Fred Johnson links to my blog in his new blog “Stemwinder” (love the name). I’m gratified; I go to the blog; I read it; I look for the profile, of course; and like Alice confronted by her comestibles, I obey the implicit command in the “my web page” link and, well, click. Now I find a cabinet of wonders: a fascinating website full of interesting images that are just clever enough (not too clever by half), and a link to a blogroll featuring Fred’s students this term. They’re all blogging. I click on one. The writing is interesting, the prompts are clever, and the mental link to the “Phantom Professor on Voice” blog I just read (by following another of Fred’s links) starts to spark up interesting connections, like the one between a tortilla chip and the perfect strawberry cobbler cookie, as detailed by Malcolm Gladwell in the recent food edition of the New Yorker (blogged about in another context by Jon Udell).

I do not have time to read everything right now. I do have time to put Stemwinder and Phantom Professor on my Bloglines blogroll. All that said, here’s the heart of it, right now, for me: these links (traces of human attention and creativity that they are) encourage me and keep me pressing forward. Always time well spent when I get a bit of that good advice.

NB: don’t miss Fred’s Tell-A-Vision.

Over at Pedablogy, Steve Greenlaw reflects on the end of week two of his experiment in a thoroughly (aggressively? persistently? recurrently?) metacognitive classroom. I’m interested to see that Steve’s exceptionally thoughtful account ends with a student telling him “now I know what you’re looking for.”

My first thought is, “what else would any teacher be looking for?” Identifying major concepts, distinguishing them from minor concepts, and applying either or both to new contexts: these are real school skills of the highest order and greatest importance. My second thought is that the comment typifies intellectual laziness and a kind of cynical cost-benefit analysis, viz., “I’m not trying to get an education here; I’m trying to suss out the teacher’s expectations and take the path of least resistance to meeting them.” My third thought is that it’s an honest question, and that enough teachers (for whatever reasons) don’t ask for metacognition that students are genuinely puzzled about the “rules of engagement” when one teacher does.

Perhaps the truth is some combination of all three thoughts.

I’m still haunted by Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” in this regard: to say what you’re looking for (which I distinguish to some extent from clarifying the assignment, which is what Steve did) is to guarantee the student cannot find it. It’s interesting that institutionalized education hides this fact from itself, or seems to. Or maybe (probably!) I’m just being willful to say to students, “I’m looking for you to show me something I didn’t know I was looking for.” The catalyst for student discovery can be a lecture, an aside, a moment’s discussion outside class, an email, a clipping, a cartoon. In short, real school is built on such catalysis (footnote here to my IT boss, Chip German), and such catalysis can appear anywhere at any time. The trick is to surround students with sense, or potential sense, and to strengthen them with a persistent feeling of expectation, and with the tools of preparedness.

Steve’s obviously doing that, and in that way his “experiment” feels more like a reaffirmation to me. You go, Dr. Greenlaw.

EDIT: Konrad Glogowski’s aptly named “Blog of Proximal Development” also treats these issues here. I continue to wish for a stimulating synthesis of a) pylons and b) the thrill of the run. Seems to me a curriculum ought to have both (and will need both). Tennis, with a net.

Whoa. Didn’t Bryan Alexander blog about this recently? Or did I dream he did?

There’s so much inspiration and wonder in what Will Richardson does in his job, and generously shares with us on Weblogg-ed, that it feels a little odd to single out one thing. But this little treasure is so compelling that I want to try to explain a little bit of its power over my imagination just now.

Thirty-three teachers at Will’s school are piloting the use of Tablet PCs in their classrooms. I won’t outline the project here for fear that I’ll get the details wrong; consult Will’s blog for more information. I do gather that they’ve got a wireless environment and that they can connect easily to video projectors. So far, so good. What jazzed me this morning, though, is the screencast Will put together to congratulate his teachers on their use of the devices. How did it jazz me? Let me count the ways:

1. The congratulations uses the medium he congratulates them for using, and thus becomes yet another proof-of-concept. That’s elegant, imaginative, and shrewd: a hat trick.
2. As Jon Udell has argued, screencasts can be very compelling mini-narratives. Will’s a fine storyteller, and that makes the screencast very effective. And by drawing on the tablet as he tells his story, he channels Magic Drawing Board, a favorite of mine from Captain Kangaroo (everything I know I learned from the Captain). The writing becomes a kind of animation. The result is an interesting combination of cartoon and manuscript. Imagine opening a letter in which the message writes itself, in the writer’s own script, as you read it. Perhaps the analogue I’m stumbling toward is that of the voice. Just as what I call the “explaining voice” conveys meaning and dramatizes cognition in the microcues of its own unfolding in time (an expressiveness like that of a musical performance), so the tablet writing in this screencast conveys meaning and dramatizes cognition. I’m reminded that “witness” means both spectator and knowledge. The trick is to get the spectacle right, to convey simultaneously the information and the mind’s experience of the information, and Will does this beautifully. (It is in fact a natural thing to do, but one that institutional education finds difficult to scale or sustain. Easier to ask for reports than for these layered performances of seeking-after-understanding.)
3. Did I say already that the presentation was creative? The awards are funny, well-chosen, and easily recognizable from my own experience in the classroom. I see the classroom vividly, in my mind’s eye. I also see Will there, looking on. Will also has a good speaking voice which he uses well in his voice-over. There’s a sneaky emphasis on production values here, all the more effective because the presentation looks utterly extemporaneous. Perhaps it was, and that’s all the more impressive.
4. Now, imagine an annotated bibliography in which a student narrates her research and comments on her sources in a screencast using a tablet PC. She writes notes, uses graphics, whatever, as she talks about what she thinks about what she’s read. The screencast is then shared with the class asynchronously. What’s happened? Not a gain in efficiency: a standard annotated bibliography can be “consumed” (hate that word) more quickly, and no doubt constructed more quickly as well. But the screencast could well be more effective as a learning tool. The drama of cognition and metacognition for both the researcher and her fellow students is amplified, individuated, and perhaps (uh-oh) made more enjoyable. The explosion of social networking as a cornerstone of Web 2.0 should lead us toward more such tools and media of presence. (An explosive cornerstone: what a weird mixed metaphor. Can a rocket be a building?)

Or so it seems to me this morning. I’m beginning to think the idea of the haptic may be worth exploring in this context. The intimate tool that extends capabilities in a way that feels like an extension of one’s presence in the world. Reach and grasp that establish new baselines from which the next reach-and-grasp will occur. The haptic sense makes the thing grasped into the tool for the next reach, because it doesn’t feel like a tool anymore. I’m not using “haptic” to mean simulating touch. I’m using it as a metaphor to investigate the cognitive metaphors of apprehension and comprehension.The former ties in to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, the latter into the newly-bootstrapped level above which the ZPD reappears. I’m interesting in this metaphor because its kinetic implications include the idea of use, where “I see,” also of course a compelling metaphor for learning, doesn’t fully activate that idea. I see what is shown to me. I use what I grasp. Or something like that.

Thanks, Will. Again.

EDIT: This tablet PC screencast, though thoughtfully presented on the author’s blog, doesn’t work nearly so well, for reasons I’m still mulling over.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.5MB)

As my preceding posts relate, I’ve been listening to a series of podcasts originating from Dr. Kelly Blanchard’s Introduction to Principles of Economics class at Purdue University. I am intrigued by the concepts I am hearing about. Some of the concepts I do claim to be learning about as well, though at a casual level that would not survive even the gentle rigors of an early quiz. Is anything of value happening, beyond the salutary spectacle of a fool rushing in where experts (newly warned by my example) would not dare to tread?

I think so, obviously, but I also need to clarify that thought.

I claim no rigorous learning from my little podcast-and-blog experiment. I claim absolutely no expertise in the subject whatsoever. I’ve never undertaken a course of study in economics. I am, however, intrigued by the concepts I’m hearing about. (Bears repeating.) I am learning some things, if only some terminology, and understanding a few of those things dimly enough to keep stumbling on, to realize the potential value of this way of looking at the world, to want to ask questions, to want to be in conversation. I blog about my experience to create a beginning learner’s diary seasoned by the more sophisticated reflections of a putative expert in one field who is most assuredly non-expert in this field.

It is disappointing but perhaps should not be surprising to learn of experts who have resolved, on the basis of the mistakes I’ve recorded here without editing away the traces (of the ones I’ve caught, anyway), never to try such an experiment themselves by blogging on, say, a Milton studies podcast. Too much risk of public blundering.

That’s a shame. I’m always up for a conversation about Milton.

I’m up to day 2 1/2, and of course it’s harder to keep things straight since, well, there are more things. Nevertheless, I know about intuitive/narrative, mathematical, and graphical levels. I know that the slope of a productivity profile frontier (I think that’s what ppf stands for; I’m going from memory here) (EDIT: production possibility frontier) is always negative because economics deals with scarcity. I know that absolute advantage is different from comparative advantage, and I think I remember that the former has to do with how much/how fast, whereas the latter has to do with cost. Even if that’s not quite on the money (sorry), the fact that there are two kinds of advantages and they differ is intriguing enough to keep me going.

I also know that cookies and pancakes are Dr. Blanchard’s daughter’s favorite foods. But now I’m too tired to remember her daughter’s name. (EDIT: Caroline.) The other person’s name in the ongoing cookie/pancake example is Scott. I’m betting Scott is her husband, though I don’t think he’s yet been identified as such.

Three other things before I forget them. One is that it was obvious on day one that people started to leave five minutes before class was over, and left en masse as soon as any word of conclusion came out of the professor’s mouth. To craft a graceful end, not an abrupt one, Dr. Blanchard took pains to talk a bit about the next class, and to try to recap a few points. Yet the exiting students were clearly done. Most students at UMW are far more polite (or, perhaps, engaged) than that, and will wait patiently until the class is done. Perhaps it’s also that there’s less anonymity in our smaller classes. If the lecture hall for my intro film class held 500 people, I’d be much more of a kiosk to those in the back row, I’m sure. Still don’t make it right, hoss, as John Mellencamp would say.

I also noticed that at the beginning of day two, Dr. Blanchard had to ask the class to stop talking. That’s also pretty rare at UMW. Yes, there are blessings to be counted here.

Finally, I noted at the end of day one that Dr. Blanchard offered an example of cost involving textbooks. I believe the whole thing centered on opportunity costs, but the point for me was that she confidently asserted that no one would ever buy an economics textbook if they weren’t taking the course. I was struck by the truth of that statement, and how readily it applies to most textbooks for most of my students. I got in the early habit of keeping all my books, even the textbooks (as opposed to primary sources), because I was starting a library and wanted to preserve my contact with the materials of my education. (Sounds high-flown, but it’s true.) There’s something interesting here, and it’s not just about generational changes. I think it’s about school and its processes. Perhaps a textbook can be defined as a book you would never buy unless you were taking a course. And perhaps that definition means that the book isn’t much more than a set of study notes. If the text has no more intrinsic interest than that, who wouldn’t sell it back?

Or perhaps it goes the other way, and the textbook industry with its sell-back processes of disposability (and the price-gouging that seems to take place these days) merely reflects the complete commodification of the classroom itself. Instead of trying to make an education out of a set of courses of study–or more accurately, the start of a habit of education–students and faculty and administration concede to a model in which the course is a good to be used and thrown away.

Maybe that’s too dismal. Still, Dr. Blanchard’s words forced me to consider my own practices and my own experiences within education. I’m always sad to think my students would sell back the books they bought for my classes. There may be economic necessity here, and I’ll concede that necessity, of course. But behind all that there’s also a strange view of books and education, or at least it seems stranger to me now than it did pre-podcast today.

EDIT: Production Possibility Frontier.

Partly as a tip of the hat to Steve Greenlaw, partly because it just seemed interesting, I’ve subscribed to one of the BoilerCasts at Purdue University: Econ 210, “Principles of Economics,” taught by Professor Kelly Blanchard. Driving in to work today, and driving through the drive-thru for my midday chow, I listened to the first day of class in what sounds like a large lecture hall. I believe Dr. Blanchard spoke of seven TAs, so I’m guessing the enrollment is over 100 students, perhaps well over. The hall holds nearly 500 students.

The class meets three times a week, twice for lecture and once for “recitation” (a TA-led discussion group). The first ten minutes or so of day one were taken up with administrative stuff: the “Katalyst” (with a “K,” like the name of the school of management) course management system, the syllabus, etc. I found this part weirdly interesting. There’s an astonishing amount of implicit culture bound up in the administrative details everyone at a university takes for granted, and hearing about it gave me a strange feeling of defamiliarization, like visiting a family with very different customs.

Professor Blanchard is a very good lecturer. She speaks clearly, in a lively and conversational tone, but always driving forward with an impressive momentum. She sprinkles her lecture with asides ranging from Back to the Future to her love for chocolate and shoes. She sounds both knowledgeable and personable, and has the gift of introducing concepts by emphasizing their strange or counterintuitive nature. I admire this in an intellectual. It’s a hook for the brain: “you might think this, but actually something rather different is true.” An element of surprise and wonder enters the discourse, something like the “oh!” moments that pepper Doug Engelbart‘s speeches.

I found the lecture easy to follow, so much so that I wasn’t sure what I’d gain from reading a textbook, other than elaboration. In fact, I had the strong feeling that I was actually learning economics. A tough exam would put that feeling to rest, I’m sure, but I have found myself thinking about several parts of the lecture at odd moments during the day: micro- vs. macroeconomics (I knew the difference, but my knowledge has a little more depth now), the idea that behavior resulting from scarcity is of central interest to the economist (I hadn’t thought of scarcity as a catalyst for the field, or as an essential part of its self-definition), and most interestingly of all the fact that some economists distinguish two types of labor: physical labor and entrepeneurial labor. The latter has to do with thinking up ideas. Immediately my mind began looping Lessig-wards, thinking about intellectual property and intellectual labor, thinking about whether and to what extent work in the academy counted as entrepeneurial labor, and so forth. The larger point here is that Blanchard’s tone, her willingness to say a little about her own life, her evident enthusiasm and knowledge, and most of all that sense of strangeness or unexpectedness I tried to articulate above, combined to inspire me to consider aspects of my experience in the light of what she was saying.

I see from her faculty biography that Dr. Blanchard is interested in the economics of information. I surmise this interest led her to join the BoilerCast podcasting effort. And I wonder if she’ll speak more about this particular interest as the course progresses.

I should also say that today was the first day of teaching for me this term, and hearing another professor go through another first day was oddly reassuring and comforting. Students don’t realize this, probably: every first day for a teacher feels like a first day, no matter how many first days we’ve had. Nervous, exhilarated, and (for me) very curious about how this journey will end come December.

Dr. Blanchard doesn’t have an especially sonorous voice. She isn’t theatrical, or overtly charismatic, or portentous. She is, however, expert at coming up with those hooky moments, like catchy bits in a melody, that have the brain hmmming along. It’s that explaining voice, scaled up to project to a large lecture hall, scaled out via podcasting to reach potentially an even larger audience, one listener at a time.

Beginning this fall, Purdue University will be offering a podcasting service called “BoilerCast” to faculty who would like their classes recorded and made available to students as RSS-enabled audio feeds for downloading, streaming, or podcasting. The service, furnished by Purdue’s Information Technology department, promises “no lead time” scheduling for professors teaching in classrooms that are already set up to record audio. Other classrooms can be accommodated “with sufficient notice.”

The BoilerCast subscription list is pretty spiffy-looking and already includes over 40 courses, plus a self-guided audio tour of the library. (I wonder: will that tour change over the course of a semester? is an RSS feed needed here?) The BoilerCast press release is most enthusiastic, right down to its Peter Piper alliteration and its very reasonable answer to the predictable question of “won’t this encourage students to skip class?” Other predictable questions were not addressed in the press release, however. Do students need to sign releases if there’s a Q&A session as part of the class? What about classes that are not primarily lecture-based? Is anyone worried that an entire set of class lectures would amount to a free course for auditors (in the truest sense of the word)? I know how I’d answer those questions; I’m curious about how Purdue would, or has.

All of that said, I think BoilerCast is a great idea. Our own “Profcast” project here is less comprehensive and aimed more at the general podcast audience, but both ideas strike me as valid ways to present education as a public good.

Thanks to Podcasting News for the initial story.

Apparently the RSS feed didn’t kick in for some reason, at least in my iTunes subscription. Apologies for the repost.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (6.6MB)

Another farewell poem from John Donne. This one doesn’t reveal itself as a farewell until the very end. Until that time, it seems very much like “The Canonization” in its hyperbole regarding the lovers as epitomes of love. The ending, though, is a mindbender. Astonishing: and it effects a transformation of everything that’s come before.