Read the whole thing, it's worth the 4 minutes...

The Smart Set: The Metaphysics of Cutting Grass - August 5, 2010: "Perhaps I yearn too much to hear my echo in the world. Yes, occasionally, I do hear from a former student, several years out, that something I said or did has assumed some meaning in their lives. And certainly I understand that students are with me only for 50 minutes three times a week, and that the results of instruction oftentimes reveal their value only in the fullness of time. Still, I find it troubling when, over the course of a semester, I see no palpable impact; I begin to doubt myself, feel vaguely fraudulent. Thus the satisfaction I find in cutting grass: When I’ve finished, I can see, clearly see, a genuine accomplishment, a consequence of my contact, a change in the physical, ‘out there,’ external reality wrought by my expended effort."

Selfishly, I'll say exactly.

These are all my tweets. I stand by them:

Science teacher: Twitter is creepy: "We wield phenomenal power over students. We forget this at our (and our students') peril."

Caring is creepy. So is teaching, really. Life is pretty creepy if you think about it. Maybe I should stop being offended when Michael calls me creepy. Or maybe "...this is way beyond my remote concern of being condescending." Rock on.

Thomas and I have rebooted the Thinking Baptists podcast:

Thinking.FM - ThinkingFM - Thinking Baptists 10: Tent Pole in the Temple

Here is the mp3 (btw, when is someone going to make a good HTML 5 enabled podcast player? I don't want to waste time/resources on a Flash player since they aren't iOS supported and you can't play them on iPhones or iPads in the browser). We'll be doing the show on a weekly basis (looks like Monday or Tuesday night) again, so head over to the still-developing Thinking.FM site and grab the RSS feed if you'd like to subscribe. We should be back in iTunes shortly. I'll keep you posted.

You all realize you're just egging these folks on by making videos, tweets, etc right? I know it's good for smiles and yells (or clicks if you're a "news" org), but as a Baptist with a couple of Seminary degrees under my belt, it always frustrates me to see the level of Biblical (and religious) illiteracy on both sides. Of course Jesus didn't want us to fear "Him" or him. Of course these people have a vested political and financial interest. The issues of "righteousness," "sin," "love" and especially God have been debated by intelligent, compassionate and level-headed folks for millenia. So let's do our best to create an intelligent citizenry that realizes the ever-present existence of extremism in all cases. Confronting these folks and giving them more exposure is just silly. Thomas and I will be doing a podcast tomorrow. You all should listen. Then you should all do this.

Top of his game...

Once More, Tensions And Promise In Mideast Conflict : NPR

R.I.P. Mr Schorr and thank you.

I'm still trying to reconcile Faulkner with my own existence at the behest of Larry McGehee. This particular admonition from Faulkner still haunts me:

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago, and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died. - Letter to Malcolm Cowley (11 February 1949), quoted in William Faulkner : A Critical Essay (1970) by Martin Jarrett-Kerr, p. 46; also published in Selected Letters of William Faulkner (1978) by Joseph Blotner, p. 285

I need to write more. I'm guessing Faulkner would not have enjoyed Twitter, btw.

From Discovery Education (warning, it's a PDF). It's taken me 31 years and I can barely tell the difference between the two if at all. The trick is to help students realize that science wasn't (magically) discovered in the 1600's by Galileo (as this guide would have us to "believe"). Nor has science progressed on an upward curve to its current level of awesomeness. Like the rest of humanity, science has had its ups and downs but the myth of a progression of enlightenment is hubric and dangerous. That's not to say that we should inject science with flights of philosophical fancy. However, Athens still has a great deal to do with Jerusalem and CERN has a great deal to learn from both. Otherwise, you end up like them.

This is certainly a catchy opening paragraph that makes you want to see what these crazy Harvard Profs are up to...

The Answer Sheet - Harvard profs dropping final exams: "Final exams are probably not anybody’s primary concern at the moment, but it is worth noting that the July-August edition of Harvard Magazine reports that many Harvard professors will no longer routinely require final exams."

However, it's not really that uncommon to forego a final exam in lieu of a major paper (or project) at the end of a semester in college. I especially found this to be the case at Yale while at grad school. Even while an undergrad at Wofford College, this was the case in many challenging and critical-thinking heavy courses. It always seemed to me that if a class was especially thought-heavy, there would be a paper at the end of the course rather than a cumulative final exam. After four years of undergrad and five years of graduate school, I can safely say that it is/was always more challenging to end a year of study with a paper than with a test. It made me reflect and look back in a much more critical fashion than if I were rehashing facts on a test. That's not to say that I don't value final exams in some circumstances. However, these types of articles really aren't pointing to a crazy new educational trend coming out of Harvard. The question becomes if we need to start looking beyond final exams in Middle or Upper/High School settings. That's a can of worms that I'm still trying to grok.

Fantastic article on cultivating creativity in Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

"Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why—sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions."

Amen. Made me tear up when I read that portion as I reflect on my incredibly inquisitive preschool daughter and her 1,000 questions-a-day rate compared to the resistance many of my 8th Grade students have to asking questions. I hope she never changes. Ever. Nullius in verba and all that. However, out of the ruins that have become our nationalized education system at large, I see tiny daisies of local promise sprouting up. We're on the verge of a major educational reform that will occur from the ground up. It won't be an overnight process, but my childrens' children will grow up with a very different system of education that is based on creativity, critical thinking and sustainability. Viva la revolution and here's to the crazy ones.

I'm working on our GriffinScience Text(s)book for next "year" (not sure why we call them school years...) and it's coming together nicely. We aren't going to be using a standard textbook for many reasons. Cost is one, but the assumption that science can be learned via a medium like a textbook is antithetical to the scientific endeavor. Instead, I'm writing everything (along with student work during the "year" that will be incorporated into the book) that will be the backbone of our class. Of course, the students will be doing most of the work and this is a labor of love to provide them with pointers. This isn't me emptying my head and asking them to memorize the facts I proclaim. Instead, this is more of a compass for their own studies of Physical Science. All of the excerpts in the book are from primary texts by scientists and in the public domain. This will all be public domain as well. I'll have it all out there on http://texts.griffinscience.com soon if you'd like to follow along and maybe learn a thing or two about your universe from the incredible young people with whom I'll be working. Here is the HTML outline that you can expand: > GriffinScience Textsbook Here is text file with the outline you can download:

> GriffinScience TextsBook.txt And here is an .rtf file you can open in Word or Pages or OpenOffice:

> GriffinScience TextsBook.rtf I'm also wrapping up on an mp3 version as well as an iPod/iPad/iTouch app (and hopefully Android as soon as I get into the App Builder beta since I don't have time to learn a new programming language after slogging through Objective-C this summer). I'll keep you posted on when those are in the App Store. More soon!