Cooperative problem solving

Well, we’re a month – more or less – into the new year. This year, the big project is working with a group of middle school (grade 5-8) students, and trying to get them to actively problem solve in real time. Here’s the scenario: A group of 20-25 kids working in pairs. Each team has a few lego sets. Every day there is a “lesson” and a “challenge”. The students have the option of doing either the lesson, the challenge, or just playing around with the legos. There is no requirement to do any particular activity, no records are kept, there are no grades, etc.

On the first couple of days, the kids pretty much ignored both the challenges and the lessons. They played with the legos, and made some pretty impressive structures – cars, houses, hotels and such. Then, one of the challenges really clicked. It was a pretty simple one – given an inclined plane (a tabletop six feet long, with one end lifted about a foot, and a “ramp” at the end to provide a smooth transition to the floor), build something that will roll or slide down the plane and either stop as quickly as possible, or go as far as possible.

One group took on the challenge – the undirected play was getting a bit boring – and as soon as the others saw the “car” zoom across the floor, they were all on it. It didn’t take long for them to all optimize their distance vehicles because they shared ideas, copied, and pretty quickly optimized their options. Once they had more or less maxed out the distance challenge, about half of the kids moved back into free building (but with a lot more emphasis on movement now), about a quarter of them kept running their distance cars down the ramp and tweaking them, and the rest started working on the “fast stop” challenge.

Once again, as soon as one group had their marks down, the other groups quickly joined in. Because there are a lot more ways to slow down the “car”, there was a lot more variation in the vehicles – from having wheels rub the body, to using dragging parts, and even a couple of high friction gear trains and a sail.

It has been truly gratifying to watch these kids pull together and figure out ways to have “cooperative competition”. Instead of focusing on making sure that “I do best” the overall feeling is more of sharing ideas to “defeat” the challenge. Once all of the kids were working on the fast stop challenge, there were 5 or 6 different mechanisms that were being used to slow the cars down. As they compared methodologies, successes, and shared ideas as to how to improve each others designs, the groups would tend to coalesce around two or three models. Each group would still make their own version of the model, but they would share ideas with the other groups and work together to try and get the best result.

The best result: cars that would creep down the ramp and stop within 1″ of the bottom. The most creative? probably the car that was designed with an accidentally turned front wheels. Its path would curve until it was going sideways, then it would flip over a couple times and start again.

The most interesting observation: the teams that were most willing to use odd mechanisms were all girls. The boys tended to build fairly “standard” 4 wheel cars, and then try to figure out how to slow them down. The girls would come up with a way to make something go slow, then build around that. The boys were responsible for the models that worked best in the distance challenge, bit the girls came up with the ideas that worked best in the fast stop challenge.

This week, we’re starting to work with motors, so we’ll see where that goes…. 

Another School Year Begins: How To Deal With the First Day

How I deal with the first day depends on where I’m teaching. In the Public schools, the first day is an opportunity to make sure the kids know their limits and the rules. My classroom is a dictatorship, and I don’t pretend otherwise. I like to think of myself as a benevolent dictator, but the simple reality is that I make the rules, and the kids follow them or deal with the repercussions. I make it clear to my students that my classrooms will be civil, polite, and well mannered. I pretty much use the first day to make sure that the students know exactly what is expected of them. Usually on the first day they also figure out that there are repercussions to their behavior – there is always at least one student that has to test the rules right away. Of course, the details of the first day are very different for different ages. Little kids operate at a completely different level than early teens, and late teens have a whole new set of issues. Depending on the class I’m in, I adjust the delivery and details, but the basic rules are pretty much the same.

Teaching at University (and sometimes High School) is a whole different game. The basic behaviors can (usually) be assumed, and there is a lot less time. I tend to focus a lot more on the issues of the particular course I am teaching. I don’t make a “this is the hardest course you’ll ever take” speech. Students have heard that one so many times that it is simply noise, and starts off the class by reducing your credibility. Instead, I tend to focus on the requirements and expectations for the course. I have taught university classes that require absolutely no out-of-class work, and other classes that require as much as 30 hours per week of additional work. I make sure the students know what to expect. I go over my grading policies, what the major assignments will be, my cheating and plagiarism policy (If I catch a student cheating, they have flunked the course).

So that is pretty much it. Regardless of the age or venue, I use the first session to make sure that the students know what is expected of them, and what they can expect from me. We take an age-appropriate foray through acceptable (and unacceptable) behaviors, and set the tone for the remainder of the year. I don’t buy the “be a hard-ass for the first N days” theory. For me, consistency works much better, so I treat the students the same way on the first day as I will for the rest of the year. Get to know the students, and make sure that they get to know you – and your expectations – and the first day is a success.

Teaching Science

One of the constant problems that I have with public schools (High school and Junior High school) is the way that they teach science.

 ”Science” is a term that includes a lot of subgroups. Chemistry, physics and biology are the standard minimum HS fare, although some schools offer other science classes. The problem is that the classes are taught completely independently of each other. This means that each teacher must assume that the kids in their class doesn’t know the basics of the other sciences (even if they have taken and passed another science class, it doesn’t mean that they actually remember any of it). So each course begins by covering the basics of atomic and molecular structure. Of course, if a kid has taken another science course, and actually learned anything, this is simply redundant, and a waste of time. After sitting in a classroom for a month listening to material that the kid already knows, is it any surprise that by the time the new stuff comes around the kid is completely tuned out?

Besides the redundant teaching, a nasty reality about science is that the “categories” – the biology, chemistry, and physics – are meaningless artificial groupings. So, how did these artificial grouping come about? Well, in the not-so-distant past, they were separate subjects. There was little to nothing to be shared between Biology, Physics, and Chemistry. Biology dealt with animals and plants on an organismal level, with some forays into cellular structure. Physics dealt with motion, statics, force, and energy, and chemistry dealt with the existence of molecules, what they were, how they went together, and eventually, atomic structure. These groupings made sense in the early days of science, but in the modern world, the categories are really sections of a continuum.

It is impossible to study ‘biology’ with a basic understanding of both ‘chemistry’ and ‘physics’. Modern biology requires the ability to understand molecular interactions – in some cases at the subatomic level, and also requires a good understanding of physics. A simple example is running a gel to separate proteins – a common HS biology lab. Without understanding how the electrical charge of a protein can be determined, the lab is meaningless. To understand how a protein can have an electrical charge, the student needs to understand the molecular structure of the protein (’chemistry’), and the way the electrical charge effects the protein’s movement through the gel (’physics’). Likewise, when a student is studying chemistry, the structures of proteins, sugars, and other organic compounds are simply trivia without a framework to hang them on – so we’re back to biology, with physics thrown in so that we can understand why some structures are more stable than others.

So, rather than having the “sciences” broken down into subgroups, why don’t we simply re-write the curriculum to reflect the reality of modern science? There are a couple of reasons. The first is because this is the way we have always taught sciences. A simple fact is that changes in education take a very long time. The more significant the change, the longer it will take. Don’t forget – we’re talking about a system that still regularly seriously considers teaching creationism as an idea that is as valid as evolution. Second, it isn’t just the public schools that have this problem. Colleges and universities face the same issue, and have been just as slow to modernize their classes and departments. Why should public schools change the way they organize their classes when the students will be getting the “old way” as soon as they hit university?

The unfortunate reality is that it is very unlikely that any significant change will take place in the foreseeable future. Those students that manage to keep an interest in the sciences alive through the public schools will go on to University and find a way to work on the stuff that interests them regardless of how the material is structured. I have worked with undergrads interested in everything from plasma physics to fluid dynamics, to evolutionary biology. In the course of pursuing their particular interests, they come to University with a good broad base of scientific knowledge. Knowledge that they do not get at school, but knowledge that they have picked up on their own.

What happens to the kids without the motivation or resources to get this level of scientific literacy before they come to university? I can’t say. I do know that they do not find their way into the research labs, and that I have yet to meet one in an introductory course I teach at university. I have to assume that they simply lose interest or give up on their scientific interests, and join the great majority of americans that view anything scientific as simply magic. So there ya go: Science education in America is either self education or no education.

Why is teacher turnover so high?

In my daily perusal of a bunch of online stuff, I came across a few interesting stories (for some reason, these stories always seem to pop up right before school starts). Anyway, they were lamenting the fact that many school districts have major retention problems. They quote numbers that suggest that 1/4 of new teachers stop teaching within 3 years, and 1/2 within 5 years. One school (I think it was in Chicago) claimed to have 100% teacher turnover from year to year.

 Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, most of the places that seem to have real retention problems are places that no sane person would want to be to start with. High crime, inner city schools. Places where education is so far down the list of “things to do” that the staff would be better equipped with experience managing a hostile prison population than a BS or MS in education. If you remove these schools from the studies, teachers still have a high turnover rate, but not as bad. Even “normal” schools have high turnover rates compared to other fields that require BS or MS degrees for employment. Once again, why? I believe there are a bunch of reasons:

1. Teachers get paid crap. Nothing more to be said there.
2. The demographic of people entering a teaching career happens to be a very good match to the “starting a family” demographic. By combining items 1 and 2, anyone with kids will realize that the crappy teacher salary doesn’t begin to cover the cost of day care, so why work when it results in a net income loss?
3. #2 leads right in to this one: career change. To a college kid, the idea of summers off, spring break, and short work days is a pretty strong incentive. Of course, once they hit the real world, and realize that their kids day-care worker gets paid a lot more than they do, that other job starts to look pretty good. Not to mention those office salaries….
4. Respect: something that is non-existent in the teaching profession. On the scale of Job Status, public school teacher is barely a step above flipping burgers. If you’re lucky. And the kid flipping burgers probably makes more than a starting teacher…
5. The realization that a job in a public school is 50% paperwork, 40% babysitting, and (in a good school) only 10% teaching. For this you need a college degree?
6. The fact that no matter how poorly a child behaves, performs, or treats others, there is absolutely nothing the teacher can do about it without risking getting fired. One bratty kid can easily eliminate that 10% teaching time, and there is nothing the teacher can do about it, and worse, the kid knows it. If you’re lucky and you’re teaching in elementary school, you may be able to get the kid tagged as “special needs”, then at least the little runt will be out of your class for a couple hours  for special ed.

So, given all of that, is it any surprise that half of the teachers that start out punt in 5 years? Especially considering the fact that moving out of the public schools – moving into private schools, tutoring, or other educational venues – counts as “leaving teaching”. The simple fact is that the teachers that remain in teaching are either completely dedicated, or so incompetent that they have no hope of finding any other job. And the truly dedicated ones burn out, leaving behind empty husks that simply don’t have the energy to change.

First day of Reading Hebrew Class – Happy teacher

This class is simply amazing. I teach at a local Religious Institution, and this course covers reading Hebrew phonetically (for those of you who are not in the know, the bible was originally written in Hebrew, so if you want to read the source material, you gotta have Hebrew). I’ve taught this class before, and usually cover the material in about 12 sessions. This time, the course is a crash review. Review because in a month, we’re going to be offering a Translating Biblical Hebrew course, and the requirement for that course is the ability to fluently read the language.

For those of you that have never had the pleasure of teaching archaic language classes, having more than a couple of students is pretty unusual. I have twelve! ranging from a couple of junior high kids (one of whom has just returned from a missionary trip to central America) to a couple of (very) senior citizens. I must admit to being a bit worried. the room was very crowded, and I’ve never taught this material to such a large group, let alone in a very fast (we only have 4 sessions) review.

It turns out that things went fine. We covered three chapters in an hour and a half. One of the students (only one!) didn’t already have some exposure to Hebrew, and by the end of the class, he was keeping up just fine. The rest of the class really were just needing a review. They started off a bit haltingly, but at the end of the first hour, most of them were sight-reading the words without having to check their aleph-bet charts.

Lets see: Large class, big age range, enthusiastic and well prepared students….. Sounds like a recipe for a good time, eh?

An example of how critical thinking works: Why it is so hard to teach.

Here is an example of critical thinking that happened to me a few weeks ago. This example truly drives home one of my basic premises about critical thinking: That it is a lot more than just problem solving. For critical thinking to work, there must be a certain amount of background knowledge.

In this case, a good friend of mine was having problems with the garden tractor (lawnmower). The battery wouldn’t hold a charge, and we had to jump start it fairly regularly. The person in question is a fairly intelligent entity, very capable of critical thinking and problem solving. It turned out that part of the problem with the battery was that it was an open cell (not sealed) battery, and the level of battery acid was low – there was simply no knowledge that open cell batteries need topping off every now and then. I demonstrated how to top off the  battery, we jumped the tractor, and I drove away to run errands.

When I got home a couple of hours later, there was a voicemail message – the tractor had stalled as soon as the mower was engaged, and could I possibly come take look at it. I popped over, and we started out with a detailed step-by-step description of what had happened. Everything was normal until the mower deck was engaged, and then the engine just stalled. We started up the tractor (we did have to jump it again – it hadn’t run long enough to recharge the battery), and everything seemed fine until we tried to turn on the mower. As soon as the mower was engaged, the engine lugged down as if it was under a huge load, and stalled. A glance under the mower deck verified that all that was wrong was that a large stick had somehow jammed the blades so that they couldn’t turn. Removal of the stick cured the problem.

So why is this such a good example of critical thinking? It demonstrates that being able to solve problems is only half of what is needed. The owner of the tractor is extremely good at solving problems. However, this individual has no real experience in dealing with engines, tractors, and other types of mechanical devices, so when something fails, there is simply no starting point or frame of reference that makes the problem solving possible. When someone who is familiar with mechanics came experienced the problem, the cause was immediatly evident – the only critical thinking needed was to make the association between this particular tractor’s stalling, and the many similar instances of  engines stalling because of overload, then realizing that the mower deck was the most probable place for the overload to occur.

The background experience made it possible to solve the problem, not any special critical thinking skills. In fact, anyone who had worked as a mechanic in a lawnmower or tractor shop for any amount of time could have solved the problem without any critical thinking – simply recognizing the sound an engine makes when it is overloaded, then tracing the drive train to find the blockage. Simply following a recipe, not really critical thinking.

However, even with good critical thinking skills, the owner of the tractor was stuck. there was not enough basic information available to make the inferences needed for critical thinking to occur. This is one of the key reasons that critical thinking is so hard to teach. teaching people to be able to solve problems and think critically is not that hard. What is truly difficult is finding a way to provide a broad base of information, skill, education, whatever. This is one of the key ideas behind a “liberal arts education” – to turn out people that have a very broad basis of knowledge. A true liberal arts education will produce an individual who can discuss science, literature, history, or pretty much any topic with some degree of knowledge (and who will know what they don’t know). This is what is needed to produce an individual who is truly capable of critical thinking. Right now, our education systems (I’m including university) are pretty good at turning out experts – people with a decent grounding in a particular subject. Where they fail is providing the rounded education. This means that the graduates are capable (if they have been taught problem solving) of solving problems in a very narrow realm of information, and anything outside of that realm is simply magic. Intellectual specialization is anathema to being able to be a true critical thinker.

A CASE OF GRADE INFLATION? « Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger

A CASE OF GRADE INFLATION? « Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger

Apparently, grade inflation is S.O.P at this school

NY Times Source Article - Make sure you read the whole article. The very last line explains why this student needed to pass: She couldn’t afford to go to her senior prom for the third year in a row!

I’d love to be around when the Clue Train flattens both this bimbo and her mom (who claims that she “earned” her grade).

How to make sure your kid fails at school.

This post is inspired by an absolutely wonderful little girl that I had the pleasure of tutoring last year. First, some history:

The little girl is from a military family, and came to our school at the start of the second grade. Her dad was stationed in Italy, where she had spent her entire life. Because her dad is american, she is fluent in english – english was the language spoken at home, even though mom is Italian. .
Even though this little girl (Lets call her Mary, even though it isn’t her real name) was in the second grade, she hardly knew her alphabet, didn’t know any of the sounds that letters make, couldn’t count to 10 reliably, and couldn’t name multi-digit numbers. She was placed in the second grade based on her age – academically, she should have been in the first grade, but by age she should have been in the 3rd, so second was the compromise.

Mary’s teacher gave up on e her very quickly. If the subject material was beyond what Mary was comfortable with, she would simply tune out and daydream. Because she wasn’t disruptive, this was pretty much allowed. At the end of the first month of school, I was told that Mary was “hopeless” and “unteachable”. She was tested, and didn’t fit into any learning disability label, so she didn’t qualify for any of the special ed funding. Because she wasn’t “learning disabled”, almost all of the special classes that might have helped her were not available to her. Instead, she got a little help from some of the staff that help the kids that are a bit behind – an hour a week with a reading specialist, an appointment with the school shrink once a month, and that was about it.

Not too surprisingly, Mary’s parents were getting a bit worried. Mary had already been “held back” one year, and simply was not learning. Her teacher had written her off, and as long as she didn’t raise a fuss in class, she was going to daydream her way through the year. After I spent a few days in Mary’s class as a volunteer, her parents approached me and asked me to tutor Mary. They signed releases to allow me to review the tests that Mary had taken, discuss her with the teachers and other school staff, and did everything they could to make it possible for me to access the evaluations and opinions that the school had generated.

After two sessions, it became very clear that Mary is no slouch. While we worked on solidifying her alphabet, we started putting sounds to letters. The connections were almost instant – a few repetitions, and the “non-changing” sounds were down pat. The letters that change sound depending on their location in a word took a bit longer, and the vowels were pretty tough – but that is expected for most second graders. Math was equally rapid. At the end of our first session, she could count to 20, recognize the written numbers, and could place the appropriate number of objects into a pile.

I worked with Mary for about 2 1/2 months – until her father was re-stationed over an hour away. In that time, Mary mastered counting to 100 and beyond, the concept of “places” in a number, addition and subtraction of both single and multiple digit numbers, counting by 2, 5, and 10, and telling time on an analogue clock. Her reading skills also flowered. She moved from picture books to reading Dr. Seuss in 10 weeks.

Clearly, Mary’s problem is not her ability to learn. I don’t think my teaching abilities are good enough to make that much of a difference, so what could have caused such a dramatic change?

There were two reasons that Mary was failing. The first was that the school had written her off. It is an unfortunate reality that if a kid isn’t a problem, or doesn’t fit into a special ed slot, they are often left to flounder until they are so far behind that they do qualify for special ed. By then, it’s usually too late. The problems in the schools are well known, and I’ve blogged about them enough to not want to go over it all again here.

The second problem is the one that I want to make sure people understand. It was simply that Mary’s parents didn’t do anything to teach her at home. They are wonderful people, and have a wonderful home, but they simply don’t do anything to provide mental stimulation at home. Neither of them is a recreational reader, and Mary never had someone to read to her or with her at home. Because she is so capable of self-entertaining – with dolls, a sandbox, or pretty much anything, it is easy to allow her to take care of herself. When she got too bored, there was always TV. While I was working with her, I encouraged Mary’s parents to take 15 minutes every night to read with her, to do some math problems with her, to do something to show her that it was good to use these skills at home – they weren’t just for when I was working with her. This simply was not their parenting style, and they never really understood how important it was.

I saw Mary again last week – her parents invited me to visit, so I trucked over, and we had a great evening together. Two things that happened that evening are what really triggered this blog entry. First, when I first got out of the car, Mary came charging across the yard, and pulled short about 10 feet from me. At the top of her lungs, she counted to 100 by tens, then by fives, with a huge grin on her face. When she finished, she charged the last 10 feet and threw herself at me. I’ve worked with a lot of kids, and I can’t remember any of them that was ever so proud to be able to prove that she still had what she had learned with me.

The second thing was that she simply would not leave me alone. Once I had disentangled myself from her, she ran into the house. She came back out a few minutes later with a copy of Fox in Socks, and insisted that we sit down so that she could read it to me. She read the book, and it was a real eye-opener. Mary was still reading at almost exactly the same level she was the last time I had worked with her – almost a year before. She spent the rest of the evening bringing me books so she could read to me, asking me to make up math problems for her, and doing everything she could to turn the visit into another tutoring session.

Mary is a perfect example of a kid that is falling through the cracks. She is desperate to have someone who is willing to teach her, and she isn’t getting it at school or at home. I worked with Mary for a short period – a total of about 20 hours – and as far as I could tell, that was the last time she had made any progress. Her new school is not paying any more attention to her than her old school did. Her parents are focusing on other things, and Mary is simply being left adrift. Sure, the schools are at least partly at fault, but its her parents that are really dropping the ball.

So next time you’re too busy, tired, distracted, or whatever to sit down and read with your kids, or help them with their homework, think about Mary. She is in the 3rd grade now, and has math and reading skills that are appropriate for an early second grader. And she hasn’t moved an inch in  a year.

Teaching: the cost of public education vs. private tutoring

Public schools are like any other government entity – they will create work to justify their continued growth. The bloat effect creates complex, redundant, and useless work that “has” to get done, because without it, the bureaucracy simply couldn’t justify existing. Every single teacher I’ve worked with spends more time on paperwork than they do actually teaching. In many states, the cost per student is over $20,000 per year – that’s about $54.80 per day, assuming that the kid is in school every day of the year. If you use the “180 teaching days per year” standard, that number goes up to $111.11 per day. Around here, most private tutors charge about $25 per hour for one-on-one private education. Given a 6 hour school day, a private tutor should charge about $150 per day, so the public schools are actually a bargain, right? Lets break it down a bit:

Students in public schools spend an estimated 60% of their time on non-instructional activities – recess, lunch, busy work, and simply waiting for something to do. In a public school, a student is one of many – between 18 and 30 - students in a classroom, and the teacher simply cannot give the one on one attention needed to maximize the use of the time. Plus, there’s all that paperwork….

So, if we take a look at the real situation, a private tutor can provide 6 hours of direct one on one education for about $150 per day. A public school teacher can provide (in a generous scenario) 50% actual teaching time = 3 hours per day and 1/18th of the direct attention (because there are at least 17 other kids in the class). This boils down to:

3 hours * (1/18) = 3/18 or .17 hours per day – about 10 minutes. Granted, there are educational activities that the teacher can manage in a group setting, so lets be generous, and throw in another hour of teaching time. That gives the student a whole hour and 10 minutes of true educational time per day.

Lets take another look at those cost numbers:

Private tutor: 6 hours of direct 1:1 teaching per day: $150.00 = 41.7 cents per minute

Public School: 70 Minutes of direct 1:1 teaching per day: $111.11 = $1.59 per minute

Granted, the public schools also act as babysitters, and for those parents that need a place to put their kids, there is some benefit, but I will stick with the model that the purpose of the schools is to teach – if you need childcare, use childcare.

So there ya go. Just another example of how government “oversight”, “involvement”, or plain old meddling drives up the cost of education. Think about what you could do with your child’s education if you could spend that $20,000 a year of teaching money however you wanted? Private tutors or Private schools, maybe home schooling. If nothing else, the ability to pick what school to send your kids to instead of having to accept whatever schools your tax dollars happen to have to go to.

Symbolic Illiteracy?

After having a debate with a friend about the sad state of literacy in many of the kids (and adults) that we know, we found ourselves using a new term: Symbolic Illiteracy. This refers to the fact that in much of our day to day life, the written word has been replaced with symbols. Take a look at whatever electronic device you have nearby. Look at all the buttons, dials, widgets and doo-dads. How many of them actually have a word telling you what that particular control does? I bet almost all (if not all) of them have little symbols or pictures.

The gist of our debate was trying to decide if this was a good thing or not. The advantages of this type of communication is that a lot of information can be passed in a very small space. If the symbols are well designs (or are universally adopted), we have the beginning of an international language – at least a writtten one. Imagine getting off a plane in Japan, China, or Russia. You really have to pee. How do you find the bathroom? You don’t speak the local language, you don’t read the local language. Depending on the airport, you just might see the universal “man” or “woman” symbol that tells you there’s a bathroom behind the door. Even if the international symbol is not used, many countries have developed symbols that are pretty obvious. I can’t recall what country I was in, but the sign for bathroom was a stick man running. Sounds kind of odd, but when I saw it, I knew exactly what it was. The “running man” was a constant joke that trip….

The arguments against the “symbol” language are the same arguments against any pictographic form of writing. If you need to communicate simple ideas, it isn’t that hard, but as you move into more complex ideas, it is much more difficult to develop symbols that are meaningful. Eventually you end up with a system where you have to fall back on some sort of alphabet because there are just too many symbols to know. Anyone who has studied Japanese knows that there are thousands of symbols – each word has its own symbol. There are so many that even native Japanese speakers often run into pictograms that they don’t know. Fortunately, Japanese also has an “alphabet”, and uncommon words are often spelled out instead of using the pictogram.

An interesting aspect of the “symbol” is the fairly new “IM Speak” – the truncating of words to a few letters, or the replacement of a word with a symbol that sounds the same as the word (homophones). Examples are using “8″ instead of “ate” or “l8r” for ‘later’. This new form of shorthand is becoming incredibly pervasive. It shows up in school work, University assignments, and I’ve even seen it in newspapers and journals. Language is a dynamic thing, and is constantly changing. The ‘net revolution has introduced a whole new medium of written communication, and our language is adapting to the ‘instant on’ aspect of it – if there is a faster way to key something in and move it on, it will get used.

Many of the educators I know lament this trend. Lets face it, the educational systems are almost always the last places where changes like this are accepted. The ‘net shorthand is finding its way into industry and business – I’ve received memos, letters, and other business documents with emoticons on them , and the occasional blot of ‘net shorthand. I will admit that I view this as unprofessional, and if I get a job application or resume with any of these, I tend to view it as if it had been written in crayon. Having said that, I must also admit that the style and format of business communication is very different from the day-to-day spoken and IM-ed language that many of us use in our informal communications. The real (and about the only) danger I see in the current mutation of the written language is the fact that many people – especially young people – don’t seem to understand that there are different modes of written communication, and that if the wrong mode is used, it can make you look like an idiot. While I have no problem getting a quick message filled with emoticons, ‘net slang, and the rest of the symbols that are used in electronic communications, if a student turned in a paper written in that form, I would punt it right back at them, and either give them an “f”, or ask them to re-write it in English. As I said above, resumes, job applications, and other formal business documents that have this type of shorthand end up in the wastebasket.

The danger with the new symbolic writting is not the change to the writing itself, it is the fact that we are not teaching our young people the importance of using the proper communication style based on the environment the communication is taking place in.