TechIntersect

This video was sent to me by a colleague at work.

I was immediately reminded of Daniel Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind” and frequent writer about emotionally intelligent design. Let’s face it, no amount of cajoling, criticizing or high pressuring can compete with sensitivity to the feelings of the intended audience. As a teacher, I prefer trying to find fun ways to communicate ideas, rather than badgering, lecturing and otherwise intimidating my students into learning what I think is important. To me, it just makes sense.

In 2007 Vinton Cerf, a founding father of the Internet wrote that what this country needs is another Sputnik to reinvigorate science education. After reading Cerf’s article, last spring I did a research project on the National Defense Education Act. The NDEA was the US response to the launch of Sputnik, hoping to improve schools and better compete with the perceived Soviet threat.

Today, on Daniel Pink’s blog, I find another interesting reference to this landmark event. This time it was a video of James Paul Gee discussing education reform. A few of the highlights I picked up on in the video include:

• Global competition will be the new Sputnik, and American education has a 50% chance it will experience the first real reform in 100 years as a result.
• Teachers have become de-professionalized, letting textbooks, testing and politicians make curriculum decisions rather than teachers making professional decisions about what and how best to teach. (Not an indictment of teachers, just a statement of current reality.)
• Innovation and creativity are not emphasized enough because many schools are simply test-prep academies.
• Social media helps to create “passion groups” through which people with similar passions can come together
• Teachers learning to use new digital tools are model learners for students

If you have 11 minutes or so, why not enjoy the entire video?

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been two weeks since Grandpa & I left on on our adventure to the USA nation’s capitol. He and I took a trip to Washington D.C. sponsored by Central Prairie Honor Flights. All WWII veterans travel at no cost to them. If you think this is a worthy cause, why not consider making a donation to help keep the movement alive? If you know a WWII veteran who has not made the trip, don’t delay… apply to get their name on the list right away! If they are physically able to travel at all, they need to do this!

Last week I wrote about getting to DC and our first day in the area. In this post I will give a little detail about what we did during our only full day in Washington.

We had an early Reveille on the day of our tour. Breakfast was served at 6am and the bus departed around 7:30. We arrived at the WWII memorial shortly after 8 am and we were among the first visitors there. We spent a great deal of time posing for a group shot. My camera couldn’t fit them all in, so this picture is a composite of four photos that I stitched together with photoshop.

I figured the Kansas marker would be a popular spot so we hurried over to the north end of the memorial & took a picture there first.

Then we moved to the center of the memorial and enjoyed the view.

Grandpa was in the Pacific so we headed over to the south end to see the Pacific battles. Grandpa was wounded on Biak, New Guinea, so he posed for a picture near the New Guinea marker.

All of my four years of sea duty were served in the Pacific as well so grandpa & I posed together near the MacArthur quotation made on the USS Missouri at the WWII surrender.

My other grandpa, Claude Rickley, served in Europe during WWII. He traveled with us to the memorial in spirit. I made a photograph of his picture & burial flag at the Battle of the Bulge, where he fought. I wish he could have gone with us, he would have loved this trip. I miss him.

After the WWII memorial, we visited the haunting Korean War memorial. Grandpa commented that the statues of the soldiers were quite real to life, down to the smallest detail. Even the carbine rifles looked like the one he carried.

Next was the unforgettable Lincoln memorial. So much history in this place, and what do my kids think of when I came home with this picture? Of course it was Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian.

The Vietnam memorial is also unforgettable. So many names, so many young men lost.

After our tour of the National Mall, we had time for a museum tour before lunch. We chose the Smithsonian Air & Space museum. Our other choice was the Holocaust museum. Grandpa had no interest in seeing that. He’s witnessed enough tragedy in his lifetime.

I was glad we went to the Smithsonian, because we saw the Apollo 11 command module.

The original Wright Flyer, the world’s first aircraft.

And an honest to goodness moon rock. I wanted badly to touch it, but it is encased in plastic.

Afterwards, we ate lunch and headed for the Iwo Jima memorial.

And the tomb of the unknown soldier.

Finally, we returned to the WWII memorial for one last look. It is quite beautiful at night, well worth a second stop. There was a moving memorial service to remember those who sacrificed everything for our freedom.

Afterwards, we were visited briefly by Kansas representatives Jerry Moran and Lynn Jenkins. They arrived late and we were freezing by then so they had to visit with us on our tour busses.

It was a long day, but unforgettable for as long as I live. We slept well that night I can assure you. We were fortunate to have an afternoon flight home the next day so we were able to take our time getting on the bus to the airport. It was a long trip home. We drove from Dulles Airport Hilton to the Baltimore Airport. Flew from there to Kansas City. Drove from there three hours to Clifton, KS. As we drew near to our home, we saw this sunset just outside of Clay Center, KS. Probably the most amazing sunset I have ever seen.

They say that we remember an experience by it’s high point and by it’s ending. You can bet with this kind of ending, we will have nothing but fond memories of our trip to Washington DC in the Fall of 2009.

One of the things I should probably understand more than I really do is website search engine optimization or SEO.

I have known for a while now that blogs play a powerful role in influencing the search engines. This was illustrated to me quite vividly recently while doing some prep work for my visual literacy class. We were doing my familiar old pixel pointillism project and I did a quick  Google image search for pointillism.

What’s this? My little blog is the first item returned for a pointillism image on Google? It’s a detail image of a Seurat painting I found on Mark Harden’s Artchive. Check it out!

Anyone who doubts that blogging is important to getting exposure for your website is missing the power of web 2.0.

My visual literacy students have been kicking hind-end this fall. I have a bunch of hardworking and talented students this year. You should check out some of their blogs.

• Rick – http://apps.facebook.com/liveblog/user/1494194154
• Natasha – http://minenatasha.blogspot.com
• Trista – http://tag91.wordpress.com
• Will – http://willyj16.wordpress.com
• Brandon M. – http://bmobes.wordpress.com/
• Savannah – http://srobeson.blogspot.com/
• Kristin – http://thoughtsofadrifter.blogspot.com
• Brandon S. – http://mydigitalbliss.com/blog/wordpress/
• James – http://thanos2469.wordpress.com
• Bryant – http://bwilvisualliteracy.blogspot.com/

This week they did a new pixel pointillism drawing. We’ve been doing these drawings every year. I described the process in a previous post so I won’t go into the details here.

This time we did Rihanna. I guess I have a thing for troubled pop icons. I suppose we should have done Michael Jackson, but I felt he was too obvious. Part of the fun is passing out the different pixel squares and letting the puzzle take shape.

Also this week, we did some drawings with Illustrator. I had them do contour line drawings and also portraits using nothing but shape. Pretty amazing results, don’t you think?

The last thing that educators need on the first day of school is a big, hairy brouhaha but that is exactly what many started the year with this year.

Hurry on over and check out how the Obama speech debacle proves Arne Duncan does not know how schools work by Edward Hayes, it’s a great read. (I heard about it via Larry Ferlazzo on Twitter)

Personally, I never saw what the big deal was anyhow. This is a snippet of a Facebook conversation we had earlier in the week:

Me: Don’t see what all the flap was about in the first place. As if my kids can come home and change my political opinions based on what they heard in a speech at school.

Robert: Or, as if what your kids hear one day in school when they are seven or ten is going to have any impact on them at all tomorrow–if you don’t want it to.

Audrey: Another example of parents getting hysterical over nothing.Just concerned about their own politcal views. I assure you, kids would not have thought twice about listening to the president speak, if not for all this bickering.

Over the years, I’ve developed a love of art and visual communication. When I am able, I love spending time viewing art in galleries and even creating my own small works of art. Yesterday I attended the opening of a new show at the Salina Art Center. I will write more about that in a separate post when I have more information to share, but let me just say that the current show has lots of kinetic sculptures with motors and electronics incorporated into the work. Very worth checking out.

I haven’t always paid attention to art. When I was in the Navy, I visited some of the most amazing cities in the world, but I was primarily interested in checking out the pubs, not the galleries. In fact, the only gallery I ever set foot in was in Hobart, Australia, and that was by accident. I was eating a nice Italian meal with some shipmates. I mentioned to them that I would really enjoy going fishing while we were in Tasmania. A gentleman at the next table spoke up, telling me that he knew of a young man who might like to take me fishing.

Over the course of the next couple of days, the gentleman (I’ve forgotten his name, this was back in 1991) introduced me to Josh Nester who at the time was around 14 and an avid fisherman. He also took us on a tour of the art gallery he owned. I’m sorry to say that I remember more about the fishing than I do the art. Josh & I each caught a nice lake trout at the Great Lake after freezing our bums off in the highlands of Tasmania.

Of course I took Josh & his family on a tour of my ship, the USS Missouri. Over the years, I had lost track of Josh and his family but I had never forgotten their hospitality. That is until recently, I reconnected with Josh through Facebook. Think whatever you like about the pros & cons of Facebook, some people are fleeing it, but for me it has been an amazing way to reconnect with people I have known in my life that I have lost touch with.

Even though I was only there a few days, Josh and his family provided me with an unforgettable experience in Australia through their kind hospitality. That is why I was pleased to reconnect with Penny, the mother of Josh who drove us to the lake where we caught those fish. I was especially intrigued to learn that she now operates an art gallery in Hobart called Detached. What is even more interesting is that the gallery currently has an interactive exhibit called 8 Months of War by Australian artist Brook Andrew. It is ironic that the 1991 Persian Gulf War was what brought me to Hobart in the first place.

I am continually amazed at this communications-based world in which we live. I was able to reconnect with people I met only briefly eighteen years ago through the power of the Internet, and now I am also able to interact with a new media artist half a world away. You can too. Why not check out 8 Months of War today?

A strong effort is being made to raise the standard of teaching in our public schools.

Wow, does that ever sound familiar? The more things change, the more they stay the same. And get a load of the teaching certificate requirements in Kansas in 1911. They had three levels of certification back then. They were starting to crack down on teachers that hadn’t completed high school.

For a while now, I have been pondering the notion of literacies beyond that of the written word, particularly that of visual and new media literacies. In the fascinating article “Expanding the Concept of Literacy” Elizabeth Daley goes so far to propose that multimedia and the language of the screen is the current vernacular; a true new literacy equal in importance to traditional literacy of the printed word. It seems to me that educational institutions have a long way to go towards recognition of non-traditional literacy, however I have observed some progress on occasion.

For example, Daniel Pink recently wrote about how the University of Pennsylvania, which normally assigns a book to the incoming freshmen class to study and analyze, this year has assigned a famous painting for study and consideration. I find the story interesting because it suggests a broad recognition of visual literacy as a valid and important field of study at that institution.

Intrigued, yesterday I tweeted the story out, seeking thoughts on the idea and unfortunately have been away from my computer for a day and wasn’t able to reply to anyone who responded. Some things are ill-suited for discussion on twitter anyhow, and this story and its accompanying ideas seems too big for 140 characters, so I wrote this quick post to continue the discussion. Here are some of the ideas that were suggested:

Chris wants to open a can of copyright worms…

Chris, I know we are in a mash-up world, but I’m going to have to learn a whole bunch more about copyright before I could effectively lead such a discussion. And it seems like the more I learn about it, the more confused I get. Still, it would certainly be interesting! How much is fair-use? How much can you expect to use before you get into legal trouble, etc.?

Jeff gets right to the heart of the matter with a suggestion of turning it into an explicit lesson in visual literacy…

Most of my students are definitely left-brain oriented, and this suggestion would certainly lead to some lively debates and discussions. What do you think of doing this debate-style and just randomly having people argue for and against? I would love to get some engineering technology students arguing for visual literacy because I certainly more often hear arguments against needing this kind of knowledge.

Then we have Dr. Taylor confusing the heck out of me…

This is why I think some things are better discussed somewhere other than twitter. When we abbreviate to the point that the message becomes confusing, maybe it’s time to take it to the blog? Rel ` icons? Is that religious icons? Ren ` ports to Cubists & Bacon? Not sure what ren ` ports is either.

I’m liking your postcard idea, but would like some further clarification on this before I comment further. I hope you can take my gentle ribbing, but either I’m just too tired or too thick-headed to decode that last tweet.

We have some terrific ideas starting us out here, I’m wondering if anyone else would like to weigh in?

At my school, we have a freshman experience class, although I am not directly involved with it. I’m not sure if they have an assigned reading assignment, but something that the incoming freshmen could do together to start developing critical thinking skills I think would be awesome. Why not a painting? Congratulations Penn, I think this is a fabulous idea for welcoming new students to college, and getting their feet wet in the world of literacy. Perhaps a video lesson might be great as well. Show them an indie or foreign film that none of the students are likely to see.

What do you think of using a film for developing visual literacy? Video is definitely a part of this generation’s lives, the trick is finding a film that they haven’t seen yet.

One film I have shown past groups of students is the French film Amélie. It is full of complementary colors and stunning visual imagery. I have yet to have a student who has seen it before I have shown it to them. Most are skeptical that they can watch and enjoy a non-English film with subtitles, yet most are surprised at how well they can follow the story.

If you have more ideas & suggestions on developing visual & new media literacies, I would love to hear them! I’m particularly interested in seeing detailed plans on how these literacies are being taught.

I’m also interested in hearing what you think about the whole notion of alternative, non-printed literacy.

I awoke early this morning because today is the 2nd Annual Fun With Science Day in Clyde, KS. Last year, on the Saturday before the kids started back to school, we held the first  science fun day in the park and it was a big hit. In our town of 500 people, we had more than 40 kids show up for the event, and I suspect we will have as many or more today.

I think this is a great time of year for an event like this because the kids are getting bored and ready to get back to school. Our event is geared for K-6 grade children, but anyone who’s a kid at heart will have a good time.

This year I am particularly excited because I’ve managed to convince a real research scientist to join us for the event. Dr. Sundeep Rayat from K-State’s Chemistry Department is coming to show the kids some cool chemistry stuff. (Check out her web-page to see how super-smart this lady is!) The cool thing is that I didn’t really know anyone from the Chemistry department until I met Dr. Rayat at the Wakonse Conference on College Teaching. Through that common experience, we have developed a friendship that ultimately has enabled the kids in tiny & very rural Clyde to rub elbows with a world-class scientist this weekend. How cool is that?!?

Recently I uploaded some never before seen videos from last year’s Fun With Science Day. This first one shows the kids experiencing conservation of angular momentum. This is the same rule of physics that allows an ice skater to speed up while spinning by raising their arms and bringing their mass towards the center.

This video shows the kids playing with “Oobleck” or “Cornstarch Goo” which is a non-Newtonian liquid. Isaac Newton described the basic properties of a liquid, which most liquids do posess, but this liquid defies the rules. It is part liquid and part solid, depending on its environment. A strong impact aligns the molecules letting it behave like a solid, while a gentle touch releases the molecules and it behaves like a liquid. Isn’t that weird? And the kids love it! You just mix enough water into cornstarch to make a batter, and this is what you get!

The weather calls for a chance of showers today, but I’m hoping we can pull this event off without getting soaked. I just looked at the radar map and everything is north of us right now, but some cells are firing up out west of us, which means we could catch some rain later today.( It’s been an unusually wet and cooler summer. Normally in the 90’s & 100’s and bone dry this time of year, but yesterday was pleasant, only 88 degrees.) But I’m keeping my fingers crossed. A lot of people have put in a lot of work to make this event happen, so hopefully we’ll make this one happen today without any bad weather.