A long way from the Galapagos

As Darwin discovered when he jumped off the Beagle and onto the pristine shores of the Galapagos; in nature the strongest survive. Those who are best equipped are most likely to find a mate and propagate, strengthening the species. This may be true for the Galapagos finches and tortoises, but the process of evolution stops in my community.

No other species on the planet actively works against evolution like we do. We support those who can not support themselves. When they propagate, we support them further and the cycle often continues.

As a teacher, what concerns me is that despite valiant attempts to differentiate curriculum the trend in many classrooms is teach to the lower end or, at best, lower middle. Students are coming into secondary school at age 13 with a reading ability of a 6 year old. This might make them the best reader in their home for some. These students can not do the class work at their year level, so the answer is for the teacher to provide work at a level that they can work to. In any given class there might be 10 distinct ability levels. How does the teacher cater to this?

But this is exactly what teachers attempt to do. Heaven forbid a student might find out that they are lacking in some area. We cater to their deficiencies, tell them they can achieve anything and never let them get a scent of failure. At least, that is, until they leave the safety of the school yard and face the real world.

If only someone had got to the Galapagos before Darwin and bent all the shrubbery down for the poor short neck turtles to eat, they wouldn't have had to bother with evolving longer necks. Unfortunately if the shrub bender let them fend for themselves after turtle adolescence they would have starved to death as Galapagos amphibians have a far poorer social security system than in my community.

I have no answer to our anti-evolutionary pathway. Of course we should support the less able, I just wonder about the sustainability of going against a natural process that seems to have done quite well for quite some time.

Come for a ride in my Trabant

Students across Victoria will be rejoicing in the fact that they have a long weekend. Teachers however, will be turning up to work to experience the wonder of the 'Ultranet', for most it will be their first look.
The Ultranet is a fantastic idea, it was even better 6 or so years ago when work first started on it. The dream was for the Ultranet to do all of the amazing things Web 2.0 was offering teachers, but to put it into a safer environment for the students. What eventuated was the online equivalent of communist cars.

The communist leaders could see that transport was a good thing, it was obvious, but sadly not everyone could access this means of getting from one place to another. "We will build them a car" they said, and they set about doing so. What eventuated were the distinctive communist cars such as pictured to the left. These machines were not good. They were poorly engineered death traps. In fact, during the war enemies of Germany considered the cars driven by the Nazi's as allies as they killed so many of their drivers. To say that these cars were not as good as others which could be purchased around the world is quite an understatement, they did however, intermittently, transport people which was of course the core business of the car.

So too, the Ultranet does provide some of the core functions of the wider Web 2.0 toolbox, if you are lucky enough to be online while it is not in the shop with techies looking under its bonnet. The tools are there, they're just more cumbersome to use. In a Web 2.0 car you adjust the seat back an inch by lifting the lever and lightly pushing back until in position. In the Ultranet car you undo the bolts, take the seat out, drill new holes in the supports and then screw the seat back in. Firstly however you'll have to run down to the hardware store to get new bolts as the holes are now a different size. But in the end, you are sitting where you want to be.

It is only early in the production of this model however, and first runs always have some bugs (Did anyone else have the terrible first model Holden VN?). The concern for me is not the current issues. The concern for me is that the automobile industry is innovating at great pace; hybrids, electic cars, fuel saving technologies, emmission controls. So too are the techno geniuses at google and the like. Web tools are already far ahead of the functionality of the Ultranet and moving forward. My greatest concern is how big will the gap get?