More on education and politics

[caption id="attachment_2836" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Tim Connolly and Rep. Jim McGovern"][/caption]

The other day, Rep. Jim McGovern spoke at our WISE politics and media class. Tim Connolly, communications director for Worcester County D.A. Joseph Early, Jr., is leading the class. McGovern took questions for the full 90 minutes. As you might expect, topics ranged widely from Worcester politics to the pile of rubble that is the Washington political process. "If you wanted to chose any time in history to be president," said McGovern, "this is not the time you would choose." (Ref The Onion's on-point headline in November 2008, Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job .)

We talked redistricting. More than half of his district is new to him, now anchored to the west by Amherst and Northampton. (I corrected him on the pronunciation of Amherst, with a silent h. The townspeople notice such things.) The discussion about education included the usual topics of improving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) as we try to prepare young people for jobs in the emerging green economy and medical technology.

In a bit of topic drift, we noted that a 20% turnout, coupled with Joe Perry's 48% plurality, means than fewer than 10% of Worcester voters chose their new mayor. "We are ultimately responsible for whom we elect," noted McGovern. By comparison, 40% of Fitchburg electorate voted. They re-elected Lisa Wong as mayor.

In addition to the usual concerns about civic detachment, the class agreed that civics should also be included in any education reform.

I know that it's comparing apples and dump trucks to relate my personal educational experiences with the practices and people of these times. There are a few dynamics about growing up, however, that are somewhat enduring. So, here are a couple of points:

• I loved history, social studies, and political science. I even got an award as best social studies student in my graduating class. My first college course, taken when I was 16, was political science. I grew up in a household where both parents voted regularly, where my mother campaigned for Ed Brooke as senator.
  I didn't vote until I was 30.


• There were several classes - Shakespeare in freshman English, shop, and gym, notably - that caused me not only not to learn the subjects but also to hate them later in life. Part of it was bad teaching, more of it was due to an inept student forced to display his ineptitude for the world to see.

These are notes of caution about what we can expect from education of any type, be it our public schools or even a parent to a child. We can give skills and knowledge, knowing that some of that will land on fertile ground and some will land on the rocks. The skill of the teacher and the aptitude of the student are the major factors here.

Much, much harder, though, it teaching people how to care when they don't. Even if we can identify root causes and remove those impediments, our successes are less than hoped for. It's pretty easy for people who are passionate about a topic to share why they're excited. The stories that are most interesting and, I think, most instructive, are the ones where someone once didn't care and now does. What happened? Is there anything transferable from those life lessons?

I voted for the first time because I was friends with people who were active in politics and who voted. The friendship preceded the act of voting. (This, by the way, is why social networks can be so compelling.) It's not about trust in the political arena or in the classroom, perhaps, but in the coffee shops and living rooms and other social places, where change happens. I voted not because I trusted the politicians so much as I trusted my friends.

November is the February of autumn

We now have more leaves than snow in the yard. Not all of the leaves are down yet. This season is running about two weeks late, not influenced by that freakish storm on Halloween weekend.

On this foggy morning, the Moses bushes in front of the house are bright. I wouldn't have noticed had I put out the trash last night. We're not apt to look at the font of the house except when we're coming or going and then we're often in a hurry. This morning, though, I had a moment.

This looks to be a typical day, meaning that there's nothing routine about it. After a reviewing the overnight news, I will take a look at a problem that one customer is having with QuickBooks and online banking. Then, I'm off to MWCC to talk with the very nice webmaster about work on new web, Facebook, and LinkedIn services for the alumni. Next will be a meeting with one of the professors and perhaps an administrator or two to see how we can integrate Twitter with Blackboard for an online course. I'm trying to rouse someone in marketing at a company so I can finish a blog post about them. I have a couple of other news stories in various states of unreadiess. You get the idea.

It's easy to lose track of details. Many of my contemporaries are complaining about age-related memory loss. I'm not ready to give in to that narrative yet. There are plenty of reasons to forget things. For example, this article, BPS Research Digest: How walking through a doorway increases forgetting, shows that going from one room to another resets our memory because our context shifts to the new place. There's no correlation with age or other condition; it just happens. If we're expecting events to be attributed to a cause, be it sugar-induced hyperactivity or the effect of the full moon, we'll regularly find events that fit our expectations. (We'll also discard, minimize, or explain away things that don't fit those patterns.)

I forget stuff, but I've always done so. Nothing new here, meaning that nothing's the same.

Note on Fitchburg politics - thinking beyond tomorrow

[caption id="attachment_2825" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong addresses a Massachusetts Broadband Institute program"][/caption]

As noted yesterday, I attended a presentation Monday by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute at Fitchburg State University. Mayor Lisa Wong introduced the program and noted the imp

ortant advancements brought about by having good broadband and wireless connectivity in the city. She presented a proclamation (full of details, she noted, gathered from the Internet) for MBI director Judy Dumont.

Most of the people in the audience were out-of-towners. This was the night before Election Day in the city. Mayor Wong was in close and tough race for re-election. She chose to be in a place that offered little immediate political advantage to talk about a program that would have a long-term benefit for the city.

This morning we learn Mayor Wong was re-elected to a third term by a record turnout of Fitchburg voters.

Mr. Hakkarainen goes to Helsinki

[This post is one of a series about Teuvo Hakkarainen, the newly elected True Finns Party MP from Viitasaari. For the record, my grandfather was born in Viitasaari.]
Banishing gays, lesbians, and Somalis to the Åland Islands isn't likely to be part of the immigration/emigration platform for the True Finns. The party leadership reprimanded MP Hakkarainen, who is on sick leave, for his recommendation that sending certain groups away to the islands in the Gulf of Bothnia would be good thing for them and for Finland. He later claimed that his comment was intended as a "joke."
A Swedish MP Elisabeth Nauclér, from the islands said, "Åland is home to 92 nationalities,” said Nauclér in Tuesday’s Iltalehti, adding that, “even Hakkarainen is welcome."
Hanna Kaarto said, in the Hesingin Sanomat, "The whole affair is so disgusting that it would be easier to plug one’s ears, shut one's eyes, and make loud noises just to keep from hearing it."

Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?

Staples has added a nice feature to its USB package, allowing you to test connection on your phone. It is, of course, made necessary by that cadre of evil-doers known as USB connector engineers who don't understand the meaning of the universal.

Unfortunately, packaging engineers are on the next layer of Hell. So, getting at the actual cable requires cutting devices and brute force.

 

The irrelevance of broadband

Many of us live in the breathless world of high tech where each advancement in tablets, phones, and social media services floods our reading queue. We click the Update button, waiting for the next release of IOS or Android. We scoff when a company's new phone has just a single-core processor. We talk to Siri like she's a sister from another mother.

Last night, I attended a presentation by the folks from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute. Their project is quite simply stunning: bring lots of fiber-optic connectivity to the unserved and underserved communities throughout the state. Even with two tornadoes, a hurricane, and an October snowstorm ("Mother Nature hates broadband," quipped MBI director, Judy Dumont.), they're still on target to ensure that, in a couple of years, all people of our fair Commonwealth can have access to fast pipes. (Take a look at the MBI's web site for details about the many facets of the program.)

Then, the hard work begins.

Americans who did not use the Internet at all – whether inside or outside the home – most commonly cited lack of interest or need as the primary reason.

via Exploring the Digital Divide | BroadbandUSA - NTIA

The Digital Divide is a series of fractures. There's the very real issue of money, of course. Even with Comcast's new $9.99 program, computers with the requisite software are out of reach for many. If it was just a matter of money, though, it'd be pretty simple.  More than a third of the people who do not have home broadband reported that, more than cost, didn't think that it was relevant to their lives.

[caption id="attachment_2809" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Main Reason for Non-Adoption of Home Broadband Internet, 2009 (National Telecommunications and Information Administration report)"][/caption]

Irrelevance was cited by 50% more people than those who were said that money was the issue.  The full report (PDF) is here.

In future pieces, I'm going to try to figure out what's going on here.

Some seems obvious.  The Internet, as portrayed in the public discussions, is a dangerous place where bad people want to steal your identity, money, and children. Those of us who've mucked around the 'tubes for a while know what a tremendous time sink all this can be, how it can isolate us even as it calls us to be more social.

There's a bit of research starting to surface about how adults learn how to use computers and networking, research that should embarrass user-interface engineers for hardware and software products, including and especially Apple.

The theory that is mine, however, is that there are a few other things going on. Mostly, they relate to how we view work and education, how our businesses adapt to change, how we, as individuals, learn or don't learn because of intrinsic and extrinsic reasons, and a lot about fear.  I'll come back to these ideas soon. In the meantime, take a look at what the MBI is doing and imagine how this can change things, if not for us, then for our grandkids.

Dept. of tunes - Hallelujah

Recently, Cassie stayed overnight with us. She brought her Shrek tape. We stayed up late and laughed a lot.

In the later part of the movie, there was a sad scene, the setup for the happiness to follow. The tune playing during this sad scene is Hallelujah.

I have to admit that I wasn't paying attention when this song was released in the 80s. Leonard Cohen was a regular on my playlist from his first two albums, but if you're going to stay sane, you have to limit the quantities. For a long time, then, I didn't play the old albums. He's not radio material, so I missed the newer stuff.

For the last decade, lots of people covered the song, bringing out modest voices and great voices, each telling a common and uniquely personal story. There isn't one best version. K.D. Lang kinda owns it, but Justin Timberlake's performance in the Haiti benefit, Jeff Buckley, and Rufus Wainwright can make us hold back a tear. Even folks  less well-known in the States can draw from the deep, deep well of the tune's simple majesty and grace.  The guy himself does himself proud, a testimony to the strength of a great song.