AN OPEN EMAIL TO MY CHILDREN

I blew out my shoulder last weekend, and typing is tough. Doesn't matter. I need to do this as a father, a Christian, and a human.

This is, verbatim, what I sent to my three fantastic children today. They have each done brave things, but it's important that this message has been directly sent to them.

I suggest other parents do something similar. In writing. Talking is fine, too.

But this should be in writing.
 
If you want background information, this pretty much covers it:
http://www.xojane.com/issues/steubenville-rape-verdict-alexandria-goddard

SUBJECT: I Have to Tell You This...

Hi.

This is a long email. Sorry about that...

It's hard to get everybody together, anymore. We're all busy, and this takes a little "space."

Two boys in Ohio just got convicted of rape--forcing sexual intentions on someone else. They were at a party, drank a bunch of alcohol, and did terrible things to a girl who was also drunk.

The issue in this town--about the size of Aberdeen, South Dakota--is still going on, though.

You see, a whole bunch of people were around. Some were involved. Some were witnesses. There was a lot of tweeting, texting, and posting to Facebook. It took a
while before anyone told the police. They were too busy telling each other. It was evil, right there in writing. The words they used were disrespectful to the victim and mean.

You know mean doesn't fly in this family.

But here's the worst part: nobody can find a tweet that told people to stop the hateful chatter.
I'm proud of our work as parents. Just look at these three products of our work! None of you strike me as rapists, murderers, or any of that. I can cite examples when each of you stopped bad behaviors in others--bravely, I might add. On top of that, my guess is you wouldn't be around at a party like that. You each choose your friends carefully.

But if you are in a place like that, you have an issue beyond underage drinking. You have a duty to stop the crime and report it. You protect the victim, and you fight for justice.

You heavenly Father, your earthly father, your mother, and over 6 billion people on Earth need you in these situations. It's not enough to avoid a problem situation like this. You are called to be a part of the solution. If you join the group rumor mill, or just walk away, you become part of the problem.

--

I know in this life I have failed you as a father many times, and I'm guilty of many of the things I tell you not to do and be in life.

But I want this in writing.

My real dream in life is to send out children (YOU!) that are better than I was--and people in middle age who will be better than I am now...

With more impact.
With more courage.
With more kindness.

Your mom spent six full years on those PISD health benefits. People tend to underestimate her bravery and willpower. Now, she needs others (like me) to carry the fight. Trust me, the scary parts don't change when you get older. I'm sorry about that.

Live your dreams, but please let me die someday knowing that my dream can become a reality. The scary part of all of this is that I know you can be that person, you three can become those people. I believe--in my very soul--that awful rape wouldn't have happened if one or more of you had been there.

I want to make it absolutely clear, though: you are the one with the potential to become a person that changes the world for the better. Not only as part of a group or family, but also as an individual who is able to challenge evil in the world.

That means you have to be brave...and downright "stupid" sometimes.

For what it's worth, we're behind you and with you. Your mother and I will support you wherever, whenever, and however we can in these situations. You need to be there for your siblings, too.

But there will be times when just one of you will need to stand firm in the face of social, financial, or political power. It's scary, and the bad stuff can seem fun. You have to be able to get over that fear...and that temptation. I have faith in you, and I'm sorry to send this on a Friday. Seems more like a Monday email...

If you have questions, ask away. Also, please tell me you read this. I'm keeping track. :-)

Thank you for your time. Now get off your iPhone and study!

Love and Prayers,

Big Daddy

Technology Helps Higher Education SPRING Into the 1970's

(From the movie "We Need to Talk About Kevin")

In what looks like another self-congratulatory ceremony, Harvard & MIT held a conference yesterday called, "Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education." There's always money for this stuff, isn't there?

Reporters were "allowed" to watch, but nobody could quote the key players. As ridiculous as this sounds to me, there were a few points to be gleaned about the positives and implied negatives of this "brave new world" in higher education.

One interesting point dealt with immediate feedback. New systems allow students to realize what they have learned immediately. That's a far cry from typical procedures, where tests and creative work need to be graded by a human. The drop in wait time is an important benefit to a MOOC situation. It's nice to see professors realizing what K-12 teachers have been taught since 1970.

Other issues were discussed. These large-scale courses allow students to "shop online" for the best teachers. MOOCs could challenging the way professors teach. As Inside Higher Ed reported, "The courses may be prompting some faculty to pay more attention to their teaching styles than they ever have before." Suddenly, the higher education community is interested in memory process. The focus was on older research--a real interest in how people actually learn things.

Since this "seminal work" is written in academic language and fails to offer meaningful quotes, I'll use the words of SimplyPsychology.

Unlike the multi-store model it is a non-structured approach. The basic idea is that memory is really just what happens as a result of processing information. 

Psychologists Craik and Lockhart propose that memory is just a by-product of the depth of processing of information and there is no clear distinction between short term memory and long term memory. 

All of this is standing on the outside, looking in. These academics would all do well to make a call to area code 210 (or 206) and find out what MRI studies have been showing us in those special medical schools that allow education researchers to use their cool stuff. Perhaps they could use the course notes from various music education courses I taught over a decade ago. Welcome to 1996, guys--and you cited a 1972 paper to get here.

If this new, exciting approach to memory is to have relevance to the MOOC world, then it would follow that the deeper the processing, the deeper the memory and recall. Logically, then, the worst way to learn a new set of information would be a standard MOOC. Yahoo! gets that, and you know that had to be a miserable decision. There really is no way to compete with a small class of experiential learners engaged in face-to-face interaction. Casually-generated language is easier to remember, and that happens with direct human interaction. You can try to make an online course more like the typical liberal arts college class, and you can save large amounts of money in that process.

Just don't tell me how it's better.