It’s Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away

I graduated high school in 1995, not too long after Kurt Cobain found he wasn’t able to live the life he was living. When I went on the Internet in my first year of university I waited ten minutes for Acorn, The Nature Nut’s Web site to load. No one could use the phone.

Time’s they are a-changin.

And they are a-changin’ exponentially fast.

Our own Neil Young responded to Cobain’s suicide letter – which contained that opening phrase I quoted from his song Hey Hey My My - by stressing a counter-point: “Once you’re gone you can’t come back.”

Three years ago I moved from Winnipeg to the country, from people spitting at bus stops and panicking in Walmart lines to deer just hanging out munching leaves and that wonderful green slick on Lake Winnipeg’s shore rocks, and I agree: once you’re gone you can’t come back. Not really. (I’m looking out a window at Henderson Highway as I write this and man I tell you it’s just not ever going to be the same for me.)

Technology is our collective move: where we are going we cannot come back from. Not really. You decide if you think we as teachers will burn out or fade away.

In class we played a game on the iPad. Presented with random countries we selected capital cities. The intent was to show how a teacher can use technology to engage students in learning – after all, it only matters that they learn, not how. Nothing is gained in the how, right? We watched the time-bar drain down in the game, and I thought: “Is it better to burn out than fade away?” That is: I either know the answer or I don’t; or, do I need some time to think about this, to figure it out?

This is the question we as soon-to-be teachers will face: burn out, or fade away? In fact we might be feeling it right now, still multiple months from being anything more than just consumers of an educational product. Which one am I going to be: the burn-out, or the fader?

Using Wikipedia is like drinking with your smartest buddy: pretty darn accurate, but it sure can leave your head spinning. For example, in regards to transplants, Wikipedia offer’s this beaut in its history section: “Several apocryphal accounts of transplants exist well prior to the scientific understanding and advancements that would be necessary for them to have actually occurred.” (Now, this is where you, Norm, say to Cliff, “You’re an idiot!”…then Sam says, “Can I draw you a beer, Normie?” and you, still Norm, reply, “No, I know what they look like. Just pour me one.”)

Quote: “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Now that I have used technology to research content and make practical cultural connections, I need to get to the guts of the story because a story is all this ever will be. Did you know there is actually a bionic arm?!? It is in fact one that “will offer the first hard-wired neural control of bionic body parts, whether lost to injury or neurodegenerative disease” Don’t believe me? Well, since I am not revealing any of my sources here (a journalistic privilege) you can simply Google that quote and find it on your own.

(Interesting side-bar: if in fact you can Google any quote and get the source immediately, why should the author bother with a reference list at all? Has technology made citing sources irrelevant?)

Meanwhile…there are some among us, some brilliant humans (or Vs for all I know), who know exactly how an arm works, from the physical structure of the arm itself to connections with the brain. These brilliant humans/reptilian aliens can take an arm off a man (in theory or, I guess, with permission) and make it give you the finger! Yup, they can dissociated the conscious intent of “giving the bird” from the physical action of “giving the bird.” (Well, there’s still the intent of the guy/snake in the lab coat, but you get my point.) In this way these brilliant humans/geckos, through this understanding, can now craft an arm that is like a real arm – a not-real arm that is nonetheless real. Only, it is real. It does all the real things an organic arm does: it executes all the waving and fist-making and nose-picking your real arm may be doing right now! There is no real difference, right? On one hand an ‘arm’ is grown naturally on the side of a body, fed by the nutrients of milk and bread and the odd case of beer, and on the other hand the ‘arm’ is made in a lab in a fashion that, though still probably requiring beer, uses plastics and metals and, in some opinions, hokum and witchcraft.

It’s no different than this: I say to you “hello”; or, lacking speech, I type hello and the computer creates the sound “hello”. Outside of the current quality of the orator’s digital tone, there is no real difference. (Yes, I’m still bitter that Colby and Danny thought text-to-speech was better than my O’Canada rant - I was gonna be a star I tell ya!)

Anyway, what is a teacher in the age of technology?

A teacher/iTeacher has inputs and outputs, right? You “hook up” a mouth and out comes the story of Louis Riel. You “attach” arms and suddenly math equations are being scrawled across the whiteboard. You “stuff” eyes into sockets and, after rolling a few times, they relay info to that wired mouth that then sighs, “Billy, for the love of jeebus will you just sit right in that #*%^ chair!”. That’s it. That’s the teacher. Passionate. Foul-mouthed. Concerned that a kid’ll brain himself balancing on two chair legs during class. You can’t tell the difference. Technology is as real as the real teacher right? Just less hops in the system come 3:31.

Think of our experiences in our recent class. We became in Teacher & Technology aware of the iPad. We saw displayed its guts: its apps. Now, since I am recently more inclined to staring at trees than sitting at a desk inputting on-on-off-on-off-on-on-off (coding joke), I may be disconnected from the actual reality as it stands – which is different from the real­ reality, right? But if the meal I’m fed is ‘teach them and teach them well’ then hell put those bionics on the iPad and code those apps so carefully that they can differentiate between a special needs student who just wants to get through the day with a smile on his face and the average student who learns in any fashion and the ELL student who’s caught in a maze of languages and cultures and personal self-doubt because she is different from most everyone else and let me just stare at my trees. Because though I am more tree than iPad, if an iPad can do it let it do it.

Really?

Remember that ridiculous scene when HBC Guy and American Ignoramus almost succumbed to the quicksand? If Norman McLaren had written that act I guarantee there would have been a sign that said: Teacher: Careful - Here There Be Technology. Maybe there’s nothing to it at all. But don’t students need me - they need you - more than they need an iPad? Don’t we have to be brave enough to tell them what they need? We are, after all, coming at them from the future: we are what they will be; we’ve been-there done-that regardless of the new shiny coat of paint every generation gets…

The story goes that at some point in time a cave man grabbed a stick and whacked his kid in the arse because he, the kid, was flicking bits of leaves at some other kid who was trying to figure out the lesson “poison berries versus edible berries”. The cave man thought, Grunt, grunt grunt grunt grunt. (Roughly translated: Hmm, whacking Billy with this stick means I don’t have to hurt my hand in the process. This stick is a tool I can use for a purpose. It is technology!) Fine, but now cave man there doesn’t feel anything when he hits his kid. He is completely disconnected from suffering his own consequences for hitting his own kid. (I guess a teacher candidate shouldn’t use ‘hitting a kid’ as a plot point in his narrative, eh?)

But the stick! It is no different than the iPad. There is no real difference. Give them all iPads and the connection shifts, the stick may not transfer the feeling. But heck kids need to be entertained and have content presented to them in explosions so that they can just lounge back and take it in? Or, we think that interactive dragging and dropping and pointing and clicking is how they now make those learning connections?

Someone said in a movie recently released only locally: “Yeah, I’m just…here.”

Crack open the skull of your iPad and you’ll see in there a “1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chi”. Yes, that’s right: a system-on-a-chi. Crack open my skull and aside from that marble I shoved up my nose when I was five you’ll find some real stuff. Sure, it might be something that to the average person is just as incomprehensible as the system-on-a-chi, but that’s no matter. It’s apples and oranges, or trees and iPads, take your pick.

C.S.Lewis wrote: “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”

Teacher and technology? One is the pen and one is the paper - make sure you don’t get them confused. As a wise man recently said: “If kids are getting all this technological stuff at home, why don’t we just scrap that in schools and focus on the basics: comprehension of content!” (Not a direct quote, though you can Google it and prove me wrong.) Remember that detached arm: it can give you the finger, but what does that really mean?

In the MacLeans’ September 28th, 2010 issue, the editors wrote under the heading Don’t Give Students More Tools of Mass Distraction: “Students with laptops had lower test results than those without. The reason? They were often not paying attention to their teacher.” I would add that they don’t pay attention to their fellow students as deeply either, and I think it is fair to say that we can learn just as much from each other as we can from the teacher.  

So, at risk of breaking protocol: I’ve just blogged myself out. But I’m also as pumped as ever about teaching, and about employing technology under my terms. (The arm will do as I say.) Let me sign off with this as we move closer to our second practicum: I thrust from my chest a heart-shaped rainbow of light, surf, sand, and the words, “be true to your school now, just like you would to your girl or guy…”

WAIT! Actually, no, I’m not going to sign off with the Beach Boys. I’m going to sign off with my own quote, created in the very real sausage-shaped coils of my brain, said from my real mouth: “I’m not good at improv, so why don’t we just wing it…”

And now to figure out how to erase this all from the Internet… 

On Web Sites & Spiders

Mankato: land of sunny skies and white-sand beaches.

Mankato: where citizens don’t pay taxes and so they can only spend $10 on their Web site.

Me: fool, tricked by Mankato into believing…

Yes, I was fooled. The Web site we were to explore in class turned out to be a joke.  I discovered during this activity how easy it is to NOT see the whole picture. I went to the site and noted in my initial thoughts that it sure was warm in Mankato – seeing, but not connecting the “fact” that Mankato is in Minnesota. I should have been concerned by the anomaly in the weather and instantly contacted one of those guys who sit in front of a slew of computers waiting for doomsday info to act on. But I didn’t. Instead I clicked around a bit and discovered that the page was a fraud – but only after hearing fellow A13s chat about hijacked sites and alternate universes - and even then only after I went to the DISCLAIMER page and read ridiculous statement after ridiculous statement. (Example: 'Don't read this site if you are pregnant'!) I’ll have to be careful in the future when researching essays!

This reminded me of a time when my niece swore up and down that daddy-long-leg spiders were the most poisonous of all spiders. I told her, “No way!” and asked her how she – a mere child – came upon this information. She said, “It’s on Google.” So she searched Google to show me the site. And there, in big bold letters was the heading: “Daddy-Long-Legs: the most poisonous spider?” followed by an article that debunked the myth. I sighed and pointed to the question mark. She shrugged. When I told her to read the article she said, “No thanks.” 

And now I learn that YouTube has replaced Google as the search engine of choice for youth! Pretty soon nieces and nephews all over the world will be declaring that cats can in fact talk because, watch, when they play paddy-cake they also sing the song!

Sigh.

Shake of the head.

But am I any better? What do I really know? Maybe daddy-long-legs are deadly and have simply put up with being stepped on and dangled by their long legs all this time due to good naturedness. Again, what do I really know? Does having access to information through the wonders of technology make me think I know things? Just as the pictures on the Mankato site had me believing global warming had fit a balmy cone over some portion of Minnesota, the web recently brainwashed me for real: for our Math Assignment I was given “Factors & Multiples” as the topic, and in a matter of a few minutes, using the textbook and Google, I went from knowing exactly what a “multiple” was to being certain “multiple” was the same as “multiplication”. Good thing I put all technology aside and actually went with the old fashioned person-to-person encounter and had my brainwashed mind reset. “A proof is a proof,” Chretien once said. “What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven.” That’s the logic Google used on me.

Have you ever...

Have you ever tossed something in the trash, only to realize that you need it? (No, I don’t mean half a hoagie – I mean something important.) You glance around to make sure no one is looking, and then you start rooting. At what point do you give up? I guess that depends on how bad you need whatever it is you’ve lost. Which is why I am here: as I search through millions of bits of garbage for information on my presentation topic, I am inspired to blog instead! (There’s something to be said about those three books in the library that just give the information I need so I can get on with it!)

In yesterday’s class we had a guest speaker who presented on Literacy with ICT. I was quit engaged, more so as he ramped up, left the bicycle analogy out on the road, and got into the nitty-gritty: students and the their use of technology.

The common zinger nowadays is that in terms of technology, the students are smarter than the teachers. This is not true: students may be better users of tech, but they are still in the earlier stages of developing critical and creative thinking that leads to better use of tech.

The presenter noted that once upon a time there were classes in typing and word processing…well, in fact those classes still exist so maybe he was speaking from the not-too-distant-future… but I think the point is that they are indeed very quickly becoming obsolete. It leaves me wondering why children have taken it upon themselves to learn these technologies without the schools help – why be fast typists and pros at point-and-clicking and touch-screen waggling ? Is this a skill/desire just inherent in technology and the generation, or is there an underlying something that we are missing? Is there is something that, were we to discover it, would inspire kids to learn math in the same way – in just the same way they are now inspired to master linking things to Facebook or creating YouTube videos? Wow, what if they just wanted to learn math or science on their own!

The presenter also mentioned sexting. He said that 1 in 4 girls/women aged 15-24 have sent nude images on their phones/emails. Yikes! In MacLean’s December 27, 2010 issue, McLaren quoted a British article that stated “the Internet and text messaging are fuelling a practice which involves unprotected sex with strangers in public parks.” Yikes again! Thank goodness this is only a British problem – it’s cold outside (and when it's not cold, it's slushy). My point: I believe we as future teachers need to really think hard about the importance of certain technologies in the public, grade-school classroom. If in fact most all kids will have these technologies in the years to come, then why not ban them from the classroom? The kids will learn, explore and exploit (inappropriately) these techs on their own time, and we can get back to basic – that is, not teaching grade 5 kids how to do a PowerPoint, but teaching them to read, write and mind their Ps and Qs! Thoughts?

To bring this back to how I started: my sister-in-law’s grandmother lost her wedding ring many years ago. She searched everywhere for it, but eventually went on with life. Some twenty years later her toilet broke. So she called in a plumber, who got down on his knees, exposed the mark of his trade, clanked around a bit, and pulled out of the pipe her wedding ring. (Not the cause of the clog – it wasn’t that big of a diamond – just a lucky coincidence.) When she tells this story, which she does a lot, she always ends with, “It was shinier then when I first got it!” The moral is that though there is a lot of crap out there (I’m talking about on-line information now, not literal crap), it’s this ‘crap’ that makes the good stuff shine. So I return to Google in hopes of finding that elusive presentation material… 

Seeing is Believing

I may be infringing on a camera company’s slogan with that title, but I don’t care: technology is like having access to an invisibility cloak, allowing me to do whatever I want - so long as everyone else also does whatever they want along with me. The Internet is a riot, but it is also like being caught up in a riot

I used the title above – “seeing is believing” - because I’ve been thinking a lot about the spirit of that statement since starting this whole teaching thing. I don’t think of myself as much of a ‘presenter’ of information, and they ‘new style’ of teaching seems to be pushing towards less talky-talky and more dooey-dooey. (That is, get the kids doing hands-on, engaging stuff in all subjects.) In this respect, it would seem it is important that students “see” in order to “believe”. This ties into technology in an important way: when the professor used his cell phone to show the Google map of Canada in regards to the HBC episode, then displayed it on the document reader, I initially thought, Overkill! Yet with seeing is believing in mind, I began to think about this more deeply. I know my basic geography, but when the statement of the Canada/U.S. border was in the video, my brain did not graphically represent it for me. I essentially ignored the information because for me to ‘get it’, I would have had to have sat there and, on my own, squinted my eyes shut real tight, set up the map in my minds-eye, and then etched the lines - but the effort, time, and silly face I’d be making was not worth it to me. So, if the technology had not been available to, in a few seconds, present that image (via IPhone on the document reader, or even just on a browser), I would have bypassed that portion of the lesson if in fact the lesson had been a social studies one, for example. In this case, the lesson was using the technology, but for a middle-years student I can see the abilities inherent in technology aiding how students ‘see’ and ‘believe’ information in their own minds. So the teacher yaps, the kids nod off or daydream (or flick those damn erasers at each other!) and then they leave not having learned anything. (I’ve left university classes after two hours thinking I’ve learned nothing.); or, the teacher supplements the lesson with all sorts of do-dads, images, and interactive activities and the students then can take in ideas and facts in various forms, making their own connections as they go along.

(Note: though I do not yet get royalties, I’d like to push questia.com! It actually is a really good resources for articles for assignments!) 

The User & The Used

Facebook: YOU are the product. (Right? You “pay” for the service by allowing yourself to be marketed to. See good comments from my last post as well as Colby added an interesting link.)…Sooo, last class it was mentioned that technologies at one time were simply things we used for a purpose: we use a pencil to jot down our thoughts, work out a math problem, scratch that unreachable itch, and, if you are in junior high, pick the eraser apart and fling it at people. However, now the line is not so clear. (Thus my bite-of-the-thumb in the general direction of Facebook – see the connection? I'm afraid of what I don't understand.) Is technology using us? I think clearly that technologies like having a Google email account are proof that this is the case sometimes: does Google not ‘read’ my emails and display ads to me based on what I wrote? (Is this true? Do we need to do research for Blog entries? I know I read this somewhere…and what is the difference between this and the telemarketers: having a phone and knowing where I live gives companies a ton of information about me and allows them marketing access.) Now where was I? Modern technologies may in fact use us as much as we use them.  This makes me think of addictions, and how people will often say that addiction begins when the ‘drug’ in question starts controlling you, and not the other way around. The user becomes used…which is a good transition into the boy from the video we watched who played nothing but video games – something like 6 hours a night and all day on weekends!!! (I only partly use three exclamation marks because it’s video games he is using; if he was doing nothing but reading books – another technology that can use the user (yes, I mean you person who wrote The Secret) – I think I would be somewhat concerned and triple-exclaim my shock at that too.) I'll end my post here: the microwave just beeped and told me my entire four course meal is done: it only took 3 minutes whereas a similar - though tastier - meal would have taken an hour without the technology...but at least the microwave frees up more time for me to watch tv shows with commercials that sell me real Italian "microwavable" cuisines to free up my time!

First Impressions...

My first impressions…the “Opening Speech” video on the first class made me think of my own experience joining Facebook for the A13 group – very awkward, lots of discomfort, and a desire to leap into the screen and just be done with it. In essence, I felt like I was ‘fighting’ the technology as all I wanted was to be a part of the A13 information channel to keep up to date with my classmates and before I new it family members and old acquaintances were adding me as friends. (A little advice: Being on your 16-year-old niece’s Facebook is not in any way a good thing.) Ultimately it has worked out and I’ve made my peace with the what one friend calls, “OMG like the BEST thingy ever!”