Category Archives: Teaching

Why Code? On Expanding Human Possibility

Over the past several years, I’ve developed a conviction that future work in academic humanities studies should involve students and developing professionals in human and machine languages. This is a conviction not a belief. Mark Bernstein, in a recent review of Hockenberry’s iPhone App Development, writes:

The treatment of design as a separate and superior activity to programming is, I think, misguided. The author is a designer and is writing, I think, for people who are not; he urges them to hire themselves a designer and then do what the designer says. Since the book clearly envisions individual developers or very small teams, this model may be unrealistic. Design and code are not separate things, and attempts to separate them are misguided.

My experience with numerous systems has trained me to agree with Mark’s statement. A couple of significant issues come to mind here.

In learning pedagogy, whether it’s engineering or poetry, we work with a traditional Aristotelean process, working from general to specialized knowledge. This is not cut and dry. In manuscript culture, specialties existed. Scribes may not have prepped the surface for their work. The labor intensity of the scribe’s work prohibited preparation of the skin. Even more complex, the scribe may not have needed reading ability, only a visual/aural understanding of the spoken word or the ability to copy already existing work. Vannevar Bush describes new conditions for the specialist in his famous As We May Think essay, where specialties can be vast in scope but also narrow in their intensity, meaning that they provide little space for study in other disciplines even though they’ve been shaped by them.

Modern education systems, as manifest in most secondary schools, don’t concern themselves with the Aristotelean tension: questions such as: what should be “learned” become strange when testing content provides a ready framework for instruction. School systems have other pressures: testing, funding, demographics. But these school systems are still dominated by the superstructures of reading, writing, and ‘rithetic in a context of “grades” of students. I consider the question of “grade level” as a critical problem to be solved. The question “What is a fifth grader” is a strange one. If she reads and understands The Lord of the Rings is she still a “fifth grader”?

For the past few weeks I’ve been buried in the Rails framework, scratching the surface of the ruby programming language and the Rails machine that puts it into a working context beyond a compiler. But I’m a poet and fiction writer, not a computer programmer. However, the framework has provided me a means of visualizing and framing a couple of systems I’ve wanted to develop for some time, systems indescribable without understanding the “limitations” of the object: what can I “not” do is a significant question. It might be true that 15 years ago a person who regularly wrote into their journal might have envisioned a web-based publishing system. The journal or notebook, such as the Moleskin, has been supported by hundreds of years of “technology,” which provides a model–a date, a body of text, an author, and a perma surface.

The computer is still a pretty simple concept if one can understand electrons. It’s instructed to do things by people using an energy one can’t see with the naked eye. How it is instructed to do something is complex. The amount of instructional language it takes to tell a computer to turn on or to display a body of text can be mind-numbing, as I continue to relearn as I dig around the notion of MVC.

I’m not arguing that all students of the humanities should become programmers or system engineers. Nor am I arguing that all programmers should write poetry. They certainly may, if they wish. I would contend, however, that some important images and relationships require competent understanding of these disciplines for teams to be successful. The Tinderbox forum provides a peek into this team concept. People use Tinderbox, they have questions, these inspire questions back, and deeper understanding of the system and its possibilities.

It’s a nice thing to behold: the possibilities or capabilities of people not computers.

On Relationships: Jobs, Money, Bubbles

A couple of interesting relationships in the paper this morning. There’s the report on UCONN’s raise in tuition which related to the article on college students and jobs.

Nationally, we’re due for major issues in graduation rates and matches in the job market, what I’d call a sort of degree bubble, though this isn’t the most accurate description. If there are more architects graduating than there are openings in architecture firms, then the architect must either wait for an opening or try something else. May/June graduations will be spirited until reality hits. How colleges and universities react or change will have a lot to do national policy coming out of Congress, though it may not be the responsibility of the college to have to worry about it, as a multi-decade problem has been brewing over the role of colleges and universities in the ecology of “quality of life.”

In terms of education, most of the students that I know and work with aren’t really sure why they’ve entered higher ed, other than it’s something they should be doing or need to do. Or they’re fallowing a now-common life narrative of birth, school, more school, then work. At my college, the money is less of an issue than it would be at a big money institution, where the debt load can be astronomical, though for many of my students low cost still equates to big money. The narrative is important as it relates to others, such as the loss of manufacturing jobs, which provided alternative means to a decent living after WWII. Now, recent high school graduates can either stay where they are (living however they’re living) or go to school, which confuses the role of higher education from the perspective of the personal (and live according to a future vision based on what exists now or how “now” is interpreted).

I remember when I graduated from high school. I would say something like, “I have to find a job.” Most people knew what this meant: it meant “dish washing” to make money for tuition at a relatively inexpensive state university. The reality at this point is that the college degree is in high demand. Whether the degree should be high demand is not my issue in this post. But I don’t think the persistent mantra of deficit reduction at the national level has much to do with the realities of this demand. It’s a simple mantra, that federal deficit cutting with create jobs. If this is true, I have to see the working syllogism. It seems to me that the more complicated and significant question is: what future economy will create demand for people with college or university degrees?

Another Best Buy Trip: Or, Are Public Ed Solutions Easier Than We Think?

Since education is much in the news, here’s another interesting Megan article that might reveal much. She reports:

The legislature’s higher education committee discussed several bills Tuesday that it hopes to raise in the current session, including one that would enable the tracking of individual students through college.

Here’s the breakdown of significant items

The committee also discussed bills that would:

*Address the Connecticut State University System. Exactly what this bill would do has not yet been decided because legislators are waiting for a report from the state’s program review and investigations staff that is expected to assess the operation of the system.

*Address the agreements among the state’s public colleges and universities to ensure the easy transfer of credits from one institution to the next.

*Work toward the elimination of sexual violence on college campuses.

*Require institutions of higher education to provide financial counseling to students receiving financial aid.

*Require early childhood educators to have either a bachelor’s or associate’s degree by 2015.

*Address the University of Connecticut Health Center. This bill is also uncertain and will depend on what the legislators learn during hearings about the next step for the proposed renovation and expansion of the health center. Late last month, the state learned that it would not be getting a $100 million grant from the federal government for the work.

*Help prepare students to join Connecticut’s manufacturing and technological workforce.

*Create a strategic plan for higher education.

A couple of comments: Connecticut, therefore, does not have a “higher ed” strategic plan. CT will be hiring more financial aid staff. CT will grow Early Childhood ed programs. CT will explore its manufacturing and tech workforce, whatever this may mean. But this might be a hint. CT will persist in the “transfer” problem for yet another legislative round. Furthermore, Megan reports

State Sen. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, and the committee’s co-chairwoman, said that the bill — which is still in the “concept stage” — would tag students with a “unique indentifer” so that their records could be followed at any public or private college or university that receives government funding.

“A high number of our students need remediation,” Bye said. “This will give us a way to understand where students are coming from, how can we support them … so community colleges aren’t using so many resources on remediation.”

Technically speaking, this “tracking” is not so difficult. It wouldn’t even require a “unique [sic] identifier.” All the state would have to do is ask for the numbers. The real problem is what the numbers will say. The legislature is actually after information that is readily knowable now: we know where students are coming from and we also have a pretty good idea why students need “remediation,” which is a word I don’t like, as the root “remedy” is improper. Enormous scholarship exists on the problem. Community college teachers teach these students and our professional staffs have much knowledge about them.

From my perspective, the early years of college should be the equivalent of “intellectual bootcamp.” The concepts, knowledge, and frameworks of higher education have developed from thousands of years of knowledge in philosophy, science, ethics, and language. To be successful, a student must be mature, patient, resilient, and curious. But the solutions to our current “public” education problems are actually simple to fix but impossible at the moment to make real, and, of course, they’re arguable:

1. A 1:10 teacher-student ratio across the board
2. Intuitive learning spaces for all students
3. Grueling study in knowledge frameworks for teachers, with plenty of flexibility for their own research and initiatives
4. Integrate all schools into their communities so that it’s difficult to see where the school starts and the community begins
5. Make real alternatives to higher ed so that the “Everyone needs a college degree” philosophy isn’t necessary. If high school has general rigor and can be viewed as “terminal” and someone can seek good quality of life with the high school degree, is this not a good thing?

I assume a general agreement with the above by most people. But if the money can’t be found, then “weaker” solutions should simply be seen as “workarounds.”

Education in Connecticut: or the $50 Best Buy Trip

A couple of articles of note in today’s paper. Connecticut, apparently, lags in post-secondary education. Kathleen Megan writes

“This is a race at which everyone is getting faster for the most part,” said Higher Education Commissioner Michael P. Meotti. “So your speed is not the key. It’s your acceleration that is the key. … Our speed is going up. … The problem is our acceleration ranks us 34th out of 50 states.”

Meotti said that if the state remains “in the bottom third in terms of our rate of growth” in the attainment of post-secondary degrees, “then we are heading for a really difficult situation over the next 10 and 20 years in terms of the overall quality of the workforce.”

Megan never really explains why “lower education attainment” is a negative outcome and Meotti seems to suggest that simply growing degrees is by nature a good.

Meotti said this rate of growth is especially important for Connecticut because “we are in a sense a higher education-sensitive economy, so for us this is like the oil wells in Saudi Arabia. They do not only need to pump oil, they need to pump more oil. … Our education level of our work force really defines the Connecticut success story of the 20th century. That is in great jeopardy.”

It would be interesting to identify where current and recent graduates are and what they are doing in the state.

But then comes the interesting paradox. Don Stacom writes

NEW BRITAIN — After losing about 50 teachers to budget cuts last year, the city’s financially battered school system faces the prospect of laying off another 100 or more this summer, the board of education said Wednesday night.

The system faces a projected $11 million gap in the coming budget, the result of a staggering reduction in federal grants and the likelihood of bare-bones funding from city government, board members said.

To close about $6 million of that deficit, the board unanimously agreed Wednesday night to cut 105 jobs in the 2011-12 budget – including dozens of teachers along with administrators, school secretaries, vocational counselors, maintenance workers, a computer technician and others. The reductions take effect after the new fiscal year starts July 1.

The final paragraph of the Megan article makes this interesting:

To improve Connecticut’s performance, Meotti said that attention will have to be paid to improving college retention and graduation rates. A key, he said, will be ensuring that when students arrive at college, they are prepared to do the work.

Rick Green mentions the Board of Governors’ report and a blog commenter lists community college graduation rates, calling them “frad” rates, and then blames something called the “education industry” and “shady admissions councilors.”

It’s logical to assume that if a school system has no money to pay for talent and buildings, then talent and buildings can’t be paid for. This, of course, is circularly expressed. If I go to Best Buy with 50 dollar bills, I can’t purchase the 800 dollar TV. But, as a faculty member at Tunxis Community College, it is frustrating to repeatedly read that while a group may want to confirm the existence of quarks, they refuse to purchase the proper collider to do the job, assuming the collider requirement in the first place. I also understand, however, that numerous people are also looking for solutions.

Most people who work in Connecticut education can do the math. But here are some questions:

1. If Connecticut elevates graduation rates to 25 or 100 per cent, what will the graduates do?
2. If high schools see layoffs, will students be prepared for college work? Are they prepared now? Were they prepared in 2007?
3. Who will provide the “resourceless model” of education that will sustain Connecticut’s present and future ecology or will these contributions come only from people who can pay for the privilege?

Often arguments about education attainment are couched in the rhetoric of passive observation. Most people have heard or have said something like this:

Wow, look at that person. He doesn’t know how to spell or behave or do the task assigned or do “fill in the blank.”

Models of good education are everywhere, really. They begin with the person doing the observing, offering the critique, as they are obviously the one in the know. Where did they go to school? How did they learn what they know?

I’d lay good money on the bet that shrinking schools these days will not generate stars at the college level. I might assert this as a fact. But then, so much for the report and what good it might do.

End of Semester Reflection: Fall 2010

I’m told there will never be another Fall 2010 semester so I might as well reflect on it.

It was an interesting semester. One of the best parts of teaching college is that every semester the instructor meets about one hundred new people. I’m glad for this. It’s one of the best aspects of the job. This semester I met some curious, interesting, exciting, and fragile people. About five weeks in, I lost about half the above number and then a few more. New Media saw lots of drops, also. British Literature keep most until the end, and the writing courses saw about three quarters loss, maintaining the trend. In any event, things worked out pretty well, with some very good writing, discussion, and learning from the men and women in these courses.

The attrition levels may sound alarming. This semester, however, faired much better than in past years. One thing I learned is that I need to front-end more logic and reasoning methodologies in the writing courses. Several of the higher performing students would have benefitted from earlier forays into composition and analysis. Those who met the course abilities at Satisfactory, I think, would also benefit from a closer attention from the start into specific examination of elements like propter hoc fallacies and other formal and informal engagement. Saving definitions and examples of “begging the question” too late in the semester appears to break the editing stream and fragments thinking, especially for students who aren’t used to argumentation and persuasive writing strategies. I’ll keep to theme of human ecology as there are numerous exciting ideas in the works, especially out of the American Society for Civil Engineering, whose grade of D on American infrastructure might be a good stage setter for the problems we study in Composition.

New Media will see the incorporation of quizzing and exams to reinforce content. Projects will be prep for these. And John and I need to work on some sort of system that will keep students on top of their studies in new media, as we find that students are misusing their time. In the courses we teach, students mainly get into trouble because they don’t keep up with “all” the material and work required. I note that one missed item breeds several more.

It was a loud semester. Hours of guitar, talking, listening, and lecture and discussion. I find myself over the last few days out of the Twitter, blog, and Facebook stream. I’ve taken to sitting in a quiet room considering what I learned over the semester. The most significant lesson comes from questions on learning that have been on the front burner: what is the epistemological epiphany? When, in other words, can we say something has been learned? One answer comes from Taoism: we know we know something when it comes without thinking or, in other words, when it is repeated naturally. Taoism sets a very difficult standard, but it does make sense. Since I still have to think about how to play the chords in the key of C, I don’t really know this Key yet. This is the perfect problem in the study of opposites: one can’t help but perform badly before performing so so and so on.

On Seeming Contradictions or Maybe Not-So Seeming

Reading Kathleen Megan on education national rankings is interesting.

A couple of quotes from which to develop:

Meotti said the New England 2020 report on educational attainment forecasts a 3 percent decline from 1993 to 2020 in the number of 30-year-olds in Connecticut holding bachelor’s degrees or higher.

and

He said the situation points to concerns that he and other state educators have raised about college graduation and retention rates and about the percentage of students who arrive at college unprepared for college-level work.

and

“The business community is concerned about this,” Kaufman said. “If we are going to be able to pull ourselves out of this recession, we must focus on high-skill, high-wage jobs: engineering, science, math. We need a highly educated workforce. We would be very disturbed to know … that we are not as competitive as we once were in the national rankings.”

Kaufman’s remark at the end of the article doesn’t, it seems to me, point to a set of real solutions to Megan’s suggested problem: a decline trend in percentage of higher ed degrees. But it does, in sentiment, reflect a focus on educational goals that might be expressed as a general “good.” The general good is “high-skill, high-wage jobs” and “a highly educated workforce.” Unfortunately, the relationship between “high-wage” and “engineering, science, and math” and thereby a fix to the recession seems thin and not strongly connected for good conclusion drawing. How, for example, would a ton of engineers pull us out of the recession? Maybe they would but the article doesn’t develop this cause and effect relationship. Maybe lots of highly-educated writers would do the job. Or maybe not.

Another method of coming at the issue of higher ed, degrees, economics, and recessions is to consider “reality.” Currently in Connecticut the political winds are pointing toward actually reducing resources for primary, secondary, and higher education. In New York we have the SUNY Albany situation, which, I would assume, is a general trend across the country, at least in terms of the conditions under which universities and colleges would consider reducing costs. In this context, to lament any sort of reduction in student preparedness, trends in levels of higher ed and access in the United States, and declines in the creation or sustainability of “high-wage” sectors would seem to be irrelevant without an appropriate response.

In yet another Megan article we have:

For the first time ever, enrollment in Connecticut’s public and private colleges and universities broke 200,000 this fall, driven by soaring numbers at community colleges and at eight of the state’s private colleges, including four for-profit schools.

That’s a lot of people going to school. Question: are there enough chairs and classrooms to accommodate this number? If not, more might be built. Or maybe not, as states have no money with which to augment their infrastructure. If not, should more be built so that the required number of “math, science, and engineering” students can satisfy the requirements of their degrees.

Across the country and under the cloud of the current “accountability movement,” teachers and their institutions are required to do more with less, which was “less” even when enrollment was lower. If more students enroll in a particular college, that particular college has to expend more resources to maintain its mission. The pickle is that a particular college or university will not be provided those resources because the additional resources–space, wages, staffing, professional development, overhead–don’t exist or are being used elsewhere.

We could say, “Well that’s just the way it is.” Fine. But, to grumble therefore about the bus in the driveway that won’t move because it lacks a rear tire, and a mechanic is at the moment removing the other rear tire, and then to continue slapping the driver in the back of the head for “going so slow”–none of this seems very rational to me.

Questions Questions

I’m currently reading Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. One: to prove that new media people read books and skim only when required. Two: for some probing into the question of youth and age. Three: because I like a window into cognitive changes over time.

Why? For one thing, the world in which Franklin grew up is both a fiction and our historical lineage, a thing against which to frame and compare ideas, such as public space and communication technology, and, sure, statements of value and political estimations of authenticity.

As kids growing up in El Paso, Texas, we had to study things like the pilgrims. We made hats, performed plays where native Americans met the English newcomers from overseas, and implanted the impressions of our little hands onto cold plaster and then turned those constructions into ash trays. Such images and the history were alien: we didn’t understand and couldn’t imagine ice storms, cold winters, and the stories of witch burnings and English hellfire. The southwest grew out of a totally different heritage than the one I experience as a fiction living in New England now, but it was Thanksgiving and who were we to question the ingrained, seasonal subjects whose symbols were dry, multi-colored corn ears and paintings of forest-surrounded picnics.

The kicker is this though. As a teacher, I wonder at what my students know and how they know it and what they should know or be able to do, whatever that may mean in context. I wonder, might they be able to read the Nicomachean Ethics at the age of twelve instead of “age-appropriate” matter. And what is the basis of “age-appropriateness” anyway: good science, logic, or fear? At the age of twelve, what did Benjamin Franklin read and how was he able to do it? What does twelve mean?

Why am I reading the bio? Because of that last question.

Questions of Fairness and Common Sense

Rob Simmons in today’s Hartford Courant writes: “I’m told that up to 30 percent of state employees are eligible for retirement. If so, then a 30 percent across the board cut is not out of the question. Nor is it unfair. It is common sense.”

This comes in one the Courant’s more bizarre opinion sections, where Simmons and Lamont write about politics in the context of their experience and party affiliations.

The above opinion by Simmons grabbed my attention. It would be more than interesting if those eligible at the college retired because the result of such mass exodus would pretty much render the institution unable to fulfill its mission, which is difficult to do as it is at current staff levels, and the possibility of this slow diminution is actually not so far from reality. I’m cool on the sentiment Simmons makes, although the logic of attributing cuts to common sense is inaccurate. The question of pairing back on government is a serious one but it would involve major study into what aspects of government might be unnecessary or inefficient. That would cost money also.

Do Students Study Enough and the Problem of Achievement

I’m always amazed at how resourceful and smart my students are in whatever area I’m into at the moment. Even those students who self report that they were unhappy in high school show loads of potential. Invariably, however, many of the men and women in my courses just don’t put in the time required to learn as much as possible. And, unfortunately, the “work hard” ethic isn’t as easy to explain or understand as politicians would think. I could always say, “Well, my students just don’t work hard enough” and walk away. One response might be: “Yeah, what are you going to do about it?” My response: “There’s not much I can do about it.” In academic circles, this subject of student success falls under the category of underachievement.

Freshman writing and research courses aren’t that hard. But I would assume that without adequate context, time, and good study habits any college course can be daunting and even impossible to understand. In my second semester Composition II course, for example, I ask students to do research and write papers around three general questions

What is the best way to design urban or suburban spaces to enhance quality of life? What standards should be used to determine quality of life in the city or suburb? What technologies are being used or should be used to enhance quality of life in urban or suburban spaces?

We come at the research process by evaluating subjects against three standards: is a researchable topic substantive, topical, and debatable. This is a matter of information literacy. If a student choses to go with transportation, they must prove that the subject is debatable, topical, and that lots of people are engaging the issue. Transportation is a go and would fit nicely inside any of the research questions blockquoted above.

Megan Balduf’s article Underachievement Among College Students published in the Journal of Advanced Academics in 2009 provides substantive reference to studies on underachievement that pose different questions:

In previous studies of collegiate underachievers, both motivation and goal valuation were key factors in determining why students were not succeeding. In a recent study, Hsieh, Sullivan, and Guerra (2007) found students whose GPAs put them on academic probation (below a 2.0) had goals that were counterproductive to academic success. These poorer performing students were less likely to search out assistance in reversing their underachievement (Hsieh et al., 2007). Shim and Ryan (2005) found that students who valued mastery—mastering the content regardless of the academic gain—had higher motivation, while performance-avoidance—shying away from challenge and situations that could result in failure—related to lower motivation. Underachievers tended to have lower motivation and difficulties dealing with stressful situations and challenges (Preckel, Holling, & Vock, 2006). A study of Turkish collegiate underachievers found that the majority of participants (67%) had low motivation and a slightly higher percentage (69%) had issues with preparing for their coursework (Baslanti, 2008). Overall, Baslanti’s study found that students who had previously experienced academic success encountered situations in college wherein low motivation contributed heavily to underachievement. (278)

Balduf’s study approaches the question of underachievement this way

The purpose of this study was to answer the following research questions. To what factors did first-year college students at an elite university attribute their underachievement, and what interventions or remediation did they feel might reverse that underachievement? (279)

The definition of underachievement Balduf takes for a frame comes from McCoach and Reis

For the purposes of this study, underachievement was defined as a “severe discrepancy between expected achievement . . . and actual achievement” (282)

The results of Balduf’s study, which drew from voluntary participants, are as follows

In response to the factors that contributed to their underachievement, three major themes emerged: lack of preparation for Queen Mary College, problems with time management, and issues with self-discipline and motivation. These themes recurred throughout participant responses in the interviews. (284)

Generally speaking, these results sound reasonable and square with the results of other studies (288). They also fall in line with my own observations and conversations with students when they’re hit with assessments they find surprising or demonstrate through questions and submissions that reflect avoidance of the material. Often students will say, “Well, I got As in all my high school courses” or “I really didn’t need to study all that hard in high school.” And so, some students will admit that they really don’t know how to study, don’t know how to move through a study week, or don’t know how to prepare to prepare for college work, which collapses several issues into the vague admittance: “I don’t know how,” which can be translated to mean: “I don’t know how to sit with a piece of reading, take notes, map classroom discussion into study time, wrestle with vocabulary, and review and revise.” These interpretations snake back into students’ previous learning experiences where “grind stone” habits were never engendered.

A key and murky issue is the problem of motivation. As referenced by Balduf, students who want to learn material regardless of the assessment framework (grade or ability-based) typically do well, as I would assume that the habit of learning is less of a concern for these students than those who are confused about what to do with subject matter. This is not the same a goal problem. A student may have the goal of grabbing a nursing or computer science degree and be unable to learn the material because they’re really not interested in the material or don’t know how to become interested in it or are simply frustrated by the enormity of the work and content. In addition, these same students may be struggling through illness, working a lot to assist their families or just working a lot, or may have long standing behavioral issues. It’s hard to know for sure without being able to follow a student through their lives and observing their problems in action.

It’s typical for me to encounter student work that has neglected basic diligence. Often students have trouble reading assignments, even finding them on my course weblog. It’s often the case that students will submit work that doesn’t reflect the details of an assignment. In these cases, my only option is to forgo assessment. I remind the student that they should review things better and take more time. In many cases, students will simply fall too far behind to take advantage of the pedagogy and will not benefit from catchup, which is sad because all my students are smart enough to do the work.

Withal, I don’t find academic studies on underachievement all that useful as being able to identify and describe a problem is one thing, while deriving a model for solutions is difficult in a national culture that values political gain and tu quoque arguments over providing people opportunities for achievement later in life. We have solid examples and knowledge about good learning methods and frameworks. We know that learning thrives when students have provocative, challenging, and disciplined environments in which to stake their claims. We spend billions on political campaigns, and the rhetoric of those campaigns often has to do with monetary waste. This is the worst sort of hypocrisy. We don’t need to “throw” money at schools. But we should invest in people wisely knowing full well that when students skate through high school (I think they should be reading and debating Aristotle by the time they’re 12 years old), they will hit an entirely different animal in college, which should be a choice, unlike the compulsory early learning grades.

So, do students study enough? The answer is of course not. More importantly, do we?

More on Devices

Many semesters ago, even prior to the issues brought up in this post, I had one of my first encounters with the laptop and smart device as a tool for critical thinking and information literacy. In Composition II, we’d been talking in class about Connecticut’s brain drain subject and the thought occurred to me that we should be able to find relationships between levels of education in a population and measures of quality of life, such as median household income, the point being to show that if educated people left the state, quality of life would be affected negatively. Here’s the simple question: is there a relation between income and higher education? (It’s harder to measure whether higher education makes people nicer.) This issue is related to relatively new ecological inquiries into smart cities and future predictions about the role of cities in the United States. You can read more about this issue in this article by Richard Florida in The Atlantic.

In this discussion, I wanted to move away from guesswork and to an examination of statistics and I didn’t want to run to the teacher’s computer while the students sat passively waiting for my thinking to go somewhere. Rather, we put the laptops and the phones to work. Students set about looking for some method of examining the above question. After a few moments, a student found median household income at about 28K and reported percentages of higher degrees in Hartford, CT at about 12%, the source being the US Census. This was a good start but not enough to generate a solid hypothesis. The next question would require a search of other urban centers, such as Chicago and Boston, and then to examine those ratios. So the student set off seeking this information out. Several students suggested that, while the same measures showed higher returns than Hartford, these cities (and even towns surrounding Hartford) might not make for good comparison as Hartford is a fairly small urban environment and has a particular metro area. Question: to which cities, therefore, should we compare Hartford? The students set to work, even though this is a difficult question. More questions came: does the drift in population in an urban center tell us something about that area’s economic and cultural vibrancy? One way to search this is to examine whether over a hundred year period populations trends down or up? We went off on a search for this: guess what the answer points to?

The point of all this is that the students in the room, with their laptops and their phones, were seeking out the info, weighing the sources, and asking questions. I find this sort of wrestling with real problems a good method of generating engagement. It’s a routine now for me to ask students to have their devices ready and their laptops on, even if the occasional student decides that a game of this or that is better than the topic at hand. And if a student gets a call, they will quickly tell the thing to shut up.

It’s a good question: should information tools be incorporated into classroom discussion or should they be kept hidden? What are appropriate uses of communication tools, such as data-service phones and other hand-helds? One size doesn’t fit all contexts. But for me, devices have become an excellent addition to classroom learning ecologies.