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March 1, 2007
A new kind of Anthem: There have been some Ayn Rand-like realizations on the Internet over the course of the past few months that all this group think may be dangerous. MSNBC reported earlier this week that "meetings make us dumber," citing a study that found people have a tougher time coming up with alternative solutions to problems when they are part of a group.
Now the mighty New Yorker, famous for its thorough fact checking, is fessing up that they, along with the collectively authored online encyclopedia Wikipedia, is fessing up that it was duped by a 24-year-old who falsely claimed he was a professor:
At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay’s real name. Essjay’s entire Wikipedia life was conducted with only a user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia admin-istrators and contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution from those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.” And here lies the problem of the Internet, a haven for the lazy and people prone to group think. If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, we're all only as smart as Essjay. I'll admit that whenever I'm diving into a new topic Google is almost always my first stop, and the plainly-written Wikipedia entries that come up at the top of almost any basic search are a quick read for getting an overview of a topic.
Still, I spent a good 45 minutes of my two-hour class last night trying to convince my students that while the Internet is the greatest research tool ever created, there are other research tools that will help them verify the information they find on the Internet and not make New Yorker mistakes. I didn't have to work as a journalist in the pre-Internet days when every document had to be tracked down with a trip to the court house and every address had to be confirmed with a phone call, and now I'm getting to see the lives of students in the post-Internet generation when research -- and sometimes tailor-written term papers -- are always a few mouse clicks away.
The discussion was a tangent from our advertised topic, which was generating ideas and finding things to write about. The idea was for the students to stumble upon the realization that the best topics to write about are the things we draw from our own personal experience, and the best way to research those topics is to do the legwork and not rely exclusively on a computer (this, of course, is coming from a guy who found the subject for his first book on Craigslist, but the 2+ years of legwork between reading that ad is the difference between a book and a very short blog entry. In a sense, I used that ad to create a set of personal experiences and fuel research that took me to several states and had me interviewing people from around the world).
Because in the end, I'm not sure that the Wiki model really works. It is now being applied to all sorts of endeavors, from sites about cars to a "how to" site that frequently makes appearances in my daily links. The concept is with multiple minds tweaking, editing and contributing, an informational piece of writing becomes more accurate and more trustworthy.
Yet there's a reason why almost every single one of the estimated 1,500 articles I've written over the past ten years or so have my byline right under the headline, and it's not to give me a little ego boost every time I get to see my name in print. It's an accountability issue that let's people find me when I mess up.
As an individual am I smarter and a better writer than the hundreds of people working on a Wiki entry? Probably not. But the group think problems now being exposed in academic studies, and -- to use a second cliché -- the "one bad apple spoils the bunch" principle allows people or groups of people to push agendas and distort information to their liking on sites like Wikipedia.Labels: education, internet, life
Posted at 6:44 AM
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February 22, 2007
Harder than Chinese algebra: I'm not sure if this is one of these things being rampantly passed around the Internet (most people who know me know to send stuff like this), but I'm in a teaching mind set this semester and I hate math, so I found these kind of funny. Presumably, they're actual answers from actual exams:
  Labels: education, internet
Posted at 11:26 AM
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December 28, 2006
Another lesson from my teacher: "We should go over and say hello," Melissa says.
I am hesitant. We are sitting in a restaurant and moments earlier we had seen him enter a restaurant across Main Street in Melrose. He was hunched over a walker and, physically, a shell of the man I remember as my U.S. History teacher in my junior year of high school. I know it may be the last time I see him and I am not good with good byes.
He has been ill for quite some time. Two years ago and just before he died my father and a friend had gone to visit Freeman Frank. "He didn't look good, but he was alert," my father had said.
My father died less than two weeks after that visit.
He taught U.S. History. Kids didn't mess around in his class. If you messed around you were bound to miss something interesting. He taught in a narrative style that brought U.S. History alive. He didn't teach a series of dates and names but our shared experience and the emotions of the people who lived through the times we were learning about.
He had a passion for books, reading long passages from Steinbeck to illustrate the unit on the Great Depression. Seeing him draw emotions from the printed page is more than a small part of why I wanted to become a writer. Knowing that words could make people passionate is a big perk of this profession, but I had never really seen -- had never really felt -- that passion until I heard Mr. Frank read from Grapes of Wrath.
I have been thinking about Mr. Frank lately. Next month I start my own teaching career with two classes of advanced English composition at Newbury College. If I am a tenth of the teacher that Mr. Frank is, I will consider myself successful.
We finish our lunch, pay our bill and Melissa leads me across the street. She knows him and we find him seated in the back of the restaurant with a group of eight or nine other men. He is engaged in a conversation and Melissa politely interrupts him to reintroduce herself. She starts to reintroduce me but he knows who I am.
"You look just like your father," he says. I hear that often.
Did I say he was a shell of the man I remember? I was wrong. He is alert and his eyes dance with the genuine happiness I remember, a genuine happiness that emits from people who genuinely like engaging with other people. He remembers that I was the youngest in my family "by a long shot" and tells Melissa about the day I was born. My oldest sister was on his debate team and she came in on that Saturday in March of 1973 to announce she had a new baby brother.
"And the next thing I know that baby brother is sitting in my classroom in front of me," Mr. Frank says.
He talks about my father's visit and how much it had meant to him. He tells me that my father was a good man but knows that I do not need to be told that. Before that day two years ago he had only known my dad in passing, as a man dropping kids off to school functions and offering polite hellos. I suspect in September 2004 they talked for hours because like my dad, Mr. Frank is a gifted conversationalist. The kind of person who talks and listens, the kind of person people remember talking to.
"The thing that impressed me most about your father is that he knew everything about everything," Mr. Frank says and I smile. Anyone who ever met my dad and spent more than a few minutes talking with him could say the same thing.
Waiters are delivering food to the table full of men and need to get by us. We say a polite but hurried good bye and shuffle backwards away from the table. It's just as well: I couldn't have lasted much longer than that. A routine day off had turned into something bigger, something I hadn't expected. I am overcome with emotion. I am happy and sad, elated and devastated all at once.
I am so proud of my dad that on that day, even with his own life thrown into uncertainty by an awful disease, he went to see a friend and was his typical self -- optimistic and more interested in someone else's well being than his own. I am elated that a teacher I had 16 years ago, a teacher who was one of the ones who made a huge difference in my life, is still a story teller and still sharp.
On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant I well up. This was not something I expected or wanted. But this is not an experience or day I would trade for anything in the world.Labels: education, life
Posted at 11:46 PM
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December 15, 2006
My burgeoning career in academia: I just got unofficial word that I passed the MTEL tests I took last month, despite a feeling of dread that I was destined to fail them because I did not study.
I'm wondering what is says about secondary teacher certification that someone can walk in cold and pass them, but that's another thought for another day.
And it looks like there's a chance I'll be teaching advanced English composition at Newbury College next semester, which is the level I've wanted to teach at all along.Labels: education, life
Posted at 4:08 PM
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November 11, 2006
Glad I'm not the only one: Turns out I wasn't the only Boston-based blogger to spend a perfectly good Saturday taking a Massachusetts teacher certification test.
Yes, that's right, I'm thinking about becoming a teacher. I've always wanted to teach writing at the college level but all those positions seem to require teaching experience (or at least twice as many published books as I will have as of January 16). Quite a few of my friends who teach high school have been able to back door their way into adjunct faculty positions and, in a few cases, full-time faculty positions. Plus the hours and vacation policies are great. So $210 and a wasted Saturday seemed a lot cheaper and a lot less time-consuming than pursuing yet another degree that still won;t get me the faculty position until I amass some classroom experience.
The rub is today was perfect and sunny, and I spent all day inside. Tomorrow, when I'm running a half marathon, is supposed to be rainy and miserable. The weather is certainly not keeping my priorities in mind.
And you can save your "people who can, do, people who can't, teach" cracks to yourself. I can. It's just that most working writers I've known seem to eventually settle into some sort of teaching gig. Now it's my turn.
It's a fairly odd collection of people lining up to take these tests. I took it at Beverly High School, one of several different testing sites throughout the state. The average test taker is a young, white woman in her early twenties, but there were more than a few guys with gray hairs. It's interesting to note that the potential educators were almost exclusively white. And while I didn't count, I'm fairly certain I was one of the few people to not wear sweat pants and a hoodie to take the test.
I took the Communication & Literacy Skills test this morning (a total cakewalk unless you have difficulty defining three-syllable words like "designate) and walked into the English test this afternoon brimming with confidence. That confidence was quickly dissipated (another word I had to define this morning) as I was forced to answer questions about the traits of work produced in the British Romantic period and common themes found in the writing of authors I had never heard of.
If I wanted to make excuses I would rail against an education system that makes English, reading and writing as boring as possible to insure that the fewest number of students take a genuine interest in it. But the truth is I signed up for the test on a whim and spent one of the two weeks I had to prepare in Ireland, and the second of those two weeks recovering and catching up from the week spent in Ireland.
I only need 70% to pass and I find out the results on December 15. If worse comes to worst there's always the option of retesting.Labels: education, life
Posted at 4:44 PM
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