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Misunderstanding Chicago

By • August 2, 2007 • 22 Comments

The teachers I work with – the veterans, anyway – measure their careers as the pendulum swings. They’ve seen us swing between whole language and phonics, standardized assessment and teacher autonomy, constructivism and direct instruction, enough times to just bunker down and wait out the uncomfortable stretches.

Me, I haven’t seen much, but I’ve got my eye on a new pendulum. At this end you have districts struggling to implement system-wide e-mail, districts still taking attendance on paper, still finding novelty in PowerPoint.

A lot of edubloggers are struggling mightily to push that pendulum across this dizzying chasm. They’re pushing us toward connectivity, global communication, and tech integration. They’re a determined bunch and I have little doubt they’ll get us there. At a certain point, though, many years from now, they’ll realize that their returns are diminishing. Like widgets to a blog, they’ll keep adding internet apps to their projects and tech elements to their rubrics but student confusion will increase and satisfaction will decrease in spite of their best efforts.

The question for 2007 is, “can I integrate more technology into my lesson?” The question for 2057 will be, “can I integrate less?” Bank on it. Options will be unlimited. It’ll be on us to make the cuts, painful cuts for some.

Which brings us to last week’s discussion of the Chicago Graduate School of Business and how so many people have misunderstood CGSB, in particular, and instructional design, in general.

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Not To Dredge This Back Up

By • July 30, 2007 • 1 Comment

… but I laughed so hard at the first three paragraphs of Todd Levin’s TV: How Novel, I think I dislocated my shoulder again. Here’s the first:

I don’t own a television, and I never have. That’s not some fact I wave around, like a flag of self-righteousness. And if you own a television–and most people do–I don’t think that necessarily makes you stupid or lazy, or both. In fact, I praise your exercise of free will. I mean, if that’s how you imagined your life playing out, staring unblinkingly, the TV screen illuminating the grim lines of your expression, as you are lulled into a kind of corporate-mediated complacency while your dreams slowly calcify and die somewhere between the cushions of your couch, then good for you! I totally respect your choice; it’s just not the choice I’ve made. Because I don’t own a television. And I never have.

I think I made a friend today.

Chicago Hope

By • July 29, 2007 • 25 Comments

Michael McVey took shots at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business today with Scott McLeod laying down cover fire. I think I understand why. I also think they’re pointing their weapons in the wrong direction.

UC is doing right:

To enable prospective full-time MBA students to present a more complete picture of their candidacy, applicants to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, one of the top business schools in the world, will now submit up to four slides about themselves with their application, the school announced. [emph. added]

McVey is bummed:

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Typing Like A T-Rex

By • July 26, 2007 • 12 Comments

Last night, not five minutes into a night game called Fugitive, I flew head first into a dry creek bed. My fellow fugitives lit up the scene with their mobile phones.

I was covered in ants, lying face down in a blackberry thicket, not sure if I should’ve been thankful or annoyed it was there. I was pretty sure my arm was broken but, no, after I stripped off my sweat shirt at Urgent Care, the diagnosis was obvious.

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No Closure

By • July 23, 2007 • 3 Comments

I can’t find a way to gracefully exit last week’s discussion of presentation. Eventually, I’ll upload a file to Slideshare which will (hopefully) embody the difference between a) slides that accompany your voice and b) slides that stand alone. Eventually, I’ll recreate the presentation in a vodcast. Eventually, I’ll recreate this entire design series in a vodcast.

Yikes.

I can’t remember the last time I was bored. Eighth grade, maybe. My to-do list brims at all times with 10% menial tasks (currently: vacuum, clean porch, wash car) and 90% creative stimuli (currently: a mograph slideshow, a 100+ item, intra-continental scavenger hunt [like this], any sentence beginning with “eventually” in the paragraph above).

It’d be easy to get depressed about all the fun to-do list entries I’m not getting around to except I remember real quickly that I’ve only forsaken them for other fun entries. Life seems to be a buffet line of excitement these past few years and my plate’s finite surface area doesn’t bug me so much. If this is adulthood, I’m in.

Anyway, ’til I get around to any of that, I need to fill in four gaps:

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