IT Rivers Merge - Educational Applications

May 31 - Synthesis of Last 3 Blogs and How it Concerns IT Education

I was fortunate to fly over the Bhramaputra River Delta a few months ago. I marveled at how the various streams and rivers flowed into and between one another in an intricate and fascinating web, and then eventually emptied into the vastness of the ocean (at the top of the image). This blog is like that - neural pathways and streams of consciousness, flowing and merging and eventually being dumped into the public obscurity of the world wide web.

In posting the last three blogs in three days, I think I've completed the requirements for my tech class, but my brain says I need to synthesize and connect this information in a meaningful way and relate it to my role as a teacher.

These are the questions I'm still trying to find the answers to.

1) How do we shelter children from the flood of information available to them, much of which is frightening or otherwise inappropriate for their delicate years?

An interesting wiki entitled The Reality of Internet Filtering/Blocking, cited numerous sources which discussed how best to shelter children from inappropriate material on the internet. The major challenge was how to continually filter out inappropriate material without also blocking sites that are fine for children to visit.

As a society we realize that young children do not have the maturity to deal with adult issues, so we protect them while they are very young, and support them as they grow and begin to explore more mature material. This is why there are 'Adult' sections in public libraries and 'Adult Only' shelves in movie rental stores. This is why good parents monitor what their children watch on TV, especially during times of crisis. This is not censorship, or a violation of the First Amendment, this is common sense, and it applies to the internet as well.

Just as all school librarians carefully select the books they order for their collections, school tech departments need to set up safety nets to block inappropriate sites. Children must be taught that if they come across something that makes them feel uncomfortable, unsafe or afraid, they should leave the site immediately and tell a trusted adult. Children must also be supervised by a responsible adult while using the internet.

2) How do we teach our students to glean the most reliable information from the glut of smut that flows through the net?

The website for The Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University offered an excellent tutorial in how to find reliable information on the internet. This would be a good starting point for teachers who are helping their students gain the skill of discernment when it comes to using the internet.

The key things to consider are as follows:
Authorship
Publishing body
Point of view or bias
Referral to other sources
Verifiability
Currency

3) How do we teach our students to make the best personal choices based on the information they determine is reliable and relevant to their lives?

A goal of most quality schools is help students develop proficient skills in critical-thinking, problem-solving and decision-making. Good teachers provide a supportive environment where students can reflect on and explore issues of citizenship within a variety of communities. Parents and families provide a framework of morality which can further guide children as they determine their place in the world. With these three support systems, children have a sturdy stool to stand on as they reach for their goals and discover how they can contribute to making the world a better place.

I'm quite convinced that my musings here will enjoy a measure of obscurity, since I doubt few, if any others will find this blog worthy of their time. However, writing this blog was a helpful exercise for me as I recorded the ideas that have been chasing around in my brain the last few weeks. My husband pointed out that instead of jotting down my notes in a journal, I've now posted them on this blog and some climate-controlled server farm will have to store it for all eternity, wasting vast amounts of energy. (So much for being environmentally friendly.) My last question is this: Is this blog worth it?

IT in Kenya circa 1983

May 30 - Things have changed a little bit since I was in school.

The political situation in Thailand is not completely unfamiliar to me. I have lived through a
revolution in Ethiopia and a civil war in Uganda. In both countries I gathered information about the situation from any friendly adults who chose to inform me, or from what I could overhear of their conversations. It seemed most of their information was from 'word-of-mouth' too.

Things have changed a bit since those days, and it annoys me that in this "information age" we expect to have all the information we want with a few clicks of the keyboard, or finger swipes on the iphone.

So for all you impatient internet users who complain about not enough information, here's a flash from the not-too-distant past.

My parents were missionaries in Ethiopia and Uganda, and when I was in Jr. High and High School in the 1980s, I was sent to boarding school at Rift Valley Academy in Kenya. RVA is a marvelous school and is perched on the escarpment of the great Rift Valley looking out over a vast plain and ancient volcano, Mt. Longonot. (Nestled on one of the world's natural satellite dishes, I wonder if they have decent high-speed internet now.)

Those were the days before email, and snail mail earned its name. Very often I would return home for my trimester vacation ahead of the letter I'd posted three months earlier at the start of the previous school term. Those tear-splattered letters which described my homesickness and the pathetic details of my early adolescence were received warmly by my parents, but they were tragically out-dated by the time they arrived. I'd somehow survived the teasing and loneliness, and now I was home and all was well with the world. "But why didn't you call us?" they enquired.

Phoning Mbale, Uganda from Kijabe, Kenya in the mid-80s required standing in the cold wind at the phone booth for an hour or more, several nights in a row, with unpredictable results.

My brother and I would give the crank on the phone several enthusiastic spins, lift the earpiece and lean in to the wall-mounted mouthpiece. When the operator responded, we asked to be connected with Mbale Three. (My parents had the third phone line in the town.) We could hear the operator pulling out and pushing in plugs in the telecommunications office down the hill in Kijabe town and shouting, "Kijabe One to Mbale Three. Kijabe One to Mbale Three! Hello? Hello?" Then she would say to us, "You wait now." And that was it. We waited. Sometimes she called back to tell us she couldn't get through to Mbale Three. Sometimes we called her back to cancel the call because we had to meet curfew. As we left for our separate dorms, we would agree to meet the following evening to try again.

Day after day we would try, and sometimes we were lucky. As we stood dancing from foot to foot to keep warm, or huddled in the deep window wells on Kiambogo porch, sometimes the phone would ring and we would nearly collide trying to reach it first. "Mom? Dad? Is that you?" And if it was, we would take turns shouting above the static about nothing in particular, just being comforted by the sound of our parent's voices. I tried not to cry because I could hear the tightness in Mom's voice and knew she was trying not to cry too.

The phones lines were often down; they were highly valued for making jewelry or binding crops, so the governments of both countries had quite a job replacing them. The missionaries communicated with one another daily by radio.

When Museveni's army put Obote's army on the run, I heard rumors of fighting near my hometown. At school we did not have access to TV or radios, and remember, these were the days before the internet. The information we received was from other missionary children who had successfully called home and heard the news that had come over the two-way radio. If anything extraordinary happened, a local missionary would drive up to school to relay the news.

For the most part, we kids were kept in the dark. I suppose that was for the best, after all, we had our studies and social lives to attend to, but there was always that nagging, lurking fear that lingered in the back of my mind. I was taught to pray and trust in God, so I did. I prayed and trusted that at the end of the term, my parents would arrive to take me home.

So, when I'm frustrated with the spinning wheel on my screen, or the choppy skype connection, I don't have to riffle far through my memories to dig up those cold, windy nights on Kiambogo porch, when all I could do was pray for a connection. I think I'll print out the picture at the top of this page and tape it up behind my computer to remind me.

Not Enough Information

May 27 - I just posted my Too Much Information blog, but it was in my desktop 'to edit' folder for over a month. I've seen the flip side of the coin and have come to realize that perhaps there are times when there's not quite enough information.

The recent events here in Thailand kept me glued to the TV and computer as I tried to get up-to-the-minute information about what was happening in our city. For once, I wanted AS MUCH INFORMATION as I could get. I wanted to know that my family was safe, and I wanted to know where that enormous, billowing cloud of black smoke was coming from that I could see from my front porch.

Besides the usual frustrations of lop-sided reporting and borderline propaganda by major news agencies, I found myself equally annoyed with self-proclaimed 'journalists' on Twitter. When anybody can don the "media" pass, you get a lot of misinformation.

I finally ventured out of hiding the other day and drove past a building that was supposedly set on fire during the rampaging after the crackdown. Not a trace of damage could be detected. Thanks to Twitter, I thought one of my favorite neighborhood movie theaters was torched. Nope; it's fine too.

Who are these Tweeting rumormongers? Is anyone holding them accountable? How am I supposed to know if they are telling it straight? Perhaps Twitter "journalists" should apply for a Reliability Rating. Joe On The Street has a 4-Star RR since he also writes for Time Magazine, but Mo On The Scene has a rating of 1 because he is accountable to no one. Do you want a mob of fans? followers? people who LIKE you? Then prove your reliability.

Until then, I say, "No thank you, Twitter, for your up-to-the-minute misinformation, I'm going back to The News at Nine where it's easier to spot the slant and tilt my head to compensate."

Too Much Information

April '10 - I use this phrase on a regular basis in my home. When my daughter wants to tell me the details about what happened to her little friend in the bathroom at school, I hold up my hand and say, “STOP! Too Much Information!” When my son wants to describe the reproductive activities of our pet hamsters I say, “WHOA! Too Much Information!” When my husband lists all the different places we could visit on our upcoming trip … you get the picture.

I am forever trying to find ways to simplify my life. Perhaps I am a very unusual person, but I hold out hope that there are other people like me in the world, people who prefer fewer choices and fewer demands on their senses.

Shopping is overwhelming for me – there are just too many options. I grew up in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. We had three, count them, three choices of breakfast cereal and yet we somehow managed to survive. I don’t need 70 options - and I don't want 70 options.

I’m so glad I live in Thailand where commercials are censored; I’d rather not be bombarded with the latest information on all the new products or trendy new TV dramas that demand my immediate attention. If I want to know what’s on TV I’ll look in the TV Guide. If I need something, I’ll go shopping.

I’m one of those people who rarely turns music on; I don’t wear headphones when I exercise. This is not because I don’t enjoy music, but because when I add extra sounds to my environment, I miss out on the natural music of my surroundings: birdsong, the whisperings of leaves in the trees, children laughing and shouting, even the sound of my own rhythmic breathing when I exercise. If I want music, I’ll sing. Too much noise is sensory overload for me.

I recently finished reading a book – yup, a real, hold-it-in-your-hands-and-turn-the-pages book (call me old-fashioned) entitled “How We Decide” by Jonah Lehrer. He begins by explaining how experts make decisions. Their years of training and practice become a solid foundation for their decisions. The pro quarterback doesn’t evaluate each play and make a conscious choice about which receiver to throw to, he just gets a feel for the action on the field and then lets his instincts direct his hand. There is just TOO MUCH INFORMATION coming his way during a 15-second play for him to analyze. He has to rely on his emotions – yup, you read that right, his gut tells him when to throw the ball and to whom. According to Mr. Lehrer, this holds true for most other skilled professionals as well.

Mr. Lehrer then goes on to describe a multitude of studies which show that when people are asked to explain their reasons WHY they should choose one type of jelly or wine over another, or why they should buy the new house in the suburbs, or why they like this poster more than that poster, people are far more likely to make a bad choice that they will later REGRET. Thinking too much about their likes and dislikes, and having to justify their thoughts, actually causes them to choose something that is not the best choice for them.

Mr. Lehrer explains that 'overthinkers' are relying on one myth that we as a society perpetuate: rational thought and informed decision-making should guide our choices.

A friend of mine is considering which preschool is the right one for her daughter. Our babysitter is trying to choose just the right college. A colleague is considering several job opportunities. My neighbor is looking to buy a car. Each of these decisions is highly complex. With a multitude of factors to consider, how does one weigh the pros and cons of each factor and arrive at the most logical, rational decision?

Mr. Lehrer states, "The main problem is that the human brian wasn't designed to deal with such a surfeit of data. As a result, we are constantly exceeding the capacity of our prefrontal cortices, feeding them more facts and figures than they can handle. It's like trying to run a new computer program on an old machine; the antique microchips try to keep up, but eventually they fizzle out." (pg. 158) Our frontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for rational thought, is new on the evolutionary scene. However, our limbic system which is responsible for generating feelings, is located in the brain stem, our primitive brain. This is a brain part that we have in common with dinosaurs and therefore, quite a bit older on the evolutionary timeline. Modern man tries to use our newest, and most glitchy brain region to determine the best course of action when we would probably be better off trusting our most evolved and experienced brain region - and trusting those gut feelings.

Thank you, Mr. Lehrer! I've been waiting for someone to validate the way I make decisions; a) get a fair idea of what the options are, b) see what my wallet can responsibly manage, c) pray and sleep on it if it's expensive or really important, and then d) go with my gut feeling. This old operating system seems to be working just fine, so can anyone tell me how to jam those annoying program update pop-ups that keep interrupting this blog entry?

Should I post all my reflections and questions?

I recently read a thought-provoking blog, If Only Time Was Really An Issue by my course instructor Jeff Utecht. It encouraged me to take time, as an educator, to reflect. So I did. On my computer I tapped out a reflection on a recent teaching assignment, thinking it would make an interesting blog post and fulfill this week's posting requirement for the tech course. However, those thoughts will not be published. Turning in a hand-written reflection for my teacher to review requires a certain balance of courage and trust, but making my reflection public in a post which anyone can read, infringes on my sense of privacy.

I have had the wonderful opportunity this year to work as a substitute teacher in classes all across the school. I have seen the programs at work and have tried my best to keep student learning on track as per the plans left to me by the teachers. I am very excited about the new programs the school has adopted for Math, Science, Reading and Writing, and I am impressed with how each teacher implements the programs in ways that meet the specific needs of the students and skills/personalities of the teacher.

In jotting down my reflections, I realized that I have a lot of questions too. I will be joining the faculty next August and am thrilled to finally be a part of such a dynamic, hard-working, thoughtful and talented group of educators. I trust some of my questions will be answered in time, but I am not certain if it is wise to pose all my questions here. For the time being, I think I will guard my reflections and questions, but the maxim "Leave no answer unquestioned" will be nagging me.