Genius On Hold

Passing the Reins or Developing Fan Fiction?

writing

Jun 182013

I am a huge Brandon Sanderson fan. I’ve read nearly everything he’s released. Everything except The Rithmatist and the Wheel of Time books. The Rithmatist is on my to-read list. The Wheel of Time books are not. While I adore Sanderson’s work, I’ve never been able to get into Robert Jordan’s. When it was announced that Sanderson would be completing Wheel of Time after Jordan passed away, I was excited for Sanderson, but bummed because there were suddenly going to be these two books in his body of work that I was never going to read. From what I have heard, Sanderson is a Wheel of Time fan, and was not only delighted to be asked but dedicated himself to finishing the series in a strong manner, basing the work on Jordan’s own notes.

Contrast this with what happened when Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry passed away. I grew up with Star Trek. I loved Star Trek. By the time Roddenberry passed away, creative control of the franchise had passed to Rick Berman. Granted, Berman was groomed to take over the Star Trek franchise, but it became clear fairly quickly that he either didn’t get Roddenberry’s vision or simply wasn’t interested in it. Now, J.J. Abrams is running things as the director of the rebooted movie series, and it’s not entirely clear what of the original vision was passed on to him.

When Les Miserables came to the big screen last winter, Disalmanacarian tweeted: Can’t wait for the sequel, Les Mi2. On the one hand, it reflected the current movie production culture where movies, regardless of how well they’ve done, get a sequel. In this case, though, there’s no material to base a sequel on. Victor Hugo has been dead for over a hundred years. Any sequel would have to be created out of thin air, effectively making it fan fiction. Not that this stopped Disney in the 90′s and 00′s, but it can have mixed success.

The practice does encourage an interesting question: When does carrying on someone’s creative legacy stop being a change in leadership and start being fan fiction? Is it the level of success? The training and pedigree of the person tasked with continuing the story? The recognized authority of the person conferring the right to continue the story? Because when you get right down to it, someone else taking over a creative franchise is going to bring their own vision to the party and the late creator is not in a position to say, “Yes, this is canon,” or, “No, you fool. That would never happen. Where did you get that?”

When Kids Pursue Their Interests

learning

Jun 132013

Play is becoming an endangered species in our culture. Rather than help children understand why certain situations are dangerous or allow them to gain that knowledge through supervised experience, we put up signs and disclaimers warning children to not even explore, without explanation. And when someone doesn’t put up a sign or disclaimer on something that should be common sense, we sue. The problem is, expecting signs and disclaimers to stop children from experiencing the world robs them of their most useful innate learning tools: play and exploration. They don’t start building their personal knowledge base, leaving them with at most a minimal sense of self-reliance, self-control, or self-discipline. They don’t learn how to evaluate situations or how to take the calculated risks necessary to challenge themselves and to improve the community around them.

When you step back and create safe spaces that offer level-appropriate challenges tailored to a child’s interest, you end up with kids like Owen Nannarone. Nannarone’s mother started homeschooling him because he wasn’t adapting well to life inside a traditional classroom, allowing him to explore his interest in taking things apart to see how they work. She tailors his school work to help him get the skills he needs to support his explorations and inventions. His father takes him to meet inventors and designers so he can see how they work and network with them. He also attends a makerspace with other children who are similarly fascinated with how things work and in using what they learn to make their own things work. And he, with his father’s assistance, is working on his first invention, complete with patent application.

Allowing a child to explore their own interests and doing what’s necessary to support those explorations isn’t “the enemy”. In fact, it’s potentially putting the current generation in a position to really contribute to their world…if we’d only release the tot leash. Children rise above whatever risk-averse, common sense-averse behavior the adults around them exhibit because they can see where it leads and they know they don’t want to be there, too. They’re also pretty good at learning from experience, because it’s how they’re wired. It’s up to the adults to provide safe yet challenging environments for the kids to explore and play in, and then to get out of their way and let them learn.

Fleshing Out a Story World

writing

Jun 112013

There’s a problem that comes when you build a storyworld as time permits over several years – the real world keeps on turning. And people in that real world keep doing cool things that shape and change your thinking. New developments in science and technology keep revolutionizing the world, making the speculative and fantastical ordinary. Or maybe that’s just because I write science fiction.

It’s just about the last item on my priority list, but my storyworld New Glory shakes more and more into place every few months. At first, I’d thought to build it by developing aspects I found interesting…but that didn’t last long. Then, I thought I’d build it by developing aspects I needed for the story I was working on at the moment. That was similarly doomed. Oddly enough, neither was the right approach. I’ve needed to work on the city both ways at the same time.

This has a lot to do with the fact that a world is a series of systems. Any scientist could tell you this, but it took forever for my inner former informal science teacher to really catch on to what that meant in creating a fictional world. So, if you take on the brave challenge of creating a fictional world, don’t do what I did and create multiple layers within the same city your first time out. Instead, identify the basic systems in play — biological, geographical, political, etc. — and start fleshing them out, taking note of where and how they intersect and affect each other. Then, you can explore those intersections a bit more closely.

Often, you’ll find that in exploring these system seams, you’ll create points of tension that will make your world that much more interesting to write in and that will keep you coming back to write in that world more often.

Licensing and Collaboration vs. Creative Commons

writing

Jun 052013

When I first started posting my writing online, it was as much to combat my tendency to lose stories as it was to share my work. Despite the fact I’d sat through numerous copyright discussions in museum law class over a year earlier, copyrighting my own work was in a dark corner of my mind. Subconsciously, I knew my work was protected once I put it to paper, but the little copyright symbol that showed up at the bottom of each story’s page made me feel a little bit better.

By the time I started sharing my photographs online, Creative Commons had come into being. The ability to choose to give certain rights to other creative folk without forcing them to hunt me down and ask for my permission? To my Rip-Mix-Burn brain, it sounded like a great idea. Most of my photographs, some of my writing, and most of my videos have existed under some form of Creative Commons for a period. While this hasn’t worked out for some people, in my case it didn’t reduce the requests to use one of my creations. People just didn’t understand Creative Commons because it never got the traction it really needed.

When I decided to place the Dead Bunny videos into the YouTube Partnership program, I had to set them all to All Rights Reserved. It didn’t change anything. Those who want to incorporate my videos into their own projects still contact me when they want to use a video or try to hammer out a partnership. I tend to know where and how my work is being used beyond my own channel, and I feel a little bit safer letting my videos out into the wild.

Even now, when I publish something to deviantArt (or wattpad), I leave the All Rights Reserved copyright in place, because New Glory is *my* storyworld. I’m fine with people wanting to eventually play in New Glory once it has more substance, but it has to be by my rules. I’ve put in too much time and too many tears to let someone who doesn’t know what New Glory has been through wreck the place. (I’ve also gained a bit of an appreciation for those authors who don’t permit fan fiction and a lot of respect for those who do, even as I understand fan fiction is a useful way to learn creative writing.)

While the idea of having a way to label when a work is put up by the creator for remixing was a good one, in this day and creative climate it just makes more sense to have licensing or partnership deals or to work collaboratively with someone whose work you think would add to your own.

Fighting Content Anxiety

learning, teaching

Jun 042013

Some of my students were recently discussing their ideal school – a school where students vote in the faculty in an effort to keep out “evil teachers”. I asked how that would help, because then the school would be populated with popular teachers who might not be strong teachers. Well, it turns out I misunderstood their definition of “evil teachers”. These eighth graders wanted to create a faculty of teachers who were flexible in their teaching style and could shift explanations as needed to help lost students. They wanted teachers who create a learning environment within the classroom (much easier to do when the teacher isn’t trying to reach thirty or more kids in a single lesson).

But it did get me thinking, because I grew up in private schools where the largest class I ever sat in had twenty students. The worst classes I ever sat in were my Algebra Honors class (thirteen eighth graders, pilot program, college professor trying her hand at teaching in the 6-12 environment) and my Geometry Honors class (eighteen ninth graders, same college professor who still hadn’t figured out the difference between college and K-12). The very courses I teach and tutor now. I failed one and nearly failed the other when I was in my current students’ position because the teacher moved way too fast and we really couldn’t ask questions. Asking for help got us nowhere. I’d been tracked into honors math because I’d been strong at math in sixth and seventh grade, and for two years I felt completely stupid at math. The two years students often check out of math. It didn’t matter that when I moved away from this teacher I started acing math again. It didn’t matter that I actually got a college algebra professor fired for incompetence when I got to college. All I could see when I thought about math were those two awful years.

It’s really kind of funny I decided to pursue a teaching certificate in math, and it was solely so I wouldn’t look like a science nerd.

Maybe it’s better my own path went like this, because I know what went wrong in my math career and I can relate when it happens to my students and can offer them better suggestions and models for successfully navigating their own choppy seas. I encourage questions, and I don’t let them call themselves “stupid” for asking the question or for not knowing something they haven’t been taught. It’s amazing how the questions start pouring out when a kid realizes the teacher doesn’t think he’s stupid and that he’s going to get a useful answer. I’m lucky enough to be a position where kids work at their own rate, and I often remind those who feel like they’re straggling behind that they just need more time to process what they’re working on and there’s nothing wrong with that. (I also point out when they zip through a concept to show them that they really do move according to their own understanding.) I use a series of questions to help students think through their work so that, when I’m not around, they have a tool for directing themselves through a sticky problem. I also invite them to double check my work and call me on my mistakes so they can see we all make them, and then they help me fix whatever mistake I’ve made. They find this part pretty funny, but it also gives them permission to make mistakes and that often helps them relax a lot.

Because I teach primarily math, I know my content anxiety posts tend to focus on math anxiety, but there is a quiet reading anxiety going on in our culture, too. There are statistics about how few adults start a book once they’re beyond college, and even fewer finish them. (I’m not sure I believe that when I look at well-populated reading sites like goodreads.) It doesn’t get as much vocal attention, but it’s still there. I have to wonder why it’s all right to have limited literacy. Maybe some English or reading teacher has enough of the right information and experience with this to shed some light on that side of the coin?

A Shojo Girl in a Shonen World

writing

May 082013

I am a series of disconnects. In many respects, actually. But it rarely manifests itself anywhere more clearly than in what I read, watch, and write. I gravitate toward books, movies, and cartoons with some sense of action and adventure, even as I gloss over fight scenes in books and focus on stage choreography in movies and blocking in cartoons. My favorite games may have an action/adventure feel to them, but they tend to be puzzle or rhythm games. I participated in LARPs for a while, until I eventually left the field because hitting someone with a well-padded boffer sword and pretending to maim or kill them was just too traumtic. I even studied martial arts at one point because I think it’s a beautiful form of movement, but I fell apart every time Sensei tried to engage me in sparring.

So, it’s pretty fair to say that while I love action-based adventures, I’m not much of a fighter.

But because I’m drawn toward action/adventure stories and action/adventure-friendly genres, I knew I’d eventually have to write fight scenes in my own stories. Before I’d realized why I was hating LARPing, I wrote my first NaNovel, an adventure parody that featured the following fight scene (I had forgotten about this little gem, my actual first fight scene written seven years ago):

A rustle in the vegetation behind him startled him. By the time he was on his feet and turned around, four large men had surrounded him. He recognized one of them from the Stewarts’ country manor, and could only assume the other three were also in the Brotherhood’s employ.

The one he recognized spoke gruffly, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

John held his arms out to the side.

“Where is Miss Williams?”

“Not here,” John offered bluntly. He grunted slightly as a pistol butt quickly connected with his cheek.

“Where is she?”

Unable to stop himself, John’s eyes went to the obelisk, wishing he could warn Alex and allow her some time to conceal herself.

The pistol barrel was poked into his chest. He understood and turned slowly. He was going to be forced to march them right up to where his injured companion was waiting. Again, the pistol was pushed against his spine.

“You know, gentlemen. I’m far more cooperative when I’m not being threatened.”

Robbins laughed, a sound that could ruin a soufflé. “Yes, but you might decide to do something foolish, like run away or perhaps call out to Miss Williams.”

There was no denying that logic, but he couldn’t let these thugs reach the obelisk. Alex wouldn’t stand a chance in her current condition. As they approached the stairs, John stole a quick look at his watch. It was five minutes to one. If he could stall them long enough, Alex would be able to check the shadow and vanish into the temple’s shadows.

The first order of business would be to remove the pistol from the equation. The pistol was driven into his back like a cattle prod when they reached the base of the stairs.

“No funny stuff,” Robbins reminded him.

No funny stuff, indeed. Let’s see how funny you think this is. John suddenly drove the blade of his foot at Robbins’ knee, sending the giant man to the ground. The other three got over their shock at seeing their leader howling in pain and advanced on the man. John had no delusions of being able to take on all three at once. He ran to the far side of the staircase, drawing the nearest thug with him. A well-placed series of punches had this thug backing off, grasping his broken ribs as he fought for breath. The next nearest thug took one look at his two downed comrades and slowly started backing off.

John was feeling pretty confident, “If you don’t wish to end up like your friends, then you’ll stay back!” He walked over and picked up Robbins’ gun, using it to keep the thugs even further back. When he was sufficiently convinced they wouldn’t follow him, he turned and ran toward Alex.

A few paragraphs later, John fights off another goon just as vaguely.

I was proud of myself. I didn’t trust myself to write a fight scene, and I managed to get out something I wouldn’t read right past and that vaguely resembled a fight scene. But I came to realize that I’m not a big fan of fighting, and I moved on to different conflict-resolution methods.

A few years later, I started creating New Glory, opening with a short story about an assassin wrestling with an attack of conscience as a pair of reporters started piecing together what had happened. I deliberately started a story involving an assassin, not the most peaceful of occupations. And I was so entranced with the world that I started focusing more of my writing practice on building his world.

And that led to creating a group of monasteries, each focused on a different discipline, including the martial arts. It didn’t make sense to me to create a dystopian society that didn’t have some form of defensive arts, and so I created a group of warriors. I research the various warrior monk tropes, and how these tropes have played out historically. I even listened to episodes from my favorite podcast on various ways to approach fight scenes (especially if you aren’t a fighter yourself).

Really, I spent more time stalling out in research than I did in writing and editing, and given that it took me the better part of two months to write “Tiger Strike”, that’s saying something. But every time I sat down to work on the next fight scene, I had a meltdown. The obvious solution would have been to change the story so only one fight scene was necessary. But to me that seemed cowardly. I was introducing the warrior monks, and I really like my idea for how I wanted to introduce them. So, I pushed onward, painful fight scene by painful fight scene.

But I can now say I’ve survived writing fight scenes. I don’t know that I’ll make much effort to fold more of them into my storyworld, but I have learned that the professionals write fight scenes without resorting to the blow-by-blow and the resulting gore. There are emotions and senses involved in a fight, and it’s perfectly acceptable to build a fight scene around them. We’ll see how this plays out as I continue to work with New Glory.

Facilitating Peer Mentoring

learning, teaching

Apr 302013

I have a series of “lectures”, as the kids call them, that I launch into when a kid is struggling or sabotaging himself. The older kids who work with me regularly know them pretty much by heart, to the point that I can start and they’ll cut me off to finish for me. Often in that eye-rolling tone only someone between the ages of 11 and 17 can produce.

But in the past couple of months, something odd has happened. A pair of students, a high schooler and a junior high student, who regularly work with me at the same time have realized that I’m giving them the same lectures because they have similar problems. (This realization may or may not have been preceded by a few rounds of me saying, “Did you hear what I just told the other student?”) Now, when one hears the other say something that sounds like he or she could have said it, he or she quotes the relevant lecture. More often than not, it’s the high schooler lecturing the junior high student, but he’s straightened her out on more than one occasion.

One day, the junior high student realized that he and the high schooler were lecturing each other more than I was lecturing either one. He expected me to be bothered by this, but I pointed out that I had noticed he reacted more positively when the lecture came from her instead of me. He wondered aloud why that was, and she explained that it was probably easier to hear it from someone just a couple of years older than him than from an adult. She’s right. Sometimes, especially when it feels like a kid is getting battered from all sides by adults, it’s easier to hear useful bits of wisdom from another kid going through similar struggles.

It’s not peer teaching in the strictest sense, but it’s helped form a positive bond between the two students. They know they can nag each other when one of them is struggling through a rough patch and help each other out, but they also know I’m still sitting right there and can (and will) step in if things get beyond a point where they can help each other. Where both have historically struggled to find their own confidence and motivation to keep pushing forward, they now have a support system that’s led to both of them showing more confidence and more independence.

And they’d both argue hotly with me if I pointed that out.

Disclaimer: This post was written with the knowledge and consent of both students as long as I kept their names out of it.

Developing a Microlecture Series

teaching

Apr 222013

Several years ago, a number of my students started asking for a miniaturized clone of me (cleverly named the “Pocket Rebecca” by many of them) who could live in their pocket and take their math tests for them. I laughed and assured them they could pass their tests on their own.

But I was becoming frustrated with the fact I was having to teach students skills they wouldn’t learn for another few lessons so they could pass the lesson I was teaching. And then many of the e-learning and instructional design blogs I was following got on this Beyond Bullet Points kick, and it occurred to me I could actually learn how to put together a resource the students could access at home while working on their homework and start exploring a better sequence for math skills. So I taught myself how to create a PowerPoint deck, how to record a script, and how to put all of it together into a mini-lesson (or a microlecture), and started making a plan of attack.

One of the reasons students wanted a mini-me clone was because I tend to teach the basic process and concepts around a skill, and then show them how they relate to and build on skills they already know. I keep it simple and straightforward. So it made sense when I started developing my microlecture series that each one focus on one skill’s process and concepts and do it simply. (I also had it somewhere in the back of my mind that by keeping the format clean and simple, I would be able to incorporate these lessons into other projects I develop in the future.)

One of the reasons the lessons were even necessary to begin with is because math, a tightly scaffolded discipline, isn’t always taught in the most logical order, or skills are taught so far apart in the sequence that connections aren’t always pointed out between new skills and old skills. Wanting to combat that with the order of my series, I spent a few weekends with index cards labeled with each skill and skills needed to be successful at the skill spread all over experimenting with different sequences until I found one that actually worked. (I’ve since learned that other math teachers have recognized many of the same sequencing issues I found.)

Last week, I migrated the videos to their own channel, and took the opportunity to really think about what I wanted the channel to be and how it would best serve visiting learners. The channel itself is now organized as a hyperlinked video textbook. Playlists group related skills together, and every skill that builds from another skill has its related skills linked in its description. But I still haven’t given up on being able to embed lessons in future projects. I want to be able to use my own videos as I need to, and students from around the world periodically contact me for permission to include a video in a school project they’re working on.

My focus all along has been pre-algebra and algebra skills, because that’s what I normally teach. But this year, I’m teaching geometry, and the students are complaining because I’m not looking to add on geometry skills any time soon. But apparently, I give them the same snarky reminders day after day…to the point where I don’t really have to say them any more because they’re quoting them to each other. But they’re asking for an iRebecca app to nag them when I and the other students aren’t around.

Oh, boy.

Achieving True Mastery

learning

Apr 172013

We have this long-standing problem in education where we take a set of skills, practice to rote, and call it “mastery”. My own discipline, math, is notorious for worksheets and dozens of homework problems all practicing the same aspects of a given skill. (I’m teaching my very first actual math class this year. While I try to assign problems that apply a skill in various ways, I’m still constrained by the limited curriculum materials available.) Practicing a skill to autopilot has its place when learning the foundations of a discipline or skill set, but it’s mindless and doesn’t develop a true mastery of the skill itself.

Athletes and performers are well aware of this. They train for specific events, practicing or rehearsing to achieve muscle memory and to reduce the likelihood that they’ll forget something important when the big day comes, and then they start focusing on specific aspects that need more practice. This is known as deliberate practice, and it’s what sets the true masters apart from other practitioners.

When you engage in deliberate practice, you spend your practice time reflecting on your current development and focusing on those skills that need more practice to achieve mastery. Deliberate practice is reflective and it’s personal. It’s taking the time to record and reflect on practice sessions (even if they’re classes), identify weaker areas, and making specific plans to address those weaknesses. It’s taking the time to note when a weaker area has gained strength, and identifying a new area to work on. Because of its focused nature, deliberate practice actually requires less time than general practice, and it’s more beneficial because it is focusing on what really needs practicing.

It’s also important to note that those 10,000 hours to mastery people talk about need to include more deliberate practice than rote practice, or you’ll be stuck in noviceville for much longer because you are practicing without direction, and as a result aren’t growing. And honestly, what is the point of learning if you aren’t growing and becoming stronger at the skills you’re learning?

A New Class of Standards

teaching

Mar 192013

The Common Core State Standards (Common Core) have made some interesting ripples in the education waters since states starting implementing them at the beginning of the school year. While I’m pretty sure we all understand that salvaging the current education system is going to be a slow, painful process, I think we can also agree that those changes need to be thoughtful, defendable, and implemented in a way that will benefit the students they’re intended to serve.

The standards affecting the youngest students, however, were not only not researched while they were under development, but they fly in the face of current research on cognitive development in early childhood. They call for a structured learning environment, robbing these young students of the play time that has proven to be a far more effective learning experience at that age. But structured learning experiences are easier to provide quantifiable assessment,

Having read only the math standards so far, I think there is potential within the approach Common Core has taken. While the skills are grouped under their respective disciplines, but there is nothing saying the standards have to be presented in their own discipline. There’s a lot of room and encouragement for extending these skills into other disciplines, which is great because these skills will be applied in a multidisciplinary way beyond the classroom…if students understand they can apply those skills in various ways. (Not to disparage kids, because a fair number of them start making those connections on their own. It just takes some of them a bit longer.) But math teachers trying to present standards-based lessons in a manner that would allow students to start seeing those multidisciplinary connections are being scolded for not engaging in quantifiable learning activities.

And then there are the informational reading standards. In a world where we have a ton of information at our fingertips, it makes sense to broaden young people’s exposure to how to process a wide variety of nonfiction. Some districts have wisely spread the informational reading standards between all of the disciplines, understanding that students will be confronted by content-specific information and will need to be able to process it in context. Others…have sacrificed content areas to extend English classes to accommodate all the new standards within that single class. Even worse, some have taken it as an excuse to exorcise literature from the curriculum. As much as I wish I could point the finger at this quest for keeping student assessment easily quantifiable, general ignorance seems to be the culprit here.

Do I think Common Core is just one more evil plan to create drones? No. There’s nothing to base any sort of judgement on. Do I think there are parts of the idea behind the Common Core that could potentially be polished up and built on in a direction that will actually strengthen our education system? Yes. There is potential. But it really comes down to analyzing what happens each school year and tweaking the standards in ways that will move us forward.

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