Article: EUOLogy about RPG Campaigns as Books

[JP Dogberry]

Nope, not really. Though I don't understand quite what yopu mean by that, and I admit I don't fully understand the Queensland system, having come from NSW which has a very similar but, IMO, inferior system. The main difference being that Queensland allows teachers greater creative freedom to tailor the course for their particular students, instead of, say, having a set list of books for White Anglo-Saxon audiences that mean nothing to any other student.

[Skar]

Though I don't understand quite what yopu mean by that, ...

SE's contention to date, at least as far as I can tell, has been that testing students to see if they've learned what they were supposed to leads to teachers being unfairly punished when they get a raft of stupid students who couldn't pass the test if God himself had taught them.

I was needling him.

My contention is that we should use something like what you describe from Queensland and then use the data on how well the students know the material to hold the teachers accountable for their work, in some reasonable and not stupid way.

[JP Dogberry]

This may only apply to Australia, as I know little about the US education system, but...

There are a lot of really crappy teachers out there, who are useless and overpaid. This is a problem that has led to NSW giving government grants to any teacher who can prove themself not up to date, in order for them to leave the NSW education system. Yes, it's as backwards as it sounds.

There are also some very excellent teachers out there who do a great job and are very underpaid.

My course is excellent. I have no doubts than anyone who graduates my course is going to be an up to date, responsible teacher with the required skillset and a knowledge of the most recent educational developments. I also do not discount the skills of teachers who are experienced, but note the best ones  are the ones who keep on professionally updating themselves with the latest research and methods.

Based on this, I think teachers need some accountability, but I also note that the education system is backwards and outdated, and needs serious reform, from the 3 r's (Reading, writing and Arithmatic) to a method based around the four r's as made up by some guy I can't remember to reference. (Recursion, Relation, Rigor, and I forgot the last one. I'll look the article up again sometime). Now, the good thing is that most progrssive schools are moving towards this sort of curriculum, as opposed to a discrete curriculum in which "english" and "maths" are entirely seperated and never cross paths. A more holistic method embracing outcomes and problem solving skills rather than remembering facts, that is.

For example, I *Like* open book tests because they're closer to real world conditions. I fully plan as a teacher to use open book tests whenever I can, and instead base the questions on actual understanding of the material, as opposed to memorisation. I also won't use multiple choice questions if I can help it.

Now, in light of this, I don't think testing is the way to prove teachers accountable, because teachers should be teaching skills that are difficult to test in any standardised way. The Queensland end of year thing is a good example, but I still find testing an inefficient process of measuring a teachers skills.

It sorts itself out naturally, in a way, since bad teachers end up getting jobs at worse schools, as better schools don't want them. The problem is these bad schools have the students that probably need better teachers far more to deal with the students there.

EDIT: Five minutes later, I look at one of my assigned readings which shows the sort of thing I'm talking about:

http://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/~jonassen/courses/CLE/index.html

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I have heard from people who have heard from teachers that the tests DO take a lot of time. All their time, more or less. Because they are forced to teach how to pass the tests, instead of teaching actual useful knowledge and skills.

And I think SE's winning this argument, but if I were him I'd have been tired of the argument long ago.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The standardized tests do take quite a bit of time. In most systems I've seen there are two to three rounds of this a year, and each one pretty much makes an entire week useless for anything else. And that's just for administering the tests.

A week is a pretty significant ammount of time for teaching.

I'd like to see how those tests measure and are administered, JP

as for how they can be evaluated: they may be separated from results they don't control, but they are not separated from processes they do. Of course there's the possibility that the observer and the teacher learned the same crappy methods, that's why you can have different people doing the observations and the approvals. The same thing applies to the people developing your test. What if they don't develop it to good standards. Eventually, you keep improving the system and that sort of thing starts to fade out. I don't have a problem with being divorced from uncontrollable results if the person is doing all they can to influence the situation.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Here's a comic relevant to the discussion

[Eagle Prince]

RPGs and books, hmm.  Yeah, I will say that they don't covert back and forth too well.  Books and movies convert better, and even that doesn't work so hot.  You can even turn it around the opposite way.  I've used tons of ideas from books, movies, video games, etc for campaigns, but a strait conversion makes a pretty lame attempt for a RPG.  You just have to basically use some of the ideas you like.  So if you had some great idea while roleplaying, nothing wrong in cannibalizing it.  But a strait conversion would usually be dumb.

I think worldbuilding is one of the big ticket things for selling fantasy novels atm, probably for at least the last decade or so.  Eventually it will probably cycle back around to something else, like plot or characters or whatever.  I'm more of a character guy myself.  I think the worldbuilding is liked so much by the big guys, cause it can be reused.  With all the movies, books, etc coming out nowdays, you always get sequals, series, stuff like that.  So I'm guessing that is at least part of why worldbuilding is big.  I'm even going to say the same world can be used for many kinds of media.  It would of course take some talent, however the Muse would only have to call once per conversion.  Once one person took a book series and made a good movie out of it, another person good at movies could continue to make good movies even if he knew little or nothing about coverting books to movies, cause the foundations for that part would have already been set by the first person.

[Skar]

Interesting. My experience with state testing was a single afternoon twice a year.  No doubt it could be done badly and has been.  It doesn't have to be.

If the teachers have to drastically change their curriculum in order to be teaching what is tested on the standardized test then, I have to ask, what the heck they were teaching before?  

Perhaps this is the desired result of the standardized test in action.  To force the teachers to teach a curriculum that is actually useful rather than whatever they were teaching that didn't prepare a kid to solve math problems, comprehend what he reads, and problem solve.  I suspect that teachers who have to drastically change their curriculum to prepare their kids for testing may have fallen into the "I am their mentor" "I am their friend" "I am their surrogate parent" trap that I brought up before.  A teacher should be none of these except incidentally.  They are primarily instructors, not life-guides.

Of course there's the possibility that the observer and the teacher learned the same crappy methods, that's why you can have different people doing the observations and the approvals. The same thing applies to the people developing your test. What if they don't develop it to good standards.

True enough.  

Eventually, you keep improving the system and that sort of thing starts to fade out.  I don't have a problem with being divorced from uncontrollable results if the person is doing all they can to influence the situation.

And perhaps this is where we agree to disagree.  I still don't think that separating processes from their results will result in better processes or results.  Isn't that one of the definitions of insanity: Performing the same action and expecting a different result?  You can't improve the system if you don't know what results it produces and since the desired results from an educational system are educated kids you have to find out if they have, in fact, been educated at the end of the day.  I don't see any other way to do that than to test their skills and knowledge.

You have made it pretty clear that you don't believe teachers can significantly influence the educational state of their students. (your missionary analogy) If that's the case then why are we paying people to teach at all?  

I don't agree with you.  I think a teacher has a huge influence on kids.  The better the teacher the more influence he can exert and vice versa.

Since Ookla is just about the most reasonable and level-headed person I know I'm going to take his implication that I'm not making sense to heart.  Forgive me if I've offended.

[Skar]

And as for the comic.  All it does is show that teachers need to exercise flexibility in their teaching methods.  Regulating how they teach, as you suggest, is just going to lock teachers into "traditional" methods. (whatever the methods are, they will become traditional and will not work for everyone). Poor Rudy, the exception, would be just as screwed.

If the system is crafted to reward teachers for teaching according to a certain methodology your going to get teachers who teach to that methodology (If the methodology doesn't help Rudy, Rudy's out of luck.)

If the system is crafted to reward teachers for producing educated children you're going to get educated children.  The teachers themselves will seek out ways to teach Rudy that work for him because they get rewarded for doing so.

[JP Dogberry]

Bad Teachers are Instructors primarily. Good teachers are a number of things, and if I had to pick one Primarily it would not be an "Instructor" but a "Facilitator." They don't so much teach things as facilitate activities and situations that cause the students to teach themselves. Much more effective, and if you do it well enough, the students never realise they're doing work.

It is the sign of a good teacher that has a class who says "Oh, he's a terrible teacher, all his classes are a total bludge" and then they all go and score well on the test.

Which is sort of hypocritical to what I'm going to say, and that's that if you're teaching to a test, you're teaching one thing, and that's how to pass the test, rather than the greater variety of skills that are more useful to the student. This of course comes into test design, which is why I heartily approve of the QCS. It's not easy to make a test that to prove the ability to solve problems, express yourself using writing, comprehend a variety of text types using multiliteracy skills, perform arithmatic and do it all succesfully, but any test that does it fine. The problem is you don't get tests like that, you get stuff with multiple choice questions. You can test one thing with Multiple choice questions: how skilled they are at multiple choice questions.

Case in point: I didn't go to the lecture or do the readings. In the Tute, I was given an eleven question multiple choice pop quiz. I got ten.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I had to look up "bludge" on dictionary.com...never would have guessed that though perhaps from context. It made me think of "bludgeon"...

[42]

Wow, I have to start using bludge in my everyday vocabulary now.

My job is such bludge.
My boss is a total bludger.

I'm still going to avoid discussing the standardized testinng issue. I have lots of issues with it. Mostly because they never answer what will be done with kids who don't meet the standard and never will.

[JP Dogberry]

Yeah, sorry, forgot that Bludge is Austrlian slang. We use it rather a lot here, but not THAT much. We decribe a lazy person as a bludger, but we rarely use it as an insult. I always describe classes as a "Bludge class", or I used to when I had bludge classes. Now I'm at uni, if I had bludge classes I'd simply not go.

[Skar]

By instructor I meant someone who sees their primary goal as teaching.  This is opposed to a teacher who sees his primary goal as making kids like him, or feel good about themselves, or teaching them about social norms, or how to be good citizens, or lecturing or keeping them from having fun.  

[Skar]

Mostly because they never answer what will be done with kids who don't meet the standard and never will.

What would you do with them?