Cover of Mob Rule Learning

Mob Rule Learning by Michelle Boule

I picked this one up from the Kraemer Family Library over at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). I always look at the new education-related books, and I have to admit, most of them look about as interesting or useful as a bag of rocks would look to, well… anyone who had absolutely no need for a bag of rocks. This is one of two that amazingly caught my eye this week.

Mob Rule Learning is a short book (220 pp) about the unconference movement. Boule provides a bit of history of unconferences and edcamps, along with practical advice on how to organize and participate in one. Unconferences are all about collaboration, cooperative learning,  and taking the focus away from an invited knowledge and wisdom dispensing bigwig who stands in front of a podium with a series of gargantuan Power Point slides looming in the background. I thought this sounded a lot like the direction that myself and a lot of other people are headed in education these days. And check out these chapter titles:

• Traditional Classrooms: What’s Missing?
• Creating Your Own Mob Ecosystem: Harnessing the Power of Mob Labor
• The Future of the Self-Educated Mob

I especially like that last one. With a subtitle like Camps, Unconferences, and Trashing the Talking Head, I think it holds great promise.

Cover of That Used to Be Us

That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

I finished this one a week or so ago and cannot recommend it highly enough. Following up on his previous work in The World is Flat, and Hot, Flat and Crowded, Friedman and his new co-author make a convincing case for a rather unpleasant reality. The good ole’ US of A has lost its mojo and all the wringing of hands and indignant saying “it ain’t so” in the world, will do nothing to make it it not so. China and many other parts of the world ascend, while America continues its decades long slide into mediocrity.

Oh, it’s so alright. But all is not lost. Far from it.  After their masterful analysis of how we got into this sorry state, Friedman and Mandelbaum have some ideas for how to reverse the trend. It won’t be easy, but as they point out, America didn’t become great by doing easy things. Let’s do it!

Cover of Better by Mistake

Better by Mistake by Alina Tugend

I read this one last Summer and loved it. Are you into educating kids? Do you want to convert mere students into successful learners? Then get them to understand the power of mistakes and learning from them. Through the use of case studies, interviews, and personal experience, Tugend explains how, that if viewed in the right way, mistakes and struggle are the key to doing great things.

The research is clear: kids who are praised for “working hard” even when they do not succeed, develop a much healthier attitude toward learning and trying hard things, than do kids who are praised for “being smart” and “doing a good job.” Read this book and understand why, then apply it to your daily life and work.

Push Has Come to Shove by Steve Perry

It is a rare event when I crank out a book in one day, but that is exactly what I did yesterday with Push Has Come to Shove. Not because it is the most stellar treatise on what is wrong with education today (but it is pretty good), but because Dr. Perry challenged my thinking on what is needed to improve education. We all need that. He tells it like it is (or at least how he sees it) and he is not all that sympathetic to the plights of teachers, administrators, school boards and school districts that are struggling to “do their best.” I wrote a more complete review of it at The Teacher Reads.

Cover of Building Powerful Numeracy for Middle and High School Students

Building Powerful Numeracy for Middle and High School Students by Pamela Weber Harris

I mentioned previously that I had recently found two education books that I found worth taking home ,with Mob Rule Learning being the first. The second is Building Powerful Numeracy for Middle and High School Students. Okay, it is probably only of interest to mathematics teachers, but then again, maybe not. Most math education “theory” and pedagogy books are terrible. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. But this one is actually written for human beings who are not trying to get in the mood to kill themselves.

Are you frustrated with kids who can’t tell if their answer is remotely close to being correct? Me too. Are you pulling your hair out over kids who can’t figure out which direction on a number line is “bigger” and which is “smaller” no matter how many times and in how many different ways it is presented? Oh yeah, I’m there. I have always thought there was a little chance of instilling number sense in a young person by the time they got to seventh grade, at least in conjunction with all the other stuff we are trying to do. But, the fact is, all the other stuff we are trying to do is a giant wheel spin if there isn’t some kind of numerical reasoning skill at hand.

Enter this book. In leafing through it, I was struck by the simple beauty of the suggestions it contained. Most math “teaching” books present methods and theories that I find totally counterintuative. This one is golden. Every example I saw made perfect sense, and I think they will make sense to kids too. Check out these example problems:

• True or false? Why? 6.2 – 3.8 = 6 – 4; 500 – 312 = 512 – 300
• Are the following equivalent to 21 x 79? 22 x 80; 20 x 78; 20 x 80

I can really see how thinking hard about these questions, along with a little guidance, could possibly turn the light on in a mind at some point. But I do not do the book justice with these two examples. Covering topics from integer addition to calculus, there is something in here that every secondary math teacher can use. In fact, now that I think about it, this book could be used to construct an entire help course for struggling math learners. It could really work.

Got any awesome reading suggestions for me? I’d love to hear about them.

Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe (Matthew High)

A few days ago I read a short story aloud in class. It was “Paul Bunyan Versus the Conveyor Belt” (1949) by William Hazlett Upson.  It’s from a collection called The Mathematical Magpie, which contains many stories that have some tie-in with mathematics. Most of the stories are science fiction or fantasy, which are genres that lend themselves more than most to a mathematically inspired plot.

In “Paul Bunyan Versus the Conveyor Belt,” Paul, along with his trusty side-kick Ford Fordson, is operating a uranium mine somewhere in Colorado. Paul has an old Ford pickup truck named “Babe” which has an attachment that drives a conveyor belt. The conveyor runs in and out of the mine and is used to transport uranium ore. The belt is quite long and has a half twist in it to even out the wear on both sides (how does that work?) making it a Mobius (pronounced moe-BYE-us) strip.

Paper Mobius strip (David Benbennick)

The Mobius strip is named after one of its discoverers, August Ferdinand Möbius who investigated it in 1858. It was independently discovered by Johann Benedict Listing in the same year. The Mobius strip is an example of a chiral structure (it has “handedness”) and a non-orientable surface. It’s a simple thing made by folding a strip of paper over on itself and joining the ends together. The Mobius strip has only one edge and one side. This can be easily proved by drawing a pencil line down the middle of the structure, or along its edge.

Two oppositely folded Mobius strips showing that they are mirror images of each other (non-superimposable). Made from duct tape of course!

In the story, Paul needs to make his conveyor belt longer as the mine gets deeper. Since he knows the belt is a Mobius strip he has an easy way of making it longer–just cut it down the middle lengthwise! That might not produce a real practical belt, but it makes for a good story, especially when Loudmouth Johnson comes along and makes a wager with Paul about what will happen when he cuts the belt, not once but two times.

To make it more fun, the class followed along with Paul by making their own Mobius strips out of paper and cutting them to see what would happen. By the time we were done we had quite a collection of Mobius strips in various colors and lengths, that had been experimentally cut in various ways.

Our Mobius strips hanging on the wall

Studying surfaces and shapes such as the Mobius strip (as well as doughnuts and coffee cups and the like ) is part of the field of mathematics known as topology (not to be confused with the computer science concept of network topology). The Wikipedia entry for topology has a few shortcoming as far as how the references are used, but other than that it is pretty good.  Check out the graphic on the page that proves coffee cups and doughnuts are just variations of the same thing (topologically speaking).

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

It is claimed that he considered it his best work. I thought For Whom the Bell Tolls was pretty good myself.

There is something to be said for six-word stories. For one thing, they are short. I like that. They can definitely have a beginning, middle and end. It is possible to set up and resolve conflicts of sorts as well. Just as importantly, they can be a heck of a lot of fun to write—and read!

The interest is amped up considerably if there is some graphic element involved. My idea fr incorporating this into a reading class assignment came a few years ago after perusing an issue of Wired magazine.

The editors at Wired commissioned a bunch of authors (science fiction and horror types mostly) to come up with their own six-word stories and many of them were presented in visually interesting ways. Some looked like they were printed on book spines, others were made of swooshing arrangements of letters, some were reflected in the windows of skyscrapers. In my view there are lot’s of possibilities in a six-word story.

Some examples from the Wired project:

Epitaph: He shouldn’t have fed it.
- Brian Herbert

Don’t marry her. Buy a house.
- Stephen R. Donaldson

TIME MACHINE REACHES FUTURE!!! … nobody there …
- Harry Harrison

It’s behind you! Hurry before it
- Rockne S. O’Bannon

I’m your future, child. Don’t cry.
- Stephen Baxter

There are many more, not all exactly appropriate for school but not too terribly bad either. That’s why I’m not providing a link to them. Here’s one I came up with:

Swallowed hammer. Hurt throat. Not smart!

Not mybest work perhaps, but…

So, I am looking forward to this edition of the six-word story project, and will post pictures of the best and most interesting results. I’ll post some here when they are done.

Writing is hard work and a lot of fun (witheyes)

The interview project in reading class is well underway. A lot of the blogs are looking good. Here are the requirements for the interviews:

• Interviewee cannot be a family member
• Interviewee cannot be a Challenger staff member
• Interviewee must be an adult
• Interview questions must be open-ended (no yes or no answers)
• Interviews may be conducted by phone, email or in person
• Parent or guardian must accompany you to the interview if it is done in person
• Interview will be published at your blog
• 400-800 words in length
• May be written in “question and answer” format or in “paragraph with embedded quotes” style
• You must ask at least five questions
• The questions must be approved by me before the interview

I figured it would be a good idea to write some example interviews myself so you could see the ways in can be done.

For an example of an interview written up in question and answer format see Jeff Brady, NPR Reporter.

For some examples of the embedded quote format see:

Writer and Teacher, James Van Pelt

Dwight D. Jones Leads Colorado Education

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Still Working Hard

Fantasy Writer, T. A. Barron

Some possible candidates for interviews are:

• Police officer
• government official
• business owner
• veteran
• doctor
• lawyer
• veterinarian
• athlete
• pastor
• actor
• musician
• bus driver
• the queen of England
• mail carrier

Good luck. I look forward to reading your work!