Category: Mechanical Sympathy

The website of T. King, technologist philosopher

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Post Election Rants (best of facebook)

10:12am, May 6: ‎61.4% voter turnout. Positive tax returns should be automatically applied to the national debt if voters can’t bother to do this simple thing.
11:15am, May 6: Wow, the conservatives even won our student vote. The future’s so bright, I’ve got to start building a post apocalyptic shelter!
Responses:
… the mob that elects politicians is only interested in their own affairs, they are incapable of looking at the greater good. We’re at the pinnacle of mob run society (call it democracy if you want to). In a thousand years, assuming there is anyone around to write about it, democratic capitalism will be described as the engine that (hopefully almost) destroyed human civilization.
Any society based on self interest and greed is doomed, it’s just a matter of time.
Nature never rewards mindless voracity, it seeks balance.
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In response to “it’s better than if the NDP or Libs won it”
Go for a walking tour of Northern Alberta, you might think differently. Ask anyone one internationally connected how Canada’s reputation has dropped, especially over environmental misdirection.

Somehow, in the past 24 hours, 24% of Canadians have implicitly endorsed Parliamentary contempt. Perhaps we should just chuck the system entirely, if the ruling party ignores it, and the opposition parties are worse… Canadian democracy’s a sham!

Ive got to stop reading factual, science based books on climate change (http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?b%3F9078791267844400000). No one else will care until it’s too late, they all want cheap gas and business as usual. Our business as usual is making slaves of our grand children. We’re not even intent on trying to find a way out, the majority just want things to stay the same.

Any aliens monitoring facebook? I”m ready to go back to the mothership!

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May 3rd, 10:53pm: After another epic failure of the first past the post system in representing actual voter interest, think we have any chance of seeing a fair and representative system with King Stephen? I wouldn’t hold your breath. Can’t wait to see the voter turnout next time around. We’ve got to have one of the only democratic systems that actually encourages voter apathy.
More Responses (to it’s pretty much business as usual with a stable government, so why worry):

One in four people just voted for parliamentary contempt. In one riding a complete turd burger who openly lied to everyone got re-elected (nice one Oda). One in four Canadians have open contempt for our governmental system and support a party that does too (and now has a majority). If our democracy’s based on parliament, then it’s a sham.

Canada won’t become a dictatorship, but it will continue to be a shifty, lying international presence that says one thing, does another and makes slaves of future generations in the process.

Oh, and more than one in three Canadians couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. It’s not really a democracy, is it? It’s more like gangs of roving political interest groups in-fighting and self aggrandizing themselves (I say that about all of the parties).
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Random Inquiry Based Learning

Inquiry based learning is the current buzz in educational circles, but until we truly free students from the yoke of expectation, they can never be free to own their own learning.  In order to recognize the entirely arbitrary and capricious nature of the world, we take a page from Zen.

The RIBL classroom

Inquiry based learning depends upon the teacher to create an environment in which students pursue their own goals in their own way, Random Inquiry Based Learning (RIBL) takes it a step further.   In order to experience RIBL, a student must be surprised by the learning.  Taking a page from Zen teaching, RIBL thrives on coincidence, serendipity and happenstance.  Any attempt to organize RIBL results in a RIBL-less outcome.

RIBL cares nothing for fairness or rules.  RIBL capers in the chaos of a dancing star. 

In a RIBLed classroom the teacher must take on the roll of instigator, chaos clown and mischief maker, unless of course students are expecting that; only the unexpected can yield RIBLed results.  RIBL thrives in the unexpected.

The RIBL teacher recognizes that life is essentially meaningless and doesn’t force a false sense of security on their students.  They discourage any belief in social norms and try for existential angst whenever they can.

RIBLed rubrics contain sections like: shock, awe, bewilderment and eureka.  If the learning is unexpected and creating an epiphany in the learner, then RIBL has been achieved.  If a student learns what they are supposed to be learning, the teacher has failed.  Only when students discover momentous breakthroughs in calculus while studying Shakespeare, or suddenly grasp photo-synthesis in phys-ed class, is RIBL being achieved.

RIBLed students are often nervous or completely terrified of what may happen in class.  They often cower in groups in the hallway, refusing to make eye contact with their terrifying, unpredictable teachers.  Many high schools seem to have adopted RIBL approaches to learning already.

There is only one rule about RIBL, you do not talk about RIBL!  (unless you unexpectedly do)

RIBL defies optimization or organization, in fact, it actively dismantles them.  The RIBL that can be explained is not the true RIBL.  Only through lack of certainty can students truly exceed their own expectations and learn something new about themselves.

Beware staring into RIBL, for 
the longer you stare in to RIBL, 
the longer RIBL stares back into you!

Graduates of RIBL schooling include: Vinny VanGogh, Freddy Nietzsche, Gini Wolfe and Bertie Einstein.  Students of the RIBL school produce unpredictable results, and surprise their teachers with amputated body parts or dramatic suicide attempts.  Collateral damage is a certainty if you’re RIBLing properly, but if you’re a committed RIBLer you gain more from failing than you do from succeeding.  Safety is another false belief that the RIBLer discards.

A student who produces work that annoys or seems irrelevant to the work at hand is a strong candidate for a good RIBLing.

Engagement is never an issue in the RIBLed classroom as RIBLed students are often in great peril and tend to approach classwork in a defensive/survival stance rather than with sighs of boredom.

RIBLing is the most divine form of teaching, it’s what the world does when class isn’t on.

 
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Death of Vision

I was listening to CBC radio the other day and Ideas had a review of the repatriation of the Canadian Charter.  One of the people pondering the politics of the day noted that modern politicians don’t stand for anything.  They remorselessly chase poll numbers, trying to place themselves in front of whatever the herd currently believes is worthwhile (itself dictated by big media interests).  McGuinty’s shameless chasing of right wing votes while throwing teachers under the bus this summer is a fine example of that approach.

Don’t look for moral standards, or even any kind of consistency in modern politicians.  As the radio interviewer suggested, we look back on our political leaders as giants and see the modern ones as dwarfs.  The old ones would push for a vision based on belief, even if it wasn’t always rational.  The current ones shamelessly chase data in hopes of power.  It makes the business of politics very economical (and I don’t mean that in a flattering way).

CTV is quite excited by this as ads for their Powerplay political commentary show declare, they are all about watching how politicians get and keep power.  I thought politics were about developing visionary leaders who take Canada toward a better version of itself.  It’s now all about holding power, and not standing for anything in the process other than a Machiavellian quest for control.

Last summer I was once again listening to CBC, this time Matt Galloway interviewing the CEO of RIM.  As the agonizing interview went on, it became clear that this MBA wasn’t put in charge of RIM to lead it, but rather to manage it into successful insolvency.  He shrugged off a question about RIM failing by simply suggesting that investors will make money on the deal because he’ll just cut the business into pieces and sell them off.

Can you imagine if Churchill had suggested that?  Instead of we will fight in the fields, we will never surrender, how about we give you Scotland and Wales and call it even?  Everybody ends up happy, and so much more productive.

We value leaders because they stand for something, and never back off it, even (or especially) if it makes them difficult.  Wired did a recent article on Steve Jobs as either angel or demon.  The man was difficult, almost impossible to work with, and the result was market dominance.  He took over from a bumbling committee of MBAs who had discussed Apple into insolvency and took the company from the brink of destruction to an enviable market position before his death.  I have difficulty liking Apple products due to their closed nature and proprietary design, but I have to appreciate the power of a Steve Jobs.  If you want to be a visionary you aren’t looking for consensus, you’re driving for the best vision even if it seems unattainable; Churchill would have approved.

It’s a pity that RIM went to the MBA pool to find another finance monkey to further run the company into the ground.  I’d much rather see a visionary, a true believer, attempt greatness rather than a controlled slide into insolvency all to benefit the moneyed class.  This German jackass they’ve hired couldn’t give a damn what will happen to Waterloo and the many RIM facilities that communities depend on around the world if he manages to successfully dissolve Research In Motion into the highest bidders.

John Ralston Saul talks about the death of leadership and the rise of management in his The Collapse of Globalism.  Using false economics (there is no other kind), Saul cuts apart the chop logic of globalism and how it is used to manage people into a massive mono-culture with no way out.  Globalism comes complete with a data driven wrapper that is self justifying, and that desire to base leadership action on data driven decisions has been conditioned into us for decades now as the only credible justification for planning; it’s scientific, logical!

In an age of computing it serves our current mindset to over value the potential of computed statistics

The MBA manager/priest uses incomplete/fictional statistics (are there any other kind?) to manipulate belief, founding all decisions on the inherently logical and statistically valid benefits of globalization, all while ignoring simple truths.  Those truths don’t go away.  When you found your system on  the idea of an unlimited, limited resource (cheap oil) the truth will make itself evident.  The problem with globalism (and the politics, media, and education it has infected) is that we have all been conditioned to swallow statistics like they are Truth.

The last half century of post-modernism, globalism and mass media have weaned us from visionaries and simple truths.  These things are now aberration s rather than a cause for celebration; panicky by-products of a lack of control in an era of false computational certainty.

I am NOT a committee!

Next time your data-driven boss/principal/MP tries to base future plans on data that are obviously minimalist,  fictional and/or fabricated (and what facts born of data aren’t?), ask yourself where our sense of vision went.

I don’t want to base my very important job on data.  I’m not interested in grossly simplifying teaching to suit ease of management for MBAs looking for efficiency.  What I’d like is a leader with vision, maybe even someone who asks for the impossible and leads us on a charge into it.  Even a near miss in that case is better than the best laid plans of a data driven committee, and sometimes the results are revolutionary.  Even the failures are more helpful than statistically supported fictions leading to more data that prove how right everything is; simplifications supporting simplifications.

I’d rather take the road less traveled and risk failure while attempting greatness.  I’d rather fail trying to address hard truths than present false successes best seen in standardized test scores.  Most importantly, I’d rather believe in what I’m doing rather than being told what to think by a spreadsheet.

I guess I’m a man out of my time.

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Shop Class as Soulcraft

 

Originally published on Dusty World in way back in August of 2012: https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/shop-class-as-soulcraft.html

It might sound very tech-specific, but this book contains many education related thoughts.  Here are some of my favorite bits from Shop Class As Soulcraft, along with some observations in blue:

In schools we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement… Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant,  and the passions for learning will not be engaged – Doug Stowe (Wisdom of the hands Blog)

“We have a generation of students that can answer questions on standardized tests, know factoids, but they can’t do anything” – Jim Aschwanden
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I never failed to take pleasure in the movement, at the end of a job, when I would flip the switch. “And there would be light.”
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I too feel this whenever I finish building a computer.  I call it ‘first light’ (a term I stole from astronomy for when a telescope is first turned  to the sky and used).  I get a thrill every time, when all of those complex components work together for the first time, and attain a kind of dim intelligence.  If AI ever happens, I would happily propogate it, it feels like birth!
 

Boasting is what a boy does, because he has no real effect on the world.  But the tradesman must reckon with the infallible  judgement of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpretted away.  His well founded pride is far from the gratuitous ‘self-esteem’ that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.

This focus on student self-esteem seems cart before the horsish to me.  You develop self esteem as a by-product of making your way in the world under your own steam.  It is one of those things that cannot be given to you, yet so much education theory revolves around building self esteem in classrooms.  Unless you allow failure, self esteem is meaningless.  My soccer players gain more self esteem in a draw against a better team that should have crushed them than they ever got in a classroom designed to hand it to them.

The craftsman is proud of what he has made, and cherishes it, while the consumer discards things that are perfectly serviceable in his restless pursuit of the new. – Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism

You won’t find a better description of modern, globalized capitalist consumerism than in these two quotes.  Why this is a standard for economics, let alone ethics, is completely beyond me.  I’ve always believed that if you can’t build it, you shouldn’t get to use it.  Can’t build a working computer?  You don’t get to use one.  Can’t build a car?  You don’t get to drive.  Were this the case, we’d have far fewer incompetents operating equipment they are far too dim to be using.

Since the standards of craftsmanship issue from the logic of things rather than the art of persuasion, practiced submission to them perhaps gives the craftsman some psychic ground to stand on against fantastic hopes aroused by demagogues, whether commercial or political.

On of my greatest frustations… trying to have a rational discussion with fanboys (and girls) about technology.  Mac users are the worst… though AMD fanboys aren’t far behind.  I’m interested in the brilliance of the engineering, not whether or not you’ve been convinced by witty advertising, though many people make their technology (all?) purchases based on little other than a cult of personality.

Persig’s mechanic is, in the original sense of the word, an idiot.  Indeed, he exemplifies the truth about idiocy, which is that it is at once an ethical and a cognitive failure.  The Greek idios means “private,” and an idiotes means a private person, as opposed to a person in their public role – for example, that of motorcycle mechanic.  Pirsig’s mechanic is idiotic because he fails to grasp his public role, which entails, or should, a relation of active concern to others, and to the machine.  He is not involved.  It is not his problem.  Because he is an idiot…  At bottom, the idiot is a solipsist. (p98)

Many a student I’ve seen be idiotic in the truest sense of the word.  They fail to grasp what being a student is, and then create all sorts of social tension as a result.  I once had a student in media arts who was having a rough time.  She stormed out of class one day and another student wondered aloud at all the drama.  This troubled student didn’t do anything, failed everything, and otherwise used an disproportionate amount of school resources to keep them from wreaking even more havoc.  I asked the questioning student why she was here, at school.  She said, “so I can get good grades, do post-secondary and get a satisfying job” (which I thought was a brilliant answer from a 15 year old).  I told her that other student has no idea why she is here.  This is a cruel, jail-like torture for her.  She sees no value in it for herself (likely because her life isn’t full of parental role models that demonstrate the advantages of a good education).  The whole class stopped to listen to our conversation, I suspect many of them wondered why this student was this difficult.

Management:  a “peculiarly chancy and fluid” character (Robert Jackall)  … vulnerability of managers in managing abstract, non-objective work develop a highly provisional way of speaking and feeling.  Staking out a position on all sides of a situation, so you always have plausible deniability of a failure (that’s not what I meant).  Vague language to protect a vague job.  Managers are always on probation, constantly vulnerable and anxious about the essentially meaningless role they play in a fickle corporation that could shift the ground under their feet at any moment.

Up in the Air for a poignant look at this kind of management in the middle of the 2008/9 1% money grab… and one of the reasons I never worked well in business.  Also one of the reasons I’m fairly relentless with people when they start talking about private business/corporate work ethics, organization and effectiveness.  I worked in a number of private companies before I became a teacher, I was lucky to find one in five run competently, let alone effectively.

A last, favorite piece, and a brilliant analysis of the apprenticeship process:
Often someone working at a speed shop spent his younger days lingering around the counter, then, as he penetrated the social hierarchy, in the back, allowed now to pull his car around and perhaps use a floor jack to install some shock absorbers purchased at the counter. Such an exposure to injury liability would give a lawyer fits; implicit in the invitation to the back is a judgement of the young man’s character and a large measure of trust.  He will get some light supervision that is likely to be disguised as a stream of sexual insults, delivered from ten feet away by someone he cannot see (only his shoes) as he lies under his car.  Such insults are another index of trust.  If he is able to return these outrageous comments with wit, the conversation will cascade toward real depravity; the trust is pushed further and made reciprocal.  If the young man shows promise, that is, if he is judged to have some potential to plumb new depths of moral turpitude, he may get hired: here is someone around whom everyone can relax. p 183

That sense of relaxation and trust is something I really miss from mechanics.  The education environment, so focused on political correctness, is the antithesis of shop culture; even justified swearing is a real no-no.  

When I showed this to my wife she just shook her head and said, “I have no experience in this.”  This sort of environment is created in groups of males.  I see it in hockey change rooms, on shop floors, and in warehouses where I’ve worked.  It’s not that women are incapable of working in that environment, I’ve known a number who have successfully done it, it’s that the vast majority of women see this as cruel, degrading and pointless.

This is a complicated issue, one that I’m still working out myself.  There is a direct roughness, a kind of honesty, to how men socialize that has been squeezed out of business (education being a subset of that culture).  Boys in school respond to it.  If we’re playing soccer and player goes down having been kicked in the groin, I go ballistic at the ref and get a warning.  I then attend to the kid on the ground.  He’s hurting.  I say, “how did that feel?”  The kid laughs despite the pain.  He knows I’ve just almost been removed because of what happened, he has no doubt of my stance on what’s happened, and the flippancy helps him deal with the agony.  Those opportunities don’t come up in class; another reason to protect extracurriculars, they let you create a more genuine bond with your students.

In Crawford’s brilliant analysis above, he emphasizes the honesty and familiarity that can come out of this kind of ribbing, a real sense of camaraderie.  It’s the kind of thing that makes Fight Club resonate with boys, and men, who read/watch it.  You can’t relax around someone who tells you to trust them.  You can relax around someone who is able to display real ‘moral turpitude’ in response to your own baiting.  The lack of understanding of how this works separates many men from developing a close working relationship in feminized work environments.

Whether you agree, disagree or simply want to try and understand, Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft makes a compelling argument for value of skilled manual labour, and the culture that surrounds it.
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Stunning Yellowstone National Park

From three short days spent in Yellowstone in August of 2018.  At over seven thousand feet elevation, there was frost on the ground the day we left (hence the atmospheric, morning fog in the sunrise photos which have been worked over in Adobe Lightroom).  


Life inside the caldera of the super volcano is odd.  The grass has a strange hue and the animal life in the world’s oldest national park is wonderfully shocking.


Photos taken with the Canon T6i.  Some of the snapshots and gifs were done with the OnePlus5 smarphone.  Variations can be found on my Instagram account and in Google photo albums.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On bike 360 Media and Digital Abstraction

Setting up a 360 camera on your wing mirror using a gorilla pod and setting it to automatically take a photo every few seconds seems like the best way to catch some interesting self portraits while you ride.  It’s a set up and forget system so you can just enjoy the ride.

Afterwards you download what the camera caught and then frame the photos as you wish (the 360 picture lets you move the point of view around until you’ve framed something interesting).

I’ve been trying to replicate the tiny planet view that the Ricoh Theta could do in its software on the Samsung Gear360.  GoPro makes a little planet capable app that they give away for free, so I’ve been using that.  Here is an example of a time lapse video tiny-planeted in the GoPro software:

The photos are screen grabs of time lapse scenes on the Samsung 360gear. They’ve all been worked over in Photoshop to give them a more abstract look.  I’ve included the original photo to show variations:

Here’s the original photo.
Here is a posterized, simplified version.
Here it is with an oil paint filter and a lot of post processing.







Here is a tiny-world ‘wrapped’ image taken with the 360 degree camera.  Below are some variations on it…




 Below are some other 360 grabs – they’ll give you an idea of how you can select certain angles and moments and then crop a photo out of them pretty easily.















One of the few things the Samsung does well is make time lapse video fairly straightforward (I miss my Ricoh Theta).  The software Samsung bundles with the gear360 only works with Samsung phones (which I don’t have).  The desktop software won’t render 4k video at all (it ends up so blocked and pixelated from artifacts as to be almost useless).  And when you’re first importing video it takes ages for the software to open a video for the first time.  By comparison the Ricoh renders video almost instantly, has never had artifact problems when it renders and has never crashed on me (the Samsung software has crashed multiple times). If you’re patient and are ok with crappy results, go for the Samsung.  Meanwhile, here’s what I could get out of the damned thing:

This is a 360 fly video sped up, the weekend after the April ice storm:



Software used:  Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Lightroom CC, Paper Artist, Windows movie maker, Go-Pro VR Viewing software

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Expectations

In a very hands-on computer technology grade 12 class, we’ve built our own network from scratch and students have been working through the A+ CompTIA technician‘s course. The final goal of the course is to get students into the position of actually getting certified as PC technicians. If they go on to college for courses, they’ll already have the first certification they need. If they go to work, they’ll be able to work in Futureshop, Staples or whatever (all those computer support people must have A+ certification).
The goal was a relevant, purpose driven class with real world value and as much technology as I could possibly provide.
I’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting my hands on equipment and making space for the students to be able to develop technology from the ground up. I hadn’t spent as much time walking students through some very information heavy review, my hope was that the hands on technology would offer us in-class opportunities to review the material.
Some students, once they got the network to a functional level, got very distracted by the fact that it can play networked games. This conversation happened recently when I suggested they needed to be ready to review the entire course because we were running out of time. One student felt that he hadn’t been handed the learning on a silver enough platter:

Grade 12 student: “but you’re the teacher, shouldn’t you be making us learn this?” (instead of letting us play games)

Me: “I’ve done back flips to get you guys access to multiple A+ courses, material and testing practice. I’ve also drilled you on the material on a daily basis. When we get done with that, you are given time to read ahead on future material, review what you missed, or apply your theory hands on. At that point I want to help people on a one on one basis. If you choose to play games with that time, it’s my job to force you to learn?”
student: “…”
me: “I’m not here to force you to learn, no one can do that. You’re senior students on the verge of graduating. If this were a junior class, we’d have more regimented lessons, but it isn’t. I expect you to be able to address yourself to what’s going on. I’m not about to force your head into the learning water here, if you don’t want to drink, that is your choice. It puts you in a bad place in post secondary though, they don’t spoon feed at all.”
student: “but we’re not college students, you shouldn’t run the class like that.”
me: “you’re about to be, at what point would you like to transition into post secondary if not in grade 12? Do you think they are going to spoon feed you next year?”
Not ten minutes later we wrapped up the chapter review and students were let loose on the network. Guess what he did…
me: “After our recent conversation, what you’re doing there is quite provocative. Are you trying to aggravate me?”
He didn’t stop, he just minimized the window. I feel sorry for the guy.
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This class has a truly awesome amount of technology at their disposal, I’m jealous. When I took my certifications, I had to take apart and reassemble the only PC we had in the house, and look at pictures of other ones because I had nothing on hand. I didn’t have a certified technician there enthusiastic about experimenting and throwing everything from imacs to netbooks, to laptops to multiple desktop formats into the mix. I also had to pay four times what I’m getting the certs for this group of students for. This guy is spoiled for choice but all he wants to do is play lame, online games and whine about not being treated like a ten year old. I’m not saying they shouldn’t take a break and blow off some steam, but they seldom put in the effort to deserve the break.
I’ve got some good students in that class, but they’re all bitten to a greater or lesser degree by their wealth; it makes them complacent and lazy. When I think about what the students in my computer club at my old school in the suburbs would have done with all of this equipment, it makes me sad. Even when you make the learning, meaningful, individualized and pack it with technology, you can’t force a spoiled, lazy horse to drink it up.
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Archetypal Emotional Response In High Stress Learning

An editorial piece I read in Bike Magazine a while back has stayed with me.  In it the author (a veteran motorcycle trainer) was describing how a rider’s emotional response to high stress situations limits their ability to learn from them.  It struck me because I still catch myself falling into both of the archetypal mind traps he describes.  I now struggle to get beyond them and adopt the clinical approach of a master learner that he suggests.

In a high-stakes, emotional environment like riding you can’t be trowing tantrums or assigning blame (though many do), you need to be calm and aware in order to both assess a situation as its happening and accurately recall and learn from it later.  Emotion is a natural response to high stress situations but it often gets in the way of attaining mastery.

The author of the piece (I’m still looking for it but I think I lent the magazine out) suggests that people fall into archetypal behaviors when they are stressed and emotional. These behaviours prevent you from making coherent decisions in the moment as well as preventing progress by hiding memory details behind ego and emotion.  The two archetypes we fall back into are child and parent.  Since we’re all familiar with these roles it only makes sense that we’d revert to them when we are under pressure.

The child throws tantrums and reacts selfishly, aggressively and emotionally.  People falling into this mind-set shout and cry at the circumstances and focus on blaming others.   The child is emotional and blind to just about everything around them except the perceived slight.  This approach tends to be dangerously over-reactive.  Have you ever seen a student blow up in an asymmetrical way over a minor issue?  They have fallen into the child archetype emotional trap.

The parent mind-set seems like an improvement but it is just as effective at blocking learning.  The parent shakes their head disapprovingly and focuses on passing judgement.  You’ll see someone in this mind-set tutting and rolling their eyes at people.  The parent is focused on passing judgement loudly and publicly.  You can probably see how easy it is for teachers to fall into this one.

The child is selfish, emotional and immediate.  The parent wraps themselves in a false sense of superiority that makes the user feel empowered when they might otherwise feel helpless.  Both archetypes attempt to mitigate frustration and ineffectiveness behind emotion and ego.

I’ve seen students stressed out by exams or other high-stakes learning situations fall into these traps but it took that motorbike instructor to clarify how students can lose their ability to internalize learning by falling into these archetypes.  He describes riders who shout and yell at someone cutting them off.  They are responding to their own poor judgement and lack of attention with the emotional outburst.  Suddenly finding themselves in danger, they lash out emotionally in order to cover up their own inadequacies.  That emotional blanket effectively hides any chance of reviewing and learning from a situation objectively.  

The parent adopts that judgmental stance.  Last summer I had a senior student who rides a motorcycle get involved in an accident.  He had bad road rash and was bruised all over.  He went with the parent approach.  The woman who hit him was panicked and frightened because she hadn’t seen him.  Her own mother had been hurt in a similar motorcycle accident and she felt a lot of guilt over being the cause of this one.  The student said ‘she came out of no-where’.  I said, ‘that’s odd, cars weight thousands of pounds.  I’ve never seen one appear out of nowhere before.’  Rather than review his own actions and perhaps learn to develop better 360° awareness, the student was happy to piggy-back on the driver’s emotional response and pass judgement.  He never felt any responsibility for that accident and still believes that cars can come out of nowhere.


I enjoy riding because it is a difficult, dangerous craft that it is very important to do well.  In pressurized learning situations you need an alert, open mind.  I’ve never once seen this the focus of consideration in school (except perhaps in extracurricular sports).  What we do instead is try and remove any pressure and cater to emotionality rather than teaching students to master it.





Other Links:
Comparing Teacher PD to Motorcycle Training
Training Fear and Ignorance out of Bikecraft
Archetypal Pedagogy

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Experimenting with Geometry on 360° On-Motorbike Photography

My 360 degree on-motorcycle photography experiment continues.  The process has evolved over time from handheld, manually shot photos to automatic, bike mounted shots.  I’ve tried half a dozen different cameras and mounts on locations all over the bike, most recently on the tail rack.


I’ve always wanted to be able to catch the front of the bike while in motion.  Mounted to the windscreen the Ricoh Theta doesn’t quite reach.  This time I purchased a 1/4 inch threaded rod and cut it to size (about a foot long) and used it to extend the camera out front of the bike.  Double fastening the camera at one end and the tripod at the other with extra nuts meant I had no trouble with the rig moving.


The results speak for themselves…

Early shots are using the extension rig mounted on the upper windshield.  It clears the camera from the fairing and gives clear shots of the whole machine and rider while in motion.  The rig is stable and holds the camera for steady shots.  It never budged on a variety of roads at various speeds.

From the windshield I moved the camera rig to the right rearview mirror.  There was a bit of flex in the windshield with the rig attached, but none from the mirror.  The shots were once again very stable and steady at a variety of speeds on a variety of different road conditions.  This one is at about 80km.hr on a country back road.  This angle still shows the front of the bike, but gives more of a 3/4 view of the back of the machine.

The distance further off the fairing means a wider view of corners.  Even with energetic riding on the twisty bits the rig was problem free.

Further along I angled the rig up higher for a more top down view.  The tripod ball joint that lets you easily angle it.  If kept tight you can do this on the fly with ease.

One of the benefits of this on-bike camera rig is that it gives a good sense of speed and captures the intimacy of riding because the camera is doing everything the bike and rider are.  Here I’m up to triple digits on a highway.

   

For the last angle I put the camera as far up and out to the side as I could angle it off the rearview mirror.  This catches the whole side of the bike and rider well, as well as offering a good sight lines up and down the road.

 

 

 

That worked.  All images are screen captures in the Ricoh imaging software cleaned up in Adobe Lightroom.

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