Harken, ye anti-texting dogs

By Tom | December 2, 2009

txting

I Profe{|s|s}e to teach thee, that art vtterly ignorant, to reade perfe{ct}ly, to write truly, and with iudgement to vnder­ {|st}and the rea|son of our Engli{|sh} tongue with great expedition, ea|se , and plea­|sure.

from the English School Maister

Clearly Langvich, like Arithmeticke, doth naught chan-geth.

Language is your servant. Language is not your master.

Too many people seem to think language is in charge. English is the bastard child of any number of languages and times. What we have now is a confusing, ever shifting and evolving, mess.

One squiggly line means the number two and three other line arrangements represents the word for the number 2. We have three words pronounced too but meaning three different things. On the other hand, we have the word lead which is spelled the same but pronounced differently and with an entirely different meaning determined only by context. We just accept that.

Words also change in meaning and spelling over time, right? If enough people say a word means something for long enough, no matter the word’s original meaning, that becomes what the word means. It’s kind of like evolution mixed with democracy.

I’ve actually listened to teachers brag that they never abbreviate when texting and that they used full and complete punctuation. That pretty much says to me, “The arbitrary ‘rules’ of English are more important than its purpose. Changing styles for different purposes and media doesn’t make sense.” I can’t think of a worse lesson for a student or a worse mind set for a teacher.

I’m not saying students should be able to write papers in text speak. I just want people to put this into context. Srsly.

Topics: Reflections | 13 Comments »

Some Improvement

By Tom | December 1, 2009

Here’s the revised video for our 21st Century push.

Improved 21st Century Plea from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

Old Version

Another 21st Century Plea from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

I find video work to be incredibly time consuming and difficult to do right. After I watch something 1000 times, it’s gets far harder to be objective and not let my mind fill in gaps. I’ll have to figure out a trick similar to reading an essay aloud that will give me fresh eyes. Until then, I’ve found getting other people to watch the video and give me feedback to be invaluable.

This minor clip still has many ways it can be improved but it has improved thanks to the comments offered by people on this site. Thanks for that.

There is now one continuous track in the background that helps unite the disparate clips and improve the mood of the piece. The tricky part about that was trying to lay that track down behind clips where people were speaking and the clips themselves had background music. I tried removing it the original background music in a variety of ways using Soundtrack and Logic but had no real luck. I did, however, get really good at making Ken Kay sound like a robot.

Another issue that was hard to deal with was video formats. Since I was getting them from other sources I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I did learn that Final Cut does not like editing the mp4 format. It does not like it at all. It will stall and balk in horrific, patience shattering ways. Do not attempt this. I ended up using Apple Pro Res 422 and it was good for editing but the files were large and not as clear.

Finally, I’m going to have to watch film critically a lot more than I do. I learned a lot about photography by submitting my shots to “Hit, Miss or Maybe- Why?.” It’s not that I believed all the comments I got from that group but there were things that made me think and I also had to critique three other people’s work for each picture I submitted. It helped to look at other images and analyze what made them work/not work. I need to do that with video.

Topics: Reflections, Video | 6 Comments »

Little Boxes All The Same

By Tom | November 30, 2009

And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Organized education as a whole seems to have become about narrowing things down, putting each person in as small a box as possible. From grades to subjects to majors, the focus is on narrowing and limiting.

Somehow the idea that all students should know the same things and be exposed to the same experiences has become seen as a good idea. It’s become synonymous with the idea of equality in education.

I’m saying that education ought not be equal, it ought to be individualized. Education ought to help people find their paths, find, focus and hone their own innate talents and interests. I’m not laying all of this responsibility at education’s feet but we have students for 12 or 16 years. 12-16 years. Surely we can do a better job helping students figure out who they are and how they might fit into the world. School shouldn’t be an extended test to see how long you’re willing to do BS work.

My own prediction into the future is that most people won’t be able to keep jobs they aren’t passionate about. It seems there are too many forces that will let those jobs go elsewhere and be done for less (or by machines)1.

Schools need to help students find their passions and develop the skills to let them turn those passions into lives. This isn’t about doing what’s best for corporations. Clearly corporations don’t give a damn about our country or the world. Their focus is profit. 2

Our focus ought to be creating people who can become powerful participants in this world on their own terms.

1 Until we’ve got more serious problems to deal with . . .

2 I don’t know how education became the maidservant of corporations. Or I guess I do, since corporations run our government. Wasn’t Lessig supposed to fix that?

Topics: Reflections | 6 Comments »

Another Change or Die Education Video

By Tom | November 21, 2009

Another 21st Century Plea from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

I have mixed feelings about making this1. It has reached the level of mediocrity. Comments regarding ways to improve it are welcome2.

This has inspired me to get moving on the mock change education video I’ve been planning for a while.

I’ll detail how it’ll be used in a later post.

1 Although, it was required for work.

2 Curses and insults are understood.

Topics: 21st Century Skills | 16 Comments »

Planning Conference

By Tom | November 18, 2009

Planning Conference from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

This is how we are trying to run our pre-observation planning conferences. It’s worth thinking about how you structure this whole process if you want useful observations and resultant teaching improvement.

Topics: Teacher, Video | No Comments »

Observation Video – Elementary Math

By Tom | November 18, 2009

Elementary Math Classroom Observation from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

This is a fairly straight forward classroom observation video aimed at helping teach our admins about gathering data. The focus of this particular video was engagement. I’ll be posting the pre-observation interview later.

This is part of our revamped professional growth process. It’s pretty interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff. If you are that kind of person, there’s a lot more information about what we’re doing here.

Topics: Math, Reflections, Video | No Comments »

What do you wish you’d learned in school?

By Tom | November 16, 2009

I was conversing with Jon Becker on Twitter a while back. He’d retweeted this tweet1 to this 50 questions project. Basically, the idea is to go someplace and ask 50 people a fairly open ended question. In this particular case, they asked people “Where would you like to wake up tomorrow?”

That stirred up some interest for me because I’ve been kicking around the idea of interviewing random people about education. I have a variety of reasons for doing this.

So, on the drive up to NYC for WordCamp I was talking to Jim Groom and throwing around some questions. I ended up picking “What do you wish you’d learned in school?”

So with all that build up, I give you the only interview I shot that day.

What do you wish you’d learned in school? Attempt #1 from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

For a variety of reasons, I only asked two people this question. You see one of them above. The other turned me down.

I don’t know if this will have any attraction for other people but if you’d like to join in and submit videos that’d be welcomed. I’m opening to tagging or other options to make them easy for people to find. Comments? Thoughts?

1 still hate that word

2 If you’ve ever met me, you’re likely agreeing that I need to work on this quite a bit.

Topics: Conference, Digital Storytelling, Possibilities, Video | 4 Comments »

Three Teachers on Integration

By Tom | November 12, 2009

Untitled from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

Despite the massive amount I still need to learn as a videographer and editor, these three teachers say some interesting things. It’s worth thinking about how some of their responses parallel despite open questions and not hearing each others responses.

The video is about 7 minutes long and has the comments of three teachers from Byrd Middle School in Henrico County.

Topics: Bloom's, Examples, Teacher, Video | 3 Comments »

Storyboarding Video

By Tom | October 19, 2009

This is the video I’d use to teach storyboarding. I might try showing them the finished version and ask them to reverse engineering the storyboards.

PSYOP How-To Animate – T.Rowe Price “Ink” from PSYOP on Vimeo.

NOTE: Apparently I can’t embed the video. Never had that happen before. Strange. You’d think Vimeo would remove the option instead of leaving it there so that people end up with stupid looking posts like the one you’re reading.

Topics: Creative Communication | 2 Comments »

Edu-pumkin II – The Bava

By Tom | October 18, 2009

Unlike Jim Groom, who only lavishes surface praise while harboring deep hatred, I truly respect the Bava and integrate him into our family’s holiday traditions1.

I had to make a hole in the back of Jim’s head to let some of the hot air out. Still needs some work though as the candle keeps going out.

1 You should see what Santa looks like in our house.

Topics: Folly, Humor, Wordpress | 3 Comments »

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