The Way of the Future

1) Teacher makes up a blank chart in Microsoft Word.

2) Students download the chart and fill it in with quotes, citations and examples of the American Dream as stated by the characters in the novel.

3) Students upload individual assignments to Turnitin.com.

4) Assignments are automatically cross-checked for plagiarism against tens of thousands of books, hundreds of millions of other papers and billions of websites.

5) Teacher viewes individual papers and reads the plagiarism reports.  Teacher adds comments with one click, anywhere in the document, and can even choose from a list of common comments, like “fragment” and “incorrect citation” — which each come with multiple paragraphs of explanation and reference.

6) Students log on, read comments and print a copy if desired.  (It’s usually not.)

Less waste, less headache, less drudgery.  I actually found myself commenting more because it’s so much faster to type in a box than to write on a piece of paper!

It doesn’t approach the cushiness of, say, an architecture professor, who assigns letter grades for entire projects DURING the students’ presentations.  Nevertheless, these advances have certainly made life easier for English teachers everywhere.

You're So Predictable

Usually, when I say this, it’s to the tune of the EMF song and in gentle mockery of my husband — after he’s said “I just bought us concert tickets,” or “Let’s have pizza for dinner!”  I like to think of myself as the spontaneous one.

But after having downloaded Google Chrome as my browser of preference, I am finding that it applies to me too. Its automatic home page for a new window or tab includes thumbnail screen shots of your most popular eight sites, and it’s rare that I need to go anywhere else.  Here they are:

• Gmail: Still the best e-mail service out there, especially since I discovered you can stay signed in to multiple accounts simultaneously.  Since I have different addresses for work, home and junk, this is especially useful.
• WordPress: I haven’t used SquareSpace enough to replace this one, but it will happen by the end of the week, I’m sure.  My new platform is much more snazzy, although we’re still getting used to each other.
• Catonsville Patch: I’ve been writing more frequently here during the summer, mostly in a series called “From the Farm” in which I pick one item from the week’s CSA pickup and share recipe ideas.  “Delicious Dish” reincarnated?  Perhaps.
• Google Voice: Your ticket to free unlimited text messages, phone calls through your computer and cell phone, and text-transcribed voicemail messages that never fail to make me laugh; I’m sure the software will improve over time, but for now “my towels and laundry” becomes “my pal the laundry” and “it’s Naomi” becomes “it’s mail me.”  When the message is in another language, it’s funnier still.
• Google Reader: This list is beginning to sound like a commercial plug!  I resisted Reader for a long time, thinking it would make me more of a blog addict, but it’s actually made it faster and more efficient — I only see new posts and I only need to go to one place.  
• The New York Times: After touting the clever loophole idea, I caved and bought a subscription for the summer — it’s half price for the first 12 weeks, and by the time the deal runs out, I’ll be too busy to read it anyway.  For now, I’m loving what I took for granted for so long: the ability to graze at will through all kinds of interesting material, even on my phone while waiting in a particularly boring line!
• Flickr: Since this service became basically free for normal people, I’ve been using it to share photos quickly and easily.  It also dovetails nicely with a cute little app called Instagram (thanks, Jo) which can make ordinary photos look retro, scary or warm and fuzzy in — you guessed it — an instant.
• Netflix: We’ve been exploring new material this summer — new to us, without a television or time to watch it during the school year, but old and dusty to the rest of the world.  We’re particularly taken with In Treatment for its simple compositions and plotlines that focus almost entirely on the psyche.  Next up are Mad Men and The Sopranos.  Alas, nothing so far has come close to the experience of LOST!

So that’s my online life, in a nutshell.  Isn’t it sad, how similar I am to millions of others on the planet?  One more reason to turn off the computer and go outside for awhile!

The Real Me

On our travels over the long weekend, we had the opportunity to listen to several Christmases’ worth of CDs that had never made it out of the packaging.  I especially enjoyed my brother’s gift of This American Life, a radio show that, very simply, plays real stories told by real people.  It can go from heartwarming to heartbreaking in a moment, avoiding preachiness in favor of the drama of true life.  (The only downside, so far as I can tell, is the way the music interrupts the flow of the story every so often – generally very good music, but misplaced, in my opinion.)

Anyhow, in my musing about this piece I will certainly ruin the ending for you, as well as most of the rising action, so I highly recommend waiting to read further until you have 20 minutes or so to listen to it yourself before clicking below:

The incredible part of this story was watching a father, with all his flaws and shortcomings, struggle to do what was best for his son.  First he sacrifices to work hard and give his son everything he could possibly want in the way of material comforts: they live in Beverly Hills.  But all is not right, as evidenced by the fact that they obviously do not trust each other and the son begins to take his charmed life for granted.

So, when the son’s grades begin to plummet and his personality undergoes a sudden and drastic change, the father worries, but he knows the son will never be honest with him if confronted (and the son confirms this.) He therefore decides to take the rather unseemly step of recording his son’s telephone conversations.

Obviously, I don’t think this is a great thing to do.  It’s certainly not illegal (father’s house, father’s choice) but it doesn’t bode well for future trust in their relationship.  But I found it touching that the father cared enough to try to find out what was going on.  Even more touching was the way in which he used the information he obtained through clandestine means: instead of confronting the boy about it, he simply tried to reroute his behavior.  If he heard his son was planning to get high on Friday after school, he’d tell him he desperately needed his help at the store on Friday afternoon.  Over time, he hoped these interventions would lead to an altered outlook and properly-aligned priorities.

Fate intervenes, however: the son discovers what’s going on, and instead of confronting his father, embarks on his own tour of espionage.  He begins planting false evidence, telling his friends he’s going straight but continuing his downward spiral on the sly.  After a month of this, though, he feels immensely conflicted about lying to both his father and his friends, so he tells his father he knows – effectively admitting to a lot of highly punishable behavior.

This is the magical part, and the reason I’m not sure I could ever be a parent: the father admits what he’s done, says he will stop, and in lieu of a punishment, asks only one thing of his son: that the boy take the dozens of accumulated tapes and promise to listen to them all.

The son, now himself a man, recalls that it took him years to get all the way through the project; it was that painful to hear his own voice, and within it the self-centered and unfeeling person he had become.  I work regularly with teenage boys, and I was shocked to hear such honesty and emotion between them:

Son: That was an interesting look you gave me today.

Friend: Oh, ha, I know. (Laughs)

Son: So what’s the problem with you?  What are you p–-ed off at me for?

Friend: I don’t know.

Son: Is it that time of the month again? (Editor’s note: I believe the friend is male.)

Friend: No …

Son: Well then, what’s wrong?

Friend: Well, I guess the basic thing is, I don’t like your fluctuation in attention towards me.

Son: (Laughs) What are you talking about? If I’m not going somewhere, if I have not got a set place that I am off to, and I’m, like, probably usually late, then I’ll stop and talk to you.

Friend: (Laughs) Uh-huh.

Son: And it’s like … well … forget it, then!  S–-!

Friend: Wait, hold on –

(Dial tone.)

he father somehow knew that the only punishment the son needed was to be forced to observe the changes that had come over him, and the son agrees: “It was valuable to be able to witness myself in that way, although painful … it’s a rare gift, in a way, to be able to see yourself from the outside … given an opportunity, I think most people would probably not want to see themselves that clearly.”

Ouch.  Way to go, Dad.

Backchannels and Consumerists, All

Ironically, I’ve been reading the New York Times much more frequently since it instituted a monthly article limit; the “most popular” list is now tailored to my specific interests (philosophy, education and cooking) and I can read at my leisure through the loopholes of Twitter and my cell phone.

Unfortunately, this often leads to an elevated heart rate at an inconvenient location.  Last week, waiting for a delayed plane, I read this flippantly upbeat suggestion that teachers embrace social networking as a classroom tool:

With Twitter and other microblogging platforms, teachers from elementary schools to universities are setting up what is known as a “backchannel” in their classes. The real-time digital streams allow students to comment, pose questions (answered either by one another or the teacher) and shed inhibitions about voicing opinions. Perhaps most importantly, if they are texting on-task, they are less likely to be texting about something else.

Forgive me, but this is about as silly as encouraging your children to experiment with drugs in your own house, since “they’re going to try it anyway.” Our attention spans are already hopelessly short, and our ability to relate on a human level severely hampered:

“When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”

Of course it is, Justin.  It’s always easier to type an angry e-mail instead of confronting someone, or to text “luv u” rather than declare your feelings outright.  Why are we encouraging this, then, instead of helping our students to focus on the interactions and articulations that make them uniquely human?

If I’d read that piece with openmouthed indignation, I read this condemnation of the college experience with a wistful sigh of resignation:

In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week, and 50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester. The average student spent only about 12 to 13 hours per week studying …

Not surprisingly, a large number of the students showed no significant progress on tests of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing that were administered when they began college and then again at the ends of their sophomore and senior years.

The article goes on to mention colleges’ tendencies to invest in residence and athletic facilities and to rely on student opinion forms as the main barometer of an instructor’s skill in the classroom – which pushes instructors to be pushovers, which further dilutes the academic rigor of the school.  I’ve certainly seen this in my graduate school, where I’m at the top of every class through a reasonable, but not burdensome, amount of effort – embarrassing, really.  College should be hard.

Well, harrumph.  That’s what I get for reading the paper.

In Case You Weren't Worried

Here are three great, thought-provoking articles about education and society, all of which should do the trick:

1. The sad truth about Internet research, which English teachers have been saying for years: students, even the intelligent and conscientious ones, don't know how to absorb and integrate new material into their work.  In the best-case scenario, they cobble together research papers from quotes of academic sources.  In the worst, they lift chunks of text from Wikipedia and eNotes and drop them into presentations, and are then shocked when plagiarism-detection software finds it: "I didn't mean to copy."  I think they actually don't know what copying is.


2. The digital revolution has spawned a generation of students who can't focus; yes, it begins with simple rudeness in their private lives, but it carries over easily into the school hours, when they spend a whole class period "researching" with nothing to show for it -- having been distracted by fluff and sidebars.


3. Peter Thiel thinks that higher education is the next bubble.  It represents wealth and safety (prestige, salary, job security) and we are willing to incur massive debt for it:

"A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed," he says. "Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus."