The LCD

In Math, the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) is a good thing…
it allows you to simplify an equation and usually makes the work easier. (If you were looking for a Math post go here or here.)

For the sake of this post the LCD is not good.
Here, the LCD is when you reduce things to in order to oversimplify a problem, to avoid it or make it go away, (rather than to make an effort to resolve it). It is about taking an easy way out instead of choosing a smart way forward.

They Both Get Dirty

Doug Belshaw does NOT want you to vote for his blog in the upcoming Edublog Awards. I’m not a regular reader of Doug, but the size of his audience suggests that he is a noteworthy edublogger. I ended up finding his Please don’t vote for this blog! post since I read Kelly Christopherson who wrote about it twice, and so I did venture over there. The worst of the comment spat that ensues comes from Dan Meyer who I first read when he wrote a brilliant post on How Math Must Asses and then later on Why I don’t Assign Homework, but he isn’t in my quite limited RSS feed either.
To put my 2 dimes worth into this I will quote my grandfather, “Never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it!”
What I don’t like about the comments in this post is that they get personal and neither of these two bloggers have any intent to resolve things, they just want to get the next jab in. I am a fan of healthy discourse, but this is unhealthy, vindictive, and I would even add cheap. LCD.

My suggestion to Josie Fraser and the Edublog Awards team: After a blog gets nominated, ask the bog author(s) if they accept the nomination… problem solved.

Easier Isn’t Better

When I took this job as Graduation Transition Coordinator, I adopted a few other responsibilities too. One such obligation was organizing the Take Our Kids to Work Day (TOKTWD) event for our Grade 9′s. Apparently our school could not coordinate the Grade 10′s Junior Achievement event on the National TOKTWD so we held this Grade 9 event one day early. This saved us from turning our entire schedule up-side-down for 2 days rather than just one… but this was an LCD solution. I didn’t make this decision, but I dealt with the upset parents whose work places had created special activities for their children on the National day (one day later). Our response, let your child miss the next day of school, so teachers had to settle for a number of absent students the day after our event.

Next year: Either the two dates fall on the same day, (I’m already in the process of booking it), or we move them completely apart and keep the TOKTWD on the designated National day. If it needs to turn our timetable upside down on two different days – so be it!

Build it and they will come…

I first blogged about the idea for FieldFindr here. I created a mock-up wiki for that post which has now been viewed over 2,500 times. Later I wrote about it in the Ning in Education network:
“…I think that perhaps a social networking site such as Ning could be a great launching point for teachers to connect with ‘resources’ in their, or the global, community. What do others think?”
… and got positive responses from Nancy Bosch and Steve Hargadon. So I launched a Ning version of FieldFindr. I then asked for help in my other Ning (Educational) Networks, and I also ‘nudged’ my Ex.plode.us friends… only to get a very small response. It’s kind of funny that I took this personally at first. I thought to myself that I had network issues… but I think the main problem is that I went to the easiest audience I could find… I went to the LCD… the wrong audience! If I really wanted to make Fieldfindr work, I would need to promote it with potential volunteers, not educators. I did what was easy, not what was necessary. Build the volunteer network and teachers will come… but we need to start with the volunteers!

I don’t feel that I personally need to start such a network, but I do believe in the idea. If by this summer I can’t find a network, or group, or website that does what I think FieldFindr can, then I will start seeking out networks of potential volunteers to sign up… For now I won’t do that because I can’t offer the commitment needed to make it work.

Busier Isn’t Better

I shared this quote with staff in a staff meeting last Monday afternoon.
“The task of organizing and operating a huge and complex educational machinery has left us scant leisure for calm reflection.”
The quote is by Irving Babbitt, and it seemed very appropriate for me to mention before discussing the plans for the heavily reflection-based program I was presenting to students the next day. The interesting thing about this quote is that Irving Babbitt died in 1933, and I think few could disagree that education has gotten much more complex since then!
In our school there is an International Baccalaureate (IB) program. In order to run the programs in sync with the rest of the school, our Grade 12 IB students are now doing 5 straight classes in a row for this semester. They start their day at 8:30 and end at 3:15, eating in classes and not getting more than a 5 min. break unless a class ends early. They also have to work on their Final IB paper as well. It is not uncommon to hear a Grade 12 IB student say they have between 3 and 5 hours of homework when they are leaving the school for the day- this would be ok if they weren’t saying and doing the exact same thing the next day, and the next day too…
As a new staff member coming in and observing this I have to wonder about subjecting students to this. I don’t doubt that there are some wonderful learning opportunities that happen in their classes, but how much is too much? The idea that these kids are bright, and that they can handle this pressure is nothing more than an acceptance of a LCD.

We are taking some of the brightest students in our district and working them so much that they can’t think, reflect, or for that matter even care about learning. It is their final year in the public education system and they are wasting it away being busy-bodies. I’ve learned so much from reflection, from taking my time to think things through, and from asking myself what I want to learn… we need to give this students a bit more time to reflect and explore their own interests in their final year… they prove themselves capable of the busy work enough in Grades 10 & 11.

Is Ping Pong a Sport?

To meet one of the requirements of the Graduation Transitions program, students are required to do 80 hours of physical activity after Grade 10. Last year as part of the Portfolio program the hours had to be considered either Moderate or Intense for the activity to count, but working definitions of those two terms were difficult. This year that language has been removed, but many school have kept it. LCD.

I was recently asked in an e-mail, “Is ping pong a sport?”
This was to figure out if time playing Ping Pong could be ‘counted‘ towards the 80 required hours. This is what I had to say:
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I’ve spent way too much time thinking about this.

Our judgments and values don’t matter.
Get students active, have them think about that activity, and if it is enough to keep them healthy or not… that’s the best we can do. Trying to tell students that an activity of their choice does not count accomplishes nothing. LCD.
(Oh, and Ping Pong is definitely a fun and exciting sport.)

I am a Hypocrite!

Tuesday Nov. 6th, 2007 was going to be tough for me to get to, and through. I knew that when I accepted this job.
When someone asked me in August, “So, is this going to be a good move for you?”
I replied, “Ask me on Nov. 7th”. Well the 6th has come and gone now. I never want to repeat the hours that went into this event- sleeping 19 hours in 5 nights the week before. Getting 2 hours sleep before doing two big presentations, and doing more paperwork that I care to do in any given year… The end result is that feedback has been very positive from teachers, secretaries, admin., support staff and students. Part of me wants to talk about this, and part of me wants to be happy with how positive the day was and just move forward… The fact is that the hard work came from getting all the background paperwork for the program fully developed to present to students, (such as the section of the 80hr Physical Activity Reflection seen above).

Three really positive things about that event that I would like to mention:
1. Students understood the value of the day and did not skip the assemblies in droves, which could easily have happened after their disgruntle attitude for the Portfolio program it replaced. Their feedback to me was very positive and I’ve had a number of the absent students come in on their own accord, or by suggestion of their peers, to find out what they missed.
2. My PowerPoint was pretty slick, I broke it up with a few good videos, and kept people’s attention with great images and subtle transitions. For someone who has used it very little (beyond my presentation week this year) I have become pretty good at creating engaging PowerPoint presentations.
3. I brought in a Bike Trails Champion, Steve Baia, to do a demonstration for us and promote Healthy Living. Not only was this a fantastic addition to the presentation, but he and his dad, Mike, were also wonderful role models of a great father-son relationship. Furthermore Mike watched my presentation and made sure to reference things that I said while he commentated Steve’s performance… very classy!
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Up until now this section is all about really good stuff. So where is the LCD and why the hypocrite title of this section?
Well, here I am developing a program for which one third of the outcomes are related to Healthy Living, and what do I do? I deprive myself of sleep, I completely stop exercising, and I put myself through tremendous stress… Some role model I am:-(
Whenever I get busy my healthy lifestyle takes a back seat. I turn 40 in a couple weeks and I am, without a doubt, in the absolute worst shape of my life. For me physical activity is the LCD, the one thing that I can always drop from my schedule to make more time for other things… and that is wrong.

So here is my plan- and it started yesterday! Three treadmill runs a week and one other activity during the week- Every Week! I’m also going to sign up for the Vancouver Half Marathon in the spring. I had students create one Healthy Living SMART Goals this week, and to practice what I preach, I’m going to create 2 SMART goals to help me live healthier, (one around weekly exercise and one specifically to build my endurance and speed for the half marathon).
By the way, for you SMART Goal fans: The ‘A’ should stand for Action-oriented not Achievable or Attainable. If you think about it, the ‘R’ stands for Realistic and if it is Realistic it is already Achievable but without Action your goal gets nowhere.

The Greatest Common Factor

None of my LCD‘s above are things that can’t be ‘fixed’. The common factor in each of the sections above is that the easiest way of coping with a problem is most definitely not the best way of dealing with these issues or concerns. Sometimes it is difficult to do what is best. Sometimes big ideas need to be challenged. Sometimes we need to question what we do, and why we do it… and we need to be willing to make a difficult change because it is the right thing to do!

One is on Digital Citizenship which looks at a post by Vicky A. Davis. The concepts I am formulating are in need of some more deep thought, and I don’t know when I will get to it?

The second post is on a 1-1 project in our district. I invited myself to a presentation for parents of students receiving computers for the project. Although the post is almost done, (and sitting in a Google document), I’m feeling bitter about my lack of availability of computers to teach my Planning 10 classes and so I don’t think I can complete the post until my frame of mind is one that can frame the post in the positive light I feel it deserves. (I feel childish admitting that, but that’s where I’m at right now.)

All these tools are technological with only the potential to be pedagogical… but they aren’t designed with pedagogy in mind. And so with regards to education, I wonder if those in the lead are actually worth following? Will Richardson has a great blog, but I’m not going to give him and his buddy 45 minutes of my time to get information that a 4 paragraph summary of their talk could give me!

…And as for the big hype around backchannels… why do people think this is something worth having transcribed? If a backchannel is used correctly -in my humble, ‘perspective from the outside looking in’, opinion- then it would influence the presenters, and so the meaningful components would be integrated into the presentation. As for any ‘interesting sidebar conversations’ that happen- they are mostly relevant in context with the presentation and if they are worth expanding on and investigating… great, investigate them and blog them for me, just don’t ask me to read 200+ comments to find a gem in the rough. Backchannels have tremendous value in the ‘here-and-now’, during a presentation, but what’s with all the analysis after the fact? My point is that not only do I not have time for all these new tools, these new tools are time consumers that don’t add to my learning experience in a meaningful way.

Looking at Kelly’s post, he states:

“Primarily, little has changed with education despite all the tools. I firmly believe that until we examine the curricula, change some of those objectives and rework others, making it relevant to the students, no amount of cool tool is going to create change.”

I couldn’t have said it better!

• How much of the K12Online07 conference will I participate in?
• Is FieldFindr worth spending time on?
• Am I Ning-ing for my Planning 10 class project or blogging?
• When will I finish my other posts?

I could go on but I think my point is made, and I want to turn my questions outward…

• Am I the only one who feels like a 30 hour day would still be too short?
• Are there others out there who wonder what kind of commitment it will take for a teacher to be technologically savvy enough to meaningfully engage students with all these new tools?
• Are we focusing too much on the tools and not enough on pedagogy?
• Will educational structures change fast enough to provide our students with a relevant education?
• … and for that matter… What would an ideal education look like today?

Learning Authentically in the Language Arts Classroom by Jamie McKenzie

Here are the bulleted criteria under 1. Rationale …

“authentic teaching” that involves students in “authentic intellectual work” outside school.

…pass the test of authenticity because they meet the following criteria:

• They are rooted in issues, challenges or decisions that people face in the world.
• They are genuine.
• The act of wrestling with these challenges is purposive – saturated with meaning and significance.
• A student can see a payoff in the future for work well done and skills acquired.

In short, authentic intellectual work passes the test of “so what?” It is meaningful, worthy and generative – in the sense of provoking ongoing growth and development.

I think that if the use of technology is authentic in this way, then the technology is being used appropriately in education. (Rather than just to play with the newest toys, as I seem to be noticing with Ustream- more on this misguided ‘use of technology in education’ in my next post). Also noteworthy, the author’s Anti-Prensky article.

I just watched David Warlick‘s K12 Online Conference Keynote: Inventing the New Boundaries.

Then I got an e-mail from Kris about an article coming out in the New York Times later today, titled: In Some Schools, iPods Are Required Listening.

They both reminded me of this post,

Which takes us back to the New York Times Article:

We have the capability to access like never before! Recently I have thought a lot about how things have changed, about how we digitally engage and interact in our world. There are so many opportunities available to us.

• Our lives are open, public and on display.

For under $100 you can have iLife ’08 and produce, publish, print and share what ever you want with the world. Fifteen years ago $10,000 couldn’t have given you the same opportunities… and there are free versions of similar (and some better) tools popping up all the time.

• Online networks help to define us.

My Blog, My Flickr, My Space, My Facebook, My Friends, My Profile, My Second Life, My del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, My Ning Network, My Twitter, My-Whole-Life-Connected-and-On-Display-For-Anyone-And-Everyone-To-See…

• Growing access to customizable tools and networks.

Maps of the future are being used as a catalyst for conversation. As Mark Van’t Hooft of Ubiquitous Thoughts notes, the map “…lists half a dozen external forces that will affect education in the next decade in the areas of family and community, markets, institutions, educators and learning, and tools and practices. With regards to digital tools, it is noteworthy that the focus seems to be on mobile and connected devices, in an environment that favors personalization/customization AND networking/connectedness at the same time.”

• Personalized learning that responds to a learner’s needs.

Machines are finding creative answers to problems… This site, Think Artificial, also introduced me to Virtual Tutors: Launched in March, uMind “…employs AI to create a virtual tutor that recognizes and adapts to the student’s limitations and emotional distress. The instructor knows when a student is stumped and activates extra teaching modules on the specific subject.”

• Life extended beyond the physical world.

Moving beyond just Web2.0 sharing. The first time I saw Gary Hayes‘ “THE CHANGING INTRAWEB – FROM 1.0 to 3.0” was the first time I considered the possibility of Web3.0. Today there seems to be a very real weaving of real-life and virtual realities for more than just entertainment. We will find ourselves engaging in, and fully integrating with, a digital universe — a metaverse — “This ubiquitous cloud of information is like electricity to children of the 20th century: essentially universal, expected and conspicuous only in its absence.”

Obstacles

Here is what I said in a comment on Carolyn’s post:

“A portal to Connect Classrooms to the World: Global Citizens can Share Talents and Skills with Students. Teachers can find Global Citizens (Volunteers) willing to help in a field of interest that they are working on in their class.”

FieldFindr: Where teachers can meet global citizens with skills to share.

It started with a post and a wiki, and now it has evolved into a Ning Network.

I humbly request your help so that WE can make this happen. After you sign up, this forum post is a great place to start.

Thank you for contributing to this new site!

After an incident delayed getting feedback from my students until last Monday, things got extremely busy with preparation for the Renaissance Fair and my Grade 5 Transition Retreats [the subject of a future post]. All this included 3 afternoons out of my classroom at other functions… I blinked and it was Friday afternoon. And only now have I noticed that not everyone has given me feedback yet. What I do see there is very encouraging.

Before reading the feedback, my initial impression was given in my Some Assembly Required post. To expand on that,
I wrote this in a comment (over a month ago) on Kelly Christopherson’s blog.

Carolyn Foote, mentioned above also added this comment after mine:

This is brilliant feedback. It isn’t rocket science for a seasoned teacher that really should know this, but scaffolding that is student directed is something we should all be reminded of from time-to-time. I think that in my excitement to get things started, and my desire to have students choose their own topic, I let technology supersede pedagogy.

I intended to put some student feedback highlights here, but I won’t. If you are interested, READ THEIR WORDS.

Here is a very short summary:
• Students really liked this project. Some of them considered it the best ever!
• They loved that they got to choose their own topics.
• They felt challenged.
• They hated the issues we had dealing with crappy computers, and yet they were willing work through the frustration.
• They thought this was a valuable experience… so much so that many of them wanted to do another similar project and/or suggested that I should do this again next year.
• And finally, using their words: They enjoyed being able to share their ideas, “What I am most proud of the most from the page is when I was how I typed out information to let others read it and learn from what I learned,” and being able to see what others did, “I thought this was a great project because it was always fun, and when you needed inspiration, it was easy to just click on someone else’s page, and see all the neat stuff that they’ve done, and then it makes you want to make your page just as good (or, it did for me).” Also another student commented about how a different group’s project touched him, “I learned a lot of stuff over the period of time that was given. I especially enjoyed learning about the diabetes because my aunt has diabetes so it was interesting to see what she goes through and how she’s affected”.
I’m proud of my students and I am very happy with our first attempt at creating wikis. I believe that for many of my students we truly did bring Science Alive!

1. Scaffolding
Here are some comments: [Their words/spelling/grammar, no editing on my part. Students can't edit a Discussion topic like they can their wiki page.]

Since Carolyn made some great topic development suggestions above, I will look more at some other ideas.

I realize now that I didn’t really give them enough of an outline. This is a challenge for topics like this… especially in a middle school where the students are still young. So many times in my teaching career I have shown a creative exemplar to students and then had a dozen photocopy-like replicas handed in. Also, in all honesty, I didn’t really know what to expect from my students and so it was hard to tell them what it was I expecting! I think that if I spent more time getting them involved with their topic and exploring possibilities early on, some of this stress would have been alleviated.
I did a lot of conferencing with groups and discussing ideas, but often I didn’t relate this back to specific things I wanted to see on their page. [Notice the control-freak teacher in me said "specific things I wanted to see" rather than suggestions that would enhance their learning. This is a learning curve for me as well as them.]
One frustration for me was that I taught Science for just 40 min. classes (a first for me this year having taught 80 min. classes in previous years). Take away login and log out times and sometimes it seemed that I would have just 2 or 3 really good conversations about projects and the class would be over.

Here is a very interesting comment:

The specific thing that I didn’t like in this case was that the experiment that they wanted to do had way too much variability and opportunity for chance to influence their results… this group did the experiment they wanted to do it anyway. Although I don’t think it was a great decision, I am glad they realized that I really did give them a choice.

The task at hand is to offer support to those that need it, and challenge those that don’t – not much different than any other project. The difference from other projects is that criteria is very hard to offer when you open up a project and allow everyone to demonstrate their learning in different ways. (Note Gabriela Sellart‘s and Claudia Ceraso‘s comments on my Some Assembly Required post- found in the reflection section.)

More from my students:

Scaffolding not instructions and criteria lists.

I had no idea how long this project would take. It went longer than it should, but I wanted to give ample notice when I finally did choose a date. Looking back, I gave the students notice on a Monday that it was due the following week Friday, then gave them until the following Monday… a lot of time! Yet, the lack of a stated completion date really seemed to bother students. I would love to see students keep updating their projects even now- why can’t they continue to pursue their interests? However, in the future I will start with a specific due date. Will this light the fire under students’ seats and get many of them on task, and/or more focussed, sooner? I don’t really know?

I had students research who were experts in their fields and intended to have them contact some of these people. Reality sunk in when I realized that I didn’t know these adults and I would have Grade 8 students contacting strangers directly. In the future, I would want to create a specific contact page for field experts to use to contact us. Then I could route initial contact through me. I would also notify parents that this would be happening well in advance of doing it. I think that this could happen in a safe way if it is well thought out, not flying by the seat of my pants as I was doing in this first attempt.
I could also have used some experts of my own. I’ll point again to Brian Crosby’s Learning is Messy post, Working, Breathing, Reproducible, Intriguing Models and once again beg for a Web2.0 service like Fieldfindr. (I created this mock site in February and it has had over 1,200 visits since the middle of March… who can make this a reality?

Imagine giving a ‘C’ to a student who writes:

Is a ‘C’ meaningful feedback? What are you telling that student about lifelong learning? What does the mark accomplish?

…And a Happy Note
I can’t get myself to end this post on a sad note, so I will end with a very positive observation:
This year has been cathartic for me.
• I have fully embraced using this blog as a learning tool since about November.
• I have read more and thought more about education in the last 6 months than in any given 5 years of my life.
• I am embracing technology like never before.
• I am engaging students in their learning like never before.
• I believe that we will see some (very exciting) fundamental shifts in education over the next few years.

…And Back to the Science Alive Wiki
If you have any observations that I may have missed, then feel free to be my teacher. Thanks!

SUPER TAGS
Call them Super Tags, Übertags, meta tags, tagging tags, umbrella tags, call them what you will but I WANT THEM!

I did a little search on Technorati, so is it K-12_Online, K-12Online, K12Online, or K12OnlineConference? I haven’t even considered the year yet k12Online06… The fact is that some of these searches are similar, but at the same time some posts are being missed because of the writer’s choice of tags. Also, there are other searches, as explained below, where a combination of very different tags would be beneficial.

In my post about a portal needed to connect classrooms to the world I made up a mock site: Fieldfindr on wikispaces. At this site a field expert who would like to help out in a classroom puts her grade interest as K-12 and makes this a tag. The teacher in the mock-up has a Grade 4 class, and she uses the tag Grade4. In helping the teacher find an expert in a particular field, shouldn’t she be able to search the tag ‘Grade4′ and have the ‘K-12′ tag be part of the search? (I didn’t even consider K12 rather than K-12 or Grade-4 rather than Grade4).

It is time for tags to grow up and be smarter! In my first example, wouldn’t it be great if a conference organizer were able to create a Super Tag that would allow a search of any number of tags to also include the many possible variances? Depending on the site, some of these could be end-user controlled, participant controlled, contributor controlled or organizer controlled, but regardless of who gets to create these Super Tags, they are long overdue!

TAG WEEDERS
Many blog sites don’t have a means to use the ‘and’ boolean in tag searches. I find that the need for this is growing as more and more people use the same tags. A perfect personal example of this is how I narrow a search of my del.icio.us account links. I now have several tags with over 50 links and rather than searching for a link through 50+ sites, I just do a ‘your bookmarks’ search with two tags that I think the link would have. This will usually narrow the search down to 5-15 links. (I can’t show you this here since the ‘your bookmarks’ search can only be done when you are logged into del.icio.us)
- – - – -
So there you have it, Super Tags and Tag Weeders, two features that I think many bloggers would like to see!

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New voices: Following Miguel and Kelly, I am seeking out 7 new voices in 7 posts, here is #2.
Serendipitous Moments isn’t really an edublog, but the posts that author Subbarman tags with Education are a treasure for educators to read. Enjoy!

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Photos: Tagged gate by Steve Roe on Flickr and Tagged Door by Sam Judson on Flickr

Originally posted: February 21st, 2007 [Update: Fieldfindr on Ning-October 3rd, 2007]

Here is an idea that has been brewing in my mind for a while:

The site could be sort of a combination of Warlick’s HitchHikr and MySpace or Facebook. (In a way it is more of a matchmaker site.)
You can sign up and log in as a teacher, or as a willing contributer (Volunteer) in you field of interest.

Basically Volunteers create a profile listing talents and skills. Then they set up a time-line of when they would be interested in helping with, or presenting to, a class. Then teachers can contact volunteers who have profiles of interest.

There could be an opportunity for volunteers to contact teachers too, but I think this should be done through a contact page like this, rather than by direct e-mail.

Here is a mock-up wiki that I built to give you an idea of what I mean. (Yes, I know the profile pictures are a bit big, but they were easy to format that way.)

Below the mock-up profiles, I created a space where interested contributors to a classroom could actually post their information. Teachers can find prospective volunteers by searching a particular field/subject.

However, I believe that there is a need for a fully committed portal site that is dedicated to:
CONNECTING TEACHERS TO GLOBAL CITIZENS THAT ARE WILLING TO SHARE THEIR TALENTS WITH A CLASS.

At a dedicated portal:
Tag searches could easily be set-up. (See my ‘Super Tags’ post [coming soon])
Teachers could find other teachers to help them.
Positive relationships between business and education can be formed.
Success stories could inspire teachers hesitant to explore web2.0
Retired teachers or field experts can be tapped into.
There is so much opportunity for collaboration! (I came up with this list in about 3-4 minutes… and I’m sure you could add to it:-)

Once the site is set up, the opportunities and possibilities are endless!
Again, just off the top of my head, here are some kinds of volunteers we can easily tap into…Especially if we had a portal to help us do so.

• A musician or poet who is willing to judge a performance or contest.
• A Researcher willing to share new ideas in their field.
• A Math tutor who offers after school assistance on a forum. (Time differences could actually be an advantage here.)
• A dance instructor could teach ballroom dancing at a local high school.
• A retired teacher giving a video tour of a Boreal Forest or a desert he lives close to.
• An art gallery tour from half-way around the world…

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A similar idea originally came to me a few years ago after seeing this award winning Timebank Commercial.

It came to me again a few months ago when I read this David Warlick Post where David is talking about Will Richardson‘s session at MASSCUE:

I finally had to get this idea out after reading these Wesley Fryer and Vicki A Davis posts over the weekend.

Feedback?