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.