Discursive Production

Anyone want to take a look? It’s here–feel free to comment on any of the blog page entries!

How was your weekend? Mine was os-some!

No, really. I spent time with my husband. I got things done that needed to get done. I relaxed. I ate. I slept. I even got a few hours in the garden by the pool on Sunday arvo (first time this season).

Oh and I was tethered to my computer. Weekends in ETEC565A are often busier–most of the students are working full-time, after all. This week and last there’s a small group activity, so things were even busier (but wow are these folks impressing me with their work!). I also wanted to get folks set up with Moodle ASAP, since many were chomping at the (learning technology) bit, as it were.

The workflow was supposed to be:

Students complete a quiz that captures all the data John needs to create accounts

1. John downloads data sets
2. John scrubs data a wee bit
3. John uploads CSV file and bulk creates all the accounts
4. John each chips and dip
5. John manually creates 83 course sites (one for each student)

Don’t worry I got chips–and bought more today. I earned ’em!  Because this is what I ended up doing:

1. Download data sets
2. Discover the wrong quiz was loaded in all 4 sections
3. Figure out a way to work with a data set missing 40% of the variables
4. Create the accounts
5. Create the sites
6. Post the announcment
7. Fix the incorrect password info in the announcement
8. Get deluged with “I can’t log on” messages
9. Each chips
10. Fix accounts
11. Get deluged with “I can’t log on” messages
12. Fix accounts
13. Eat the last of the chips

I think the worst is behind me though: the fix requests have slowed to a trickle.  No sympathy required. 🙂

The numbers have firmed up for ETEC565A: certainly Rob and I shall not suffer from boredom this summer!

I spent much of yesterday assessing the first batch of assignments for the course. Each student prepares a “flight path”–essentially a substantive reflection on what they hope to glean from their ETEC56A experience. They’re encouraged to draw upon the course materials available to date–including, but not limited to, the required readings. More specifically, the assignment is:

Write a proposed flight path during ETEC 565A. Tell us a bit about yourself, your experience, and your goals for this course (or, perhaps, the MET). Explain what you want to learn about Learning Management Systems (LMS), assessment, social software, and multimedia. Give your best estimate (guestimate?) about what resources you would need to master these technologies as a novice professional. Be sure to cite relevant literature to support your decision.

Which got me thinking: what do I hope to get out of this summer’s offerings? Hmm…

My flight path

I’ve been an educator for 20 years now: adult ed, vocational ed, community ed, and mostly higher ed (No Mr. Ed). Most of this work has been in Canada, but chunks have also been in the US, Australia and (briefly) Africa. What started as a means by which to mitigate the costs of graduate school has become a focus of my career: educational technology. My experience, borne out by much of the literature (Chickering and Gamson 1987; Chickering and Ehrmann 1996; Bates and Poole 2003), shows that effectively deploying technology can enhance–dare I say it, amplify–learning. But it’s in the pedagogy and the pedagogical design where the substantive development work must be done. All the toys and gadgets in the world won’t make a lame learning activity…significantly less lame.

I consider myself a skilled end-user and generalist. I have a relatively broad skill set that’s supported by mastery of a few key tools. I’ve a good idea where that skill set ends: time and other resources are often the bariers to broadening it further. Though truth be told I rarely find myself wholly unable to move something forward…somehow. And as the instructor I want to model this, in a way that aligns with the principles we’ve highlighted in the course materials.

• My specific goals this time include:
• Two Moodle live sessions
• Better use of communication technologies, specifically Skype and Wimba Pronto
• Maintain high standards of performance for the students–and me.

References

• Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.
  http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
• Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996).  Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.
  http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm
• Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers. Available here.
• National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers
  http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm

Welcome to this summer’s cohort of ETEC565A students! Glad to have you aboard!

Was chatting with my Dad today and explained that a new term started this week and that I was teaching in it–online.

“Online? You mean over the internet?”

“Yup.”

“What  you teach–is for the….University of….Vancouver up there?”

“UBC. University of British Columbia, yeah that’s right.”

“What subject?”

*deep breath* “Well…I teach a course on how to create online courses. So it’d be more than a little hypocritical if we couldn’t teach it online.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Fast forward several hours and I’ve done my chores, watched the Canucks turn a game around in less than 2 minutes (sweet!) and am now “teaching”. When it occurred to me: is teaching online the pedagogical equivalent of that old 1970s commercial: “I’m cleaning my oven, while  I ________!”

Monday marks the beginning of UBC’s Summer session: two, two two terms of fun! And I’ll be teaching ETEC565A. In order to maintain good relations with she who makes my work look awesome I’ve tried to either: 1.) do things myself, or 2.) get things to her waaaay early. And I very nearly did that again. This term I’ll also have a TA, which is bi-winning a win-win for everyone: students, he (TA) and me.

It’s gonna be a busy summer, with teaching, work, conferencing, holidaying, trying to stay married, trying to get outdoors more. So if you’re about to start ETEC565A hello! And if you’re not…well hello to you too!

Canadian citizen? In Canada? But not registered to vote? Here’s how you still can!

I’ll be presenting a paper at this conference mid-June. The preliminary programme has been set and as I feared I’m in the opening slot on the first morning of the conference. Feared? Well, yeah…I will have arrived from Vancouver around 8pm the evening before. Here’s my route:

• Vancouver to Calgary
• Calgary to Frankfurt
• Frankfurt to Belgrade
• Transfer Belgrade to Novi Sad

Assuming I got the airport in Vancouver 2 hours before departure that’s around 21 hours of elapsed travel time. Fingers crossed I can use some upgrade points on the flight to Frankfurt; regardless I’ll be able to access the showers in the lounge before my flight to Belgrade (it’s about a 5 hour connection).

So I won’t have had any time to figure out how to get to the conference venue before the morning I present. Or transportation options. Or where the building or room are. Far from ideal; it’ll be fine.

What I am chuffed about is my co-presenters. I’m sharing a 90 minute slot with a team from Poland and another from Croatia. That’s cool! Oh, and a chocolate biscuit to the first UBCer to translate the topic of this posting… 😉

If you’re not aware, Apple now has a nifty process by which you can–if you’re a nimble typer and refresh your browser quickly–reserve one in the evening and pick it up the next day. I missed out on the first two days but managed to book a 64GB with 3G out of Vancouver’s Oakridge Apple store. Here’s the link; follow the instructions on the page. The next day I rocked up to the store, no queue, in and out in 10 minutes. Then I had to cancel the online order that wasn’t gonna ship for another 4 weeks. 😉

I’ve had my new iPad 2 for about a week now. I can’t claim it’s the tranformative device that its predecessor seemed to be. There are a number of improvements that inspired me to upgrade–each of which addressed concerns I had with my first iPad:

No video: I rely on Skype for communication when I’m travelling. On my last business trip the only thing I was using my laptop for was Skype. Yes it worked fine with audio…but Skype is such a better experience when you can see and hear the other person.

Application crashes: I often and cutting-and-pasting between apps online (browsers, translation apps, chat). The more I pushed my old iPad the more app crashes I experienced.

Speed with digital images: when rendering images on the previous iPad things slowed down a fair bit. Editing video wasn’t really worth the trouble on it either, since the device didn’t capture video via its own camera.

Size: like anything else truly innovative, I had no issues with the size and weight of my original iPad…until I picked up an iPad 2. It feel less bulky.

Performance: still images

Here’s two photos I grabbed with the back-facing (towards the user) internal cam:

Neither is a work of art. In the first you can see that the camera (and Photobooth app) have some problems with white balance. In the second you can see I’m out of mind…and that the tones aren’t well balanced at times either. But I would also argue that anyone who buys an iPad expecting to be a great camera hasn’t though things through: it’s unwieldy, and there’s no way to stabilize it via a tripod, for example.

Performance – video

Here’s a wee movie I shot and “edited” using iMovie on the iPad 2:

Again, it does a decent job, rather than a spectacular one. However the scope for this to be fun is pretty high–and iMovie ran zippily along on the new iPad.

The video performance in Skype is great! My only complaint is that you cannot use the text chat as the same time as video or audio calls. I’ve a lot of friends for whom English is a second (or fourth) language; my French also has a number of black holes in it, vocabularly-wise. So being able to type the odd word is very useful. Hopefully the folks at Skype will address this soon!

ça ménarve (that’s annoying)

Of course, my old iPad’s case is useless now: the new one is thinner so it won’t stay in the clips. And the old case blocks both cameras. I bought a couple of the new smart covers–very interesting in how they use multiple magnets to sleep/wake up the device by closing/opening the cover. But even this cover blocks the forward facing camera when opened–a hole for this cam is an oversight.  And the smart covers don’t protect the back of the device. So far the offerings for iPad 2 covers in Vancouver are meagre…but I shall keep looking.

Overall: 1.5 thumbs up

Am I happy I upgraded? For sure–and for the reasons outlined above. But for lots of folks with v1 iPads the benefits of upgrading might not be worth it.

Have you upgraded? Bought your first iPad? Why or why not?

An elder just made me cry. In a good way.

Today our research team made its first presentation of the findings from our alcohol and stigma study. Because we’re committed to OCAP principles (ownership, control, access and possession of all aspects of the study, including data), the first stakeholder to receive findings is the Aboriginal community. As I expected I found out a couple of hours earlier that I would be presenting a good whack of the findings. Though the slides were already prepared–pas grand chose.

Most community-based HIV research is qualitative: we’re doing a mixed methods study. And we’re collecting two types of data: from Aboriginal Persons with HIV/AIDS (APHAs) and those who provide care/services/support to APHAs. This is an ambitious study.

I expected we’d get fairly pummeled presenting the findings…and we did to a certain extent. But we also got lots of great questions, tons of great feedback, and a round of applause for doing what we’re doing. All good.

Then an Innu elder spoke. Among the various things she said, this is what made me cry:

My elders told me “learn their language so you can use it better than them. And then get them to understand our story.” And you are doing that with this project.

I have no words…so honoured, so happy.

Last night the Vancouver Parks Board approved a memorial to the Komogata Maru exclusion of  1914.  Here’s the gist of the story:

To limit non-European migration, the Canadian government implemented a range of racist policies, including the Direct Passage Act, which requires migrants to come directly to Canada from their home countries without any intermediary stops. Which is impossible from South Asia

• Gurdit Singh Sandhu, a Singaporean Sikh businessman, charters a boat to bring migrants from Calcutta to Vancouver. Eventually nearly 400 South Asians book passage on the boat
• The Komogata Maru (the name of the boat) departs Hong Kong on 04 April 1914 and arrives in Vancouver on 23 May, via  Shanghai and Yokohama; passengers join the vessel at each of these ports
• After a two month stalemate, the ship is forcibly towed from Canada to bring the passengers to Calcutta. In the interim 24 passengers are allowed to enter Canada
• Upon arrival in Calcutta British authorities try to arrest Sandhu and other “leaders” on the boat; 19 passengers are killed by the British. Most of the surviving passengers are arrested and held in custody until the end of World War One
• It’s important to remember that as persons from what is now India, these men were all British subjects who should have had the right to emigrate to Canada as British subjects

It’s a shameful story, but one that has created countless teachable moments here in BC. More info can be found here.

One of my favourite podcasts is BBC’s Digital Planet, a sort of omnibus programme about technology. This week’s episode is about ownership in the digital age.

Included is a brief report on Mukurtu, which tries to integrate indigenous epistemologies into a rights/ownership management strategy for digital archiving.

It’s worth listening to the DP piece (scroll down and select chapter 3) before visiting the Mukurtu project’s site.

You might not be aware of it, but you’ve heard of Anonymous. No, not Alcoholics Anonymous: this band of people are hackers who take collective action against organizations whose practices they find objectionable. After the hegemonic slamming of Wikileaks a few months ago, Anonymous and its supported brought down Visa‘s Mastercard‘s and PayPal‘s websites (each of which disabled donations to Wikileaks after mounting international pressure). A pretty compelling act, regardless of one’s take on Wikileaks or Julian Assange, who has larger fish to fry at the moment.

We queer folk have had to live with a hateful “religious” group from Kansas since the early 1990s. Westboro Baptist Church is, in reality, the extended clan of one elderly man. In raw numbers they’re nothing really, but they’ve made it their business to vilify queers aggressively. Which, for the most part, mainstream society met with a shrug. Even when they picketed outside the funeral of Matthew Shephard, a young gay men tortured to death in Wyoming, with charming signs like “Matthew is burning in hell” and “no fags in heaven” and “fags die god laughs” the reaction was rather mute–though more people became aware of Westboro as a result.

Until the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the accompanying casualties among US military personnel. Westboro sees the entire US (and Canada, btw) as evil. And the death of US soldiers as proof that “god hates America. ” Westboro began their picketing of military funerals, this time with signs like “god hates fag enablers,” “thank god for dead soldier,” “fag troops,” and “god blew up the shuttle” (the last one…really?). All of a sudden Westboro were front page news and a groundswell of public reaction lead to blockades of their picket lines (folks dressed up as angels, some bikers too). Since then from time to time Westboro does something outrageous and gets on the news again.

Recently a spoof threat against Westboro and their lovely website was made by persons claiming to be members of Anonymous. Westboro responded “bring it.” The real Anonymous said “nope, wasn’t us.” But like a dog with a bone, Westboro couldn’t let go.

And now Anonymous has “brung it.” Denial of service attacks. Apparently they’ve done whilst one of the Westboro hatemongers was being interview on TV:

This pleases me.

Finally sorted out some access issues for my teaching evaluations from ETEC565A Fall 2010. In general UBC’s CWL system gets a bit verklempt when someone has multiple roles. As one who avails himself of his tuition waiver (otherwise I feel like I’m giving the university free money. Weird, I know), I am one such confounder.  But the amazing folks in CTLT who keep our CourEval system running tickety-boo stepped in and stepped up. Thank you! Merci! Go raibh míle maith agat!

I’ve never been the sort of teacher who wants to be popular. The best teachers–and mentors–I’ve had have been tough and fair. I try to be too.  Some folks who’ve taken my courses think I’m the most inflexible, unreasonable, anal jerk in Canada; others in the same class think I’m compassionate, nurturing, and supportive. Which camp is right?

Neither, really. When it comes to things like concessions I follow a few principles:

1. My Dad was a detective; I’m not. And won’t be
2. Sometimes my Mom figured out I was struggling and stepped in.
3. When Mom didn’t see it for herself, she could only help if I asked.
4. If I complained about this she told me to grow up.
5. If she didn’t give me the help I thought I deserved, see #4 above.

If I had been five, that’d’ve been mean. At 12 it peeved me, but there’s a life lesson in there from Mom: you cannot realistically expect help from anyone unless you ask for it. And sometimes the help needed–especially when shown  a bit and told me to try harder figuring out the rest–wasn’t the help I felt entitled to. Mom no doubt got this wrong sometimes.

As, no doubt, have I as a teacher.

In this round of evaluations one of the students clearly wasn’t at all happy with my approach to the course. Another took issue with my inflexibility regarding due dates. Actually I’m very flexible…if the person is forthright, approaches me before I have to chase them down, and it’s not an ongoing pattern.

Oh, and the reason isn’t “I’m working and taking classes and I’m having a hard time managing my time.” Because everyone in this program is.

The deductions for lateness are relatively small in my course: folks can elect to ditch 5% of the grade on an assignment if they want an extra day. Or more

But in fact, I can be very flexible–and have been known to apologize to a student when, upon reflection, I see I’ve been a bit too rigid. I start out trusting everyone at the beginning of term, but nothing erodes (temporarily, hopefully) that trust than someone who refuses to take responsibility for their work. Whose else’s responsibility could it be? When someone rather aggressively argues for flexibility without compelling reasons (like illness, death, family issues), no I’m not granting an extension: the entire term’s deadlines are available on day one of the course; within each module there’s 2-3 weeks of flexibility in terms of much of the deadlines. Folks want to book a holiday during the term? They can either get their work done earlier, work a bit on their holidays, or take the lateness deductions.I only have the middle option, by the way: I’ll be marking assignments in a tiny hotel room in Novi Sad in June.

All of this trickles down to one core concept: how well am I preparing these mid-career professionals to assert expertise to their colleagues? I think pretty good, actually. So do the vast majority of my students.

(*yeah I know they’re not haters, probably. But it’s an attention-grabbing headline, innit?)

I’ve had a paper accepted here; so I’ll be travelling to Novi Sad Serbia in late June. After looking at various permutations of dates and flights (taking into account the husband’s birthday on 18 June), here’s my itin:

• 19 June Depart YVR (via YYC and FRA)
• 20 June Arrive Belgrade; transfer to Novi Sad
• ????? (some combination of Bosnia, Croatia and perhaps Slovenia)
• 23 June transfer to Belgrade for 1-2 nights

04 July Depart Zagreb; arrive in YVR later same day (via YYC and FRA)

This routing puts on Air Canada from Western Canada to Europe. I should be able to sleep decently–especially if I can use some of my upgrade points.

So good people, have you travelled the region? Lived there? Suggestions for travel between cities, places to stay, things to see and do? I’m too old for backpackers; too poor for 5 stars. Here’s my current thinking for the ????? bit:

• 24 June fly to Sarajevo
• 24-28June: Sarajevo, Mostar
• 28 June: bus to Dubrovnik
• 30 June: fly to Zagreb
• 02 July: train to Ljubljana (friends there)
• 03 July: train to Zagreb

But would welcome suggestions!

Is what I teach informed by–or distant from–who I am? The various signifiers of my life? Since I can only speak for myself, the answer is that who I am is significantly what I teach. Having grown up queer (gay in my case; I see other gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans folks as my peers) has largely oriented my approach to learning (a lifesaver), schooling (torture), and teaching (dangerously intoxicating, in terms of power). The first thought I have when teaching doesn’t always start with “as a gay man”. But it’s still there, it still informs what I do. How could it not?

For me teaching is a positional pedagogy. I’ve yet to experience teaching or learning that’s genuinely neutral. Everyone bring themselves into the process: the content creator (or appropriator…more generously recycler), the pedagogue, the student, the Powers That Be in terms of the  setting or context. Everyone’s there; everyone brings their history. Much of my recent teaching has been in a realm where being queer shouldn’t be terribly relevant: learning technologies. In ETEC565, we don’t merely teach instrumental skills: we teach how to critically select, design and apply learning technologies. The criticality is in there.

One thing we don’t get to do much of is examining existing web resources for their pedagogical value. Recently one came to my attention that’s profoundly moved me. No it’s not “It Gets Better“–though I think it’s an AWESOME project. It’s a blog started by a DJ in the States called Born this way. The premise is simple: queers sharing childhood images and stories, that underscore that their queerness predates puberty and hormones and adulthood. For folks who’ve wondered how a someone feels they knew their sexuality when they were 5 or 6 years old, this site will be an eye opener. What pleases me is that the stories are mostly mirthful, have a sense of joy, and a dearth of polemic. The core message is this is who I’ve always been.

For all the funny ones there’s the one that resonates the most with me:

I remember the ever-present idea of loneliness that seemed to have no end in sight. Knowing I was different – and aware that nobody would approve of what I was feeling – always made me feel alone. And I felt a false certainty that things would remain that way forever.

My childhood in a paragraph, really. Which for folks that know we as an adult (“you’re like the Eveready bunny, John” a colleague rather snarkily commented a few weeks back), might seem far-fetched. Yes I knew what I was when I was four: profoundly, unacceptably different.

And that’s why the positional pedagogy of Born this way, which clearly isn’t neutral–even if it doesn’t use a hammer to get its message across–strikes me as being so vitally important: we’re talking about the mental and spiritual health of kids when we deliver (or perpetuate through silence) the message that they’re something wrong with the person each child naturally is. There’s something really wrong with that. Really wrong.

The internet is a powerful thing.

…though not necessarily the current one.

There’s a re-ratcheting up in the rhetoric regarding the Foundation Skills Assessment testing system used in BC schools. You can read more about it here, and a raft of materials against it here. I think it’s worth noting that two of the main points from the BCTF leadership bear unpacking:

The FSA results are misused by a private organization to rank schools based on a very narrow measure.

Absolutely. The Fraser Institute uses these test scores to rank schools in BC. It’s facile, lacking rigour (2 tests=calibre of teaching and learning, not), and conveniently ignores things like economic, political and social capital in different districts and schools across the province. But I also doubt (m)any parents would base their entire decision-making process when it comes to school selection based on these rankings. Or scores. Give parents a bit more credit please.

The FSA tests do not result in any additional funding or support for students.

Correct. But they also don’t result in any funding being withdrawn, or even re-apportioned. In fact, I’m struggling to think of any specific assessment that does in BC.

Test  test baby

There are a number of pluses to standardized testing across the province–not the least of which is identifying where things can and must improve, in terms of educational outcomes. It can give parents confidence in their kids’ education, which is important, since we seem to forget we have one of the best public education systems in the world in BC. Yes, the world: why else would offshore BC high schools be enrolling so many students overseas? And parents moving their families here so their kids can access these schools?

As well, there’s always a whack of people holding forth on how important it is for our schools to prepare students “for real life”. Well…comparative assessment of performance is pretty important in our society: in school, in sport and in the economy. Participating in assessments like these is an integral piece to that preparation. Keeping these scores arm length from students grades for years 4 and 7 (when the assessment is given) makes this medium (rather than high) stakes testing. And in many fields–professional ones for sure, but also trades–standardized high-stakes testing is part of the credentialing process. It’s not just in university that these sorts of assessments are found. at the post-secondary level.

Finally, there’s the “teachers will just teach the test” argument. Yes, yes they will. And if it’s a rigorous, reliable, well constructed test teachers will need to create rigorous, reliable and well constructed materials. And delivery them to that performance standard. Teaching the test is only a problem when the test is flawed. Have problems with the methodology of the FSA, or its construction? Great–there are ways to improve assessments. There are alternatives. Let’s get working on that then.

For the record

BTW I’m not a huge fan of testing as assessment, generally. In fact, there are many times where I think other forms of assessment–particularly integrative assignments–are a better tack. But for assessing core knowledges and skills, testing is a reasonable assessment strategy.

PS: I have exams in my current French class. Not fun. But not a human rights violation either.

While teaching in UBC’s MET program has given me a reasonably strong sense of the needs of K-12 educators seeking to leverage technologies…my own practice remains focused on higher education.  But here’s some iPad apps I have found useful:

Best word processor: QuickOffice. Yes Pages is pretty, but it’s a Word world–and if I build a sophisticated document in Pages then convert it to .docx (or .doc), it invariably stuffs it up.

Best presentation tool: Keynote. Pick up a VGA dongle for your iPad and you can use Keynote to present via LCD projector–or any TV with a VGA port. Speaking of which, not all apps that should be able to use the VGA output can do so. So you can’t use Quickoffice for PowerPoints. Which bites. 🙁

Best Moodle app: mTouch. It’s not perfect; in fact, it loads upside down and won’t re-orient itself) and only supports student activities (in other words you can’t build or modify your course as a teacher), but it’s a great interface.

Best Twitter app: TweetDeck–though in fact it’s merely the least annoying one I’ve tried. Fingers crossed Nambu develops an iOS app–I love Nambu!

Best browser: iCabMobile. Real tabs support, highly customizable, can import bookmarks from an html file. Alternate: SkyFire, which will run Flash on some pages. Now I just want Apple to allow me to choose my default browser: 8 Safari windows is a pain.

Best French/English dictionary: Ascendo’s French-to-English, English-to-French Dictionary and Phrase Book. Tons more entries that any other I’ve found. Nice simple interface.

Best ebook app, experience: iBooks. It’s super-configurable, but also simple to learn. anything I could do with a hard copy book I can do: highlight, cut/paste, bookmark. But I can also search–can’t do that with hard copy books! But the price differentials are often significant when compared to…

Best ebook app, selection and price: Kindle. It’s not as featureful as iBooks, but the selection from Amazon is much broader–and often much less expensive–than Apple’s store

What are you favourite apps?

There are some prevailing discourses with respect to public K-12 education in Canada: too many students drop out, we’re failing Aboriginal students, EFL/ESL student needs are shifting resources from other programmes and initiatives. All of these are true. But they also don’t tell the whole story.

Because, in fact, our public education system is one of the best in the world. Even when data from some regions (PEI most notably) brings down our mean scores.

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) assesses student performance of 15 year-old public school students around the world. In the most recent study (from data collected in 2009) 33 countries or regions (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Macau, Taiwan are “regions”; China as a country does not participate) took part. Three domains are assessed: math, reading and science. It’s important to note these tests are designed to assess reasoning in each domain rather than content knowledge. The application of math, reading and science understanding. As is often the case the wikipedia page on PISA is clearer than the OECD’s own.

Canada ranked 10th in math, 8th in sciences and 6th in reading. The  other countries/regions in the top 10 in all three are Finland (6th/2nd/3rd), South Korea (4th/6th/2nd), Shanghai (1st/1st/1st), Singapore (2nd/4th/5th), Hong Kong (3rd/3rd/3rd), and Japan (9th/5th/8th). If we rank these 7 side-by-side (giving 10 points for 1st down to 1 point for 10th) we get:

What’s also worth noting is that Canada is one of only two multicultural migrant nation in the top 7. None of the other countries, save Singapore, have as many migrant children in their systems. All of the others except Singapore also use languages with relatively consistent orthographies (assuming Singapore is also teaching primarily in English). Singapore is an island city-state…which means administering “an” educational system isn’t nearly as challenging as in in a large confederated country like Canada.

Do we need to improve things here? Absolutely! But we’re also doing a lot of things right. And personally I find and asset-based approach–where we acknowledge successes to build upon them, rather than only focussing on deficits–much more inspiring.

O Canada indeed!

2010 will perhaps be the most important year of my life. That’s not hyperbole: a number of landmark, once-in-a-lifetime things happened.

Mom: Despite 10 years of her living with emphysema, countless visits to hospitals, and one particularly horrific journey from Australia to New York in 2005,  Mom’s death in September gutted me. I am a momma’s boy through-and-through and I still have moments…perhaps days…when I ache so much to see her, hear her (“you’re an idiot!” would be music to my ears), touch her, tell her how much I love her, what a great Mom–and person–she was. So much of who I am–the activist, the scholar, the nurturer, the lion–I get from her. Getting to delivery her eulogy has been–will be, I suspect–the greatest honour of my life. It’s available here if you’re interested, the password is Pat.

And if you still smoke cigarettes, please stop. Today. If you can’t for your own health, look at those who love you and imagine the horrors you will subject them to as you gasp for that one decent breath that never, ever comes. Please.

And yet…there were so many other wonderful things earlier in 2010. So many it feels callow to write about them. But remembering what was awesome doesn’t diminish my loss. Or pain. And, truth be told, Mom was as excited for them as I was.

Volunteering for the Olympics: It started in 2009, but the time I spent with my friends on the Uniforms team was golden. We had fun, we worked hard, and we got infused with the Olympic and Paralympic spirit months before most of the country. Some of these folks will be friends for life.

Torch relay: running with the Olympic torch in Logan Lake was the highlight of the year. I can remember watching the relay when I was a child; I think I even dared dream about carrying the flame into the stadium. But me? Carry it? For real? Not gonna happen. Except it did and for 6 minutes on 06 February 2010 I was the only person in the world holding the Olympic flame. Wow!

Hosting the Egans/Smiths: I’m not sure how I ended up with zero house guests during the Games. I figured someone would want to crash here for a few days. Instead my brother Tommy, the lovely Theresa, and the beauty that is Tina, along with most of Tommy’s in-laws, rented a house together. So over a week I played happy host. We took in several events, meals, and touristy stuff. They were such a great group of folks to spend time with.

My Games experience: watching Canada win 12 medals live, in-person (7 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze), getting to the final full dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, going to the real Closing Ceremony of the Olympics (on the floor!), and the Paralympic Opening. I was there for the Golden goal then walked over to the Closing. All on my 46th birthday.  Best moment of that day? My mobile ringing while walking between the too and Mom saying “I’m so excited for you! I’m so glad Canada won! I cried when they played “O Canada”!” Best. Mom. Ever.

New role: after the amalgamation of several units on campus, a new role came up and I got it. It’s been not quite 2 months so far and I’m still settling in (ugh, I frickin’ hate settling in), but I think I’m gonna love doing this. Whatever precisely this is!

As we move into 2011, I wish you all peace, love and joy!

Another term–and another year–are coming to a close. This year I taught ETEC565A for 3 consecutive semesters (6 sections in total). So I’m pleased to have a break before the next offering in May 2011. I’m also keen to do a bit of a refresh. I’ll reflect on the year more broadly a bit later.

One of the core activities in 565A is to create an educational digital story. I came across this one today. If you are an observant Christian I don’t think you’ll find offense here:

To any and all I wish you a peaceful, restful holiday season full of love.