Genius On Hold

Taking a Closer Look

teaching

May 172012

Recently, we looked at the benefits of engaging in error analysis, but that’s not the only way analysis can be useful. Analysis is really nothing but taking a closer look at something and interpreting what you see.

We engage in analysis for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, we analyze a situation to get a clearer understanding for what’s going on. We’re looking at what’s working and why it’s working. We’re looking at what isn’t working and what’s preventing it from working. We may then use that analysis to create suggestions for how to either keep things running smoothly or fix what isn’t running smoothly, but our primary goal in this type of analysis is to understand the system itself.

We may also analyze to problem solve or to predict. We may look for gaps that are causing a system or set of data to behave in a way we aren’t expecting. Once we find those gaps, we can take what we know of the system to fill in the gaps and straighten out the system or data set. If we have a complete system or data set, we can analyze it for patterns that will allow us to predict how the system or data will behave in the future, a useful ability in many industries when trying to plan projects and growth.

Regardless of our reason for engaging analysis, there’s no doubt it’s a useful skill to have.

Writing For the Masses

teaching, writing

May 152012

Writing teachers spend so much time encouraging children to create complex sentence structures as their understanding of grammar grows. We ask them to make strong word choices in their writing, encouraging vocabulary development and higher levels of readability. We push them to write to their level or beyond.

Then we turn them out into a world that says, “Wow! You are a fantastic writer. But this will go right over everyone’s head. You need to use simpler sentence structures. You need to use simpler words.” Several years of writing training goes out the window as these fabulous young writers are asked to go back to the work they were doing when we first taught them the different types of verbs.

What I’ve often wondered is: Why? What’s wrong with pushing the envelope? What’s wrong with encouraging people to exercise skills as adults that we forced them to learn as children? Why not expect and encourage people to be intelligent, to be able to process those things that their schooling supposedly made them ready for?

I know what part of the problem is, but I think you get farther talking up to someone than talking down to them. I see it with my students all the time, even the ones who feel stupid or behind. I don’t simplify my language for any but my very youngest students, and I expect my students to engage their vocabulary, too. (It drives them crazy when they start swearing and I tell them they’re too educated to fall back on such vague words before making them go back and select more specific words.) Plus, it’s fairly insulting to start out by assuming people aren’t smart enough to handle something.

My point is, smarter writing should be encouraged always. When you lay out a challenging expectation, it’s amazing how often people, regardless of their age, will rise to meet it.

Applying Error Analysis

teaching

May 112012

There’s an aside in one of my notebooks (or several, as it’s turned out) that reads: Has anyone ever deliberately placed bad science or social studies information in children’s media to get children thinking? How about left out information? I haven’t been able to come up with any examples yet, but if you think of one, please feel free to leave it in the comments.

I think this question is worth considering because error analysis is a pretty useful teaching tool. Who among us didn’t love as a kid (or even now as an adult) being able to point to something in a television show, movie, or book and say, “That’s wrong. This is how it would be if it were right!”? How many of us have, as guardians and caregivers, had the pleasure of watching a child’s eyes light up in amazement when we show them why a television show, movie, or book is wrong? The child’s response is to run off and tell someone else what they just learned with the same enthusiasm they might tell you that a cherished friend a visiting. And the next several times the child sees you, she’ll tell you about that mistake again. It’s like a peer teaching moment of sorts, and it stays with her.

Error analysis is also a great assessment tool because employing it allows parents and teachers to see how well a child has mastered the concepts presented. When you ask a child to really think about the media they’re consuming, the child’s response demonstrates where a child is in understanding her world and how she applies that understanding to the world around her. Engaging in error analysis is also a great way to open a discussion analyzing what characters are doing and what could be done instead. It allows us to engage that child in a conversation, building several skills at the same time in an authentic manner.

When errors are deliberately introduced into children’s media, it has the potential to encourage children to think more critically about what they’re consuming.

Why I Like Fantasy and Science Fiction

on deviantArt, writing

May 092012

A fellow Deviant shared this poll a few months ago, and it got me thinking about my reading habits. Actually, it got me thinking about my media consumption habits in general. If you ask me what I gravitate toward, I’ll answer fantasy and science fiction without a second thought. If you ask me why, I can’t answer. I grew up with fantasy and science fiction, so I’ve never really thought much about why I’ve stayed. They’ve both just always been a part of my life.

I’m not even locked into one specific subgenre within either genre. I’m just as likely to pick up sword-and-sorcery fantasy as I am urban fantasy; and I’ll sit down to space exploration science fiction as quickly as I’ll sit down to dystopian or cyberpunk science fiction. There’s just something I can get from both genres that I can’t get from other genres. It’s taken me a few months, two new personal projects, and a freelance writing project, but I think I can offer an explanation (that won’t surprise anyone who knows me or my work). And I think the best way to approach that explanation is by talking about one of my favorite fantasy authors: Brandon Sanderson.

Brandon Sanderson is an amazing writer. He has a gift for taking political thrillers, dressing them up with well-designed science-based magic systems, and exploring sociological issues in a way that speaks to both my inner fan girl and my inner anthropologist. He develops these rich, vibrant worlds that you can’t help but be sucked into because there’s something so familiar about them, and they’re populated with characters that feel like real people. Between reading his books and listening to a podcast he participates in, I’ve learned so much about building viable worlds that I’m now putting to use in my own work.

That’s how both science fiction and fantasy work. Both allow authors to hold up a mirror to society in a way that’s less painful than just bluntly pointing fingers. They allow authors to explore or react to things going on around them, and I think that’s just beautiful.

Teaching Test Taking

teaching

May 082012

Another teacher was complaining recently about how kids aren’t taught how to take tests anymore. My response, in my usual snarky tone, was, “It’s not even a real-world skill.”

It’s not. When was the last time you had to prepare for a true/false or short-answer test. I think it’s been ten years since I had to do anything but a multiple choice test, and learning how to fill in blanks or prepare essay responses quickly really hasn’t helped me with filling out forms or applying for jobs. So…maybe teaching how to take a test isn’t that critical (although instructing in students how to complete the assessment task you’ve set before them can certainly help make both your life and their lives much easier).

What are we really trying to teach when we sit down to teach kids how to take tests, anyway? Is being able to churn out a perfect essay that will determine the rest of their life in twenty minutes something that’s going to make them better citizens in the future? No, what we really want them learn is how to organize information in their memory so that it can be accessed when it’s needed, regardless of the stress level of the situation.

I think that’s where we’ve become confused – remembering why we’re even giving assessments to begin with. It’s not about the speed or accuracy of recall in a high-stress situation when the information really isn’t necessary. It’s about making sure the learner is ready to move on to a task that depends on having these mental connections built.

About the only useful skill we teach as part of the test-taking curriculum is the process of elimination, because that’s a reasoning skill that can be applied to many situations.

Use A Little Logic

teaching

May 032012

Logic is the answer to everything.

Okay, maybe not, but it is my favorite answer to “Why do I have to do this proof?” Trying to help high school geometry students see not only how to step through a proof but also how they’re building a skill they’ll use for the rest of their lives is something akin to spreading peanut butter directly on jelly. You can do it, but it quickly become a big mess.

For reasons I’ve never understood, logic skills tend to be taught exclusively in math or computer programming classes. If this is, then that has to be. If two things are the same as a third thing, they must be the same as each other. If this is true, is the reverse? Can you think of an example where this isn’t true?

Conditional statements, the transitive property, converses, and counterexamples. We see them every day in real life…but we don’t formally teach them until high school, when the student already understands the concepts because they’ve been utilizing them in English, history, science, and real life for years.

When we teach a child to look critically at their world, what we’re often doing is asking them to run what they’re seeing through a logic lens. When we ask them to make a connection, we’re asking them to apply logic. When someone says something and another responds, “That doesn’t make sense”, an argument of logic ensues. And it never remains solely in algorithmic settings.

Ruining Our Childhood

creativity

May 022012

I’m going to start this by talking about my relationship with X-Men. Why? Because I think it’s a good foundation for what I really want to talk about. You see, despite the fact I’ve read no more than fifteen issues of any of the comic book series, I consider myself an X-Men fan. I’ve seen all of the cartoons (even that horrible X-Men: Evolution) except the most recent one (and seriously bummed to be missing Steve Blum playing Wolverine. That has got to rock!), and I’ve seen all of the movies. I’d have hated the thought of missing any of them (and I do hate that I don’t have access to Wolverine and the X-Men). And I’ve read just enough to understand what Stan Lee was hoping to achieve with the series.

But every time a new cartoon or movie appears, I get to listen to friends who have read most, if not all, of the comics argue and scream about how botched storylines and characters are. I feel for them. Books adapted to movies drive me up the wall more often than not. But I also know Lee is right there as these cartoons and movies are being made, and he’s saying, “This is okay.” It’s really hard to get uptight when the creator himself is saying the adaptation is fine. (This is not to be confused with George Lucas’ failure to understand that he revolutionized special effects thirty-five years ago and feels it’s better to destroy his own trailblazing past than continue to blaze forward.)

Anyway, I tell you about my past and my feelings toward X-Men and its various adaptations because it’s been running through my head a lot lately. And for this, I need to make a confession: I found Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles highly annoying in high school. It was too campy for me, and I wanted to slap April. But I regularly babysat a little boy who fancied himself Raphael, so I’d tie on a purple bandana, grab a broom, and help him kick an imaginary Shredder’s bum. I didn’t miss having to be a turtle when his family moved away. When the series rebooted several years ago, I had no desire to go anywhere near it…right up until I learned Wayne Grayson was playing Michaelangelo, and I just had to hear that! I ended up watching the entire series, and I now miss having it around. Especially because I think it could help clarify something.

By now, I’m pretty sure everybody has either heard or seen jokes about Michael Bay’s intended adaptation for the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. I know I have. Fans hate something they love being messed with, and most feel that Bay’s intent to turn the turtles into aliens is just going too far. There are a few problems with the fan reaction, though. The first is that, from what I’ve read, Bay’s intent was never to turn the turtles themselves into aliens. It was to make their origins alien, and as one of the writers has pointed out, we are told at one point that the ooze that mutated the turtles to begin with is of alien origin (and I seem to think I’ve seen that story in the rebooted cartoon). This is not actually a change. Even better, the writer in question is friends with Kevin Eastman, who has seen part of the script and been fine with it. Even better than that, Peter Laird drew an alien turtle for the writers after he heard what was going on.

Eastman and Laird, the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, are onboard with this project. Maybe the rest of us should chill out and trust they aren’t going to let their own work be misrepresented. (Seriously, how many creators could truly end up with Konietzko and DiMartino’s bad luck?)

Starting Over

gaming, teaching

Apr 302012

The other day, I was thinking about all the times I’ve listened to gamers complain about having to restart from a save point, or worse the beginning of a level, when they die. They don’t want to have to re-do all that work just to get back to the area they were struggling with. They do it because so many games are designed that way, and they have to do it if they want to continue on in the game, but they complain the entire time about how lame all of that repetition is.

But I don’t hear similar complaints from students who have to retake a course or a grade level, which seems odd to me because it’s really kind of the same concept.

Think about it. In a class/grade level, a student learns various skills to the best of her current ability/desire and does all of this work, only to get to the end of the course/grade level and learn that their mastery score just wasn’t high enough to let them move on to the next class. So the following school term (be it year, semester, or quarter), the student retakes the class/grade they failed. And they don’t take just the parts they failed; they retake everything. It’s the nature of how our education system is designed – you can’t just pick out specific topics to re-study.

And no one complains. Some kids actually fail out of a class so they can take it next term with a different teacher. It’s just part of the education game to them.

So, what’s different? Why will they tolerate all of that repetition in their schooling, but not in their games? It’s the same idea – gaining more practice with skills they were weak with until they can do those skills well enough to be less likely to fail at the next level. What’s the shift in perception?

Getting the Message Across

teaching

Mar 292012

If literacy is about decoding and assigning meaning, them communication is about encoding to create/provide meaning. Better said, communication is about getting someone else to understand what you’re saying.

But too often when we think about communication, we get wrapped up in the tools. Print vs. digital. Newspaper vs. magazine. Static website vs. social media. Do we send out the same message across all media, or do we coordinate messages? (And this doesn’t even factor in broadcasting options.)

Communication is more than just selecting a medium or set of media. It’s first and foremost about a message. Without a message, who cares if you want to use a combination of a TV series, social media, and those quirky QR codes? Without a message, you shouldn’t even be thinking about medium because the nature of the message really dictates the appropriate medium.

And that’s the message we should be presenting to students. Form a message. Make a thesis. Make your point. Then worry about the shape and style you’re going to give that message.

A Collection of Meaningful Glyphs

learning

Mar 262012

I was forced to sit through the cartoon Viva Pinata a few years ago. (Hey, the requester was cute. What was I supposed to do?) Despite assurances that the last 32 episodes would be less brain cell-killing than the first five, I found myself trying to decide just how badly I wanted to stay on this guy’s good side…right up until I noticed something interesting: I was starting to count how many times I saw a pinata with either a newspaper or a book in his hand. The pinatas’ written language was this bizarre boxy set of shapes, but it made total sense to them and my inner teacher could see how it might encourage kids who didn’t read to give reading a shot.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about language as a bunch of nonsensical shapes. When it first really started sinking in as a teenager that there were people older than me who couldn’t read, I started wondering what my books must look like to them. I failed at trying to put myself in their shoes because I could read and couldn’t convince my brain otherwise. It understood that those letters had meanings, and that arrangements of letters had meanings, and it wasn’t keen on forgetting that knowledge for even a few minutes.

I have been fascinated by alphabets for as long as I can remember. I was constantly trying to learn to recognize them when I was a kid. I didn’t get very far, and I was never able to make the connection that what I was doing was like what someone goes through when learning to read English until I started making friends who write quite a bit in their own language. What makes perfect sense to them is to me a collection of symbols that has no meaning to me whatsoever. It’s like staring at a pinata newspaper.

Written language is a collection of symbols that has meaning to us only when we learn what meanings have been associated with each glyph. Until then, we’re just as lost to translate as someone who is illiterate in their own native language. It really makes you think…

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