Archives for category: Technology

You too can generate an essay on the Babel Generator created by Professor Les Perelman at MIT.

 

I put in three key words: education, privatization, absurd, and here is my essay. I asked Professor Perelman to run it through the grading machine. Unfortunately it scored only a 4 out of 6. Very disappointing. I used to be a good student.

 

 

 

Didactics to subjugation will always be an experience of humankind. Human life will always civilize education; many for diagnoses but a few of the amanuensis. Myrmidon at absurd lies in the search for reality and the realm of reality. From the fact that denationalization excommunicates the denouncements involved of civilizations, humanity should propagate absurd immediately.

 

As I have learned in my semantics class, mankind will always laud absurd. The same brain may counteract two different pendulums for the study of literature on the celebration to catalyze gamma rays by observation. Despite the fact that radiation receives a gamma ray with the casuistry, information emits brains at pilfering. Interference is not the only thing a neutrino on allocutions implodes; it also processes simulation to pedagogy. If drones compel the assiduous mesmerism, agriculturalists for an authentication which shriek but ascertain demolition inquire too with denationalization. The sooner the accumulation permeates reticently potent advancements, the less salvers consent.

 

Expulsion, often of vernacular, fascinates the absurd. Because of diagnosing many of the analyses, embroideries which divulge respondents allege as well at privatization. Furthermore, a demonstration to those involved, typically by propagandists, may be reticent but not tantalizing on privatization. In my semiotics class, most of the advances by my concurrence proclaim confluences. Nonetheless, armed with the knowledge that propagation can unavoidably be the consequence that may be a quip with the inquiry, many of the admonishments for our personal escapade to the atelier we retort verify diagnoses. In my experience, almost all of the arrangements with our personal disenfranchisement at the assumption we analyze account. Since then, forefather encompasses adherents on quarrels of my reprobate. a precinct advocates, not pique. Our personal orator for the speculation we surround should certainly be the obvious contretemps and inaugurates a sophist that exposes superfluously or peripherally tenacious avocations. The sooner mien is supercilious yet somehow fecund, the more organisms declare a response.

 

According to professor of semantics the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., privatization is the most fundamental appetite of society. The plasma by rationalization implodes to react. Information with an affirmation oscillates to process the brain. The orbital is not the only thing gravity reproduces; it also counteracts radiation on educational activity. Because adjurations which expel assassins are rationalized by absurd, an abundance of pedagogy can be more blindly denigrated. Permeation at intercessions for denationalisation changes a gregariously prelapsarian didactics.

 

Privatisation to edification has not, and doubtlessly never will be rivetingly erratic. Even so, knowing that commission may be the congregation, all of the utterances on my scenario advance and choreograph the utterance. By quibbling, a lack of educational activity can be more undeniably pondered. Teaching at an agronomist will always be a component of human society. Instead of remunerating masochist, education constitutes both a strident concession and a blithe circumscription.

 

 

Apparently the company that scores the essays has been getting some Babel entries, because it has guidelines offering the following advice:

 

 

“4. What is meant by a “good faith” essay?

“It is important to note that although PEG software is extremely reliable in terms of producing scores that are comparable to those awarded by human judges, it can be fooled. Computers, like humans, are not perfect.
“PEG presumes “good faith” essays authored by “motivated” writers. A “good faith” essay is one that reflects the writer’s best efforts to respond to the assignment and the prompt without trickery or deceit. A “motivated” writer is one who genuinely wants to do well and for whom the assignment has some consequence (a grade, a factor in admissions or hiring, etc.).
“Efforts to “spoof” the system by typing in gibberish, repetitive phrases, or off-topic, illogical prose will produce illogical and essentially meaningless results.”


Professor Les Perelman at MIT created a “babel generator” with his students that can produce elegant essays that are gibberish.

 

Fred Klonsky offers examples here, as well as the link to the babel generator.

 

Try your luck at writing an essay that will fool the computer. It isn’t hard.

 

A reader recently submitted one of Shakespeare’s sonnets to the grading machine, and it got a low score. Or so he claimed.

 

Most PARCC exams will be computer-scored.

 

Here is an essay that scored a 6, which is very high-performing:

 

ScoreItNow!

 

 

Analyze an Issue Topic: In most professions and academic fields, imagination is more important than knowledge.

 

 

 

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim.

 

 

In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position

 

 

 

Your Answer:

 

 

 

Careers with corroboration has not, and in all likelihood never will be compassionate, gratuitous, and disciplinary. Mankind will always proclaim noesis; many for a trope but a few on executioner. a quantity of vocation lies in the study of reality as well as the area of semantics. Why is imaginativeness so pulverous to happenstance? The reply to this query is that knowledge is vehemently and boisterously contemporary. Benevolence, usually by confrontation, might enthrall career. If nearly all of the sanctions assure a concession of the swiftly or tantalizingly enthusiastic rejoinder, the consummate cognition can be more multifariously provoked. Additionally, an orbital is not the only thing simulation reacts; it also spins at knowledge. Our personal countenance on the accusation we diagnose can scrupulously be a circumspection. Be that as it may, knowing that inducement can be the oration, most of the avocations to my inspection belie toxic agreements. In my philosophy class, all of the appendages by our personal altruist of the inquiry we expedite allocate circumscriptions which advocate with accessions but reprove boundary that should potently be a aggregation and abandon performances for convulsions. Imagination which is contemptibly in how much we adhere assimilates melange of our personal advance to the administration we adjure as well. a quarrel will erroneously be a lamentation on the authentication, not an escapade. In my experience, none of the salvers by our personal amplification at the affirmation we authorize masticate consideration that journeys but incline. an abundance of vision changes plethora for careers. As I have learned in my literature class, humanity will always foretell calling. Even though the brain counteracts a gamma ray to veracity, the same pendulum may catalyze two different neutrinoes with the promptly erroneous contentment. Although the same neuron may receive two different brains, radiation processes orbitals of speculations on an appetite. The plasma is not the only thing a gamma ray oscillates; it also transmits neutrinoes for torpor at the authorization by imaginativeness. The assassination of imagination changes a plethora of calling. The less extraneous respondents articulate precincts, the more an explanation amplifies those in question. Irreverence, normally on the propagandist, exhibits career. As a result of culminating, all of the circumstances respond equally with careers. Also, vocation to accumulations will always be an experience of humankind. In my theory of knowledge class, some of the postulates of my aborigine sublimate embroideries by the search for semiotics. Still yet, armed with the knowledge that privation can be a conveyance or attests, many of the allocations for my exile ascertain recrudescence and agree. In my philosophy class, almost all of the celebrations at our personal demonstration by the avocation we induce forsake amygdalas which attain the amygdala with the civilization on excess that tantalizes accumulations or implore tyroes. Imagination which pledges subjugation may rivetingly be provocation or is faltering but not speculating of my appendage also. a situational augur feigns the people involved, not resourcefulness. Our personal congregation to the affront we stipulate should be the accession. The sedulously despicable imagination changes a quantity of noesis. The squalidly but drowsily ashen masochism, usually with the search for literature, circumscribes knowledge. Noesis which will effectively be an axiom changes a frugal knowledge. Additionally, while the neuron for respondum spins, the same brain may process two different orbitals at inducement. In my reality class, none of the accusations on my agriculturalist implore mournfully but slightly penal advocates but sublimate multitude. Still yet, armed with the knowledge that validation is pedantic, substantiated, and inflexible, all of the queries by our personal respondent with the assimilationist we edify commandeer the people involved of the countenance. In my experience, most of the tropes to our personal report for the casuistry we recount report. The explanation on career can virtually be irreverence that howls and annotates performances which accede at our personal scrutinization to the apprentice we command too. an authentication may be scrupulousness, not ligature by orators. Our personal organism with the altruist we embolden laments state-of-affairs that is prototypical yet somehow fecund. By the fact that all of the probes are bemoaned for imagination, disrupting interlopers culminate to the same extent on cognition. Knowledge has not, and undoubtedly never will be scrupulous yet somehow agreed. However, armed with the knowledge that an amanuensis with exposures advances, all of the injunctions for my circumscription ruminate. By the fact that disparaging reprovers are incensed at knowledge, most of the circumscriptions protrude too by cognition. Vision will always be a part of human society. Noesis is the most precarious agriculturalist of human life. As I have learned in my semantics class, human society will always enlightenment career. Interference emits simulation to transmit plasmas. Despite the fact that the same pendulum may counteract two different gamma rays to diagnoses, the neuron receives interference. Gravity of dissemination for the assassin is not the only thing a neutrino inverts; it also processes pendulums at humanity to noesis. The sooner accumulations undertake salvers, the sooner an adjuration diverges. As a result of accounting, most of the concurrences which rationalize the abominable augur allude too by imagination. Calling has not, and undoubtedly never will be aggravating in the way we encounter mortification but delineate the reprimand that should be inclination. Nonetheless, armed with the knowledge that the analysis augurs stealth with propagandists, almost all of the utterances on my authorization journey. Since sanctions are performed at knowledge, a quantity of vocation can be more gaudily inspected. Knowledge will always be a part of society. Vocation is the most presumptuously perilous assassination of mankind.

Andreas Schleicher, who is education director for the OECD and oversees the international assessment PISA, spoke recently in Australia. He was especially concerned about the overuse of technology in schools.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on his comments:

“Private, Catholic and public schools are reducing their reliance on laptops and tablets following a damning international assessment and concerns over the impact of social media on learning.

“The reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools today,” the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s education chief Andreas Schleicher told world leaders at a global education forum this month.

“Last week, John Vallance, the principal of one of Sydney’s most expensive private schools, Sydney Grammar, said that laptops were not necessary in class and that more traditional teaching methods were more effective.

“Schools in the Catholic sector are also moving away from laptop centred learning after an OECD report found that countries which have invested heavily in education technology have seen no noticeable improvement in their performances in results for reading, mathematics or science.

“Australia has spent $2.4 billion putting laptops in the bags of as many schoolchildren as possible through the Digital Education Revolution of the Rudd and Gillard governments.

“Education is a bit like the stock market, it overshoots.” said St Paul’s Catholic College principal Mark Baker. “Computers have been oversold and there is no evidence that it improve outcomes. Giving out laptops was the educational equivalent of putting pink batts in people’s roofs”.

“Mr Baker said every school in NSW has become a Google or an Apple school. “If I put McDonald’s signs all over the school saying McDonald’s was bringing you education, there would be an outcry.”

“The Manly school has banned laptops for one day a week in an effort to get pupils out onto the sporting field and away from LCD screens. “If you say that at an education meeting you are branded as an educational dinosaur,” the principal of 17 years told Fairfax Media….

“While laptops have brought a plethora of resources to the fingertips of students, educators remain concerned about their use as tools of distraction….

A new survey of 1000 young adults has found that 39 per cent obsessively compare their life and achievements to others on social media, according to the Optus Digital Thumbprint program.

Mr Baker believes that removing the centrality of the laptop in the classroom might be the first step in getting that balance back.

“Parents expect schools to have the technology,” he said. “The issue is the appropriateness. Anyone who says we should stop using textbooks is peddling dangerous nonsense.”

“Education leaders agree: “If we want our children to be smarter than a smartphone then we have to think harder,” Mr Schleicher said.”

There is no link for this story, but ipt out leaders are buzzing with the news that children with cognitive disabilities will be tested online this spring. In the past, these children were give performance assessments in line with their IEPS. One parent called this “cruel and unusual punishment” for these vulnerable children. A personal call to a high-ranking state official confirmed that this decision was made by State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, without consulting the Board of Regents.

No, it is not “all about the kids.

In the wake of massive technology breakdowns in the online testing in Tennessee and Alaska, this teacher posted a warning:

“Based on my experiences trying to teach lessons with various age groups in the computer lab, I must say I am not surprised by the technology issues when giving a statewide test. The Buffalo Publc School System couldn’t support a normal day’s worth of computer use. In our lab of thirty computers, a number of computers were broken and wouldn’t turn on, several were missing a keyboard or the mouse, some kids forgot their passwords, the hardware took at least five minutes to boot up, and some computers crashed or froze midlesson.

“In a state like New York with over a million students, I shiver to think about the log jam that will occur when everyone logs in at once. Alaska’s problems will look like a walk in the park.

“Of course, they all think it can’t happen here. I simply refer the administrators to Murphy’s Law when the make their arrangements.”

Politico reports this morning:

 

 

PARCC says many states with Common Core-based assessments will use automated scoring for student essays this year. A spokesman says that in these states, about two-thirds of all student essays will be scored automatically, while one-third will be human-scored. As in the past, a spokesman said about 10 percent of all responses will be randomly selected to receive a second score as part of a general check. States can still opt to have all essays hand-scored.

 

This is another reason to opt out of the state testing.

 

Do you think that PARCC is unaware of the studies by Les Perelman at MIT that show the inadequacy of computer-graded scoring of essays?

 

Here is a quote from an interview with Professor Perelman, conducted by Steve Kolowich of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

 

 

“Les Perelman, a former director of undergraduate writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sits in his wife’s office and reads aloud from his latest essay.

 

“Privateness has not been and undoubtedly never will be lauded, precarious, and decent,” he reads. “Humankind will always subjugate privateness.”

 

Not exactly E.B. White. Then again, Mr. Perelman wrote the essay in less than one second, using the Basic Automatic B.S. Essay Language Generator, or Babel, a new piece of weaponry in his continuing war on automated essay-grading software.

 

“The Babel generator, which Mr. Perelman built with a team of students from MIT and Harvard University, can generate essays from scratch using as many as three keywords.

 

“For this essay, Mr. Perelman has entered only one keyword: “privacy.” With the click of a button, the program produced a string of bloated sentences that, though grammatically correct and structurally sound, have no coherent meaning. Not to humans, anyway. But Mr. Perelman is not trying to impress humans. He is trying to fool machines.

 

“Software vs. Software

 

“Critics of automated essay scoring are a small but lively band, and Mr. Perelman is perhaps the most theatrical. He has claimed to be able to guess, from across a room, the scores awarded to SAT essays, judging solely on the basis of length. (It’s a skill he happily demonstrated to a New York Times reporter in 2005.) In presentations, he likes to show how the Gettysburg Address would have scored poorly on the SAT writing test. (That test is graded by human readers, but Mr. Perelman says the rubric is so rigid, and time so short, that they may as well be robots.)

 

“In 2012 he published an essay that employed an obscenity (used as a technical term) 46 times, including in the title.

 

“Mr. Perelman’s fundamental problem with essay-grading automatons, he explains, is that they “are not measuring any of the real constructs that have to do with writing.” They cannot read meaning, and they cannot check facts. More to the point, they cannot tell gibberish from lucid writing.”

A Korean grandmaster of the game Go finally beat a computer designed by Google. 

 

After losing three times in a row, Lee Sedol finally found weaknesses in the computer that beat him.

 

Lee had said earlier in the series, which began last week, that he was unable to beat AlphaGo because he could not find any weaknesses in the software’s strategy.

 

But after Sunday’s match, the 33-year-old South Korean Go grandmaster, who has won 18 international championships, said he found two weaknesses in the artificial intelligence program.

 

Lee said that when he made an unexpected move, AlphaGo responded with a move as if the program had a bug, indicating that the machine lacked the ability to deal with surprises.

 

AlphaGo also had more difficulty when it played with a black stone, according to Lee. In Go, two players take turns putting black or white stones on a 19-by-19-line grid, with a goal of putting more territory under one’s control. A player with a black stone plays first and a white-stone player gets extra points to compensate.

 

Lee played with a white stone on Sunday. For the final match of the series, scheduled for Tuesday, Lee has offered to play with a black stone, saying it would make a victory more meaningful.

 

South Korean commentators could not hide their excitement three hours into Sunday’s match, when it became clear that Lee would finally notch a win. AlphaGo narrowed the gap with Lee, but could not overtake him, resigning nearly five hours into the game.

 

I am for the human. Let the machines cheer for the machine.

Peter Greene eviscerates an article advocating competency based education for teacher education.

The claim for technology starts with the assertion that traditional teacher education is worthless, which explains why there are so many bad teachers. But you don’t have to be a fan of such programs to object to a technological fix.

Greene writes:

“Let me step aside for a moment to note that I am not the person you want to defend traditional teacher prep programs. I was trained in a non-traditional program with far fewer hours of education courses before student teaching and far more support and coursework while I was getting my classroom practice on. I happily await the day that some college education department calls me up and invites me to re-configure their system, because I have more than a few ideas.

“I should also note that debating study versus practice in teacher prep strikes me as just as useful as endlessly arguing about whether there should be more hugging or kissing with your romantic partner. If you are arguing violently for mostly one at the exclusion of the other, you’ve lost sight of the point.”

“I’m a little nervous that Riccards is dreaming of an EdTPA type of program, with videos and a set of standard behaviors that can be evaluated at a distance. That idea is a snare and a delusion. It does not work. It will never work.

“This also feels like one of those attempts to remove subjective personal judgment from the process. That is also a snare and a delusion.

“Teachers have to be educated by other teachers. That is why student teaching works– daily constant supervision and feedback by a master teacher who knows what she’s doing. That experience is best when it rests on a foundation of subject matter, child development, and pedagogical knowledge. It also works best when the student teacher is helped to find her own teacher voice; co-operating teachers who try to mold mini-me’s are not helpful.

“The computer era has led to the resurrection of CBE because computing capacities promise the capability of an enormously complicated Choose Your Own Adventure individualized approach to learning– but that capacity is still not enough for any sort of learning that goes beyond fairly simple, tightly focused tasks. Sure– creating a CBE teacher prep program would be super easy– all you have to do is write out a response for every possible combination of teacher, students and content in the world. And then link it all together in a tagged and sequenced program. And then come up with a clear, objective way to measure every conceivable competency, from “Teacher makes six year old who’s sad about his sick dog comfortable with solving a two-digit addition problem when he didn’t actually raise his hand” to “Teacher is able to engage two burly sixteen-year-old males who are close to having a fist fight over the one guy’s sister to discuss tonal implications of Shakespeare’s use of prose interludes in Romeo and Juliet.”

We count on Peter to be the voice of common sense and experience.

Caitlin Emma reports in Politico from the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, where thousands of ed tech entrepreneurs meet and greet:

 

 

DISPATCH FROM SXSWedu: Thousands of students have indicated that they’re interested in getting credit since Arizona State University and edX announced [http://politico.pro/1UbIAgi ] a partnership last year to make freshman year available to students entirely online, allowing students to complete the courses and then decide later whether they want to pay for academic credit. edX CEO Anant Agarwal told our own Caitlin Emma at SXSWedu in Austin that while just 323 learners were actually eligible for credit in the Global Freshman Academy’s first year, he expects that to grow. Having online courses deliver real credit has rocketed edX into an era of “MOOCS 2.0,” he said. Thinking ahead, Agarwal said he’s also focused on a recent announcement [http://bit.ly/1U28unX ] to pilot “MicroMaster’s,” which will allow learners to take a semester of courses online and then spend a single semester on campus. The pilot now offers only the courses in “supply chain management,” but Agarwal said he hopes to expand it to dozens of subject areas in the coming years.

 

 

ARIZONA’S APPETITE FOR A MENU OF TESTS: There’s a good chance that Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will sign a bill that would make the state the first in the nation to offer schools a menu of assessment options. The legislation doesn’t let parents opt children out of tests, but would comes as the opt-out movement warns of another strong showing this spring. The state board would have to approve alternative tests. State lawmakers envision a scenario where schools use the ACT instead of the state standardized test, for example. The Obama administration has supported some states that wanted to move from the state test to the ACT or SAT in high school for accountability. And the Every Student Succeeds Act provides states with the flexibility to pursue this option. But federal officials might take issue with individual schools using different tests for accountability because it could become difficult to measure student learning across the state and hold all schools accountable to a similar standard. More in The Republic: http://bit.ly/1UcaNng.

 

 

As I have said many times on this blog, standardized tests should never be used as a graduation requirement or for accountability. An accountability test should be akin to a test for a driver’s license, not norm-referenced. This is called a criterion-referenced test. Everyone who is able to meet the agreed-upon requirements should be able to do so. A norm-referenced test guarantees that a certain proportion must fail.

As we have seen again and again, in the rhetoric  of the Gates Foundation, Mark Zuckerberg, and assorted tech entrepreneurs, “personalized learning” means learning on a machine. In typical corporate reform talk, where up means down and reform means destruction, personalized means impersonalized.

 

And here it comes, as described by Politico Education:

 

“DISPATCH FROM SXSWedu: “Who here has ever complained about No Child Left Behind?” iNACOL President and CEO Susan Patrick asked a room full of people during a panel discussion at SXSWedu in Austin. The vast majority of hands shot up, our own Caitlin Emma reports. “The future is now,” she said. The Every Student Succeeds Act represents an “incredible opportunity,” Lillian Pace of KnowledgeWorks said: States couldn’t fully implement personalized learning systems under No Child Left Behind, but now there’s an opportunity to do something different. That’s particularly true when it comes to testing, she said. And there’s been a lot of discussion at SXSWedu about what New Hampshire is already doing with its Performance Assessment for Competency Education pilot. It took a while to get federal officials on board, New Hampshire Deputy Education Commissioner Paul Leather said. Leather said he first pitched former Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the idea just six months into the Obama administration. But Duncan told Leather to come back when the idea was more fully formed. So Leather did and blew Duncan away with his presentation: New Hampshire’s assessment pilot received federal approval last year.

 

“- Leather said his state has been working on competency education for about two decades. “It’s not a Johnny come lately” idea for the state and it shouldn’t be one for other states, he said. Seven states will have the opportunity to pilot [http://politico.pro/1QCPQAx ] innovative assessment systems under ESSA. But New Hampshire is a pioneer and for most states that are considering applying for the pilot, it’s their only frame of reference for an innovative assessment system, Pace said. States considering these systems should think carefully about what works best for them, Leather said – because what works for New Hampshire won’t necessarily work everywhere.”