Clay Burell

Recent Activity

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  Clay commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  How to Write Timed Essays That aren't Crap

  Hi Jennifer,

  
  

  Glad you like it. I use screencast-o-matic.com to make screencasts. Free and convenient and easy.

  
  

  By the way, since re-entering teaching after my sabbatical last year, I've left the daily writing at Change.org. I am blogging occasionally at my original blog at http://beyond-school.org , where I share the occasional thought on the Muse's schedule, not the time-clock's. Come on over!

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  "Teaching Against the History Textbook" Wiki Project Invitation

  Hi David,

  
  

  All comers are welcome at any and all times. I'm not sure I'll be able to get this off the ground until later in the semester, but I'm hoping to. A handful of other teachers on the NCSS ning have expressed interest, so I hope its something we can slowly grow.

  
  

  Take care :)

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Dear Auntie Siobhan: My Students Won't Put Away Their Phones

  Funny, Siobhan, I wrote my comment above before getting this far down the thread and reading yours.

  
  

  As I said above, I look forward to settling in to my new city and catching up.

  
  

  I arranged the guest-bloggers I lined up to so graciously cover for me during my relocation (and to do it so powerfully) so that we would have an alternating "content teacher - education professor - content teacher - education professor" series of week-long posts. I hoped such a pattern would bring out contrasts and disconnects for any folks fond of stepping back to look at the full canvas instead of the details. That seems to be happening.

  
  

  Thanks for filling in, and see you on Twitter :)

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Dear Auntie Siobhan: My Students Won't Put Away Their Phones

  @Joe,

  
  

  I'm offgrid in Singapore at a wireless cafe with screaming rock and roll, so this is not the time for writing, but just FYI:

  
  

  This blog is not affiliated with the Obama administration. Change.org was registered to Ben Rattray and the other founders before Obama's team came up with change.gov and their other sites.

  
  

  And for the record - and for the second time with you, Joe - reading through the comments here, I have to agree there is a level of condescension and sarcasm that really does quite ironically undercut a lot of arguments in this thread that technology can help teach social skills and civilized debate. I would be surprised to hear some of the more cutting things said above in a face to face discussion. That they were said by the pro-cellphone camp is surprising.

  
  

  None of which is to say I think cellphones should be banned in the classroom. Frankly, I've never taught in a school in which they were permitted, so I can't speak to it personally.

  
  

  I have taught in a 1:1 laptop school, though, and that raises many of the same issues. Since the laptops were instrumental to the work we were doing in class - this was the school year before last - they were almost always open. Any lack of self-discipline on the part of the student, as long as it wasn't distracting other students, was to me the equivalent of classroom chatter or note-passing in the analog world. And if I ever needed or wanted undivided focus for whatever reason, it was easy enough to say "screens down for a few minutes."

  
  

  It's funny. I'm a history and literature teacher, but I rarely lecture. Using the laptops to let students read, watch, discuss, and articulate their understanding (or lack thereof) of the subject matter worked just as well as lecture. Probably better. And I base this observation on the assessments at the end of each unit.

  
  

  I look forward to next week, when my wife and I have found an apartment and are back online, so I can catch up on what I've missed this week. Siobhan's perspective as a content-area teacher seems to be bouncing off of Ira's in ways that seem instructive, or at least complicating.

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  "Evaluate that!" - Schools for Children

  Ira, thanks for giving the us all Something To Behold.

  
  

  It really was. The door's alway open for more.

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Counting the Origins of Failure

  No doubt. Like I said, I was inferring, since ppl usually ask about Asia because they hear about test scores. If I inferred wrongly, my mistake.

  
  

  Short of transplanting Confucianism, I don't see much hope for America shiting eastward. I've featured a work of cultural psychology by Richard Nisbett on this blog called "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ... and Why" - and it does a bang-up job of marshalling the historical roots of our differences but, more interestingly, the emprical evidence from contemporary psychological research of how radical those differences are. A great read.

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Today's "School Reformers" vs Real Change for Education - I

  v v,

  
  

  You ask for input from me about Asia, I spend ten minutes on a comment to oblige, and your comment above is the fruit of that. Odd.

  
  

  For the record, I answered you the first time:

  
  

  "American education among the wealthier districts is doing _well enough_ as is. It's mostly the urban and rural poor whose schools suffer. So the education problem is as much a poverty problem as anything else."

  
  

  I say "well enough," not "successful." Sure they can improve, but it's no secret that based on the same NAEP scores and state tests, the wealthier districts _are_ doing well by the international comparison you asked me to make in the first place. The poor ones aren't.

  
  

  Could the whole system use a shake-up? Yes. Does that mean the wealthy districts are in crisis? No. But the urban and rural are, much more often.

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Technology: The Wrong Questions and the Right Questions

  Provocative post, Ira. Tired of seeing tweets without substance on it, so I'll leave a thought here, though one maybe off-topic and maybe off-base, too.

  
  

  It's this: the difference between the literacy technologies of our childhood - and I'm talking books, pencil and paper - and those Blackberries you mention of today is, to me, not insignificant: one (the Blackberry, and all the rest of today's gadgets) requires electricity, intact infrastructure, and all the trappings of an intact, peacetime civilization to both use and produce. The other - books, paper, pencil - do not. At least not to the same degree.

  
  

  The world - especially the West - has seen Dark Ages more than once in its history, from the Dorians to the Vandals. I have this nagging feeling that we can't assume one won't return in the future.

  
  

  The planet is certainly experiencing greater stress than ever before, so it's not unthinkable that abundant (or in worst cases, any) electricity might not be taken for granted.

  
  

  Does that complicate putting all of our eggs in the electronics basket?

  
  

  Put another way, aren't handwriting and books possibly, if not primary today, at least perennial despite that? The library will still be accessible, even if Washington follows Rome, know what I mean? The web might not.

  
  

  It's 5 a.m., and I'll quite likely chuckle at this when I wake up later. But the thought was there.

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Counting the Origins of Failure

  v,

  
  

  I'm inferring you think Asian education is superior to American, and thus we can learn something from it. It's a complicated proposition on several fronts.

  
  

  First, American education among the wealthier districts is doing well enough as is. It's mostly the urban and rural poor whose schools suffer. So the education problem is as much a poverty problem as anything else.

  
  

  As for Asia, I can only speak about China and Korea first-hand. China is way behind most nations because it's still developing. Its classrooms are over-crowded and under-resourced, its pedagogy rote and skill and drill.

  
  

  Korea scores high on standardized tests, but not because of its schools - in which Korean parents have no faith - as much as its night and weekend cram schools. The kids do nothing but study from age 3 to 18, and the result is high suicide rates, stunted personalities, and mastery of test-taking at the expense of creativity and innovation. Parents are economically pinched paying for these cram schools. Google GDP spent on education in Korea and you'll see they spend more per capita on tutors and cram schools than any other nation - yet their kids drop out of Ivy League universities more than any other country, because they can't do the academic work. They've only been trained for testing success. Search Korea on this blog and you'll find a few posts with data.

  
  

  Japan, my wife tells me - and she's Korean, and majored in Japanese Studies - is very similar to Korea in the above respects.

  
  

  I'm moving to Singapore to begin teaching there in a week. Its education minister himself said that Singapore education, despite its high test scores, lacks due to its failure to create critical thinkers, creators, problem-solvers. Search "Gerald Bracey" on this blog, and on Google (add "international comparisons") and you'll find that reference.

  
  

  Finally, there are economic, demographic, and linguistic/ethnic factors in America that you don't find in Korea (99+% ethnic Korean population) and China.

  
  

  Social factors too: Gun ownership and sales are illegal in Asian countries, so you don't have gang issues like in the States. Drug laws are draconian, so you don't have those issues either, among parents or students. Families are much more closely-knit than in America. Education is valued in Confucian Asian. Teachers are respected.

  
  

  So it's pretty apples and oranges, in short.

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  Clay commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Counting the Origins of Failure

  Nice links, Matt. I'm looking forward to the AP courses article, because definitely constrain me and most teachers I know who teach it. Blech.