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An interesting take on "Achievement Gap"

More than interesting. This challenges a basic premise of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

One laptop per elementary school kids, in Uruguay.

Uruguay is about to achieve the 1:1 child/laptop ratio for every primary school student in the country via OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). Only 5% of the country's education budget was needed to achieve this.

"To achieve our vision as a 'learning city', learning must not be defined as a certain task or confined to one place - our learners must have the freedom to learn anytime, anywhere"

This is discussed in the Productivity section of the NETP

Arizona is taking an interesting view on seat-time http://news.yahoo.com/high-school-less-four-years-070000848.html Hundreds of schools in Arizona are being given the chance to opt into an initiative called Move On When Ready where students are allowed to graduate after their sophomore year based on proving academic achievement. Some are arguing that it is the same option as getting a G.E.D. after one turns 16 but I would argue that there is a negative connotation to having a G.E.D. versus a high school diploma and that this program provides a way for students to achieve a diploma without "putting in" four years of high school seat-time.

An all-too-familiar tale of school districts hailing software as a "silver bullet" and then getting frustrated when student achievement gains didn't live up to expectations--even though teachers implemented it for a tiny fraction of the recommended use time...

I see similarity in what CEEO is trying to achieve with MIT's Scratch project. Emphasis on creativity, learning from others, reflecting on process. Figuring how to assess its performance remain as an issue here as well. 

BYOD is an interesting solution, but what is it doing to the school's limited bandwidth?

Through an example of the University of the People (online, tuition-free, non profit university), the article highlights the hardships such organization face to be successful in achieving their vision/mission. Credibility issue for online university issued certificate is also mentioned.   

The role technology can play in expanding the time during which learning can take place.

Another article about "expanded learning time" both online and via community-based "brick and mortar" locations like libraries, YMCA, and Boys & Girls Clubs. "Out-of-school programs can be strong partners for schools who want to leverage expanded learning time to help their students achieve global competence. Youth-serving organizations share the broad mission to promote student success in work and life in the 21st century. Out-of-school program organization and management is often based on an asset model that values diversity. In order to attract and retain participants, out-of-school programs are centered around youth engagement through hands-on and experiential learning, often with a focus on 21st century skills, service learning, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, and others."

I wonder what Helen Haste would think of this organization . . .

Georgia's Hall County partnered with Dell and transforming the classrooms "one student at a time", using 1) personalized 2) blended 3) data collection and 4) results. Sounds familiar? "wouldn't believe that these types of classrooms existed if I hadn't seen it for myself. When you get a group of dedicated educators together with a shared vision that is designed to remove the business-as-usual stigma and support total transformation you can achieve amazing things."

I get really nervous about these "shifts" when they become sensationalized. Despite our insistence that students are not created equal, we keep searching for the one-size-fits-all solution to education, and in this era that solution is bolstered by anything containing the word DIGITAL. How much socioemotional development will students lose if this trend increases over time? How do we provide for human relationships, mentors, even confrontation and conflict resolution when we are all hiding behind computer screens? It has to be about more than convenience.

This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. Counter to the conclusions drawn by a recent U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of non-experimental analyses of internet instruction in higher education, we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

The authors are very misleading in their claim that this study is the first on live versus internet. There is a huge literature on this topic stretching back decades. The claims about the generalizability of the study are also very suspect.

Chris, I think the authors are claiming it is the first experimental trial where participants were randomly assigned to a treatment or control condition. They contrast their study with the DOE meta-analysis, which I don't think includes experimental studies--at least as experiments are defined within econometrics. My problem with the study is that they are aren't really comparing live vs. internet so much as live vs. recorded video. They are very careful to not take advantage of any of the potential affordances of internet mediated instruction, except broadcasting a lecture, to preserve the "purity" of their experiment. Of course, that's not a terribly interesting experiment. The more interesting experiments, which they deride as "not apples-to-apples," is to compare a traditional lecture format with an online course that takes full advantage of the affordances of the internet. These studies would confound the carefully balanced design of an apples-to-apples comparison, but no serious education technologist thinks we should just record all the lectures and post them...

A small but very pertinent article in the recent edition of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) by Seth Gurell, Yu-Chun Kuo and Andrew Walker called The Pedagogical Enhancement of Open Education: An Examination of Problem-Based Learning1 is a real gem. The Pedagogical Enhancement of Open Education is a gem because it is focussed on pedagogy and online open learning. Gurell et al argue from a review of the literature and practical experience that problem based learning can work well with online open education. For example, traditional problem-based learning requires the learner to find and review resources which are usually print based materials such as books, journals, newspapers and so on, many of which take time to locate and access. However, using problem-based online learning using open education resources can remove much of the distraction of finding resources and enable greater attention to the learning task. Although problem-based learning (PBL) may not be suitable for all types of learning, a review of the research does indicate that students perform equally well using PBL as they do in traditional learning. Students engaged with PBL also perform better on retention tasks and on explanatory tasks, reveal Gurell et al. There are many sources of open educational resources. Two such examples that are well known are the Open Education Resource (OER) Commons, the Open Courseware Consortium. However, others such as Academic Earth, Scientific Commons, and Project OSCAR are also interesting. The Pedagogical Enhancement of Open Education is a very succinct review of online PBL and its fit with open online learning. Gurell et al have provided an excellent review of the versatility of online open education and how to maximise pedagogy to achieve improved learner outcomes.

This is an editorial discussing how emerging technologies can help eliminate the need for annual standardized testing of students by tracking their progress constantly throughout the year through technology use. IPads, Khan Academy, data analysis, KIPP schools, the achievement gap, online courses and their innovations through emerging technologies are discussed.

Google has US Education in its crosshairs.... Google is name-dropping all sorts of work in the education space in its forum to help redefine American education : Harlem Children's Zone, NCLB, A Nation at Risk, Sesame Street................. Here's a snippet: "And according to McKinsey's Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools report, if the U.S. had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of higher-performing nations, our GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. That's 9 to 16 percent of GDP!"

"Despite popular opinion, the flow of qualified math and science students through the American education pipeline is strong-except among high-achievers, who appear to be defecting to other college majors and fields."