Education | Chris Aldrich

Replied to Jennifer Hall Lee: In Pasadena, the Fund-Raising for Schools Reflects the Income Inequality in Society by

Diane Ravitch (Diane Ravitch's blog)

Jennifer Hall Lee is a parent activist in Pasadena, California. She wrote this article about the different amounts of money available to different types of schools in Pasadena. Remember that one of…

It’s probably also worth noting that the Pasadena School district was one of the first in the country to begin busing in the early 70’s. This caused a dramatic split in the community and created a dramatic rise in the number of private schools here.

Private schools were not included in this new plan [busing], and because of that, people who didn’t agree with the plan — and could afford it — sent their kids to affluent private schools. This lead to around 30 private schools (currently 53) being present in the city of Pasadena.

—Roxanne Elhachem, Colorado Boulevard.net

To my knowledge there are easily about 20 private elementary schools within Pasadena with tuitions beginning at $15,000 per year and going up as high as $40,000+/year. The wealth disparities within Pasadena are pulling so many students out of public schools and into private schools has also caused the city to begin significantly cutting back on budgets and closing/consolidating schools to stay solvent.

Read Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories. (nytimes.com)

We analyzed some of the most popular social studies textbooks used in California and Texas. Here’s how political divides shape what students learn about the nation’s history.

📑 Highlights and Annotations

Conservatives have fought for schools to promote patriotism, highlight the influence of Christianity and celebrate the founding fathers. In a September speech, President Trump warned against a “radical left” that wants to “erase American history, crush religious liberty, indoctrinate our students with left-wing ideology.” ❧

I can’t help but think here about a recent “On The Media” episode A Civilization As Great As Ours which highlighted changes in how history is taught in India. This issue obviously isn’t just relegated to populist India.
Annotated on January 12, 2020 at 11:22AM

Pearson, the publisher whose Texas textbook raises questions about the quality of Harlem Renaissance literature, said such language “adds more depth and nuance.” ❧

If they wanted to add more “depth and nuance” wouldn’t they actually go into greater depth on the topic by adding pages instead of subtly painting it such a discouraging light?

But Texas students will read that some critics “dismissed the quality of literature produced.”

Annotated on January 12, 2020 at 11:27AM

Publishers are eager to please state policymakers of both parties, during a challenging time for the business. Schools are transitioning to digital materials. And with the ease of internet research, many teachers say they prefer to curate their own primary-source materials online. ❧

Here’s where OER textbooks might help to make some change. If free materials with less input from politicians and more input from educators were available. But then this pushes the onus down to a different level with different political aspirations. I have to think that taking the politicization of these decisions at a state level would have to help.
Annotated on January 12, 2020 at 11:30AM

How Textbooks are Produced

Authors, often academics, write a national version of each text.

Publishers customize the books for states and large districts to meet local standards, often without input from the original authors.

State or district textbook reviewers go over each book and ask publishers for further changes.

Publishers revise their books and sell them to districts and schools. ❧

This is an abominable process for history textbooks to be produced, particularly at mass scale. I get the need for broad standards, but for textbook companies to revise their books without the original authors is atrocious. Here again, individual teachers and schools should be able to pick their own texts if they’re not going to–ideally–allow their students to pick their own books.
Annotated on January 12, 2020 at 11:33AM

“The textbook companies are not gearing their textbooks toward teachers; they’re gearing their textbooks toward states,” she said. ❧

And even at this they should be gearing them honestly and truthfully toward the students.
Annotated on January 12, 2020 at 11:39AM

Read Teaching Podcasting: A Curriculum Guide for Educators (NPR.org)

Guidance on planning classroom instruction.

NPR has got some great materials for teaching/learning podcasting techniques.

Read Free law textbooks raise questions about OER by Lindsay McKenzie (insidehighered.com)

Legal scholars are increasingly adopting and creating free textbooks in an attempt to increase affordability for students. But are these textbooks considered open educational resources?

Replied to a tweet by

Hungry Bread Elevator (Twitter)

For people who are opening up the blogging/reading capabilities of @hypothes_is like @ChrisAldrich and @tomcritchlow, how might tools like https://t.co/kLJ1U9sHc1 facilitate metachat or hyperconversation collaboration? So far I only seeing it being used for teaching. @kickscondor pic.twitter.com/5zBS7nq1v4
— Hungry Bread Elevator (@AGWilsonn) December 23, 2019

Some of the off-label uses of Hypothes.is have been enumerated lately, including some I’ve mentioned.

I’ve tinkered a bit with CROWDLAAERS, but it’s always seemed to me geared toward a very niche audience including teachers potentially using it for grading? Perhaps I’m missing some more of its flexibility? Remi Kalir might be able to help elucidate it or indicate if he’s noticed anyone using it for off-label usage.

I might see it being more useful if one could analyze site-wide annotations on a domain with a wild-card search of this sort: https://tomcritchlow.com/*.

I have to imagine that it would be cool to see all the annotations and conversations across something like the New York Times with a data visualization tool like this.

Jon Udell and gang are aware of Webmention, but haven’t pulled the trigger (yet) on making the decision to build them in. I’ve outlined some methods for making their platform a bit more IndieWeb friendly by adding markup and some additional HTML to allow people to force the system to be able to send webmentions. I do frequently use Jon’s facet tool to check highlighting and annotation activity on my website.

I have found Crowdlaaers useful several times in that I’m aware that some pages are annotated, but they’re either not public or are part of other groups for which I’m not a member. An example of this is this page on my website which has one annotation which I can’t see, but by using Crowdlaaers, I can. Another example is viewing annotations on sites that have subsequently blocked Hypothes.is like this example. Of course, sometimes you’ll do this and find odd bugs floating around in the system.

Dr. Lynne Kelly’s research on history, indigenous people, and memory, and a dovetail with Big History

David Christian, Fred Spier, Bill Gates, Big History Institute, and other Big History researchers and thinkers, if you’re not already aware of her, allow me to introduce you to researcher Dr. Lynne Kelly. Her work dramatically expands our understanding of pre-literate societies’ learning, memory, and particularly collective learning. Further, it makes for a strong and fascinating story that could not only be integrated into Big History; it provides links between modern and pre-modern humans and ties deeply into ideas of origin stories, mythology, and early religion; and it provides actual methods for improving student’s memories and particularly that for history.

I think her work has some profound impact on the arc of Big History, particularly with respect to Threshold 6, well into Threshold 7, and continuing into the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. In true big history fashion, her thesis also touches heavily on a broad array of topics including anthropology, archaeology, psychology, neuroscience, history, and education.

A broad, reasonable introduction to her work can be had in CalTech physicist Sean Carroll’s recent podcast interview.

Another short introduction is her TEDx Melbourne talk:

A solid popular science encapsulation of her work can be found in her book The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments (Pegasus Books, 2017).

A more thorough academic treatment of her work can naturally be found in:

When knowledge was power (Ph.D. thesis, 2012)
Knowledge and power in prehistoric societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

With some work, I think her research could become a better foundational basis for a stronger bridge from threshold 6 into threshold 7 with dramatic impact on how we view origin stories, mythology, religion. It also has some spectacular implications for improving pedagogy and memory within our educational systems and how we view and use collective memory and even innovation in the modern world.