Category Archives: Learning and Ideas

I support teachers, not a strike – Part 1 / 5 – Education is mostly about teaching

The PolyBlog
February 11 2020

I find it odd, and a little offensive, the constant rhetoric that gets launched at times at people who might disagree with teachers striking “for the kids”. The argument is not very complex, but bears laying out:

  1. People should support education
  2. Teachers deliver education
  3. Teachers are striking to change the government’s bad approach to education

Ergo, people should support a teachers’ strike. And, of course, the reverse MUST be true — if you don’t support a strike, you obviously hate teachers, kids and education.

Which leaves me with a puzzling conundrum. I cannot support strike action, yet I don’t hate teachers, kids or education. So where did I fall off the train above? I initially wrote a REALLY long post and realized it is way too convoluted to share as a single post. As such, I’m breaking it into five parts. This first part deals with the first two arguments above and the scope of “education”.

PEOPLE SHOULD SUPPORT EDUCATION

I could word that line as “education is uber important” or that “it’s about our future”, as many protest signs do, but let’s stick with the simpler wording. Is there any problem here for me? Not a whit.

I believe in the value of education. My entire sense of being revolves around lifelong learning, and so I cannot in any way ever support the idea of a cut or really anything that diminishes the value of education. Growing up, school was a refuge for me. A place where, surprisingly, things made sense. Not so much with people, friends, family, socializing, etc., but the subject matter at school did. A world where, if I could have lived in that “bubble of ideas”, it would have seemed close to heaven. People throw in stats about contributions to earnings, job security, blah blah blah, but that is treating education as a means to an end. For me, I’m willing to accept that education is a goal in and of itself.

I’m all in, no argument here, I would even go stronger.

TEACHERS DELIVER EDUCATION

As I said, I value education, I value schools, and I think teaching is one of the noblest of professions on the planets. It is tough, and many people could not last a day doing it. Many of those who could last wouldn’t be any good at it. Finding someone who likes it, embraces it and is good at it? Those individuals should probably be worshipped daily. Even if I didn’t know that from my own experiences growing up, I have four teachers in my extended family who could rightly smack me silly to believe anything else. Again, I’m all in, and the wording could be as strong as you want to make it for this premise.

But teachers are one part of “education”. Maybe the most important part, sure, but not the whole system. Teachers know how to teach, absolutely, and know what has worked in their classrooms in the past, how changes will affect learning. I’m willing to defer to them on that aspect. Who would know it better?

But teaching is one part of the delivery network for the education system, as is having a school, support staff and principals, transportation, security, or janitorial services, school layouts and locations, all of it. The “education system” also includes school boards, multiple school systems even, aspects of learning, human rights, stakeholders, curriculum development, even political support. Plus the dreaded area of budgeting, system management, representation from the full constituency of citizens and taxpayers who fund the system. Accountability. And relationships between the education system and other parts of the state. 

All things that go way beyond a teacher in a classroom.

Which means they are one part, not the whole thing. They contribute to delivering “education”, they don’t control all of it.

If they stay in that lane, and that lane only, the argument can hold. If they go beyond their lane, their claim to superior knowledge is suspect.

Conclusion for part one

I can agree with the first premise, and I can narrow the second premise enough for it to hold. Education is important and teachers’ views of the classroom component are solid. So far, the logic holds. I’m still on the train.

Metaliteracy – Week 5 – Understanding How Information is Packaged and Shared

The PolyBlog
July 8 2019

Week 5 of Coursera’s Metaliteracy course is entitled “Understanding How Information is Packaged and Shared”. I was initially skeptical of the week, as the format is rarely something I have thought much about outside of the mainstream. For example, a blog post vs. a news article, and the likely credibility of the two by default. Kind of like peer-reviewed vs. non-peer-reviewed articles. But as I worked through the readings, and the assignments, I actually found that I liked the content more than I expected.

For example, it talks about it from a creation standpoint. An academic wanting to advance learning in a specific area is likely to follow a traditional route and publish in a peer-reviewed journal using technical language appropriate to the field. By contrast, the same academic might want to make a presentation to students that would make the same information available but tied to more fundamental principles. And equally, the same academic might try to reach out through blogs or popular press articles with infographics to encapsulate similar information. But the same infographic wouldn’t work for the technical crowd. And while all that is obvious, another element hadn’t occurred to me.

That it’s the same process for me with my blog. I am not trying to be the academic talking to the peers, nor am I teaching students. My target for my HR guide and my blog, in general, is usually the Average Joe on the street. But I usually default to text. I rarely put much thought into infographics which are often a better vehicle for the Average Joe. While I consider many of the same elements, I rarely boil it down so starkly. In particular, one of the readings talked about various formats available for communicating:

A book
A journal article written for scholars in the field
A blog entry that is public
A Facebook message for only one’s friends
In-person communication
A text message
A chart with data
An infographic
A YouTube video montage
An online timeline containing text, video, and photos

It has started me thinking about my HR Guide in book form and whether that was ever the best format. I’ll likely still do it, but I have my eye on some other formats for subsequent versions.

The first assignment for the week was a simple worksheet that asked you to pick a topic that you could explain to someone else, choose three different formats you could use from the above list to communicate information about it, and then give some strengths and weaknesses for the format, how much the format lends itself to collaboration / feedback / sharing, and whether the format is important to the content.

The second assignment was to reflect on your own role in critically examining online material (I chose the example of my frequently seeing so-called factual memes or infographics that seem one-sided or misleading and having to dig deeper to get to the truth), what triggers me (i.e. the one-sidedness that seems off), and if it affects you in your own role as producer of information.

And finally, the third assignment was to expand on the producer role and how I as a producer use various formats, how I started, whether I considered those other factors, etc.

An interesting week, much better than I expected.

What if…you had to choose a war to live through

The PolyBlog
June 25 2019

I mentioned in a previous post that I have a copy of “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)” by Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell (Villard Books, 1995). It gives you an “If…” question about life, and you answer it. Good for dinner parties or blogs, apparently.

The one I’m tweaking today is “If you could have lived through any war in history (without actually fighting in it), which war would you choose?”. 

Of course, nobody is going to really choose a war to live through. Unless they’re being literal, in which case the shortest war or the most localized war would be best, with you on the other side of the planet, preferably. And to be honest, to even attempt to answer that question and figure out what some of the parameters might be is a bit horrific to think about. All war is hell.

But, if I go sideways for a second, and ask about seeing the sociological changes that happen during the same time, WWII is probably my war of choice. Knowing the outcome, knowing the reality, it would be incredible to see how people got their news, and reacted to it, in real-time. As a child who became aware of the world in the 80s, it’s hard to imagine news being shared at movie theatres rather than on the radio or TV. Changes in the roles of women both during and after the war. PTSD as humans came back — “shell shock” at the time. Even the horrific but gradual awareness of the reality of the concentration camps as the news started to enter into mainstream thought, not just occasional rumours that were dismissed as outrageous, impossible, unreliable even.

Some of the interest is grim, some of it is academic, but much of life in the Western hemisphere changed in a five- or six-year timeframe. All wars have been catalysts for change…this one just resonates more with me as I can see glimpses of the before and after.

If you had to live through a war, or just simply observe the changes from one, which would you choose?

What if…you could teleport to anywhere on Earth for a day

The PolyBlog
June 18 2019

Awhile ago, I picked up a copy of “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)” by Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell (Villard Books, 1995). I don’t even remember how I got it…gift, impulse buy, used, whatever. But the idea behind it is a list of “If…” questions that you can ask yourself or others in a group to have a fun or excruciating series of conversations about people creativity, wishes, and whims. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? If you could have dinner with anyone in history for one night, who would it be? You get the idea. And so while I have this book, and several others, that ask similar questions to ponder, I really thought I would use them to ask myself questions for my blog. Ideas that could spark my own creative thought for a day. 

The book is not organized around any real themes, just series of question after question, although some are related as you go — having dinner with someone alive, or having dinner with someone from history, for example. I had illusions that I would first go through and categorize them and maybe consider a bunch about people or actions at a time, or on a rotation basis. Kind of like avoiding quotes on the same theme and being more diverse when I post. I got about 10 pages in, and got bored. Instead, I’m just going to go through manually in order and choose one that appeals to me and skip ones that don’t.

I’m going to skip “if you were to be granted one wish, what would it be?” as that is just too generic to me, and some silly ones for cocktail parties about spending nights alone with people around the world or throughout history (eyebrow raise, eyebrow raise).

But one that appeals to me asks about teleporting somewhere on earth. If I modify it slightly, I’ll answer the question:

If you could physically transport yourself to any place in the world at this moment for one day, where would you go?

I tweaked it assuming I could get back afterwards, not just the equivalent of a simple free air ticket somewhere, and that you are only going for the day. I have a few choices that leap out at me.

Florence would be a great choice right now to go for the day because my wife is there. But we could do that on our own without using up a great gift of a wish.

Australia and New Zealand are on my bucket lists to visit, but I wouldn’t want to go alone, so those are out. I feel the same way about the Galapagos and Patagonia, as well as Antarctica.

I could name a couple of dozen places that would be awesome to visit to do astronomy but I don’t know any that would rise to the level of a single wish. 

Great wonders, big waterfalls, island oases, all of it would be possible, sure, but as I thought about some of them, I realized none of them would pull at my heartstrings.

I started to think about what would be one that would be guaranteed to be meaningful, that would be worth such a wish. And suddenly my answer was clear. I would want to go a place that already holds meaning to me, an obvious place of resonance and not just curiosity, and one that I am unlikely to visit again anytime soon. Too many other destinations calling for attention.

I would want to go back to Ke’e Beach, on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Andrea and I went there on our honeymoon and watched the sunset. 

Ke'e Beach

If I could go somewhere to just sit and chill, that would be it. Which would be possible now that it all reopened after the rainfall devastation in 2018.

Where would you go?

FtU #02 – MOOC this, universe

The PolyBlog
June 3 2019

I completed a previous MOOC on video game analysis (#50by50 #32 – Complete a MOOC – Understanding Video Games) from the University of Alberta and I started one on Metaliteracy some time ago from the State University of New York (SUNY). But I’ve found the Metaliteracy course a bit challenging for its design.

There are ten weeks, with each week having a mix of videos and readings to consume, and then a couple of online assignments to fill out about what you learned. The previous one had an option for just auditing with little interaction, this one needs that interaction to really work. Which is generally fine, no problem.

Except each week’s “submission” then has to be graded by your peers. Which would work fine if you had any other peers doing the course at the same time, but it has continual intake. People can start and stop anytime, the deadlines can be reset with a click of a button, etc. Which means I finished weeks 1-4 and sat waiting for “grades” on the submitted postings/assignments until someone started the course, reached the same point, and reviewed them. As part of the community, you also have to review three other people’s materials. Which also doesn’t work if I go to review them, and there are no other people doing it at the same time — once or twice, I had NOTHING to review. 

Which means while I’m doing my part, there’s no cohort moving through the course with me. So I got to week 4 and stalled. Eventually, someone else will come along and review my stuff and I can review theirs, but until then, my submissions go into the temporary abyss of the internet waiting for “review”.

I also confess that the course, while okay, is not as interesting as I had hoped. It has some interesting readings related to curation of info, fact checking in a social media age, licensing, etc., and I’m getting what I wanted out of it, but it is definitely not at the top of my list of interesting presentations and presenters.

The “challenges”, however small, are not an unusual occurrence, nor any grand universe conspiracy, it’s just a really frustrating form of group work that holds back my somewhat boring learning while I’m waiting for others to engage and do their part.

Except it isn’t really holding me back, that is / has been my perception. MY part is just to do the assignments each week and mark other people. I can still do my part, and complete the majority of my learning. If I don’t get the checkmark for any given week because nobody marked my submission, who cares?

MOOC this, universe. I’m proceeding anyway. I’m designating Mondays as my MOOC day, either at lunch or at night. I’ve even downloaded the app for Coursera so I can view it on my tablet rather than at night on my laptop. Week 5 on formats as a consumer and producer is done, moving on to week 6.