Punctuation in Perspective

I wanted to put punctuation into its proper perspective, so I created this infographic using Steven Brill's article from Time Magazine called Bitter Pill.

Charter School Search Trends

Charter Schools Web Trend Searches


You will notice that all the drops in search interest occur in December and the forecast holds to that pattern. So, why are charter schools not searched during the month of December?  Perhaps, only students are doing searches on charter schools?

Music Software For Everyone

Everyone loves music.  Well, let's hope so anyway.  Now, you may not know this, but there is a lot of software out there for making music.  Here are just a few examples.

The Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard is pretty cool.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmpk/?source=dlp

The next piece of software is Hydrogen, which is a drum machine.  I have used it before and I really like it a lot.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hydrogen/?source=directory

Lesson #2 Reading Like a Writer

Lesson #2
Reading Like a Writer

If you want to be a better writer, you have to read everyday like a writer reads.  So, this isn't just leisurely reading; it is time to start paying attention.  Most writers don't learn to write by diagramming sentences, learning the rules of punctuation and grammar, or by learning about the parts of speech.  It's not that those things aren't important.  It's that they are better learned through reading than memorizing rules.

So, what is reading like a writer?  Well, let me demonstrate through an illustration.  Here is the first sentence from Atul Gawande's essay, The Checklist.  It first appeared in the New Yorker and then was turned into a short book.  This is the first sentence of the essay.  You will notice that the sentence is a long one because it ends with a list.  The writer first writes a complete sentence, which he ends with a colon, as circled in red, and then begins a list.

Lists are something to watch out for.  Writers use them all the time to provide examples or clarify something by providing examples.  In the list above, he is providing examples of the damage that the human body can survive these days.  Here is another example from the same piece, just a few paragraphs down.  

This time, the writer uses a dash instead of a colon between the sentence and the list because the list items have qualifying phrases starting with "if" in them.  Because it is a more informal list, we use a dash instead of a colon. 

Now you should go and look at some of the major publications, such as, Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report and find some lists.  Analyze how they are put together and then try to mimic what they do using your own information.  

Writing for Beginners: Lesson #1, Say It First

Everything your writing teacher didn't teach you about writing that you should know.

Lesson #1 

Say It First.

First, we need to conceptualize writing in way that most people can understand.  Writing is like music.  Music has many genres: country, rap, hip-hop, rock, punk.  And within those genres, each artist has his or her own style.  Will Smith's hip-hop is different from that of Andre "Ice Cold" 3000s.  Johnny Cash and Willy Nelson are both country artists but their individual styles are different.  So, it is with writers.  Some writers like short choppy sentences and short choppy words.  And other writers, use alliteration to create prose that are like poetry.  Well, let's look at some examples.  The first is one of my favorites.  It's from Ham on Rye from Charles Bukowski.  

The crowd rose as the President’s car entered the arena. There had never been anything like it before. It was the President. It was him. He waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls circled overhead as if they too knew it was the President.

Notice the way the short sentences, matching a similar pattern speed up the pace of the reading?  Here is another example that is one of my favorites.  It's a letter from Frank Sinatra to Mike Royko, a columnist from Chicago who criticized Frank for something that Frank had nothing to do with.  Here is just a blurb.

And thirdly, who the hell gives you the right to decide how disliked I am if you know nothing about me?  The only honest thing I read in your piece is the fact that you admitted that you are disliked, and by the way you write I can understand it.  Quite frankly, I don't understand why people don't spit in your eye three or four times a day.  

http://www.examiner.com/article/frank-sinatra-s-angry-letter-to-mike-royko-of-the-chicago-daily-news

You can easily see that Frank Sinatra writes exactly the way he talks.  His sentences aren't fancy.  His words are not flowery.  He is direct and to the point.  Is it ever unclear how Frank feels?  No.  Frank's style of writing is called informal.  There are formal and informal styles of writing.  In school, students are expected to write formally.  However, your day to day writing is largely informal and it is how you should write everything at first.  

Here is another example of very informal writing from Jay McInerney's Story of My Life.  

When you read it, you will notice how it is written to sound just like someone is talking.  All writing should start like this.  Before writing anything down, you should be able to say it as though talking to someone.  So remember to say it first before writing it down.  Don't worry about grammar or punctuation at first.  Simply put a period after every complete thought.   

What's Wrong with Educational Sciences?

One of my favorite websites to visit is called Eurekalert at http://eurekalert.org.  It is an aggregate of press releases from universities, colleges, and research facilities.  And, of course, as an educator, I find myself scanning through the education section looking for interesting articles to tell my students about and post to this blog.  The problem is that the educational sciences are not that rigorous.  Studies rarely meet the standards set by the medical community, which require the randomized double-blind method.  

The randomized double-blind study is the gold standard because it minimizes confounding variables.  However, this standard is rarely met in the field of education.  For example, students are often selected randomly, but rarely from the general population.  Now, that is not to say that these studies aren't worthwhile, for they can be used for meta-analytical studies later.  Taken on their own, however, they should not be extrapolated out to the general public.  Or, as in the case of charter schools, are not randomly selected from the general population but from a self-selected group of students who are biased towards charter schools.

The other problem with methodology is the placebo effect.  Students know they are going to a different school or can figure out when something dramatic has changed in the curriculum.  This creates the idea of a treatment to the student.  We know from research that the placebo effect counts for up to 30% of observable improvement even if the person knows they are receiving a placebo. 

In conclusion, the science problem eventually leads us to the present policy problem: wanting evaluations for teachers that aren't scientific.  Any evaluation of a teacher that isn't scientifically based is a fraud and a waste of tax payer dollars.  The question is this.  Do we really want to solve the problem? Or are we simply dumping blame at a group of people because we can and it is easy?

Charter School Performance in New Jersey Proves Nothing

There are two reasons why the study is flawed.

1. The study does not meet the scientific criteria of a randomized double-blind.  Children want to and know they are going to a Charter School.  
1. Placebo effect constitutes 30% of observed improvement.  The study recorded a 3 month improvement, which falls within the range of a placebo.
2. The What Work Clearinghouse from the Institute of Educational Science admits that it doesn't prove much of anything and that Charter schools perform no better than regular public schools while serving a more diverse population of students. 
1. Although students at some charter schools showed significantly higher or significantly lower achievement gains compared to students in non-charter schools, most charter schools had student gains that were not different from the gains of students in non-charter schools.
1. http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/quickreview.aspx?sid=220