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Question 215 of 365: What happens when languages are made irrelevant?

Published on August 4, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.
A logo similar to google chrome
Image via Wikipedia

This situation now exists:

Google Chrome senses when a webpage is written in another language and it translates it on the fly into the language of your choice. Google Docs does the same thing with collaborative documents. This means that a great many barriers are removed from creating, researching, and aggregating information from anywhere.

It also does a couple more things. It makes the teaching of languages nearly impossible in the ways we have done it previously. It also makes us all language experts.

With easy access to automatic translation tools, there is so little incentive for students who are taking online classes or working on homework to translate their own work. More that that, we can no longer simply take a pass on information if it is written in a different language. We can’t only make collaborations with those that speak our native tongue. We are now responsible for working with others from around the world and not feeling the limits of our mono linguistic obsessed society.

So, now that this situation exists, what does it mean?

It means that we can’t do online translation exams. We can’t hire professionals only for their ability to convey meaning from one language to another. We can’t focus all of our energy into the things that a single piece of software can accomplish in a mater of seconds.

The alternative is to start expecting more.

Rather than quizzing students on their ability to translate, we need to ore sent them with situations where they would actually have to collaborate to create a working document in both languages. They should be responsible for working with a native speaker of that other language and crafting pieces of writing that demonstrate the ability to fix automated translations. They should create novels and do research and create web pages that chronicle the real work of language experts. And those experts, now that they are everywhere, must do more, too. The real expertise will now be in the language of communication and not static information. We must find the ways in which people are being people (instead of machines) and then translate that into the language of action as well as other more official languages.

I have a lot of hope that people will use these incredible new tools to good use, but I have a feeling that most will want to shut them out and block them off in order to maintain the same instruction and jobs. The only way to face this technological wonder, is to face it head on and adapt. I hope we are up to the challenge.

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Question 89 of 365: What’s on the table?

Published on March 30, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.
Interactive LED Dining table
Image by oskay via Flickr

In discussions about change, the expectation is that some things are negotiable and others are not. There is a kind of understood language for those things that are sacred, and therefore off the table. We give them a preferred nomenclature, using words like standards or givens. These assumptions within any given change are ones that single-handedly deny compromise. They are responsible for strikes, mass-firings, and even riots given the right set of circumstances. They are what is universally known to be off the table.

But, the table is big enough to hold everything. We just seem to like cutting it short and using only part of it to hold meetings. It is like we huddle together at the head of a big board room and ignore all of the space that we could have if we acknowledged it existed.

In writing about radical use, I advocated for taking the everyday objects and ideas and figuring out ways to reorganize and utilize them to greater and more interesting effect. I would like to make the case now for putting everything on the table once more.

We should not remove things because they are too hard to discuss or they would disrupt all other negotiations. We should not remove things because they would take to long to sort out or too many people are invested in them the way that they currently exist. Everything should be laid out and explored. Everything should be debated. Now, we may come up with similar conclusions, but the only way to be truly sure that you have made the right decision is to continue to affirm it.

So, what’s on the table?

  • Childhood
  • Relationship
  • Hierarchy
  • Memory
  • Privacy
  • Ownership
  • Health
  • Religion

There should be no givens on these topics. No free passes to any groups that find themselves at odds over the particulars. I want free and open questions to be raised as to the validity of a particular viewpoint. I want to put it all out on the table and manipulate just how important and prevalent each element is. I want to question the value of starting and stopping childhood at a certain age. I want to consider outsourcing our memory to objects and metadata on a machine. I want to discuss just how private each of us needs to be if we could trust that everyone else shares the same privacy.

I want data to support what stays on the table and what comes off. I want a Microsoft Pivot-like interface on the table so that we could measure the effects of each proposal.

And why is this so important?

Because our assumptions have led us down the wrong path too many times. Believing that things were off the table have led us to compromise just how much we can get done. If we know that change is only available for the few things that we comfortably admit are broken, then change is nothing more than an illusion.

And I want it to be real. I want to touch it and see it and talk about it. I want to notice that things are getting better all of the time because we have had the tough conversations and made the difficult concessions. If we had an interface for putting everything on the table, I think that more people would inevitably no longer fear what they have committed to. They could look at their own truth, and iterate into what makes sense for who they are right now and what place they inhabit.

What’s on the table? Everything.

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As things come together

Published on July 10, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

As we meet to talk about bringing all tools under one roof, as we
start to work toward a single solution, as we start to use the same
language to discuss learning, as we get on the same page with
professional development models, as we create in the same formats, as
we pull from the same information and databases, as we get into the
same ganntt chart and project plan, as we start to realize the same
vision…
 
As we begin to all of these things more and more, I feel as though we
may lose some of what makes pushing boundaries seem so right.
 
 I believe that there is value in scope creep, so long as it is
reflective of the needs of learners.
 
I believe in not choosing a final solution.
 
I believe that disruptive innovation comes when fast moving ideas are
allowed to move fast.
 
I believe in knowing whose shoulders we are standing on and whose feet
we will support.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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Goomoodleikiog: Naming things is important

Published on March 31, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

So, this came across my tweetdeck today:
http://sites.google.com/site/goomoodleikiog/Home
 
It outlines in very specific terms one way of integrating Google Docs,
Moodle, Wikis and Blogs. I say very specific because one of the
general hallmarks of the 2.0 version of teachers is that we tend to
all be pretty good at explaining things in vague terms for others and
specific terms for our students. We tend to be able to project a
vision to the outside world and not be able to back it up with the
specific ways of getting there, the ways that we got there in our own
situations.
 
The videos at this space are concrete (in-progress examples of just
how a classroom can run). The pedagogy page is a brilliant explanation
of how all of these tools should fit together, and it may be one of
the first coherent things I have seen that isn’t just a list of tools.
 
However the real reason for this post is not to talk about the site
itself, but rather the name. Goomoodlewikiog, although a mouthful, is
specific in terms of its purpose. It projects exactly what it aims to:
a collection of interrelated tools.
 
I believe that we should always be intentional in naming things that
we want to be associated with. We should always frame our
conversations in the terms that we want to be speaking about on a
daily basis. And although I’m not sure that I’m going to be using
Goomoodleikiog on a daily basis from now on, I am glad that someone
is.
 
My question is: what other terms do I need to make more concrete? When
is it time to drop Web 2.0 and start talking with language that
actually means something?

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

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Create something every day.

Published on January 28, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

One of the big revelations for me at educon was that creating things is the only way to sustain change. You cannot influence things to change. You have to create what you would like to see and make the change real for people.
 
Concretely, I mean that every student, every teacher and every administrator should not be allowed to leave their buildings with being able to truthfully say that they created something new that day. The following things do not count as creations:
 
1. Grades
2. Worksheets or any answers to lower level thinking questions
3. Meetings or notes from meetings
4. Email (unless it is cross-posted somewhere else)
 
Another reason why I believe that everyone should create something every day is because no one will be removed from learning if this happens. If you have to go through the process of creating something new, you have to also go through the process of demonstrating learning or of even learning something new. We would no longer have teachers who are out of touch with students or administrators that are out of touch with teachers. If we are all engaged in the act of creation, we are all speaking the same language.
 
We must, therefore, create an economy of creation as well. We must require creation as a requirement for participation in society. If we all now have the ability to publish quickly and create regularly, why are we so timid about requiring it of others. (That being said, anyone feel like poking holes?)
 
 
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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Learning Language

Published on May 2, 2008, by in Uncategorized.

I don’t usually post personal things on this blog, but I thought that this was just too important to leave unpublished.

My daughter is learning language at an amazing rate. She knows more words at 18 months than I thought was possible, but they aren’t just any words. They are words that are important for her. They are words that have a meaning and a context for her life.

Normally I would turn this experience into an educational rant about creating authentic places for our students to learn language and curriculum, but for now I will just leave you with this video.

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iloveyou

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Community requires tending.

Published on April 11, 2008, by in Uncategorized.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a story mostly about tyranny and the corruption of utopian ideals, but in the very beginning there is a passage that means something very different to me. It deals with the leadership of Mr. Jones before the rebellion, before the animals decide to take the farm into their own hands.

“The fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted roofing, the hedges were neglected, and the animals were underfed.”

This quotation represents all of the things that happen when Mr. Jones gets too distracted to work, to maintain his environment, and to make life better for all those involved. To me, this is about not tending the community. It is about letting things lie fallow which must be uprooted and overturned to see what is underneath them.

Our communities are just like this I think, both in our classroom and outside of them. The communities within our classroom, especially the collaborative ones that we are all striving for, require an immense amount of tending. The Discovery Utopia wiki that my students are working on (and the reason that we are reading Animal Farm in the first place) is not an exception. If I do not constantly draw attention to the great things that are going on there, the community seems to just pass right on by them. If I do not look for the troubling points, the issues that nearly every student seems to be struggling with, students stop using the community. They find other ways to occupy their time. And that is one of the most interesting parts about our communities. They are communities of choice.

All communities of choice are ones that can be thriving in one minute and vacant in the next. So, how do we tend for consistency? Well, we feed the animals (is it weird that I am referring to my students as animals). We put up new buildings for them to play in. We design the space so that it is inviting and provokes the best kind of authentic creativity: their own.

I think that the lesson is pretty clear. If we do not tend to our communities, they will fail. The inhabitants will rebel and either stop using them, or turn them into something that rejects their purpose. And, if Animal Farm is any indication, the inhabitants of a untended community will become just like us and not tend to their communities. I mean that in both a virtual and real-world sense.

I hope this comes across as something other than a Language Arts teacher’s metaphorical analysis.

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The New Job Description

Published on June 11, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

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The more that I think about doing something “different” in my classroom, the more that I feel that process should be transparent. Not just for my students and their parents, but also for my administrators. Principals, Assistant Principals, and even Super-Intendants should be aware that there is change happening in the classroom. They should also want that change to occur, meaning that they should actively support it. But the only way that this is going to happen is if we start advocating for it.

So, this podcast is all about how we should be writing our own job descriptions for the jobs that we dream about doing as teachers and presenting them to our administrators. I think that if we take this proactive approach, many will listen and start to think differently about what should be going on in the classroom.

Show Notes:

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The Discovery School within a School

Published on January 29, 2007, by in Uncategorized.

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A colleague of mine and I were brainstorming all of the technology implementation possibilities for the next school, when he suggested that what we were talking about was not merely two classes (Social Studies and Language Arts) collaborating, but that we were shifting the paradigm of teaching to a School within a School.

On this podcast, I attempt to flesh out what a technology-centric School within a School would look like and I hit upon a couple of things:
1. Online interactive notebooks.
2. Collaborative note taking.
3. Curriculum wiki’s that are edited by students and teachers.
4. Teacher reflective blogging.
5. Strands of curriculum that students could learn all disciplines within.
6. Synchronous and Asynchronous online discussion.

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