Bonnie Sutton
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U.S. Report Sees Perils to America's Tech Future - 1 views
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U.S. Report Sees Perils to America's Tech Future
In report, Commerce Department looks at competitive threats and internal weaknesses in new report
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223191/U.S._report_sees_perils_to_America_s_tech_future_
Computerworld - The ability of the U.S. to compete globally is eroding, according to a federal report released Friday that described itself as a "call to arms."
The report, which has a strong emphasis on technology, warns in stark terms that "some elements of the U.S. economy are losing their competitive edge."
The report , titled the "The Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States," was prepared by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which said the report reflected "bipartisan priorities."
"This is a topic of pivotal importance," said Commerce Secretary John Bryson, in a statement. "Our ability to innovate as a nation will determine what kind of economy - what kind of country - our children and grandchildren will inherit."
The report sees problems in many areas.
It points out, for instance, that the U.S. ran a trade surplus in "advanced technology products," which includes biotechnology products, computers, semiconductors and robotics, until 2002. In 2010, however, the U.S. "ran an $81 billion trade deficit in this critically important sector."
Many of the warnings raised in the report may seem familiar. It is an amalgamation of previous studies with similar warnings, coupled with updated data produced by government agencies, private-sector think tanks and university researchers.
Many of its concerns can be found in a National Academy of Science report, "Rising above the Gathering Storm, Rapidly Approaching Category 5." That report was originally released in 2005 and updated five years later with the warning that "the nation's outlook has worsened."
But the report released Friday is the work of President Obama's administration. It was required by the America Competes Act that was signed into law one year ago this month. The law allocated $50 billion for research funding and education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
Despite that investment, the report sees cracks in research spending. Specifically, in 1980 the federal government provided about 70% of all dollars spent on basic research, but since then the government's share of basic research funding given to all entities has fallen to 57%. The government maintains that innovation is the key to job creation and lists companies that were created with the help of government research. Among those companies is Google , whose founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, received government research funding as students to develop some of their ideas.
The problems that the U.S. is facing are evident in a number of key areas, especially income.
From 1980 to 1999, real median household income increased about 20%. Since then, real median household income has stalled, "and even before the Great Recession, real median household income fell from $53,252 in 1999 to $52,823 in 2007 (in 2010 dollars)," the report said. Report continued at URL
Mobile Multiplier or Mobile Divider? - 1 views
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Mobile Multiplier or Mobile Divider?
http://bigthink.com/ideas/41809
Dominic Basulto on January 4, 2012, 9:28 PM
inShare12
Mobile_divide_mobile_multiplier
The rapid proliferation of mobile devices is making it possible for not just communities, but also entire nations, to narrow the digital divide between society's have's and have-not's. Not only are these mobile devices more affordable for lower-income individuals, they also are more accessible for individuals in hard-to-reach or under-served areas. In fact, IBM recently predicted the elimination of the global digital divide within the next five years, thanks to a renewed emphasis on building out the infrastructure for mobile networks and expanding the functionality of what we can do with our smart phones - everything from paying bills to monitoring our health to getting real-time information about agricultre. Eliminating the digital divide is supposed to create a "mobile multiplier" for economic growth, but is it actually possible that it could lead to a new type of divide between the mobile have's and have-not's?
We've already seen evidence of the power of the mobile multiplier in emerging and under-developed markets, where technology gurus routinely talk about the ability of these economies to "leapfrog" the West, thanks to the embrace of mobile devices by every segment of the population. In these emerging markets, the ability to get mobile into the hands of the local population has, indeed, resulted in a mobile multiplier in the form of dramatic improvements in the quality of life. McKinsey estimates that the mobile multiplier in emerging markets may ultimately account for $300 to $400 billion in GDP growth. Other consulting firms point to the role of high mobile device adoption rates in making new types of healthcare initiatives accessible to a greater segment of the population. In places like India and Africa, efforts to eliminate the digital divide have also led to everything from improvements in agriculture to massively disruptive changes in mobile payments and banking.
The good news is that, currently, all signs point to a similar type of multiplier within the U.S. Not only are overall mobile penetration rates within the U.S. on the rise, it is exactly the lower-income and minority segments of the population that are embracing mobile in greatest numbers. Young people making less than $30,000 per year are among the fastest-growing segments of mobile Internet use. Moreover, the latest Pew Internet numbers show that African-Americans and Hispanics are not only more likely to use mobile phones than whites, they are also more likely to use them for a wider range of activities. This would all seem to hint at a rapid closing of the digital divide within the U.S., right?
The bad news is that not all mobile usage is created equal. Technology gurus are already starting to question whether Internet usage on mobile devices is comparable to Internet usage on desktop and laptop devices. The consensus appears to be that people are more inclined to use traditional Internet usage for gaining knowledge and accessing information, while people are more inclinded to use mobile Internet-connected devices to communicate with others. According to a study conducted by the Soros Open Society Foundations, there were also gaps according to gender and education levels, with males more likely than females to be users of mobile devices, and well-educated individuals more likely than poorly-educated individuals to be regular mobile Internet users. In an age where information and knowledge are paramount, people who use their mobile devices solely for communication may get left behind.
"Mobile-first" is one of those corporate buzzwords that people are using these days to describe their strategic focus on creating and designing user experiences around mobile devices. There's no doubt that not just corporations, but also entire communities and nations, can use exactly such a mobile-first strategy to erase the gaps between the have's and have-not's. As McKinsey pointed out back in 2009, tweaks to the regulatory regime and pricing of a nation's moble networks can have a significant follow-on impact on everything from adoption rates to usage patterns. As a result, we need to be careful that in eliminating one type of digital divide, we are not unknowingly creating another type of digital divide, this one created for the mobile 1% capable of paying for more functionality, more information and faster speeds than the other 99%.
Image: Happy People Showing Their Modern Mobile Phones /Shutterstock
Mobile Multiplier or Mobile Divider?
A forum where top experts explore the big ideas and core skills defining the 21st century Learn...
Digital Divide, Mobile Divide, Knoeledge Divide, Access Divide, are we a nation of oppo... - 1 views
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http://thepowerofus.org/2012/01/06/digital-divide-mobile-divide-knowledge-divide-access-divide-are-we-a-nation-of-opportunity/
We Still Have a Digital Divide and it is growing!!'We Still Have a Digital Divide and it is growing!!
In recent years, it's become clear among academics, community organizers and government policymakers that addressing the issue of access is just the first step, not the whole solution, to the digital divide.
Once connected, some people don't have the skills to make full use of the Internet, or don't participate in social and civic life online because they're too busy working two jobs to make ends meet.
The barriers are numerous and complex, meaning that the problem remains persistent, and not subject to a single, easy fix.
But without universal broadband adoption and full participation in digital life, to use one example, governments must maintain digital and paper systems that are duplicative and wasteful. The divide also makes it hard for schools to embrace digital tools, knowing some students have them and some don't. And with more job applications moving online, being on the wrong side of the digital divide can make it harder to get a job.
"The size, the nature, and the endurance of the digital divide has a lot of impact on the U.S.," said Tessie Guillermo, president and CEO of ZeroDivide, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that works with community groups across the U.S. to address issues of digital exclusion. "In terms of global competition, innovation and economic power, if 20 percent of our people are not on the Internet, their contribution to the economic vitality of the U.S. is not being maximized."
When you can't get it in school use a technology center
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Back in 2010, the FCC released a National Broadband Plan that was an ambitious attempt to reach universal broadband adoption while addressing the many complexities of the digital divide. Rather than fading away, the FCC made three important announcements this year that show it still has momentum:
The Universal Service Fund that for decades had been dedicated to telephone adoption was transformed into the Connect America Fund, which will generate $4.5 billion to help millions get access to broadband connections.
Connect to Compete, an agreement with broadband providers to create a $9.95-a-month plan for families that are eligible for federal lunch programs.
And the creation of a nonprofit public-private partnership with a long list of telecommunications and tech companies that will provide digital literacy and skill training.Remarkably, it's all being done without cutting other services, or raising any taxes. And while not revealing details, Genachowski said he expects more progress in 2012.We are still a long way from closing the digital divide, to be sure. But by keeping the topic on the national agenda while also managing to make progress should be considered a huge victory for Genachowski and the FCC.
Barriers to Use
Affordability: 36 percent of non-adopters, or 28 million adults, said
they do not have home broadband because the monthly fee is too
expensive (15 percent), they cannot afford a computer, the installation
fee is too high (10 percent), or they do not want to enter into a
long-term service contract (9 percent). According to survey
respondents, their average monthly broadband bill is $41.
Digital Literacy: 22 percent of non-adopters, or 17 million adults,
indicated that they do not have home broadband because they lack the
digital skills (12 percent) or they are concerned about potential
hazards of online life, such as exposure to inappropriate content or
security of personal information (10 percent)
.
Relevance: 19 percent of non-adopters, or 15 million adults, said they
do not have broadband because they say that the Internet is a waste of
time, there is no online content of interest to them or, for dial-up
users, they are content with their current service.
Digital Hopefuls, who make up 22 percent of non-adopters, like the idea
of being online but lack the resources for access.
Few have a computer and, among those who use one, few feel comfortable
with the technology. Some 44 percent cite affordability as a barrier to
adoption and they are also more likely than average to say digital
literacy are a barrier. This group is heavily Hispanic and has a high
share of African-Americans.
Julius Genachowski
Literacy today depends on understanding the multiple media that make up our high-tech reality and developing the skills to use them effectively
Prior to the 21st century, literate defined a person's ability to read and write, separating the educated from the uneducated. With the advent of a new millennium and the rapidity with which technology has changed society, the concept of literacy has assumed new meanings. Experts in the field suggest that the current generation of teenagers-sometimes referred to as the E-Generation-possesses digital competencies to effectively navigate the multidimensional and fast-paced digital environment. For generations of adults who grew up in a world of books, traveling through cyberspace seems as treacherous and intimidating as speaking a new language. In fact, Prensky1 recognized such non-IT-literate individuals as burdened with an accent-non-native speakers of a language, struggling to survive in a strange new world.
We who have technology complain about or love the various changes that happen on a daily basis with the use of the Internet.
http://www.businessinsider.com/incredible-things-that-happen-every-60-seconds-on-the-internet-2011-12
Internet Access A Right!!
Vint Cerf had some reflection on the state of the art and whether or not it is a digital right. He said."
Although some countries around the world argue that Internet access is a fundamental right, one of the "fathers of the Internet," Vint Cerf, doesn't see it that way.
"Technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself," Cerf, who is also a Google's chief Internet evangelist, wrote yesterday in an editorial in The New York Times. "There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things."
It is no secret that the recession has hit our nation hard, particularly in low-income and minority communities. Naturally, many government institutions and private organizations have turned to broadband to help them cut costs by streamlining various processes and keeping productivity levels high. In general, this is a productive use of a transformative technology - and embracing it to improve efficiency is certainly the right thing for these organizations to do. But what about the millions of Americans who lack a home computer and who remain unconnected to broadband? How are they supposed to apply for government benefits online, access Web-based job search sites, and otherwise participate in this digital revolution? The short answer is that those who remain unconnected are relegated to second-class digital citizenship. Enhancing the broadband adoption rate across every demographic group must be priority number o
ne for policymakers at every level of government. Without more robust broadband adoption, too many Americans will be stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. Social justice and continued economic prosperity demand a concerted effort to get these non-adopters on a path toward first-class digital citizenship.
Links to Sources
Why the Unconnected are Second-Class Digital Citizens
My ideas for education have not changed . The technology has. How can minority kids learn computational thinking, and new supercomputing ideas if they are not connected?
In recent years, it's become clear among academics, community organizers and government policymakers that addressing the issue of access is just the first step, not the whole solution, to the digital divide.
Once connected, some people don't have the skills to make full use of the Internet, or don't participate in social and civic life online because they're too busy working two jobs to make ends meet.
The barriers are numerous and complex, meaning that the problem remains persistent, and not subject to a single, easy fix.
But without universal broadband adoption and full participation in digital life, to use one example, governments must maintain digital and paper systems that are duplicative and wasteful. The divide also makes it hard for schools to embrace digital tools, knowing some students have them and some don't. And with more job applications moving online, being on the wrong side of the digital divide can make it harder to get a job.
"The size, the nature, and the endurance of the digital divide has a lot of impact on the U.S.," said Tessie Guillermo, president and CEO of ZeroDivide, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that works with community groups across the U.S. to address issues of digital exclusion. "In terms of global competition, innovation and economic power, if 20 percent of our people are not on the Internet, their contribution to the economic vitality of the U.S. is not being maximized."
When you can't get it in school use a technology center
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Back in 2010, the FCC released a National Broadband Plan that was an ambitious attempt to reach universal broadband adoption while addressing the many complexities of the digital divide. Rather than fading away, the FCC made three important announcements this year that show it still has momentum:
The Universal Service Fund that for decades had been dedicated to telephone adoption was transformed into the Connect America Fund, which will generate $4.5 billion to help millions get access to broadband connections.
Connect to Compete, an agreement with broadband providers to create a $9.95-a-month plan for families that are eligible for federal lunch programs.
And the creation of a nonprofit public-private partnership with a long list of telecommunications and tech companies that will provide digital literacy and skill training.Remarkably, it's all being done without cutting other services, or raising any taxes. And while not revealing details, Genachowski said he expects more progress in 2012.We are still a long way from closing the digital divide, to be sure. But by keeping the topic on the national agenda while also managing to make progress should be considered a huge victory for Genachowski and the FCC.
Barriers to Use
Affordability: 36 percent of non-adopters, or 28 million adults, said
they do not have home broadband because the monthly fee is too
expensive (15 percent), they cannot afford a computer, the installation
fee is too high (10 percent), or they do not want to enter into a
long-term service contract (9 percent). According to survey
respondents, their average monthly broadband bill is $41.
Digital Literacy: 22 percent of non-adopters, or 17 million adults,
indicated that they do not have home broadband because they lack the
digital skills (12 percent) or they are concerned about potential
hazards of online life, such as exposure to inappropriate content or
security of personal information (10 percent)
.
Relevance: 19 percent of non-adopters, or 15 million adults, said they
do not have broadband because they say that the Internet is a waste of
time, there is no online content of interest to them or, for dial-up
users, they are content with their current service.
Digital Hopefuls, who make up 22 percent of non-adopters, like the idea
of being online but lack the resources for access.
Few have a computer and, among those who use one, few feel comfortable
with the technology. Some 44 percent cite affordability as a barrier to
adoption and they are also more likely than average to say digital
literacy are a barrier. This group is heavily Hispanic and has a high
share of African-Americans.
Julius Genachowski
Literacy today depends on understanding the multiple media that make up our high-tech reality and developing the skills to use them effectively
Prior to the 21st century, literate defined a person's ability to read and write, separating the educated from the uneducated. With the advent of a new millennium and the rapidity with which technology has changed society, the concept of literacy has assumed new meanings. Experts in the field suggest that the current generation of teenagers-sometimes referred to as the E-Generation-possesses digital competencies to effectively navigate the multidimensional and fast-paced digital environment. For generations of adults who grew up in a world of books, traveling through cyberspace seems as treacherous and intimidating as speaking a new language. In fact, Prensky1 recognized such non-IT-literate individuals as burdened with an accent-non-native speakers of a language, struggling to survive in a strange new world.
We who have technology complain about or love the various changes that happen on a daily basis with the use of the Internet.
http://www.businessinsider.com/incredible-things-that-happen-every-60-seconds-on-the-internet-2011-12
Internet Access A Right!!
Vint Cerf had some reflection on the state of the art and whether or not it is a digital right. He said."
Although some countries around the world argue that Internet access is a fundamental right, one of the "fathers of the Internet," Vint Cerf, doesn't see it that way.
"Technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself," Cerf, who is also a Google's chief Internet evangelist, wrote yesterday in an editorial in The New York Times. "There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things."
It is no secret that the recession has hit our nation hard, particularly in low-income and minority communities. Naturally, many government institutions and private organizations have turned to broadband to help them cut costs by streamlining various processes and keeping productivity levels high. In general, this is a productive use of a transformative technology - and embracing it to improve efficiency is certainly the right thing for these organizations to do. But what about the millions of Americans who lack a home computer and who remain unconnected to broadband? How are they supposed to apply for government benefits online, access Web-based job search sites, and otherwise participate in this digital revolution? The short answer is that those who remain unconnected are relegated to second-class digital citizenship. Enhancing the broadband adoption rate across every demographic group must be priority number o
ne for policymakers at every level of government. Without more robust broadband adoption, too many Americans will be stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. Social justice and continued economic prosperity demand a concerted effort to get these non-adopters on a path toward first-class digital citizenship.
Links to Sources
Why the Unconnected are Second-Class Digital Citizens
My ideas for education have not changed . The technology has. How can minority kids learn computational thinking, and new supercomputing ideas if they are not connected?
Survey: Majority Say U.S. Teachers Underpaid - 1 views
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Survey: Majority Say U.S. Teachers Underpaid
By Liana Heitin on January 5, 2012 11:56 AM
More than half of Americans believe that U.S. teachers are underpaid, according to a national telephone survey by Poll Position. The survey was conducted in December, about a month after the American Enterprise Institute released a controversial study saying teachers are overpaid. (You can find our coverage of the AEI report here, in what became our fifth most-viewed story of 2011.)
Poll Position asked 1,142 registered voters whether they think school teachers are "underpaid, overpaid, or make the right amount of money." Overall, 56 percent of respondents said teachers are underpaid. Among respondents in the 18- to 29-year-old age group, 70 percent said teachers are underpaid. While 67 percent of Democrats said teachers are underpaid, only 45 percent of Republicans agreed.
In addition, 13 percent of total respondents said teachers are overpaid and 24 percent said they make the right amount of money. About 8 percent of respondents had no opinion on the matter.
Take a look at the full survey results, which also compare subgroups by race and gender, here [PDF].
12 Education Tech Trends to Watch in 2012 - 2 views
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12 Education Tech Trends to Watch in 2012
FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Tech Tools
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/01/12-education-tech-trends-to-watch-in-2012/
Looking ahead at some of the education technology trends we'll likely see in 2012, many are already underway.
But here are 12 areas where we believe we'll see significant adoption and innovation in the coming months.
MOBILE PHONES: Mobile learning is hardly a new trend, but we have now reached the point with near ubiquitous cellphone ownership among adults, and growing ownership among children. More than three-quarters of teens own a cellphone, and about 40% own a smartphone. As such, these mobile devices will help unlock some of the promise of "anytime, anywhere" learning opportunities.
BYOD (BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE): A related trend to mobile learning. More schools will grapple with their policies surrounding students bringing their own devices to school. They do so already, of course, although cellphones in particular are often required to be turned off or stowed in backpacks or lockers. It isn't just cellphones that are brought from home now either. There are iPod Touches, tablets, laptops, e-readers, and netbooks, and schools will weigh whether or not students will be permitted or even encouraged to bring their own devices to school.
BANDWIDTH ISSUES: The FCC has made broadband access the focus of some of its efforts over the last few years, arguing for its importance to the U.S. economy and education. It's pushing for better access across the board, but also recognizing the importance of high-speed Internet specifically at schools and libraries. Even those schools with broadband access may find their resources strained in coming months - with the increasing number of mobile devices brought to schools, tapping into the local network as well as with growing demands for streaming video content.
NATURAL USER INTERFACES: The last few year have brought about a number of important innovations in the ways in which we interact and interface with technology: motion-sensing as with the Microsoft Kinect, the touchscreen of the iPhone, the voice-activation of Siri. Just as the graphical user interface, the GUI, opened computer technologies to new populations (specifically non-programmers), these natural user interfaces will likely push those things further forward, increasing accessibility.
WEB APPS (HTML5): Despite the popularity of Apple devices - among consumers and in the classroom - an emphasis or reliance on native (iOS or Mac) apps excludes a lot of people. The demands for tools that can be used at home and at school, regardless of device, will lead to more Web-based education applications. Thanks to HTML5 technology, Flash, which is still used by a lot of educational content providers, will no longer be as ubiquitous.
DATA: "Data-driven" has been a buzz phrase in education for a number of years now, but much of the emphasis has been on standardized testing. With more "data exhaust" from our usage of technology and the Web, there's a trove of information we aren't really fully tracking when it comes to teaching and learning. 2012 will likely bring about a search for new analytical tools to account for just this (many sidestepping the question of whether or not teaching and learning can be quantified and analyzed this way).
ADAPTIVE LEARNING: Adaptive learning companies had an interesting year: Knewton and Grockit raised substantial investment, for example, while Carnegie Learning found itself critiqued in a New York Times story. With the promise of personalized learning - that is, instruction and quizzes aimed at a student's specific needs and skills - adaptive learning is poised for widespread adoption, both at the K-12 and higher ed levels.
PRIVACY/SECURITY: There was an increasing realization in 2011 that many of the pieces of legislation that govern children and students' online interactions are woefully out of date. As such, there will be increased scrutiny in 2012 to COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), CIPA (the Children's Internet Protection Act), and FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). Whether or not the government's legislation and kids' usage actually match up will be another thing entirely. Another major trend of the year, particularly in light of an increasing importance of data: user (student) control of their own educational data - that means both privacy protections and data portability.
OPEN LICENSING: "Open" may well be one of the big marketing terms we'll hear in the coming months, and it'll take some scrutiny to really evaluate what many companies mean when they adopt the label. That said, openly licensed content and openly licensed code is likely to be one of the most important trends in 2012: open source technology, open source textbooks, open educational resources, and open data.
PEER TO PEER: "Social learning" has gained a lot of attention in recent years as new technologies have offered ways for students to communicate and collaborate - whether they're side-by-side in the classroom or thousands of miles away. The ability for learners to connect with one another will be one of the most important trends of the coming year. This isn't just a matter of connecting learners with online resources or with online instruction. Rather, one of the big opportunities will be to create a space in which learners can help and teach each other.
THE MAKER MOVEMENT: The Maker Movement - encouraging people to make things by hand - may be one of the most important keys to improving STEM education in this country. That's because it works outside the realm of standardized testing and all the associated hand-wringing. The movement, which includes efforts like Maker Faire and MAKE Magazine, may be the key to helping new demographics (or at the very least, "kids") discover science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in an exciting and hands-on way. Building and tinkering and playing all offer powerful ways to learn and experiment. We need more of this - lots more.
GAMING: Game-based learning has been on the cusp of being "the next big thing" for a while now. Perhaps 2012 will be the year. With the flourishing of mobile technologies, with the promise of data and analytics, and with a realization that we can create new and engaging ways to move through lessons, we are likely to see an explosion of educational gaming apps this year. The big question, of course - with this as with every new ed-tech development: does this actually improve learning? When is a educational game fun? What makes it engaging? What makes it actually educational?
What are your predictions for technology and learning in 2012? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Mobile Multiplier or Mobile Divider? - 1 views
-
Mobile Multiplier or Mobile Divider?
http://bigthink.com/ideas/41809
Dominic Basulto on January 4, 2012, 9:28 PM
inShare12
Mobile_divide_mobile_multiplier
The rapid proliferation of mobile devices is making it possible for not just communities, but also entire nations, to narrow the digital divide between society's have's and have-not's. Not only are these mobile devices more affordable for lower-income individuals, they also are more accessible for individuals in hard-to-reach or under-served areas. In fact, IBM recently predicted the elimination of the global digital divide within the next five years, thanks to a renewed emphasis on building out the infrastructure for mobile networks and expanding the functionality of what we can do with our smart phones - everything from paying bills to monitoring our health to getting real-time information about agricultre. Eliminating the digital divide is supposed to create a "mobile multiplier" for economic growth, but is it actually possible that it could lead to a new type of divide between the mobile have's and have-not's?
We've already seen evidence of the power of the mobile multiplier in emerging and under-developed markets, where technology gurus routinely talk about the ability of these economies to "leapfrog" the West, thanks to the embrace of mobile devices by every segment of the population. In these emerging markets, the ability to get mobile into the hands of the local population has, indeed, resulted in a mobile multiplier in the form of dramatic improvements in the quality of life. McKinsey estimates that the mobile multiplier in emerging markets may ultimately account for $300 to $400 billion in GDP growth. Other consulting firms point to the role of high mobile device adoption rates in making new types of healthcare initiatives accessible to a greater segment of the population. In places like India and Africa, efforts to eliminate the digital divide have also led to everything from improvements in agriculture to massively disruptive changes in mobile payments and banking.
The good news is that, currently, all signs point to a similar type of multiplier within the U.S. Not only are overall mobile penetration rates within the U.S. on the rise, it is exactly the lower-income and minority segments of the population that are embracing mobile in greatest numbers. Young people making less than $30,000 per year are among the fastest-growing segments of mobile Internet use. Moreover, the latest Pew Internet numbers show that African-Americans and Hispanics are not only more likely to use mobile phones than whites, they are also more likely to use them for a wider range of activities. This would all seem to hint at a rapid closing of the digital divide within the U.S., right?
The bad news is that not all mobile usage is created equal. Technology gurus are already starting to question whether Internet usage on mobile devices is comparable to Internet usage on desktop and laptop devices. The consensus appears to be that people are more inclined to use traditional Internet usage for gaining knowledge and accessing information, while people are more inclinded to use mobile Internet-connected devices to communicate with others. According to a study conducted by the Soros Open Society Foundations, there were also gaps according to gender and education levels, with males more likely than females to be users of mobile devices, and well-educated individuals more likely than poorly-educated individuals to be regular mobile Internet users. In an age where information and knowledge are paramount, people who use their mobile devices solely for communication may get left behind.
"Mobile-first" is one of those corporate buzzwords that people are using these days to describe their strategic focus on creating and designing user experiences around mobile devices. There's no doubt that not just corporations, but also entire communities and nations, can use exactly such a mobile-first strategy to erase the gaps between the have's and have-not's. As McKinsey pointed out back in 2009, tweaks to the regulatory regime and pricing of a nation's moble networks can have a significant follow-on impact on everything from adoption rates to usage patterns. As a result, we need to be careful that in eliminating one type of digital divide, we are not unknowingly creating another type of digital divide, this one created for the mobile 1% capable of paying for more functionality, more information and faster speeds than the other 99%.
Image: Happy People Showing Their Modern Mobile Phones /Shutterstock
Former D.C. schools chief busy lobbying, helping politicians - 1 views
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Former D.C. schools chief busy lobbying, helping politicians
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
Updated 5d 10h ago
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-29/michelle-rhee-lobbying/52276930/1
More than a year after she resigned as chancellor of Washington, D.C., Public Schools - and nine months after her successor asked D.C.'s inspector general to investigate high erasure rates on standardized tests during her tenure -Michelle Rhee remains as high-profile as ever.
Michelle Rhee's non-profit is lobbying statehouses.
By Charlie Nye, The Star
Michelle Rhee's non-profit is lobbying statehouses.
By Charlie Nye, The Star
Michelle Rhee's non-profit is lobbying statehouse
Students First, her Sacramento-based advocacy non-profit, this year successfully lobbied state legislatures in Michigan and Nevada to overhaul teacher evaluations and end "Last In, First Out" policies that many activists abhor.
On a conference call Dec. 13 with supporters, Rhee said Students First would soon enroll its one-millionth member.
STORY: Schools marred by testing scandals in 2011
MORE: Were gains real when D.C. test scores soared?
STORY: D.C. officials to review high rates of erasures on school tests
And really: What other education wonk finds noisy protesters picketing her speaking engagements?
If the simmering Washington test-erasure scandal is having any effect, it's not immediately apparent.
Rhee, who stepped down after then-Mayor Adrian Fenty lost the September 2010 Democratic primary, has spent 2011 becoming a political force, lobbying statehouses and helping a handful of like-minded state lawmakers get elected.
In one case, she pushed - unsuccessfully - to help one Michigan lawmaker fight off a recall.
And Rhee says her non-profit's 1 million members in 2012 will lobby for a re-authorization of No Child Left Behind that places even more emphasis, not less, on the results of standardized tests.
"She clearly understands, to a greater degree than other reformers, the struggle for sustained reform that primarily involves a political battle," says Marc Lampkin, a Republican strategist and co-founder of Ed in '08, an education advocacy group that was active during the 2008 presidential election.
Rhee has declined repeated requests to talk to USA TODAY, both during and after the reporting on its D.C. public schools erasures series.
But her spokesman, Hari Seguvan, says that in the past year, Students First and its members have helped pass 50 education measures in seven states, affecting 8.7 million children.
What resistance Rhee has encountered so far has come from educators and activists who already thought her anti-union, take-no-prisoners approach was wrongheaded.
"She represents an approach to reforming education that we think is really destructive and is not going to face the problems of public education," says Lisa Guisbond of Citizens for Public Schools, a Boston-based public education advocacy group.
Along with a handful of others, Guisbond's group arranged a boisterous demonstration in November when Rhee appeared at Boston's Symphony Hall, where marchers carried signs that read, "Erasing Mistakes Doesn't Put Children First."
Seguvan says Rhee in the past year has made more than 150 public appearances, with protests in only two or three instances, including a noisy exchange during an Ohio speech and the appearance of placard-waving demonstrators outside a speech at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.
Guisbond, a mother of two in Brookline, Mass., calls the Washington testing irregularities "Erasergate" and says the growing number of cheating scandals in 2011 is "starting to bubble up to people's awareness, as it should. It's starting to be connected to all these high-stakes testing policies, as it should."
Teachers Resist High-Tech Push in Idaho Schools - 0 views
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By MATT RICHTEL
POST FALLS, Idaho - Ann Rosenbaum, a former military police officer in the Marines, does not shrink from a fight, having even survived a close encounter with a car bomb in Iraq. Her latest conflict is quite different: she is now a high school teacher, and she and many of her peers in Idaho are resisting a statewide plan that dictates how computers should be used in classrooms.
Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that requires all high school students to take some online classes to graduate, and that the students and their teachers be given laptops or tablets. The idea was to establish Idaho's schools as a high-tech vanguard.
To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators. And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.
This change is part of a broader shift that is creating tension - a tension that is especially visible in Idaho but is playing out across the country. Some teachers, even though they may embrace classroom technology, feel policy makers are thrusting computers into classrooms without their input or proper training. And some say they are opposed to shifting money to online classes and other teaching methods whose benefits remain unproved.
"Teachers don't object to the use of technology," said Sabrina Laine, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, which has studied the views of the nation's teachers using grants from organizations like the Gates and Ford Foundations. "They object to being given a resource with strings attached, and without the needed support to use it effectively to improve student learning."
In Idaho, teachers have been in open revolt. They marched on the capital last spring, when the legislation was under consideration. They complain that lawmakers listened less to them than to heavy lobbying by technology companies, including Intel and Apple. Teacher and parent groups gathered 75,000 verified signatures, more than was needed, to put a referendum on the ballot next November that could overturn the law.
"This technology is being thrown on us. It's being thrown on parents and thrown on kids," said Ms. Rosenbaum, 32, who has written letters to the governor and schools superintendent. In her letters she tells them she is a Republican and a Marine, because, she says, it has become fashionable around the country to dismiss complaining teachers as union-happy liberals.
"I fought for my country," she said. "Now I'm fighting for my kids."
Gov. C. L. Otter, known as Butch, and Tom Luna, the schools superintendent, who have championed the plan, said teachers had been misled by their union into believing the changes were a step toward replacing them with computers. Mr. Luna said the teachers' anger was intensified by other legislation, also passed last spring, that eliminated protections for teachers with seniority and replaced it with a pay-for-performance system.
Some teachers have also expressed concern that teaching positions could be eliminated and their raises reduced to help offset the cost of the technology.
Mr. Luna acknowledged that many teachers in the state were conservative Republicans like him - making Idaho's politics less black and white than in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, where union-backed teachers have been at odds with politicians.
Mr. Luna said he understood that technological change could be scary, particularly because teachers would need to adapt to new ways of working.
"The role of the teacher definitely does change in the 21st century. There's no doubt," Mr. Luna said. "The teacher does become the guide and the coach and the educator in the room helping students to move at their own pace."
Many details about how students would use their laptop or tablet are still being debated. But under the state's plan, that teacher will not always be in the room. The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits.
Mr. Luna said this would allow students to take subjects that were not otherwise available at their schools and familiarize them with learning online, something he said was increasingly common in college.
The computer, he added, "becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information."
Idaho is going beyond what other states have done in decreeing what hardware students and teachers should use and how they should use it. But such requirements are increasingly common at the district level, where most decisions about buying technology for schools are made.
Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake.
That is a concern shared by Ms. Rosenbaum, who teaches at Post Falls High School in this town in northern Idaho, near Coeur d'Alene. Rather than relying on technology, she seeks to engage students with questions - the Socratic method - as she did recently as she was taking her sophomore English class through "The Book Thief," a novel about a family in Germany that hides a Jewish girl during World War II.
Ms. Rosenbaum, tall with an easy smile but also a commanding presence, stood in the center of the room with rows of desks on each side, pacing, peppering the students with questions and using each answer to prompt the next. What is an example of foreshadowing in this chapter? Why did the character say that? How would you feel in that situation?
Her room mostly lacks high-tech amenities. Homework assignments are handwritten on whiteboards. Students write journal entries in spiral notebooks. On the walls are two American flags and posters paying tribute to the Marines, and on the ceiling a panel painted by a student thanks Ms. Rosenbaum for her service. Ms. Rosenbaum did use a computer and projector to show a YouTube video of the devastation caused by bombing in World War II. She said that while technology had a role to play, her method of teaching was timeless. "I'm teaching them to think deeply, to think. A computer can't do that."
She said she was mystified by the requirement that students take online courses. She is taking some classes online as she works toward her master's degree, and said they left her uninspired and less informed than in-person classes. Ms. Rosenbaum said she could not fathom how students would have the discipline to sit in front of their computers and follow along when she had to work each minute to keep them engaged in person.
Some of her views are echoed by other teachers, like Doug StanWiens, 44, a popular teacher of advanced history and economics at Boise High School. He is a heavy technology user, relying on an interactive whiteboard and working with his students to build a Web site that documents local architecture, a project he says will create a resource for the community.
"I firmly believe that technology is a tool for teachers to use," he said. "It's time for teachers to get moving on it." But he also spoke last year on the capital steps in opposition to the state's program, which he said he saw as a poorly thought-out, one-size-fits-all approach.
Half of teachers, he suspects, will not use the new computers. And the online learning requirement seems to him to be a step toward cutting back on in-person teaching and, perhaps eventually, on not having students congregate in schools at all.
"We can just get rid of sports and band and just give everyone a laptop and call it good," he said.
Stefani Cook, who teaches accounting and business at Rigby High School in southeast Idaho and was the state's 2011 Teacher of the Year, also teaches a modernized typing course to 32 online students after-hours. A contractor for the state pays her to teach the course and also to help other teachers shape and present their online lessons.
Ms. Cook is a believer in classroom technology and generally supports the state's plan. She is on a 38-member task force that is working out the logistics of deploying computers to teachers next fall and, eventually, to 80,000 high schoolers. The group will also organize training for teachers. Ms. Cook said she did worry about how teachers would be trained when some already work long hours and take second jobs to make ends meet.
"I'm excited about it," she said. But some teachers, she said, "think it's just another thing that they've got to do."
Mr. Luna, the superintendent, said training was the most essential part of the plan. He said millions of dollars would be set aside for this but that the details were still being worked out. Teachers will need to learn how to use the new devices and how to incorporate them into their lesson plans, which could involve rethinking longstanding routines.
For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students' hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most.
When asked about the quantity of unreliable information on the Internet, he said this also worked in favor of better learning. "There may be a lot of misinformation," he said, "but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth."
Mr. Otter said of a teacher like Ms. Rosenbaum, "If she only has an abacus in her classroom, she's missing the boat."
Some of the state's politicians disagree with that message. State Senator Dean L. Cameron, a Republican who is a co-chairman of the senate budget committee, said there was no proof that the technology improved learning. He said he felt the legislature was "dazzled" by presentations given by lobbyists for high-tech companies - who also gave generously to Mr. Luna's re-election campaign.
(Mr. Luna said that $44,000 of his $300,000 in donations to his last campaign came directly or indirectly from technology companies, but he said that was because they supported his agenda, not because they shaped it.)
Mr. Cameron said of the law: "It's almost as if it was written by the top technology providers in the nation." He added: "And you'd think students would be excited about getting a mobile device, but they're saying: not at the expense of teachers."
Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students - about half of the school - staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: "We need teachers, not computers."
Having a new laptop "is not my favorite idea," said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum's English class who has a blond mohawk. "I'd rather learn from a teacher."
The ten most popular eSN stories of the year - 2 views
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The ten most popular eSN stories of the year
Here are the most popular eSchool News stories of 2011.
Recently, we published our editors' picks for the 10 most significant ed-tech stories of 2011. Now, see what our readers think.
These 10 stories were the most popular among our readers in 2011, as judged by the number of page views they received at www.eSchoolNews.com. If you missed any of them before, don't worry: You can go back and read them now, simply by clicking on each headline.
Ten great sites with free teacher resources
With cuts to school budgets, teachers are often left searching for ways to innovate without breaking the bank. There are numerous sites that can help, but we've picked 10 that our among our favorites…
10 of the best apps for education
As iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches become more integrated in classrooms, educators and students are looking for new ways to apply them to the learning process. In this special feature, we've assembled a list of education "apps" for Apple devices that we think are noteworthy…
Ten skills every student should learn
Ed-tech stakeholders for years have been touting the need for students to learn so-called "21st century skills" such as problem solving, critical thinking, and media literacy to prepare for the new global, digital economy, while others are calling for students to have strong math and science skills. All of these skills are important-but what do educators and other school stakeholders think are the most important skills for students to learn?
Five characteristics of an effective 21st-century educator
We recently asked readers: "What are the qualities of an effective 21st-century educator?" Here are our readers' top responses…
Ten common myths about teaching
It seems everyone has an opinion about teachers and their profession these days-and most of them aren't teachers…
'Bring your own device' catching on in schools
Many children and teens now own their own mobile devices, and school leaders are using that to their advantage by incorporating devices that students already own into classroom lessons and projects…
How to use YouTube at school-safely
As most teachers know, there's a lot of great educational content on YouTube-and there's a lot of inappropriate material, too. That's why many schools block access to YouTube on their networks, which can be frustrating for teachers who want to use YouTube at school. Now, a new service from internet security company M86 Security aims to solve this problem…
Five things students say they want from education
With so many education stakeholders debating the needs of today's schools, student voices aren't always heard when it comes to what they want from their education…
Math research reveals early-learning needs
Numbers, counting, and low-level arithmetic are three basic competencies that are vital to later success in math, and students should have these key math skills in first grade in order to be successful in math in fifth grade, according to a long-term study released by psychologists at the University of Missouri…
Ten ideas for interactive teaching
Interactive teaching methods are an effective way to connect with a generation of students used to consistent stimulation-and education professor Kevin Yee has some advice for how teachers can make their lessons more interactive…
Finland and Shanghai.. a reminder post especially in the light of the NYTIMES article o... - 0 views
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The Real Lessons of PISA
By Diane Ravitch on December 14, 2010 9:13 AM
Dear Deborah,
When the results of the latest international assessment-the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA-were released, our national leaders sounded an alarm about a national "crisis in education." Our students scored in the middle of the pack! We are not No. 1! Shanghai is No. 1! We are doomed unless we overtake Shanghai!
President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan warned ominously that our nation was having a "Sputnik moment." We have fallen behind the global competition in education, they cried, evoking comparison with the Soviet Union's launch of a space satellite in 1957. At that time, the media and the politicians predicted that the Soviets would soon rule the world, and we know how that turned out.
Now the politicians would like to use the latest test scores to promote their "reform" agenda for the schools: more charter schools, more reliance on competition and free-market strategies, more testing, more use of test scores to evaluate teachers, more firing of principals and teachers, more closing of low-scoring schools.
Our leaders in Washington would have us believe that they know how to close the achievement gap and how to overtake the highest-performing nations in the world. PISA proves that they don't.
Consider the two top contenders on PISA: Shanghai and Finland. These two places-one a very large city of nearly 21 million, the other a small nation of less than six million-represent two very different approaches to education. The one thing they have in common is that neither of the world leaders in education is doing what American reformers propose.
According to the OECD, the international group that sponsors PISA, the schools of Shanghai-like those in all of China-are dominated by pressure to get higher scores on examinations. OECD writes:
"Teaching and learning, in secondary schools in particular, are predominantly determined by the examination syllabi, and school activities at that level are very much oriented towards exam preparation. Subjects such as music and art, and in some cases even physical education, are removed from the timetable because they are not covered in the public examinations. Schools work their students for long hours every day, and the work weeks extend into the weekends, mainly for additional exam preparation classes...private tutorials, most of them profit-making, are widespread and have become almost a household necessity."
OECD points out that more than 80 percent of students in Shanghai attend after-school tutoring. It remarked on the academic intensity of Chinese students. Non-attention is not tolerated. As I read about the "intense concentration" of these students, I was reminded of the astonishing opening event of the Beijing Olympics, when 15,000 participants performed tightly scripted routines. It is hard to imagine a similar event performed by American youth, who are accustomed not to intense discipline, but to a culture of free expression and individualism.
Interestingly, the authorities in Shanghai boast not about their testing routines, but about their consistent and effective support for struggling teachers and schools. When a school is in trouble in Shanghai, authorities say they pair it with a high-performing school. The teachers and leaders of the strong school help those in the weak school until it improves. The authorities send whatever support is needed to help those who are struggling. In the OECD video about Shanghai, the lowest-performing school in the city is described as one where "only" 89 percent of students passed the state exams! With the help sent by the leaders of the school system, it eventually reached the target of 100 percent.
Finland is at the other end of the educational spectrum. Its education system is modeled on American progressive ideas. It is student-centered. It has a broad (and non-directive) national curriculum. Its teachers are drawn from the top 10 percent of university graduates. They are highly educated and well prepared. Students never take a high-stakes test; their teachers make their own tests. The only test they take that counts is the one required to enter university.
Last week, I went to a luncheon with Pasi Sahlberg, the Finnish education expert. I asked him the question that every politician asks today: "If students don't take tests, how do you hold teachers and schools accountable?" He said that there is no word in the Finnish language for "accountability." He said, "We put well-prepared teachers in the classroom, give them maximum autonomy, and we trust them to be responsible."
I asked him if teachers are paid more for experience. He said, "Of course." And what about graduate degrees? He said, "Every teacher in Finland has a master's degree." He added: "We don't believe in competition among students, teachers, or schools. We believe in collaboration, trust, responsibility, and autonomy."
Since I have not visited schools in either Shanghai or Finland, I am certainly no expert. It was interesting to watch the short videos about their schools, found here. It is also interesting to consider what these two very different systems have in common: They place their bets on expert, experienced teachers and on careful training of their new teachers. They rely on well-planned, consistent support of teachers to improve their schools continuously.
These two systems are diametrically opposed in one sense: Shanghai relies heavily on testing to meet its goals; Finland emphasizes child-centered methods. Yet they have these important things in common: Neither of them does what the United States is now promoting: They do not hand students over to privately managed schools; they do not accept teachers who do not intend to make teaching their profession; they do not have principals who are non-educators; they do not have superintendents who are non-educators; they do not "turn around" schools by closing them or privatizing them; they do not "improve" schools by firing the principal or the teachers. They respect their teachers. They focus relentlessly on improving teaching and learning, as it is defined in their culture and society.
The lesson of PISA is this: Neither of the world's highest-performing nations do what our "reformers" want to do. How long will it take before our political leaders begin to listen to educators? How long will it take before they realize that their strategies have not worked anywhere? How long will it be before they stop inflicting their bad ideas on our schools, our students, our teachers, and American education?
Diane
Categories: China , PISA , Testing , teaching
CHEATING ON THE SATS - 0 views
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From CBS 60 Minutes [TV program], Sunday, January 1, 2012 -- you can view the segment at http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57348498/the-perfect-score-cheating-on-the-sat/ and also read the script; also appeared in The New York Post, Friday, December 30, 2011 -- See http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sat_whiz_takin_it_so_easy_qe6GJGvP60vMQB6j0XkM5N
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SAT taker-for-hire tells '60 Minutes' it was easy to cheat
By Selim Algar
The easiest SAT problem to solve was how to cheat on it.
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PHOTO SIDEBAR: NO PROBLEM: Test taker Sam Eshaghoff tells "60 Minutes" that security at college entrance exams is "pathetic."
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Speaking out for the first time, the Long Island teen who took college-entrance exams for cash told "60 Minutes" that his scandalous scheme couldn't have been simpler to pull off.
"I would say that between the SAT and ACT, the security is uniformly pathetic," a cocky Sam Eshaghoff says in a segment to air this Sunday. "In the sense that anybody with half a brain could get away with taking the test for anybody else."
Now a student at Emory University, Eshaghoff was arrested in September, and the bust set off a national debate on entrance-exam integrity and trained a harsh light on his tony hometown of Great Neck.
To date, 20 people have been arrested at several Long Island schools allegedly for either paying to have the test taken for them or providing the service.
The 19-year-old whiz kid says his bustling business started with a casual proposal from a classmate. "He's like, 'Yo, you're good on your SATs and I'm not. And you know this is possible. How much is it going to take?' "
The answer was a cool $2,500. Eshaghoff told "60 Minutes" that he took the tests - both the SAT and the ACT - roughly 20 times for score-starved clients.
"My whole clientele were based on word of mouth and, like, a referral system," Eshaghoff said. He offered up his SAT wizardry gratis only once, for his then-girlfriend.
With his business booming, Eshaghoff began to feel like he was performing a noble public service rather than a criminal act that would lead him into handcuffs.
"I mean, a kid who has a horrible grade-point average, who no matter how much he studies is gonna totally bomb this test, by giving him an amazing score, I totally give him this . . . new lease on life. He's gonna go to a totally new college. He's gonna be bound for a totally new career and a totally new path on life."
But while Eshaghoff routinely furnished sky-high scores for his clients - usually between 2170 and 2220 - many ended up in colleges that fell short of Ivy caliber.
One batch of busted customers included entrants to noted party schools like Arizona State and the University of Colorado.
Despite the felony raps against him, Eshaghoff will accept a plea deal that will allow him to avoid jail time by again boosting test scores. Only this time he will offer up his counsel to low-income students looking to ace their exams.
In bashing Eshaghoff's activity, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice has said he was stealing coveted college-admission spots from deserving students.
But Eshaghoff blew off that accusation. "I feel confident defending the fact that [my clients] getting into the schools that they ended up getting into didn't really affect other people."
He did admit to some shame in the negative attention his arrest has brought to his family.
Eshaghoff's lawyer, Matin Emouna, said his client was uncharacteristically nervous for the "60 Minutes" interview.
"He was nervous because he didn't know what the questions were going to be," Emouna said.
"Sam came across as the true person he is," the attorney continued. "He is just like any other teenager. He has a very bright future ahead of him. He has learned a valuable lesson: the importance of being a law-abiding citizen."
But while his brush with the law may have dulled his desire to cheat, the opportunity, he said, remains wide open.
Asked if he could pull his stunt off again despite the national uproar and talk of security improvements, Eshaghoff didn't hesitate.
"Easily," he said. "Piece of cake. I could do it tomorrow."
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selim.algar@nypost.com
The Years Worst Tech Trends.. - 1 views
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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/12/the_year_s_worst_tech_trend_complexity_.html
011 Was a Terrible Year for Tech
All our devices got more complicated. And they won't get simpler anytime soon.
By Farhad Manjoo|Posted Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011, at 6:23 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
If you read tech criticism often, there's a good chance that you've come upon a staple of the form that I like to call the "mommy dearest" review. Your middle-aged tech journalist-the sort of fellow who could spend hours telling you about the newest developments in wireless routers-is assessing a gadget like the Kindle or the iPad, a device meant to appeal to non-techies. He begins by praising the gadget's intuitive interface and its easy setup process, but eventually he finds that mere description doesn't adequately convey the product's momentous simplicity. That's when he drops the mom bomb: This thing is so easy that even my mom could use it.
I'm pretty sure I've never written a mommy dearest review, but I've come close (sorry, Dad!), and I understand the impulse. People who write about technology for a living are fundamentally different from those who don't, and we know it: We're obsessed with gadgets, and we're prepared to invest time learning complicated things if the payoff looks grand. But we also know that the real audience for tech products is non-techies-or normals, as they're called in the business-and we're instantly taken by anything that promises to demystify tech for those users. That's why tech journalists love Apple, and why the last half-decade has been such an exciting time in the business. Over the last few years, the industry finally started paying attention to normals: With the advent of smartphones, tablets, and centralized app and media stores, it looked like computers would finally become easy enough for every tech reviewer's mom to use.
But then, this year, all that simplicity was tossed out the window. It was a terrible year for tech. In 2011 nearly every gadget or service that I use on a regular basis picked up new features that made it more frustrating to deal with. Everywhere I looked, I saw feature creep, platform wars, competing media standards, and increasingly chaotic user interfaces. Complexity appeared in places where I've come to expect it-like Facebook, which, as usual, added a blizzard of overlapping, sometimes secret features-but also in longtime havens for normals, like the Mac operating system. In Lion, Apple's latest OS, there are so many ways to download and launch apps-not to mention a new, full-screen app interface that renders everything you thought you knew about how to get around your Mac pretty much useless, and introduces a host of inconsistent swipe gestures-that even if you dare to install it, you'd be wise to ignore everything else.
But it's not just that individual products got more difficult to use; in 2011 the entire tech ecosystem descended toward entropy. Devices and services had a harder time playing together, and simply choosing what to use became an occasion for a flowchart. Some of the simplest tech questions-How should I send a text message to a friend? Which video phone service should I use?-are now hopelessly fraught.
Say you're looking to watch movies and TV shows online. Should you subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, cable, satellite, or something else altogether? The correct answer is: It depends. There are now so many variables that affect this simple decision-How much TV do you watch? Do you prefer old stuff or new stuff? Are there specific shows you're into? Do you like live TV?-that it could take you a couple hours of research to arrive at your answer. Worse, however deeply you research the question, you're unlikely to find everything you want from a single service. In the tech industry today, trade-offs rule. There are lots of almost-great ways to get stuff you want, but perfection is elusive. And it will remain that way for several years, at least.
The main problem is that the tech business is in a period of transition between yesterday's PCs and tomorrow's mobile machines. The old business was dominated by a single company, Microsoft, which could decide carte blanche how millions of people's computers would change every year. But no single company has yet claimed the post-PC era, and for the foreseeable future, new devices will remain under the sway of four or five gargantuan firms (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft). Because these companies have different visions and business interests for the future, they're all creating similar but incompatible technologies. In 2011 both Apple and Facebook released BlackBerry-like messaging services that are meant to replace traditional SMS text-messaging-but neither can talk to the other. In the same vein, you can't use Apple's Facetime to video chat with someone on Skype (now owned by Microsoft) or Android, and you can't invite someone on Facebook to your Google+ Hangout.
The multi-device world requires constant management and coordination: Today lots of people-even non-techies-regularly deal with three or four main gadgets. But each of these devices is an island; the cell number you have in an archived work e-mail isn't necessarily available on your phone when you need it. Sure, there are apps (like Dropbox) that claim to ensure all your data is available from your work computer, your personal laptop, your smartphone, and maybe your tablet, but the very fact that you've got to install an add-on suggests the depth of the problem.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are all working on ways to allow me to seamlessly switch from device to device, but, again, their competing interests prevent them from creating something that just works everywhere. This year Apple unveiled iCloud, a way to keep your data automatically synced between all your services-but of course it won't sync anything you do on your Android phone. I love the way that Google's Chrome Web browser remembers everything that I do on every computer: When I save a bookmark or add an extension to Chrome on my laptop, my desktop instantly gets the same info. But the iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone, and Kindle Fire don't run Chrome, so it's no help there.
I suspect there's a big opportunity, in 2012 and beyond, for startups that attempt to solve this problem. The success of Dropbox proved that people need a simple way to force compatibility between their devices, but I'm envisioning something more than just making sure your files are everywhere. I'd like a service that acts as a concierge between all my competing devices and services: Why should I have different Lists and Circles in Facebook and Google+? I shouldn't; someone should come up with a way to keep them in sync.
Yet for a host of technical reasons, it will be difficult for startups to solve the complexity problem. This is something that the marketplace will address over the long run: As one mobile platform wins out, and one media service gains dominance, eventually it will become easier to choose the best way to send messages, watch videos, and keep things synced between your gadgets. But Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft are locked in a battle for the ages. None of them is going to give up soon, and it might be many years before we see a clear winner. Until then, brace yourself.
Ten Education Predictions for 2012 Answer Sheet - 1 views
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10 education predictions for 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/10-education-predictions-for-2012/2011/12/29/gIQAB2PbPP_blog.html
By Valerie Strauss
This was written by Larry Ferlazzo, who teaches English at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. He writes a popular blog for teachers and is the author of three books. He is a member of the Teacher Leaders Network. A version of this excerpt appeared on his blog, "Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day."
By Larry Ferlazzo
I'm going to take a stab at some prognostication for 2012. I batted close to 50% in last year's predictions, which can't be much worse than those made by professional pundits. Feel free to add your own predictions - and don't hesitate to include "wishful thinking!"
My predictions for 2012:
1. Proponents of what is typically called "corporate school reform" - expansion of charter schools and teacher merit pay, primarily evaluating teachers by student test scores, erosion of seniority rights - will emphasize expanding their agenda through three major avenues: Teach For America will use their new $50 million grant from the federal government to enter multiple new districts; KIPP charter Schools will do the same with their new $25.5 million grant from the Walton FamilyFoundation; and, in California at least, charter operators will build on their recent push to have county Boards of Education's approve charter applications over school district objections.
2. Notwithstanding recent court decisions in New York City, efforts to publish teacher ratings by test scores in local newspapers will die out. Newspapers will shy away from publicizing this misleading data after seeing the backlash received by The Los Angeles Times after they pioneered this questionable practice. In addition, since more districts are unfortunately including student test scores in teacher evaluations, the practice of making "job reviews" public will becoming increasingly questionable legally.
3. There will be a surge of interest in the concept of Social Emotional Learning (SEL), the idea of explicitly helping students learn about and develop character traits like self-control and perseverance. Unfortunately, that interest will be combined with a strong desire to test and grade, and much of its potential effectiveness will be lost.
4. Here in California, Gov. Jerry Brown and his allies will be successful in convincing proponents of other tax initiatives to focus on supporting his ballot drive. His plan to increase taxes would result in billions more for schools, and will pass handily. That success will inspire similar efforts in other states during following years.
5. As the 2012 presidential election nears, and the polls show a Romney/Obama contest as a nail-biter, the Obama administration will offer a "fall surprise" to teachers by offering states waivers to No Child Left Behind requirements that don't have the "poison pills" of rules and costs that their present waiver hold. The tactic will work, and larger numbers of educators will actively campaign for the president in the election's final months.
6. The inaccurate teacher evaluations in New York, Tennessee and Florida will force states to go much more slowly in implementing ones that include student test scores as a sizable percentage of the ranking. Unfortunately, the momentum for these types of evaluations will only be slowed, not stopped.
7. There will be a renewed interest in using Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) as an evaluation and professional development strategy. Districts that expand the use of this process, which treats educators as professionals, will find increasing success for students, their families, and educators alike.
8. Former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee will continue her decline in public credibility and relevance. Her work with some of the most conservative, and anti-teacher, Republicans has made her highly unpopular among many Democrats. And, as her Republican allies falter in their own success and popularity across the country, she is, incredibly and unsuccessfully, trying to build a base here in California.
9. Strategies to use technology as a transformative tool in education will take a backseat as for-profit online learning charlatans and the Khan Academy take up the tech money and the media space.
10. As I did last year, I'm borrowing this last one from Bill Ivey, a colleague in the Teacher Leaders Network. He predicts that "Each and every school day will bring tens of thousands of reasons to celebrate in schools across the country." That sure sounds good to me…
Please share your reactions, and your own predictions!
Teach for America: Liberal mission helps conservative agenda - 1 views
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Teach for America: Liberal mission helps conservative agenda
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/teach-for-america-liberal-mission-helps-conservative-agenda/2011/12/25/gIQApoVZHP_blog.html
By Valerie Strauss
This was written by Andrew Hartman, who teaches history at Illinois State University. He is the author of Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School. This was originally published at jacobinmag.com. It is long but well worth your time.
By Andrew Hartman
The job of the American public school teacher has never been so thankless. In states across America, cutting teacher salaries and pensions has become the most popular method for fixing budget deficits. New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie's deep cuts, for instance, force teachers to contribute a much higher percentage of their salaries to their pensions, while doubling or even tripling their health care contributions and eliminating cost-of-living adjustments. Republican governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio took their austerity measures a step further by seeking to abolish collective bargaining rights for teachers. Such legislation is possible because the image of teachers has never been so degraded, especially of unionized teachers, whom Christie routinely refers to as "thugs" and "bullies."
The liberals of the education reform movement, often more surreptitiously than Michelle Rhee, the overstated former Washington D.C. chancellor of schools during Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty's term in office, have for decades advanced negative assumptions about public school teachers that now power the attacks by Christie, Walker, Kasich and their ilk.
This is particularly true of Teach for America (TFA), the prototypical liberal education reform organization, where Rhee first made her mark. The history of TFA reveals the ironies of contemporary education reform. In its mission to deliver justice to underprivileged children, TFA and the liberal education reform movement have advanced an agenda that advances conservative attempts to undercut teacher's unions. More broadly, TFA has been in the vanguard in forming a neoliberal consensus about the role of public education - and the role of public school teachers - in a deeply unequal society.
In 1988, Princeton student Wendy Kopp wrote a thesis arguing for a national teacher corps, modeled on the Peace Corps - the archetype of liberal volunteerism - that "would mobilize some of the most passionate, dedicated members of my generation to change the fact that where a child is born in the United States largely determines his or her chances in life."
Kopp launched TFA in 1990 as a not-for-profit charged with selecting the brightest, most idealistic recent college graduates as corps members who would commit to teach for two years in some of the nation's toughest schools. From its inception, the media anointed TFA the savior of American education. Prior to a single corps member stepping foot in a classroom, The New York Times and Newsweek lavished Kopp's new organization with cover stories full of insipid praise. Adulation has remained the norm.
Its recent twenty-year anniversary summit, held in Washington, D.C., featured fawning video remarks by President Obama and a glitzy "who's who" roster of liberal cheerleaders, including John Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, Gloria Steinem, and TFA board member John Legend. The organs of middlebrow centrist opinion - Time magazine, Atlantic Monthly , The New Republic - glorify TFA at every opportunity. [Education columnist Jay Mathews of ] The Washington Post has heralded the nation's education reform movement as the "TFA insurgency"- a perplexing linguistic choice given so-called "insurgency" methods have informed national education policies from Reagan to Obama.
TFA is, at best, another chimerical attempt in a long history of chimerical attempts to sell educational reform as a solution to class inequality. At worst, it's a Trojan horse for all that is unseemly about the contemporary education reform movement.
The original TFA mission was based on a set of four somewhat noble if paternalistic rationales. First, by bringing the elite into the teaching profession, even if temporarily, TFA would burnish it with a much-needed "aura of status and selectivity." Second, by supplying its recruits to impoverished school districts, both urban and rural, TFA would compensate for the lack of quality teachers willing to work in such challenging settings. And third, although Kopp recognized that most corps members would not remain classroom teachers beyond their two-year commitments, she believed that TFA alums would form the nucleus of a new movement of educational leaders - that their transformative experiences teaching poor children would mold their ambitious career trajectories. Above these three foundational principles loomed a fourth: the mission to relegate educational inequality to the ash heap of history.
TFA goals derive, in theory, from laudable - if misguided - impulses. But each, in practice, has demonstrated to be deeply problematic.
TFA, suitably representative of the liberal education reform more generally, underwrites, intentionally or not, the conservative assumptions of the education reform movement: that teacher's unions serve as barriers to quality education; that testing is the best way to assess quality education; that educating poor children is best done by institutionalizing them; that meritocracy is an end-in-itself; that social class is an unimportant variable in education reform; that education policy is best made by evading politics proper; and that faith in public school teachers is misplaced.
Take the first rationale: that TFA would enhance the image of the teaching profession. On the contrary, the only brand TFA endows with an "aura of status and selectivity" is its own. As reported in The New York Times , 18 percent of Harvard seniors applied to TFA in 2010, a rate only surpassed by the 22 percent of Yale seniors who sought to join the national teacher corps that year. All told, TFA selected 4,500 lucky recruits from a pool of 46,359 applicants in 2010. [In 2011 the acceptance rate was 11 percent.]
Although many applicants are no doubt motivated to join out of altruism, the two-year TFA experience has become a highly desirable notch on the resumes of the nation's most diligent strivers. The more exclusive TFA becomes, the more ordinary regular teachers seem. TFA corps members typically come from prestigious institutions of higher education, while most regular teachers are trained at the second- and third-tier state universities that house the nation's largest colleges of education.
Whereas TFA corps members leverage the elite TFA brand to launch careers in law or finance - or, if they remain in education, to bypass the typical career path on their way to principalships and other positions of leadership - most regular teachers must plod along, negotiating their way through traditional career ladders. These distinctions are lost on nobody. They are what make regular teachers and their unions such low-hanging political fruit for the likes of Christie, Walker, and Kasich.
The second justification for TFA - that it exists to supply good teachers to schools where few venture to work - has also proven questionable. Though the assertion made some sense in 1990, when many impoverished school districts did in fact suffer from a dearth of teachers, the same is not so easily argued now.
Following the economic collapse of 2008, which contributed to school revenue problems nationwide, massive teacher layoffs became the new norm, including in districts where teacher shortages had provided an entry to TFA in the past. Thousands of Chicago teachers, for instance, have felt the sting of layoffs and furloughs in the past two years, even as the massive Chicago Public School system, bound by contract, continues to annually hire a specified number of TFA corps members. In the face of these altered conditions, the TFA public relations machine now deemphasizes teacher shortages and instead accentuates one crucial adjective: "quality." In other words, schools in poor urban and rural areas of the country might not suffer from a shortage of teachers in general, but they lack for the quality teachers that Kopp's organization provides.
After twenty years of sending academically gifted but untrained college graduates into the nation's toughest schools, the evidence regarding TFA corps member effectiveness is in, and it is decidedly mixed. Professors of education Julian Vasquez Heilig and Su Jin Jez, in the most thorough survey of such research yet, found that TFA corps members tend to perform equal to teachers in similar situations -that is, they do as well as new teachers lacking formal training assigned to impoverished schools. Sometimes they do better, particularly in math instruction.
Yet "the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well," Vasquez Heilig and Jin Jez discovered, "than those of credentialed beginning teachers." It seems clear that TFA's vaunted thirty-day summer institute-TFA "boot camp"-is no replacement for the preparation given future teachers at traditional colleges of education.
Putting TFA forward to solve the problems of the teaching profession has turned out poorly. But the third premise for Kopp's national teacher corps - that it would "create a leadership force for long-term change" in how the nation's least privileged students are schooled - has been the most destructive. Such destructiveness is directly related to Kopp's success in attaching TFA to the education reform movement.
In this, Kopp's timing could not have been more fortuitous. When TFA was founded, the education reform movement was beginning to make serious headway in policy-making circles. This movement had been in the works since as far back as the notorious Coleman Report, a massive 1966 government study written by sociologist James Coleman, officially titled "Equality of Educational Opportunity."
Coleman contended that school funding had little bearing on educational achievement and, thus, efforts to achieve resource "equity" were wasteful. The Coleman Report became a touchstone for those who argued that pushing for educational "excellence," measurable by standardized tests, was the best method to improve schools and hold teachers accountable. Chester Finn, an influential conservative policy analyst who worked in the Reagan Department of Education, put his finger on the educational pulse of our age when he wrote that "holding schools" - and teachers - "to account for their students' academic achievement" was the only educational policy [along with the choice movement] that made sense in a "post-Coleman" world.
With unwavering support from powerful economic and political actors, who almost uniformly understood the state of American public education through the lens of "A Nation at Risk," a widely publicized 1983 study that argued the failure of American schools was undermining the nation's ability to compete in an increasingly global economy, education reformers set out to ensure that schools and teachers were held accountable for the achievement of their students, privileged or not. George H. W. Bush, dubbed the "education president," filled his department of education with advocates of "outcome-based education," which emphasized "excellence" in contrast to "equity." Educational progress was to be measured by what students produced (outputs) rather than by what resources were invested in schools (inputs). The TFA mantra - "we don't need to wait to fix poverty in order to ensure that all children receive an excellent education" - meshed perfectly with this "post-Coleman" zeitgeist.
One of the more salient aspects of the so-called "TFA insurgency" was that it operated from the assumption that more resources were not a prerequisite for improving schools. "Schools that transform their students' trajectories aspire not to equality of inputs," Kopp declared, "but rather to equality of outputs." Instead of more resources, underprivileged students needed better teachers. Reformers thus set out to devise a system that hired and retained effective teachers while also driving ineffective ones from the classroom.
The TFA network has been crucial in shaping efforts to improve the nation's teacher force. Kopp's second book, "A Chance to Make History " (2011), reads like a primer for such reform measures. Kopp is particularly enamored by high-performing charter schools, which succeed because they do whatever it takes to hire and retain good teachers, a zero-sum game that most schools cannot win without more resources - those dreaded "inputs."
But successful charter schools, Kopp maintains, also stop at nothing to remove bad teachers from the classroom. This is why charter schools are the preferred mechanism for delivery of education reform: as defined by Kopp, charter schools are "public schools empowered with flexibility over decision making in exchange for accountability for results." And yet, "results," or rather, academic improvement, act more like a fig leaf, especially in light of numerous recent studies that show charter schools, taken on the whole, actually do a worse job of educating students than regular public schools.
Rather, crushing teacher's unions - the real meaning behind Kopp's "flexibility" euphemism - has become the ultimate end of the education reform movement. This cannot be emphasized enough: the precipitous growth of charter schools and the TFA insurgency are part and parcel precisely because both cohere with the larger push to marginalize teacher's unions.
The TFA insurgency has, from its inception, sold education reform as above politics. The idea is to support ideas that work, plain and simple, no matter their source. But the biography of Michelle Rhee, the prototypical TFA corps member-turned-reformer and the most divisive person in the education reform movement, defies such anti-political posturing.
After serving a two-year stint in the Baltimore Public Schools as one of the earliest TFA corps members, she earned a Master's Degree from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. From there Kopp tapped Rhee to be the founding CEO of The New Teacher Project, a TFA spin-off that sought to revolutionize the teacher accreditation process by helping school districts evade colleges of education. The notoriety she gained in her work with The New Teacher Project enabled her appointment as chancellor of schools in Washington, D.C.
Rhee is adored in elite circles. Regularly feted by Oprah, Kopp touts her as a "transformational leader." During her short tenure leading the infamously bad D.C. schools, Rhee gained national acclaim for applying, in Kopp's admiring words, the corporate "principles of management and accountability."
In contrast to such devotion, teacher's unions loathe Rhee. Rhee's heavy-handedness in dealing with the Washington Teacher's Union conveyed her attitude that a non-unionized teacher force would better serve justice for children, as if children would benefit from their teachers lacking the few remaining benefits accrued by collective bargaining, such as nominal job security and shrinking pensions. Rhee is also disliked by a large percentage of black D.C. citizens, who voted out former Mayor Adrian Fenty in part because of his unqualified support for Rhee's actions. This included firing four percent of district teachers, mostly black, and replacing them largely with TFA-style teachers, mostly white, whom one astute black Washingtonian labeled "cultural tourists."
TFA's complicity in education reform insanity does not stop there. From its origins, the TFA-led movement to improve the teacher force has aligned itself with efforts to expand the role of high-stakes standardized testing in education. TFA insurgents, including Kopp and Rhee, maintain that, even if imperfect, standardized tests are the best means by which to quantify accountability.
Prior to the enactment of Bush's bipartisan No Child Left Behind in 2001, high-stakes standardized testing was mostly limited to college-entrance exams such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). But since then, the high-stakes testing movement has blown up: with increasing frequency, student scores on standardized exams are tied to teacher, school, and district evaluations, upon which rewards and punishments are meted out. Obama's "Race to the Top" policy - the brainchild of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the former "CEO" of Chicago Public Schools - further codifies high-stakes testing by allocating scarce federal resources to those states most aggressively implementing these so-called accountability measures.
The multi-billion dollar testing industry - dominated by a few large corporations that specialize in the making and scoring of standardized tests - has become an entrenched interest, a powerful component of a growing education-industrial complex.
TFA insurgents support standardized testing not only because they believe it ensures accountability. They also herald testing because it provides evidence that their efforts are working. The schools and districts that achieved celebrity as the reform movement's success stories did so by vastly improving standardized test scores. In emphasizing testing, though, reformers tend to overlook the obvious incentives that ambitious educators have to manipulate statistics. President Bush appointed Houston Superintendent of Schools Rod Paige as Secretary of Education in 2001 because Paige's reform measures seemingly led to skyrocketing graduation rates. Not surprisingly, this so-called "Texas miracle," predicated on falsified numbers, was too good to be true.
More recently, cheating scandals have likewise discredited several celebrated reform projects. In Atlanta, a TFA hotbed, former superintendent and education reform darling Beverly Hall is implicated in a cheating scandal of unparalleled proportions, involving dozens of Atlanta principals and hundreds of teachers, including TFA corps members. Cheating was so brazen in Atlanta that principals hosted pizza parties where teachers and administrators systematically corrected student exams. Following a series of investigative reports in USA Today , a new cheating scandal seems to break every week. Cheating has now been confirmed not only in Atlanta, but also in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, Dayton, and Memphis, education reform cities all.
Rhee's D.C. "miracle" has also been clouded by suspicion: impossibly high wrong-to-right erasure rates indicate that several of Rhee's "blue ribbon" schools might have cheated their way to higher test scores. Such accusations are nothing new to Rhee. The legend of how she transformed her Baltimore students - a fable resembling the Hollywood drama Stand and Deliver, based on East Los Angeles math teacher Jaime Escalante's work in helping several of his underprivileged students pass the Advanced Placement Calculus exam - has been called into question by investigative reports that suggest fraud.
That education reformers have long argued that "incentives" are necessary to improve the teaching profession underscores another in a series of ironies that mark the movement. Reformers believe that if teachers are subjected to "market forces," such as merit pay and job insecurity, they will work harder to improve the education they provide for their students. The need to incentivize the teaching profession is the most popular argument against teacher's unions, since unions supposedly protect bad teachers.
But, in a predictable paradox, by attaching their incentives agenda to standardized testing, the reform movement has induced cheating on a never-before-seen scale, proving the maxim known as Campbell's Law: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." In sum, the TFA insurgency's singular success has been to empower those best at gaming the system.
In contrast to such "success," the TFA insurgency has failed to dent educational inequality. This comes as no surprise to anyone with the faintest grasp of the tight correlation between economic and educational inequality: TFA does nothing to address the former while spinning its wheels on the latter.
In her writings, nowhere does Kopp reflect upon the patent ridiculousness of her expectation that loads of cash donated by corporations that exploit inequalities across the world - such as Union Carbide and Mobil, two of TFA's earliest contributors - will help her solve some of the gravest injustices endemic to American society.
Kopp shows some awareness of the absurdities of her own experiences - including a "fundraising schedule [that] shuttled me between two strikingly different economic spheres: our undersourced classrooms and the plush world of American philanthropy" - but she fails to grasp that this very gap is what makes her stated goal of equality unachievable. In short, Kopp, like education reformers more generally, is an innocent when it comes to political economy. She spouts platitudes about justice for American children, but rarely pauses to ask whether rapidly growing inequality might be a barrier to such justice. She celebrates 20 years of reform movement success, but never tempers such self-congratulatory narcissism with unpleasant questions about why those who have no interest in disrupting the American class structure - such as Bill Gates and the heirs to Sam Walton's fortunes, by far the most generous education reform philanthropists - are so keen to support the TFA insurgency. Kopp is a parody of the liberal do-gooder.
Of course, liberal notions about the potential of education to serve the ends of justice are nothing new to American social thought. Progressive educators since John Dewey have sold their wares as instruments of justice. And yet, education reform has almost always propped up the social order: just as current reform success is calculated by how well students score on standardized tests, the progressive education movement's most longstanding success story was its pedagogical program for "Americanization." Educational progress as measured by how well students stack up against conventional standards will always and inevitably reinforce the status quo. Most of the time, schools are little more than engines of social reproduction.
TFA exists for nothing if not for adjusting poor children to the regime otherwise known as the American meritocracy. Kopp's model for how teachers should help poor students acclimate to the American meritocracy is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a nationwide network of charter schools. Founded by TFA alums Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, and currently lead by CEO Richard Barth, a former TFA staff member who also happens to be Kopp's husband, KIPP now runs over 100 schools, typically in cities that staff a multitude of TFA corps members, such as Houston, New Orleans, and New York City. Many KIPP teachers began their careers in education as TFA corps members, and an even higher percentage of KIPP administrators are TFA alums. KIPP schools are in such high demand that students must win lotteries for the opportunity to attend. The pièce de résistance of Waiting for Superman chronicles one such dramatic lottery drawing.
Slots in KIPP schools are in short supply because, unlike most charter schools, they have a track record of actually improving student performance and of helping poor children gain acceptance into college. Their methodology consists of nothing novel: teachers and students work very hard. But more than that, KIPP students and their families must sign contracts committing to a rigorous program of surveillance - the only way to ensure that underprivileged students overcome lives that otherwise drag them down. As one KIPP administrator described the philosophy: "At every moment, we asked ourselves, what about this moment of the day is or is not fostering college readiness in our students?"
While visiting a KIPP school in New York City early one morning, where fifth graders were busy with drills at 7:00 a.m., Kopp quietly lamented, without a touch of irony, that her own child of the same age was still in bed. Thus, in the KIPP model, we are presented with the solution to the nation's educational inequalities: for poor children to succeed, they must willingly submit to Taylorist institutionalization. This is made starkly evident in the concluding scene of "Waiting for Superman ," when young "Anthony," one of the lucky few, arrives at his charter school with suitcase in hand, since his particular school boards its students. Anthony is rightly ambivalent about giving up his life with his grandparents and friends in order to attend a SEED Foundation school - the prototype in education reform - where 24-hour supervision is the only way to ensure that poor children have a chance at success.
In working to perfect their approach to education, TFA insurgents miss the forest for the trees. They fail to ask big-picture questions. Will their pedagogy of surveillance make for a more humane society? Having spent their formative years in a classroom learning test-taking skills, will their students become good people? Will they know more history? Will they be more empathetic? Will they be better citizens? Will they be more inclined to challenge the meritocracy? Or, as its newest converts, will they be its most fervent disciples? What does it mean that for children born in the Bronx to go to college they must give up their childhoods, however bleak?
I teach at a second-tier state university in the Midwest that houses a large college of education, not exactly TFA's prime recruiting territory. And yet, every year a TFA representative briefly stops by our campus to sell our students on TFA and encourage them to apply. Three of my best former students have, to my surprise, been chosen TFA corps members. Although I would never begrudge such hard-won personal victories for my students - well-meaning individuals who hail from decidedly non-privileged backgrounds-in the future I am determined to strongly encourage those students interested in becoming TFA corps members to read Paul Goodman's "Compulsory Mis-Education" (1964), in my opinion the single-best critique of the kind of education that the TFA insurgency seeks to perfect.
Goodman's disdain for what the corporate-organized society did to young people was first made apparent in his 1959 bestseller, "Growing Up Absurd ," a response to the "curious" fact that two of the most analyzed phenomena of the 1950s - the "disgrace of the Organized System" and the problem of disaffected youth - were given mutually exclusive treatment. Goodman combined these two popular strands of social commentary - a critique of the bureaucratic society with an analysis of juvenile delinquency - and argued that the former caused the latter.
In Compulsory Mis-Education , Goodman extended this general critique of the "organized society" to a more specific attack on its socialization method: compulsory schooling. Schooling as socialization, which he described as "'vocational guidance' to fit people wherever they are needed in the productive system," troubled Goodman in means and ends. He both loathed the practice of adjusting children to society and despised the social regime in which children were being adjusted to-"our highly organized system of machine production and its corresponding social relations." For Goodman, compulsory schooling thus prepared "kids to take some part in a democratic society that does not need them."
Goodman was not against education in the strict sense of the word. For him, the question of education was always of kind. In Goodman's world, which I imagine as a sort of utopia, those who seek to institutionalize the poor are the enemies of the good. And teachers - real teachers, those who commit their lives (not two years) to expanding their students' imaginative universes - they are the heroes. I can hardly imagine a better inoculation against the hidden curriculum of liberal do-gooders.
Accountability in Action- cartoon - 1 views
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http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/accountability-in-action-cartoons/
Accountability in Action-Cartoons
larrycuban.wordpress.com
More than any other word, "accountability" has become the keyword defining the past quarter-century in private and public sectors of life in America. Presidents, governors, and mayors say that th...
Social Media is Transforming the World - 0 views
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http://mediatapper.com/social-media-typewriters-and-fax-machines-lead-the-revolt-against-oppression/
Social media is transforming the world! This is especially true in the Middle East where platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and Facebook are used by dissidents to organize opposition to their, all too often, dictatorial rulers. The rise of social media can be seen worldwide. For example, millions across Egypt employed social media to organize demonstrations that lasted for weeks. In the end, this led to the fall of their 30-year-old dictatorship and thus hopefully began the democratic renewal of Egypt. They have a long way to go before declaring success, but thanks to social media, the people of Egypt are now participating in their first ever democratic elections in many decades.
The same happened in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. Everywhere across the region, those who were once powerless have used social media to organize, to connect and to bring down dictators who had ruled their countries for dozens of years. Some of these dictators still hold on to power, but in most cases only barely so. Thanks to the democratizing effect of social media, their citizens are becoming increasingly vocal and their message is being heard.
Communication between people has been the quintessential attribute of humanity since civilization began. It unites us as a species. Without it, our relationships and sharing of ideas become strained. It should not come as a surprise to see how far we have come since then. Before the PC and ultimately, social media, the typewriter and the fax machine were leading edge communication technologies.
There was a time when a writer and her typewriter were best friends; a time when journalists would dictate their accounts from the scene of an event. Speaking all night over the phone to their editors at news headquarters, their spoken words were feverishly typed so that the stories would make the newsstands, driveways and offices by next day.
Did you know that the entire Watergate scandal was documented by journalists typing every word from tapped phone lines? That tumultuous decade of the 1970s was not too long ago. It was a time when some of the most intensive investigative journalism reached people on paper after a laborious process where the story was typed and corrected by teams of journalists.
Less than 80 years ago in Central Europe, some people were banned from using the typewriter altogether. An arbitrary rule blocked one of the most crucial lines of communication between ordinary people. It was an oppressive act designed to deny these citizens the ability to connect with each other and people outside their country. Even in today's age of pervasive mobile technology, oppressive regimes still attempt to block communication between people. There are internet firewalls which restrict the information people inside the country can view. Leaders who feel threatened by popular protests have shut down mobile telephone access during public gatherings. Technology options have to some degree thwarted these attempts. The voices of their people may have been muted before; but no longer are silenced.
It was September, 1930 when Adolph Hitler's National Socialist Party won 107 seats in the German parliament, thereby becoming the ruling political group in that country. Just two and a half years later, Hitler had compelled Germany's President to sign Article 48, suspending all citizens' civil rights, allowing security forces to imprison or execute anyone deemed as suspicious. In these years leading up to the invasion of Poland, Adolph Hitler ordered AEG, a leading German manufacturer, to halt the production of the Mignon Modell 4, a very popular typewriter. By 1935, all Jews were banned from carrying a typewriter. Internal security forces also seized these machines and other printing tools in anti-Facist groups that threatened their rising power.
Let's fast forward to the mid 1980s when the fax machine came to widespread use and global communication took another leap forward. It was no longer necessary to carry the bulky typewriter or have words dictated to someone on the other side of the phone. Transmission of information, including both text and pictures over phone lines became commonplace.
By the late 1980s faxes were the hottest means of information sharing after the typewriter (e-Mail had not yet taken hold). However, that was not the case for millions of people behind the iron curtains of Eastern Europe and Mainland China. While the rest of the world was enjoying an exponential expansion of communications and facilities, those ruled by totalitarian regimes were being starved of the use of these inventions. The systemic purpose of this policy was to separate and then silence dissidents, hoping to eliminate the possibility of revolt or insurrection against the state.
The fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), changed that dynamic some 20 years ago.
The Premier of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, had begun a program of free speech (glastnost) and economic rebuilding (perestroika) in an effort to adapt to forces of change that could not be resisted. Economic repair was no easier than than our leaders are facing today. As a result, unrest grew. Meanwhile, "glasnost" took hold. Information that was viciously repressed by the government began to flow via a huge number of fax machines that were smuggled into Russia. Pages of notes and details that Pravda would not disclose began to spread throughout Moscow and Leningrad. It also became apparent to the common person that the U.S.S.R. was not as strong militarily nor economically as they had been led to believe. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent peaceful turnovers of power in Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, and the Ukraine were the result of fax machine's liberation of communication.
The typewriter and the fax machine changed our modern world. That's how it happened then, and that is what is making headlines today. The explosion of communication is being facilitated by the social media we may take for granted. The ecosystem that surrounds Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter are enabling people to connect in increasing numbers and have meaningful discussion, raising awareness and promoting action against common social and political issues.
As for us, and people like us who have had a small part in these massive changes in our recent history, we are just glad to have been here to witness the world change like no other generation before us.
Where do we go from here? Keep communicating. We are all listening.
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Overhauling Computer Science Education - 1 views
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Overhauling Computer Science Education
http://thejournal.com/Articles/2011/12/05/Overhauling-Computer-Science-Education.aspx?Page=1
Students from elementary school through college are learning on laptops and have access to smartphone apps for virtually everything imaginable, but they are not learning the basic computer-related technology that makes all those gadgets work. Some organizations are partnering with universities to change that.
By D.A. Barber12/05/11
The ability to use a computer, its software, or computational thinking to solve problems are not core K-12 subjects taught under most state guidelines by certified teachers. In fact, schools often blur the lines between computer technology literacy with the ability to use computational thinking skills across disciplines. Today, computer science (CS) curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software but gives no insight into how it's made or an aptitude for the technology to an entire generation whose everyday lives have become inextricably linked with computing technology.
While adopting best methods and practices in teaching computer science principles (CSP) is not standard procedure in most K-12 schools, some university projects are working toward that goal. The latest approaches pursue computer science education as far more than learning how to use a computer, building a spreadsheet, or even creating a Web page. It's about problem solving, computational thinking, and abstract reasoning across a broad range of subjects. According to supporters, you can incorporate these concepts into your curriculum--no matter what subject you teach--and prepare students with the skills for success in the new knowledge economy.
"There certainly has been an increase in students generally being more technically adept, and some have picked up a sort of 'hackers' sense in that they know lots about different Internet technologies and have made their own Web sites," said Clay Morrison, associate director at the University of Arizona's School of Information: Science, Technology, and Arts (SISTA)
Another study released a few months earlier--in May 2010--also concluded that the integration of computer science into the K-12 curriculum in the United States has not kept pace with other countries, resulting in a serious shortage of information technologists. The report, "Addressing Core Equity Issues in K-12 Computer Science Education: Identifying Barriers and Sharing Strategies," was produced by the CSTA, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), and the University of Arizona's Department of Computer Science. According to that study, inconsistencies in computer science certification plague K-12 school systems, where fewer than 65 percent of schools across the nation offer an introductory-level computer science course.
Teaching Teachers
For CSTA, there is no issue that creates more frustration than teacher certification, said Stephenson.
"The certification for teachers for CS in this country is beyond a mess," said Stephenson. "Either there are no requirements and anyone can teach computer science, or they're technology requirements that have no CS content. In some cases, the teachers are required to write practice exams to prove that they can teach computer class where there isn't a single question on computer science."
Stephenson said part of the problem is that universities say they can't teach CS because there is no certification process, and states say they can't enact a certification requirement because there are no programs to train the teachers.
The CS10K program was launched in response to these and other studies with a nationwide goal of training 10,000 high school teachers to teach advanced computer science courses by the year 2015 guided by the College Board's CS Principles national project. The effort includes developing a research base for the teaching of computational skills and concepts and developing mechanisms for infusion of computational thinking across the curriculum.
On that note, it was announced Sept. 12 that the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and SDSU received National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to jointly expand the computer sciences curriculum among San Diego's high schools, community colleges, and universities. The three-year grants, worth a total of nearly $1 million, are for a project called Computing Principles for All Students' Success, or ComPASS, which will contribute to the nationwide CS10K program.
Currently, there is no teacher certification process for CS in California. Nevertheless, the overall goal of ComPASS is to improve Southern California's educational capacity for preparing high school and college students of all backgrounds and disciplinary interests to participate in the "computationally driven economic future." The ComPASS program calls for SDSU to offer "pre-service teacher training" through a senior-year course covering both CSP material and methods, particularly to all single-subject majors, not just those in math or science.
"Whatever major you're going into, computers are going to be involved some how," said Leland Beck, chair of the Computer Science Department at SDSU and SDSU principal investigator for the ComPASS project. "Especially in banking and insurance, you'll be using computers all the time."
Starting in January 2012, the ComPASS program will also offer training for current high school teachers and will continue to evaluate strategies and methods designed to prepare teachers to teach computer science. At least six community colleges in the region will also offer CSP courses equivalent to the UCSD and SDSU courses.
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"We don't think that everybody needs to be able to be a professional programmer or know professional-grade programming, but we do think there is a good argument to be made that everybody should have some level of understanding of what computers can do and what they can't do," said Leland Beck, chair of the Department of Computer Science at San Diego State University (SDSU).
Chris Stevenson, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), said they are not talking about training kids to fill seats in software development sweat shops but rather to make sure K-12 students are at least given the opportunity to learn the basics.
"The position of the CSTA is that every kid needs to know something. Not every kid should aspire to be a computer scientist, just as not every kid should aspire to be a chemist or physicist or athlete," said Stephenson. "But there is a certain amount of knowledge that everyone needs in order to function effectively in this society."
That also means equipping teachers with the tools and best methods not just for introducing computer science principles into general education at the high school level but to give students a strong foundation from which to integrate computing into any field they pursue--from insurance sales and banking to biotechnology or the arts.
A Lack of K-12 Curriculum
According to a December 2010 report, "Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age," released by the Association for Computing Machinery and the CSTA, computer science education is scant in most American elementary and secondary school classrooms. And most schools teach students how to run a computer's applications but are not using the technology to teach computational skills. In fact, 14 states have adopted no standards at all for upper-level computer science education. The number of introductory and advanced placement courses in computer science has actually declined in the last five years, and only nine states count computer science credits toward graduation requirements, according to the report.
12/05/11
The ability to use a computer, its software, or computational thinking to solve problems are not core K-12 subjects taught under most state guidelines by certified teachers. In fact, schools often blur the lines between computer technology literacy with the ability to use computational thinking skills across disciplines. Today, computer science (CS) curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software but gives no insight into how it's made or an aptitude for the technology to an entire generation whose everyday lives have become inextricably linked with computing technology.
While adopting best methods and practices in teaching computer science principles (CSP) is not standard procedure in most K-12 schools, some university projects are working toward that goal. The latest approaches pursue computer science education as far more than learning how to use a computer, building a spreadsheet, or even creating a Web page. It's about problem solving, computational thinking, and abstract reasoning across a broad range of subjects. According to supporters, you can incorporate these concepts into your curriculum--no matter what subject you teach--and prepare students with the skills for success in the new knowledge economy.
"There certainly has been an increase in students generally being more technically adept, and some have picked up a sort of 'hackers' sense in that they know lots about different Internet technologies and have made their own Web sites," said Clay Morrison, associate director at the University of Arizona's School of Information: Science, Technology, and Arts (SISTA).
"We don't think that everybody needs to be able to be a professional programmer or know professional-grade programming, but we do think there is a good argument to be made that everybody should have some level of understanding of what computers can do and what they can't do," said Leland Beck, chair of the Department of Computer Science at San Diego State University (SDSU).
Chris Stevenson, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), said they are not talking about training kids to fill seats in software development sweat shops but rather to make sure K-12 students are at least given the opportunity to learn the basics.
"The position of the CSTA is that every kid needs to know something. Not every kid should aspire to be a computer scientist, just as not every kid should aspire to be a chemist or physicist or athlete," said Stephenson. "But there is a certain amount of knowledge that everyone needs in order to function effectively in this society."
That also means equipping teachers with the tools and best methods not just for introducing computer science principles into general education at the high school level but to give students a strong foundation from which to integrate computing into any field they pursue--from insurance sales and banking to biotechnology or the arts.
A Lack of K-12 Curriculum
According to a December 2010 report, "Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age," released by the Association for Computing Machinery and the CSTA, computer science education is scant in most American elementary and secondary school classrooms. And most schools teach students how to run a computer's applications but are not using the technology to teach computational skills. In fact, 14 states have adopted no standards at all for upper-level computer science education. The number of introductory and advanced placement courses in computer science has actually declined in the last five years, and only nine states count computer science credits toward graduation requirements, according to the report.
Another study released a few months earlier--in May 2010--also concluded that the integration of computer science into the K-12 curriculum in the United States has not kept pace with other countries, resulting in a serious shortage of information technologists. The report, "Addressing Core Equity Issues in K-12 Computer Science Education: Identifying Barriers and Sharing Strategies," was produced by the CSTA, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), and the University of Arizona's Department of Computer Science. According to that study, inconsistencies in computer science certification plague K-12 school systems, where fewer than 65 percent of schools across the nation offer an introductory-level computer science course.
Teaching Teachers
For CSTA, there is no issue that creates more frustration than teacher certification, said Stephenson.
"The certification for teachers for CS in this country is beyond a mess," said Stephenson. "Either there are no requirements and anyone can teach computer science, or they're technology requirements that have no CS content. In some cases, the teachers are required to write practice exams to prove that they can teach computer class where there isn't a single question on computer science."
Stephenson said part of the problem is that universities say they can't teach CS because there is no certification process, and states say they can't enact a certification requirement because there are no programs to train the teachers.
The CS10K program was launched in response to these and other studies with a nationwide goal of training 10,000 high school teachers to teach advanced computer science courses by the year 2015 guided by the College Board's CS Principles national project. The effort includes developing a research base for the teaching of computational skills and concepts and developing mechanisms for infusion of computational thinking across the curriculum.
On that note, it was announced Sept. 12 that the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and SDSU received National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to jointly expand the computer sciences curriculum among San Diego's high schools, community colleges, and universities. The three-year grants, worth a total of nearly $1 million, are for a project called Computing Principles for All Students' Success, or ComPASS, which will contribute to the nationwide CS10K program.
Currently, there is no teacher certification process for CS in California. Nevertheless, the overall goal of ComPASS is to improve Southern California's educational capacity for preparing high school and college students of all backgrounds and disciplinary interests to participate in the "computationally driven economic future." The ComPASS program calls for SDSU to offer "pre-service teacher training" through a senior-year course covering both CSP material and methods, particularly to all single-subject majors, not just those in math or science.
"Whatever major you're going into, computers are going to be involved some how," said Leland Beck, chair of the Computer Science Department at SDSU and SDSU principal investigator for the ComPASS project. "Especially in banking and insurance, you'll be using computers all the time."
Starting in January 2012, the ComPASS program will also offer training for current high school teachers and will continue to evaluate strategies and methods designed to prepare teachers to teach computer science. At least six community colleges in the region will also offer CSP courses equivalent to the UCSD and SDSU courses.
"It's a new approach to CS principles and it was something that was introduced initially at college and we are now bringing it into the high school teaching level as well," said Diane Baxter, director of education at SDSC and UCSD principal investigator for the ComPASS project.
According to Baxter, the teachers who participate will be "self-selected" in that ComPASS is working with principals at the high schools to promote the program and see if they are willing to support use of the curriculum by their teachers. The NSF grants support teachers with a stipend, as well as a full class-set of books and the needed support materials, including interactive teaching hardware that allows high school students with clickers to participate in open quizzes.
"We don't want to work with teachers who don't want to do it," noted Baxter.
In addition, those high schools teaching the new CS courses will be able to offer transferable credit to the San Diego area's two largest state universities. The goal is to use the credit to attract high school students to the classes, giving them a strong foundation from which to integrate computing into any field they pursue.
Extra Credit
Expanding Your School's CS Program
Computer Science Education Week (CSEW) is designed to draw attention to the issues revolving around upgrading CS courses to meet 21st Century needs. Designated as December 4-10, 2011, CSEW is a collaborative effort of Computing in the Core (CinC) to acknowledge computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper's birthday: Dec. 9, 1906. CinC, a non-partisan advocacy coalition of associations, corporations, scientific societies, and other non-profits, strives to "elevate computer science education to a core academic subject in K-12 education" and has a few recommendations to address K-12 computer science education's basic policy obstacles for state and local governments:
Clearly define and include K-12 CS education in education initiatives;
Develop CS standards and assessments for grades K-12;
Ensure that courses count toward a student's core graduation requirements either as mathematics, science, or CS credits;
Expand CS teacher professional development opportunities and address teacher certification issues.
"The question that all educators and all school systems are groping with is, 'What's the amount every kid needs to know,'" said CSTA's executive director, Chris Stephenson. "We keep expanding our expectations as to what our kids are going to learn and then we face budget crunches where we can't even give them some of the stuff we've always given them. And then we say 'OK, now we have new expectations.'"
While many states lack computer science certification for high school teachers, there are a few ways school administrators can squeeze in better coverage of such core course material without much disruption or added expense. Stephenson said that high school administrators should try to be flexible with their hiring practices and with the teachers they've already hired.
"Try and discover if your math or science teachers have taken CS in university, or at least have a couple of CS courses under their belt because they may be fine for teaching a computer science introductory course," said Stephenson.
Stephenson also noted that feedback from CSTA's 10,000 members has indicated two other trends that seem to work. One involves partnering with a local community college that already offers a CS course and work out a dual credit system where students not only get credit toward their high school graduation but also earn credit toward college.
CSTA also suggested looking to Web site producers to build online CS courses. According to Stephenson, this solution works well for those rural students who don't have any access to CS instructors in their high school or at a nearby community college.
"This is not ideal because it's really tough to learn CS online, but at least it's something for the kids," said Stephenson.
Interdisciplinary Approach
At the university level, CSTA's Stephenson said she is seeing more and more interdisciplinary approaches to teaching--both teacher and non-teacher students--in what she calls "combinational sciences" where a CS education is linked with other sciences or humanities.
"We're seeing a huge number of university programs starting to come up in those areas because those jobs are available and waiting for people to fill them," said Stephenson.
At the University of Arizona, the School of Information: Science, Technology, and Arts was recently launched to affect change at the university level and to provide an interdisciplinary curriculum based on computing across all majors.
"We really see this as useful, whether somebody goes on to become a professional programmer, or if they go into marketing or become an artist," said SISTA's Morrison.
A bachelor of arts in information science and arts and a bachelor of science in information science and technology were approved in 2010.
"Our BA is intentionally meant to be very broad and we are trying to cater to students who may come from the humanities or from the arts," said Morrison. "What we are trying to achieve is basically a modern version of a liberal arts degree where, in this modern information age, information technology pervades everything."
The SISTA program contrasts itself from the traditional CS track in that it combines the ability to use a computer with the ability to understand data by introducing the basics of statistics and probability as the language of data. Morrison said SISTA is planning a graduate program as well as a Ph.D. program.
"The master's program will have two tracks," said Morrison, who added the working title is "Computational Intelligence." "One track will be very course intensive, and the other will be research intensive."
Morrison also said the future plans for SISTA include summer outreach programs for high school students, much like what the UA already does for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses.
CS: A K-12 Elective?
One of the hurdles to introducing or expanding computer science in K-12 is finding the room for the courses.
"What's wrong is when kids don't even have the opportunity to take these courses even when they're interested," said Stephenson at CSTA.
The May 2010 study CSTA helped produce found that courses in the fundamentals of computer science often don't count as general electives in high school or as college-preparatory electives. Stephenson said that kids today are very savvy in terms of knowing what they need--and don't need--in order to meet graduation requirements, and so most will not take courses unless they count for something.
"So what we say is it has to count for something and the simplest thing--which a lot of states have done--is to make it count as a graduation requirement as a math or science credit," said Stephenson.
Stephenson also noted that some schools have a tech requirement--the "T" in STEM--and that many of those requirements could be fulfilled with a CS course as well.
"Most of what we're doing in schools right now is we're teaching our kids how to be passive consumers," said Stephenson. "There is an assumption I think on the part of an older generation of teachers--and a lot of parents--who think because they see kids using the technology all the time, that they understand it. That's just not the case, and when you don't understand how things work, it's very easy to become a victim of things that you don't understand."
Editor's note: This article has been modified since its original publication to correct an error in a quotation. The quote in paragraph 3 from Clay Morrison should have read "There certainly has been an increase in students generally being more technically adept,..." rather than "inept," as previously rendered. [Last updated Dec. 8 at 10:41 a.m.] --David Nagel
About the Author
D.A. Barber is a freelance science and education journalist. He can be reached at dbarber@dakotacom.net.
Effective questioning and feedback using Web 2.0 technologies and Social Networking - 2 views
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I have recently been researching the use of Web 2.0 technologies and Social Networking as a tool for Assessment for Learning. Thanks to all who responded via Twitter especially @nick_chater @57mason and @AtkiTeach.
Below is a list of websites and tools that could and should aid effective Assessment for Learning, all have been tried and tested (I've included helpful hints where possible). The list is by no means exhaustive or definitive and I would be very interested to hear about others.
Web 2.0
Google Docs - documents can be in form of powerpoint, spreadsheet or document, you will need a google account to set this up, a document can be open to anybody to either just view or populate. Links are shared via eMail. Ideal for collaborative learning https://docs.google.com
Answer Garden - no sign up required! Simply create a garden by writing in a question and then share the link (either by eMail or perhaps a QR code). Collaborators then have 20 characters to use to answer the question - generating a blooming garden of (anonymous) answers, opinions and feedback. You can control the settings to allow people unlimited or single responses, delete certain answers, search keywords on the internet and upload answers into wordle or tagxedo. http://answergarden.ch/
Linoit - my personal favourite! Really fancy looking canvas of post-it notes, where each collaborator can write their own post-it note and pin on the board. Images and videos can also be uploaded as well as any document. You will need to create an account for this one and as before canvasses can be private, open to view or open to edit - all you will need to do is invite people via eMail (each collaborator will then need to create an account). The post-it notes are completely anonymous and can be edited by anybody, fantastic for gauging feedback and collaboration. http://en.linoit.com/
PrimaryPad - Similar in some aspects to Googledocs but alot easier to use! You just create a pad and share the link, no sign up required. Each collaborator writes in a different colour (each individual has the option to 'register' their colour or remain anonymous) and there is no limit on character usage. Contents of the pad can be uplaoded into wordle, embedded into blogs, have documents attched etc. Provides a great opportunity for classroom feedback. http://primarypad.com/
Other Web 2.0 software which is great for assessment for learning;
Wallwisher - very similar to Linoit http://www.wallwisher.com/
Voicethread - an amazing collaborative site that enables you to add not only typed responses but audio, video and annotations, well worth a look at. http://voicethread.com/
…and some more alternatives! Click here
Social Networking
There has been an explosion of interest in using Social Networking in schools recently, especially with the creation of Google+ (I now have an account……..just need to work out how to use it!). The use of Facebook has always and will continue to cause controversy as to whether it should be used in education - I personally believe it has a real place in learning (there, said it!). I would recoomend you read @chickensaltash blog post on "Facebook as a Tool for Improving Student Outcomes"
Blogging -an amazing opportunity for students to learn by collaborating, reading, giving feedback and not just in the classroom but anywhere and anytime.
Please click on the links below to view two blogs that I have recently set up for schools and events - people are generally impressed at the professional look of the sites and are also genuingly surprised as to how easy they are to create. Whether you set up a personal learning journey blog, or a class blog, or a blog for your department or school - it's incredibly powerful. Go on give it a go, you know you want to!
http://shootthatc2011.posterous.com/ - this was a blog I set up for a GCSE Maths revision day.
http://goodtooutstanding.posterous.com/ - this is a blog I have set up for a school for their "outstanding teacher" programme
Twitter - I love it, for my own personal CPD and also for use in schools. I have written a blog post about how it could be used in schools, feel free to view it here.
Part of this blog was also recently published by Creative Training Techniques
….and if you feel that Twitter is too "open" why not try Twiducate - a free educational alternative to Twitter that could be just used by a selected group of students, one class for example.
Check out an old post on how it could be used in the classroom "35 ways to use Twiducate…"
Click here to view my Prezi that I used to present my findings at #aflbradford2011
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Not breaking News.. but important to the conversations
This is a simple article with a simple purpose: to raise the level of discussion about the amount private / prep school teachers are paid for their service. I fully acknowledge that there are salary issues with almost every other type of teacher out there but this article is intended to focus the discussion on private schools. If you'd like to weigh in, participate in the comment discussions or mention @edudemic on Twitter or comment on this Facebook page.
$21,000. It's barely a living wage and would be a terrific salary for someone looking for a job that requires little to no labor or thought. But that's not the job that my wife was offered. She was offered a position to teach French at one of the best private schools in the country and in return for her dedication and hard work they were willing to pay her $21,000 plus put her up in a horrid apartment that was more like a haunted attic crawl-space than an acceptable living situation. All in exchange for spending 60-70 hours a week teaching, coaching, monitoring, and helping students.
The school's name is not important. What is important is the fact that schools like this one do regular fundraising efforts that bring in tens of millions of dollars while claiming that most of the money is being spent on faculty salaries and benefits. At $21,000, it's hard to imagine that this is actually the truth.
The Money Trail
So where does the donated money go? How can this school get away with annually hiking tuition by 5-8% to make it just as, if not more, expensive than most 4-year colleges?
The answer is simple: because new teachers looking to work in a private school are usually willing to take just about any salary as long as they get the job.
This needs to change.
How on Earth is a new teacher supposed to live, work and save enough with a $21,000/year salary to make it a viable career? It essentially traps the teacher into having to always work at a private school because they may not be able to afford to move to a place with a higher cost of living in order to take a job at a higher pay grade. If you're not able to save, the cost of simply hiring movers alone may seem astronomical and force you into a sort of inertia that means you'll never be able to leave your first-ever job. In this day and age, that seems ludicrous.
Author's note: I went to a prep school. I know the background of most students and teachers. While some students come from meager means, many are from wealthy families that simply don't understand the concept of living paycheck-to-paycheck. It makes me sad to think that teachers are basically in the poor house while some students get dropped off at school in Bentleys. It happened (a lot) at my school and in hindsight it makes me feel terrible for the teachers. However, since not all students are the same, this article focuses instead on the relationship between the teacher and his or her school rather than the discrepancy between incomes of teachers and students.
How Change Can Happen
It will start with one of the top schools slowly starting to offer teachers a more reasonable salary. Teachers should be paid and rewarded for their devotion and effort rather than taken for granted. If some of the top private schools in the country started offering salaries on par with dot-com startups or decent financial organizations, you'd see an influx of talented people looking to mold young minds instead of slugging it out on Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
Could you imagine if private schools offered starting salaries of $75,000/year? What would happen? The quality of candidates would presumably skyrocket and it would quickly become one of the most sought-after jobs in the country. While I don't foresee $75k happening anytime soon, the idea is not without merit.
Weigh In
I look forward to the day where private school teachers (and other teachers of course) are paid a more reasonable salary. It's going to take a lot of time and effort to raise the minimum salary bar at these institutions but everyone from teachers to parents to students should be on board with this idea as it will simply raise the quality of the educational experience.
What do you think? Should salaries be raised at private schools? What do you think would happen if the minimum offered salary jumped from $21k/year to $75k/year? The above statements were purely my opinion and I'd love to have yours.
Please share this with anyone you think would benefit from knowing the truth about teacher salaries and might want to do something about it. Thanks in advance. -Jeff