BFTP: Why we satisfice

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post October 13, 2008.

Satisficing (a portmanteau of "satisfy" and "suffice") is a decision-making strategy which attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution.Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing>

Why we satisfice - part 1

A common complaint about student researchers is that they "satisfice." They stop after finding the first possible answer to a question. I am guessing there is more to it than just laziness.

Consider this graph:

Is there a direct correlation between importance of the question to the researcher and the depth of research he or she is willing to do?

Maybe, just maybe, if we asked better questions, we'd get better researchers.

Ya think?

Why we satisfice - part 2

I am always amazed at the amount of time and anguish some people will devote to completing reports - especially those useless ones required by the state or a central office. 

Here's how I look at them:

If there is money involved, I attempt to be as accurate as possible without agonizing. When ever possible, I figure conscientious estimates are enough. I mean, is somebody actually going to come in and recalculate the average age of your science section? Count the number of computers in your district? Really care if you count a set of reference books as one title or three volumes? I don't think so.

As my dad always said, "A job not worth doing is not worth doing well." Give a good guess and then use your time helping your kids or staff. The world will continue to revolve.

The gift that's kept on giving - and why

Miles showing off the space left by lost tooth #2. (10/13/13 at 7:59PM)

Some of you may remember (or not), that I gave my two older grandsons iPads for Christmas last year. (See Instructions for iPad Use.) And I think it's been the best gift I have ever given - to myself!

As I remind the boys each time I see them, the only thing wrong with them is that live too far away - seven hours of driving when the weather is good. This limits physical visits to five or six times a year. Just not often enough to keep up with these rapidly growing guys.

But the iPads help bridge the gap. The boys send me texts including gibberish, selfies (see above), and silly emoticons and cartoons. (Forget e-mail!) We video conference using Facetime about once a week so I get to hear the boys play piano, see their Boy Scout awards, and even say "hi" to their mom and dad once in a while. I get to ask how school is going, what they're reading, about soccer and concert band.

The primary reason the iPads have been a positive influence is not because of Grandpa, but because these boys have very smart and very caring parents. (I'm sure it is at least partially genetic.) They monitor and limit the use of technology in their lives. (The boys can't take their devices into their bedrooms at night.) Both parents are tech-savvy, especially their dad who was an IT guy in an earlier career. While they both love gaming, they are also voracious readers, play musical instruments, draw, participate in sports and Scouting, and do very well in school academically. They have lives offline as well as online. 

I love technology. I use it a lot. It's my job and in many ways my hobby. I feel lost when I leave my phone at home and when the wifi in a hotel room doesn't work. But the more I use technology, the more I see a need for the kind of balance that my daughter and son-in-law have helped Paul and Miles establish. 

School must balance technology with reading, with creativity, with F2F collaboration, with physical activity, with adult supervision, with adult caring. My professional goal is to see that all my district's students have adquate, reliable, and ubiquitous access to technology. But even more importantly, I want them to acquire the sense  to use it wisely - including knowing when to turn it off.

Tech and trust

It’s becoming less and less effective to block students from websites. When Los Angeles Unified rolled out its one-to-one iPad program, administrators expected to be able to control how students used them both in school and at home. But, not surprisingly, kids are resourceful and students quickly found ways around the security, prompting the district to require students to turn over the devices. Teach Kids To Be Their Own Internet Filters, Mindshift, October 4, 2013

Hmmmm, trust kids? With the Internet? To make good choices? Like real people with brains? What a concept!

But some schools are doing just that. In the link to the Mindshift article above, Michelle Luhtala, Library Department Chair at Connecticut's New Canaan High School, explains how making good choices about Internet use is embedded in all lessons. My guess is that these kids will make some mistakes - but they will be what I call "safe mistakes" - ones that they can recover and learn from.

So why can and do some schools like Michelle's choose trust and teaching and some schools like Los Angles futilely attempt to block, censor, and control the use of student use of technologies and the Internet - prescribing a very narrow set of uses and resources for their kids?

I keep going back to Jonathan Kozol's observation in his book Savage Inequalities (1991) in which he summarized:

... children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed.

The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe.

My sense is that New Canaan High School's mission is to "educate the governors" and LA's is to train the governed. (I believe this to be a socio-economic, even racial issue.) By trusting its students, New Canaan is allowing them: 

• To learn time management skills
• To find, read, and consider divergent points of view
• To explore personal interests that motivate
• To receive expert adult guidance in online resources (read Michelle's comments about website evaluation in the Mindshift piece)
• To not just receive information, but create and share it (check out the great video!)
• To create an environment where adults are trusted guides, not roadblocks to learning (Control freaks will always be fighting a losing battle trying to block access - as LA has learned.)

All of us - teachers, tech specialists, librarians, and administrators - must ask ourselves if our schools are for the governors or for the governed. I know the kind of school I want to be associated with - and the kind of school I want my grandchildren to attend. 

Thank you, New Canaan, for showing us all it's possible.

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Oh, not that I really care. A few articles that I could find that I've written over the past couple decades...

• Are You Sure You Want an Internet Filter? Virtual Censorship is Still Censorship TechTrends, May/June 1998
• Best Practices for Meeting CIPA Requirements EdTech Magazine Q4 2005.
• Developing Ethical Behaviors in Students: What Schools Must Do Educational and Media TechnologyYearbook, 2003
• Good Policy for Policies (Techno Intelligence), School Library Journal, March 2003
• Internet Filters: Censorship by Any Other Name?, Emergency Librarian (Teacher Librarian), May 1998
• The Neglected Side of Intellectual Freedom, LMC, March/April 2013
• Proactively Teaching Technology Ethics Library Media Connection, January 2004