Sunday, April 10, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: OVERT CONFIDENCE
"Think You'll Ace That Test? Think Again, Then Start Studying" ScienceDaily 3-23-11 I just watched Waiting for Superman. This story puts me in mind of a statistic cited there: while students in the United States rank twenty-fifth in math and twenty-first in science among thirty developed countries, they rank first in confidence.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX'S "RUNNING OUT OF TIME"
RUNNING OUT OF TIME. By Margaret Peterson Haddix. Scholastic, 2004 (originally published 1995). 184 pages. M. Shyamalan’s The Village has a plotline suspiciously close to Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Running Out of Time. A nineteenth century backwoods settlement is completely artificial; we’re actually in the present. When a medical emergency prompts residents to seek a twentieth century cure, a young girl is asked to escape the guarded perimeter of her make-believe world. Despite the striking resemblances, the film’s producers called charges of plagiarism “meritless.” Haddix and her publishers considered litigation, then didn’t bother suing, probably because The Village was less than wildly successful, to put it charitably. All a fascinating sidelight, but not one that really matters when you’re reading Haddix’s debut novel. The author of the fabulous Shadow Children series has written a novel far superior, not to mention slightly more plausible, than Shyamalan’s humorless clunker of a movie. Since Running Out of Time is aimed at an audience that is willing to suspend disbelief, readers might excuse the lack of planes flying overhead. Or the children of the ersatz 1840s Clifton, Indiana, not wondering about the cameras in the trees. Unlike The Village, the town in Running Out of Time is not a thought-control experiment. Instead it’s a tourist attraction that’s morphed into a study of immunology. The conspiracy, and conspirators, behind the artifice are more down-to-earth and realistic. What really distinguishes Running Out of Time, as in the Shadow Children books, is its utterly true and finely drawn child protagonist. Jessie Keyser is a resourceful, yet vulnerable, kid, with the same sources of strength, and the same insecurities, as seventh and eighth graders in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her encounters with adults and other children carry a straightforward verisimilitude. Jessie runs into all kinds of suspenseful action as she, like all children coming of age, searches for truth in an untruthful society imperfectly managed by its elders. And, like all childhood heroes should do, she saves the day. Recommended for fifth graders on up.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: TALKING MATH
"The Importance of Clarifying Language in Mathematics Education" ScienceDaily 3-22-11
Many math concepts are counter-intuitive (measurement units, place value, the number zero, fractions, negative numbers), which makes them challenging. Presenting them abstractly (as in merely demonstrating an algorithm) makes them even harder to understand. The challenge for teachers is finding clear language, a variety of metaphors, and a variety of concrete contexts.
Or this can happen: "Many consumers believe 36 months is longer than 3 years."
Another connection in this precious post.
Many math concepts are counter-intuitive (measurement units, place value, the number zero, fractions, negative numbers), which makes them challenging. Presenting them abstractly (as in merely demonstrating an algorithm) makes them even harder to understand. The challenge for teachers is finding clear language, a variety of metaphors, and a variety of concrete contexts.
Or this can happen: "Many consumers believe 36 months is longer than 3 years."
Another connection in this precious post.
WORLD OF LEARNING: FEAR ITSELF
"Masked Fears: Are Fears That Are Seemingly Overcome Only Hidden?" ScienceDaily 3-20-11
A good reminder of how persistent fear is.
A good reminder of how persistent fear is.
WORLD OF LEARNING: WORKING MEMORY
"Brain Has Three Layers of Working Memory, Study Shows" ScienceDaily 3-21-11
Working memory really interests me. No matter the number of layers, or amount of items that can be held, it seems clear to Daniel Willingham in Why Don't Students Like School? that working memory's space is not only finite, it's extremely limited. You can cheat that by squeezing more into each item--chunking--or by quick and easy access to patterns in long-term memory--automaticity.
The lead author of this particular study put it this way: "Predictability can free up resources so a person can effectively multitask. When you do the same sequence over and over again, your memory can be partially automatized so you have the ability to do another task concurrently."
Two parents have recommended Milton Dehn's Working Memory and Academic Learning, so I just ordered it.
Working memory really interests me. No matter the number of layers, or amount of items that can be held, it seems clear to Daniel Willingham in Why Don't Students Like School? that working memory's space is not only finite, it's extremely limited. You can cheat that by squeezing more into each item--chunking--or by quick and easy access to patterns in long-term memory--automaticity.
The lead author of this particular study put it this way: "Predictability can free up resources so a person can effectively multitask. When you do the same sequence over and over again, your memory can be partially automatized so you have the ability to do another task concurrently."
Two parents have recommended Milton Dehn's Working Memory and Academic Learning, so I just ordered it.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
RECENT NEWS: MY REVIEW OF "MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES"
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: NEW HORIZONS. By Howard Gardner. Perseus Books Group, 2006. 300 pages.
Working on a daily basis with children who have been diagnosed with deficits—problem learners—I’m attracted to educational theory which holds that individuals are amalgams of unique characteristics. Strengths as well as weaknesses.
My conception of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences played into that attraction. School is in large part based on psychometrically determined intelligence quotients and the ability to apply intelligence to written language and mathematics. Stretching that view a bit might allow kids who are academically unsuccessful to see that they have capabilities that can be realized with effort, and allow society to make use of unrecognized potential.
After reading Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons, I find my conception was fairly accurate, but I remain confused about how to translate theory into practice. I’m also more skeptical about the theory itself, while still agreeing with Gardner that we need "to nurture all of the varied human intelligences."
It’s interesting that Gardner has been surprised by his audience. He originally formulated his theory in 1983 as "a psychologist who thought he was addressing his fellow psychologists." However, he did not find a warm welcome among his colleagues, to whom Frames of Mind "seemed somewhat exotic." Among those whom Gardner, perhaps with a hint of derision, labels "psychometricians," "the book aroused antipathy."
However, the book was a huge hit with another constituency. "For reasons that I do not fully understand," writes a baffled Gardner, "the theory of multiple intelligences spoke immediately to educators—loudly and quite clearly."
The dichotomic reception of Frames of Mind set off warning signals in my mind to approach the theory of multiple intelligences with caution. I came to Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons after reading Daniel Willingham’s excellent Why Don’t Students Like School? The cognitive psychologist’s critical view of Gardner’s work increased my wariness.
The presentation of Multiple Intelligences didn’t help. It’s not an updated edition of Frames of Mind, but a poorly organized mish-mash of collected essays, some written with co-authors, and randomly ordered reflections on a theory by its creator a quarter of a century down the road.
Readers looking for an outline of that theory need go no further in this book than its first chapter, twenty-five pages aptly titled "In a Nutshell." Or, with even more brevity, you could note that Gardner posits seven intelligences: musical, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, intrapersonal and interpersonal. Maybe an eighth, too—a naturalist intelligence.
Most readers, I would think, come to this book with that outline more or less already in place.
Gardner does contextualize his work and its effect over the years, and acknowledges an impediment to more widespread acceptance of his ideas—a lack of supporting clinical evidence for multiple intelligences.
While it’s hard to argue with his plea that "psychologists should spend less time ranking people and more time trying to help them," it leaves a question unanswered. How?
Good teachers have long recognized that different students learn in different ways. I’m not really sure that determining which intelligences are in which classrooms will make for an improved version of tailoring instruction to varying needs and abilities, even to the moment.
To be fair, Gardner does address the issue of application in the second part of this book where he discusses the Project Spectrum elementary school program, learning through projects, the Arts PROPEL high school program, and using broader, more inclusive forms of assessment. The problem is that the information is sketchy. Gardner repeatedly reminds readers of the positive reaction to his theory among educators, rather than tell them exactly how educators can put theory into practice.
A chapter called “Multiple Entry Points Toward Disciplinary Understanding” offers an interesting and helpful way of framing instruction—narrational, logical, quantitative, foundational, aesthetic, experiential, or collaborative. Likewise, while considering Project Spectrum, Gardner includes a questionnaire which puts forward useful criteria for determining a child’s learning style through observation.
But is connecting learning styles to teaching really have much to do with intelligences as separate categories? Gardner says no, that "style and intelligence are really fundamentally different constructs." Ironic, given that I found the questionnaire and entry point framework the most practical takeaway from Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons.
Gardner tackles those "new horizons" in a final section that I thought was pretty much fluff. A chapter on multiple intelligence theory and the workplace seemed downright goofy.
The ostensible goal of this book is to introduce Gardner’s theory and to explain its application. It fails on both counts.
___________________________________________________________________
COMMENT FROM JULIE AT ALL EARS ON GOODREADS 3-20-11:
So interesting that he didn't think that educators would be a primary target for this info!
COMMENT FROM CLIF ON GOODREADS 3-21-11:
What obsesses me about education is - how to trigger motivation. I did very poorly in school because I simply wasn't interested in the subject matter. On my own initiative, however, I was fascinated with meteorology and avidly read and re-read books on weather, something not even covered in (elementary) school.
As it turned out, I couldn't go into the field professionally because I had (and this gets to multiple intelligence) absolutely NO aptitude for math. I am entirely a word, not a figure, person!
But regardless of what aspect of intelligence one may have - triggering the desire to use it is key. How do we do that? And why is it that I am insatiably eager to learn in subjects that interest me? If we could turn that on with a switch in students!
MY RESPONSE:
Julie, not only did Gardner fail to see that it was obvious that the people most invested in realizing kids’ intelligence would be the most significant audience for his theory, he still seems somewhat befuddled by his rock-star status in the educational community. I think his myopia tells us more than we’d like to know about him.
Clif, one reason why I am critical of Gardner’s work is that I believe it’s more important to look at what good teachers do than to look at psychological categories of intelligence, especially when the evidence base underlying that categorization is inchoate.
Good teachers go with core curriculum, but empathize with their scholars-in-training. They are aware there are different cognitive styles and personalities in their classrooms and adjust accordingly.
People who remember a favorite teacher often say that the reason the teacher was so great was that the teacher “motivated” them to learn. Of course, motivation is really internal; no one can turn it on but you. What good teachers do is connect curriculum to their students’ lives. They also really know the material, and are really enthusiastic about teaching it.
I would wager that some of your difficulty in engaging with school subject matter was caused as much by the way it was taught as by the content itself.
Almost all children are curious and creative. They love to play. They love to meet challenges if they believe they can improve. There’s a lot there education can tap into. Instead, it is often the case that all those qualities are stomped out of kids as soon as school starts.
Besides that, meteorology should be covered in elementary school!
Working on a daily basis with children who have been diagnosed with deficits—problem learners—I’m attracted to educational theory which holds that individuals are amalgams of unique characteristics. Strengths as well as weaknesses.
My conception of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences played into that attraction. School is in large part based on psychometrically determined intelligence quotients and the ability to apply intelligence to written language and mathematics. Stretching that view a bit might allow kids who are academically unsuccessful to see that they have capabilities that can be realized with effort, and allow society to make use of unrecognized potential.
After reading Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons, I find my conception was fairly accurate, but I remain confused about how to translate theory into practice. I’m also more skeptical about the theory itself, while still agreeing with Gardner that we need "to nurture all of the varied human intelligences."
It’s interesting that Gardner has been surprised by his audience. He originally formulated his theory in 1983 as "a psychologist who thought he was addressing his fellow psychologists." However, he did not find a warm welcome among his colleagues, to whom Frames of Mind "seemed somewhat exotic." Among those whom Gardner, perhaps with a hint of derision, labels "psychometricians," "the book aroused antipathy."
However, the book was a huge hit with another constituency. "For reasons that I do not fully understand," writes a baffled Gardner, "the theory of multiple intelligences spoke immediately to educators—loudly and quite clearly."
The dichotomic reception of Frames of Mind set off warning signals in my mind to approach the theory of multiple intelligences with caution. I came to Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons after reading Daniel Willingham’s excellent Why Don’t Students Like School? The cognitive psychologist’s critical view of Gardner’s work increased my wariness.
The presentation of Multiple Intelligences didn’t help. It’s not an updated edition of Frames of Mind, but a poorly organized mish-mash of collected essays, some written with co-authors, and randomly ordered reflections on a theory by its creator a quarter of a century down the road.
Readers looking for an outline of that theory need go no further in this book than its first chapter, twenty-five pages aptly titled "In a Nutshell." Or, with even more brevity, you could note that Gardner posits seven intelligences: musical, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, intrapersonal and interpersonal. Maybe an eighth, too—a naturalist intelligence.
Most readers, I would think, come to this book with that outline more or less already in place.
Gardner does contextualize his work and its effect over the years, and acknowledges an impediment to more widespread acceptance of his ideas—a lack of supporting clinical evidence for multiple intelligences.
While it’s hard to argue with his plea that "psychologists should spend less time ranking people and more time trying to help them," it leaves a question unanswered. How?
Good teachers have long recognized that different students learn in different ways. I’m not really sure that determining which intelligences are in which classrooms will make for an improved version of tailoring instruction to varying needs and abilities, even to the moment.
To be fair, Gardner does address the issue of application in the second part of this book where he discusses the Project Spectrum elementary school program, learning through projects, the Arts PROPEL high school program, and using broader, more inclusive forms of assessment. The problem is that the information is sketchy. Gardner repeatedly reminds readers of the positive reaction to his theory among educators, rather than tell them exactly how educators can put theory into practice.
A chapter called “Multiple Entry Points Toward Disciplinary Understanding” offers an interesting and helpful way of framing instruction—narrational, logical, quantitative, foundational, aesthetic, experiential, or collaborative. Likewise, while considering Project Spectrum, Gardner includes a questionnaire which puts forward useful criteria for determining a child’s learning style through observation.
But is connecting learning styles to teaching really have much to do with intelligences as separate categories? Gardner says no, that "style and intelligence are really fundamentally different constructs." Ironic, given that I found the questionnaire and entry point framework the most practical takeaway from Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons.
Gardner tackles those "new horizons" in a final section that I thought was pretty much fluff. A chapter on multiple intelligence theory and the workplace seemed downright goofy.
The ostensible goal of this book is to introduce Gardner’s theory and to explain its application. It fails on both counts.
___________________________________________________________________
COMMENT FROM JULIE AT ALL EARS ON GOODREADS 3-20-11:
So interesting that he didn't think that educators would be a primary target for this info!
COMMENT FROM CLIF ON GOODREADS 3-21-11:
What obsesses me about education is - how to trigger motivation. I did very poorly in school because I simply wasn't interested in the subject matter. On my own initiative, however, I was fascinated with meteorology and avidly read and re-read books on weather, something not even covered in (elementary) school.
As it turned out, I couldn't go into the field professionally because I had (and this gets to multiple intelligence) absolutely NO aptitude for math. I am entirely a word, not a figure, person!
But regardless of what aspect of intelligence one may have - triggering the desire to use it is key. How do we do that? And why is it that I am insatiably eager to learn in subjects that interest me? If we could turn that on with a switch in students!
MY RESPONSE:
Julie, not only did Gardner fail to see that it was obvious that the people most invested in realizing kids’ intelligence would be the most significant audience for his theory, he still seems somewhat befuddled by his rock-star status in the educational community. I think his myopia tells us more than we’d like to know about him.
Clif, one reason why I am critical of Gardner’s work is that I believe it’s more important to look at what good teachers do than to look at psychological categories of intelligence, especially when the evidence base underlying that categorization is inchoate.
Good teachers go with core curriculum, but empathize with their scholars-in-training. They are aware there are different cognitive styles and personalities in their classrooms and adjust accordingly.
People who remember a favorite teacher often say that the reason the teacher was so great was that the teacher “motivated” them to learn. Of course, motivation is really internal; no one can turn it on but you. What good teachers do is connect curriculum to their students’ lives. They also really know the material, and are really enthusiastic about teaching it.
I would wager that some of your difficulty in engaging with school subject matter was caused as much by the way it was taught as by the content itself.
Almost all children are curious and creative. They love to play. They love to meet challenges if they believe they can improve. There’s a lot there education can tap into. Instead, it is often the case that all those qualities are stomped out of kids as soon as school starts.
Besides that, meteorology should be covered in elementary school!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: CONFIDENCE AND FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE
"One Hour Confidence Exercise Can Boost GPA, Study Finds" Curriculum Matters Blog/Education Week 3-17-11
I can't find it, but there was another well-known study a few years ago that used similar evidence to arrive at similar findings. My suspicion is that it was done by Carol Dweck.
I did find a connection to seventh graders.
There's a rather fine balance here. Students need to be confident but not so confident that they feel they don't really have to learn. David Brooks addressed this issue in a recent column called "The Modesty Manifesto."
I can't find it, but there was another well-known study a few years ago that used similar evidence to arrive at similar findings. My suspicion is that it was done by Carol Dweck.
I did find a connection to seventh graders.
There's a rather fine balance here. Students need to be confident but not so confident that they feel they don't really have to learn. David Brooks addressed this issue in a recent column called "The Modesty Manifesto."
WORLD OF LEARNING: CREATIVE STYLES AND ADHD
"Adults With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Score High in Creativity" ScienceDaily 3-17-11
I liked the way the questionnaire for this studied categorized creative styles into four basic types: clarifiers, who define and structure problems, ideators, who generate ideas, developers, who elaborate or refine ideas and solutions, and implementers, who incorporate a refined idea into a final product or solution.
I liked the way the questionnaire for this studied categorized creative styles into four basic types: clarifiers, who define and structure problems, ideators, who generate ideas, developers, who elaborate or refine ideas and solutions, and implementers, who incorporate a refined idea into a final product or solution.
WORLD OF LEARNING: DON'T LEAVE IT TO THE KIDS
"Digital Gaming Goes Academic" Education Week 3-14-11
Adds on to this earlier post. Parents need to participate, and teachers "know how to use the game effectively."
Adds on to this earlier post. Parents need to participate, and teachers "know how to use the game effectively."
WORLD OF LEARNING: KIDS RULE
"Let Kids Rule the School" Susan Engel/New York Times 3-14-11
Kids who own their learning will be better learners.
Kids who own their learning will be better learners.
WORLD OF LEARNING: STEREOTYPING MATH
"Gender Stereotypes About Math Develop as Early as Second Grade" ScienceDaily 3-14-11
I think the message here goes beyond gender stereotyping. Speaking from personal experience, I know I stopped pursuing any interests in math somewhere in the middle school to high school era, because I concluded I just wasn't a math person--even though today, I love math. I work with girls and boys who appear to have come to a similar conclusion, and they are often surprised to find that not only can they understand math, but that math can be fun.
I think the message here goes beyond gender stereotyping. Speaking from personal experience, I know I stopped pursuing any interests in math somewhere in the middle school to high school era, because I concluded I just wasn't a math person--even though today, I love math. I work with girls and boys who appear to have come to a similar conclusion, and they are often surprised to find that not only can they understand math, but that math can be fun.
Friday, March 18, 2011
LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF CARLOS COLLODI AND ROBERTO INNOCENTI'S "PINOCCHIO"
THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO. By Carlo Collodi. Translated by M.A. Murray. Illustrated by Roberto Innocenti. Creative Editions, 2005. 192 pages.
Three years ago, Robert Brock’s translation of Pinocchio garnered a fair amount of attention, including mine. I realized I knew nothing about the darker original story, despite the Disney movie being a childhood favorite.
Actually, though, I couldn’t remember too much about the movie, and thought I should see it again. What really stuck in my mind was Jiminy Cricket, and even more, the voice of Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket singing “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Bliss.
Three years later, I haven’t yet returned to the movie, nor read Brock’s translation of the Carlos Collodi story. But then Pinocchio drew me back.
In her superb blog, the Children’s Book-A-Day Almanac, Anita Silvey devoted an entry to the Robert Innocenti-illustrated edition of the book. The sample she provided of his work was too enticing to let Pinocchio slip out of consciousness once more.
Innocenti delivers. Collodi’s story, of course, is far longer than would fit in a picture book. Innocenti lavishly supplies many, many more pictures than normally found in a chapter book, in large format and lush color. He places the action in a hyper-realistic small-town Italy full of magic and foreboding, in a not-too-distant past—photography’s there and motor scooters are on the horizon. It’s a magnificent book to look through.
As for Collodi’s tale…. It’s probably no surprise to anyone that Disney homogenized the contents. Pinocchio will surprise, though. That cute little cricket is a large all-too-real insect creepily crawling up a wall. The cricket does talk, and offers the wooden puppet, whose life ambition is to ‘eat, drink, sleep and amuse myself, and to lead a vagabond life from morning to night,’ some sound advice.
Don’t run away. Don’t rebel. Obey your parents. Go to school, or at least learn a trade. If not, ‘you’ll grow up to be a perfect donkey.’
Pinoccio grabs a mallet and smashes the cricket’s head. Innocenti unflinchingly depicts a line of goo running down the wall to the discarded weapon.
Definitely not Disney.
There are moral overtones to the tale, and as in the movie, goodness transforms the puppet into a boy. But the original Pinocchio never really seems quite ready to walk a straight and narrow path. You get the feeling he never really learns his lesson, and never will.
Indeed, you get the feeling that is not what the story is really about, and that Collodi enjoys observing the evil mischief of his protagonist.
A violent story that glosses over morality might be considered inappropriate as children’s literature. I’ll leave that up to you, and any little devils looking for something with a little jolt. Fairy tale land can be unsettling. And thrilling. Ask the Grimms.
Highly recommended for unsqueamish fourth graders on up.
Three years ago, Robert Brock’s translation of Pinocchio garnered a fair amount of attention, including mine. I realized I knew nothing about the darker original story, despite the Disney movie being a childhood favorite.
Actually, though, I couldn’t remember too much about the movie, and thought I should see it again. What really stuck in my mind was Jiminy Cricket, and even more, the voice of Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket singing “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Bliss.
Three years later, I haven’t yet returned to the movie, nor read Brock’s translation of the Carlos Collodi story. But then Pinocchio drew me back.
In her superb blog, the Children’s Book-A-Day Almanac, Anita Silvey devoted an entry to the Robert Innocenti-illustrated edition of the book. The sample she provided of his work was too enticing to let Pinocchio slip out of consciousness once more.
Innocenti delivers. Collodi’s story, of course, is far longer than would fit in a picture book. Innocenti lavishly supplies many, many more pictures than normally found in a chapter book, in large format and lush color. He places the action in a hyper-realistic small-town Italy full of magic and foreboding, in a not-too-distant past—photography’s there and motor scooters are on the horizon. It’s a magnificent book to look through.
As for Collodi’s tale…. It’s probably no surprise to anyone that Disney homogenized the contents. Pinocchio will surprise, though. That cute little cricket is a large all-too-real insect creepily crawling up a wall. The cricket does talk, and offers the wooden puppet, whose life ambition is to ‘eat, drink, sleep and amuse myself, and to lead a vagabond life from morning to night,’ some sound advice.
Don’t run away. Don’t rebel. Obey your parents. Go to school, or at least learn a trade. If not, ‘you’ll grow up to be a perfect donkey.’
Pinoccio grabs a mallet and smashes the cricket’s head. Innocenti unflinchingly depicts a line of goo running down the wall to the discarded weapon.
Definitely not Disney.
There are moral overtones to the tale, and as in the movie, goodness transforms the puppet into a boy. But the original Pinocchio never really seems quite ready to walk a straight and narrow path. You get the feeling he never really learns his lesson, and never will.
Indeed, you get the feeling that is not what the story is really about, and that Collodi enjoys observing the evil mischief of his protagonist.
A violent story that glosses over morality might be considered inappropriate as children’s literature. I’ll leave that up to you, and any little devils looking for something with a little jolt. Fairy tale land can be unsettling. And thrilling. Ask the Grimms.
Highly recommended for unsqueamish fourth graders on up.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: SCREEN TIME POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES
"Screen Time for Kids: Is It Learning or a Brain Drain?" MindShift Blog/NPR 3-11-11
The key here, as it is with television, is that the medium is not viewed as a babysitter. The story quotes a pediatrician who says, "Most parents don’t understand the need for their participation." I know there are good video games and apps for portable devices, but kids are going to be attracted to the dreck, just as they are to candy.
The key here, as it is with television, is that the medium is not viewed as a babysitter. The story quotes a pediatrician who says, "Most parents don’t understand the need for their participation." I know there are good video games and apps for portable devices, but kids are going to be attracted to the dreck, just as they are to candy.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF CLARE VANDERPOOL'S "MOON OVER MANIFEST"
MOON OVER MANIFEST. By Clare Vanderpool. Random House Children's Books, 2010. 368 pages.
A nice safe choice for the Newbery people, but not one that knocked my socks off.
The best historical novels, of course, trick you into learning about their periods. The reader never notices he’s sitting still for a history seminar, but is swept up in a story that happens in history. Vanderpool’s intention to teach World War I, the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression, is quite transparent.
Not to mention her desire to impart a feel-good messages about diversity (that is, the diversity of European immigrants in a Kansas town), and self-confidence. You know the bad guys are going to lose because, well, they’re bad. And they’re in the Ku Klux Klan
The structure of the novel makes for some snags in the stream, as well. There are four narrators, the delightfully feisty Abilene Tucker, 12-years-old and making do without family as a new resident of Manifest, Kansas, the author of a somewhat hokey homespun newspaper column, the doughboy scribe behind a trove of letters Abilene comes across, and a Hungarian fortune teller.
If that isn’t enough stutter-stop narration for you, you also have to keep switching back and forth between two time frames, 1918 and 1936.
Too bad, because Vanderpool has some strong characters, a fascinating little window into an unsung time and place, and a nice bit of mystery regarding Abilene’s father.
I especially liked the cousins who quickly become Abilene’s buddies, the spunky Lettie and Ruthanne, and wished I could have followed more closely on the three girls’ heels as they kick up the dust in the streets of Manifest. In the 1918 flashbacks, a boy called Jinx is also a strong and complex character.
The adults, with the exception of Abilene’s caretaker, Shady Howard, both a man of the cloth and the bottle, are one-dimensional and predictable. Like a nun named Sister Redempta, and those guys wearing hoods.
If I’d come to Moon Over Manifest as an unheralded debut novel, I might have been more forgiving of its flaws. I expected more from the Newbery Award winner, especially in a year with so many great chapter books, and for that matter a fantastic non-fiction book about World War I, Russell Freedman’s The War to End All Wars.
A nice safe choice for the Newbery people, but not one that knocked my socks off.
The best historical novels, of course, trick you into learning about their periods. The reader never notices he’s sitting still for a history seminar, but is swept up in a story that happens in history. Vanderpool’s intention to teach World War I, the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression, is quite transparent.
Not to mention her desire to impart a feel-good messages about diversity (that is, the diversity of European immigrants in a Kansas town), and self-confidence. You know the bad guys are going to lose because, well, they’re bad. And they’re in the Ku Klux Klan
The structure of the novel makes for some snags in the stream, as well. There are four narrators, the delightfully feisty Abilene Tucker, 12-years-old and making do without family as a new resident of Manifest, Kansas, the author of a somewhat hokey homespun newspaper column, the doughboy scribe behind a trove of letters Abilene comes across, and a Hungarian fortune teller.
If that isn’t enough stutter-stop narration for you, you also have to keep switching back and forth between two time frames, 1918 and 1936.
Too bad, because Vanderpool has some strong characters, a fascinating little window into an unsung time and place, and a nice bit of mystery regarding Abilene’s father.
I especially liked the cousins who quickly become Abilene’s buddies, the spunky Lettie and Ruthanne, and wished I could have followed more closely on the three girls’ heels as they kick up the dust in the streets of Manifest. In the 1918 flashbacks, a boy called Jinx is also a strong and complex character.
The adults, with the exception of Abilene’s caretaker, Shady Howard, both a man of the cloth and the bottle, are one-dimensional and predictable. Like a nun named Sister Redempta, and those guys wearing hoods.
If I’d come to Moon Over Manifest as an unheralded debut novel, I might have been more forgiving of its flaws. I expected more from the Newbery Award winner, especially in a year with so many great chapter books, and for that matter a fantastic non-fiction book about World War I, Russell Freedman’s The War to End All Wars.
Friday, March 11, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: TOO MUCH INFORMATION?
"I Can't Think!: How the deluge of information paralyzes our ability to make good decisions" Sharon Begley/Newsweek 2/27/11
Apparently, this was the swan song issue of the old Newsweek, prior to Tina Brown's makeover. Which is fine, unless the magazine loses Sharon Begley.
Cutting to the chase: "Some people are better than others at ignoring extra information. These 'sufficers' are able to say enough: they channel-surf until they find an acceptable show and then stop, whereas 'maximizers' never stop surfing, devouring information, and so struggle to make a decision and move on. If you think you’re a maximizer, the best prescription for you might be the 'off' switch on your smart phone."
Begley gets it. There is a flip side, though, I think. Sometimes limiting the influx of information is an excuse to ignore viewpoints with which we don't agee. You see that in spades on comment areas on the internet.
Apparently, this was the swan song issue of the old Newsweek, prior to Tina Brown's makeover. Which is fine, unless the magazine loses Sharon Begley.
Cutting to the chase: "Some people are better than others at ignoring extra information. These 'sufficers' are able to say enough: they channel-surf until they find an acceptable show and then stop, whereas 'maximizers' never stop surfing, devouring information, and so struggle to make a decision and move on. If you think you’re a maximizer, the best prescription for you might be the 'off' switch on your smart phone."
Begley gets it. There is a flip side, though, I think. Sometimes limiting the influx of information is an excuse to ignore viewpoints with which we don't agee. You see that in spades on comment areas on the internet.
WORLD OF LEARNING: NO QUICK FIX DOES NOT MEAN BURY YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND
"'Brain-Based' Research: Run From It" Larry Cuban/Answer Sheet Blog/Washington Post 2/28/11
Run from it? I find Cuban's tone condescending, as if teachers are too ignorant to understand that neuroscience offers no easy solutions for education. Keeping up with the exciting research that is going on, as well as learning what we know about how we learn--for example by reading recent works by neuroscientists Stanislas Dehaene (Reading in the Brain) and Antonio Damasio (Self Comes to Mind)--can only enrich teaching. I know the words "brain-based research" are often part of a slick sales pitch, but anyone who's looking for a quick fix is probably not a very good teacher, wherever he might turn for the magic pill.
Run from it? I find Cuban's tone condescending, as if teachers are too ignorant to understand that neuroscience offers no easy solutions for education. Keeping up with the exciting research that is going on, as well as learning what we know about how we learn--for example by reading recent works by neuroscientists Stanislas Dehaene (Reading in the Brain) and Antonio Damasio (Self Comes to Mind)--can only enrich teaching. I know the words "brain-based research" are often part of a slick sales pitch, but anyone who's looking for a quick fix is probably not a very good teacher, wherever he might turn for the magic pill.
LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF GARETH HINDS'S "THE ODYSSEY"
THE ODYSSEY. By Gareth Hinds. Candlewick, 2010. 256 pages.
I’ve read Gareth Hinds’s Beowulf and King Lear. Both fantastic examples of what can be done with the graphic novel form. With The Odyssey, however, Hinds has really outdone himself.
He’s outdone himself in size—The Odyssey is 250 pages long—and scope—it includes all of the elemental parts of Homer’s epic. And he hasn’t left out any of the excitement and drama that figure in his other works. If anything, those aspects are intensified. Hinds’s spectacular artwork, rich color, and superior page layouts are icing on the cake. Such a lovely book.
Readers of children’s literature know that The Odyssey is a source tapped by many authors. How could kids not like a story jam-packed with magic and adventure, monsters and gods? Of the many adaptations, this is now the one I will recommend first. It’s the most comprehensive, and the most thrilling.
Highly recommended for sixth graders on up.
I’ve read Gareth Hinds’s Beowulf and King Lear. Both fantastic examples of what can be done with the graphic novel form. With The Odyssey, however, Hinds has really outdone himself.
He’s outdone himself in size—The Odyssey is 250 pages long—and scope—it includes all of the elemental parts of Homer’s epic. And he hasn’t left out any of the excitement and drama that figure in his other works. If anything, those aspects are intensified. Hinds’s spectacular artwork, rich color, and superior page layouts are icing on the cake. Such a lovely book.
Readers of children’s literature know that The Odyssey is a source tapped by many authors. How could kids not like a story jam-packed with magic and adventure, monsters and gods? Of the many adaptations, this is now the one I will recommend first. It’s the most comprehensive, and the most thrilling.
Highly recommended for sixth graders on up.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: MONEY FOR STUDY
"Should We Pay Kids to Study?" Planet Money Blog/NPR 2/23/11
Very provocative, eh? Also relates to my review of Daniel Pink's study of motivation in Drive.
Very provocative, eh? Also relates to my review of Daniel Pink's study of motivation in Drive.
WORLD OF LEARNING: BETTER BILINGUAL BRAINS PART TWO
"Speaking Foreign Languages May Help Protect Your Memory" ScienceDaily 2/223/11
Along with this previous post, more evidence for the value of bi-, tri-, multi-lingualism.
Along with this previous post, more evidence for the value of bi-, tri-, multi-lingualism.
WORLD OF LEARNING: MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE
"Listen to the Rhythm: Nerve Cells Acting as Metronomes Are Necessary for Certain Memory Processes" ScienceDaily 2/17/11
"When Fingers Start Tapping, the Music Must Be Striking a Chord" ScienceDaily 2/22/11
I knew there was a good reason for my obsession with music.
"When Fingers Start Tapping, the Music Must Be Striking a Chord" ScienceDaily 2/22/11
I knew there was a good reason for my obsession with music.
WORLD OF LEARNING: MATH CLASS MAKEOVER
"Math Curriculum Makeover" Dan Meyer/TEDxNYED/YouTube 3/6/10
I only just found out about this one, so I'm some months behind, but Meyer's presentation is great, and his comparison of the too predictable (and too brainless) format of math texbooks and Two and a Half Men is funny, on the money, and contemporary, given the recent Charlie Sheen media fixation.
I only just found out about this one, so I'm some months behind, but Meyer's presentation is great, and his comparison of the too predictable (and too brainless) format of math texbooks and Two and a Half Men is funny, on the money, and contemporary, given the recent Charlie Sheen media fixation.
RECENT NEWS: MY REVIEW OF "WHY DON'T STUDENTS LIKE SCHOOL?"
WHY DON'T STUDENTS LIKE SCHOOL? A COGNITIVE SCIENTIST ANSWERS QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW THE MIND WORKS AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE CLASSROOM. By Daniel Willingham. Jossey-Bass, 2010 (paperback). 258 pages.
The titular question might appear an opening to a rant against our educational system. Rest assured that Daniel Willingham is hardly scribbling out some angry screed. He’s thoughtful, and avoids polemic.
In fact, I hope I’m not oversimplifying when I say his basic answer is that students don’t like school because it’s hard.
If that sounds awfully facile, be aware that Willingham goes on to a knottier problem: What can we do about it?
What Willingham is really writing about is not student anathema, but how our brains work, especially in the areas of understanding and memory, and how that connects to teaching students. A harder concept to translate into a catchy title.
School is hard because "we are not naturally good thinkers." That doesn’t mean we don’t have amazing brains. Evolution has equipped us to take in what’s around us and react accordingly. In typically down-to-earth and insightful language, Willingham uses a striking contrast to clear up the paradox:
"Tasks that you take for granted—for example, walking on a rocky shore where the footing is uncertain—are much more difficult than playing top-level chess. No computer can do it."
Humans do, however, have more difficulty when consciously processing available information to solve problems or create new ideas—thinking. "The mind is not designed for thinking," Willingham writes. Thinking takes time. Thinking requires work. Thinking means not being sure.
So our brains default to not thinking when possible, even when we are performing complex actions—like walking on a rocky shore. Once we know how to chop an onion, drive a car, or read a book, we no longer waste time or effort considering how we are doing those things, or question whether we are doing them correctly.
Willingham repeatedly returns to a major stumbling block on the road to true reasoning and reflection—working memory. This is a short and easy-to-read book with lots of great practical advice for teachers, but its most valuable contribution to my own thinking was really helping me better understand what working memory is, and how its limitations affect learning and cognition.
In a way, working memory is consciousness itself. It is what you are thinking about now. Working memory allows you to blend what’s coming in through your senses with what you already know so that you can answer questions and put together thoughts.
Willingham cites current research that pretty definitively concludes working memory is limited—very limited—and more or less fixed—there is little evidence that you can improve it.
What you can do is cheat it. If the "lack of space in working memory is a fundamental bottleneck of human cognition," the trick is to enfold richer content into the limited number of items that small space can hold.
There are two ways to do this. One is to increase factual knowledge. That’s extremely counter-intuitive—learn more to learn more. Here’s how John Medina put it in his Brain Rules: "It’s like saying that if you carry two heavy backpacks on a hike instead of one, you will accomplish your journey more quickly…."
But it’s true. Willingham uses the same kind of model as Medina, dividing his work into nine "cognitive principles." One is, "Factual knowledge precedes skill." Another is, "We understand new things in the context of things we already know."
When a student can easily access factual knowledge from long-term memory, he can "chunk" information. He has a clear idea of context. The items that he’s manipulating in working memory are broader and deeper. As I’m reading a discussion of eukaryotic cells and life regulation in Antonio Damasio’s "Self Comes to Mind," I’m extremely grateful I just reviewed cell structure with a seventh grade kid with whom I’m working.
Walking on Willingham’s rocky shore is a demonstration of the other way to get around the working memory logjam. Performing automatically means a student doesn’t have to use working memory to think about that performance.
An example Willingham uses is practicing times tables as a yonng man. When he transferred to a new school, his math teacher insisted that Willingham would do better if he memorized the multiplication facts. Coming from a school that placed more emphasis on conceptual understanding than rote memorization, Willingham at first resented the requirement. He soon realized how much automaticity helped.
It’s another counterintuitive principle, its paradoxical nature beautifully summed up by a marvelous quote from the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead: "It is a profoundly erroneous truism…that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
Unfortunately, automaticity only comes effortlessly with tasks such as breathing. Willingham’s cognitive principle here is, "Proficiency requires practice." So teachers have to think hard about what their students most need to practice. They should also consider that spacing practice—rather than cramming—is more effective.
It’s clear that Willingham regards working memory as a universal. Indeed, he cites studies connecting working memory to intelligence. This viewpoint is quite different from the outlook of Howard Gardner, and Multiple Intelligence theory. Willingham is somewhat abashed to find himself in this counterpoint position.
Nevertheless, despite feeling "like a bit of a Grinch" in stating it, another one if his cognitive principles is, "Children are more alike than different in terms of learning." He makes a critical qualification, however—that he is not making a claim "that all children are alike, nor that teachers should treat children as interchangeable."
But more important than tailoring content to individuals is teachers really getting to a deep understanding of that content. Activating previous knowledge and making sure that knowledge is there will help advance proficiency and comprehensive mastery.
So will thinking "of to-be-learned material as answers." Begin with a thorough examination of the questions.
No matter where children’s interests lie, no matter what their talents or "intelligences," I do believe that well-rounded general knowledge should be a goal of education (as does Gardner). It makes sense to me that we can also generalize about the ways students might acquire such knowledge.
Gardner’s skepticism about "horizontal faculties," like working memory, might result in teachers using valuable time evaluating different learning styles that would better be spent in effectively presenting content to groups with at least some homogeneity.
Educators, parents and students looking for some good tips on how to do that will find Why Don’t Students Like School? a most worthwhile resource.
Highly recommended.
The titular question might appear an opening to a rant against our educational system. Rest assured that Daniel Willingham is hardly scribbling out some angry screed. He’s thoughtful, and avoids polemic.
In fact, I hope I’m not oversimplifying when I say his basic answer is that students don’t like school because it’s hard.
If that sounds awfully facile, be aware that Willingham goes on to a knottier problem: What can we do about it?
What Willingham is really writing about is not student anathema, but how our brains work, especially in the areas of understanding and memory, and how that connects to teaching students. A harder concept to translate into a catchy title.
School is hard because "we are not naturally good thinkers." That doesn’t mean we don’t have amazing brains. Evolution has equipped us to take in what’s around us and react accordingly. In typically down-to-earth and insightful language, Willingham uses a striking contrast to clear up the paradox:
"Tasks that you take for granted—for example, walking on a rocky shore where the footing is uncertain—are much more difficult than playing top-level chess. No computer can do it."
Humans do, however, have more difficulty when consciously processing available information to solve problems or create new ideas—thinking. "The mind is not designed for thinking," Willingham writes. Thinking takes time. Thinking requires work. Thinking means not being sure.
So our brains default to not thinking when possible, even when we are performing complex actions—like walking on a rocky shore. Once we know how to chop an onion, drive a car, or read a book, we no longer waste time or effort considering how we are doing those things, or question whether we are doing them correctly.
Willingham repeatedly returns to a major stumbling block on the road to true reasoning and reflection—working memory. This is a short and easy-to-read book with lots of great practical advice for teachers, but its most valuable contribution to my own thinking was really helping me better understand what working memory is, and how its limitations affect learning and cognition.
In a way, working memory is consciousness itself. It is what you are thinking about now. Working memory allows you to blend what’s coming in through your senses with what you already know so that you can answer questions and put together thoughts.
Willingham cites current research that pretty definitively concludes working memory is limited—very limited—and more or less fixed—there is little evidence that you can improve it.
What you can do is cheat it. If the "lack of space in working memory is a fundamental bottleneck of human cognition," the trick is to enfold richer content into the limited number of items that small space can hold.
There are two ways to do this. One is to increase factual knowledge. That’s extremely counter-intuitive—learn more to learn more. Here’s how John Medina put it in his Brain Rules: "It’s like saying that if you carry two heavy backpacks on a hike instead of one, you will accomplish your journey more quickly…."
But it’s true. Willingham uses the same kind of model as Medina, dividing his work into nine "cognitive principles." One is, "Factual knowledge precedes skill." Another is, "We understand new things in the context of things we already know."
When a student can easily access factual knowledge from long-term memory, he can "chunk" information. He has a clear idea of context. The items that he’s manipulating in working memory are broader and deeper. As I’m reading a discussion of eukaryotic cells and life regulation in Antonio Damasio’s "Self Comes to Mind," I’m extremely grateful I just reviewed cell structure with a seventh grade kid with whom I’m working.
Walking on Willingham’s rocky shore is a demonstration of the other way to get around the working memory logjam. Performing automatically means a student doesn’t have to use working memory to think about that performance.
An example Willingham uses is practicing times tables as a yonng man. When he transferred to a new school, his math teacher insisted that Willingham would do better if he memorized the multiplication facts. Coming from a school that placed more emphasis on conceptual understanding than rote memorization, Willingham at first resented the requirement. He soon realized how much automaticity helped.
It’s another counterintuitive principle, its paradoxical nature beautifully summed up by a marvelous quote from the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead: "It is a profoundly erroneous truism…that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
Unfortunately, automaticity only comes effortlessly with tasks such as breathing. Willingham’s cognitive principle here is, "Proficiency requires practice." So teachers have to think hard about what their students most need to practice. They should also consider that spacing practice—rather than cramming—is more effective.
It’s clear that Willingham regards working memory as a universal. Indeed, he cites studies connecting working memory to intelligence. This viewpoint is quite different from the outlook of Howard Gardner, and Multiple Intelligence theory. Willingham is somewhat abashed to find himself in this counterpoint position.
Nevertheless, despite feeling "like a bit of a Grinch" in stating it, another one if his cognitive principles is, "Children are more alike than different in terms of learning." He makes a critical qualification, however—that he is not making a claim "that all children are alike, nor that teachers should treat children as interchangeable."
But more important than tailoring content to individuals is teachers really getting to a deep understanding of that content. Activating previous knowledge and making sure that knowledge is there will help advance proficiency and comprehensive mastery.
So will thinking "of to-be-learned material as answers." Begin with a thorough examination of the questions.
No matter where children’s interests lie, no matter what their talents or "intelligences," I do believe that well-rounded general knowledge should be a goal of education (as does Gardner). It makes sense to me that we can also generalize about the ways students might acquire such knowledge.
Gardner’s skepticism about "horizontal faculties," like working memory, might result in teachers using valuable time evaluating different learning styles that would better be spent in effectively presenting content to groups with at least some homogeneity.
Educators, parents and students looking for some good tips on how to do that will find Why Don’t Students Like School? a most worthwhile resource.
Highly recommended.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: BETTER BRAINS THROUGH BILINGUALISM
"Infants Raised in Bilingual Enviornments Can Distinguish Unfamiliar Languages" ScienceDaily 2/20/11
"Juggling Languages Can Build Better Brains" ScienceDaily 2/21/11
Compelling evidence that early bilingual ability does not cause confusion, but improved cognition.
"Juggling Languages Can Build Better Brains" ScienceDaily 2/21/11
Compelling evidence that early bilingual ability does not cause confusion, but improved cognition.
WORLD OF LEARNING: EARLY TRAINING WITH A MOUSE
"Practice More Important Than Child's Age in Learning to Use Computer Mouse" ScienceDaily 2/16/11
If you're thinking about "stealth assessment," maybe kids should learn early how to use the computer. One intriguing thing in this Australian study is that kids seem to lose "smoothness" when manipulating the mouse as they get older. I would posit that this is not only a result of having to "sacrifice fluidity for speed," but also points to one of the drawbacks of computer screens--overstimulation. I think kids tend to jump around on screen because the movement is stimulating. The trouble then is less attention and focus.
If you're thinking about "stealth assessment," maybe kids should learn early how to use the computer. One intriguing thing in this Australian study is that kids seem to lose "smoothness" when manipulating the mouse as they get older. I would posit that this is not only a result of having to "sacrifice fluidity for speed," but also points to one of the drawbacks of computer screens--overstimulation. I think kids tend to jump around on screen because the movement is stimulating. The trouble then is less attention and focus.
WORLD OF LEARNING: "STEALTH ASSESSMENT"
"Video Games to Enhance Learning" ScienceDaily 2/16/11
Video games can offer the student an immediate chance to see if he has mastered material, and to try again if he doesn't. It can offer the teacher an immediate chance to see the level of remembering and understanding for an individual. Then there's the added benefit of kids having fun as they play. That's why one of the researchers quoted here uses the term "stealth assessment." It's worked for me with Quizlet.
This kind of assessment is just what is indicated in a Purdue University study that gave more weight to "retrieval practice" as a memory enhancer than "elaborative studying with concept mapping."
Video games can offer the student an immediate chance to see if he has mastered material, and to try again if he doesn't. It can offer the teacher an immediate chance to see the level of remembering and understanding for an individual. Then there's the added benefit of kids having fun as they play. That's why one of the researchers quoted here uses the term "stealth assessment." It's worked for me with Quizlet.
This kind of assessment is just what is indicated in a Purdue University study that gave more weight to "retrieval practice" as a memory enhancer than "elaborative studying with concept mapping."
Saturday, February 19, 2011
LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF KAREN CUSHMAN'S "ALCHEMY AND MEGGY SWANN"
ALCHEMY AND MEGGY SWANN. By Karen Cushman. Clarion Books, 2010. 176 pages.
While reading Anne Scott MacLeod’s thought-provoking essay on historical fiction in the recent, and excellent, ‘A Family of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Literature,’ I was a little distressed to learn that MacLeod faults Karen Cushman for copping out on her heroine’s fate in ‘Catherine, Called Birdy.’
At the end of that work, Birdy lucks out when her arranged medieval marriage to an ‘old, ugly, and illiterate’ lecher is cancelled when he dies. Instead, she will wed his young, handsome, and well-read son. Not a legitimate representation of the time, MacLeod insists. ‘In fairness,’ she admits, ‘I think Cushman knew this; she just flinched at consigning her likable character to her likely fate.’ (MacLeod’s piece is online at The Horn Book’s site.)
OK, sure. But I loved ‘Catherine, Called Birdy.’ I also believe that children have the wherewithal to distinguish fantasy from history, and to realize that writers of fiction have license to alter the documentary record. Readers of ‘Catherine’ learn a great deal about England in the late thirteenth century. As MacLeod has to acknowledge, ‘Birdy’s world is real enough---rough, dirty, and uncomfortable….’
I suppose ‘Alchemy and Meggy Swann’ could be criticized in the same way. Perhaps Meggy, a poor teenaged girl left orphaned in Elizabethan London, crippled by a congenital birth defect, should have ended up battered and hopeless. That would’ve been a different, and grimmer, tale.
A tale that could not have starred Cushman’s Meggy, a typically and satisfyingly feisty and sharp-tongued protagonist whose hard exterior covers the warmest of hearts. But Meggy’s life in exile is hardly anodynic, and Cushman’s London festers, filthy, stinking, noisy—and alive with color and flavor.
With the death of her beloved granny, Meggy has been ousted from country home and sent to her absent-minded and irresponsible father. He’s the one who practices alchemy. With the end of the period of servitude for the boy who assists the alchemist, he is forced to recognize his daughter and enlist her help.
The boy, Roger, turns out to be Meggy’s first friend in London, other than her pet goose. Unlike others, Roger does not ‘look to…demons’ to explain Meggy’s hip dysplasia. He’s more interested in her eyes than her limp.
Attempting to finance the search to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, worthless material into gold, Meggy’s father gets in too deep with the wrong sort. Meggy is, of course, the one who must try to subvert the nefarious plot that ensues.
As she does, she ‘wabbles’ through the crowded London streets and the reader learns about ballads and broadsides, sausage pies and ale, and that alchemy and natural philosophy were precursors of chemistry and the Scientific Revolution.
The reader is also treated to a marvelous story. In the same way that alchemy blurs the line between magic and reason, Cushman crafts a blend of energetic fiction with an authentic dose of the era’s language, customs, sights, sounds, and smells that earns ‘Alchemy and Meggy Swann’ a place among the best children’s historical fiction.
Highly recommended for fifth graders on up.
While reading Anne Scott MacLeod’s thought-provoking essay on historical fiction in the recent, and excellent, ‘A Family of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Literature,’ I was a little distressed to learn that MacLeod faults Karen Cushman for copping out on her heroine’s fate in ‘Catherine, Called Birdy.’
At the end of that work, Birdy lucks out when her arranged medieval marriage to an ‘old, ugly, and illiterate’ lecher is cancelled when he dies. Instead, she will wed his young, handsome, and well-read son. Not a legitimate representation of the time, MacLeod insists. ‘In fairness,’ she admits, ‘I think Cushman knew this; she just flinched at consigning her likable character to her likely fate.’ (MacLeod’s piece is online at The Horn Book’s site.)
OK, sure. But I loved ‘Catherine, Called Birdy.’ I also believe that children have the wherewithal to distinguish fantasy from history, and to realize that writers of fiction have license to alter the documentary record. Readers of ‘Catherine’ learn a great deal about England in the late thirteenth century. As MacLeod has to acknowledge, ‘Birdy’s world is real enough---rough, dirty, and uncomfortable….’
I suppose ‘Alchemy and Meggy Swann’ could be criticized in the same way. Perhaps Meggy, a poor teenaged girl left orphaned in Elizabethan London, crippled by a congenital birth defect, should have ended up battered and hopeless. That would’ve been a different, and grimmer, tale.
A tale that could not have starred Cushman’s Meggy, a typically and satisfyingly feisty and sharp-tongued protagonist whose hard exterior covers the warmest of hearts. But Meggy’s life in exile is hardly anodynic, and Cushman’s London festers, filthy, stinking, noisy—and alive with color and flavor.
With the death of her beloved granny, Meggy has been ousted from country home and sent to her absent-minded and irresponsible father. He’s the one who practices alchemy. With the end of the period of servitude for the boy who assists the alchemist, he is forced to recognize his daughter and enlist her help.
The boy, Roger, turns out to be Meggy’s first friend in London, other than her pet goose. Unlike others, Roger does not ‘look to…demons’ to explain Meggy’s hip dysplasia. He’s more interested in her eyes than her limp.
Attempting to finance the search to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, worthless material into gold, Meggy’s father gets in too deep with the wrong sort. Meggy is, of course, the one who must try to subvert the nefarious plot that ensues.
As she does, she ‘wabbles’ through the crowded London streets and the reader learns about ballads and broadsides, sausage pies and ale, and that alchemy and natural philosophy were precursors of chemistry and the Scientific Revolution.
The reader is also treated to a marvelous story. In the same way that alchemy blurs the line between magic and reason, Cushman crafts a blend of energetic fiction with an authentic dose of the era’s language, customs, sights, sounds, and smells that earns ‘Alchemy and Meggy Swann’ a place among the best children’s historical fiction.
Highly recommended for fifth graders on up.
LAR'S LIBRARY: DYSTOPIA PRIMER
With Charles McGrath's look at the dystopia phenomenon in the New York Times Magazine, it's time for a review of what I've seen on the subject in the last couple of years. Let's start with Newsweek's "Unhappily Ever After," followed by YA writer John Green's review of "The Hunger Games" and what I think is the best of the lot, Susan Beth Pfeffer's "The Dead and Gone." Next up: Laura Miller's superb survey, "Fresh Hell," from The New Yorker, and bringing us up almost to McGrath's piece, prominent YA authors weigh in on "The Dark Side of Young Adult Fiction."
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
LAR'S LIBRARY: ROALD DAHL
It seems I've been reading a lot of, and talking a lot about, Roald Dahl's children's books recently. It's good to remembre that he is such a great children's author is because he's a great writer, as this article in the U.K.'s Telegraph reminds us.
WORLD OF LEARNING: MICRO AND MACRO BRAIN RESEARCH
"V.S. Ramachandran's Tales of The 'Tell-Tale Brain'" NPR/Fresh Air 2/14/11
"Trial and Error: The Brain Learns From Mistakes" ScienceDaily 2/14/11
"Partnership of Genes Affects the Brain's Development" ScienceDaily 2/14/11
Perhaps it's a stretch to connect these stories, but nevertheless:
The two ScienceDaily stories are about new technology is letting us better see how the brain works by looking closely (micro) at the actions of "Golden Goal" and "Flamingo," as well as Bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), proteins.
The Fresh Air interview with the very cool neurologist V.S. Rmachadran, on the other hand, is largely about how old technology is letting us better see how the brain works by looking globally (macro) at how plasticity can help us trick ourselves into relieving pain and learning.
Both approaches are useful.
"Trial and Error: The Brain Learns From Mistakes" ScienceDaily 2/14/11
"Partnership of Genes Affects the Brain's Development" ScienceDaily 2/14/11
Perhaps it's a stretch to connect these stories, but nevertheless:
The two ScienceDaily stories are about new technology is letting us better see how the brain works by looking closely (micro) at the actions of "Golden Goal" and "Flamingo," as well as Bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), proteins.
The Fresh Air interview with the very cool neurologist V.S. Rmachadran, on the other hand, is largely about how old technology is letting us better see how the brain works by looking globally (macro) at how plasticity can help us trick ourselves into relieving pain and learning.
Both approaches are useful.
Monday, February 14, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: CONTEXTUALIZING A RECENT STUDY ON SELF-CONTROL
"For Kids, Self-Control Factors Into Future Success" NPR 2/14/11
NPR picks up on the long-term study recently done by Duke University psychologists looking at children in New Zealand and Great Britain and the effect of early self-control (or lack of it) as time goes by. I first saw the study covered in ScienceDaily.
Neither story really contextualizes this recent work. It's a hot topic and I linked to a few other pieces in that earlier post. Now I was reminded that the first chapter of Ellen Galinsky's Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Skills Every Child Needs is "Skill One: Focus and Self-Control." And Elena Bodrova and Deborah J. Leong's Tools of the Mind program places heavy emphasis on self-regulation, and offers strategies to encourage that.
NPR picks up on the long-term study recently done by Duke University psychologists looking at children in New Zealand and Great Britain and the effect of early self-control (or lack of it) as time goes by. I first saw the study covered in ScienceDaily.
Neither story really contextualizes this recent work. It's a hot topic and I linked to a few other pieces in that earlier post. Now I was reminded that the first chapter of Ellen Galinsky's Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Skills Every Child Needs is "Skill One: Focus and Self-Control." And Elena Bodrova and Deborah J. Leong's Tools of the Mind program places heavy emphasis on self-regulation, and offers strategies to encourage that.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
WORLD OF LEARNING: LARGE NUMBERS AND LANGUAGE
"Without Language, Large Numbers Don't Add Up" NPR 2/9/11
"Words Help People From Mathematical Concepts" ScienceDaily 2/7/11
This intriguing idea is not new. I first encountered it in Keith Devlin's The Math Gene.
"Words Help People From Mathematical Concepts" ScienceDaily 2/7/11
This intriguing idea is not new. I first encountered it in Keith Devlin's The Math Gene.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF VICTORIA BOND AND T.R. SIMON'S "ZORA AND ME"
ZORA AND ME. By Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon. Candlewick Press, 2010. 192 pages.
People tend to denigrate adaptations, abridgements, those shortcuts to understanding that all of us use from time to time despite their reputations.
Admit it. As a student, you read the Cliff Notes, or more likely these days, the Wikipedia summary, of a required text rather than do your homework. Perhaps as an adult, you’ve refined the process. A few reviews, and you blithely pretend that you’ve read the book they’re talking about at the dinner party.
One of the joys of working with kids is that you get to read kids’ books. They’re easily digestible, but you can still feel like you aren’t cheating. They’re real books. Many are just as much works of literature as anything the older crowd might consider paragons. Plus you can learn something.
Such is the case with Zora and Me. By reading a clever little mystery that could stand alone as just that—a clever little mystery—you’re exposed to a fascinating slice of history. Eatonville, Florida, was "the first incorporated all-black township in the United States." That was in 1887. It was also the place where the family of Zora Neale Hurston, one of America’s most esteemed writers, moved in 1894, and where she grew up.
So you’re also introduced to Zora, or a fictionalized fourth grade version of Zora Neale Hurston. Besides appending their book with a timeline of her life and a bibliography, Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon also include a list of children’s books based on folktales that Hurston collected. So you can follow up, if you so desire.
But that’s not a requirement. Which brings me back to the clever little mystery.
Cassie has a friend, Zora, already known for her fascination with the tales adults tell, and her own story-telling abilities. When Old Lady Bronson is mysteriously injured at a pond called Blue Sink, Zora conflates the reality of a man-eating alligator and a reclusive old man to produce the story of a man who "can take on the face of a gator." Or it seems that is what Zora is doing.
Then an event of greater import happens in Eatonville—murder. Cassie, Zora, and their friend Teddy set out to prove the gator man is guilty. And there is something to Zora’s theory. But the real shape-shifting, it turns out, has a more insidious source than ghostly gators.
The mystery is wrapped up in a wistful coming-of-age story told in wonderfully evocative language—a story where Zora’s father lights in on her with special vigor because, "Sometimes there’s nothing more aggravating than looking in a mirror."
A story that takes place in a time before "the moving pictures and before the radio" when: "people were accustomed to silence; we even used to hug up on it once in a while. I never though of it as special then, that we could just sit and stare and luxuriate in the comfort of our own thoughts. Without time to think, we wouldn’t have had anything to talk about in the first place."
See? You should read kids’ books. Kids need adults, and other kids, who can tell them what’s good. Zora and Me is.
Recommended for fourth graders on up.
People tend to denigrate adaptations, abridgements, those shortcuts to understanding that all of us use from time to time despite their reputations.
Admit it. As a student, you read the Cliff Notes, or more likely these days, the Wikipedia summary, of a required text rather than do your homework. Perhaps as an adult, you’ve refined the process. A few reviews, and you blithely pretend that you’ve read the book they’re talking about at the dinner party.
One of the joys of working with kids is that you get to read kids’ books. They’re easily digestible, but you can still feel like you aren’t cheating. They’re real books. Many are just as much works of literature as anything the older crowd might consider paragons. Plus you can learn something.
Such is the case with Zora and Me. By reading a clever little mystery that could stand alone as just that—a clever little mystery—you’re exposed to a fascinating slice of history. Eatonville, Florida, was "the first incorporated all-black township in the United States." That was in 1887. It was also the place where the family of Zora Neale Hurston, one of America’s most esteemed writers, moved in 1894, and where she grew up.
So you’re also introduced to Zora, or a fictionalized fourth grade version of Zora Neale Hurston. Besides appending their book with a timeline of her life and a bibliography, Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon also include a list of children’s books based on folktales that Hurston collected. So you can follow up, if you so desire.
But that’s not a requirement. Which brings me back to the clever little mystery.
Cassie has a friend, Zora, already known for her fascination with the tales adults tell, and her own story-telling abilities. When Old Lady Bronson is mysteriously injured at a pond called Blue Sink, Zora conflates the reality of a man-eating alligator and a reclusive old man to produce the story of a man who "can take on the face of a gator." Or it seems that is what Zora is doing.
Then an event of greater import happens in Eatonville—murder. Cassie, Zora, and their friend Teddy set out to prove the gator man is guilty. And there is something to Zora’s theory. But the real shape-shifting, it turns out, has a more insidious source than ghostly gators.
The mystery is wrapped up in a wistful coming-of-age story told in wonderfully evocative language—a story where Zora’s father lights in on her with special vigor because, "Sometimes there’s nothing more aggravating than looking in a mirror."
A story that takes place in a time before "the moving pictures and before the radio" when: "people were accustomed to silence; we even used to hug up on it once in a while. I never though of it as special then, that we could just sit and stare and luxuriate in the comfort of our own thoughts. Without time to think, we wouldn’t have had anything to talk about in the first place."
See? You should read kids’ books. Kids need adults, and other kids, who can tell them what’s good. Zora and Me is.
Recommended for fourth graders on up.
Friday, February 11, 2011
LAR'S LIBRARY: BLACK HISTORY MONTH, E-READERS, NEWBERY
For Black History Month, Scholastic School Journal asked twenty of the best children's book authors to write a few words on a kids' book about the black experience "that they truly loved." The result is wonderful. I nominate Langston Hughes's autobiographical The Big Sea. Though technically not a children's book, it is so accessible that older kids can easily read it, and it's profoundly moving.
Kids can read books about the black experience, and many other books, on e-readers. As more and more young people get e-readers, children's e-book sales are rising, as reported in the New York Times.
The American Library Association's annual awards for 2011 include the prestigious Newbery, which went to Clare Vanderpool's Moon Over Manifest.
Kids can read books about the black experience, and many other books, on e-readers. As more and more young people get e-readers, children's e-book sales are rising, as reported in the New York Times.
The American Library Association's annual awards for 2011 include the prestigious Newbery, which went to Clare Vanderpool's Moon Over Manifest.
WORLD OF LEARNING
"Neural Communication: Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together" ScienceDaily 2/7/11
"Study Finds Social-Skills Teaching Boosts Academics" Education Week 2/4/11
"Teenagers, Friends and Bad Decisions" Well Blog/New York Times 2/3/11
"Children's Genes Influence How Well They Take Advantage of Education, Twin Study Shows" ScienceDaily 2/3/11
"Learning Causes Structural Changes in Affected Neurons" ScienceDaily 2/3/11
"Sleep Selectively Stores Useful Memories: Brain Evaluates Information Based on Future Expectations, Study Suggests" ScienceDaily 2/1/11
"Can Txt Msgs Really Help Kidz 2 Spell?" ABC News 1/31/11
"Presence of Peers Heightens Teens' Sensitivity to Rewards of Risk" ScienceDaily 1/29/11
"Study Finds Social-Skills Teaching Boosts Academics" Education Week 2/4/11
"Teenagers, Friends and Bad Decisions" Well Blog/New York Times 2/3/11
"Children's Genes Influence How Well They Take Advantage of Education, Twin Study Shows" ScienceDaily 2/3/11
"Learning Causes Structural Changes in Affected Neurons" ScienceDaily 2/3/11
"Sleep Selectively Stores Useful Memories: Brain Evaluates Information Based on Future Expectations, Study Suggests" ScienceDaily 2/1/11
"Can Txt Msgs Really Help Kidz 2 Spell?" ABC News 1/31/11
"Presence of Peers Heightens Teens' Sensitivity to Rewards of Risk" ScienceDaily 1/29/11
WORLD OF LEARNING: SELF-CONTROL
"Childhood Self-Control Predicts Adult Health and Wealth" ScienceDaily 1/25/11
A little surprised this article didn't even mention the Stanford marshmallow experiment. A couple of years ago, Jonah Lehrer had a marvelous piece in The New Yorker about self-control (and the marshmallow experiment). I've written about it, too.
A little surprised this article didn't even mention the Stanford marshmallow experiment. A couple of years ago, Jonah Lehrer had a marvelous piece in The New Yorker about self-control (and the marshmallow experiment). I've written about it, too.
WORLD OF LEARNING: SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA MEMORIZE
"Podcast: Oops! Why Rote Memorization is a Valid Teaching Tool" BAm!Radio
This discussion features Daniel Willingham. I'll be reviewing his Why Don't Students Like School? He really help me crystallize my understanding of working and long-term memory.
This discussion features Daniel Willingham. I'll be reviewing his Why Don't Students Like School? He really help me crystallize my understanding of working and long-term memory.
WORLD OF LEARNING: ROOTS OF LITERACY
"Podcast: Parents, Books and the Roots of Literacy" Early Ed Watch Blog 1/24/11
Nice interview with Gabrielle Miller, national director of Raising A Reader, about the skills children can, or cannot, bring to reading from their homes. Miller touts Ellen Galinsky's Mind in the Making, a book I'm now reading.
Nice interview with Gabrielle Miller, national director of Raising A Reader, about the skills children can, or cannot, bring to reading from their homes. Miller touts Ellen Galinsky's Mind in the Making, a book I'm now reading.
WORLD OF LEARNING: HANDWRITING AND LEARNING
"Better Learning Through Handwriting" ScienceDaily 1/24/11
I've posted on this subject before. While this study, by a Norwegian reading specialist in collaboration with a French neuro physiologist, just leads to some initial ideas about how composing by pen or pencil, rather than on a keyboard, might affect learning, it definitely makes the case that different things are happening in the brain when you write instead of type. In an experiment "in which the participants were assigned the task of having to learn to write in an unknown alphabet," those who learned by writing on paper did better than another group that learned on keyboards. The handwriters also showed far more brain activity in Broca's area--speech production.
I've posted on this subject before. While this study, by a Norwegian reading specialist in collaboration with a French neuro physiologist, just leads to some initial ideas about how composing by pen or pencil, rather than on a keyboard, might affect learning, it definitely makes the case that different things are happening in the brain when you write instead of type. In an experiment "in which the participants were assigned the task of having to learn to write in an unknown alphabet," those who learned by writing on paper did better than another group that learned on keyboards. The handwriters also showed far more brain activity in Broca's area--speech production.
LAR'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF CARL HIAASEN'S "FLUSH"
FLUSH. By Carl Hiaasen. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2007. 263 pages.
You might come to Flush with two preconceptions.
Carl Hiaasen writes adult thrillers with a satirical tenor, often featuring characters from the trailer trash end of the social spectrum. So it’s likely that his children’s books will retain a bit of that edge.
Those adult thrillers, and Hiaasen’s books for younger readers, focus on environmentalism, so it’s likely that Flush centers on that kind of issue.
Your preconceptions would be proven true.
The tone of Flush is sardonic. It features a bartender who saves the day named Shelly, who has a "barbed-wire tattoo around one of her biceps," wears "stockings that look like they were made from a mullet net," and actually lives in a trailer park. Not your run-of-the-mill children’s book character.
It’s all about a kid’s battle to help his father stop a casino boat owner from dumping raw sewage in Florida’s coastal waters. Sometimes the message is close to heavy-handed. The bad guys have zero complexity, no redeeming social value.
There is more going on in Flush, however. Wthout making a big deal of it, Hiaasen makes his personable 14-year-old protagonist an accomplished naturalist. Noah knows the names of plants and animals that live where he does—in the Florida Keys. And I mean he really knows them, not just as names he can rattle off. Noah really looks at where he is when he’s outdoors, and notices what he sees.
In our culture, where kids often suffer from what Richard Louv in his Last Child in the Woods called "nature-deficit disorder," Noah makes a nice role model. Although Noah is not afraid of risks, he’s an eminently practical kind of guy, unlike his dad, who is a hothead. Noah gets that practicality from his mother. She married because she loved her impulsive husband, but he goes a little far in his fight to keep the ocean clean. Flush has a lovely subplot—Noah and his stubbornly righteous little sister, Abbey, working together to save their parents’ marriage.
That subplot and Noah’s eye for nature combine with colorful characters and a good dose of action and suspense to endear readers of Flush. I haven’t met a middle schooler who’s read it who wasn’t enthusiastic about the experience. Now I am, too. It’s a sweet little chapter book.
Recommended for fourth graders on up.
You might come to Flush with two preconceptions.
Carl Hiaasen writes adult thrillers with a satirical tenor, often featuring characters from the trailer trash end of the social spectrum. So it’s likely that his children’s books will retain a bit of that edge.
Those adult thrillers, and Hiaasen’s books for younger readers, focus on environmentalism, so it’s likely that Flush centers on that kind of issue.
Your preconceptions would be proven true.
The tone of Flush is sardonic. It features a bartender who saves the day named Shelly, who has a "barbed-wire tattoo around one of her biceps," wears "stockings that look like they were made from a mullet net," and actually lives in a trailer park. Not your run-of-the-mill children’s book character.
It’s all about a kid’s battle to help his father stop a casino boat owner from dumping raw sewage in Florida’s coastal waters. Sometimes the message is close to heavy-handed. The bad guys have zero complexity, no redeeming social value.
There is more going on in Flush, however. Wthout making a big deal of it, Hiaasen makes his personable 14-year-old protagonist an accomplished naturalist. Noah knows the names of plants and animals that live where he does—in the Florida Keys. And I mean he really knows them, not just as names he can rattle off. Noah really looks at where he is when he’s outdoors, and notices what he sees.
In our culture, where kids often suffer from what Richard Louv in his Last Child in the Woods called "nature-deficit disorder," Noah makes a nice role model. Although Noah is not afraid of risks, he’s an eminently practical kind of guy, unlike his dad, who is a hothead. Noah gets that practicality from his mother. She married because she loved her impulsive husband, but he goes a little far in his fight to keep the ocean clean. Flush has a lovely subplot—Noah and his stubbornly righteous little sister, Abbey, working together to save their parents’ marriage.
That subplot and Noah’s eye for nature combine with colorful characters and a good dose of action and suspense to endear readers of Flush. I haven’t met a middle schooler who’s read it who wasn’t enthusiastic about the experience. Now I am, too. It’s a sweet little chapter book.
Recommended for fourth graders on up.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
LARS'S LIBRARY: MY REVIEW OF SCOTT WESTERFELD'S "LEVIATHAN"
LEVIATHAN. By Scott Westerfeld. Illustrated by Keith Thompson. Simon and Shuster Children's Publishing, 2010. 464 pages.
Aleksander, a prince barred from his throne, is up past his bedtime in 1914, playing with tin soldiers. Given who he is, it follows that in this imaginary battle, the French and British forces stand "no chance against the might of the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
What prevents the boy from becoming king is his mother, Sophie. Franz Ferdinand married her for love rather than dynastic succession, and children of the union are denied the crown. For now.
Suddenly, the surreptitious playing and the actions of make-believe armies are interrupted, and the prince is whisked away to very real battles. When Aleksander threatens his abductors with beheadings ordered by his father, one of them counters, "Alas not, Your Highness…. Your parents are both dead, murdered this night in Sarajevo."
Does it sound like history? The 1914 assassinations of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo did begin World War I. European nations, insecure about their imperial standing, reacted all too swiftly, leading to the unraveling of a complicated network of alliances and counter-alliances, and a long and brutal war that solved nothing and left more than nine million combatants dead.
Franz Ferdinand did fall in love with Sophie Chotek. Her lack of pedigree meant a marriage designated as morganatic, between social unequals. Offspring were out of the royal line.
But hold on. There was no son named Aleksander. If there had been, his tin toys would probably not have included "diesel-powered walking machines," nor "Darwinist monsters." Actual models for such toys—that, of course, is complete fantasy.
A steam-punk fantasy made rivetingly believable by Scott Westerfeld. In Leviathan, the same powers still go head to head, but with competing technologies based on competing science. The British and the French have moved forward from the discovery of evolution to genetically-engineered living weaponry, while the Germans and the Austrians have taken steam-driven machinery to a new level—armored vehicles that traverse difficult terrain by walking on legs.
It’s not the Central Powers against the Allies, but Clankers against Darwinists.
Westerfeld creates the perfect foil for Aleksander in Deryn Sharp, a newly enlisted British midshipman learning how "fabricated beasts" work. The swirling stew of events in the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination result in her getting a position on "the first of the great hydrogen breathers to rival the kaiser’s zeppelins"—the Leviathan.
Sharp is a quick study, brash and bold. Sharp also has a secret. She is not the boy that the Air Service thought they had signed up.
The Leviathan carries its own secret, a military secret zealously guarded by one of Britain’s "boffins." Dr. Barlow is an unusual scientific expert in the same way that Deryn Sharp is an unusual warrior. She’s not the expected gender.
The Leviathan rushes to complete its covert mission and perhaps keep war at bay. The Austrian prince runs to escape those who would eliminate any rival to the kaiser, a rivalry that could postpone a greater conflict. It’s inevitable that Deryn and Aleksander’s paths will cross.
What happens makes for a skillfully-woven tale of intrigue, suspense and adventure. Westerfeld has done a sterling job. Keith Thompson contributes extraordinary illustrations that perfectly fit the story, little wonders of chiaroscuro. Leviathan will keep middle schoolers, teens, and adults totally engrossed, and anxious to read, as I now am, its sequel, Behemoth. Perhaps it will also prompt them to find out more about World War I.
Highly recommended for fifth graders on up.
Aleksander, a prince barred from his throne, is up past his bedtime in 1914, playing with tin soldiers. Given who he is, it follows that in this imaginary battle, the French and British forces stand "no chance against the might of the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
What prevents the boy from becoming king is his mother, Sophie. Franz Ferdinand married her for love rather than dynastic succession, and children of the union are denied the crown. For now.
Suddenly, the surreptitious playing and the actions of make-believe armies are interrupted, and the prince is whisked away to very real battles. When Aleksander threatens his abductors with beheadings ordered by his father, one of them counters, "Alas not, Your Highness…. Your parents are both dead, murdered this night in Sarajevo."
Does it sound like history? The 1914 assassinations of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo did begin World War I. European nations, insecure about their imperial standing, reacted all too swiftly, leading to the unraveling of a complicated network of alliances and counter-alliances, and a long and brutal war that solved nothing and left more than nine million combatants dead.
Franz Ferdinand did fall in love with Sophie Chotek. Her lack of pedigree meant a marriage designated as morganatic, between social unequals. Offspring were out of the royal line.
But hold on. There was no son named Aleksander. If there had been, his tin toys would probably not have included "diesel-powered walking machines," nor "Darwinist monsters." Actual models for such toys—that, of course, is complete fantasy.
A steam-punk fantasy made rivetingly believable by Scott Westerfeld. In Leviathan, the same powers still go head to head, but with competing technologies based on competing science. The British and the French have moved forward from the discovery of evolution to genetically-engineered living weaponry, while the Germans and the Austrians have taken steam-driven machinery to a new level—armored vehicles that traverse difficult terrain by walking on legs.
It’s not the Central Powers against the Allies, but Clankers against Darwinists.
Westerfeld creates the perfect foil for Aleksander in Deryn Sharp, a newly enlisted British midshipman learning how "fabricated beasts" work. The swirling stew of events in the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination result in her getting a position on "the first of the great hydrogen breathers to rival the kaiser’s zeppelins"—the Leviathan.
Sharp is a quick study, brash and bold. Sharp also has a secret. She is not the boy that the Air Service thought they had signed up.
The Leviathan carries its own secret, a military secret zealously guarded by one of Britain’s "boffins." Dr. Barlow is an unusual scientific expert in the same way that Deryn Sharp is an unusual warrior. She’s not the expected gender.
The Leviathan rushes to complete its covert mission and perhaps keep war at bay. The Austrian prince runs to escape those who would eliminate any rival to the kaiser, a rivalry that could postpone a greater conflict. It’s inevitable that Deryn and Aleksander’s paths will cross.
What happens makes for a skillfully-woven tale of intrigue, suspense and adventure. Westerfeld has done a sterling job. Keith Thompson contributes extraordinary illustrations that perfectly fit the story, little wonders of chiaroscuro. Leviathan will keep middle schoolers, teens, and adults totally engrossed, and anxious to read, as I now am, its sequel, Behemoth. Perhaps it will also prompt them to find out more about World War I.
Highly recommended for fifth graders on up.
WORLD OF LEARNING: TESTING MEMORY
"Learning Science: Actively Recalling Information From Memory Beats Elaborate Study Methods" ScienceDaily 1/21/11
"To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test" New York Times 1/20/11
Both articles are about the same study, but offer complementary information. ScienceDaily's headline is a bit more to the point.
What the study finds is that exercising recall from long-term memory with timely feedback can be more effective than approaching material in different ways (continued exercise of working memory). I don't think that could be the basis for an argument for more standardized testing, which usually involves lots of prep (elaboration) and delayed reporting of results. In California, students wait months before seeing how they did.
Look over the material, test yourself, look again, especially at where you erred, test yourself again. That's common sense, and can even be entertaining.
The study does call into question overemphasis on making subject matter "relevant."
"To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test" New York Times 1/20/11
Both articles are about the same study, but offer complementary information. ScienceDaily's headline is a bit more to the point.
What the study finds is that exercising recall from long-term memory with timely feedback can be more effective than approaching material in different ways (continued exercise of working memory). I don't think that could be the basis for an argument for more standardized testing, which usually involves lots of prep (elaboration) and delayed reporting of results. In California, students wait months before seeing how they did.
Look over the material, test yourself, look again, especially at where you erred, test yourself again. That's common sense, and can even be entertaining.
The study does call into question overemphasis on making subject matter "relevant."
WORLD OF LEARNING
"Risk, Consequences of Video Game Addiction Identified in New Study" ScienceDaily 1/19/11
"Girls Who Are Bullied Are at Risk for Substance Abuse Through Depression" ScienceDaily 1/19/11
"Challenging the Limits of Learning: Linguist Measures the Human Mind Against the Yardstick of a Machine" ScienceDaily 1/20/11
"Girls Who Are Bullied Are at Risk for Substance Abuse Through Depression" ScienceDaily 1/19/11
"Challenging the Limits of Learning: Linguist Measures the Human Mind Against the Yardstick of a Machine" ScienceDaily 1/20/11
WORLD OF LEARNING: MATH DOODLES
"Bending and Stretching Classroom Lessons to Make Math Inspire" New York Times 1/17/11
Vi Hart is sharp, irreverent, and awfully funny. She might get some girls (and boys) interested in math, and might get some teachers thinking about ways to make math lessons less boring. Be sure to link to the videos. Let's hear it for doodling!
Vi Hart is sharp, irreverent, and awfully funny. She might get some girls (and boys) interested in math, and might get some teachers thinking about ways to make math lessons less boring. Be sure to link to the videos. Let's hear it for doodling!
WORLD OF LEARNING: LANGUAGE FROM A DOG
"Stay. Sit. Parse. Good Girl!" New York Times 1/17/11
As many pet owners will attest, we are not that far removed from the animals in our families and in nature. We can learn as much from them, as we teach to them.
As many pet owners will attest, we are not that far removed from the animals in our families and in nature. We can learn as much from them, as we teach to them.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
RECENT NEWS: MY REVIEW OF "THE SHALLOWS"
THE SHALLOWS: WHAT THE INTERNET IS DOING TO OUR BRAINS. By Nicholas G. Carr. W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 256 pages.
In the summer of 2008, the Atlantic published a piece by Nicholas Carr that tore through American literary culture. In an all too ironic twist, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains" became an internet hit.
The twist was that even though Carr warned that the way we take in printed (or pixilated) words was changing how we processed those words, probably for the worse, scads of folks seemed to be processing his words in the old-fashioned way.
Citing research, he said internet users are "hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited," and that they "typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book." But at least some internet users were clicking on his article and staying there for its 4,000 plus words, as evidenced by liberal quoting from the piece in thoughtful debates not only on blogs but also in print.
Soon, the essay had been included in several anthologies. And Carr expanded it into The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Presumably he expects, or at least hopes, that readers will persevere through its 200 plus pages. Book consumers, still around, if in shrinking numbers, did buy it. The Shallows has sold steadily since its release this summer.
There’s a reason. It resonates. Many of us feel that the internet has taken away as much as it has given. We can identify with the dilemma Carr faces. On the one hand, he is grateful: "Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes." But after "reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, following Facebook updates, watching video streams, downloading music, or just tripping lightly from link to link to link to link," he begins to feel "what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation."
"The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
Has deep reading ever been natural? Thoughtful, reflective immersion in printed words has always taken effort. First we have to spend a great deal of time learning how to decode the symbols, a process that a significant number of intelligent children have tremendous difficulties mastering. Once that process becomes automatic, we still have to find a space free from distraction and the discipline to fully engage with abstract ideas. Not easy things for the human animal, even in pre-computer times.
Carr himself acknowledges that unlike language, "reading and writing are unnatural acts."
There is no doubt that the increased time we human animals are spending moving our eyeballs on screens and our digits on clickers and keys is changing our brains, and thus will change the way we do those unnatural acts. An essential property of the brain is its malleability, and Carr limns the startingly recent developments in neuroscience that have overthrown the long-held view of the brain as a static organ.
In 1968, using microelectrodes to probe monkeys’ brains after he had severed nerves in their hands, a young Michael Merzernich was incredulous to find an "astounding reorganization." After an initial period of confusion, the brains had rewired themselves so that the monkeys could get back to business as usual.
Merzernich’s work was dismissed, or ignored, because as he put it, "nobody would believe that neuroplasticity was occurring on this scale." As scientists’ ability to monitor brain function rapidly improved with more and more advanced technology, nearly everybody would believe that our brains are, in Merzenich’s words, "massively plastic."
So plastic that brain scans of experienced London cabdrivers show the part of their brain associated with environmental mapping is much larger than normal.
Not everyone becomes, or wants to be, a London cabdriver. Literacy, however, is a desired attribute in nearly all cultures, and necessary for a comfortable level of survival in nearly all societies. That’s a very recent phenomenon.
For widespread literacy you first need an alphabet, then typographical conventions that let you know when words and thoughts begin and end, then recognized formats for presenting stories, observations and commentaries, and finally efficient ways to produce and deliver that content to wide swaths of the public. We’ve only reached that point in the last few hundred years.
Carr excels at presenting the history behind that achievement, and making a case for its staggering effect. Without what he calls "the literary ethic," no Locke, no Nietzche, no Einstein. No Enlightenment. No Scientific Revolution. For that matter, no computers. The ability to produce and consume print has altered all of our brains in ways far more profound than the enlarged posterior hippocampus of a veteran London cabdriver.
Now, Carr alerts us, the even more rapid development of computer interface is even more drastically changing what we are. It’s more than shallower content. The reason the content is shallower is due to the very nature of the medium, which is multisensory and hyper-fast. "Producers are chopping up their products," Carr writes, "to fit the shorter attention spans of online consumers, as well as to raise their profiles on search engines."
Changing the message came after changing the medium. Hello, Marshall McLuhan. Stop whining about the onslaught of superfluous celebrity news, vapid e-mails, obtuse polemic and ubiquitous pornography, Carr tells us. Deliciously quoting McLuhan, he notes that "the content of a medium is just 'the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.'"
The real danger is not reading cruddy prose. The new way in which we read could diminish thoughtfulness itself. Because the "juggler’s brain" used in surfing the internet is intent on attending to multiple and disparate links, we are using all of our limited working memory space. We can’t draw on long-term memory, much less add to it; we can’t supply context.
Scary. If long-term memory is absent, what is left? A true tabula rasa? I agree with Carr when he states, "The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory and weave it into conceptual schema." A human brain is not analogous to a computer. The brain, a marvel of messiness, can’t outsource memory. But it can do what computers cannot: compare and evaluate, reflect and synthesize. Think. Really, it’s true. A computer cannot think.
Working with children has taught me the importance of background. A kid can’t learn a new concept until he’s got some context. He constructs knowledge on previous knowledge. The concern over the threat to cognition from the online environment is particularly salient when we’re talking about children. This is where I applaud Carr for sounding the alarm.
Carr finds Google founder Sergey Brin’s view that if you "had an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off," upsetting because it is based on a "pinched concept of the human mind." It’s a view of a future that’s far from the liberating of human potential, and closer to the early twentieth century "scientific management" principles of Frederick Winslow Taylor, champion of assembly-line efficiency, the man who said, "In the past man has been first; in the future the system must be first."
I would like to think that we have the opportunity and the ability to go beyond the Industrial Age. I hope that my internet explorations won’t turn me into "a human HAL." That in our awareness of danger we can avoid it.
Throughout human history, what Carr terms "intellectual technologies" have changed the very shape of that history. "Instrumentalists" believe that it was the users who were key; "determinists" believe it was the tools themselves. Carr places himself in the determinist camp: "It strains belief to argue that we 'chose' to use maps and clocks."
I would like to think that the truth is somewhere in between. Maps and clocks forever changed us; so will the internet. But we do have control over when and how we use maps, clocks and the internet, and the power not to erase everything that went before them.
A significant number of people did read Carr’s original essay. A significant number of people have read The Shallows. There might even be a number of people reading War and Peace at this very moment.
Not everyone agrees with the Rhodes scholar Carr cites as declaring, "Sitting down and going through a book cover to cover just doesn’t make sense." Otherwise there would be no Goodreads, and I’d be typing this review only for myself.
Deep reading has always meant mental work, and there have always been people who don’t want to do that. Lots of people. Sometimes I don’t want to. But there remain people who, like David Ulin (The Lost Art of Reading), can say, "It's harder than it used to be, but still, I read."
The Shallows is provocative, informative, clearly and beautifully written. It’s also disturbing and depressing. Read it without giving up.
In the summer of 2008, the Atlantic published a piece by Nicholas Carr that tore through American literary culture. In an all too ironic twist, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains" became an internet hit.
The twist was that even though Carr warned that the way we take in printed (or pixilated) words was changing how we processed those words, probably for the worse, scads of folks seemed to be processing his words in the old-fashioned way.
Citing research, he said internet users are "hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited," and that they "typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book." But at least some internet users were clicking on his article and staying there for its 4,000 plus words, as evidenced by liberal quoting from the piece in thoughtful debates not only on blogs but also in print.
Soon, the essay had been included in several anthologies. And Carr expanded it into The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Presumably he expects, or at least hopes, that readers will persevere through its 200 plus pages. Book consumers, still around, if in shrinking numbers, did buy it. The Shallows has sold steadily since its release this summer.
There’s a reason. It resonates. Many of us feel that the internet has taken away as much as it has given. We can identify with the dilemma Carr faces. On the one hand, he is grateful: "Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes." But after "reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, following Facebook updates, watching video streams, downloading music, or just tripping lightly from link to link to link to link," he begins to feel "what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation."
"The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
Has deep reading ever been natural? Thoughtful, reflective immersion in printed words has always taken effort. First we have to spend a great deal of time learning how to decode the symbols, a process that a significant number of intelligent children have tremendous difficulties mastering. Once that process becomes automatic, we still have to find a space free from distraction and the discipline to fully engage with abstract ideas. Not easy things for the human animal, even in pre-computer times.
Carr himself acknowledges that unlike language, "reading and writing are unnatural acts."
There is no doubt that the increased time we human animals are spending moving our eyeballs on screens and our digits on clickers and keys is changing our brains, and thus will change the way we do those unnatural acts. An essential property of the brain is its malleability, and Carr limns the startingly recent developments in neuroscience that have overthrown the long-held view of the brain as a static organ.
In 1968, using microelectrodes to probe monkeys’ brains after he had severed nerves in their hands, a young Michael Merzernich was incredulous to find an "astounding reorganization." After an initial period of confusion, the brains had rewired themselves so that the monkeys could get back to business as usual.
Merzernich’s work was dismissed, or ignored, because as he put it, "nobody would believe that neuroplasticity was occurring on this scale." As scientists’ ability to monitor brain function rapidly improved with more and more advanced technology, nearly everybody would believe that our brains are, in Merzenich’s words, "massively plastic."
So plastic that brain scans of experienced London cabdrivers show the part of their brain associated with environmental mapping is much larger than normal.
Not everyone becomes, or wants to be, a London cabdriver. Literacy, however, is a desired attribute in nearly all cultures, and necessary for a comfortable level of survival in nearly all societies. That’s a very recent phenomenon.
For widespread literacy you first need an alphabet, then typographical conventions that let you know when words and thoughts begin and end, then recognized formats for presenting stories, observations and commentaries, and finally efficient ways to produce and deliver that content to wide swaths of the public. We’ve only reached that point in the last few hundred years.
Carr excels at presenting the history behind that achievement, and making a case for its staggering effect. Without what he calls "the literary ethic," no Locke, no Nietzche, no Einstein. No Enlightenment. No Scientific Revolution. For that matter, no computers. The ability to produce and consume print has altered all of our brains in ways far more profound than the enlarged posterior hippocampus of a veteran London cabdriver.
Now, Carr alerts us, the even more rapid development of computer interface is even more drastically changing what we are. It’s more than shallower content. The reason the content is shallower is due to the very nature of the medium, which is multisensory and hyper-fast. "Producers are chopping up their products," Carr writes, "to fit the shorter attention spans of online consumers, as well as to raise their profiles on search engines."
Changing the message came after changing the medium. Hello, Marshall McLuhan. Stop whining about the onslaught of superfluous celebrity news, vapid e-mails, obtuse polemic and ubiquitous pornography, Carr tells us. Deliciously quoting McLuhan, he notes that "the content of a medium is just 'the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.'"
The real danger is not reading cruddy prose. The new way in which we read could diminish thoughtfulness itself. Because the "juggler’s brain" used in surfing the internet is intent on attending to multiple and disparate links, we are using all of our limited working memory space. We can’t draw on long-term memory, much less add to it; we can’t supply context.
Scary. If long-term memory is absent, what is left? A true tabula rasa? I agree with Carr when he states, "The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory and weave it into conceptual schema." A human brain is not analogous to a computer. The brain, a marvel of messiness, can’t outsource memory. But it can do what computers cannot: compare and evaluate, reflect and synthesize. Think. Really, it’s true. A computer cannot think.
Working with children has taught me the importance of background. A kid can’t learn a new concept until he’s got some context. He constructs knowledge on previous knowledge. The concern over the threat to cognition from the online environment is particularly salient when we’re talking about children. This is where I applaud Carr for sounding the alarm.
Carr finds Google founder Sergey Brin’s view that if you "had an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off," upsetting because it is based on a "pinched concept of the human mind." It’s a view of a future that’s far from the liberating of human potential, and closer to the early twentieth century "scientific management" principles of Frederick Winslow Taylor, champion of assembly-line efficiency, the man who said, "In the past man has been first; in the future the system must be first."
I would like to think that we have the opportunity and the ability to go beyond the Industrial Age. I hope that my internet explorations won’t turn me into "a human HAL." That in our awareness of danger we can avoid it.
Throughout human history, what Carr terms "intellectual technologies" have changed the very shape of that history. "Instrumentalists" believe that it was the users who were key; "determinists" believe it was the tools themselves. Carr places himself in the determinist camp: "It strains belief to argue that we 'chose' to use maps and clocks."
I would like to think that the truth is somewhere in between. Maps and clocks forever changed us; so will the internet. But we do have control over when and how we use maps, clocks and the internet, and the power not to erase everything that went before them.
A significant number of people did read Carr’s original essay. A significant number of people have read The Shallows. There might even be a number of people reading War and Peace at this very moment.
Not everyone agrees with the Rhodes scholar Carr cites as declaring, "Sitting down and going through a book cover to cover just doesn’t make sense." Otherwise there would be no Goodreads, and I’d be typing this review only for myself.
Deep reading has always meant mental work, and there have always been people who don’t want to do that. Lots of people. Sometimes I don’t want to. But there remain people who, like David Ulin (The Lost Art of Reading), can say, "It's harder than it used to be, but still, I read."
The Shallows is provocative, informative, clearly and beautifully written. It’s also disturbing and depressing. Read it without giving up.
WORLD OF LEARNING: ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
"High-tech Help (Assistive technologies are becoming more prevalent for learning disabled)" New York Times 1/7/11
Good quick survey of what's out there.
Good quick survey of what's out there.
WORLD OF LEARNING: WRITING TO LESSEN TEST ANXIETY
"Writing About Worries Eases Anxiety and Improves Test Performance" ScienceDaily 1/13/11
Fascinating, and something I have to try to put into practice.
Fascinating, and something I have to try to put into practice.
WORLD OF LEARNING: TRAVAILS OF MIDDLE SCHOOL
"Middle School Is When the Right Friends May Matter Most" ScienceDaily 1/12/11
Peer pressure is often assumed to peak in high school, but I've always felt middle school is when it's most difficult to establish an identity. In high school, you're a big kid--a teenager. K-5, you're a kid. Middle school, no one knows.
Peer pressure is often assumed to peak in high school, but I've always felt middle school is when it's most difficult to establish an identity. In high school, you're a big kid--a teenager. K-5, you're a kid. Middle school, no one knows.
WORLD OF LEARNING
"Brain Scans Show Children With ADHD Have Faulty Off-Switch for Mind-Wandering" ScienceDaily 1/10/11
"Can You Build a Better Brain?" Sharon Begley/Newsweek 1/3/11
"Effort to Restore Children's Play Gains Momentum" New York Times 1/6/11
"Major Advance in MRI Allows Much Faster Brain Scans" ScienceDaily 1/6/11
"Can You Build a Better Brain?" Sharon Begley/Newsweek 1/3/11
"Effort to Restore Children's Play Gains Momentum" New York Times 1/6/11
"Major Advance in MRI Allows Much Faster Brain Scans" ScienceDaily 1/6/11
WORLD OF LEARNING: DEEP READING
"Is deep reading in trouble?" Contra Costa Times 1/5/11
I'm about to post my review of Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, touched on in this article. It also quotess Mirit Barzillai. I've cited her essay with Maryanne Wolf on deep reading previously. And it mentions two other books on the subject which sound interesting: John Miedema's Slow Reading and Cynthia Lee Katona's Book Savvy.
I'm about to post my review of Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, touched on in this article. It also quotess Mirit Barzillai. I've cited her essay with Maryanne Wolf on deep reading previously. And it mentions two other books on the subject which sound interesting: John Miedema's Slow Reading and Cynthia Lee Katona's Book Savvy.
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