Timothy King – Page 15 – Mechanical Sympathy

Failing Forward

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. – C.S. Lewis

Four years ago I decided to show what we know in the information technology focused computer engineering course I teach at Centre Wellington DHS. The Skills Canada I.T. and Networking Administration contest seemed custom tailored to do that for us. That first year we took two competitors down to Guelph and finished second and third to an urban(e) high school in the regional competition. We took what we learned from that first round and applied again the next year, this time winning our way through to the provincial competition for the first time. Had we not known the competition by failing at it the first time, we never would never have been able to re-orientate ourselves and get out of the regional battle.

That first student we sent to provincials was a polymath, gifted at pretty much everything, but once again we were unprepared and we ended up finishing fourth overall. Like mechanics and other stochastic skills, I.T. is experiential. You can be the sharpest person in the room, but the more experienced technician will usually figure it out first because the problems aren’t always obvious and linear; instinct based on experience plays a surprisingly large part in analyzing problems. Still, fourth in the province wasn’t bad for our second go at it. Our competitor came back and debriefed on the provincial competition just as our previous students had with the regional competition.

Our third go at it had two competitors having to face off challengers regionally. They finished 1-2 and we were off to provincials again. Our second run at the big competition showed just how much the scope of the competition could change year to year. We once again finished in the top ten, but didn’t medal. As before, our competitor came back and did a thorough debrief, helping the next candidate (the one who’d finished second regionally) get ready in more detail than ever before. The old adage goes: I was able to reach so high because I stood on the backs of giants. In our case this is completely true. Had those previous students not leapt into the breach and shown us the way, we would never have seen the steady improvement that we did.

We just got back from provincial competition once again. We gold medalled in I.T. and then finished top three in all technology competitions combined – meaning we didn’t just beat other competitors, we also got a near perfect score in the process. The first thing Zach, our gold medalist, did when he found out he won was shout out to the people who came before him, thanking them for the doing all that dangerous reconnaissance blind.

We’re off to Moncton next month to compete in Skills Canada at the national level. Ontario’s is the biggest provincial skills program with the toughest competition, and we scored highly, but it’s our first time nationally. I didn’t consider changing our approach. Our goal is to go there and learn. Zach has benefited from the failures of previous students, and now it’s his turn to go first and pave the way.

Can a small town school compete against massive, urban
school boards? Yes, yes we can.

At first glance it might look like those previous students failed, but they didn’t, they were part of something bigger than themselves that has succeeded. I know some people look at competitions like Skills Canada and wring their hands over how harsh it is on tender adolescent egos, but our failures made us better and our approach meant we were resilient in the face of those failures. Even when we were sending different individuals year on year there was a team feeling as new competitors read over the notes, advice and encouragement of now long graduated students (all of whom are enjoying post-secondary computer focused success). In many cases current competitors connected with grads through social media in order to further develop this mentorship.

The education system has focused relentlessly on student success. A big part of that push is to mitigate failure wherever possible. When failure is removed from learning you can’t develop nonlinear, experiential skill-sets or take risks on new challenges because those things in particular demand failure in order to learn. You also can’t learn to fail forward or consider your learning to be a part of something larger than yourself. No fail learning is remarkably selfish on a number of levels, damaging not only a student’s ability to learn stochastic skills, but also weakening their resiliency, resolve and humility before a task.

The concept of no-fail learning is very academic in origin, no real-world learning process would consider such an approach viable. It’s unfortunately ironic that one of my best teaching experiences and a unique learning opportunity for many students has to happen outside of the classroom, where the many benefits of failure are still allowed to happen.

A couple of years ago I realized were were on a multi-year trajectory, so I started putting up posters in the classroom for each competitor so that new students would realize they are part of a dynasty!

Our school mascot is a falcon… geddit? For the less sports focused among us, a predatory bird doesn’t really jive with what we’re doing.

what’s in your digital toolbox?

Originally published on Dusty World, March, 2014.

This week we’re off to the On The Rise elearning Ontario conference in Mississauga.

I’m presenting Tuesday on how to avoid the pitfalls of a single online learning environment by building a diverse online digital learning ecosystem.

I’m aiming to outline what I’ve used and how in the classroom, then I’m hoping we can crowdsource what other people have used and create a wiki of current, useful digital learning tools with explanations written by the teachers who have made them work.

Here’s the PREZI of the presentation:

What’s In Your eteacher Digital Toolbox? Prezi of the presentation.
The crowdsourced links to diverse digital tools that our presentation assembled for your enjoyment…

Motorcycle Handling & Chassis Design

Tony Foale’s brilliant engineering manual, Motorcycle Handling & Chassis Design, gives you an inside, technical look at how motorbikes operate. It also gives you some idea of just how precarious the act of piloting a motorcycle is. Much is said about how free people feel when riding and the physics behind flying on two wheels makes it that much more magical.

That first time you roll on the throttle and your feet leave the ground not to come back down again for miles, you get that sensation of flight. Your senses are alive on a motorbike as the world makes itself felt in many different ways.

The naked exposure you feel when riding is obvious. What is less obvious are the hidden forces at work that allow you to do crazy things like hang sideways while cornering.

Anyone who has seen a racing motorcycle suddenly hit the ground can speak to how suddenly these balancing forces can fall out of sync. Foale’s book is full of helpful diagrams that clarify some pretty arcane physics.

Cornering on a bike is one of the most complex and misunderstood aspects of riding. Keith Code does a good job of explaining this in Twist of the Wrist. Foale’s approach is more interested in the mechanics of the machine and how it handles the forces working on it.

From a rider’s perspective, corning is a balancing act, but from the suspension’s perspective things get a lot heavier when you’re bending into a corner.

Compared to a car, motorcycles have very different dynamics that often surprise riders when they are testing the extremes of two wheeled dynamics. Reading Foale’s book (though he pitches pretty hard) is worth it even if you’re only getting a sense of just how differently the ‘integrated system’ that is a motorcycle works.

Foale also gets into the geometry of the motorcycle. From wheelbase and centre of gravity to more complex issues like how suspension height changes those fundamental forces. Of course, in a corner a the suspension is severely compressed, changing the bike’s responses in dramatic ways. You get a real sense of how connected and complicated the physics of riding is after reading this book.

The copy I read was the 2002 version, but he still managed to work some of the newer computer based analysis of motorcycle physics. Static pressure and its role on aerodynamics is a relatively new aspect of motorcycle theory, but Foale covers it.

You can find the latest version of this technical manual online from Foale’s website, but you can get a good idea of what it’s all about from Google Books. I’m curious enough about changes and updates that I think I’m going to spring for the new PDF ebook.

Expensive Aerodynamic Games

Those people paid to watch very highly paid drivers parade
around lap after lap and throw fits if anyone upsets the tedium.

I just watched the Spanish Formula One Grand Prix. I used to be a huge Schumie fan and watched F1 religiously, but I’ve wandered away since I starting two wheeling. It was an historic race with Max Verstappen being the first Dutch driver and youngest ever driver to win a GP race, but it was tedious. Sky Sports’ announcers tried to rev it up with one of the few attempted passes, which was then followed up by Sebastien Vettel complaining about an attempted pass. Daniel Ricardo, the driver who attempted the pass said after the race, “I know no one tries to pass any more in Formula One, but I did, and it didn’t work.”

When you’re working the air around a car that hard,you make
a lot of turbulence, which makes it hard to pass. If you clip
another car with wings on it like this, you’ve probably just
done a million dollars in carbon fibre damage. No wonder
they all drive around worried at being passed.

Having not seen a grand prix in a few years, I was surprised at how complex the wings have become. The new normal isn’t a front chin wing and a rear spoiler, it’s layers upon layers of carbon fibre. Thanks to complex 3d modelling the wings now consider wind flowing over them in all dimensions, so the wings have become these origami type pieces of industrial art. You can only imagine what it costs when one gets clipped by a wheel.

The upside of all this aerodynamic black magic are cars that can corner like they’re on rails because they have tons of carefully managed air pushing them into the pavement. The downside is all that down-force creates huge turbulence, making passing next to impossible. MotoGP doesn’t produce passing stats, but based on any criteria I can imagine passing is orders of magnitude greater in MotoGP.

MotoGP has played with aerodynamics before, but because motorcycles change their angle of attack (they lean) when they corner, it isn’t a relatively static shape that is always facing the oncoming wind blast. As a result the benefits of consistent down-force while cornering aren’t there for motorbike wings, but that isn’t stopping MotoGP from pushing deep into it this season.

The vestigial wings on MotoGP bikes don’t do much to glue the bike to the ground in corners (the main purpose of F1 wings), but they do provide some stability while under acceleration (keeping the front wheel from rising). Turning a wing sideways makes it fairly useless, so acceleration is the only place it’s facing the wind properly. Even with these modest wings, riders are complaining that the amount of turbulence coming off machines has increased, making passing more difficult. Between that and worries about wings clipping people in an off, there are obvious dynamic concerns around winglets.

Another problem with aerodynamics is that they’re incredibly expensive. You can only go so far with computer simulations before you wind up in a wind tunnel testing your designs, and wind tunnels aren’t cheap. Developing aerodynamics mean many models and constant refinement. That the end results aren’t that significant begs the question: why do it?

What I’d like to see is MotoGP ban wings. The aerodynamic costs limit other manufacturers from considering entering the fray. A strong multi-manufacturer competition is a big part of MotoGP’s success. That they create turbulence that makes following bikes unstable at speed and reduce chances of passing is another strike against them. The aesthetic argument that they turn the simplistically elegant racing motorbike into a warty toad also rings true; winglets aren’t pretty.

I love the high tech nature of Formula1, but aerodynamics have made the cars fantastically expensive with no real benefit beyond the race track. Improvements to engines, transmissions and safety have a clear connection to the evolution of automobiles in general, but massive wings and tons of down force don’t. Watching a film like Rush reminds me of a time when drivers drove. Today’s races are more like a Moon shot, and the drivers astronauts. In the last race Hamilton couldn’t compete because he couldn’t get his car to reboot, and Vettel is probably still upset that his carbon fibre wings might have been touched. If I wanted to watch people who can’t work computers I’d go to work, I hardly want to watch it in an F1 race. If I wanted to watch people worried about how perfect their cars looked, I’d go to a concour d’elegance.

A Formula 1 with physically smaller cars and reasonable down-force limits could still explore the technical boundaries of driving on four wheels while encouraging something that looks less like a parade lap and more like racing. Without the wings dripping off them and huge turbulence, passing could become a part of an F1 race again, perhaps so much so that drivers don’t complain about a single attempted pass. If F1 wanted to explore a more functional aspect of aerodynamics they should limit the massive wings but allow small, adaptive aerodynamics. That’s something that would once again be relevant to the evolution of the automobile.

I can only hope MotoGP doesn’t follow F1 down this evolutionary dead end of aerodynamic inflation. A bike festooned with wings wouldn’t just be ugly, it would be irrelevant.

Can you imagine if the wings knocked each other, or got locked together? I like my bike racing frenetic, fast and side by side.

Four abreast heading into the first corner? The beginning of another frantic pass-fest in MotoGP.

F1 overtaking stats

Dr Who on 2 Wheels

Being an English immigrant to Canada in the ’70s, I’ve brought my childhood Dr. Who fandom with me. Last year Triumph made a surprise appearance in “Bells of St John” episode of Doctor Who meaning I could geek out while enjoying my cool new hobby too.

Here are some screen shots from Bells, and then a video in which Jenna says after shooting, “I wanna bike, I wanna motorbike!” Very cool.

Apparently Jenna wasn’t kidding about wanting a motorbike as she is the one riding in Day of The Doctor, the 50th anniversary special that came out this fall. Here are some screen shots from that one:

She’s on the bike this time. I couldn’t find anything online about whether or not she’s gotten into biking or not. I guess I’ll have to wait until she’s on Top Gear, they’ll get it out of her!

There has been a lot of talk about this in the UK press:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/doctor-whos-3d-50th-anniversary-special-will-be-like-the-bourne-identity-with-motorcycles-8538617.html?action=gallery&ino=1

http://www.justjaredjr.com/2012/10/18/jenna-louise-coleman-motorcycle-ride-with-matt-smith/

http://www.mtv.co.uk/news/doctor-who/376568-doctor-who-motorbike-picture-matt-smith-jenna-louise-coleman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/doctorwhosevenb/jenna-louise-coleman.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2218527/Matt-Smith-shatters-Tardis-illusion-rides-open-doors-Doctor-Who-shoot.html

http://www.motorbiketimes.com/news/people/celebrity/dr-who-stars-pictured-riding-down-the-shard-on-triumph-scrambler-$21382079.htm

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/mcn/news/newsresults/general-news/2012/december/dec2412-ten-best-doctor-who-connections/

Jenna’s Tumbler also has some great images:

That Moment When You Realize The Difference Between Road Tires & Multi-purpose Tires

I went out for a blast on Saturday of the long weekend. It wasn’t a long ride, just up and down the few windy roads near where I live that follow the Grand River before heading home for an oil change.

The Tiger was frisky and I was enjoying exploring its limits. After a run up and down the north shore I crossed the river on a road I don’t usually take. Coming up the south river bank hill, I think I’m still a few hundred yards from the stop sign when I finally pick it out of the growth on the side of the road and realize it’s only about forty yards ahead of me; I’m doing 80km/hr and the Tiger doesn’t stop that quickly from 80km/hr.

Ahead on the right you can see the stop sign, but this spring it’s in long grass and the trees have filled out around it.

Between smaller tires in general and a curved profile to
manage cornering on half as many contact patches,
motorcycle tires do an amazingly good job.

Motorcycle tires do an astonishing job of gripping the pavement with barely any contact patch. I’ve had to dig deep into braking at various times and have always come away surprised at how well they grip with so little contact to the pavement. Of course, I’ve only ever ridden road bikes with road biased tires until this spring (the KLX doesn’t count, I barely road it and besides, those big, knobby tires slapping on the pavement were a constant reminder that it wasn’t a road bike).

Finding myself astride an athletic Tiger coming in too hot to a stop sign with through traffic doing the better part of 100km/hr had me realizing I’m in a bit of bother. You can feel remarkably naked on a motorcycle in that moment. If I can’t stop in time I’ll end up in the intersection, possibly side swiped by a two ton box.

As the adrenaline begins to course through me I’m happy to note that my right foot is already deep into the rear brake and my right hand is squeezing the front brake hard. Meanwhile my clutch hand has me in neutral already. The rear has locked up and is snaking about back there. I’ve never had a rear lock up that quickly before. The bike is shedding heaps of momentum but I’m not going to stop in time. I go deeper into the front brake where all the bike’s weight is concentrated and it starts to skittle as it too locks up. You can slide down the street in a car all day, but staying vertical on a bike with two locked wheels seldom happens. All of this is flashing through my mind while my body is doing its own thing, I’m not consciously doing anything at this point. My foot remains locked on the rear brake, but to my surprise my hand immediately eases off and reapplies brake over and over whenever the front starts to wobble; I didn’t know it would do that. Even with all that adrenaline I’m happy to learn that I didn’t freeze up or lock up and drop the bike; I’m glad I have smart hands and feet. Maybe all that reading about motorcycle dynamics has paid off.

The big Tiger is crouched down on its long front suspension, trying to shed all that forward momentum into the ground. I would have stopped already on the Ninja with its sticky Avon road tires and hard suspension, but this isn’t a purpose built road bike with pavement biased tires, it’s a tall trail bike with multipurpose tires – tires that are evidently very easy to lock up, though I didn’t know that until now.

I’ve shed the majority of my velocity but I’m still not going to stop in time. Things have slowed enough, and my hands and feet seem to know what they’re doing without me telling them, so I glance up and down the road as I near the intersection; it’s all clear in both directions. I immediately release the brakes and roll over the painted white line marking where to stop – impending lock up on that wouldn’t have gone well. I glide through the intersection, release the clutch and continue down the country road in front of me in too high a gear.

“Get your head on straight!” I say to myself as I gear down and move off down the road. You don’t miss stop signs until it’s too late on a motorcycle, especially when you’re going to be entering a through way with high speed traffic. Getting t-boned in a car there would probably have been fatal, getting t-boned on a bike would have been a certainty.

There are two take aways from this little incident. Firstly, pay better attention and approach unfamiliar, overgrown intersections in a more circumspect manner. The Tiger’s big triple gets you going quickly so easily that it’s easy to forget how fast you’re moving – keep that in mind too. Secondly, those Metzelers may feel fantastic on gravel and loose dirt (and they do, the bike is astonishingly stable), but they aren’t grippy like road tires and they’ll lock up early on you in an emergency.

I was remarkably calm afterwards and enjoyed the rest of the ride. Even during the emergency braking and immediately after I didn’t get the shakes or anything like that. This turned into a good learning opportunity about a few key items. I now know how I handle emergency braking (better than I could have hoped), and I’ve learned the dynamic limitations of multipurpose tires, all with no penalty.

If it happens again I might give myself a smack in the head, but it won’t.

A picture perfect day for a ride along the Grand River…

Back home and all cleaned up – that engine will get you going faster than you think you are, and the bike’s athleticism will encourage you to push it, but those tires aren’t up to 10/10ths road riding, so keep that in mind ya big git.

Saturday Morning

I’ve been fighting a cold all week and haven’t been out on two wheels since the rally. On top of that and with the build up to school I’ve been putting together a computer lab all day every day. Teaching is a good gig, but there are no down days once it starts and the change in pace from summer to fall is a big step. Going from off to 100% all the time takes a good clutch.

I woke up Saturday morning to crisp 10°C air and a flawless blue sky. For the first time in days I hadn’t woken up with a crushing sinus headache so I did the one thing that always makes me happy even when not feeling that well and stressing over work (teaching anxiety dreams are always a good time), I went for a ride.

The hills of Erin, just outside of Hillsburgh

Max wasn’t up yet or I would have asked my trusty pillion to come along. I threw a single pannier on the Tiger and disappeared into the morning mist. The temperature was cool, but I like it like that. No wind, empty roads and a happy Tiger.

The ride over to Belfountain took me through Erin and Cataract and onto the Niagara Escarpment, where the roads get bendy. It isn’t much, but it got me loosened up for the post-coffee ride.

I pulled in to Higher Ground Coffee Co on a Saturday of the Labour Day long weekend at about 8:30 in the morning. In a couple of hours this place would be a hive of activity, but now it had a couple of early risers drinking a hot beverage and quietly reading; it was mercifully empty of loud talking spandexies going on about how hard what they just did was.

After a hot cup of very well made coffee that warmed me up and getting the Holtom’s bakery order from the family just waking up back in Elora, I got back on the Tiger and went for a philosophical ride up and down The Forks of the Credit. It’s only 7kms of bendy elevation changes, but beggars can’t be choosy in Southern Ontario.

Sometimes I feel like really attacking the corners, but this quiet Saturday morning I was in a contemplative mood and was going for smoothness. Strangely, this made me faster than when attacking. There is a real sense of Zen when you sort out corners properly on a motorbike.

Back in Belfountain I turned off the video on the phone and headed over to Erin. Holtom’s was in full swing, having opened half an hour before. The lone pannier was filled with fresh bread and bakery treats and I rode back to Elora, feeling at one with the world.

I didn’t have any fancy media devices with me, only my phone, so I hung it over the windshield and got this!

Tough Durable Tech

Tough tech!

This is one of my favorite bits of digital technology: A Casio Pathfinder wrist watch. What’s so cool about a watch you ask? They’re SOOO 20th Century!

Well this one is also an altimeter, barometer, compass and thermometer. It’s also a stop watch, alarm clock and just plain old watch.

But none of that is what makes it cool.

What makes this piece of tech one of my favorites is that it isn’t tethered to anything; it’s one of the few pieces of digital technology that I own that is entirely self-contained, and that’s somewhere that I want all my hardware to go.

This watch is fantastically accurate, but what makes it even better is that it picks up a signal and keeps itself atomically accurate. It’s a watch that never has to be set.

It’s also a watch that never has to be wound or have the battery replaced. The face is also a solar panel that recovers enough charge out of even a well lit room to recharge itself.

On top of all that, it’s virtually indestructible. It’s encased in a rugged body that can withstand a car driving over it, it’s freeze proof to well below zero, waterproof to diving depths and probably bullet proof as well.

Fragile energy vampire!

What I’ve got here is a tough, self-reliant piece of technology that always works no matter where I am. When I look at my choices for computers, tablets or even smartphones, I’m looking at fragile, energy vampires that are lucky to work a day in regular use without the need to draw from a socket.

Faster is nice, but I’m also looking for tough and self contained. Until I can lay in the bath with my e-reader or turn to my phone without seeing red low battery warning lights, the digital tech isn’t nearly as tough and self contained as I need it to be.

The edtech question to ask is should we be putting fragile tech into the slippery hands of teens and children? The repair/replacement rate of these fragile little digital flowers are going to be much higher than they are in the steadier hands of adults.

Until digital tech is as tough as the analog it’s replacing, it’s an edgy proposition to push it as the main focus in instructional tools.

In the meantime, Casio keeps evolving the tough tech. Soon enough I’ll have a watch PC that will communicate wirelessly with peripherals and power itself (hope hope).

Casio is also heading into something other than watches! If there’s a phone, perhaps a gshock tablet can’t be far behind! That’d take on those slippery student fingers, and look tough while doing it!

3d modelling for everyone!

Unboxing the Structure Sensor

This week, thanks to our forward thinking student council, we received a Structure 3d scanner. Unboxing created a lot of curiosity. In about five minutes we had the sensor mounted on the front of our ipad mini and we were off to the races.

3d modelling is a tricky business. It typically takes a fairly comprehensive knowledge of software to get yourself a decent 3d model. Thanks to the Structure sensor, anyone with an ipad (grade 3 and up?) could quickly and easily create a 3d model of pretty much anything they can walk around.

It takes a bit of practice, but once you see how the laser sensor paints the object (it looks like it’s covering it with clay on the ipad display), you get the hang of it and you’re producing remarkably accurate 3d models.

In about 15 minutes I had it figured out and took a detailed model of my partially dismantled Kawasaki Concours in the garage.

Our principal!

The files are obj format – an open source format that a lot of software can easily read. I’ve found that sketchfab.com is a handy way to share the models and offers a fair bit of customization in how the models present as well.

At school we’ve had a good time making busts, while at home I’ve tried modelling complex mechanical items.

I’ve been using Obj Viewer to see the 3d models on the desktop (they’re all saved as model.obj, so very quickly you’ll find yourself buried in model.obj files not knowing which one is which). I quickly got into the habit of renaming them as I opened them.

As an avenue into more complex 3d modelling software (like Blender, which imports obj files with no problems), the Structure scanner is a great starting point. You can quickly create 3d models and then clean them up or embellish them in something like Blender (also an open source, astonishingly good piece of freeware).

You can view your model once you’ve painted it on the ipad screen (the pictures here are screen captures from the ipad). If you like the model you can email the obj file. The largest (an attempt at scanning our computer lab) was about 4 megabytes. A smaller object, like a head, is usually under two.

Hammer Model by tking on Sketchfab

Being able to quickly and easily model 3d objects offers all sorts of interesting educational opportunities. Because you’re accurately measuring volume, the immediate uses as a measuring tool in mathematics and the sciences are obvious. Using this scanner you could quickly and accurately measure the growth by volume of a very complex shape like a plant. If you’re creating clothing, you would be able to scan your prototype and then see what it looks like in a wide variety of textures from all angles. As a prototyping and measurement tool, the Structure Scanner takes some beating.

Our focus is on creating 3d models for our software engineering project. 3d models are often too perfect, looking rather plastic. The Structure sensor is going to allow us to model clothing and other complex textures and organic shapes much more realistically and quickly.

At less than the price of a game console, this little sensor opens up what used to be the inaccessible world of 3d modelling to everyone.

Cultivating Genius & the Zen Teacher

A recent issue of WIRED has an article on student directed learning called: The Next Steve Jobs, which asks some hard questions about teaching and learning during an information revolution.

The idea of regimented learning in rows in classrooms is so obviously indicative of 19th Century factory thinking that it begs for change, but many traditional education organizations have so much invested in the status quo that they will spend all our time and money hammering people into system-serving standardized thinking. Instead of developing the skills vital for learning in an information revolution, we cling to politics and habits. Nowhere was this more obvious than in a poor Mexican school that wasn’t serving a genius in their mix.

You have to wonder how many of our students are marginalized and never see their own potential because we are wringing our hands about how not-average they are and how they don’t respond appropriately to being indoctrinated by an archaic education system.

The article leans on technology, brain science and student centred and directed learning to bring out real genius in a student who was otherwise disengaged. The brain research is fairly straightforward (though ignored by most education systems):

“The bottom line is, if you’re not the one who’s controlling your learning, you’re not going to learn as well,” says lead researcher Joel Voss, now a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.

Neuroscience has proven this again and again, but education stubbornly holds to an information limited, rigidly programmed learning system because these traditions support the political makeup of that education system.

“If you put a computer in front of children and remove all other adult restrictions, they will self-organize around it,” Mitra says, “like bees around a flower.”

Mitra’s research still assumes a teaching presence that will bump students along when they run into repetitive habitual patterns. The key is a good leading question and then that dogged support as students find their own way to an answer. The urge to interfere in this process in order to make learning clinical and exact is great, and many teachers do this with the best possible intentions, but what they are actually doing is taking away the student’s opportunity to internalize learning.

Learning is a messy process, at its best teaching is a subtle presence focused on producing a fecund environment for fearless experimentation and research. An idea is only learned when it is internalized by the learner and that can only happen experientially. Any time you see a teacher talking at students there isn’t any learning happening.

Faith in the self direction of a learner is something we’ve tried to remove from every aspect of the education system. The system becomes the intent rather than the learner’s learning. Words like curriculum, assessment and standardized data become watchwords for how effective the system is as a system, it all has nothing to do with learning.

Many of the fads we embrace in education around self-directed learning are little more than smoke and mirrors – the appearance of self-direction in order to fool the student into engagement with otherwise rigid systemic need. This is exactly why a genius in a poor Mexican school couldn’t engage enough to show her talents until her teacher threw away the paradigm.