Coursera - Week 1

The Grimm's Household Tales

In has been an interesting introduction to the free, massive open online courses offered by Coursera. I've enjoyed the experience so much that I've already signed up for two more courses - Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, set to start on September 10th, and Greek & Roman Mythology, which starts on September 24th. I'm looking forward to them, but seeing as how I will also be launching into my masters thesis in poetry, as well as two single semester courses on playwriting, and teaching creative writing around then, I'm not sure if I will be able to see those courses through. Considering the results of my first week with the two courses I am currently enrolled in, Listening to World Music, and Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Human Mind, Our Modern World, I may indeed have to be a little more on task to keep all those plates spinning.

Week 1 - Science Fiction and Fantasy

The course is taught by Eric Rabkin, from the University of Michigan. Thus far I have enjoyed the videos, although they are traditional lectures. That said, the videos do cut away from Rabkin to display example texts, illustrations, and pictures. The audio is always clear, and Rabkin has a knack for explaining complex topics in a relatable and understandable manner.

The course expectations are clear. Each week we read a text, and are expected to write an essay of between 270 and 320 words. The submissions page will not accept any entry above 320 words, which helps encourage concision. After submitting an assignment, you have to read and evaluate essays by 5 of your classmates. These essays are chosen at random, and provide no identifying information, just the text. Your job is to give them a score of 1 to 3 (1 = Terrible, 2 = Average, 3 = Awesome) for two separate categories, form and content. In addition to the numerical score, you have to write comments/critiques of between 30 to 150 words for each category, with an additional optional comments section for anything else you might have to say. In one of the videos, Rabkin explains that for each category, 10%-30% of the marks should be a 1, and no more than 20% should be a 3.

Thus far I have given scores that range between a 2 (lowest score possible) and a 4 (average).  Of the six essays I evaluated (after the first five you are given an option of evaluating more), none showed any real creative thought or effort, and only two had a (barely) university-level command of English. As the course currently has an enrollment of between the high five and low six figures, the participants will represent a broad spectrum both academically and culturally. While this might mean that I should perhaps focus more on the ideas being expressed than the precision with which those ideas are conveyed, as this is meant to be a university-level course, conducted in English, it would be better if my evaluations reflected that.

Overall I have nothing but good things to say about how Rabkin and his team are running the course so far. Based on the e-mails they have sent out to the students, and also based on what I know about the general nature of those who would flock to a course in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Remember, I'm an internet nerd too, and I know what my people can be like), I am absolutely sure that Rabkin and his assistants have been absolutely hammered by a deluge of irritating, off-topic, mind-boggling e-mails. That they seem to be taking the feedback in stride and maintaining a the integrity of the course and the prepared syllabus is refreshing.

Week 1 - Listening to World Music

I'll admit it, I was not a good student this week. I downloaded the videos, watched them, enjoyed the lectures, but when it came to the assignment, I messed up. I didn't pay proper attention to the submission deadlines, and missed the deadline. One thing I'll say is that I love the fact that these courses have hard and fast deadlines. When the deadline passes, you can't even attempt to submit a response. When I'm a conscientious student, there is nothing I hate more than seeing late and overdue submissions make their way in to the marking pile.

The course is taught by Carol Muller, from the University of Pennsylvania. The videos are also lectures, but put together differently. Muller is recorded in green screen, and the Powerpoint slides are are placed behind and to the side of her. Where Rabkin's videos featured him sitting and cutting away to show slides, Muller is standing, and always present in the videos.

Hopefully I can get my act together for week 2, and get things done on time.  

Build Up, Don't Tear Down

I came across a post on Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, regarding a recent Washington Post article that was critical of Salman Khan, and his online education efforts.

Reading the article put my blood pressure up a mite, and I ended up leaving this as a comment on McLeod's post.

I'm of two minds on that article. On the one hand, I do agree that the aesthetics of Khan's videos leave much to be desired, but as to whether Khan's approach is inherently bad teaching? I'm not so sure.

A normal teacher is observed during a lesson around two or three times a year wherever I have worked. After an observation comes a feedback session where everything that occurred in the lesson is nitpicked.  Strong areas are highlighted, areas of improvement are pointed out, and the teacher walks away with a record of that observation. 

Generally speaking, teachers wear their Sunday best when being observed. They pull out the assessment tool, make sure to touch upon the key elements being assessed, and put on a show. While every other lesson in their day-to-day practice may still be good, it is rare for any teacher to bring their B-Game to an observation. And after the observation is over, they are left to keep on keeping on.

But that's not the case for Khan. For Khan, every lesson is an observed lesson. Every lesson has thousands of keen eyed educators assessing and nitpicking it, commenting on it, and judging it.  Imagine if every lesson you taught, day after day, were observed in the same manner? Would you be brining your A-Game each and every time? Would you be as infallible as the Pope with your facts, figures, explanations and analogies?

Probably not.

This, then, is what so irritated me about this article. It encapsulates a mindset that I find absolutely infuriating. 

So Sal Khan goes ahead and teaches a couple thousand different lessons. Some are great, some not as great. But instead of saying "Hey, this is an awesome foundation we can build upon", or "I like Khan's video, but I would add that another way to conceptualize (concept) is...", all I hear is "How come Khan doesn't explain (insert concept) as good as (insert educator's name) does?" Or they make an entire video about why Khan was wrong on some point or another.

Khan is trying to do something that few educators have tried to do. He is trying to create a broad swathe of resources that can be accessed by anybody, covering a broad span of topics, grade levels, and subjects. As Odin was the "All-Father" some see Khan as turning into the "All-Teacher," and look upon that with the specialist's contempt of the jack-of-all-trades, and dismiss his work as merely a lesser effort.

The article says "[i]n the class it's bad teaching, and online it's a revolution?" In a word, yes.

Khan's lessons, whatever their merit, are there, online. Available to one and all. You can put the greatest teacher in the world in a room and have them teach the greatest lesson ever taught, and it will still amount to less than what Khan has achieved. Why? Because that lesson, however good it was, ceased to be the moment class was over. All that would remain would be, as Tenacious D would put it, a tribute.

Serious educators do not criticize and tear down. Serious educators analyze and build upon. Don't like Khan's explanation of something? Then edit his video, add your own spin. Credit the source and make it better. 

That's the whole point of the creative commons. It's the underlying principle of the scientific method. It's the entire basis of western culture since the enlightenment.

Make, share, use, make better.

Okay. End of rant. But as a postscript...

Bad teaching? That's a first world view. I teach in Asia, and for students who study the Indian syllabus, or in similar systems in Asia (which is most of them), what Khan does is what they want. The student centered, problem solving, independent learning approach is better, but it is not the norm in the most populated areas of the world. It is only prevalent in wealthy nations, and even there these approaches are limited to the relatively privileged groups.

Teachers in North America are insanely privileged in comparison to teachers almost anywhere else. In South Asia, the average teacher barely earns a subsistence level wage, has to contend with enormous class sizes, and has little to no logistical support. Students get little to no individual attention, so resources like what Khan produces are an absolute godsend. Sure he may be just going over example after example, but you know what? That's what the they want over here. That's how education functions over here.  It's not a question of what is best practice and what is not, it is a question of what actually is. 

"[H]ow the price of an iPod changes as you buy more memory" may not necessarily work as well in Bihar as it would in Iowa. 

Coursera, or Teacher Learn Thyself

As a proponent of free, open resources, and someone who hubristically believes they know a bit about online education (most likely a false belief, but we all need our illusions), I thought it might be good to jump into the world of MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses. This week, my education began.

MOOCs are a rapidly growing area of education that has the potential to be incredibly destabilizing, at least to the current higher education model as it exists today. edX, MITx, Udacity, and now Coursera are some of the organizations, or entities, pursuing this model. At some point in the recent to mid past, I had put myself on a mailing list for Coursera, but as I hazily recall, at the time I looked at Coursera, the courses on offer were STEM focused, and thus not something I'd attempt to touch other than at gunpoint. Did I want to study computer science? No, not really. What about artificial intelligence? Possibly. It's something I am interested in, and if presented through a humanities framework, probably a something I might try. But since the course seemed to involve math higher than basic addition and subtraction, I took a pass. None of the initial courses offered by Coursera interested me, but the initiative still seemed a neat idea that I should keep an eye on.

Well the initiative turned out to appeal to a broad swath of people from around the world. Since launching, 1.5 million+ students have signed up for courses. The artificial intelligence course I took a pass on ended up having 50,000+ students enrolled. Only a small fraction of those students ended up passing the course, but then that's a good thing. Of the 46,500+ students who did not make the cut, they all learned, for free, a lesson that every debt burdened higher-ed dropout wishes they had learned - that not everybody grows up to be an astronaut (tip o' the hat to E.L. Kersten).

Which brings me to the key thing that motivated this post. Now, I love university, and the university life. I didn't do the standard four year run, due to finances, ending up finishing my B.A. over a more sedate seven year stretch, and I am currently in the fifth year of an MFA, just starting my thesis in poetry. (I know... I know... but still I like it). Yet university is a massively expensive proposition for the average person, and the ROI for almost any degree is nearly negligible at the outset. At best, getting a Bachelors, or a Masters is akin to investing in a 30 year bond. It'll pay out eventually, but you have to wait a while.

For a guy like me, who likes reading, likes writing, like wrestling with esoterica that has nothing whatsoever to do with the world of work, money, or practical and applicable skills, university is great. That's my thing, you know. I like it. I'm good at it. I can't rebuild an engine, and can barely change the oil on my car, but analyze a text? I've got six shooters in both holsters, my friend.

But then, isn't that kind of useless, in a practical sense? The humanities don't add value to the world in the physical sense. They don't build houses, or design telecommunications arrays. But isn't the point of existence in this modern age that we don't have to live as our hunter-gatherer forbears did - with each and every day focused only on practical tasks necessary for survival? Music, art, novels, and movies are all completely unnecessary for survival, completely impractical, yet they are what make the day to day of life worthwhile for so many. They are, in a word, fun.

This is the reason I signed up for these Coursera courses. I like the humanities. I like musicology. Paying thousands of dollars for these courses would be a reckless indulgence for my family, financially, and would offer no benefit to us monetarily. I may have been imprudently indulgent in pursuing a B.A. in Creative Writing, and now an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, instead of trying for an MBA or JD, but I can defend my choice of degree in that I will end up with a graduate degree, period. The credential will be something I can leverage for my family's benefit. In my line of work, regardless of experience or intelligence, the difference between a Master and Bachelors translates into a whole swathe of better job opportunities, and extra income. That I am studying something I enjoy, and am good at, is a bonus. But if not for the fact that I can use my degree for a practical purpose, and have the ability to complete it, pursuing it would have been purest folly.

I keep reading articles about millions of students in the US and Canada who enter into university, only to drop out with a mountain of debt, and these stories always upset me. I really hate the precedence of the academic credential in the modern world, because the end result is a highly destructive and self-defeating educational paradigm. Students go to high school to prepare for university, and anything less is frowned upon. Based just on the dropout rates for high school and university, there are a heck of a lot of people not cut out for higher education. Yet so many feel pressured to give it a go, and universities capitalize on this.

Anybody who has ever sat in a massive lecture hall in a first year introductory course has taken part in a scam. Where I did my B.A., at York University in Toronto, I had to take two "Foundations" courses. These were 9 credit courses (With 30 credits being a full load) where a single professor would lecture to over 500 students, while TAs (always grad students being paid a pittance) would lead smaller groups in seminars. Since I was going to school in Canada, the tuition was not outrageous. Maybe $200 and change per credit. Still, that amounted to $1800 per student, for a total of nearly $1,000,000 for the course. In the US, where the per credit course is that much higher... you can do the math.

So what's wrong with this? Well these courses are often used to separate the serious students from those who should not be at university. They are marketed relentlessly, and are usually forced upon students as a requirement, with the result being that a sizable portion of the students who paid for these classes deciding to eventually drop out. It makes sense for the university in that these courses are money-makers, and often go a long way to supporting the budgets of entire departments, yet for all those students who end up walking away with nothing but debt, the experience was anything but beneficial.

Some students will have dropped out due to financial constraints, but with the readily available, and seemingly free-flowing credit laying around for students who simply want to give university a go, it is probably more likely that those who dropped out did so because the learned that university level education was not right for them. The level of reading, the writing requirements, whatever it may be, these students ended up learning, to their detriment, that they made a HUGE mistake.

And this is where something like Coursera is a godsend. Imagine if, in the final year of high school, students were required to take a Coursera style university course. Not for marks, but just as a participation requirement, just to determine wether university education was right for them. The first, and immediate effect, I believe, would be a massive reduction in the number of students giving college a go. These students would see university level education for what it is, not good or bad, but difficult and not for everyone, and might perhaps then be open to alternatives, to trade schools, vocational programs, or entry-level positions with on-the-job learning.

This is how something like Coursera could be destabilizing for the current higher education paradigm. It pulls the curtain back on the wizard, dispelling the marketing slogans, and enticing offers. It allows those who love to learn in a community of learners to do so. For those who are not quite prepared for the university level, it offers a risk-free opportunity to experience higher-education.

Over the summer, I will be doing two courses through Coursera - a course in World Music offered by The University of Pennsylvania, and a course about Science Fiction offered by the University of Michigan. I'll post my thoughts about it from time to time, how the course operates, and perhaps posting some of my assignments and the associated lectures or texts (where copyright allows).

It should be fun!

Creating an Open Learning Network Part 1

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The eLearning Workroom on YouTube

It had to be done, I guess. I've now got the knack of doing video online on my own, but there really is no escaping that YouTube juggernaut. I hemmed and hawed over the idea, but finally decided to set up a dedicated channel for my new Educational Technology initiative, The eLearning Workroom.

The idea behind this initiative is to create videos and video series focused on a broader implementation of technology in the classroom, not so much on how I might use a certain whiz-bang neato thing with a couple of students in my own class, but more on how technology and online services can be harnessed in a way that it can benefit the faculty of an entire school or board, and the thousands of students connected to them.

Teachers are dedicated, often ingenious, but not always efficient. A teacher's classroom is, in practice, an isolated fiefdom. A place where procedures and traditions develop in a bespoke manner, where assignments and collected materials are both varied, and as unique as a fingerprint, from classroom to classroom.

It's not that teachers don't share resources, because they do, but almost always in a haphazard, ad-hoc manner. I might share worksheets with a colleague I like, but perhaps not with a colleague I am on the outs with. I might pop by the classroom next door, but perhaps not beyond that. Not everyone has all the best stuff, and often a herculean effort is endlessly required in order to find, make, and organize materials, worksheets, and lessons. More often, those herculean efforts need to be repeated as documents are lost, curriculum objectives shift, or people move.

This endless waste of time, just getting stuff together to use for a lesson, is the both the bane and the ordinary condition of almost any teacher. It is just a part of the job, and always has been. But that does not mean the situation is okay, or the situation has to stay. There is, in fact, a better way.

In the second video on the eLearning Workroom blog and channel, I begin a series where I explain and explore the power and utility of the Open Learning Network. The first video takes us step by step through the creation of the initial network, and subsequent videos will explore how we can link resources to this network, and utilize technology to do things with teaching that were not possible in the past.

Ever wanted to mark 1000 tests with the click of a button?

How about having an entire year long course prepared in advance?

What if you, your students, and their parents could access every pertinent piece of information they might need to succeed, all in a single place?

What if, instead of spending a third of your day trying to get your students to quiet down and listen, and a further half vainly trying to explain and re-explain the same concepts over and over again, you could skip all that, and free up more time in the classroom than you ever thought possible?

What if you could actually be a teacher? Not a task master, or a disciplinarian, or a burnt out wreck trying day by day just to make it to the last bell. But a teacher, in the truest sense. Not the font of all knowledge, but the guide, the friendly face, the helping hand.

That would be pretty nice, wouldn't it? 

Introducing the eLearning Workroom

I recently gave a talk at the TESOL Arabia Pecha Kucha 20X20 event at the Dubai Women's College, and the feedback I got was extremely positive. So much so that I was inspired to get moving a bit, and start producing videos aimed at educators hoping to grasp the e-learning basics that they may have been struggling with as their schools, and around the world, shift to more e-focused curricula. (Gasp! That was a lot to say in one breath!)

So I set up a new website solely for educators, featuring video tutorials. I would like to introduce to you The eLearning Workroom

My first post is my talk from TESOL ARABIA 2012. There was a technology malfunction, so I had to redo the audio. Same stuff, just nicer sounding!

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There is More Than One Way Show a Cat Video

There's a well known eLearning advocate I follow, named Scott McLeod (no relation to the comic book scholar...as far as I know!) who writes a blog called Dangerously Irrelevant. Scott has spoken at Tedx conferences, and regularly presents on eLearning related topics, and one of his main pet peeves, that I have noticed, is the tendency of administrators to try to restrict and block access to technologies and services they see as disruptive, like Facebook, or You Tube.

Today he put up a post expressing his sense of frustration with this sort of of behaviour.

Yesterday it was Facebook. Today it's YouTube. Here's an email exchange between two district technology coordinators...

TC1: I have recently completely blocked youtube in our network. Does everyone block youtube? As soon as I blocked it, teachers started complaining. What other websites can they go to that will serve the same purpose as youtube?

TC2: It is blocked here as well!!! I know there is some good to it BUT it is my responsibility to monitor, block, etc. I do not have time to monitor students all day long every day of every week. We have a product called LanSchool and it is awesome. You can view every student that is logged on at any given time and can take over their computer and shut it down as well BUT I cannot do that every day all day long. The teachers have the same capable to monitor as well BUT they are hired to teach. I will not take the responsibility for what they CAN GET IN TO THAT THEY DO NOT NEED TO!!!

It is very disheartening to read this stuff. The federal government is not asking us to do these sorts of things. So we could trust our teaching staff (and - gasp! - our students) but instead we resort to draconian measures that penalize everyone for the potential actions of a few. As I said three years ago, we need to view school organizations like these as ones that are desperately and inappropriately blocking the future

While normally I agree with a lot of what McLeod says, I found my demurring today, and posted this comment in response (I couldn't embed links in my response on his blog, but I have adde them below).

The school system I work for in Dubai also has this restriction, primarily for socio-cultural reasons. Personally, however, I don't mind this restriction, because it doesn't affect my ability to bring streaming video into the classroom. Administrators and IT departments are going to want to restrict access to technologies and services that they feel pose a possible liability risk. It's just their nature. My view is, instead of railing against that, it is better to find another way to accomplish your objectives.  

Where I work, we created a linked system of blogs using Google's Blogger platform. And while Blogger is sure to be seen as a bit boring and old fashioned by some, I see it as being like the Ford F-150 of blogging services - a dependable tool that is surprisingly flexible, and comes with an amazing support network.  

First, when we want to use video in the classroom, we will embed video in a post that contains all the elements of the lesson - instruction, practice activities, and an assessment. That one post is then used by all the teachers in the same grade and subject for that specific lesson. (Shares the load, promotes equality of instruction).  

Since the nature of blogs is dynamic, and not all students or staff have the patience or the knowhow to poke into the blog archive, we also create static pages where videos are collected and embedded, and create links to those pages at the top of a blog.  

This system has proven really versatile and useful for all our stakeholders. There's a place for student podcasts which includes student made tech help videos, a place for eLearning resources for staff, and the system is simple enough that even the most tech averse teachers can grasp the basics of how to use it, and in a short time feel comfortable enough to use it in their everyday teaching practice.

Students Today?

An old Harvard entrance exam is circulating around the interwebs lately, and curious as I always am to peek into the schoolroom of the past, I thought I'd take a look. After reading through it, I found I had learned something, or at least come to alter my way of thinking about a topic that is well trod and well accepted - the idea that each generation is slightly less intelligent than the one preceding it.

Even though the exam is much harder than any test I have ever had to take, I found that it was not a sign that our current generations had a diminished academic/intellectual capacity, but that past generations had an extremely limited and focused education. You'll note that in the exam there are pretty much only two topics - classics (language and literature) and mathematics. The section "History and Geography" was a bit of a misnomer, because most of the history mentioned was classical Greek or Roman history, with three questions about rivers thrown in for good measure. There was nothing of physics, biology, chemistry, English literature, American history (or even any history around the world beyond pre-Byzantium). Let us also not forget the absence of social science, non-classical languages, comparative religion, music, economics, psychology, civics, political science, or art.

The thing I note from this exam is that a) students of today would fail this exam in the most spectacular fashion, and that b) the knowledge base of a modern student is so very broad that the students of yesteryear, who might have done well on an exam like this, would have seemed of limited education, parochial even, in comparison.

Forget Smartboards

I came across a post by Jacob Gutnicki on Lisa Nielsen's The Innovative Educator, where she argues that interactive whiteboards, or Smartboards as they are more popularly known, are both a tool many educators love, and perhaps one of the most significant blocks to effective teaching in the modern classroom.

I couldn't agree more.

Technology is supposed to bring about the promise of the 1-to-1 classroom, where the focus is on the learning, and the teacher steps back from being the source and font of all knowledge to being but a lowly facilitator, a mere guide as students progress down the path of independent learning.

Currently, I work in a school equipped with Smartboards, and other than being a blank white screen for the projector, I find no use for them, whatsoever.

In my school, the students are all equipped with MacBook Pros, and a FAR better way to utilize technology in the classroom, I have found, is to prepare recordings of lessons before hand (allowing you to nicely edit and touch them up), then deliver those lessons, and the accompanying materials and follow-up tasks wirelessly when the class begins.*

In this way, the focus is never on the teacher at the front of the room, the students are engaged directly in the lesson, have immediate access to resources that assist them with questions and concerns (which facilitates independent learning), students of differing abilities can take the material at their own pace, the students get to literally, virtually "take" the teacher home with them for extra help and revision later on down the line, and the teacher is free to roam the room and facilitate learning.

It is the true student centered model of teaching.


*Mac is superb for this... I have not found a better way to transfer data in the classroom than through the Public Folder/Drop Box system on Macs.

Getting All A-Twitter

Twitter is a dichotomy. On the one hand it is the most vapid, pointless extrapolation of the useless small talk paradigm ever put into concrete form. On the other hand, it is the most powerful collaboration tool, and passive information retrieval system ever devised.

Say wha?

Simply put, if you are on your computer or your mobile phone, whatever device, you can tap out a small message of up to 140 characters and send it. That is your "Tweet." Your Tweet goes out there into the world, and finds it's place on your little online Tweet page. But, it can also go elsewhere.

Say you have a circle of friends who like to keep in touch or want to know what's up with you, they can follow you on Facebook by adding you as a friend, and/or they can follow you on Twitter. If they choose the latter, then every time you send a Tweet out into the universe, it will pop up on their computer, or phone, or whatever they use, letting them read what you have said.

Basically you broadcast some trivial thought out to the universe, and certain people who are tuned into that station will hear it.

"I just had some great coffee!"

"Gosh I hate being late to work!"

"These jeans make me look fat."

"Our plane is crashing into the Hudson river!...Wait. Sorry, False alarm. Sweet landing, though."

You get the idea.

So what's the big deal? It all sounds so stupid, really. Like, who would care to tap into the stream of consciousness of gads of people? Well, young people for one. Young people really love it, just as they love SMS. In some countries, Japan for instance, the ratio of SMSs to actual calls is higher than 1000:1. It's like passing notes in class, and eternal activity for youth.

But then, if that is what it is, why would adults, or the Guardian (please note the exclusion from the latter group) take this stuff seriously?

Because of the dichotomous nature of the service, and the sudden, overwhelming ubiquity of data rich portable devices like the iPhone, the Blackberry, and Palm's new Treo. Jeez, even the new Nintendo DSi can get in on this action.

On the part of the Guardian, it is an incredibly cheap and effective way of driving up page views. A small tweet with a clever headline and link can drive a lot of traffic to a specific page. On the reader's part, it's like a mobile news wire, so that you get word of a new story the instant it is up. On the part of the newspaper, they can sell ad space linked with stories carried out by this wire at a premium price since the consumer data being returned is so rich. Think about it like a marketer... say you want adults between 30 - 49 earning $75K+. How do you know those people are reading the Guardian (They're not...but this is just for pretend purposes here)? Normally you don't, since dead tree media doesn't tell any tales. Even a home IP won't give them much because there is no identifying demographic information of much use. But, since Twitter is optimized for mobile media usage, people who click on a link in a Tweet to go to a story, will leave behind a very remarkable footprint. First and foremost, The Guardian will be able to tell what type of device was used, and barring that, what OS or browser, which works out to the same thing. Did 60% of the page views come from Blackberries? Well, the correlation between Blackberries and high income earners is very high, so the Guardian can go to the advertisers and jack up ad rates for this service, with this very specific, concrete demographic detail.

But what about for adults?

Here, here is where Twitter gets good. And I mean, really good.

I'm going to tell a little story here. It's a true story, but a longish one. I just wanted to give fair warning...

I was at a conference two weeks ago attending a presentation on the educational uses of Twitter in tertiary institutes. Nice presenter, decent slides, but what she had stumbled upon just blew my mind.

I say stumbled upon because while the presenter was in EdTech, she had only learned of Twitter half a year earlier. But the incredible impact it had had on her teaching practice and professional development was extraordinary.

The way she put it was thus...

With Facebook, you connect with people you know. With Twitter, you connect with people you want to know.

Think about that for a moment. Imagine being that proverbial fly on the wall, and tapping into Einstein's thoughts? Or Hemingway's? Honestly...what would you give for that?

With Twitter this is possible because it's a stream of consciousness service. It's useful only for short messages, and so easy to use anyone can use it almost anywhere. Following someone's Twitter feed is almost like tapping into their stream of consciousness.

There are amazingly brilliant people out there that you or I will never be close to, will never have a chance to get to know, and would never be able to stand next to for long enough to learn the tiniest fraction about what they think. But with Twitter, you can.

This presenter had identified 50 or more colleagues or authorities in the same field who were at the top of their form. They did stellar work, and were well respected, for good reason. Also, they were all on Twitter. So instead of going to a yearly conference to learn the new and amazing things these scholars dug up, she attended a virtual conference every day. A Tweet would pop up on something mind blowing, and would be incorporated into the next day's lesson plan. What's more, by sending a direct message to the poster of a particular Tweet, she was often able to arrange for an impromptu video conference (via Skype) where the researcher could expand on their finding for her class.

Using this paradigm, she was able to transform her whole program, and make it effective in a way that had never happened before. At first she set her graduate students into research groups using Twitter as their key collaborative tool. But it also became the key to getting them to write. To understand this, I'll give a little background.

Her students are from an area where students do not learn how to write in their own language. They learn grammar, sure, and the mechanics of writing, but not "how" to write. That is, in the Arabic world, writing isn't something students really do. They never write any essays, book reports, or what have you, because that has never been a part of the educational model here. In English class they are expected to write, but with no experience at it whatsoever, in their native tongue, attempts at it in a second language are almost always very poor. I face it every day with my students who had never written anything longer than 100 words before going to high school. The presenter I met faced the same problem, and just was not able to drag any substantive writing out of her students. 3000 words? Forget. Even 500? Not a chance! They just wouldn't do it, and school authorities would back the students up on that. So what to do?

It was obvious to her that her students did write, and wrote a heck of a great deal. In fact, her students, as mine are, are inveterate communicators. They are forever posting on bulletin boards, sending IMs, SMSs, emails, and more. Via writing, they communicate more, I daresay, than any generation in human history. But they don't think of it as writing. This is why Twitter was the key.

A limit of 140 characters is not much. Two sentences, three max. She got her students to buy into posting messages to a group Tweet, and responding to posts. As the project wore on, from what she said, it sounded like these students had tapped more words through that one collaboration than at any other point in their career. They were posting gads of messages each day. Back and forth. Posting, commenting on posts, commenting on comments. Every time someone found an interesting link, they posted it, which set off a flurry of other Tweets as the group looked into the information.

The experiment succeeded beyond any of her expectations.

Which leaves us back at the beginning of this post.

Like with Xerox or the VCR, there are good uses and bad uses. Twitter can be trite, but it can also be transformative. Part of the hype around Twitter right now is that many have sensed just how powerful this tool could be. As newspapers die, and media models crumble, there is a mad scramble for the next model, whatever will arise out of the ashes, and Twitter is in very good shape to make a run at that. During the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the world learned through Twitter long before Reuters got wind of it. When that plane went down on the Hudson, word of it was on Twitter even before anyone walking by as it was happening had thought to take notice. Major news wires have reacted by hiring staff who only monitor Twitter, and pick off breaking stories from there.

For writers , I would say that Twitter is a tool we can all use. Most of us share thoughts, findings, and ask questions of each other here, in the spirit of true colleagues. When we graduate, that will be over for us, but it doesn't have to be. The ability to collaborate with talented people in your field, who you respect and admire, is a precious and valuable thing. Even just to be able to get glimpses of what they are thinking and doing can be informative or inspirational. I've learned a great deal in the short time I've been allowed to frequent these boards, and I am sure that in the next few years as I stretch my time in the program to the allowable limit (you know...budget constraints), I will continue to do so. But hopefully, using some other method like Twitter or what replaces it, I'll be able to continue to do so.

Crunch Time

It's that time of year when I imagine that I'm still a freshman in university, ready to take on an all-nighter to get everything done and in on schedule. It being the last week of school, there is the attendant mark collection, the corralling of stray and truant assignments, and, of course, various other last minute tasks to attend to.

When I first started teaching in Dubai, I was gung-ho about getting a school newspaper up and running. I tried to whip up some interest in my students, but journalism, in this part of the world, has never been what you might call a "high profile" profession. What budding Bob Woodward's there are or were, they quickly learned to turn their energies and talents to something that is more likely to ensure they stay hale, healthy, and free.

So with little interest in getting this project going on the student side, and being the optimistic sort, I figured that all that was needed was someone to do the grunt work, and soon enough students could be drawn in. Later I stretched that to include students and faculty. The students, faculty, and administrators.

For that first issue, I'd managed to squeeze contributions from a number of students, a teacher or two, but the rest ended up being ghostwritten. A colleague had pitched in to help with the copy-editing, and the first issue was a resounding success. Sort of.

Unbeknownst to me, I'd annoyed more than a few people, caused offense through excluding them (instead of begging for help, perhaps abject begging was called for?), and in that regard you could say the success was tempered.

The following year I head great plans to try for an issue every month or two, and stepped into action, only to have other events and occurrences dampen my enthusiasm to the point where I forgot about the whole project entirely. Until, two days before the big end of year open day, I got a call kindly requesting an issue, pronto.

In this world, there are requests, and there are requests. Code for get it done.

This year, as happened last year, other events and occurrences dampened my enthusiasm to step out and do anything other than my job (Amazing how that happens). And in another case of deja vu, a few days before the "big day" the call came in.

Stepping out has its consequences, not the least of which is learning that your university days are so far long and gone that you might as well be reserving a nice spot under a shady tree with a good view of eternity.

Still, when things got to be done, you got to get them done.

A Little Give Gets a Lot

Back last September, when school started, I spent the first few weeks of classes training my students up on Google Documents. I would email a document to each student, have them upload it and share it with me, and from then on I could monitor their progress. Because of the powerful revision history tool, I could also monitor every stage of a document's development. I could tell, in an instant, if a student had copied and pasted something into their work without attribution, and through Google's search tool, I could take a string of text and compare that with all the other documents that had been shared with me. All told I could catch just about every instance of cheating imaginable, and I did.

By taking away their ability to cheat, I thought, I could eliminate cheating and foster a most positive academic climate. So I showed them, in detail, everything I could do, and every way I could catch them. By knowing this up front, I figured, they probably wouldn't bother trying to cheat in the first place.

Afterward, when I found a student had cheated, I called them over, showed them the proof of their academic dishonesty, and issued a reproof about the impropriety of cheating, and the need to do one's own work. A few students, thankfully, had enough of a sense of shame to admit what they had done, and endeavored not to repeat their mistake. But with others, the same conversation led to no few howls of protest, and emphatic claims that no cheating at all had occurred, and even when I pointed out the proof sitting there clearly and unequivocally on the screen, most took the Shaggy approach - they said "it wasn't me." And no matter the proof or the logic, they acted as if by being emphatic enough for long enough, the accusation would just go away.

But I'm not one to be swayed by my students in that manner.

Before long I had garnered a reputation a teacher with an unerring eye for cheating, how had the will to call students out for it, and stick to his guns. I noted down every instance of cheating, and if students persisted in refusing to admit what all and sundry could see as plain as day, I'd issue an incomplete, mark an x in a little box, and cease all discussion on the matter.

Back in Canada, I would have considered the matter closed, the battle won. I would have informed the students that for the next and each subsequent assignment, I would expect no less than honest effort. While I am sure some might have complained, I would know that regardless of whatever pressure a parent could bring to bear on the administration, I was protected. I could call on my union rep, quote the appropriate academic guidelines, and leave the matter at that. From a letter of the law standpoint, I would have been on the side of angels. But I don't live in Canada, I live here.

Knowing they could be caught dead to rights, many of my students started waging a misinformation campaign. To other students, other teachers, the admin, and the principal, they made claims, let their grievances be known, and came up with all manner of excuses as to why it was all so unfair. They focused on undermining the use of Google Documents. What if they did not have internet access at home? (Every student making this claim later recanted, admitting they did, indeed, have internet access at home). Why doesn't the teacher just give a paper out? (To prevent rampant copying). Why dd I insist on them calling me "sir?" (Because saying "teacher, teacher" is poor English, and "sir" is a universally accepted, respectful mode of address). On, and on it went. Endless meetings, conferences, you name it. Students would bring in parents with the most wild eyed claims (He makes us search for our homework on Google!), and while in each case the misinformation was cleared up, and the parents left with a good mind to introduce their son to the back of a hand, the damage had been done.

Complaints. There had been complaints. There had been a torrent of seemingly endless complaints. If my ears were deaf to them, my students figured that others might be more receptive. That the complaints had no merit was not the issue. That there were complaints, was. Why did I have to rock the boat? Why did I have to be so strict? Why couldn't I be a little more flexible?

Not one to stand against the tide in a foreign country where my rights are limited and the possibility of being packed on to a plane and sent home is a possibility, I decided to drop the matter. I love that Google system, but not enough that I'd put myself in the path of a possible pink slip for it. So when the New Year dawned, I was given entirely new classes. A fresh start, I was told. Sometimes, I was also told, some people just aren't a good fit in one place. Change is good.

I accepted my new situation, but for most of the rest of the year I felt bitterness, and no little amount of betrayal. The way I saw it, I had been looking out for my students, enforcing proper academic standards, and properly preparing them for entrance into a tertiary program the following year. I saw my removal from one set of classes and placement in another set as a gross error that not only undercut my authority and credibility, but which would only serve to reinforce exactly the wrong lesson for those students whose long and bitter campaign had ended in triumph. While railing secretly over what I saw as an injustice, I also came to feel a little depressed, unsure of myself and my ability as a teacher.

Then things began to change. Ever flexible, I acquiesced to the imperative I had been issued. Change! Change something. Do something. I was told to think long and hard and to find somethng that worked, with the implication that if I was called back, the subsequent discussion would be much briefer.

So I did as asked. I changed. I thought long and hard, and I used those hard fought battles and the experience that came with them, and adjusted my entire system. I lightly introduced the Google Docs system to those willing, and to the rest I would email documents as Word files that could be completed on a computer, and I even printed out hard copies for those who wanted to do them by hand. Keeping tabs on cheating was a little harder, but still doable, and that added flexibility seemed to be appreciated by my students.

I found that by storing every submitted assignment away on Outlook, I could still detect cheating, and call students out on what they had done. But the evidence was not quite as unequivocal, and soon some of my students found some wiggle room. Simultaneous submissions, renaming files, and more. But being the geek that I am (apprentice level, really, as I have a long ways to go to hit uber-geek status), I still had a few tricks up my sleeve. One good one was being able to check out the file properties, and see who last saved the file, or who had created it. The students saw my actions as fair play. I was doing my job, but wasn't being a hard ass about it. They knew I wasn't trying to submit them to the panopticon, but they knew I was paying attention.

With the new classes there were no complaints. Cooperation increased. Participation increased, and our little system purred beautifully. My new students knew I was as hawk-eyed as my reputation suggested, as time and again I'd softly call one over and have a brief discussion about the need to redo an assignment. But by omitting any sense of censure or moral indignation from my tone, almost every time I called a student over, I found my students willing to admit what they had done, and willing to do their work for real.

I could still catch them, but I wasn't totalitarian about it. And when I did catch them, instead of trying to get them to feel shame over an immoral act, I looked on their indiscretion as I would a traffic ticket. No judgment, just a simple statement of fact and a clearly defined consequence.

As the school year winds down and summer approaches, and I look back on this year, I find myself feeling humbled, truly and deeply humbled. In September I had thought that by demonstrating to students that not only could they not cheat, but that it was impossible to do so, they wouldn't try. Little had I known then, but can see so clearly now, I had sown the seeds for confrontation through my own actions. From the student's perspective, what I'd said was that I expected they would try to cheat, which was tantamount to basically saying that they were all cheaters, and that my opinion of them was about as high chocolate thins wafer.

I'd done to them what music and movie companies have been doing to countless media consumers the world over, and I reaped the same reward. By making it impossible to cheat, by removing my students' free will in the matter, conflict became inevitable. It's not a matter of right or wrong, but of human nature, and human dignity. Being honest with myself, I could not say that I would have reacted differently had I been in their position.

Don't get me wrong. Cheating is something teachers have to strive to stamp out, but I learned that the key to the process is the striving itself. You cannot make the system perfect or infallible. You have to allow for imperfections, for the possibility of wrongdoing. In order to foster moral behavior, you cannot simply prohibit immoral behavior or make it impossible. You have to offer morality as a choice, one not coerced or forced, but just a choice laying on the table.

The old students I had had, as I learned, had not turned a new corner with a new teacher. They'd won their battle, and felt all the bolder for it. I felt sad for the students who had been honest, had worked hard, had applied themselves, and who found themselves in a less than ideal learning environment. But I didn't dwell on it. It's a challenge many students the world over have faced, and is by no means unique to this part of the world (Which is why I believe that Season 4 of The Wire should be required viewing for every teacher). It all could have been avoided, as they say, had I known then what I know now. But teaching, just like any other job, is something you learn to become better at through experience. There will inevitably be failures, but the key is to recognize those failure and leverage them into, if not success, then something better.

Right here, right now, I feel the truth of that old adage, that old cliche. When God closes a door, he opens a window. Even though my actions may have been right, and my intentions also, how I went about it had much to be desired. A younger me, a less family-ed up, worried-sick-about-not-being-able-to-support-them me might have made more noise, stood my ground, and fought for my principles.

That I hadn't, perhaps, is a sign that I'd grown up. As I look at my wife, and my children, all safely, peacefully asleep, I am so very thankful that I did.

What Are Teachers? (Cont'd)

Last night I put out the putatively preposterous postulation that teacher were not professionals. So, before I am forced to reap the whirlwind, it's time for an explanation.

What is a professional? I'm not talking about someone who acts in a professional manner, as in "does their job well, honestly, and efficiently." No, I'm talking about professionals, period. A professional is someone who:

- does not invest themselves emotionally in their work.

- works for hire, on short term contracts.

- is brought in to fix a problem, not prevent one.

- does not have a vested interest in connecting with stakeholders.

- is always looking for a better paycheck, or better opportunity.

If teachers were professionals, they would have a short term, mercenary attitude to their work. They would have no reason to really care about their students, to care about how their actions affect those around them over the long term, about creating an atmosphere of continual and gradual improvement.

In other professions, law, medicine, politics, and engineering, the behavior listed above is generally conducive to improving career prospects. But if teachers were like that, well, they wouldn't be teachers, would they? Instructors, maybe, workshop leaders, probably, university professors, definitely.

Another thing about professionals is that they don't like getting their hands dirty with the grunt work, the boring drudgery that, day by day, is a large component of what they do. Doctors have their nurses. Engineers have their laborers. Lawyers have their paralegals. Professors have their teaching assistants. Politicians have their flaks. But teachers? They're on their own.

Professionals also, with the exception of professors, don't have unions. Professional associations, sure. Accrediting bodies, of course, But unions? No. Yet teachers do have unions (and so do professors, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here).

It is the very fact that teaching is generally a unionized occupation that really puts the nail into the notion that teacher are professionals. Why? Because unions did not originate as a way to help out professionals, they developed as a way to help workers, and, more importantly, tradespeople.

Teachers are not professionals, no, but they are tradespeople. Sure the trades are seen as lowly in our society. I mean, you don't go to university for a trade, you go to a community college or, (how ghastly!) you learn on the job through an apprenticeship.

This fact should disqualify teachers as tradespeople, because you need a university degree, in Education no less, to be a real, certified teacher. But as any teacher will tell you, the Education degree has not been made that is worth the price of the paper it is printed on. Teachers learn on the job, and nowhere has this fact been more empirically proved than through the Teach for America program.

Teachers learn on the job just like anyone else in a trade does. Teachers have to get their hands dirty, and deal with the boring detail and drudgery, just like any tradesperson does. But teachers also take pride in their craft, take pride in the quality of their work, and the satisfaction of their customers, just as tradespeople do.

Teaching is hard work, and while teaching is thought of as work of the mind, it mostly is not. It is work of attention to detail, physical presence, performance, and consistency. And while teachers expect to earn a living off their work, as tradespeople do, they also do not expect to get rich by it. They do the work because they, can, they are good at it, and it gives them a sense of purpose and satisfaction.

What Are Teachers?

I got to thinking this morning. A dangerous pastime, as Lefou would note. But it is something I tend to do on the lonely drive to work every morning. And while usually there is a cacophony of thoughts rumbling around upstairs, all of which are easily shifted or re-directed by whatever meaningless noise on the radio, I chose silence instead this morning, with this singular focus as, I suppose, a side effect. I'm going to have to come back to this topic later, because I haven't fully thought through it yet, but the thing I'm beating around the bush about is that of teachers as professionals.

Are teachers professionals? The reflex response is of course they are. Teachers are credentialed, highly educated, operate according to certain ethics and guidelines, and are accountable to professional organizations like the College of Teachers, or the State Certification Board. They dress professionally, and uphold high standards of deportment. Teachers are thrust into situations with limited resources, a finite amount of time, and seemingly impossible goals that need to be met. They wade into these situations with tact and aplomb, and in general make lemonade out of what used to be something far baser.

I could list a thousand paeans, odes, and meditations on, by, about, and for teachers and their professionalism, yet the question still begs - are teachers professionals?

I have known many professional teachers in my time, professional being the adjective describing the noun, and not the other way round - a teaching professional. I know for a fact that there are many teaching professionals all about, who can be hired at any time to conduct workshops and seminars on anything in this world and the next. But I don't see them as teachers, nor as professional teachers. And of the teachers I do know, many have professional qualities, professional attitudes, and professional attributes. But I wouldn't say they were professionals.

In fact, and I know some of you will not like this, and some of you will not like this a whole lot, but I truly think that teachers are not professionals. Not at all, not even a bit. And while I will explain why, I'm not going to do it today, so as to give my thoughts a little time to order themselves, so that when I follow this up tomorrow, what I write will what I mean, clearly, and concisely.

I promise you, however, that if you don't agree with me right now, I may just change your mind on the morrow.

No Cheatin' Allowed

This going to sound like a bit of a puff piece, but as a teacher and an educator, I have discovered over the past year that just the tiniest technological change can make all the difference in the world when it comes to making a difference with your students. The change I refer to is a small feature in Google's Online Apps that has allowed me to demonstrate beyond a doubt to all my students that it is well nigh on impossible for them to cheat when writing an assignment for me. Before I get into the nitty gritty, however, it's time for a little background.

Where I live and teach, for most students the study of writing generally consists of a few points about grammar and a trip over to "the Google" for a quick copy and paste. It was easy to spot the cheating, which popped up in nine out of ten submissions, by the simple expedient that if I could both read it and understand it, it was not their work. That was the easy part. The hard part was going through the exhausting arguments where students would swear (Wa'allah teacher, I swear! My two eyes!) that they had done the work, that they had not cheated, all of which was accompanied by great eye rolling, hand waving, and the propitious beating of chests. With twenty odd cases like this to look at, in a row, caving in often became the default option. Since I hadn't been right there, watching over their shoulder as they did the deed, I couldn't prove a thing. Thus the path was clear to argue until day turned to night, or it was time for the next period. Either way worked for them.

To solve this, issue, I first turned to handwriting only, but that was a bust. not only did the students still copy each other, word for word, regardless of my ongoing protestations, but the entire process slowed down to a grind. Not only did it all take longer, but it was harder to read those essays, and when the arguments started, I couldn't say "you didn't write this," because my literalist budding lawyers knew very well it had been their own hand put to paper, so that was the end of that.

What to do? Well, I went back to the computer only system, but instead of accepting handouts, I had an email only policy, since this allowed me to compare papers side by side, call over the offenders, and demand to know whose paper it really was. I could do online text searches to determine where the copied text came from, but with students used to banding together, it was back with the arguments and the ardent declarations of innocence all over again. Overall this was a little better than what had happened before, but not by much. So again I was left with the same question - what to do?

Well, in a moment of zany impulsiveness, I checked out Google Docs. I don't know what led me there, because the last time I had used it, it was right after the service had been introduced, and it was easily the worst word processor I had ever seen. But I was pleasantly surprised to see things had changed, that the application had become slicker and more robust. The greatest surprise came when I saw two distinct features that I knew, right away, would change the whole teaching writing game. Share, and Revision History.

First, I could get my students to share their documents with me as a collaborator. This meant I could watch their document from my own desk, almost literally see the words moving across the page, and I had the ability to edit, change, and comment on their documents in return. I could give notes to an entire class in the time it used to take me to look over two or three handwritten pieces. Best of all, I could see exactly when the student had last used the document, so when they told me they had been "working on it" the night before, I could pull up the empirical evidence right before their eyes. With no leg to stand on, those arguments stopped before they began. But this was not even the best of what I discovered.

Embedded in the Tools directory, there is a small function called Revision History. You see, as an online app that saves documents to the cloud, and has access to pretty much unlimited storage space, Google Docs automatically saves documents in thirty to sixty second intervals. Ever single version of each document is saved and stored also. This meant that I could click on the Revision History, and see how long it had taken to write a particular document. If the student had done the work themselves, I would see short progressions of added text in each successive version. But if I saw a sudden, massive jump in text? Bam! Caught cheating.

I put this baby up on the overhead, and in each class I showed how I had caught every single cheater in that class. Using those indestructible tools, my students lost all the will to argue their innocence when I caught them red handed. In retaliation, they refused to use Google Apps, went to their parents and told them horror stories of being forced to use "the Google," but to no avail. Because in every case, when a concerned parent came in to see these new inhuman practices, I could calmly open up their child's work, show them the evidence, and rest easy on the side of the angels.

All of a sudden, I saw a remarkable change. Knowing that, like the Terminator, I could catch them every time, my students stopped trying to cheat. And when they protested that their English was not good, I told them clearly that I wanted their not good English. I wanted them to write, no matter what level they were. And with no option but to do their own work, my students fell to the task of actually doing their own work. And the results were remarkable.

In a month I saw more progress in my students than I had over the course of an entire year. In fact, I had never been this effective before, regardless of the tricks and efficiencies I might have tried to teach them, and all of it was thanks to "the Google," or more specifically, Google Docs - the most powerful classroom tool I have ever encountered.

So, like I said, this will, and has, sounded like a puff piece, like PR copy straight from the G-Plex, but it isn't. It's the straight truth, and I'm not in the least embarrassed to tell it this way for one single reason - with this program, I can catch them cheatin'.

Imagine a Hundred Altafs

A little while ago I came across an article in the Toronto Star, by a columnist I like to read, Joe Fioroto. While there is not much about The Star that I generally like, you still have to respect a newspaper that brings in those sorts of numbers, especially in this day and age. But regardless of my views about the paper, Fioroto consistently writes engaging articles about people, hard working ordinary people, who are forever overlooked and unmentioned. In this one article Fioroto happened to be writing about someone I had worked with in the past, and I thought I'd share a few thoughts on this remarkable individual.

About eight years ago, when I was a student in the Faculty of Education at York University, I worked with a man named Altaf Qadeer at Brookview Middle School in the Jane/Finch area for several months during a teaching practicum. Although I later pulled out out the Ed program for financial reasons, I still ended up working as a teacher, and to my great surprise I found I faced many of the same problems Altaf introduced to me back then in Canada.

You see, Altaf was and is a very effective teacher, and his effectiveness with students from so many disparate communities is a testament to the kind of resource Canada currently has so much of, but utilizes so poorly. His class included students from fifteen to twenty nationalities, each and every one having only an elementary grasp of English at most. But through the use of evocative activities, and a finely honed pedagogical approach, these students regularly went from strangers overwhelmed by an alien tongue to everyday neighbourhood kids, ready to talk your ear off if you gave them half a chance.

Back when I was studying to become a teacher, I specifically requested the Urban Education program. This sort of program is supposed to embrace visible minorities and students from urban environments. In short, students who knew what it was like to be poor, underprivileged, or new to the country. The sad irony is that the cost of becoming a teacher is so high, in both time and money, that these same students cannot afford to go through the program, since it is a strict requirement of the program that students not work, even at a part-time job. Those who need to work to pay the rent often end up with no recourse other than to withdraw. It happened to me, and so I ended up taking myself abroad, to teach elsewhere. Though I have spent the last several years teaching intensive ESL to high school students, and will soon complete an MFA in Creative Writing through UBC, were I to go back to Toronto today, I would be ineligible to teach at a place like Brookview.

While I could rectify that by going back to school to acquire the necessary credential, I would not have enough money to support my family in the interm period. And that is the real problem, because for many, many educators like Altaf, who immigrate to Canada, who have a vast array of expertise dealing with students in far more challenging environments than even the most downtrodden parts of Toronto could produce, the situation is the same. In them there is experience and ability, but no viable option to exercise either, which is to the detriment of everybody.

Can you imagine being able to take a hundred Altaf Qadeers and sending them into the schools today? Altaf has been at Brookview for years. In the few months I was there, they had three principals come and go, and eight other teachers quit. So, so many middle class new teachers arrive at a place like that, take one look at the challenges they face, and make a beeline for Orangeville or Newmarket, or anywhere but there. But a guy like Altaf, though, he doesn't hop on the next bus down the road. He puts down roots, and goes about giving a hand up to those sitting there at the very bottom.

Can you imagine what might happen if we found a way to let a hundred more Altafs in?

What If They Can't Read What We Write?

I came across an interesting article in the New York Times a while ago, about how the internet may be irrevocably changing the way children and teens learn to read, including what they read, and how they read.

Right now I teach in a country that has no history of literacy, where the current generation being educated is the first generation that will have acquired wide spread literacy. This is happening at the same time that internet use has become ubiquitous amongst these youths. From what I have observed so far, the effects include an almost violent antipathy towards reading any long or long-ish form text, be it fictive or not, and an unwillingness to write anything at all outside of online bulletin boards, text messages, e-mails, or instant messages.

While I could place most of this to aspects of culture prevalent in this society (For 95% of my students, the only book in their households is a Qu’ran, and fiction is completely verboten), I am beginning to wonder whether a variation of this trend (pathology?) is gaining momentum in the Anglosphere.

In any number of articles about the ever oncoming e-book revolution, a time when, experts predict, text perused electronically will pass some critical threshold after which the printed word will begin to fade, there is always a caveat to the effect that the tangible pleasure of a book in hand will always trump pixels on a screen. And it makes sense, for us. For us old codgers, coots, grannies, and grumps that is.

We the elderly (Over 25) can all remember a time before the internet, when computers were an interesting, but expensive curiosity, and when the only way we could “download” a movie, show, song, or book was if we got ourselves down to the library to pick one up. For us old folk, the feel of a book in hand as we curled up on the couch or lay on our sides on the bed to read, informed a great deal of our early lives. For many of us, it was the most personal, intense form of pleasure we knew (At least until we went to college…). For many of us, it still informs our lives today, in the same way. But for those who have come after us, who were born in the mid-80’s and later, things have changed.

If the tangible pleasure of a book in hand was entirely absent from your early and adolescent years, there is little chance it will ever become a part of your life. When late nights were spent, not curled up under a lamp with a novel, but on MSN chatting to ten people while updating your status on Facebook, and refreshing your MySpace page, books became something to put on a shelf, and nothing else. They become nice objects, on display for guests. Quaint curiosities, like Great Grandma’s silver snuff box, or Uncle Charlie’s pocket watch. Relics all, from another time, with no place in the present, other than as a reminder of the past.

This, then, brings up a schism of sorts that will soon start to become more apparent in our society. The terms I use to define the sides of this schism are BG and IG. The Book Generation, and the Internet Generation. All the angst over the past decade about Gen X, and Gen Y, and how Baby Boomers in the office sometimes find it hard to relate to their younger colleagues, is nothing compared to what is to come. Workplace tensions today are often over differing views of work/life balance, and worldview. Yet these differences exist on the same plane, shared by different sectors of the Book Generation. The Internet Generation doesn’t exist on that plane, they exist in an entirely different dimension. How they think, process information, communicate, network, prioritize, and act is completely dissociated from their predecessors.

When it comes to reading, what the IG reads, and how the IG reads, is different. In Japan today, some of the biggest blockbuster novels never even come close to a bit of dead tree. Instead they are read on mobile phones, written in serial format, for the medium, by those who write exclusively on that medium. Chapters arrive, a la a Dickens novel, in parts, over time, with eager readers dying to learn what happens next.

This poses a problem for the Book Generation, for whom long form texts are a pleasure and a joy, because the constraints of the new media where the IG exists are antithetical forms and conventions that have flourished in the past.

We can write, hone our craft, learn the forms and conventions and traditions that have shaped and defined literature for hundreds of years, but what of our readers, our IG readers? What if they can’t read what we write? And conversely, what if we can’t write what they read?

What then?

Do we go gentle into that good library?

Rage, rage, against the dying of the page?

What do we do?