Education: Open for Business 24/7? #change11

I previously posted on Google+ and education here. I just came across this article by Ryan Tyler at betanews about the benefits Google+ has in store for educators. I think he makes a lot of sense, especially when writing about the potential uses for "Hangouts":

One other feature of Google+ that makes it a truly "killer app" for education is Hangouts. With a webcam and mic enabled computer or phone/tablet with a front facing camera, you can have a real time, online meeting with up to 10 simultaneous video streams. Google recently added Google docs integration and screen share, making it even more compelling. Now a group of students, or a teacher with some students, can meet, "face to face" and edit one document in real time, with side-chat functionality as well.

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The use of hangouts for education is significant. Small group ad hoc meetings between students from anywhere at anytime. Study groups accessed from the palm of your hand. A teacher that can join a group at anytime to give feedback and answer questions. The list goes on.

This could provide more flexibility and excitement for group projects and conferences for traditional and distance learners.

As I see it, here is the biggest drawback: As we blur the boundaries between the classroom and the world outside, we put a tremendous amount of pressure on educators to be online and ready for requests from students at all hours. Most educators, of course, don't view their profession as a 9-to-5 job. It's more like a calling. It's not just something you do; it's who you are.

Nonetheless, we still need healthy boundaries. How can we make sure efforts to integrate education and social media don't eliminate those few extra hours we have?

We know that many facets of the Wal-Mart are being applied to everything these days, including education. Do teachers really want to be open for business around the clock?

Student Senate Amendment to Class Attendance

The student council hereby amends college policy regarding class attendance:

1) Classes before 11:00 AM will now be prohibited. The internal biological clock of 18-23-year-olds is not suitable for morning classes. Holding class at these times violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment against cruel and unuseful punishment. Additionally, given that the extended hours of most extracurricular learning activities interfere with the sleep habits required for waking before noon, the student council has ruled in favor of former Red Sox pitcher Samuel Clemens' awesome idea that schooling should never interfere with education.

2) Classes between the hours of 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM are now banned. Given that extracirricular learning activities are notorious for causing dehydration, the munchies, and frequently require greasy foods to reinforce the previous night's lessons, the latter/former(?) hours remain open, now officially sponsored by Doritos and called "Crunch Time" with the slogan, "We're Chipping Away at Education!"

3) Classes shall not be held between the hours 2:oo PM and 5:00 PM because this is when we get sleepy from the chips and such. We think can't w/out sleeping.

4) No more classes between 5:00 PM and 9:00 PM. This is our prep time for getting ready to stay out all night. :)

5) We hereby stipulate that all educational transactions shall occur at flexible hours between 1 and 3 hours before the due date of an assignment whereby you will answer our emails and provide extensive feeback and/or massively detailed summaries of the last seven hours of course content without making that face because (Please see #1) this is not a good time for us!

Horton Hears a Who as Hegelian Dialectic

One thing I do sometimes is write crazy reviews of Dr. Seuss books on Goodreads:

Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Certainly the finest book in the American Canon. Seuss, initially conceiving the book as a response to the American occupation of Japan, instead constructed a multi-layered allegory addressing the historical pattern of the scientist/mystic at odds with a totalitarian church-state. Thus, on one level, the representation of Horton as the seer (literally and mystically) who is called to actions by unheard voices of intuition and other-worldliness while, at the same time, embodying the scientist whose extended techno-organs perceive substratum the untutored masses merely mock in their ignorance, suggests Seuss is replicating the plight of Meister Eckhart, Galileo, Theresa of Avila, and countless others. Seuss is not content to stop there. The aptly named Whoville ("Who" first as a question, then as a rapturous owl call announcing the night of triumph) becomes a stand in for vocal, democratic, non-violent resistance (their drum circles reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street, and their total participation in announcing their presence, affirming their existence, reflects nothing other than the multi-cultural, consciousness raising of the 1970's). Here I am not being anachronistic. This is precisely the point. Ultimately Seuss stitches every fabric of allegory together in what can only be described as a Hegelian Historical Dialectic. Horton is not hearing a who. History is hearing its own narrative and responding with a new vision that resounds with echoes of the atemporal fingerprint of God. Horton Hears a Who is, then, not a book exactly, but a sort of opening into the Divine Idea.



View all my reviews

My Sweet Lord: Comparative Religious Literature as Social Corrective

Here's the best live version of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord," the inspiration for the title of my lecture below:

The genius of this song is that it combines Hare Krishna-style chanting with American call-and-response gospel/R&B (via his ripping off the Chiffons) and turns it into something new and exciting.

I recorded this lecture a couple of years ago for a World Literature 1 course. I mostly discuss the stunning synchronicity between two literary masterpieces, The Book of Job and The Bhagavad Gita:

If you go back far enough, there is no distinction between literature and scripture. There are many reasons for this, but I'll save that for some other time. If you open up Volume A of The Norton Anthology of Literature you'll find stories and poems from the Old Testament, sacred Egyptian and Sumerian traditions, The Bhagavad Gita, and so on. Whenever I teach World Lit 1, I like to pair readings from across cultures and time periods so that students can see the similarities and differences.

One thing I've noticed is that The Book of Job and The Bhagavad Gita have the same core message. I thought of this today after reading about Kentucky Republican gubernatorial nominee David Williams accusing his opponent of being anti-Christian for attending a Hindu ceremony. I've posted the above lecture as a correction.

Two very important books in these respective religions have the same basic message, regardless of what we might think of it. If David Williams really thinks his religion is true and that Hindus are just weird, polytheistic sinners, so be it. He is, however, ignoring the obvious similarities that cut across cultures.

The Funny Thing about....

....searching for "DMACC"-related Twitter users to follow is that you mostly get people named Dennis MacCarthy and Dana Macc whose nicknames are "DMACC."

What is the Hardest Problem in Science?

Surely it's getting more students to major in science?

Okay, that's another topic.

According to David Barash in the Chronicle of Higher Education, it's the mind-body problem. That is, what is the relationship between the experience of subjective consciousness and the physical brain? To put it in terms more friendly to current scientific consensus, "How does the brain create our experience of consciousness." (Most scientists will agree that "mind" is an emergent property of the brain.)

Well, I'll let you think about that problem for a while. I know the answer; I'm just not telling.

In any event, this problem may not be your cup of tea, but if you want to solve the first problem (How do we get more students to major in science?) then problems are actually the answer.

Difficult (and important) problems inspire curiosity, innovation, and motivation. And yes, also learning.

More class sessions, courses, majors, departments, and colleges should be structured on difficult problems.

In a sense, education is about learning the problem, and learning how to provide the best non-answers.

How Much Does the Internet Weigh? Actually, Not Much....