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Yale Russian Chorus tours Quebec

My son, Stephen, writes this about the Yale Russian Chorus tour in Quebec:

In March 2009 the Yale Russian Chorus went on tour to Quebec. We sang at a variety of venues, including Laval University in Quebec City and both Francophone and Anglophone retirement homes in Montreal. The contacts we had made with the Russian Orthodox community in Montreal allowed us to end our tour with an exciting concert at St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral. We stayed for most of the tour at the house of Paul and Sandy Gauthier, whom my family had met on our sabbatical to China.

To publicize these events, we had the privilege of appearing on Radio-Canada twice. The first was an interview I did over the phone to advertise our first concert, at St. Elizabeth Catholic church in North Hatley.

Halfway through our stay in Montreal, we drove to the CBC/Radio-Canada building in Montreal to appear on the morning show “C’est bien meilleur le matin”. After discussing the history of the Russian Chorus with the host, Franco Nuovo (and surmising possible connections to the CIA), I rejoined the group to sing our version of the Russian folk song “Po moriam, po volnam” (Across the seas, across the waves)

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Why I like to use walking poles

leki_polesOK. I know it looks strange, but here are a few reasons I like to use walking poles:

  1. If I don’t have a baby or a dog with me, it provides something to talk about with strangers.
  2. It add ten years to the usability of my knees (and ankles, hips, back, feet,…).
  3. Even in the short run, my knees don’t hurt so much after a long walk.
  4. I can fend off small animals.
  5. A stick can be handy for opening gates, picking up objects, making an impromptu tent, or hoisting a flag. See more reasons to carry a walking stick.
  6. I get upper body exercise while walking.
  7. I burn more calories, but don’t even feel that I’m exercising.
  8. I walk faster.
  9. I’m less likely to fall when crossing a stream and stepping on slippery, unstable, rounded rocks, or even just stepping on a wet leaf or going down a bumpy sidewalk.
  10. I can use the same sticks for x-country skiing.
  11. They remind me to get more exercise, and to be outside more, providing a partial escape from the computer screen.
  12. They’re reflective, which makes it much safer to walk at night, especially since they move rapidly in the normal walking motion.
  13. They make me feel that I’m in Finland again.
  14. Using them is similar to using a bicycle or roller blades in that walking is suddenly easier.
  15. Cars slow down and avoid me more. I’m not sure why. Do they think I’m disabled? that I might strike them with the poles? that I look larger? that I look strange? Whatever it is, I appreciate their response.
  16. They’re a big help going up a steep hill, because you can use your arms to push up.
  17. They provide a measure of safety going downhill.
  18. They’re handy for retrieving a frisbee stuck in a tree, a hat that fell in a stream, or a ball that rolled under a cabinet.
  19. When you’re tired of walking, you can lean on them to rest.
  20. And they’re especially useful for canoeing!
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Sharing your books, for a noble cause …

wordle_mark_quote [tag cloud from the UC Books to Prisoners site, created using wordle]

UC Books to Prisoners is an Urbana, IL based project providing books to Illinois inmates at no cost. Books to Prisoners offers books by mail to all Illinois inmates and operates lending libraries in the two Champaign County jails.

Is your book collection weighing you down? Do you have a home library that is threatening the structural integrity of your abode? Champaign-Urbana has many great places to donate books. One of the neediest is the Books to Prisoners program, profiled earlier in a Smile Politely piece.

We take donations of used books from the community, mail books in response to prisoner requests, and stock and staff the two local jail libraries. Those books that are not suitable for prisoners, for a variety of reasons, are sold to cover the postage to mail books.

Thanks to community support, we have sent 32,162 books in 8,281 packages to 5,096 inmates since we were founded five years ago. Go here for details about dropping off books.

If you’d like to get rid of your books, merely to make space to acquire more, come to our Spring Book Sale April 3–5 at the IMC in the old Urbana Post Office. A huge assortment of high quality books: paperbacks at 50 cents, hardbacks for a buck.

via Sharing your books, for a noble cause … : SPlog : Smile Politely

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Arts and the cognitive life of the university

Harvard has issued a Report of the task force on the arts (2008, December), which argues that the arts are an integral part of the cognitive life of the university. Similar reports come out regularly from other institutions; this one is notable mostly because of Harvard’s stamp on the value of the arts, especially for inquiry in all fields. There is (belated) attention to a wide view of arts both in appreciation and in making, as well as the use of new technologies:

The use of new digital and media technologies—in virtually all forms of inquiry—provides an unprecedented opportunity for our students to take art-making seriously “for itself,” while seeing it as an enhancement of their own specific scholarly and professional interests. “Making” in the visual arts, for instance, is no longer restricted to the hand-held technologies of pencil, brush, chisel and camera…The availability of computer software for creative purposes allows for a range of artistic practices that may not “train the hand and eye” in the time-honored traditional sense, but whose imaginative and aesthetic possibilities provide the important cognitive and conceptual training of an “art-making” education. (pp. 8-9)

One side note is the recognition of Harvard’s “unusual, if not unique” relation to arts practice. The report notes for example that

By 1869, Yale had opened the doors to its School of Art . Yale now confers graduate degrees in arts practice from four separate professional schools—the School of Art, School of Drama, School of Music, and School of Architecture—and it provides as well profound opportunities for mentorship and instruction within the talented undergraduate population. (p. 6)

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Happy Pluto Day!

plutolithograph1Image courtesy of Windows to the Universe. “This is an artist’s conception of Pluto and Charon. Pluto is in the background and Charon is in the foreground. Pat Rawlings, Science Applications International”

The Illinois State Senate has redeemed poor Pluto from dwarf planet status to its rightful place in the universe, and established March 13 as Pluto Day. This was done in large part to honor Illinois native Clyde Tombaugh. One justification for this was that Tombaugh was the only American to discover a planet. Another was that there were no real problems left to work on.

There are of course a few problems with the Senate’s idea. Early Native Americans undoubtedly discovered most of the planets in our solar system, even if official histories don’t credit them. Other Americans have discovered many planets outside of our solar system. And what Tombaugh discovered isn’t really a planet, under current definitions.

225px-clydetombaughBut Pluto is now part of our culture. Even if it’s not a planet, do we really want children going around saying “My very educated mother just served us nine”? Nine what? Pluto gives us a reason to add “pizzas,” which might be reason enough to keep it.

Tombaugh did do something. Eric Jakobsson, points out that they should have honored him for “discovering the first of the Kuiper objects (as opposed to the last of the planets). Arguably, that was a more important discovery than another planet, because it added a whole new dimension to our understanding of the solar system.”

Eric’s argument highlights two different conceptions of learning. In one, authority gives us the answer, case closed. In another, ideas become tools for further inquiry. Richard Shaull, puts it this way in the foreword to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1993):

There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women participate in the transformation of their world.

We should remember and honor Tombaugh’s dedication, intelligence, and painstaking studies of photographs. His work on Pluto and asteroids contributed to transforming our scientific understanding of the universe. That was not the social world that Freire means when he says the “practice of freedom,” but in its own way represented a challenge to the “present system.” Unfortunately, the Senate’s rearguard action has become an internet joke that fails to express what Tombaugh really accomplished.

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RiseOut: “Defining Our Own Education”

I’ve been reading the articles on RiseOut, an online “news center focused on deschooling, youth activism, and other related issues concerning the rights of youth in the U.S.” There are entries on deschooling; unschooling; youth media; racism; the Highlander Folk School in New Market, Tennessee; Dr. “Patch” Adams; a review of the book, The Teenage Liberation Handbook, How to quit school and get a real life and education (by Grace Llewellyn); critiques of school segregation (and recent Supreme Court decisions that support it), credentialism, and military conscription.

Most of the articles on RiseOut are well-researched, thoughtful, and provocative. They remind me of the wonderful book, Letter to a teacher by the schoolboys of Barbiana, in which youth in Italy present a searing critique of their education and the unjust society it supports.

Both the Barbiana book and RiseOut address the question that Earl Kelley asks: What is real in education?. Kelley answers that the bedrock reality is the the actual life of youth.

The Obama administration’s proposed “Cradle to Career” education plan, has many good components, but education reform will never accomplish much if schooling continues to be separated from actual life and fails to come to terms with the issues raised in RiseOut.

From the RiseOut site:

We provide a diversity of alternatives to education that are self-directed and decentralized from standardized schooling. We support a young person’s choice in dropping out of school, free of social stereotypes and biases. We aim to provide a plethora of alternatives from a 12-year prison like sentence of state schooling, while staying vigilant of abuses against young people through diagnosing, segregation, ageism, adultism, sexism, and other assholisms.

A message to those who have decided to quit school:

Instead of dropping out, we applaud you for your courage to “riseout” from a nightmarish disposition of compulsory schooling. We hope RiseOut can be a resource for sharing your stories and providing choices towards regaining control over your own education.

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Education for what is real

taasaIs subject matter real? We often act in education as if the concepts and methods expressed in course materials are the reality, and the task of teaching is to help the learner from unreal understandings to the truth. But that seemingly obvious assumption is the one that is far from reality.

In Education for what is real, Earl Kelley makes the case for purposeful learning. At the core, his argument is not simply that allowing the learner to find a purpose in learning is effective pedagogy; nor is that everyone lives in a subjective universe in which no dialogue or learning is possible. Instead, it is that the the learner necessarily remakes anything a teacher says in terms of his/her own “scheme of thing.” That remaking changes the learner and can lead to growth, but not in the straightforward way imagined by a transmission epistemology.

Now it comes about that whatever we tell the learner, he will make something that is all his own out of it, and it will be different from what we held so dear and attempted to ‘transmit’. He will build it into his own scheme of things, and relate it uniquely to what he already uniquely holds as experience. Thus he builds a world all his own, and what is really important is what he makes of what we tell him, not what we intended. –Earl C. Kelley

Jeannie Austin makes a similar point in discussing her own learning in a class that allowed her to build on what she knows and cares about:

It’s allowed me to have a feeling of ownership over my education, as I’ve been able to pursue the study of things that I am passionate about and still count it toward school. I can’t tell you how much less stressful it has made my life, as I no longer have to try and balance an education that is separate from my lived reality. –Jeannie Austin

Postman and Weingartner put it this way in Teaching as a subversive activity:

In other words, you end up with a student-centered curriculum not because it is good for motivation but because you don’t, in fact, have any other choice.

References

Kelley, Earl C. (1947). Education for what is real. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Postman, Neil, & Weingartner, Charles (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. New York: Dell.

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TakingITGlobal – Inspire. Inform. Involve.

tigI heard Michael Furdyk from TakingITGlobal.org give a very interesting talk with slide show on Thursday. TakingITGlobal – Inspire. Inform. Involve. “is an online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities.”

It offers many of the features found on other social networking sites, but with a focus on social good and attention to the special needs of schools and youth leaders for protected spaces and appropriate content. Youth can share media they have produced as well as discuss projects around the world. They can participate in fully online communities or build an online community to support their face-to-face interactions. TakingITGlobal now works with 235,701 individual members and 1008 schools in 261 countries.

You can see a short CBC documentary about Michael and co-founder, Jennifer Corriero, here:

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Hidden Her-story: The Top-Secret “Rosies” of World War II

leann_ericksonNorma Scagnoli referred me to a wonderful podcast by LeAnn Erickson, Associate Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University. Erickson is an independent video/filmmaker, whose work has appeared on public television, in galleries, and has won national and international awards.

Entitled, Hidden Her-story: The Top-Secret “Rosies” of World War II, it was recorded in January at the EDUCAUSE 2009 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in Philadelphia. I expected to listen for a minute and then go on to more pressing things, but after listening a little I decided that those things weren’t so pressing after all. It’s a fascinating story for anyone who has an interest in history, computers, women, education, mathematics, warfare, politics, Philadelphia, science, workplace equity, morality, or life in general.

In 1942, only months after the United States entered World War II, a secret military program was launched to recruit women to the war effort. But unlike recruiting “Rosie” to the factory, this search targeted female mathematicians who would become human “computers” for the U.S. Army. These women worked around-the-clock shifts creating ballistics tables that proved crucial to Allied victory. “Rosie” made the weapons, but the female computers made them accurate. When the first electronic computer (ENIAC) was invented to aid ballistic calculation efforts, six of these women were tapped to become its first programmers. “Top Secret ´Rosies’: The Female ‘Computers’ of WWII” is a documentary project currently in postproduction that will share this untold story of the women and technology that helped win a war and usher in the modern computer age.

Controls for the podcast appear beneath the description on the EDUCAUSE page.

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Illini Summer Academies plans, 2009

isa_logoIllini Summer Academies is a three-day event providing Illinois teens opportunities to explore the University of Illinois campus, study potential careers, develop leadership skills, and meet with youth from across the state. One of the nine academies will be on Youth Community Informatics, in which youth will learn about GPS/GIS, video editing, and other digital communication tools as means for contributing to their own communities.

alumnicenterThe Academies are open to youth in grades 8-12. They take place from June 29-July 1 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Delegates live in college dormitories and tour the campus. Joint activities for all delegates offer opportunities to meet with those attending different academies and with youth from around the state. These include opening and closing sessions, activities every evening, and a formal banquet at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center.

The Illini Summer Academies are just one among many camps and activities for youth offered by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign during 2009.