New Media, Laptops, and Learning

About a month ago I wrote a little on a study that found little improvement in learning from educational technology. Unable to find the study, I had to take analysis from the newspaper to form a conclusion: that studies critiquing edutech will always come to wrong conclusions if questions are begged. Now this article on laptops in schools is making rounds (may require login). Here’s a snip:

Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.

Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.

Again, the question of “no difference in academic achievement” comes up as a focal question. The problems at Liverpool Central School District are foreseeable: tech support, abuse, and pedagogy. Those of us who have been working with technology for a while, in my case it’s nearly 17 years, have learned a lot about benefits, limitations, and the questions that need to be asked before money goes into the techno sink hole. How will the technology be used? How will it solve problems of collaborative work and learning, team problem solving, and design work. I’ve never heard people who have struggled with technology talk about “improving learning.” They talk about alternatives, contexts, and specific problems, such as lab times, augmentation, and effect.

I’ve never thought providing laptops to students at school is a good idea. Were the teachers provided laptops? Now we’re in a bad apple situation. When ill results come from underdeveloped questions, people with good intentions will be required to prove possible conclusions first then get the technology they think fills a gap. That line on the requisition form that says “How will this device improve your students’ learning?” should be stricken. Only students can improve their learning.

If people write more with word processors, their writing will improve; it’s not the word processor that is making the improvement.

Stars in the News

On supernova SN 2006gy:

In a cascade of superlatives that belies the traditional cerebral reserve of their profession, astronomers reported Monday that they had seen the brightest and most powerful stellar explosion ever recorded.

The cataclysm — a monster more than a hundred times as energetic as the typical supernova in which the more massive stars end their lives — might be an example of a completely new type of explosion, astronomers said. Such a blast — proposed but never seen — would explain how the earliest and most massive stars in the universe ended their lives and strewed new elements across space to fertilize future stars and planets.

Nathan Smith says:

“This was a truly monstrous explosion, a hundred times more energetic than a typical supernova,” said Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley, who led a team of astronomers from California and the University of Texas in Austin. “That means the star that exploded might have been as massive as a star can get, about 150 times that of our sun. We’ve never seen that before.”

Images here.

Evolution and Belief

I have not and will not be following any of the debates for so-called president, but I read that three grown men didn’t get the memo on evolution.

Three of the candidates indicated that they did not believe in it.

None is a front-runner but even so there will be American scientists who will feel deeply depressed that serious politicians in 2007 can be disputing the entire thrust of modern knowledge about how the world was formed and how it, well, evolved.

What does it mean “not to believe” in evolution. This may be the kind of thing that people will often say to express disagreement.

“I don’t believe in _____________” means “I disagree” with it. (In the case of a political debate, I’d have to assume that disagreement is always political.)

But what, then, does it mean to disagree with evolution? “I don’t believe” mixes obstinacy with the inability to supply facts and logic to a claim, especially when the science is both deep and nuanced. What member of the glass-eyed class could stand in front of a crowd and piss off just about everyone with hard-nosed reason? I’d vote for her.

What We See

Joshua at Thoughts from Kansas writes a little about Drew Ryan’s comment on the Mormon religion. (follow links back at the original)

Drew Ryun, Jim Ryun’s baby boy and former Evangelical Outreach director for the RNC, thinks Mormonism is weird. He defends that claim by encouraging people bothered by that statement to read up on Mormon theology. . . .

. . .

It’s my opinion that any religion looks weird to outsiders. I think it’s problematic to suggest that weirdness only belongs to others, or that it is an automatic strike against an idea.

Praying towards Mecca 5 times a day is a little weird, so is washing your hands and feet each time. I don’t know that Joseph Smith’s story about Moroni, the Golden Plates, Urim and Thumim is that much weirder than Mohammed’s revelation from Gabriel, or Moses and the Burning Bush. Buddha’s chance at nirvana is pretty weird, too, as is much of the Mahabharata.

Orthodox Christian theology can seem very strange to an outsider. It argues that sin entered the world because Adam and Eve – two perfect beings created by a perfect, omniscient and omnipotent God – ate a fruit. Orthodox Christianity further holds that that sin passes down to all human beings without exception. Actually, there was one exception, Mary, on whom God sired a child, a child both separate from and part of the father. Orthodox Christianity then goes on to argue that the only way an omniscient and omnipotent deity could purge the sin derived from eating a fruit was by allowing, perhaps even orchestrating and causing, the son to be charged, convicted and killed in an agonizing manner, after which the body was physically transported to heaven, after which a vision of it appears to various people, mostly in rural settings or on grilled foodstuffs.

The narratives that shape a religion are important. They are all odd. I remember the game of saying a word repeatedly until it becomes meaningless, just a series of ambiguous sounds. Tiger, tiger, tiger, tigger et cetera. A man ascends into the heavens on a particular day–but only way back when. The closer the miraculous in time, the events become even stranger because the deep past can indeed mystify. The more distant the story in the past or the future, the more it exists in an envelope of mythology; the nearer, the more it corresponds to the rules of observed law. I like those rules; I like to think about the reality of the number and its mysterious world.

Can religion be religion only as a set of metaphors or interesting mythologies?

Spatial Sense

One of my hobbies is studying how the design of spaces–landscape, architectural, digital–shape experience and encourage problem solving, creativity, and interaction. So it was fun to finally experience the Stata Center. A few photos from the trip on Friday:

The Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences is built on the site of MIT’s legendary Building 20, a “temporary” timber-framed building constructed during World War II that served as a breeding ground for many of the great ideas that were born at MIT. Designed by renowned architect Frank O. Gehry, Stata is meant to carry on Building 20’s innovative and serendipitous spirit, and to foster interaction and collaboration across many disciplines.

strata04.jpg

strata02.jpg

strata01.jpg

strata03.jpg

Heroes, Hypertext, and Paradox

Heroes introduces an interesting storytelling device: a freedom with space-time as an element of plot. Taken to extreme degree, this means that the story could move an infinite number of directions and maintain consistency given the way arcs are being developed: short within long. Within any narrative system or circle time plays a role as a link out into another circle. The skill might be to keep the bubbles growing within the larger bubble of the story world without relying too much on prevention plots or plots that attempt to cancel plots

The question is: what are the story arcs and would these pattern out as tangles within cyclical structures of hypertext, to use Mark Bernstein’s terminology. More importantly, does the persistence of the structures make for interest and the kind of questions that keep people interested.

Time in Heroes is hypertextual. In Heroes, it’s possible for a story to end within a given narrative arc. It’s also possible for that arc to be split into any number of complete stories causally independent from some other development, such as Hiro dying.

Case 1: Hiro prevents Syler from killing Claire.
Case 2: P. Petrelli arrives late, stalling Hiro from preventing Syler from killing Claire.
Case 3: P. Petrelli prevents Syler from killing Isaac, leaving Hiro in the hallway.

Case sequence doesn’t matter, nor does paradox, because the story could move to the rear or to the fore of any of the cases. The cases could also be split or forked, if Hiro could fork them.

Open Borders

I’m an advocate of open borders. I’d like to see gates and walls come down and any plan to maintain and build structures along the US Mexico border cease. This is, of course, a position of hypothesis that asks: what would happen if border gates, walls, and barriers were removed? And why would a particular a set of results happen given conditions? I enjoy conjectural tests and simulations.

If A results then what policies and positions would prove correct or incorrect? How would the idea and arguments behind nationalism and protectionism change? Why let oranges and poetry through and not people?

It’s a serious prospect. The United States invests billions in maintaining its borders, as do other countries, billions that could be spent in better, more constructive ways, such as on increasing the imagination of people. We know that walls will not keep people out. But can the arguments for borders ever go beyond vague comparative analysis without flexible spatial change?

Source:http://aviewtothesouth.blogspot.com/2006/10/mexico-us-helped-create-migrant-flow.htmlImage source: Leftside.

Border walls remove a huge swath of landscape from human vision. They hinder sight, seeing, travel, distance, and the imagination, a wasted canvas. They construct difficult metaphors to overcome in debates about identity, safety, economics, and law.