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Interactive 'clickers' transform classrooms ~ May 17, 2005

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PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) -- Professor Ross Cheit put it to the students in his "Ethics and Public Policy" class at Brown University: Are you morally obliged to report cheating if you know about it? The room began to hum, but no one so much as raised a hand. Still, within 90 seconds, Cheit had roughly 150 student responses displayed on an overhead screen, plotted as a multicolored bar graph -- 64 percent said yes, 35 percent, no. Several times each class, Cheit's students answer his questions using handheld wireless devices that resemble television remote controls.

The devices, which the students call "clickers," are being used on hundreds of college campuses and are even finding their way into grade schools. They alter classroom dynamics, engaging students in large, impersonal lecture halls with the power of mass feedback. "Clickers" ease fears of giving a wrong answer in front of peers, or of expressing unpopular opinions. "I use it to take their pulse," Cheit said. "I've often found in that setting, you find yourself thinking, 'Well, what are they thinking?"'

In hard science classes, the clickers -- most of which allow several possible responses -- are often used to gauge student comprehension of course material. Cheit tends to use them to solicit students' opinions. The clickers are an effective tool for spurring conversation, for getting a feel for what other students think, said Megan Schmidt, a freshman from New York City. "It forces you to be active in the discussion because you are forced to make a decision right off the bat," said Jonathan Magaziner, a sophomore in Cheit's class.

Cheit prepares most questions in advance but can add questions on the fly if need be. His setup processes student responses through infrared receivers that are connected to a laptop computer. Clickers increased class participation and improved attendance after Stephen Bradforth, a professor at the University of Southern California, introduced them to an honors chemistry class there last fall, he said. Bradforth uses the clickers to get a sense of whether students are grasping the material and finds that they compel professors to think about their lesson plans differently. He says it's too early to say whether students who used the clickers are doing better on standardized tests.

Eric Mazur, a Harvard University physics professor and proponent of interactive teaching, says clickers aren't essential but they are more efficient and make participation easier for shy students. Many colleges already use technology that allows teachers and students to interact more easily outside the classroom. For example, professors can now post lecture notes, quizzes and reading lists online. Several companies market software, such as Blackboard and Web CT, that provide ready-made course Web pages and other course management tools.

Mazur envisions students someday using their laptops, cell phones or other Internet-ready devices for more interactivity than clickers offer. At least one company, Option Technologies Interactive, based in Orlando, Florida, markets software that allows any student with a handheld wireless device or laptop to log onto a Web site and answer questions, just as they would with a clicker. For now, the clicker systems appear to be selling. Two companies that make the systems say each of their technologies are in use on more than 600 university campuses worldwide. Some textbook publishers are even writing questions designed to be answered by clicker, and packaging the devices with their books. Versions of clickers have been available since the 1980s, but in the past six years several more have entered the market and advances in technology have made them both cheaper and more sophisticated.

Most universities that use clickers require students to buy them, although at Brown they're loaned through the library. Made by companies including the Maryland-based GTCO CalComp, eInstruction Corp., of Denton, Texas, and Hyper Interactive Teaching Technology, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, the devices cost about $30. The clickers communicate with receivers by infrared or radio signals, which feed the results to the teacher's computer. Software allows the students' responses to be recorded, analyzed and graphed.

While each company offers slightly different features, the systems typically allow instructors to display the class's results as a whole, or to record each student's individual response. The clickers themselves vary among companies but generally allow students to respond to multiple choice questions or key in a numeric answer. The clickers can also be used to give quizzes that can be graded automatically and entered in a computerized gradebook, saving professors time. But several professors said they have avoided that so students will see the handheld devices as positive, rather than punitive. At the college level, the devices originally took hold in science classes, but they are finding their way into the social sciences and humanities, where the anonymity they offer may be an advantage. Cheit said that's especially true when it comes to sensitive topics, such as affirmative action. "People that are against it will click," Cheit said, "But they might not raise their hand and say it."

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

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Group: Internet Explorer share slips below 90 percent ~ May 13, 2005

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Microsoft Corp.'s share of the U.S. browser market has slipped below 90 percent as the Firefox browser continues to grow in popularity, according to independent tracking by WebSideStory. Firefox, an open-source browser collectively developed by the Internet community under the Mozilla Foundation, had a 6.8 percent share as of April 29, an increase from 3.0 percent since WebSideStory began tracking Firefox separately in October. Other browsers based on the Mozilla code, including America Online Inc.'s Netscape, had a 2.2 percent share, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer share was 89 percent, a drop from 95 percent in June.

The figures are for all operating systems combined. On computers running Microsoft's Windows, Internet Explorer has a 91 percent share, down from 97 percent in June. Outside the United States, Germany is among the leading adopters of Firefox, with a 23 percent share, compared with 69 percent for Internet Explorer. "They just seem to be averse to Microsoft products and really interested relatively in these open-source products," said Geoff Johnston, a WebSideStory analyst. Microsoft is strong in Asia, with Internet Explorer commanding a share of 94 percent in Japan and 98 percent in China..

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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College Libraries Set Aside Books in a Digital Age
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL ~ New York Times, May 14, 2005
HOUSTON, May 13 - Students attending the University of Texas at Austin will find something missing from the undergraduate library this fall.
By mid-July, the university says, almost all of the library's 90,000 volumes will be dispersed to other university collections to clear space for a 24-hour electronic information commons, a fast-spreading phenomenon that is transforming research and study on campuses around the country.

"In this information-seeking America, I can't think of anyone who would elect to build a books-only library," said Fred Heath, vice provost of the University of Texas Libraries in Austin.

Their new version is to include "software suites" - modules with computers where students can work collaboratively at all hours - an expanded center for writing instruction, and a center for computer training, technical assistance and repair.

Such digital learning laboratories, staffed with Internet-expert librarians, teachers and technicians, have been advancing on traditional college libraries since appearing at the University of Southern California in 1994. As more texts become accessible online, libraries have been moving lesser-used materials to storage. But experts said it was symbolic for a top educational institution like Texas to empty a library of books.

The trend is being driven, academicians and librarians say, by the dwindling need for undergraduate libraries, many of which were built when leading research libraries were reserved for graduate students and faculty. But those distinctions have largely crumbled, with research libraries throwing open their stacks, leaving undergraduate libraries as increasingly
puny adjuncts with duplicate collections and shelves of light reading.

Mr. Heath said removal of the books had raised some eyebrows among the faculty and anxiety among the library staff. But he said the concerns were needless. "Books are the fundamental icon of intellectual efforts," he said, "the scholarly communication of our time."

Rarely do today's students hunt for a book in the stacks, she said. Now they go online and may end up with a book, but also a DVD or other medium. But, she said, "it's unlikely there will be libraries without books for a long time." Significantly, librarians are big supporters of the trend.

"This is a new generation, born with a chip," said Frances Maloy, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and leader of access services at Emory. "A student sends an e-mail at 2 a.m. and wonders by 8 a.m. why the professor hasn't responded."

Ms. Maloy praised the initiative at the University of Texas as signifying "that a great university with a fabulous library collection recognizes it's in the digital age."

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Bloggers' conference emphasizes tools of reporting

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CNN News Story ~ May 12, 2005
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Bloggers -- those Internet-based writers without rules -- are fighting back against criticism that their work is unreliable, libelous or just poorly done. More than 300 bloggers came to town Friday for a two-day conference that was heavy on teaching techniques used by journalists in what bloggers term "the mainstream media." One class taught students how to access and analyze government statistics.Conference organizer Bill Hobbs called blogging "citizen journalism." "If freedom of the press belongs to those who have the press, then blogging expands ownership of the press," Hobbs said.

Right now, more than 8 million people write blogs, said Bob Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association. Blogs, short for Web logs, are running commentaries on whatever their authors are interested in. Content often focuses on politics or media criticism and usually includes feedback from readers.Participants such as Shelley Henderson said they want to expand their research capabilities to strengthen their commentaries. Henderson, of Los Angeles, dedicates her blog to keeping the Internet unregulated. Blake Wylie of Nashville was among the participants who took exception to criticisms from politicians and mainstream media pundits that their work is often inaccurate. Wylie said bloggers often provide links to let readers go directly to their sources of information.

Hobbs noted that blogs entries are corrected more thoroughly and prominently than in other forms of media. "We write and then our readers edit us," Hobbs said.  Linda Seebach, a columnist for The Rocky Mountain News, said traditional media outlets are experimenting with involving bloggers in their news reports. Her newspaper this week launched a series of 40 community-oriented blogs to serve the Denver area. Hobbs said bloggers and the news media are linked because bloggers use them for source material and that the relationship could grow closer.

The prevalence of blogs seems certain to expand even more as people explore ventures such as global blogger news services. Hobbs said the usefulness of such projects was shown when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck last year and some early accounts and pictures from the area came from bloggers.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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Now grading your student essay -- a computer

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CNN News ~ May 12, 2005
COLUMBIA, Missouri (AP) -- Student essays always seem to be riddled with the same sorts of flaws. So sociology professor Ed Brent decided to hand the work over to a computer. Students in Brent's Introduction to Sociology course at the University of Missouri-Columbia now submit drafts through the SAGrader software he designed. It counts the number of points he wanted his students to include and analyzes how well concepts are explained. And within seconds, students have a score.

It used to be the students who looked for shortcuts, shopping for papers online or pilfering parts of an assignment with a simple Google search. Now, teachers and professors are realizing that they, too, can tap technology for a facet of academia long reserved for a teacher alone with a red pen. Software now scores everything from routine assignments in high school English classes to an essay on the GMAT, the standardized test for business school admission. (The essay section just added to the Scholastic Aptitude Test or SAT for the college-bound is graded by humans). Though Brent and his two teaching assistants still handle final papers -- and grades -- students are encouraged to use SAGrader for a better shot at an "A."  "I don't think we want to replace humans," Brent said. "But we want to do the fun stuff, the challenging stuff. And the computer can do the tedious but necessary stuff."

Developed with National Science Foundation funding, SAGrader is so far used only in Brent's classroom. Like other essay-grading software, it analyzes sentences and paragraphs, looking for keywords as well as the relationship between terms. Other programs compare a student's paper with a database of already-scored papers, seeking to assign it a score based on what other similar-quality assignments have received. Educational Testing Service sells Criterion, which includes the "e-Rater" used to score GMAT essays. Vantage Learning has IntelliMetric, Maplesoft sells Maple T.A., and numerous other programs are used on a smaller scale.

Most companies are private and offer no sales figures, but educators say use of such technology is growing. Consider the reach of e-Rater: 400,000 GMAT test-takers annually, a half-million U.S. K-12 students and 46 international schools and districts. ETS says an additional 2,000 teachers begin using its technology each month. But it's tough to tout a product that tinkers with something many educators believe only a human can do.

"That's the biggest obstacle for this technology," said Frank Catalano, a senior vice president for Pearson Assessments and Testing, whose Intelligent Essay Assessor is used in middle schools and the military alike. "It's not its accuracy. It's not its suitability. It's the believability that it can do the things it already can do."

South Dakota is one of several states that has tested essay-grading software. Officials there decided against using it widely, saying feedback was negative. Not all districts had the same experience. Watertown, South Dakota, students are among those who now have their writing-assessment tests scored by computer. Lesli Hanson, an assistant superintendent in Watertown, said students like taking the test by computer and teachers are relieved to end an annual ritual that kept two dozen people holed up for three days to score 1,500 tests. "It almost got to be torture," she said.

Some 80 percent of Indiana's 60,000 11th-graders have their English assessment scored by computer, and another 10,000 ninth-graders are taking part in a trial in which computers assess some routine written assignments. Stan Jones, Indiana's commissioner of higher education, said the technology isn't as good as a teacher but cuts turnaround time, trims costs and allows overworked teachers to give written assignments without fearing the workload. "This (allows) them to require more essays, more writing, and have it graded very painlessly," Jones said.

Software can also remove a degree of subjectivity. "It's fairly consistent. Different teachers grade different papers differently." -- Keith Kelly, 21, of Cleveland, one of Brent's sociology students. The software is not flawless, even its most ardent supporters admit. When the University of California at Davis tried out such technology a couple years back, lecturer Andy Jones decided to try to trick e-Rater.

Prompted to write on workplace injuries, Jones instead input a letter of recommendation, substituting "risk of personal injury" for the student's name. "My thinking was, 'This is ridiculous, I'm sure it will get a zero,"' he said. He got a five out of six. A second time around, Jones scattered "chimpanzee" throughout the essay, guessing unusual words would yield him a higher score. He got a six.

In Brent's class, sophomore Brady Didion submitted drafts of his papers numerous times to ensure his final version included everything the computer wanted. "What you're learning, really, is how to cheat the program," he said. Work to automate analysis of the written word dates back to the 1950s, when such technology was used largely to adjust the grade level of textbooks, said Henry Lieberman, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before long, researchers aimed to use such applications to evaluate student writing.

SAGrader, like other programs, needs significant prep work by teachers. For each of the four papers Brent assigns during his semester-long course, he must essentially enter all the components he wants an assignment to include and take into account the hundreds of ways a student might say them. Part of one assignment for Brent's class was for students to pick a crime and explain how it fit into sociologists' categories. Brent had to key in dozens of words in order to ensure all types of transgressions would be identified. What a writer gets back is quite detailed.

A criminology paper resulted in a nuance evaluation offering feedback such as this: "This paper does not do a good job of relating white-collar crime to various concepts in labeling theory of deviance." Brent -- who earned a postdoctoral degree in artificial intelligence and is also an adjunct professor in the computer science department -- said the software may have limitations, but allows teachers to do things they weren't able to do before. Before Brent wrote SAGrader, a part of his broader data-analysis program Qualrus, he only gave students multiple-choice tests. "Now we can focus more," he said. "Are they making a good argument? Do they seem to understand? Are they being creative?"

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

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Scientifically Wrong, But Politically Correct
FOX News  | May 11, 2005 | Joanne Jacobs

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A chapter on climate in a fifth-grade science textbook in the Discovery Works series, published by Houghton Mifflin (2000), opens with a Native American explanation for the changing seasons: "Crow moon is the name given to spring because that is when the crows return... Students meander through three pages of Algonquin lore before they learn that climate is affected by the rotation and tilt of Earth...

...Affirmative action for women and minorities is similarly pervasive in science textbooks, to absurd effect. Al Roker, the affable black NBC weatherman, is hailed as a great scientist in one book in the Discovery Works series. It is common to find Marie Curie given a picture and half a page of text, but her husband, Pierre, who shared a Nobel Prize with her, relegated to the role of supportive spouse. In the same series, Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, is shown next to black scientist Lewis Latimer, who improved the light bulb by adding a carbon filament. Edison's picture is smaller.

Middle-school science textbooks are riddled with errors, a Packard Foundation Study found. British students will study "science lite" under the new national curriculum: The science that all pupils study from the age of 14 is to focus more on "lifestyles," general knowledge and opinion and less on chemistry, biology and physics, says the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. ...Instead of learning science, pupils will "learn about the way science and scientists work within society."

They will "develop their ability to relate their understanding of science to their own and others' decisions about lifestyles," the QCA said. In addition, they will be taught that "there are some questions that science cannot answer, and some that science cannot address." Especially, if nobody actually knows science.

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Genetic Testing Reveals Awkward Truth Xinjiang's Famous Mummies (Caucasian)
Khaleej Times  2005.04.19

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URUMQI, China - After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived. The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades. “It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized because it has created a lot of difficulties,” Victor Mair, a specialist in the ancient corpses and co-author of “Mummies of the Tarim Basin”, told AFP. “It would be better for everyone to approach this from a purely scientific and historical perspective.” The discoveries in the 1980s of the undisturbed 4,000-year-old ”Beauty of Loulan” and the younger 3,000-year-old body of the ”Charchan Man” are legendary in world archaeological circles for the fine state of their preservation and for the wealth of knowledge they bring to modern research.

New findings and discoveries
In historic and scientific circles the discoveries along the ancient Silk Road were on a par with finding the Egyptian mummies. But China’s concern over its rule in restive Xinjiang has widely been perceived as impeding faster research into them and greater publicity of the findings. The desiccated corpses, which avoided natural decomposition due to the dry atmosphere and alkaline soils in the Tarim Basin, have not only given scientists a look into their physical biologies, but their clothes, tools and burial rituals have given historians a glimpse into life in the Bronze Age. Mair, who played a pivotal role in bringing the discoveries to Western scholars in the 1990s, has worked tirelessly to get Chinese approval to take samples out of China for definitive genetic testing. One expedition in recent years succeeded in collecting 52 samples with the aide of Chinese researchers, but later Mair’s hosts had a change of heart and only let five of them out of the country.

“I spent six months in Sweden last year doing nothing but genetic research,” Mair said from his home in the United States where he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. “My research has shown that in the second millennium BC, the oldest mummies, like the Loulan Beauty, were the earliest settlers in the Tarim Basin. “From the evidence available, we have found that during the first 1,000 years after the Loulan Beauty, the only settlers in the Tarim Basin were Caucasoid.” East Asian peoples only began showing up in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago, Mair said, while the Uighur peoples arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, largely based in modern day Mongolia, around the year 842. Modern DNA and ancient DNA show that Uighurs, Kazaks, Krygyzs, the peoples of Central Asia are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian. The modern and ancient DNA tell the same story,” he said. Mair hopes to publish his new findings in the coming months. China has only allowed the genetic studies in the last few years, with a 2004 study carried out by Jilin University also finding that the mummies’ DNA had Europoid genes, further proving that the earliest settlers of Western China were not East Asians.

Mixed opinions…

In the preface to the 2002 book, “Ancient Corpses of Xinjiang,” written by Chinese archeologist Wang Huabing, the Chinese historian and Sanskrit specialist Ji Xianlin soundly denounced the use of the mummies by Uighur separatists as proof that Xinjiang should not belong to China.

“What has stirred up the most excitement in academic circles, both in the East and the West, is the fact that the ancient corpses of “white (Caucasoid/Europid) people’ have been excavated,” Jin wrote. “However, within China a small group of ethnic separatists have taken advantage of this opportunity to stir up trouble and are acting like buffoons, (styling) themselves the descendants of these ancient “white people’ with the aim of dividing the motherland.” Further on, in an apparent swipe at the government’s lack of eagerness to acknowledge the science and publicize it to the world, Ji wrote, “a scientist may not distort facts for political reasons, religious reasons, or any other reason”.

Meanwhile, Yingpan Man, a nearly perfectly preserved 2,000-year-old Caucasoid mummy, was only this month allowed to leave China for the first time, and is being displayed at the Tokyo Edo Museum. The Yingpan Man, discovered in 1995 in the region that bears his name, has been seen as the best preserved of all the undisturbed mummies that have so far been found. Yingpan Man not only had a gold foil death mask -- a Greek tradition -- covering his blonde bearded face, but also wore elaborate golden embroidered red and maroon garments with seemingly Western European designs.

His nearly 2.00 meter (six-foot, six-inch) long body is the tallest of all the mummies found so far and the clothes and artifacts discovered in the surrounding tombs suggest the highest level of Caucasoid civilization in the ancient Tarim Basin region. When the Yingpan Man returns from Tokyo to Urumqi where he has long been kept out of public eye, he is expected to be finally put on display when the new Xinjiang Museum opens this year. China has hundreds of the mummies in various degrees of dessication and decomposition, including the prominent Han Chinese warrior Zhang Xiong and other Uighur mummies. However, only a dozen or so are on permanent display in a makeshift building until the new museum is completed.

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WALTER GIBSON ON WRITING ~ MysticLightPress.com ~ April 2005

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As a writer, Walter felt when he worked he "entered a timeless sort of dimension. It is almost as though time stands still. The stories just come out of nowhere." So they did, just as the many characters he created, and the many names he adopted for himself: Walter B. Gibson, John Abbington, Andy Adams, Ishi Black, Douglas Brown, C. B. Crowe, Felix Fairfax, Wilber Gaston, Maxwell Grant, Maborushi Kineji, Gautier LeBrun, Rufus Perry, and P. L. Raymond. For Walter, output meant money. Although much of the public is under the impression that writing is easy, in reality a writer's life is difficult. In the March 1941 issue of Writers' Digest, Walter offered certain suggestions regarding his own output of "The Shadow":

I have found out certain points regarding my own output. Here they are:

Working hours: I tried getting up at a reasonable or stated hour, to approach writing like a regular job. No good. Experience proved that I wasted the extra time I could have slept, and became tired earlier.

Peak of Progress: Roughly, after the first two thousand words, I begin to approach the peak, and reach it between three and four thousand. Generally good through five thousand, and sometimes longer.

Pauses: Whenever I want them, even when unjustifiable. The latter type encourage a return to work, with greater zeal.

Time to Quit: Never, until after the peak has been reached, though long pauses can be inserted, such as going somewhere to dinner, a party, or a show. Such excursions, however, must be made with intent to resume work upon return. After the peak, I quit whenever I want.

Reward for Merit: When writing, I take the fun first, and pay up for it. This has given me discrimination and wariness regarding fun.

In breaking off, I follow a method which I believe has been frequently suggested: that of quitting in the middle of a chapter, often in the middle of a paragraph, or even a sentence. Once when a car was tooting for me to go somewhere, I couldn't wait to put another page in the typewriter, so I ended up in the middle of a hyphenated word. In picking up the next day I found it was very easy, perhaps because of the novelty. I often end work when I pull out a page, regardless of whether the sentence has ended.

When I finish a story, I put a new page in the typewriter, and begin on the next. I regard it as a sure-fire system to keep up output. Every writer is bound to have something in him upon completion of a story that will be of value, if he uses it right then.

This plan, judging from tests that I have made, is more applicable to the short story than the novel length.

One Wednesday I had the best of all excuses. Trying to start the next story outline, I couldn't find an idea to go with it. It was a really tough nut that would take a few days to crack. The day was lousy, and I felt the same. I was in Maine, and unless I mailed the synopsis the next afternoon, John wouldn't get it until Monday, since the office is closed Saturday. So I gave myself a complete out and began to read a magazine that was around the house.

In it I found an article by a successful writer of mystery stories. It told how the source of inspiration, or what have you, can go dead or latent, leaving a writer more or less helpless until it returns. My agreement was so absolute, that it suddenly changed to horror. I was acknowledging a luxury that I couldn't afford. I went back to the typewriter, drove through the outline, and into the synopsis. The works was in the mail on Thursday, and the OK arrived Saturday. By Monday, I was deep into the story, a breeze to write from that synopsis.

Which proves that one source of inspiration is a good, swift, self-delivered kick in the pants. Someone might answer this by telling me: "Maybe you don't need much inspiration, writing for your market." I need just as much as if I were writing for another, because I'm not writing for any market. I have always written for readers, and have found it valuable to continue that policy. It keeps a writer from going stale, enables him to follow any trend, and sometimes to start one.

Asked if he enjoyed being a writer, Walter said: "I'd rather do any of a thousand other things. But whatever job I took, I'd spoil all the fun of it by wanting to write. So there it stands." Walter B. Gibson became the ideal example of a professional writer. He was a composite of many minds, centered in a generous and friendly personality. He truly enjoyed people and conversation, and he was constantly challenged by mental projects that found their way to his written pages. Creating fiction, nonfiction, almost any subject, posed a challenge for him, and he met each challenge with the same enthusiasm. Perhaps it might be a hardback book, or a booklet which detailed the lives of the presidents. It might be a book on Yoga, or How to Tie Knots, or Hypnotism Through the Ages. The range and breadth of subject matter which he tackled was vast, and his research retention ability was awesome. When publicity appeared on Halley's Comet, which made its appearance in 1986, Walter had already written of it years before. He once told me, "Bill, I would like to live to be 100 years old, so Willard Scott could mention it on the Today Show, but then again, I think I might like to go out on Halley's Comet like Mark Twain."

All the various rooms in Walter's home contained a typewriter. In some of those typewriters, pages of uncompleted articles or projects remained even at the time of his death. With so many typewriters in simultaneous operation, he could work upstairs or downstairs, and shift from one subject to another.

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The Dead Parrot Sketch
Monty Python The Pet Shoppe
A customer enters a pet shop.
Customer: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
(The owner does not respond.)
C: 'Ello, Miss?
Owner: What do you mean "miss"?
C: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
O: We're closin' for lunch.
C: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
O: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
C: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
O: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
C: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
O: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
C: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
O: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
C: All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up!
(shouting at the cage)
'Ello, Mister Polly Parrot! I've got a lovely fresh cuttle fish for you if you show...(owner hits the cage)
O: There, he moved!
C: No, he didn't, that was you hitting the cage!
O: I never!!
C: Yes, you did!
O: I never, never did anything...
C: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO POLLY!!!!!
Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!
(Takes parrot out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
C: Now that's what I call a dead parrot.
O: No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!
C: STUNNED?!?
O: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! Norwegian Blues stun easily, major.
C: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk.
O: Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the fjords.
C: PININ' for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got 'im home?
O: The Norwegian Blue prefers kippin' on it's back! Remarkable bird, id'nit, squire? Lovely plumage!
C: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.
(pause)
O: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its beak, and VOOM! Feeweeweewee!
C: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!
O: No no! 'E's pining!
C: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker!
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies!
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig!
'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
(pause)
O: Well, I'd better replace it, then.
(he takes a quick peek behind the counter)
O: Sorry squire, I've had a look 'round the back of the shop, and uh, we're right out of parrots.
C: I see. I see, I get the picture.
O: I got a slug.
(pause)
C: (sweet as sugar) Pray, does it talk?
O: Nnnnot really.
C: WELL IT'S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?
O: Look, if you go to my brother's pet shop in Bolton, he'll replace the parrot for you.
C: Bolton, eh? Very well.
The customer leaves.
The customer enters the same pet shop. The owner is putting on a false moustache.
C: This is Bolton, is it?
O: (with a fake mustache) No, it's Ipswitch.
C: (looking at the camera) That's inter-city rail for you.
The customer goes to the train station.
He addresses a man standing behind a desk marked "Complaints".
C: I wish to complain, British-Railways Person.
Attendant: I DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS JOB, YOU KNOW!!!
C: I beg your pardon...?
A: I'm a qualified brain surgeon! I only do this job because I like being my own boss!
C: Excuse me, this is irrelevant, isn't it?
A: Yeah, well it's not easy to pad these python files out to 200 lines, you know.
C: Well, I wish to complain. I got on the Bolton train and found myself deposited here in Ipswitch.
A: No, this is Bolton.
C: (to the camera) The pet shop man's brother was lying!!
A: Can't blame British Rail for that.
C: In that case, I shall return to the pet shop!
He does.
C: I understand this IS Bolton.
O: (still with the fake mustache) Yes?
C: You told me it was Ipswitch!
O: ...It was a pun.
C: (pause) A PUN?!?
O: No, no...not a pun...What's that thing that spells the same backwards as forwards?
C: (Long pause) A palindrome...?
O: Yeah, that's it!
C: It's not a palindrome! The palindrome of "Bolton" would be "Notlob"!! It don't work!!
O: Well, what do you want?
C: I'm not prepared to pursue my line of inquiry any longer as I think this is getting too silly!
Sergeant-Major: Quite agree, quite agree, too silly, far too silly...

---

How computers make our kids stupid
There's growing evidence that too much cyber-time dumbs down our children
Macleans: June 06, 2005 by Sue Ferguson
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/education/article.jsp?content=20050606_106930_106930#
The first thing you notice opening the door to Les Black's classroom is the smell. It's a dank, earthy aroma from a dozen planters perched on shelves or suspended from the ceiling. Sunlight filters through a row of wood-framed windows onto the 27 fourth-graders. A boy standing at the front relates the story of his grandfather's life, impressing upon his audience that the old man did not always act within the letter of the law. His classmates squirm in their seats. Some fiddle with pencils. One boy thoughtfully caresses a papier mâché snake resting on his desk. Behind the presenter is a chalkboard and, above it, the age-old series of placards displaying the alphabet, exquisitely drawn in cursive form.

This scene in a private school in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill is not unlike thousands of others across Canada. But wait a minute -- something is strangely amiss. Where are the keyboards? Where are the darkened screens framed by dull grey plastic? The tangle of cables cascading over the backs of the tables? How strange: a classroom without a gigabyte in sight, not even on the teacher's desk. How will these children ever get a job? How will their teachers ever instill in them a love of learning?

It's never been easier for kids to get their fingertips on a keyboard or to cruise cyberspace. Statistics Canada reports three out of four households with school-aged children regularly access the Internet, and a growing number of users are turning to high-speed connections. Our schools now have about a million computers, 93 per cent of which are online. Although we already boast a 5:1 ratio of students to computers (compared to an average of 8:1 in the developed world as a whole), the push is on in many districts to equip each middle- and high-school student with a wireless laptop. With homes and classrooms crawling with mouses and modems, anyone resisting the digital impulse seems either hopelessly naive or in a state of downright denial.

Yet, in bucking the trend, the Toronto Waldorf School -- home to Les Black's class -- is arguably doing its students a favour. While computers clearly have a place in education (Waldorf introduces them in Grade 9), the evidence is mounting that our obsessive use of information technology is dumbing us down, adults as well as kids. While they can be engaging and resourceful tools for learning -- if used in moderation -- computers and the Internet can also distract kids from homework, encourage superficial and uncritical thinking, replace face-to-face interaction between students and teachers, and lead to compulsive behaviour.

At least some teens recognize the problem. Fifteen-year-old Colin Johnson of Toronto sits down at his computer at 4 most afternoons. He whizzes through his homework in half an hour, and then starts surfing, gaming and chatting with friends on MSN until 1 a.m., when he goes to bed. The tenth-grader is failing science, but otherwise getting by. "I procrastinate a lot more than before," he says, acknowledging that "everybody's marks suffer to some degree" if they spend as much time as he does online.

Perhaps the most persuasive evidence for taking a more critical view is a broad-reaching and rigorous study published last November. University of Munich economists Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann analyzed the results of the OECD's PISA international standardized tests. Not only did they tap into a massive subject pool -- 174,000 15-year-olds in reading, 97,000 each in math and science from 31 countries (including Canada) -- but they were also able, because participants filled out extensively detailed surveys, to control for other possible outside influences, something remarkably few studies do. Their results, which are only now starting to make waves among pedagogy experts, confirm what many parents have long intuited: the sheer ubiquity of information technology is getting in the way of learning. Once household income and the wealth of a school's resources are taken out of the equation, teens with the greatest access to computers and the Internet at home and school earn the lowest test scores.

At school, the economists found, some exposure to computers seems beneficial. For instance, students who never or rarely use the Internet and computers in the classroom don't do as well as those who make moderate use of them. But the difference in achievement levels is significant in math and science only, not in reading. And those same computer-less students outperform peers who frequently access the technology. The optimal level for computer and Internet use at school, Fuchs and Woessmann suggest, is pretty low, somewhere between "a few times a year" and "several times a month." Seventeen-year-old Tilo McAlister has some idea why that may be so. By Grade 7, the Waldorf student was aware that friends in other schools were more computer-savvy than he. (McAlister had limited use of his father's home-office computer at the time.) Upsetting as that was to him then, four years later, he has caught up. And "looking back," he says, "I'm glad I didn't have them in school. Anything I would have learned from a computer, I'm sure I learned better from a teacher."

Irene Freeman is Brooke Elementary School's resident technology guru. The 63-year-old teacher first introduced computers to her Delta, B.C., classroom in the early 1980s. She's since facilitated the installation of the school's computer lab, designed the school's website, led countless workshops for teachers, and spent two years as an e-learning consultant for her district. Now in the last of 39 years of teaching, Freeman takes every opportunity to put her first-graders on the road to becoming seasoned technophiles. Along with twice-a-week trips to the lab, her 23 six- and seven-year-olds spend a chunk of each day in front of the five hand-me-down computers in her classroom, where they navigate a selection of commercial educational software and Internet sites.

Freeman estimates she delivers about a quarter of the curriculum in this way. "In September, we talk about the parts of the computer," she says. "Where to put your left hand, your right hand -- and they play games with the alphabet." By the end of the school year, the children (who have already used computers in kindergarten, though not as extensively) can, among other things, write stories, draw pictures and insert them into documents, build geometric patterns, organize their thoughts (with the help of a graphics program called Inspiration that prompts them to "web," or connect, their ideas), and even create slides for a PowerPoint presentation. Freeman's convinced that computers help students master the alphabet, reading and writing more quickly than they would in a tech-free environment. "Pretty well all the kids really like it," she notes, "so they're motivated to learn."

The computer is frequently cited by educators as the great motivator. "It's not that you couldn't teach without it," says Brooke principal Barbara Hague, "but we need everything in our power to keep kids engaged." More significantly, however, PCs are part of their world. If schools failed to integrate them into the curriculum, she insists, "we'd be missing a huge part of their life -- it would be like not including physical education" in the school day.

Yet the accoutrements and relentless upgrading they demand are expensive. At Brooke, which is located in a solidly middle-class neighbourhood, parents are helping foot the $10,000 cost of an upgrade to the lab this spring, which added 14 computers for a total of 32. And although some have questioned the school's priorities (especially as spending on "all aspects of school life," says Hague, has been cut back in recent years), the students' current level and sophistication of use means they need to be working at their own screens. "They're way beyond sharing."

The push for more -- more modules, more speed, more software -- can take on a life of its own. In fact, labs and classroom PCs like those at Brooke school are considered dinosaurs -- "not that different from someone wanting to install an eight-track tape player in a 2005 sports car," according to Ron Rubadeau, superintendent of schools for B.C.'s Central Okanagan district. Students don't get enough time in labs, he stresses in a report released earlier this year, "Technology Unplugged," and classroom modules are located "in spaces that may already be too cramped to fully accommodate student learning." The wave of the future is wireless laptops which, although "costly," will lead "to an improved focus on teaching and learning," he predicts. That's the same reasoning behind the province's $2.1- million program to equip each child in select Grade 5 to 12 classrooms next fall with their own laptop computers.

Rubadeau's confidence is born of a seemingly impressive stack of research. When 1,150 Grade 6 and 7 students in B.C.'s Peace River North school district were given their own Apple iBooks, for instance, writing skills improved (especially among students whose teachers were more experienced with the technology), and the achievement gap between girls and boys, and between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal students, narrowed. Studies from Quebec, Maine and Maryland, where iBooks have been used for a few years, back up those results. Wireless laptops distributed on a one-to-one basis, concludes Rubadeau -- whose middle and high school students are part of the province's initiative -- are "revolutionizing instruction."

Now surely that should silence the critics -- the parents, educators and others who have, over the years, objected to the massive outlay of cash on what they argue is an unproven medium. (No one has kept tabs in Canada, but in the U.S., one estimate puts the federal expenditure on digitizing schools at nearly $6 billion a year.) Yet, rather than clamming up in the face of such persuasive evidence, the opposition, like a dog with a bone, has grown bolder -- and has its own growing body of contrarian evidence, including the Munich economists' study. "The jury is in," says Alison Armstrong, Toronto co-author of 1999's The Child and the Machine: Why Computers May Put Our Children's Education at Risk. "There's no compelling evidence that computers help develop intellectual or emotional intelligence in any way."

South of the border, the Alliance for Childhood, a group of 60 health, child-development, education and technology experts, has called for a moratorium on new computers for preschool and elementary classrooms. In its report "Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood," the Alliance argues, "We do not know what the consequences of such a machine-driven education in adulthood will be. But we suspect that they will include a narrower and more shallow range of intellectual insights, a stunting of both social and technical imagination, and a drag on the productivity that stems from imaginative leaps. In short, a high-tech agenda for children seems likely to erode our most precious long-term intellectual reserves -- our children's minds."

Meanwhile, the Munich economists found that on the home front, kids without a PC do better than those with one or more. This changes only when specific computer uses are taken into account. Educational software, email and web page access -- and this will come as no surprise -- are associated with higher achievement than gaming or chat rooms, precisely the activities on which teens spend the most time. Or, as a new British Department for Education and Skills document advocating e-learning puts it, booting up at home can be beneficial, "but not many pupils have yet integrated such uses with their school experiences."

So, it's quite simple, really. There's no harm in buying your teen his own computer and dedicated Internet access, so long as you're confident that the Encyclopedia Britannica, and not an online game of Doom, will keep him glued to the screen. And while American author Steven Johnson argues in his new book, Everything Bad is Good for You, that video games and certain popular TV shows are making the next generation smarter (because their multi-layered, unresolved soap-opera plots stimulate under-used neural pathways), this sort of virtual multi-tasking clearly has its drawbacks. Not only, as Fuchs and Woessmann propose, can recreational uses be a distraction, crowding out time spent on homework, but our brains -- at least, once we go to work -- appear to suffer in other ways. According to a University of London study commissioned by Hewlett-Packard, the constant interruption of employees' concentration by emails and telephone calls lowers a person's IQ by 10 points -- more than double the four-point drop that results from smoking a joint.

One reason students don't "integrate" their school work with their home computer use, the British government report goes on to suggest, is that "teachers do not have direct control over what pupils do outside school hours." In many ways, this goes to the heart of the issue. Computers don't, on their own, dumb us down. But so long as schools treat computers as if they are indispensable, and teachers continue to assign homework that either requires or assumes research will be carried out on the web, kids will inevitably be pulled into gaming, chat rooms and other distractions. This, as Woessmann and Fuchs have shown, bodes poorly for their achievement levels. It also arguably interferes with their capacity for deep and sustained reading, thinking and understanding -- a point Everything Bad is Good for You author Johnson eventually comes around to acknowledging. "Now for the bad news," he writes at the end of his book. "Complicated, sequential works of persuasion, where each premise builds on the previous one, and where an idea can take an entire chapter to develop, are not well-suited to life on the computer screen."

And it's not just the students who are losing out. Heather Menzies, author of the recently published No Time: Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life, and York University sociologist Janice Newson surveyed 100 faculty members from six of the country's universities. About a third of them reported short-term memory problems and difficulties concentrating, which they link to the digital revolution. Seventy per cent said that rather than read deeply, reflectively and broadly, they scan for usable bits of information. What's more, the overwhelming use of email is affecting their interactions with students and colleagues, making communication more "superficial" and less personal.

As for why kids with a surfeit of school computers don't perform as well as others, Fuchs and Woessmann suggest what Waldorf student McAlister suspects about his own experience: time spent at the screen may crowd out personal interaction with teachers and creativity. They're referring to the 15-year-olds in their study, but in an interview, Fuchs speculates that younger children whose lessons depend excessively on computers suffer even more. "I would suggest that for the reading literacy of nine-year-olds, very frequent computer use at school could have a more severe effect, since the learning of reading requires a lot of interaction between teachers and students." The general message of the German study is this: at home and at school, computers may well have a time and a place, but not just any place and any time. As Canadian schools eagerly embrace the next wave of e-learning -- and PCs, laptops and the Internet become as common as pencils and erasers in ever-earlier grades -- it's not clear that message is getting through.

All this makes it harder to accuse the staff at the Toronto Waldorf School of being either naive or living in denial. "We're not Luddites or anti-computer," says the Toronto school's faculty chair, Todd Royer. "But we are for introducing important technologies at the right time in the development of children." The right time for computers, he says, arrives in Grade 9, when students move from a purely sensual, experiential curriculum to a more abstract, conceptual level of learning. According to the Waldorf approach -- first espoused by Austrian philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner in 1919 -- the elementary years are for engaging children with natural phenomena, like gardens, animals and light. The child is expected to store such encounters in her memory and, from an accumulation of experiences, create and test her own concepts. In experiencing (as opposed to intellectualizing) the world, says Royer, students come to develop their capacities for wonder, interest, reverence and love -- a key step in "holding their intellect in check so that they can deal with it responsibly."

Computers are of no use in this process. "They don't present us with phenomena," he explains. "They present us with something that is pre-digested -- a concept of something" created by someone else. For the same reason, textbooks are also scarce in Waldorf classrooms. The children write and illustrate their own records of what they've learned using good, old-fashioned pens, pencils, crayons and paper. That process, says Royer, goes a long way toward building a child's self-esteem -- a task the Waldorf elementary curriculum puts front and centre in the belief that intellectual life should develop from emotional and moral maturity.

Letting a child loose on the Internet (where three million new web pages are created every day) before they've developed a strong sense of self, he says, "can extend them beyond their capacity to understand." They lack the maturity to deal with it responsibly. Obsessive use of the Internet is a prime example. Not only can gaming and chat rooms distract a kid from homework, but more than 10 per cent of students show signs of compulsive Internet use, experts say. In such cases, cautions University of Calgary computer scientist Tom Keenan, computers themselves are not to blame. "There's always something to take kids away from studying. Thirty years ago, at universities, it was bridge." But whereas card games require some effort to coordinate, the Internet is "ubiquitous and cheap," he adds. And in the absence of parental supervision, "it's always ready for you, always friendly, always happy. It's the crack-cocaine of time-wasters" -- a point some kids are well aware of. "MMORPGs" (massive multi-player online role-playing games) "are highly addictive," notes Toronto teen Colin Johnson. "A lot of people have screwed up their lives playing them." In fact, one Sony product, EverQuest, in which gamers create characters using "a powerful customization system for unprecedented player individuality," according to the company's website, is widely known as EverCrack.

Even more troubling, notes Royer, is that the things kids read and see online invade their imagination. The recent incident at Royal St. George's College -- in which two boys (one Jewish) at the Toronto private school spewed anti-Semitic insults at a chat-room participant, Rod (a moniker for four Jewish girls from another private school) -- is a case in point. Not only did one of the students pick up some of the racist vocabulary from surfing the web in the first place, but it's not clear he fully understood the impact of posting his diatribe on the Internet. In a cyberworld glutted with undifferentiated information, students desperately need to be able to distinguish valid information from hate propaganda and other irresponsible messages. In light of such incidents, it doesn't seem entirely grandiose when Royer suggests, "The force of thinking is like the power of the gods that we hold in our hands. We have the power to do incredible things, both for good and evil. It's a force that needs to be protected within humanity."

The Waldorf school's 100 high school students share a modest 17-unit lab for a limited menu of courses -- math, programming and business. In waiting until a child's character is more fully formed, Royer hopes his students will understand computers for what they are, a tool, and use them responsibly. Student McAlister does much of his homework on the PC he recently bought for himself, and acknowledges that the allure of surfing, downloading music and email was initially a distraction. But he started to feel guilty, his marks were dropping, and, he says, "that got me to get on top of it" -- without parental nagging. Classmate Kaz Iguchi transferred from the public system to the Waldorf school in Grade 9. "I close all other programs so I don't get distracted when I do my homework," he says. A one-time video-game aficionado, he sold all his games in January. Iguchi, 17, credits his school environment with that decision. "In Waldorf, not many kids play games," he says. "If I still went to a public school, I'm pretty sure I'd still be playing."

As for the standard rationales for digitizing the classroom, Royer trots out a variety of curt responses. To the claim that the world is full of computers and schools need to be relevant to children's lives: "The world's full of all kinds of things -- automobiles, sexuality, and we have appropriate times and places for all these aspects of our lives." But surely engagement is an issue. Don't kids get revved up about lessons presented on a computer? "Sure," he responds. "It's an addictive medium." Okay, what about helping students gain the skills they need to get a job? "Our grads go everywhere and anywhere."

This last rebuttal is less impressive when you consider that Waldorf is a private school with tuition fees between $11,000 and $12,200. Most of its students, in other words, are going to be ahead of the curve by virtue of their advantaged background. But it's also the case that a 2005 survey asking Canadian corporate leaders what they look for in new hires consistently emphasized self-discipline, an inquiring mind and loyalty over technical know-how, which can be picked up on the job. Add to this evidence cited by Fuchs and Woessmann that computer skills have no substantial impact on an employee's wages, while math and writing abilities do, and Royer's glib response gains credibility.

Delta teacher Irene Freeman is also a big believer in hands-on, experiential learning. The first week of May, her class spent a morning making strawberry jam for Mother's Day, arranging baby food jars of preserves in baskets fashioned out of berry containers woven with strips of coloured paper, topped off with a homemade card -- no mousing or keyboarding required (except for Freeman, who found the design for the cards on the web). But even experiential learning can be digitized. For one previous project, her students picked fallen leaves, which Freeman then laminated. After writing about where they found each leaf and what kind of tree it dropped from (using Microsoft's Talking First Word software), the students mailed their work to dozens of other North American schools participating in the same project. In return, says Freeman, "we got some unusual looking leaves -- from trees like the sugargum in Florida." The experience "didn't replace books," she stresses. "We started by reading The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein," and ended by looking up the leaves they were sent in reference books.

It's hard to see much harm in such judicious use of technology. But for every positive example, there are other troubling ones. Of course we hope our kids will discover that mouses, websites and email are useful educational tools. But as we allow curricula and computers to cozy up ever closer, we risk letting technology run the show.
 

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