Necker Cubes and Rhomboids
This is a Necker cube:
It’s an example of shifting perspectives. You can push the front of the cube to the back, move the back to the front, and even flatten it into a six-sided, two-dimensional shape. You can feel your brain shifting its focus as you do this — a kind of gestalt click as the perspectives snap into place.
Shading the cube makes this clearer:
Since we’re focusing on our use of metaphors lately, let’s use the Necker cube to discuss perspective, optics, and in-class focus1.
In-class focus remains the most powerful predictor of your eventual success. Notice how much it’s interwoven throughout these posts:
Note the dates of publication for these, too. Every month or so, you’ve gotten an interstitial lecture — the equivalent of a chapter in a textbook or an actual, in-class lecture, as you no doubt know — that clarifies and explicates the need to stay focused in class.
An Important Reminder of How You Receive Instruction
Every post is a lesson unto itself. This one, for instance, is mostly concerned with an update to the “Rubicon protocol” that tracks your in-class focus, but it also links back to important class updates while teaching you about perception and optics.
The depth of this course lies in interstitial teaching. That’s how we weaponize your class time: by arming you with a dozen different kinds of instruction before you walk in the door.
If you aren’t reading carefully, you miss out on that chance. You won’t understand what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, or how it helps you. It’s a self-inflicted wound, but that’s not the point; the point is to treat the wound before you bleed out.
Back to the less violent metaphor of Necker cubes:
A Shift in Rubicon Scores
In the most recent update to the course, I explained what the numbers in Infinite Campus mean. Now I’m shifting that online feedback in a small but significant way. It’s a shift in perspective only, like the shift of a Necker cube’s front and back.
What you’ll find now are assignments linked to each GAP panel. They will be named, for example, “Crossing the Rubicon: Q3A.” These assignments have had every parameter set to zero: zero points available, zero weighting, etc., and they aren’t factored into your averages at all.
Every “point” in this category indicates one of the unacceptable choices outlined in this guide. That occasionally ironic list, again:
- doing homework for another class
- playing games
- sending text messages
- watching videos
- sleeping
- rappelling down the side of the building and escaping into the woods
- gossiping
- complaining
- gazing too long into the abyss
- checking social media accounts
Last quarter, each Rubicon “point” reflected a single period during which you made a choice like these. The shift in perspective is this: You can now receive a “point” multiple times during each class period. Think of it as pro re nata, or PRN, which means “on demand.” These are PRN Rubicon tallies.
As an example, imagine that you are given the makerspace for the period, and you can choose between three separate course assignments: reading a book, writing an essay, or analyzing recent test prep. You work on the essay, but you get distracted by text messages for five minutes in the middle of the period. That ought to be tallied up as a Rubicon “point,” right?
But it can’t be treated exactly like the student who was sitting next to you, since she decided to do homework for another class for the entire period, including a trip to the iLC to pick up a printed copy. That has to yield more “points” than your (admittedly avoidable) lapse.
As another example, imagine that it takes you five minutes to settle down and begin a timed assignment that requires 40 minutes to complete. That’s a lapse in assiduousness, and it ought to be noted. It affects your learning. It’s not equivalent, however, to the student who stops every five minutes to gossip during the timed writing, effectively ruining the essay as a representation of her best efforts.
What this means is that the online grade book will reflect point values above a zero, indicating the frequency and severity of your lapses. We’ll try that for a GAP panel or two, see if it motivates you differently, and discuss other options.
As you accumulate “points” for this Rubicon tally, you can always sit with me during a free period and go over what you’re doing wrong. It should be obvious, though, and that brings us back to Necker:
It’s actually not about perspective. It’s not, at least, as subtle as pushing the front of a cube back and forth. There’s no optical illusion at all. When I note that you’ve crossed the Rubicon, it could be for any number of obviously inappropriate decision. You’re one of those cubes, or some variation thereof; but you’re obviously, irrefutably some kind of Necker-like shape.
The metaphor’s getting away from me, so to put it plainly: If you don’t want “points” for doing the wrong thing, don’t do the wrong thing. There are multiple perspectives on every choice you make, and I’ll always err on your side. I’ll always try to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you accumulate “points” (which I keep putting in quotation marks, hoping to find a better noun; this whole operant-conditioning thing makes my skin crawl), it means you were obviously and irrefutably doing the wrong thing.
That’s the feedback. Numbers in that column online indicate that you need to refocus. Make that in-class focus a strength, and you’ll see greater success overall. Remember to read this poster:
It’s the poster by our door. You can’t miss it.
Focus on in-class focus. And, as necessary, stop making excuses for your lack of self-control.
I actually prefer the original version of the cube, which is the Necker rhomboid on the right of this image:
I hadn’t heard of it until I looked through the notes section of the New World Encyclopedia entry on Necker cubes, which is the first link in this post. The lesson, as always, is to train yourself to click on links and follow ramiform paths to new information. That encyclopedia’s next entry, for instance, gives us an even better metaphor for what we do, although it isn’t one I’d advertise too much. ↩
