Author’s Note: I’ve re-posted this article for your reading pleasure as I am on vacation.
Kids who grow up with no television in their homes either (a) make friends quick with a kid whose family worships the ‘mote, or (b) they read a lot. My utter lack of pop culture references from the mid-seventies through the mid-nineties should do all the explaining as to which path I took.
The outcome being, I ended up with a stellar vocabulary, full of words I’d only ever seen in print and therefore usually couldn’t pronounce correctly. Whatever. At least I knew what they meant.
And there were some I knew how to say. (With feeling). When I was eight my 18-year-old babysitter burned the chicken pot pies that were to be our dinner. My mother never bought us crappy processed food, which meant my brother and I were infatuated with all sugary, well-preserved, and insanely processed foodstuffs.
I was understandably pissed when the sitter burned my only shot at packaged food for the month and filled the kitchen with smoke. To vent my anger I hollered, “What are you trying to do, asphyxiate us?!” She had no idea what that meant, and almost sent me to my room because she thought I’d called her something so horrible, not even teenager her had ever heard that particular obscenity before.
There is also the common problem, among adults and too-smart-for-their-own-good children, of only ever hearing a word or a phrase and never figuring out the correct spelling. There are so many words that sound alike but are spelled differently, and each version of the stupidly exact-sounding word means something completely different. I’ve got their, there, and they’re down cold, but it took a while for me to get affect and effect straight. The English language, in my bitchy opinion, has some definite asinine qualities.
Or perhaps I should ask more questions. Until I was in college and saw this phrase written on the board as a common mistake college sophomores made when writing papers for the professor, I had always thought “For all intents and purposes” was “For all intensive purposes.”
According to Paul Brians, author of Common Errors in English Usage, I’m not the only native English-speaker to screw that phrase up. Which made me feel better for about point seven seconds until I saw the bit where he describes the phrase as “Another example of the oral transformation of language by people who don’t read much.” Ouch, Professor Brians. That was totally uncalled for.
I read plenty, thank you. The books I read (fine literature and lots of science-y non-fiction) just haven’t ever contained that exact phrase. I am still very smart and am an excellent reader. And clearly I have nary a hang-up about the whole intents/intensive blunder.
Author’s Note: I’ve re-posted this article for your reading pleasure while I’m on vacation.
I was never concerned as to whether or not today’s school-age kids were going to be considered fully functioning adults someday; anyone who can seemingly mind-meld with a computer (or a cell phone or anything gizmo-ish), understand it, and make it work is probably going to do just fine once they’re let loose on the world.
Despite feeling that kids these days were good to go on the technology front, I was a wee bit worried that the whole writing portion of their lives was headed for much suckage. I was caught in the admittedly old-fashioned (lame!) idea that all forward progress in the land of tech can only lead to less and less well-rounded humans. The telephone, for instance, led to a severe decline in letter-writing. (Of course, the electric light bulb led to everyone staying up later and getting more work done, but let’s ignore that for the moment.)
Clive Thompson’s article in Wired has calmed me down. Thanks to all the e-mail and texting that goes on these days, kids are doing more writing than anyone has since correct cursive and perfect penmanship were qualities to strive for. Now we’ve got technologically savvy kids who can express themselves with the written/typed word like nobody’s business. I’m stoked that society will not be taking one-way trips in any hand baskets.
The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn’t find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.
Oh, it’s coming. Denying it won’t help you. Fall Term is starting up soon whether you’re ready or not. When the first week of classes have been attended and while you’re still focusing on first chapters, small quizzes, tolerable assignments, and the finer points on your professors’ syllabi, at the very least please skim this: How to Study: A Brief Guide. Learning how to learn is, how do you say, crucial, of the essence, invaluable, indispensable and totally effing necessary.
Watch it, people. Just because information is second only in volume to pollution on this planet, it does not mean all info is available for you to use and then slap your name on to it like you wrote it or something. Plagiarism, for those of you who missed that day in class, is when you take someone else’s work and falsely claim it as your own. It’s very bad, and it makes you look like an ass@$%*.
The NY Times has an article up about plagiarism and the tech-savvy information generation. The lines are blurry for Gen-Y, apparently.
If you’d like to avoid being an uninformed cheating ass@#$%, the following links are helpful.
I must go. The line above regarding information and the volume of it is freaking me out. Can digital information have volume at all? And is it possible to measure the volume of every printed word on the planet? What about all the still-intact newspapers in old landfills? Do those count as existing information? Crap!
That’s crazy talk! That Jay guy writes a whole damn column about education (he’s for it), and I write an education blog (I’m a big fan of the learning as well). So a big yes on college and the campuses they’re attached to. And still, I totally agree with him about not sucking every ounce of fun out of a campus visit. Parents: Release! Retract! Recoil! Unclench! Attend the tour, ask real questions, get some information, then just wander around for a while, with or without your child, and let it all flow over you both. It’s not life or death, people.
One must always be learning. Even if you’re one of the learning ones and you’re an educator, who’s supposed teach. Because even teachers have to keep learning. Did they not tell you that in Teacher School?
Ric Murray wrote a piece about a profound moment he had: learning something completely unexpected from a student. He’s a seasoned teacher, is incredibly involved with his school and with his teaching and coaching work. He’s not effing around when it comes to going above and beyond the call of duty, and so was caught totally off guard when he realized he had missed something that was so significant his students.
Mr. Murray is a seventh grade Social Studies teacher and some of his students, being new to the U.S., are English Language Learners (ELLs). A former student, Rocio, was a newly minted high school graduate and a Gates Millennial Scholarship recipient when she showed up to say goodbye to her old school before heading off to college.
Mr. Murray asked her to say a few words to his new class about her experiences as an ELL student and what it’s possible to achieve after coming to the States knowing how to say only “Hi” and “Yes” in English.
She began to speak, explaining her path and how she’d gotten to this moment—heading off to college. Most of the students gave a disrespectful look and turned away. To which she responded with two items:
First she said, “I know why you are looking away. You think this can’t happen for you. You think you’re not smart enough. You think you’re not meant to go to college. You think it would be disrespectful to your parents; who did not even go to high school. I know that’s what you are thinking, because I sat in your chair just a few years ago, thinking the very same thing when teachers talked about students going to college.
But let me tell you something, Your parents would not have left their families, struggled with their children to travel here, and now work 16-18 hours everyday if they didn’t want you to get your education. So make them proud. That’s why they came here. Not for them, but for you.”
Second she said, “I’m not saying it will be easy, but I am saying it will be worth it. What we know that your teachers don’t know is that we can’t even be ourselves or show our real personality to them, or our classmates, because we don’t have a personality until we own the language the people around us use to communicate. We know that you can’t be who you really are in someone else’s language. But when you do learn the language, and you will, you will be able to reveal the real you to them.”
Realizing the absolute truth of that statement, You can’t be who you really are in someone else’s language, Mr. Murray now asks his ELL students to tell him about something they’ve done recently, something fun. First he asks them to tell him in English. Then in their own language. The information is given and received satisfactorily in English. But in the second telling, when the students tell ostensibly the same story but in their native tongue, they laugh, their eyes light up, more of them comes through.
Brown University undergrads using their powers for good: using the pay-it-forward concept to assist college students with higher education fundage while decreasing (and hopefully obsolete-ing) the need for banks and their Machiavellian student loan schemes.
It’s an amazing idea whose time has come. I’m incredibly impressed with Mr. Simmons and his team for building this project, thereby making a good solution possible for college students who could use some help funding their higher education.
Cody Simmons, Founder, CEO and President of CO-Fund, is crazy busy officially launching Co-Fund.org today, but here’s the press release he smartly sent out:
CO-FUND’S OFFICIAL LAUNCH
Co-Fund, America’s College Opportunity Fund, now publicly accepting donations
PROVIDENCE, RI (May 17th, 2010) – CO-Fund has just publicly launched its website today and is now accepting donations for its students at www.co-fund.org. CO-Fund is a nonprofit organization that enables individuals to sponsor a student’s college education through direct, person-to-person donations.
CO-Fund empowers students to garner support from their community in an easily-accessible and credible fashion while also connecting them with supporting individuals nationwide. Through CO-Fund’s online platform, donors can sponsor a student with as little as $1, with 100% of the donations made to students going toward “closing the gap” of the selected students’ college tuition costs.
Founded by a group of talented and entrepreneurial undergraduates at Brown University, CO- Fund was developed for students, by students. CO-Fund is a unique hybrid: a non-profit mission, scalable and cost effective technology, and the organization and energy of an Internet start-up. CO-Fund succeeds not by making money but by funding and empowering students to succeed.
Akin to micro-giving sites like Kiva and DonorsChoose, CO-Fund connects donors directly to recipients, lowering cumbersome barriers for donors and fostering a rapport between donors and recipients. Instead of offering students zero-percent loans that students pay back, CO-Fund Fellows instead “pay it forward” by supporting other students and communities like their own. As examples, students can pay it forward by working for a CO-Fund partner organization for at least one year after graduation or by completing a community service requirement.
CO-Fund is fiscally sponsored by Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education (RISE) and its pilot launch includes students and partner organizations (Brown University’s College Advising Corps and College Visions) from Rhode Island, as they seek to validate the effectiveness of their model with a small group of students before scaling to work nationwide. CO-Fund is legally sponsored by Partridge, Snow & Hahn in addition to several corporate sponsors; it has also received recognition and funding in several business plan and social enterprise competitions.
This is how the donating works:
Donating
Individuals submit donations via PayPal through our website, and these donations are then tracked by PayPal and internally through our platform. Micro-donations made directly to students are “temporarily restricted funds,” meaning they are only used for that given individual recipient. Once a Fellow enrolls in college, CO-Fund works directly with his or her college’s Bursar office to cover part of their tuition bill using the money raised.
And here’s the bit I like the most:
“Pay-it-forward” pledge
Students sign a pledge to CO-Fund and their donors to complete one of three “pay-it-forward” options. First, students can work for CO-Fund or a partner organization for at least one year after graduating. Second, students can donate one-fifth of the amount received back to other CO-Fund students within five years after graduating. Third, students can complete at least 100 hours of community service while in college. CO-Fund and its partners then work with the students to make sure they carry on CO-Fund’s social mission and confirm their completion of a pay-it- forward option.
Wired magazine calls him “the explainer.” Michael Wesch is a social anthropologist who teaches at Kansas State University. In his 15-minute TED talk, he explains the effects of media (social and otherwise) on learners, on humanity, and on the classroom environment.
Wesch also manages to squeeze in a bit telling other educators how to take advantage of all the media and the technology humans have available as a way to make students more “knowledge-able” than just knowledgeable. It’s not just memorizing facts and theories anymore—all the information is out there, students need to learn how to find it and ponder it and bring their own thoughts and theories to the table.
Watch it. It takes about 15 minutes; that’s less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee. And no way one cup of caffeine will blow your mind like Michael Wesch can.
