Tag: education

What followed was an insightful keynote into Blackberry’s work in developing secure systems in an industry famous for fail fast and early.  Companies that take a more measured approach to digital technology can sometimes seem out of step with the rock-star Silicon Valley crowd, but after a day of listening to software engineers from various companies lamenting ‘some companies’ (no one said the G-word), who tend to throw unfinished software out and then iterate (and consider that a virtue), the hard work of securing a sustainable digital ecosystem seems further and further out of reach.  The frustration in the air was palpable and many expressed a wish for more stringent engineering in online applications.

From Sarah Tatsis I learned about Cylance, Blackberry’s AI driven cybersecurity system.  This reminded me of an article I read in WIRED recently about Mike Beck, a (very) experienced cybersec analyst who has been working on a system called Darktrace, that uses artificial intelligence to mimic his skills and experience as a cybersecurity analyst in tracking down incursions.

Automating our tech doesn’t reduce our effort.  If anything it amplifies it.  The genius of Marc Marquez can only be really understood in slow motion as he drifts a 280hp bike at over 100mph.  That’s what an AI arms race in cybersec will look like too – you’ll only be able to watch it played back in slow motion to understand what is happening.

Once a vulnerability is found in software it’s often held back and sold to the highest bidder.  If you discovered a backdoor into banking software, imagine what that might sell for.  Did you know that there is a huge market for zero day threats online?  Between zero day attacks, nation-state cyberwar on a level never seen before and increasingly complex cybercriminals (some of whom were trained in those nation state cyber war operations), the digital space we spend so much of our time in and more and more of our critical infrastructure relies on is only going to get more fraught.  If you feel like our networked world and all this cybersecurity stuff is coming out of nowhere, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  AI may very well help shore up the weakest parts of our cyber-defence, but the need for people going into this underserved field isn’t going away any time soon.


***

Where did the Cybersecurity & Privacy Conference turn next?  To privacy!  Which is (like most things) more complicated than you think.  The experts on stage ranged from legal experts to sociologists and tackled the concept from many sides, with an eye on trying to expose how our digitally networked world is eroding expectations of private information.


I found the discussion fascinating, as did my business colleague, but many of the students were finding this lecture style information delivery to be exhausting.  When I asked who wanted to stick around in the afternoon for the industry panel on ‘can we fix the internet’, only a handful had the will and interest.  We had an interesting discussion after about whether or not university is a good fit for most students.  Based on our time at the conference, I’d say it isn’t – or they just haven’t grown into the brain they need to manage it yet.  What’s worrying is that in our increasingly student centred, digital classrooms we’re not graduating students who can handle this kind of information delivery.  That kind of metacognitive awareness is gold if you can find it in high school, and field trips like this one are a great way to highlight it.


The conference (for us anyway) wrapped up with an industry panel asking the question, “Can the Internet be saved?”  In the course of the discussion big ideas, like public, secure internet for all (ie: treating our critical ICT infrastructure with the same level of intent as we do our water, electrical and gas systems) were bandied about.  One of my students pointed out that people don’t pirate software or media for fun, they do it because they can’t afford it, which leads to potential hazards.  There was no immediate answer for this, but many of the people up there were frustrated at the digital divide.  As William Gibson so eloquently said, “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”  That lack of equity in entering our shared digital space and the system insecurity this desperation causes was a recurring theme.  One speaker pointed out that a company only fixated on number of users has a dangerously single minded obsession that is undermining the digital infrastructure that increasingly manages our critical systems.  If society is going to embrace digital, then that future better reach everyone, or there are always going to be people upsetting the boat if they aren’t afforded a seat on it.  That’s also assuming the people building the boats are more interested in including everyone rather than chasing next quarter earnings.


This conversation wandered in many directions, yet it always came back to something that should be self-evident to everyone.  If we had better users, most of our problems would disappear.  I’ve been trying to drive this ‘education is the answer‘ approach for a while now, but interest in picking up this responsibility seems to slip off everyone from students and teachers to administration at all levels.  We’re all happy to use digital tools to save money and increase efficiencies, but want to take no individual responsibility for them.

I’ve been banging this drum to half empty rooms for over a year now.  You say the c-word (cybersecurity) and people run away, and then get on their networked devices and keep doing the same silly things they’ve always done.  Our ubiquitous use of digital technology is like everyone getting a new car that’s half finished and full of safety hazards and then driving it on roads where no one can be bothered to learn the rules.  We could do so much better.  How digital skills isn’t a mandatory course in Ontario high schools is a mystery, especially when every class uses the technology.

I was surprised to bump into Diana Barbosa, ICTC’s Director of Education and Standards at the conference.  She was thrilled to see a troop of CyberTitans walk in and interrupt the opening keynote.  The students themselves, including a number of Terabytches from last year’s national finalist team who met Diana in Ottawa, were excited to have a chat and catch up.  This kind of networking is yet another advantage of getting out of the classroom on field trips like this.  If our pathways lead at the board hadn’t helped us out, all of that would have been lost.


We left the conference early to get everyone back in time for the end of the school day.  When I told them we’d been invited back on the bus ride home they all gave out a cheer.  Being told you belong in a foreign environment like an industry and academic conference full of expert adults is going to change even more student trajectories.  If our goal is to open up new possibilities to students, this opportunity hit the mark.


From a professional point of view, I’m frustrated with the lack of cohesion and will in government and industry to repair the fractured digital infrastructure they’ve made.  Lots of people have made a lot of money driving our society onto the internet.  The least they could do is ensure that the technology we’re using is as safe as it can be, but there seems to be no short term gain in it.

The US hacked a drone out of the sky this summer.

Some governments have militarized their cyber-capabilities and are building weapons grade hacks that will trickle down into civilian and criminal organizations.  In this inflationary threat-scape, cybersecurity is gearing up with AI and operational improvements to better face these threats, but it’s still a very asymmetrical situation.  The bad actors have a lot more going for them than the too few who stand trying to protect our critical digital infrastructure.  


Western governments have stood by and let this happen with little oversight, and the result has been a wild west of fake news, election tampering, destabilizing hacks and hackneyed software.  There are organizations in this that are playing a long game.  If this digital revolution is to become a permanent part of our social structure, a part that runs our critical infrastructure, then we all need to start taking networked infrastructure as something more than an entertaining diversion.


One of the most poignant moments for me was when one of the speakers asked the audience full of cybersecurity experts who they should call, police wise, if their company has been hacked.  There was silence.  In a room full of experts no one could answer because there is no answer.  That tells you something about just how asymetrical the threat-scape is these days.  Criminals and foreign powers can hack at will and know there are no repercussions, because there are none.


Feel safer now?  Reading this?  Online?  I didn’t even tell you about how many exploit kits drop hidden iframe links into web pages without their owners even knowing and then infect any machine that looks at the page anonymously.  Or the explosion of tracking cookies designed to sell your browsing habits to any interested party.

***

I’m beating this drum again at ECOO’s #BIT19 #edtech Conference in Niagara Falls on November 6, 7 and 8…

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2IHHQjL
via IFTTT

This year I applied for a Ministry grant for student driven experiential research. I’ve tried this before without much success, but this time we got OK’d!

Describe how students were involved in designing or co-constructing the learning experience.

CW students were encouraged to volunteer for a school wide VR research group where they got priority access to the VR sets during lunch. 30+ students joined this group but only two finished their projects.  Many faded away after midterm when they needed to focus on missed school work rather than volunteer projects. Early self directed research led students into 3d modelling using VR applications, but subsequent groups and individuals looked at curriculum wide VR possibilities.

VR is also integrated into the software engineering courses we run in grades 11 and 12. Two groups elected to develop VR based applications using Unity & Blender. These groups were student directed and managed through the entire development process. HexVR is a reflex action game running on the HTC Vive. Co/Labs focused on creating a virtual classroom that would allow people to meet in virtual space from anywhere to problem solve collaboratively.

https://twitter.com/3204games
https://twitter.com/CoSlashLabs
http://ift.tt/2uvSjpY

Describe how students developed and applied the knowledge and skills associated with education and career/life planning.

Software engineering students follow SWEBOK and

engineering design process planning when developing their software. The purpose of this course is to develop real world planning, collaboration and leadership skills. Many of our grads take the software they developed in class and use it as portfolio work to get into challenging post secondary programs, and in some cases to earn income to pay for their post secondary educations. As a stepping stone into post-secondary and career skills, the leadership skills learned in software engineering are a vital stepping stone.

The engineering design process we follow in software is closely linked to the iterative career/life planning process outlined in the document above – both are self correcting systems.


Describe how students reflected on and applied their learning.

In the voluntary group a rigorous reflection process was not possible and probably led to the lower outcome. In the more structured software engineering class reflection is baked into the iterative engineering design process and students were pressed to constantly assess their progress and change their course depending on how possible their final goals were. This demanding process of reflection on student knowledge and skill, and how effective it was in realizing project goals, was vital to the positive outcomes achieved.

The ministry is particularly interested in projects that promote inclusion and foster equity by focusing on the role of experiential learning to improve outcomes for a diverse group of students. What strategies did you use to ensure that every student participated and was able to derive personal meaning from the experience? *

At CW we offer computer technology courses at open levels in junior grades and at essential to M level/post secondary focused at senior grades. Students of all levels were able to access our VR technology. In addition the VR set was offered school wide and was used by students of all levels in a variety of curriculum learning situations. Our computer teacher (who is writing this) is autistic, as is his son, and his program is especially welcoming to autistic and other neuro-atypical students. Computer classes at CW tend to have very high rates of IEPed students who are able to develop complex technology skills using advanced hardware like our virtual reality sets.

Describe the planned outcomes / learning goals for students.

Students designed projects that would develop virtual reality software. These students were already experienced with 3d modelling and rendering software (Blender & Unity), but VR is such a new thing that there is very little out there to support development. In many cases these student projects were using software that was only weeks old that no one else was using. As an engineering project this was a unique goal: to build something without online support or previous versions to copy from – a completely unique piece of software engineering. Both groups working in this manner acheived working prototypes, and one group has been asked to continue developing their project by a number of interested industry partners. This may end up being the most genuine kind of project imaginable – one that becomes a published piece of software.

Describe the skills, knowledge and habits that students demonstrated related to each of the outcomes / learning goals. Cite data that speaks to the project’s impact on students’ attitudes, achievement and/or behaviour. Refer to Appendix E: Evidence of Impact in the Community-Connected Experiential Learning Project Handbook at http://ift.tt/2uvHN1Z.

Resiliency and self-direction were the main goals of this research work, and the students who stuck with it developed a stick-to-it-ness that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. From our grade 9s who were researching and essential beta testing unfinished software in a brand new piece of hardware to our seniors who were trying to develop software for it, real-world engineering practices were vital to success. Organization and an adherence to the engineering process allowed our successful students to exceed extremely challenging goals while other students benefited from a truly unique set of peer driven exemplars.

Our greatest success came from seniors who developed software both in and out of class, but several juniors also stuck with the voluntary research and produced satisfying and complex results (shared in subsequent answers).


The failure to produce output rate of volunteer non-class related students was exceptionally high while the completion rate of students with in-class support and access was significantly better.  While student directed research has merit, it should be noted that teachers have a strong role to play in helping less developed students plan and execute such work.

Reflect on your collection of project artifacts. Select and submit at least one artifact in each category that you think would be the most valuable to other teachers who may have an interest in exploring community-connected experiential learning in their programs. Where applicable, ensure that you have necessary consents/permissions to share. Refer to Appendix D: What Makes A Good Artifact? in the Community-Connected Experiential Learning Project Handbook at http://ift.tt/2tWKgW5.

CW exemplars:
MEDIUM: Oculus Rift 3d modelling software: (grade 9 analysis & review)

Check out Co/Labs on Twitter…

documentation: http://ift.tt/2uvv4w8
presentation:
http://ift.tt/2tWPaT2

Software research (grade 9):
http://ift.tt/2uvFJXy

Grade 11 VR software research
http://ift.tt/2tWGr2XiGC_cvbIoLc/edit?usp=sharing

Check out HexVR on Twitter…

Grade 12 Software development:
http://ift.tt/2uvv53a

HexVR: The pinnacle of CW’s VR research this semester:
http://ift.tt/2tWK4WM




A good examplar needs to show not just student work, but how the student played a part in designing that work.  An exemplar of a worksheet designed and given by a teacher is probably aiming for the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy and wasn’t what we were aiming for in this project.






Involvement of community partner: Describe the artifact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artifact. *

Our community began when our board SHSM lead offered to support us in rolling out VR sets to schools around the board as a pilot program. That roll out created a local community of users. Our grant application grew naturally out of our independent research as we already knew of each other and were keen to work together exploring this technological learning opportunity.

Some early adopters, most significantly TJ Neal at ODSS, had been into VR since before it went public using engineering samples of early VR sets, but he was working in isolation. Our local community, started by SHSM and then supported by this Ministry grant has created fertile ground for new technology research to occur.

TJ’s early work had also put him in touch with Foundry10, a Seattle based educational research group with an interest in VR. Their support early on in providing hardware and, more importantly best practices from other schools all across the continent, allowed us to quickly overcome or avoid obstacles and get our sets running in a sustainable and safe manner.

Community involvement both locally, at the board level, and even internationally online (and in person when Foundry10 came to visit) was key to our success in HexVR as well as our other projects related to this grant.


The artifact chosen would be Foundry10’s VR research which we both participated in and benefited from:  http://ift.tt/2li1qbC

Student involvement in the design/planning: Describe the artifact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artifact.

HexVR is an astonishing piece of software – a live action 3d game that already works well after only half a semester of in-class development by our senior software engineering class. Our valedictorian designed and built most of it while guiding and mentoring a number of junior engineers. HTC is interested in seeing if he can complete his development and our board SHSM has supplied him with a VR set for the summer to do that.


To technically understand what it means to design a working VR interface like this you have to understand how complicated it would be to ray cast both hands and head in 3d space in a continuous manner in a rendered virtual space.  It’s a complex and brutal piece of engineering.

This project was entirely designed and built by our valedictorian (who wants to go into software engineering). His work not only produced a working prototype, but also helped us clarify how and what to teach in future classes.  His understanding of how to implement object based programming will drive future engineering work in our class.   As an exceptional student about to pursue a professional interest, this is powerful exemplar of student directed planning, design and effective engineering process and helps define what is possible.

HexVR: http://ift.tt/2tWK4WM

Connection to the education and career/life planning program: Describe the artefact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artefact.

Up until three years ago we did not offer any software engineering course at CW. This course, which runs at cap each year, allows students to experience the engineering process involved in building software using industry rules, goals and expectations.

We already have graduates who have published software and many have gone on to successfully complete in-demand, high-expectation post secondary programs in digital technologies with great success.

Cameron’s work, like the work of other grads, will go on to produce a working software title.  The difference is that Cam did it using emerging hardware and software.  As an example of industry grade engineering by an Ontario high school student, there is little better.

Application of the experiential learning cycle: Describe the artifact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artifact.

A great example of the experiential learning cycle was grade 9 Kathryn’s research into Oculus Medium.

With less than a year under her belt in high school and with little experience in self directed research and while looking at days old software on weeks old new hardware, Kathryn self organized, planned an approach and executed it, all without any grades hanging on it (she wasn’t even my student at that point, she’d finished grade 9 computer tech in semester one).

A key aspect of experiential learning is self direction. In Shopclass As Soulcraft (a book any tech teacher or maker interested instructor should read), Matt Crawford proves the importance of self direction both in skills mastery and, ultimately, professionalism. Someone who is unable to self direct their work is not a professional. To see this kind of dedication and professional focus in a grade 9 student is exceptional and underlies the importance of offering the self directed planning of projects at the high school level.

What did you learn about the development, delivery and impact of community-connected experiential learning? What worked well? What will you do differently next time? *

Offer access to a large number of interested students, you’ll lose many of them in the process, but a big group means more people still working on it at the finish (we had 3 juniors out of 40 complete their research work).

Tying it to a course so there is more support (as in the senior engineering course) made a bit difference in completion rates (100% vs 8%). Offering more support to juniors might improve that, but I’m a big believer in a sink or swim approach to technology learning, and the students not willing to get organized will expect you to end up doing it for them, which isn’t the point of the grant, nor the point of why I teach technology. Having said that, I think I’ll still offer a bit more in the way of initial organizational support to juniors if we do this again because many of them can’t see the point of doing anything unless there is a mark tied to it (and sometimes not even then).  That would be a good habit to break if we’re in the business of producing life long learners.

How can the Ministry of Education continue to support your efforts to provide community-connected experiential learning opportunities that promote student engagement, improve achievement, and foster well-being and life-long learning? *

Emerging technology is a sign of our times. The nature of digitization means everyone currently in education needs to be conversant in it – just like literacy or numeracy. Digital Fluency in Ontario education is at best an afterthought. The MoE should be looking to support digital fluency in both its staff and its students. We make grade 9 Geography and Art mandatory but there is no mandatory digital technology course, yet every student is expected to know how to use it both in their learning and in any future career they might have. Thinking that students magically know technology because they were born into it is ludicrous. Do you know how to replace a clutch in a car because cars were prevalent when you were a child? Or even just change a tire? Basic digital fluency is an expected foundational skill in 2017, but we don’t treat it like one. If the Ministry wants to help at all, start there.

Digital technology is connecting us both locally and virtually in ways unprecedented in history. Teaching all of our students how to do the digital equivalent of learning to drive, change a tire or look after the oil means they keep themselves on the road and get to experience and exploit that connectivity.   You want community connected experiential learning opportunities?  Digital technology is the grease the makes that wheel turn.

I teach students from grade 9s with little experience or interest in computers to grade 12s who are going to make it their life’s work, and every single one of them across that massive spectrum of skill and experience would benefit from a province wide focus on digital skills; it would make everything work more smoothly in a changing world and prepare our graduates for whatever job they may eventually inhabit.

Experiential learning is amplified with technology (VR is an excellent example of just how

powerful that can be – try standing in a ruined Auschwitz on a misty morning alone in VR and see if it isn’t). Student engagement is spiked by technology (assuming they are capable of using those tools effectively), achievement is improved as technology skills open the door to opportunities like elearning and other non-geographically limited learning. Student well being is improved with the ability to communicate with like minded people and seek out help when it’s needed, and lifelong learning is encouraged and enabled when you can make effective use of technology and then apply it non-habitually and functionally in your learning. The future’s so bright, but only if we’re ready for it, and we get ready for it by developing our hard skills in a focused, curriculum driven structure.  We all become more literate if we’re all more literate.

Research work like we did in this project seems far fetched and theoretical, but it’s what is coming next, and allowing us to explore this emerging technology and see what it can do for experiential learning allows us early adopters to improve our advanced skills while laying the groundwork for wider adoption down the road. This is differentiated instruction that helps us all, and for that I thank you for the chance to do it.

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2uvv7Ik
via IFTTT

I’ve raged against the inflation of grades and streaming to minimize expectations on otherwise capable students before.  I’m at the end of another semester of teaching essential students and once again I’ve been injured by the process.  Just as in last year’s essential English class, I’m given a single class with mixed grade elevens and twelves (because teaching essential classes is easy?).  In that split focused class are a majority of genuinely essential level students who need close support and a lot of one on one attention to manage the work.  This I have no trouble with.  These students tend to be very genuine and eager, but have trouble thinking through what needs to be done.  They make me feel valued as a teacher, which is lovely.  In all cases when I bump into them in the hallway outside of class we have positive and supportive interactions with each other.


Hidden among these students (the ones least able to resist their animosity) are capable students who have matriculated into essential classes because they have failed academic and applied courses in previous years.  They haven’t failed these classes because of an inability to manage the learning, they simply haven’t done it.  These students tend to have months of absences in a semester and when they do show up you can expect disruption, disrespect and constant sabotage.  At the end of it all is an expectation to pass these students (usually with a fifty), even though they have been a poison in the room.


Needless to say, teaching in an environment like this (in a split three way classroom with a handful of saboteurs who have been carefully moulded by a system seemingly intent on not expecting anything from them) isn’t an enjoyable experience.  Halfway through the semester I had to fill out my annual learning plan and I ended up asking that the essential classes I had been working to begin for years be stopped.  If it means not catering to using essential classes as a catchall for miscreants, then I will happily make a place for genuinely essential students in my open M level classes and look after them better there without them having to sit next to a learning troll.


These poisonous apples are a tiny portion of our school’s population, I’d guess no more than thirty students out of almost thirteen hundred, but they damage whole rooms of learners and diminish the school’s ability to function.  In some cases they are hanging around the school to sell drugs, in others they are hanging around the school simply because no one else expects anything of them either.  The rest of us are going to end up spending the rest of our lives paying for these people, and the system seems intent on teaching them that they can do what they want and expect no consequences.


I’ve watched these students accumulate months of absences without any observable consequence.  When they are in class you can expect them to walk in twenty minutes late (and after initial instruction), actively disrupt any work others are doing, take twenty minute toilet breaks and then walk out early without permission.  I’m told I’m supposed to spend my lunch giving them an in-class suspension, but they refuse to attend those too.  In any case, I usually leave my room open for the other 99% of students who want to do something productive.  Given a choice I’ll look after that vast majority.  Meanwhile, back in class, I’ve watched these lost boys maliciously and intentionally break technology in my shop, driving up the costs of what I’m trying to do with no discernible benefit to anyone, themselves included.  That’s the saddest part about this, they are wasting their own potential and no one seems to want to do anything about it.


Ontario’s Bill 52:  Learning until 18, was obviously instituted with the best interests of all students, including those who would previously have dropped out, but there is benefit in having a student leave school if they are unable to make use of what is still a fairly inflexible education system.  Changing this bill to learning until 16 with a variety of options beyond sabotaging high school classrooms would be a logical step forward.  Giving apprenticeships and work to these students might prompt them to care enough make productive use of their potential.  It would also stop the system from punishing vulnerable and genuinely essential level students by dropping delinquents into their midst because the only response to a failing grade in our rigid education system is to move the offender into a different stream.



There is nothing inherently wrong with Ontario’s streamed high school system except what politics has done to it.  With some rational adjustments we could fix this for those students who have lost the ability to develop their own potential, as well as everyone else.  Going to work and getting dirty and tired for a couple of years did wonders for my educational motivation.

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2FnZrcf
via IFTTT

There has recently been a fair bit of push back against STEM as a focus in schools, but as a classroom technology and engineering teacher I have to tell you, there is no STEM.  By sticking science, technology, engineering and mathematics in an acronym, many people, especially people who aren’t in classrooms, think that this is some kind of coherent strategy, but I can assure you it isn’t, at least not in Ontario.


Maths and sciences are mandatory courses throughout a student’s career.  Technology and engineering are not, ever.  Maths gets even more additional attention because of EQAO standardized testing, so numeracy is an expectation for all teachers throughout the school.  Science is mandatory throughout elementary grades and high school students are required to take two science credits to graduate.  Maths and science are baked into a student’s school experience.


Want to feel the sting of irrelevance?  Waterloo University (and many others) do a fine job of underlining how little technology and engineering programs matter in high schools.  If you’re signing up for their software engineering program you need lots of maths… and lots of science.  Engineering for an engineering program?  Well, there’s no point in making it a requirement because it’s an optional course that is barely taught anywhere in Ontario.  At one point I heard less than 15% of Ontario schools run any kind of coherent computer engineering program.  The technology prejudice is a bit different, that’s more of a blue collar white collar thing, but engineering, as an academic focus, has been swallowed whole by science and maths.


SM has always been a foundational piece of public education, and remains so, but the entire ‘STEM push’ is really an SM push, engineering and technology remain barely taught and entirely optional and peripheral in Ontario classrooms, assuming they exist at all.  Tactile, hands on technology programs with their lower class sizes, expensive tools and safety concerns are the first to get canned when the money tightens up.  It’s cheaper to stuff 30+ kids into an ‘academic’ (aka: text based/theory) course where you can sit them in efficient rows and learn linearly until everyone gets the same right answer.  It doesn’t do much for them in the real world, but it’s cheaper.  Math and science make sense in a school system focused on those kinds of academic economics.


Governments get voted in by creating panic about student mathematics skills, and how science is taught is another political hot-spot that gives politicians lots of traction.  I have no doubt that these two subjects enjoy the attention they do because of this political fecundity.  Engineering and technology?  The skills that build the critical infrastructures that allow us to feed, connect and house people?  Not much political mucking to be done there, it just needs to work.


Last year I had a student graduate and go on to college for computer technology.  He had some trouble in school, but was on track to be a successful computer technician.  In his first post-secondary computer technology courses he was feeling well ahead of his classmates and was confident of success, but not all his classes went so well.  He ended up failing his maths course and eventually dropped out of the whole program.  Talking to his mother after this happened, she implied that I’d failed to teach him the mathematics he needed to succeed.  I didn’t argue the point (I don’t teach mathematics other than in conjunction with what we’re doing in computer technology).  There is an entire mathematics department with ten times more personnel, resources and infinitely more presence in the school than me an my oft-forgotten program, but with STEM ringing in her ears we’re all lumped into that failure.

This year I’m rocking a budget (which I’ve already exceeded in the second week of September) that is 25% of what it was a few years ago.  Everyone is seeing cuts, but the mandatory departments are protected in a way that our optional courses are not.  Where they might see a 10% cut, I’m seeing 75%, because what I teach is not a priority.  That cut is happening while I’m actually up in sections due the success we’ve had in various competitions and the media attention we’ve received (but not in our own yearbook).


You can rail against STEM all you like, but there is no such thing.  If there has been any STEM funding with this focus it hasn’t found my technology and engineering courses, because not all STEMs are considered worthy of political attention.  The best I’ve seen out of this are a few more manipulatives in maths classes based on corporate tech-in-a-box, but building a kit isn’t engineering.  When you’re engineering there are no instructions and the end goal may not even be possible, you certainly don’t end up with everyone looking at the same finished product.  That kind of stochastic process is another reason why eng/tech is frowned upon in academic settings; they like everyone to arrive at the same correct answer.  It makes for a clear sense of progress, but learning to deal with potential failure in reality isn’t wasted time in school.

In the article that kicked this off, you get a very articulate and scholarly take on the value of a liberal arts education and how it can free you from economic bondage in our overpopulated and automated world.  The down-your-nose ‘yeomanship’ / servitude argument pasted on STEM and CTE as a preparation for the workplace ignores the many soft skills that hands-on technical training can provide in favour of the argument that students of technology are dimensionless corporate shills whose only interest is to find work in a system that doesn’t really need them.  But aren’t we all yoked to our broken economic system?  A degree doesn’t somehow free you from that commitment, but it will bury you in debt and the attendant servitude to it.  A technical education costs less and teaches you some valuable soft skills that will help you in any vocation, while also offering you a shot at something other than general labour.  The engineering design process technology training is predicated on would help anyone in any aspect of life where they must self-organize and tackle a problem that may not have a solution.


I have a liberal arts education (English and philosophy majors) and I greatly value the discipline it has brought to both my thinking and writing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value hands-on mastery and the attendant good habits that accompany it.  It took me a long time to value my technical, hands-on skills against the constant noise of academic/white collar prejudice and privilege.  Since moving to technology from English teaching, I face that pressure daily, as do my tech-teaching colleagues.  In speaking to many people I still get the sense that technical, hands-on skills are inferior to academic skills, but I find them complimentary, not less than.  It would be quite a thing if we could value a student’s technical hands-on mastery as much as we value their academic grades… or even their sports abilities.


I get the sense that Professor Zaloom believes the future will be full of highly educated academics elucidating on the state of humanity while they float above economic necessities with their intellectual freedom.  I’d argue that learning hands-on technical skills gives you a variety of soft-skills (persistence, self-organization, resilience, humility to name a few) that will help students deal with that overpopulated, automated future every bit as much as a degree might.


If you follow that article through, it’s less about STEM and more about what we’re going to do in an increasingly automated world populated by more and more people with less and less to do.  In that no-win situation, the value of being able to repair your own technology and understand the hidden systems that regulate your life is another kind of literacy that I think all students should have, especially if they are going to depend on those systems and let them direct their lives.

A good read on the fecundity of hands-on mastery.

Technology education offers that insight along with a plethora of tough-soft skills that are wanting in many academic programs where established reality is whatever the teacher thinks it should be.  There is a hard, real-world edge to technology training that is often hard to find in the mentally constructed world of academic achievement.  Matt Crawford describes management thinking in Shop Class as Soulcraft as having a ‘peculiarly chancy and fluid character’ due to its success criteria being changeable depending on the whims of the people in charge.  That was my experience in too many academic situations.  You know where you stand in technology because reality isn’t fickle.


It’s a shame that this pointless acronym has thrown a blanket over the grossly neglected curriculums of technology and engineering, while giving even more attention to two of the Disney princesses of academia.  To be honest with you, I think technology and engineering would be just where it is now had this STEM focus never happened, which tells you something about how this ed-fad has gone down.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/31pRHlE
via IFTTT

Additional Reading:

The rich intersection of a liberal arts background and technology expertise:  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Shop Class as Soulcraft is a must read, but so is Matt’s follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head.  A philosophical look at the power of tactile skills to free us from consumerism and the mental world of the digital attention economy.

My Background in Elearning:


I’ve been elearning since the early 1990s in university.  Back then it was called distance-ed or correspondence learning.  I’d get a big parcel int he mail and work my way through paper based course work before sending it back.  When I got my ESL teaching qualifications in Japan in 1999, it was through a distance-ed school in Scotland.  Those courses were difficult and made more so by the one way nature of the communication.  As email became prevalent I was able to establish faster two-way communication with instructors.  This finally evolved into an online, cloud based elearning system in the early zeroes.


In the 90s I was working in IT, which included a lot of user training on new, cloud based software management solutions, so the elearning concept wasn’t new to me.  From the very earliest cloud based management systems, I’ve had an oar in the water when it comes to elearning.


I became an Ontario teacher in 2004 and was a summer school elearning teacher by 2005.  Those early Learning Management Systems (LMSs) were very texty.  If you wanted graphics or even links, you had to HTML code them in yourself.  All of us (my students and I) were alone in cyber-space way back then, and some wonderful things happened that demonstrated the potential of this technology.  After two years of teaching elearning through Peel’s summer school program on the ANGEL LMS, I moved to Upper Grand DSB, who hadn’t touched elearning yet.


By 2007 UGDSB was starting to get into it and I volunteered to be in the first group sent to another board to learn how D2L’s new LMS worked.  The next year I was once again teaching elearning in summer school and then also teaching elearning during the school year as part of my course load.  By that point I was also taking Additional Qualification courses (AQs) in the summer on elearning.  Rather ironically, out of all the AQs I took in English and visual art, the only one that wasn’t elearning was computer technology.


In addition to teaching remote elearning in English, I also pushed for a blended learning course in my local school that uses elearning technology in a traditional classroom so that students can get familiar with this increasingly popular option for earning credits.  That blended elearning course in career studies was very successful in terms of introducing students to elearning.  Any student who took it knew what elearning was by the end of it and whether or not it would suit their learning habits.


Way back in 2011 I was trying to wrap my head around how to get students in a 1:1 technology situation to make effective use of technology that most people consider mainly entertainment focused.  Seven years ago I was trying to help our union understand elearning and how they could support effective implementation of it.  Many educators turned their nose up at elearning and the unions would rather it not exist at all, but this kind of disruption is exactly what digital information does, and ignoring it isn’t a good idea – just ask Blockbuster.


By six years ago I was thinking about applying to become an elearning coordinator at my board.  Strangely, after going in for the interview and not getting it, I was suddenly out of the pool of elearning teachers and haven’t taught it since.  I’ve found other ways to exercise my digital expertise, but elearning has always been a fascinating union between ICT, digital media and pedagogy that I’ve never really gone away from.


With the rise of GAFE in our board, all of my classes have essentially become blended learning classes.  I didn’t make any photocopies for my courses last year because our documentation and information all flows digitally.  I expect my computer-tech students to be able to effectively use our learning management systems.  Many of them take that digital expertise and use it to effectively engage in elearning.  Many other students from across the school show up at my door unable to effectively engage in elearning courses due to a lack of digital fluency – I still help with that, though it isn’t the gig I’m being paid for.


All that to say, I have a long history with elearning and think it can be a  powerful addition to our education system.


Meanwhile, in 2019…

The current provincial government, without a lot of forethought or apparent research, have stated that all students have to take four elearning courses.  The high number of expected elearning credits and lack of infrastructure around this would suggest that this is an excuse to create giant classes, ignore pedagogy and pump out students with little or no effective learning.  If elearning is going to be used to Walmart education into cheaper, less effective process, then it’s a disaster for students, educators and the tax payers who are funding a process that isn’t effective.


If elearning is going to become an effective tool in our education system (and it really should), it can’t be an excuse to cheapen learning.  There are too many corporate interests involved that want to make it exactly that.  Those interests may well be what is behind this latest lunge at Ontario’s education system.


This approach plays to a common tactic: grossly simplifying a complex public service in order to diminish it.  Many adults flippantly state that they have to do elearning through work so kids should get with it. Teaching children isn’t like teaching adults. When a wage earning adult takes a course, it’s an entirely different situation than a child doing it. Adults (most adults, the adult ones anyway), bring a degree of self-discipline and purpose to a course of study that children are still developing, because that part of their brain isn’t done growing yet; it’s neuro-science.  Saying that children should learn like adults do is like saying children should drive cars because adults do (ie: a profoundly ignorant and stupid thing to say).


Elearning in our schools should start off as blended learning  focusing on getting comfortable with the technology and expectations of remote instruction in a familiar, face to face environment.  Most students are dumped into it without any clear idea of what it is and then given minimal support. Once the tech is in hand and a student has a clear understanding of how elearning might work for them, pedagogy and high standards are vital or the whole thing becomes a cheaper, less effective option, which helps no one and just wastes money.  Having elearning as a required blended course using elearning technology in a face to face classroom is a great idea, but dumping 4 remote courses on every student in Ontario is a profoundly ignorant thing to do; differentiation based on student need should always be a driving force in effective elearning (or any kind of learning, right?).

Integrating elearning effectively is starting to feel like a no-win scenario.  Between callous government announcements about forced elearning courses for all and the reticence of unions and teachers to embrace this inevitable technology evolution, there are few who are willing to champion it.  If Luddite teachers (and their unions) would turn down the skepticism and negativity and get behind effective implementation of this inevitable technology, there is a chance to beat the politics.


Elearning is going to happen anyway, and if we don’t engage and participate in making it as pedagogically effective as possible it’ll end up being the corporate/neo-con money grab it’s being primed to be. When that happens, students and educators alike will be hurt. So will tax payers, because they won’t be getting their moneys worth – the corporations pushing it and the governments that serve them will always cash in though.


The way forward is clear:

• prepare students for elearning by training them in the technology and the instructional expectations in a familiar f2f environment – no one should suddenly find themselves in a remote learning situation without knowing what to do
• provide full support for elearning students including guidance and library/research support just like f2f students enjoy
• set high standards and hold to them, including offering outs for students the process isn’t working for
• develop LMSes that curate a learning community in digital spaces – a sense of community is vital to any classroom situation, physical or otherwise
• provide elearning instructors with excellent technical skills and fluency in digital environments
• provide passionate elearning instructors and support people who are willing to go the extra mile to ensure a successful online learning experience

NOTES:

https://k12sotn.ca/blog/ontario-e-learning-graduation-requirement-scalability/
To better understand the level of growth that this requirement would create, it is useful to examine what we know about the level of e-learning that currently exists in Ontario.



http://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Ontario-e-learning-plan-unique-in-North-America-1.pdf
Traditionally, in Ontario, students have enrolled in e-learning courses for a number of reasons: to fast-track and get to graduation early, to catch up in credits, to accommodate their learning needs, or because particular courses are not offered in their communities. E-learning has benefits for many students, and for some it is challenging. 


https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/does-elearning-damage-teacherstudent.html


https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/b2qq79/snapshot_from_elearning_that_has_since_been_taken/
Expectations change as politics dictate new directions.


https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/confessions-of-elearning-pariah.html


https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/04/09/news/ontario-may-create-student-inequality-mandatory-online-learning-report

The digital divide is deep and wide:  https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-digital-divide-is-deep-and-wide.html  Elearning has an expensive barrier to entry in terms of in-hand technology as well as broad-band access.  It isn’t a cheap alternative, but it can be a powerful tool in our educational toolbox.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2ScnRgF
via IFTTT

While I was attending the Future of Work Summit with ICTC at the MaRS Centre in Toronto, just down the street Ontario’s teacher unions were having their yearly meetings.  The social media runoff from those meetings, and from Ontario Education in general, has been increasingly and overwhelmingly negative.  As I’m listening to talks about how to increase our flexibility and reduce institutional lag, the education system around me is going into a state of rigour mortis as it stiffens up to the point where nothing is acceptable and everything is rebuked out of hand.


In my time teaching in Ontario I’ve watched the provincial government break the law and end up paying millions in reparations as a result.  That mess was treated like a blip compared to what has been happening recently.  Before this new government even did anything we were warned that it was all going to hell.  Things went to hell with the previous government too, but that seemed to be ok because, ultimately, our unions had ongoing relationships with that government.  This is the first time I’ve seen Ontario education operating under a non-Liberal government and it isn’t pretty.  There was always some flexibility of approach previously, even when what has happening to us was ridiculous.  That flexibility is gone now.

Rae and the NDP pushed up our debt, but so did Harris and the PCs. Interesting that McGinty and the Liberals were actually more fiscally conservative than the PCs until it all went to hell in 2008. Ontario is as in debt as it is because it spent billions bailing out private corporations that were playing silly buggers with the economy.

I’m well aware of what happened the last time a ‘progressive’ conservative government ran Ontario education into the ground.  At that point it was described as a needed financial correction from the previous NDP government, but the Financial Times doesn’t graph it like that.  Mike Harris and his government sold off money makers like the 407 to balance a single year and look fiscally tight.  It’s that kind of self serving short sightedness in our elected officials that frustrates me.  What I find strange is that Ontario defaulted to conservative leadership for many years, and in that time could depend on governance that wasn’t populist and myopic, but recent attempts seem to be all about violent correction catering to special interests without any long term intentions.


Ontario needs to get a handle on its debt and we need a capable leader who is willing to lead by example to do it.  The problem with Ontarians is that they won’t vote for someone like that.  Instead they are swayed by buck a beer huxtering.


Frankly, I don’t care whether they are liberal, conservative or NDP, but I do care that it happens.  We’re paying billions servicing debts we can’t afford.  If it has to be austerity, then it needs to be austerity for all.  I’d be willing to buckle down and do my best with larger classes and lower budgets if I felt that everyone else wasn’t voting themselves higher living allowances and inventing redundant jobs for friends.


Squeezing the system generally won’t yield the kind of savings we need, and it damages learning conditions for students as well as teachers.  Ontario students are some of the best in the world.  If we’re willing to sacrifice that excellence to protect a UN sanctioned publicly funded semi-private religious school system, or a questionable standardized testing regime brought to us by an under-performing US model of education, then we’re damaging our excellence to protect inequity and keep ourselves buried in debt.  There are plenty of places we could save billions in Ontario education by making systemic change while protecting the learning conditions of students.  It is only because we are trapped by our history and our selfish, short-sighted, tail-chasing political system that we can’t make the changes needed to make Ontario more sustainable.


Attending that summit once again got me thinking about how relentlessly and aggressively the best private enterprises chase efficiency.  There is nothing sacred in that environment, it’s eat or be eaten.  That kind of focus really appeals to the technician in me who builds technology based on efficiency and efficacy, but it’s short sighted when dealing with public education.  


Working for a system that is ultimately led by politicians who are in turn being led by the short-sightedness of our electorate has never been anything but frustrating.  Watching this government shore up the money-sinks while at the same time hurting learners and damaging our performance isn’t new.  Previous governments did the exact same thing.  There is nothing revolutionary or different about what’s happening now, other than the mass centralization of opposition against it.


Ontario continues to sink deeper into debt even as we’re catering to special interests as we’ve always done.  Things could be better, but the system we have does nothing to encourage intelligent decision making.  If you’re looking for change in Ontario any time soon, you’re not going to see it.  In the meantime, Ontario will drag Canada out of the top 10 worldwide as we intentionally damage one of Ontario’s most popular exports.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2HErhFI
via IFTTT

One of the ways I differentiate my courses in order to cater to students who will become digital engineers and technicians is to find opportunities to compete in skills based competitions.  Not only does this offer them advanced study in specific areas of computer technology, but it also provides curriculum material that often trickles down into my regular course work.

In the fall we took our first run at the CyberPatriot/CyberTitan IT security competition.  Cyber-security is a high demand field we don’t produce enough of in Canada.  With a very strong team of seniors we made big steps forward in each round figuring out how the competition works and what we needed to focus on to get better at it.  Once we knew how to focus on Windows and Linux operating systems and Cisco networking, we got a lot better.  By the final round we’d fought our way up to the sharp end of the competition and ended up finishing in the top 10 out of 90 odd Canadian teams.  We’re off to Fredericton in May to see how we fare in the national finals.

I’ve been looking at ways to bring cyber-security into my curriculum and this ICTC run competition has provided me with a pile of material on all levels of IT security from the desktop all the way up to networking.  In the meantime, I’ve got four students who are national finalists, which looks mighty fine on both a job and post-secondary program applications.  The team isn’t a mono-culture either.  One student is aiming at software engineering, another at information technology, another at teaching and the last isn’t ICT focused but is a strong, multi-talented student who can solve esoteric problems well.  They also work well as a team, so we’re looking forward to seeing how we fare in the finals in New Brunswick.

Meanwhile, we’ve got four students aiming for Skills Ontario provincial finals in Toronto in May.  Unlike last year when we tried to commute into the GTA for the event (utter misery), we are lining up hotel rooms and staying overnight, so everyone will arrive early and well rested – no seven hour school bus commutes for us this time.  We’ve got last year’s bronze medalist at IT and Networking who is angling for a higher finish, last year’s 7th place electronics student in the hunt for a medal and last year’s 10th place web developer looking for a top five finish.  I’ve also got a ringer for the first ever coding competition at Skills Ontario provincials.  Like the CyberTitan competition, I’ve been able to lift a lot of useful course focuses out of Skills scopes.  Our electronics have diversified and become much more complex thanks to our competitor’s work in skills (and I love that she’s beating the boys in a predominantly male competition).  The web development we started last year is going to provide much of the coding focus for our new grade ten computer class that starts next year.

I get a real charge out of competition.  I used to coach soccer at school but now I spend my time focused on supporting technology curriculum.  The differences are many.  Instead of only catering to students who are wealthy enough to not work and have the free time to play games at school all week, I find myself supporting a wide socio-economic range of students, which I find more gratifying.  In the process I’ve been able to show many of them opportunities and post secondary pathways that they hadn’t considered before.  I didn’t manage to produce a single professional soccer player in years of coaching, but I’ve managed to help engineers, technicians and digital artists begin their careers.  Of course, I don’t get paid to do any of this, but finding students and helping them develop into competitive provincial and national challengers is one of the favourite aspects of my job, even though it isn’t actually my job.  The hardest part is convincing them that it’s possible; doubt is the hardest thing to overcome.

Meanwhile, in the classroom this semester I’m running yet another round of capped at 31 students software engineering (it’s tricky to stuff 31 student computers into a classroom, but I manage it).  I started this course three years ago as a bit of a joke, but I couldn’t run it like one, the opportunities it provides are too real.  Our school started offering courses in hockey and camping and I jokingly suggested I make a video game course if we’re giving credits out for recreational activities.  I spent much of my youth playing hockey, camping and video gaming, so why not?  Of course, I didn’t get high school credits in those things, but I digress.

Our software engineering class has become an applied coding course that focuses on engineering process rather than the mathematical minutia of coding, which I leave to computer science.  We start with IEEE’s Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) to get a handle on best practices in real-world software building, then we learn 3d modelling in Blender and scripting in C# in Unity in order to prepare everyone for some game development.

This class has produced published software since the first year it ran and has allowed students to produce digital portfolio work that has gotten many graduates into some of the most challenging post secondary programs in the province.  Like the competition opportunities described above, software engineering has turned into an intense but demanding real world opportunity that allows senior students to step up and demonstrate some leading edge digital skills.

We’ve just finished the training portion of the course where the grade twelves introduce the grade elevens to SWEBOK, the basics of 3d modelling and the Unity game development platform.  With these basic skills in place everyone then reorganizes into startups and proceeds to develop software titles for the rest of the semester.  This time around we’ve got a mini putt VR simulator, a VR based survival game called Grave Dug, a nostalgia arcade title called Devil’s Hollow, a two player cooperative asymmetrical puzzle game called Shield and Staff, an atmospheric stealth title called Instinct and for the first time we’re also developing a non-interactive title focused on 3d animation that should offer our 3d artists a less restricted and more experimental approach to modelling without the complexities of interactivity.  We hope to use VR (Tiltbrush, Oculus Medium) and our Structure Sensor 3d scanner to produce less Blenderized looking models and experiment with our design process.

My senior computer technology (TEJ) courses also focus on real world problem solving.  We cover CompTIA industry testing for A+ technician in 3M and NETWORK+ administration in 4M, and both courses also do in-school tech support.  We’re also building VR ready systems for our board SHSM program to distribute to other schools.  Working in real world situations with live problem solving and deadlines is something my students find invaluable, whether it’s in class or in competition.  It gives them strong portfolio work (check out our ever expanding collection of 3d models, in 3d!) and prepares them for the intensity of life outside of the rubber walled, failure-not-an-option world of high school.  It’s a lot of extra work, but I didn’t get into teaching computer technology in order to be able to spin the same lessons out year after year; the constantly changing nature of the subject area is one of the reasons I chose to do it.  The real world challenges and intensity of competition keeps  things interesting for me too.
 

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2JbpxC1
via IFTTT

I stand on the cusp of another year teaching computer technology and I have to say I’m looking forward to it in spite of the various nonsense surrounding Ontario education these days.  I have a particularly strong crop of seniors and I’m hoping to exceed the lofty heights we’ve previously reached.  @CWcomptech continues to grow and seek out new opportunities.


I’m hoping for at least two Skills Ontario provincial medals and successful runs at CyberTitan and by all three (and possibly a fourth) of our teams.  Thanks to the groundbreaking work of our Terabytches last year, we’ve achieved a 50/50 gender split in our cybersecurity teams with 2 co-ed teams and our champion all-female team at a time when the industry is struggling to balance a 25/75 gender split.


I’m also hoping this strong senior group will uncover new opportunities for us to explore, but then they already have.  The Cybersmart Project, a student run training course for other schools interested in getting onto CyberTitan started over the summer and has already picked up a number of schools they are going to help.

We had Gord Alexander from IBM Canada come in last year and show our grade 10s how to code IBMcloud’s Watson AI.  The pickup on that was amazing with students of all skill levels returning to it in their culminating projects.  Gord followed up by applying to present at this year’s ECOO Conference #BIT19 on how students can access this free and very accessible artificial intelligence learning environment.  I’m looking forward to helping out with that at the conference.


One of the nicest things about teaching computer technology is that it’s never the same year to year, but sometimes those emerging technologies can be difficult to access.  Not so with Watson.  If you’ve got students who can code in Scratch, you can get them going with Watson and have scripted, AI supported projects very quickly.  I suspect students from grades four onward could manage the coding involved and I’m looking forward to sharing this exciting possibility with Ontario teachers in November.




Over the summer I took two Cisco courses (thanks Philippe!) that will improve our practice.  The IT Essentials course was something I’d been looking to complete in order to give my students access to current materials.  Up until now I’ve been cobbling things together from books and various online sites.  It was a lot of work and constantly falling out of date.  The Cisco Net Academy course is current and covers much of what we were doing anyway, but in a concentrated and curated format that should lighten my preparation for teaching IT in junior high school classes.

Having been a certified computer technician since 2002, the IT Essentials course was review, but the other course I took was a bit more ferocious.  The CCNA Cyber Operations course is designed for cybersecurity specialists who want to get a handle on the current state of play as they begin working in cybersec.  It’s a no-holds barred review of advanced networking analysis tools followed by detailed explanations of how cybersecurity has been implemented in the very networked world of 2019.  I’ve really enjoyed taking the course and should be wrapping it up over the next couple of weeks.  Having an understanding of best management practices in cybersec should help me coach our school teams more efficiently and effectively.  It has also handed me a plethora of current network assessment and management tools that will find their way into my senior ICT curriculum immediately!


2019-20 feels like it could be a banner year.  Competition is always fickle and you never know what Goliaths you’ll face, but we’ve never had better access to the tools we need to succeed as we do now.  As long as the education system isn’t thrown into an artificial crisis, we should be ready to produce an exceptional year of graduates with rich extracurricular experiences who are ready to tackle the challenging, digitally empowered 21st Century workplace.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2ZBzpAe
via IFTTT

One of the dangerous things about watching the shows my son likes to watch is that many of them aren’t what they appear to be.  He likes complexity, and there are few things on TV these days as complex as Rick & Morty (if it is ever on TV again…).  Like a lot of other modern cartoons, Rick & Morty hides surprisingly complex narrative behind simplistic animation.


Rick is a scientist who has discovered interdimensional travel and so can exist in any timeline.  As this ‘infinite Rick‘ he has almost god like power and is constantly criticizing everyone else for not realizing how pointless and narcissistic their reality is – any ethical value they place anywhere is a result of their lack of perspective.  This show goes to great lengths to force its viewers to question morality and how embedded it is in our personal circumstances.  If you’re looking for a show that makes you feel better about your circumstances, Rick & Morty is the opposite.  It shows you a multiverse in which even your unique self isn’t unique let alone special.  This pan-dimensional multiverse is so vast and so overwhelmingly indifferent to your circumstances that it continually screams a central premise of the show:  nothing matters.  Yet even in this chaotic and indifferent multiverse, Rick and the other characters in the show stand out as prime movers; people who make their own meaning in spite of the alienating size and indifference of reality.


In one of the most popular episodes from the last season of the show, Rick turns himself into a pickle so that he doesn’t have to go to family therapy:

He, of course, ends up in it anyway after he fights his way (as a pickle) through an impromptu action movie.  The therapist (voiced by Susan Sarandon!) finally gets to judge this character who goes to great lengths to avoid judgement.  Her monologue (which Rick immediately bashes as they’re driving away from it) is another of those moments where Rick & Morty gets startlingly real:

I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way I’m bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass. Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is it’s not an adventure. There’s no way to do it so wrong you might die. It’s just work. And the bottom line is, some people are okay going to work, and some people well, some people would rather die.

Each of us gets to choose.




This is idea of death by maintenance has stayed with me.  I turn fifty next year and I’m on my way to two decades in a career I’d never have guessed I’d be doing.  Unlike many teachers, I’ve never been struck by the divine ‘calling’ of teaching.  My early life of rolling over into a new career every few years as emerging technology caught my attention and encouraged me into learning something new is a distant memory while pensions, mortgages and stability drive most of my decisions these days.  I imagine this is how most people age until they end up the typically habitual old person who is scared of everything and avoids risk at all costs until they are in a nursing home.  It’s a long battle to get to that point of declining mediocrity, and the win condition kinda sucks.

In my younger years, with very little guidance or support from home, I struggled through high school, college, apprenticeships and university, trying to find my way towards a life that made best use of my abilities.  I walked away from stability and income many times in favour of those opportunities as a young man, and it’s why I’m where I am now, but I’m not inclined to follow that trajectory and maintain myself into mediocrity.  If I can’t find satisfaction in teaching, I’ll go elsewhere, but I’m hoping that teaching is one of those careers that can evolve with me.


The first ever blog post I did on Dusty World way back in 2010 was on Caution, Fear and Risk Aversion in students.  Those students are long gone but the learning risks we took paid off for many of them.  Taking risks and pushing learning has become my default setting in the classroom.  If we can’t reach for the potentially undoable then we’re just maintaining ourselves into mediocrity.  Whether it’s dangling students out in competition or creating difficult courses that push them to deal with real world consequences, including failure, I’ve got to find my way past the learning as maintenance approach or teaching is going to get dangerously stale and abstract.


Speaking of real, with the return of school this year I’ve realized I’ve only got a decade left in teaching.  I’m not sure how I’ll be able to approach that in a way that will let me finish with alacrity, but whatever it is, it’ll need to be something other than status quo maintenance teaching.  I know a number of my colleagues find this approach tiresome, but it’s the only way I’ll be able to stick with the job.  Some people love maintaining the status quo and ensuring continuity and conformity, they thrive on it!  I’m not one of those people.

Some find Rick’s lack of boundaries or context upsetting, but it’s that kind of existential freedom that we all enjoy, we just hide it behind socially constructed barriers.  Rick isn’t special, he just realizes that his future is his to author and doesn’t have to be determined by overly restrictive social norms.  In that freedom he prizes adventure and risk as the only real way to live and grow.  Testing boundaries and pushing limits is where we find ourselves.  When I eventually retire I hope I can dedicate my remaining years to those same goals and not spend my time and energy hiding from life.  If there is a better working definition of lifelong learning, I’ve yet to hear it.


If you’ve never watched Rick & Morty, give it a go.  Many of your students are.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2pFF04V
via IFTTT