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Sunday, January 31, 2016

It could be WAY different

Facebook is not the only source for English as it is used in a social setting, nor is it a source showing the "average" American speaker's usage of English.  It also is not the only way to judge language trends in English.  But, it is certainly one source to use, and with a plethora of examples of anything that is trending on it.

One such trend that has increased over the last two years of Facebook use is the number of "stickers" used, usually at the end, but sometimes in the middle, of a post.  In addition, more people are  "commenting" on other people's posts with pictures of their own rather than typing a response.  Both of these trends show that people are increasingly tired of using words when something else is available to them to represent ideas.


I don't think this bodes well for those interested in keeping the old ways of keeping English around in print.  Handwriting is very much a pain to anyone anymore.  People are resistant to handwriting since they can just as easily type something into a notes app or paste and copy much more efficiently than ever before.  Typing, not handwriting, is taught in lower grade levels in most schools that try to "keep up" with technology advances.  But, even that is not where the Facebook trends seem to be stopping.  Emoticons, mojis, stickers, and pics have sharply affected how people want to respond to others.  Even in advertising used on Facebook, outside of people's posting, the marketing experts have instilled into everyone to use pictures when possible and words only to give essential information like a slogan or product highlights.

I think it is easy to connect dots from the present to the future at this point.  But, I still see people who hang on to the idea that using words, usually formal words, shows how educated (and by association) how respected one is.  Maybe that's true if I use sources from other sectors of English language use.  But, if I think Facebook is a good indicator of things to come, I am betting on a really different kind of future for English.

At present English is a lingua franca, but if the nature of English changes, what happens to the lingua franca?  Next year, it is estimated that more speakers of English will be spoken by people in and from China than by any other country.  That also will affect the nature of English in the realms of the spoken language.


I'm not at all worried about the future of English since I am not an elitist of the language.  I just think it will be WAY different than what people are seeing at the moment... say in 10 years.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Working with the brain

One of the most noticeable features of brain operation is how efficient it is.  The functions it controls are well organized and hierarchically organized.  So, in the portions of the brain that capture electrical impulses and change them to information, the collection and interpretation points automatically log the information into the storage areas of other related ideas.  When the impulse carries information that already has been set up in storage, the collection point for it interprets the semantic domains for the information and again sends it to the storage areas.  Some storage areas receive repeated information a lot and some not so much, depending on the semantics for each piece of related information.  It's how the brain determines importance and priority because it is an extremely efficient manager of information.  If information comes to the brain that doesn't have a storage area, it is temporarily stored in an area for one to make a conscious decision to keep it or not.  If no attention is paid to consciously categorizing it, it stays in the temporary area until it is bumped out as the area refills with more temporary information.

Efficient, swift, easy, continuous, and effortless.  That's the brain at its best.  And although the brain contains millions upon millions of storage areas for information, when a storage area is not tapped by the memory in a really long time, the information is also released to the temporary storage area for one to decide to re-store it or let it go.

Just knowing this much about the brain should change the way learning happens, and it should shape how learning should occur as the virtual world continues to grow and take on the function of educating people 16 and older.  Before age 16, two great pruning periods occur automatically around 10 months of age and again between 14 and 16years of age.  For infants and youth, then, a slightly different process happens.  Learning among these two groups should take into account the differences.

Those businesses who train employees and educational institutions, physical and virtual, should really use methods of learning compatible with how the brain naturally works.  The brain will do what it does best with or without compatible learning methods, but those who work with the brain will achieve learning in a much more efficient manner because that's what the brain does - work efficiently.  A method that doesn't work with the brain will find a lot of resistance among students.



Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Applauding what's implied


USA Today carried a story with the following headline:

New analysis of math, reading scores 'very disconcerting'

The article mentioned that over the last decade the scores in US population centers have declined, but that the new scores are rock bottom enough to be disastrous - lower than ever.  Educators are so worried that they wanted to give these miserable results their due misery, so they changed the way the percentages were reported.  In all of Detroit, the article said, only 120 African American students would be considered proficient.  They presented results in the same way for several major cities, the number of students in a city who would be proficient.  Another example is that only 40 Hispanic students would score proficient or better in all of Atlanta.

That should get people's attention all right.  Yes it should... but for a very different reason.

The scores are not lying, of course.  But, they are telling us that reading and math (the way it is taught, at least, with discrete skills) are not relevant any longer.  Of course, educators don't want to hear that.  Reading and math (the way it is taught) are definitely in peril.  Educators ignored the reasons for the decline, and scrambling to fix scores now is futile.   Reading and math (the way it is taught) scores are irretrievably in peril.  Why?  Reading is dying.   A decline has happened over the last ten years because there was a war with technology, and technology won.  Visual presentation has replaced it.  Math taught as a series discrete skills is dying.  Operations are not the end game any longer.  An environment for those skills has replaced them.  The new environments are algorithms, coding, and math syntax.

I'm sure there will be other articles of gloom and doom to follow this one.  They will decry the poor scores.  They will try to use the smoke and mirrors of how the poor and minority children are way behind.  They will continue reporting on tests that measure reading and discrete math skills.  But, if those in charge of education were to test the skills for the new world, the world people really wake up in every day, they might see an increase in scores for disciplines that actually count, disciplines that are the building blocks of the world now, and increasingly, the coming world.  Test basic computer programming.  Test video presentation of ideas.  Test the construction of meaningful algorithms.  See if those scores show proficiency.  Tout the increase of web page organization and use.  Applaud the widespread use of photo presentation that yield interpretation of real world events.

Reading and math skills are not going to improve.  But, who cares!  Let's be done with measuring skills from the 20th century.  Let's construct tests that measure what students are really learning, what they absolutely should learn to survive in a global economy.  I think people would be proud of the results, not "disconcerted" with them.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Speaking has a diminishing role, thankfully


I'm a little bit picky about the public speakers I want to hear.  I'm really not inclined to waste my time if the speaker doesn't follow certain criteria.  It's a little hard to take instruction from him or her if his or her speech is sprinkled with ain'ts and she don'ts, for instance.  And, if a disconnect happens between what is proposed and what is real, I'm out.  The two reference points are too different from each other.  If I hear too many You ought tos, then my mind checks out for sure.  The number one criterion for me is not to ask me to raise my hand for any reason.  Speakers think that is a point of engagement with the audience, a type of participation that keeps the audience listening to him or her.  I won't raise my hand for any reason in an audience.  The speaker either has my attention or (s)he doesn't.  Raising my hand doesn't show that I am engaging with the speaker.  I have been known to walk out if speakers do that too much.

If I am listening to a speaker, first and foremost, I am there to be informed in some way.  So, inform me.  If the information is something I need, then I'm all ears.  Another reason I might attend a public speaker is to listen to substance.  Wasting my time with fluffy stories that bear little relevance to the substance I am there for is inconsiderate.  Most of the time informing me using substance is enough for me to act in a certain way if I deem it necessary.  So, the practical part I respond to is if the speaker gives a variety of ways for the substance to happen in, not with inexperiential or poorly thought through methods of implementation.

In this day of video presentation, public speakers are few and far between for me.  Increasingly, I choose ones that present using media.  A droning voice can get old after about 20 minutes.  Needless to say, I don't go very often to see a speaker.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

What's the effect?

Education is not preparation for life.  Education is life itself.
- John Dewey

        Image result for tornado damage    

I normally wouldn't put stock in a saying like this one because the people who say such things are generally not among those who are educated.  That to me means they are speaking about something they haven't experienced, so they don't know if their words are true or not.  But the quotation above is from one of the pioneers of modern education, a premier educational reformer.  He would know the truth of his words.

One of the stated missions for many school districts across the U.S. is to prepare students for life.  If Dewey is right, the school should have no such mission.  I had a great discussion with two people last night, one from Honduras, the other from Mexico, over this idea.  Both of them didn't have much formal education and thought that formal training would have changed things for them.  I could see their point of view since I have espoused the idea of preparation for life before.

But really, Dewey is right.  Society is set up to provide jobs that require "training" in order to enhance performance.  But part of "life itself" that Dewey speaks of is experiencing life as it happens, solving problems as they happen, overcoming difficulties as they happen.  The experience itself is what allows success or failure.  There's no grade given for one's performance.  Your experience worked for you or it didn't.

It is true that researching how to do something is part of any experience, but life happening to a person is not artificial like most people's education.  Life happening to a person isn't artificial.  It has tangible, real, long or short term effects. 

And how should one attempt to duplicate the experience of life happening.  In Dewey's day, one attempt was the Motessori approach to education.  Discovery learning it has been called.  Many approaches have come and gone since that time.  But, the mission of preparation for life has prevailed throughout all the attempts.


I hope that today's educators would see the truth of Dewey's statement.  We need education to give life experiences that have effects for those engage in it.  Education should not be simply periods of learning subject facts.  It should include a broader scope of experience that has tangible, real, long and short term results.

Imagine an 18-year-old who knows that life has effects and tries to take on life by competently, deliberately solving problems and overcoming difficulties.  It shouldn't be imagination!


Thursday, January 21, 2016

Argument lost

Today I was at a university.  It didn't at all look like a university. The building that housed the university was a new building on a major highway in a major city, very modern looking.  The university took up only the 8th floor of the building.  All offices had full length windows to the outside and were divided from each other by glass walls.  There were areas where tables existed in front of large white screens/smartboards, but a person could easily see there were no classrooms, no brick and mortar buildings making up a campus, and no library, the heart and center of traditional universities.  The people that worked in the glass offices had almost nothing on their desks, certainly not paper.  Computers were on the desks, but there were no wires as eyesores snaking along the floor to a hole in the wall or across desktops or down the sides of the desks.  The monitors were sleek and curved convexly.  In the first days of computers, this environment would have been called sterile, but today the word is efficient.

Where were the students carrying all their books or sitting around tables in the midst of library stacks of books?  Where were the teachers speaking in front of their students?  Where was the student center, usually a hub of activity?

Of course, you know the answers to those questions.  It's 2016.  Next year is the end of a 10 year war between technology and books.  The war between reading, writing, and arithmetic and the world of coding, algorithms, and applications.  The university I was in today is a perfect example of who has won that war.

Right now, the university is a sign of a growing trend, but my three-year-old granddaughter will call it mainstream and traditional, not cutting-edge at all.  There are so many students preparing for the wrong world that it hurts to look around.  So sad when it could have been otherwise.


Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Choosing mediocrity

I have heard that students at school tend toward mediocrity in their academic subjects.  I have heard that students ostracize smart people or befriend them only to cheat from them.  I have heard that no one really wants to be one of the smart ones, so a student "dumbs himself down" in order to have a less than smart reputation.

I have not seen a correlation between academic competence and competence level later in life in one's job.  But, I have seen the same behavior from people not in a particular career field judging unquestionable competence by someone outstanding in another career field.  They get jealous; they find excuses why they can't be as outstanding in their own career field; they disparage the exhibited competence every chance they get; they attribute traits such as "arrogance" in order to villainize the outstanding person's achievements.

Don't believe me?  I'll show you an example.


That's what I thought.  Oh, he's a cheater you say.  Really?  Cheating his way to 7345 passing yards in playoff games?  Well, he's so arrogant you say?  Six categories that no one else in history has done before might just give a person a little confidence, a little swagger in his walk.  There have been other great quarterbacks and you can't compare apples to oranges you say.  Hmm.  Records have been kept for all the great quarterbacks.  So, "most in NFL history" is a standard that includes the great quarterbacks.

I have my favorite greats - Joe Montana, Roger Stabuach, Brett Favre, Fran Tarkenton, Joe Namath.  All of them have some qualities I like more than Brady's.   But those qualities don't confuse me with the facts.  There are many reasons that Brady is the most efficient, most renowned, most competent quarterback in NFL history.

In many ways the school world is merely a microcosm of the larger adult world.  Recognizing competence, expecting competence, challenging the people around you to have competence is not highly valued in the world around us.  It's no surprise at all that the smaller world of school would reflect what is seen in the adult world - mediocrity.  So, I have a hard time putting any credibility in the complaint that students are coming out with mediocre grades and performance even if it is true.  It's the trait they see in the larger world reflecting in their own.

We should be asking Brady how he does it, so that we can copy some of that competence.  If we did, we would hear him say, "Just do your job, improve, and be the best you can be."  That's what he has said on numerous occasions.  We all can do that.  It's just something we choose not to do, not to hear.



Monday, January 18, 2016

Again - and again


The way you recover affects the way you play.

That's the saying used on a recent Gatorade commercial.  It shows two pro football players in a hot tub drinking Gatorade soothing their aches and pains after a game.   At the end, the two players are silent and the narrator gives the saying.

It's true in football.  A person has to learn to mend the right way or the muscles, tendons, and organs keep giving way in game situations.  That's why proper protocols and regimens are followed.

It's true in everyday living, too.  A person has to learn so many lessons on their journey that a person has to develop strategies for setbacks.  Sometimes credit gets destroyed.  Sometimes marriages fail.  For some, dreams for education get tabled.  For others, disease strikes.  Many reasons exist such as job loss, death, family censorship, bad business relationships, bad friendships, bad economy, arrogance, sabotage, and many other life situations.  Therefore, the strategy for bouncing back becomes paramount.

No bounce-back, no quality of life.  Rising from
the ashes, great respect from yourself and others around you.


Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Megaquakes that drive, shake, and test

One thing is for sure.  I will die.  Everyone does.  However, the unexpected death of someone close is really difficult because I share time and space with that person.  And sharing time and space is the definition for me of being close.  When suddenly I have time to spare because that person is not with me, or when I am not sharing the same space to hear laughs and cries, to see smiles and piercing eyes, I more than miss that person.


Soon, a person uses replacement therapy in order to move on.  That helps for one to see that productivity is still the number one way to refocus the missing time and place.  It works, but the memories of the time and space shared with another continues in the quiet, tranquil, and reflective moments.

Three times in my life I have experienced missing time and space with someone of great importance to me... once when I was in college, another time when my son had just finished high school, and again when I changed a steady job for a consulting job.  Those three times registered the megaquakes in my life that defined who I was and am now.  The first loss drove me to define the parameters of religion in my life.  The second shook my world view until the replacement for it changed radically.  I had to learn that acceptance was much more valuable than control.  The third loss was not a physical death.  But, the definition was the same.  It tested my lesson of acceptance, and I have never been the same.


The three megaquakes in my life, the unexpected deaths, have taught me, ironically, how to live.  I am grateful to them for that.  So, when that one sure thing happens to me, I will be a great deal different from when I first started and hope my death will have that same irony for someone else.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Ignoring the obvious

I read the list today in USA Today of retailers that are going to have difficulty staying afloat during the coming years.  Surprisingly, Macy's was number one on the list.  They have plans to save money and try to make it, though.  They're laying off a great number of employees and closing stores to save almost half a billion dollars.  Four other retailers are in the same boat including Sears, Nordstrom's and Aeropostale.

Part of the problem these companies had was that they didn't count on this winter being a warm winter.  So, thousands and thousands of cold weather articles and implements are sitting in inventory and on shelves unsold.  But the news story also said part of the problem was that these retailers didn't keep up with current marketing trends.  All of the mentioned retailers had plans to make their online presence much more visible than it is now.


Can you imagine miscalculating online business?  This is 2016.  Black Friday has been followed by Cyber Monday for at least 5 years.  Well, that's what happens when a company is on coast and ignores a sizable portion of their client base moving in a different direction.  They get into trouble and have a chance of going completely under - depending on the client base's actions, which they have ignored to get into their condition in the first place.

Dinosaurs seem to be everywhere among us, those who live in the present without a thought for the immediate future.  Creatures who graze the land without looking to the sky.  Then they see a flash in the sky, feel the earth rumble under their feet, and die in their tracks from shockwave and fire from a descending, massive meteorite.  

I can live without any of the stores mentioned.  I never shop at them anyway.  I'm part of the client base that's moved on.  Boxes come to my door almost weekly from the stores online that I shop at.


Wednesday, January 06, 2016

You can't fix stupid

Incompetence seems to be so prevalent in my dealings with the marketplace.  

Scenario:

A single mother works at a job, shows up every day and pays her bills timely.  She has a customer who befriended her who makes so much money he will not spend it all in his lifetime.  They talk one day, and the single mom mentions that her 11-year-old car is in need of repairs (again) and she needs to buy a new car.  They talk a little more, and the rich customer told her he would make a call to a dealership that he's bought 7 cars from in the last 4 years.  He said he would tell them to put her in a car.

The mother was naturally excited.  She went to the dealership and talked to the salesman.  The salesman decided he wanted to talk finances before even showing her a car.  Then he asked her to find a co-signer because she had not built up any credit.  The mom has paid cash for everything to this point, so does not have credit built up.  So, the mom tells the salesman she cannot find a co-signer and the salesman loses the deal.


Now I'm thinking what an idiot this salesman is that he would be asked by someone who has bought 7 cars from his dealership and who can take his business anywhere in town and then not fulfill a simple request.  The salesman didn't think this one through very well.  He wants to screen the single mom's finances and then tell the rich customer he can't help her.  That's bad business for a number of reasons:  a dissatisfied frequent and rich customer foremost, insensitive treatment to the single mom, a high stakes gamble if he makes the rich guy mad, and a single mom whose situation will probably improve but who will never return to this particular dealership when it does.  What an idiot!

A car salesman has a number of avenues at his disposal to put someone in a car if he wants to.  His action just shows his haughty and condescending attitude toward others.  He needs to be trained in a hurry by the sales manager before his ineptness costs the dealership a bad reputation among the residents it is in business to serve.  What a complete and total idiot!

Even if the rich guy is not bothered too much by the actions of the salesman, all the observers of this situation will know not to deal with the dealership because of this incident.  I know of 8 people that this situation has affected already.  I don't know how many others, but there are more because people talk to their friends.

Is there a way to eliminate stupid people from a business?!



Tuesday, January 05, 2016

Everyone's story has a "bottom"

This morning as I was driving a song came on the radio.  Just with the opening chords of the piano, I recognized the singer, the title, the main line from the chorus, and a time period in my own life.  All of that just as the song began.  It seemed like I was there again frozen in a time period that had already come and gone in my life.

Mainly, it was the time period in my life that my mind recalled as I was driving.  The song was not particularly memorable.  In fact, if I ever think of songs from that era, this one never comes to mind.  But there I was driving down the road in a trance, stuck in 1986.  1986 was the lowest point in my life - still is.  Most everything I had expected, dreamed of, and worked for was totally shattered.  I was working part of 1986 in a job I had never done before and wasn't related to anything I liked or had trained for.  I wasn't living at the time with my wife and son.  The job after I quit the one just mentioned was in a field I had trained for, but was below even the entry level, a hack job.  I had gone not just 3 steps backward, but more like 20 steps backward.


Popular in 1986 was the song, That's Just the Way It Is, by Bruce Hornsby.  The opening line speaks of people lined up in a welfare line with someone driving by to mock those in the line by shouting to them, "Get a job!"  The chorus reverberated in my reasoning.  I identified.

That's just the way it is,
Some things'll never change,
That's just the way it is...

Yep, it was a very low time in my life.  I remember the distinct thought, if I ever get out of this situation, then I will appreciate everything from that point on.

At the same time, Bruce Hornsby made another song popular, Mandolin Rain. That song was about a sour relationship.  The lines of the chorus:

Listen to the banjo wind,
Sad song drifting low,
Listen to the tears as they roll,
Down my face as she turns to go,

actually brought tears to my eyes whenever I heard the song since I was living almost 6 hours from my wife and two-year-old son.  It made my nights very, very long because I was alone.


So, as I was driving, scenes of those two jobs floated in front of my eyes.  Mistakes I had made, moves I wanted to make (that also would have spiraled me further downward), particular people I had come into contact with, and just the sensation of perfect misery flooded my thinking.  I missed the laughter of my little boy and his journey of discovering life without me.

It's not 1986 now.  We're in the third decade removed from that time.  It's amazing how powerful a song can be to be able to put you in a certain time and circumstance far removed from the present.  But, it happened today.

Fortunately, the chorus of The Way It Is, ends with a more optimistic line and is repeated after the first two verses (even though the song ends on the pessimistic note of "That's just the way it is."  But there is encouragement in the song.  The ending line of the chorus reads, "Ah-h-h but don't you believe them."  That's what I had to believe, too, in my miserable condition long ago.  And I didn't.  Today the story is a far cry different from the days of 1986.  Occasionally, I

Listen to the Mandolin rain,
Listen to the music on the lake,
Listen to my heart beat...

But the words that come next are not "tears rolling down my face," but satisfaction with particular accomplishments in life that 20+ years later have given me something to at least smile about and rest in.  I have learned that the things that never change are not for me.  Don't believe them.  Listen to the Mandolin Rain, all right, but, see yourself engaging in

A cool evening dance,
Listen to the bluegrass band,
It takes the chill from the air,
As they play the last song...

Let the music on the lake soothe your soul.