I dig the tech.  A lot.  So much so, that I pretty handily outpace all but the most tech-centered students who I teach.  Seriously, in the eight years that I have been teaching, I have worked with exactly one student who had better chops than I do when it comes to using the computer, and exactly one student who has approximately equivalent chops to my own.

And let’s be perfectly clear, I don’t have particularly impressive chops.  I know just enough to know that the folks who know what’s really going on with modern technology know way more than I do.  Compared to someone who really knows their way around the computer, I’m the computationally cognitive equivalent of a fruit fly (If I was absolutely forced to pick a label for myself, it would be “mid-level power user”, which I would then truncate to “MILPU”, primarily because it sounds silly).

All of this is a very round about way of getting to my main point in this post, which is that my students don’t seem to really enjoy technology in the same way that I do.  And to make that point, I’ll speak to my recent attempts to integrate twitter in to my student practice, and the pulling of teeth that I have had to engage in to get anything receptive from the children.

Stemming from the thought that maybe it might be nice to offer a room full of hyper-intelligent seniors an opportunity to have a bit of out-of-school review time, I decided to implement twitter review sessions for the week leading up to our midterm.  This is a difficult, cumulative exam, that an instructor might think students would be interested in studying for in a prolonged, and extensive manner.  So, we decided that 6pm or so each evening would be a useful time to check the class twitter feed, and if we all used the #apbio hashtag, it just might work out that students could get the kind of help I thought they might need.  What could go wrong, eh?

As it turns out, a few things, but primarily, I think my main mistake was overestimating the interest-level of my students.  Because no one seems particularly in to using the opportunity that has been carved out for them.  In the first night of review, one student actually wrote in with a question about the material on the midterm.  Another student decided to demonstrate a woeful lack of technological accumen by using the hashtag, actively monitored by the instructor, to profane the fact that the work load of the course was overwhelming (the student in question promptly removed the offending remark when I sent an email.  We had a brief, private chat the next day about how to appropriately use a global, public, communication platform, which I can only assume was incredibly embarrassing for the other party).  That was the entire “review session”.

All in all, it was an unimpressive showing.  But sadly, it is not completely without precedent.  All it takes is a trip to the #apbio hashtag on twitter to see that most students would rather use it to complain about the course that they have elected to take than they would to actually use the tool as an opportunity to mitigate the circumstances they complain about (full disclosure, none of the whiners in that link are my students, who know pretty well that if they tweet it with an #apbio hashtag, I will see it).  And maybe things will change as the clock ticks closer to next week’s midterm.  In which case, I’ll update this here post.  Or maybe it won’t.  Either way, I’ll still feel like I’m about ten steps ahead of my students when it comes to the digital world we are building together.

A final note.  None of this is a complaint about my students, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t read as such.  My students are, in their entirety, amazing young folks who genuinely make me feel good about the future of this country.  What I am speaking to above is simply an specific instance of a much larger pattern that I see in my students.  It’s a pattern that concerns me, as it seems like more and more, students are interested in less and less active engagement with the digital tools that are made available for them.  I don’t know what that presages, but I have a hard time thinking it’s a good thing.

Have you ever read anything by Sean Carroll (Biology version)?  If not, you should.  At least if you are looking for some good writing about the life you share the planet with.  Dr. Carroll is a practicing evolutionary developmental (or “evo-devo”) biologist, who knows quite a bit about the genetic basis of animal development, and the seemingly uncountable ways that evolution can function in the domain of making new, and nifty, creatures.

I have read most of Sean Carroll’s books, but for whatever reason, I had never gotten around to reading “Endless Forms…” (or as I now refer to it in my thinking “It’s the Switches, Stupid!”), which is universally well-regarded, and quite possibly the book that Dr. Carroll is most famous for.  So, when looking for a new science book to read (I always try to keep one science book somewhere on the “actively reading” pile), I figured why not give it a shot.

It took me five days from start to finish.

Part of that is due to my own interest base.  As an AP Biology teacher, a lot of the fundamentals of evolution and genetics that Dr. Carroll puts down at the beginning of the book are nothing new for me, which gave me a bit more alacrity through the first three or four chapters than I would have if the last time I thought biological thoughts was several decades ago.  But my bio-chops are just a piece of what makes this book so easy to read.  When it comes right down to it, the thing is just a good time.  If you have ever wondered why animals look the way they look, and how the processes that change those appearances function, this is the book for you.  Dr. Carroll is a fan of the “tell them three times” approach (wherein he will tell you what he is going to tell you, then tell you, and then tell you what he just told you), which is as good a way of discussing abstract concepts as any that I am aware of.  But he also makes a point of hanging his conceptual framework on real-world examples, pulling them from the most widely-researched bits of evolutionary developmental biology that have been elucidated. You not only learn how evolution drives changes in animal anatomy and physiology, you also get fantastic explanations of the evolution of eyes, wings, colors, limbs, brains, and various other notable animal adaptations.  The result is as close as one can get to an enjoyable romp through animal phylogeny. 

The book does get a bit wonky in parts, but never for too long, and always with the goal of explaining something really interesting.  Similarly, Dr. Carroll builds his case throughout the book, finally culminating in a concluding chapter that serves both to seat evo-devo within the larger evolutionary framework, but also as a plea for increased scientific literacy on the part of the public.  I do wonder how important the last bit is for the audience of this book, most of whom I assume to be pretty much on the same side of the issues discussed as the author.  While I certainly count myself as a fellow-traveller with Dr. Carroll, I don’t know that he was telling me anything particularly new in the last ten pages.  Still, I certainly understand why it’s in there.  

If you want to learn about the evolution of the kingdom you belong to (is there anything more interesting to learn about?), I think you’ll find this one worth your while.