Hybrid Cars and Hybrid Education

I think we need a hybrid education system that is serious about combining the aspects of computer literacy for some distance learning combined with in class sessions with highly qualified teachers to supplement the distance learning.

‎”I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy. You can only punish. I warn you that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys everyone it touches — its upholders as well as its defiers.” -Jerome Lawerence.

Perhaps Floridians can use this quote to think about their laws?

Funny how the Scopes Trial is still relevant today in so many ways other than evolution.

 

I don’t like either side of the Trayvon murder case.

You don’t carry guns to solve problems.

At the same time, you don’t slam peoples heads in the sidewalk.

People just need to mind their own business.

Clause 5

From Living in the Kingdom on the Trayvon murder case and Senator Rush’shoodie debacle

The invitation of Palm Sunday is an invitation to solidarity with the poor and the oppressed, an invitation to “the things that lead to peace.” Such an act as standing for a victim of injustice over against the authority of a State which refuses to concede its authority is very much in the spirit of Palm Sunday and Holy Week. To say, in essence, “if we are silent, even the rocks will cry out… that’s how serious this is” in the face of an empire which demands silence and denial for the preservation of its own power is often an act of discipleship. Jesus said, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23 CEB) Getting reprimanded and escorted away every once in a while should come as no surprise.

I disagree.

Senator Rush was not escorted out for speaking in the face of “empire.”

He was escorted out because “clause 5” that says you can’t wear hats. I’m sure Senator Rush was aware of this “prohibition” and knew what kind of media blitz he could create by wearing a hoodie in congress.

This is far different than being a “victim of injustice.”

A WriteRoom Conondrum

I have a conundrum.

I want to buy WriteRoom, but I don’t feel like it is worth $25 to buy a word processing app with no features that looks just like a VIM editor in Terminal.

Maybe I will have to just get better at VIM.

Dashboard

Why is it so hard to get to the dashboard in wordpress now?

…first married Christmas…

Sitting in the corner, my wife puts together a doll house.

I don’t know how many Christmas’ ago she got the house, but she picked it up out of the attic in her parent’s house and has all the pieces strewn across the bed and the floor.

Piece by piece, she snaps the house together.

“Maybe this is why I like England so much,” she said. “The house is Victorian after all.”

Advent Calendar

As much as church Christmas musicals would like you to think the opposite, easter is not part of the advent calendar.

Amalgamation of Christmas Quotes

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is by ringing a bell so that an angel can get its rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

Khan Academy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Khan Academy brings the virtual classroom just a little bit closer to home with thousands of how-to videos of a variety of academic subjects and hundreds of practice modules for students of mathematics. Sal’s compelling dream to create an alternative to the “traditional” education model really has grabbed many people’s attention, including Bill Gates.

I accidentally stumbled upon Khan Academy while preparing for an algebra lesson on youtube. While many other online video lessons use quite dry narrator, Sal’s deep voice carries the listener through the video; he seems more like a fried telling someone how to do something. Also unlike many other youtube videoizers, no long annoying intros bore the listener and the audio streams through crystal clear to anyone with decent speakers. After watching his TED Video last year, I knew I would have to try this in my classroom.

So I am trying it out and I just wanted to let anyone thinking about using the program how it has been working for my classroom. There are some really great things about the program and there are some things about the program that I would absolutely change if I could.

Let’s start with the good things.

Arguably, probably because of Sal’s data driven background,, the site literally goldmines data for it’s users. Not only can you see how many problems your student got right or wrong, but also how long the student takes to complete the problem, whether or not they used a hint, and what answers they put in each time they got the problem wrong. If you had your students scanning in their scratch paper, you might be able to analyze student data all paperlessly.

But with the good, there is the bad and the ugly. Setting up student accounts was akin to trying to jump through fire. I honestly couldn’t even set up the accounts at school because, for some weird reason, you can only sign on to the site through google or Facebook.

Right off the bat, this sends up red flags. I haven’t done a lot of research on how Khan Academy gets its funding, but we certainly know that Facebook and google make their money through advertising. Thus, signing in through Khan Academy from these portals inevitably sends more of our data away to corporate giants who will sell that information to the highest bidder. Considerations of student privacy could be in order here and just general good practice would call on the creators of Khan Academy to create a more “in-house” approach for creating student accounts.

Teachers also really need to have up to date computers that are not finicky with sites like Khan Academy. In our classroom, we constantly fight with the school internet to allow us to get to the site because the security certificates and whatnot to not match up well with LAUSD. I am using mac iBook G4s from 2004 to run Khan Academy and it took quite a few workarounds before I found the right version of firefox to work with the practice programs.

Finally, the data simply cannot be downloaded or taken off-site. To put the data into a grade book requires a lot staring back and forth from one screen to another. I don’t have the option of dual screens at school at the moment, so this requires a lot of mission control back and forth on my macbook. The designers of the site really need to come up with a simple way to download the data into a CSV file so that teachers can edit and disaggregate the data in a way that is helpful to them.

All in all, I would highly recommend the actual practice and videos available on site, but I would think twice if you are thinking about using it as a tool for student assessment because of the many hurdles you might run into with it as a system.