John Hollenbeck, Ph.D.

At the start

John — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 22:57:23 +0000

I’m looking forward to watching the replay of the final America’s Cup race this evening. It has been an amazing comeback, and is compelling in spite of the fact it is the ultimate rich (white) man’s sport. The most sailing I’ve ever done was in a tech dingy on lake Mendota when I was at UW Madison. It was fun, but after about a half hour I was ready for beer on the Terrace.

But the point is that at the start, these two ungainly sail boats are thrashing around, trying not to run into each other and generally looking very clumsy. This part of the race is both crucial and the one thing sailboats of this type are not designed for. And it reminds me of where we currently are with instructional technology. On the one hand we are trying to fit into the century’s old tradition of the university, and on the other hand computers just want to catch the wind and fly. So we stumble around and try not to run into each other, making things like learning management systems and MOOCs. And this is as it always has been; Tyack and Tobin many years ago observed that the institution of school takes things like technology and tries to whittle it down to fit the practices of the school. It’s a catamaran at the starting line, hobbled by rules and trying mightily not to go too fast.

But that’s a metaphor that has gone too far. I will enjoy the replay of the race and the beauty of all that technology flying across San Francisco Bay in the hands of highly skilled teams working at the peak of their ability. Then I’ll go back to working on Blackboard and trying not to run into all the flotsam that the rules surrounding higher education throw at it.

Someday the starter pistol will fire.

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Contrasting Two Psychologists

John — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:39:09 +0000

For a while I taught at a for-profit online university that insisted we use their prepackaged curriculum. One of the oddest part of this was their idea that both B.F. Skinner and Lev Vygotsky shared a behavioral orientation of mind. I never would have put Vygotsky with Skinner, and still cannot. The channel below was assembled to show videos about each as a contrast, and my students were asked to comment on the argument presented by the course.

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Dodgers make a great play

John — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 19:37:50 +0000

I love this play! 4.9 seconds from the warning track to the plate. The announcer’s call is fantastic in how it builds and builds to the tag.

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And then came the divorce…

John — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 03:11:09 +0000

Funny that the post before this, over a year ago, was a trombonist playing Schubert lied written for a baritone. At that time, it was a baritone that my wife was having an affair with.

And I wondered what it was about that video that made her uncomfortable…

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Post-Classical

John — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:35:10 +0000

As we think about the possible future(s) of art music, it is nice to hear how far creativity can go. This is a trombonist with a plunger taking on one of Schubert’s most compelling works. It has elicited no neutral comments.

Listen with enough bass to pick up the 6 bull fiddles who are accompanying.

Update: The original video seems to have been taken down. This is a new version.

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Shoot Miniscule Street Art in Macro! – From Photojojo

John — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:17:14 +0000

Let’s all go get small!

Some street artists think they’re sooo hot just because their work is billboard-size big.

Well, we say Banksy is an overgrown dinosaur. Twist is a hulking mammoth. Even Phil Lumbang sometimes acts like he thinks size matters.

Tiny is where it’s at.

Our new fave Slinkachu’s street art is tiny. How tiny? Put it this way: the guy graffiti tags snails.

After making a teeny tableaux of itty-bitty model people, he leaves them on the street for anybody to find. But first he takes rad macro photos so the wee little scene is never really lost.

Wanna try it yourself? Snag some little plastic people at the local hobby shop and slap a macro lens on your camera or camera phone.

If you prefer staying indoors, photograph tiny people in clever food-scapes, like Mini Miam did. Now all you need is a tag name!

The Tiniest Street Art Around

p.s. Happy Cyber Monday kiddos! We’re giving everyone $5 for sharing their store favorites. Head to the shop for more tidbits.

p.p.s. Oh! Did you know that shipping is free on orders over $50? Cause yeah, it is.

Related posts:

How to Shoot Impromptu Street Portraits

How To Make Macro Photos Without Buying An Expensive Macro Lens!

Low-Fi Street Lenticulars = Photo Inspiration in Street Art

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ADDIE Backwards Planning Model

John — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:42:00 +0000

This is from Downes. I have always thought the ADDIE model to be simplistic and wrong. The best version of it has been one that put evaluation (The “E” of the acronym) in the center of a flower. But in reality it’s all about how you are going to evaluate. There is also a nice into to ADDIE, but really let’s get beyond simplistic linear design of instruction.

Donald Clark, Big Dog, Little Dog, November 22, 2010.

For people who have heard of the ‘ADDIE’ learning development model, and wanting to know what it is, you would be hard-pressed to find a nicer concise description than this one. [Link] [Comment]
[From ADDIE Backwards Planning Model]

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Distance Learning as Learning

John — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:36:11 +0000

“All I needed was the Internet, a little bit of time everyday and priorities” – Delta Sky article about Distance Learning

The act of defining distance learning as separate from learning is exactly the problem. It is this compulsion that will keep the model for distance education subservient to the classroom, or at least dependent on it for its models of operation and evaluation. So the learner quoted above is assumed to be seeking a more convenient virtual classroom that is open whenever the time presents itself.

Usually, distance learning is defined as a physical separation of teacher and learner(s). Because of this separation there is a general feeling that the virtual classroom is inferior because of some lack; personal contact, individual help, a hallway to chat in, something. But this always leaves me to wonder about where the large lecture hall falls in this continuum. When I taught a class of 320, we were physically together, but were hardly present to each other. Yet somehow this is still a regular college class, while an online version teaching the same subject matter to 20 is virtual.

Social and economic pressures are forcing the perceived need for education higher and higher. Yet job, family and responsibilities separate a class of adult learners from the regular student body that schools were designed to service. These non-traditional students are accommodated in community colleges and, often, for profit online universities. Here they attempt to duplicate the university credential by looking and actin like real school, even if the experience is vastly different.

My point is that learning is learning, and where it takes place should not be an issue. But, as Illych pointed out 40 years ago, the institution of school has become synonymous with the act of learning. The real value of what we call distance learning is that it offers the possibility of another model for knowledge creation, education and evaluation. Yet as long as it is beholden to the institutional practices of the University, this potential will not be realized.

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Schools and Creativity

John — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:06:09 +0000

If there is one thing the schools do not do well it is prepare students for novel situations. Their plight is understandable; schools must educate a wide variety of students on little money with relatively small staffs. They are under pressure from society to do not only a good job but prove empirically that they are succeeding. Criteria for success are set by government agencies; No Child Left Behind on the Federal Level and, in Virginia where I live, Standards of Learning (SOL’s) which are in many ways more restrictive than the national standards. Schools are accredited, and must cover certain amounts of material. They may be neither too lenient (witness the illiterate high school graduate concern), nor so strict that no one graduates (thus no meeting their government quotas). In a system such as this things inevitably are reduced to “fill in the blanks” kinds of learning. The questions are measurable and the outcomes are defined. These are methods that are the exact opposite of what a creative education needs. Or a education for the 20th century.

Creativity is not an objectively measurable commodity. In spite of Thorndike’s famous statement that all that exists can be measure, there is no reliable way to “grade” a student’s creativity without descending to the absurd. Ellen Longenman once summed up the history of education in America as “Thorndike Won and Dewey Lost.” Dewey, in his way, saw the role of schools to be primarily the creation of a child that is generative and self-sufficient, while Thorndike’s legacy is more aimed at transferring measured quantities of knowledge. Now I do not want to get into that popular game of creating the objectivist “straw man” that so often is a feature of educational critique. Thorndike was concerned with measures, and a grade-based system is prejudiced toward them. Dewey, on the other hand, saw a more fluid educational system.

The basic point is that our system of school does not naturally seek to enhance creativity. It is taught, but only by dedicated teachers working under the radar in subjects that are not valued like the arts, language, even sports. Topics such as math, science and reading are vital, and so the system sort of “clutches” on something it can measure.

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