edX: Friend or Foe?

A few years ago, when I wasn't in school, I talked a lot about different forms of self-education platforms (when i wasn't talking about bread). Over the years I've had a lot of fun listening to lectures on iTunes U and sometimes doing the reading along with the courses. One can learn a lot from these classes. However, I find that I sometimes fail to listen to the whole thing or fail to do it on a regular schedule. Part of the reasoning is that a lot of the courses don't have access to readings (or put syllabi and other information on other websites) and almost none of them allow access to exam materials, etc.

The other day, I read this article in the New York Times about a new educational group known as edΧ. Harvard and MIT started the program called edX for designed online learning. One of the major features of edX is the new ability for the software to read and grade essay and short answer questions as well as True/False and multiple choice. This feature was the main feature of the New York Times article, which made it seem as though professors were going to use this to free up time. As someone who will spend much of the next 6 years TAing, the idea of machine grading seemed to put my job at stake as well as being pedagogically problematic. However, looking at the edX website, it seems that the software is designed primarily for allowing students access to classes for free online, unlike current systems where classes are either free (with no ability to test or receive credit) or expensive (taken through the universities). While online classes can be great, a noted classicist who runs one of the biggest online classical databases told me that she taught an experimental online mythology class last year that had troubling results. Half the class enrolled online while half enrolled for an in-person class. While the students who were there in person had an average grade of a B+, the online class had a C average. While this is just one instance, I can imagine that there would be a greater disconnect for students doing online learning.

edX seems to be endeavoring to fix some of these problems. Those student motivated enough to use resources like iTunes U have the ability to test themselves on the material they learn which may promote greater retention. Furthermore, students have the ability to rewrite and gain additional feedback making testing about improvement as well as assessment. Since no institution could afford to make these classes free if they were graded by humans, the grading software can provide the ability for free learning. Students earning a passing grade will get a certificate, although obviously these won't count for much in the academic world, at least it will provide a small sense of achievement and a record of classes completed.

It's Just Wrong!

I've spent a lot of time studying Greek today, so I decided I would reward myself by listening to the Berkeley class on Archaeology (Anthropology 2AC from Spring 2008). However, I went to webcast.berkeley in vain; the class is no longer there. In fact, a huge number of classes are no longer there.


Distressed, I looked for an explanation on Berkeley's website. I found a letter to the large group of perturbed self-education fans. The general gist is that the Real Player server has been retired, and all those courses with it. The team has been unable to find what they believe is an adequate conversion format for the files and seem to be hoping for donations in order to increase the possibility that they might find something. They claim that they might obtain a temporary stint on another server, but they give not hint as to when this might be: "We have requested additional temporary storage space on a new server, when this space comes online we will restore the Real Player files and make them available for the public to download for a limited period of time (Contingent upon instructor approval)." I do not have much faith in this limited period of time because they provided no warning whatsoever about the websites renovation.


I find this whole move quite saddening. Berkeley's webcasts are on of the great ways for people to educate themselves for free, and they are cutting off access to those who would seek out that education. I am posting this same note on Platonic Psychology because I believe it's an important problem.

One of Those Days...

It's just been one of those days where nothing goes as planned. It seems to be some kind of math curse. I studied for the exam for the whole weekend. I made a study guide and did practice problems of each of the ypes that my professor enumerated were on the exam. Unfortunately, I was deceived. At least three of of the 13 questions on the exam were of a sort I had never seen. It was one of those days.

I think I will go back over the math. I have books that will take me up through multivariable calculus. It may be harder to teach myself, but at least I will know when I know the information and I cannot get blindsided by an exam that makes no sense. Ultimately, I am learning for my own sake anyway, so there is little downside to teaching myself.

I had a lovely dinner of samosa's my mother bought. I will resume bread baking tomorrow...

More on the Exciting World of Opencoursware

So I am going to make a detour from my recent bread craze and talk about education (again), although I did make some more lovely pizza last night. A friend who was staying with us (and for whom I made the pizza) reminded me about the a lot of the opencourseware I was using before I started doing so much breadmaking, teaching, tutoring, and various lessons over skype. My recent discovery was iTunes U. The new version of iTunes apparently has a whole host of opencourseware from universities and groups all over the world from MIT to Oxford to UC Berkeley and beyond. Very cool.

I wonder if anyone has made an opencourseware bread class...

Real Public Education

In general, I try not to talk too much about politics, but today will be one of my few exceptions. I received an email this morning from my mother. Apparently, the US Republican party released a budget proposal which "zeroes out funding for both NPR and PBS" which is the worst funding decrease in more than a decade. I love NPR. Although I do not listen to it every day, I set up my iTunes last year to download NPR podcasts on international news and science and I gain a lot of my current news from these podcasts. Although I do not generally like online petitions, I signed this one on MoveOn.org to save NPR.

I am not the only person who gains their news this way. When I was working last summer, my bookstore colleagues spent their entire shelving shifts listening to different NPR programs through a similar podcast program on other topics. For a number of the college students I know, this and the New York Times online are the only place that people listen to the news. In reality, NPR is real, free public education that only requires people to pick the type of podcast they which they seek and download and listen to it. You can find your shows at the NPR podcast directory.

I read an article recently in the New York Times about the FCC expanding internet access to under-served areas and possibly expand the proposal in future. As the internet provides so many resources for self-education (including NPR podcast directory), I think this will be a great step forward in raising the level od education in these populations. Sugata Mitra's work, which I discussed in previous blogposts, shows that the combination of the internet and curiosity can allow children to educate themselves in anything for learning a new language to concepts in science and technology.

Bureaucratic Nightmare

I had one of those days where I couldn't do anything right. Many things went wrong, but suffice it to say that I realized I ordered my used copy of Hammer's German Grammar and Usage in German instead of English (i.e. all of the notes on how the language works are in German) and it just got worse from there. I was really excited to go to my math class, until I wandered into a bureaucratic nightmare.

It turns out, at this particular Community College, if you make a mistake on a form, you have to get an entirely new form and fill the whole thing out again, instead of just crossing it out and rewriting it. Perhaps there is some reason for it that I do not know, but this policy seems absolutely insane. Anyway, having a visual processing issue, I often mix up numbers and letters when I write them down. I reversed two of the numbers in one of the pieces on the form. So, I was told very snootily, that I had to go back and get a new "add form" and it was unlikely that I would be able to get into the class. Seriously? Anyway, I talked to the professor who was very nice and said he was happy to get me a new "add form" but this still does not explain the "no cross-outs" policy. Bureaucracy sucks.

Update 02/11/11: I woke up this morning (after sleeping in) and the world looked a little brighter. Even better, when I went down to check the mail for my math book (which has not yet arrived), I found that my German book arrived-- and it's in English! Apparently the words "German Edition" (I bought a cheap used copy) just meant that the book was a descriptive German grammar, and all of the explanations are in English. I breathed a sigh of relief and cackled gleefully at having purchased a perfectly clean used edition for less than a quarter of the new price.

Circumnavegating the Wall #2: Calculus

By the time I took calculus in high school, I was quite a good math student. I loved calculus and I could not wait to take more math in college. As I mentioned in "Cicumnavegating the Wall" in multivariable calculus I hit a wall and had to drop the course. It just did not make any sense. Consequently I pursued my other great passion, classics, and graduated with a BA. Math was no longer in the direct path to my future.

Being out of school made me realize that while institutions may organize education in order to place their students on particular paths, there is no reason that self-education must follow those same paths. So there was noting barring me from taking more math. As I promised in "New Year, New Possibilities," I registered at my local community college. Realizing that I needed a math refresher (and because of timing commitments) I decided to take Calculus I and I will move up through the math classes from there (they offer three semesters of calculus followed by linear algebra and differential equations). I took a big step and went to my first class today.

The past week, I have been nervous and annoyed about my decision to start the classes. There was no need. Calculus (at least the evening class I am taking) is a decently paced introduction taught by a middle aged man with a thick Indian accent and an efficient, clipped style. The class is entirely lecture, although after every few sentences he asks "is this ok?" which seems to translate to "understand?" and then he moves on without waiting for a reply. If a hand is raised he will eventually call on the person and he seems happy enough to answer genuine questions, but my best guess would be that he has taught this class for many years and simply wants to get the material to the students in the most expedient manner possible.

The students also surprised me. In the discussion before class, I ascertained that most of the students were at the college with the hopes of transferring into the local university. Many were in the class because they want to pursue degrees in engineering. I found them to be engaged with the class and intelligent. Although first impression are often misleading, I believe that these students will probably continue to be good classmates. I was really nervous about fitting in, but a few students asked me questions about the nature of the class during the break so I guess I must have looked like just another student. Luckily I fit the profile of the typical girl in the class (interestingly the class is a 50-50 gender split): skinny jeans, t-shirt, and boots (although I had knee-high instead of the ankle-height boots sported by the rest of the women).

Any of you who read my new year post noticed that I was also supposed to be taking German because it is one of the classes necessary to pursue a more advanced degree in classics. As it turned out, the class was based on conversational German and used a textbook reputed for avoiding tricky things like grammar. As much as it would be nice to be able to talk to people, what I need is academic German, and specifically German for reading. I realized that the money that I would be spending on the class itself could be spent instead on approximately 34 nonfat lattes which, if I could find a coffee shop, could allow me to spend that time more effectively trying to teach myself reading German. So my thought is that I will compare a few different textbooks. At the moment I am leaning toward Jannach's German for Reading Knowledge, which I have put on hold at the local library. If anyone has a recommendation, I would greatly appreciate it.

New Year, New Possibilities

I decided to take more math. It is a New Year and I think that means that it is time for me to start something new.

One thing that I hear a lot from college and post-college female friends is that they miss science or math. This seems to break stereotype. Going to an all-girls high school, I had always heard that single-gender education and tailoring classes to "the way that girls learn best" allows girls to feel comfortable in math or science (or any field) and should help confidence and begin to rectify the gender gap in the sciences. Yet, there seems to be something wrong with that theory. A number of girls who enjoyed science in high school but went into humanities, art, or social sciences instead.

Some of them probably had issues in their math or science classes like I did (as I mentioned in "Circumnavigating the Wall"). Some of them just decided another path was better, and now have changed their minds, or wish they could reincorporate math and science back into their life. The real problem seems to be that the sciences require constant devotion. To finish as a physics major in four years at my alma mater, you had to start immediately as a freshman, otherwise you could not graduate in time. However, students often changed their majors to the humanities or social sciences after the first year. The problem was not that there were less requirements-- it was that classes in the humanities and social sciences can be taken concurrently. For example, one could take a 200-level Shakespeare class, a 300-level Chaucer class and a 400-level Literary theory class all at the same time, provided instructor consent and student devotion to the subject. With math and science, there is much more of an order of things; each level builds on the previous one and requires a rigid line throughout. Most of my female friends have a large variety of interests [1], and either did not want to sacrifice most of their other interests to science or were not sure that was the path they wanted to venture down.

So what should this group of girls do, who like science but have BAs or are working toward BAs in other fields? Taking science classes after a BA is regarded by other people as "useless," "inefficiant," or "a waste of time and money." I decided that I don't care. Today I registered at a local college and when my registration is processed I am going to sign up for a calculus class. I will probably never need advanced mathematics in my life, just as I will probably never need to know the philosophical standpoint of Pierre Bourdieu, which I studied in my Lit Theory class, but I think that it will enrich me as a person.

I picked the college because it was nearby, but also because it decided to offer German. None of the programs in my area had been offering it. I guess it's because German is primarily useful for classicists and students of philosophy, neither of which really exist at the local colleges [2]. German will help me get into graduate school and will also allow me (hopefully) to eventually read the German philosophers and writer's I like in their original language.

I hope the classes are not so full that I cannot get into them. Wish me luck!

Endnotes

1. There are probably males in this position as well, I just do not know any of them. Most of the guys I know who have varied interests seem to have varied interests within the humanities, or are science majors who take a few classes in other disciplines but have never wavered in their devotion to science.
2. There is a big university near me (which has great programs in both classics and philosophy), but unfortunately one cannot take many classes there unless one is an actual student at the university.

Teaching Well: An Art or Science?

I read an article a few mornings ago in the New York Times. The article was by Thomas Friedman on the crisis state of education in the United States. I found myself agreeing easily with the first half of the article. He contends that to close the achievement gap, students must learn "he ability to do critical thinking and problem-solving; the ability to communicate effectively; and the ability to collaborate" (article). After this point, however, I found myself extremely bothered by the rest of his perspective, specifically two major pieces:

First, Thomas Friedman's proposed solution, that he claims has worked in some European countries is selecting only teachers from the top third of their graduating class. Intuitively this sounds good: smart teachers inspire smart students. Yet, if you think about this for a second, this rings false. Teaching SAT prep, I have realized that being smart and having the right answers is extremely important, but wins little ground in ensuring that students want to be there and that they sit down and absorb the information. What a teacher needs is enthusiasm for the subject, energy, charisma, patience, empathy, and serious critical thinking skills in order to ensure that (s)he can constantly engage the students' interest. None of these things can be measured in college grades.

Two anecdotes illustrate this point. One of my favorite teachers in high school was an English teacher that I had. He started off as a library assistant at the school, who sometimes substituted for different classes, and he was so well liked, the administration gave him a teaching position. He was well-read, eloquent, spoke at least three foreign languages, and was clearly intelligent. From a stray comment here or there, I had the feeling that he may not have graduated in the top third of his college class-- or maybe just barely. After college, he apprenticed as a stone mason in Italy and worked as one in the US for a while before deciding he wanted to teach. What made him beloved was his passion for literature and language and the fact that his experience was not limited to the books that he taught. He endeavored, above all to make students as enamored with the subject as he was. My second example is of a physics professor from my alma mater. Some years ago, he had been a student at my alma mater and was reputedly one of the most intelligent physics students we had with a GPA near if not at the top of his graduating class. Although students generally liked him because he was a nice, intelligent guy, a constant criticism that I heard from my physics-major friends was that "he doesn't understand that just because it was easy for him when he went here that it does not mean it's easy for us." Since he extremely intelligent but without proper empathy, he undertaught the material, assigned too much homework, and made his students feel inadequate. Even Cerinthus, who ended up with a very high score in this professor's class, constantly complained that the professor just did not understand how much work he was assigning and how he simply did not realize that his students could not absorb information as quickly as he did.

My point with these two anecdotes is obviously not to entirely disprove Friedman's solution, it is simply to demonstrate that there are problems with the idea that teaching well and having students enjoy their education can not be solved with numbers and figures (like only selecting teachers from the top 33% of the class). There must be other ways of enticing good teachers, such as paying off the student loans of those who become teachers or helping pay for PhD programs. I'm not sure. I just cannot believe that selecting teachers by statistics, rather than those characteristics I mentioned earlier, will not lead to a better school system.

Second, I was shocked to find that Friedman does not speak at all about the crisis of the humanities so frequently discussed by academics in the paper over the past few months. Although the sciences can certainly help students with critical thinking, and in some cased with collaboration, effective communication skills come from humanities (as well as humanities also furnishing critical thinking and often collaborative skills). If teachers have not been educated in the humanities themselves, they cannot effectively impart these skills to their students. An article I read back in September lends credence to this point. The article uses the example of a Massachusetts school which integrated humanities-style writing into every class in the entire curriculum, including math and science. The result was "In 2001 testing, more students passed the state tests after failing the year before than at any other school in Massachusetts. The gains continued. This year and last, Brockton outperformed 90 percent of Massachusetts high schools" (article). I could not believe that Friedman would neglect such an important issue.

Opencourseware and Textbooks (revisited)

Stumbling across the internet today while taking a break from my Greek history reading, I found a phenomenon called "opencourseware." This is essentially the same idea as the Berkeley Webcasts, but it is up to the jurisdiction of the professor or the school what they post. From syllabi to opensource textbooks, classes post immense amounts of information online to allow students in other places-- or just anyone-- to access information for free. Some examples are certain classes from MIT, Quantum Mechanics from University of Utah, etc. There is even an entire Opencoursewear Consortium.

One of the problems that I have (and I think most people have) with textbooks is their incredible expensiveness. I worked in the bookstore at my alma mater and I remember students returning or deciding not to buy textbooks because they couldn't afford them (and borrowing them from a friend or the library). I know that I avoided buying any books I didn't think I would use again and instead made photocopies, checked the books out of the library, borrowed books from friends, found public domain versions of books, etc. I not know a whole lot about the textbook publishing industry and I do not entirely understand how to calculate a book price, but it seems that there has to be some way that authors can still get paid for their books and books of quality can still be published without forcing students (especially in the sciences) to pay between $100-500 (and sometimes even used copies are over $100). So, are freeware textbooks and online courses the answer? I think they are great, especially for students (both traditionally aged and adults who want to expand their minds) without the access to institutions (or who are too young for universities) but need a place to invest their intellectual curiosity. However, there is no way to replace the knowledge and experience of talking to a real expert in the field. Maybe, just maybe, this could help societies move toward more affordable books and institutions of learning, while still providing benefits and incentives for great teachers. I hope so.

A Good Textbook?

In his History 5 lectures, Thomas Laqueur says that there is no such thing as a good history textbook. Since I have lately been reading a lot of textbooks in my attempt to review Greek History, I thought I would explore the issue.

The Greek History class that I originally took in my sophomore had no textbook. Originally I thought this was a better option. Reading primary sources and the scholars that discuss them is a wonderful way to learn. However, for an survey class, when there is no lecture and no textbook, just professor-lead discussion, there is not enough background information for someone not already with a narrative sketch of the subject. I know I became lost and overwhelmed. On the other hand, this was the perfect format for the classes that I had which took an in-depth look at Herodotus and Thucydides.

Laqueur seems to imply the same thing when he says that in the age of easily accessible textbooks, the internet, and wikipedia, students can learn facts and timelines by themselves (especially if the class provide a guiding resource). However, he states, that the professor's job is to provide a narrative that sews these facts together in context. This makes a lot of sense to me.

The Greek history textbooks I have been reading are the following: Ancient Greece: A Political, Social and Cultural History by Pomeroy et al., Early Greece by Oswyn Murray, The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C. by Jeffrey Hurwit, and Archaic and Classical Greek Art by Robin Osborne. I would consider Early Greece and The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C. to be "good" while I consider Ancient Greece: A Political, Social and Cultural History and Archaic and Classical Greek Art to be "fairly decent." The good ones provide an interdisciplinary approach and provide an overarching narrative. The writing is reasonably placed and enjoyable-- it manages to make the reader realize she is learning things. However, this means that the books do not provide the "just facts" [1] approach which allows a professor to provide their own context and narrative for their students. The other problem might be that it would omit a specific instance a student might be seeking to compose a paper or to check a fact. The latter two both provide a less mediated approach and provide a much greater amount of pictures than the others. However, frankly, neither of these books are particularly interesting or enjoyable reading (and the analysis in the Osborne book is quite shallow). So although I like the former two much better, I can see arguments to be made for the latter two.

I think that this sort of problem can be applied to textbooks in almost any subject, although I have not (yet) done an anecdotal comparison (like this one ) on other subjects (as of yet).

Do you think there is such a thing as a good textbook?

Great College Stunts

Back when I was in applying to colleges, I heard a lot of stories about various pranks that the students took part in at each institution. The science and technology schools are especially proud of their heritage of practical jokes. However, on these college tours, one never hears about my favorite type of prank: jokes on the students by the professors for the sake of some greater educational purpose.

I was listening today to the sixth lecture from the History 5 class (Fall 2010). Even in the video, one cannot see the lecturer but only the slideshow. So, listening to it, this practical joke (and I use this in a loose sense) might have been funnier than in person. Thomas Laqueur (the lecturer) is speaking about the divisions in the early protestant church. He stops; there are some rustling noises. Then he says "is that a Berkeley homeless person?" Another long pause ensues in which presumably some unknown person moves through the audience. Then he says, no, it's Ulrich Zwingli (and the slide changed to a portrait of Ζwingli). I presume, again, that the "homeless person" is dressed like the portrait of Zwingli that Laqueur shows in the slideshow at this moment. Everyone laughs. Zwingli, played by emeritus professor Thomas Brady [1]. "Zwingli" explains the theological contention he has with Luther and the connection between religion and politics of the period. Laqueur interjects frequently with after jokes about Zwingle's death and the protestant conception of the afterlife. Finally, the stunt ends and Laqueur returns to his lecture, now focusing on the Catholics.

 

This reminded me of an instance at my own university in which a math professor played my number theory class. And I know it sounds totally weird, but this is a true story. So it was 11am and I was standing in the vestibule outside my number theory class. I had been up late the night before working on my qualifying paper, and I was very tired. The door opened to the lecture hall and a thin man with scruffy brown hair, wearing-- I thought-- round spectacles and pushing a cart full of pineapple. I blinked for a moment, just to make sure, and then stepped aside to let the outpouring of Linear Algebra students exit the classroom.

Our lesson that day was on the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence. The lecture was interesting and fun (and, as it turned out, very similar to the Linear Algebra lecture from earlier that day). At some point, my professor, whom I will call James for the sake of convenience, stopped the class for a moment, explain that he forgot something. He proceeded to call 411 on his cell phone and ask for the number of Quimby and Dimby's Singing Pineapple Delivery Service.

This bizarre moment may need some context. In most classes, a stately math professor doing something like this might seem like it would require the Infinite Improbability Drive from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. However, James was a little different. A specialist in surreal numbers and the coauthor of a textbook that included fake biographies of the Ancient Greeks and cartoons, James was stick skinny, gangly, sporting a full beard, and often covered head-to-toe in magenta chalk. He was brilliant and exuberant, but also comical in, among other things, his obsession with brightly colored chalk. So the mid-class cell phone call was certainly unusual and pushing the boundaries of his usual eccentricities.

So he finished his 411 call and told the class that he had to make just one more call before he got back to teaching. He called Quimby and Dimby's Singing Pineapple Delivery Service and appeared to have some difficulty explaining to the person on the other end of the line that his class was in the same room as before in order to have them do the show. At this point, my morning already appeared very strange and I was open to almost anything to happen next.

About ten minutes before the lesson ended, a man entered the room with a cart full of pineapples and something that resembled a violin case. Although he looked like the same guy as before, he was not wearing glasses. He greeted the class cheerfully. James said to him, "aren't you going to sing the song and show them how to count the pineapple [2]." The man, who was presumably Dimby, explained that his brother, Quimby, had come to the previous class, but was unable to return due to "too much Maui Wowi." He said he would show us how to count the pineapple, which he did, but he told James (who looked rather concerned and dishearted at the news) that he could not sing. He explained that he could accompany James if James wanted to sing, and he handed James a untidy pile of papers that were presumably the lyrics to the song. He then proceeded opened the violin case, which turned out to be a ukulele case, and the two of them put on a rather strange performance of a song. I don't remember any part of the song except the chorus, which was made up of the list of the Fibonacci numbers up through around 6000. It was pretty funny. We all joined in on the last chorus.

That evening when I got home, I googled Quimby and Dimby's Singing Pineapple Delivery Service. There were no results matching that phrase. The whole thing was an elaborate prank.

Endnotes

1. Brady is credited in a slide at the end of the stunt. According to Laqueur, Brady wrote a book on this splintering in the protestant movement.
2. The pattern of growth on a pineapple matches the Fibonacci sequence, as does the pattern of growth on many plants.

More on Self-Guided Education

I have been reading Horace (selected poems in Latin, see my reading list) and Euripides' Medea with friends. Although I do not read as quickly or as well as I would like, it is a wonderful and enjoyable experience and it's amazing that skype has enabled me to talk and coordinate with people in totally different places.

But today a fell in love again with the Berkeley webcast website. Today I have listened to the first four lectures of "History 5: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present" (well, I'm listening to the fourth one right now). Although his voice is kind of annoying, Thomas Laqueur, the professor, is thoroughly engaging and intelligent. He seems to be a Foucault-influenced scholar with an interdisciplinary approach that involves finding the narratives of power and legitimacy in history an analyzing their progression. I wanted to listen to this for the most part because Cerinthus and I have been debating over Romanesque verses Gothic architecture (he likes Romanesque, I love Gothic) and specifically of the historical quoting and power of religion built into the architecture itself. If anyone wants to share their thoughts for one side or the other for the debate feel free to comment (we would love to have some new ideas to discuss)

Unfortunately, most of the courses do not have any links to their course material, since the material is now contained on b-space, which I believe is a Berkeley-students-only website. A few of them do and the lectures do provide a vast amount of the information so it is still an effective teaching tool.

One other thing that I found recently is a set of free e-books "sold" by Amazon that cover high school math and science from the CK-12 Foundation. This is not very advanced, although the math does go through calculus, but I think it's incredible that a company it making them accessible to students who want to get ahead, review, or just learn on their own. The coolest one is CK-12 21st Century Physics: A Compilation of Contemporary and Emerging Technologies, which intends to introduce high school students to the marvels of modern physics rather than forcing them into only learning the advancements of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. I have not read much of the book itself, but the purpose looked great.

I am continually amazed at the resources out there for self-teaching. It is very cool. It reminds me of the food blog network, from which I taught myself to make bread. It is amazing that people are willing to provide their experience to a public and talk about the techniques for cooking. That is very cool.

The End of the Humanities?

My favorite French Literature professor once told our Literary Theory class that the humanities were going to die out as a field of study. One of the theorists that we read, who it was I sadly cannot remember, said that the world is placing value on efficiency and production. The humanities do not fit into this schema, and will therefore be eliminated. I did not realize that it was coming so soon.

Stanley Fish's New York Times article appeared a few days ago and demonstrated that the end of the humanities is being realized. SUNY Albany, according to Fish, is abolishing the following departments: classics, French, Italian, Russian, and theater. I could not believe it. I was stunned that a school would rid itself of these departments. I understand the lack of direct production of technology that comes out of these departments, but I somehow cannot imagine even those for whom this is the only value, eliminating the distinct ways that people think because some of the non-traditional thinking is what leads to the greatest innovation.

On the other hand, these are probably the same people who would scrap the idea of a particle collider because of its lack of practical application.

Cerinthus Reports: The Secret Bakery

It has been a very long weekend so far. I spent 7 hours today teaching a mixed class of 6th graders and high school sophomores algebra and English. It was a long day. However, I shall write a short "Cerinthus Reports" and get back to more substantive posting tomorrow.

Sulpicia asks: are there any interesting quirks of nightlife in Florence?

Cerinthus answers: I really want to try one of Florence's secret bakeries.
This, of course, prompted me to ask, "isn't being a secret bakery a bad marketing strategy?" Apparently, there is some rule in Florence that food cannot be sold-- or maybe it is hot food cannot be sold-- after around 11pm. Secret bakeries fill this gap. They function illegally between around midnight and 4am or so. Apparently, a person finds the unmarked door and knocks. They then specify whether they want a pastry or bread. The door closes and opens again to exchange the item for the money.

The whole thing sounds pretty sketchy to me, but it also sounds like a wonderful quirk of Florence. I think I may have to try one when I some day get there?

The Joys and Pitfalls of Self-Directed Education

In May, I graduated from college with my BA in Classics. I decided to strike out on my own for a year (and looking increasingly like two years) in order to solidify my education, gain some work and teaching experience, and choose my path forward into academia. Exploring education on my own, and teaching my own classes, continues to provide me with a new perspectives on the benefits and drawbacks to institutionalized learning and also on educational resources.

Here are some of the great things I have found while learning on my own:

• Skype is awesome. 
• Although Cerinthus is away, I can still ask him questions and get answers from the experts he has access to in Greece and Italy (see Cerinthus Reports on both Fragments of Sulpicia and Platonic Psychology).
• Propertius II and I work on Horace together over skype as well and we can share screen, send information, and interact.
• On a broader educational level, Sugata Mitra's work which he explained in his TED Talk (which I highly recommend if you have not seen it) employs Skype through a method known as the Granny Cloud. This employs British grandmothers to watch over and encourage students using internet resources for the purpose of education and has proved to be an effective tool
• I can read and research whatever I want, which leads me to exciting new areas of research.
• As I was doing some more in-depth research on grave monuments to solidify work on my thesis, I stumbled across Ian Morris' Burial and Ancient Society: The Rise of the Greek City-State (which can be downloaded for free if you have access to ACLS and some minimal computer skills). The book is awesome so far, but I realized I have almost no background whatsoever in archaeology. This lead me to find another book, An Archaeology of Greece, by Anthony Snodgrass, which is currently public from University of California Press.
• There are a number of websites and blogs that provide immense amounts of information and there are even more under construction.
• The UC Berkeley Webcast website has some fabulous classes by incredible professors that one can listen to via podcast. They also have campus events and speakers. A truly phenomenal resource.
• I have a whole list of classics resources under "Interesting Links" on the left-hand side of Platonic Psychology.
• Wikimedia Commons provides images for people to use. I employed these to find examples of for myself and then to provide examples to me readers for Proto-Corinthian pottery.
• There are also some unfinished resources which may still be valuable:
• Wikiversity (and its Classic Department) attempts to provide class outlines and resources to individuals who want to learn from the teachers who are willing to make them. Wikiversity says on its main page: "Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities."
• The Homer Multitext is an incredible resource put together by the Center for Hellenic Studies, which, according to the website, "seeks to present the textual transmission of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey in a historical framework. Such a framework is needed to account for the full reality of a complex medium of oral performance that underwent many changes over a long period of time. These changes, as reflected in the many texts of Homer, need to be understood in their many different historical contexts. The Homer Multitext provides ways to view these contexts both synchronically and diachronically." This is an incredible resource for Homer scholars.
• Everything you do is directed toward your needs (or the needs of those with whom you study).
• Something I really need to work on is my Greek and Latin reading fluidity and pronunciation, as well as building my vocabulary. Although all of my classes in college attempted to do a little of this, none of them focused on it. After ascertaining from those who I considered experts in each area what resources I should be using, I have been able to at least begin to work on these areas.
• Furthermore, I can use old syllabi to review precisely those assignments I did not quite understand (or wanted to look into further).

 

However, there are also inevitable problems with learning on my own:

• There are no teachers and no deadlines. I have to be ready to set firm deadlines as well as find resources among friends, books, and the internet to provide instruction. It is incredibly easy to slip up or procrastinate. I have slipped up a number of times, but I remind myself that cheating only hurts me, which motivates me to work harder.
• I have to create my own evidence of my efforts. Unforuntately, I cannot get a degree from Sulpicia University and I am not graded in my endeavors, even when I use resources like UC Berkeley Webcast, so I have to demonstrate my knowledge effective and produce something. Blogging has been one thing that provides a certain amount of accountability and shows some amount of my effort, but I need to also work on getting something published so that I can show it to a graduate school.
• There are no school facilities. Although I can drive to my local university library to check out books or search for information (and I do), I do not have the same incredible facilities that I had in college, e.g. I cannot use an inter-library loan program nor do I have campus visiting lecturers nor easily-accessible students and professors in other disciplines. However, Skype, email, and access to my parents has helped ameliorate this, because I can contact scholars and peers as well as having greater access to cars and trips to concerts, lectures, conferences, museums, and even out of town to find wonderful opportunities.

Teaching through the Invisible Wall

I proctored another practice test today. Practice tests are a long four hours and I finished Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy and was able to cross it off of my reading list [1]. I also read two other works which I will discuss in detail over the next few days.

At one of the five-minute breaks in the four-hour exam, I asked my students how their college applications were going. People were nervous-- and rightfully so-- but were in the process. I told them that I was doing graduate school applications, and they were a nightmare because they do not have a common application and require a lot of strange GPA manipulations (depending upon whether the school is focused on your grades in courses in your major, in your last two years, etc). After explaining this, I realized that this attempt to explain my sympathies with the students' situation was precisely the wrong approach. They do not want to hear how hard my experience is-- or the things that may be awaiting them after college-- but rather they would like some encouraging words.

I always thought, while I was in high school, that when I became a teacher (I wanted to be a professor of course, but I figured that it was a similar principle) that I would understand the plight of the student and not be alienated from it in the way that my teachers seemed to be. My specific specific qualms were with busy-work, "creative projects" as graded material, and improper balancing of review and new material (in either direction). Now, I realize that there is as much of an invisible wall between my students and me as there was between me and my teachers. Maybe it is the inevitable position of being a teacher.

One thing that cheered me up was an essay that a student wrote today. The topic asked the students to consider what type of learning should be done in schools. One of the girls related a personal anecdote about a friend of hers sitting at lunch one day and complaining that school did not have enough breaks and did not incorporate enough creative learning. The girl questioned her friend, and through questioning the friend agreed that although it might feel that way, but the purpose of school was to provide a learning experience and that it was ultimately useful. I do not know if the anecdote was true, but it made me feel a little bit better.

Endnotes

1. Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy is fabulous. Andrea Nightingale utilizes a mixture of history and classical scholarship with Bahktin and a smattering of literary theory to provide an energetically written and scholastically footnoted work that provides a fascinating analysis of Plato and the development of philosophy as a genre. I will do a full review soon.

 

The Problems with Free Books

This morning, my mother emailed me a thoroughly amusing article called "The Trouble with Google Books." The article deals with the errors and problems that Google books has, specifically with metadata (i.e. the data that allows you to find the book you are looking for, e.g. publication date, author, etc). Some of the pieces are particularly hilarious, such as attributing a book an the Mosiac Web browser to Sigmund Freud's distinguished co-authorship [1]. My biggest problem with google books was that it always omitted exactly those pages of a book that I needed most when I looked something up because some other enterprising classicist had checked it out of the library before I got there [2].

Although I have always been a massive lover of cheap books and used books (which is the only way I could have amassed the massive collection of books around my house and in boxes in the garage), receiving a Kindle (see my previous blogpost) I have become a zealot for free electronic books. Part of the time while Cerinthus was visiting, I stupidly spent showing him the wonders of ACLS Humanities E-Book Archive (because he still has access to our college's server). It is incredible. Although one can only download PDF pages in three pages bursts, there are some fabulous academic texts on every subject from archaeoastronomy to modern urban planning. If one compiles the books oneself, they're free (provided, of course, access to said archive through school or an academic institution). I also have spent a lot of time searching for books, especially classics books and found a number of different places (to many of which I link on Platonic Psychology). Some interesting ones are as follows:

• Project Gutenberg: An archive of out of print books and audiobooks. Has a pretty awesome variety of formats available, including MOBI documents for the kindle. They are now also compiling audiobooks, as well as adding works in their original languages, such as Greek and Latin (as well as German, French, etc)
• Internet Archive: Very much like Project Gutenberg, this archive includes a variety of out of print books in many different formats, including the Sanskrit Grammar that I included in my blogpost last night.
• Textkit: A selections of out of print materials for teaching Classical Greek and Latin.
• Free Books from Amazon: this is all in kindle format (but can be read with free kindle reading apps), but it includes out of print books, as well as government documents like the U.S. Budget, and a number of new studies on digital media and learning by MIT, like this one.
  

There are some more but this is a start and I would love to hear about more I have not found yet.

Harping on my education theme, again (sorry!), I think cheap used books and free ebooks are awesome. I believe, most certainly, that authors and the institutions who aid in dissemination their work should be paid and that they provide a vital service for society. However, the library near my house has a book section only twice the size of my bedroom. Thus far, I found no classics texts there I am interested in reading. The books are simply too expensive for a small local library. It seems to me that libraries are one of the great places that one can supplement or design their own education. It makes no sense that only university libraries have the necessary academic texts when cities and towns without universities are the ones could most use an extensive library. So I think that used book sites and free ebooks are great because they provide access to a whole range of materials not otherwise available.

Endnotes

1. This reminded me of when I asked a group of my SAT kids what they knew about Charles Dickens' writing, and I got three blank stares and a girl who told me that she had only read half of Alice in Wonderland and did not remember it very well. I was also shocked to learn that out of a 13 person class, not one person knew who Adam Smith was. On the other hand, every one of them can work a smartphone, an art which I have not yet mastered.
2. My junior year this was a particularly pernicious trend, which prevented me from ever getting a chance to read Genres in Dialogue for my Phaedrus paper. Luckily, I received a copy for my last birthday and I am enjoying it thoroughly.

Unconventional Education #2

Two of the reasons that I was so interested in Sugata Mitra's [1] TED Talk in my last blogpost are that I am now working as an educator and that I am a product of progressive education (in my formative elementary school years). From this, I understand the power of working in groups and students teaching themselves and each other.

I went to a progressive elementary school that was built on John Dewey's conception of experimental learning. We spent most of our time in school working in groups, block building, and wood working. We went on field trips to the source of each of the sites that we were studying. I remember vividly sitting through mass at a modern monastery when studying the life of medieval monks and getting up at 3am to go to one of the groups of vendors that supplies restaurants in order to see how the city worked. I gained a curiosity and a passion for learning there.


I picked the college that I did partially on the idea that it would be a return to these unconventional roots. Although it had grades, classes, and majors, like any traditional institution, there was a high premium put on working in groups for certain classes as well as an encouragement for self-competition rather than interpersonal competition. This was a lovely change from my traditional high school, and it fostered precisely the intellectual environment that I craved. In my senior year, I started a Heidegger seminar which met on Friday nights to discuss Being and Time. This class utilized a combination of technology (sometimes listening to Hubert Dryfus' lectures from his Philosophy 185 class, as well as individual in the group finding things online), and group work (the discussions every week) allowed us to gain an incredible amount of information out of the text. Emergence, in Mitra's words. We had very little outside intervention, except for a few visits from a wonderful German professor. I unfortunately was not able to read and participate in this as much as possible due to writing my thesis, but the Heidegger group was productive and wonderful and it was one of the great parts of my education.

The SAT prep that I teach involves some amount of group work in each class. Although often times the group work devolves into talking. The students in my class are tense about school, sports, and college applications, and many of them go to school together. However, the other day I witnessed a great moment. Two of the girls in my class, who have the most trouble with math were working together. One of the smartest, but also one of the tougher girls in my class, ended up in a group with them. When I came over to check on the group, she was helping them-- really explaining carefully how each of the math problems worked and encouraging them. I did not even have to help them out and I was able to focus on some of the other groups that were having trouble focusing. It underlined, for me, the true value of working together.

In some ways, that this self-generated learning is what I am trying to do this year. I am attempting to channel my curiosity in a way to further my own education and solidify those things I learned in the past in my mind. I am not, unfortunately, in a group of any kind (although there is an advanced calculus class at a local school I would absolutely love to take), but I am using the internet, the books I have around, and material from my old courses in order to try to create my own education. Part of the reason I write Platonic Psychology is that I provide a collection of resources for anyone who is out there looking, but more to provide me with a hypothetical group with whom I can interact. By articulating my thoughts to these theoretical people, I solidify my thoughts and allow them to grow (and hopefully generate emergence). So hopefully it will all work out.

Endnotes

1. I just discovered his blog and found it to be thoroughly charming.

Unconventional Education

My mother just sent me an incredible video. I'm not, generally speaking, one of those people who watches a lot of videos online, but this was so stunning that I had to share it. This video is from a TED conference, in which Sugata Mitra discusses the use of computers in child-driven education. The initial premise that he poses is that the places in the world to which good teachers cannot or will not go are not only the places that need them the most, but also the places that become the hotbeds of problems in the world. From there, he started an experiment by placing computers in slums in order to see if children could learn from them without instruction.

Mitra poses this hypothesis at the end of the talk, which he intends upon proving experimentally in the next five years:

"Education is a self-organizing system [1] where learning is an emergent phenomenon [2]."

This video is fantastic and I highly recommend it.

Endnotes

1. Mitra defines a self-organizing system as "one where the system structure appears without explicit intervention from outside the system."
2. Mitra defines emergence as "the appearance of a property not previously observed as a functional characteristic of the system."