Learning Aloud

I have been making decisions about the articles I require for my graduate class. I added a short Research Summary from AERA that considers the topic of Time to Learn (pdf). There are many facets to this topic. How long is the school day? How much time is spend on academic subjects and which subjects receive what proportion of the school day? How engaged are individual learners during the time allocated to a given subject?

I have long been interested in some of the theoretical issues associated with time. By long, I mean some of these topics were being raised when I was in graduate school. The notion that individual differences in time to learn may represent an alternate way to think about aptitude differences has long fascinated me. The assumed meaning of aptitude is that differences in aptitude are reflected in differences in how much is learned (given a fixed amount of time). Thinking of aptitude as differences in time to learn was originally not very practical – what is realistic about  understanding that less capable students may require 3x more time? Where would that time come from? Of course, ignoring this reality is also unrealistic. What is practical about offering many students less time than is necessary to learn what they need to learn? Such students simply fall behind, become frustrated, and give up. Mastery learning (a model of individualizing instruction I find most of my younger peers have never heard of) argued that moving ahead when understanding was present offered the most efficient approach to learning. Is differentiated instruction a new version of this claim (time and method)?

Whatever the skills to be acquired (traditional or 21st century), there are still important issues to be resolved regarding time in group settings. Perhaps it is time to expect students to acquire certain skills outside of the “school day”. I suppose this already happens for those with motivation and opportunity.

We drove from western Wisconsin to western Iowa yesterday to visit mom. About 6 in the evening we came over a slight rise in the highway and were confronted with a herd of deer. No escape route and not enough time to stop. I know we struck at least two deer and messed up our car.

We met a couple of nice officers after calling 911. Contrary to what I had assumed, the dispatcher did not know which county we were in let alone which mile marker we had just passed. Like I would have some idea. Explaining that I was on highway 60 close to an ethanol plant brought us help in about 20 minutes. One nice lady did stop to ask if we needed help. No claims adjuster will take a look at the car until Monday (accident was Thursday). My brother is lending us a car so we can get back to North Dakota and we will work out the details via phone.

Yes, those are dealer plates on the car. First accident of my life and it happens in a new car. Probably a good thing. The car handled very well – not certain what would have happened years ago if we would have experienced the same thing in our original VW van.

There must be some lessons here. I am trying to figure that out. You can’t control all of the variables. Sometimes a herd of deer decides to sacrifice a few members.

We are both fine and enjoying our holiday.

We are gathered at a cabin for the holiday break and presently are snowed in. We have great wifi and plenty of ways to entertain ourselves. Last evening we engaged in some recreational problem solving.

We decided we wanted to watch “Dark Knight” using the projector we brought with us to play Wii games. Son Todd had downloaded the movie to the iTunes application on his new Mac, but then discovered that the new machine used a different “AV out” than was required by the projector. What to do?

We could have watched the movie on the computer, but what fun is that. We considered downloading the movie to an iPod and then found that we did not have the proper adapter for that device either. Target driving Todd’s machine and moving the movie to another of our Macs was considered, but then we would have had to subvert the DRM. Be illegal only as a last resort.

The final solution worked like this. Share the screen on the machine with the movie. Hook an older computer to the projector and via wifi to the computer playing the movie. We could have stopped there, but there ended up being more. It turns out Todd controls his Mac with an iPhone app and we decided to run the audio through the cabin’s surround sound system.

It was great fun, but took a while to accomplish. Cindy had to be awakened several times to make it to the end of the movie.

Hope your own holiday brings you whatever experiences you enjoy.