The Ants Go Marching . . .

I just returned from a week-long research conference in Chicago (AERA)--my mind electrified by sparks catalyzed by the unexpected convergence of cognitive load theory, self-efficacy, mirror neurons, motivation, play, and split attention. So, I find it particularly amusing that what captivated my attention today was a simple clan of virtual ants, and that in some ways, I learned more about research from my engagement with them than I did from the conference!

I happened to be chatting on the phone with a friend when she suddenly expressed with dismay that a group of ants had suddenly materialized in her kitchen. Since they weren't in MY kitchen, I wasn't particularly disturbed. Besides, unless they bite, ants don't seem particularly distressing to me.

First rule of research: If it disturbs your research partner, it WILL affect your work!

My friend explained that all of the ants seemed to be focusing their attention on a rather large crumb of bread. Although we continued to chat, as our conversation progressed, she interrupted it periodically with news flashes regarding the progress of the ants (which, upon reflection, makes me wonder how engaged she was in our conversation!)

Second Rule of Research: It is just as important to observe the interaction between the subject and the researcher as it is to observe the subject and/or the interaction between the subject and the context.

"This is amazing!" she exclaimed. "They are picking up this giant crumb of bread. It would be the equivalent of me and a group of my friends trying to pick up a skyscraper!" The periodic news flashes (I could almost hear the urgent music and the "We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this special news update!") soon turned to play-by-play descriptions of the ants' efforts. (She would make a great sportscaster!)

Third Rule of Research: Sometimes, the most important questions are buried beneath comments that seem to require no interrogation.

I should have pondered why she was so completely enthralled by the ants. I should have posited alternative hypotheses . . . perhaps it was the immediacy of the ant phenomenon by contrast with the more physically remote phenomenon of our disembodied conversation? Perhaps our conversation was boring her, and this was a useful way to divert the course of the conversation?

Eventually, our conversation turned to the best way to help the ant visitors to understand that they were no longer welcome to remain as guests in her kitchen. After determining that stepping on them was a little harsh, she decided to pick up the crumb of bread, put it on a plate, wait for them to converge on the plate, and then transport them to a new location outside of her apartment. After several minutes, she decided that they weren't very good at recognizing implied invitations, and gave up on that approach.

I explained the manner in which pheromones help ants to create and follow trails to their food sources. I remembered my mom telling me that sprinkling baby powder (or something) on the floor would keep them away (either because they couldn't smell the pheromones to cross it, wouldn't cross it, or because it would make them sick and kill them. However, I couldn't remember exactly what the substance was or what effect it was supposed to have).

Fourth Rule of Research: A thorough literature review must include adequate documentation of the information encountered.

Meanwhile, I did recall a site I'd come across recently about getting rid of stuff (including pests). After reading various potential remedies from the site to my friend over the phone, we decided to conduct our own mini-investigation. :-)

We began with cinnamon. (I suppose she thought that would be especially humane and might add to the ambience of her kitchen?) Her exclamations certainly captured my attention, but did not contain sufficient data regarding the results of the experiment for me to make an informed decision regarding the next step in the research.

Fifth Rule of Research: It is important for the researcher to take good field notes and to share them with the other members of the research team. It is also useful to include a descriptive analysis of the data in the write-up of the research, and not just merely the conclusions it supports.

After additional queries on my part, I finally learned that the ants walked right into the cinnamon and didn't seem remotely disturbed. Next came the bay leaf. The experience my colleague had gained during the first intervention positioned her to report much richer data based on the field notes that she "streamed" to me during the course of this second intervention, "They are congregating around it." "One little guy is perched on top of it." "Now they are all flocking to it." Check. Scratch the bay leaf off as a potential remedy. Perhaps baby powder would work?

Sixth Rule of Research: It is much easier to state the Rules of Research than it is to adhere to them.

After a few of the ants coated themselves in it with minimal effects, we decided that perhaps we should move on to other sources. I began reading the comments that other readers had posted on the pest removal page. We spent quite a bit of time giggling at the mental images of little ants trying to cross detergent-filled moats, exploding from eating instant grits or molasses, or being sucked up by the "roomba" vacuum that the descriptions evoked. We finally decided that chili powder made a lot of sense, so it became our last experiment before my friend went to find her shoe and her vacuum.

Transcript:

"Ohhhh! The chili powder!" "Well, wait, they're coming toward it." "Hmmm." "Well, one is walking through it." "Hmmm. They don't seem to, well . . . no . . . now that one is acting a little crazy. They are all leaving the cinnamon except the one little guy who seems to like it, but they are all fleeing the chili powder. They seem to like the bay leaf though."

Findings:

Ants seem to have an aversion to chili powder that, with sufficient exposure, can become a fatal allergy.

Interpretations/Discussion:

Doctoral students who have too much to do, are not getting enough sleep, and are looking for distractions can find "research" quite fascinating if you pick the right topics!

Who?

Who do you tell your heart to when the sun sets on your day?

Who do you share your mind with when ideas leap and play?

Who do you bare your soul to when heartache cracks it like dry earth?

Who do you reach for with your eyes to tell you what you're worth?

Cherice Montgomery, April 2007

Shifting Paradigms . . . Again!

I can feel my thinking shifting (finally) . . . bits and pieces here and there. In the classroom, I moved from thinking about teaching to thinking about learning. Here, I think I've moved from thinking about learning to thinking about living. What a paradigm shift!

On a practical level, those thoughts have changed the questions I ask. Instead of saying to myself, "What am I going to teach today?" I've moved to asking, "What are students going to do today?" That moved me much more toward the idea of student-centered instruction. However, since that time, I've started thinking more about the importance of experience in learning. That has transformed my question to, "Why should it matter to students?"

Yesterday, I realized that I might be on the verge of still another shift . . . . what if instead of focusing on knowledge, we focused on needs? Teaching to their needs is very different than teaching a set curriculum . . . which, if the goal is that the curriculum reflect the field, shouldn't ever be all that set anyhow because the field is always shifting and changing.

So now it becomes a question of integrating the students into the experience and the experiences into the students. And THAT leads me to ask why we spend so much time "creating" experiences when there is a whole world out there just waiting for us?!

Conversations Make It Real?

I was reading Danah Boyd's latest post in which she muses on the ways that the "public performance" of our lives in socially networked spaces change the "reality" of our experiences. I love the quote with which she begins her post and it makes me wonder if this isn't what makes the Web 2.0 world go ‘round:

"The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves." -- Hannah Arendt

Like the Velveteen rabbit . . . people all “esforzandose” to ensure that their desire to “become real” is fulfilled.

Leads to all sorts of interesting questions . . . who do we spend our time talking with in “real” life? Are those people different from the folks we spend time with “virtually?” Are our goals for both sets of relationships the same, or do they meet different needs? Are there people who play in both worlds who aren’t so interested in being heard by the world at large, but rather, are content for a small minority of a chosen few to “witness their worlds” . . . and if so, why is that?

Sigh. Probably another conversation I'll never have . . .

Universes In Translation

So I'm back to thinking about Quantum Physics again, and it occurs to me that the paradox of truth is that it is both self-evident and veiled at the same time. Why? Perhaps because there is so much power inherent in truth that it must be carefully protected so that only those who have been adequately prepared to wield it can fully access it? Ahhh, I love to speculate, don't I?!

Back to my point, though . . . take hypercubes, for instance. Their "truthfulness" is elegantly obvious . . . intuitively, you can "feel" their realness . . . yet so much of our understanding of them is veiled . . . in that fourth dimension, in those pesky mathematical symbols that I don't understand . . . (and it suddenly strikes me that symbols seem to be a principle way of conveying truth, making it more accessible, and transmitting it, as well as a major means of obscuring it from prying eyes).

And so for me, it becomes an issue of learning multiple languages . . . I cannot understand the math without recourse to visual representations which immerse me in the aesthetics and the geometry of the principles . . . and I cannot understand those without recourse to prosaic explanations. So in order to pursue truth, I have to work across and through at least 3 languages (art, discourse, and math), pursuing all three through multiple pathways, all of which will hopefully converge (as they did in this article on Electricity, Magnetism, & Hypercubes--an article in which I finally see that a hypercube is simply what 3-D space looks like when you add the dimension of time--like Step 4 shows in the video Imagining the 10th Dimension. All the lattices that I've been fascinated with lately--vedic math, lattice math, the axonometry image used at the bottom of this page, and Drawing Gravity in 3 Dimensions--also are suddenly relevant, as are the thoughts in Godel, Escher, Bach and my triangles (Pascal's triangle, the Sierpinski triangle, etc. This stuff is finally starting to connect and I cannot WAIT to see where it will lead me!)

I'm captivated by this thought of translation . . . and that of translating all these ideas and experiences into social contexts and situations. Then I wonder if that isn't exactly what is happening through social software such as del.icio.us and social networking sites like Facebook? Lattices (a.k.a. networks) are being created across dimensions of time that are generating electromagnetic (a.k.a. social?) forces that have physical and social consequences. I wonder if anyone has studied the geometry of social networks to see if patterns like hypercubes emerge? ;-) I wonder if anyone has thought about how sites like Facebook are actually networks of translation?

Perhaps I should give Malcolm Gladwell a ring and let him know that I have stumbled upon the concept for his next book . . . the ways in which mavens and connectors and salesmen thin-slice not only domains or people's nonverbal expressions, but also conversations across those domains AND conversations . . . and then package them and deliver them to the masses through social networks that are really just multiple hypercubes! Maybe Madeline L'Engle was more on target than anyone could have possibly realized?! ;-) It must be getting late b/c I am getting very silly!

Conversation as Improvisation

What a joyful thing it is to listen to the improvisation of a gifted musician! Experiencing the synergy that arises when multiple musicians, freestyling poets, dancers, or comedians improvise dynamically in response to one another is even more compelling.

So why don't people improvise more often? Improvisation can certainly have negative connotations (as in situations where one has to improvise or "make do" because one lacks sufficient resources of some kind or another). However, I find that I tend to associate it more with a competence that yields flexibility, fluidity, and spontaneity. In order to improvise, one must possess a broad, deep, internalized understanding of not only the fundamentals of a field, but also of its intricacies, its subtleties, and its nuances. One must know the rules so well that one can consistently and accurately predict the effects that breaking them (and thus, the expectations they engender) will have on one's audience. All of humor rests on this principle (of setting up expectations and then purposefully deviating from them in ways that engender a well-spring of surprise that produces an involuntary emotional reaction). One must also know one's audience.

From the point of view of the improviser, I imagine that it is most fun when one discovers someone who not only understands the improvisation one has just finished rendering, but also has the competence, sensitivity, and wit to reply in a meaningful, but novel way. This makes me wonder about conversation as a form of improvisation. What makes some conversations so much more satisfying than others? Are fabulous conversationalists those who bring tremendous stores of knowledge to the table--both in terms of the topics of conversation and also of the audience, context, and culture of the conversation? Or is knowledge less important than finely honed observational skills that allow one to recognize opportunities within the conversation for novel contributions, recursions, or new iterations? Or is it simply the flexibility that such knowledge, skill, and understanding provides that makes it work?

Whatever the case, scintillating conversations are unmistakable. I always know when I'm having one, and it is easy to recognize when others feel they are engaged in a similar experience (irrespective of the actual content of the conversation).

So, once again, I raise the question of improvisation. Are scintillating conversations merely the product of skillfully manipulated elements and patterns of conversation? Are they the result of agile and flexible participation? Or is something more aesthetic in nature at work . . . a sensitivity to natural rhythms, the ebbs and flows of the tides of a conversation, and an ability to weave balance and harmony into the composition? Certainly there is an element of risk involved in improvisation . . . a willingness to let the composition emerge, unfold, and guide. There is also an element of play at work . . . a willingness to experiment, to explore, to be surprised by one's own discoveries, and to pursue them to see where they might lead. That requires tremendous confidence (or a strong sense of security).

Perhaps we don't improvise because we don't feel competent enough, confident enough, or safe enough to do so? Yet, in some ways, isn't improvisation what leads to some of the most creative and amazing breakthroughs in science, in art, in mathematics, in poetry?

Things of Eternal Consequence

I've moved from thinking about teaching, to thinking about learning, to thinking about living. This is the comment I made to a friend today--and I was shocked by the profundity of its implications as I heard it escape my lips! What I was really saying is that as a result of experience, my perspective has expanded, and I am able to see that the most important aims and objects of educational experience ought to involve things of eternal consequence. By implication, I was also admitting that I have allowed trivia to consume more of my time than it merits, while neglecting things far more deserving of my attention.

On the other hand, the connotations of each of those three words (teaching, learning, and living) also imply that I have undergone a powerful transformation--one that has helped me to reframe my role as a teacher, students' roles as learners, and the purposes of the time that we spend together each day.

I think about Deloria & Wildcat's Power and Place and their insistence that we should consider every action through the lens of the impact it will have seven generations after it is initiated. I think of Tom Barone's book, Touching Eternity, and the impact that the teacher whose career it chronicles had on the adult lives of his students. Then I think about the people and ideas that have most influenced who I am, what I value, and where I'm going. How do I actively invest my time in building relationships with ideas, people, and things of eternal consequence? How do I use my personal influence to purposefully design places and set aside times and spaces that will catalyze, nurture, and sustain such work? What would happen to my students if I could accomplish that in ways that riveted our mutual attention on the joy of living instead of on the task of learning or the responsibilities of teaching?

The trick is developing a sense of discernment sharp enough to distinguish what matters and what does not. Saying is different from seeing, and seeing is different from doing. Saying that things of eternal consequence matter is a far different endeavor than seeing which things those are, and identifying things of eternal consequence is far different from knowing what to do about them once they have been named.

For me, I suppose there is a simple pleasure in recognizing that the words I chose represent at least the beginnings of an enduring personal transformation!

Of Giftedness, Intensity, Sensitivity, & Idiosyncracy

In my experience, giftedness tends to be framed in terms of intelligence and achievement. That frame not only leaves many things about it invisible and unexplained, but makes many other characteristics common across gifted children appear to be incongruent with their giftedness. Such interpretations position gifted individuals to be bewildered by why they are the only people among their peers who seem to respond to their circumstances so intensely.  Such interpretations position those who spend time with them to wonder why people who are "so smart" or "so talented" can't figure out how to just relax and go with the flow. The "obvious" explanation is that it must be the result of a lack of maturity or self-control. This "obvious" answer causes the gifted to question why they can't seem to change successfully, even when they really want to do so. That, in turn, evokes deep doubts about the veracity of the labels that have been attached to them, which destabilizes their faith in themselves to the point that it can impede their ability to accomplish even the simplest of tasks.
 

Thus, after reading this summary of Dabrowski's ideas on the subject (be sure to explore the related links to specific sensitivities once you read through the bulleted lists), I was almost sad—wondering how it could be possible that I’ve lived my whole life without understanding some of these things, wondering how it could be possible that in spite of my many experiences with giftedness--friends, my teacher training, the 13 years I spent as a teacher who had many gifted students in her classes--that I never put it all together quite like this before!

Other websites contributed useful pieces to my understanding as well. Although Parenting Emotionally Intense Gifted Children focuses primarily on the emotional dimension of the sensitivities described on the page above, I find it interesting that the sensitivity is, in part, attributed to physical roots. “ Emotionally intense gifted children exhibit a super sensitivity of the nervous system that makes them acutely perceptive and sensitive, more discriminating of external stimuli and more analytical and critical of themselves and others.” It is easy to see how such sensitivity would affect every aspect of one’s existence. I liked the microscope analogy from the section entitled Differences on the Helping Your Highly Gifted Child web page, and appreciated the concept of Multiple Ages as a way of explaining some of the paradoxes of giftedness. This asynchronous development is reinforced in the paragraph titled Gifted Child Development Center and helps to explain (for me, at least) the ways that common characteristics of giftedness “clash” with one another in ways that produce problems. The entire paragraph on School is useful, particularly the first sentence, the elephant analogy, and the idea that sometimes the highly gifted may look “less capable” instead of more capable than their peers. Finally, the paragraph on Lack of Fit seems to summarize many of the key issues inherent in giftedness.

In short, the idea that “intensity” is often the result of profound “sensitivities” to certain aspects of experience not only illuminated my own experiences with gifted children, students, and adults, but also helped me to understand the idiosyncracies of people in general in important new ways. After all, the scriptures teach us that everyone has at least one gift or talent. What if instead of viewing idiosyncracies as problems, we approached them with the perspective that they might be clues that would help us to identify the gifts of those around us?

The Ever So Elegant Universe

Preface

She had encountered several bloggers who seemed to use their blogs as a notepad--especially when sitting in conferences and professional meetings. The notes were often very telegraphic in nature (as notes tend to be) and often intermingled with personal observations, applications, and/or metacommentary. She found that she really appreciated such notes because she could quickly get a sense of the key ideas without having to wade through tons of text or added interpretations.

On the other hand, she found that she had tremendous difficulty posting her thoughts in that fashion. Perhaps the strategy worked well when one was attempting to sift through someone else's pre-organized presentation, but she suspected that her present thoughts would appear to be gobbledygook to the casual observer unless and until she added a bit of context and signposted the way through the web of conceptual connections her brain had been making. She wasn't even sure what to make of them, so she couldn't imagine that they would make sense to anyone else! However, someone had told her once that writing is not about telling what you know, it is about figuring out what you think. Well, she certainly needed to do that, so . . .

She was also fascinated by several recent conversations she had had in which she had tried to elucidate her thinking for others. Bouncing around from concept to concept during the course of her conversations was helping her to begin to untangle the threads of association that bound them, and to thicken the connections between them. However, she was intrigued by how difficult it was to marshall all of those beautiful and complex clumps of thought into a linear and sensible package. How does one preserve and convey the beauty and dynamic/reciprocal elegance of a magnificent array of wildflowers in a static flower arrangement? An artistic eye, a skillful hand, and a beautiful vase all help, but much is lost in the "translation!"

***

So, I've made it to p. 176 of The Roots of Things, and to Ch. 10 (p. 276) of The Elegant Universe. I'm left with much to ponder and little to say except, "Wow! Is it ever elegant!" (And I'm pleased to be able to include that word with a purposeful eye toward its mathematical connotations!)

I was ineptly trying to explain the implications of the ideas to a friend, who sat and nodded politely. There was no reciprocal spark of response to indicate that I was successfully conveying any of it on even a superficial level. So I defaulted to superlatives, "It's absolutely elegant." As I was thinking about what I meant by that in hopes of being able to extract and convey its significance to her more clearly, the profundity of it all overwhelmed me and I surprised myself by spontaneously bursting into tears and exclaiming, "It's just so incredibly beautiful!"

Now honestly, what was THAT about?! Me crying over math? Granted, I've shed many tears over it during the course of my lifetime, but only in frustration; certainly never in admiration, much less the reverence, awe, and deep joy that accompanied these particular drops!

Yes, I will eventually get to WHY it is all so beautiful, but that post will take more time than I currently have to devote to it. And once I accomplish that, ohhhhhh the implications! I can't imagine how people would behave if they really understood! (Of course, that presumes that I am correct in thinking that I do!)

The ABCS: A Symmetry, Balance, Control

So I've been trying to get my life "under control" for some time now (a lifetime, to be quite honest). However, I've also been thinking about symmetry for quite some time now . . . first in terms of visual symmetry, but now in terms of other kinds of symmetry too. Breaks in symmetry really represent disruptions of a larger system, disjunctures in harmony, a lack of balance. They are also important signals (at least according to the quantum physics I've been reading) that something is amiss in one's theoretical framework.

"Let me answer your question using a symmetry argument. Symmetry is an important concept in science. You ask if I could combine my career with marriage, and yet very seldom is the same question asked of a man. That shows a lack of symmetry. Question: Is this lack of symmetry imposed by cultural differences or by nature itself? It seems to many that it has been imposed by tradition" (Weyland, 1984, p. 150).

Weyland, Jack. (1984). A new dawn. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Company.

I was reminded of these musings when one of my clients today explained her thoughts about the problems created by "information asymmetry" in higher education as part of a paper she was writing. In thinking about education, I came to the conclusion that when we feel overwhelmed by the complexity of teaching, learning, or education in general, we attempt to "control" it by legislating it, wrapping it in policies and procedures, writing course syllabi, and assessing our efforts.

Then I started thinking about the movie, Space Camp--specifically, the scene where the female astronaut is in the gyroscope and is trying to "control" her situation, which is spinning out of control. The key to that situation was balance . . . in 3 dimensions.

It occurs to me that the same is true of life. It will ALWAYS be complex. It is IMPOSSIBLE to control it. Every time something changes in the system (which is constantly), imbalance is introduced in the system. It can feel chaotic, but the trick is to avoid the common response in which we instinctively try to impose order on the chaos by controlling it, and instead, allow ourselves to embrace the chaos, feel its rhythms, and eventually, realign the various dimensions of ourselves in such a way that we bring the various elements of the system back into balance (or harmony).

Musically speaking, we have to "listen" to our lives, and then seek to replace dissonance with the beautiful sound of resolving chords that restore harmony.