Agri-energy conference set: The 2007 Michigan Agri-Energy Conference will highlight renewable energy, while identifying market barriers, the economics of renewable energy, and examining case studies and success stories. This event will take place at the Holiday Inn South in Lansing March 13 and 14. Farmers, service providers, rural and agricultural leaders, researchers and policymakers are all encouraged to attend, and learn how Michigan can capitalize on the potential of renewable sources like wind and solar, biomass, biofuels and bioproducts. The opening keynote, "A Perspective on Future Energy Trends for the United States," will be delivered by Michael Schaal, director of the Energy Information Administration in the United States Department of Energy. This will be followed by breakout sessions hosted by technical experts in the fields of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and environmental regulations. Day One will end with a networking reception and an additional opportunity to view the exhibit area, which will feature the latest products and services in the renewable energy arena, as well as informational booths on current research and development from various universities and institutes. Day Two will start off with a keynote address, "21st Century Energy Plan Report," from Peter Lark, chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission. This will be followed by more breakout sessions and a grant-writing workshop to learn tips for securing Farm Bill, Section 9006 grant dollars. To register online, visit www.michigan.gov/deqworkshops and click on "Upcoming DEQ Workshops." For more information, e-mail Terri Novak at novaktl@michigan.gov or call (517) 930-3170.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
FROM the ARCHITECT'S DIGITAL DESKTOP
From Previous Post: Michigan Virtual High School "CareerForward" On-line Program
http://www.mivhs.org/content.cfm?ID=693
MIVU
http:www.mivu.org/symposium/
Agenda
http://www.mivu.org/symposium/mvu_files/SymposiumAgenda012407.pdf
February 8, 2007
Online Learning Experience Symposium
When Michigan became the first state in the U.S. to require students to successfully complete an online course or learning experience (approved by the Governor and Michigan Legislature in April 2006), Michigan middle and high schools were charged with implementing an online program for their students.
This MVU Symposium will bring the Michigan Merit Curriculum-Online Learning Guidelines to life and provide you with the knowledge and strategies to move your students into the online world — and meet the state’s online learning requirement.
The symposium will provide practical information on how you can be successful in implementing online learning solutions for a wide-range of students in your district. Attend this symposium and walk away with confidence in meeting the new online graduation requirement. Sessions will cover multiple topics including:
- National and international trends in online learning
- Michigan’s new online learning graduation requirement
- Local implementation strategies
- Online approaches to teacher professional development to insure HQT
- Building learning communities using the Internet
- Online test preparation tools, including the ACT
- Learning world languages in an online environment
- Online career planning tools and courses
- How can my district afford it?
Individuals from the following organizations will be on hand to share their knowledge and expertise:
- Microsoft Corporation (Partners in Learning Program)
- Michigan Department of Education
- North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL)
- Blackboard, Inc.
- Michigan Virtual University
- K-12 Schools
Confirmed Keynote Speakers
Mary Cullinane
Mary is a former teacher and high school administrator. In 2000, after serving in schools for 10 years, she helped start an Internet company focused on creating online learning communities for school districts. In 2001 she accepted a job with Microsoft Corporation as the National Program Manager for Anytime Anywhere Learning. In 2002 she became the U.S. K-12 Segment Manager responsible for Microsoft's K-12 marketing and programs. In September 2003 she moved back to the east coast to drive the School of the Future Project as part of the US Partners in Learning Team. In February 2006 she assumed responsibility for the U.S. Partners in Learning program.
Susan Patrick
Susan is the President / CEO of the North American Council for Online Learning. She is the former Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, where she published the National Education Technology Plan, Toward a New Golden Age in American Education: How the Internet, the Law and Today’s Students Are Revolutionizing Expectations in January 2005. Patrick managed the federal government’s educational technology policies and produced two Secretary’s Technology Leadership Summits: Empowering Accountability and Assessment Through Technology and Increasing Options Through E-Learning. She served as co-chair of the federal government’s Advanced Technologies Working Group for Education and Training; and served as a member of the Secretary’s Rural Education Task Force.
Mike Flanagan
Mike Flanagan was appointed State Superintendent of Public Instruction by the State Board of Education on May 18, 2005. He directs the Michigan Department of Education; chairs the State Board of Education; and advises the State Board of Education, the Governor, and the state Legislature regarding public education in Michigan. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Flanagan served as the Executive Director of MASA and MAISA. He served as the Superintendent of the Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA). Mr. Flanagan was also Superintendent of the Farmington/Farmington Hills School District in Michigan for five years. Mr. Flanagan currently serves on the boards of the North Central State Committee; the Michigan Virtual University; and the Midwest Regional Education Laboratories (MREL).
FLASH: GOVENORS to DESTROY SILOS of IGNORANCE in EFFORT to CREATE 21st Century Education!
By Gordon Freedman
There are so many moving parts to education in any given state or between states and the federal government that it is nearly impossible to address dropout rates, graduation rates, annual yearly progress, increased college attendance, or producing more capable teachers and administrators. The answer to the education dilemma, oddly enough, might be found in the building trades. There, the choice is often between renovation and new construction. We all know that remodeling an old house or building a new one can produce very different results. We also know that there can be a significant difference between using a builder to design a complex home versus hiring an architect to create a set of plans from scratch.
Education, in large part, belongs to the states. It is an expensive public good designed to produce human capital capable of boosting state economic output and contributing to the national economy. Hanging in the education and training balance, on the positive side of the ledger, is increased economic activity and tax revenue from a more highly educated workforce. In this sense, the education investment, not cost, finances the renewal and expansion of state infrastructure and state programs. On the negative side of the education balance sheet are the true costs, not investments, of social and economic failure -- increased incarcerations, expanding social services, and a declining base of innovation and economic development focused on replacing old state economies.
To attempt to solve such large social and economic issues, where 21st century education is a key part of a complicated calculus, hiring a builder to renovate a tired school system is not the right answer. The answer, using the construction metaphor, is to hire a state level education architect who can construct a clear path from kindergarten through college and into the workforce; one who can accommodate the quickly changing demographics of every state inside the rapidly developing global economy. Who could commission such a state office and create the mandate to build rather than renovate?
The only office that can rise above the thousand-pothole mentality and look at the whole education establishment in a state and do something about it is a governor. Left to their own devices, those further down the line, often influenced by many competing interests, are often incapable from an organizational and political point of view of looking at and acting on the whole picture.
The governors who are thinking architecturally are finding three enabling factors: enterprise technology, economic analysis, and organizational reengineering. There are clear efficiencies in using technology to not only collect and analyze data, but to apply what is known quickly and confidently to remedy problems, right down to individual teachers and students. But applying technology by itself is meaningless unless there are changes in the human organization that carries out education in all its many silos. And organizational reengineering is largely incomplete unless there are plans for how increased levels of education can bolster the workforce in ways that are more significant than simply stemming the tide of student and school failures.
Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, and New Mexico have strong education governors committed to pre-K-20-workforce policies designed to use technology as an enabler. They are aware that the silos between different education segments and agencies must come down. For them, the information highway has to turn into a coherent education network where policies, practices and interactions can cross educational stakeholders as easily as an interstate traverses neighborhoods. Govs. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.), Janet Napolitano (D-Ariz.), and Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) were returned to office in November 2006; each took a stand on education as a centerpiece of their second terms. Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R-Ky.), who committed Kentucky to a realignment of its education and workforce capacity, will come to the end of his first term in 2007. Consider their work thus far:
? Arizona's Janet Napolitano created a pre-K-20 commission (pre-kindergarten through higher education) in Arizona to coordinate all the educational segments in that state and to drive toward a singular educational experience. "Here in Arizona, we're already making the investment today so our state can lead the global economy tomorrow and beyond," Napolitano has said. On the national scene, in announcing her first action as the current chair of the National Governors' Association, Napolitano stated that her personal project as chair will be to take Arizona's approach to the rest of the states in order "to educate our students to be innovators, and to carry that spirit of innovation through their university experience and into the workforce."
? Michigan's Jennifer Granholm perhaps went the furthest of her colleagues. In pushing through her state's first graduation requirements, Granholm put her support behind a high school graduation requirement that requires every student in the state to have an online learning experience. "When it comes to education, we will have one overarching goal: to become the best-educated workforce in the nation. To do that, we will give our children the tools they need to be successful in the classroom and in the 21st century economy." To make good on the online learning requirement in Michigan's sluggish economy, the Michigan Department of Education and Michigan Virtual High School have joined forces to offer a free online course entitled Career Forward. It explores the global economy, starting in ninth grade. "This course is an incredible 'two-fer,'" Gov. Granholm announced in March 2006. "It will help our students understand how to thrive in a changing economy, and it will teach them how to learn online, something they will need to do throughout their work lives."
? New Mexico's Bill Richardson, a likely presidential candidate, has made education New Mexico's top priority. Like his neighbor in Arizona, the investment is a comprehensive package for students, an integration of education units and singular statewide technology run out of the state CIO's office. "New Mexico high school graduates must be armed to compete for excellent jobs, not just here, but nationally and internationally," said Gov. Richardson after announcing a comprehensive high school redesign in May 2006. Richardson has reorganized the education structure in New Mexico, making the heads of K-12 and higher education the front pieces for the state's efforts all coordinated directly from his office.
? Kentucky's Ernie Fletcher has already spent years on the organizational realignment in his state. Getting every education and workforce unit on the same page has been difficult but rewarding. Run out of the statehouse, this effort puts Kentucky, the longest running of the pre-K-20-workforce taskforces, in a position to create a single technology, delivery and policy network spanning all of its state-funded stakeholders. Their collective goal is to raise the graduation rate and education level of Kentucky citizens so that they, like other more economically active states, can compete in the global economy. In August 2006, commending Virginia Fox, the outgoing the secretary of education, Fletcher said of the state's combined effort: "[Virginia] is an exceptional individual, and she has done a tremendous job helping me move Kentucky forward. Her tireless work has brought all of the Education Cabinet agencies much closer together, and the proof of her effort was visible in the successful 2006 General Assembly when many educational initiatives were approved."
The Herculean task of prodding the sedentary education machinery in our states must now evolve into even more. The next step for our governors is to develop well-crafted state education and human capital blueprints to make education systems match today's needs in the global economy. There is not enough money in any state treasury or local school district bank account to continue down the old path any longer.
Gordon Freedman is vice president of education strategy for Blackboard, Inc.
FROM: The Center of Michigan
http://www.thecenterformichigan.net/Website/Portals/0/CFM_BUDGET_REPORT2.pdf
Monday, January 29, 2007
THE "yin" of the 19th Century...........followed byt the "YANG" of the 21st Century!
"Yin and Yang are the interdependence of opposites. Yin symbolizes earth, darkness, cold, night, moon, passivity, and Yan symbolizes heavens, light, heat, day, sun, activity. Yin and Yang, "imaginary" and "real", the mastery of their interactions provide opportunities where the weak overcomes the strong by borrowing from the enemy’s power."
19th Century Model for Business as Usual
More students, more cash
School districts consider enrollment bonuses
January 28, 2007
When Bellevue Community Schools hired Scott Belt as superintendent this month, the district asked him to help reverse years of declining enrollment. Officials offered him $300 per student if Bellevue's enrollment grows.
The rural district between Lansing and Battle Creek isn't the only one showing the money. In Grand Rapids, teachers will get a cash bonus if the district loses fewer students than expected.
Cash incentives for attracting new customers have been common in the business world. Now, they're moving into education.
The idea is still young and largely in the experimental stage, but it makes sense to some school leaders in Michigan, where school funding is based on enrollment. Competition among districts for students has become so keen, some educators refer to schools of choice as "schools of theft."
"That's how districts survive today -- on enrollment," said William Mayes, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Administrators.
Carl Hartmen, associate executive director of the Michigan Association of School Boards, said the idea is likely to spread.
"I'm sure you're going to see more and more of it," Hartman said. "If you're losing students, you're losing money."
Not everyone sees bonuses as the answer to declining enrollment. East Detroit Public Schools have gone from 6,500 students to 5,200 over the last 10 years. The board recently voted to become a school of choice district, offer all-day kindergarten and close buildings to help cut costs and keep enrollment up.
But East Detroit doesn't offer financial incentives for enrollment.
"I see it as a slippery slope," Superintendent Bruce Kefgen said. "If your bread and butter depends on you being able to retain students, might you be less prone to suspend a student?"
Even though Detroit Public Schools has lost about one-third of its enrollment during the last several years and is closing schools, parent Samuel Ivory said the district would be better off putting the money in the classroom. Ivory has five children in Detroit schools, at Southeastern High School, Joy Middle School and Hutchinson Elementary.
"They should be spending it on the students, maintaining the schools and keeping the buildings open," if they want to retain students, Ivory said.
The incentives could also add to the growing concern that school districts are cannibalizing each other in their zeal to pick up students.
"It makes you like a bounty hunter," said Royal Oak Superintendent Thomas Moline. Royal Oak Public Schools' enrollment has been declining by about 200 students per year. The district uses a demographer to help forecast the change and is closing schools to keep pace with it.
But Moline isn't opposed to incentives.
"I think it stimulates the system," he said. "But the bottom line is, you'd better have better quality and better outcomes, because parents are very savvy shoppers these days."
Promoting the pluses
Bellevue has gone from 1,005 students in 2000 to 710 today. Some of the students have gone to neighboring districts, while others have been forced to move for economic reasons, Belt said. His job is now to run a PR campaign convincing parents to come back.
"If we can get the word out, get some good positive promotion going on, maybe we can gain enrollment," he said.
But Belt was a little uncomfortable with the bonus.
"I don't ever want anyone to think that I want a kid to come here so I can make an extra dollar," Belt said. "I want them to come because this is the best place for them to be."
Tim Reed, Bellevue's school board president, said Belt's role will be to be more visible in the community than previous superintendents and tout, in part, the district's new emphasis on students earning Michigan Merit Scholarships and its decision to offer more science classes.
"I expect him to be the leader and visionary thinker for the staff and teachers and bring these things to reality," Reed said.
Unions agree
The 20,000-student Grand Rapids Public Schools district has been losing between 800 and 900 students a year. Almost all the unions in the district -- including those covering teachers, administrators, secretaries and noncertified personnel -- have agreed to a plan in their contracts calling for a lump sum bonus in June if the district loses fewer than 800.
The bonuses will vary, from 0.25% of their salary if the district loses between 600 and 699 students, up to 1.75% if the loss is 100 or less.
"We all have a role in recruiting and retaining students. Even a secretary ... has things that can be done with customer service," said Fredericka Williams, executive director of human resources.
Employees are being urged to make parents feel welcome and make sure they are aware of programs that other districts may not provide, such as the district's after-school program.
Not everyone is convinced that teachers or superintendents can change enrollment.
The Lansing School District tried enrollment incentives for the superintendent, only to drop them, said Hugh Clarke, board vice president.
"Given the economy, the mobility of people ... it's kind of an unworkable goal," Clark said.
Contact PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI at 586-469-4681 or pwalsh@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.
21st Century Model for Creating & Innovating NEW Business Solutions that Add-Value to the Intentional Mission! (AIM)
The internet will revolutionise television within five years. That was the prediction of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had,” the Microsoft chairman told politicians and business leaders.
“Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it,” he said. “Internet presentation of these things is vastly superior.”
He said the change was coming “because TV is moving into being delivered over the internet — and some of the big phone companies are building up the infrastructure for that.”
Microsoft has had some success in signing up telecommunications companies to use its software to deliver audio and video, but worldwide only a few million customers currently receive television over internet technology.
The rise of broadband video delivered over the internet has been more spectacular, but for most people it is still not currently a substitute for watching television.
It is not the first time that Bill Gates has predicted that broadcasting will become irrelevant. Back in October 2004 we reported that he said that linear schedules were on the way out.
YouTube
Chad Hurley, the co-founder of YouTube was also speaking at Davos. He said that the impact on advertising would be profound and that YouTube would be experimenting to build an effective model that works for advertisers and users.
He also confirmed that the company, now owned by Google, is working on a revenue sharing mechanism that would reward users that submit material to which they own the copyright.
www.microsoft.com
www.youtube.com
Broadband, Business, IPTV
AND the Natives are Restless
Living with Digital Natives and their Technologies
By Jonathan Nalder
January 1, 2007
URL: http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604072
from Educators' eZine
Attending a recent conference dealing with Boys Literacy, I was happily surprised to find that many of the solutions presented involved technology, and not just for their gimmick value. A range of educators had all reached a similar place of integrating technology to increase engagement and learning, no easy task.
These same educators, however, all seemed to have picked up Mark Prensky’s idea of distinguishing teachers from students with his terms “Digital Native” and “Digital Immigrant.” We heard those terms several times, and they elicited nods of recognition as well as collective sighs. It was if those who considered themselves Digital Immigrants now had a name for their ‘condition’ that excused them for being outside the new world created by the Information revolution. Terms such as these, when used broadly, can end up causing harm if they are accepted as mono-cultural, rather than just as useful lenses through which to see current issues.
Many of the presenters also spoke about inclusive practices and taking into account the damage that separating out one group can do. So, as educators, let’s not create a them-and-us mentality when it comes to technology in the classroom. When a show of hands was solicited in one session asking who understood the meaning of several newer ICT terms, only about one in ten responded. If you fear you may have been one of those excluded, you can start gaining a passport to the world of the ‘Digital Native’ right away. ‘But how’ you may ask? Outlined below are just ten names/sites/programs/devices that currently mark the digital world in which our students exist. The socialising technology of Tamagotchi is nothing compared to the revolutionary nature of these:
Nintendo DS: I’ve sighted this handheld gaming device several times in the playground of my school. The Nintendo name may be familiar to you, but the DS is something else, and, rather than the usual shoot-em up games associated with such devices, Nintendo’s tend to have less-violent characters, such as Mario.
The DS opens like a clam- shell, has Dual-Screens (hence the name), a built in microphone and packs a PDA-like stylus (kids’ toys are growing up). Its unique features means it can offer software like ‘Nintendogs’, a digital pet game where users view the top screen, can tap commands on the lower screen, and even speak commands to their pet. It also has wireless capabilities for messaging other users with the unique write and draw ‘Pictochat’. Watch for the new ‘brain age’ game full of puzzles and brain-challenges.
With a street price of around $180, and a new, more compact model on the way (the DS lite), this is one device guaranteed to be high on the wish list of most students, girls included.
Myspace.com: Launched only it seems like yesterday, Myspace is an all in one Webpage service with over 50 million users worldwide. That’s more than the population of some countries! It provides a free (but with advertising displayed) homepage where you can have a blog, photo gallery, songs etc. displayed. This is one of the sites whose combination of many features is increasingly being described as an example of Web 2.0.
With so many users, it is also a community unto itself where one can easily get in contact with other people who have the same music or hobby tastes. You can view other peoples ‘profile’ or homepages and even leave comments or add someone whose site you like as a ‘friend’. It’s been hugely popular with high school students overseas (although the minimum age requirements have recently been tightened due to concerns about Net predators) and there is now an Australian-hosted chapter to further add to the phenomenon.
flickr.com: A free photo-sharing site where you can search for images on any topic imaginable – all uploaded by people just like yourself. The breadth of images available is quite staggering – one of my favourite sections is the one-letter and number group where people all over the world have uploaded pictures of single letters and numbers taken from signage, and advertising. One can then go to an associated site and spell out words or sentences using the hundreds of various pictures.
There is a monthly limit on the free account for how many megabytes you can upload, but no total limit on how many images one may have. (There is also a Pro account available with no limits).
Like MySpace, its members number in the many millions. You can comment on the photos you like, and in turn have yours viewed by others from the flickr community. The site keeps a record of how many times your photos have been viewed, and you can add friends, join groups based around photo themes, and even send internal Emails to other members. Again, the emphasis is on the creation of a social space.
Youtube.com: A free video-sharing website doing for video what flickr has done for photos. Upload your holiday or podcast video and instantly have access to a potential audience of over 35 million other users. The site keeps track of how many times your collection has been viewed, and who has rated your creations with stars, or left you a message.
Fitting in perhaps with the reality TV trend that so many students seem to love, it really is a ‘power to the people’ site, where the most viewed video (close to 3 million) is from a comedian parodying different dance styles. Recently a British singer has gained a record deal and top-ten debut solely by building a huge fan base with video recordings of herself performing. It has even become a site for ‘street’ journalists who record video of important events, speeches and the like and upload it so it becomes immediately accessible to anyone around the globe.
RSS: Really Simple Syndication. With so many news and info-tainment web diaries (blogs) and podcasts being published these days, it’s easy to do a Google search and find someone writing just about that obscure hobby you have. RSS was developed for use on handhelds or laptops in the pre-always-on internet days so that news could be downloaded when one was connected and read later, but now is used as well to keep track of audio and video podcasts.
With RSS software you can paste in an RSS address and set your computer to automatically download the blog or podcast entries as they are published. Podcasts can be searched at many sites including from within iTunes, which will keep your ‘feeds’ organised and updated for loading onto a portable mp3 player for later listening or viewing.
Skype: Like the sound of free phone calls? Skype software (in conjunction with a microphone) allows you to call any other Skype user for free using an Internet connection. Like the IM (instant messaging) craze in which many students spend their home hours participating, it’s a way of communicating with their friends that doesn’t add $ to the family phone bill. Skype even has the option to purchase call credits and call landline phones at discounted rates.
Xbox Live: Ok, you know the Xbox is a gaming machine, but it now comes with an Internet connection to the Microsoft Live service. Xbox Live “provides voice communications [and] … a console-related friends list of other selected online players, as well as a messaging system of either text or voice messages” (taken from www.wikipedia.com). As long as you are signed in to Xbox Live, while either playing a game, watching a DVD (with the DVD playback kit) or navigating the dashboard, you have access to view all your friends, see what your online friends are doing, and send messages via the dashboard or the Xbox 360 guide. You can send either written messages or voice messages to other players, even if they aren't online.
Leapfrog: A maker of game and quiz inspired education toys - everything from talking storybooks to handhelds that mimic adult PDA’s. They seem to have found a way to make basic learning tasks fun, and at a decent price point too. Their audience base begins at about three and up, but for school-age children they market the ‘Leapster’ handheld which accepts cartridges like a Nintendo but with a more educational bent.
iPod: Ok, you know it plays music. But these days, an iPod (or other mp3 player) can play video, display maps and images, and hold your calendar and address data. It can hold literally thousands of podcasts, becoming a portable audio (or video) library with accessible information on the hundreds of topics on which podcasts are now produced. It can also be used to record audio for later moving to a pc for using in producing your own podcast!
There are many uses that a creative teacher can make of these capabilities. For example, educational videos or school-slideshows can be displayed directly on the classroom TV or data-projector without the need for a Laptop or DVD player. Interactive step by step guides can be produced with hyper-linked sections that can be taken on field trips or even used to facilitate independent learning tasks.
The iPod is also about a new concept that is revolutionizing modern life – that being the ability to carry previously unimagineable amounts of music, video and data in your pocket. For adults who have spent years carefully building up a CD or a video collection, the concept of it all fitting into one pocket-sized rectangle may seem hard to grasp, but it is something that today’s kids are already used to.
Keen readers who have got this far will have noticed just how many of the current technologies mentioned above have something to do with social networking. I have had conversations with parents recently who are concerned that computers are stopping today’s kids from interacting with their peers. These same parents also marvel at how their children’s use of Email and instant messaging means they now know more about what’s happening with other family members (via their computer-using children) than they ever did before. In a world of sometimes increasingly fractured families, this is one positive of technology worth noting.
There are ways for teachers to also make use of students’ affinity for this networking technology. I have just begun encouraging students to Email me their written work as computer files so I can correct them whenever I have time, an innovation too which they have taken well. Students working on group projects can message their notes to each other, and if each student adds his contribution in a different text colour, teachers can keep track of who has written what.
Now, you may have also noticed that, although I promised ten, I’ve only listed nine examples that mark out just what makes our students such ‘digital natives’. This is not because there aren’t many more, but because I’m challenging you to ask your students for the tenth. Open up a discussion and you might find a new way into their world, or better yet, be inspired to become a part of it yourself. After all, how can one teach students and yet know so little about the world in which they are immersed? Is it enough to seek to bring them only into our ‘adult’ world, and not be willing to enter theirs? Surely that is the learning contract we make with our students – to expect from them only what we first show ourselves – which is, hopefully a willingness to be involved in each other’s world and to set a learning example.
And get started right away; after all, any passport to the digital world is likely to stay current for ten months at best. Then you’ll again have to ask your digital native students about the latest hot trends.
For more on all this, visit my Blog, M-Learn.
Email: Jonathan Nalder
Sunday, January 28, 2007
MEDICI Effect on Creativity & Innovation
Book: The MEDICI Effect http://www.themedicieffect.com/
The MEDICI Effect Game http://www.themedicieffect.com/workshops/medicigame.html
Friday, January 26, 2007
21st Century "Sticky" Digital Learning Environments
Can't Touch This
SEE VIDEO http://fastcompany.com/video/general/perceptivepixel.html
Working all but alone from his hardware-strewn office, Jeff Han is about to change the face of computing. Not even the big boys are likely to catch him.
Jefferson Han, a pale, bespectacled engineer dressed in Manhattan black, faced the thousand or so attendees on the first day of TED 2006, the annual technology, entertainment, and design conference in Monterey, California. The 30-year-old was little more than a curiosity at the confab, where, as its ad copy goes, "the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration." And on that day, the thinkers and doers included
Then Han began his presentation. His fingertips splayed, he placed them on the cobalt blue 36-inch-wide display before him and traced playful, wavy lines that were projected onto a giant screen at his back. He conjured up a lava lamp and sculpted floating blobs that changed color and shape based on how hard he pressed. ("Google should have something like this in their lobby," he joked.) With the crowd beginning to stir, he called up some vacation photos, manipulating them on the monitor as if they were actual prints on a tabletop. He expanded and shrank each image by pulling his two index fingers apart or bringing them together. A few oohs and aahs bubbled up from the floor.
Suppressing a smile, Han told the assembled brain trust that he rejects the idea that "we are going to introduce a whole new generation of people to computing with the standard keyboard, mouse, and Windows pointer interface." Scattering and collecting photos like so many playing cards, he added, "This is really the way we should be interacting with the machines." Applause rippled through the room. Someone whistled. Han began to feel a little bigger.
But he was far from finished. Han pulled up a two-dimensional keyboard that floated slowly across the screen. "There is no reason in this day and age that we should be conforming to a physical device," he said. "These interfaces should start conforming to us." He tapped the screen to produce dozens of fuzzy white balls, which bounced around a playing field he defined with a wave of the hand. A flick of a finger pulled down a mountainous landscape derived from satellite data, and Han began flying through it, using his fingertips to swoop down from a global perspective to a continental one, until finally he was zipping through narrow slot canyons like someone on an Xbox. He rotated his hands like a clock's, tilting the entire field of view on its axis--an F16 in a barrel roll. He ended his nine-minute presentation by drawing a puppet, which he made dance with two fingers.
He basked in the rock-star applause. This is the best kind of affirmation, he thought. The moment you live for.
Six months later, after TED posted the video on its Web site, the blogosphere got wind of Han's presentation. Word spread virally through thousands of bloggers, who either posted the video on their sites or pointed to it on YouTube, where it was downloaded a quarter of a million times. "Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwllllllllll I want one!!!" whined one YouTuber. "Just tell me where to buy one," said another. "Holy s--t. This is the future," cried a third. Han's presentation became one of YouTube's most popular tech videos of all time.
In this Googly age, it only takes a random genius or two to conceive of a technology so powerful that it can plow under the landscape and remake it in its own image. People are already betting that Jeff Han is one of them. (For an exclusive look at a new demo video, see Related Content at right.)
For as long as he can remember, Han, a research scientist working out of New York University's Courant Institute, has been fascinated by technology. He even doodles in right angles, rectangles, and squares--hieroglyphs that look almost like circuitry, a schematic of his unconscious. The son of middle-class Korean immigrants who emigrated to America in the 1970s to take over a Jewish deli in Queens, Han began taking apart the family TV, VCR, "anything that was blinking," at the age of 5 (he still has a nasty scar courtesy of a hot soldering iron his little sister knocked onto his foot). His father wasn't always happy about the houseful of half-reassembled appliances, but encouraged his son's technolust nevertheless, and even made him memorize his multiplication tables before he enrolled in kindergarten. At summer camp, Jeff hot-wired golf carts for nocturnal joy rides and fixed fellow campers' busted Walkmen in exchange for soda pop. He studied violin "like any good Asian kid." He was 12 when he built his first laser.
His parents scrimped and saved to send him to the Dalton School, an elite private high school on Manhattan's Upper East Side, then Cornell University, where he studied electrical engineering and computer science. Han skipped out on his senior year without graduating to join a startup that bought a videoconferencing technology he developed while a student. A decade later, he's poised to change the face of computing.
Until now, the touch screen has been limited to the uninspiring sort found at an ATM or an airport ticket kiosk--basically screens with electronic buttons that recognize one finger at a time. Han's touch display, by contrast, redefines the way commands are given to a computer: It uses both movement and pressure--from multiple inputs, whether 2 fingers or 20--to convey information to the silicon brain under the display. Already, industries and companies as diverse as defense contractor
"Touch is one of the most intuitive things in the world," Han says. "Instead of being one step removed, like you are with a mouse and keyboard, you have direct manipulation. It's a completely natural reaction--to see an object and want to touch it."
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Han gives me a private demonstration at NYU. The 36-inch-wide drafting table he used at TED has since evolved into a giant screen: two 8-foot-by-3-foot panels. I notice the screen is not only smudge resistant but durable--or as Han says, "peanut butter--proof," a phrase he didn't invent but liked enough to co-opt.
In this Googly age, it only takes a random genius to conceive a technology so powerful that it plows under the landscape and remakes it in its own image.
Han teaches me the one pattern I need to know--a circular motion akin to a proofreader's delete symbol, which brings up a pie-chart menu of applications. I poke at it, and suddenly I'm inside the mapping software, overlooking an arid mountain range. Spread two fingers apart, and I'm zooming through canyons. Push them together, and I'm skying thousands of feet above. I'm not just looking at three-dimensional terrain, I'm living in it: I'm wherever I want to be, instantly, in any scale, hurdling whole ridgelines with a single gesture, or free-falling down to any rooftop in any city on earth. This ain't no MapQuest. Han's machine is faster--much faster--because there's nothing between me and the data: no mouse, no cursor, no pull-down windows. It's seamless, immediate, ridiculously easy. No manual required.
An NYU colleague pokes his head in (Han greets him like he does most everyone: "Dude!") and tells him that a producer from the Ellen DeGeneres Show called. Han is amused but declines the invitation to appear. Ever since he became a Web phenomenon, he has been receiving all sorts of offers, come-ons, lecture requests. An official from SPAWAR, a subdivision of the Navy focused on space and naval warfare planning, queried Han about collaborating. A producer from CBS News wondered how to make use of Han's touch screen for special events like election coverage. A dance deejay asked if he had a product to spin music at clubs. A teenager asked how he could become a computer engineer too (answer: "Study math").
Meanwhile, I get back to playing with Han's über tech. "Jesus," I say under my breath. "He's gonna get rich."
Han overhears me and laughs. The thought has occurred to him.
Before reinventing the touch screen, Han was just another dotcom refugee at a crossroads. BoxTop Interactive, an e-services firm he worked for in Los Angeles, had just flamed out with everything else (he calls the whole boom-bust era a "collusion of bulls--t"). With his father ill, and ready for a change himself, Han returned to New York.
He knew some professors at NYU and, despite his aborted stay at Cornell, landed a research position at the Courant Institute, where he has been for the past four years. The scope of the projects he's involved in is a testament to the sheer wattage of his brain. Two are funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the Department of Defense, including one involving visual odometry: Modeling his work on the brain of a honeybee, Han has been looking for ways to make a computer know where it has been and where it is going--part of an attempt to build a flying camera that would be able to find its way over long distances. Han has also made it to the second round of a DARPA project to create an autonomous robot vehicle that can traverse terrain by learning from its own experiences. The goal: to perfect an unmanned ground combat vehicle that could operate over rough trails, in jungles or desert sand, or weave through heavy traffic as if it had a skilled driver behind the wheel. One non-DARPA project involves reflectometry. Han came up with a way to scan materials so they are faithfully reproduced digitally. The process typically requires shining a light on a piece of fabric, a flag, say, from dozens of different angles, and scanning each one into a computer--a time-consuming proposition. But Han developed an elegant shortcut: He built a kaleidoscope with three mirrors that reflect one another. Once a swatch of cloth is inserted, the scope yields 22 reflections mimicking different angles of light. When data from each reflection are scanned, the result is a flag that can be formed into any shape--one that looks like it's waving in the breeze, with each ripple and each slight shift in light rendered to a photographic exactitude. The whole process takes a fraction of the time Hollywood's best computer animators would need.
Han brought a similarly pragmatic do-it-yourself attitude to his study of touch-screen technology. When he began looking into the idea, he discovered that a few researchers were working on interactive walls and tabletops, and there were a number of art pieces. But that was about it. The concept hadn't advanced much from where it was in the 1980s, when Bill Buxton, now a
Inspiration came in the form of an ordinary glass of water. Han noticed when he looked down on the water that light reflected differently in areas where his hand contacted the glass. He remembered that in fiber optics, light bounces on the inside of the cable until it emerges from the other end miles away. If the surface was made of glass, and the light was interrupted by, say, a finger, the light wouldn't bounce anymore, it would diffuse--some of it would bleed into the finger, some would shoot straight down, which was happening with his water glass. Physicists call the principle "frustrated total internal reflection" (it sounds like something your therapist might say).
Han decided to put these errant light beams to work. It took him just a few hours to come up with a prototype. "You have to have skills to build," he says. "You can't be strictly theoretical. I felt fortunate. I walked into a lab with crude materials and walked out with a usable model."
He did it by retrofitting a piece of clear acrylic and attaching LEDs to the side, which provided the light source. To the back, he mounted an infrared camera. When Han placed his fingers on the makeshift screen, some light ricocheted straight down, just as he thought it would, and the camera captured the light image pixel for pixel. The harder he pressed, the more information the camera captured. Han theorized he could design software that would measure the shape and size of each contact and assign a series of coordinates that defined it. In essence, each point of contact became a distinct region on a graph. "It's like a thumbprint scanner, blown up in scale and encapsulating all 10 or more fingers. It converts touch to light." It could also scale images appropriately, so if he pulled a photo apart with two fingers, the image would grow.
"People want this technology, and they want it bad," says Douglas Edric Stanley, inventor of his own touch-screen "hypertable" and a professor of digital arts at the Aix-en-Provence School of Art in France. "One thing that excited me about Jeff Han's system is that because of the infrared light passing horizontally through the image surface itself, it can track not only the position of your hand but also the contact pressure and potentially even the approach of your hand to the screen. These are amazing little details, and pretty much give you everything you would need to move touchable imagery away from a purely point-and-click logic."
Han began coding software to demonstrate some of the touch screen's capabilities, running them on a standard Microsoft Windows operating system. Meanwhile, Philip Davidson, an NYU PhD candidate, got excited about the project and quickly became its lead software developer.
The first thing the pair did was to modify NASA World Wind, a free Google Earth--type open-source mapping program. (Han figured the military would be keen on anything that works faster, since split seconds mean the difference between life and death.) Then they created the photo manipulator, which lets you upload pictures from Flickr or anywhere else on the Web (it can also make 2-D images appear as 3-D). A taxonomy tool makes it a cinch to navigate the illustrated branches of the Linnean classification system, from animals and plants down to every known species, and see on one screen how these families are structured and interrelated. (They are thinking of extending it to genealogy and an analysis of social networks.) Multidimensional graphing and charting help you visualize spreadsheet data and move them around from one point in time to another, while Shape Sketching lets you draw on-screen as easily as you can with a pencil on paper--then animate these shapes instantly. Down the road, it may be possible to draw Bart Simpson on-screen and instruct the computer in what you want him to do.
"As computers have become more powerful, computer graphics have advanced to the point where it's possible to create photo-realistic images," Han says. "The bottleneck wasn't, How do we make pixels prettier? It was, How do we engage with them more?"
Today's computers assume you are Napoleon, with your left hand tucked into your suit," says Bill Buxton, whom Han considers to be the father of the multitouch screen. "But a lot of things are better performed with two hands. Multiple- sensor touch screens bridge the gap between the physical and virtual world."
Mind you, this doesn't mean touch screens will completely replace the computer mouse, QWERTY keyboard, or traditional graphic user interface (or GUI) any more than cinema made live theater disappear or television supplanted radio. Each continues to do what it does best. Your iPod or cell phone may be fine for short music videos, but you probably wouldn't want to watch a two-hour movie on it. "These media fall into their appropriate niche and are displaced in areas where they are not the best," Buxton says.
Han really doesn't know how his mapping software, photo manipulator, or any of it will ultimately be used--these applications are really proofs of concept, not ends in themselves. "When unexpected uses emerge that no one ever thought of, that's when it gets exciting and takes off," says Don Norman, a professor at Northwestern University and author of Emotional Design. Thomas Edison, after all, believed the phonograph would lead to the paperless office; businessmen would record letters and send the waxed discs in the post. And the Internet wasn't exactly invented to serve the masses and become the backbone to business and commerce.
In January, Han was set to ship his first screen to a branch of the military. He hasn't taken a dime of venture capital, so his company is already in the black.
Meanwhile, wherever touch-screen technology leads, Han will face stiff competition. Microsoft has been working on its own version, TouchLight, which offers echoes of the Spielberg sci-fi flick Minority Report.
Mitsubishi is targeting a completely different market with its DiamondTouch table, a collaborative tool for business that allows a group of people to interact at the same time via touch screen. Canada-based Smart Technologies has created a nice niche selling interactive whiteboards to universities, corporations, and even to three branches of the U.S. military for briefings. Panasonic has been developing wall-size touch-screen displays, as has consulting firm
But Han isn't exactly worried. In January he was set to ship his first wall screen to one of the branches of the military (he won't say which one) "and they are paying military prices--six figures," he says. His company will also be offering consulting services and support, which will generate even more revenue, and Han says he has a lot of other deals in the pipeline. He hasn't taken a dime of venture capital, so his company is in the black even before he has rented office space.
What's more, with the cost of cameras and screens plummeting, it is inevitable that interactive displays will be built into walls and in stores, in schools, on subways, maybe in taxicabs. In fact, a screen could be as thin as a slice of wallpaper, yet durable enough to handle the most rambunctious user.
Not everyone is sold on Han's idea. Ben Shneiderman, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland and a founding director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, calls Han a "great showman" who has "opened the door to exciting possibilities." But he doesn't think Han's technology would be suitable for a large-scale consumer product, nor as useful as a mouse on a large display. If you are standing in front of the screen, Shneiderman wonders, how would people behind you be able to see what you're doing?
One way, Han counters, is for the demonstrator to simply move his ass out of the way. Another: Use a drafting-table display, as Han did at TED, and project the image on a wall-size screen.
But criticisms like these are a million light years from Han's mind. We're in his cluttered and cramped office at NYU. Books line a shelf, and a skein of wires unfurls across the floor. A computer circuit board is half taken apart (he stopped losing screws long ago), and a nearby whiteboard contains blueprints and sketches of the touch screen, plus a clever trick for hacking programming code.
Han is explaining why he formed Perceptive Pixel. "I want to create an environment where I can create technology, get it into the hands of someone to market it, and move on to other technologies so I can keep innovating," he says. "I want to be a serial entrepreneur: Incubate an idea, get it to a good state, and make that an enabler to get to the next state. It's every researcher's fantasy."
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Measuring Educations "Digital Flatness"
Measuring Up in a FlatWorld
By Karen Greenwood Henke
January 22, 2007
URL: http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604144
from Technology & Learning
Pioneering groups are reforming curriculum to prepare students for the global digital workforce.
When President James Monroe was crafting the Monroe Doctrine back in 1823 to prevent foreign inter ests from encroaching on American territory, the notion of a global economy undeterred by regional boundaries would have been viewed as pure science fiction.
The fact is we're there today. An Internet-enabled society has brought with it a rash of competition that is already posing a threat to our position of economic leadership in the world.
How does the future look? According to U.S. employers, not so bright. In November 2006, we reported results from a survey of 400 of the Fortune 500 companies showing startling skill deficiencies in today's graduates in a range of crucial areas (see "The Workforce Readiness Crisis."
Graduating students who can compete in the digital age is imper ative but remains an uphill battle in the absence of a strong national technology policy, empowered education leadership, and ongoing dialogue involving business, community, government, and educators.
Meantime, in pockets around the country, some states, districts, and schools are moving forward with innovative initiatives that aim to prepare students for success in the global digital workplace.
A State Steps Forward
West Virginia's State Superintendent Steve Paine got a wake up call last year when scores on the state's assessment for No Child Left Behind, which showed increased achievement, were at odds with results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a country-wide evaluation tool, which registered no progress. If the state's standards did not measure up to national benchmarks, then neither would West Virginia's students.
Paine knew that successful competition was key. West Virginia students needed to master a broad range of skills to compete successfully with other states and worldwide. Tapping into West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin's commitment to education as the cornerstone for economic development and, with support from the state legislature, Paine launched an initiative to refine and align state standards and assessments.
Shaping a New Curriculum
Using a mixture of traditional, digital technology, and 21st century crucial skills, West Virginia has created its own state-level model for a new core curriculum and is currently in the process of designing assessments to measure the new elements.
"We are revising our objectives and creating a new assessment built around more rigorous content standards," says Brenda Williams, exec utive director for the state's office of technology. "We've incorporated ICT literacy with learning skills standards and core content." The state development team adopted the Inter national Society for Technology in Education's National Education Technology Standards to define ICT literacy and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills' 21st Century Learning Framework as an implementation strategy.
"The revised content standards are much more focused and defined according to performance task and expectation," says Dr. Jorea Marple, assistant state superintendent of schools for curriculum and instruction. "We actually reduced the number of objectives and made them clearer."
For example, a current reading policy states: "develop an outline using prepared notes to write a paragraph." The proposed policy says: "using student-prepared notes, create an outline and use it to develop a written and/or oral presentation using computer-generated graphics (e.g., tables, charts, graphs)."
The proposed standards have been submitted to researchers around the country for feedback, and the next step is to bring teachers into the review process and to help develop resources. Instructional guides for all four content areas will show teachers how to integrate skills into a definable performance task that they can use to measure acquisition of that skill. The state expects to integrate the new standards and assessments by 2009.
Six Key Elements of 21st Century LearningCore subjects: NCLB-identified core subjects. Learning and thinking skills: critical thinking and problem-solving skills, communication, creativity and innovation, collaboration, contextual learning, information and media literacy. ICT literacy: using technology in the context of learning so students know how to learn. Life skills: leadership, ethics, accountability, personal responsibility, self-direction, and so on. 21st century assessments: Authentic assessments that measure all five areas of learning. (For details, go to www.21stcenturyskills.org.) |
A Starting Point for Accountability
West Virginia and North Carolina are the first two states to incorporate the Partnership for 21st Century Skills' Framework into their curric ulum strategy. The Partnership has so far focused on defining and measuring skills crucial to the workplace of today and of the future (see www.21stcenturyskills.org). Its latest initiative helps states, counties, and districts develop learning plans and implementation strategies based on its framework: Six Key Elements of 21st Century Learning (see sidebar). In addition to subject mastery, the framework emphasizes learning and thinking skills; information and communications skills; and the life skills that help students become responsible, productive, and self-directed leaders.
In the age of accountability, what gets measured gets priority in the classroom, and most end-of-the-year (summative) state tests only measure core content acquisition. The Partner ship supports a balance of assessments — both high-quality standardized tests used for summative reporting as well as high-quality classroom assessments throughout the year to evaluate progress and soft-skills acquisition.
"Nobody is advocating more assessment," said Ken Kay, president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. "The question is, "What kind of assessment?'" Multiple-choice, true/false, and other standardized assessment tools measure subject mastery rather than thinking and decision-making skills. Kay points to the Council for Aid to Education Collegiate Learning Assessment Project (www.cae.org/content/pro_collegiate.htm) as a resource for measurement tools that require complex reasoning and written responses rather than multiple choice questions.
District Level Adoption
Although West Virginia and North Carolina are pioneers in spear heading a state-level push for the integration of 21st century skills, many districts around the country are taking matters into their own hands to raise standards and revise assessments. The Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, a medium-size K-12 district (16,000 students) located outside Indianapolis, used the 21st Century Skills Frame work to define seven literacies it deems key for its students: tech nology literacy, basic literacy, information literacy, visual literacy, higher-order thinking skills, self-direction, and cultural competency (www.ltschools.org).
Toward that effort, the district ensured that each of its 16 schools has an instructional coach to train teachers to integrate the seven literacies into authentic instruction based on "rigor, relevance, and relationships." After five years of this program, Leona Jameson, director of professional development for the district, estimates that 80 percent of teachers are teaching to the seven literacies.
Profile of an International Studies School GraduateThe Asia Society forms a vision of the 21st century graduate.
(For details, visit http://international studiesschools.orgs.) |
"Coaches help teachers create a situation for kids to understand and master skills," says Jameson. "They ask teachers, "How is the instruction authentic? How does it meet the standards?'" For example, a science teacher using project-based instruction helps students solve a real-world problem to learn the scientific process. The teacher might start with an issue such as water purity and ask students to define what they want to find out and how they will go about doing it. When the project is finished, the students present their results to a panel of experts in the community for authentic feedback and assessment.
An online grading system lets students and parents log in to see grades, attendance, and track their progress. But while the district has the state assessment measures to compare schools, it still lacks the ability to track students beyond graduation to measure the impact on outcomes in higher education and the workplace.
Global Relevance
Several networks have sprung up to address this lack of articulation between school and work success. The New York-based Asia Society International Studies Schools Network (ISSN) received a Gates Foundation Grant in 2003 to create small secondary schools that prepare students for college or other post- secondary education through knowledge and understanding of world cultures. Beyond that, the ability to communicate in languages other than English, and the capacity to work, live, and learn with people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds are central goals of the society, which has 10 schools in the United States.
"We created a graduate profile that defines what we believe young people should achieve to be ready for college and global competency," says Executive Director Tony Jackson. This profile maps closely to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills Framework with an added emphasis on cultural awareness and second language proficiency (see "Profile of an International Studies School Graduate," above).
Metropolitan Learning Center Expectations for Student Learning
(For details, visit www.crec.org/ magnetschools/schools/met.) |
The Asia Society curriculum broadens core subject skills and content for increased relevancy in an international workplace. "For example," says Jackson, "a biology class might focus on the nature of disease, and issues of wellness, exploring the spread of disease, migration trends, and the globalization of transportation, [which increases] human contact."
The Metropolitan Learning Center (MLC) in Bloomfield, Connecticut, is one member of the Asia Society's network. The public, interdistrict, grade 6-12 magnet school serves 681 students from six school districts in and around Hartford and focuses on the global themes of the society.
The MLC curriculum centers around nine Expectations for Student Learning that go beyond traditional objectives. For example, Effective Communication ESL focuses on the higher-order skills of interpretation, making connections, and taking critical stances to extend textbook content. Rubrics for each ESL define a range of achievement from advanced/exemplary to below basic and include multiple forms of assessment.
Recently recognized as an ISSN exemplary school, MLC has graduated two classes (it was founded in 1999). According to Principal Anne McKernan, almost all of the students have been accepted to college, with at least 80 percent going to four-year schools. And though this is one measure of success, adapting the graduate profile of ISSN to its curric ulum and measuring its success beyond college is a work in progress. It created a rubric about global connectedness that defines skills such as being socially prepared and culturally sensitive and is now grappling with how to assess them. To help enable MLC and other schools in its network find ways to measure global skills, ISSN is working with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (www.cpre.org) to establish assessment tools.
Success Beyond Graduation
At least one organization, the progressive New Technology Foundation (NTF), which has 25 schools across the country and 10 more in the works, is taking the first steps toward determining the effectiveness of its program in preparing students for higher education and the workplace. A survey of graduates from the first NTF school, New Technology High School in Napa, California, found that 89 percent of the responding alumni attended a two-year or four-year college/university or professional or technical institute. Most (92 percent) of the respondents have applied some or a great deal of what they learned during high school to their postsecondary education or career.
New Technology High School Learning Outcomes
|
Clearly, more work needs to be done for conclusive evidence of the program's effectiveness for the workplace. But the student-centered nature of the curriculum has been a unique and groundbreaking contribution to public education.
Empowering Students
Founded in 1996, New Technology High School is one of the earliest experiments in education focusing on skills needed for the digital world of work. High schools in the New Technology Foundation network offer a truly student-centric learning environment in which the standards are written in language for the students. For example, the learning outcome for oral communication says: "Oral communication skills are very useful in school and are of particular importance when entering and advancing in a career. In an interview and on the job, you will need to present information and ideas effectively." The standard then goes on to define specific objectives.
The learning outcomes are embedded into projects and used for grading. Students create a digital portfolio to demonstrate their progress, including work samples, grades, collaboration scores, and commendations. "They have a report card for each course that shows each learning outcome from the kid's point of view," says Bob Pearlman, director of strategic planning for the New Technology Foundation. "This is assessment for learning rather than school accountability." The curricular literacy outcome (one of nine) includes succeeding in standardized tests as one measure of a student's abilities.
"People talk about personalization," says Pearlman, "but that's not possible unless kids are acting on their own juices, have their own tools, and an environment and a framework to orient them."
The Next Wave of Reform
As policy makers consider reauthorization of No Child Left Behind legislation in the coming year, those schools, districts, and states taking the first steps toward integrating 21st century skills represent the pioneers in the next wave of education reform. Issues such as how to define and measure the new essential skills, whether to standardize them nationally, and how to determine their impact on workplace success remain very much works in progress. "It's crucial to teach kids the critical thinking skills they need to adapt and compete in the future," says Paine. "Because borders and boundaries are a thing of the past."
Karen Greenwood Henke is founder of Nimble Press. She writes a blog about funding for classrooms and technology in education at blog.grantwrangler.com.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
DIGITAL Promise....Just Continue to...DO IT!
Securing U.S. Public Funds for Educational Technology Research and Development:
Additonal: Learning to Learn / Luskin Interview
http://www.imsglobal.org/articles/18Sep2006Luskin1.cfm
Digital Promise Project
http://www.digitalpromise.org
An Interview with Larry Grossman of the Digital Promise Project
Lawrence K. (Larry) Grossman is co-chair of the Digital Promise Project with former FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow of "TV is a vast wasteland" fame. Mr. Grossman is former president of NBC News and PBS. Before that he founded an advertising agency to serve media and not-for-profit public service clients and was vice president of advertising at NBC. After leaving NBC News, Mr. Grossman held the Frank Stanton First Amendment Chair at the Kennedy School of Government, and was senior fellow and visiting scholar at Columbia University. He serves on the boards of various educational, science, public broadcasting, and health organizations and is author of The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age.
IMS Global Learning Consortium recently talked with Mr. Grossman about Digital Promise and the need for federal legislation to support research and development of advanced information technologies to serve the public interest, particularly in education, skills training, and lifelong learning and to help bring museums and libraries and the nation's public institutions into the digital age.
IMS Global: Perhaps a good place to start is to define for us what is the Digital Promise Project? What exactly do you hope to achieve?
LG: Digital Promise began in 1999, before the nation had any public policy or serious discussion about how to exploit the great potential of the new information technologies to serve the public interest, especially in education, skills training, and lifelong learning. A group of major foundations, including Carnegie, Century, Knight, MacArthur and Open Society, were concerned that in the approaching digital age, the rapid advance of new information technologies was revolutionizing the commercial segments of our society - in communications, business, banking, finance, entertainment, and manufacturing, to name a few. But the nation's nonprofit and civic institutions - our schools, libraries, museums, universities, and other public institutions that serve the crucial centers of our society were being left behind in the emerging digital age. The foundations asked Mr. Minow and me to direct a project that would develop recommendations for what should be done. We agreed to take on the job on a pro bono basis. After extensive research and interviews throughout the nation, we concluded that the U.S. had an overwhelming need to launch a new, federally financed R&D trust fund that would do for education, lifelong learning, and skills training in the digital age what the National Science Foundation does for science, NIH for health, and DARPA for the military. We called our proposed trust fund the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust, or DO IT, and urged that it grow eventually into a billion dollar a year fund to transform the nation's learning and training through intelligent use of advanced information technologies.
IMS Global: Is the Digital Divide in this country growing wider?
LG: The term Digital Divide usually refers to the disparity of access to computers and the Internet by the affluent and by inner city, rural and economically deprived segments of our population. That disparity continues, although in most parts of the nation it is diminishing. Increasingly schools are encouraging and subsidizing the use of computers by students. The great majority of today's students, even in poor communities are "digital natives," at least when it comes to the hardware. According to the most recent Department of Education report, 97% of high school students today have access to computers. Most have some experience using the Internet. The real deficit we see today is not in the hardware as much as it is in the development of educational and training software and content. The real opportunity and need is to transform education, lifelong learning and training for the digital age by the application of the remarkable new advanced information technologies that are being developed every day.
The federal government funds substantial R&D that translates into advancements in key U.S. industries, and those investments pay off handsomely in improved productivity. Unfortunately there is no such R&D model for education. U.S. taxpayers invest nearly $1 trillion per year on K-12, higher education, and skills training, yet we invest relatively little to explore the application of technology for learning. And what little is spent goes to the Defense Department, which is making extraordinary advances in training troops through information technologies. But what they're learning is not available to the general population. Most formal teaching and learning still use 19th century methods: reading texts, listening to lectures, blackboard exercises, and the like. Firms and industries with higher IT intensity have higher levels of productivity growth. In education today, low IT intensity yields low, in fact diminishing productivity. A recent Commerce Department study of 55 industries found that the education and training services industry has the lowest IT-intensity of the industries studied, even though education is arguably one of the most knowledge intensive industries of all.
As the Federation of American Scientist's Kay Howell has written recently in e-learn, "When we talk about technology for learning, we're talking about much more than using email to communicate with students, Google for doing homework research, and Powerpoint slides to support distance learning. We're talking about sophisticated information technologies tightly integrated into daily learning activities. We know that such software tools are possible because of the way information technology has been used in other service sector industries: powerful simulations and visualization tools used in computer games and movies; sophisticated help systems to provide accurate answers to questions; websites to undertake continuous evaluations of the individuals who use them, often tailoring offerings to interests and preferences revealed by the user. These technologies can be adapted to learning and will make it practical to adopt approaches to education that learning scientists have been advocating for years. New communication tools could enable learners to collaborate in complex projects and ask for help from teachers and experts from around the world. Learning systems could adapt to differences in student interests, backgrounds, learning styles and aptitudes. They could provide continuous measures of competence, integral to the learning process that can help teachers work more effectively with individuals and leave a record of competence that is compelling to students and to employers. And new tools could allow continuous evaluation and improvement of the learning systems themselves."
IMS Global: The R&D that is being conducted in other countries - is that being subsidized by their governments?
LG: Substantially. Other nations, ranging from Great Britain, to India, Singapore, and Italy are setting aside substantial amounts of money to bring their students up to speed. And we, alarmingly, and ironically, are falling way behind in comparison with just about all developed nations in how our students are progressing in math, science, reading and other basics.
And keep in mind that when we talk about the need for DO IT to invest in technology, we're not talking about buying computers and hardware as much as we are focusing on content and software. We have great precedents in American history for farsighted, transformative legislation that improved and expanded public education and higher education. One of the very first actions of Congress, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, required every new state to reserve public land to pay for public education, which started public education in the young nation, and indeed, in the world. In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, Congress passed and Lincoln signed the Land Grant Colleges Act, called by historian Alan Nevins the most farsighted legislation in the nation's history. That act also required public land to be set aside in every state to help finance public higher education that would increase our nation's competitiveness with Europe by developing more productive agriculture and advanced manufacturing. The result is today's remarkable network of 105 outstanding public research universities serving every state. That act did provide no funds for buildings; it was assumed that the states would pay for that. The money from the federal legislation was to pay for teacher salaries, textbooks, and content. And in the 20th century, Congress passed the GI Bill of 1944, which opened higher education to millions of veterans and helped bring unprecedented post-war prosperity to the nation. In that spirit, we believe America needs once again to act and to provide a transformative education initiative for the 21st century.
IMS Global: The Digital Promise Project is seeking to establish the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DO IT), the proceeds from which would be used to provide this type of research. How would the trust be funded? And how much money is needed to adequately support the type of R&D that is needed?
LG: There is no more publicly owned frontier land to help pay for this initiative, but today's equivalent is the publicly owned telecommunications spectrum, the radio and television frequencies that Congress has mandated be auctioned off for commercial uses such as cell telephones and digital transmissions. We said that eventually the interest earned on just 20 percent of the revenues received from those auctions of this publicly owned resource would amount to over a billion dollars a year. That trust fund money should be spent, at the direction of Congress, on critically needed R&D to help bring our schools and universities, our libraries and museums, our essential nonprofit civic and scientific organizations into the digital age. The trust fund would be overseen by a blue ribbon board of directors, recommended by those in the disciplines it serves, nominated by the President and confirmed by both houses of Congress. DO IT would be modeled on the National Science Foundation. We need that kind of decision-making authority so that the best ideas in education and learning can be funded, and partnerships can be established with the private sector, with states and local school districts, as well as with libraries and museums and similar public institutions. DO IT would start in a modest way, and build up its funding just as NSF has done since its launching in 1950.
IMS Global: Who would own this trust fund?
LG: The federal treasury would hold the auction revenues, which would be treated as an asset of the federal government. The interest from those revenues would be spent by DO IT under the direction of its independent board, with annual oversight by Congress.
IMS Global: What kind of support are you getting for this proposed legislation?
LG: We have strong bipartisan sponsorship of the bills in both the Senate and the House (The Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act, S 1023 and HR 2512). Of course, given what Congress is up against these days with the budget deficit and the war, our goal now is to get this proposal started and its operations tested in a modest way. Given the pace of technological change, and the essential need to transform the quality and modernize our systems of education, we want to see a modest fund established as soon as possible, the board of directors appointed, and the priorities set by the DO IT board.
IMS Global: The IMS Global Learning Consortium recently came out and publicly endorsed this initiative. What kind of response are you getting from the other nonprofit and for-profit organizations?
LG: Just about every major national organization representing our nation's museums, libraries, universities, schools and teachers have strongly supported the DO IT effort. The National Council of Mayors has given its endorsement. The former chair of the National Governors Association has supported it. High tech companies, in particular, like Google, E-Bay and Hewlett-Packard are on board. And we have on the DO IT leadership council prominent people in many fields ranging from former Senator Warren Rudman to Internet pioneer and Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Vinton Cerf to former National Science Board Chair Eamon Kelly.
IMS Global: How can individuals, organizations, and companies get involved?
LG: We'd welcome them to join the DO IT coalition. Endorse the Digital Promise initiative and the current legislation. Let others know of their support. Write, phone, and contact their legislative leaders urging them to sponsor and vote for the DO IT legislation. We'd certainly welcome any grants of financial support for the Digital Promise Project through donations to our coalition partner, the Federation of American Scientists. We are conducting public forums throughout the nation, producing our website (www.digitalpromise.org) and publications, and supporting our two staff members - our extraordinarily hard working and talented executive director and her deputy in Washington, DC, Anne G. Murphy and Rayne Guilford. For specific information, draft letters of endorsement, lists of your legislators, and further information go to the DO IT website: www.digitalpromise.org.
IMS Global: Private enterprise has done a pretty good job of developing and applying technology. Don't companies have a role to play here in developing technology?
LG: Certainly, they do. The job of the Digital Trust is to encourage the private sector to develop technology for public interest and public service uses by providing funds to stimulate R&D. Content is expensive to create and the marketplace does not encourage developing new and advanced software for not-for-profit uses such as in education, training, museums and libraries. Rights issues and standards for that development need to be worked out. Digital Promise has been influential in getting modest Congressional appropriations for the Federation of American Scientists, our leading coalition member in Washington, to develop prototype educational games and a learning R&D roadmap to demonstrate what can be done. You will find examples of these prototypes on our website, www.digitalpromise.org. The beauty of the new technologies is that once the software is developed, the costs of distribution through the Internet, digital public television stations, CDs and DVDs, are minimal. They can actually be made available to the entire world.
IMS Global: If America doesn't make this investment in developing information technologies for the sake of learning, don't we run the risk of falling behind other nations?
LG: We have already fallen behind other nations. Recent reports from the Council on Competitiveness of the corporate world, and the National Academies of Science document that fact. The influential U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century warned: "The inadequacies of our systems of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that we might imagine. American national leadership must understand these deficiencies as threats to national security. If we do not invest heavily and wisely in rebuilding these two core strengths, America will be incapable of maintaining its global position long into the 21st century."
IMS Global: What you're talking about here seems to go to the heart of DOE's commission findings on the need for assessment for accountability and accessibility.
LG: Testing, or assessment, has become central to new educational initiatives, in order to demonstrate accountability, productivity and responsible use of funds. With the new information technologies, we not only can assess how far students have come through standardized tests, but far better, can assess each person's individual strengths and weaknesses. Teachers and parents, and the students themselves, then can learn exactly what needs to be done and how it can best be achieved for each student. The best education, after all, is interactive and individually focused.
IMS Global: Considering your extensive background working in television, what do you believe we've learned from working in multimedia and its application to learning?
LG: The Digital Promise Project actually got its start by focusing on television, especially public television. Back in the 1990's I served on the board of Connecticut Public Television and chaired its strategic planning committee. Congress mandated that all television stations, public and commercial, had to convert to digital from analog distribution, a much more efficient use of the publicly owned radio spectrum. Digital TV allows many more channels per frequency; makes interactivity possible, and improves the quality of sound and picture. It became clear that Connecticut public television had to redefine its role in this new digital environment. In a digital world it has the opportunity to bring into the home, school and workplace the state's libraries and museums, which contain the DNA of our civilization; the services of its schools and universities, its public health and civic centers. Our project aroused the interest of the major foundations which then broadened the inquiry to explore the ways in which the new information technologies could serve the public interest. The result of our research was a book published in 2001 called A Digital Gift to the Nation, which laid out our recommendations, which eventually were translated into federal legislation in the House and Senate.
IMS Global: Are you frustrated that this initiative is not getting as much visibility as it should? Or that it is taking so long to gain momentum?
LG: The slow pace of progress can certainly be frustrating. But look at the precedents for our effort. The farsighted Land Grant Colleges Act was vetoed twice before it was signed by President Lincoln signed. The GI Bill was passed out of committee by just one vote. And a Senator had to be carried from his sick bed to cast that vote. In 1950, landmark legislation establishing the National Science Foundation was ready for passage when North Korea invaded South Korea. All new programs were put on hold, given the need to build up our armed forces and prepare for war. Eventually Congress realized the critical importance of improving and expanding our nation's investment in science. And so NSF received a small appropriation to start, and now has evolved as a major national force for innovation in science with a budget of several billion dollars a year.
We are optimistic that Digital Promise will have similar long-term success, and will be voted by Congress if not in this session, then in the next. As Brooklyn Dodger fans used to chant, (WE AT AGRISCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE, MUST NOT AND WILL NOT) "Wait `til next year."