Noble Pursuits

Just Don't Suck

Here's my twist on the whole rubric design process.

My Introduction to Computer Science students are using GameSalad to design games. As I often do, I started the unit by issuing a challenge. For the next four weeks, my students' challenge is simply:

Design a game that doesn't suck.

We then brainstormed a whole list of reasons why games typically suck. The kids' ideas ranged from:

• Bad graphics
• Bad story
• Bad gameplay
• Boring
• Too hard / too easy

We put our ideas up on the board. We labeled them "Elements of Suckability" (yes, that is an adjective.) Once we had a good list, I pushed them to define exactly why something is "bad". For example, bad graphics might be graphics that don't match each other, or that make it hard to differentiate between friend and foe. A bad storyline is one that is either unoriginal, or too predictable (or nonexistent.)

We then just reframed the language in that list to come up with a rubric by which we would ensure that the games we come up with don't have any of these elements. I told them, "I'm not looking for a showstopper, or the next Angry Birds. I'm just looking for a game that doesn't suck. And in order to do that, you will need a game that doesn't do any of these things." Here is what we came up with:

• Clear, distinct graphics
• An original, engaging story
• Gameplay that is neither too hard nor too easy
• A progression dynamic (leveling up)
• A clear objective
• Matching graphics that are original or Creative Commons licensed
• Sound that is appropriate and non-repetitive

The secret of course, is that if you come up with a game that does all of these things, you will have a terrific game! But most of us have played bad games in the past, and it's sometimes easier to back into defining a good game than try to analyze why great games do things so well.

I've Seen the Present, and It Is Teh Facebook

I saw a TED Talk recently by my former Nobles Yearbook Business Advisor Seth Priebatsch: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html. I was SO psyched to see him presenting on the TED stage. Go Seth!

He says right at the start that the social network is done, and it's called Facebook. Businesses and  organizations that are still trying to build an online community that requires you to log in, create a  profile, and select your friends, are twelve to eighteen months late to the party. The connectivity layer  is done. The more interesting layer is the one on top of the connectivity layer, and how can we leverage  that layer to shape behavior? That's actually a much more complex and interesting question.

I want us to stop debating over whether to use Ning, or elgg, or Moodle, any of the other social  networking sites to try to build an academic community of interest. We've made too many sites that we  force students, or teachers, or conference attendees, to register for, create a profile, and visit in order  to build connections and access content. Then they visit a bunch of times during the project, then they  never come back. I've lost track of how many times I've recreated my resume online on some social  networking site, then tried to find friends and get other people to sign up. In the end, I keep going back  to Facebook which is where everybody is already. The connectivity layer is built, and it's Facebook and  the Facebook API.

It's as if we're still fighting over what kind of railroad to build when the rails have already been laid. Shouldn't we be more concerned about what kind of trains will be running on them?

I'm going to spend more of my time trying to figure out how to use Facebook, like it or not (I actually don't really like FB but oh well) to aggregate and share content, build communities of interest, and  construct different layers of privacy to manage the content I put up. I believe that managing Facebook is going to be a 21st century skill. Our summer lab school (teachers come to Punahou from all over for tech training and to hear keynote speakers)  will probably be using Facebook for collaboration. I suspect more and more young employers of young people will ask that the members of their team also be on Facebook, to collaborate.

Many of my older teachers who are scared of technology won't sign up for a Ning site or a Moodle page because they are wary of giving their information out to just anybody. But guess what? Most of them are on Facebook in the evenings, because their kids or their grandkids showed them how to do it, and that is where the social connection is.

I think that's the key to reaching the largest number of people and forming communities of practice in our field. The social connections are what gets them to use the rail system in the first place. Now that they're riding the rails, it's much easier to get them to jump trains.

Say You're Sorry

This morning I watched Apple's press conference addressing the iPhone 4 antenna issues. In the entire half hour, I did not once hear Steve Jobs say the word "sorry" or "apologize". Some other bloggers have jumped all over him for this. I am still wondering why he didn't say, at least once, "We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you, and here is how we intend to fix it" or "I am sorry that this happened, and here's how I am going to address this problem." Would that have been so hard?

When my second graders got into a dispute, I would always wrap things up by asking them to shake hands and apologize.

"Say you're sorry to Brad."

"I'm sorry, Brad."

"Really mean it this time."

"I'm sorry."

"Brad, you say it's OK."

"It's OK."

"Not to me, to Eric."

"It's OK, man."

A handshake or high five and it's done. Problem solved. But it didn't feel OK. I asked my mentor teacher, "Why make kids say they're sorry if they don't feel sorry?"

She told me that it's important to say you're sorry when you've hurt another person, even if you don't feel you've done anything wrong. (This sometimes led to the disingenuous apologies I would hear from some kids: "I'm sorry you got hurt" -- notice careful use of the third person -- or even "I'm sorry you feel that way, but…")

She pushed me to go further and ask about specific actions that kids could take to address the injury they had caused. Picking up the bike from the ground, replacing the sandwich, putting the head back on the bunny. Apology plus action. The formula for addressing a wrong.

Steve Jobs provided an action this morning, with no apology. He said, "Apple is not perfect. Smartphones aren't perfect." He acknowledged that there is a problem with the iPhone 4 reception (and pointed out that most other smartphones have the same problem.) He came up with simple actions to address the problem (free bumper case, return with no restocking fee.)

From my perspective as someone who uses and loves Apple products, that action is sufficient. I had the iPhone 4 antenna problem and this summer I have had plenty of dropped calls in areas with marginal signal coverage (rural areas in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maine.) Ever since I added a bumper, the problem went away in those areas. I have never had the problem in major metropolitan areas (NYC, DC, Boston.) And the iPhone itself is terrific for its speed, its features, and its price. The signal problem is nothing more than an irritation. I don't need an apology. I just want the problem fixed.

But I still wonder why there was no apology. It must have been a conscious decision, for marketing reasons, or liability reasons. So puzzling.

What to do About All the Readers

NOTE: I wrote this back when a hot topic on campus was whether our issuing a laptop to every student had been a good idea.

We made a big decision a few years ago. We gave every single one of our students a library card. We have the most incredible library in the world here on campus; there is very little the students can't read. We allow them to make their own choices about what to read, and if they choose, they can write their own books to be included in the library for other students to check out.

I passed a student just this morning. He was sitting on a bench reading. The thought of it filled me with anxiety. Why wasn't he writing, or reading something related to school?  He wasn't reading anything professionally done. It looked like he was reading something from our amateur section of the library, where anyone can write anything they want, and publish it for anyone else to read. Some of this work is sloppy, some of it is just bad writing, but it's very immediate and popular books spread like wildfire.

Walking around campus, I see kids sitting in groups, all with their heads buried in books. Almost all of them are reading. Many are reading comic books, others are doing games like crossword puzzles and word searches. It's a little jarring. You'd think that kids sitting in groups would be talking face to face. Sometimes I wonder if issuing library cards to everybody was a bad thing. How are books affecting our kids' ability to socialize? How is it affecting their choices of what to do with their free time?

I think that our biggest goal should be to engage our kids more in the act of writing and sharing their own work. Of course, as they say, "You are what you eat," so we also need to raise the quality of what our kids are reading. Then, get them to create better stuff than what they consume.

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing bad about reading. In fact, you have read a variety of things, from comics to novels, from non-fiction to plays, from bestsellers to pulp fiction, if you are going to be able to be a flexible and imaginative writer. We adults probably need to choose to read more YA and comic books, just as our kids may need to choose to read more novels and biographies.

In fact, as teachers who wish to inspire a love of writing, we ourselves need to be passionate about reading, and of writing. We ourselves need to be publishing, and critiquing, and dreaming, and creating, in ways as large or as small as our dreams allow. Then we need to share our work with the world, maybe by adding to one of the shelves in that public section of the library so many of our kids frequent.

I think the cat is out of the bag, as they say. Now that our students have gotten a taste of the library card, they're going to make their own choices about what, where, and when they read. Taking the card away, or banning reading, is not a solution. Being passionate about creating, collaborating, and sharing original work, informed by good choices about what we consume, should be right at the top of all of our reading lists.

iPad Day!

So, here it was 3:30 am this morning, and I was going back and forth about whether to preorder the Apple iPad. What I decided, ultimately, was to wait until the WiFi models come out, and to see whether the 3G iPad is worth it. Here is what is pushing me toward the 3G: You can order 3G service on a month-by-month basis; there is no contract. This means you can truly "pay-as-you go" and you will even receive notices when you are nearing your 250 MB limit, similar to the "You have 20% battery" notices we are already used to getting.

Also, the GPS features will be very useful, I think, in all of the Mapping apps that are sure to be released for the iPad. I believe the GPS will work even without the 3G package, so that's a bonus even if you don't spring for the monthly fee.

My mom actually preordered an iPad, though, which is a surprise since she's not particularly "techie", but she really does want to try one out! So I'll at least get to try her iPad out until the 3G versions come out a few weeks later.

Will I regret my decision to wait, come April 3? A few weeks will tell!

Senior Slump

I was just talking with another teacher who is having a terrible problem with senior apathy. The seniors just don't seem to want to do anything in class. Students who previously came to class on time, turned things in regularly, and volunteered in class are all of a sudden like different people.

I recently read Daniel Pink's new book Drive, and it's made me think a lot about how we motivate students. Pink asserts that for complex, open-ended  tasks, extrinsic motivation fails as an incentive. Intrinsic motivation ("for the love of the game") is much more effective, and of course as an institution we strive to foster intrinsic motivation in our kids. Yet, in a place where grades and class rank seem incredibly important, and we are surrounded by high achieving kids, one has to wonder if the tasks we are putting before our kids are, in fact, sufficiently complex.

So why do we have senioritis? I think the biggest problem is that for the first time, the main motivation for most students completely changes around this time of year. I do believe that most of our students are motivated by extrinsic factors such as grades, class rank, and college admissions. Now, most of our seniors are beyond that. For the first time, perhaps since middle school, grades don't matter. When you remove grades as a motivator, where does that leave you?

I try to involve seniors in project-based learning in the spring semester. I am purposely trying to replace the traditional motivations of grades and test scores with different motivators: pride in creating something, empowerment in the learning process, the drive to be a leader. My colleague remarked that trying to teach seniors is like pulling a steamship -- it's immensely heavy and difficult, and you wear yourself out.

I try to look at it this way. Why tire yourself out pulling the ship? Find out where it's going, and as long as it's not going somewhere dangerous or illegal, let it take you for a ride. You might both get somewhere you least expected to go. And the pull of creating something, inventing something, can be a wonderful, exciting draw. The structure of how we teach seniors doesn't have to be the same all year. We can acknowledge the change in motivation once college admissions are done, and change the structure of how we teach to accommodate that.

Can You Walk and Chew Gum?

Big themes at the Learning and the Brain conference were multitasking, ADD/ADHD, and the neuroscience of learning and memory enhancement. Interesting stuff that I’m still thinking about as I get back into my regular routine.

As far as multitasking is concerned, brain research shows that multitasking is impossible. You cannot pay simultaneous attention to two cognitively demanding tasks. What you can do is switch your attention from one task to the next in rapid succession, and infer what you missed. As you multitask, your power of concentration suffers, and you forget what you were working on. Concentration, focus, and active working memory all suffer.

If you are washing dishes and watching reality TV, you can effectively multitask -- your hands can be on “autopilot” while you watch Gerry and Terry bicker over the stuffed koala at the yard sale. But as soon as something actively demands your attention, you are likely to lose details of the fight -- or you’ll end up with spotty glassware.

I think we intuitively realize this. When I am driving, and have to follow some tricky directions, I will often reach over and turn down the radio, saying, “I have to focus.” Or when I’m on the phone with someone, I will sometimes find myself saying, “Can you hang on for a sec? I have to concentrate on this.”

One study showed that workers worked an average of 11 minutes before being interrupted. The work they were doing was subdivided into 3-minute sub-tasks. On average, it took 25 minutes to get back into the same cognitive state. Often they never got back to task.

If you ask people where they do their best thinking, the answer is usually not “at work”. In fact, the number one place most people say they do their best thinking is “in the shower.” Talk about one place you’re unlikely to ever get interrupted!

I have students who insist they can listen to music and do their homework at the same time. Perhaps this is a statement not so much of their ability to multitask, but rather, of the cognitive demand (or lack thereof) of the homework? One of the other themes at the conference was the relationship of engagement to learning. If learners see the context and relevance of what they are learning, and if the task is sufficiently demanding, they are much more likely to retain what they are learning.

I hope that we can get kids to the point where they can self-regulate their distractions -- if we engage them sufficiently in the task, they will choose to “turn down the radio” or close the laptop in order to focus on the cognitively demanding task that takes precedence. Of course, to get to that point I think we need to train kids and give them the skills to manage their own distractions.

I have this dream that kids will always be able to have their laptops open in my class, as a sort of “ready reference” so they can look up things I am referring to, or bookmark content online for future review. That’s how I learned in graduate school lectures; I always had my laptop open, to do fact-checking, or fill in background knowledge, etc.

I always felt I could multitask by following the lecture and reading through a related web site at the same time. Now, as I look back with a more critical eye, I am sure I missed some important parts of the lectures, or at least the funny bits -- I remember a number of occasions where I was interrupted by everyone in the room laughing, and realizing that although I thought I had been paying attention with “one ear open,” that I had completely missed something good!

Music Enhances Learning

One of the more interesting studies at the conference was on music, and how it can enhance learning. I spoke with Willy Wood, who delivered a breakout session on “Teaching for Long-Term Retention”. He says that music does have a positive effect on learning, but you (the teacher) need to control it (no iPods) and it needs to follow specific guidelines. He recommends:

• 60 - 80 beats per minute
• instrumental only (no words, unless they are non-recognizable words, like Enya or Bjork)
• low volume Good: smooth jazz, some classical Bad: rock, top 40, anything by Neil Diamond

I talked to a teacher at my old school who has been experimenting with using music in his classroom. He has different songs for different phases of his activities: brainstorming, lab work, cleanup. We know that increased beats per minute affects students physiologically: their heart rate speeds up, blood flow is increased, and their energy level picks up. After 80 bpm, the effect is actually detrimental; too much arousal, and you run into a problem of focus. He has seen kids’ energy level visibly change with different types of music; they sit up straighter, seem more awake, etc. He said it was really cool.

The idea is to have the music on so that it masks distracting noises: a kid tapping his pencil, or kids laughing in the classroom next door. The idea is not to play music that you want to actively listen to, because then you are pulling your focus away from the task at hand. If the music is too loud, or too recognizable, it also pulls kids' attention away.

He also uses short one- and two-minute snippets of music to signal duration of time, e.g., “You have two minutes to think of as many examples of dynamic compression as you can. Stop when the song is over.” After playing the same song a bunch of times, kids get a feel for how long that span of time is (kind of like the “Final Jeopardy” theme.)

So starting today in class, I’m making some changes. First, I’m going to stop playing classic rock while my kids work on their labs. Second, I’m going to ask them not to use their own iPods while they work.

I suspect they will be far more upset about the latter than the former.

Third, and most important, I'm going to try to be the "cognitive DJ" and build some playlists of music for my kids during their lab time. I'll report back on how it works.

Shipping Up to Boston

I'm on my way to Boston for the Learning and the Brain conference. This time the conference is focused on technology.

A couple of days ago, at a Smartboard training here at our school, the trainer casually remarked, "You know, kids these days are different. Studies show their visual cortex is larger than ours," as a way of emphasizing the importance of using their product to present concepts visually.

I agree with making things visual -- it's one of the themes my partner CRT and I are looking at this semester (no pun intended) -- but the idea that kids' brains are physiologically different from those of the teachers who are teaching them... hmm, I'd need to see some hard scientific evidence of that. It seemed to be one of those throwaway lines that sounds good, but really... is that really true?

Personally, I'm guilty of drawing all sorts of conclusions about teaching and learning based on anecdotal evidence, or what sounds good or sounds popular. What I love about the idea of mixing it up with educators, scientists, neuropsychologists, and medical researchers at this conference is the prospect of applying objective scientific principles and academic research philosophy to the art and craft of teaching.

Along the way, I am hoping to find out more about the physiological differences in kids’ brains these days. Is there really a discernible difference? What about the idea of neuroplasticity: the brain that literally “rewires itself”? As we make more and more neural connections along specific pathways, can we strengthen those connections? Do our brains grow and change as we use them, in the way a muscle does? It’s another one o those theories that “makes sense” but is there any basis to it?

What about the “myth of multitasking”?  Does multitasking exist, or is it really “many-tasking”, no more than dividing your attention at the expense of focus? Are our students better able then we are at learning from multiple resources simultaneously? When I taught fourth graders I observed that some of my kids with attention issues actually seemed more successful at web-based research their most of their counterparts. I always thought that it was because their ability to jump back and forth between threads was actually less of a hindrance online, where they would have a number of windows open (since Internet access was slow back then) and they seemed better able to keep track of multiple threads of information.

Lots os interesting stuff to investigate, and hopefully I'll come back with some good stuff to report.

The Curriculum App Store

Blackberry and Palm are both trying to dethrone the iPhone's smartphone market dominance by offering App Stores of their own, touch-enabled screens, and numerous interface improvements. A recent article suggests that this will be difficult -- simply put, there are so many high quality apps for the iPhone to choose from, that iPhone users have crafted devices that are uniquely their own simply by installing numerous customized apps that provide a fully personalized workflow. In order to persuade a user to give up their iPhone, what you have to provide -- as a competing manufacturer -- is a phone that not only can replace what that user has created, but does it better. And that's going to be impossible with a "one size fits all" approach.

My iPhone is a combination voice recorder (for my interviews with teachers), panoramic photo studio (I love photography), game device, appointment book, and all-purpose Internet portal (my own Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) I have probably purchased three times as many apps as I ultimately use, trying them out and systematically deleting the ones that I don't like in a Darwinian natural selection that has resulted in a very refined, powerful set of apps that is uniquely personal. Many of my friends like some of the same apps that I do, but no one has exactly the same selection.

What if students took courses the way I choose apps?

Last year for the first time, I had a student take the AP Computer Science exam -- and score a 5 -- without the benefit of my teaching brilliance. In fact, not only had this student never taken my class, I had never even heard of him or seen him in any of the various extracurricular activities we have at my school, where the computer-oriented kids tend to come out of the woodwork.

"How did you study for the exam?" I asked him. He told me he took an online AP course that fully prepared him for the exam. He said it only took him about six weeks to study for it. He was already taking the maximum six courses that our school allows anyway, so he didn't have the time for my full year course. "Nothing personal," he assured me, as I openly wept in front of him.

Kids are increasingly able to craft their own learning experience by studying from some of the best college professors at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. Even science museums and discovery centers are offering online courses that are engaging and interactive. Most of these courses are free or very low cost. What happens when kids craft their high school academic experience the way I customize my iPhone, collecting, evaluating, and discarding courses like apps?

I think what they end up with is a very personalized learning experience, grounded in their own choice, chosen in a sort of fast-twitch Darwinian selection process (hey, just like shopping period at Harvard!) and with a course load that may share some favorite courses with others, but no one with exactly the same selection. And maybe, some students have a course that only 2% of the population find useful or relevant, but for those students, it is invaluable.

As traditional schools come to terms with the online revolution, I think it is vitally important that we realize that we may not be competing with this model yet, but it may be a lot closer than we think. And if this does come to pass, how do we provide a student experience that is as personalized, as relevant, and cost-effective as what students can get elsewhere? How do we ditch the "one-size-fits-all" approach to course load, course requirements, or course structure itself?

Perhaps most intriguing is the idea of how we might combine elements of freely available online courses to supplement our own classroom learning environment, and provide the best of both worlds -- allowing our own students to "mix and match" and customize their own learning experience within the context of our course. I am already experimenting in having a Stanford professor "guest lecture" in my computer science course, by assigning his videotaped lecture on Arraylists as homework. I work with my students directly in class after they have watched the lecture, and spend my time working with them on labs. I still have a long way to go before my kids are creating the "iPhone experience" in my class, but it's a start.