Learning Aloud

The recent election has brought a shift in political power to Washington. Assuming a simplistic vote along party lines both houses are not controlled by republicans and the President is a democrat. One wonders whether the contentious politics of the past two years will continue. Democrats in the Senate could now play the Republican game of the past two years and prevent passage of pretty much anything. Will the “party of NO” wear a different color jersey?

Leaders, Mitch McConnell and President Obama, have been remarkably pleasant and promise greater efforts to work together on areas of agreement. While it may have seemed that no such areas exist, to avoid the “party of no” strategy, Republicans are now likely to identify some such areas (in addition to pushing through legislation that the President will obviously veto).

One such area may concern teacher preparation and teacher evaluation. Republicans and Obama’s Department of Education have been supporters of the “value added” mentality. I single out Republicans only because it seems this concept is somewhat more accepted by Republicans. This is a simplification.

The idea of value added proposes that the contribution of teachers can be estimated statistically by using student gain scores after attempting to control for some confounds. It follows that if the value added of a teacher can be determined than the average value added of the institution preparing these teachers can also be estimated. It kind of makes sense on the surface, but the practical significance of value added in contrast to variables other than the teacher and issues of what the dependent variable used in statistical should be make this very controversial. By dependent variable (a stats/research kind term), I mean what will be used to evaluate “gain”. This probably translates as some type of standardized achievement test. Even standardizing on a standardized test will be a struggle that will probably not be resolved. You will then have a mess with different standards in different states and teachers trained in one state teaching in other states making the use of gain scores to evaluate teacher training an apple and oranges mess.

So, without weighing in on whether this will be a good thing for learners and educators, I am just predicting that politicians will see this as an area to address. Teachers are an easy target and politicians will want to point to something, anything, they have accomplished.

(pre-election article on the possible regulation of teacher preparation from the Washington Post)

I see these blog posts in which recognizable individuals show their office or explain their work strategy. I make no claim to being recognizable nor will I provide images of my office (it is presently pretty cool – a three season porch looking out on birch, pines and a lake with a fire burning in the stove), but I thought I might explain how I write for online consumption (not the same as writing textbooks). The tools I use may be of interest to some.

My daily process involves the use of input tools that I use to surface content that I read. I would divide these tools into three categories – social tools (Twitter, Google+) for following specific individuals, an RSS feed I use to follow specific bloggers, and discovery tools that follow topics, but not individuals. As I go through this content, I annotate and move interesting content into Evernote. I mostly write in Evernote. I write when I have time and when something I have found seems interesting. I generate blog posts from individual or multiple inputs and draft these posts in Evernote before generating the final versions in WordPress (my three blogs). Of course, I also search for additional information related to topics I am writing about and sometimes write based my original ideas rather than in response to what I have read. I keep content in Evernote for future reference whether or not I write something. I use Diigo as a social bookmarking site mainly as a way to share resources related to our textbook. I pay for pro/premium Evernote and Diigo accounts to allow for expanded capacity.

This is the season for political ads. The frequency and approach of political ads drive me crazy. There seems so little meaningful information and so many obvious attempts to manipulate.

Anyway, I think an examination of political ads offers a great opportunity for developing critical thinking and/or media literacy. I have been trying to come up with a way to involve such skills without getting into the emotions that come with politics. I happen to think emotion in education is great and we should take on issues that raise enthusiasm whenever possible, but I also recognize that some would rather such issues be avoided.

Here is my basic idea – analyze political ads by creating and applying bingo cards. This seems a popular way to explore the “in terminology” during conference presentations I attend so why not apply in other contexts. Here is my first effort based on phrases and images (I). Obviously, some of the imagery or phrases would not apply in all areas of the country.

Consider that multiple students might create cards and apply to see who had done the best job of spotting trends. Popular images or phrases might also allow scrutiny of the messages ad creators think sell. Does the phrase “all politics is local” apply? Are there more negative or positive messages? Does the incumbent or challenger use more negative messages? Are voters being manipulated or informed based on phrases or images are emphasized?

I have wondered about this feeling I have had recently that not much was going on. That things in general were boring. I thought it might be the general political climate or various vague threats that we face. I thought it might even be me. Perhaps I had somehow become jaded or fatigued. I am getting older.

I happened on a blog post describing a new documentary that sounded interesting. The description was vague but there was mention of the OLPC and Peru. We donated an OLPC some years ago and purchased one for ourselves. I happened to find the device a week or so ago as we packed up our house to move. The combination of random events caught my attention. I wondered what had happened to the project. You no longer hear about the project online or at conferences.

I thought I might be able to watch the video using Amazon Prime, but it was not available. For a couple of bucks you can view the movie from Amazon or iTunes. I recommend it for education and tech people. The themes kind of take you back to a time when we hoped tech could change things.

It seems we have momentarily lost our fascination with the dreamers and their dreams. Maybe this is reality, but I think it is too bad.