Summary: Seb Paquet has put his finger on something. Or, rather, he has tapped the finger of the hand that already rests on something, something very important. There are various reasons for writing a weblog; in this one Seb's remarks have brought to mind the what might be called theCommunity of Truth Seakers, Living and Dead

Visit Seb's site and you will note links to those with and without a weblog, to those offline and and to those who are deceased. Edsger Dijkstra is in the last category.

Seb's entry serves to note and celebrate our access to his thoughts and to remark on his virtues as a truth searcher.

I can now celebrate my access to Dijkstra's thoughts (having already marked several entries for deep reading) and want to extract and extend two ideas which were provoked by Sebs entry. Those ideas pertain to the nature and motivation of some who write weblogs.

One of the ideas is of Dijkstra's and the other derives from a colleague's description of Dijkstra.(Both are drawn via Seb from the article Dijkstra and thinking out loud

On why some of us might write a weblog[D was referring to a journal]--Dyskstra notes that at the center of it, in his case, is:

The need to get some sort of verbal grip on your own pondering [causes you to write now and in the future, in the hopes that] as time progresses, patterns will become distinguishable.

On the personal characteristics necessary to pursue such a course [writing and publishing entries in which imperfection is necessarily manifested as the quest for higher order understanding is pursued] his colleague observed the following in Diijkstra:

searing integrity and [[sigma]] humility and willingness to make a complete ass of [oneself in front of any who link to and read one's entries]

I never met Dijkstra, now to my regret, but I suspect that his motiviation was not simply to benefit his students or colleagues. Speaking for myself, as a weblog writer and someone who's also taught learning methods by learning in front of students, I would agree that student benefit is one of the paramount motivations, yes. But also, I believe, the drive to discover/rediscover the order underlying the chaos of experience necessitates that one speak out with integrity. Thus, as so many saw Dijkstra do, one must be willing to sacrifice self-conscious fearfulness to the higher goods of uncovering underlying truths. In speaking out one also recognizes, subscribes to and helps in the constant recreation of the truth-seeking community .

Now you can read my website,Connectivity, in multiple languages. Among them: French, Russian, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese.

How? Simply scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Flag representing the target language for Connectivity 's translation.

Wait 2 minutes and you'll have the translated version of my site. Feedback is welcome.

Summary: Quotation of Martin Buber's thoughts (from I and Thou) on the teacher student relationship. Serious food for thought about any educative relationship. It also allows a perspective upon the difference between bureaucratically generated and spiritually processed relationships; intentions, processes, affects and effects are all distinct. Finally, you'll see the irony of the puns (unintended on Buber's part) on the special education term inclusion and on the phrase special education itself.

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The other day Bernice, one the students in a graduate class I am teaching, read between the lines. She commented, "You're an idealist, aren't you" -- or words to that effect. [She did have to read between the lines because I had been discussing testing procedures and was ticking off the points that a competently written report might cover.]. In response, I said something profound: "Oh [insert long pause and thoughtful look] yeah!". Given that initial response, I thought I'd follow with a serious dip into the sources of my idealism, i.e., this passage from Martin Buber's I and Thou, 1958 edition. [The passages are generally and personally meaningful: (a) it's relevant to any educator's concerns about the meaning and processes of their work and (b) it's powerful: in my own experience this book was, in real part, responsible for my choosing to move from oceanographic studies to becoming a teacher.

The passage stands on its own. It will reverberate more, several orders of magnitude more, if you read the book. At the center of I-Thou is the generation and maintenance of a non-self-serving relationship with beings, large and small, who share the same environment and who also struggle to exist , to eat, to find meaning in this world. The phrase "I and Thou" refers to the special character of relating when generated from the center of a well-tuned, spiritual frame of mind.

In the next question we are no longer concerned with the threshold, the preliminal and the superliminal of mutuality, but with mutuality itself as the door into our existence.

The question is, how is it with the I-Thou relationship between men? Is it alwas entrely reciprocal? Can it always be, may it always be? Is it not--like everything human--delivered up to limitation by our insufficiency, an also placed under limitation by the inner laws of our life together?

The first of these two hindrances is well enough known. From your own glance, day by day, into the eyes which look out in estrangement of your "neighbor" who nevertheless does need you, to the melancholoy of holy men who time and agiain vainly offered the greeat gift--everything tells you that full mutuality is not inherent in men's life together. It is a grace, for which one must always be ready and which one never gains as an assured possession.

Yet there are some I-Thou relationships which in their nature may not unfold to full mutuality if they are to persist in that nature.

Elsewhere I have characterized the relationship of the genuine educator to his pupil as being a relationship of this kind. In order to help the realization of the best potentialities of the pupil's life, the teacher must really mean him as the definite person he is in his potentiality and his actuality; more preceisely, he must not know him as a mere sum of qualities, strivings and inhibitions, he must be aware of him as a whole being and affirm him in this wholeness. but he can only do this if he meets him again and again as his partner in a bipolar situation. And in order that his effect on him may be unified and significant one must also live this situation, again and again, in all its moments not merely from his own end but also from that of his partner: he must prctise the kind of realization which I call inclusion (Umfassung).

But however much depends upon his awakening the I-Thou relationship in the pupil as well--and howeveer much depneds upon the putil, too, meaning and affirming him as the particular person he is -- the special educative relation could not persist if the pupil for is part practised "inclusion," that is, if he lived the teacher's part in the common situation. Whether the I-Thou relationship now comes to an end or assumes the quite different character of a friendship, it is plain that the specifically educative relation as such is denied full mutuality.

[Here we see how Buber sorts the well intended effects of analysis alone (I-It, in his parlance) and what results from the full mutuality created by over-and-over-again revisiting of the I-Thou space.]Another no less illuminating example of the normative limitation of mutuality is presented to us in the relation between a genuine psychotherapist and his patient. If he is satisfied to "analyse" him, i.e. to bring to light unknown factors from his microcosm, and to set to some conscious work in life the energies which have been transformed by such an emergence, then he may be successful in some repair work. At best he may help a soul which is diffused and poor in structure to collect and order itself to some extent.But the real matter, the regeneration of an atrophied personal centre, will not be achieved. This can only be done by one who grasps the buried latent unity of the suffering soul with the great clance of the doctor; and this can only be attained in the person-to-person attitude of a partner, not by the consideration and examination of an object.[italics mine, Spike Hall]. In order that he may coherently further the liberation and actualisation of that unity in a new accord of the person with the world, the psychotherapist, like the educator, must stand again and again not merely at his own pole in the bipolar relation, but also with the strength of present realisation at theh other pole, and experience the effect of his own action. But again, the specific "healing" relation would come to an end the moment the patient thought of, and succeeded in, practising "inclusion" and experiencing the event from the doctor's pole as well. Healing, like educating, is only possible to the one who lives over against the other, and yet is detached. [Martin Buber (1958) I and Thou, 2nd edition, New York: Scribeners, pp 131-133.]

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Others thinking about Buber and Education on the Web

Ruth Wilson

Mark K Smith(in Infed)

Yesterday a student and I talked about motorcyle helmets. We asked, "Should motorcycle riders be required to wear them?". In our back-and-forth I was arguing pro and he contra.

I share some notes and summaries below, but first one or two indicators of my investment in and experience with motorcycles. I've ridden and owned motorcycles ever since college days. Hondas, an Indian, a Suzuki three cylinder "Water Buffalo" with a sidecar, a BMW. I've lived in states that had helmet laws (California and Washington) and that did not (Iowa).

I am deeply commited to the belief that individuals are free to make of their own lives what they will, that the day-to-day and week-to-week of commerce, of love, of addictive habits and of beautiful becomings are all our own to construct , to forego, to destroy.

However, I also believe that our individual freedoms are bounded to the extent that they limit the freedoms of others. For example, if your appreciation of [name your favorite music group] is demonstrated by turning the volume up so high that I, pursuing my own moments, my own epiphanies, have your favorites inflicted on my space, then your freedom has been pursued at the expense of mine. You've crossed the boundary of your freedoms into mine. You've gone too far.

As to the case of motorcyle riding: the likelihood of costly accident, and of my bearing [as a citizen of the community within which you also reside] the medical and other costs of your accident are part of the moral ecology of motorcycle riding--because they are located at the boundary of your freedom to ride a motorcycle and mine to conduct my life. To the degree that motorcycle riding on the part of another has impact on my freedom to operate in my own space is the degree to which I have a say. To say nay, possibly. To say under what conditions, I think so, definitely.

Some notes and summaries:

Supreme courts (Maine/New Hampshire, I think) find that the public good is sufficiently diminished by nonhelmet use to outweigh the loss of individual freedom involved in mandated helmet use. The courts have rebuffed contra argument based on loss of individual freedom.

Their conclusion --- a) there are considerable public costs associated with lack of helmet use . These costs, borne by all citizens, were seen to outweigh the individual "loss of freedom" involved in purchasing and wearing helmets.

Trauma.org has some interesting links as well. Found online discussion among physicians [can't find link] ; theme of discussion related to attempts to repeal helmet law (again) in Oregon. Two efforts /thoughts re countering resistance to law which is presently in force: One --- give up helmet insistence; insist, instead, that each person licensed to ride motorcycle carry signed universal donor card --harvested organ benefits of those killed outright would pay for long-term care costs of those who survive(this was never seriously proposed). The other -- which is presently an active strategy -- was to insist a) that motorcycle license only comes with demonstrated insurance and b) that insurance be charged based on motorcyclist actuarial tables [predicted likely individual costs based actual mortality and long term health care statistics and costs]; this would take individual insurance premiums through roof. The insurance lobby is concerned and, naturally, the proponents of repeal are screaming foul.

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-The following are the summaries from NHTSA

Without Motorcycle Helmet Law We All Pay the Price. U.S. Department of Transportation, August 1998 (DOT HS 808 600). Consolidates motorcycle helmet effectiveness information by documenting the life- and cost-saving benefits of motorcycle helmets and the effectiveness of motorcycle helmet laws. The multimedia package discusses NHTSA[base ']s comprehensive approach to motorcycle safety and makes three points: (1) motorcycle helmets save lives and reduce head injuries to motorcyclists in crashes; (2) helmet laws for all riders increase helmet usage; and (3) helmet laws reduce the societal costs resulting from injuries and fatalities in motorcycle crashes.

The Effect of Helmet Law Repeal on Motorcycle Fatalities:A Four-Year Update. NHTSA Research Notes, September 1989. This report estimates fatalities increased about 20 percent in states that repealed helmet use laws.

The Effect of Helmets in Preventing Fatalities. U.S. Department of Transportation, March 1989 (DOT HS 807 416). This publication presents the data and analysis used to determine that motorcycle helmets are 29 percent effective in preventing fatalities.

The Effects of Motorcycle Helmets Upon Seeing and Hearing. U.S. Department of Transportation, NHTSA, February 1994 (DOT HS 808 399). The study examined how wearing a helmet affected motorcycle riders[base '] ability to: (1) visually detect the presence of vehicles in adjacent lanes before changing lanes; and (2) detect traffic sounds when operating at normal highway speeds. Results indicated that wearing a helmet does not restrict the likelihood of seeing a vehicle in an adjacent lane or the ability to hear auditory signals.

Impact of Re-enactment of the Motorcycle Helmet Law in Louisiana. U.S. Department of Transportation, December 1984 (DOT HS 806 760). This report documents the effect of Louisiana[base ']s helmet law on injuries, fatalities, and costs. The repeal and subsequent re-enactment of Louisiana[base ']s helmet use law offer unique and valuable data to conduct this systematic study. [SPH: similar results reported Oregon's epidemiologist]

The Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System (CODES): Technical Report. U.S. Department of Transportation, NHTSA, January 1996 (DOT HS 808 338). This document presents state-specific results from the CODES project. These results show that safety belts and motorcycle helmets are effective in reducing fatalities and injuries. This report also indicates that safety belt and motorcycle helmet use saves millions of dollars in direct medical costs.

Report to Congress on The Benefits of Safety Belts and Motorcycle Helmets. U.S. Department of Transportation, NHTSA, February 1996 (DOT HS 808 347). The study employed methods whereby statewide data from police crash reports, emergency medical services, hospital emergency departments, hospital discharge files, claims, and other sources were linked so that those people injured in motor vehicle crashes could be followed through the health care system. Information for both the injured and uninjured was then used to determine the benefits of protective devices in motor vehicle crashes.

Motorcycle Accident Cause Factors and Identification of Countermeasure, Volume 1: Technical Report. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, U.S. Department of Transportation, January 1981 (DOT HS 805 862). This report presents the data and findings from on-scene, in-depth investigations of 900 motorcycle crashes and the analysis of 3,600 traffic accident reports of motorcycle crashes in the same study area.

Report to Congressional Requesters[~]Highway Safety: Motorcycle Helmet Laws Save Lives and Reduce Costs to Society. U.S. General Accounting Office, July 1991 (GAO/RCED-91-170). This report evaluates studies on motorcycle helmet laws. The report summarizes each study[base ']s findings on: (1) the effectiveness of helmets in preventing deaths and serious injuries; (2) the effect of helmet laws on helmet use and fatality rates; and (3) the cost that society incurs when nonhelmeted motorcyclists are involved in crashes. All studies comparing helmeted riders to nonhelmeted riders found that all helmeted riders had a lower fatality rate.

Motorcycle Helmets: The Facts of Life. U.S. Department of Transportation, NHTSA, revised October 1996 (DOT HS 807 603). This eight-panel brochure summarizes the life- and cost-saving benefits of motorcycle helmets and discusses issues surrounding the enactment of universal motorcycle helmet laws.

Summary: I note some of the pitfalls and suggest improvements for online classrooms involving nontechnologists. Some useful online teaching tips via web site and weblog at bottom of this entry.

The "no face" teaching experience takes getting used to. Initially it can be compared to, say, swimming one hundred yards underwater with just my arms. I have been teaching graduate education courses for 32 years...and a mixture of traditional and online courses since 1990 (the first one using a bulletin board server on an early Mac). In those years I have seen considerable accomplishment by online learners. Learning that is comparable to, sometimes superior to, the same class delivered by traditional, everyone-in-same-classroom" methods. There have been extraordinary failures, however.

Background:
My clients are most often teachers, if not teachers are human service workers, administrators and counselors. Their common ground is their investment in human growth and development, possibly mental health . Their individual talents have to do with face-to-face communications and 'reading' people as well as subject matter. It is a rare one of my clients who is deeply invested in technology. These days most bring word processing, beginner level web browsing and, more rarely, file transfer skills to the classroom. Often undergraduates are more technologically literate than 30+ graduates who are coming back for a graduate credential or degree.

Sources of failure:

Absence of computer comfort and skill: student unable to word process, email, upload, download, navigate on the web, etc. This can be compensated for by intense support during the course or by preonline assessment and training according to the technical weaknesses found. I prefer the latter. That way the course itself is not tainted by technical failures. If the technical problem, or the problem with technically dependent learning, is found too late corrections may not matter; the student is already too stressed , too confused and defeated to reverse earlier.

Inability of instructor to detect substantive learning problems in a timely fashion, particularly on part of insecure or indirect learners(i.e., they wait for you to detect problems or fix them; otherwise they will prefer bumbling along rather than calling attention to their problems). Once again, if problem detection is late in the failure experience, reversal becomes less and less likely. This problem can be overcome but only with thought and effort.

Some thoughts:

Give frequent and easy initial assignments. Ease must involve both substantive and technical requirements of the assignments. This will establish doability and allow correction of errors while small and while moving attitude toward course into the territory of "can do".

Establish direct communication habits, e.g., require students to critique self, instructor and technology fairly frequently, particularly in first 3-5 exercises. This will allow timely corrections of misunderstandings of substance and pre-frustration adjustments of technology ; in this set of quick high-ownership exchanges, ownership, on the part of student, and responsiveness on part of teacher put class on more successful path.

Websites addressing online learning issues:

American Psychological Society's Online Teaching Tips

Margaret Driscoll's (2000) Ten Things We Know About Teaching Online

Ray Schroder's Online Learning Weblog

I would like interaction on this one. My claim: Teacher's who work in high intensity positions in public schools rarely get the chance, let alone having the expectation, to work with an individual's realization of potential. A teacher under public school circumstances is excellent,indeed, to deliver on the textbook; e.g., a majority of the students master fifty percent of the content.

As for aiding a student on her path to realizing her "unique potential" -- somehow rendering a high realization of that which is only hers to become --, I'm sorry, but that doesn't happen.

Here's where you come in:

I know it's an Aristotelian dream. Beyond that, do you agree as to the facts? If not, speak. If so, speak.

If so, should we (educators, the public, parents)do something? What would you suggest in the way of practical short- and long-term steps that we (again, educators, the public, parents)could take?

Summary: I get a bit wiser. Prospective teacher clients may like the news. Former teacher clients may say both "at last" and "too little, too late."

I've spent decades (this is not hyperbole) teaching teachers to build classroom tools that would allow them to actually teach what they intended to teach. I'm convinced in the absolute worth of those skils. They have great relevance to the inside-and-out understanding that could help a teacher make touch-up repairs or do a major rebuild of their classroom. However, my front end approach is flawed.

You ask, "front end?". You know! The part where your prospective client decides that he/she needs what you're selling (in my case teaching) and 'commits' to it. Part of my flawed approach has had to do with the fact that what I taught was required as part of a program. Students had no choice in the matter. Thus, I had the illusory luxury of being able to skip dealing with "why" except in a more incidental, person-to-person manner with students when and if they raised the question. Generally speaking they did.

But, alas, too late for some!

For some, being 'forced' to learn something creates a 'victim' mentality which significantly reduces higher thought processing. For others the fact of 'compulsion' may also catalyze resentment; resentment and constructive creativity are not comfortable coworkers.

Had the course been only voluntarily taken I would have had to have altered my front-end --the part that gets people to take the course. The name "Instructional Accommodation of All Learners" may be topical and even right in some deep sense. But, from the teacher's point of view, it isn't a "grabber".("Sounds like Correct Speak" or "Whaa?" might be the response). Titles like "Classroom Tune Up" and "Textbook Repair" are closer to being tailored to match a teacher's sense of practical need.

Actually, the most accurate title might have been "Building a course from the ground up". Even then,the busy teacher of 25 has a 50-60 hour week well filled just running the classroom, correcting papers and having meetings. From that point of view each might well ask, "Why take a course on 'reinventing the wheel' [making a curriculum]when I already have a textbook [which IS a curriculum, right?] that I have to use?"

For quite a few teachers there are reasons to learn the "ground up" skills rather than continuing as is. That would not, however, be their initial belief. Adjust, "Yes!" or "Maybe!", rebuild, "No way! " [That would require too much discomfort while thinking about past teaching].

Analogically speaking, there are reasons for taking a complete engine mechanics course as a means to acquiring "oil changing" skill. But there would have to be no choice and a sense of urgent need before the full auto mechanics curriculum would be seen as anything but overkill. Similarly for the ability to build a curriculum from the ground up. Teachers would rather get the skill that they (a) have the time to acquire and (b) which fits their initial sense of need.

So, as I plan my online consultation and teaching activities I am reconfiguring my marquee and business cards. As you surf the education section of the web keep a watch out for "Classroom Tune-up" and "Textbook Repair".

Sebastian Fiedler has a point; we'd better remember the physical and emotional realities, the real system complexities, that we hope our students will master by the time they're through with school. In short, let's not forget the profound things we must teach. To name a few of the primo curricula from which to graduate:

self understanding

using legitimate means of persuasion

making and maintaining friendships

choosing good over evil action in familiar and unfamiliar circumstances

distinguishing between nurturant, neutral and destructive social systems

deploying active and adaptive learning skills

With those pay-offs in mind let's listen as Seb explains the nature and limitations of digital learning objects.

It is important to note that Illich's idea of "educational objects" does not map entirely on the notion of "(digital) learning objects" that is currently quite popular with educational and instructional technology researchers and developers. "David Wiley", for example, offers the following definition of Learning Objects in his chapter "Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a taxonomy" in the online book The Instructional Use of Learning Objects:

Learning objects are elements of a new type of computer-based instruction grounded in the object-oriented paradigm of computer science. Object-orientation highly values the creation of components (called [base "]objects[per thou]) that can be reused (Dahl & Nygaard, 1966) in multiple contexts. This is the fundamental idea behind learning objects: instructional designers can build small (relative to the size of an entire course) instructional components that can be reused a number of times in different learning contexts. Additionally, learning objects are generally understood to be digital entities deliverable over the Internet, meaning that any number of people can access and use them simultaneously (as opposed to traditional instructional media, such as an overhead or video tape, which can only exist in one place at a time). Moreover, those who incorporate learning objects can collaborate on and benefit immediately from new versions. These are significant differences between learning objects and other instructional media that have existed previously. [David Wiley]

Illich on the other hand looks at things[as opposed to digital abstractions of things, emboldening is mine, Spike Hall] as basic resources for learning. This is a much more radical point of departure. We then have to think about the educational value of artifacts and their accessiblity in a given environment. Illich writes:

... in the city rich and poor alike are artificially kept away from most of the things that surround them. Children born into the age of plastics and efficiency experts must penetrate two barriers which obstruct their understanding: one built into things and the other around institutions. Industrial design creates a world of things that resist insight into their nature, and schools shut the learner out of the world of things in their meaningful setting. [Ivan Illich]

I think that Illich makes a very important point here. Sure, we can use digital representations of all kind of things and processes. We might even be able to create giant (and distributed) repositories of these digital learning objects (see, for example, "Stephen Downes" proposal for design principlesfor for such a network). What I don't agree with is the current, almost exclusive, fixation on digital learning objects. Illich righfully calls for a different orientation:

The general physical environment must be made accessible, and those physical learning resources which have been reduced to teaching instruments must become generally available for self-directed learning. [Ivan Illich]

[Seblogging News]

Seb finishes by asking that we use our digital connections and systems to bring the world, fully-fleshed--not abstracted , and the learner in closer contact.

We have made an awful mistake if we disproportionately fixate on what we can teach with digital representation--this is far too small a subset of necessary and central learnings in the curriculum of living. We must target our developmental and instructional efforts upon these important, personal world-making, capabilities and teach them things in ways that we know to work.

With great teachers to interpret and guide (Virgil to the learner's Dante) immersion in the world of the real as a preparation for deep, effective life participation is, IMHO, still, and by far, the more proven and the more consequential of the prerequisites for teaching profound things.