-07-25T06:22:00.003-04:00

Do you desperately need to say something publicly but equally desperately need not to have it associated with your searchable identity?

Enter, Vanish, an application/service that makes it possible for data to self-destruct over a period determined by natural degradation in a distributed torrent network.

The implications for this technology are wide-ranging.

I would like to address the issue of life *before* this happened. Specifically the assumption that students obviously need to be prepared for a totally open life. Bouts of drunken behaviour will haunt them forever. Blah blah.

Is it still obvious?

There isn't much you can't accomplish using the open architecture of the Internet. That's why statements regarding how amazing things are and how little the architects of the Internet appreciated the possibilities of their creation don't just ring hollow. They are themselves shortsighted.

Tim Berners-Lee laid the Web on top of the Internet. Don't forget it.

Trip to Korea

2009-07-24T05:13:00.004-04:00

Korea is charming, historic, and great. It is like North Carolina populated by Canadians.

You know how in the spring North Carolina looks like it was taken over by a gardening show? Well South Korea is like that, but on steroids.

On top of that, everybody we met was really nice and helpful with few exceptions. The one time, an old guy in a market gave us flack that thoroughly confused and embarrassed his friends, it turned out he was a soccer fanatic. Nobody in the group besides me realized that he was ranting on South Korea's soccer prowess. Typical fan. :-D

The Gallery

I took pictures of food, but missed some of the best photos because I forgot and ate it. One of the best examples of this was a "traditional Korean" bowl of mixed barley and rice near a tourist trap. So fluffy, so tasty!

Environmental Cancer and the Web

2009-06-29T19:30:00.004-04:00

It's June and the Palm Beach County television stations have been reporting on a high number of cancer cases in children in a small-ish agricultural/residential area.

After a week of reporting increasing numbers of people, a local mortician spoke up and said he mentioned to a county commissioner that it looked suspicious. The county commissioner didn't do anything we know of.

Why didn't the county health officials have GIS mapping with a historic database? The property appraiser has it, the fire department has it. The property appraiser makes money for the County. The firemen don't want people to die if hazardous chemicals are released by accident.

Sure high mobility communities would be poorly represented, but it would be better than nothing. It isn't rocket science.

Google Fusion Tables

2009-06-29T17:57:00.003-04:00

Google Fusion Tables extend data sharing and manipulation in the browser.

Browser based speed is goning to be a lot faster very soon. Take a look at the AMAZING speed of Bespin.

Twitter in the Classroom

2009-06-20T09:00:00.002-04:00

Skeptic's Guide to the Universe had an interview with Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire who had just used Twitter for an investigaiton of "remote viewing," a psychic theory that claims people can see something at a distance from the subject that would ordinarily be obscured by intervening distance or obstacle.

Since this is about Twitter in the classroom and not about the eighteen million Google returns you get if you use it as a search term, I will dismiss remote viewing and urge my reader to do the same.

Wiseman is using Twitter as a quiz engine for remote voting using handheld devices.

If this reminds you of the now ubiquitous "clicker" for embedded evaluation in the classroom, it should! What we need to do is take the twitter stream consisting of a question or series of teacher tweets and a series of student response tweets, parse it, evaluate it, and display it.

Why Paul Ormerod is Still Cool

2009-06-18T12:46:00.003-04:00

My buddy Richard sent me this link today (6-18-2009) Tech Dirt analysis of a Yahoo analyst's analysis of a shambles.

Problem! "Systematic risk" is mischaracterizing risk by generalizing it, not to mention misquoting the phrase "systemic risk" which is what Duncan Watts actually said. The journalists are having a fantasy. The system *is* transparent enough to see what is happening, but it is obscured by distance and not-giving-a-shit.

The issue is understanding systems, in particular how several nonlinear variables that act together produce a solution. If you read Why Most Things Fail which is about cause and prediction and then The Black Swan which is about economic prediction specifically you can see what my point is. Ormerod is an economist and is sometimes on the outs with some of the community. They were in the middle of a pout when the bomb went off.

Measuring risk in a limited area of the economic system is a trivial part of the problem. Journalists are talking about risk and banks but the real problem is risk and the financial system. Libertarian economists say an individual institution should be allowed to fail. Techdirt is saying that there are individual institutions that are so large that toppling one will bring widespread harm. I don't know about that but I suspect that interlinking risk between institutions is what would be the big problem. I don't see people making any distinction between the individual elephant and the herd of elephants.

Which brings me to the issue I pointed out. Inventing a new tool to spread risk in an attractive way that makes it appear palatable may have contributed to the problem.

Watts' article in the Globe points out that institutions shouldn't be allowed to extend in certain ways. My way of saying it would be that if a system can't be predicted, it should be dismantled into components that can be predicted. Then we should create an institutional memory that explains why they can't be allowed to do a repeat performance.

Fear and Loathing in Alaska

2009-06-12T18:12:00.003-04:00

Dumbass Wulf Blitzer asked Sarah Palin to explain the economics of the recovery. Then I muted her.

She stook there squinting into the camera spouting her soccer-mom-brand passive-aggressive fear and hate.

Which reminds me that with the centerists becomming less tolerant of creepy attitudes, the nutcases are feeling the pressure of marginalization more than ever before.

Sarah Palin is their representative-in-chief.

The Summer Job Market Looks Grim

2009-05-28T06:50:00.005-04:00

The Summer Job Market Looks Grim for people in Broward County where Fort Lauderdale is located.

This morning, May 28, 2009, the Channel Ten news anchors announced a job fair giving the location, time, and the names of several participating companies.

The outlook is indeed grim if the news report is indicative. We can work for:

Avon
Family Dollar Stores
The Check Cashing Store

A multilevel marketing company that makes money from economic incest, the lowest priced retailer in the universe, or a company that charges outrageous fees for cashing paychecks, taking advantage of ignorance.

Mirable dictu! Horribili visu!

When to Use a Different Search Engine

2009-05-22T07:08:00.003-04:00

On May 21st Deep Web Technologies announced browser plugins for searching the data they have helped make available using federation technique that finds, merges, and presents things Google et al don't give you. What they do involved taking lots of time to understand how data is stored at many different locations and creating a way to reorganize ontologies into a common format in order that *apples can be compared with apples* so to speak.

It's easy to use. Instructions:

Users can easily add any of these portals to their browser's search engine box by going to http://www.deepwebtech.com/open-search.html and clicking on a portal to automatically add it to their search box.

This post however is about *how* and *when* you make the choice.

The browser plugin makes a huge step forward in usability because it brings federated search into one click range for the user.

Unfortunately ALL search choices are conscious while searches tend to make unconscious assumptions. Changing these unconscious assumptions is a process of education and I wonder which markets outside of academic research will have penetration first. Deep Web Technologies obviously has an idea and a plan but users do unexpected things so this will be exciting to watch. If you like watching NASCAR for a week straight.

Break out the beer!

Conservative Pundits and Cognitive Dissonance

2009-05-16T12:57:00.003-04:00

Although every nation has ratified Children Rights as recommended by the United Naitons, only the U. S. and Somalia haven't. That's the background.

Here's the rhetoric: Rep. Hoekstra on the O'Reilly Factor.

Evidently Hoekstra and O'Reilly are proud of the following bit of mental gymnasitcs:

The basis of conservative insistence on stopping abortion is the rights of the community protecting members who are voiceless. Community rights versus individual rights. Period.

Strangely, the basis of the United Nations push to grant rights to children in law is the same.

So what's the difference? In one case Hoekstra and O'Reilly like community rights and in the other, they like individual rights better.

I don't understand and I suspect, neither do they.

Google Squared

2009-05-12T20:58:00.004-04:00

When you see Google Squared in a couple of weeks or months and you love spreadsheets, you will love the juicy goodness of a search arrayed in splendor and ordered in columns and rows. Or rows and columns if you prefer.

An if, as a spreadsheet user, you enjoy surrounding yourself with stacks of building blocks, you will again be content.

But if you think Google will extract structure out of the disorder, you will only be fooling yourself. I may be wrong. I have only seen a brief demonstration.

But it seems as though Google Squared is like looking at the world and seeing intelligent design. And yes, I believe the lead up was worth the punch line.

Don't Like Open Journal Publishing?

2009-05-09T20:59:00.004-04:00

If you think there is something about the Internet that pollutes the purity of journal publishing, think again.

The relationship between big pharma and publishers is perilous. Any industry with global revenues of $600bn can afford to buy quite a lot of adverts, and pharmaceutical companies also buy glossy expensive "reprints" of the trials it feels flattered by. As we noted in this column two months ago, there is evidence that all this money distorts editorial decisions.

This time Elsevier Australia went the whole hog, giving Merck an entire publication which resembled an academic journal, although in fact it only contained reprinted articles, or summaries, of other articles. In issue 2, for example, nine of the 29 articles concerned Vioxx, and a dozen of the remainder were about another Merck drug, Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions. Some were bizarre: such as a review article containing just two references.

Things have deteriorated since. It turns out that Elsevier put out six such journals, sponsored by industry. The Elsevier chief executive, Michael Hansen, has now admitted that they were made to look like journals, and lacked proper disclosure. "This was an unacceptable practice and we regret that it took place," he said.

As you see, there is ample reason to suspect that this kind of thing is not rare as hen's teeth but rather a bit more common. In fact it might not be newsworthy if a journal publisher hadn't been the one to print it. Consider that if you will.

It isn't so different from whipping up a think tank is it? You want opinion, you buy it.

Using Ontologies to Change Government

2009-05-03T09:46:00.000-04:00

The Knight Commission on the Information needs of Communities has a survey on how you find and use news. Fine and good, but at the end they ask about how government should change delivery to facilitate public engagement.

I suggested they discuss how an ontology could be developed that would give several levels of summary and detail. This sort of data structure would allow most trained data people to mash up and deliver useful information. For instance you could give contributors filtered by standard industry group (SIG) against politicians votes and agenda items filtered by SIG in a Gapminder display.

So far so good.

But this kind of ontology has the potential to replace current bill tracking methods used in house by governmental entities. After a bill passes or a court case is settled, the record would be an adequate way of archiving records for all types issues at law.

Past Facebook a Hyper-Social Format?

2009-05-02T14:13:00.000-04:00

If social media are driven primarily by their ability to facilitate social contact, then we should be moving in the direction of an open social format.

My students like Twitter (speed), Facebook (friends), Myspace (fandom), Digg & Make (interests), Twine and blogging (sharing created content.) Not to mention Geo-location.

I don't see why we couldn't start with a desktop app like Adium to mash it in some way and then move to a cloud app. Then we will be able to see over the walls. Wish list: A sliding indicator for geo-location going from "exactly here" to "nowhere" would be nice.

The move would be invisible to your friends who prefer to stay in a particular comfort zone, yet visible to friends who are shall we say, more adventurous.

It's the heritage of Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and Orlando. The concept of the destination resort with an escape hatch.

Quite a few years ago, a retired judge from Atlantic City gave a talk about the way the city had changed in the wake of casinos. I believe he was trying to warn us that promises of increased tourism from gambling resorts were not reliable. The casinos had captured their tourists and were definitely not sharing them with the rest of the city.

Social Issues and Online Addiction Among Teens

2009-04-18T10:43:00.000-04:00

Sun-Sentinel's Education reporter Andrew Tran did a story on students and technology adaptation. Some of my students are quoted here.

The interview ran an hour and a half with a return trip for video a week later. I discovered some new things about my kids and put some more into new contexts.

There are a few things we need to address separately.

Number one, after viewing the Frontline piece on Korea, I think we can say that addictive behavior is probably limited to less than ten percent (between 5.5 and 10) of highly wired individuals. Let's let that problem plop into the laps of the psychologists. *plop* Now we can move on and not worry about the other ninety percent.

Number two, the remaining ninety percent have to deal with adaptation. Adaptation includes the temptation of addictive behavior. This is a real issue that should be dealt with explicitly. Although they don't end up with addictive behavior, they *are* the actual environment the addicts live in. The addictive behavior is socially immersive. But adaptation is much more than simply avoiding temptation.

The stories my students provided Andrew were about adaptation. It is about how to immerse yourself without drowning.

It seems that this, like every other part of adolescence is about learning. Maybe we can figure out how to help them learn rather than standing to one side screaming.

Observations on Florida's high school graduation rate

2009-04-01T14:20:00.000-04:00

That's misleading. It's really an observation on child abuse by state versus graduation rate and prison population. Gapminder US View of HIgh School Graduation rate, child abuse, number of prisoners.

Observation of other states shows much lower rates of child abuse that *aren't* regionally associated. High school graduation rates *are* regionally associated.

Student blogs

2009-03-24T10:41:00.000-04:00

Lexa Indigoes Again

Michael #42

Josue Underscore

Noelle Musings of Noelle

Skylar The Winna of Cinema

Will What The Mind Wants

Larry The Mind Divide

Quinton Reflectionsz of Me

Earl dishallucinations

Ask yourself Punk. "Should I Twitter?"

2009-03-18T13:53:00.000-04:00

Twitter itself

This link explains best practices on Twitter - OR how to make a fool of yourself on Twitter.

Let Mr. Tweet look for relevant people using Twitter.

Look for people who use key words on Twitter.

Check out your influence on Twitter.

Check out your influence yet again on Twitter.

Filter your Twitters.

Incentivize Wellness

2009-03-16T06:17:00.000-04:00

The news item this morning from Boston about the "near-universal" health care made me think about wellness. There is difficulty incentivizing behaviour.

As with other things in life, there are probably as many reasons for not taking care of yourself are multitude.

One thing that could contribute would be having your gym count days in attendance each month and granting credit for it in some way. The gym could use RFID on membership cards and you wouldn't get credit if your stay is under 45 min. In essence, you get paid for attending the gym.

Open Access and Self-Destructive Acts (edited rant repost)

2009-03-12T08:26:00.000-04:00

Open access to research funded by the U. S. Government at any level is not really a matter of debate any longer. What we are witnessing with attempts to head off open access may be a DMCA-like act of desperation. In any case, the behaviour of citizens, whatever they do for a living, has changed as they interact with increasingly democratcized channels of information distribution over time. The trend is obvious and resistance is indeed futile. This much is plain and I believe we all agree on the ubiquity of the conversion of these cultural artifacts to digital form.

What we don't agree on is the right of last year's concessionaire to be this year's gatekeeper. Certainly a graceful segue into a different business model is the proper solution, but at whose expense?

As we see in the courts, it will be many years before we see a political body that is prepared and knowledgeable in issues of advancing science and technology. Perhaps it is naive of me to think people who are afraid of the future and unwilling to adapt should admit it. Delaying tactics appear to be the order of the day.

I don't want to draw inappropriate parallels, but look at the way Al Gore was treated publicly over his advocacy on global climate change. You have a situation where a long-term trend is recognized by people you pay to research stuff you don't have the inclination to learn, then ignore what they have to say - or - "Decide for Yourself" the immortal motto at Fox News. Obviously the journal publishing industry has a long way to go before they throw money to the think tank prostitution industry the way ExxonMobil does but it's worth considering. Are we indulging in self-destructive acts?

There is evidence that humans will need every single minute available to them in order to learn to deal with earth's changing systems. Delay in this case (global warming) may end up causing irreparable damage to civilization. Delay in the case of open access holds the potential of hindering the movement of information to places we never foresaw, preventing developments we never imagined.

Some of this perspective comes from attending the open access symposium at the 2005 AAAS meeting in Washington, some from watching what the Department of Energy and others such as Deep Web Technologies, think about the future of collaborative research over the last few years, and some from observing the evolution of knowledge systems online.

I'll admit to being unscientific and indulging in advocacy as well but I have students who need need new systems in place for learning and for advancing knowledge. Not tomorrow, but today.

Fox News Recipe for Graphics Excellence wink

2009-02-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

Fox News appears to have obtained the last surviving copy of the "Glitz-o-Matic."
Awesome Fox News Graphics

That was an inside joke for SIGGRAPH attendees in the early 90s but I don't think it really needs elaboration. You can't teach concepts of scale with nothing to compare against.

Inflation, GDP, productivity measures and other countries - all of these things would be at least somewhat useful.

It's a strange Fox recipe:

1. Rip off somebody you don't like.
2. Criticize his presentation.
3. Do something far worse.

Education and Streaming Video

2009-02-02T07:57:00.000-05:00

There are vendors who want schools to transport vast archives of video files over their networks for educational purposes. The idea is that a teacher can have her choice of appropriate material constantly available for curriculum needs. Some Districts have already spent money on it.

I believe that the majority of educational video content should continue to be provided by cable distribution.

Mark Cuban posted a thoughtful rant (possible oxymoron here)about getting video files (1)hosted and (2) transported across the limited bandwidth available to large numbers of folks.

The Broward District School Board in South Florida has about 250,000 students on any given day. There are 134 teachers at my modestly sized high school which gives you an idea of how many classrooms might be viewing something. It has *one* network with equivalent capacity of one or two T1 connections to each location where there may be from 400 elementary to 2000 high school students.

Granted, there are display devices that serve up to 25 students at once. But assuming modest use, this is going to strain the dickens out of the network of people actually use it.

Let's look at an alternative. Each school district has a broadcasting license for television which allows them to become a mini cable provider.

The bandwidth of commercial cable providers is so immense that the content available is pitifully inadequate to fill it. Think of the 490 channels you don't actually watch. The average teenager regularly views from 7 to 12 networks at home. That's from my freshman class survey done annually in the Fall for the last seven years. Yes they're self-selected, but *for* geekiness, not against. The mode is around 9.

Video files can still be delivered on the Internet, but most of the time teachers and students should be able to tune into the content they need with a cable-like service.

Science Tatoos

2009-01-06T10:51:00.000-05:00

There is no longer a question as to whether Scientists have them. The question is, who has better ones?

(a) Physicists
(b) Biologists
(c) Mathematicians
(d) Marine Biologists [cause they're not *just* biologists]
(e) Name your own fav

LINK

The Next Big Thing Might Not be What You Expected

2009-01-03T08:16:00.000-05:00

The Edge Annual Question has stimulated Sam Harris to propose reliable lie detection as a something that would change society. He is entirely correct. But I would like to point out something that may adulterate the overwhelming joy, should it come to pass. I'm not taking issue with Harris. Far from it.

We all understand the concept of social compacts because we are the "law-abiding" and the "good" citizens. The last eight years of extreme conservative rule making should make it clear that there are things the American People hold dear. The "potential for human life" is one of them. Another is our duty to invade another country and change things if we suppose our friends are not being treated right. Harris couches it in terms of tension between absolute morality and moral dilemma.

Absolute standards may label a thief as a bad person. A burglar may not subscribe to the complete social compact as understood by your average minister, but he wouldn't necessarily hurt you on purpose. Likewise, I may not subscribe to the concept that human life begins at the time of fertilization.

Harris imagines it happening thus:

Well-intentioned people would happily pass between zones of obligatory candor, and these transitions will cease to be remarkable. Just as we’ve come to expect that many public spaces will be free of nudity, sex, loud swearing, and cigarette smoke—and now think nothing of the behavioral changes demanded of us whenever we leave the privacy of our homes—we may come to expect that certain places and occasions will require scrupulous truth-telling. Most of us will no more feel deprived of the freedom (to) lie during a press conference or a job interview than we currently feel deprived of the freedom to remove our pants in a restaurant.

What if there is a location-dependent social compact where it is acceptable to smoke or remove your pants? What happens when you leave the area? Do you magically change from being good to being bad?

Harris suggests in a presentation at the Salk Institute that objective measurement is a solution. I agree.

The future might be *squirmy*.

Google Reader

2008-12-12T12:25:00.000-05:00

It's official - among my students at any rate - the new Reader design is not eyeball friendly.

Blogging in Class

2008-12-07T07:51:00.000-05:00

If you had asked me a while back if blogging in class was going to be an issue, I would have said no.

Now, maybe.

If it's reflective in nature because of interest in class discussion, it's great. I guess it's a gauge of interest like twittering.

The I-4 Corridor

2008-11-05T10:27:00.000-05:00

The map of Florida counties gives lie to the I-4 corridor fantasy.

Note that at one end lie Hillsboro and Pinellas and at the other Orange and Osceola, counties that voted Democrat for Obama.

In the middle, the vast Southern Baptist stretch of pasture voted Republican for McCain. Polk, Lake, Pasco, and Sumter counties lie to each side of I-4 between Tampa and Orlando.

If you want to see I-4 as a lever for change for the Republican party in the past, the current configuration is a better description.

It resembles a dumbbell.

The I-4 dumbbell... Yes, it has a ring of truth.

Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ can and should replace the Holy Bible

2008-10-19T08:29:00.000-04:00

I cast about in vain last night for an appropriate metaphor for life. Or as my kids would say, "in vein." Which made me think about my relationship with them as a teacher.

It occurred to me (BIONG!) that my relationship with them is a defining thing but for that to work for me, the concept has to include the rest of you, Gentle Readers.

I have concluded that the only world-view I can embrace is that of Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ but not as a central character.

I am a porpoise.

I believe it was Wednesday after my first class of the day when I mentally addressed my departing students with, "Goodbye, and thanks for the fish."

Look into the story my friends, you will find your situation mirrored somewhere. I wonder if at some point in my life, I can suggest to every one that Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ can and should replace the Holy Bible.

Why, you ask?

Because it more closely resembles reality.

Plot synopsis here:
Wikipedia entry for Adams' wonderful book.

Thanks for listening. If I had arms, I would hug all of you. Now give me a fish!

Is Sarah Palen Holding a Viper to Her Breast?

2008-10-04T08:12:00.000-04:00

@ BoingBoing.net, this appears, itself a quote but at the original not elaborated.

Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin quoted an unidentified “writer” who extolled the virtues of small-town America: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” (9/3/08) The unidentified writer was Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969), the ultraconservative newspaper columnist whose widely syndicated columns (at its peak, 200 newspapers and 12 million readers) targeted the New Deal establishment, labor leaders, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews, and poets.

But it's not about Palen's lack of discrimination. All politicians are barbarians when it comes to pillaging the intellect. It's their birthright.

The quote informs us about the speech writers, not Palen. What politician would reject such a high sounding quote about the nobility of the common man? Perhaps Obama would have spoken it had the same quote been placed in his hands.

My point is that it is a speech writer making an indirect and ultimately sly reference to an obscure source, maybe as a joke but most certainly in a thoroughly cynical way. It is the face of an up and coming young Ben Stein in the ranks of Republican speechwriters.

It says to me that the people who control the day to day operation of the campaign are buffoons when it comes to something that should be important to their integrity as citizens.

Is the lady holding a viper to her breast? I suppose that would indicate a desire to follow Dubbya into obscurity...

Sarah Palen and Joe Biden debate on 10-02-2008 or "Exxon Stooge Shows up for Humiliation Show"

2008-10-03T06:39:00.000-04:00

Palen appeared to have been briefed by someone who wanted her to display the fearful and reactionary low spots of the Bush administration's two terms.

You can pick your own favorite. This is my blog and I am only interested in two things. Global warming and Iraq.

I expect that after her son returns from Iraq as mine did, Palen will have her opinion changed for her unless her son is isolated from the people of Iraq.

On the other hand, her opinion on global warming displays a total lack of contact with reality. She has adopted the fallback position of ExxonMobil which is no real surprise. Exxon has had a very strong influence on the Bush administration's science policy and Sarah Palen appears to have been hand picked to continue the tradition of pandering to those who, in Fox News parlance, "Can Make Up Their Own Minds" which means exactly the opposite of what it says.

The Wisdom of Crowds Questioned

2008-09-20T08:33:00.000-04:00

Slashdot (as an entity) has been whining about the nasty email it gets accusing it of bias.

Of course there is the perception that as in any human filtered media organization, bias happens naturally.

I have been thinking about crowd bias. If you have a crowd of "evangelical christians" for example, what kind of crowd stupidity would come out of it on account of commonly held misconceptions?

Let's take the misunderstanding of the historic origin of "when human life begins" in common usage in the U.S.

In the 1960s, as a part of its general rethinking of liturgy and philosophy, the Catholic Church considered the question of when human life begins. The context was this: Humanity has rights as a group that are different from individual rights. The rights and responsibilities of the group need to be considerate of its members who have no way of making themselves heard. These may be oppressed populations in different locations or they may be the unborn members of the community of humans.

The theologians consulted with biologists to clarify what was then understood as constituting life and came to the conclusion that they couldn't tell when life began. To be on the safe side, they (Roman Catholic policymakers) decided that life begins when the possibility of life exists.

American theologians, taking this as excellent advice, incorporated the new policy into their thoughts.

What we are left with is a conflict between the rights of the family of humans versus the rights of the individual based on a decision so conservative it verges on fantasy.

Gradually, groups who incorporated this into their core belief systems have come to make it a matter of faith.

Catholics, in their admirable love-hate relationship with Rome are somehow able to distance themselves from a good deal of this but evangelicals who are as a matter of belief are in daily direct tow-way communication with God have forgot that it wasn't the result of a divine utterance.

Mandatory Sarah Palin remarks

2008-09-05T22:14:00.000-04:00

Sarah Palin Totally Looks Like Tina Fey

On the other hand, she wanted to fire the town librarian for refusing to ban some books she didn't like and built a sports center that cost so much the town COULD have gotten a sewer system. If they wanted it. I guess they didn't want a sewage treatment system. Maybe you don't need one for a town the size of two high schools. Maybe they just freeze it and FedEx it somewhere.

If the Republican ticket wins, Tina Fey will have the best job in town for four years. She can literally spout gibberish and it will be funny since Palin is a Pentacostal.

Accountability in Educaion and the Public Sphere

2008-08-02T08:18:00.000-04:00

If you are interested in accountability and bottom-up transformation, here is something we in education should think about.

Most accountability programs are top-down (big stick.) Power is vested way upstream in a licensing authority of sorts such as a state's department of education rules that essentially decertify a professional under a specified set of circumstances that are documented under a routine review and filtering process.

There is a huge volume of writing and public assertion about giving the public "choice" but that is usually defined in an on/off paradigm of either using a public institution or leaving and going to a private institution. Choice means giving the public the choice pundits want to give them. I could rant about religious fundamentalism here and the damage it has done to the corporate mentality of the American public. But I won't do that.

Instead, how about empowering the public with tools for change?

This is a post at Howard Rheingold's site Smart Mobs titled:
Citizens use YouTube to keep gov’t in check

You have seen it working with the Los Angeles Police. But as people realize the benefits of social network software giving a low threshold for attention, it is possible to extend to other public spheres. Public nuisance is certainly a good example, but opening the classroom like a fruit is another interesting example.

We already have open curriculum to the extent we use Moodle where authentication can be given to anyone as opposed to a centrally managed system like WebCT. We have toyed with putting webcams in classrooms.

To tell the truth, I believe that student posting of school events whether in class or not is inevitable. All I am really talking about is giving it a forum.

Let's say Rate My Professor decided to allocate a hunk of bandwidth to video and students could capture, edit and post within minutes in a discussion format.

Whoever gives shape to the first marketplace entry will frame the discussion.

Why I didn't buy a new iPhone how Android gets my vote

2008-07-12T07:22:00.000-04:00

I'll admit it. I didn't buy a new one. The old one was nice but when it spent a half hour in the washing machine and I went back to my first generation iPod (waiting for 7-11-08) I found I could still listen to the podcasts to which I am addicted. I wasn't *unhappy* enough to go back.

THEN I found out the data charge would be thirty dollars a month! Frankly I am not willing to pay that much to look at a four inch screen. A dollar a day isn't much but I only use the data service once a week unless I'm out of town. So that's seven dollars per use.

I will probably reevaluate in 2009 and see how things are going. In the meantime Android will launch on new phones for multiple service providers.

I was going to use my iPhone in my Interactive Design class as a guinea pig/sacrificial phone. But after consideration I realized Android is more practical for my students since they will be able to afford their own Android capable phones next year. This will vastly improve the social aspect of the class.

The social interaction that surrounds handheld devices is worth of spending time studying.

Global Search and Stress

2008-07-10T09:36:00.000-04:00

This post:"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Craig Newmark proposes some interesting observations about the interaction of wealth and personal well-being. I would like to make some observations on search technology and the way we interact with it. Newmark is quite right in the way he points out the deleterious effects of our interaction with technology. The original article with the same title ran in the Atlantic.

There are quite a few subjects in the post that deserve treatment. But one theme that runs through is choice.

If you are conscious of your habits, it is not difficult to immerse yourself in a deep and lengthy work. However, people and students in particular choose not to read information in full context. How much of it is the way they have been taught to read and how much is the style of writing is debatable.

To tell you the truth, the last sentence of the post is probably my favorite:

"(I note a third hypothesis, also related to economics. Since information has become more important and more valuable, some authors have gotten much better at producing it. High quality information lowers patience with the lower quality forms. Once you've read a really well-written microeconomics textbook, say, it's much harder to wade through a poorly-written one, or a poorly written text on any subject.)"

Television is a good parallel that I can use as an example of why I think this is true. OMG, I didn't mean that. I am giving an example of production volume, not quality. Don't worry, I will get to finding quality a bit further on.

As with the Internet, cable and satellite bandwidth far outstrips the content a given individual wishes to consume.

Viewing habits are a good indicator. I survey my freshmen every semester on how many network channels they watch in any given week.

In a class of 25, the median is from 7 to 9 with very small variation. There will be one student with no television, one near 15 and one over 20.

This seems at odds with the availability of several hundred alternatives. Because I am a technology and society guy, I only survey news content viewing as a measure of choice variation. Again, there is very little spread. 80% of the average class watches one of only three channels out of approximately 25.

How much of the choice is due to poor interface? A Finnish researcher claimed in 2005 that our interactive (haptic) interface hasn't changed in over 100 years. This was based on his comparing current technology with mechanical arcade games that use pressure sensors to deliver feedback from the turn of the previous century.

In the case of television, development capital is scarce because of the low chance of economic success. Consequently both content and quality are scarce in comparison to bandwidth. (Think repeat of last season yet again.) In the case of Internet content, the development capital threshold is so low my students can afford it. Content creation has been democratized to an amazing extent. This makes the process of making a reading or viewing choice so difficult, we need the help of a search engine. Quality has to be treated differently as you will see.

The famous failure of full text search to live up to expectations is also to blame for a good portion of the reading statistics. Searches turn up hundreds of thousands of hits, a good number of which must be called up in order to eliminate them from consideration. This is the so-called "bounce rate" but it is not indicative when a reader finds exactly the page he is looking for. Bounce rate is really a measure of depth of site penetration, not content quality or relevance.

So Google does have something to do with it (!) because Google is unable to search for a concept that can be described in many ways. Take for instance a full text search for an emergent concept that people label or describe differently. But what the heck, it isn't magic, it's just a computer. The user had better be able to bring something to the table.

To some extent, that's why Google bought GapMinder. You can see the nations of the world compared by average income, infant mortality, longevity, and GDP over time. It is easy to see that if a population is healthy, average income will increase more rapidly than it does in a country where health care remains poor while economic development is happening.

GapMinder is an example of the semantic web and how it may well cause an accelerated discovery revolution comparable to that of the rapid discovery revolution of the 1600's.

Filtering noise in an effective way will be the next challenge that allows stress to subside. But the challenge is huge. How do you decide whether to exclude news from Fox or the Competitive Enterprise Institute in a meaningful way?

I feel that there are two things that will reduce stress when it comes to overload. First, open access to professional communities. Second, semantic utilities with tiered relationships. (Tiered in terms of technical knowledge and links outward to either collections of data or critical evaluations of relationships.

Is this just another whiz-bang computer nerd technology solution? That's what I heard in my SIG meeting when I proposed we sponsor a DOE symposium on one of their collaboration pieces. But Raymond Orbach (DOE) and Abe Leiderman (Deep Web Technologies) have produced good work with federated data previously and I see no reason to think that extending it a bit is unreasonable.

Hyperlinks and search results are seductive in the way wandering in the library is. Debating the percentage of the population susceptible to wandering off topic in a given circumstance is probably not productive. Again, it's choice.

Does Google make us stupid? To the extent that using a tool without knowing how full text search and popularity ranking works can produce ineffective and flawed work. (Student papers. rofl rofl) Using other search techniques such as reading full context and gauging professional reputation can help stabilize the work. In other words, making good choices is central to success in search.

NCLB (FCAT) Broward County Schools

2008-07-08T22:13:00.000-04:00

NCLB testing (aka FCAT) results in Google spreadsheet form. Broward County schools ordered by percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.

The "poverty percentage" column is ordered from lowest to highest to highlight the test results in low poverty communities. All schools have been included regardless of student age. Without working any further, it appears to me that minority percentage may be a stronger indicator but if you're high in both columns, an A or B looks really hard to do.

I might order it differently from time to time so don't be surprised. It should not be hard to tell.

Negative Tagging for research

2008-06-02T22:10:00.000-04:00

One could propose a tag or set of tags for publication in a dB (say PubMed) for "negative results" that might be a nice way to search so you could find them more easily.

One might also encourage publication of negative results since the barrier to publication is so low on the Internet. (Peer review not omitted of course.)

Take THAT Ben Stein!

2008-05-14T06:56:00.000-04:00

News from the BBC:

...the Vatican is organising a conference next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.

Father Gabriel Funes, Vatican Astronomer made the announcement and included speculation on the spiritual state of possible alien races.

This is a good example of how theology should advance. It opens speculation on the nature of spiritual subject matter and does not glorify text written by persons who lived hundreds of years before the nature of space, time, and matter were explored in a meaningful way.

Laptops and Students - To Be OR Not To Be -

2008-04-25T11:57:00.000-04:00

... That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...

Gentle Reader, kindly peruse the previous two postings before tackling this one. They will give you some background knowledge that should put you in a frame of mind to accept this particular bit of opinion. It *is* opinion of course since it is not backed up by research.

Probably the most important thing to recognize when comparing the XO or One Lapotop Per Child (OLPC) and the U S district based projects is the nature of the combination of network and resources.

Not just the hardware. The rest is a lot more important.

The whole thing is a huge tool and people, especially kids, will figure out how to use it. Yes, they will hack it.

If you ask Nicholas Negroponte if he thinks the kids in Peru will hack any of his systems, he will say "I sure hope so!" It will be disappointing if they don't.

1. This huge tool must be transparent to use. This means that the tool becomes irrelevant, like a pencil or a pen. The fact is that it is largely transparent to students, but not to everyone else.

2. The tool exists as a cloud of resources to be used at will. It is not time or location dependent. So when it doesn't fit into a particular frame of reference, just forget about trying to make it fit. The tool, by its nature, works.

If changing the location of an activity is important, consider that everyone involved in using the tool can and will leave the location at will.

If changing the tool itself is important, consider that everyone involved can and will repurpose the tool literally in a few seconds. (If you can supervise children with scissors, you can supervise a class of technology users. That may sound challenging, but art teachers do it every day with very few fatalities.)

Finally, think of the scope of the community involved and the connections available.

In the U S, proxy filters are common. In Finland, Sweden, and Denmark I hear the children are expected to behave themselves without nanny software. Granted, Finland has very high test scores in Math and Science.

In order to control and guide students who have this kind of power, the environment has to be carefully curtailed in certain ways without stifling creativity and access in an unreasonable way.

Consider the typical situation envisioned by the OLPC program. It is a compact community having few members with no preexisting Internet access. The school provides a satellite uplink and lesson resources. The student's laptops create a mesh network that presents the same face to the users no matter whether they are inside the school building or outside.

This means that instead of being cut off from the school environment when the day is done, the school follows the child home and provides a community with teacher support and peer support.

Let me mention one of the criticisms that OLPC communities have. Spouses of teachers complain that their time at home is absorbed by students. After letting that sink in, consider that one of the hallmarks of a high quality education is long periods spent with professors.

Let me close this by quoting from Seymour Papert's article about Bode Miller

Consider a simple incident: a 3-year-old goes to a shelf, pulls off a cassette and loads it into the VCR. People are wrong to be amazed at the technological capacity of the child. Getting dressed and playing with many traditional toys are actually more complicated than working a VCR or even clicking a computer program into life. What is remarkable is that the child is able to make a decision to spend the next half hour immersed in a topic of choice...

That children are learning to find independent ways into knowledge is wonderful and necessary. But it poses a challenge for parents and indeed for the way we think about school. In the past school had to provide knowledge. In the future schooling -- and parenting -- will have to be about developing the ability and the judgment necessary to use knowledge wisely and critically.

I hope the link with what I said earlier is obvious. Students will figure out how to use technology better than their elders.

The OLCP project is designed to support precisely the parts of networked community that are useful to discovery and education. This means the XO laptop is designed precisely to be a particular subtype of tool for a reason that the majority of technology projects in the US are evidently blind to it.

Una Laptop por Niño - One Laptop Per Child

2008-04-24T11:12:00.000-04:00

The philanthropic effort dubbed the $100 Laptop has not met its grand initial goals. But its first deployment, in Peru, may turn skeptics into believers.

Here are a few quotes pulled for the article.

The laptops are headed to 9,000 tiny schools in remote regions such as Huancavelica, in the Andes, an arduous 12-hour bus ride over rocky roads southeast of Lima, and villages such as Tutumberos, in the Amazon region, days away.

The computers come loaded with 115 books--literature such as Mi Vaquita, about a rare porpoise, but also classics, like some of Aesop's fables, novels (at least one by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa), and poetry (including verse by the early-20th- century Peruvian poet César Vallejo). The laptops' flash drives also store introductions for teachers, reading-comprehension programs and other educational software, a word processor, art and music programs, and games, including chess, Sudoku, and Tetris. The rugged, low-power hardware includes a camera that can capture video or still images. The computers are Internet ready and can wirelessly relay data to one another.

Schools Get Rid of Laptops, it's history now

2008-04-24T09:35:00.000-04:00

Tests measure certain things and I don't think the benefits of stepping into the modern culture of cooperative science is one of them.

This article is here as a placeholder for historic purposes as the XO or One Laptop Per Child project is up and running in Peru. I will attempt to draw parallels to what appear to be similar programs (but may not be) in the U S that have had various levels of success.

I'm responsible for the snide but insightful comments. *wink*

By WINNIE HU - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html?
Published: May 4, 2007

LIVERPOOL, N.Y. — The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

Is it possible they need more help than the teachers can offer? Or perhaps they have just gotten to work and they are checking their email and doing work like the rest of the world. In what world is the Internet not used for homework?

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse...

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

Note: In technology we aim for transparency. The term is important because transparent technology doesn't let this (sic) happen. Transparency however does not come from within technology, rather it is characterized by smooth social interaction.

Liverpool’s turnabout comes as more and more school districts nationwide continue to bring laptops into the classroom. Federal education officials do not keep track of how many schools have such programs, but two educational consultants, Hayes Connection and the Greaves Group, conducted a study of the nation’s 2,500 largest school districts last year and found that a quarter of the 1,000 respondents already had one-to-one computing, and fully half expected to by 2011.

Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.

".. did not fit into lesson plans.."

".. dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers.."

How does a computer not fit in a lesson plan? It is a tool that can do just about anything. You could just as easily say that pencils won't fit into lesson plans.

Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.

This sounds like the research that says recall is affected by repeated testing. Why? Because they both use practice. So is there an advantage to computers?

Not if you don't count having access to vast libraries, incredible diversity of opinion, and a huge variety of approaches to explaining things to students. I guess the U S Department of Education decided it isn't important.

Those giving up on laptops include large and small school districts, urban and rural communities, affluent schools and those serving mostly low-income, minority students, who as a group have tended to underperform academically.

So it isn't a class thing or a digital divide thing.

Matoaca High School just outside Richmond, Va., began eliminating its five-year-old laptop program last fall after concluding that students had failed to show any academic gains compared with those in schools without laptops. Continuing the program would have cost an additional $1.5 million for the first year alone, and a survey of district teachers and parents found that one-fifth of Matoaca students rarely or never used their laptops for learning. “You have to put your money where you think it’s going to give you the best achievement results,” said Tim Bullis, a district spokesman.

So it is the kids who are not using them for learning? By all means, blame the students for not figuring out how to use computers.

Everett A. Rea Elementary School in Costa Mesa, Calif., where more than 95 percent of students are Hispanic and come from low-income families, gave away 30 new laptops to another school in 2005 after a class that was trying them out switched to new teachers who simply did not do as much with the technology. Northfield Mount Hermon School, a private boarding school in western Massachusetts, eliminated its five-year-old laptop program in 2002 after it found that more effort was being expended on repairing the laptops than on training teachers to teach with them.

These are not reasons to quit using computers. Am I wrong?

Next for the Best Reason Ever to get rid of technology!

Two years ago, school officials in Broward County, Fla., the sixth-largest district in the country, shelved a $275 million proposal to issue laptops to each of their more than 260,000 students after re-evaluating the costs of a pilot project. The district, which paid $7.2 million to lease 6,000 laptops for the pilot at four schools, was spending more than $100,000 a year for repairs to screens and keyboards that are not covered by warranties. “It’s cost prohibitive, so we have actually moved away from it,” said Vijay Sonty, chief information officer for the district, whose enrollment is 37 percent black, 31 percent white and 25 percent Hispanic.

Here we are. This is us. How much does it cost to maintain the media centers in those four schools? What about teacher's time being used more productively as a result of using testing and things like automated essay grading to accelerate student achievement?

(Back to Liverpool NY)...
Students like Eddie McCarthy, 18, a Liverpool senior, said his laptop made him “a lot better at typing,” as he used it to take notes in class, but not a better student. “I think it’s better to wait and buy one for college,” he said.

Here we have an example of a student who does not use his computer appropriately. What a surprise. Can we do anything about this?

More than a decade ago, schools began investing heavily in laptops at the urging of school boards and parent groups who saw them as the key to the 21st century classroom. Following Maine’s lead in 2002, states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Dakota helped buy laptops for thousands of students through statewide initiatives like “Classrooms for the Future” and “Freedom to Learn.” In New York City, about 6,000 students in 22 middle schools received laptops in 2005 as part of a $45-million, three-year program financed with city, state and federal money.

I heard that Maine's use of laptops was stimulated by a friendship between the governor and Seymour Pappert. That would make Maine the first experiment in the OLPC direction. Other districts failed to understand that it was an education experiment, not a technology experiment.

Many school administrators and teachers say laptops in the classroom have motivated even reluctant students to learn, resulting in higher attendance and lower detention and dropout rates.

But it is less clear whether one-to-one computing has improved academic performance — as measured through standardized test scores and grades — because the programs are still new, and most schools have lacked the money and resources to evaluate them rigorously.

In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not, though some data suggest that high-achieving students with laptops may perform better in math than their counterparts without. When six of the schools in the study that do not have laptops were given the option of getting them this year, they opted against.

Mark Warschauer, an education professor at the University of California at Irvine and author of “Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom” (Teachers College Press, 2006), also found no evidence that laptops increased state test scores in a study of 10 schools in California and Maine from 2003 to 2005. Two of the schools, including Rea Elementary, have since eliminated the laptops.

But Mr. Warschauer, who supports laptop programs, said schools like Liverpool might be giving up too soon because it takes time to train teachers to use the new technology and integrate it into their classes. For instance, he pointed to students at a middle school in Yarmouth, Me., who used their laptops to create a Spanish book for poor children in Guatemala and debate Supreme Court cases found online.

Those pesky folks from Maine again. What is it that they do that makes them use the technology appropriately?

“Where laptops and Internet use make a difference are in innovation, creativity, autonomy and independent research,” he said. “If the goal is to get kids up to basic standard levels, then maybe laptops are not the tool. But if the goal is to create the George Lucas and Steve Jobs of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.”...

In the school library, an 11th-grade history class was working on research papers. Many carried laptops in their hands or in backpacks even as their teacher, Tom McCarthy, encouraged them not to overlook books, newspapers and academic journals.

Why doesn't the media center have electronic access to those resources?

“The art of thinking is being lost,” he said. “Because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”

Without a doubt, aphorisms will never help us understand why teachers are not using the technology in a transparent fashion.

One thing I am interested in is the assumption that the principal benefit of having a computer is higher test scores.

Tests measure certain things and I don't think the benefits of stepping into the modern culture of cooperative science is one of them.

Academic Freedom - lol who needs it?

2008-04-15T19:03:00.000-04:00

Teachers in Texas aren't supposed to teach students about evolution.
Texas biology teacher fired for teaching evolution.

Legislators in Florida have been told that (undisclosed) teachers in their state are afraid they will be threatened if they *offer* alternative theories to their students. (Alternative to evolution that is.) Note, this is opposite to what happened in Texas.

Even though the NATIONAL STANDARDS offer no mention of the existence of such alternatives.
Even though no national organization of scientists offers any alternatives.
Even though all of the world-wide organizations of scientists say that evolution is the only theory that makes sense.

Does it make sense? Texas teachers get fired for teaching evolution. This doesn't happen in any other state. But in Florida, someone in the legislature has heard a rumor that the evil forces of Science will come down hard if they offer students a choice in what are apparently imaginary alternatives.

Who are the bad guys here? Just who is being nasty and horrible?

If I may skip back to Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed, where it is stated that the evil forces of Science routinely expel the forces of God from their ranks, there is offered one example. An "employee" of the Smithsonian Institution supposedly was fired. Unfortunately for Ben Stein, the man is a researcher who is NOT a Smithsonian employee. AND he is still trundling along doing his research.

Disasters beget regulation - Forseeing the Future of Continuing Education

2008-04-13T12:25:00.000-04:00

After the Savings and Loan meltdown of the 1980s, Real Estate Appraisers were blamed for banks making loans in anticipation of future market value - or what was termed exceeding fair market value. A special class of appraisers was created, they were given gold stars, and continuing education was prescribed as the solution to the awful state of ethics that allowed the innocent banking industry to be taken advantage of.

I have two questions.

First, given the current mortgage failure rate, who will end up doing continuing education?

Second, when will a professional organization have to balls to end stupid and pointlessly shallow professional education?

Now comes the fun part. Having read my rant, here is a lovely bit about continuing education mania gone wild in the U.K. The quackometer: Medical Astrology - Forseeing the Future of Regulated Alternative Medicine. Thanks to Andy Lewis, Le Canard Noir.

Where does the Darwin Hitler connection come from?

2008-04-02T17:52:00.000-04:00

Richard Weikart. From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. xi + 312 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-6502-8.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=37981105462766

Weikart goes so far as to assert that "in philosophical terms, Darwinism was a necessary, but not a sufficient, cause for Nazi ideology" (p. 9). As the book portrays it, Darwinism's causal role lay in undermining Christian ethics, which would otherwise have held as the last bastion against Nazism, no matter how many other causes were working in Hitler's favor. I suppose this is also the rationalization for leaving all those other causes out of the book. There is of course no way to investigate what would have happened without Darwinism, or even to imagine the modern world without any challenges to pre-modern Christian doctrines. Perhaps Nazism could have been avoided, as Weikart asserts. Perhaps it would only have had to appropriate less biological rhetoric and more of some other sort.

Do I need to say anything about this? There are underlying assumptions that are unsupportable as well as a flawed understanding of Natural Selection that is just plain wrong.

4-15-2008 Addition to post.
War in Heaven/Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic (Millennialism & Society)

War in Heaven/Heaven on Earth: Theories of the Apocalyptic (Millennialism & Society) by Stephen D. O'Leary and Glen S. McGhee
A chapter by David Redles that is meticulously researched outlines the motivations of Adolph Hitler.

Instead of theorizing about influences, Redles offers Hitler in his own words. A moving portrait of a man who believed in God first and foremost. A believer in God's plan for his people. A believer in the essential Jewishness of the bolshevics. A believer in destiny and in sterilizing his environment for the eventual entry of his people into God's embrace.

One of the problems I see with the Weikart book that the religious right and Ben Stein use is where he goes light on the essential fallacy of "Jewish bolshevism" which is Hitler's acceptance of the false origins of the bolshevics from what were evidently very poor sources.

Redles understands that understanding Charles Darwin's theory sheds no light on the Third Reich at all. Weikart says that there are several kinds of darwinism which is his way out as although he identifies an influence from the eugenics movement in Hitler's racial improvement theory, he also says it has darwinist influences.

Does it? Does it really? Darwinism doesn't describe what Hitler wanted to do to other people. Darwinism isn't even what he tried to do to the volk. But I can see why people who don't understand Natural Selection think so.

Conclusion? If Hitler was a "darwinist" then so were Jim Jones, Marshall Herff Applewhite (Heaven's Gate), and David Koresh. Hitler took the added precaution of eliminating others prior to ascending. Sterilizing the soil before planting new seed. Is that significant? Not unless you want to twist it yet again and turn it against innocent people.

Weikart himself says this about his book:

These scholars apparently are unaware that I wrote a previous book, Socialist Darwinism: Evolution in German Socialist Thought from Marx to Bernstein, in which I explained the reception of Darwinism by German socialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. No, all Darwinism didn't lead to Nazism, and I of all people know this quite well. If my critics skipped the introduction of my book, they could also have learned my views in the conclusion, where I stated: "It would be foolish to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, as though Darwinism leads logically to the Holocaust. No, Darwinism by itself did not produce Hitler's worldview, and many Darwinists drew quite different conclusions from Darwinism for ethics and social thought than did Hitler." (p. 232)

This quote comes from his academic website.

Expelled No Intelligence Allowed

2008-04-01T13:16:00.000-04:00

Resource here Expelled Exposed.

Is it surprising that the premise of the Academic Freedom bill in the Florida Legislature is so far off base that it isn't even playing the same game?

The above link goes to the site set up by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) to keep track of resources that nail the movie's creators for dishonesty. At this point the count goes up every day as they lie about why people interviewed for the movie are kept out of screenings.

There is a possibility that this will end up being as funny as the Dover trial.

Using the movie to support the Academic Freedom bill was great for those of us who want to point out weaknesses because it reveals the underlying prevarication in their arguments.

An independent scholar housed at the Smithsonian is claimed to have lost his position in the movie but when you check him out, he is in the same position as every other resident scholar in the building. Yes he is disliked but it is because he doesn't return books or specimens he takes out of the collections.

2008-03-26T20:16:00.000-04:00

There is apparently research on Christian Fundamentalist’s inability to manage their own finances.

This article contributes to the understanding of this relationship by exploring how religious affiliation affects wealth ownership for conservative Protestants (CPs). The results demonstrate that religion affects wealth indirectly through educational attainment, fertility, and female labor force participation. The results also provide evidence of a direct effect of religion on wealth. Low rates of asset accumulation and unique economic values combine to reduce CP wealth beyond the effects of demographics.

Full journal article.

So what is going on? Education is worse than average. Ability to manage finances is worse than average. Is it surprising that they have some fundamental issues with average theology? Of course not! It follows as day follows night.

Perhaps the need for research lies with finding the root cause for the deficits that have been discovered. A chicken and egg issue so to speak.

Searching for related topics

2008-03-18T12:19:00.001-04:00

Technology for search is soooooo primitive. Natural Language Processing can be used profitably for a lot of things, but sometimes you just fall off your chair.

PhysOrg reprinted an article on a spammer who got nailed for mail fraud, wire fraud, and failure to file a tax return. Other terms in the article included "e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and numerous other counts of mail and wire fraud."

Here is the text from the bottom of the page:
Related Products:

* Zatoichi: Zatoichi and the Doomed Man

That is a genuine ROTFL (even though I am the only person I know who puts the "T" in anymore.)

Health Care and Quacks, a possible connection

2008-03-09T21:12:00.000-04:00

There probably isn't a causal link but it must be at least partly true that a high number of quack practitioners in other countries must have some effects here.

The February 21 issue of The Economist had two interesting articles that ran on the same page. One said that India has more fake doctors than real ones. Up to 40,000 in Delhi which has a population of 14 million. The other article explained that most of China's population can't afford health insurance and those who have it are reimbursed at a rate of 30 to 40 percent.
India's Fake Doctors
Health Care in China

Both of these sad situations explain the use of so-called traditional cures in places where people are desperate. But look at what happens here when people distrust medical institutions. This distrust allows quackery to take root and flourish.

One of the things that is important to notice is that in India, quacks are included in public health initiatives. This is important because it points up the political decisions that are made here every day that validate quackery in the minds of citizens. Food supplements, acupuncture, reiki, chiropractic, and of course the overuse of zombies at work.

Addition posted 3-20-2008:
Here is a link to an article about how the abominable conditions in Iraq are being exploited by quack-think.

Airborne Effervescent Health - Evil Quack

2008-03-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

The makers of Airborne products have admitted that their claims of efficacy are bogus but the only thing that will happen is that they will make some refunds. Too bad.

New York Times

Web MD story

A spokesperson for Airborne, who declined to be quoted by name, says, "Airborne is an immune booster. We are pleased to have reached this settlement." LOL this is not true. Immune boosters are things that challenge the body and stimulate it to fight. It is known as an inflammatory response. You know, the kind of thing that gives you a heart attack later in life.

Unless Airborne puts bacteria into their vitamin pills, it won't challenge the immune system. Hmmm maybe we ought to look into this since a company representative has actually said it. Have you ever noticed that con artists often tell you exactly what they are intending to do to you? Look at AmWay for instance: "You are going to give us $150.00 a month forever." They are totally clear. What is unclear is that you expect something in return and it isn't there. ROTFL

The New York Times had this morsel:

Airborne said that a double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted with “care and professionalism” by a company specializing in clinical trial management, GNG Pharmaceutical Services.

GNG is actually a two-man operation started up just to do the Airborne study. There was no clinic, no scientists and no doctors. The man who ran things said he had lots of clinical trial experience. He added that he had a degree from Indiana University, but the school says he never graduated.

Come Here and let me bite off your leg!

2008-02-23T21:24:00.000-05:00

Although I attended two talks on religion and evolution at the AAAS annual meeting last week, the one I learned the most from was on public health and communication.

In particular, from a gentleman (sorry notes at work) who works as a lobbyist for scientific enterprise. His remonstration toward scientists who do not empathize with lawmakers was pointed. The fact is that they have many competing interests that simply must be served. Simply doing what we think is the best thing for science and the public is often not possible for them.

His other point was that when you put truth forward in a persuasive way, the people who hold the swing votes are in fact most often listening with an open mind.

Folks like the two creationists, one of whom actually contacted the Discovery Institute for guidance, are not going to listen. Whatever the reason, their minds are closed.

Jeb Bush, like his brother, moved to destroy institutions in order to advance his agenda for education by placing stooges in positions of influence. Who knows whether successive federal powers will restore balance in Washington. Obviously the Florida Board of Regents was abolished by Jeb Bush (along with student representation) at the University level. He wanted to bust the professor's union but failed.

Getting back to the folks whose minds are closed . . .

They are like the Black Knight at the bridge. You can knock out one weapon after another till they have nothing of reason remaining. You can cut away their footing, till they have nothing on which to launch a logical attack. Nevertheless, they will insist on fighting on to preserve their ill-founded affection for lousy theology. Jimmy Carter left the Southern Baptist Convention because of their oddball behavior. He puts it in a more diplomatic way. But if you schlep down to the entry about Reverend Kennedy, a Presbyterian Church of America leader, you will see that fundamental beliefs based on thoughts about humanity two thousand years ago that are not mediated by reason can lead to some bizarre results.

reference:
Students ‘biggest losers’ in evolution debate
Point of View
By DONNA CALLAWAY
Special to Florida Baptist Witness
Published February 22, 2008

Evolution in Florida Science Standards

2008-02-19T20:23:00.000-05:00

Today, February 19th, 2008 the State of Florida's Board of Education voted on new Science standards for their schools. (Not that they are really wonderful 'cause there are warts aplenty.)

The very public issue was the use of "evolution." The word is now included in the official education framework as a "big idea" we should teach all children.

You should read the entry on the Florida Citizens for Science Blog to see what kind of oddball things are going on. But hey, it's Florida.

Speaking of brains, "I warned you not to use those things!"

Measure, Measure, Measure, Barf

2008-02-13T10:06:00.000-05:00

I was shamelessly looking over a shoulder this morning at test scores and remarked to the guy they were intended for that they looked remarkably uniform. Was the maximum score on the test 30? No, he said it was 100.

Uh oh.

He told me his 9th grade Algebra class was full of children who had never been to school. I don't mean kids who skip school. I mean kids who have attended only a year or two of school in their lives because their parents couldn't afford to pay tuition where they used to live.

There are two things to think about here.
First, there are countries with no free education.
Second, these kids are like Tarzan when it comes to school. You remember him? Tarzan was not even marginally ready to go to high school. But we have a staff to care for and teach him and the other kids who are not ready to do any number of the things that your kids are ready to do.

Our school has ten reading teachers. Not English teachers. These are just for teaching reading to kids who are not up to reading above a fourth grade level. That means they may be at a first grade level for those of you who don't know that the NCLB ruler begins at four, not zero.

I have no idea how many remedial Math teachers we have (there are eighteen Math teachers for a population of 1,700 students) but fifteen reading teachers require about three quarters of a million dollars in payroll and benefits, not to mention the fact that they displace other classes since the school has a fixed budget based on a population of kids who have NO SPECIAL NEEDS AT ALL. Or put another way, ten percent of our staff doesn't teach high school skills. The official count for Reading is ten but there are twenty English teachers on staff.

18 Math, 20 English, 10 Reading = 48 out of 134 people teaching classes and providing resources.

Thankful is such a pitiful word sometimes . . .

2007-11-22T10:56:00.000-05:00

The Jehova's Witnesses were here a minute ago. I told them I am an atheist and they asked me how I came to it. I said nothing more than years of theology. One of them laughed and said, "Of course! That will do it every time."

I wondered what she thinks she studies. Are their heads just so upside-down that nothing can fit?

I am thankful that it is my choice to talk to them - or not. Thankful that it is the act of men and women, not gods.

Thank God and Greyhound You're Gone

2007-09-06T06:59:00.000-04:00

Sun-Sentinel:
The Rev. D. James Kennedy, a pioneering Christian broadcaster and megachurch pastor whose fiercely conservative worldview helped fuel the rise of the religious right in American politics, died Wednesday. (September 5,2007) — Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder and senior pastor for 48 years of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (CRPC) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., passed away peacefully in his sleep at approximately 2:15 a.m. at his home with his wife and daughter by his bedside, following complications from a cardiac event last December.

NYT:
Mr. Kennedy stayed largely in the background as men like Mr. Falwell, Mr. Robertson and James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family spoke to Americans about the need to curtail abortion rights, gay rights and the teaching of evolution. But over the last decade, he, too, grew more openly active, creating the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, which held conferences that taught people to how to get involved in the political process. The center closed in April.

Me:
Kennedy's attack on Science.
Of course he probably did many things during his lifetime that were worthy of our admiration. I only know that the kind of poison represented by the program is deadly to free will. Reverend Kennedy wanted to take back America for a certain group of morally superior people. I suggest that he was far more Hitler's heir than the people he, Behe, and Coulter attack.

Murdoch and the WSJ

2007-08-25T22:24:00.000-04:00

Those of us who have heard that Fox News takes daily political direction and believe it think the situation should be exposed. Others say that there is no evidence that Fox does anything more than run from fire to fire gawking and pumping up fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Here is an article that provides a pedigree for what is happening today. It is _Bending to Power_ by Bruce Page in the Columbia Journalism Review.

It appears to me that between the Moonies and Murdoch, neo-conservative manipulation got a tremendous boost over the past few years. When global warming skepticism proved to be so easily planted in the psyche of a substantial portion of the public, it became clear that critical thinking skills are sadly absent at all levels of society.

FUD produced by the Wall Street Journal will have the same effect on the grey-suited and well-educated that Fox News has on "angry middle-aged men who scream at the TV." In fact it will be more insidious because they honestly feel their education confers mental fitness.

Who would have thought Ben Stein is an idiot?

2007-08-22T21:47:00.000-04:00

Why would Ben Stein collaborate with the production company that created this abortion ? It looks like a good education doesn't armor one from errors in thinking. OMG what an obvious statement. Just look at the smorgasboard of autodidacts around Bush. Smart, well-educated people who will do anything to have the last word. They are the Strangeloves of today, inventing convoluted solutions to problems that exist only in their huge, echoing brainpans.

Ignoring the U.S. District Court decision that found the ID folks from the Discovery Institute to be disingenuous and liars, somebody is throwing actual money into producing a movie about how science is somehow screwing free thought.

Forget the philosophy. Forget the science. Forget the religion. What they did was lie when they should have told the truth. As far as I'm concerned, there is no thoughtful consideration of alternatives involved. I vote for the side that tells the truth.

This reminds me of the stranger who was observed swimming in a lady's swimming pool last week. When confronted, dripping wet in her driveway by police, he denied the illicit swim.

But is it Science?

2007-08-07T07:28:00.000-04:00

When a Federal District Court judge says information bearing the imprimatur of the Discovery Institute is NOT science, it is a good bet he is right.

Generally when a publisher classifies a book, it is for purposes of clarity within the ontology. When the Discovery Institute people classify their books it is for the purpose of destroying the integrity of the structure of knowledge.

If libraries can't deal with the issue, they have a problem discriminating honesty from dishonesty. The judge said that the Discovery Institute people are disingenuous and dishonest. Just how does that translate into a "different point of view?"

resources:
http://webpages.charter.net/tomeboy/bias.html

Trust and Authority

2007-06-02T13:47:00.000-04:00

One of the most amazing things I see today is the use of the adjective environmentalist as a pejorative. The funny thing is that nobody I know isn't an environmentalist in one way or another. Yet there is a substantial stream of invective that tries to cast it as a religious movement.

My conclusion is that the invective is cast by a group that understands the world in religious terms alone and can't unshackle themselves from their common sense beliefs.

I'm using common sense in terms of believing only the evidence of one's senses.

This was brought home to me today when I read an article - I am posting the abstract with the issue information for those who wish to read the whole article:

Science 18 May 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5827, pp. 996 - 997
DOI: 10.1126/science.1133398

Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science
Authors: Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg

Resistance to certain scientific ideas derives in large part from assumptions and biases that can be demonstrated experimentally in young children and that may persist into adulthood. In particular, both adults and children resist acquiring scientific information that clashes with common-sense intuitions about the physical and psychological domains. Additionally, when learning information from other people, both adults and children are sensitive to the trustworthiness of the source of that information. Resistance to science, then, is particularly exaggerated in societies where nonscientific ideologies have the advantages of being both grounded in common sense and transmitted by trustworthy sources.

Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.

So you can see that it is to be expected in populations where practical knowledge is highly valued as well as faith-based organizations or groups of young people. This is why we have such a terrible time convincing people that the world is old and anthropogenic warming is a fact. We have to bring them up to speed by filling in gaps in their education. This assumes they are willing to learn.

Probably the majority of people who do accept evolution as a fact do so because they accept authority in a different way than the people who do not accept natural selection. Trust and authority. These two words are my mantra in Internet and Society classes. Without developing the ability to discern the good from the bad, a person has no signposts and wanders in search of meaning.

Trust and authority are key because you just can't know everything. Let's take the example of deciding whether to believe a group of climatologists versus a single geologist's view of global warming or a political appointee's statement versus the head of meteorolgy at NASA. The political appointee has more than one doctorate and is a highly respected manager at NASA. However, he owes his job to the administration.

Here is what we know for sure. The Bush administration's appointees have been broadly accused by hundreds of employed scientists of intimidation and coercion. Evidence has been offered. This is countered by accusing the other guy of being an environmental nut and a liberal. The problem as I see it is that the scientist is working inside of his specialty and will continue to do so as long as he does a workmanlike job. The political appointee is beholden to his master alone no matter what his academic credentials may be. So I see this as a pretty clear cut example. The evidence points to the side of the employed scientist and against the political appointee.

Saving for your child's education

2007-05-25T18:58:00.000-04:00

A good education is expensive. Marketwatch agrees with me.

"It's a totally unnatural act to pay for school," said Patrick Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents more than 1,000 of the nation's private schools. "Everyone wants to believe that their high local taxes are paying for good public schools. But by the time kids get to middle school and parents are spending time around the school, they get very nervous."

Comment: The truly sad thing is that in terms of education, the elementary school is where the problem starts and can be most easily fixed. Continue reading . . .

Then, the crunch comes. Private high schools offer precious little financial aid to cover yearly bills that run almost $17,000 nationwide and are often closer to $30,000 in New York, Los Angeles and other urban centers. Depleting cash, scrimping on expenses, borrowing against home equity and relying on grandparents and other relatives is standard.

So it looks like the folks at the Wall Street Journal have a pretty good idea about how much it costs. I guess it's no surprise. They probably aren't planning on having their kids deliver pizza for a living. They may even take the future knowledge based economy seriously. Imagine that.

By now you know I think we don't spend nearly enough on public education. I know that common NCLB wisdom says that money has no bearing on it, but if that were true, wouldn't those smart folks at the Wall Street Journal, the Bush family, and the rest of those who so benevolently rule send their kids to an inexpensive but well run school somewhere?

No? You mean the social benefits of Phillips Academy are worth the cost of a new Mercedes to Daddy? :-D

Really it's a matter of value-added services. The teachers have lots of contact with the kids. They invite them to visit their homes too. I remember how surprised I was when I found out that pblic school teachers tear the address labels from the magazines they take to school. I don't do it, but everybody I know does.

There are serious extra-curricular activities like debate, journalism, theater, and electronics in addition to sports. Sports are not considered a suitable alternative lifestyle unless they are golf or tennis.

Teachers have specialized educations in their subjects. Most of them have Masters and many have Doctorate level educations. They actively encourage inquiry and debate in their classrooms.

Perhaps the most important factor is mentioned in the quote above. Many of the parents of these kids are willing to sacrifice a lot to send their kids to these schools. That translates into a huge driving force behind the child.

It is a matter of odds and keeping track of what works. It has worked for them for generations so they just keep on doing the same thing.

Why Wikipedia is a success

2007-05-12T15:41:00.000-04:00

This isn't about Jimmy Wales' sex life. Sorry! It is about tearing down walls and rearranging furniture in a house that is growing at an ever-increasing rate.

The volume of information, particularly new information, is such that it can't be created, edited, or distributed in what people born prior to 1970 consider a normal way. If the Internet was not around, it would have to be created.

This isn't about paper or the movement of paper. It is organizational and it is about money. Paper output can keep up with scholarly output and it can be shelved, but can it be paid for and accessed?

Needing knowledge and finding appropriate knowledge is an increasing problem for people. The cost of access and the lack of authority is key.

My train of thought leads me to the possibility that Wikipedia has to be non-authoritarian because an editorial structure that guarantees objectivity is too heavy. Authority and trustworthiness may not be a part of Wikipedia's editorial function. I don't mean to say that there is a complete lack of it. I just think that the kind of ex-cathedra pronouncements Wikipedia's critics look for is not going to appear under any circumstances.

I expect that authority may be replaced by oversampling. Just as a Walkman oversamples a track to replace gaps, oversampling could play a role in building knowledge rules.

The Trinity. Scale, Trust, and Findability. Which is the greatest?

Seeing No Progress Some Schools Drop Laptops

2007-05-04T12:23:00.000-04:00

Today, the New York Times published an article about schools that have Decided to get rid of their one-to-one laptop projects.
There is a litany of reasons: cheating, pornography, hacking, and repair costs. But the worst by far was the fact that student's test scores didn't go up. I don't know why cheating and pornography are mentioned in the same breath with the project's failure to reach objectives, but an analysis of the failure should be attempted.

*** Update 5-12-07 - It turns out that the average usage for all schools was only 10 minutes a day for BOTH math and reading.***

Since I am in Broward County, I will quote the portion of the article that deals with us first.

Two years ago, school officials in Broward County, Fla., the sixth-largest district in the country, shelved a $275 million proposal to issue laptops to each of their more than 260,000 students after re-evaluating the costs of a pilot project. The district, which paid $7.2 million to lease 6,000 laptops for the pilot at four schools, was spending more than $100,000 a year for repairs to screens and keyboards that are not covered by warranties. “It’s cost prohibitive, so we have actually moved away from it,” said Vijay Sonty, chief information officer for the district, whose enrollment is 37 percent black, 31 percent white and 25 percent Hispanic.

The program was initiated three years ago, then two years ago it was abandoned. The repair cost was only 1.4% of the cost of the laptops annually. I wonder if that included theft? The six thousand laptops were given to students at schools where online education was absent from classrooms and the teachers unprepared to teach using the appropriate tools. Note that I said "online education", not technology education.

What is not surprising about the article is that students are not scoring higher on tests. This is because teachers are teaching the same way, using the same material and the same lessons they were prior to having computers.

The reporter states that many districts sought to "prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not."

In the very next paragraph we have this from Mark Lawson of the Liverpool New York School District:

The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.

I don't know if it's obvious to you, but what I see is a disconnect between two stated learning objectives that should be naturally connected. Maybe the first isn't really a learning objective, but it expresses the hands-on use of a tool (like a pencil) in pursuit of knowledge. The idea is to teach "through" the box, not to use it like a supplemental textbook.

The article goes on recounting disaster stories. Schools that have two sets of classes for haves and have-nots, huge repair bills, and the dreaded time consuming computer glitches. It concludes with a quote from Tom McCarthy, a teacher who says that the art of thinking is lost when you can give up after you find the first reference online.

*Grins in an evil fashion* Can you tell why I have the grin? I just have to wonder why a computer causes a child to satisfice when doing research. I have to wonder why a computer is responsible for any off-task behavior at all.

My classroom has a computer for each child. A web server delivers lessons and content. A web server is used to store student created projects. The Internet is used to bring content into the classroom from all over the world to enrich the experience. I can see every screen as I walk around the room and talk to the students and off-task behavior is no worse or better than any other classroom. Sometimes students even cheat.

But what my students don't do is idle their brains. Saying the art of thinking is lost typifies an abysmal misunderstanding of tool usage.

It CAN'T be DoneNo, Not Never

2007-02-24T18:35:00.000-05:00

Last Monday my identity was rejected at the San Francisco airport (SFO) and I'm glad I got there early because it took a while to convince them I was me.

I have always traveled using my nickname as opposed to the name on my driver's license and it looks like it's the end for Bob. *snif*

The attached clip from Boston Legal addresses the issue but my purpose for putting it up is not that. It is not Homeland Defense that gets up my nose. Watch the show and then read the rest of the post.

James Spader gives an impassioned speech about ignorance and the bureaucratic mind that actively pulls at reality, making it unravel. Why? Because it can.
Link to the Video via the Unofficial Apple Blog 'cause it isn't interdicted.

Last week somebody ran a query to create what amounts to address stickers for test booklets. There are over two hundred sixty thousand students. They didn't all get tested but the number of test booklets is still awesome in the fifth largest school district in the U.S.

The person who ran the query didn't quite get it right and left out a set of students that should have been included. These students are identified by a coded field in the DB2 table the district uses.

Instead of running another query and making a set of stickers for this group of students, they said "No" and made the staff of each school write the information on the booklets by hand. At our school it was several hundred.

This is the issue. One person running a report versus hundreds of people toiling for hours. One person adding a field to create unique records versus a confusing milkshake database. One person running an absentee report versus thirty thousand teachers writing postcards when a student fails to show up for class. One person creating a scheduling program that integrates with student records versus a huge whiteboard with post-it stickers for each subject and class that ends up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in delays, conflicts, and repeated classes for which credit cannot be given and abominations like giving a student a schedule that has four math classes simultaneously.

Are All Schools The Same ?Marat vs Lavoisier

2007-02-13T14:58:00.000-05:00

Evidently there are plenty of people who think so and they are willing to apply the same solutions to every single one of them.

I wonder if that won't cause a problem commensurate with the current situation.

What if a school only needs the equivalent of a new fuse? Remember this is being done in the name of economy. The tools are crudely wielded by citizen zealots as if they were part of the French Revolution.

Thus the title of the essay. Marat denounced Lavoisier several times calling him "the greatest schemer of our times." Lavoisier took positions without pay, yet Marat was certain Lavoisier was taking advantage of the people of France. Can you say paranoid nutcase?

After the Revolution, it was recognized that France had beheaded a great scientist. Joseph Louis Lagrange commented, "It only took them an instant to cut off the head and a hundred years may not produce another like it."

One can visualize elderly ladies rocking and knitting while the heads roll. "Praise the Lord! Another dirty evolutionist!"

Bush lets Dr Strangelove die... like a vampire hit by sunlight

2007-02-07T18:10:00.000-05:00

Around 2:14:00 the Senate committee hands off from Bill Nelson to John Kerry. Nelson was being chummy with the NASA guys. They were saying that they would soon have no capacity to do earth observation from space because of a 30% reduction in earth science research in administration budgets.

Kerry goes after the admin's science adviser Dr. Strangelove (Bill Brennan) just after that. Funny because when the guy could have responded with specific documents and timetables he couldn't because they don't exist so he has to respond with stuff like "Ve haff plans for informink der Congress and the Amerikan pipples..." and "Long live der Führer!"

If you are a Dr. Strangelove fan, you know that when he is under stress, the Doctor reverts to his "Nazi Scientist" roots which is pretty similar to what happened in Washington this week.

David Kennedy at Coral Ridge Presbyterian thinks that the science behind natural selection is at fault for causing the bizarre experiments of the Third Reich but he is seriously wrong. Hitler's "Nazi Scientists" were just doing what the boss told them to do and trying to make it *look* like science.

Does that remind you of Administration spokesmen? It should because it is what they do for a living. It should remind you of the guy at NASA who told the Hubble website writers that every time they used the phrase "Big Bang" they had to make sure it was accompanied by a disclaimer saying that it was just a theory. One of many alternate theories of the creation of the universe. You know the others, right? The giant turtle theory, the big tree theory, the pouffy-hair guy pointing his finger theory, the four sacred mountains theory, Mother of the Shining Ones theory, Ometeotl and what-have-you.

Dr. Strangelove is in charge of the "Good Science Theory" propounded by his boss President Bush. The litmus test for evil henchmen consists of a trinity of statements. First, Every Cell is Sacred, second, CO2 makes plants grow and that's all, and third, there is no such thing as natural selection so dinosaurs and people must have lived together.

Dr. Strangelove froze up and reverted to his Nazi roots in a Congressional hearing. There was nothing he could do because the Supreme Leader shot himself in the foot and couldn't run interference. Yes Reverend Kennedy, you, the President, and your friends are closer to being Nazis than angels.

While the Administration's Education supporters run for the hills . . .

2007-02-02T20:23:00.000-05:00

The National Review printed a "Run Away, Run Away" article about NCLB and the American Enterprise Institute resurrected Charles Murray (Bell Curve) to begin a measured retreat from the Bush education policy.

So when the entire world says the place is getting warmer, some of the Administration's REAL friends show their true colors in support. Washington is full of fair-weather friends, but with friends like Senator Inhoffe, you really don't need enemies.

Oklahoma Republican senator James Inhofe has been one of the lone bright spots in Washington when it comes to media accountability, specifically on the issue of global warming. He's continuing his hard-hitting approach Wednesday with a congressional hearing examining how the media has been been trying to scare the public into siding with climate change alarmists:

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, will hold a full committee hearing tomorrow (First week in December 2006) on "Climate Change and the Media."

Global warming, according to Senator Inhoffe, is bogus garbage foisted off on the public by a bunch of envronmentalists whose motivation stems from their mistaking the planet for GOD. The benefit they will derive from their interference in our lives? Some kind of stuff. Ahem. Well, something at the very least.

You can't simply say that the the people he quotes are all on the payroll of Exxon-Mobil and that simple fact makes them unreliable. I mean really! Look at those environmentalists, they are religious fanatics! That should be sufficient reason to doubt them. Just look at them. All nasty and healthy. Probably a bunch of lousy vegans.

By the way, you lousy vegans, his friend Pat Robertson is muttering about God and plagues.

Bush's glass wastebsket

2007-01-31T21:32:00.000-05:00

Kristen Hellmer, of the Council on Environmental Quality, part of the Executive Office of the US President, said the CEQ had been cooperating with Congress. When asked about allegations of political interference in scientific documents, she said: "We do have in place a very transparent system in science reporting."

Full article.

As to the force applied on people who speak out on global warming:

"After that speech and the release of data by Dr Hansen on December 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr Hansen that there would be 'dire consequences' if such statements continued, those officers and Dr Hansen said in interviews," the Times reported.

Full article Hansen works at NASA. You know, the place you can't say "Big Bang" without adding, "It's just a *theory*, you know."

Granted, New Scientist is not the source I would like it to be, but the articles are properly linked out to their sources.

Believe in Magic: "I did not alter that scientific report!"

2007-01-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

"Snicker, snicker."
Last Friday night we went to see Frank Caliendo at the Palm Beach Improv. He does an awesome impression of the Decider.

Today Senator Waxman said the White House has documents that prove they have been deliberately altering documents that deal with scientists' professional judgments surrounding global warming.

"We know that the White House possesses documents that contain evidence of an attempt by senior administration officials to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimize the potential danger," Waxman said.

CNN

What's going on here? Didn't we find out about this back in June of 2005? Don't you remember the whistle blower who ratted on Philip A. Cooney, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality for altering a report? The whole thing came out in the news and is well documented.

Maybe we believed the scientist Myron Ebell from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who defended the editing as necessary for "consistency." Ebell tried to offer a dodge saying that the report was cleared by several governmental agencies. Unfortunately a "whistleblower who resigned in March from the government office that coordinates federal climate change programs, made the documents — showing handwritten edits by Cooney — available to the Project on Government Accountability and, in turn, to news media."

Or maybe we believed the White House representative when she said, "He's not a cleared spokesman..."

Cooney was hired by Exxon within a week.

So what does this have to do with today?
This:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

The NYT

Need I say more? What's next? A government news agency called The Newserator.

Expulsion Improves School Scores

2007-01-29T17:53:00.000-05:00

A story at the Independent Online in Britain says some schools are allowed to get rid of troublesome students in order to improve their annual evaluation (like NCLB):

Ministers privately support the exclusion of large numbers of "challenging" pupils by Tony Blair's flagship academies, a senior government official has revealed.

Story here.

Of course we knew it was being done to us at my workplace. But nobody has ever acknowledged it or done anything about it. It seems Britain has a similar situation.

Why do I think it is happening? The signs? How about a December influx of new students with police records? We really didn't need to wait until report cards were printed to know we were being hustled again.

We may not be the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but it is possible the advances our students made would be recognized by the community. The kids work hard and deserve a pat on the back.

More Magical thinking

2007-01-21T15:57:00.000-05:00

Not true, of course but it's like the Frito Bandito kind of magic. Presto! I make your research into my research!

In the Bush Administration's latest sally into reality, they have purloined stem cell research, rewritten it, and relabeled it _Advancing Stem Cell Science Without Destroying Human Life_. Touting recent research as "..creating potential alternative sources for pluripotent ES-like cells.." the report cites the January issue of Nature Biotechnology that stem cells found in human amniotic fluid have many of the same qualities as ES cells (Science, 12 January, p. 170).

Unfortunately, it is not the case.

The researchers who authored the journal articles have objected to the Administration's characterization of their findings calling it a "..clear misrepresentation of our work."

According to The Wall Street Journal, presidential aides are drafting a possible executive order favoring alternative sources. Perhaps the President could get his friend the Supreme Being to take time out of His busy schedule and alter His work to suit the Executive Order.

The report did not state specifically that the Administration's representatives scuttled back into Fantasy Land with their prize, but it's a good bet they did.

National Review: "Let's distance ourselves . . ."

2007-01-14T13:46:00.000-05:00

Michael Petrilli's article "Leaving My Lapel Pin Behind Is No Child Left Behind’s birthday worth celebrating?" is a moving farewell, but he can't let it go. He says that supporting NCLB is a statement of belief in the "subtext" of the law as a "belief system." Perhaps I exaggerate somewhat, but that's how I read it.

I can't think of anything that gives me more satisfaction. Unless it would be a statement affirming the actual subtext as handed down by the Moses of privatization, William Bennett. He who would have denied internet access to public school students. A statement that public schools have as their goal preparing students as minimally qualified workers for the jobs of yesterday would be nice.

Petrilli cites a list of "powerful" ideas that embody 1990s education reform.
First, that every child has the capacity to achieve a minimal level of proficiency by 18 (not 22.)
Second, that school systems need threats in order to work.
Third, education bureaucracies and licensing rules impede good teaching.
Fourth, creating commercial alternatives to public school education has "all kinds" of benefits. (I can't THINK of anything funnier to say that that.)
Fifth, the federal government NEEDS to be involved in education in your community.

No, I don't think you can distance yourself from NCLB and still "embrace" the core values of a destructive subtext. It reminds me of people who say that Adolph Hitler never told his minions "... exterminate all of the Jewish people you can find." Who cares which words he used or how he used them? His people understood what he wanted them to do and they did it.

A final observation. When you discover your strategy and tactic has failed, you don't position more of your resources there. Reauthorizing the dysfunctional values represented by NCLB would be that kind of "surge."

James Brown, Rest in Peace

2006-12-26T11:26:00.000-05:00

James Joseph Brown, Jr. (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) passed in an Atlanta hospital after being diagnosed with severe pneumonia.

The Godfather of Soul and the hardest working man in the entertainment industry. What esle can you say? We will remember you every time we hear one of the songs you made us love.

Connected Thinking and Learning

2006-12-19T19:18:00.000-05:00

Some mid-term exams and some final exams just happened in my classroom. The one I had fun with was a question that used the NYT and BBC reports on the Holocaust Deniers' Love Fest in Tehran.

How could you go wrong with targets like David Duke, the Neturei Karta (or as they are known, the Unorthodox Jews), and the ever popular President Ahmadinejad headlining along with French and German jailbirds who just can't understand why their governments don't want them to spread falsehood world wide.

I asked the kids to identify the semantic tactics used and the errors of thinking, then explain them.

So far, so good. Taking a photo of dead people who were killed with bullets, gas, and starvation and saying they died of typhus. Unsubstantiated, but plausible. So if they want to deny the eye witness accounts and go with something merely plausible they can do it. (Just keep it to yourself and don't express it aloud.)

Expressing it aloud is stupid. It is not "ignorant" because they know there are first hand witnesses and affidavits. It is deliberate distortion of fact in the service of some other lie they are attached to. Generally these are lies that the perpetrators think will benefit them in some way.

And this is the real purpose of the essay assignment. To get my students to make the connection between the Holocaust Deniers and people who deny other facts.

Facts like the predictable decay of radioactive isotopes proving the age of minerals and fossils.

Facts like the relationship of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere to increasing temperature.

These people really have only two choices. North Korea or outer space. Life on another planet is a lot like life in North Korea. No news. Nothing unapproved gets in. Nothing. Nothing at all, just like the world they want. Ignorant and circumscribed by the rest of the universe.

I really liked the story last week of the young lady who had lived on a large farm with her extended family. She was doing some research and found a description of how religious cults work. She read a bit and thought "Hmm...that sounds a lot like my life." After reading a lot and talking to people, she realized that everybody's granddaddy didn't diddle them like hers did. She got pissed off and called the cops.

Too bad the citizens of North Korea can't call the cops.

Welcome Visitors!

2006-12-19T19:13:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, I had a bunch of visitors. Bangalore India, Antalya Turkey, Rishon LeZiyyon Israel, Sundsvall Sweden, Manchester UK, Winnipeg Canada, in teh US, Redlands, Los Angeles, SanFrancisco, Provo, Carrollton, Washington DC, Huntington, Raleigh, Troy, Metairie, Berkeley, Tampa, and of course my loyal fan base in Fort Lauderdale.

What can I say except "Go Manchester!" One of my students is moving somewhere near Manchester and I told him he had better be ready for the IB curriculum when he gets there. For some reason he didn't think I was serious, but I *know* his Dad is.

New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce

2006-12-10T22:37:00.000-05:00

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568480,00.html

"This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can't think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.

This week the conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries and business, government and other education leaders releases a blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy."

"Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages"-

"... premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos," says Marc Tucker, an author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy."

***** problem *******
"Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is as important as IQ for success in today's workplace. "Most innovations today involve large teams of people," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine."
******
I didn't know anybody had proven that EQ exists. I'm not really comfortable with our institutionalized treatment of IQ.

Is it possible that this high powered group has problems with critical thinking?

"Can our public schools, originally designed to educate workers for agrarian life and industrial-age factories, make the necessary shifts?" I assume they are talking about our private institutions as well since the students there still "sit in chairs much as their grandfathers did and listen to teachers lecture."

"...organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Asia Society are pouring money and expertise into model programs to show the way."

Bill Gates spends ten thousand dollars a student. That's one way to skin a cat.

Then they say, use the IB curriculum. That's good because we will save untold dollars fooling around with figuring out what Johnny must know at every school district on the planet. Over. And over again.

Here's a classic. She had to . . . "learn the names of all the rivers in South America. That was the assignment given to Deborah Stipek's daughter Meredith in school, and her mom, who's dean of the Stanford University School of Education, was not impressed. "That's silly," Stipek told her daughter. "Tell your teacher that if you need to know anything besides the Amazon, you can look it up on Google."

How nice. You would think that the dean of an education department would not interfere in a way that demeans her daughter's teacher in front of the child. I wonder how she speaks of her colleagues? Furthermore I'll bet mom wouldn't be able to google the answer all that quickly. There is a LOT of luck involved with that kind of search.

"Last year, in response to demand from colleges, the Educational Testing Service unveiled a new, computer-based exam designed to measure information-and-communication-technology literacy. A pilot study of the test with 6,200 high school seniors and college freshmen found that only half could correctly judge the objectivity of a website."

What Time doesn't say is that the test uses an interface that is alien to the students and somewhat unsettling to use because it is not anything they have previously encountered. The other thing is that the results of the search are presented as summaries which gives them automatic authority in a student's eyes.

I have an idea. Since it will be difficult to raise the critical thinking level of the American citizenry in a rapid fashion, why not start by closing down Fox News? Then regulate religion in a way that causes dogma to adhere to a standard of reasonableness. Every religion would have to give up the crazy stuff and it might help people stay sane a while. Oh yeah, let gay people do what they want. And, um sew Hannity's lips shut.

The Dysplastic Brain

The Investigator Found in Shallow Water

Green Dot saves the Planet

Education Policy is Health Policy

What Should Interest Legislators?

School Safety and PerceptionBoth Public and Student

Here we go:

High Stakes Testing

Comedy American Enterprise Institute-Style

Asking Entirely Too Much From Testing

Social Production Models vs Prescription

Accountability and Measurements of Effectiveness

Great Britain - Educational Bellwether

Do You Value Freedom of Religion and Constitutional Rights?

The Manufactured Crisis and the Bloomberg of 2010

Home Schooling

Why Education Isn't a Key Factor in Decision Making

When is it Religion and When is it Prejudice?

Open Letter to Senator LeMieux

Colin Marshall Hits the Nail (School) on the Head

Standup Comedy & Backchannel Intimacy - (informal talk)

Phil Jones Hadley CRU admits hiding data of temp decline

Open Access, Federation, and Why it's Like Healthcare

Universal Health Coverage - Why and Why

On the Moving of Cheese

Google Reader

Kudos to the reading department

Twitter Followers & No Notifications

Vanish Gives Your Speech Life (A Short One)

Trip to Korea

Environmental Cancer and the Web

Google Fusion Tables

Twitter in the Classroom

Why Paul Ormerod is Still Cool

Fear and Loathing in Alaska

The Summer Job Market Looks Grim

When to Use a Different Search Engine

Conservative Pundits and Cognitive Dissonance

Google Squared

Don't Like Open Journal Publishing?

Using Ontologies to Change Government

Past Facebook a Hyper-Social Format?

Social Issues and Online Addiction Among Teens

Observations on Florida's high school graduation rate

Student blogs

Ask yourself Punk. "Should I Twitter?"

Incentivize Wellness

Open Access and Self-Destructive Acts (edited rant repost)

Fox News Recipe for Graphics Excellence *wink*

Education and Streaming Video

Science Tatoos

The Next Big Thing Might Not be What You Expected

Google Reader

Blogging in Class

The I-4 Corridor

Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ can and should replace the Holy Bible

Because it more closely resembles reality.

Is Sarah Palen Holding a Viper to Her Breast?

Sarah Palen and Joe Biden debate on 10-02-2008 or "Exxon Stooge Shows up for Humiliation Show"

The Wisdom of Crowds Questioned

Mandatory Sarah Palin remarks

Accountability in Educaion and the Public Sphere

Why I didn't buy a new iPhone how Android gets my vote

Global Search and Stress

NCLB (FCAT) Broward County Schools

Negative Tagging for research

Take THAT Ben Stein!

Laptops and Students - To Be OR Not To Be -

Una Laptop por Niño - One Laptop Per Child

Schools Get Rid of Laptops, it's history now

Academic Freedom - lol who needs it?

Disasters beget regulation - Forseeing the Future of Continuing Education

Where does the Darwin Hitler connection come from?

Expelled No Intelligence Allowed

Searching for related topics

Health Care and Quacks, a possible connection

Airborne Effervescent Health - Evil Quack

Come Here and let me bite off your leg!

Evolution in Florida Science Standards

Measure, Measure, Measure, Barf

Fox News Recipe for Graphics Excellence wink