Archive for February, 2009
I just cracked open the Google Analytics stats for my blog, and was curious to see how much data was available. I had it display all data (going back as far as November 16, 2005, which is apparently when I first started using Analytics). Google has tracked over 1 million page views on my blog. Over 600,000 unique visitors. The scale of that just blows my mind.
This article is making the rounds, and the comments on the Globe and Mail page are pretty entertaining. Professor Denis Rancourt gave everyone in his fourth year physics class an automatic A+ so they wouldn’t be stressed out over grades and could get into some interesting and meaningful stuff in the class.
I’ll be clear – I think that’s a fantastic idea. I’d maybe pull back a bit and make the course pass/fail rather than automatic A+, but I love the idea of nuking grades and focusing on learning instead.
The problem isn’t with Rancourt’s actions – with academic freedom, he should be able to do what he wants with his class (and of course students are also free to appeal the grades and actions). The problem is that his is likely the only course in that institution, and probably the continent, that has thrown out grades in such a way. The fact that he got fired for it, and subsequently arrested for trespassing, shows how rare this action is.
Isolated professors willing to risk their tenure by experimenting with gradeless classes will be perceived by the public as being “lesser” classes, not up to “the standards” of measurement. When a society only understands assessment of learning in terms of letter grades and curves, anything else is perceived as meaningless liberal garbage. Even if it is actually a profoundly powerful experiment in meaningful teaching and learning.
What is needed is a larger shift away from grades and numerical metrics of assessment. And that kind of change just isn’t possible with a lone professor tilting at that particular windmill. But, maybe, the concept has now gained a bit of public awareness, and subsequent experiments may meet slightly less resistance.
As we continue moving toward a more individual and portfolio-driven assessment of a person’s abilities, philosophies, and educational contexts, grades become less meaningful anyway. What may have been lacking in Rancourt’s class was some concrete means for students to document and describe their learning, once their A+ grade had been essentially rendered meaningless as an assessment metric.
I spent some time this afternoon poking around in the database that runs UCalgaryBlogs.ca to see if I could get a better sense of how it’s growing. Turns out, it’s growing MUCH faster than I thought it was (and I thought it was growing pretty darned fast).
It’s still pretty small scale, compared with giants like WordPress.com and Edublogs.org, but the growth looks pretty much exponential. I’m glad we’ve got lots of room to scale this puppy. And that campus IT isn’t upset with growing demands on database resources.
I just tried out the new (unnamed product name redacted), and it seems like a whole lot of fuss and screen after screen of configuration in order to do what Skype and iChat do out of the box. I suppose/hope VCS scales up to having more active participants than either Skype or iChat allow for video, but am wondering why something free like UStream.tv wouldn’t be better. For free. Cross platform.
sunrise, reflected off the ice on the road.
my bike parking spot, in my office at the TLC.
this makes me smile.
Not sure why, but this makes me smile…
Just substitute the word “conversation” in your head each time they say “argument”
So much of the “conversation” on the social web slash web 2.0 isn’t really conversation. At best, it’s a series of parallel monologues, occasionally overlapping or feeding each other. Or, they are (almost) nothing but superficial fluff, with the puffed up posture of “making a difference” or “changing the world” or “doing my part”.
Bullshit. Text posted to the internet (including this post) is just text. It’s not changing the world. It’s not making a real difference in the way we actually live our lives. It’s what we choose to do with the ideas floated around that can make a difference.
Conversation, on the social web, doesn’t really exist. It’s a mirage. An illusion. A shared mass delusion. And as long as we continue to participate in that delusion, we’re preventing any real, deep, meaningful conversations from taking place.
Is an “unconference slot” kinda like a “free speech zone”?