Thick descriptive, narrative practice

Harsh fluorescent lighting above, the math tutor continued talking at the student, who alternated between looking away, closing his eyes with a look of frustration, and staring at the paper.  The body language of the math tutor showed he understood what was going on, and could see he wasn't reaching the student - but, rather than altering tactics, taking a different approach, he just did what he was doing "more" with additional emphasis on particular words, more scribbling on paper, and leaning closer to the student, more (and bigger!) head nods.

• I wonder if the student is paying this guy?
• What sort of training has the tutor had?
• Does the student think this is the best way for him to learn?
• Is all the effort of two hours' worth of tutoring going to go right down the drain once the upcoming test is over?

So what?

This experience helped illustrate two things for me:

1. It seems the model described above is accepted as commonplace, even comfortable, for many learners, educational stakeholders, and instructional professionals.  Why?  I see some of Lortie's "Apprenticeship of Observation" at work - in that the tutor (or more broadly, the folks mentioned above" are examples of success within a given model.  So, from an egocentric perspective, why should they change?  That's powerful anti-innovation work right there.  I also imagine there could be a training issue too...I bet the tutor hasn't had significant pedagogical development training, or reflected deeply among a group of his educational peers about how he might best reach a student in this situation.

2. I am prompted to consider how often I do this in my own practice.  I try to partially redesign material each course - to look at what is working and what isn't - then to improve both of those for the better.  But just how am I going about that?  It's entirely possible that my Constructivist, Multiple Intelligence biases color my view to a point that I am not reaching those students who are more comfortable absorbing an answer delivered didactically, then looking for ways to reapply it later.  In an age of information saturation, what tools are out there to help a mere mortal who also has to nurture relationships outside of those with students, sleep, eat, and be human in his own right?

Haptics

You read it here first: HTML 6 is going to have to integrate haptics standards.  Hopefully, I'm wrong it haptics will hit by HTML5.x -I think the next big frontiers in opening up what technology can do for education might well be, literally, in our hands.  Not only are 20-60% of people self-identified as haptic learners, but look around at how often people have a handheld device in use: smartphones, tablets, and more, oh my!

So what's the hold up?  Well, a major piece is fidelity - the average smartphone has one "actuator" or "effector" to allow the phone to buzz.  That's not very useful in communicating in depth information, and could well be a distraction to most learners.  Some folks have used smartphones, connected to a haptic "suit" to create augmented reality experiences, grounded in the "real world" but guided by GPS.  The phone talks to the actuators in the suit, rather than having its own - a great compromise, but potentially also farrr too expensive to be widespread in education (yes, with 3 R's...).  Maybe we'll see a day when everyone has embedded datajacks to physically connect with their "smart" device, and we'll really see science fiction come to life...but until then, having an open standard for web development to leverage haptic coding is the next step. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't include my recent prezi on the topic.

...but, the kids already know the technology!

I hear some version of that statement frequently, either from the people I'm teaching, or from professional colleagues.  And, I think it's doing us a huge disservice.  My "lowercase-t" truth is, a majority of people are comfortable in a couple of technological media, environments, or applications...and have to be pushed to go beyond that. 

Whoopty ding...what am I gonna do about that?

I need to stop showing a couple of videos in my class, particularly about Jalen (see below).  I think it's too intimidating to those folks who view themselves as technologically illiterate - despite that the point I try to make with the video is that, as teachers, we'll never know more than the students we teach about technology in and of itself.  But, maybe that's the wrong point?  Maybe the real point here, the one that I've been skirting too far afield of, is that we, as teachers, need to be able to model critical analysis skills on the fly so that when a student comes to us and says they want to do "X", that we have some place to direct them that meets their skill level with technology, will grab their interest and hook them, and provide a way for the learning process to fade into the background rather than having the technology get in the way...

Infoviz FTW

As a researcher, I am often inundated with dense, unapproachable language that requires so much background knowledge, context, and overall patience that I reach cognitive load levels quickly and have to reread or take a break.  It's much worse when trying to communicate research to a general public who probably has much less background knowledge and context than I do.  Why do we insist on doing things this way? It's small wonder the populace at large considers academics to be of limited value.

One possible solution is the notion of information visualization, or infoviz, as a way to better communicate data and information (per Bellinger, 2006) through graphics or other sensory input.  Although, it's important to remember that infoviz is typically not standalone, and the best examples are used to help tell a story, not being the story alone.

Some recent examples I came across:
Nathalie Miebach and her exploration of weather data as sculpture and music


Although, I found that I liked Aaron Koblin's visualizations better, and certainly found his longer (18 minutes) timeframe more conducive to greater detail and really understanding what the hell is going on:

Whats with that title anyway?

This is as much for my own recollection as it is for anyone who wants to read this, so forgive the probable ramblings.

I've noticed over the last few months that I finally, after two full years of coursework, am beginning to feel like an educational researcher, with some new superpowers of design and being able to integrate theory into instructional design.  That old adage "the more I learn, the less I know" is so very, very true - and especially in a field with intellectual giants.  I am humbled, frequently, just reading the words of Dewey, Eisner, Hara, Norman and others, along with seeing the killer work going on within my program at the LTML. For example, Avenue DHH (not linkable at this time due to early production status) could be a very powerful teaching tool outside of DHH classrooms. 

Oh, the name...

It's a car reference.  On a modern serpentine belt drive, the thing that keep tension on the belt is an idler pulley.  Without it, the whole system breaks down and the car will soon stop working.  I view ID (Instructional Design) and LR (Learning Research) as critical to keeping our whole country going through contributions to education.  I am using the lower case "e" for education here since I think we need to collectively move away from this idea that "real" learning happens in a formal school-based setting.  That's not to say learning doesn't happen there, but rather, in order to meet demands of modern society we, as educators, should perhaps consider ways to go beyond the classroom both for relevance and for instruction.

I plan to document the changes I see in myself, along with creating a repository of interesting things I come across.  Feel free to subscribe, RT, or whatever amazing interactions are available at the time you read this.