The Fire's Beginning to Start in the Wilderness Downtown

If the new interactive film and music experiment from the Canadian indie rock artists Arcade Fire hasn't come up in the RSS feed or social media platform of choice, it is time to recalibrate or adjust priorities. Because this experience is engaging, challenging, and everything that social media should be. 

Upon traveling to the experiment site via the band's website or other portals users are met with an interesting price of entry: "the address of the home where you grew up." In an era of privacy concerns a user might balk at such a request; but it's worth it. The experiment then goes on to use Google Street View information tied to the given address to propagate the scenery of the interactive film. Immediately users have engagement via relevant images on the screen; this is the user's world as the palate for the media. 

While it's easy to get caught up in the "Hey that's my house" aspect of the interactive film there is also an element of challenge. While net neutrality is still fresh in the collective unconsciousness, only the early adopters of the HTML 5 variety can come play these reindeer games. The development channel and stable versions of Google Chrome are recommended as the film is a Google HTML 5 experiment. So while a browser might need to be upgraded or downloaded it is important to note that experience is the offered incentive here, and what an experience it is. The website itself puts it best by calling it "choreographed windows" - the images beautifully collect, converge, and collapse while interweaving locations from the user's immediate world. 

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering... this Chrome Experiment has them all. "The Wilderness Downtown" is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait" and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

But upon several viewings what resonates is that this is what the internet and social media should be for users. An interest in the music or some aspect of the interactive experience spurs engagement on the part of the user. The experiment then takes data relevant to the user's life in the form of street images and "advice to a younger self" and weaves it all into the overall work. The effect is simultaneously unsettling and compelling. For in this world images flow from window to window and style to style all while building an audio/visual message. Once this message is crafted the user can then choose a new starting point from which to renew the experience, or share what they've done with others. is this not a suitable approach to learning also? 

While the debate surrounding whether Flash or HTML 5 is the superior format rages on one thing is clear; all future notions of literacy must contain a visual component. This video experiment provides an outlier of what social media use could be. A great deal of talk in the educational world attempts to encompass what exactly 21st Century Skills are while struggling with whether textual or visuals elements should have prominence in instruction when the answer is simply "yes."

It is fitting that one of the first singles from Arcade Fire's album is entitled "Ready to Start." As a recent review of the album notes: 

The Suburbs delivers a life-affirming message similar to Funeral's: We're all in this together.

This is what art does; it shows what can be possible in the world of those that behold it. Everyone's in this, change is here, and one must be ready to start. Below is a version of the experiment tailored to this writer's environment. What's yours like? 

The Wilderness Downtown

Student Mind, Blogger's Mind

This year students and educators around the country will be blogging, or starting to do so. Wrapped up in this blogging is the axiom of "teachers as lifelong learners." In the midst of learning what embedding, tagging, quoting, and auto-posting are, perspective can be obscured or even lost. Here's a recommendation; get help - join a community. It's quite common to see millennial or digital native students posting pleas for help on a variety of sites. If the students now are becoming more comfortable asking for help so should their educators. Any activity that requires the educator to simultaneously become a learner gains an additional level of credence. 

Kelly Tenkely has a great post on the necessity of blogging for educators. Here's a money-quote: 

Blog posting is good for teachers. It keeps us humble, reminds us of how scary it can be to "speak" in front of the class. It reminds us of what it feels like not to have all the right answers. How it feels to get your work back with red marks all over it, exposing your faults. 

It brings back Suzuki's concept of Zen mind being the beginner's mind. If blogging can return educators to a student's mindset, it is compelling evidence for the necessity of blogging in the classroom. 

Almost Student-centered: Bootleg Edition

Every teacher has processes that they go through to get ready for the school year. For this writer and educator, there are certain movies that need to be watched before beginning a school year. One that always makes the list is Cameron Crowe's under-appreciated gem "Almost Famous". It's a semi-autobiographical turn for Crowe based upon the time he spent as a teenager writing for Rolling Stone. In past viewings the relationship between Crowe's alter-ego main character William, and the rock critic guru Lester Bangs would resonate for their student/teacher qualities and quotes like the following: 

Music, you know, true music -not just rock 'n' roll- it chooses you. It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones, you know, with the vast, scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain.

             It's a place apart...

But while viewing the film in readying for this school year another aspect gained prominence; namely that of the journey William's character goes through. William begins with a passion for music, specifically rock 'n roll. He meets a guide in the form of Lester's character, who arranges his work for the magazine which precipitates his journey following the band Stillwater. In the process of covering the band he often calls Lester to vent and get help in overcoming challenges presented by his situation and his goal of being a legitimate writer. Ultimately William's journey is about writing the truth behind his trials and sharing the knowledge gained with others. Does the progression of this plot sound familiar to anything else?

While William's journey strongly parallels that of the mono-mythic hero posited by Joseph Campbell and other scholars it is also an outline for student-centered learning. The student begins with their passion, a mentor arranges experiences to foster growth and engage the student in inquiry, the student undergoes trials in the process of learning, getting aide when needed but ultimately coming to understanding on their own and sharing that understanding with others. 

Maybe it's not possible or desired for all students to possess such an experience. The type of trials and tribulations William goes through clearly aren't for everyone, but if this experience of learning is analogous to the stories of heroes that pre-date Christianity it bears examination and discussion. Right now it feels like the multiple-choice driven assessments present in education are grounded firmly in the "trials & tribulation" aspect of the process and offer absolutely no check or outlet on the element of "sharing knowledge gained with others". A test score is a static number currently being used to evaluate, judge, or at worst shame those involved in the learning process. Isn't learning more than that? 

Factual knowledge is an inextricable part of the learning process. But the trials of a learner are so much more. It's fine to assess and test factual knowledge, but there is an entire part of the process that is being abandoned if this is the only focus. There needs to be a value and assessment for the sharing of knowledge; anything else is only 'almost' - but it's not real learning. Sharing knowledge is of vital import because: 

The only true currency in this bankrupt world... is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.  

 

A Ticket to Cautionary Tale-land

One centerpiece skill for many students this year will be the use of metaphors. If one thinks back, images of comparisons and distinctions from those of similes no doubt arise. But it's important to consider the origin of the word: 

metaphor 

1530s, from M.Fr. metaphore, from L. metaphora, from Gk. metaphora "a transfer," especially of the sense of one word to a different word, lit. "a carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry over," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear" (see infer). Related: Metaphoric; metaphorical; metaphorically.

When using metaphor the concept of transfer is particularly salient; it is after all, an attempt at reshaping reality through language. The poetic aspects of this have been forced upon students for generations and the clip below takes a simplistic, but striking take on the metaphor. Metaphors are similar to many linguistic devices in that if they are presented in a clear, committed manner an austere power presents itself. Joe Hill's excellent "Locke & Key" series is one such example. 

This short video by FableVision not only thoroughly applies a metaphor to the utmost, it employs the metaphor in service of the story. After all, it is important to remember that if one gets a "ticket to metaphor-land" the destination should clearly listed. If not, get another ticket. 

Testing the Cupcake Dog

In preparing for the school year I've been approaching my planning from a different standpoint. In the same vein as this blog, the aim has been to be as transparent as possible in terms of the learning process. One inevitable reality of the learning process in public schools is assessment which often takes the form of tests. During this preparation an interesting meme that came at me sideways was Stains the Cupcake dog.

This clip from "It's Me or the Dog" has started to take on a small life beyond the show. It could be the production values, or the disconcerting amount of focus by the dog, but in any event it's amusing and thought-provoking.

While preparing for the school year I've been embedding multiple assessments of different natures, all with the goal of improving student achievement. Within this goal is the focus and assumption of education being something more than mere operant conditioning. Too many students consume information, retain it until the test, and then promptly forget said information to ready the mental space for new information presumably for the next test. In this way the learning of Stains the Cupcake dog is a cautionary tale. If all we assess is the memory of wrote facts we are racing not to the top but toward obsolescence. Learning requires a basic knowledge of facts but that knowledge is not the sum total of learning. Though it may be easy to manage I do not want a classroom full of cupcake dogs.

What's the answer then? I'm not entirely sure, but I want to bring my students into the process of the learning that they take part in. A first step is giving them power to choose, let them peek behind education's curtain, to have opportunities Stains did not. If we do not teach students how we create lessons and curate learning how can we then expect them to learn on their own? The interesting thing is that we know what to do. The talk below is something that I am going to share with my students. Because I want learners, not cupcake dogs.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words then video is worth...

Take a look at an outstanding video called "Words" from the creators over at Radiolab. Try to carry on a dialogue of the words describing each scene as it shifts and the excellence of this clip becomes clear. 

Google, Data, and the Problem of the Chessboard

Last week a rather impressive statistic was used by Google CEO Eric Schmidt - Tech Crunch has the figure and the quote: 

Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until  2003, according to Schmidt. That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says.

Schmidt goes on to say that the lion's share of this new data is user-created but the implications for all of us as learners is enormous. The immediate analogue is the proverb of the wheat and the chessboard. 

The short version is that an ancient ruler (some say India, others China) was quite pleased with one of his scholars who invented the game of chess. The ruler goes on to let the scholar name the reward for creating the chessboard. The scholar replies that he would like to receive one grain of wheat for the first square of the board and have the total amount of wheat doubled for each subsequent square. The ruler wasn't the mathematician that the scholar was but it works out to: 

To solve this, observe that a chess board is an 8×8 square, containing 64 squares. If the amount doubles on successive squares, then the sum of grains on all 64 squares is:

This equals 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.

To bring this back to Schmidt's quote it important to note that an exabyte is defined as: 

exabyte definition

unit 
 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes = 1024 petabytes or roughly 10^18 bytes. 

So what we're seeing nearly daily in data creation is something akin to the wheat & chessboard scenario. Again, a sizable portion of this data can be chalked up to the effluvium of life that comes in texts, tweets, and assorted blog postings - including this one. However, if even a fraction of this information is of merit it means that a drastic shift in pedagogy is needed. 

Often when people criticize education it's that recent graduates are woefully inept when it comes to remembering facts. Such a lack of memory has even been the subject of late night television segments and game-shows. With the aforementioned exponential increase in the creation and storage of data, how can something like the Common Core Standards hope to serve to prepare students for the future? Given the bureaucracy that surrounds the Common Core, and education legislation in general, keeping up with "all the facts that are needed to know" seems to be an almost foregone conclusion. 

Knowledge is needed to acquire any skill; facts are an indivisible part of learning. But the intertwined nature of facts and process in learning begs some important questions. Are educators supposed to strive to prepare their students for life, or for the next test? When looking at the chessboard are we approaching education as the ruler or the scholar? 

EdChat and the Information-scarce Society

A post over at MPB Reflections, 21st Century Teaching and Learning sparked some of my thoughts and observations from recent EdChats on Twitter. Michelle's post is one of those blog postings that gives you everything - context, content, and thought. The thoughts at work in the post deal with the dichotomy of social media interacting with staid teaching practices. The quote that stood out for me was:

Pulliam identified the lecture as a "discredited teaching method" in the 1960s.  Consider the head spinning rate of information production today -- my own blog and tweets serving as perfect examples -- and the fact that this perpetuating flow of content is now available through laptops and smartphones in the pocket of a growing percentage of the world.  Yet we're still educating our college students through a medieval teaching method that "makes sense" in an information-scarce society.

We no longer live in an information-scarce, but we're sure teaching like it. As the Smithsonian Magazine so succinctly states, we are reading in new ways. We are no longer a people of the book; we are the people of the screen. But then some of the recent discussions on #EdChat came to mind. Specifically whenever the topic of social media, a complimentary tool for our information-rich society, arises. Often an outraged educator will post something like

Not teaching social media is NOT a travesty. Not teaching <insert name of a fact from a personally beloved content area here> is a travesty! 

Or something along those lines. But we are all in this together as a society. Our society is changing due to the communication tools it has now. We need to develop ways to responsibly bring the learning to all stakeholders; parents, community, students, and educators. Given the vast array of knowledge accessible via the internet teachers simply can no longer compete as being the sole source of factual knowledge in a classroom. My question is why is the discussion so often framed in a binary manner? Why am I encountering such a dialogue while using social media to discuss education? Does the use of social media immediately preclude the use of factual knowledge? 

It's not wrong to have an aspect of life or area of study that we love almost unto excess. For many educators that passion is irrevocably bonded to a love of learning, it's what got us into education. But no one can be the font of knowledge as though it's an information-scarce society; we're too interconnected. There are many variations of the saying (often attributed to David Thornburg) "Any teacher that thinks they can be replaced by a computer should". The same might be said about social media in education. I would rather help my students learn to read the world around them and find their passion in it. Maybe I'll learn something from them and as we come to an understanding together about content. 

Hiring out "Milkshake Mistakes"

The Washington Post has an intriguing article posted today regarding college admissions that got my thinking connected to a post by Rob Jacobs over at Education Innovation. The article in the post is detailing how colleges are struggling to distinguish talent amongst the thousands of applications they are receiving. A money-quote:

"We felt that students who managed to come to campus were not reflective of the diversity of our applicant pool," said Maria Laskaris, dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth College. via The Washington Post

The article goes on to detail the pitfalls of the "to interview or not" conundrum and what kind of technologies (Skype, webcams, etc.) might be used to this end. This brought me to Rob's post and a book I, and it seems technology enthusiasts and educators everywhere, have been reading - Clay Shirkey's "Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age".

Rob does an excellent job of summing up what Shirkey dubs "The Milkshake Mistake." The problem occurred when McDonald's researchers, working to increase milkshake sales, were surprised to find that milkshakes were being purchased in the early morning contrary to their expectations. Shirkey goes on to point out how the customers were simply hiring out the milkshake to perform a needed service, regardless if it was contrary to its expected use. Rob's post connects this to education:

You “hired” the technology to help students consume. They “hired” it to help them produce. You hired the technology to help students connect. They “hired” it to comment and critique.

The question over what we're hiring technology to do in education is somehow both salient and elusive. Shirkey does provide a key quote in a later chapter:

The logic of digital media, on the other hand, allows the people formerly known as the audience to create value for one another every day.

When using technology in education, are teachers committing a "Milkshake Mistake?" How are the expectations in the use of technology being communicated in relation to adding value? If the prevailing progression of test well, do well in school, get into a good university now involves an interview process that is designed to have prospects demonstrate skills - how are the Common Core Standards or test-based teacher accountability systems preparing students for this possible future? All I can think of is this quote:

So what future action should be taken? One thing I'm thinking about is teaching my students about Bloom's Taxonomy as a foundation piece for the school year. If we understand what we value and how we add value, maybe we can avoid some Milkshake Mistakes.