Article+Summaries

 **l.Marshall Memo 364** A Weekly Round-up of Important Ideas and Research in K-12 Education  December 13, 2010    =  = =  = =  = =  = = 1. Is Pushing Out Ineffective Teachers the Right Thing to Do? =  In this powerful // Kappan // article, University of Chicago researcher Sara Ray Stoelinga describes some of the ways principals use “harassing supervision” to make underperforming teachers so uncomfortable they leave:  - A teacher who has used the same first-floor classroom for 23 years is transferred to a room on the fourth floor and given a schedule that requires her to walk up and down several times a day; climbing stairs is difficult for her.  - A teacher who has taught eighth grade for 14 years is assigned to teach first grade. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - A principal makes several unannounced supervisory visits to a teacher’s classroom each week. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - A teacher is required to attend professional development sessions three times a month while a substitute covers his class. In each of these cases, harassing supervision worked: the teacher left the school within two years. Stoelinga says that Chicago principals she’s talked with over the last 15 years have been surprisingly open about this practice. Usually they volunteered information when asked about roadblocks to school improvement. Principals felt somewhat guilty, but they rationalized harassing supervision in three ways: • // Caring about students // – One principal said, “I hate being this guy, this terrible person who is putting this teacher in 1st grade when he is an 8th-grade teacher. On the other hand, I hate what he is doing to kids more. To protect students and give them what they need, I have to move poor teachers like him out regardless of the personal toll on him or on me.” • // Removing bad apples // – Principals talked about the poisonous effect of teachers who had bad classroom management, screamed at students, were negative in staff meetings, or couldn’t get along with their colleagues. • // Accountability // – Principals felt that removing ineffective teachers was essential to keeping their jobs and not having their schools closed or reconstituted. So why don’t principals go through the formal evaluation and dismissal process? There are a number of reasons: • // Flaws in the evaluation process // – “The lack of an effective, rigorous, and fair teacher evaluation system fuels the need and incentive for principals to use harassing supervision,” says Stoelinga. • // Weak training // – Many new principals and those in underperforming schools have not had good preparation in hiring, supervision, and evaluation. • // Lack of guts // – “I have three teachers I am pushing out right now,” said one principal. “All three were rated Excellent in the last evaluation cycle, so now I have to get creative.” • // A weak pool // – In addition, there’s a shortage of high-quality teacher candidates. This results in teachers who shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. • // Ineffective professional development // – “There should be some relationship between what I write on an evaluation of a teacher and the professional development we are providing here,” confided one principal, “and there just isn’t.” This means there are teachers with potential who are not developed – and they sometimes become targets of harassing supervision. • // High principal turnover // – “Given the constant churn,” says Stoelinga, “principals are more likely to inherit staff who were hired and evaluated by other principals.” “Harassing supervision is an imperfect response of principals to a set of imperfect circumstances,” concludes Stoelinga. One Chicago principal put it this way: “When you have a system where you are doing crazy things like messing with teacher room assignments and praying someone will leave, that is the mark of an insane system.” Stoelinga says there are several serious downsides to harassing supervision, all of which point to the need to revamp the process for supervising, supporting, and evaluating teachers: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Harassing supervision often pushes ineffective teachers from one school to another – the “dance of the lemons.” <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - It pushes teachers out who, with the right professional development, might become effective. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - It undermines the trust, cooperative relationships, and moral leadership required to improve schools. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - It saps the principals’ morale. “I never feel good about it, not at all,” said one principal. “It is so underhanded, so disrespectful.” Stoelinga concludes, “Harassing supervision makes it clear that reforming schools is as much about changing the nature of schools as workplaces for adults as it is about improving schools as institutions of learning for children. And perhaps the two are not unrelated.” “Pressuring Teachers to Leave: Honest Talk About How Principals Use Harassing Supervision” by Sara Ray Stoelinga in // Phi Delta Kappan //, December 2010/January 2011 (Vol. 92, #4, p. 57-61) = <span style="font-family: 'Times','serif'; font-size: 14pt;">2. Identifying High-Leverage Teaching Practices = (Originally titled “Teaching Skillful Teaching”) Some believe that teaching requires little more than patience, content knowledge, and liking children, say University of Michigan/Ann Arbor education dean Deborah Loewenberg Ball and doctoral student Francesca Forzani in this thoughtful // Educational Leadership // article. In fact, effective teaching “demands special kinds of knowledge and skill that most individuals do not naturally possess,” including: • // Making expertise explicit // – “At its heart, teaching involves being able to ‘unpack’ something one knows well to make it accessible to and learnable by someone else,” say Ball and Forzani. “Teaching is unnatural in that it demands not only skill in a given domain, but also the ability to take that skill apart so others can learn it.” An expert tennis player, for example, isn’t automatically a good tennis teacher. • // Seeing the world through students’ eyes // – “Even if a teacher remembers what helped her solve linear equations, write a good paragraph, or understand the concept of gravity, this may not help her students,” say Ball and Forzani. “[T]eaching without attention to learners’ perspectives and prior knowledge is like flying a plane in fog without instruments.” • // Working with groups // – Lawyers and doctors usually work one-on-one with their clients; teachers must somehow orchestrate learning for a whole class. Teacher proficiency in these three areas is at the heart of improving underperforming schools, say Ball and Forzani. Unfortunately, most teacher-education programs do a mediocre job, and too many teachers learn on the job, which can result in: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Improvising ways of teaching that are ineffective; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Teaching students mnemonic devices that help them remember but not understand; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Favoring some children; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Using punitive discipline techniques. “Winging it doesn’t work,” say Ball and Forzani. There’s a crying need to “identify a common set of high-leverage practices that underlie effective teaching and to develop ways to teach them.” To fill this void, they have launched the Teacher Education Initiative at the University of Michigan. Their team narrowed an initial list of more than 200 teaching practices to 19 high-leverage practices that significantly increase student learning. One example: the teacher’s ability to recognize ideas and misconceptions that students at a particular grade level have when they encounter a given idea (e.g., why fifth graders are so often confused by the process of photosynthesis). The Teacher Education Initiative also aims to help teachers build on student strengths – for example, using African-American adolescents’ experience with word play to engage in complex literary analysis. As they have worked to identify high-leverage practices, researchers have grappled with three challenges: • // Each subject area has different demands //. The kinds of questions that spur learning in a history class are quite different from those that are effective in a math class. • // Cultural context matters //. “Introducing 9th graders to the work of Maya Angelou may be a somewhat different task in a suburban Connecticut classroom than it is in a classroom in rural Mississippi,” say Ball and Forzani. • // The knowledge base is undeveloped //. Other professions have broken down skills to a helpful “grain size” – for example, medical students learning how to conduct a physical examination – but for the most part, education hasn’t. Teaching goals and evaluation criteria tend to be too microscopic – for example, wait-time – or too abstract – “Planning instruction” or “Engaging students in using methods of inquiry.” A more useful grain size would include the specific skills such as: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Launching a task with students; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Conducting a whole-group discussion; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Creating norms for talking and listening; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Using learning goals to keep the discussion focused on its point; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Quickly checking on students’ understanding; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Figuring out and responding to what students say; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Connecting students’ contributions; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Tying up the discussion; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Writing careful feedback on a student’s essay; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Designing an assessment that will give helpful information on learning; <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Discussing a student’s progress with a caregiver. “Teachers who cannot marshal these skills effectively may be able to generate some collective talk in their classrooms but will be limited in their ability to use discussions to achieve specific learning goals,” say Ball and Forzani. A major goal of the Teacher Education Initiative is to steer the teaching profession away from idiosyncratic, on-the-spot improvisation that is often unproductive. “Surgeons do not invent techniques at their pleasure that fit their ‘style,’” say Ball and Forzani. “Pilots do not creatively land planes. Of course, skilled practitioners flexibly adapt to conditions, but they do not make up practices according to their individual ‘way’ of doing things. There is a professionally based bottom line: Surgeons must meticulously carry out procedures that result in high levels of success; pilots must land planes safely. Teachers, too, must teach skillfully so their students learn.” Identifying those common practices, they believe, will provide a common professional language for teacher training, professional development, and evaluation. “Teaching Skillful Teaching” by Deborah Loewenberg Ball and Francesca Forzani in // Educational Leadership //, December 2010/January 2011 (Vol. 68, #4, p. 40-45), = <span style="font-family: 'Times','serif'; font-size: 14pt;">3. What to Look for When Selecting Teachers = (Originally titled “Good Teachers May Not Fit the Mold”) In this // Educational Leadership // article, McREL researcher Bryan Goodwin reports what the research is saying about the characteristics of effective teachers. __What matters more__: • // Verbal and cognitive ability // – Given that teachers spend most of their time thinking on their feet and communicating with students, this is hardly surprising. One 1996 study found that teachers’ ACT scores had more influence on student achievement than the // combined // impact of class size, teaching experience, and students’ SES. • // Adequate knowledge of their content area // – Good teachers know their subject well, but PhD-level mastery isn’t necessary to get results. • // Pedagogical content knowledge // – Teachers who know // how // to teach their subject well do better than those with just content knowledge. • // Belief that all students can learn // – Teachers’ expectations matter. • // Belief in their own abilities // – Teachers’ self-efficacy is also important. • // Ability to connect with students // – Teachers’ warmth, empathy, and “non-directivity” correlates with higher student participation, motivation, and achievement. __ What matters less: __ • // Traditional credentials // – A major study comparing high-school student achievement and teachers’ credentials found little correlation. The one exception is National Board certification, which is correlated with higher achievement. • // Advanced degrees // – Master’s degrees and higher are not linked to achievement; in fact, one study found a slightly // negative // correlation between advanced degrees and student achievement. The only exception is master’s degrees in math and science, which have a positive impact on high-school student achievement. • // Extensive classroom experience // – Rookie teachers are on a steep learning curve for the first few years, but effectiveness usually reaches its peak after five years. Beyond this, additional years of experience rarely produce higher skill levels. “Good Teachers May Not Fit the Mold” by Bryan Goodwin in // Educational Leadership //, December 2010/January 2011 (Vol. 68, #4, p. 79-80), = <span style="font-family: 'Times','serif'; font-size: 14pt;">4. Intensive Weeklong Supervision = (Originally titled “A Week of Observations”) In this intriguing // Educational Leadership // article, Boston charter school principal Jenne Colasacco says that she had been doing weekly or bi-weekly 20-minute mini-observations and putting a feedback form in teachers’ mailboxes, sometimes followed up with informal chats. But this approach wasn’t helping teachers grow. So last year, Colasacco tried something different: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Teachers chose a week for intensive supervision of one class each day of the week. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Colasacco met with each teacher beforehand and discussed lesson plans, objectives, and focus areas. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - She observed the full class period Monday and Tuesday and shared written notes. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - She met with the teacher Wednesday to discuss the notes. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - She watched the same class Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, continuing to give written feedback. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - At the end of the week, she gave the teacher summative feedback in this format and met to discuss how the week had gone. Colasacco describes a one-week cycle with an AP calculus teacher who didn’t respond to her Monday suggestions to check for understanding with quiet students. In the Wednesday conference, she was clearer and more direct, and the teacher followed up with a new approach. Afterward, he said, “Now I see what you mean. This is good – I will do it from now on.” Colasacco acknowledges that there are some downsides to this approach: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Teachers had advance notice of supervisory visits. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Emergencies sometimes interrupted the five-day cycle. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Teachers were observed only two times a year. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - The momentum from the first cycle was sometimes lost. However, Colasacco believes she was able to observe and analyze instruction on a much deeper level, evaluating effectiveness in light of the teacher’s goals. “For the first time,” she says, “I was able to see how a series of lessons fit together; I had never been able to give feedback regarding cohesion and flow on this level.” She could also give real-time suggestions and see if they were effective. Teachers said they felt supported, pushed, and validated, and were at least 25 percent more likely to implement suggestions. This year, Colasacco is continuing the weekly intensive visits with two modifications: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - New teachers and those having difficulty get mini-observations for frequent, ongoing feedback. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - The majority of teachers get the weekly intensives, with mini-observations so she sees them in action more frequently. Colasacco acknowledges that this method is easier in a small school (she supervises only 12 teachers), but believes that it can be used with modifications in larger schools, for example, by picking a few teachers each year for weekly intensives or having department heads do them. “A Week of Observations” by Jenne Colasacco in // Educational Leadership //, December 2010/January 2011 (Vol. 68, #4, p. 59-62) = <span style="font-family: 'Times','serif'; font-size: 14pt;">5. How Teaching Gets Better = (Originally titled “What Teachers Gain from Deliberate Practice”) “Expertise does not happen by chance,” says author/researcher Robert Marzano in this // Educational Leadership // article. “It requires deliberate practice.” Standard supervision and evaluation do little to improve teachers’ expertise, he says, but teaching benefits from four other practices: • // A common language of instruction // – “All teachers and administrators in a district or    school building should be able to describe effective teaching in a similar way,” says Marzano. His taxonomy of 41 effective practices includes: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Routine strategies – These communicate learning goals, track student progress, celebrate student success, and establish and maintain rules and procedures. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Content strategies – These help students digest new knowledge, practice and deepen understanding, and generate and test hypotheses. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: -9pt;"> - On-the-spot strategies – These engage students, address their adherence or lack of adherence to rules and procedures, build teacher-student relationships, and communicate high expectations. <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 27pt;"> • // A focus on specific strategies // – Each year, each teacher should focus on one skill in each of the three areas above and concentrate on improving in those areas. • // Tracking progress // – Marzano suggests measuring data on the three focus skills on a five-point scale: <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Not using <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Beginning <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Developing <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Applying <span style="line-height: 17pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -9pt;"> - Innovating • // Opportunities to observe and discuss instruction // – Marzano says that teachers need the chance to observe colleagues’ classrooms (or videotapes), not to evaluate but to see other teaching strategies and discuss insights. “What Teachers Gain from Deliberate Practice” by Robert Marzano in // Educational Leadership //, December 2010/January 2011 (Vol. 68, #4, p. 82-85),  = <span style="font-family: 'Times','serif'; font-size: 14pt;">6. More on What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains = In this troubling // Kappan // article, author Nicholas Carr says that the way we are bombarded by stimuli through the Internet “short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively.” This is because of the way we tend to flit from one thing to another, following hyperlinks, scrolling rapidly through numerous documents and websites, constantly distracted. “The depth of our intelligence,” Carr explains, “hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory and weave it into conceptual schemas.” We can hold only about seven pieces of information in our working memory, so it’s a bottleneck as we process new bits of information and try to store them permanently. “Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble,” says Carr. “That’s the challenge involved in transferring information from working memory into long-term memory.” The task is manageable if we’re reading a book and can control the pace at which we absorb new information, thimbleful by thimbleful, without causing cognitive overload. But when we interact with the Internet, says Carr, “we face many information faucets, all going full blast. Our little thimble overflows as we rush from one faucet to the next. We’re able to transfer only a small portion of the information to long-term memory, and what we do transfer is a jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream from one source… We can’t translate the new information into schemas. Our ability to learn suffers, and our understanding remains shallow.” And there’s another problem: the stuff we’re trying to hold in working memory vanishes quickly if it’s not refreshed by being rehearsed. When we overtax working memory, it’s harder to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. “We become mindless consumers of data,” says Carr, which makes it more difficult to understand a subject or a concept. Carr recalls that when hyperlinks were first introduced, educators thought these instant links would enable students to dive into multiple layers of content and escape the patriarchal authority of the author. But studies comparing hyperlink study with using traditional paper documents show real disadvantages with the former. “Deciphering hypertext substantially increases readers’ cognitive load and hence weakens their ability to comprehend and retain what they’re reading,” says Carr. “[R]esearch continues to show that people who read linear text comprehend more, remember more, and learn more than those who read text peppered with links.” Is anything good coming from the intellectual style of the Internet? Certain cognitive skills are strengthened – but they tend to be lower-level mental functions like hand-eye coordination, reflex response, and processing visual cues (from computer games) and fast-paced problem solving, recognizing patterns in a welter of data, and evaluating competing informational cues (from Web work). “As we practice browsing, surfing, scanning, and multitasking,” says Carr, “our plastic brains may well become more facile at those tasks.” And of course those skills are useful in the modern world. But it would be a mistake to conclude that they are making us more intelligent – and these abilities develop at the expense of others. What’s being lost, says Carr, is creativity, imagination, inventiveness, inductive analysis, critical thinking, and deeper, more deliberate reflection. People in Internet mode are more likely to rely on conventional ideas and solutions and become skillful at a superficial level. “The Net is making us smarter, in other words, only if we define intelligence by the Net’s own standards,” he says. “If we take a broader and more traditional view of intelligence – if we think about the depth of our thought rather than just its speed – we have to come to a different and considerably darker conclusion.” A 2009 study at Stanford University provided evidence of this. Heavy multitaskers were much more easily distracted by irrelevant environmental stimuli, had much less control over the contents of their working memory, and were less able to concentrate on a given task. Infrequent multitaskers, on the other hand, had stronger “top-down attentional control.” The sad truth seems to be that intensive Internet multitaskers are “suckers for irrelevancy.” As we multitask online, says researcher Michael Merzenich, we are “training our brains to pay attention to crap.” “The mental functions that are losing the ‘survival of the busiest’ brain cell battle are those that support calm, linear thought,” concludes Carr, “– the ones we use in traversing a lengthy narrative or an involved argument, the ones we draw on when we reflect on our experiences or contemplate an outward or inward phenomenon. The winners are those functions that help us speedily locate, categorize, and assess disparate bits of information in a variety of forms, that let us maintain our mental bearings while being bombarded by stimuli. These functions are, not coincidentally, very similar to the ones performed by computers…” “The Juggler’s Brain” by Nicholas Carr in // Phi Delta Kappan //, December 2010/January 2011 (Vol. 92, #4, p. 8-14)