After participating in the Vialogues Olympics and various seminars, I have come up with some suggestions for Vialogues. I have already submitted some of these to the Vialogues Feedback system but have not received a response. I feel these issues deserve more attention.

1. Real Time Comment Updating
This feature was begging to be implemented during the seminars. I'm not sure if this is the case on all computers, but on mine comments would only refresh after I made a comment of my own. This issue ruined the conversational aspect as I would have to respond to my own comment or make a new one to see the responses of others. I could have refreshed the page but I would have had to reset the time-stamp on my video and potentially miss opportunities to comment.

2. Better Facebook Integration
Part of the Vialogues Olympics was to recruit new members. In a world with increased emphasis on Facebook, I found this rather difficult to do. Many websites feature a Facebook account alternative to creating a dedicated account for said website. As I'm sure you all know, they just say, "Connect With Facebook," and in two clicks, the user grants the site Facebook permissions and the site grants the user access to its system. I know it seems like a huge first world problem, but people don't want to go to a website and create an account(although Vialogues has a very fast sign up which I commend). This would be the easiest way to gather new users. Furthermore, a Facebook app should be developed to allow people to comment directly from Facebook. The existing embed option won't even allow me to let the video stream directly from my wall like YouTube does. This is probably obvious to all of you but I want to reiterate its importance.

I've only read one book this summer, which was E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime. I want to get back into the swing of things before school starts up again. I'm going to try and read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Has anyone here in the lab read anything recent lately? Is there a book that would be particularly recommended? A favorite book? Please comment below, I'd love to know!

I found an Edweek article about the strategic usage of rewards and incentives for students. The piece cited research showing how long term benefits of education are often unappealing and how immediate gratification worked well. Tactics such as giving a student a reward before a test and making them work to keep it proved more effective than rewarding students for good performance. Furthermore, giving rewards for studying supplemental materials instead of just doing well on tests improved results in an area students can control. I personally think that this is a great strategy. Students enrich their knowledge and are made to study the subject matter, not just the testable material. It also prevents teachers from teaching to the test and could lead to enriched discussions beyond the required curriculum. This could eventually even lead to a love for a subject.

Last Friday I received my first check from Teachers College and I jovially dashed to get something nice for myself as a reward. After some browsing online, I headed to Guitar Center and ended up buying a nice little acoustic-electric guitar, as I had been meaning to for quite a while. I had no experience playing guitar, so, like many of my friends, I headed onto YouTube and Google to learn.

Lu wrote a blog mentioning the strengths of musical communities and their educational potential a few months back. The tools for independent musical education are out there. There are countless tutorial videos online giving advice. The best ones gain popularity and become easier to find. Many forums exist where a community is ready to answer any questions that haven't been answered already. People learning to play guitar often have friends who now how to play. I personally asked some of my friends for some pointers and for good videos.

About a month or so back, I had a substitute teacher named Mr. Forbes. He was a history teacher, but he could speak Spanish and had been put to sub for my Spanish literature class. My teacher hadn't left any classwork and we were all caught up with the reading, so Mr. Forbes decided to have a conversation with the class(at first in Spanish but then in English!).

He started by telling us about himself. He told us that he was a history teacher being rotated around different schools for two week periods of time by the Department of Education. He then told us about his experiences at Stuyvesant and asked us about the school. The class was very small only totaling about 15 kids so the discussion flowed nicely. What it boiled down to was that Stuyvesant students were more respectful of their teachers than in most schools, but the school itself was run in an antiquated manner. He told us that anywhere else in the city, Delaney cards have been eliminated and that setting up classrooms in rows has mostly been done away with. At Stuyvesant, most classes are set up into rows. English and a few other miscellaneous classes are set up in U-shapes for the sake of discussion. He described along the lines of Stuyvesant being in a bubble while the rest of the city changed. It didn't make much sense to me to set up a math class in a U-shape; most participation in a math class is explanation of taken procedures to solve a problem and often involves individuals going to the blackboard. I asked Forbes about this and he said it was the result of the bureaucracy of reformers trying to change education in the city. His theory was that since all or most of these reformers sent their children to private school, the plan they had was to make public schools follow the example of private schools, which often have their classes set up at small round tables. He called them out of touch, as class sizes in public schools are much larger making the private school approach impossible. He also told us about how as a young teacher, he was a zealot eager to head into the toughest schools around and try to change things. The problem was, the DOE started evaluating teachers based on the performance of their students. He said that this was a terrible strategy, as it scared the quality teachers away from trouble schools.

While working on the digitization of the John Fischer Collection, I came across a situation I found particularly interesting and worthy of sharing. In 1966, a new middle school in Harlem was being opened under a white principal. Black parents protested and demanded a black principal and even refused to send their children. The principal resigned to allow a black principal to come in, but the teachers decided not to staff the school in protest. More details can be found here.

The attached documents are the Board of Education's Proposal for the improvement of education in disadvantaged areas like Harlem and the response of the parents of Harlem to the proposal. Upon reading the Board's proposal, my initial reaction was positive. Finally something was getting done to improve the horrible state of education in Harlem at that time. However, the response of the parents was something that caught me completely off guard and radically shifted my view on the proposal. Here's where it gets interesting: the parents were offended by the proposal, and justifiably so. I encourage you to read the response, but basically the parents tell the board that their proposal implies that there are inherent flaws in African American and Puerto Rican communities and that they need an intervening task force to set them straight.