ruthful

by Kalexanderson

I have often wondered, as our world becomes more complex and global knowledge is added at an exponentially increasing rate, how a student will ever manage to have, even a reasonably basic overview of all that they should know by the time they complete their degree. It is even more impossible now, to know everything that there is to know. It seems that a student who has specialized in one area of knowledge early on, and has thus been able to dive deeper into its complexities, has an advantage in the job market over a student who has a shallower but wider range of knowledge. In each area of expertise, one has to learn such a vast amount of material before one can go further and become a pioneer in new and crucial findings and discoveries.

The idea of a “collective intelligence” as outlined in the MacArthur white paper, “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” has very important ramifications for how we prepare our students for their higher education experience and their eventual participation in the work force. Understanding that shared knowledge from a base of varied expertise can accomplish so much more than trying to progress on the acquired knowledge of just one or few individuals allows us to structure learning where students can become an expert in one area of their studies. If we can let go of the insistence that all students learn exactly the same thing (and in exactly the same way), we can allow students the thrill and edification of being responsible for teaching his or her peers. This approach has been successfully enacted in history classes, for example, where each student takes on a persona of a historical character, researching their possible actions, motives and background so that they can participate in a writing or role-playing exercise that uses actual historical events to guide the classroom action. 

This “collective intelligence” is clearly valued as students search online for resources relating to school assignments, artistic searches for music or images and for purposes of pure entertainment. We learn to sort through the vast ocean of material to find the very best or exactly what we need for our purposes. We use what is already out there for our own individualized purposes. Artists and scholars have always borrowed and built on the work of their predecessors. The issue of copyright and correct attribution, however, has never been more important than it is now.

The richness of a collective intelligence has a parallel in the collective creativity of an increasingly accessible and digitized world. We all benefit from being able to access material from so many sources, both contemporary and historical. There has to be a happy medium somewhere between completely free “borrowing” of material and copyright fossilization. The Disney company, for example, although it has borrowed freely and often without attribution is constantly pushing back the copyright cutoff date to protect access by the public to creatively borrow Mickey Mouse. Ironically, Mickey’s debut film “Steamboat Willie” was a parody of an early Buster Keaton film, “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” and thus, Mickey began his ascent to stardom by building on the works of others and referencing the popular culture of his day. Interesting that the Disney company does not think this sort of thing should continue when it begins to be applied to the company’s own proprietary material.

Copyright Disney; this low-res. screen shot qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.

Despite my indignation over Disney’s apparent hypocrisy and although I am still a bit confused about all of the rules and regulations attached to what materials we can use and for which purposes, I know that it is essential to teach students to properly attribute all media used in reports and presentations. We carefully teach MLA format and run submitted papers through various plagiarism checks, and we should be as thorough when scrutinizing borrowed images, music and video clips as well. We should not, however, discourage incorporation of such a vast store of resources for fear of an error in attribution. For the most part, students, who are not out to make money from someone else’s creativity, are not targets of the copyright police. We can guide them to sites like Creative Commons that provide images with a more relaxed attitude about sharing and make sure that they do give credit where credit is due. The better students are prepared to collaborate with the collective intelligence and the collective creativity of their world, the better they will be prepared to craft new and compelling ideas, inventions and art to grace our collective consciousness.

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“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” Used to be, when we were wrong, only a few people knew about. Now with the internet removing layers of privacy, we can be wrong much more publicly. What does this mean for my creative endeavors, and what does this mean for my kids and the students whom I am teaching? Fear does tend to choke creativity.

I was recently watching (again) Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk entitled, “Schools Kill Creativity.” This statement about being prepared to be wrong, resonated with me. I thought about how differently I approach writing assignments as opposed to how I approach math assignments. I love writing. I hate math. Writing can have an infinite number of brilliant solutions to a literary proposition. Math seems to always only have one. It automatically carries the fear of being wrong.

What if we taught math in such a way as to invite creativity… somehow? Of course, you eventually have to come up with the right answer. But I remember my son coming home from school one day when he was in fifth grade in an accelerated learning program when they had a visiting mathematician. This teacher invited the students to use any method to solve a problem, as long as they could show that their method would work consistently for other related problems as well. Good challenge for a kid who liked to make up stuff. If he didn’t know the answer to a question, he would often just make something up and then back up his statement with some invented, but plausible, resource. (He soon found that many grown-ups were gullible.) So, with a compelling challenge in front of him, and no fear of being wrong, my fifth-grader came up with a completely new method which worked consistently and suddenly enjoyed doing math.

And to add to that “If you’re not prepared to be wrong” statement…. if you’re not prepared to be hurt or be put into some sort of danger, you will never fully understand your world. This is an idea supported by another “Ted Talk” entitled, “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do,” Before I watched this, I thought about the dangerous things I let my children do… climb trees and jump out of trees into big leaf piles, whittle with knives, go online, argue with their teachers, climb around and explore the rooftops of tall buildings (I won’t tell you where, but it’s in Tokyo) and plank. These are things that I allow them to do, fully understanding the risks. (Yes, they have gotten some poor grades in subjects that they know well because of the arguing…. but at least they competently supported their arguments.) But against the risk of doing these things, I have to weigh the risk of not doing these things. No risk, no experience… and no learning to climb, to control a blade, to manage a digital footprint, to hone an argument, to internalize architecture or to strike a silly pose. The benefits outweigh the risks. And thankfully, there have not been any major accidents. So far the most dangerous thing that my daughter does every day, is to commute to school. She’s been hit by cars a couple of times, and no, the cars did not have the right of way. They just didn’t see or stop in time. But the accidents have not been serious, thank the Lord.

Nowadays, the worry over online risk is causing many to throw up so many shields around their children and their students, that authentic and educational engagement with the rest of the world is not possible… but at least they’re safe. Of course, the predators we are so worried about are much more likely to come from a child’s own family or social contacts, and much less likely to be an online creeper. Recent research shows that most fears on online predation are unfounded, but the worry persists. As the linked article explains, “Perverts trolling for cute kids on MySpace would have about as much luck dialing numbers out of the phone book and asking for a date. It just doesn’t work and they know it.” The online world is not more dangerous than the physical world. We teach kids all kinds of safety rules about fire, traffic, strangers, eating sticky candy off the floor… Teaching children from an early age the basics of online safety and etiquette is undoubtedly the best way to ensure that they keep themselves safe and continue to be savvy and cautious as their online presence increases.

If a student has taken some risks, both physically and mentally, that student can be much better prepared to take on a world full of dangers and challenges that are constantly changing and evolving. If their brains and their attitudes are not trained to deal with the new and the dangerous, then they will have a much harder time surviving in the workplace as skill needs change at increasing rates. Letting students try new things and training them to thrive on solving problems in their own way is the best preparation we can give them.

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(Image from earth911.com)

It was a simple, humble plan. Last year, because our compost pile was not cooking as fast during the chilly Tokyo winter, ever-resourceful husband decided to start a vermiculture bin. He was quite pleased to discover that the red worms already propagating in our existing compost pile were the correct type of worm to inhabit a thriving bin.  While turning the pile, he found many healthy and eager helpers and quickly settled them into a small container on the kitchen window sill. They had a pile of dirt, yummy leftovers to burrow through and a comforting cover of wet cardboard. He tucked his little buddies into their new home and we trudged up the stairs to bed.

For whatever reason, I did not sleep well that night. I flipped and flopped under the covers and only succeeded in getting to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. So, when the alarm woke me a couple of hours later, I felt nauseatingly fatigued. Down the stairs I stumbled to make some breakfast.

The attack was unexpected, to say the least. A wriggling wave of red and pink undulated its way towards the kitchen sink and along the crack towards the dark corner behind the microwave. Those worms were everywhere. Luckily there was nothing in my stomach to  come up. Back up the stairs I ran. “Your friends have taken over the kitchen,” I explained to my bleary-eyed man. “I am not feeling like breakfast this morning.” I left him to worm-wrangle while I quickly left the horror movie playing out in our kitchen and biked to work on an empty stomach.

And on the way to work, of course, I got a flat tire. Sigh.

When I got home that night, there was a new container in place with a tight lid. And it was nowhere near the kitchen counter. The worms’ new home was in hubby’s office next to the computer where nothing at all could ever happen….

The “Attack of the Red Worms” has put so much into perspective. When I wake up in the morning and come down to the kitchen to fix breakfast, I think what a wonderful day it is, to not have worms on the counter in the morning. And every day, even a Monday, is wonderful, because, as you know, it could always be worse.

Now, we have a change of plans. We do have a compost bin in the kitchen, crowded in next to the compartmentalized recycling bin and the bread maker in the narrow, dark aisle that pretends to be a kitchen. (Too many cooks in this kitchen can use up all the air.) But this compost bin uses friendly, aromatic, beneficial “good” bacteria to help speed up the decomposition process. (See EMRO website.) No worms, no wafting fumes; just a good source of compost. Oh, and they are anaerobic… they don’t need air. Good thing  ‘cause there’s no extra oxygen in this claustrophobic corridor of a kitchen.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

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Last week, with the storytime link in place on the school library site (http://tinyurl.com/4x74fyx) the 5th grade students at my school were able to watch themselves tell their collaborative folktale with their partners.

For some, it was their first time to really scrutinize their oral presentation style. They were given a task to perform while watching; to write down one positive thing and several areas where they could improve in their storytelling techniques. Some had trouble finding a positive. “Did you look at the audience? Did you speak up clearly? Did you know your story well? Did you and your partner collaborate well during the telling of the story?” I asked as I circulated among them. Finally, most found at least one positive. And all of them had a list of suggestions of ways they could improve. “Don’t play with your clothes. Too many, ‘ums’ and hesitations. Don’t look at your partner. Speak up. Add some expression. Don’t look so bored.” I didn’t have to tell them anything. They told themselves. A video was worth a thousand words.

Now for the second phase…. the students will have the chance to remake their folktale as an iMovie, adding all of the expression and movement that they may have missed at the first go. There are a lot of steps to this one. They already know their stories and most have learned to collaborate very well with a partner that they probably would not have chosen for themselves (all boy-girl assigned partners, poor kids), and they know how to improve. Now they just have to:

1. Learn how to use a video camera. (We have several new Kodak PlayTouch cameras; http://tinyurl.com/3amsvlj)

2. Make a storyboard of their folktale. (Jason Ohler has templates and instructions on his site: http://tinyurl.com/24tjrv2)

3. Shoot the folktale footage with the focus remaining on the student storytellers.

4. Download the footage and begin to work on the final product in iMovie. (Apple’s tutorials are helpful: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/)

5. Post new and improved folktales alongside the original ones on the library “Storytime” website.

Of course, first, I might have to learn to use iMovie. My students will probably end up teaching me. I look forward to the process.

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