Interesting side note from Sunday night’s Eagles-Falcons game: The major reason why the Eagles did not challenge a key interception play is that NBC, which broadcast the game, didn’t show any replays that suggested the play was not, in fact, an interception. Coaches don’t have their own camera feeds, so they are dependent on whatever the TV broadcast shows. It wasn’t until after it was too late to challenge the play that the director found a definitive angle, so the TV broadcasters were able to comment on the play not being an interception and wonder why the Eagles didn’t challenge it – without commenting on the fact that they hadn’t found the relevant information at the time. If they had, the outcome of the play, and thus the game, might have been different. The broadcast wasn’t just showing the audience at home what happened in the game – they were affecting the outcome of the game. There’s a metaphor there somewhere.
Author Archive
Making the Story, Not Covering the Story
Posted September 19, 2011 By Dave ThomerFeedback Loops
Posted September 18, 2011 By Dave ThomerTrying to figure out the best way to give feedback to students after their first shot at an assignment. We go over and talk about subjects in class, but I know that can be tough to absorb. I could write comments on everyone’s work, but I’m not sure how much I can fit in the margins and how many times I can write similar comments before my own brain explodes. I’m trying to put together a study guide that’s basically answers to all of the exercises so that students can compare their answers to mine. I’ll post the guide on my class wikispaces and Google Docs collection. It requires the students to take some initiative, but they can go through the material at their pace, and then come back to me with questions if they’re interested. I’m going to use this tool when I have the time to make the guides, so we’ll see how it works.
Trying Not to Get Used to This
Posted September 17, 2011 By Dave ThomerOn the way home from a walk the other night, I made sure to remind Alex that the fact that the Phillies have won the National League East in half of the baseball seasons that she has been alive should not, in any way, be taken as normal. I explained to her that I started watching baseball around Game 2 of the 1983 World Series – so I even missed the one game of that series that they won, along with the rest of that 1976-1983 run. So we’re trying not to take division titles for granted, even though I’d sure like to see Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Raul Ibanex and everyone else who joined the team after 2008 get their turn with a World Series ring. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m going to go back to pinching myself.
Hey, I Know That Place!
Posted September 16, 2011 By Dave ThomerAnother off night tonight, but while I was looking on thenotebook.org for details on the latest contract snafus in Philadelphia schools, I found this item that mentions my own school a couple of times:
Students face long odds at many popular schools
Parkway Center City, where I teach, admits the smallest percentage of its applicants, and is one of the high schools in the city with the largest number of applicants. On the one hand, it’s certainly nice to know that lots of parents and students want to be part of our community. But it also reminds us that lots of parents and students want something from their education that they only feel they can get from a selective-admission school. There may be no getting around that, but it sure would be nice if there were even more of those options available for students across the city.
Always in Four Down Territory
Posted September 15, 2011 By Dave ThomerI’m pretty much taking the day off from blogging, but here’s a link to a story on CNN about a high school football team that rarely punts and usually attempts an onside kick after every score. The coach’s logic is that doing everything you can to increase your chances to keep possession of the ball does more to improve your chances to win the game than giving up the ball because you’re afraid of what will happen. I’d love to see this data-driven convention-defying approach tried elsewhere.
How Do You Find It?
Posted September 14, 2011 By Dave ThomerFollowing up on last night’s post, I was talking to a college friend who’s now a library teacher for young students, who are used to being able to type a question into Google and having a website pop up with an answer. (Not necessarily a good answer, but an answer.) It got me thinking about how we use search engines. I’m still used to using keywords from all my time using academic libraries, and I think general keywords are a better tool for understanding a topic because they will present you with a range of general information that you can use to build context. That way, when you do find out the specific detail you’re looking for, you understand what it really means. But that requires an entirely different kind of thinking than a natural language question search, and I’m not sure if there’s a best way to teach kids about Boolean operators. If there is, I wish someone would teach me.
I’m Just a Guy with a Blog
Posted September 13, 2011 By Dave ThomerMy students have to find an article about “how the world has changed since 9/11/01” and bring it in tomorrow. It’s meant, in part, to be a way to break free of the idea that I have to curate every experience, but I admit I have a little trepidation. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff on the Internet, y’know? Some of it is written by people of questionable talent, honesty, and/or sanity. And I find that a lot of my students don’t differentiate between different sources – indeed, many of them don’t pay attention to the actual website where they get a piece of information. It all comes from Google. I find myself wanting to teach my students my media habits born of a pre-Internet youth, pre-Google young adulthood, and trying-to-keep-up-with-it-all 30s. (Remember portals, anyone?) Should I? Am I sharing wisdom gained through years of experience, or trying to force a new generation into the same world of gatekeepers that I’m comfortable with? Maybe there’s no way to do the first without a little bit of the second, but at the moment I feel like it’s still worth it to try to impose just a little bit of order in the Information Age’s Wild West.
Teaching Utilitarianism
Posted September 12, 2011 By Dave ThomerI’ve been trying to find a good way to help my ethics students learn about John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism. I put together this combination of reading and reflection questions to get everyone to think through the content, and every so often while the students are working independently we’ll stop and have a class discussion so that students can share and develop their responses. I’m not trying to cover every detail, but I want to bring up a few key points: 1) a general definition of utilitarianism; 2) Mill’s method of measuring the quality of pleasures; 3) the need to protect the minority from abuse by the majority.
Any suggestions for things to rewrite, different questions to ask, or resources to use are welcome.
Read the remainder of this entry »
Recent Culinary Adventures
Posted September 11, 2011 By Dave ThomerHad my sister and her boyfriend over today for pizza and a game of Ticket to Ride. Once again we relied on Alton Brown’s dough recipe from his grilled pizza episode, although we made the pizza in the oven. Nearly killed my mixer making a double batch of dough because I forgot to use the paddle wheel to mix the ingredients before switching to the dough hook, but we got through it. Pattie and Alex got to laugh at me putting an ice pack on top of the mixer, the pizza was tasty, and we have leftovers.
We also just finished up a batch of pork tacos using the slow cooker recipe from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Everyday. I love this cookbook. Great salsa recipes. I’m trying to think of how to modify this recipe to make barbecue pork.
Not sure what the next major project will be, but it may be time for fried chicken before too long.
Sidetracked
Posted September 10, 2011 By Dave ThomerI was working on a writeup of the ethics class I’m teaching, but then I started to wonder if that was a productive topic. Before I could make up my mind I found myself looking through some material by Zac Chase, currently doing graduate work in education at Harvard. I met Zac at a session at EduCon last year that I really enjoyed, and I’m getting a lot of vicarious education from following his work at HArvard on his blog, Autodizactic, and his Twitter feed. This will probably result in some interesting thoughts from me later (I hope), but for now, go check out Zac’s thoughts if you haven’t already.