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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Username: Admin
Post Number: 29261
Registered: 01-2000
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2012 - 8:59 pm: | 
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Madison Schools to Receive 1,400 iPads by Next Fall
Students at Madison schools will soon be working on Apple iPads after it was announced the schools will be receiving 1,400 tablets by the fall.
B.A. Birch / Education News
Feb. 2, 2012
 Ipads are essentially entertainment toys. They are terrible devices for writing documents and many other tasks, though they may be satisfactory as textbook substitutes. Adding bluetooth keyboards helps a lot.
Madison, Wisconsin is set to join the long list of districts experimenting with blending technology with traditional instruction by exploring the capabilities of wireless tablet computers in the classrooms.
Can you imagine blended farming so horses could still feel important after tractors came along? Blended learning is just a way of providing middlemen with jobs that are no longer needed.
The majority of schools in the district will receive 600 iPads in the spring, with another 800 being introduced by next fall, writes Matthew DeFour at the Wisconsin State Journal.
With the tablets, students are able to wirelessly share work and replace digital workbooks with ease. And now, with the unveiling of Apple’s iBooks application, more districts could soon be inclined to make the transition.
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Tablet devices offer a cheaper alternative to computers and laptops. And their portability makes them ideal for the classroom.
Who needs a classroom to learn?
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Username: Admin
Post Number: 29251
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 10:51 pm: |
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Indiana challenges teachers to instruct digitally
By the Associated Press / Evansville (IN) Courier Press
January 31, 2012
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Department of Education is challenging teachers to instruct their students digitally.
The state agency said Monday it's hosting a "29-Day Web 2.0 Challenge" in which it will feature an online resource with educator tutorials and tips for each day in February. It says teachers will be challenged to explore the online tool and share ways in which it enhances learning or helps them teach more effectively.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Username: Admin
Post Number: 29237
Registered: 01-2000
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - 10:15 pm: |
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$3M gaming project could help spark STEM education
MIT developing a massive multiplayer online game to help high school students with math, science
By Laura Devaney, eSchool News Managing Editor
January 31st, 2012
A $3 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant will help the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Education Arcade build a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) to help high school students learn math and biology.
Part of the grant’s purpose will be to change the way that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics are traditionally taught in secondary schools. Studies indicate that many students fail to remain engaged and interested in STEM education in high school and college, leading to a need for highly skilled STEM employees in the nation’s workforce.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Username: Admin
Post Number: 29192
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2012 - 10:51 pm: |
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Clayton Ridge Community School District and K12 Inc. Announce New Iowa Virtual Academy
Statewide online public school will open in Fall 2012
PR Newswire Press Release: K12 Inc.; Clayton Ridge Community School District
Jan 23, 2012
Companies:
GUTTENBERG, Iowa -- Iowa families now have access to a new and innovative public school option with the announcement of the Iowa Virtual Academy (IAVA). Offered by the Clayton Ridge Community School District, the online public school will serve students in the district and across the state in grades K-6 beginning next year, and will gradually expand to middle and high school in subsequent years. The district is currently accepting applications for IAVA.
Iowa Virtual Academy will use curriculum, technology and school services provided by K12 Inc., America's largest provider of online learning programs for students in kindergarten through high school. Over 2,000 school districts in states across the country use courses, assessments, and education services provided by K12.
"The Clayton Ridge Community School District is excited to offer the Iowa Virtual Academy to students and families in our state," said Allan Nelson, Superintendent of Clayton Ridge Community School District. "There is a strong need for personalized learning programs that can reach children in new ways and help them succeed. We believe IAVA will be an excellent option for families and a success for students."
Nelson added, "During the extensive planning and preparation, our district worked closely with the Iowa Department of Education to ensure full compliance. On behalf of our district and school board, I would also like to thank the Department for their guidance throughout the process. We look forward to continue working closely with the DE to ensure the success of our online public school."
IAVA will offer each student a highly individualized learning program using engaging online lessons, assessments, and innovative technology. Iowa-certified teachers will provide instruction, oversight and support, and regularly interact with students and families. Teachers will engage students through real-time web-based classes, and one-on-one sessions. Students receive daily face-to-face support from learning coaches – parents or legal guardians – who assist students as they progress through their individual education plans. School events, field trips, and academic and extra-curricular activities will also be offered.
Students will follow the same state and district accountability requirements, including full participation in the Iowa Assessments.
Online schools offer students a public school alternative with a highly personalized and flexible learning experience regardless of where they live, or their socioeconomic or academic circumstance. With a high level of engagement, all types of students can succeed in online schools, including students with special needs, athletes and artists, advanced learners, children struggling in traditional schools, and many others.
Online education programs offered by school districts are the fastest-growing and largest category of online and blended learning activity in the U.S. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 50 percent of all school districts across the country have a least one student taking a distance learning course, and nearly three-quarters of districts with online learning enrollments plan to expand their distance learning offerings.
Families interested in enrolling in IAVA for the 2012-2013 school year can apply during Iowa's Open Enrollment period which ends March 1, 2012. More on IAVA, including enrollment details and a schedule of school information sessions for interested families can be found at www.k12.com/iava.
About Clayton Ridge School District
Based in Northeast Iowa, the Clayton Ridge Community School District provides a safe and student-centered learning environment where individual needs are met. The district's mission is to provide equal and quality educational opportunities for all students in preparation for their role in a changing democratic society, and changing world. More information can be found at www.claytonridge.k12.ia.us
About K12 Inc.
K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN - News), a technology-based education company, is the nation's largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs for students in kindergarten through high school. Using 21st century tools to prepare 21st century students, K12 provides options for children to learn in a flexible and innovative way, at an individualized pace. K12 provides curriculums and academic services to school districts, public and private online schools, blended school programs, traditional classrooms, and directly to families. K12 has delivered over 4 million courses to students worldwide.
K12 is accredited through AdvancED, the world's largest education community. Additional information can be found at www.K12.com.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Username: Admin
Post Number: 29144
Registered: 01-2000
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - 12:06 am: |
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Burlington proposal would give laptops or iPads to 1,900 students
Molly Walsh / Burlington (VT) Free Press
Jan 21, 2012
BURLINGTON — * * *
Instant grading is one of many things that the teenager has come to appreciate about the one-to-one computing initiative that her seventh-eighth grade team is piloting at the school. Now the experiment is poised to grow significantly in Burlington. The proposed school budget for next year includes funding for the first year of a four-year phase-in that would provide portable computers or iPads to all 1,900 middle and high school students in the city school district.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Post Number: 29067
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012 - 11:05 pm: |
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ArtistWorks' online lessons resonate with musicians and students
The academy offers musicians a new way to make money and enables students to carry on a regular dialogue with well-known instructors through Web video exchanges.
By Alex Pham, Los Angeles Times
January 10, 2012
About four times a week, before heading to bed, George Gaffoglio retreats to the upstairs bedroom of his Irvine home, where he settles on his couch, picks up his guitar and fires up his laptop.
For the next half-hour or so, the 54-year-old sets aside his daily worries and dives into a website called ArtistWorks, where he plays along with instructional videos by Martin Taylor, attempting to mimic a British jazz guitarist who has collaborated with George Harrison, Dionne Warwick and other musicians.
"It's my therapy," said Gaffoglio, chief executive of an aerospace prototype manufacturing firm and a longtime ArtistWorks subscriber.
Based in Napa, Calif., ArtistWorks has a dozen professional musicians on its faculty offering thousands of hours of video lessons, from basic techniques to master classes. Among the instructors are Billy Cobham, a drummer who recorded and toured with Miles Davis, and Tony Trischka, a banjo player who produced Steve Martin's Grammy-nominated album "Rare Bird Alert." Martin himself appears in several ArtistWorks videos.
Since launching the service in June 2009, ArtistWorks has amassed more than 32,000 videos in more than a dozen genres, from classical piano and bluegrass fiddle to traditional mandolin and turntable scratching. The privately held company does not disclose its revenue or number of subscribers but says they number in the tens of thousands. By aggressively adding new instructors, the online academy expects to triple its revenue this year from 2011.
Instructional videos are hardly new, having been around in the form of DVDs, CDs and VHS tapes for decades. But online classes hold the promise of enabling teachers and students to communicate — even when they're across the world from each other.
In an age when the traditional music business structure is crumbling, companies such as ArtistWorks are offering a new path for musicians to make money.
"This is part of the general trend of social media breaking down barriers between artists and fans," said David Pakman, a partner with New York venture firm Venrock. It's also part of a general wave of people with knowledge using the Internet to share their skills, Pakman said, citing as examples online learning start-ups including TurnHere for video production, oDesk for technical instruction and Behance for creative design. "These new marketplaces for knowledge workers are great uses of the networked economy."
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Post Number: 28985
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2012 - 10:12 pm: |
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Teachers Resist High-Tech Push in Idaho Schools
By MATT RICHTEL / NEW YORK TIMES
Jan. 4, 2012
POST FALLS, Idaho — Ann Rosenbaum, a former military police officer in the Marines, does not shrink from a fight, having even survived a close encounter with a car bomb in Iraq. Her latest conflict is quite different: she is now a high school teacher, and she and many of her peers in Idaho are resisting a statewide plan that dictates how computers should be used in classrooms.
Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that requires all high school students to take some online classes to graduate, and that the students and their teachers be given laptops or tablets. The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard.
To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators. And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Post Number: 28970
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2012 - 9:11 pm: |
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Gov. Cuomo to announce state education commission to reform schools: sources
EXCLUSIVE: His call will come just days after he was critical of the city and other districts that failed to reach agreement with their unions on a new teacher evaluation system by an end-of-year deadline
BY Kenneth Lovett / NY Daily News
January 2 2012
ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo, in his second state-of-state address [pdf] Wednesday, will accuse New York’s schools of being unaccountable and announce a commission to come up with reforms, the Daily News has learned.
Cuomo’s announcement will come just days after he was critical of the city and other districts that failed to reach agreement with their unions on a new teacher evaluation system by an end-of-year deadline.
“The failure to pass the teacher evaluation system is an example that not only is the system broken, but the ability to monitor the system and come up with a method to ensure kids are educated properly is broken,” said a source close to Cuomo.
The education commission he will announce will be designed to look at education from a “student perspective,” the source said.
“What are the performance indicators? How do you judge performance in the education system? How are the services being provided?” the source said. “No one has really looked at it without a particular perspective on what’s going on in education.”
The makeup of the commission, which as of Sunday was still undetermined, will likely include outside experts.
Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto wouldn’t confirm or deny specifics of the speech.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Post Number: 28941
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 25, 2011 - 12:06 pm: |
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What if Curriculum was an Adventure?
David Warlick / 2¢ Worth blog
December 3, 2011
Learning absolutely should be an adventure and the classroom instruction model can never be transformed into an adventure. But, learning should not be a computer game, where the goals and objectives are controlled by the programmer. It should be a simulation, where the learning pathway evolves as influenced by the interests and goals of the learner. This is not to say that the learner can omit English and focus on only math, but that a person driven by math would learn English in that context. The curriculum becomes a real-time living organism. It is a living organism now, but it evolves in fits and starts--not moving for years, essentially vibrating around an axis--then leaping, then resting again--and always lagging real-time needs. With computer delivered learning, the curriculum can evolve on the fly -- within nanoseconds.
I had the opportunity last week to participate in a conversation that was arranged by ISTE, exploring some of the potentially pivotal emerging issues in the ed tech and broader education domains. I was asked to go first, as I would not be able to stay long — and was consequently put on the spot, to think quickly, and clearly articulate ideas to some really smart people. So I blubbered something about a niche for some new and compellingly relevant digital and networked learning platform that will so effectively, efficiently, and elegantly facilitate all of the education philosophies that we are all so urgently trying to describe that it will change education as we know it.
Peggy Sheehy, being Peggy Sheehy (and rightly so) intercepted my fumbled explanation, campaigning for games as an integral part of that platform. I understood where she was going, said so, and she acknowledged it — because we’ve had the conversation before. But there is a frustrating problem with Peggy’s mission. Most people still see games as play and learning as work — and although many of us have become convinced of the learning potentials of video games and begun to promote their use, the game is still what happens after the teaching.
Periodically, I’m asked to do a presentation called “Video Games as Learning Engines,” which is an introduction to video games (mostly for non-gamers) and an attempt to show how games are actually a form of pedagogy. Yet, I suspect that what most attendees are actually looking for directories of flash-based educational games designed to help students master their multiplication facts or identify parts of speech. Those games are certainly out there, but they do not interest me.
One of the lingering mysteries that continues to intrigue me, in the waning years of my very long career, is what makes it a game — or more to the point, what makes it fun? ..and can we unfold the elements in such a way that they become handlebars in that learning platform I was trying to describe, from which we can hang more engaging learning experiences for our students.
For instance, one interesting quality of the games our children play is that they do not require you to learn the rules before you play the game. Learning about roles and rules is part of the playing, and they are often a surprise that has to be earned. They’re a secret. In solving a puzzle or simply exploring, the player finds a magic coin, potion, or relic. As a result of the find, she is endowed with new powers of flight, invisibility, or speed. The powers are a surprise and they change the rules.
Ewan McIntosh recently described a very simple but explicit illustration of this, concerning a school he is working with in Sydney, Australia. There is a fairly nondescript and unreferenced book in a classroom that when moved, releases a switch that turns on a light. Students find it by exploring the environment. They explore because they expect to find secrets. It’s an example of what McIntosh calls Secret Spaces, one of Seven Spaces of Technology in School Environments (watch the video).
So what if this learning platform held hidden information switches, such that when a student references a particular document in his work, he is suddenly endowed with new powers, an opportunity to visit previously blocked resource or tool, or an invitation to formally explore a topic of personal interest, or awarded points or admin rights to further configure his profile page with options and colors that were not available before.
What if curriculum was an adventure, and learning was the reward?
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 21, 2011 - 11:58 pm: |
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M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All
By James Marshall Crotty | Forbes via Yahoo News!
Dec. 21, 2011
MITx faq
This is exactly what public education should be doing. Parents and students from around the world should be able to learn anything taught by public schools for free, online. But we're still stuck with horse-and-buggy classroom instruction.
For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the “social injustice” of college tuition, here’s a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.
The program will not allow students to earn an M.I.T. degree. Instead, those who are able to exhibit a mastery of the subjects taught on the platform will receive an official certificate of completion. The certificate will obviously not carry the weight of a traditional M.I.T. diploma, but it will provide an incentive to finish the online material. According to the New York Times, in order to prevent confusion, the certificate will be a credential bearing the distinct name of a new not-for-profit body that will be created within M.I.T.
The new online platform will look to build upon the decade-long success of the university’s original free online platform, OpenCourseWare (OCW), which has been used by over 100 million students and contains course material for roughly 2,100 classes. The new M.I.T.x online program will not compete with OCW in the number of courses that it offers. However, the program will offer students a greater interactive experience.
Students using the program will be able to communicate with their peers through student-to-student discussions, allowing them an opportunity to ask questions or simply brainstorm with others, while also being able to access online laboratories and self-assessments. In the future, students and faculty will be able to control which classes will be available on the system based on their interests, creating a personalized education setting.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2011 - 10:55 pm: |
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How to start a successful virtual learning program
Securing administrator, educator buy-in is a key to effective online instruction
By Laura Devaney, eSchool News Managing Editor
Dec. 12, 2011
Virtual learning can help districts address many needs, such as filling a gap between courses a school offers and courses students might want to take but aren’t currently offered—and a new report offers insights on starting a virtual learning program from a number of seasoned experts.
Statistics indicate that more than 1.5 million students attended fully online or blended learning programs during the 2009-10 school year, and more school districts are turning to online instruction for its expanded curriculum offerings, flexibility, and cost-saving potential. Some experts predict that roughly half of high school courses will be offered online by 2019.
In “How to Launch District Virtual Learning [pdf],” a new report from the Blackboard Institute, 17 virtual learning experts agreed that getting buy-in from teachers, administrators, parents, and the community is absolutely essential to success.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 11, 2011 - 8:51 am: |
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Obsession with technology leads to bogus education theories for today’s students
PETER BERGER, Vermont middle school teacher / Schenectady (NY) Gazette
December 11, 2011
Many technology boosters say people who resist the onslaught of silicon gadgets are motivated by fear.
I don’t accept their diagnosis. Criticizing or rejecting something isn’t the same as being afraid of it. I’m afraid of drunken drivers and riptides, but I’m indifferent to most motorists and fond of the ocean.
I doubt we all need to be in constant radio contact, I’m concerned at how much time we spend staring at liquid crystals instead of at real people, and I consider Facebook an exercise in narcissism that has corrupted the word “friend.” But I don’t think every teacher who uses a smartboard is plotting to destroy the intellects of American children.
On the other hand, there are those, in school and out, who worship a silicon calf. That idolatry does trouble me.
I take antibiotics, I drive a car, and I abandoned my Smith-Corona decades ago. I simply recognize technology’s limitations. Despite the relentless storm surge of hype, the latest version of every big new thing isn’t a wonder drug. If I write more coherently than I did when I was in college, it’s not because I changed keyboards.
Distracted by gadgets
Despite those things technology does well, students and educators are typically so distracted by the “trending” gadgetry that learning often suffers. Consider the computer teacher, writing in an education journal, who lets her students email each other instead of giving them specific assignments. While she concedes she has little control over the content of their messages, she’s happy they’re “so comfortable communicating electronically,” as if adolescents who can text in their pockets need help getting comfortable. She seems unconcerned that she’s traded her curriculum, her purpose, for what we used to call passing notes.
My computer keyboard is superior to my old typewriter, but that doesn’t justify teaching kindergarteners to type, anymore than the existence of hybrid cars justifies teaching them to drive. Crayons and pencils need to come first. Otherwise you wind up with children who can’t write.
I’m convinced that education technology on balance has done more harm than good, but I’m even more troubled by the bankrupt ideology that commonly marches along with the machines. Standards promoted by the influential International Society for Technology in Education are typical of the 1970s zombie reforms that still haunt our schools.
ISTE proudly “partners with forward-thinking corporations who share our passion and commitment to education and education technology.” Since those corporations include Adobe, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard, it’s not surprising that ISTE and its partners envision education technology as a positive and profit-generating addition to as many classrooms as possible. In that spirit ISTE prescribes that teachers incorporate digital tools and resources in their classrooms and embrace a “vision of technology infusion,” whatever that means.
Translating jargon
But you can’t blame the silicon world’s corporate masters for ISTE’s bad education ideas. Like most reform position papers, parts of ISTE’s manifesto sound upbeat and benign. Who could object to “creative and innovative thinking” or students who learn to “communicate information and ideas effectively”? It isn’t until you translate the educationese that you can fully appreciate ISTE’s classroom vision.
Linked, for instance, to ISTE’s call for creative thinking is its imperative that students should “construct knowledge.” Constructivism is the theory that students learn from personal experience and therefore should direct their own education, with teachers serving merely as facilitators. Its offspring includes “student-centered learning,” also championed by ISTE, where students “pursue their individual curiosities,” “set their own educational goals, manage their own learning, and assess their own progress.”
This folly has bred a host of unsound practices, from schools’ current infatuation with student projects to the touted science program where science books are eliminated, teachers “get out of the way,” and 12-year-olds just “follow the science.” Reformers’ Information Age disdain for directly teaching kids information accounts for why so many American students know so little about so much.
ISTE’s standards incorporate “critical thinking,” another reform favorite. Unfortunately, having campaigned for years against teaching kids knowledge, reformers have left most students with little or nothing to think critically about. You’ll also find “authentic” learning, code for a shrinking role for textbooks and the rise of allegedly real-world instruction and assessment like Vermont’s “authentic” portfolio program that replaced old-fashioned “two trains leave New York and Chicago” algebra problems with, “A community of gnomes in the magic forest is upset because their forest is being bulldozed for a shopping mall.”
When ISTE endorses teaching kids to communicate “using a variety of media and formats,” it really means less writing and more PowerPoint presentations. Requiring students to “work collaboratively” in teams is code for cooperative learning, where kids spend class in groups without direct teacher supervision and interaction.
Silicon obsession
In short, ISTE exalts our silicon obsession, which has left children increasingly unable to distinguish between friends and “friends” or focus for more than milliseconds on anything that doesn’t glow or move, combines that mania with public education’s 40-year disdain for fundamental skills and knowledge, and wraps it all in misleading, rose-colored rhetoric.
Until we recognize the lethal flaws in campaigns like ISTE’s to “advance educational excellence,” the 40-year “cure” we’ve been force-feeding students and schools will only sicken them further.
   
Peter gets a lot of this right. What he's missing is the big picture truth that classroom instruction is a dying methodology. Just like tractors, the use of technology in education will evolve and improve to levels of quality and power that we cannot approximate, today. The proper use of technology will retain learning tracks that preserve the content and knowledge of today's schools for SOME students. Other students will choose the benefits -- and failures -- of exploring new frontiers.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 8:32 pm: |
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Ballot initiative seeks to expand access to online education
Joanna Lin / California Watch
November 23, 2011
For public school students in California, where you live usually determines where you can learn. To David Haglund, that's not right.
This month, Haglund, principal of the Riverside Virtual School, an online independent study program run by the Riverside Unified School District, introduced a statewide ballot initiative [PDF] that would give students unrestricted access to publicly funded courses – wherever they are.
The California Student Bill of Rights Initiative is "designed to eliminate control by ZIP code," Haglund said.
Under the proposal, schools, districts and county education offices would be required to make available to all students the courses needed for admission to the state's universities. Those courses, known as A-G requirements at the University of California and California State University, could be offered at a student's school or district of residence or any other publicly funded school, and they could be classroom-based, online or a blended model of the two.
Nearly 27 percent of California public high schools in 2007-08 offered too few A-G courses for all students to take them, according to an analysis [PDF] by UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.
"We in our public school system in California say, 'If you don't live within so many square miles of a building, you can't play,' and that's not fair," Haglund said. "And it's particularly unfair when the infrastructure and technology exists to resolve those issues."
Skeptics of the initiative say that while the proposal attempts to address real problems in education access and equity, it's not the right mechanism to do so. If passed, the initiative could send more public money to private companies, they say.
The initiative calls on the state to modify its school financing system so that average daily attendance is apportioned to the courses students complete, allowing multiple institutions to split funding for the same student. Currently, online education in California operates as independent study programs, or charter or private schools – models that initiative supporters say limit access to virtual learning.
"The idea is if the funding is attached to courses, the schools might be more willing to investigate how to make those courses available," Haglund said.
John Rogers, director of UCLA IDEA, sees a different outcome: "Splitting up a student's ADA (average daily attendance) potentially can weaken the home institutions," he said. "When there are efforts to supplant aspects of the existing public education system with a cheaper online alternative, you're going to diminish the overall quality of public education, and you're going to exacerbate, not remedy, inequalities."
The initiative "could wreak havoc on the delivery of public education in the state," said John Affeldt, managing attorney for Public Advocates, which is representing organizations and families challenging the constitutionality of California's school funding system.
"It seems at first blush to be more about an online provider's bill of rights to get public money to provide online courses than an initiative to make sure we have equitable access to education for all kids," he said.
Haglund said, "The initiative is not designed to destroy public education."
"California as a state has pushed educational innovation into the private and charter school space. If that's where we want to go, then keep it up," he said. "But if we want our kids in public schools to have access to the same type of high-quality education they can have elsewhere, we need to switch it up."
'The Old West'
Haglund's proposal comes at a time when more students are going to school by logging on to their computers. At least 15,000 students in California are enrolled in full-time online charter schools, and more than 3,600 were enrolled at Riverside Virtual School, the largest district-run program in the state in 2009-10, according to a review by the Evergreen Education Group.
But unlike many states that have embraced – or at least accepted – online education, California has stayed on the sidelines.
"There is no statewide provision for online learning in California. It's all facilitated through individual districts who make up their own thing as they go along; consequently, it's like the Old West," Haglund said. "You've got everybody and their grandmother out there doing something, but nobody knows what that something is."
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 17, 2011 - 10:42 pm: |
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Review of New Fordham Digital Learning Papers
by Bill Tucker / The Quick and The Ed blog
November 16, 2011
Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction [pdf] and School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era [pdf], two new working papers in the Fordham Institute’s series on digital learning, are welcome additions to the often narrow debates around online learning.
“Teachers,” written by Public Impact’s Bryan and Emily Hassel, opens with an important and refreshing perspective: “that digital education needs excellent teachers and that the teaching profession needs digital education.” Rather than replacing teachers, the authors see digital learning as transforming teaching — both by offering tools for traditional classroom teachers and by enabling entirely new ways of teaching. Often missing from conversations around technology, the paper outlines the varied roles that teachers play, including helping with motivation, social and emotional support, and stretching critical thinking and analytical skills. It concludes that the future is a much more differentiated field, with a smaller number of higher-paid, more empowered teachers acting in teams with a variety of specialized and lower-paid support personnel. (School of One offers one glimpse of this future.)
Some of the paper’s most interesting discussions touch on new administrative structures and the role of unions. The authors see today’s teacher evaluation battles as a relic of an old one-classroom, one-teacher model. Instead, they envision a different form of accountability, such as that in a small professional firm, where one person takes on both leadership and administrative responsibility to coordinate a variety of teaching personnel and supporting technology tools. They reject the notion that digital learning is necessarily a union-killer. Instead, they see a role for a new type of union, modeled perhaps after the Screen Actors Guild, which provides employment and pay security in increasingly differentiated teacher roles, but does not constrain top performers. One quibble though, is that when the paper discusses these new models, it too often uses a static, more-effective/least-effective teacher frame. A more helpful frame might place the same weight on effective teaching, but explore the interdependency between a teachers’ role and effectiveness.
Overall, the paper both rightly recognizes the fallacy of technology replacing teachers and appropriately posits that digital tools will be limited in potential if shoved into traditional teaching models. Additional exploration should go even further, contemplating how digital learning might also change and possibly more tightly align the roles of informal and out-of-school educators, including those in museums, cultural institutions, youth development programs, and of course, homes.
There is no fallacy of technology replacing teachers. Why do people make up this stuff? Rather, the primary instructional role will be played by technology. It can teach faster, better and in ways that humans cannot possibly replicate.
Sure, there will still be teacher-instructors for the 20% of students who need them after 4th grade, but the role of teacher will change from instructing to coaching, advising, knowledge management and other skills current teachers are ill-prepared to perform.
Technology has replaced soldiers, pilots, factory workers, letter carriers, travel agents, clerks and many others. The most inefficient use of technology is as a supped-up chalkboard, DVD player and typewriter. We absolutely need to replace teachers as instructors. They are the weakest link in the learning process. That's not an insult. They are doing the best they can. Just like autoworkers built the best cars they could. They simply can't match the precision and speed of robots and teachers simply will not be able to match the performance of technology as instructors.
The second paper, written by Paul Hill, details how current school funding systems conflict with new forms of digital learning that cross school, district, and time boundaries:
The problem boils down to this: Our system doesn’t fund schools, and certainly doesn’t fund students. It funds district-wide programs, staff positions, and so forth. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to move money from concrete facilities, established programs, and entrenched staff roles to new uses like equipment, software, and remote instructional staff. Yet to encourage development and improvement of technology-based methods, we must find ways for public dollars to do just that—and to follow kids to online providers chosen by their parents, teachers, or themselves.
Hill blames this funding rigidity — not the lack of ideas from teachers, principals, or innovators — for the relative scarcity of education innovation at scale. And, while states have developed workaround solutions, few go far enough. His solution: a new “follow-the-child” funding system. While many states already have what is often called weighted-student funding, where funding follows students to their educational institutions and is weighted to account for greater needs, such as those of an English language learner, a new system needs to go beyond “whole school” models. In other words, if digital learning “unbundles” school so that students can choose courses and learning experiences from multiple places, as in Florida and other states, then funding needs to be just as nimble. And, it even needs to accommodate parents who want to assemble their own learning experiences. Hill says:
Funds available for a child’s education must include all the taxpayer funds available to support students’ education. To make this happen, some government entity would need to assemble all of the funds available from all sources for K-12 education in a locality, keep an account for every student, and faithfully allocate its con-tents to whatever school or education program a student attends.
Hill goes on to discuss important implications of these ideas, including dilemmas around accountability and choice. And, while many might reflectively reject Hill’s ideas as a digital-age voucher, there’s also the kernel of another more radical idea. If taken to its logical extreme, localities might not just assemble K-12 funding, but also those for all sorts of other services, such as juvenile justice, mental health, out-of-school programs, etc., enabling an approach that just might resemble a digital-era Harlem Children’s Zone.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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My Teacher Is an App
More kids than ever before are attending school from their living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. The result: A radical rethinking of how education works.
By STEPHANIE BANCHERO and STEPHANIE SIMON / WALL STREET JOURNAL with over 110 comments
NOVEMBER 12, 2011
For those who say computers can't replace teachers I say computers can run circles around what teachers can do. They aren't there, yet, but they will be.
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In just the past few months, Virginia has authorized 13 new online schools. Florida began requiring all public-high-school students to take at least one class online, partly to prepare them for college cybercourses. Idaho soon will require two. In Georgia, a new app lets high-school students take full course loads on their iPhones and BlackBerrys. Thirty states now let students take all of their courses online.
Nationwide, an estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, up 40% in the last three years, according to Evergreen Education Group, a consulting firm that works with online schools. More than two million pupils take at least one class online, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a trade group.
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[Allison Brown, a Georgia mother of three, says,] "I don't think learning has to happen at school, in a classroom with 30 other kids and a teacher…corralling all children into learning the same thing at the same pace," she says. "We should rethink the environment we set up for education."
Absolutely right.
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The ABCs of Online Schools
By STEPHANIE SIMON / WALL STREET JOURNAL
Nov. 12, 2011
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Students enrolled in an online school full-time are required to work closely with a "learning coach," usually mom or dad, to ensure that they are staying on track in their studies.
For younger students, the learning coach becomes the primary teacher. A typical first-grade language arts lesson, for instance, asks the student to brainstorm a list of words about her favorite place, then write three complete sentences. Parents go online to certify that their child has done the work and to answer questions about its quality—for instance, did the child use proper punctuation?
You want parents more involved in education? This is the way to do it.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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State's criteria for school grants flawed
By Meghan E. Murphy / Middletown (NY) Times-Herald Record
11/09/11
Middletown art teacher Mary Kelly took her own picture with an iPad on Tuesday. She used it on the Smart board to show 17 district art teachers how to create a lesson for students using the technology.
Middletown students soon will have iPads in every art classroom, linked together by the district's wireless network. But the district, which also increased its graduation rate by 12 points over four years, apparently isn't innovative, or successful, enough to qualify for Gov. Andrew Cuomo's new performance grant.
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To get points on the grant, districts have to show progress on graduation rates and performance indexes, a measure based on test scores. But the way the grant uses growth in the performance index is a "terrible measure of progress," according to Matthew DiCarlo, a senior fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Library Links to Schools
Books Borrowed Online Are Delivered Directly to Classrooms for the First Time
By JENNIFER MALONEY / WALL STREET JOURNAL
Nov. 7, 2011
A pilot program between the world's largest circulating library and the nation's biggest public school system is allowing New York City teachers to borrow books online and have them delivered directly to classrooms for the first time.
The school system's partnership with the New York Public Library—set to be announced Monday—lets teachers at more than 50 schools borrow up to 100 books at a time, including sets for an entire class, officials told The Wall Street Journal. The schools' students also will get library cards.
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Under the program, teachers and students are now able search their own school library as well as the New York Public Library using a new online catalog called BiblioCommons. It allows all readers—including students and teachers—to post reviews of books and share book lists.
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New York Public Library staffers already have created lists of books on specific topics that teachers can borrow all at once, including a third-grade reading list on Africa and a fourth- through seventh-grade list on American Colonial history. The books are delivered by UPS at no cost to the schools.
Public library officials said they would help create electronic catalogs for school libraries currently using card catalogs.
New York state law requires all middle and high schools to have licensed librarians. The city has roughly 1,700 public schools, 800 libraries and 365 licensed librarians.
New York Public Library spokeswoman Angela Montefinise said the library's portion of the pilot cost $1 million and was funded through philanthropic grants. Mr. Betheil said the city's work was performed by in-house staff at no additional cost.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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eSN Special Report: Smarter Education
Predictive analytics can help schools quickly identify at-risk students—so they can intervene before it’s too late
By Jennifer Nastu / eSchool News Contributor
Nov. 4, 2011
Predictive analytics is one solution that can help with a number of education dilemmas.
Not only should predictive analytics be used in education, but high school students should be learning how to do it at a basic level.
For years, marketers have used sophisticated software to track consumers’ buying habits and web browsing activity, then crunch this information and—based on the data—make a series of intelligent predictions that allow them to target their sales messages much more effectively.
Now, this same technology is appearing in schools and colleges as well—and observers say it’s a development that could revolutionize education.
Using predictive analytics software, teachers at Georgia’s Gwinnet County Public Schools soon will be able to see at a glance which students might need more help. Sinclaire Community College in Ohio has cut its student dropout rate in half. And the online American Public University System has watched its course completion rate steadily climb.
These breakthroughs come at a key time for U.S. education, which is under enormous pressure to innovate and provide better learning opportunities.
As school district officials struggle to meet the goal of having all students graduate from high school ready for college or a career, the challenges are significant: Operating costs are on the rise, while budgets for public institutions are shrinking. Infrastructures are aging and need costly updates. Changing demographics require that schools change, too, to meet the shifting needs of students. Performance is declining at the same time that expectations are rising. And “working harder” is simply not a sustainable option.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Board approves Idaho online class requirement
By JESSIE L. BONNER - Associated Press via Yahoo! News
Nov. 3, 2011
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho is set to become first state in the nation to require high school students to take at least two credits online to graduate.
Pretty amazing, isn't it. We are in the 3rd decade of computers and it's possible to lead the nation by requiring high school students to take 2 online courses. It's lamentable--and expensive. It's like converting from land lines to cell phones in 2011--for 2 hours of the day.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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No, more computers will not fix our broken schools
By: Heather MacDonald | Washington (DC) Examiner Op-Ed Contributor
10/19/11
Computer technology is the latest panacea for American students' mediocre academic performance.
If we can just pump enough interactive whiteboards, iPads, and eye-popping video graphics into the classroom, asserts the education establishment, we can overcome the knowledge gap between U.S. students and our leading economic competitors.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings set out the possibilities in the Wall Street Journal this September. "Imagine ... an online high-school physics course that uses videogame graphics power to teach atomic interactions," they wrote, "or a second-grade online math curriculum that automatically adapts to individual students' levels of knowledge."
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch presented an even more scintillating scenario to a San Francisco education summit last week. An otherwise "dry and abstract" principle of fluid dynamics would come "alive," he said, by "linking it to the soccer star Roberto Carlos -- showing students a video clip that illustrates how his famous curved shot is an example of [this] principle in action.
"Then suppose I followed up with an engineer from Boeing -- who explained why this same principle is critical in aviation and introduced an app that could help students master the concept through playing a game."
Naturally, this faith in a technological education fix has spawned a massive industry of tech companies, consultants, business associations, and foundations, all gobbling up billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer-funded government contracts every year.
Educational software products alone are estimated to generate $2.2 billion in sales to school districts. The Department of Education's new Digital Promise initiative will only inflate that spending further.
To call the results to date disappointing would be generous. The Kyrene school district in Arizona, which serves kindergarten through eighth grade, has spent $33 million since 2006 on the most cutting-edge computer gimmicks without having the slightest effect on student achievement, reports the New York Times.
You can't expect different results from computers that simply replicate classrooms. It's like replacing a horse with a tractor but never taking it out of first gear so the tractor doesn't go any faster than the horse could.
Nine of 10 major educational software products on the market have no effect on test scores, the federal Department of Education found in 2009. This lackluster record was utterly predictable.
Yep.
Educational technology would be the solution to poor academic performance only if the lack of educational technology were the cause of that poor performance.
Nonsense. Vaccinations would be the solution to polio only if the lack of vaccinations were the cause of polio. That's just dumb.
Somehow, however, generations of students have mastered algebra, geometry, and the rudiments of historical knowledge just by reading -- wait for it! -- books.
Students the world over have even learned about atomic interactions simply by hard mental work. More mysteriously still, computers were invented without computers.
If students are not willing to make an effort, no amount of scintillating "videogame graphics" will magically put that knowledge into their head while they are otherwise engaged in Facebook exchanges.
Likewise, if a second-grade student is not paying attention in class or is showing up tired because his parent is loudly partying all night, an individually tailored math curriculum is not going to overcome that disadvantage.
To be sure, all students today need computer skills. That is a different proposition, however, from thinking that using computers to convey knowledge can compensate for a lack of self-discipline, perseverance, and a desire to learn (or, failing such a desire, fear of the consequences for not doing so).
Shanghai's students lead the world in math and reading skills not because their schools boast the fanciest videogame apps (they don't). Rather, those students outpace all others because they possess the internal motivation to learn and because their classrooms are orderly places where the teacher possesses unquestioned intellectual authority.
The keys to improving Americans' educational performance are the following: Get back to teaching the basics; restore order and discipline in every classroom; return to a teacher-centered, rather than student-centered, pedagogy; and demand hard work from children and commitment from parents.
Reverting to 19th century approaches is just as stupid as using computers to replicate the classroom instructional model. 21st century schools will do neither.
Unfortunately, such an agenda promises no big contracts for the education-industrial complex.
Heather MacDonald is a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Out With Textbooks, in With Laptops for an Indiana School District
By ALAN SCHWARZ / NEW YORK TIMES
Oct. 19, 2011
MUNSTER, Ind. — Laura Norman used to ask her seventh-grade scientists to take out their textbooks and flip to Page Such-and-Such. Now, she tells them to take out their laptops.
The day all have seen coming — traditional textbooks being replaced by interactive computer programs — arrived this year in this traditional, well-regarded school district, complete with one naysaying parent getting reported to the police. Unlike the tentative, incremental steps of digital initiatives at many schools nationwide, Munster made an all-in leap in a few frenetic months — removing all math and science textbooks for its 2,600 students in grades 5 to 12, and providing a window into the hurdles and hiccups of such an overhaul.
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Jerry Moore (Admin)
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Students Compete to Design Better Lunches
By Jason Koebler | US News & World Report via Yahoo! News
Oct 21, 2011
Instead of pizza and hotdogs, high school students in six U.S. cities are trying to serve up healthier lunch options to their classmates as part of a national cooking contest.
Students in public high schools with vocational culinary programs in Chicago; Denver; Jacksonville, Fla.; St. Louis; Washington, D.C.; and Winston-Salem, N.C., will compete to make the tastiest, healthiest lunch to serve their peers in the Cooking Up Change contest. The catch? The six-person teams can only spend about $1 per lunch and must order food from their school system's food supplier.
"They use and develop a lot of skills," says Rochelle Davis, founder of Healthy Schools Campaign, a nonprofit that tries to make school lunches healthier and school environments safer. "They learn to work with a team, prepare and plan a menu idea, [and] test their food. They have to get a nutritional analysis done, and present their meal to culinary professionals."
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