I closed out the summer with a rafting trip on the American river. I took one of these disposable jobs along and had three recurring thoughts:
How am I supposed to explain any of this to my children?
These days the technologists who remain vital are not experts and not generalists but rather techo-existentialists. The mantra is learn what you need for NOW and let it go – chances are it will change by the time you need or use it again.
Someone help me out here. How has clear, cinematic communication changed since The Jazz Singer first deployed synchronized music and dialogue in 1927? If, in fact, those conventions haven’t changed appreciably in nearly a century, shouldn’t the edublogosphere match its seemingly boundless enthusiasm for new media creation tools and new mechanisms for distributing those media with some reflection on the ancient, unchanged fundamentals of those media?
Case in point:
Alec Couros posted a video of an elementary school’s touching, deeply heartfelt rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” The ensuing commentary circled issues of copyright, walled gardens, global distribution, digital footprints, etc., but Darren Kuropatwa, out of all those technofuturists, hit the bullseye, noting the truly transcendental:
Darren: My favourite bit came at the very end when the teacher turned and spoke to the camera: “That was gooood!” That comment encompassed so much; about him, his students, and how they all feel for each other.
A milligram of sober deconstruction (“why do I like this?”) is worth, for my money, a kilogram of exuberant, big-picture futurism (“how does this change everything?!”). It would do this old curmudgeon’s heart some good to see some balanced restored to our discussions of ancient arts.
This never fails to crack me up, like the homework problem is Miley Cyrus and the whiteboard is our Pacific Garden Mall. Or something.
Other classes are even savvier, with smaller groups of friends rotating to one student the responsibility of sending the photo to the others. Digital natives, 21st-century skills, etc.
This is one of the most thought-provoking comments this blog has ever seen, one which was posted weeks ago but which still messes with me:
David Cox: What percentage of the population do you think has the eyes and/or ears to know the difference [between soundtracks done well and done poorly]? When I watch a movie or listen to a song, I don’t see the things that you see. I try, but I don’t understand why certain shots are done certain ways or why a particular piece of music was or wasn’t used. Can I learn that? I don’t know. But if my audience won’t know the difference, should I take the time to learn it?
Two incomplete thoughts:
1. The software programmer should not write your lesson plan.
The programmer cares about consumers, not students. The programmer’s job is to make as many features accessible to as many consumers as easily as possible, without glutting the program. Your job is to challenge your students. Your job is very, very different. So don’t feel weird telling kids not to use a) bullet points in PowerPoint, b) filters in Audacity, and c) the “Add Track From iTunes” button in iMovie. The existence of the button does not make good pedagogy out of the button.
2. To put students in a place to care about the difference between good and bad production and not to equip them is wrong.
Which is to say, if you don’t know why those closing montages at the end of Grey’s Anatomy and Lost are insipid shortcuts to genuine emotional interaction with a story, then you should have the humility to recuse yourself and say, “Maybe I’m the wrong person to teach students to make movies.”
This isn’t about amateurs and experts. That fight is over. The amateurs have won and I wouldn’t reverse that ruling if I could. But it’s extremely important to understand where teachers fit into the new creative structure, a structure which has seen the quantity of published media increase at the same pace as its median quality has declined.
We must act as bulwarks against that decline, not accelerants of it.
Personally, I think that this particular image lacks opportunities for inquiry. Perhaps if it was presented with other kinds of door locks leading students to come up with and answer the question, “which is the most secure lock?” [emph. added]
This is exactly right. The latest WCYDWT? installment has provoked the usual litany of Really Interesting Bite-Sized Questions, the sort of prompts that will play great in the Applications & Extensions & Assorted Mindblowers section of your lesson plan but which, on their own, aren’t a lesson plan. Those questions don’t provoke the kind of iterated, increasingly difficult practice that students need for skill development.
Again, this image on its own is insufficient. With some creative modifications, however, it will carry you through permutations. Here is that lesson plan in its broadest strokes.
Start with the image.
Tell them the code is 1 digit long. Tell them the code is 2 digits long. Tell them it’s as long you want it to be. I respected the rule of least power here, which meant that when I took this photo I tried to stay out of the way of your lesson planning. Have them write down all the possible codes for n=1, n=2, n=3, etc. The increasing obnoxiousness of the task will motivate a formula for the general case. That’s arrangements.
Tell them the lock is a 4-digit lock. Now turn on the blue light.
Ask them to list the possible codes. You can iterate this a bunch of times until they have discovered on their own this tool that mathematicians call a factorial.
Remind them it’s a 4-digit lock. Then put up this image. It will be confusing, but only for a second. Ask them to list every possible code.
Iterate this with two and three buttons until they have generalized permutations. Then maybe you iterate the entire thing with another keypad lock.
Then maybe you dip into the comments of the original WCYDWT? post and help yourself to some very-interesting follow-up questions. I recommend Alex’s.
Let me close by saying how shocked I am at how little all of this costs.
[Update: Bruce Schneier has a good follow-up on information leakage. Two photos.]
[Update II: due to the peculiarities of many car door locks punching in “123456” tests both “12345” and “23456.” Consequently, there is a number string 3129 digits long that will test every five-number comination.]
[Update III: more information leakage.]
[Update IV: more information leakage.]
