The Curmudgeon Speaks

Cindy bought me some new clothes for our trip to Russia. There are several new lightweight shirts and nice walking shorts. I also bought a couple of new pairs of shoes. She made me try on the shirts to make certain they fit. Evidently an XL is not always an XL. I have learned there are long XLs and there are short XLs. I need the long XLs. This size is sometimes called “athletic fit” – I think this is just to make guys like me feel better. I even used the shoes for a few days so that I would be able to walk in them without blisters.

I did not try on and model the underwear. For some reason, Cindy thought I wore a size “medium”. I have not worn mediums since middle school. Now, I will have to purchase some Russian underwear. This could be interesting.

Let this be a lesson for all novice bloggers. You can always find something to write about.

Maybe things like this just happen to me. Sometimes I wonder.

We are heading for Russia in a couple of days. This will be the third trip for Cindy. She has worked with teachers in Russia before, but there was not an opportunity for me to go along. Cindy is far more of an adventurer than I and more social, but you do not have these opportunities often and pushing yourself a little is important. I am going this time.

Some travel requires a visa – your passport is not enough.  As much as Cindy has travelled you might think we would know what we are doing. However, the details were often handled by someone else and the process is a little more complicated than you might think.

First, it turns out there are several kinds of visas – business, humanitarian, tourist (my terms). We thought our trip might be a business trip. The application then requires that you identify your company and have a way to guarantee that your company will cover costs should you not have sufficient funds to get home. Our employer, the university, is not responsible for this trip. We have never bothered to incorporate as a business and representing ourselves as a company and then claiming we would cover our expenses should we not be able to cover our expenses seemed unlikely to be approved.

It turned out the type of work we do is considered humanitarian/cultural. This means something a little different to me, but I guess it implies that we are sharing ideas about educational practice with each other. To apply we had to identify the organization offering us an invitation. We had the invitation, but it was written in Russian. We assumed we were invited by the school district (or whatever the equivalent designation might be). I have a colleague in my department who is Russian and I asked him to translate. Dmitri determined that the invitation came from the city of Volgograd. I guess this makes sense if you understand this as a public school.

The problem with our uncertainty is that time passes. The less time available, the higher the cost of expedited services. We kept making mistakes resulting in the need to submit this or that by FedEx. Finally, we had all the forms filled out and all of the documents were submitted.

We were to receive our documents on Tuesday, but we received a message instead. It turns out my passport was never signed. I had to secure a new passport this year and I had my new passport in hand. I had even used it to cross the border into Canada. However, while I signed forms in multiple places and had my identify checked, I had not signed the passport when it was sent to me. No one had noticed. Despite appeals from multiple parties no approval was given and I would have to sign and resubmit my passport before rather than after.

If things work out perfectly, the visa should arrive on the morning of our projected departure. If FedEx cannot find me in the woods of Wisconsin, we will have to attempt to change our plane tickets, our one night hotel reservation in St. Petersburg, and our connecting flight to Volgograd. Far more excitement than I need.

More later.

I think we all want to feel special and I believe if we search long enough we will find just what this special talent is. It may be difficult because we do not always recognize our true gifts. Sometimes these gifts are more obvious to others than they are to us. Sometimes these gifts are difficult to identify without special monitoring tools.

I purchased a FitBit One because I love any kind of data (and I hoped it would help me lose weight). You know that 10000 step thing. It is more difficult to take 10000 steps than you might think. It turns out that being active is not my special gift.

The FitBit also monitors the effectiveness of your sleep. Evidently, being able to sleep soundly is an important component of being healthy. Sleep is very important in helping your body recuperate from the strains and damage of the day. There is also something about your brain doing helpful things when you are in deep REM sleep.

It turns out that I am a spectacular sleeper. I sleep very deeply – my body and brain must be deriving tremendous benefit. This must be it. This must be my special gift. Who would have guessed? Without this wonderful device I would not have known what special talent I possessed.

You should not be punished for trying to be helpful. We have made contributions to several democratic political candidates because we supported their promised course of action, but now I am continuously asked for more money. I am not only annoyed by the frequency of these requests, but also the tone. After bringing up an issue and a position I likely support, there is a request for more money. Sometimes the request appears within a competitive framework – the republicans supported by “some rich guy” have already raised $xxxx. I guess the idea is that I am supposed to help the dems catch up.

I still don’t get the use for the requested money. My assumption was that my representatives would vote in keeping with their promises. Why do I get the feeling I must pay additional money for this service?

So, anyway, this is starting to feel like spam. Despite all of the advice from the best tech experts on how to deal with spam, I have decided to request that I be unsubscribed. The reason given for not responding at all is that this offers the spammer assurance that there is someone out there receiving the emails.

Anyway, I did decide to unsubscribe and I thought the experience deserved public disclosure.

Selecting the link to unsubscribe sent me to the following page

Evidently, the site creators have not seriously tested the unsubscribe option. OR, now I must donate to have my name taken off the list.

The responsibility for Mothers’ Day greetings and presents is one of the three or so things my wife and I argue about. My position, of course, is that my wife is not MY mother. She argues, in truth but that is not the issue here, that she is the mother of my children. Perhaps this is one of those controversies you can identify with and perhaps even have experienced yourself.

One of the problems with our different perspectives is that the resolution (I am always wrong) requires late action and fast thinking.

We happened to spend a good part of last night at a wedding social in Winnipeg. The honorees included the individual who will be my last graduate student. Anyway, this is an event that seems unique to Manitoba and involves a great party part of which includes the opportunity to purchase chances on prizes. The proceeds from the drawings will go to the bride and groom. So, as things often work out for me, I won a “sports gear” prize.

We are riding back to Grand Forks today and I began thinking about the general topic of Mothers’ Day. I realized that I had no present and I would likely soon be getting the silent treatment. I concentrated and thought of a solution.

One of the prizes from the sports basket seems absolutely perfect. I am promoting this as a “I just want you to be safe when we ride our Ranger on the trails” gift. What do you think? She looks pleased – I think.

Best wishes to all you mothers. Remember every curmudgeon must have had a mother.

I have decided that being a judge charged with evaluating which of 13 applicants competing for a coffee kiosk spot in the University library was probably not good for my blood pressure. It was not the weighty task of selecting a winner that was the problem. It was sampling so many different brews that had my heart working at a higher pace. I could feel the flush in my face. I know the approved “cupping” technique – slurp and spit, but this was the final project for an industrial design course and the multiple exhibits did not include spittoons. The student “competitors” were offering full cups. After a couple of these, I used my own cup and asked for a small sample.

This is what educators would call authentic assessment. You see if students can put the principles you hope they have learned into practice. If you learning design and evaluation processes the type of activity described here would be a reasonable capstone experience. I teach Intro Psych. I am not certain what a capstone experience for such a survey course might be. There might be smaller applied tasks, but the course does not build toward any cumulative goal that I can see evaluating with a single project.

I am somewhat of a coffee snob and I had fun challenging the students. I asked how they had selected the coffee the offered. Clearly, cost was often a factor and I suggested that I would likely not purchase Folgers or one of the inexpensive options from a big box stores. When I pushed a little more, it was obvious that many students did not actually drink coffee on a regular basis, but might use it to stay awake. Another tendency was to prefer heavily doctored drinks with flavors. One of the exhibits featured chocolate syrup because the pitchmen thought this would be popular with students (perhaps it would, I hope not). I also argued with the use of the large capacity drip coffee makers. I said that continuing to heat the coffee created a bitter taste over time. I did have an interesting discussion with this group regarding whether this was similar to the way Turkish coffee was made. I get the boiling part (my grandparents use to make coffee by boiling grounds in water with egg shells), but this approach (they were German, but I call this cowboy coffee) has a downside if you just let the stuff sit there on heat.

One of my big questions was whether the students thought their stand was a “grab and go” or was intended to be part of a social experience. What did students in the library want? Did they think about seating? Did they think students and adults (faculty members, staff) would prefer different kinds of coffee?

Some of these young entrepreneurs relied heavily on marketing to influence the judges. At least I received a free cup.

I just finished Douglas Rushkoff’s Program or be Programmed. I have come to similar conclusions but I think a more realistic solution. I am more concerned we are losing the “learning potential” by being consumers rather than producers. Like Rushkoff I think the problem is we do not recognized how we are being influenced. We are losing the creative potential the Internet made available and we are giving up opportunities in exchange for ease of use.

The author proposes we are being shaped by the tools and services we choose. We do not understand how these services work or acknowledge the motives of those making the services available. Shouldn’t we be a little curious – why are they providing us these services for free?

Services that we have grown to expect at no cost collect information based on our behavior and serve us ads based on what can be learned about our interests. If our acquaintances can be drawn into this same environment so much the better – more data and more ad hits. As the social dependencies grow it becomes difficult to escape and operate independently. We can go it alone, but we then lose the opportunity to communicate with friends unwilling or unable to make the jump with us.

The distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants has always annoyed me. It occurs to me that certain digital immigrants have great insight that the natives are unable to grasp. Some of us were interested in technology and benefit from being there from the beginning. We have witnessed the changes and because early experiences depended on our active participation, we have a far better sense of what has changed and how the advances have been accomplished. We may have even had to learn to program to take advantage of the power in these new tools.

I am not certain Rushkoff really believes it is worth the time to develop programming skills in young people. Schools are expected to accomplish so much already. It would not really be fair to add one more thing. It can be a reasonable hobby, but must be understood as such. I can say from experience that doing real work from scratch is difficult. Those who interact with what you create have grown accustomed to sophisticated products and will likely not appreciate workable products that lack polish. The experiences that have discouraged me have had more to do with security and hackers. Protecting yourself and those who take advantage of what you develop can require as much sophisticated as writing code that works.

In the old days, I was fascinated with the potential of any Internet-connected computer to function as a server. Every Mac came with the potential (still does) to offer web pages. ISPs do not make this easy (you are typically assigned a dynamic rather than a static IP, upload speeds are far slower than download speeds, and the ISP may simply have a policy preventing your from offering content if you do not pay a much higher monthly rate). Things have continued to slip. It seems we have moved away from personal blogs toward easy and simplistic services such as Twitter and given in to Facebook. Rushkoff would claim we now have given in to the model of interaction these tools allow.

Here are some things to consider:
1) There is no free. You give up something to get something. You get dumbed down television because of ads or you pay for content that interests you.
– Invest a little money – purchase the base rate access to tools that allow you to share content you create (e.g., DropBox, Evernote). Create rather than consume. Invest your own creativity and a little money.

2) Use tools that allow personal expression – try a blogging platform (Blogger, WordPress) that allows customization. Add your own photos and generate something useful. Be a contributor.

3) Spend a little money and purchase your own domain and server space. You will learn something and you will offer yourself a wider variety of options.

My greatest concern is the consolidation of services. Interesting tools are continually bought up by big companies. As is the case in so many areas of life, there are fewer and fewer alternatives and fewer and fewer people making the most important decisions. While few would suggest giving up independence and influence is a good thing, the slide   whether visible to the digital natives or not is picking up speed.

I think I am regressing to my ‘60s roots. Power to the people, etc.

The North Dakota legislature now has a resolution urging college profs to make use of open textbooks. The concern seems to be that students pay an average of $1000 a year in textbook costs (see beer money ploy – trust me it makes more sense than you might think).

The following is a YouTube video of the discussion. I had no idea YouTube had such content. What I am trying to determine is whether I agree with the definition of “open” textbook that is being used. I am trying to decide if they are confusing ebooks and “open” digital books. If the assumption is that an ebook is sold by textbook companies at a greatly reduced price, this is not actually the case. I checked the Intro Psych book I will use in the Fall – the difference between the digital and the paperback version is less than  $20.

My interpretation of open would look more like the California model. However, California contributed funds to generate this content.

 he [Gov. Brown] also signed off on a proposal for the state to fund 50 open source digital textbooks. He signed two bills, one to create the textbooks and the other to establish a California Digital Open Source Library to host them

Perhaps the North Dakota model is to borrow from California. This is evidently what the politicians mean when they promote the “North Dakota Way.”

There is a statistical concept that might be described as partitioning variance. Outcomes are seldom the result of single factors and the goal of accurate description is thus to accurately explain how much of the variability in the outcome can be attributed to which possible cause.

I include this introductory paragraph to encourage a scientific perspective and to discourage those who seldom bother with deep thinking. I am guessing they did not get to this point.

What I want to address is the political position that educational institutions are responsible for increasing the length of time it takes to earn an undergraduate degree. To be clear, I mean delay in a negative way; i.e., it is a bad thing, it is the fault of the institution, it is more expensive that it should be. The negative interpretation is clearly the view taken by many politicians and even by the few institutions that advertise a funding model based on the guarantee that students will have to pay for a maximum of four years. I often wonder whether politicians say such things because they have no clue or because placing blame resonates with voters who want to blame somebody.

As an academic, my argument is that is is seldom appropriate to blame the institution for students taking more than four years to complete college. There may be a few situations in which I would admit fault, but only to the extent that options are limited by the resources we have to expend.

So, for an example of a situation in which the institution is responsible, but not actually at fault, there are sometimes situations in which a specific course needed by a student is offered once every other year and was offered last just last semester. Translation – the course will now be available for some time. The frequency with which courses are offered can slow students down, BUT required courses are seldom offered infrequently, the resources available determine how frequently courses are taught, and lack of planning is the most common reason for missing the opportunity to take a given course.

Here are some other observations (possible causes of delay with examples):

We seldom require students to see their advisor. While regular meetings with an advisor is helpful, taking advantage of this opportunity is up to the student. Most of us spend a great deal of time sitting in our offices and we do not object to spending some of this time meeting with students. This does not mean that we are always available so making a phone call or sending an email can be helpful. Excuses such as “My advisor was not available Monday at 2:15 and this is the only time available in my busy schedule. How was I to know English composition was a requirement?” are not acceptable and likely an exaggeration.

Students often have little clue regarding what they want to be when they grow up and they often discover there are options mom and dad did not tell them about. I would think that changing your mind when you realize that an intended course of study is not for you or when you have found something that is a real passion is a good thing. It is a good thing even if you need to spend a little more time and a little more money.

Note: I was a biochemistry and biophysics major for a while because my high school guidance counselor could not find biology in the college catalog. There was not such thing as a Biology Department at the time. In fairness, may biochemistry advisor did indicate that he had never been responsible for someone who wanted to be a high school biology teacher before.

Some of the 400 premeds may not earn one of the 40 med school positions. Some of the premeds also did not fully understand the section on probability theory in their introductory statistics course. This is a situation in which it is known from the beginning that some students will be unable to achieve their goal. Who would you blame for this?

10 x 8=80. 80 < 120. So that is how that credit thing works.
– When I talk with students, I think they sometimes do not acknowledge basic arithmetic. To graduate in 8 semesters, you must complete a clearly stated number of credits. When you do not take enough credits or drop courses because you are doing poorly, the math allowing you to complete on the 8 semester plan may not work out. I am not judging here unless you are bewildered by this reality.

I need to take Statistics after 2. I work in the morning and need time for lunch. You have no courses available at this time.
– You are correct. Life is complicated and everyone must set priorities and make decisions. Setting a work schedule before you class schedule is a priority with consequences.

I could continue, but lengthy posts are seldom completed.

P.S. – I should indicate that “wasted” credits are a part of analyses appearing even what are supposed to be scholarly sources (Educause Review). I have a couple of reactions. First, the notion that the focus of an education is to efficiently generate the appropriate credit hours is somewhat off target. An education is intended to increase understanding, skill, tolerance, etc. Heaven forbid, student would contribute to any of these goals in a course that did not count toward their graduation. Second, sometimes what you learn in a course is that you are neither interested nor capable in a given area. This is often money very well spent.

Punishment (by formal definition) occurs when a behavior decreases in frequency as the result of consequences that are aversive to the learner.

During election season we made contributions to several Democratic campaigns and to support an issue of personal interest (Senator Al Franken’s issues with some FCC decisions). The elections are now over (my candidates were both successful) and the issue under consideration by the FCC was resolved. I do not regret supporting these candidates or this cause.

However, it appears that I am now on multiple email lists and am constantly bombarded by requests for additional funds. I guess part of my frustration is that I am no longer certain what any contribution would be used address. I supported certain candidates because I thought I could predict the causes they would support and the values they would implement. Am I now to assume that my initial assumptions were wrong? Additional money should not be necessary to encourage representatives to explain their positions or cast their votes.

One of the things I naively believe is that this process is not about some contest to determine who can generate the most money. This seems to be a growing problem of our system of government and one of what I had hoped was a fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats. If it is a contest to determine whether the rich or the middle class are willing to spend more to get what they want, the enterprise is a lost cause.

I would prefer that representatives rally their supporters to make their views known or contact other representatives that might be persuaded by additional input. I hate the feeling that what I think does not matter unless I send money.