Page 106 – Mechanical Sympathy

Then vs. Now

I’ve been wondering why motorbikes don’t seem to have moved on in the way that cars have. To that end I’m trying to find comparisons between 1960s (pre-oil crisis) vehicles and current vehicles. In trying to keep apples with apples and find stats for similar vehicles. The problem is a 1960s Cooper Mini doesn’t have anything like the crash worthiness of a new Mini Cooper, and that crash worthiness costs weight, though not as much as you might think. The real cost in weight is our expectations around size. The new mini is significantly larger mainly because minimalist, small cars don’t sell.

Our improvements in engineering efficiency are often overshadowed by our need for bigger, more plush vehicles. My thinking is that this shouldn’t be such an issue on a motorbike, it’s not like our bikes have gotten much bigger in the way that cars have turned into SUVs.

An example, the Mini Cooper. The new car has nothing mechanical whatsoever to do with the old one. Other than the name and marketing niche, these cars are very much creatures of their times.

length	3,054 mm (120.2 in) (saloon)
Width	1,397 mm (55.0 in)
Height	1,346 mm (53.0 in)
Kerb weight Horsepower Fuel Economy	617–686 kg (1,360–1,512 lb) 1275cc / 78hp (16.35cc/hp) 6l /100kms

via wikipedia

Dimensions (LxWxH): 3723 / 1683 / 1407 mm
Kerb weight: 1150kg – 1185kg
Fuel Economy: 6.1 l/100kms
Horsepower: 1600cc / 121hp (13.22cc/hp)
So the new car is:
18% longer, 17% wider, 4% lower
46% heavier all with the same mileage!
courtesy of Mini.

So what you’ve got is a much bigger car that offers all the modern amenities in addition to more space that gets about the same mileage, and it does it with an engine a third larger than the old one. Put another way, the new Mini is about twice as efficient as the old one (it uses the same amount of fuel to move almost twice as much car). On top of that Mini needs three less cc to get a horsepower out of an engine. It isn’t much, but it’s an improvement, unlike the bike below.

1969 Honda CB750

Dimensions Wheelbase	L 85 in (2,200 mm) W 35 in (890 mm) H 44 in (1,100 mm) 1460mm
Seat height	31 in (790 mm)
Weight	218 kg (481 lb) ^[1] (dry) 491 lb (223 kg) (wet)
Fuel capacity	19 L (4.2 imp gal; 5.0 US gal) ^[1]
Fuel consumption Horsepower	34.3 mpg_-US (6.86 L/100 km; 41.2 mpg_-imp) 68hp (10.82cc / hp)

via wikipedia

Here is Honda’s modern ode to the CB750:
The Honda CB1100A
Dimensions: 1490mm wheelbase
Weight: 248kgs 547lbs – wet
Mileage: 41mpg
Horsepower: 82.5 hp (13.8cc /hp)

At 1140cc, the new Honda is 390ccs larger, though follows the same engine layout as the old CB750. They are within 3 cms of each other as far as wheelbase goes – bikes aren’t significantly physically bigger in the way that four wheeled vehicles have put on weight in the past forty years, though cars seem to have done it while finding ways to get way more out of each litre of gas. That new mini is a much bigger vehicle, almost twice the size of the original in terms of mass. Bikes haven’t grown anything like that, yet their mileage is pretty much the same.

Keep in mind we were comparing a twelve hundred cc 1969 Mini with a 1.6l modern Mini, a 25% increase in displacement. The new CB1100 has 33% more displacement on a heavier bike and gets the same mileage as the old carbureted one. Why is the new bike so much heavier? It’s not like a car – it isn’t larger than the old bike, it isn’t carrying airbags and all sorts of other modern safety gear other than ABS. To top it all off a carburetated 1969 CB750 used to use 10.82ccs to make a horsepower, the new one uses 13.8ccs to make a horsepower. A lot of that could be tuning the engine for more torque, but here we are, 45 years later using more displacement to make less power? What the hell is the point of fuel injection?

In 45 years of material development, the new Honda is 56lbs heavier. The 1969 CB750 is within point one of a mile per gallon of the 2014 CB1100. You might say it’s not a fair comparison because they’re not both 750cc bikes. Honda’s only current ~750cc bike is the NC750x, which is a parallel twin rather than a four cylinder. Even with that disparity the NC750x tips the scales at 483lbs, still 2 pounds more than the 1960’s 750 four cylinder. And it’s not like Honda isn’t an engineering powerhouse.

If you say the motorbike vs. car argument isn’t fair, how about motorbikes to bicycles? A Tour de France bike in the 1960s weighed about 22lbs. Modern bikes are limited to 15lbs, though in 2004 Armstrong had a 14.5 lb bike and without the limit a 10lb bike is more than possible. If bicycles have dropped 30% of their mass in the last 45 years, why not motorbikes?

If we look at this from an automotive/bicycle equivalent efficiency angle, the new Honda CB750 should have a 20% more efficient engine and weigh 30% less. The 2014 CB750 happy memories bike should get about 80mpg, weigh 344lbs and produce about 82hp. This bike would have a power to weight ratio of about 4.2lbs per horsepower, approaching what some of the fastest sports bikes in the world have. The sensible choice then would be to make the bike a 650cc CB throwback, which still produces a better power to weight ratio than the CB1100 and weigh even less with the smaller engine.

I asked before and I’ll ask again, why haven’t bikes advanced at the same rate as cars (or bicycles)? Why isn’t the new ode to the CB750 a CB650cc bike that produces more power, uses less gas and rides far better than its prehistoric inspiration? Motorbikes are stripped down, simple machines, in many ways still very similar to the machines made decades ago. With that in mind, why don’t we see the radical evolution in technology evidenced in the Mini and in racing bicycles in the past 45 years in the Honda CB750/CB1100? If we aren’t larding up bikes into SUVs (though some people are), the efficient burning of gasoline should have produced astonishingly high mileage numbers by now. Where is the direct injection? Where are the intelligent drivetrains and engine management systems that have produced cars that weigh twice as much and still burn the same amount of fuel? Where is my frictionless magnetic drivetrain with integrated brakes? Where is my kers?

With an integrated kers system, I could be riding a 400cc bike that when the kers kicks in feels like a 1000cc bike, then recharges while I ride. I could pull onto the highway or overtake on a super light bike that can feel like a one litre rocket when I need it and sip fuel like a 400cc machine when I don’t.

Zero Motorcycles: all electric, but I don’t know that we
have to go to that extreme yet, we’re not exploring
internal combustion that well.

Because motorbikes are small and inherently efficient compared to cars, manufacturers haven’t pushed engineering limits in the way that they have with other vehicles. I’m looking for the future of motorbiking, and it doesn’t feel like manufacturers are testing limits in a way that makes my choices feel any different than they were a decade ago, let alone four.

Rebranding & Refocusing on Applied Computer Technology

After learning about the messy history of computer studies in Ontario, I’ve been catching up on our school’s history. The computer studies department was created just prior to the new computer curriculum in order to create a headship for a computer science teacher who has since moved on. The headship consolidated computer technology, computer science and the school IT support role all in one place.

When computer studies (actually computer science) became its own area of study independent from the rest of computer technology in 2009, our departmental divisions minimized that damage by keeping the now separated computer studies/technology (what’s the difference? It’s hard to tell with the vague titles) together.

Was it a good idea to keep computer studies and computer technology (two apparently completely different courses of study) together? I’d argue that it’s a pointless distinction based on a prejudice deeply ingrained in Ontario education. Computer science teachers, like the majority of teachers, come from university/academic backgrounds. These teachers are catered to in Ontario education with easier access to high pay grades (it’s much easier for an academic teacher to gain level 4/honours specialist). Many technology teachers who come into teaching through industry experience and apprenticeships (many of which are as long or longer than university programs) never achieve the highest pay grades in teaching. Teaching in Ontario is inherently geared toward academics.

When computer science was amalgamated into computer technology (as a technology course), many comp-sci teachers thought it a demotion into ‘tech’. It took them eight years to get their academic subject back.

In a perfect world computer studies would be just that – computer studies, meaning a curriculum that addresses the subject completely from the most academic/theoretical side (computer-science) to the most applied/immediately useful (information technology, computer repair). As in science (biology, chemistry, etc), we could have teachers with different backgrounds and training teaching complimentary subjects and collaborating within the same department. It happens throughout the school (arts, science, tech), but apparently it can’t happen in computer studies. I believe this is because it attempts to straddle that academic/applied divide.

Between the political history of Ontario’s computer studies and my own school’s focus on consolidating heads, it looks like our computer studies headship will go away and computer science and computer technology will fly apart. Personally, this is a relief. Trying to give students access to coding through a computer science department that does more photocopying than English and clings to Turing as the be-all and end-all of programming languages has been a continuing frustration. Being able to refocus around the more open technology curriculum in comp-tech would allow me to develop real world computing skills for students, something that I think ‘computer studies’ has failed to do.

If applied computing is the focus of computer-technology, then I don’t intend to leave coding to computer science. They can have the theoretical end of it all, and teach to university bound students interested in advanced mathematics, but I’ve long contended that coding is a universal skill that everyone should at least have a passing knowledge of, especially in the 21st Century. To that end I’ve been remapping our course offerings in Computer Technology (as well as rebranding my subject area, because that is apparently – and sadly – what we have to do in Ontario).

A grade 9-12 curriculum of applied computer technology study using current technologies that would give students
immediately applicable skills. A student who took this path would be literate in information technology, computer
repair, networking and coding, as well as have an understanding of industry practices in all those fields.

Would this dig into computer science’s sections? Yes, but isn’t it more important to introduce a computer technology curriculum that increases digital fluency school wide? Computers may have once been a theoretical subject area, but they’ve long since become a daily part of our lives. Our computer curriculum should be introducing computer fluency to as many students as possible. Our comp-sci department hasn’t had a single girl in any senior course in the past four years. That has to change. Many other students who have an interest in digital technology are chased out of computer science by the photocopies, mistakenly thinking that comp-sci will teach them applicable skills. That has to change too.

Rebranding computer studies to computer technology, because that matters to people in Ontario Education (though
it causes a lot of confusion for everyone else). It’d be nice if pedagogy instead of prejudice dictated our computer
studies curriculums.

Here are some other pieces created for the rebranding:

Taken from code.org’s fantastic array of promotional material and ICTC’s Canada specific technology industry research.
And yes, I cut out the word science after computer because that apparently causes confusion in Ontario. Is this really
how we do computer studies in Ontario? Yes, yes it is.

Here is the post on the computer technology graphics.
Here is the post from grade 8 parent’s night, where computer studies was still a subject headship, that’s all gone now.

The computer studies prezi: showing parents a coherent focus on computer studies (comp-sci included)
The computer technology prezi: showing parents a coherent focus on applied computer technology (no comp-sci in sight).

Snow Honda

Driving in to work I pass by this old CB750 (?) Honda every day. As the snow has piled up and the temperature dropped I’ve watched it get buried.

It looks in pretty well cared for, other than the sitting in the snow in -30° winter.

My first urge is to leave a note on the door asking if they’d be interested in selling it.

While my Ninja is getting cleaned with a toothbrush, this old classic sits in the snow, it makes me sad. I’ve been looking for a project bike. This might be a bit more project that I was first thinking, but there it is.

I’ve been reading a lot of bike history. The big Hondas were one of the first super bikes. There was a time when someone brought this home and it was the bleeding edge of motorcycle engineering, it must have oozed cool.

Of course, these old Hondas make for fantastic cafe racer projects too…

Maybe one of these days I’ll swing by and ask if they’d want to sell it. I’d wait for a day with clear roads, get it going and ride it the few kilometres down the river to my garage, where it would get stripped down next to the Ninja and prepped for spring.

Everyday I go by it reminds me of fantasy art pieces of skeletons lying forgotten. With the morning sun shining on it, I’d like to go with something other than the smartphone and take some serious photos of it – it strikes me as buried sculpture, a story slowly being forgotten, an opportunity being lost.

Why Blog? Lisa’s Meme

via Lisa Neale’s Never Ever Stop Learning:

I get the sense that a number of educators are recommitting to blogging in the new year. This can only be a good thing. A blogging educator not only reaches out to other teachers with a blog, but they also reach out to the general public, who seem to harbour a number of misconceptions about the profession. Blogging is a wonderful way for individual educators to bridge that gap.

I’ve written for paper publication and find it tiresome. The constant editorial revision waters down any edge in your writing and can make even the most acerbic argument seem bland. The worry over saying anything that someone else may have already said and the resulting over-citation also takes any joy out of writing (or thinking for that matter). I understand why many people would back away from old-school publication, it’s a miserable experience. Blogging is a way to refine your writer’s craft while still enjoying the benefits of an audience.

My favourite part of blogging is that there is no captive audience, no circulation. If people want to read it, they can, if they don’t, they won’t. It’s publication with none of the overhead (advertising, editors, space limitations, etc). Blogging is an opportunity to write without having to carry a pile of other people with your words.

Lisa mentions Dean Shareski’s ‘excuse to write’. With blogging you don’t need an excuse, just write! If you find you want to write about different subjects, then do that too, it’s easy enough to create interest specific blogs, and it’s a great way to enter the online community of your new interest. The more you write, the easier it gets (like most things). The trick is not to get all wound up with what you’re writing, it’ll get better over time.

With that all said, here is Lisa’s dare:

Nominating blogger: Lisa Neale
11 random facts about myself: Facts? How tedious… look me up online, it’s all there if you want facts. The fictions are far more interesting though, and much harder to find.
List 11 bloggers? I enjoy many of the staff writers on WIRED. Quinn Norton is a genius. If I had to pick a local edu-blogger, it would have to be Jamie Raeburn-Weir. She’s a writer’s writer, a direct, honest voice. Andrew Campbell is another one I enjoy reading. He writes how he talks, which probably gets him into a lot of fights.

Lisa’s Questions:

favourite mode of transport: motorcycles! The more minimal and visceral the better…

Random piece of advice: luck is like everything else, you need to practice it to get good at it. If you never test your luck you’ll atrophy it. Virgil understood this when he said, “fortune favours the bold.” We’re all less lucky (and compassionate) than we once were because of the nanny-state and insurance.

Favourite hobby: Reading? writing? photography? art? riding? mechanics? Whatever lets me express myself most completely in any given moment.

How do I like my eggs: sunny side up and runny.

Something I think differently about: it’s not how long you’re here, it’s how you’re here that matters.

Must watch movie: anything by Guillermo del Toro, dude’s a genius.

When nothing is pressing: take a long ride on my motorbike. It is meditation in the wind, you’re completely in the moment.

Preferred hot beverage: loose leaf black tea

How do you say 2014? 11111011110

First job: delivering newspapers, refing minor sports (hockey, soccer)

Lesson learned from relationships: nobody owns anyone

I think that’s it… I’ve been told I haven’t done this properly, but I’m ok with that.

They Know Not What They Do

Yesterday the Waterloo Region District School Board didn’t cancel school due to inclement weather. The response they got on Twitter was, to say the least, shocking. That students don’t understand how the internet works is apparent in how they present themselves online. Some of their comments not only reflected their ignorance but also uncovered a mob mentality that frequently appears online. Students think they are private and anonymous when they are in fact standing on a world-wide stage making fools of themselves.

People outside of Kitchener can see Twitter? Dude!

The fellow on the left is surprised that people not from Kitchener are responding to tweets. The entire world could see these tweets and they’re now a permanent part of the digital record, you can’t take back what was said in anger online. You can only imagine what this does for their digital footprint, not that anyone is teaching them this in school.

My wife suggested that if WRDSB hadn’t let all their elementary librarians go in the last ten years, those librarians might have been there to teach this generation of ‘digital natives‘ how not to make fools of themselves online. I only wish that were true. The vast majority of librarians I’ve met are determined not to address digital citizenship because they feel that technology is a threat to traditional (book based) learning. Alanna herself didn’t get hired recently because she ‘was too digitally focused’. I fear that librarians themselves and the people who hire them aren’t the ones to fix this.

So who does teach digital citizenship? I’ve got a teacher at my school who does it because he feels it’s a vital part of any relevant, modern civics course – he doesn’t even have a full contract. The only people addressing digital citizenship are outliers, though our students (those digital natives) are expressing themselves inappropriately through this technology all the time.

The mob mentality and the righteousness that comes with it.

Take a moment to look over the tweets directed at WRDSB in the last 24 hours and you see students making the common mistake (because the formats are similar) of assuming tweets are like texts. In the student’s mind they are texting directly to their school board but, of course, that is not how Twitter works. You see students unaware they they are publishing death threats publicly, you see students encouraging the mob mentality that had them hurling invective at their school board. You have to wonder what a kid in Rwanda thinks about all of these grammar impaired, spoiled, first world kids commplaining about having to go to school. Yes, people in Rwanda can read your tweets.

So we’re left with an awkward, embarrassing situation here, and not one limited to Waterloo Region. We have students who spend the majority of their time in digital communications without realizing what it is or how it works. We have students who are essentially making themselves unemployable by creating such deplorable digital footprints that no one would touch them. Can you imagine what you’d do if you googled the kid who just asked for a job and found death threats against their school board published online? It shows a startling lack of prudence.

Instead of embracing digital communications to create a live résumé that would generate job offers for them, they are building themselves a digital ghetto, and this is happening on a massive scale. An entire generation of students are making themselves irrelevant. I wonder how many more times this will happen before we start to integrate digital citizenship into curriculum like it matters.

North American International Motorcycle Show

Hey NAIMS, you coulda had my wife there… a master’s degree,
great job, but you’re not appealing to her demographic…

My son and I went down on Friday morning in -25°C temperatures for our first ever motorcycle show at the International Centre in Mississauga. My wife didn’t come because the advertising on the website (which also had a complete lack of social media) put her off. I suspect you’ll get a better class of customer with more in their pocket if you appeal to educated women interested in the sport. I’m not sure who you cater to with the twinkies, but I suspect they aren’t great customers. You’d also bring in many more younger riders (I think the average age at the show was about 50) if you embraced social media.

Old white guys & twinkies, it’s a weird,
backwards, and kinda creepy
dynamic, time to change it up

Since it was my first time at a show like this I was a bit worried that I was bringing my son to a de-tuned strip club, but I was pleasantly surprised. There were a few other families there and the crowd represented a typical Canadian cross section. With the bike clubs on hand, the variety of bikes on show and the various supporting retailers, this wasn’t a biker bar scene at all – it’s a shame that the advertising doesn’t show this for what it is.

There were little herds of Harley aficionados trying too hard in their leathers and badges, but they were a minority. On our way in from the parking lot an older fellow we were walking in with gave us a discount coupon, and the people in the show were encouraging, accessible and not at all snobby (which is nice when you’re a n00b).

We spent the better part of four hours walking around and missed an entire hall. The amount of material was prolific, from the gear to the bikes themselves. Two brands really stood out for me and the others were generally a disappointment.

You’d normally be hard pressed to get me interested in a
Harley, but they make it easy to like them, and what a
good looking bike!

I’m the furthest thing from a Harley Fan, but Harley Davidson Canada put on a great show. They took a good chunk of floor space, had a lot of room to try out bikes and were more than willing to focus on developing a relationship with their customers rather than leaving it to dealers who are only interested in moving units.

Having dealers take care of your brand loyalty is like have the tigers at the zoo do the job of the zookeepers. If they can drum up any customer relationship building at all they’re only pretending, all they really want to do is feed themselves a sale.

I ended up throwing a leg over a bunch of Harleys and I’m much more curious now than I was before, well done HD.

Shows like NAIMS are an ideal opportunity for manufacturers to develop a relationship with their customers, and I was surprised that so few did. I want to be a Triumph fan, I’m from the UK, I love their bikes from a design point of view, but they were only there through a local dealer who parked the bikes so close together that it was impossible to sit on many of them (which was no doubt the idea). The special ‘deal’ on Triumph t-shirts had them on ‘sale’ for $60… for a t-shirt. Between the inaccessible bikes, the over-priced merch and the dealers rolling their eyes whenever your kid wants to try and sit on a bike, we didn’t spend much time in Triumph land.

After the show I’m reconsidering how and why I might become attached to a specific make, or even whether I should (though motorcycling seems particularly intense in its tribal approach to brand).

Beautiful naked bike, the Z1000… it’s got me
thinking…

Another manufacturer who didn’t take my loyalty for granted was Kawasaki. My first bike was supposed to be a Honda or a Suzuki and it ended up being a Ninja. It’s been a great first bike and the KLR has long been on my mind as an alternate/multi-purpose bike (though the insurance chat later is making that unlikely). Kawasaki has been good to me so far, and the show only made me more of a fan.

Like Harley, Kawasaki showed up instead of only being there through dealers. The reps they had on hand were friendly, helpful and approachable. The bikes were displayed in a way that encouraged you to try them out, and Kawi also brought the bling (which I immediately put up in the garage).

Kawasaki was never on my bike lust list when I was younger (I was all about Interceptors and Gixers), but as an adult buyer they have my attention. Well done Kawasaki!

The rest of the bike show was a whirlwind of gear and meet and greets. Two Wheel Motorsport was there, and I had a quick chat with my motorcycle course instructor (while getting a great deal on a Bell Helmet for my son – I’m all about Bell helmets since seeing Rush).

I had a chat with Riders Plus Insurance. They insured me in my first year of riding and were helpful and efficient. This time round I was curious about how insuring multiple bikes work. They told me that buying a second bike means you’re doubling your insurance payments. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me as I can only ride one bike at a time. I expected something like you’re insured at the rate of whatever the highest cost bike is plus 10% for the paperwork on the other bike. What I was told was that you get a 10% discount on your second bike and pay another full set of insurance on it… which makes owning multiple bikes not really financially viable, so that dream goes down the toilet.

I was looking for Motorcycle Mojo as we wandered about since I’ve been emailing with the publisher, but couldn’t find them! This show really is huge. But I did find The Widow’s Sons. After a round of secret handshakes I got some contact information. A number of guys in my lodge have bikes but don’t ride with others. I’m wondering if I can start a local chapter, or perhaps join the Grand River Chapter.

My son and I both really enjoyed the show. It let us throw our legs over a lot of bikes and talk with a wide variety of people in the sport. It was a wonderful thing to get excited about riding again even as the temperature outside turned truly arctic. Kawasaki & Harley both get nods as my favourite manufacturers of the show. Their stand up showing has me questioning brand loyalty based on some weird sense of belonging rather than a manufacturer’s interest in genuinely developing a relationship with their customer. As a new rider I’m looking to be wooed. Harley & Kawi both did some quality wooing.

My suggestion? Get yourself out to the North American Motorcycle Show and bring your family along, they’ll have a great time and maybe even get a sense of why you love riding like you do.

I hope the show will reconsider the marketing angle and get away from the twinkie/biker thing on the website and embrace social media next year. If they do, maybe I can convince my wife to come along with us.

Some pictures from the show.

The Wolverine & Corporate Product Placement

Filmed In Japan, Manufactured in Italy

I just saw The Wolverine and enjoyed it. I lived in Japan for a couple of years and have a soft spot for it. The idea of Logan in Japan was cool and I was looking forward to seeing what local vehicular colour they put into it (Japan does a lot of domestic one-offs that you don’t see anywhere else).

Unfortunately I’d forgotten that Marvel is in bed with Volkswagen Group. Imagine my disappointment when everyone in Japan is driving Audis or riding Ducatis (Ducati is owned by VW Group). To top it off most of it was filmed in Australia and made to look like Japan. If you’re looking for a film that shows you Japan, this ain’t it.

So while Logan and his sidekick are on Ducatis (in Japan, sort of), I wonder what the local manufacturers are thinking. Since the whole advertising/placement thing is sorted out by lawyers, I imagine that Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha had no say in it anyway. Isn’t it a shame that brilliant local engineering like that can be made to not exist in a film? Can you imagine if they did a film in America and everyone was riding Ducatis with not a Harley in sight? It would seem unrealistic. If film makers are more interested in milking advertisers for product placement than they are in making a film seem properly placed, it bodes poorly for the future of film.

I’d read an online discussion about the best summer riding gear and someone suggested looking at what Boorman & McGregor wore on Long Way Down. It was immediately suggested that this wasn’t the best kit but merely the one that sponsored them. Like Ducatis in Japan, media is more about advertising than fact. With that in mind, can you trust anything you see on film about motorbikes or even the kit being used?

Ninjas! On motorbikes!

One scene that was motorbike crazy was Logan taking on a squad (clutch? herd?) of ninjas on motor-cross bikes. I couldn’t see what they were (it was dark, there were ninjas everywhere), but it made for some frantic fight scenes, especially when one of the ninjas did a stoppie and hit Logan in the face with the back wheel.

I enjoyed The Wolverine, it was a good action flick, but it would be nice if they made more of an effort to create a genuine vehicular experience in the film instead of chasing hidden advertising revenue.

Motorbike Books

I just finished Melissa Holbrook-Pierson’s The Perfect Vehicle. She has a wonderful writing voice, you really get to know her and her love of two wheels through reading the book. The anecdotal pieces on trips she’s taken and the history flashbacks are very immersive and informative. At other times she prosetalizes and it wanders a bit, but she always seems to find her way back to that love of bikes again.

The most memorable parts for me are her poetic descriptions of how it feels to ride. She has come closest (by far) in describing the feeling of riding a bike. If you are willing to let her take you on a ride and aren’t freaked out by her intelligence or gender, you’ll find the trip rewarding.

I then moved on to Motorcycling: A Life Long Passion, and after the Ondaatchi-esque prose of Melissa I’m having trouble getting into this strange book.

I previously read Odessey To Ushuaia by the very entertaining Andres Carlstein, who makes a trans-American trip sound both naive and remarkably slutty at the same time; I really enjoyed it.

So here I am reading a less engaging road trip and then alternate chapters on the experience of motorcycling whose prose isn’t up to the task. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but it isn’t grabbing me as the other two books did. I’ll keep at it with the hopes that it ups its game.

On a different angle I also picked up some more tech-orientated books. I got the Ninja Haynes Manual when I got the bike in the spring, but I was looking for more general overviews of bike mechanics when I came across the Basics Techbook and Motorcycle Maintenance on Amazon.

I’ve started the Techbook and after skipping the explanations of two and four stroke motors, I got a good explanation of the variety of motorcycle engines out there. I’m finding the book detailed and well written so far.

After spending so much time finishing the garage, the only gratuitous purchase was the How To Set Up Your Motorcycle Workshop. It’ll be both enjoyable and frustrating to see what a more perfect bike repair area would look like.

If I can’t be riding at least I can work my mind around other aspects of the sport.

Motorbike Magazine Mania

Since I’m in riding withdrawal I’ve been continuing my overdose on motorcycle media.

In one of the many magazines I’ve been picking up I came across the Overland Adventure Rally, which happens to be only about half an hour away from where I live. I won’t be participating on a Ninja, but I’m working on that.

The magazine picks have been many and varied. On the Canadian side I have picked up Inside Motorcycles and Canadian Biker.

IM is very race focused so I’ve been trying to use it to get a grip on what racing is offered/popular in Canada. I stumbled across the last MotoGP race of the year on SPEED and gave it a watch. Utter madness! But more entertaining than any F1 race I watched this season.

I’m still partial to British bike magazines and pick them up when I come across them. Motorcycle Sport & Leisure is written from older perspective but the mag holds up the quality end of British magazines. Few ads, lots of articles on a wide range of subjects, well written too.

BIKE magazine is a big one in the UK and I can see why. The writing is top notch, I was laughing out loud as I read one piece on all the ways an author has fallen off a motorcycle.

I’d pick up Adventure Bike Rider again, but it was hard to find even when I was in the UK this summer.

These hard to find British magazines may drive me to reading on a tablet just so I can get at them.

Cycle Canada is the only bike magazine I’ve gotten a subscription to so far, no regrets there.

Mastery Learning, Digitally Empowering Idiocy & Being Humble Before the Task

I ended up presenting on what mastery learning is and what mastery might look like in digital realms at ECOO13 last week .

HERE is the prezi.

Developing digital mastery in a digital world

The Humble Egotist: A teacher who encourages learning…

In untangling what digital mastery might look like I had to back up and describe mastery learning in general. This ended up clarifying my ideas around the process of learning itself. As much as we’d like to think we impart learning as teachers, the process itself is very much internal to the learner. Teachers aren’t nearly as central to the process as they like to think they are.

I started studying instructional technique when I was still a teen in air cadets and through coaching sports. That progressed into technology instruction in business and then language instruction in Japan. Finally getting my B.Ed. years later was just the latest in an ongoing personal journey to understand learning.

I’m self taught in so many things that I have trouble remembering being taught. I’ve dropped out of every kind of education you can imagine, and finished some too. I have real trouble with authority for the sake of authority and I’ve always found a strong element of that in teaching. There is no doubt that a teacher can be an important influence in a young person’s growth (I have several who were, we all do), but those people were never magical because they taught me something, they were magical because they enabled me to learn something. No one else has ever been the architect of my learning, it has always failed or succeeded because of how I tackled it. A good teacher looked at me and figured out how to enable my tendencies toward learning something effectively. A bad teacher would sabotage my learning, usually because my hero worship wasn’t up to their standards.

Teaching is a tricky business. It takes a lot of self confidence to do the job, but it also takes a lot of humility to get out of the way and let people learn. Self confidence and humility seldom co-exist comfortably in the same person. The urge to sage on the stage is strong in a lot of teachers, they really enjoy the attention and the social status (no matter how staged it is).

Not unless you do it you don’t,
learning isn’t downloaded,
it isn’t given, it isn’t easy

But learning is an internal process, you can’t have learning implanted in you (this was one of the reasons it seems so magical in The Matrix), as the learner you have to be the active agent, learning is hard work. We confuse this with a lot of edu-babble about engagement and over-focus on how entertaining a teacher can be but this ignores the essential issue. If a student doesn’t want to learn then they won’t. The value of learning should be self evident. It takes a colossal amount of work by the education system to assume responsibility for learning and hide the truth that students are the real agents of their learning.

During the ECOO presentation I described a good teacher as an awesome roadie, you can’t even tell they are there until they adjust or fix something to better enable the show. The learner is the one on stage doing the learning, a good teacher, like a good roadie, makes the show run smoothly but they aren’t the main act.

I see far too many full period lectures with sages on stages. Those people retire and are immediately back in the classroom because they miss the audience, they miss being in a socially constructed place where people have to listen to them. They don’t do much in the way of encouraging learning, but boy do they talk a lot, and they have no idea that students live in an information rich world and don’t have to wait for the slow drip of a teacher’s talk to learn a fact.

This isn’t to say that the flipped classroom is the obvious way to manage this. Learners have to internalize their own learning, but students who are many miles away from what they need to be broken out of their habitual patterns if they are going to learn something new. Sometimes this takes a teacher who is the centre of focus in a classroom.

How do you manage a room full of digitally super charged ids?

This is especially true when educators attempt to integrate digital devices into learning. Digital devices slavishly satisfy the desires of their users no matter how asinine or repetitive. An idiot on a digital device becomes an empowered idiot. A teacher can be a vital influence in breaking that destructive, repetitive cycle, but not if they are as habitual and limited in their use of digital tools as their students. Being humble before the task of learning gets even harder in a digital environment where every stupid urge is moments away from being satisfied. The teacher cannot facilitate student learning in an environment that they themselves are also oppressed by.

One of the key pressure points in learning is breaking someone out of
habitual use in technology (the pink bit), but that’s impossible if the
teacher is as habitual and illiterate as the student is…

If you’ve ever seen how many students (and teachers) treat school computer labs you know what I’m talking about. Rather than selecting the tool for the job, a teacher with low digital fluency will ask students to use computers as an analogue for something else. The computer is treated like a book, or a paper and pen. Booking a lab for this purpose is akin to renting a car to drive to the end of your street. You’re not using the technology for it’s capabilities, you’re using it to exacerbate your own habits.

That’s assuming the teacher didn’t book the lab as a digital babysitter while they get marking done (or so they could just surf the net in the same way as their students). In those classes I’m having to replace vandalized computers and students may as well be at home doing whatever they do there online. This damages digital fluency for everyone in the room by actually encouraging habitual usage, and it’s expensive.

Trying to focus on learning is difficult in the hyper-personally empowering digital realm.

Developing mastery of any kind isn’t a focus in education, trying to do it now with digital narcissism at every fingertip is even more difficult. Classes are set with 50% credits and minimal expectations around attendance in order to facilitate pass rates. In terms of digital mastery, administration seems to think this is about device access, but it’s more about people, self-discipline and work habits. Digital mastery falls back on the habits of the learner. A strong, self-directed learner is empowered by a digital environment, a weak, dependent one is impoverished by it. For the strong it empowers their ability to learn, for the weak it offers them a constant stream of distractions so that they can stay in the most base, trivial, superficial and habitual parts of their minds.

If we practiced mastery learning across education then digital mastery would follow. If we took teaching digital fluency seriously (in both staff and students) we would have a chance at using technology to create amplified learners who are able to access information and self direct their learning at a rate unseen before.

Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t dropping the digital football just to keep the traditional power structures in play.

note: this is the 4th re-write of this post, it’s an ongoing attempt to figure out some big ideas, I’m still not happy with it but I’m going to let it lie and move on. I suspect I’ll be trying to clarify the ideas in here in future posts.

1969 Honda CB750

Other Reading:

Lisa’s Questions:

The Humble Egotist: A teacher who encourages learning…

How do you manage a room full of digitally super charged ids?