The Standardizors Part III

 Still not finished with this. Take a look at this video:

You get the TED forum where you KNOW you're gonna get some good shit! You have a pleasant looking, well spoken, attractive, bright jacket wearing person telling you of something super exciting in the world of education along with an emotional, touching personal anecdote and you've hooked almost everyone. I believe this lady genuinely believes the idea of blended technology CAN democratize education, and I wish I could just jump on this bandwagon, but it's not a new bandwagon and it has the same flaws that caused many old bandwagons to lose a wheel or two. 

You tell a story of a teacher with a name NOBODY will forget (she said Wendy Fuck right?) and you tell of some astonishing success like teaching a one-year curriculum in 6 months and build up the hopes of the audience. Then you give an example you hope the audience won't see the flaws in, and you move back to the personal emotional anecdote and you're done.

I don't want to poke too many holes in this vid because I agree with Jessie Woolley-Wilson in almost everything she says. I too believe we could blend technology into classrooms to improve education. I also like the fact that she wants to make Grace more creative and she wants to pursue "learning how to learn" or cognitive learning theory because YEAH things are developing so fast, maybe Grace's future job doesn't even exist yet. I am just not as comfortable yet with the idea that adaptive technology will be used for good, not evil by the bean counters and cost cutters that find their ways to the administrative leadership of so many schools that ARE businesses nowadays. I would like some assurance from Jessie that this sort of technology won't be used to replace teachers like grocery baggers at Walmart or people who used to work the tills at McDonalds. Can she assure me that technology and humanity will be blended and we won't end up just depending on this technology and removing the humanity? Because that would diminish the quality of the education. 

Let me show you how Wendy Fuck got so much done in such a short time. I'm here to tell you that maybe Wendy Fuck got a lot FINISHED in a short time, but her work was probably just about half as good as her co-teachers. But I don't want to fall into the trap of measuring teaching quality like it is math. That's the very problem I see here. Let me illustrate: Go to about the 7 minute mark in the vid. There is an illustration of a math game in which one student comes up with the number 48 by using 4 groups of 10 and one group of 8 while another student comes up with the same number just by using groups of 1. Jessie says this demonstrates a different level of understanding of mathematics and where these two students should progress to should not be the same. With the help of blended learning she says, (though I don't see enough blending here) we can give the first student a lesson in subtraction. Come up with 48 starting with 100. But the second student who is struggling (here's where the blending should have but didn't come in) should get a lesson in 5's or 10's. This is what the computer sees from keystrokes and UN-intuitively adapts. This is where Wendy Fuck (I love typing that name) saved so much time. However, Wendy Fuck really should have asked the second student why she/he did the exercise that way. There could be many more reasons than mathematical deficiency. In fact the second student could be an advanced student who will (because of the decision of a machine) be given remedial treatment. 

What if to use a group of 10 the program required you to simultaneously press the ctrl key and the space bar to build groups of 10 then the enter key to copy those groups. That's what the first student did. The second student could have been bored by the simplicity of the mathematics that were much too easy for her/him and just used the space bar 48 times out of boredom. Or maybe she was chatting on her cellphone in her other hand and didn't want to do it the first way. Or maybe he was eating an apple with his other hand. Or maybe she wasn't paying attention when the formation of groups was illustrated in the previous class. Or maybe keyboarding skills are lacking. Or maybe the ctrl key doesn't work. Or maybe he has a sore left hand from playing rugby. Or maybe maybe maybe... THIS is where the blending comes in. Wendy Fuck should have asked the second student why he/she chose to just enter 48 groups of one rather than trust the machine approximation of adaptive intelligence. Maybe this missing step was what saved Wendy Fuck so much time and her results really aren't "nothing but astounding," they're really nothing but ordinary. Maybe even a little bit lazy? Wendy Fuck is winning teacher of the year while another teacher is asking why students are doing things the ways they are and finding that there are flaws in the artificial approximation of intelligence and human intuition, instinct, reason, and HUMAN adaptability is still far superior.

But that won't stop the promotion of Wendy Fuck and this "adaptive" math program and the pushing of computers and technology in general onto the teachers, even the good ones who haven't put all of their faith into a machine like Wendy Fuck has. Those good teachers will be viewed as naysayers and people who fear technology and they will be forced into "professional development" rather than given a forum where they can voice their reasons for not using the technology and illustrate its flaws. This is what needs to happen. The forum and the blending. THEN technology can be mixed with far superior human attributes and we will not have to settle for computer approximations. But this is not what I see happening. Computers have been hailed as the next educational revolution for a few decades and because of good teachers recognizing their limitations - not because of the limitations of good teachers - that revolution hasn't been as revolutionary.

Now let's get back to the Standardizors. THEY are doing much the same thing only worse. They are trying to push mathematical, mechanical, machine-like thinking onto teachers who possess instincts, compassion, sensitivity, intuition, logic, critical thinking, problem solving, abstract emotions and many other superior abilities that computers can only approximate. Here is one example. This is real folks. I saw at one of my "professional development" meetings for LINC an illustration of how to evaluate a CLB (Canadian Language Benchmarks) level 1 vs a CLB level 4 student in speaking. I am paraphrasing but the example I will give is very similar. Ask the question, "How was your vacation to Florida?" If the student's answer includes 4-5 adjectives it is a CLB 4 answer. If the answer includes 1 adjective it is a CLB 1 answer. So imagine if you will... 

The first student badly wants Canadian citizenship which can be obtained if she gets a CLB 4 certificate. She has no interest in learning English because she lives very comfortably in a community made up of mostly people who speak her first language. She just wants to pass. She knows how to beat the test and she knows she just needs to list some adjectives so she says, "It was hot, humid, rainy, wet, muggy." BAM! CLB 4.

A second student is asked the same question and his answer is, "It was like spending 2 weeks in Cardi B's wet ass pussy." BAM! CLB 1. I only see one adjective. Wet. Or wet-ass I guess. But this student has used a simile. He has used creativity and humour. His answer shows cultural awareness and a fairly high degree of currency although maybe not by the time I post this. Any good teacher could tell that this student has a much better English level than the first student and he knows WAP so it shows he has some interest in the culture here, but with the limitations imposed by the CLB's strictly mandated rules and regulations he will languish in level 1 for awhile where he will be bored speaking with students who are probably lower level than he is. He will need to produce 8 "artifacts" or tests (which he will ace if he puts any effort at all into them) in order to get to level 2. This will take him months and months and probably years to get his citizenship whereas the first student will already have hers. I ask you, which of the two would YOU rather have selling you siding, checking you through immigration at the airport, answering your call to set up a doctor's appointment or whatever???

I would place the first girl in a lower level and the second student in CLB 4 or 5 but given the overzealously pedantic CLB Bootcamp and PBLA training I have received, I think I would be fired. Every place where I have done level testing overseas, and there have been quite a few of them, I could place these two students into the levels that are appropriate for them based on standards, maybe computer scoring, AND my human judgment. That is the way it should be but for some cockamamie reason it seems we are reverting to deep in the past before we realized the humanity of teachers is irreplaceable. Back when teachers had classes of 100 students with mixed levels and ages and the teacher had to teach them several different subjects. Okay, then it helps to standardize. But nowadays we have the ability to differentiate, to get to know students and tailor lessons to their interests and learning needs. I sometimes wonder if maybe all this retrograde standardization and mechanization might be a way to revert to the classes of 100. That, disturbingly, IS a trend in education. 

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm....."