Sub's Assignment Workbook!

[Subb]

So, this is one way to be productive around here. School is starting up again in a bit more than a week, and I get a plethora of assignments and other things to do. Why not take the best and the worst assignments and put them here? And maybe I talk about why the assignment is good or bad, what it's trying to accomplish, if it succeeds, etc. I believe this will accomplish 3 things:

1. It will provide insight into what I do as a virtual school student.

2. It will help me create, maybe not regular assignments, but projects for my students for when I'm a teacher.

3. It will show the faults of virtual school curriculum, and how that system can be improved.

Maybe other people can do this with me, so that the work from traditional schools can be scrutinized?

[James Comey]

This actually sounds like a very good idea.

[Zo]

This is an excellent idea.

I'm doing a similar thing this year at school. I plan to write down everything (if anything) I learn at school daily, along with whatever I learn outside of school. Then I'll compare the two and see which one was more meaningful in the long run.

[Subb]

Okay, first day of school going well. Only one graded assignment this week (Which is bizarre.) So I'll talk about one system of grading here. It's for all of the classes, but you notice them the most in the science classes.

It's called the Target System. You have four grades in the class, or "Targets." their abbreviated as T1,T2,T3,and T4. And the assignments you're graded in only gives you credit for the target it's in. So, if the assignment you have is a T2 assignment, it'll only affect your T2 grade. Your assignments are graded out of 4, and the lowest you can get with passing is a 2. If it's lower than that, it's INC, and usually you get to do it again at least one more time. In order to pass, you need to get at least a 2 in all 4 targets, and that's a D.

So, let's go through my science target system. T1 is the Scientific Method. This is where we learn through accepted practice of science, such as experiments. So, a lot of lab reports here. T2 is Content. This is where the real meat is, because the assignments here tend to focus on teaching us the core concepts of the material. T3 is Scientific Process. This is the application of what we learned to something else, like something from a previous unit. This is integrating the knowledge and applying it to real life. T4 is Communication. This usually involves some sort of discussion with other students and maybe the teacher. In other words, you talk about what you've learned to see how easily you understand it and can explain it to others.

So, my thoughts... I like it better than the A-F grading system. However, it still has some huge flaws. I like how it says more about the student, and how each assignment has a purpose that's clearly explained by the target. I like how different types of assignments count towards different grades. However... most of the time it overlaps. These only are counted when it's a big assignment. For an example, an essay in science might have two grades, one for T3 and one for T4. But a mostly busywork T2 assignment might have some T1 elements, but that won't be reflected in the grades. That seems to be the point, but it's hard to execute correctly. There's also the fact that if you've aced all the targets but failed one of them (4,INC,4,4), you failed when you would've gotten a C otherwise. Student effort can easily be missed. That's the biggest mistake in it.

So, I hope you enjoyed that, and I'll report back when I have an interesting assignment to talk about.

[Subb]

Okay. First assignment on here. We learned about the "McDonalzation" of society (Or making a product as consistent and convenient), and we were supposed to design a school based on this philosophy. It was supposed to be two paragraphs, but I wrote this behemoth, and the teacher gave me a 4. If the teacher graded based on opinion or something like that, I would be angry. I would've preferred a "Design a thing" assignment rather than a "Design a school" assignment. That way students could also flex their creative muscles.

Here it is:

Spoiler (Click to View)

So, there are four tenants to the philosophy of what is called “McDonalization.” These four things (Efficiency, Calculability, Predictability, and Control) is supposed to increase convenience and efficiency. It also makes sure that the “Product” (or experience) is the same every time.

So, we will apply this to a high school. For efficiency, we need to make sure that the knowledge makes the best path possible from the school to the student, without as little labor as possible. So, why not have the school run by an AI? That way, there’s not even one teacher to pay, and the AI would be able to construct curriculum purely by algorithm, so the plan the students go to should be constructed so that the students can learn as much as possible within the year. Once you make the initial payment of having this AI set up, it will cost you less and make an optimal curriculum for the student body in general.

But, how will it be calculated for optimal performance? I’ll just take a page out of the current school system and institute some sort of standardized testing. But not only will it be compared to the national school system’s scores, the AI could also tweak the curriculum based on trends in what students had trouble on. That way, not only are we seeing if it works, we can change it and see if it helps or not.

This model can be incredibly predictable, because every social studies class would get exactly the same material every day, right down to what’s being said. So there would be no other variables between the information and the student.

So, the AI would obviously be tightly controlled, but what about the students? How do we make sure that they are controlled and do what the AI says? Well, it depends on what you want the relationship between the students and the AI is. You could put cameras everywhere and make the classrooms drab and white, all the desks facing some sort of a screen (Put some posters about how this AI “sees everywhere” while you’re at it.) The AI would seem omnipresent and all-seeing, and that would surely make the students more obedient, but I find it hard to believe that that’s the best learning environment. I would keep the screen in the front and the classroom same looking, but there should definitely be more of a laid back environment in desk layout and hall design. That environment would scream “Learning” a lot more.

But, is this a good design? Well, as someone who regularly thinks about ways we can improve the system, no. First of all, no AI could be intelligent enough to replace a teacher. I mean, there is a huge amount of educational stuff on the internet, and there has been software that could pick out the best stuff and present it to you. There is no educational program like that, but one can be made easily enough, because we’ve made most of the parts already. What I’m saying is that even if we make an AI that does that, it wouldn’t be able to do things such as read student’s homework or be able to adapt to certain students on the spot. It’s isn’t human.
But, I think this model presents an even worse problem, one that’s present in this McDonaldization principle (and today’s school system), that makes it incompatible with education: The standardization present. What happens when you make an “average student” and cater to that student, is that it’ll fit no one. Sure, some fall more towards the average than others, but they’ll still have problems with the curriculum because it wasn’t made for them. It was made from all the students in the school combined. Everyone learns slightly differently, and will have trouble with different things. This model needs to reflect that.

If we even apply this to the hypothetical AI model, and make it so that the grades of the students are also grouped by classroom, it’ll work better. Or, you can test someone to determine exactly where their pitfalls lie, and place them in a classroom where the AI would focus more on those areas (ex. It’s basic math, but one teaches geometry slower than algebra, and another does the opposite.) But why stop there? Why not have an AI make curriculum for every student individually. Not only could you make the curriculum the absolute best curriculum for that student, you could also take things such as career options into account, and teach things that students are guaranteed to use later in life. This model has so much potential in it, if you make it less predictable and add variance in curriculum.

To sum it up, this idea of keeping things standardized and convenient may be good for things such as industry and product making, but education cannot work like that. And that’s simply because people aren’t products. Sure, you can take this way of thinking for some areas of the school system, but you can’t design a school based on this philosophy alone.