edchat – Page 13 – Mechanical Sympathy

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.

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.

The New Efficiency

This African proverb passed me on the
internet last week, and left me thinking.

Originally published on Dusty World in June of 2015:

https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-new-efficiency.html

Last semester I had an energetic grade 9 suddenly stop his interaction with the internet and wonder out loud (and it was asked in all seriousness): “why is it in video games and movies old people are so cool, with hidden knowledge and special powers, but in real life they just suck?”

He received an avalanche of ‘how could you say that?!’, but then everyone went on to say how wonderful their grandparents were. Everyone loves their grandparents, but no one was willing to defend age and by extension experience in and of itself.

When this African proverb popped up I immediately felt the pinch of that class discussion (yes, I know, we were talking about the value of age and experience in a class where I was supposed to be teaching computer engineering, I guess my kids won’t be ready for whatever standardized test they invent for it).

What role does age and experience have in the information age? This proverb also refers to libraries, which have been facing their own test of relevance thanks to the Googliable nature of information.

Information technology has made personal knowledge irrelevant. The life experiences of human beings have become meaningless, replaced by internet searches. Why would you bother to ask your grandfather how to change the brakes on your car when you can just Google it? Once a useful source of information, the elders around you are now objects of affection and little more, they serve no function. You can get the information you need without any of the static (anecdotal stories that accompany the information). This sanitized, machine driven version of knowledge has many benefits.

You can reduce complex human knowledge (for example, the development of literacy) into simplistic, easy to quantify standards and then make sweeping suppositions about the results. Banal opinion based on internet ‘fact’ is the new intelligence. Like any opinion you hear online, carefully crafted grading schemes end up becoming the truth, which fits nicely into the antiseptic version of knowledge the information age peddles.

Another benefit is the downward social pressure on human communities. When you plug people into a centralized source of information you wean them from the social necessities of family, community and even nation. When no one needs anyone else (but they do need an ISP), you have removed all the social static and laid the groundwork for a kind of hypercapitalism that will make past look like the middle ages!

When we try and argue for meaningful learning (in anything other than a poster), we are met with educational administration making sad faces and saying it’s not viable. The reasonable provision of caps on class sizes is just such an attempt, which is why the meme on the right goes straight to the heart of this issue.

Tangible data that grossly oversimplify human endeavour are how we roll nowadays. As the poster states, class caps mean nothing, but fail to hand out a piece of paper with grades so abstract that they are meaningless along with computer generated comments, and ‘everyone loses their minds!’

There is some push back against the dimensionless facts that drive the information age. You find it in the physical world in grass roots movements like slow food or maker spaces where you see individuals trying to wrest control of production from the hands of remote systems. In these places the idea of human interaction is key to the process of learning. They are trying to build communities in an arid digital landscape that is bereft complex human interaction… unless they are under a corporate banner; communities designed for marketing purposes. What would be the economic sense in creating a community solely for the benefit its members?

Ironically, human interaction is less and less a factor in human education. The push to integrate technology into pedagogy without considering its implications has infected education systems with the same efficiency that we now enjoy everywhere else. We can hardly expect the personally demeaned yet highly efficient funployees in the private sector to demand anything other than consistent menial labour, it’s what they do. Developing complex personal relationships in order to effectively mentor and teach aren’t very efficient/economically viable. They are certainly discouraged in the brave new world of 21st Century education where teachers are now facilitators, reduced to getting out of the way of learning and making sure the #edtech is working.

One of my students from many years ago is now out in the world. She was sitting in a restaurant a few weeks ago watching two employees, a teenage girl and an older woman on their break. The older woman kept trying to start a conversation. The teen ignored her, buried in her phone until she finally snapped, ‘What? What do you want?” She was incensed that this woman had interrupted her texting time. She was probably in withdrawal because they don’t let her have the phone while working. I can bet which one of those two employees gets better performance reviews, though she sounds like an ass.

Maybe human experience is meaningless nowadays. Maybe old people are useless and libraries are a waste of space (great idea: replace every one in school with franchise coffee shops to balance the books!). Maybe we don’t need each other to learn any more, it’s certainly not as efficient.

LINKS

Watch the new efficiency infect the UK’s Labour Party
“In 2015 we are living in a cold, cruel, and desolate country in which benefit sanctions, foodbanks, poverty wages, and ignorance reign, governed by a clutch of rich, privately educated sociopaths whose conception of society has been ripped straight from the pages of a dystopian novel.”

I Just Wish They Could Finish A Thought

At the ICT conference I attended yesterday we did an industry panel discussion. The thirty year old VP of a major printer company passionately responded to a teacher question: “What can we do to prepare students for the workplace.”

“I just wish they could finish a thought! They can’t close sales, they can’t even perform basic customer service. They get halfway through a sales pitch and forget what they’re talking about, and they don’t listen! If a customer is telling them a problem, they respond by ignoring what the customer has just said. If grads could just finish what they started, we could take care of the rest.”

I’ve seldom heard the distracted digital native described in such (frustrated) clear terms. If business can’t use them because they can’t actually finish anything, then this puts older people at a distinct advantage.

Another of the panel told the story of a friend’s son who did an IT contract for him. He started off great, but once the big install was done and he was in beta testing the system, he seemed to slack off. About halfway through the contract he noticed the twenty something was on Facebook, so he made an account and befriended the kid. His stream was full of comments like, “I’m doing nothing and getting paid for it!” and “another day on Facebook on company time.” This manager contacted HR, revised his contract (which still had over a month in it) and ended it two days later, that Friday.

That guy’s inability to think through (complete a thought) about what he was doing (broadcasting his laziness), led to him being unemployed. There is a direct correlation there that any thinking person would understand, why don’t these digital natives? Because they don’t finish a thought. Even cause and effect are magical happenings beyond their understanding.

This question came up again later from a senior federal government manager who couldn’t understand how fractured the thinking of recent Ontario graduates appears to be. I suggested that Mcguinty’s in-school-till-18 program has resulted in a system wide lowering of expectations. Rubrics start at level 1. The implication there is that you pass if you do anything, anything at all.

Failing students has become almost impossible with student success and administration jumping in to offer alternatives (usually taught by teachers with no background in the subject). A great example is a failed grade 11 English student who was taking our credit recovery program. She got a B+ on her ISU paper, it had two grammar mistakes in the title alone and was marked by someone with no English background. I had to wonder how much of it had been cut and pasted, but that wasn’t looked into either.

The example that federal government manager gave was of a student who had missed dozens of classes at a community college and hadn’t completed any work. His argument? “Can’t you just pass me?” He was confused when the college prof said no, his high school teachers had.

Apparently we’re graduating students who can’t complete a thought and have systematized secondary education to minimize (if not remove entirely) cause and effect. I wonder how long it takes before we see persistent and ongoing economic problems related to this. That young VP’s passionate plea for graduates who can finish a thought might just be the tip of the iceberg.

Final OISE Blog

The final blog entry from my OISE computer engineering program:

Name and describe the school, board and ministry standards you must follow.
Our school and board follow Ministry standards and our collective agreement based upon it. One of the challenges we have is in following changing standards. One of those specific problems is the adoption of skills based assessment (a holdover from the Harris years). Many teachers have a great deal of trouble following this protocol (the learning to 18/student success plan works with it extensively).

I recently had to do a heads thing and sit on a committee that would create school level language around assessment. The fights were pretty epic. Many of the academic teachers believed that students should be marked on their behavior, not what they know about their subject. To them, school is about control and discipline, not subject matter (this dovetails nicely with a conversation I had with my wife last night – I think I’ll be blogging about it on Dusty World shortly).

In any case, our admin is determined to even out the radically different approaches to assessment that go on in our school (even within the same department). I’m curious to see how much this affects teachers this coming year. There is a great deal of professional latitude given to teachers whenever the door closes to the classroom. Unlike the US system, our lessons aren’t mandated and while we have invasive standardized testing, we aren’t held too tightly to them. US schools are required to force feed students lessons year round to feed standardized testing. They then rank poorly world wide.

As much as a loose, teacher centred approach grates on the nerves of hard core curriculumists, it does produce broad based learners who score well in general testing (and adapt well in a changing work environment).

I personally have issues with student success and many of the shortcuts they take in getting students diplomas. But even that process is one I can live with if it allows the majority of students to maximize their learning.

What would you see changed?

One of the few countries ahead of use in world rankings is Finland. Finland does a couple of things that I think would fit well with Ontario’s approach to education. Firstly, they expect teachers to be highly trained specialists in education. In order to teach in Finland, a teacher must have a Masters in Education. I think university focus on this isn’t a great idea, but I’d like to see teacher’s college be much more rigorous in producing teachers. A two year program that offers easy outs into other programs (teaching assistant, educational support worker, business training, etc), or out of education entirely, would be helpful. A greater stress on teacher’s college as an apprenticeship with many more weeks spent in-class with an associate teacher/mentor would also shake out the applicants.

I found a number of candidates in my program who wanted to drop out, but were given no option other than withdrawal with financial penalty. I’d really like to see a first semester drop out option (available after the first in school, teaching COOP session), that offers escape with no financial penalty. I’ve seen too many people teaching who aren’t particularly good at it, have no interest in changing that, and are doing it because they feel trapped into doing so. A more stringent, apprenticeship based, exit enabled teacher training system establishes higher standards (like Finland’s) without the university bias, and with a firm focus on developing teachers actually interested in teaching well.

The other thing Finland did was abolish all standardized testing. Standardized tests do not produce broad-based students who are able to adapt to new situations in creative ways. Standardized testing produces myopic, specifically focused students who fail in open, changing environments (the kind most students will be facing when they enter the workforce).
I’d also like to see a huge push away from the walled garden/board run IT model. The language around protecting students produces overly restrictive access to technology that reduces students’ ability to learn how to author, manage and effectively use current digital tools. If we want to remain relevant, we need to be able to meet students where they live, and show them how to manage modern digital tools effectively.

Develop an action plan to push forward your idea(s).Process:

Figure out what my stance is on effective educational reform

Read other theory, review statistics (don’t be Ontario-centric, look at educational theory from around the world), establish an understanding of what you believe effective reform is

Metacognitively, reflect on your own experiences in the classroom. What is a modern student like? What is needed to reach them? What would an effective learning environment look like in 2012 and beyond?

Develop your own ideas

Collaborate with others to organize and present them

Publish your thinking and invite critical response

Build a following or establish connections with other people who share your vision

Continue to respond to conditions in education,

I’ve done this by starting a blog that continually looks at current digital learning. I use it to reflect on my own experiences, think of ways to produce better results, publish my ideas and continue to evolve my own understandings of this very complicated (and very simple) profession. The blog led to presentations at Edcamps, conferences and PD. It’ll lead to a book at some point me-thinks.

The most important step in this action plan is to take action, and make other people aware of what you’re struggling with in education. If you’re a teacher who doesn’t think twice about teaching, I’d suggest that you’re probably not a very good teacher. If I had to mandate any Ministry requirement for teaching, it would be that teachers should be life long learners, who love the process of teaching and learning, and demonstrate how they are actively working to improve it, in themselves, their classroom, their board and their profession in general.

http://pinterest.com/scottmcleod/slides/ Some good (and funny, and sometimes nasty) comments on educational irrelevance

Hostage Situation

I’m being held hostage by an authoritarian government. These fascists (they certainly don’t believe in democracy) have demanded that I surrender my rights and work under their terms. In this impossible environment the people who speak for me have begun a legal battle on this government’s attack on my fundamental Charter freedoms. The process of overturning that legislation will take time, but it will eventually be overturned and will result in the end of this nasty, self-serving government and their illegal legislation.

My rep has also tried to bargain a deal to protect me in the meantime. The bargain was made with a Bill 115 Magnum aimed at our heads, so a fair deal wasn’t exactly the result of the process.

There was no negotiation, it was more like begging for our lives. This government was happy to turn the public against us in order to further their agenda.

If you’re held hostage you look for the basics, you don’t start asking for more than you had. It’s a moment of desperation.

If we don’t take the deal our rep has scraped together for us, this authoritarian regime will put us in an even worse situation because it has legislated our rights away. In either case we will no longer have anything like we had. We either lose a lot and keep a bit because our rep got some concessions out of the regime, or we end up in their even worse MoU prison, either way, we lose.

When someone has a gun to your head, do you start moralizing with them?

So do we vote for a contract that strips us of years of concessions because this government would rather flush money down poorly managed ehealth experiments, semi-privatized air ambulances, quarrelsomeness wind power and on again/off again power plants, or do we go to the wall and burn it all down because this is just wrong?

If we don’t vote for this, something even worse is imposed on us anyway. This is divisive no matter how you play it. Junior teachers lose their grid increases, senior teachers (who are the majority) don’t lose their retirement sick-day payouts. Some boards may OK this, others may not. This isn’t going to create labour peace, it’s going to create an uneven mess across the province.

In the meantime that fight to overturn the regime continues. In a year and a half, we could very well be standing over the ruins of Bill115 (and the Ontario Liberal dream of being the government) and be able to bargain a fair deal under Canadian law; we can’t do that right now. Whether we vote for this or not, our agreements will be in tatters because the Ontario Liberals and their Tea-party-Hudak lapdogs have pushed through this ridiculous, undemocratic legislation.

Do you go along with what you know is wrong hoping to protect you and your family as best you can or do you say, “NO, this is wrong, I will not be a party to it”? This isn’t an easy decision.

The lack of clarity, both moral and professional in this makes this a very uncertain, difficult decision to make. Unfortunately I’m a bloody minded kind of fellow; I fear I’ll vote for what’s right, whatever the cost, politics be damned.

PRIVATE TEACHER, PUBLIC JOB

The Tyranny of Paper

Students in my board collect over 17,000 sheets of paper in handouts in their k-12 school careers. Most Canadian schools are probably similar…

Every piece of finished paper has measurable environmental costs: http://bit.ly/p9wpqq

We burn a 60 watt light bulb continuously for 159.1 years so that we can hand out those handouts, one for each student… we burn plutonium to keep them in handouts.

We put 76.5 kilos of carbon into the atmosphere for each student who goes through our system… just so we can give them handouts.

Each student consumes almost one whole tree in paper in handouts from k-12. Think of the tens of thousands of students going through the system. We deforest just to give them handouts.

At 6 cents per copy that’s $1020 per student during their k-12 career. Over one thousand dollars spent on EACH student, just so we can give them handouts.

That’s all end-product related. The paper industry is one of the most polluting industrial processes we maintain, even giving oil a run for its money: paper pollution.

Last year, the wood/pulp/paper industry produced more particulate pollution than oil production in Canada. Only stone and metal based heavy industry were worse polluters.

In addition to all those handouts, I haven’t even gotten into the millions of dollars we spend on the tons of paper in text books, all supporting that polluting paper pulp industry.

I don’t doubt an electronic solution has its own problems, but I can’t believe that with some intelligent design, we couldn’t come up with a dependable, tough tablet device that would take paper and the massive polluting industry out of our schools. A simple reading and data entry device along the lines of a Kobo or Kindle would end the tyranny of paper; we’re close to this technologically now.

Individualizing technology in education isn’t just more efficient, it’s cheaper and more ecological too.

Learning Without A Safety Net

As a learner I tend to have problems following curriculum (I have trouble following it as a teacher too). For me, learning is a challenging, self-directed, non-linear activity. It’s a delight when you have that eureka moment and frustrating when you’re can’t grasp a concept because you don’t have enough context around it. I don’t want it to be easy, and I don’t want it to be fail-proof. Classes that are unfailable are pointless in my eyes; difficulties in learning are what make it empowering! Success shouldn’t be assured, if it is, you’ve sacrificed any real sense of accomplishment.

If a teacher, closely following set curriculum, spoon feeds me a lesson, I don’t feel that I’ve learned it, so much as learned the wrong thing (being told how to do it rather than figuring out how to do it). When students ask me to resolve a problem for them, I point them in the right direction, I don’t fix it for them. They aren’t in class to learn how to ask someone to correct their grammar, operate Adobe Flash or build a computer, they are in class to learn how to do these things for themselves. If they’re miles from figuring it out for themselves, I simply try and close that gap, but never take the last step, they need to do that themselves, or they won’t own their learning. To quote the mighty Morpheus, ” I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it. ”

I set up my classrooms as research centres and each assignment as a project. The environment should quickly and easily provide the tools needed to learn in a hands-on way. Failures aren’t failures, the only way to fail is to do nothing (which an increasing number of students seem to be doing once they realize how hard it is to fail in the current system). I encourage experimentation, and the opportunities found in resolving your own misunderstandings. Most of all, I make it very clear that the only way to fail is to make no attempt. Once students are engaged, they inevitably find success in a supportive learning environment.

I did this in English and it often caused conflict with the force-feeders who feel that you’re not teaching unless you’re talking at the class. Those force-feeders are as often students as they are teachers; the expectation of most academic students are that the teacher will give you information, you’ll repeat it back, and see high grades. Giving them room to fail makes them very nervous. Seeing that the technology curriculum is actually based on this idea of broad based, project focused learning, I’m looking forward to teaching a subject built upon this open, student centred approach. I loved teaching art for the same reason; project based, hands-on learning with lots of time for me to work one on one with students as they develop tangible skills.

In a tightly restricted, curriculum based classroom, I feel like I’m trying to dance in a straight jacket (both as a teacher, and as a student). I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be some focus, but the moment you dictate the entire process of learning, you effectively kill any personal meaning or satisfaction in it.

The State of Educational Hashtags, FEB 2012

I’ve become quite habitual in my use of hashtags, and haven’t really been exploring the edges. At conferences I’m diligent about following and using the correct hastag, but when it comes to topic specific ideas, I tend to resort to the basics (#edchat #edtech).

I thought it time to look into the current state of edu-hashtags and try and dig up some new resources for them.

An interesting post on the reach of various Education hashtags. Personal favs from those lists: #edchat #edtech

Twitter U: lists of Education hashtags with explanations. Hashtags of interest:

#TUfuture: future trends… sounds interesting (and up my alley)
#TUtin: tech integration in specific teaching areas

EDUDEMIC hashtag listings:

#mlearning: mobile learning using mobile tech
#vitalcpd: effective use of tech in the classroom
#elearning: dedicated to… fish! No, just kidding, it’s about elearning

Supercool School hashtags list.

Hashonomy: the science of hashtags (in beta right now).

Some Canadian specific hashtags… #cdned: general Canadian education tag. There are some BC ones that I don’t follow too much, such as #bced, though I should.

Anyone got any Ontario educational hashtags or other Canadian specific ones? Not that I get that wound up about geographically specific tags – they tend to not get the point of the internet (common interests matter more that geographical proximity).

Reply with any I missed! I want to poach your hashtag knowhow!

“You Never Teach Us Anything”

Originally published on Dusty World in May of 2014:

I had an interesting chat with a student yesterday. He’s yellow, I’m green:

“You never teach us anything.”
“By teaching do you mean do it for you?”
“Um, yes?”
“I don’t do everything for you because unless you figure it out for yourself, you haven’t figured out anything at all.”
“… but you never help.”
“I don’t think that’s true, I offer suggestions, and give you a framework to develop ideas in, I’ve provided you with thousands of dollars of free equipment and access to professional level learning resources. Have I never helped?”
“Ok, so you’ve helped, but you don’t teach.”
“What do you think teaching is?”
“When someone tells you what you should know…”
“Do you think that’s what a lesson is? When someone gives you information?”
“Yeah, isn’t it?”

Good question that, isn’t a lesson when you tell people what they should know? Isn’t teaching when you do everything for the student so they can be passive receptacles?

That a strong student who has ‘figured out’ the education system has such a poor view of our profession is worrying. I wonder how many lessons it took before he came to see pedagogy as little more than a fill in the blank exercise.

I wonder what it will take now to have him take possession of his own learning. I don’t imagine that will happen before post secondary, and when it does it will be a shock.

Learning Curves

Following up on the ‘just tell me the answer‘ post last week, I’ve been trying to find ways to articulate what I’m attempting to do with students so that they don’t become frustrated. It’s said that familiarity breeds contempt, but what I’m hoping is that familiarity breeds confidence and a willingness to experiment and push the boundaries of student knowledge.

The germination of self-directed learning should be the goal of instruction in any teaching. A student who is forever dependent upon a teacher is a poor student indeed. With that goal in mind I’m working out the process of developing self directed learning in students using Prezi to map out how familiarity breeds confidence and self direction.

Some brilliant Google+ sharing by Liz Krane &
Carmelyne Thompson via Josh Kaufman

Explaining this to my senior computer engineers I tried to stress that this process is what I’m looking at, not necessarily what you know. Even though the seniors are supposed to have previous experience many don’t so the course needs to be flexible in how it approaches a wide range of abilities. If I see steady growth in familiarity through guided instruction the inevitable result should be the formation of self-directed learning demonstrated through experimentation, collaboration and troubleshooting. Looking for what a student knows is much less important than looking for where a student is in this learning process towards mastery. Mastery itself is really just another word for a person who knows enough to error correct and self direct their learning – expertise never came at a teacher’s hand, mastery is always self taught.

Josh Kaufman’s TEDtalk on how 20 hours takes you through the initial steep climb (humbling and intensely rewarding) when picking up a new skills is telling:

We fail to do a lot of these things in school. Distractions in the form of bells, announcements, lousy chairs and tables, large classes, and dozens of other interferences break focus. I like to say, “stop learning now, you have to leave” to students when the bell goes and students who were lost in what they were doing are jarred back into the present.

Kaufman’s learning curve,
seems perfectly sensible…

On top of school itself we now have digital technology which is most effective at monetizing us if we ‘surf’ rather than focus. The habits we develop while being consumers online plague educational technology as students who are used to being digitally shallow out of school bring the same lack of focus to their learning. That we ignore digital habits and corporate influence in educational technology will probably be the reason it never does what it promises it might do.

Beyond industrialized settings and digital distractions education systems fail to recognize the basic process of learning and in doing so spend a lot of time and money producing under-performing students. When 50% is a pass even a perfect pass rate isn’t saying much. If our learning happens on a curve as Kaufman suggests, then we are doing this wrong in just about every possible way.

About a year ago I took a weekend course in order to begin riding a motorcycle. Difficult and uncompromising it demanded my full attention both in the classroom and for hours in the saddle. Not paying attention resulted in possible injury (and several people were). That weekend course might seem too short but it just happens to be about twenty hours long (what Kaufman suggests you need to get over the steepest part of the learning curve). With the right kind of support (small class size with a 1:4 instructor/student ratio and everything we needed to learn the skill including bikes, space, etc) and an expectation of focused learning, that twenty hours got me over the hump and able to continue developing expertise in a complex skill set that I had no previous experience in. I’d have to say, anecdotally, that Kaufman’s 20 hours seems right on the money.

We don’t think about learning curves in school. We don’t consider how students feel when they are picking up a new skill and feel inadequate; feelings aren’t in the curriculum. Worse, we consider learning to be a twelve year long marathon in school rather than a series of short sprints. Student goals aren’t always clear or consistent, failure isn’t considered an option and learning itself is less a focus than are irrelevant personal details like your age. We’d rather bunch students by age than where they are in their learning process. We lose sight of the possibilities and challenges inherent in the first twenty hours of new learning in favour of decade long statistical growth.

Can you imagine a school guided by Kaufman’s logic? Students are given focused learning to get them into a self correcting phase and then are expected to self-direct their learning. There would be classrooms with very high student:teacher ratios where the focus is on early learning. There may be other times and spaces where students are entirely independent and producing their own directed learning. Instead of a blanket approach our classrooms and schedules would reflect our variable learning curves; our schools would be responsive to how we learn instead of the other way round.

Digital technology would lend itself to this kind of learning by offering information, collaboration and communication to students on a profoundly personalized level. If we don’t begin taking the training of digital tools seriously the consumerist habits developed by everybody (students and staff) outside of school won’t allow us to de-industrialize education and adapt it to how we learn.