Issue #153 - The Spaces in Between
Issue #153 - The Spaces in Between
Brinks Drift
It is a beautiful sunny day, the sun is streaming through the blinds, and even though it is cold and steam is rising from my coffee, I feel warm inside.
Apologies for the late issue, I’m writing Sunday morning. I was busy ferrying the boys to practices last week, and then I had a few evening events, and packed days at work meant I had no time at all. However, all is good. I was lying in bed, awake early, so I thought I would get up, make myself a cuppa, and start typing.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
Once I finish this week’s issue, I’ll write a course announcement for Everyday Learning ahead of our final week. Students are sending me drafts of their final reflective essays, which I’ve enjoyed reading. Many of these pieces reflect on how little they’ve thought about education and the questioning of teaching and learning they have been asked to do throughout their schooling. I find it all quite depressing; some talk about a system that moves them like cattle from one lesson to the next loads their brains with facts and figures, and asks them to regurgitate them in high-stakes tests at small desks in a gymnasium.
Sure, some progressive ideas have been integrated into education. There is certainly more opportunity for project-led learning, internships, and tackling “real-world” challenges in class. Still, for the most part, there is a continued obsession with measuring recall through summative examination and then sharing that data with parents, politicians, and communities through league-tables, and then tying that success to budget allocation is hugely detrimental to student learning. Those students who can’t game the system are set up to fail. Those that succeed do so despite the system, not because of it.
We will finish the week by discussing the ongoing political battles in education, from voucher systems to book banning. As a class, we will set ourselves the task of redesigning the system for the future. Then later in the week, we’ll look at our outcomes and celebrate the end of the course with some coffee and donuts. At least that part should be fun.
Life Lessons
In the second half of the semester, I’ll be working on projects for the Global Languages & Cultures Room. There are already a few of these underway: a new experience in collaboration with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), a VR story project with some of my students from last semester, an interactive book, the audio piece on Te Ata that I mentioned in a previous newsletter, and a couple of other ideas tucked up my sleeves. I hope to make progress on the project with my colleague Mame-Fatou Niang based on her work with New York Times writer Martha Brown about Abigail, an enslaved woman, and the moving story of her escape in Paris. The only way I can complete these projects is if I spend a few days planning and making sure I allocate my days sensibly.
I also hope to use this time to head out on some early morning bike rides and find a yoga class. I know that Pittsburgh still has some snow coming. Looking back at last year’s photos, we had snow in late March, so I should be taking advantage of these sunny days now.
Finally, just thinking ahead, I have articles to publish and a hefty chapter to write, all of which must be included. If I get the chance to head to Washington DC again, I will try and visit the Library of Congress and Smithsonian. Towards the end of the semester, I’ll be heading to CALICO, the conference for computer-assisted language learning where I’m presenting, and then (phew) it will be time to head to Europe, hopefully to France and also home to the UK. This is my first time listing all these things, and I’m already feeling a bit queasy and excited about it.
Lost and Found
Here are a few things I read and stumbled across this week.
I always use Open Culture to find free things and realized I probably hadn’t shared this incredible resource, although you may already be familiar. There are lists of freely accessible books, films, audio, learning materials, podcasts, and more.
I enjoyed this article about Old Man’s Journey, the game for iPad and phone which I’ve been playing recently. It is a beautiful and moving game, and certainly, I’m drawn to emotional experiences, those that are rooted in a more poetic interpretation of character and place. Of course, my favorite is still Florence by Annapurna. I’m also a fan of other story-led experiences, like the Chinese Room’s Dear Ester or Her Story, which is also engaging and atmospheric in worlds as rich as those in novels.
I thought this was fun, asking Chat GPT to create crochet patterns and seeing how bad the results are. It’s just more evidence that the Ai is a supreme bullshitter. I also understood this week that because it isn’t connected to the web, it will simply use the keywords in the URL to fake an answer if you ask to create a summary of a particular page. You can give it a made-up URL for a page that doesn’t exist, and as long as there are keywords (rather than numbers or random letters), it will return an answer as if it had visited the page and gathered a summary.
Book banning isn’t just the preserve of Florida and other red states. In Pennsylvania, a school district is removing copies of Girls Who Code (affiliate link), a brilliant book aiming to close the gender gap in computing and encourage girls to learn and see themselves as future developers and designers. I hope the publicity increases sales of this book and others listed in Pen America’s index of school book bans. I noticed Malala Yousefzai’s books on this list, so the people who want to silence her are the Taliban…and a school board in Central York School District in PA. I have no words…
Help!
I plan to make a few adjustments to the newsletter in the next few weeks, and I would really appreciate a moment of your time to help with some ideas. These are questions about the newsletters generally, not just this issue.
I really like hearing from you, so please leave a comment or send me a message.
Let’s figure out what’s next for this newsletter.
Thank you
Okay, I have a rugby match to watch this morning, so I’ll be heading off soon.
It was our eldest’s sixteenth birthday this week, and we had a lovely family meal in a Hibachi restaurant on the South Side. I’m super proud of him, he’s done okay, the usual ups and downs, stresses and strains, but he’s kind and helpful, and we love him to bits.
He’s been playing and refereeing Futsal, which is indoor footy played on a court like this one. Some of the places they play, I love the decor.
Have a good week, take care, and be safe.
Well…… as usual, it's a pleasure to "read you"! It was a bit frustrating to have to choose only one favorite section and I say that because I love the fact the Introductions are so personal. We don't get much "personal" email at work. Often, what you write reminds me that I need to look and go outside more often, and think about and write about and communicate more about just "human" stuff.
I'm really glad you're working on Te Ata (I saw the film on Netflix about her) and on the project with Mame. Once my book is done (hopefully) by June/July, I want to try to design a website onto which to transfer aspects of what I've written about, visual and sound material, etc. (I'm even considering applying for a small grant to be able to go to the Diaz Ayala Popular Music collection at Florida International University to be able to get rights to uploading music that would have been used in some of these plays. I don't have a clear picture of it yet, but it's been a long time coming/gestating. Because it deals with issues of race and representation, it cannot be all "celebratory." Instead, it needs to help people understand the contexgt in which this particular blackface theater took place, and why. And questions about what different forms of "blackface" or assumed identities exist today, and how, and why. Anyway… I hope to see you at some point this semester! Kenya