Pedagogy & Politics

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When you have a state-run education system it seems that all education is political, n’est-ce pas? The French Immersion debate has once again reared its head in the Province of New Brunswick, the same place that gave birth to the COR party. The Confederation of Regions party’s main platform was to reverse official bilingualism in the province.

The Minister has commissioned another review of the system which has opened up the debate, especially from Canadian Parents for French. I have not had time to examine, once again, all factors at play, but here are some of my personal observations. Both of our sons are in the French Immersion program (Grades 8 & 10) and my wife and I, both bilingual, have been fairly active in their education.

The Early Immersion program starts in Grade 1 and all of the research that I have read on the subject shows that earlier is better. Given that information, it would be better if French Immersion began in kindergarten. Actually, I would prefer that it was the ONLY program, with no opting out. Second language skills are one of the few long-term cognitive skills taught in the system which are useful in a broad sense and easily transported beyond school.

The critical factor in second-language immersion is the teacher’s ability in that language. With only one person to emulate, the students need an excellent example. The Berlitz method is based on this understanding. Our experience has included several teachers with very poor French language skills.

The Immersion program in our schools also lacks adequate resources, so that students with any special needs must transfer out of the program in order to get the attention they require. This results in fewer children with behavioural challenges in French Immersion, and of course more with challenges in what’s known as the Core program. Over the years, a self-selection process has developed, with the many of the more actively involved parents opting for French Immersion, as this seems to be a “better” program for their children. Add to this the “my kids don’t need no French” factor plus real advantages for government employment as a bilingual individual and French Immersion becomes highly politicized.

This separation of French and English not only occurs at school, where the immersion students are known as “French kids”. It also happens at the Departmental level with two separate educational systems (Organization Chart, PDF) and curricula. For example, we have French-speaking schools within a 30 minute drive, yet not once have I heard of an exchange program in the past decade. The kids don’t get a chance to talk with each other. Indeed, two solitudes.

Blog readability test

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Since a lot of people are checking out their blog’s readability on this quick test [dead link], I thought I’d join the crowd. Now I wonder if this is based on US high school levels, or Canadian or European, etc. Personally, I think a lower level is better, so perhaps I should get rid of them words like taxonomy or pedagogy. Anyway, FWIW:

 

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Thanks, Karyn.

Update: Note comment #5 and also that the code provided (not on the image above) links you to a cash advance site. I guess we can all be scammed at some time.

VocabProfiler is a lexical analysis tool from UQAM that actually works!

Wonderful World of Wikis

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I’m digging back into wikis for a client; reviewing my bookmarks and following trails of links in this growing field. For instance, WikiMatrix has dozens of options listed and includes a selection wizard to help you select a wiki. In reviewing some saved posts in my aggregator I re-read Nathan’s post on using wikis in a pharmaceutical company, with this advice on a content strategy:

  1. If someone isn’t willing to maintain a piece of content, it can’t be that important to the business.
  2. We happily show people how to do things with the site, but we don’t do it for them.
  3. Occasionally we highlight sections of the site on the home page, which is a great way to drive the defacto owners to clean it up a little.
  4. We encourage people to have high expectations for content on the Intranet. If something is missing, please report it to the appropriate area of the business, or better still, add it for them.
  5. The answer to verbal queries for many departments has become, “it’s on JCintra”. This reminds people to search first and ask later.
  6. In the end, the quality of content in an area is a reflection on the defacto department owner, not the Intranet itself.

I also checked enterprise-strength wikis at SocialText and was a bit frustrated that the section on Pricing & Licenses does not include any prices. My request yielded a response that someone from sales would be contacting me shortly. We’ll see if I get a clear answer or just a sales pitch.

SmartDraw has a Blog

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About 5% of visitors to this blog who found it via a search engine were looking for SmartDraw, a visual design and flowcharting tool for PC’s.  I’ve used SmartDraw for several years and was even an Affiliate for a while. When the 2007 version arrived, there were several complaints from the market and many customers wound up on my site and made their comments about SmartDraw 2007 here.

I’ve just been informed by Paul Stannard, CEO of SmartDraw, that the company has launched the SmartDraw Blog.   So go ahead and tell SmartDraw what you like or dislike about their products and services, because markets are conversations and it’s better late than never to join in.

Portrait of the School as Mortuary

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Donald Clark’s view of the Damien Hirst’s “School: The Archaeology Of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity And The Search For Knowledge”, is summed up as:

I think he’s got this nailed. The loss of identity, uniformity, submergence and deadening of life the classroom. The sheer tedium of it all – an 11, soon to be 13, year minimum sentence. The religious imagery of the caged dove as the teacher caught in a pseudo-religious preaching role. The shark is the lurking bully and the ever-present air of frightening violence that is typical of the school experience. Like the students the teacher is merely a larger trapped, farmed animal. The classroom is the mortuary of lost desires. The search for knowledge only emerging after you recover from its leaden effect.

A rather damning indictment of our industrial school system from the perspective of a renowned artist. I think that this installation is great for encouraging conversation. A little digging and I came across Hirst’s statue of Virgin Mother; also disturbing and intriguing at the same time.

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Remembering what’s important

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In the long run, what subjects you covered in school are not that important. Neither is the fact that all your students got over 80% on the final exam. Pete Reilly reminds of this with Tim’s Story:

I had a long relationship with Tim. He was stubborn about not following the rules. If there was homework, he ignored it. If there was reading or studying to be done, he usually left it undone. Grades didn’t motivate Tim. Punishment didn’t deter him. School held no interest. Most of us, including myself, I am ashamed to say, treated Tim like a lost cause.

It’s no wonder that Pete was given the Best Newcomer Edublog Award last year.

What business are you in?

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From Tom Haskins, are two views of business today.

Exhibit A:

“There are firewalls and silos to stay inside of. There are lines of authority to conform to and procedures to execute. There are consequences for stepping out of line, going around someone or finding loopholes in the policies. There are scripts for handling phone calls, policies for handling exceptions and rules for procedural compliance.”

Exhibit B:

“Networks may function with routers to redirect linear transmissions through a past of least resistance. Networks support search and find processes that come up with unforeseen options. Networks reconfigure themselves to accommodate changes. They do not go on hold because local resources are tied up. They do not overtax a reliable node and fail to spread the challenge system wide. They get things done by letting the network do its thing.”

And then I remembered this cartoon from Hugh:

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So what business are you in – Silos or Networks?

I’ve noticed that even many so-called “new economy” companies are still based on the command & control models of the industrial age. They’re like dinosaurs wearing mammals’ clothing but they won’t be able to keep warm during the next ice age.

We’re hearing a lot about the millenials demanding a more flexible workplace and I think that with the impending demographic crunch here in North America, we may not be far from a real change in the dominant model of how we work. Let’s make sure that we have some reasonable options.

The Inexorable Wave of Technology

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The Internet and and other information technologies have changed everything, whether you like it or not. The ability to connect people, information and ideas from any node in this massive network has changed all the rules.

Reverse Marketing Engines, from Make Marketing History:

So, in spite of the demographic realities, the considerable doubts about the longevity of brand loyalty and the radical changes to daily life that digital technology has wreaked, businesses still repeat the mantra of attracting youth, capturing new users and molding technology to their traditional way of doing business. Changing marketing thinking in the corporate world is clearly akin to turning round an oil tanker.

A digitally literate UK? from Strange Attractor:

“The fact is, that most of those working in education, in politics, in the civil service are the equivalent of modern day illiterates. Without understanding how to read and write on the web, there is no other way, really, to describe this state of being.”

Younger Docs, from Nine Shift:

The National Center for Heath Statistics reports that 44% of physicians aged under 35 report using full or partial electronic medical records. That’s opposed to physicians aged 65 and older, where only 18% of docs use e-records.

Cameron Bales made this comment on doctors and medical records, after reading the post above:

If retiring docs hope for money from selling a practice, and or have all of their patients easily get a new doctor then they need to implement EMR [electronic medical records]. Young docs would rather start from scratch, pick their own patients and not fight with paper records they can’t read. If a retiring doctor can’t sell their practice or even find somebody to give it away to they have the expense/hassle of keeping all those medical records for x years (10 to 18 years depending on the age of the patient).

Three stories and an argument

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I’ve supported Creative Commons (and use a CC license for this site) for several years and see it as a leader as we move to a digital economy. Larry Lessig’s presentations are usually quite informative, but it’s obvious that he put a lot of effort into his TED Talk this year. As Larry says, this talk is “Somethings old, somethings new, lots that’s borrowed, none that’s blue.”

He points out that we are living in a society where most of our children are doing illegal activities (AKA piracy) because we haven’t figured out this whole digital universe yet. Let’s get it right for our kids

Take 20 minutes and watch the presentation on how creativity is being strangled by the law.

Update: Don’t believe me? Here’s what Garr Reynolds has to say:

The 18-minute constraint forced Larry into making the best talk I have ever seen him make. He nailed it. His content was good, the argument was logical (even if you do not agree with it) and his visuals and the way he effortlessly controlled the visuals behind him is the perfect demo for the way it should be done. 

Trust

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Trust is something that you have to work at every day. Yesterday I got some comment spam referring to a Squidoo page. I use the Squidoo service and have created a few lenses, so I thought I’d forward evidence of the spammer to Squidoo’s administration. They quickly responded:

We’ve reviewed and locked these lenses, along with the accounts responsible for them.
Squidoo has a zero tolerance spam policy (http://www.squidoo.com/pages/tos) and we appreciate your help keeping a few bad actors from ruining the web for the rest of us!

I now trust Squidoo to take action on spam. As it becomes more difficult to hide on the Net (for better and for worse) it makes sense to be trustworthy through your actions. The latest Carnival of Trust reviews ten excellent articles on the issue of trust:

In each Carnival of Trust, a theme emerges; in this one, it’s policy on trust. Issues of policy and trust in health care, in direct marketing, in marketing, in leadership.