The Case of the Misinformed Manifesto

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You may be aware of a recent article published in the Washington Post.  The article was called, “How to Fix Our Schools: A Manifesto”.  The article was written by a group of well-intentioned but apparently uninformed or misinformed school superintendents including Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders.  I say uninformed because I don’t think that they intentionally lied in writing the manifesto, but they are clearly wrong on several of the ‘facts’ that they cite to bolster their opinions.  The only part of the manifesto that we might agree with is the closing paragraph.  In it, they say:

“For the wealthiest among us, the crisis in public education may still seem like someone else’s problem, because those families can afford to choose something better for their kids. But it’s a problem for all of us — until we fix our schools, we will never fix the nation’s broader economic problems. Until we fix our schools, the gap between the haves and the have-nots will only grow wider and the United States will fall further behind the rest of the industrialized world in education, rendering the American dream a distant, elusive memory.”

To read the full manifesto, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705078.html

For a well-reasoned response that details the false statements in the manifesto, go to http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/manifesto-should-be-resignatio.html

The degree of recognition and frustration with the many problems associated with today’s K-12 education system in America continue to grow.  And every time I read another article, I am more encouraged about the work we are doing.  We have by far the best solution available to this complex issue.  In the words of Victor Hugo, “There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

Allan C. Jones
President
Emaginos Inc.- Customizing education for every child in America
571-222-7195(Office)
703-357-3055(cell)
571-222-7032 (home)
Campbell’s Law is an adage developed by Donald T. Campbell.
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”[1] [Think NCLB and high-stakes testing.]

Teacher Community Angst.. What is a Bad Teacher?

bonniebraceysutton 1 Comment

 

Who is a bad teacher? Who decides?

When Innovation and STEM were considered unusual...

 

In some of the press, recently teachers have been attacked in many different ways. The initial assault was months ago with a pose of Michelle Rhee on the cover of a national magazine. The story gained national attention and the story started a whole new perspective , a look at what is called a BAD teacher.  Since that time there have been a raft of stories with test scores as the reason that teachers were being tagged as being unfit. There was even a teacher suicide that was hardly reported. The suicide was based on the LA TImes ” revelation or assumption ” that the teacher was unfit,

What is a Bad Teacher?

I am not sure what most people consider a bad teacher but the press began to collect evidence , or build the case for bad teachers and the articles continued, without a stop until the movie, “Waiting for Superman” . By that time the stories were at a fever pitch. The Los Angeles Times created even more furor by publishing information on teachers that had to do with testing and the assumption that a teacher was a bad teacher if the students had low test scores.

I think I would have been considered a bad teacher in some of the schools in which I taught though I taught , gave, contributed and worked overtime to make a difference. I taught in Washington DC. I am a long time teacher and have lived through the fashion of educational change of decades. I have lived through unit methods, team teaching, new math, a Nation at Risk, New Standards. I probably have missed a few of the educational dictates.

New Ideas in Teaching and Learning

Think  benchmarks, Hands On Science, New Math , Independent reading vs Textbook reading, the pendulum changed with the dictate of political pressure.

Sometimes I moved to new schools, and sometimes I stayed and tried to wait until the new educational mandate came. I never feared for my job but once or twice, but I have been harassed, bullied, and transferred to another school. Sometimes it was personality, sometimes it was that I worked too hard without involving other teachers , and was successful. Sometimes it was that I was dazzling parents and community members, school children with the expertise that I gained from learning partners, NASA, National Geographic, NSTA, Earthwatch, NCTM, AAGE, .. How I loved attending the workshops, using the resources, the various outreach that happened by working with learning partners. I was so pleased to be an AAAS demonstration teacher.

My mother and father were teachers and when I got upset, they calmed me and advised me. I admit that being a teacher who helped to integrate schools across the spectrum was hard. I never experienced difficulty from other teachers until I started to use technology. Playing , with computing I was told was a problem. I was taking away valuable time from teaching. Doing field trips often and going to learning places, what a waste of time. Other complaints doing enrichment using resources from NASA. Inside my head, as I was winning awards nationally and getting in difficulty with administrators because I was becoming a teacher ” star” I was probably considered to be a bad teacher.

I am of color, I am a minority, I came from schools that were marginal in their preparation of me and others as a teacher. I graduated without difficulty and with honors.  When I had taught for three years, I escaped the profession by going to Europe to teach. The first three years of my teaching were hard years. I wanted to make a difference in the lives of my students.

There are secrets in teaching that bothered me. I was trying to teach everything, some other teachers mocked me as I taught science, and social studies, .. eventually I was told , teach reading , math and spelling .. the rest is extra and if you have time fill it in. Well, I never did that .. I had been trained as a gifted and talented teacher and loved teaching science and new math. That made me a BAD teacher. I wanted to teach the kids that were not identifies as Gifted and Talented.. I worried about tracking.

There were students who had all kinds of problems, homeless students, poor students, students who had parents going through divorce, a couple of girls who were suffering from sexual  relationships against their will and even more difficult problems. Once a child who was being sexually compromised as an adoptee, shared her angst with me. Interestingly enough my pursuit of her concerns made me a bad teacher.

I was able to survive because I wrote grants, got national attention and learned to involve community.

So what is a bad teacher…I know what I wanted to do with that broom that Ms. Rhee used in her pose. I admit that I was hurt, angry and saddened that a person who had the power to change teaching and learning could so openly blame tie ills of society on teachers .

Teaching is hard work. Being a good teacher or one of the best is even harder work. The press has been unmerciful and mean. It is time to stop trashing teachers and look at the problems of society that affect our children. Most of the time I have loved working with students. The current media position on teachers even for teachers in the District of Columbia, does not consider the reality of the job, parental involvement or not, and or problems of the community.

Teachers and students work together in some schools that are pointed toward the future.  The power of us is to make change and to demonstrate the possibilities.

MetLife Survey of the American Teacher

The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Collaborating for Student Success examines the views of teachers, principals and students about respective roles and responsibilities, current practice and priorities for the future, addressing the issues of effective teaching and leadership, student achievement and teaching as a career (2009).ED509650

The Survey report was originally released in three parts, which have been combined into the document posted above:

  • Part 1: Effective Teaching and Leadership examines views about responsibility and accountability; what collaboration looks like in schools, and if and to what degree it is currently practiced.
  • Part 2: Student Achievement examines views on student goals, teacher expectations, and what educators believe would increase student achievement.
  • Part 3: Teaching as a Career examines collaboration in the context of teacher professional growth, experience level and career paths.

Home-to-School Connections Guide: Tips, Tech Tools, and Strategies for Improving Family-to-School Communication

Edutopia shares with youtheir  latest classroom resource guide highlighting new solutions for connecting home and school in order to improve student learning and success.

Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or district administrator, this new guide provides  relevant and valuable tools and resources for how best to strengthen the bonds between schools, families, and communities.

http://www.edutopia.org/home-to-school-connections-guide

Rivers to the Sea.. How do you know about Oceans ??NOAA has resources for you!!

bonniebraceysutton 1 Comment

In thinking about digital equity, we try to understand what resources are available for teachers, students and community that are the very best.

. The Department. of Commerce has outreach programs and games, and recently there is a report that has invaluable information for use in the classroom. In times of economic difficulty the Digital Equity SIG, and those of us working in Supercomputing , Broadening Engagement would like to share resources to bring education into the future. THe power of us, is that we can transform education by using new practices.
There are embedded links for those who can access them. What we love to do is to show you supercomputing that you probably don’t know you use. 

How do your Students See the Sea and learn Ocean Literacy?

Thinking About Oceanography, NOAA, Updates on Marine Life


I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind. Health to the ocean means health for us. Sylvia Earle

Place Learning , Museums and Aquariums, Other resources

The Smithsonian has a wonderful exhibit in the Sant Hall using wonderful computational resources. Here are my Iphone photos of transformational ways of teaching and learning from that site.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=92735&id=593996326

The Dept of Commerce Science on Sphere is so compelling that students often sit through the demonstrations and seem to be mesmerized. Adults too find the use of digital media an easy way to learn complex information. Thanks to computational science we can teach in new ways. Teaching earth science and geography is enhanced by digital media.

The power of us is to use transformational resources and ideas that change the way in which we teach and learn. The education director of the Dept of Commerce talked about the fact that we often teach with textbooks with ten year old information when people working in Outreach may be serving students with ten days old research. Breaking the silos with the use of project based work, or partnership learning is powerful .

THE SCIENCE EDUCATION SYSTEM

 


NOAA is one of many agencies, institutions, and organizations working to improve the nation’s science literacy and technical workforce. To understand its role in education it is critical to understand the major players in the system and the role of the federal government in the education system. This section outlines the roles of various entities in the K-12, higher, and informal education systems.
K-12 Education

The responsibility for public education is not specified in the U.S. Constitution; hence, individual states have the right and responsibility for K-12 public education. Schools, school administrators, and teachers are held accountable within their state system. Federal agencies and nonprofit and private-sector organizations can offer advice, materials, training, funding, and other support.

NOAA’S ROLE IN EDUCATION

The national need to educate the public about the ocean, coastal resources, atmosphere, and climate and to support workforce development in related fields is well established. 

The source of the last two paragraphs and the whole report is here. You can download or purchase the report here.


Authors:
John W. Farrington and Michael A. Feder, Editors; Committee for the Review of the NOAA Education Program; National Research Council
Authoring Organizations


Description:
There is a national need to educate the public about the ocean, coastal resources, atmosphere and climate. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for understanding and predicting changes in the Earth’s environment and conserving

You may not think of the powerful resources that help us to visualize and image the collected knowledge that we have. Supercomputing , and computational resources enrich our learning resources.

Tranforming Education
All rivers, even the most dazzling, those that catch the sun in their course, all rivers go down to the ocean and drown. And life awaits man as the sea awaits the river.
Simone Schwarz-Bart

There was a recent Census of Marine Life
( Data Mining )
Earlier this month, a consortium of the worlds leading marine scientists released the first ever, Census of Marine Life.  This Census is the result of a decade long effort to assess the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life.


The Census efforts lead to the discovery of more than 6,000 new species, yet scientists estimate that we still are only scratching the surface. The current catalog of ocean species contains nearly 250,00 species but the estimate, derived through extrapolations, is that the oceans likely contain more than a million.
The Census is an unprecedented snapshot in time that will not only benefit scientists but will serve to educate the masses and help raise awareness about the perils the oceans face today. There has been a census of Marine Lifehttp://www.coml.org/. There is a treasure trove of resources at the previous URL.
There is an abundance of projects available for teacher and student use in both of the resources.

NOAA resources shared.

Websites
Education Program

 

STEM.. science , technology, engineering, when do we really start this conversation?

bonniebraceysutton Leave a comment

In recent days, we have heard a lot about teacher effectiveness. We  who are really interested in reform need to create a better understanding of how to prepare teachers, students and communities for the future. The press needs to do their homework and share research, reports and findings that are relevant to change. Teacher effectiveness is dependent on many factors. I offer many of the sources here. Not my work, but I have been to many metings and workshops to gather this information for other teachers and advocates.

The nation has been involved in discussions about what makes an effective teacher. The discussion has lacked the depth of expertise that has taken a reflective look at the history of STEM and the path to the understanding of what is needed for true change in education, on a national basis.I have tried to gather the information for perusal and for discussion of the real issues.

Who is concerned?

Many meetings have been held in Washington about ways to ” fix” K-12.I believe that the ongoing conversations of the nation, our education nation, have been compromised at a shallow level that only discerns legendary educational leaders who are in the guise of ” superman” ,”wonder woman” with a one person effort. Here we have the efforts of those who truly care about  have the research to back, and who have broken silos to shape the future of the nation.

How Do We Get the Right Perspective on What is Needed?

In a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode. A comprehensive and coordinated federal effort is urgently needed to bolster U.S. competitiveness and pre-eminence in these areas

. This congressionally requested report by a pre-eminent committee makes four recommendations along with 20 implementation actions that federal policy-makers should take to create high-quality jobs and focus new science and technology efforts on meeting the nation’s needs, especially in the area of clean, affordable energy:

1) Increase America’s talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education;
2) Sustain and strengthen the nation’s commitment to long-term basic research;

‘
3) Develop, recruit, and retain top students, scientists, and engineers from both the U.S. and abroad; and
4) Ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world for innovation.  These are not my words, these come from a meeting that tried to pinpoint where change needed to be made.
I was one of the few K-12 teachers at that meeting. I listened and learned. Norm Augustine has been the person who has spearheaded the effort. Continue reading →

Much Ado About Education.. Circa 1995, So Why has it Not Happened?

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Alex Repenning

What book are you reading?.. I have three on education that are catching my attention. Some of us have been talkking about preparing for the 21st Century for about 20 years.  Some of this has happened, but many people are on the digital dark road.

Time to put the Edge into Education


Revisiting Common Ground. an NIIAC Document 1995 -Why didn’t this happen?
by Bonnie Bracey Sutton
How much of this has happened? Take a look.
What are the impediments besides the lack of broadband.
I believe the lack of sufficient teacher professional development and the lack of school infrastructure are a part of the problem. Bad teachers? Who says?What about the lack of
understanding what was needed to meet the challenge of transformation?What about the slow understanding of how the world has changed with social media and the ways in which
the whole world has become internationalized? How has thinking changed about content?

Your thoughts , ideas ? What happened? Why did not a lot of this happen?


A Transformation of Learning:
Use of the NII for Education and Lifelong Learning

Bonnie Bracey <bbracey@aol.com>

Today, we have a dream for a different kind of superhighway that
can save lives, create jobs and give every American young and old,
the chance for the best education available to anyone, anywhere.

I challenge you. . .to connect all of our classrooms, all of our
libraries, and all of our hospitals and clinics by the year 2000.

Vice President Al Gore, speaking to communications industry
leaders, January 11, 1994

I am a classroom teacher. I am a member of the National Information
Infrastructure Advisory Council, appointed by the President and we are
involved in sharing our documents, which we wrote and the “Common Ground”
that links the ideas that will allow Americans to see the future, using
technology.

I want to share with you scenarios of technology at work from the Office of
Technology Assessment video, the overarching themes, or Common Ground of the
National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council
and the National Institute of Standards vision for the thinking which will
take us into technology.

Education and Lifelong Learning

Communications technology is transforming the way we live by
connecting us with information and each other. The National
Information Infrastructure (NII) promises every business,
government agency, hospital, home, library, and school in the
nation access anywhere to voice, data, full-motion video, and
multimedia applications. The impact of these capabilities on
learning — for the children, for higher education students, and
for lifelong learners — will be substantial.

The way Americans teach, learn, transmit and access information
remains largely unchanged from a century ago. We find the following
conditions in American education and training:

– The textbook remains the basic unit of instruction. Absorption of
its contents tends to be the measure of educational success.

– Teachers and instructors use “chalk and talk” to convey
information. Students are often recipients of instruction rather
than active participants in learning.

– School teachers work largely in isolation from their peers.
Teachers interact with their colleagues only for a few moments each
day. Most other professionals collaborate, exchange information and
develop new skills on a daily basis.

– Although half of the nation’s school teachers use passive video
materials for instruction, only a small fraction have access to
interactive video, computer networks, or even telephones in the
classroom.

– While computers are a frequent sight in America’s classrooms and
training sites, they are usually used simply as electronic
workbooks. Interactive, high performance uses of technology, such
as networked teams collaborating to solve real-world problems,
retrieving information from electronic libraries, and performing
scientific experiments in simulated environments, are all too
uncommon.

– “U.S. schooling is a conservative institution, which adopts new
practice and technology slowly. Highly regulated and financed from
a limited revenue base, schools serve many educational and social
purposes, subject to local consent. The use of computer technology,
with its demands on teacher professional development, physical
space, time in the instructional day, and budget … has found a
place in classroom practice and school organization slowly and
tentatively.”[note 1]

Events of the last two decades have proven that we can do better.
We have found that most American children are capable of learning
at dramatically higher levels — levels of performance we now
expect only of our best students. We have learned this from
research in cognitive science, from the educational achievements of
other countries, and from pioneering efforts in our own schools.
Moreover, after 35 years of research, we have found that technology
can be the key to higher levels of achievement.[note 2]

Similarly, in the American workplace we have found that workers can
achieve levels of productivity and quality equal to the best in the
world.[note 3] Well-educated, well-trained, motivated workers can
produce high-quality goods and services at low cost, enhance
industrial productivity and competitiveness, and sustain high
living standards. High-quality education and training payoff for
the individual whose skills are upgraded, for the company seeking
a competitive edge, and for the nation in achieving overall
productivity and competitiveness.

Our major foreign competitors place much greater emphasis on
developing and maintaining workforce skills than we do. Experienced
production workers at Japanese auto assembly plants, for example,
receive three times as much training each year as their American
counterparts. Research in our country has shown that workers who
receive formal job training are 30 percent more productive than
those who do not. Again, we have found that technology is the key
to making training accessible and affordable — especially for
small- to medium-sized firms with few resources of their own to
devote to producing and implementing the training and lifelong
learning their workers need and for workers who, on their own, are
attempting to improve their skills or transfer them to new areas of
endeavor.

Finally, in preparing students for the workplace, we have learned
that interactive, high performance technology can produce
immersive, real world instructional environments. These
environments can smooth longterm school-to-work transitions while
helping to meet the immediate objectives of both schools and
workplaces. Our efforts to develop this capability have been
fragmentary and shortlived at best.

A Vision for the Use of the NII

The NII, will be the vehicle for improving education and lifelong
learning throughout America in ways we now know are critically
important. Our nation will become a place where students of all
ages and abilities reach the highest standards of academic
achievement. Teachers, engineers, business managers, and all
knowledge workers will constantly be exposed to new methods, and
will collaborate and share ideas with one another.

Through the NII, students of all ages will use multimedia
electronic libraries and museums containing text, images, video,
music, simulations, and instructional software. The NII will give
teachers, students, workers, and instructors access to a great
variety of instructional resources and to each other. It will give
educators and managers new tools for improving the operations and
productivity of their institutions.

The NII will remove school walls as barriers to learning in several
ways. It will provide access to the world beyond the classroom. It
will also permit both teachers and students access to the tools of
learning and their peers — outside the classroom and outside the
typical nine to three school day. It will enable family members to
stay in contact with their children’s schools. The NII will permit
students, workers and instructors to converse with scientists,
scholars, and experts around the globe.

Workplaces will become lifelong learning environments, supporting
larger numbers of high skill, high wage jobs. Printed books made
the content of great instruction widely and inexpensively available
in the 18th Century. The interactive capabilities of the NII will
make both the content and interactions of great teaching
universally and inexpensively available in the 21st Century.

Education and Lifelong Learning Applications for the NII

The NII will provide the backbone for a lifelong learning society.
Education and training communities will better accommodate an
enormous diversity of learners in an equally diverse variety of
settings. In addition to schools and work places, interconnected,
high-performance applications will extend interactive learning to
community centers, libraries, and homes. Education, training, and
lifelong learning applications available from the NII may include:

– Multimedia interactive learning programs delivered to homes to
immigrant children and their parents to collaborate on learning
English as a second language.

– Troubleshooting and operating applications that access the
computer-assisted-design (CAD) databases used to design workplace
technology and to integrate the CAD data with instructional and
job-aiding capabilities to provide just-in-time training and
maintenance assistance.

– Comprehensive interconnectivity for students that allows them to
receive and complete assignments, collaborate with students in
distant locations on school projects, and interact with teachers
and outside experts to receive help, hints, and critiques.

– Simulated learning activities such as laboratory experiments and
archeological digs.

– Universal access interfaces for computers and telecommunications
devices for students, workers and others with disabilities to allow
access to the NII.

– Affordable, portable personal learning assistance that tap into
the NII from any location at any time and provide multimedia access
to any NII information resource.

– Immersive, realistic interactive simulations that allow emergency
teams made up of geographically dispersed members to practice
together on infrequently used procedures that may be urgently
needed to meet local exigencies.

The Educational Benefits of Technology

Evidence from research, schools, and workplaces around the country
tells us that communications technologies are powerful tools in
reaching the highest levels of educational performance.

– Students with disabilities, who previously had at best limited
access to most educational and reference materials, will have
fuller access and will have the ability to participate in the
learning experience with their peers.

– A 1993 survey of studies on the effectiveness of technology in
schools concluded that “courses for which computer-based networks
were used increased student-student and student-teacher
interaction, increased student-teacher interaction with
lower-performing students, and did not decrease the traditional
forms of communications used.”[note 4]

– Research on the costs of instruction delivered via distance
learning, videotape, teleconferencing, and computer software
indicates that savings are often achieved with no loss of
effectiveness. Distance learning vastly broadens the learning
environment, often providing teaching resources simply not
available heretofore. Technology-based methods have a positive
impact on learner motivation and frequently save instructional
time. Savings in training time produce benefits both by reducing
training costs and by shortening the time required to become and
remain productive in the workplace.

– A review of computer-based instruction used in military training
found that students reach similar levels of achievement in 30% less
time than they need using more standard approaches to
training.[note 5]

– A Congressionally mandated review covering 47 comparisons of
multimedia instruction with more conventional approaches to
instruction found time savings of 30%, improved achievement, cost
savings of 30-40%, and a direct, positive link between amount of
interactivity provided and instructional effectiveness.[note 6]

– A comparison of peer tutoring, adult tutoring, reducing class
size, increasing the length of the school day, and computer-based
instruction found computer-based instruction to be the least
expensive instructional approach for raising mathematics scores by
a given amount.[note 7]

– A landmark study of the use of technology for persons with
disabilities found that “almost three-quarters of school-age
children were able to remain in a classroom, and 45 percent were
able to reduce school-related services.”[note 8]

Of course, these benefits depend upon several contextual factors,
including the instructional methods used, the quality of the
applications, the availability of professional development for
educators, accessibility of instructional materials, the presence
of school technology support staff, and family involvement.[note 9]
We must learn through experience how best to ensure that the
benefits we intend to obtain from NII-based applications become
routinely realized in practice.

Telecommunications networks provide a range of resources to
students and educators that were never before available or
affordable. Students and workers can now gain access to mentoring,
advice, and assistance from scientists, engineers, researchers,
business leaders, technicians, and local experts around the globe
through the Internet, using a level of access and connectivity that
was previously unimaginable. High school students in West
Virginia, for example, can now study Russian via satellite and
telephone with a teacher hundreds of miles away. Few West Virginia
school districts could afford to offer such a course any other way.
Less well understood are changes in the types of learning that
occur with the use of certain technologies. Current evidence
suggests that some technology applications are more effective than
traditional instructional methods in building complex problem
solving capabilities for synthesizing information and in improving
writing quality. The effects are achieved in part by permitting
alternate methods of “reaching” and motivating learners.

The Administration’s National Information Infrastructure initiative
can trigger a transformation of education, training, and lifelong
learning by making new tools available to educators, instructors,
students, and workers and help them reach dramatically higher
levels of performance and productivity. The impact of this
transformation in teaching and learning is in-estimable, but
clearly enormous. Knowledge drives today’s global marketplace. The
NII will permit us to take learning beyond the limitations of
traditional school buildings. It will take our educators and
learners to worldwide resources. Learning will be our way of life.

PART II: Where Are We Now?

Today, compelling teaching and learning applications are the
exception, not the rule. Several federal agencies provide services
that meet specific, focused needs, while hundreds of state and
local networks and private service providers have begun to address
the technology needs of education. Current uses, while expanding
rapidly, reach only a small number of technologically-literate
school communities.

Current application of NII capabilities to work place training is
more extensive and technologically advanced than educational
applications, yet it lags well behind what is needed and available.
The story of workplace training seems to be a case of the haves
receiving more and the have-nots remaining neglected. Small firms,
those with 100 employees or less, provide about 35 percent of total
U.S. employment, but they lack the expertise to provide in-house
training, the resources to pay for outside training, and sufficient
numbers of people who need training at any one time to justify
focused training efforts. Larger firms are more likely to provide
training than smaller ones, but the training they provide is mostly
limited to college-educated technicians and managers. The lower the
level of skills possessed, the less likely the worker is to receive
training from any source. Transportable, quality controlled
training and lifelong learning could be made readily and
inexpensively accessible using the NII and will have a major impact
on improving worker skills and workplace productivity.

While much remains to be done, the opportunities offered by the NII
put many of the needed capabilities within reach of schools, homes,
and the workplace.

Current Uses of Telecommunications for Education

The existing telecommunications infrastructure is composed of
telephone, broadcast, cable, and electronic networks. It is used
for education, training, and lifelong learning in five basic ways:
1) instructing with video; 2) gathering information from remote
libraries and databases; 3) communicating using two-way
asynchronous capabilities such as e-mail and information bulletin
boards; 4) distance learning; and 5) electronic transfer of
instructional software and simulations.

– Instructional video. Seventy-five percent of America’s schools
have cable television, and half of its teachers use video material
in their courses.[note 10] The Stars Schools program is reaching
200,000 students in 48 states with advanced placement courses in
mathematics, science, and foreign language instruction using fiber
optics, computers, and satellites.[note 11] Cassette videotapes
for instruction are widely used in schools and work places, and the
development of these videotapes for both education and training has
become a vigorous industry.

– Information collection. This activity includes location and
retrieval of documents such as lesson plans and research reports,
but it also includes newer data sources such as CAD databases for
workplace technologies and equipment, and multimedia information
retrieval from digital libraries that can be accessed by students,
workers, or people in homes, libraries, and museums. Over 60,000
electronic bulletin boards are used by more than 12 million
Americans every day.[note 12] The annual rate of Gopher traffic on
the Internet, which directly represents an effort to use NII
facilities to gather information, is growing at an annual rate of
approximately 1000%[note 13] The Department of Education has a
Gopher server which points to or contains educational research
information, such as the AskERIC service and information from
sources such as CNN, Academy One, and the Educational Testing
Service. NASA Spacelink makes lesson plans on space flight and
related science topics available on the Internet.

– Two-way communication. This includes communication via electronic
mail and conferencing among teachers, students, workers, mentors,
technicians, and subject matter experts of every sort.
Approximately one-quarter of the teachers in Texas regularly sign
on to the Texas Education Network, or TENET, to share information,
exchange mail, and find resources. A professor at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University teaches a writing course
entirely online. Students swap writing projects and discuss their
assignments online. In the workplace, electronic mail is used by
more than 12 million workers, increasing to over 27 million workers
by 1995. Just less than a sixth of U.S. homes now have at least one
computer connected to a modem, and this percentage is growing
rapidly. As of July, 1993, there were four Internet hosts for
every 1000 people in the United States. There are now 60 countries
on the Internet. About 137 countries can now be reached by
electronic mail.[note 15]

– Distance learning. Hundreds of thousands of students in schools,
community colleges, and universities now take courses via one-and
two-way video and two-way audio communication. In South Carolina,
high school students across the state study with a teacher of
Russia based in Columbia through South Carolina Educational
Television. Boise State University offers a masters degree program
conducted entirely over networked computers to students all over
the country. The Department of Defense is investing well over $1
billion in the development and implementation of networked
distributed interactive simulation. This technology, which allows
dispersed learners to engage in collaborative problem solving
activities in real time, is now ready for transfer to schools and
workplaces outside of the defense sector.

– Transfer of instructional software and simulations. Instructional
programs, simulations, materials, and databases can all be accessed
over the NII and delivered to schools, homes, libraries, and
workplaces wherever and whenever it is desirable to do so.
Currently, there are massive exchanges of software, databases, and
files using the Internet, but relatively little of this activity
occurs in the service of education, training, and lifelong
learning.

Nonetheless, compelling applications that will become indispensable
to teachers, students, and workers are not yet available. All the
capabilities of computer-based instruction and multimedia
instruction can be distributed using NII facilities to schools,
workplaces, homes, libraries, museums, community centers, store
fronts — wherever and whenever people wish to learn. Yet the
infrastructure and applications to support this level of
accessibility for education, training, and lifelong learning uses
have yet to be developed. Until compelling applications are
available, educations will not realize the potential of the NII.

Efforts to Build the NII for Education and Lifelong Learning: Roles
of the Private, Nonprofit, and Public Sectors

Successful implementation of the NII to serve the nation’s
education and lifelong learning needs will require significant
contributions by the private sector, state and local governments,

Reference

D. Lewis and E. McCracken, Common Ground: Fundamental Principles for the
National Information Infrastructure, NIIAC,
March 1995.(gopher@ntiaunix1.ntia.doc.gov)

A new book by Milton Chen of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, picks up the discussion.

Where are we now?

Since information is no longer bounded by time and space, and I know you are all savvy digerati who get all your information from the Internet, you can listen to the live stream or archive at this link, where you’ll also see info on how to call in or send an email during the show:

http://www.kqed.org/radio/programs/forum/

For more info about the book and a short video of me introducing it on edutopia.org:

http://www.edutopia.org/educationnation

Now that we’re into a new school year, it’s time to put “the edge into education”!

Games in the classroom? They’re serious business

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Serious Games

Charleston, WV – August 2010. Games in the classroom? It might sound like the antithesis of serious learning, especially for those of us whose school years were spent working through weighty textbooks.

But there is a serious body of research to suggest that games are a valuable learning tool. Robert J. Marzano, an educational researcher who has made many studies on the use of games in education and their effects on student achievement, suggests that using games to teach can lead to a 20% increase in student results.1
And Karl M. Kapp, in his book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning, explores in some detail how a new generation of techno-savvy gamers is replacing the boomer generation. They are perfectly at home with new methods and tools such as Flash mobs and cheat codes, video iPods, instant messaging and blogging.2
One organization that has built a very successful program to build on the potential of games for education is the World Wide Workshop Foundation.3 Its ‘Globaloria’ program, launched  in the spring of 2006,  trains students of ages 12 and up to create educational games and interactive simulations, for their own personal and professional development, and for the benefit of their communities.
Globaloria students work independently or in small teams to develop their own original games from idea to finished product. They learn game design and programming through a hands-on online curriculum that teaches Adobe Flash.
Students learn to use a wiki; make social profile pages and team game pages; produce and post interactive game content, prototype videos, simulations, graphics, music and sound effects; and write blogs about their gaming ideas and content research. They receive feedback and support from their classmates, Globaloria students at other schools, and professional game makers.
The largest Globaloria pilot was launched in West Virginia in 2007. Currently, educators in 41 middle schools, high schools, community colleges and universities offer Globaloria as a game-design elective or as a vehicle for teaching core subjects such as biology, chemistry, English, and civics. Globaloria educators customize and align the curriculum with the West Virginia Department of Education’s Content Standards and Objectives and 21st-Century Skills.
East Austin College Prep Academy in Austin, Texas is the first school to apply Globaloria as a school-wide teaching and learning program. During the 2009-10 school year, all students took a daily, 90-minute Globaloria class, where they developed original math games.  The curriculum is aligned with Texas state standards.
Some of the educators who take part in Globaloria learn about the initiative from colleagues. Others may be referred by their principals or superintendents. If their application is successful, Globaloria provides them with training, and pays them a stipend of $3,000 p.a.

The latest professional development initiative for recently-recruited, returning and beginner Globaloria educators recently wrapped up in Charleston. It brought together 50 West Virginia educators, and 3 colleagues from Texas, organized into 26 teams, with each team using Flash software to develop an educational game for classroom use. The group first met in July, for a three-day workshop to introduce Globaloria to the educators who were new to the program, and to provide returning educators with updates and advanced training. Now they have learnt how to teach the program. The subject areas covered by these 53 educators range from history to math to civics and social studies, taught at different grades of middle and high school as well as college.
Some examples of the games developed earlier in the program?4
Should They Stay or Should They Go is a game developed by Tracy Halsey and Sheila Robinson.5 This is a role-play game in which the user assumes the role of Deszo, an Arizona police officer responsible for determining immigration status. The game is based on the controversial Arizona Senate Bill 1070.
Once students successfully complete the three scenarios in the game, a final page provides them with a link to the Web sites of Arizona State Senators John McCain and John Kyl, so they can find out more or get involved.
The game uses a cartoon-style Deszo against an Arizona desert background.
Pythagorize the Fire was developed by Melanie Sheppard and Aaron Lester.6 The game challenges students to use the ratios of the Pythagorean Theorem while learning safety and fire prevention tips. For example: “If the fire is 12 feet above the ground and the fire hydrant is 16 feet away, how long is the hose?”. The question is illustrated by a picture of a firefighter aiming his hose at the fire in a burning house.
If the student gets the answers right, a fire hydrant fills with water to allow them to put the fire out. The wrong answers leave the hydrant empty.
Figuratively Singing is a game built by Jennifer Hayes and Nora Smith.7 The game uses snatches of lyrics from country, rap and rock songs – sung by appropriately-depicted avatars – to teach metaphors, alliteration and similes.
Race to Vote is the brainchild of Lana Turner and Tammy Holcomb.8 The game is designed to allow 18-year-olds to learn how to register to vote, how to learn about candidates, and to understand the voting process. The user has to drive a car around town and collect various items. After completing each level of the game, students are asked to answer a trivia question related to voting.
Learning Games to Teach

Globaloria Academy, West Virginia

Many of the games devised by the latest-recruited group of educators are still in the process of planning and development. But all benefit from a Globaloria approach which involves educators as partners in piloting the program. The goal is transparent, social learning, using the Globaloria West Virginia wiki and blogs to manage students’ work and report on their progress. These reports are also used by the Globaloria leadership to evaluate program success.
The games developed by Globaloria educators are fun for students to use. Nonetheless, their goal is serious business: improving the learning process for all that they reach. (END)
Notes:

1 Cited by Barbara Pytel on http://www.suite101®.com, see: http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/educational-games-in-the-classroom

2 Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning: Tools and Techniques for Transferring Know-How from Boomers to Gamers, by Karl M. Kapp. Pfeiffer Essential Resources for Training and HR Professionals, 2007.

3 See http://www.globaloria.org

4 A gallery of games can be found at: http://myglife.org/usa/wvwiki/index.php/Special:GlobaloriaGamesGallery

5 Tracy Halsey teaches at Liberty High School, Beckley and Sheila Robinson at Oak Glen High School, New Cumberland

6 Melanie Sheppard is at Eastern Greenbrier Middle School and Aaron Lester is at Sandy River Middle School

7 From Eastern and Western Greenbrier Middle School

8 Lana Turner teaches at Chapmanville High School and Tammy Holcomb at Webster County High School

What is the Power of Us?

bonniebraceysutton Leave a comment

The Power of US is a strong power. There is soft power and hard power and the power of government.
In thinking about education there is the power of us. Those of us who care deeply about education and are interested in transformational change. Not gimmicks, not tricks, but as people who have
interest in changing education for all.

Who is Jack Taub?

bonniebraceysutton 1 Comment

We will create a public/private partnership and a national movement in collaboration with teachers’ unions to unleash America’s largest, unlimited, and virtually untapped source of renewable energy: the minds of all of our children!!!! Customizing education for every child will ensure that never again will our children’s hopes, futures, and dreams be determined by the color of their skin, their gender, the quality of their healthcare, the poverty in their home and/or community and – last but far from least – the teachers’ and students’ ability to withstand the frustration and boredom inherent in today’s public education systems. The needless NCLB ‘teaching to the test’ which dominates our schools is really the result of public policy made by legislators, business leaders, and policy makers often against the wishes of teachers and others involved in education.

-Jack Taub 2008

History

Jack is a boy from Brooklyn who dropped out of high school to avoid terminal boredom.  One of his friends from the old neighborhood was Al Shanker who grew up to lead the American Federation of Teachers for many years.  In the late 1970s he was the one who first turned Jack on to the issue that less than 5% of high school graduates had reading proficiency.  This did not include science and math and it was before the Flat World that Thomas Friedman describes allowed China and India to compete for low-skilled jobs.    When Jack dropped out, he began pursuing his passion, stamp collecting.  He did it very well.  So well, in fact, that at one point he owned a significant share of Scotts Publishing (He was Chairman of the Board) and the publisher of the Scott’s Catalog – the “bible” for stamp collectors.  He had a store located across the street from Tiffany’s at 57th street and Fifth Avenue.  Not just the store; with his brother and friend, they owned the whole ten-story building.  He then convinced the US Postal Service that they could make a profit selling stamp collecting materials.  He ended up with an exclusive contract to sell his products in 35,000 post offices, and the USPS has earned over $10B by retailing philatelic paraphernalia and other non-stamp items.

In 1977, he got restless and he took some of the money from that success and invested it in a new concept that allowed people to use computers and modems to exchange ideas using email and bulletin boards.  The business was called ‘The Source’ (See the article below) and it was the first consumer online business.  It became the model for the consumerization of the Internet and all that followed.  In 1980, he sold that business to Readers’ Digest for a significant amount of money.

At that point, he began focusing on the educational needs of his physically challenged child.   He was trying to get his child a good education in public schools.  His experience led him to realize that even with the then existing Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), schools were not only not meeting the needs of challenged children; they were not serving any children well, while boring most.  He was reminded of the earlier comments from Al Shanker and decided to dedicate his life and the resources he had to customizing education for every child in the country.  That was in 1980, three years before the seminal report, ‘A Nation At Risk’ that concluded, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” Jack has been pursuing his vision for customizing education ever since.  He has built a team of people who share his dream and dedication and together they have designed and implemented the model at three schools that prove it can be done.  Along the way, he passed on many opportunities to make significant profits from some of the elements of the solution because he didn’t want to be distracted from the need to transform the whole system.  He determined that if he was successful in transforming K-12 education it would be America’s greatest social and economic engine as well as an historic legacy and a great business.  Jack never thought that transforming K-12 education would be one of the most complex journeys in history and that it would take 30 years and most of his resources to solve.

Jack believes that every child is precious and at risk, some at greater risk than others.  The great tragedy and human rights issue is that virtually every child first shows up in kindergarten with unlimited curiosity and a genetic need to learn.  Then we start ‘helping’ them learn to pass tests.

America has about 100,000 public schools, nearly 4,000,000 teachers and 55,000,000 students.   All of this is organized into about 15,000 locally autonomous school districts – each making their own decisions.  Neither the president nor the governor has control over the local district decisions.  Consequently, the solution must be from the communities up, not the top down.   The program must benefit all the children and all the teachers.   It is both impractical and unnecessary to replace the existing schools and teachers.  We need to transform them.  To be a scalable solution, it must eliminate student boredom, be supported by the teachers and their unions, and affordable to all schools within existing budgets.  If you do the math, transforming 10,000 classrooms a year (which in itself would be Herculean) would take 400 years to get done once.   His goal, to complete transformation of public education in 15 years will start after the receipt of the funding for the first 1,350 discovery and innovation schools.  That led Jack to realize that we would need a national grass-roots movement consisting of over a million parents, students, teachers, administrators, business leaders, academics, and politicians to support the transformation.  The Power of US Foundation (www.thepowerofus.org) has been established to recruit and coordinate members in support of the transformation.  At their website, you can read their “Call to Arms” and “Implementation Plan”.

In the ensuing 30-plus years, more than $100,000,000 dollars (not all of it Jack’s money) have been spent building implementing, testing and improving the model.  The solution he and his team built integrates virtually every known research-based organizational and student-centered-learning best practice into a smoothly operating system.  As a result, all of the elements have already been thoroughly researched and proven in multiple locations.  The integrated system his team developed, that includes a multidisciplinary project-based, small-group learning environment, has been in operation as the Discovery Learning Systems (DLS) model at the three schools (elementary, middle and high school) at the Tracy Learning Center (TLC)  for over eight years, representing over 8,500,000 hours of student and teacher experience, with outstanding results.  In the DLS model, the teachers are able to observe and assess individual student behaviors and learning and customize the learning for all 54,000,000 students.  This ongoing assessment means there is no need to teach to the test.  In addition, the ongoing data-gathering and analysis allows the model to continuously improve programmatically while scaling exponentially.

The DLS model was originally implemented as a charter school in order to allow the designers to start with a clean slate.  However, from the beginning, Jack and his partner, Dr. Keith Larick, were determined to create a model that could be scalable and replicable in any public school in the nation.  The needless NCLB ‘teaching to the test’ which dominates our schools is really the result of public policy made by legislators, business leaders, and policy makers often against the wishes of teachers and others involved in education.  The DLS model totally avoids teaching to the test and the resulting student boredom and teacher burnout.

The DLS model is a comprehensive change from the current teacher-centered learning environment.  So to be scalable, we provide an equally comprehensive program of professional development and change management.  The staff and teachers have 24/7 access to a broad range of support services at no cost to the teachers.

To be successful, children need a quality education and good health.  DLS addresses the health issue in two ways.  The curriculum includes a number of grade-level-appropriate health and wellness projects on topics like obesity and substance abuse.  We also provide free access to primary healthcare services via a telemedicine network.

The DLS solution is not an education management system that takes over and operates the schools.  DLS is a subscription-based education transformation service that includes unlimited usage of all of the best practices listed below. Beyond that, the fixed subscription cost includes all of the upgrades that result from the DLS continuous improvement program.  Budgeting and procurement for many of the services included in the DLS subscription package are frequently problematic for school districts.  Many of the critical services often end up on the chopping block during difficult financial times.  Which should we cut, the volleyball team or the drama program?  Should we replace the computers or retain a teacher?   It is not that the school board feels any of these options are unimportant. It is that they have to make difficult choices and local pressures frequently overwhelm good educational practices in a political climate.  Because all of the elements of the solution are research-based best practices and are an integral part of the comprehensive DLS model, they are bundled into a subscription that cannot be purchased a-la-carte.   This simplifies the budgeting for the school board.  They know what they need and they have a guaranteed fixed cost for the package that they can budget.  It includes providing and refreshing (every three years) all of the district technology.   AT&T is assisting the DLS team in designing, implementing, managing, and refreshing the participating schools’ technology infrastructure.  AT&T is looking forward to rolling out the model as a national program.

“There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come”

– Victor Hugo – 1857

Jack’s present activities include two related programs.  The first is to raise funding to transform 1,350 schools to schools of discovery and innovation in the next five years.  The plan then is to transform the rest of the schools across the country within the following ten years.  His goal is to demonstrate that the transformation can occur and to build the momentum for getting it to happen.  At that point he expects other organizations to join in the effort and help in transforming the remaining 100,000 schools.  The other activity is continuing to build relationships with other organizations that share our vision and explore means for supporting each other’s efforts.  He believes that schools should regain their status as community centers – but not just for education.  The school should also be a center for primary healthcare, innovation, culture, entertainment and community/economic development.  For more information about the DLS program for creating schools of discovery and innovation visit http://www.emaginos.com/.   Jack’s goal is to make schools places where children want to attend, not have to attend.  For anyone who doesn’t believe Jack’s vision is attainable, he challenges them to read the history of the Manhattan Project and see what the nation did in three years.

Jack identifies personally with the Peter Finch character, Howard Beale, in the movie Network (1976), when Beale expresses his despair over the continual political bickering while the citizens are faced with unemployment other societal ills.  Beale says, “We’re as mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore.”

Approximately 10,000 children a day are dropping out of school or graduating but incapable of earning a living.  These 10,000 kids all showed up for kindergarten with unlimited curiosity and a genetic need to learn.  Through the Power of US he hopes to get millions of volunteers (parents, teachers, students, and community members) as mad as hell like he is.   They must all join him and come together to stop destroying the futures of virtually all of our children and our nation.

Jack Taub’s Theory for Educational Transformation 2000

* The CHild equals CUriosity minus  Boring Education = Infinite Intellectual and Creative Energy.

1978 Washington Post article about the Source

The following article from the Washington Post was the first mention anyplace in the world of the concept that came to be known as the ‘consumer online industry’.  Jack Taub pioneered and funded digital broadcasting which gave birth to The Source.  People from the Source led to the creation of America Online.  The Source ultimately became the model for the consumerization of the Internet.  In today’s terminology Jack’s 1977 vision is now known as ‘cloud computing’.

If you look towards the end of the article, you will see Jack quoted as saying that the demonstrated capabilities will become as famous as McDonald’s hamburgers.  At the time this article was being written, there were only three people on his online system.

Jack believes that the greatest days in using these technologies still lie ahead of us through the development of DLS Discovery and Innovation schools and empowering all children – no matter how poor or remote.