Media: The Classroom Experiment

Absolutely loved watching this program. . .

From the BBC website: "Education theory and practice go head to head when Professor Dylan Wiliam takes over one Year 8 class to test simple ideas that he believes could improve the quality of education."

In this program Wiliam introduced a few very simple, cost effective methods to increase academic achievement. He implemented exercise in the morning, a new grading system, and getting rid of hand raising and replacing it with names being drawn at random, using whiteboards to answer questions, or using color coded cups to indicate when they need help understanding. I really would have loved having colored cups in math class when I was that age.

On the damaging practice of hand raising:


What was really interesting in this show is not only did getting rid of hand raising (eventually) lead to the increased participation of the usually less active students, it also allowed teachers to identify the weaknesses in their usually active students because suddenly they were called on to answer questions that they didn't know and wouldn't have volunteered to answer.

On traditional grades:



Unfortunately I can't find any clips that show much of his solutions, but I found this:


Wiliam discusses changing the interaction between students and teachers as well as working class vs. middle class education but that part gets cut off.

Out of everything he implemented I found the no hands up rule and the use of color coded cups in math class to be the most effective. If a student can put a red cup on their desk signaling to the teacher to come to them before moving on, it makes it a lot easier than keeping your hand raised for all 20 or so minutes it takes to get to everyone, I figure that having a red cup on my desk would have made me felt less defeated in math courses where my arm felt like it was going to fall off.

How to start a book club on ten minute break.

It helps to describe your book club as EPIC and mention that there will be cocktails. Is it really going to be epic? No, it's a book club, not a Peaches concert. But no matter, all you really need to do to start a book club in under ten minutes is to find one person who you know has been wanting to read something. After that you text Person B and tell them you and Person A have started a book club, Person C has joined and it's going to be an EPIC book club. Then you text Person C and claim Person B has already joined and it's going to be EPIC. Then they both text you back saying "I'M TOTALLY IN!!"

Then Person A picks the book which is good because the reason why you asked Person A to join was because you noticed he had FREAKONOMICS on his coffee table, and you've been meaning to read it since your Economics professor mentioned it. This way you can not only read what you wanted to read but you can also have a club you created to add to your college application under extracurricular activity. Now all you need is a cool name for the club.

I started thinking about how easy and inexpensive it would be to have an after school book club on the high school level. Maybe you could even go to book readings and events that are put on at libraries. . . but then I remembered that many books are actually controversial and maybe that's why my teachers never ran one.

Anyway, so far I am the only person in this club without a college degree. The only person with a degree in English doesn't want to read books that weren't originally written in English. That was disappointing since I've bought a bunch of translations, but I figure that you have to seduce your book club the same way you'd seduce a partner. So all I have to do is pick a mainstream, accessible, kindofwanttoread type of book, like maybe Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, and then -- when she least expects it -- I bust out the foreign novel. Maybe I'll have an extra copy that I give her with the cover ripped off so that she doesn't realize it wasn't originally written in English.

Now all I have to worry about is the food. If this was poker night I'd make nachos but for the hip (but not too hip) folks of Jackson I'll make Thai fresh spring rolls and Bhel Puri.

So, I am a little calculating. I'm okay with that. Five years ago I would have just let things happen to me. I didn't care about the classes I took or the professors I picked. I never did any sort of research in advance on who was teaching or what was going to be taught, but for the most part I was pretty lucky. But those days are over. When I came back to school for the spring semester of 2010 I had a plan in my head of exactly what I needed to accomplish before transferring. I was determined that a professor who, five years ago, offered to write me a glowing letter of recommendation would most definitely be teaching a class I could take this spring semester. I wouldn't say I was comfortable with taking the class since my last extremely vague memory of talking to the professor was me being an asshole (at least I think? What my memory is missing is bugging me more than those hours I lost after midnight on New Years, but in the latter case I have vodka, brandy, hot damn, and beer to blame) but I knew that if I took it I would perform well and get that damn letter of recommendation I should have taken years ago.

So . . . when I saw the schedule and he wasn't teaching the class all my ambivalence and anxiety melted away into frustration/anger/determination and my heart started humping the inside of my chest like a dog to a couch cushion. Fortunately, I already had a Plan B. A vague Plan B, but I'll have all spring semester to shape it into a better idea before presenting my proposal in the fall. It'll be a special project, a way to get that damn letter fair and square AND learn something.

While debating with a coworker about how important it is to create a brand for myself in my college application essay he told me I was taking it too far, going too crazy thinking about it, and that I shouldn't rack up credits that won't transfer. He's a college graduate from Michigan State and he makes as much money as I do, which isn't much, but it isn't minimum wage either. We have benefits. We work with other college graduates. I've seen college graduates get laid off. To actually consider leaving a full time job (with benefits) in this economy is a pretty scary thing. And when I transfer that's exactly what I'm going to have to do. And I like my boss. I like my coworkers. And sometimes I even like the work itself (though maybe not this month). It's also nice to work close to home (although it's a house I don't actually want to live in). So when I leave I need to have all my ducks in a row. I need a savings fund. I need to get into the best public university that I can. I need to have read a million and one books so that I can get the most out of the experience. In the meantime, I'm going to suck community college for all it's worth. I am the leach getting fat on the blood of public education, not falling off until I've gorged myself to near death.

Another reason why I am getting, as my coworker/friend said, "psycho about it" is because school is ruining/reshaping my life. My friendships, my relationship, everything. And yet. . .if I had to choose, I'd choose school. Sure, there are external factors that make it more appealing. I am utterly depressed when I look at people I know and/or am related to, the addicts and the arrested, the family and friends in abusive relationships, all the wonderful people I've known who are so hell bent on destroying themselves, and all the not so wonderful people I've met who want to destroy anyone that isn't them. Then there is the sibling who took a different path, a path of denial and mutilation, turning herself into some synthetic freakshow of suburban normalcy, and denying all her artistic dreams in favor of money and possessions -- that clearly don't satisfy her -- going from poor girl to hater of the poor, all because she hates who she was, who we were. Or maybe she doesn't remember, because if she remembered, she wouldn't sound like Ronald Reagan talking about welfare queens. I want to reach out to her, to pull her into the darkness and show her how cool it can be, how free she'll feel when she accepts who she is and where she came from. But. . . I have to focus on myself for now. I know who I am and all the skirts, suits, and uniforms I have to wear will never make me forget.

. . .And it's more than the external factors that make me love school. It's something else. Something building inside me.

To prepare for one upcoming class I've purchased a bunch of playbooks, a vocabulary builder book, a rhyming dictionary, and some other helpful tools. I decided this time around in creative writing I wouldn't bs my way through the poetry section. I'm kind of excited about it because the professor taught me for a couple weeks when I was in elementary school. So, I figured I'd better read some plays being that I don't go to any. I've decided the next friend I make will want to go to the ballet and to see plays.


Still. . .despite any increasing confidence I've developed since spring semester I can't watch the first six and a half minutes of this scene in Educating Rita without over relating and bawling my eyes out.



I cry. Every. Single. Time.

. . . Speaking of better songs to sing, I'm going to put on some Arcade Fire and do some homework.

They heard me singing and they told me to stop
Quit these pretension things and just punch the clock
These days my life, I feel it has no purpose
But late at night the feelings swim to the surface

'Cause on the surface the city lights shine
They're calling at me, come and find your kind
Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
That we can never get away from the sprawl


- Arcade Fire

Best Blogs, I

I am mentally and physically exhausted. I know I have a brain but it doesn't seem to be turned on right now, so, before I forget, AngryBlackBitch's blog entry"Communication..." is amazing and it's something I want to remember if I end up pursuing special education.

. . .now back to letting my brain turn to jello.

Project Connect, etc.

Because I've been interviewing high school teachers I've been able to hear some stories about how difficult and frustrating it can be to approve new and/or challenging lesson plans. One person I interviewed quit teaching out of frustration and another teacher has been soldiering on with over twenty years on the job, despite hating the last four years of her administration and an anti-teaching climate. So when I started to try and raise donations for Project Connect (an event for homeless and people who are at risk of becoming homeless) I remembered an assignment I had in a middle school English class. We were supposed to write letters to our favorite businesses, telling them how much we like their products, and the incentive was the idea that they might send you something for free. So I wonder how hard it would be to change an assignment like that to writing to businesses to ask for donations to charitable causes. It seems like such a small change and such an important one because as a class discussion recently reminded me, many people are completely ignorant of history and when you're ignorant of the history of activism you can be ignorant of your own political power and your own influence over the market should you choose to exercise it.

Anyway. . .
I am writing to DIVA CUP at divacup.com, the makers of the GREATEST MENSTRUAL PRODUCT EVER!!

I know, they scare some people (even me, at first) but they're wonderful and they seem like they'd be a perfect fit for someone without the money to buy tampons or pads. Over the past three or four years I've saved tons of money. I hope all my compliments and information will convince them to donate their product.

This whole event has me thinking about homelessness and poverty and how skewed the debate becomes because the discussion is so often framed in one or two stereotypes. Again, this is where stories in education are so important.

When I think of the homeless I think of . . .

- The GLBT kids in Salt Lake City that I saw in a documentary. They were squatting in abandoned buildings and homes because their parents kicked them out for their sexual orientation.

- My husband, who lived in an abusive home and was kicked out of the house before he could graduate high school. Sometimes he couch surfed, other times he squatted in abandoned buildings, crack dens, etc.

- My cousin who has been living at home and recently found herself pregnant with twins. Her mom wants her out before the babies are born. . .but this is a much longer story.

- People who are homeless because of a drug addiction.

- People who have a drug addiction BECAUSE they are homeless.

- The mentally and emotionally ill.

- The physically ill.

- People with disabilities.

- Veterans.

- Mothers, Fathers, but as the statistics for the last Project Connect tell us, mostly it's children.

- I think of my mother, my sister, and me. I think of how easily we could have been homeless after my parents divorced and how the only thing that kept our disasters from destroying the roof over our head was my mother's very supportive and wonderful parents who I owe more to than to anyone.

- I think of my uncle who was blinded from complications resulting from his premature birth. I think of how that 1950's doctor recommended he be institutionalized and I think of all the people I saw while working at the library in Ann Arbor -- many people who had been institutionalized but then were released and had no where to go. I wonder how many of them suffered the fate my Uncle could have had my grandparents not said No. I wonder if they have family or if institutionalization blunted their emotions and kept them from building normal familial bonds.

- Anyone.


There are stories that need to be told.

Where Science and the Arts meet.

. . . at a Captured! by Robots concert.

There seems to be a schism between the arts and sciences. I'm not sure if it comes from our cultural attitude that favors innate ability over hard work and the tiresome left brain/right brain identities, or perhaps it results from the financial competition between the two areas where art programs are usually first to get cut while science teachers are stuck with outdated equipment and little lab space.

Either way, some of us often embrace of one area often disregard the other, unaware of how each area can enhance or compliment the other. I was once such a student.

And I was wrong.

That's why I am totally geeked over Captured! By Robots returning to Michigan. I've seen them (Jay Vance and his robotic musicians) twice and look forward to a third time. This is a great example of combining the two worlds to create Rock God Sci-Fi Glory.

From an old SF Weekly Article

"[Vance] is not meant to be in a band with other people, he's just not," laughs Jimbo Matison, a television/Web director who does animation and commercial work with Vance and who played in a band with him called the Invincible Magnificent Heroes. "He made the robots because he can't get along with other musicians. He's just so obsessed [with music] -- but he's very honest about that."

Vance had his true epiphany while watching the members of Steel Pole Bath Tub use foot switches to activate backing tracks during a live show.

After deciding to invent his own mechanized guitar and drum players, he realized he still had one major problem: Although he had a degree in music from DePaul University in Chicago and worked as a tech for Haight Ashbury Music Center, Vance had no formal training in mechanical engineering. But, after checking out works by local robotics group Seemen, Vance was able to teach himself how to create a robot. By his own admission, the original incarnations were awful.

"I'd never built a robot before, and the first attempts were ridiculous," he says. Vance controlled his prototypes with pedals activated by his hands and feet, while simultaneously playing bass and singing into a strapped-on mike. The equipment required to make the original C!BR shows run weighed heavily on Vance, wrecking his knees and pushing him to decide to give the "musicians" more autonomy, a task that was easier imagined than done. "I have a feeling about how things work and then I build it, but there's no mathematical equations necessarily, it's all instinct," he says. "It's like experimental physics."

By the beginning of 1998, Vance had discovered a way to make his bandmates independent: He ran data cables from a computer to the robots, leaving him free to play the half-guitar/half-synthesizer instrument he'd created. His first "indie" co-conspirator was GTRBOT, a 6-foot-tall creature with steel-scrap fingers, stubby legs, bulbous eyes, and an autoharp abdomen who made music by dragging cable ties across his 12 strings. Then came DRMBOT, who had the body of a full drum kit and the mangy dreadlocked head of Medusa and who hit her kit with a kick drum pedal and three sticks attached to motors. According to Vance, both DRMBOT and GTRBOT hate humans, so they are ruthlessly nasty when they speak, humiliating and threatening to kill "JBOT" during performances. On the recent Captured! By RobotsCD, the duo makes him inhale propane, eat boogers from a homeless man's nose, and say, "JBOT is a butt-sniffing butt-licker" (to which they laugh uproariously). According to C!BR lore, Vance is at the mercy of the robots because, once he finished the pair, they planted a "biocerebral chip" in his brain that allowed them to control him by administering shocks. Vance shows his supplication by performing in shackles (with red guts spilling out of his white shirt) and a black mask that exposes only his mouth and two reddened eyes.

To balance out his hate-filled 'bots, Vance secretly built the Ape Which Hath No Name. The Ape is an oversize stuffed animal with a movable mouth and eyes that light up. When he's not shaking the tambourine attached to his head, the Ape expresses his love for Vance, complimenting him on his hair, eyes, lips, and music and making the other 'bots even more pissed. The band's newest member is AUTOMATOM, DRMBOT's baby, who is constructed of three drum toms, a China cymbal, and a black trunk with big white teeth.

Come May 3, the robots will ride!

"scattering their rich guts across the galaxy"

I don't know what I was thinking jumping off a a pile of snow onto the slippery sidewalk I just know that I landed on my hand, knee, and twisted my leg to the side. Since someone saw me I jumped up real quick. Had there been no one around I probably would have been much slower to get up. That's my first metaphor for life. Or something. Later, I was so busy with the stinging pain and the cleaning the blood out of my business suit that I completely missed the slowly swelling ankle until I started dragging my leg behind me like a dead corpse. That is my second metaphor my life. Or something. But maybe it was just a small price to pay to the universe because upon arriving home I learned that my math test really was extended and I am GOLDEN. I am the happiest student alive!

Now if only astrophysicist and television host Neil DeGrasse Tyson would tutor me in Astronomy.

I watched this amazing video from BBC 4 on the moon which actually helped me further understand and appreciate what I've been learning. But, I can't figure out if Neil and BBC 4 would actually interest a student 10 to 14 years younger than me.

I mean. . .there's just something about Neil. He's so passionate and smart and kind of goofy.

Every time I see him I want to make a Uranus joke. A SEXY Uranus joke.

The Daily Show - Neil deGrasse Tyson Pt. 1
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Not so sure a fourteen year old would feel the same way. I don't think I want a fourteen year old to feel the same way.

Godless-Liberal-Unions trying to teach our kids!!

Do I like all teachers?
Nope.
Should some teachers be fired?
Yup.
Do I think curbing a unions right to collective bargaining will solve this problem?
HELL NO.

My high school experience was set in a small White town as socially conservative as many of these small White Midwest towns are. There were teachers who were openly sexist, racist, and homophobic and had such a wonderful influence on so many small minded students whose minds continued to stay small. Were they being protected by their unions against a community and administration that wanted them fired? Um, no. They were a REFLECTION of the community and the administration. The so-called "godless liberals" (some not actually godless and not all were even that liberal) who actually focused on teaching and learning were the protected ones. These were teachers who taught critical thinking skills instead of regurgitating stereotypes and cracking extremely offensive jokes. Despite some teachers pandering to the lowest common denominator it was still often the most exceptional teachers who captivated students, at least while they were in the room, before reverting back to their anti intellectual selves, a self that is congratulated and welcomed in every other area of their existence.

Did my old school ever change? No. The school board's recent track record on discriminating against disabled students leaves me with zero hope for them. But they continue to attract settlers with a standardized teaching record somehow higher than surrounding urban areas and they're a "safe" community. Their record on safety is even attracting my sister who wants to replace my nephew's religious private school (which she selected to avoid the "scary" city public schools) with a safe school in our old backwards community. How exactly did this sort of teaching somehow become "safer" than attending a public city school? If you're gay and you go to Jackson Public you can at least join the gay straight alliance, last year there was even a gay prom! But if you're at our old school and you find yourself feeling gay or just confused, uh, enjoy the closet (there's even a teacher in the closet, and oddly with zero political ambitions) and good luck at not wanting to kill yourself at some point. Oh, and try and avoid the standard dangers of date rape and this new explosion of heroin that suddenly people actually care about because it's happening to all those pretty White kids who moved to the burbs or country specifically to avoid this kind of thing.

Yes there are teachers/coaches who pad the grades of his or her athletes and never teach critical thinking skills because he or she doesn't actually possess any. Yes, I went to a school where every single sport budget eclipsed any academic extracurricular activity (such as debate, you know, that thing Ivy League students and world leaders do). But hey, if your administration cares more about sports than learning, and if your community cares more about sports than learning, and if we all care more about partisan politics than actual LEARNING, don't be a fucking douche bag idiot who thinks it's the UNION protecting that mentality. That mentality would exist with or without unions.

This train of thought blows my mind. Just look at what the free market values these days. Pregnant teenagers who are only famous for being pregnant are on the cover of magazines in the checkout aisles. Why put in the time and energy to accomplish anything when fame and fortune is just a sex tape and a reality show away? I'm afraid social conservatives don't know what they are getting into when they support the corporate model of education. I know there are complaints about sex education now but just imagine how it'll be when a Kardashian is teaching your kids how to give blow jobs on film.

Anyway. . .

In a previous semester I took a class with a young person who was barely literate. I could hardly understand her posts but from what I managed to discern the student was an anti union conservative who didn't want government regulation because we already had the (fill in the blank of a government agency). When someone tried to point out to this student that the organization IS a government agency this seemed to fly over her head. It was impossible to have meaningful discussions because she had so little in the way of comprehension skills. And yet I am sure she will go on to vote and make her opinion against unions and government protections known, perhaps she'll eventually vote down a milage to support a school because she'll think, "Don't Ke$ha's unicorns shit twenty dollar bills?"

No offense, Ke$ha.

Bad Student 4 life.

For spring semester I need to retake Business Law, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I deal with business law all day at work and school is like my escape from work. I should have withdrawn from it five years ago instead of just failing it because now it is the one grade dragging down my damn overall GPA.

Sometimes I am still a bad student. . .

but first, let me say that I have no idea what people who claim the private sector is better than the public sector are thinking. Working in various areas of the private sector from a small town grocery store to a large company I've seen waste, inefficiency, and HUGE bureaucracy. Probably the most efficient no nonsense job I ever had was working for nearly minimum wage at a public library. And right now work is getting increasingly complicated and I'll be short staffed for at least a month and I have no idea how I am going to survive without overtime approval in the meantime. Not that I know how my school work would survive overtime, so either way I am preparing for hell in one area or another.

So, sometimes I am still a bad student. I had done well in blowing off a Friday bar night and Saturday beer fest with friends because I wanted to study and do homework, as much as I would have liked to have socialized. Despite the hermit behavior and the studying, I went to take an exam that I really wasn't as prepared for as I would have liked. I aced the first exam and wanted to do the same on the second but I knew that wasn't going to happen. So when I came in the proctor said "Just to let you know, today is not the last day to take the test like everyone thinks." I think my heart might have jumped out of my chest and somehow smacked me in the forehead, or maybe I suffered a mini stroke because the world seemed to go black for a second before I regained consciousness making out an articulate "HUH?" I asked if there had been a change. That's when the proctor pulled out the paperwork my professor signed. It was true! I had until 3/11! Still stunned I asked "Are you sure?" and the proctor assured me it was my professor's handwriting. I felt a mix of emotions, something like feeling foolish for asking so many doubting questions and another feeling of divine providence. In one second I computed all the possible reasons for extending the test deadline and figured it must be because of the massive power outages. Of course as I walked out I started to doubt the scenario and wonder if I had done the right thing. But I kept walking, left, ran errands, came home and logged into my class to reread the exam info. I hadn't misread it the first time. So I emailed the professor explaining what had happened and asking if the date had been extended or did I just take a zero?

But we're on spring break and the professor isn't going to answer for a week. So now I am ridiculously nervous, scrunching up my face causing premature lines and wrinkles (not to mention a huge stress headache). How badly do I want to kick my own ass? So bad.

I find that the more I learn about higher education the more issues I have with my grades. I receive an A and I have to consider whether or not my grade was inflated and whether or not I can compete with students at a more competitive school.

According to The Chronicle I should be able to expect more honesty from tenured professors who don't have to worry so much about student evaluations. But how do I know who are tenured? Should I email them before signing up for their classes saying, hey are you tenured? Would that be rude? It seems a bit personal. Of course I want good grades but I also want to actually learn. How can I make that happen without coming across as annoying/needy/jerky/crazy?

To make a bad week worse, diet soda has been linked with a huge increase in strokes. It doesn't mean they're CAUSED by diet soda but it's possible. Either way, how dare they tell me this, diet soda has been my new Vodka ever since going back to school.

A Good Teacher is a Good Storyteller

My sister and I have two different problems. When confronted by something that offends our very core she struggles to be cruel while I struggle to be kind. So when I heard of what my nephew's kindergarten teacher had to say about him this time (and why she thinks he should be held back) I imagined my sister hearing it, frozen in silence, too pained and stunned to say anything until later when she'd relay the story in her rapidly increasing pace. Of course being the sibling who doesn't shy from confrontation I imagined talking to (or talking AT) the teacher, boiling over with self righteous rage and indignation, going over my case for my nephew point for point, and then when that's not enough I go into my case against her -- breaking down all of her flaws to every last detail -- then I unhinge my jaw. . .

Uh. Yeah, well it was a lot of negative thinking. So I decided to unfurrow my brow and save cultivating those premature lines for another day. Instead I focused on what makes a good and effective teacher.

It seems to me that the best teachers I've ever had were storytellers. They were animated, dramatic, and they could be talking about the birth of Shakespeare and you'd swear they were there. Sometimes their stories weren't relevant to the course, sometimes they were about things they did in school that got them into trouble, sometimes it was about their favorite pastries, or the roommate from hell, or their most embarrassing moment. The best teachers were vulnerable, sharing not only their passions but their most humbling experiences. Their stories made you excited to learn. Their stories made them human. Their stories made you feel OK with being vulnerable. If students aren't willing to be vulnerable then they won't take risks or challenge themselves or defend a position. A student who can't be vulnerable will gravitate only towards the courses they excel in, answer only the questions they know for sure, and be more likely to follow the crowd no matter how wrong or boring the crowd might be.

Eunice LaFate "Story Teller"



Teachers who are strict disciplinarians, who have no stories and are unwilling or unable to tell them -- and who often make learning seem more like a punishment than a privilege -- are consumed with never being vulnerable, offering no incentive for a student to be.

Sometimes a student's vulnerability is abused by a teacher. I still remember the fifth grade teacher who asked a girl to read and ridiculed her in front of the whole class because she could barely read. The girl was held back, something I'm not totally against -- except for in the many cases where the exact same methods applied once are reapplied, hoping for different results. Yes, she couldn't read, and yes she was held back, but she never learned to read well. We had a high school science class together and she stumbled over the words then, too. By then she spent the lab hour discussing the many middle aged married men she hooked up with after meeting them over the internet. She belonged to a small unpopular group of girls who spent 9th through 12th grade swapping their low self esteem and lack of ambition for the satisfaction that some pervert out there wanted them and was willing to cheat on their wives and break laws for a chance to touch them. Of course, there are a lot of factors that lead a child on that course, and there are a lot of potential factors for illiteracy, but I know a teacher who humiliates a young child doesn't help. But, my fifth grade teacher wasn't a storyteller and she sure never told us an embarrassing story about her.

Not all "good" teachers are storytellers. I had many teachers who were kind and caring and would help a student who was struggling, but they weren't as effective as the storytellers because they couldn't lure a student into a subject that didn't interest them, and they couldn't form the same trust a storyteller could.

Although I think the pressures facing children and teenagers make K-12 the most important place to have storytellers as teachers I think it would be beneficial to the college level as well. Having taken online classes at community college I find they all lack stories. There are certain things teachers (and students) can't or don't express in text but they express them when they speak. I did have an adjunct faculty member who used video lectures. Although the lectures contained instructional information that could have had the same effect had they been typed it was still promising.


To the naysayers of The Story, those corporate education model lovers who believe literature and the arts should fly out the window, and even to the well meaning social worker that came to JCC and described stories as being valued in the working class world but not so much in business/middle class world, I MUST DISAGREE! In fact, it was fairly recently that the boss of my boss's boss told us that she wanted STORIES, exact details of what happened, when, how, who helped, etc. exact examples of what we do, because the stories are so much more effective than figures or vague explanations, she wants more of them, the CEO wants more of them, because stories are essential to truth and understanding. I work in a conservative private sector industry. If they want stories, I'm thinking stories aren't just for kids.

Media in the Classroom: Math.

There are so many things that make math in middle and high school sooooooooo booooooooring. Math is full of weird formulas and numbers that aren't numbers among all these other concepts that seem too strange to ever be of any use. When I was in high school it was assumed that the only people who needed much math were engineers and if you wanted to go into literature and the language arts, social services, political science, business, etc. that you didn't really need that much math. As long as you knew how to pay bills and make change this here math stuff was a waste. Even my math teachers weren't defending their subject's honor.

That is why I'd show every student the BBC program The Joy of Statistics.

It's an amazing program that showed how math and statistics can be applied to almost every area. It can help law enforcement, social workers, politicians, policy makers. If you're interested in language you can use it to translate information into every different language. If you want to study psychology you can use it to study emotions expressed on the internet. Interested in art and graphic design? Design statistical visualizations and save lives!

Unfortunately the full episode has been removed from youtube due to copy right infringement but there are still some great clips available:



An intro to Hans Rosling and his work.


From the documentary: Stanford University using statistics to study human emotion.


From the documentary: Using statistics to identify and fight crime in San Francisco.


From the documentary: Use statistics to design language translators for Google.

I <3 Hans.