Snap

Sending and receiving email is like writing checks and it should happen about as frequently. I think I wrote fewer than 10 checks last year.

Email is built on a pre-phone, pre-telegraph world in which the only way to communicate across distance was to communicate across time. We don’t need to do that now. We have phones. Hell, we have texting! I’m hoping in my life time we get to mind melding. 

One part of what keeps email hanging on, despite its death rattle, is threads: that is, the  ”many-turns” conversation. This is known as your work email. I say X. You reply Y. I counter with Z. and on and on we go. Sometimes rapid fire within the same day. Sometimes, maddeningly over a few days, or even =gasp= a week. But those conversations are usually NOT actual conversations. They’re not much like “letters” (a.k.a. mail). Me: How are you? How’re the kids? You: Oh well, we’re good yah. No, these back and forth missives are actually how we do work … moving forward… slowly… as we hack out the details, negotiate the meanings, compromise on the solutions. We can do that BETTER in a shared Google doc or a wiki or any other collaborate space on the ‘net. We DO NOT need email for that. 

Heck we don’t even need email for attachments. Put your pix up on your FB or G+ or elsewhere and txt me the link. Drop that doc in Dropbox, if you must. But don’t, dear god, attach it to an email to me, where I’ll end up having to dl it and then PUT IT SOMEWHERE and try to remember the email context I’ve removed it from, the location I’ve put it in, and sometimes even that I have it all. Me: did you send me that X? You: yah yah, I sent that a few days ago. Here, let me resend it. Me: Nooooooooo.

I’ve watched us evolve our email etiquette. We HAVE gotten better. Mercifully, we don’t feel the need to do openings and closings. We don’t spam a paragraph of pretended interest in the other person’s well being anymore before getting to the point. We’ve finally stopped sending back the empty reply that basically says, “thanks.” We’ve stopped printing emails out. My colleagues at work still insist on spamming each other with REPLY ALL to blanket memos from admin., but that’s not an email problem; that’s a workplace status anxiety problem. 

And don’t tell me it’s how we maintain social relations. My mom knows more about my life from my FB page than from email. Interestingly, the way we knew we were ready to kill the home landline was NOT that we finally got decent signal on all our cellies. It was our collective realization that the ONLY people who called us on the landline were spammers, or those annoying “reminder” calls from the doctor/dentist, or my mom. (Sorry mom, it’s true.) When the phone rings in our house, all three of us yell out “I’m not home,” which means I’m not answering that, and if you do don’t you dare hand it to me. Email is now similarly irritating. When I open my mail I want to yell at it, “I’m not home” but it doesn’t work as well.

So can we all do a big pinky promise and just stop sending email? Skype. Text. Collaborate in a shared space. Hang Out in Google Plus. Or STFU.

I am, sad to say, learning to be a better person because I play  one in a virtual world. Think about what that means. But first, some background:

Context — I’ve started playing Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO (SWTOR). It’s my fourth or fifth MMO and I wanted to play it in part because of the Star Wars theme but mostly because I was curious about how Bioware’s ethical decision making approach to lore would work in an MMO, as opposed to a single player game like Dragon Age. I was in the beta; loved that and decided to play. I rolled on the Republic side because I was feeling that the Star Wars lore really compelled me to roll light side. I’ve got two Jedi toons: a Consular Sage (healer) and a Knight Sentinel (dps). I have since, of course, added a couple of dark side Siths to the family. This entry is about the two Jedi, which I play the most frequently.

Vygotsky — Yah, I’m going to drag his dead ass into this. Why? Because Vygotsky tells us that we do in order to learn. That is, first we behave, we act. Then, from that we learn. Now typically learning theories tell us that we have to develop some capability to learn first, or we need to be taught or instructed in order to learn. With social learning theory we roll up our sleeves and engage in real activities, with others, and from that engagement, from working it through, we learn. Learning is the product of experience.

Jedi and the whole light side thang — Okay, so at various decision points in the game, as various quests entail choosing to be mean and snarky, and vengeful and destructive or patient and supportive, and thoughtful and other-directed, I have chosen to go light. I don’t kill the bad guy I’ve just subdued, I give him another chance or I urge that s/he be treated justly. At first it was a combo of wanting to level my light side points so I could wield higher level lightsabers, and realizing that if I were truly RP’ing (role playing) a Jedi, I needed to be true to the Jedi principles. But now, by level 45, something strange has started to happen to me. I am feeling the vibe. In real life I am more patient, urging calm and negotiation, listening before deciding… not that I NEVER EVER did those things. I mean I’m not a complete jerk, but certainly those would not have come up on the short list of my strengths. But now, in a kinda of creepy way, I realize I’m trying to engage reality using some of those ideas from the Jedi side of the game. 

It’s freaking me out a little. As we look into game studies we don’t typically look for this! We look at kids acquiring scientific habits of mind from playing games like Quest Atlantis or River City. We look at kids acquiring collaborative teamwork skills from games like WoW or networked FPS. 

Now I wouldn’t just say this is some weird thing happening to me. I had a conversation early in my SWTOR playing days with an old buddy of mine, OrneryBob, whose name says it all. He was a real hothead/meathead in WoW, not that I ever minded but other people did. He actually TOLD ME that the SWTOR Jedi knight he was playing was making him choose to be good, to go with the light side choices, to be nicer. I lol’d of course, assuming it was a sarcastic and snarky joke. But … dude, I get you now. I feel it. It’s real. It’s creepy but it’s real. I wonder if it will stick after I stop playing some months or years hence.

Just when I thought media had succeeded at homogenizing the United States, presidential politics reminds me that regionalism is alive and well. In fact, from this awareness I offer this modest proposal to solve all the concerns dividing Dems and Repubs. Let’s fully embrace the Republican rallying cry of get federal government out of our lives. This could be a real win-win. Here’s how it works.

Get the government out of the public education; let the states deal with that. So Tennessee can go ahead with intelligent design or even your basic creationist version of science. Those kids won’t get in to colleges elsewhere, as those colleges won’t accept their h.s. science courses as legit, but that’s okay. They can go to U of Tenn. Or, and here’s the beginning of the model, if they live in Tennessee but want a credible science course, they can take an online course offered by, say, California. California gets to charge a fee for that, but hey, the Tennessee kid gets the course s/he needs for the transcript. Let Alabama outlaw Family Planning clinics and a nearby state might offer those services. Can’t have gay marriage in Florida; go to New Hampshire and spend the marriage and honeymoon money there. Remember kids, every time a door closes, another door opens somewhere. Cha-ching.

So the federal government might best focus on a really strong transportation and technology infrastructure that will allow everyone to shop where the services and goods they want are available to them. That’s interstate commerce, and THAT’S a federal game. Unless, of course, the south secedes again. But this time, let’s let them go.

One of the endlessly recurring themes I’ve heard here in DC is the big data meme. We need or can get big data (the “we’re already generating all this great data” argument). We need to work on seamless integration of big data (the “but data aren’t useable or systematically gathered” argument). We need to build ways to report big data (the “get money & private sector people on that back end problem” argument). Teachers need big data in a timely fashion (the teachers are clueless in the classroom argument). Shouldn’t you have access to your big data (the “MY DATA button” argument). All that great energy (*cough* money *cough*) rests on the last two arguments, one of which is a lie about a problem or, at best, a cover up; and the other of which is a solution in search of a problem.

MORE TIME; FEWER KIDS; NOT MORE DATA FASTER — Teachers are not clueless and in desperate need of data from the back end of anything to know what the academic issues are with the children they see on a daily basis in their classrooms. I haven’t heard them call for more data. I haven’t heard them respond to low test scores with the argument that they need more data or more timely data. I have asked them explicitly about a) how they know a kid needs help, b) what they use to know a kid needs help, and c) if more data or more timely data would help them diagnose and treat the kid’s academic problems. What they DO say is, if I had fewer kids in the room I could a) know sooner, b) know more deeply, c) give that kid more personal time. Big data, not a solution here. It does let you assign blame and give the appearance of making data based punishment decisions such as firing teachers, labeling kids, or defaming schools.

PARENTS & TEACHERS NEED TO ENGAGE; NOT SHARE DATA — Parents want to know how their kids are doing in school. Generally, they know to ask the teacher, rather than the kid. Hence the parent teacher conferences, which are for every kid, not just the ones in trouble. Parents often miss those conferences because of scheduling or child care issues. One response has been to use web-based parent-school communication systems to make information about children more readily available to parents… with web connections at home. Some parents find web connectivity or parent conference scheduling to be problematic. We have yet to deal fully with that. I don’t see how big data’s MY DATA buttons have any relevance to the underlying problems of conferencing access to teachers or web connectivity. So when a “solution” comes along for a problem that doesn’t seem to be a real problem, we should all know to ask the critical questions: Who benefits? Who gets hurt? I’ll let you marinate on that one. It *is* going to be on the test. At best it’s a distraction from the real problems and their solutions: teachers need fewer kids in the room so they can spend more time with each one; parents need easy access to interaction/conversation/dialogue with their kids’ teachers. At worst, it’s a mean spirited low hanging fruit pick by commercial interests in education who see a revenue stream just full of limited value, expensively generated data, that they helped create in the first place.

Badges for learning, if  you know me you know I hate the idea, both as an incentive and as a certification system. I just see so many holes in the mechanic when applied to education. But this afternoon I was just thinking…

I was reading the Fast Company article by Lindstrom, The HIgh Cost and Extreme Stickiness of Free Stuff and I got to thinking about it in juxtaposition with an article from New Republic posted today, The Higher Education Monopoly is Crumbling as We Speak. But, liberating instruction, curricula, instructors from venerable institutions presents the problem the author notes toward the end of the article about vetting or credentialing learning. Enter badges, which have essentially the same problem if they are to have any street cred whatsoever.

At the same time Lindstrom notes that emotional commitment to the investment players have made in games or other free or cheap deals leads them to spend the little extra it takes to go further, whether further means a saved game with your name on the leader board or as I’ve seen it, better gear for that free-to-play MMO character you’ve been leveling. 

Bailing out at this stage of the game would be like driving 100 miles only to realize that you need to pay a $4.95 toll to reach the final destination, even if I offered you a free train ticket home. No, you’ll probably pay for the pleasure of saying you reached the end of something instead of just being in sight of it. It’s funny, irrational, illogical behavior. The students who chose to forego the better deal and opted for the immediate option understand it perfectly well.

So solid, good, free learning opportunities should be equally compelling, just as emotionally attractive. If you’ve clocked your time in Code Year, wouldn’t you shell out oh, maybe $10 for a vetted certificate acknowledging your competence/achievement in coding? Sure you would. And that small revenue stream might allow the badge/certificate wielding vendor of the free learning to be sustainable, at scale (necessary element if you’re going to be the vetting institution of record).  About half a million are working on Code Year. That gives Codecademy some social cap to spend on vetting.

OTOH, it’s gotta be good stuff being offered up. Vetting the learner is only half the game. Someone has to vet the offering as worthwhile and legit. Audrey Watters captures a lot of my concern in her post on Code Year. I was thinking the same thoughts as I finagled my way through the first week’s lesson.

I still think there’s something to be had in thinking about badges as the mini-transaction tuition you pay for the cert/badge, at the end of a good free-to-learn road.

Just a thought. 

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I’ve been pondering this for years. Not the theory, but the absence of the arts from school curricula, or, if you insist, “the marginalization” of the arts. That is, you need to declare yourself an art student or a music student or a theatre geek to legitimize your access. Generally, we don’t include the arts in our testing, our standards-obsessions, our international competitions, our big money grants in education, or even in our search for someone to blame for school failure. The arts are just…invisible in school. [Don’t start me on a “hands on art” rant. That’s for another time.]

So, here’s my theory. It follows from an earlier rant about the bullshit that passes for character education, or drug education, or anti-bullying exhortations, and the like. There I typically argue that if we had more of the arts in school curricula we wouldn’t need special programs to remind people of their humanity nor to help them explore it with others. This is an extension of that notion. It begins with a fundamental assumption about the arts generally, and studio or “performance” arts in particular. The assumption is that through arts (music, writing, painting/sculpting, acting, dance, etc.) the artist expresses a personal perspective on reality, aka life. 

That’s an important assumption, especially in education wherein we “professionals” are constantly trying to get learners “to put something on the table” that shows us what or how they’re thinking about some idea. Once they have some skin in the game, once they have externalized, we can engage more easily with them about it. It’s pretty hard to imagine that the performing arts aren’t going to be a terrific resource for such objects. Indeed, there was a tiny window of time in which the state of California was actually interested in having students draw — yes draw — mathematical ideas to be interpreted as illustrations of mathematical understanding. I’d prefer they be interpreted as opportunities to engage about understanding, but well, whatever. As assessment, it was a very expensive method for large scale testing and quickly dropped. [Hmmm, visual recognition systems anyone? It would be deliciously ironic, unless you’re Steve Jobs, if technology enabled us to revisit that idea for large scale assessment.]

In artistic construction the artist/writer/photography/dancer/actor shares a personal interpretation that includes not just her understanding but her attitude, her perception (which itself includes socicultural material as well). There aren’t right answers in the arts, but there *is* precision. There isn’t consensus, but there *is* discussion and negotiation.  So why wouldn’t we want the arts in school curricula? Well, at the moment, and for quite a while now (mmm, two decades? three?), education has been repurposed as a political system to measure the progress of the country (as opposed to its original purpose, which was to educate the citizenry.) We are more interested in answers than questions. We are more interested in convergence than divergence. We are more interested in standards than innovation. We are more interested in righteousness than humanity. So the arts have to go, they’re nothing but trouble-makers. Sadly this leaves us with machinists rather than designers, in a world economy where machinists can be had in other countries for a lot less coin. Perhaps it’s an accidental conspiracy, but it’s rather solidly ingrained. The educational arguments seem to focus on how best to teach and how best to measure the narrow list of skills we have chosen for learners. The basic assumption of the curricula is never questioned by the public or the legislature (oh well, I don’t mean Texas; let’s not even grace that craziness with discussion.) 

In my own private fantasy realm, preservice teachers don’t just have to learn about technology (another rant for another day), they have to learn some basic piano, and there should be a piano in every classroom (there was when I was a kid, oddly enough, and EVERY private school has a recorder class. Ever think about why? About why that’s considered part of the privileged education? actually, the arts live on in private education. THINK ABOUT THAT). Preservice teachers need to draw, paint, photograph, dance, recite, author, enact, and so on. Not read about. Not consider. Do. Share. Discuss. Critique. From the experience of being a do-er, comes the insight of how and why to do these activities intentionally, in the service of learning. 

Okay, I feel better now and this is way too long a rant for a tumblr.