For all those middle school students out there who want to design video games....
The White House has recently announced a video game development competition as part of its Educate to Innovate campaign to improve student achievement in STEM disciplines (that is, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics education). In the Youth Division part of the competition, U.S. middle school students--those enrolled in grades 5-8 or for homeschoolers, students aged 9-13--are invited to submit their best game designs dealing with STEM topics. There are three ways students can submit their ideas: (1) a written game design document; (2) a playable game that uses the design features in the free version of Scratch, Gamestar Mechanic, or Gamemaker 8; (3) a playable game than runs for free on any open platform (for example, using something like Flash). There are over $50,000 in prizes available for the middle school contest, which is actually split into two sections: submissions from 5th-6th grade, and those from 7th-8th grade. But even if they don't win, or even end up submitting an entry, this is a great place for middle school students who want to design video games to check out, because there are lots of resources available on the competition submission platforms and other options. Those who want to compete have until January 5, 2011 to submit their design documents or playable games.
For more information, see the competition site at http://www.stemchallenge.org/Default.aspx
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Lesson Plan: Writing Fibs (Fibonacci Poetry)
In today's poetry class, we learned the fine art of writing fibs (of course, when I announced that, all the students were intrigued). But in this case, fibs is short for Fibonacci Poetry. They are named after Fibonacci, the mathematician who discovered the Fibonacci sequence of numbers (the Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the previous two numbers). If you are not familiar with Fibonacci numbers, which occur in all sort of natural growths (pine cones, pineapple, leaves on trees, the nautilus shell, etc.), check out this book from one of my previous posts.
Fibs are six-line poems in which each line contains the number of syllables in the initial Fibonacci sequence--1,1,2, 3, 5, and 8. I wrote the following two Fibs to explain them to the students by example:
One
Sound.
Then Two.
Next Comes Three.
Fifth line has Five sounds.
Wrap it up with an Eight sound line.
A
Fib
Poem
Has six lines
With syllables that
Grow in Fibonacci sequence.
We paired Fibs with writing Haiku, which also have a set syllable structure. However, the traditional Haiku form also has various rules--it is supposed to be about a scene in nature, it is supposed to have a word that connects the poem to a particular season, and the final line is supposed to be about the emotion that scene evokes. Fibs are a more recent poetic form, and have fewer restrictions about content, etc.
I like Fibs because they are new to most students and so have them thinking in different ways. I also like them because they are contemporary (which I think is important to students) and because they connect poetry to math (and I love creating connections between disciplines). Plus, Fibs are just fun!
Here is one last Fib that I wrote for the students in my class:
This
class
has been
so much fun!
Your poems are great.
The poets are even better!
Fibs are six-line poems in which each line contains the number of syllables in the initial Fibonacci sequence--1,1,2, 3, 5, and 8. I wrote the following two Fibs to explain them to the students by example:
One
Sound.
Then Two.
Next Comes Three.
Fifth line has Five sounds.
Wrap it up with an Eight sound line.
A
Fib
Poem
Has six lines
With syllables that
Grow in Fibonacci sequence.
We paired Fibs with writing Haiku, which also have a set syllable structure. However, the traditional Haiku form also has various rules--it is supposed to be about a scene in nature, it is supposed to have a word that connects the poem to a particular season, and the final line is supposed to be about the emotion that scene evokes. Fibs are a more recent poetic form, and have fewer restrictions about content, etc.
I like Fibs because they are new to most students and so have them thinking in different ways. I also like them because they are contemporary (which I think is important to students) and because they connect poetry to math (and I love creating connections between disciplines). Plus, Fibs are just fun!
Here is one last Fib that I wrote for the students in my class:
This
class
has been
so much fun!
Your poems are great.
The poets are even better!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Can a Stanford Educator Explain the Wake County School Board?
I ran into a book today that gave me a whole new theory in terms of explaining the recent tumult in the Wake County School Board. As inhabitants of the Raleigh, NC-area Wake County know, last year four new school board members were voted in and claimed they had a mandate to dismantle the old system, in which students were bussed throughout the country to provide economic diversity among all the schools rather than creating a system of poor schools and rich schools, in favor of a neighborhood-based system. They aligned with one previous school board member with similar inclinations, and gained a 5/4 majority on votes relating to this issue. That previous board member was chosen to chair the board, and the majority was seen as "steamrolling" their position in vote after vote, despite the concerns being raised by the community. Board meetings were turning into circuses, with protesters, petition, police, and prison incarceration becoming common occurences.
Then, last week, suddenly things shifted. The board member from Cary (where I live), claiming that she was being shut out of the decision making and was increasingly uncomfortable about the direction the new school assignment plan being designed by a closed board committee was going, swung her vote to the minority and shut down work on the current board plan. So now the whole thing has to go back to the drawing board, as they say.
It has been a nasty time, with ugly comments and insulting insinuations being flung by both sides. And now nobody knows what is going to happen (although those aligned with the formerly-minority side are happy with that right now).
But the book I encountered today put it all into a new perspective for me. David F. Larabee, a Professor of Education at Stanford University and long-time observer and writer on educational policy, has just released his latest book entitled Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling. Once again, I haven't actually read the book, other than sections through Google Preview and from reviews and comments from the author, etc. So I really can't speak to the entire contents of the book. However, one concept I picked up from what I have read has helped me reframe this entire conflict.
Larabee argues that there are two major forces that drive changes in public school: the Reformers, those who want to use the public schools for all sort of beneficial public purposes ("melting pot" integration of aliens, increasing opportunities for the poor, producing a more competitive economic workforce, and so on), and the Consumers, those who are sending their children to school for a better life (in Larabee's opinion, it seems, often by providing them a competitive edge over other children). Sometimes the interests of Consumers and Reformers overlap, as when education provides poor children with a mean to escape the poverty of their parents. Sometimes Consumers can co-exist with Reformers; they don't necessarily actively support the reform movement, but it doesn't cause them any issues so they are fine with it. But Larabee seems to indicate that if there is a run-in between the Reformers and the Consumers, the Consumers win every time.
I think that is exactly what we are seeing here in Wake County. For the past ten years, despite the issues and problems, I don't think most parents (the Consumers) were opposed to the Reformers plan for economic diversity. Unfortunately, the school system blew the implementation of that system through its inadequate planning. The school system was reassigning students on a continuing basis, so that students were going to three different elementary schools from K-5, families had siblings on completely different schedules (traditional, year round, different tracks, etc.), and neighbors were attending completely different schools. In short, the costs of the Reformers' plans were becoming too high for the Consumers. And so, they rebelled....and voted in a new slate of school board members.
But here is the crux of the latest problem....
The people on the school board who were designing the new system, although voted in by Consumers to solve their Consumer problems, were, in fact, Reformers. They were opposed to the existing Reformers, so perhaps they should be called the Anti-Reformers, but they were still Reformers. One, in particular, is not even married and doesn't have any children. This is not to say that they don't care deeply and aren't trying to do the right thing and have no right to have input to the school system--after all, since I homeschool, I'm not a consumer either--but it is to say that they aren't coming from it from a Consumer point of view.
So thing fell apart, I think, when word started getting out that this new set of Reformers/Anti-Reformers were considering creating regional zones and not assigning students to a base school. Now, who knows what they were doing, since it was closed even to other board members, and maybe it made sense in their new Reformer scheme. But that was anathema to all the Consumers who were tired of all the confusion after years of redistricting for economic diversity and who were just trying to vote in a system where they would know where their children would go to school for the foreseeable future.
So it came down to the new Cary board member, who was voted in on the new Reformers platform but who was, in reality, a Consumer (she has two children in the public schools, I believe). And beyond being a Consumer herself, she represents the community with the most vocal and active Consumer population, just given Cary's relatively high income, educational achievement of parents, and number of one-income families where spouses have the time and expertise to advocating for their children in the school system. She---and by extention, the Consumers--wasn't being listened to, and she pulled the plug.
And that, according to Laramee, is the fate of any Reformers scheme when it runs head-to-head with Consumer opposition.
Or, at least, that's what I think Laramee says. Regardless, it makes a lot of sense to me to explain the recent events from that framework.
What do you think?
Then, last week, suddenly things shifted. The board member from Cary (where I live), claiming that she was being shut out of the decision making and was increasingly uncomfortable about the direction the new school assignment plan being designed by a closed board committee was going, swung her vote to the minority and shut down work on the current board plan. So now the whole thing has to go back to the drawing board, as they say.
It has been a nasty time, with ugly comments and insulting insinuations being flung by both sides. And now nobody knows what is going to happen (although those aligned with the formerly-minority side are happy with that right now).
But the book I encountered today put it all into a new perspective for me. David F. Larabee, a Professor of Education at Stanford University and long-time observer and writer on educational policy, has just released his latest book entitled Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling. Once again, I haven't actually read the book, other than sections through Google Preview and from reviews and comments from the author, etc. So I really can't speak to the entire contents of the book. However, one concept I picked up from what I have read has helped me reframe this entire conflict.
Larabee argues that there are two major forces that drive changes in public school: the Reformers, those who want to use the public schools for all sort of beneficial public purposes ("melting pot" integration of aliens, increasing opportunities for the poor, producing a more competitive economic workforce, and so on), and the Consumers, those who are sending their children to school for a better life (in Larabee's opinion, it seems, often by providing them a competitive edge over other children). Sometimes the interests of Consumers and Reformers overlap, as when education provides poor children with a mean to escape the poverty of their parents. Sometimes Consumers can co-exist with Reformers; they don't necessarily actively support the reform movement, but it doesn't cause them any issues so they are fine with it. But Larabee seems to indicate that if there is a run-in between the Reformers and the Consumers, the Consumers win every time.
I think that is exactly what we are seeing here in Wake County. For the past ten years, despite the issues and problems, I don't think most parents (the Consumers) were opposed to the Reformers plan for economic diversity. Unfortunately, the school system blew the implementation of that system through its inadequate planning. The school system was reassigning students on a continuing basis, so that students were going to three different elementary schools from K-5, families had siblings on completely different schedules (traditional, year round, different tracks, etc.), and neighbors were attending completely different schools. In short, the costs of the Reformers' plans were becoming too high for the Consumers. And so, they rebelled....and voted in a new slate of school board members.
But here is the crux of the latest problem....
The people on the school board who were designing the new system, although voted in by Consumers to solve their Consumer problems, were, in fact, Reformers. They were opposed to the existing Reformers, so perhaps they should be called the Anti-Reformers, but they were still Reformers. One, in particular, is not even married and doesn't have any children. This is not to say that they don't care deeply and aren't trying to do the right thing and have no right to have input to the school system--after all, since I homeschool, I'm not a consumer either--but it is to say that they aren't coming from it from a Consumer point of view.
So thing fell apart, I think, when word started getting out that this new set of Reformers/Anti-Reformers were considering creating regional zones and not assigning students to a base school. Now, who knows what they were doing, since it was closed even to other board members, and maybe it made sense in their new Reformer scheme. But that was anathema to all the Consumers who were tired of all the confusion after years of redistricting for economic diversity and who were just trying to vote in a system where they would know where their children would go to school for the foreseeable future.
So it came down to the new Cary board member, who was voted in on the new Reformers platform but who was, in reality, a Consumer (she has two children in the public schools, I believe). And beyond being a Consumer herself, she represents the community with the most vocal and active Consumer population, just given Cary's relatively high income, educational achievement of parents, and number of one-income families where spouses have the time and expertise to advocating for their children in the school system. She---and by extention, the Consumers--wasn't being listened to, and she pulled the plug.
And that, according to Laramee, is the fate of any Reformers scheme when it runs head-to-head with Consumer opposition.
Or, at least, that's what I think Laramee says. Regardless, it makes a lot of sense to me to explain the recent events from that framework.
What do you think?
Monday, October 11, 2010
Is the movie "The Social Network" GOOD for Reducing College Application Anxiety?
OK, so now I've REALLY got to see this movie!
I'm speaking of "The Social Network," the movie about which I wrote in a previous post as potentially misrepresenting both the study of innovation and of history (even though, admittedly, I haven't seen it.). Then today, my favorite newspaper writer on the education beat, Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, had a fabulous article about how well the movie represents undergraduate life in Ivy League schools (Mathews attended Harvard, as did Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman, although I think Mathews graduated, unlike Zuckerman).
Mathew advises college-anxious parents to pay attention to what the students are talking about in the film. According to Mathews, they talk about, ummmm, let's call it "dating," clubs, parties, technology, making contacts, making money, and so on. What they do not talk about is their classes, their teachers, their homework, their "Dead Poet Society"-like inspiration that evokes new levels of passion for their chosen fields.
And that, according to Mathews, is the reality of undergraduate education at Ivy League-level colleges like Harvard (at least, in his personal and professional experience). It is not a community of inspired learners who devote themselves to the pursuit of knowledge and forging new understanding of their chosen fields. It is a community of people who excelled in high school (otherwise they wouldn't be there), but who otherwise act like undergraduates at almost all schools--caught up in new experiences, testing out living on their own, devoted to their favorite clubs, activities, or relationships....much or most of which may have little or nothing to do with their classes.
For years, Mathews has been trying to convince people that acceptance to an Ivy League or similarly competitive schools is not like obtaining a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, of which only FIVE exist and only that will allow you in the running to run the Chocolate Factory. The author of Harvard Schmarvard: Getting Beyong the Ivy League to the College That Is Best for You, Mathews argues that dedicated students can find at least as good educational opportunities, and in some cases, even better ones at the lesser-known, less competitive, but more undergraduate-focused universities than at iconic institutions like Harvard. He recommends that high school students (and their families) also read a new book, Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents by Zac Bissonette. This book, Mathew claims, demonstrates how someone who is truly passionate about their academics can create a superior intellectual program at a state university to what the typical student experiences at schools that will cost a quarter of a million dollars to complete (see my earlier post for more details on that subject).
Who knew that move would foment so much discussion on educational issues? I really do feel like I have to see it now, when before the major attraction in the movie for me was seeing Justin Timberlake, whom I like, not in a cougar way, but as someone who seems like a nice guy with considerable talents (I particularly liked his duet with Al Green on "Let's Stay Together" when the 2009 Grammy show had to find a last-minute replacement for the just-incarcerated Chris Brown).
I'll let you know what I think once I've seen it myself.
I'm speaking of "The Social Network," the movie about which I wrote in a previous post as potentially misrepresenting both the study of innovation and of history (even though, admittedly, I haven't seen it.). Then today, my favorite newspaper writer on the education beat, Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, had a fabulous article about how well the movie represents undergraduate life in Ivy League schools (Mathews attended Harvard, as did Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman, although I think Mathews graduated, unlike Zuckerman).
Mathew advises college-anxious parents to pay attention to what the students are talking about in the film. According to Mathews, they talk about, ummmm, let's call it "dating," clubs, parties, technology, making contacts, making money, and so on. What they do not talk about is their classes, their teachers, their homework, their "Dead Poet Society"-like inspiration that evokes new levels of passion for their chosen fields.
And that, according to Mathews, is the reality of undergraduate education at Ivy League-level colleges like Harvard (at least, in his personal and professional experience). It is not a community of inspired learners who devote themselves to the pursuit of knowledge and forging new understanding of their chosen fields. It is a community of people who excelled in high school (otherwise they wouldn't be there), but who otherwise act like undergraduates at almost all schools--caught up in new experiences, testing out living on their own, devoted to their favorite clubs, activities, or relationships....much or most of which may have little or nothing to do with their classes.
For years, Mathews has been trying to convince people that acceptance to an Ivy League or similarly competitive schools is not like obtaining a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket, of which only FIVE exist and only that will allow you in the running to run the Chocolate Factory. The author of Harvard Schmarvard: Getting Beyong the Ivy League to the College That Is Best for You, Mathews argues that dedicated students can find at least as good educational opportunities, and in some cases, even better ones at the lesser-known, less competitive, but more undergraduate-focused universities than at iconic institutions like Harvard. He recommends that high school students (and their families) also read a new book, Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents by Zac Bissonette. This book, Mathew claims, demonstrates how someone who is truly passionate about their academics can create a superior intellectual program at a state university to what the typical student experiences at schools that will cost a quarter of a million dollars to complete (see my earlier post for more details on that subject).
Who knew that move would foment so much discussion on educational issues? I really do feel like I have to see it now, when before the major attraction in the movie for me was seeing Justin Timberlake, whom I like, not in a cougar way, but as someone who seems like a nice guy with considerable talents (I particularly liked his duet with Al Green on "Let's Stay Together" when the 2009 Grammy show had to find a last-minute replacement for the just-incarcerated Chris Brown).
I'll let you know what I think once I've seen it myself.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Math For Dinner
Today is a one-in-a-lifetime (presumably...although I'm holding out for a medical breakthrough...) event--10/10/10 day. My new age friends say that it is a time of great energy convergence, and my math friend, Maria D of Natural Math, says that it is a mathematical holiday called Powers of Ten day, and recommends that everyone celebrates by watching this video.
At our house, we didn't focus on the exponents of ten, however, looking more at the fact that there were three tens. So we created a dinner based on threes.
We started out with a vegetable platter with hummus for dip. There were three types of crudites: carrots, three colors of bell peppers, and three-sided pita chips.
However, we didn't use just any hummus; it was Trader Joe's Three Layer Hummus:
We had three three-sided vegetarian dishes. They were Spanakopita,
Samosas,
and Marsala Burger Wedges.
Our last dish was our attempt at "Fibonachos." We took three colors of corn chips:
Laid them out in a Fibonacci sequence with altering colors (although it is hard to tell the blue corn chips from the red corn chips, so we put the yellow corn chips in between them):
Then covered them in three ingredients: chili, salsa, and cheese.
Dessert was (at least) three varieties of chocolate.
What a fun and delicious way to celebrate 10-10-10 day! But since that isn't coming around again for another hundred years, maybe we'll recycle this idea for the 3rd of March.
At our house, we didn't focus on the exponents of ten, however, looking more at the fact that there were three tens. So we created a dinner based on threes.
We started out with a vegetable platter with hummus for dip. There were three types of crudites: carrots, three colors of bell peppers, and three-sided pita chips.
However, we didn't use just any hummus; it was Trader Joe's Three Layer Hummus:
We had three three-sided vegetarian dishes. They were Spanakopita,
Samosas,
and Marsala Burger Wedges.
Our last dish was our attempt at "Fibonachos." We took three colors of corn chips:
Laid them out in a Fibonacci sequence with altering colors (although it is hard to tell the blue corn chips from the red corn chips, so we put the yellow corn chips in between them):
Then covered them in three ingredients: chili, salsa, and cheese.
Dessert was (at least) three varieties of chocolate.
What a fun and delicious way to celebrate 10-10-10 day! But since that isn't coming around again for another hundred years, maybe we'll recycle this idea for the 3rd of March.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Career Exploration Resources: Interest and Values Profilers
I had mentioned in a previous post that middle school is a good time for students to start exploring their future careers. I ran into an interesting online source that might help them in that task.
The O*NET Online website, developed by the US Department of Labor, bills itself as "the nation's primary source of occupational information." It has a wealth of information about different occupations, skills required in different fields, and such topics as apprenticeships and education. The information and assessment tests on the site are linked to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' comprehensive database entitled the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-2011. The Handbook projects the job outlook for a plethora of different occupations up to 2018, as well as containing such valuable information as average salary, educational or experiential requirements, etc.
My favorite part of O*NET are the online career assessment tools they have. One, the Computerized Interest Profiler (CIP), asks questions about what you would or would not like to do for work, and then suggests occupations that fit with your interests. It categorizes your specific interests into six different themes that suggest what aspects of jobs are most important to you personally. So, for example, when I took the test, I scored VERY high on Social, fairly high on Artistic and Investigative---and got ZERO (0) points in both Realistic and Conventional (scores that I'm sure will shock those who know me).
The other assessment is the Work Importance Profiler (WIP), which is more an assessment of the values that are important to you....that is, such factors as job security, on-the-job training, recognition, or advancement, the ability to work alone and/or independently, those sorts of things. I think this one might be trickier for students to answer, because you have to rank things in relative importance, which is harder than just saying whether or not you like to do something. I think it may also be hard for them to consider some of these factors if they haven't had any experience working.
But still, I find these things fascinating. In my case, my top work values were, in order:
Achievement--The Achievement work value involves the need to use your individual abilities and have a feeling of accomplishment.
Relationships--The Relationships work value includes the need for friendly co-workers, to be able to help others, and not be forced to go against your sense of right and wrong.
Independence--The Independence work value refers to the need to do tasks on your own and use creativity in the workplace. It also involves the need to get a job where you can make your own decisions.
My less important values, in order, were:
Recognition--The Recognition work value involves the need to have the opportunity for advancement, obtain prestige, and have the potential for leadership.
Support--The Support work value involves the need for a supportive company, be comfortable with management's style of supervision, and a competent, considerate, and fair management.
Working Conditions--The Working Conditions work value refers to the need to have your pay comparable to others, and have job security and good working conditions. You also need to be busy all the time and have many different types of tasks on the job.
Again, I would say that assessment is pretty spot on. After all, no one who highly values Recognition, Support, and Working Conditions would ever end up homeschooling!
You can download the CIP and the WIP from O*NET to run on your own computer, but I also found two state employment agencies where you could just do it online. The information links to job or educational opportunities in that state, but I think the overall suggestions for matching occupations are the same, and I didn't want to bother with downloading and installing the software. So I took the CIP at the Washington State Employment Security Department site and the WIP at Career Zone California.
It is a fun exercise to do, just to see what they suggest. For example, according to my WIP results, I should be working in music theater....which is funny, because it is a love of mine, but I lack the talent to work in that field. Being a middle school teacher, while not incompatible with my values, was way down on the list, but being a postsecondary teacher was fairly high up. And one of the top suggestions for both my CIP and WIP was Meeting and Convention Planner, which is a job I think I would enjoy--and, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, would make from 50-100% MORE than being a school teacher.
Anyway, I think such tools are a good way to diversify students' viewpoints about the careers they might consider.
The O*NET Online website, developed by the US Department of Labor, bills itself as "the nation's primary source of occupational information." It has a wealth of information about different occupations, skills required in different fields, and such topics as apprenticeships and education. The information and assessment tests on the site are linked to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' comprehensive database entitled the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-2011. The Handbook projects the job outlook for a plethora of different occupations up to 2018, as well as containing such valuable information as average salary, educational or experiential requirements, etc.
My favorite part of O*NET are the online career assessment tools they have. One, the Computerized Interest Profiler (CIP), asks questions about what you would or would not like to do for work, and then suggests occupations that fit with your interests. It categorizes your specific interests into six different themes that suggest what aspects of jobs are most important to you personally. So, for example, when I took the test, I scored VERY high on Social, fairly high on Artistic and Investigative---and got ZERO (0) points in both Realistic and Conventional (scores that I'm sure will shock those who know me).
The other assessment is the Work Importance Profiler (WIP), which is more an assessment of the values that are important to you....that is, such factors as job security, on-the-job training, recognition, or advancement, the ability to work alone and/or independently, those sorts of things. I think this one might be trickier for students to answer, because you have to rank things in relative importance, which is harder than just saying whether or not you like to do something. I think it may also be hard for them to consider some of these factors if they haven't had any experience working.
But still, I find these things fascinating. In my case, my top work values were, in order:
Achievement--The Achievement work value involves the need to use your individual abilities and have a feeling of accomplishment.
Relationships--The Relationships work value includes the need for friendly co-workers, to be able to help others, and not be forced to go against your sense of right and wrong.
Independence--The Independence work value refers to the need to do tasks on your own and use creativity in the workplace. It also involves the need to get a job where you can make your own decisions.
My less important values, in order, were:
Recognition--The Recognition work value involves the need to have the opportunity for advancement, obtain prestige, and have the potential for leadership.
Support--The Support work value involves the need for a supportive company, be comfortable with management's style of supervision, and a competent, considerate, and fair management.
Working Conditions--The Working Conditions work value refers to the need to have your pay comparable to others, and have job security and good working conditions. You also need to be busy all the time and have many different types of tasks on the job.
Again, I would say that assessment is pretty spot on. After all, no one who highly values Recognition, Support, and Working Conditions would ever end up homeschooling!
You can download the CIP and the WIP from O*NET to run on your own computer, but I also found two state employment agencies where you could just do it online. The information links to job or educational opportunities in that state, but I think the overall suggestions for matching occupations are the same, and I didn't want to bother with downloading and installing the software. So I took the CIP at the Washington State Employment Security Department site and the WIP at Career Zone California.
It is a fun exercise to do, just to see what they suggest. For example, according to my WIP results, I should be working in music theater....which is funny, because it is a love of mine, but I lack the talent to work in that field. Being a middle school teacher, while not incompatible with my values, was way down on the list, but being a postsecondary teacher was fairly high up. And one of the top suggestions for both my CIP and WIP was Meeting and Convention Planner, which is a job I think I would enjoy--and, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, would make from 50-100% MORE than being a school teacher.
Anyway, I think such tools are a good way to diversify students' viewpoints about the careers they might consider.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Is the Movie "The Social Network" Bad for Understanding Both Innovation and History?
There was a really interesting article in my favorite paper, The Washington Post, today, in the business section (which is not usually my favorite section). In "Where the next Facebook will come from," Ezra Klein claims that the current movie, "The Social Network," does a disservice to those who are trying to understand how Facebook became such a worldwide phenomenon. According to Klein (and I'm just going on his word and what I've read in the reviews, because I haven't seen the movie myself), the movie depicts Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman as the quintessential computer nerd genius who is connecting the world through his technical expertise, his singular vision, and refusal to surrender to more socially-adept competitors. However, in real life, there were many Facebook-like experiments that were percolating along at the same time (a process known as "simultaneous invention"), and it was as much luck as anything that it was Zuckerman's concept that won out (although Klein does credit him with developing a cleaner interface than the alternatives). Klein argues that while we as humans find it easier to latch onto the idea of a person coming up with an idea rather than the idea manifesting itself as part of an evolutionary technology, we need to focus more on the latter approach if we are really to understand the nature of break-through innovations.
This point of view is seconded by Steven Johnson, a writer/historian/internet innovator who you may know as the author of the book "Everything Bad is Good for You," (one of those books that are on my list but I haven't gotten to it yet). His brand-new book, "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," examines successful transformational ideas from evolution to You Tube to see what the key factors are for fostering innovation. But Johnson apparently (again, I'm going from reviews and interviews here, because I haven't read this book yet either) agrees with Klein, stating that innovation is almost never the result of an "Eureka!" discovery by an isolated genius. For a short (just over four minutes) synopsis of Johnson's findings about good ideas, see his clever and fast-paced You Tube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU .
So, OK, I haven't seen the movie or read either book, and business innovation is far from my field. But I'm easily swayed by this argument because it lines up with something I've long disagreed with about the teaching of history. I think, particularly in the United States, our approach to teaching history is too heavily oriented to what I call "The Great Man" (expanded to "And Great Women" in more recent years) approach. That is, I think by personalizing history as much as we do, children growing up thinking that without Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson we wouldn't have declared Independence, without Washington we wouldn't have won the war, without Lincoln we would still have slaves, etc. etc. And while these people were all great people, and there is no telling what would have happened if they hadn't had the positions they had, they also had those positions because they were representatives of a movement larger than themselves. Certainly they effected history, but they were also manifestations of the currents of thought and activity of their times. I think we do students a disservice when we focus too much on the representatives of the times and don't look at the undercurrents that brought those particular representatives to a place where they had the opportunity to turn those thoughts into actions or policies.
After all, isn't "The Social Movement" movie actually about really recent history? And if we do that to people who have only been in the public eye for under 10 years, what are we likely to do after a century or two?
It's funny, because the Washington Post's movie critic, Ann Hornaday, gave the movie a really good review, calling it a "parable for our age" and comparing it to "Citizen Kane" and "The Great Gatsby." But, of course, those works are fiction. Too often, I think, when we focus on the people rather than the environment of the era, we end up fictionalizing our history as well.
This point of view is seconded by Steven Johnson, a writer/historian/internet innovator who you may know as the author of the book "Everything Bad is Good for You," (one of those books that are on my list but I haven't gotten to it yet). His brand-new book, "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," examines successful transformational ideas from evolution to You Tube to see what the key factors are for fostering innovation. But Johnson apparently (again, I'm going from reviews and interviews here, because I haven't read this book yet either) agrees with Klein, stating that innovation is almost never the result of an "Eureka!" discovery by an isolated genius. For a short (just over four minutes) synopsis of Johnson's findings about good ideas, see his clever and fast-paced You Tube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU .
So, OK, I haven't seen the movie or read either book, and business innovation is far from my field. But I'm easily swayed by this argument because it lines up with something I've long disagreed with about the teaching of history. I think, particularly in the United States, our approach to teaching history is too heavily oriented to what I call "The Great Man" (expanded to "And Great Women" in more recent years) approach. That is, I think by personalizing history as much as we do, children growing up thinking that without Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson we wouldn't have declared Independence, without Washington we wouldn't have won the war, without Lincoln we would still have slaves, etc. etc. And while these people were all great people, and there is no telling what would have happened if they hadn't had the positions they had, they also had those positions because they were representatives of a movement larger than themselves. Certainly they effected history, but they were also manifestations of the currents of thought and activity of their times. I think we do students a disservice when we focus too much on the representatives of the times and don't look at the undercurrents that brought those particular representatives to a place where they had the opportunity to turn those thoughts into actions or policies.
After all, isn't "The Social Movement" movie actually about really recent history? And if we do that to people who have only been in the public eye for under 10 years, what are we likely to do after a century or two?
It's funny, because the Washington Post's movie critic, Ann Hornaday, gave the movie a really good review, calling it a "parable for our age" and comparing it to "Citizen Kane" and "The Great Gatsby." But, of course, those works are fiction. Too often, I think, when we focus on the people rather than the environment of the era, we end up fictionalizing our history as well.
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