Schools banning iPods to beat cheaters
By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press WriterSun Apr 29, 2:50 PM ET
Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious — students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other.
Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device. Devices including Apple Inc. iPods and Microsoft Corp. Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.
"It doesn't take long to get out of the loop with teenagers," said Mountain View High School Principal Aaron Maybon. "They come up with new and creative ways to cheat pretty fast."
Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials realized some students were downloading formulas and other material onto the players.
"A teacher overheard a couple of kids talking about it," said Maybon.
Shana Kemp, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said she does not have hard statistics on the phenomenon but said it is not unusual for schools to ban digital media players.
"I think it is becoming a national trend," she said. "We hope that each district will have a policy in place for technology — it keeps a lot of the problems down."
Using the devices to cheat is hardly a new phenomenon, Kemp said. However, sometimes it takes awhile for teachers and administrators, who come from an older generation, to catch on to the various ways the technology can be used.
Some students use iPod-compatible voice recorders to record test answers in advance and them play them back, said 16-year-old Mountain View junior Damir Bazdar.
Others download crib notes onto the music players and hide them in the "lyrics" text files. Even an audio clip of the old "Schoolhouse Rock" take on how a bill makes it through Congress can come in handy during some American government exams.
Kelsey Nelson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, said she used to listen to music after completing her tests — something she can no longer do since the ban. Still, she said, the ban has not stopped some students from using the devices.
"You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you're resting your head on your hand," Nelson said. "I think you should still be able to use iPods. People who are going to cheat are still going to cheat, with or without them."
Still, schools around the world are hoping bans will at least stave off some cheaters.
Henry Jones, a teacher at San Gabriel High School in San Gabriel, Calif., confiscated a student's iPod during a class and found the answers to a test, crib notes and a definition list hidden among the teen's music selections. Schools in Seattle, Wash., have also banned the devices.
The practice is not limited to the United States: St. Mary's College, a high school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, banned cell phones and digital medial players this year, while the University of Tasmania in Australia prohibits iPods, electronic dictionaries, CD players and spell-checking devices.
Conversely, Duke University in North Carolina began providing iPods to its students three years ago as part of an experiment to see how the devices could be used to enhance learning.
The music players proved to be invaluable for some courses, including music, engineering and sociology classes, said Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, he said.
"Trying to fight the technology without a dialogue on values and expectations is a losing battle," Dodd said. "I think there's kind of a backdoor benefit here. As teachers are thinking about how technology has corrupted, they're also thinking about ways it can be used productively."
___
On the Net:
National Association of Secondary School Principals: http://www.principals.org
Center for Academic Integrity: http://www.academicintegrity.org/
Monday, April 30, 2007
21st Century Digital Learning Environments.....Unintended Consequences....and Inconvenient Truths!
How'd You Do In School Today?
With Edline Online, The Report Card Goes 24/7 and Every Test Is An Open Book
With Edline Online, The Report Card Goes 24/7 and Every Test Is An Open Book
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 30, 2007; C01
At the beginning of this semester, Laura Iriarte Miguel switched anatomy classes.
No big deal. Students at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg can shift courses around at the start of each term. But when Iriarte Miguel remained on the roll in the wrong class for several days, her parents began receiving notices from Edline -- an online, up-to-the-sec grade-tracking program used in Montgomery County middle and high schools -- about her unexcused absences and zeros on quizzes.
Finally, one night at dinner, in between bites of spaghetti, her parents grilled her about her truancy and her rotten anatomy grades. She hadn't told them she had opted into another class.
"They wanted to know why-why-why-why," Iriarte Miguel says. She set them straight, but the air was still poisoned. The suspicion, she says, "accumulated in the back of their minds during the whole day."
This could be a simple story of parental expectations and teenage lackadaisicalness. But it's also a tale of an innovation at the nexus of a morphing world -- symbolic of the changing nature of childhood, America's abiding faith in education and the unforgiving quality of technology.
* * *
Growing up isn't what it used to be. Time was, parents set boundaries, children tested them. There was always a question of how much parents should know and how much kids should tell them. School was often a black box to parents. Mom and Dad dropped their kids off in the morning and had nearly zero understanding of precisely what went on during the day.
High school in particular has been a time of experimentation, says Ellen deLara, an adolescence specialist at Syracuse University. "People are inventing themselves, trying out different ways of being in the world, trying different faces."
Now along comes Edline to help erase the illusion -- and reality -- that school is separate from the parental world. That separation, deLara says, "is a buffer that's actually critical for healthy adolescent development."
Constant monitoring -- the equivalent of a nanny cam trained on teenagers -- "doesn't allow for confabulation," she adds. Nor does it provide "space for thinking about how to present bad news to parents. Instead, parents can jump to conclusions, and essentially, try and convict their teens, all before hearing from them."
The result is double-edged: Edline -- and other programs like it, such as SchoolFusion and School Center -- provide students, teachers and parents with an online meeting place to discuss day-to-day assignments, tests and grades. But it also enables parents to keep track of a kid's academic progress -- or lack of progress -- in a heretofore unthinkably micromanagerial way. Parents can know everything; children have no wiggle room. Gone is the fudge factor, the white lie. A student makes a D on a quiz, a D shows up on Edline. No matter that a student leads a discussion in class or puts forth a cogent point. Or has the possibility to retake the quiz, make up the poor grade or do extra credit work over the weekend.
This swift knowledge of success or failure can drive a wedge into families.
Exhibit A: More than 20 anti-Edline groups have popped up on Facebook with names such as "Edline Is Hazardous to My Health" and "Edline Is Ruining My Life." These two groups, it turns out, were founded by Montgomery County high school students.
So was the largest of the anti-Edline clubs: "Child abuse increased 78% since the Edline was created." With more than 6,000 members, the online klatch is Iriarte Miguel's co-creation. She says that when she and a guy launched it she was being tongue-in-cheek. But there is a real sting.
"Edline really doesn't give us an opportunity to explain why our grades aren't up to par," Iriarte Miguel says.
An A-minus student planning to go to the University of Virginia in the fall, she hears from scores of kids all over the country who are frustrated by the technology's watchdog qualities. A sampling of comments:
"My mom literally watches my sister like a HAWK on Edline," writes a student from Tampa. "Can't say that she has had many fun weekends since Edline was created."
And another note from Los Angeles: "Whatever happened to trying to improve grades before the report cards were sent out? This is so dumb!"
* * *
With computers, everything is binary -- one/two; either/or. There are few in-betweens. Gone are the rough edges, the gray areas. And there are unintended consequences.
Technologies often solve and cause problems at the same time. Cellphones, advertised as devices for knowing the whereabouts of someone at all times, also allow that someone to call from, and pretend to be, anywhere. Edline enhances communication among parents, teachers and students. And it can also destroy communication.
Sherry Turkle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, warns against "overtechnologizing." A grade-tracking system like Edline, Turkle says, "sounds to me terribly intrusive."
The best way for parents and students to communicate is to talk about what is going on at school, she says. "When you just see a grade as a number, it's not necessarily opening the possibility of dialogue. Potentially it's closing down dialogue."
Turkle says Edline reminds her of the panopticon, an 18th-century idea for a specially designed building that would enable jailers to watch prisoners without the prisoners knowing they were being observed. The panopticon has become a metaphor for Big Brother.
The question the culture should be asking about monitoring technologies, Turkle says, is: "Is this just making children feel surveillance in a way that is uncomfortable for everybody?" The Internet, she says, can be used as a "blunt instrument."
In the old, pre-Internet days, parents who attended back-to-school nights and knew the names of their child's teachers were considered involved. Edline, and other monitoring technologies, take involvement to a whole other level.
"Parent involvement is known to be the key factor in positive student behavior and achievement," says Edline Vice President Marge Abrams. "How parents use the information is a parenting decision. Hopefully, if parents use the information to work with their child in a positive caring way, this parental involvement will lead to good achievement. Edline does not change the way a parent parents. If a parent uses the information in a punishing way, the same parent probably punishes at report card time."
Love it or hate it, Edline is expanding.
Abrams says the service was created in the late 1990s and today is being used in every state and in other countries. The privately owned company won't release its earnings or a complete list of its customers; schools pay about $2 per student for Edline. Edline, she says, has "many thousands of clients," including schools in Harford County, Md., and Chesterfield County, Va.
There are 38 middle schools and about 25 high schools -- 75,000 students -- in Montgomery County, according to schools spokeswoman Kate Harrison. All but three of the high schools began using Edline this year.
Next year, all the schools will use the service.
* * *
Many American parents don't think that keeping close tabs on their children's school activities is so dumb. They think it's smart.
Countless American success stories revolve around a caring teacher, a challenging class, a top-drawer education. A whole subset of the entertainment industry is built around the glorification of pedagogy. Think "Dangerous Minds" and "Finding Forrester."
In this country, "the middle class -- and anyone wishing to become middle class -- believe that education is the escalator to higher social status and financial well-being," says Larry Cuban, a former district superintendent of Arlington Public Schools and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.
"The early-20th-century progressives saw schooling as the engine of democracy and the instrument by which immigrants would become Americans and middle class," he says. "Both business and civic elites have sold public schooling, getting a diploma, and now going to college as ways of entering the labor market and succeeding."
The same people, Cuban says, "particularly at the beginning of the 20th century and in the past three decades, have linked better schooling and getting credentials to better jobs, a strong economy and higher lifetime earnings."
With so much riding on success in school, watchdog technology such as Edline and its immediate techno-feedback have an obvious appeal. For hovering "helicopter" parents, it's a high-beam searchlight. No bad grade escapes its harsh glare.
Chris Barclay is a member of the Montgomery County Board of Education whose daughter goes to Einstein High School in Kensington. Although the students at Einstein call it "Dreadline," he says that the grade-tracking service "helps hold your child and your child's teacher accountable." The software allows working parents to stay connected.
Laura Hajdukiewicz, a biology teacher at Andover High School in Massachusetts, loves the software. She liked it so much at her old place of employment, the Bromfield School outside of Boston, that she persuaded Andover to try it. She tells of parents who found out through Edline that their son was reading the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," giving them something to talk about at dinnertime. She says a parent who is a cardiologist volunteered to come into her class and speak when he learned through Edline that the class was studying the heart. "It's opening lines of communication," Hajdukiewicz says. "Students like it when they are doing well."
Hajdukiewicz asked more than 100 students in several grades for their opinion of Edline. She says the response was overwhelmingly favorable, although they felt their parents were now micromanaging their grades. "They like it for their own use but would rather keep things 'quiet' which is a fairly typical teenage response," she writes in an e-mail. "They also feel that their parents check it more often than they do!"
Carol Blum, Montgomery's director of high school instruction and achievement, says that Edline has helped to cut down on the number of e-mails and phone calls that parents make to teachers.
In the past, she says, "it wasn't as easy to be in touch with parents." A teacher would send out an interim report if the student was in danger of failing and by the time the parent received it, "it was almost too late," she says. "This way if a student is in trouble in a course, a parent can see it in a timely manner."
And students can know where they stand. "The biggest pro, coming from the high school perspective," says Christopher S. Garran, principal of Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, "is that Edline gives the students more information about their grades and where they stand in class."
A student can go online, Garran says, "and quickly see the impact that a zero might have. He can more easily see the effect of not having worked very hard." At the same time, "when they get an A, it immediately shows them how powerful that is."
Garran tells parents: "How closely you monitor your child's progress is a personal decision.
"Parents have to remember what it was like when they were in school . . . remember when you didn't get that homework assignment in on time."
A lot can happen, he says, "between that first quiz and the final grade."
Saturday, April 28, 2007
NEW MATH!
Granholm's call for school aid cut raises the stakes
Districts express alarm; GOP says governor is overreacting
April 27, 2007
LANSING -- An irate Gov. Jennifer Granholm put the heat on Republican lawmakers Thursday, announcing she would cut money to public schools by $125 per pupil unless the GOP agrees to a tax increase to make up for falling tax revenues.
School officials said the cut would force them to tap emergency reserves or borrow money to balance their budgets -- difficult options with just six weeks left in most districts' school year. If money isn't restored in the new budget year, they said, layoffs and program cuts loom.
"I'm assuming most districts are going to be able to at least keep open their classrooms," said Mike Flanagan, state superintendent of public instruction. But he said some may cut transportation or lay off administrators for the rest of the school year.
Granholm said Michigan's continued weak economy, which translated to lower-than-expected tax revenues, forced her decision. New data, she said, show that the state fell $136 million short of March sales tax projections. She plans to officially notify school districts Monday of the aid cut. The Legislature will have one month to find cash to avoid the reduction.
Granholm's announcement fueled partisan discord over a state budget crisis whose solution has eluded Granholm and lawmakers since she announced in January that reduced tax collections had put the state $900 million in the hole.
Republicans accused Granholm of using alarmist tactics to force a tax increase and insisted the immediate budget problems could be solved through spending cuts.
Granholm also said she would notify physicians and hospitals of reduced state payments for treating Medicaid patients because of a general fund deficit she said has grown to $500 million.
Granholm implored several hundred school officials at a Lansing conference to urge their state senators to raise taxes and avert the cutbacks. She said she has cut state spending so much that further cuts will harm education, public safety and health care.
Senate Republicans have opposed tax hikes for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, although they hinted they would consider new or higher taxes for 2007-08 along with more cost-cutting. Many House Democrats also have shunned a tax increase unless significant numbers of Republicans agree to one.
Granholm, visibly angry, told reporters that Republicans are stonewalling budget negotiations with extremist views against taxes.
"We need revenues to be able to save our schools," she said. "I'm angry at Senate Republicans for having purely an extremist ideology of never, no way ever, regardless of how it impacts Michigan, will they ever consider revenues. That philosophy is damaging to Michigan."
Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, dismissed Granholm's label as unproductive name-calling. Bishop, in a statement, said the House and Senate have cooperated to erase part of the budget deficit.
"The governor seems intent on derailing the bipartisan progress via her obsession with a massive tax increase on Michigan families," Bishop said. "Republicans and Democrats have both demonstrated in legislation that the current-year deficit can be balanced with cuts."
Warren Consolidated Schools Superintendent James Clor said a $125-per-pupil cut would cost his district of more than 15,000 students about $1.9 million. He said the district's $13-million reserve would last three months.
"This is a shock, that it has to happen instantly," Clor said. "I hope it's a move that Granholm has to do to have these senators and legislators wake up."
He added, "What happens to districts that have no savings? Do they just close on that date? What do you do if you have no money?"
Avondale Schools Superintendent George Heitsch said a $125-per-pupil cut would cost his Auburn Hills district more than $400,000, which he said would be lumped onto next year's deficit.
Asked whether it would force an early end to the school year, he said, "We would not want that to happen."
This week, the Senate sent to Granholm a House bill that lops $300 million from the School Aid Fund deficit, mostly through accounting maneuvers. The bill still left a $62-million school budget hole. Granholm said she plans to sign it.
Combined with the March revenue shortfall, the School Aid Fund will remain $198 million in the hole when state economists meet in May to officially announce new revenue projections.
Earlier this month, Granholm and the Legislature cut $344 million from the current year's budget.
Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi, chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees tax issues, said Granholm hasn't done enough to trim such growing costs as health insurance and pensions for Michigan school employees. She said the governor's criticism of Republicans makes it more difficult to reach a budget compromise.
Cassis said a tax increase might be considered as a last resort for the 2007-08 fiscal year, adding that school funding may have to be scaled back, though not as much as Granholm's $125-per-pupil cut.
Contact CHRIS CHRISTOFF at 517-372-8660 or christoff@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
OLD MATH!
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April 27, 2007
Daniel Howes
Daniel Howes: Jig is up on fat school funding
You'd be irritated, too, if you'd been re-elected governor in a landslide last November
And your party, in control of the state House for the first time in a decade, dissed your plan for a 2-percent tax on services in about as much time it took you to propose it.
And your speaker, a private equity shark-turned-Democrat, didn't buy it either. Then he and the guys heading the tax policy committee recast a replacement to the Single Business Tax that Republicans, automakers, key chambers of commerce and other business leaders greeted with the kind of respect and qualified consideration that made you look, well, like an outsider.
And your tactic of whipsawing more revenue from the Senate GOP so you can plow it back into the entitlement maw that is Michigan's public schools didn't work. So the answer, just months after magically coming up with $220 more in (pre-election) per-pupil funding, is to take more than half of it back, call the Republicans "extremists" who "won't consider revenues" and bank that the public buys the charade.
But here's the bipartisan problem facing Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester: The cash burn consuming Michigan public-school funding won't stop unless something changes fundamentally.
Almost every penny of the cash Granholm found last fall, minus the $125 per head she's promising to pull back, wasn't headed to "the kids" anyway. It was destined for negotiated health care benefits and retirement fund payments whose rates are dictated by state bureaucrats.
Here's an example that should be familiar to Bishop. In the current year, according to estimates prepared for the Rochester school board, the 14,800-student system has an estimated payroll of $57.95 million for 847 teachers. The district pays pay an additional 17.74 percent, or another $10.3 million, into the state teacher retirement system.
By the 2008-09 fiscal year, estimates show, Rochester schools expect to be paying 21 percent of payroll (up from 14.87 percent in '04-05) into the system. That's $13.2 million on top of an estimated $62.9 million in payroll for a total of $80.9 million (including payroll taxes), or easily more than $100,000 per teacher.
The point here is not an emotional one, although it will surely be made that, or that teachers are "the problem." It's that the system, absent either massive revenue expansions through growth (unlikely near-term) or annual tax grabs (more likely), is financially unsustainable -- even in comparatively wealthy Rochester.
Rochester's payments into the state retirement system are expected to be 28.1 percent higher by the 2008-09 year than today, while salaries are expected to increase 8.5 percent over the same period.
Compare that to your 401(k) at work, where employers typically contribute 4 percent or 6 percent of salary as a "match" to employee contributions. As salaries grow through raises and promotions, the contributions grow even if the percentage doesn't because to increase wages and, at the same time, increase the percentage match would outrun the ability of almost any business to keep up.
But that's exactly what's going on in many school districts across the state. It's not the only challenge among countless others facing Granholm and the Legislature, but it's a major one pressuring state and local budgets every year -- and it needs to change.
Daniel Howes can be reached at (313) 222-2106, dchowes@detnews.com or http://info.detnews.com/danielhowesblog. Catch him Fridays with Paul W. Smith on NewsTalk 760-WJR.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Yin and Yang of the 21st Century!
Am I An Anachronism?
21st Century Leaders
Not too long ago I was participating in a national meeting of K-12 CIOs, listening to a panel discussion on the latest developments in district IT shops. Although the three panelists were justifiably proud of their accomplishments, I was struck by the absence of a common component from almost all of the presentations and ensuing discussions. Yet I could not quite put my finger on what was missing.
The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I began to feel. I started to wonder if perhaps the unnerving feeling was due to a lack of familiarity with key concepts, a fear not uncommon to professionals who reach my age. I not only began to feel old, but wondered for the first time in my 39 years in education (34 in educational technology) if educational technology was passing me by.
My head was spinning. Was I becoming irrelevant? Were changes occurring at such a rate that I did not even know they were taking place? Put simply: Was I becoming an anachronism without even knowing it?
As an urban district technology leader for the past 22 years, I have tried to stay ahead of the curve and took pride in being able to marry ideas and concepts to reality. In recent years, for example, I directed the implementation of a GigE WAN throughout my district, along with a VoIP phone system, and instructional video streaming. Similarly, the district is changing its central information architecture and is in the middle of implementing an ERP. No, I don't think my feeling of discomfort is due to falling behind the technology curve.
Well, it's now 3:30 AM (one of my most productive times for problem solving), and I think I've figured it out: While differing in details, the CIOs who spoke at the conference all focused almost exclusively on the application of project management techniques. Indeed, each panelist showed off visual representations of relatively complex models using a large number of circles, squares, and other geometric forms in different colors.
As I considered the similarities of the project management-oriented presentations, I realized they were also very much alike in what they left out. In all three presentations, not one presenter (whom I respect for their accomplishments) mentioned words such as instruction, school, student, principal, or learning. I wondered if any of them had been to a school during the first week of classes or actually talked to a principal about one of the major information systems his or her staff had developed.
Unfortunately, there are CIOs, who, while designing systems to improve student achievement, have never visited a school, rarely talked to a principal, nor met with a curriculum coordinator. To remain aloof, distant, and even uncaring about the instructional side of the house cannot help a modern CIO, and, in the long term, will impair his or her IT program. It is difficult to get support from those you ignore.
Much of this attitude, I believe, stems from many IT directors coming into districts with little, if any, experience in education. Up until the last 7 to 10 years, IT leadership generally came from those who had years of K-12 experience. However, due to the increasing complexity of technology, the retirements of earlier generations of district-bred leaders, and the emphasis on accountability mandates, districts are increasingly hiring IT specialists from the private sector. This movement has transformed the meaning of IT from "instructional technology" to "information technology."
But while they may be experts in technology, these leaders too often have limited knowledge of the industry in which they function-education.
With a little effort, I believe the barriers between central IT and the schools can be significantly reduced. I suggest some of these for a start:
Set up a CIO/Principals' Advisory Committee to meet every month or two to discuss issues of importance. I did this at my district because it keeps me close to what's important at the ground level, and it lets me know how well my technology team is doing (The principals sometimes tell a different story than my managers.) Also, it lets me test out and gain support for new ideas.
Distribute a quarterly newsletter to key groups in schools. In my setting, for example, I wanted to increase rapport with school technology specialists. Although my leadership team and I frequently attend their monthly meetings, we felt an informational newsletter focusing on their particular needs would help. To see a sample newsletter, visit www.ccsd.net/tls/Newsletter/oct06/newsletter-full.htm (Note: Some of the links will not work outside the district intranet.)
Speak at technology events at schools or those sponsored by different district groups. Virtually all districts have some type of technology-related events going on, whether it is third graders showing off their PowerPoint presentations, a high school robotics competition, or the computer club meeting. While you certainly don't need to attend all of them, occasionally participating in one will help break down the barriers between the schools and your IT organization.
Visit a school. One of the things I enjoy doing, and don't do nearly enough, is to visit a school to see how technology is being used by staff and students. Usually I call up the principal the day before or the day of my trip, and ask if it is okay for me to visit the school for one hour. I assure principals that I'm not there to check on them and that I just need to visit some schools for my own mental health. Almost always they're delighted to host me and have the technology specialist take me around. It's a great opportunity to show off something they are quite proud of and/or hit me up for something special. Either way, I have won.
Support innovative instructional technology projects that are usually associated with schools or instructional applications. For example, recently our purchasing department did not want to buy 80+ tablet laptops for a middle school. They believed that tablets were too expensive. I intervened and not only got the purchasing staff to relent but worked with the vendor to get special pricing. Another time, I took the lead on implementing a Web-based library management system throughout the district. The key point in each of these examples is that I left the "IT Center" and was directly involved in instructional technology.
As for me and my quandary, I feel better now that I've figured out what was bothering me about the presentations. There's nothing anachronistic about a CIO focusing on where the rubber meets the road: students and learning.
Philip J. Brody, Ph.D. is chief technology officer/assistant superintendent of Clark County School District in Las Vegas.
21st Century Skills: Will Our Students Be Prepared?
Editor's Pick
Learning for the 21st Century, a report from the public-private coalition known as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, articulates a vision of how schools can best prepare students to succeed in the first decades of the 21st century. Central to the report's recommendations is a call for schools to focus on six key elements of 21st century learning:
1. Core Subjects: The authors reaffirm the importance of the core subjects identified by No Child Left Behind but challenge schools and policymakers to expand their focus beyond "basic competency" to understanding the core academic content at much higher levels.
2. Learning Skills: "To cope with the demands of the 21st century," the report states, "students need to know more than core subjects. They need to know how to use their knowledge and skills-by thinking critically, applying knowledge to new situations, analyzing information, comprehending new ideas, communicating, collaborating, solving problems, and making decisions."
3. 21st Century Tools: Recognizing that "technology is, and will continue to be, a driving force in workplaces, communities, and personal lives in the 21st century," Learning for the 21st Century emphasizes the importance of incorporating information and communication technologies into education from the elementary grades up.
4. 21st Century Context: Experiences that are relevant to students' lives, connected with the world beyond the classroom, and based on authentic projects are central to the sort of education the Partnership for 21st Century Skills defines as the appropriate context for learning in the information age.
5. 21st Century Content: The report's authors believe that certain content essential for preparing students to live and work in a 21st century world is missing from many state and local standards.
6. New Assessments that Measure 21st Century Skills: "As pervasive as assessment seems to be today," the report says, "it remains an emerging and challenging field that demands further study and innovation." Recommendations include moving beyond standardized testing as the sole measure of student learning; balancing traditional tests with classroom assessments to measure the full range of students' skills; and using technology-based assessments to deliver immediate feedback.
Just as the CEO Forum on Education and Technology included a StaR (School Technology and Readiness) Chart in its 2001 report to aid schools in identifying their level of technology readiness and preparation, Learning for the 21st Century features a fold-out MILE (Milestones for Improving Learning and Education) Guide to help measure progress at preparing students to meet the challenges of the new millennium.
What's New Here?
Many of the themes explored in Learning for the 21st Century will be familiar to educators who have read the 1991 SCANS Report (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) or subsequent reports issued by the CEO Forum. Both groups outlined a variety of skills-including higher-order thinking, personal abilities, and technology literacy-essential for preparing students for a knowledge-based economy.
So what is new about the recommendations being made by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills? "To some degree, the recommendations are not all that new," says Chris Dede, professor of learning technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an education advisor to the partnership, "and that, in itself, is newsworthy. The fact that educators and business leaders keep returning to many of the same findings means we have a lot of confidence in them-that they're not part of a temporary fad."
Another partnership advisor, Paul Resta, director of the Learning Technology Center at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees that the consensus arrived at by the partnership is noteworthy-especially because of the large number of stakeholders from business, K-12 schools, higher education, and government who participated in its creation. In addition, he points out that it delves deeper into the how of delivering 21st century skills than its predecessors.
John Wilson, vice chair for the 21st Century Skills partnership and executive director of the National Education Association adds that, "While previous works have focused on technology, this goes beyond that to what we need to do to prepare students for a world that is vastly transformed by technology, making it necessary to constantly learn and adapt."
NCLB and 21st Century Skills: Contradictory or Complementary?
For some who attended the Learning for the 21st Century press conference, there was something incongruous about listening to John Bailey, director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology, endorse the report-including its suggestion that "standardized tests can measure only a few of the critical skills that we hope our students will learn." After all, for many educators today the government's No Child Left Behind program is synonymous with high-stakes testing and a narrowing vision of what constitutes achievement.
For example, social studies teacher and media coach Marco Torres laments the fact that his students, who create outstanding multimedia projects that demonstrate both knowledge and creativity, are forced to attend four-hour Saturday "drill-and-kill" sessions if they fail to pass a weekly test. "Many of my colleagues feel too overwhelmed to focus on teaching or learning. Louder, slower, and more repetitive seems to be the pedagogy of choice of low-income schools like mine," he says.
ISTE president Jan Van Dam concurs with the feeling that, "Many districts are so overwhelmed and concerned about the NCLB requirements and potential financial repercussions of not complying, that for lots of them the safest route is the 'back-to-basics' approach-focusing entirely on 20th century skills at the expense of 21st century ones."
But both Van Dam and Bailey believe that it does not have to be this way. "It's not an either/or choice," says Bailey. "We can teach higher-order thinking skills and have students using 21st century tools at the same time that they master core content areas." He points out that NCLB does not mandate that measures of average yearly performance be based solely on tests of lower-order thinking skills and that many of the 21st century skills outlined in the partnership's report are already part of state standards.
"I wholeheartedly agree that there is no need for an either/or approach," adds Van Dam. "There needs to be less fear and more creativity applied to the methods used to meet the needs of NCLB."
Basic Skills Revisited
One of the key points of Learning for the 21st Century, according to John Wilson, is that we are defining essential skills too narrowly. "As our nation focuses on the basics, it is noteworthy that government, educators, and private industry are unified in underlining that 21st century skills must be part of today's basics," he says.
The report states, "Literacy in the 21st century means more than basic reading, writing, and computing skills. As writer Alvin Toffler points out, 'The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.'"
Learning for the 21st Century reminds readers that NCLB defines core subjects to include the arts, civics, and a number of other subjects often overlooked in back-to-basics curricula and that many states and districts already incorporate a wide range of learning skills into their standards. Now, the report says, it is time to "emphasize them strategically and comprehensively" - and to add some more key skills to the list.
Technology's Role Today
Although the authors are careful to point out that there are plenty of learning skills that have nothing to do with technology, they describe 21st century tools - including computers, telecommunications, and audio- or video-based media - as critical enablers of learning in a number of realms. And the fact that the information age that has resulted from the widespread adoption of such tools places us "in a world of almost unlimited streams of trivial and profound information, of enormous opportunity and difficult choices," necessitates an emphasis on information and communication technology literacy skills that will allow students to make sense of it all.
While many education, business, and government leaders concur with the importance of technology as a tool for 21st century teaching and learning, this realization contrasts sharply with what is happening in a number of states and districts as they scramble to respond to budget cuts and accountability pressures. "Unfortunately," says Margaret Honey, vice president and director of EDC's Center for Children and Technology, "in the schools that have the most pressure on them to improve test scores, technology often takes a back seat, along with the arts or anything that is seen as peripheral."
"I think everyone recognizes the importance of technology," agrees Ginger Jewell, coordinator of educational technology for the Clarke County School District in Georgia, "but it sometimes comes down to Solomon-like decisions. We've lost the technology money that was generated by the lottery and that is a tremendous blow. We also had to scale back the regular budget to accommodate unfunded NCLB mandates." Nevertheless, she says, her district continues to support its technology program with help from a local sales tax. "I actually think we're experiencing better use as teachers see the technology as a tool to accomplish academic goals rather than an add-on to an already busy day."
Having Faith in 21st Century Teaching
The authors of Learning for the 21st Century are clear that an emphasis on learning skills, 21st century tools, global awareness, and other elements of 21st century curriculum can - and should - coexist with core content. "Both [basic and 21st century skills] are essential," they write, "and, when taught concurrently, one reinforces the other."
According to Chris Dede, "In their focus on achievement lots of people are going back to behaviorist ideas from the first half of the 20th century, which said that basics must come first, and only when you know all the basic concepts and skills can you move on to learn about more complex interrelationships. Unfortunately, many kids get bored or burned out long before they get there. The drill kills their natural curiosity and they stop even trying."
"There is plenty of evidence," he continues, "that it is possible to learn the simple things in the process of addressing a complicated problem. Given interesting but complex challenges and projects, students are often motivated to learn the basic computation skills or simple facts that they need to master the problem."
The value of rich, multidisciplinary, technology-infused learning seems so obvious to educators who have seen its impact on young people that it is often frustrating to be asked to prove it using tests. Eeva Reeder, educational consultant and project-based learning specialist, speaks for many of her colleagues when she says, "A massive amount of research has made it clear how people learn and don't learn. The fact that it is still being debated is baffling. We need to use our common sense and pay attention. All human beings learn by doing, analyzing, talking, processing, and problem-solving. Talking at kids never has been and never will be an effective way to help them learn."
At the same time, there is good news for those who are resigned to the idea that test scores will continue to take center stage, at least for the near future. According to a number of researchers, rich 21st century learning experiences commonly do translate into higher test scores. Paul Resta describes two projects he worked on with secondary schools in Texas. Both focused on cooperative learning and knowledge construction in the context of English and social science instruction. "The teachers and administrators were very nervous about the nontraditional nature of the activities and how they would affect test scores. In the end, the students involved in these two projects all scored as well as their peers on some of the tests and significantly better on others."
It is interesting to note that these sorts of gains are true in spite of the fact that allowing students to solve real-world problems, collaborate with others, and create presentations to demonstrate their learning takes more time - time that might otherwise be used to speed through additional content material. Both Dede and fellow advisor Margaret Honey point to the importance of deep learning. "A broad overview is important," says Honey, "but stopping frequently to involve students in projects that allow them to go deep is equally important. We need a balanced approach."
Ironically, educators' worries about test scores might eventually be what it takes to make them broaden their teaching methods. "Let's be honest," says Michael Simkins, creative director for the California-based Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership, "we can get some initial gains on tests by teaching to the test and practicing test taking skills. Ultimately, though, we're going to hit an achievement wall. The irony here is that teachers are most likely to drill basic skills even harder in their effort to keep getting new achievement gains when, in fact, it may only be through engaging kids in higher-order thinking activities that they have any chance of breaking through those subsequent achievement barriers."
New Assessments and Measures of Progress
Regardless of the impact of 21st century learning on test scores, there is clearly a need for assessment tools that measure those essential skills that will never be captured by traditional tests. Even before Learning for the 21st Century challenged states and districts to add new skills to their lists of essentials, many of the standards on the list were being played down or ignored simply because they weren't easy to measure. Or, as the report reminds us, "What gets measured gets taught... We must measure what we value - or it won't be taught."
While the urgency is evident, the mandate for what must follow is a little fuzzier. Twenty-first century project and portfolio assessments are great classroom-level tools for monitoring the progress of individual students but, as the report mentions, "These assessments typically are not valid or reliable for broad comparisons across classrooms or schools." Other new approaches, such as computer-delivered tests, are helping with scoring and rapid feedback to schools - an essential element if we are to use the results to help students - but do not dramatically broaden the sorts of things that are being tested.
Whether second-generation assessment tools can bridge the gap - allowing the entire nation to focus on what's important, not just what can be tested easily - is a big question. John Wilson, for one, is optimistic that "technology will help us find ways to more effectively utilize assessment both for identifying overall achievement patterns as well as for helping individual students learn. Devising these much-needed quality assessments must be a priority of our policymakers."
In the meantime, the report places surprisingly little emphasis on other measures of progress that so many educators point to as compelling evidence that their 21st century teaching is paying off. While NCLB legislation permits states to use a variety of measures for measuring annual yearly progress, factors such as student attendance, college acceptances, or student and parent satisfaction, are receiving far less publicity than test scores.
And yet those are the factors that administrators at New York's widely respected Urban Academy tout when they talk about the measures of success that matter to them and their school community. "Why is Urban Academy so successful?" they ask at their Web site - and then go on to explain that 97 percent of their graduates enter four-year universities, they have virtually no violence, theft, or teacher turnover, and their attendance and dropout rates are far better than those seen in most other New York City schools.
And those are the factors Marco Torres takes pride in as he surveys his classroom. "My students just had a film festival last week that over 500 community folks attended. Within three days, the Web site had 22,000 hits," he says. "Here, in one of the poorest areas of Los Angeles County, I have kids who have self-esteem, who are going to college, who are being recruited to help make companies and institutions more effective, who are being treated like queens and kings by our elected officials and being recognized in front of L.A. City Council for their commitment to giving our community a voice. Come to my class when the bell rings and see how many kids get up to go home. They want to be there, they want to finish their projects, they want to learn more." If that's not achievement, what is?
By Judy Salpeter.
This article first appeared in Technology & Learning.
A VERY FAMILIAR THEME! Name that Tune!
MIKE FLANAGAN: RETHINK EDUCATION FOR FUTURE
While the policymakers in Lansing wrangle about how much education Michigan can afford, State School Superintendent Mike Flanagan wants to make one thing clear: our state cannot afford to settle for the level of education we have provided in the past.
Flanagan says that does not necessarily mean spending a lot more money. To a large degree, it comes down to raising the bar and expecting more from kids, teachers and parents.
"It's not corny to say that if you expect more, you will get more," Flanagan said.
It's also time to re-think the way teachers are trained, Flanagan said. Techniques that might work with college-bound kids, for example, might not be adequate to give others the math they now need to get jobs in fields like home building. He said educators also need to find ways to weave technology into their teaching methods.
Podcast: WWJ Newsradio 950's Greg Bowman talked with Mike Flanagan as part of WWJ's Our Michigan, Our Future project. To listen, click here. 
Sunday, April 22, 2007
On Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurialism in Michigan
| Monday, April 16, 2007 Updated Study Says Michigan Still Struggles to Grow Entrepreneurs | |||
| LANSING - The latest Small Business Foundation of Michigan's Entrepreneurship Score Card, released Monday, finds that Michigan last year lost ground in developing new, high growth job-creating entrepreneurial small businesses. The Score Card gives Michigan a 2006 grade of "D-minus" for entrepreneurial dynamism, down from the 2005 "D" grade and edging closer to the failing "F" grade that Michigan received for 2004. The Score Card project is a collaborative project of the Small Business Foundation of Michigan (SBFM) and GrowthEconomics, Inc. Financial sponsors are Automation Alley, Central Michigan University, the Edward Lowe Foundation, Lawrence Technological University, MERRA, the Michigan Entrepreneurial Education Network, Michigan State Housing Development Authority, Michigan Technological University, MiBiz, Next Energy, Schoolcraft College, Saginaw Valley State University and the Small Business Association of Michigan. The SBFM defines entrepreneurial dynamism as a composite measure of Michigan’s performance in entrepreneurial change, entrepreneurial vitality and entrepreneurial climate. “While Michigan has not achieved its full entrepreneurial dynamism potential, there are some things it does right – it is still making tremendous progress in areas critical to robust entrepreneurship, such as private lending to small businesses, university spinout businesses and entrepreneurial education,” said SBFM executive director Mark Clevey. “However, the economic impacts of factors like globalization and restructuring of old-line industries will continue to have negative effects on entrepreneurship. Michigan needs to do even more if it is to accelerate entrepreneurial dynamism and create more jobs for our struggling economy.” Here’s how Michigan ranks compared to other states: Entrepreneurial Change (the amount of recent entrepreneurial growth or decline in an economy): 46th Entrepreneurial Vitality (the absolute level of entrepreneurial activity): 38th Entrepreneurial Climate (the capability of an economy to foster entrepreneurship): 38th Business Costs and Productivity: 41st Quality of Life: 37th Government Efficiency and Regulatory Environment: 26th Infrastructure: 24th University Spinout Businesses: 16th Workforce Preparedness: 10th Education and Workforce: 8th Broadband Coverage: 4th Private Lending to Small Businesses: 3rd Although the Foundation does not advocate policy positions, Clevey says Michigan can improve its entrepreneurial dynamism by paying greater attention to entrepreneurial education, economic development strategy, access to capital, technology commercialization and developing a business climate that nurtures entrepreneurs. Promotion sponsors are Ann Arbor SPARK, Creating Entrepreneurial Communities (CEC), Michigan State University; Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, Great Lakes Angels, Inc., Great Lakes Entrepreneur Quest, Keweenaw Economic Development Alliance, Michigan Homeland Security Consortium, Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, Michigan Ross School of Business, Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity, James Madison College, Michigan State University; Midland Tomorrow, Michigan Venture Capital Association, Prima Civitas Foundation and Vision Tri-County. | |||
Author: Staff Writer Source: MITechNews.Com |
Friday, April 20, 2007
Technology's ability to personalize instruction
Technology's 'greatest potential' for education: Personalizing instruction By Dennis Pierce, Managing Editor, eSchool News March 29, 2007
Calling technology's greatest potential for education its ability to personalize instruction, Katie Lovett, chair of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), kicked off the group's 12th annual K-12 School Networking Conference in San Francisco March 28.
The conference brought together school district chief information officers and other educational technology leaders from around the globe to discuss key ed-tech challenges and solutions. One of these challenges, Lovett noted in setting the stage for the meeting's opening general session, is the need to break out of the mold of the one-size-fits-all approach to instruction.
Lovett, who is the CIO of Georgia's Fulton County Schools, introduced Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. Dede moderated an opening general session that explored two creative yet very different approaches to personalizing instruction with the help of technology.
One of these approaches is Notschool.net, a United Kingdom-based international virtual learning community. Notschool.net offers an alternative to traditional education for students who, for a variety of reasons, can't cope with school.
"We're the absolute antithesis of what school is," said Jean Johnson, project director.
Johnson explained that Notschool allows students to take ownership of the curriculum and shape their own education. They can choose their areas of study, and because instruction is asynchronous and online, they can choose when they'll participate. "Teenagers don't want to learn at 8 o'clock in the morning," she said--but, given a choice over the direction of their education, they do want to learn.
Operating within the confines of the traditional school system, Virginia's Fairfax County Public Schools--the nation's 12th largest school district--is working to create an Individual Learning Plan for each of its 163,000 students. "It's time to craft our vision for the future, instead of dwelling on the past," Superintendent Jack D. Dale told conference attendees.
After Johnson and Dale described their respective projects, Dede moderated a discussion about the challenges each faces. He concluded the session by noting that, while it's clear technology allows educators to personalize instruction "in ways we never could before," school leaders often must confront significant political and cultural hurdles to make this happen.
(Note: For highlights of this opening general session, see the nine-minute video clip titled "Personalized learning.")
Re-engaging students
A key idea to emerge from this opening general session was the need for schools to re-engage today's youth.
"Why are kids on MySpace?" Johnson asked conference attendees. "They're there because they want to be there." But, too often, the same can't be said about school. Today's students are growing up immersed in a world of video games, cell phones, and instant messaging--but when they get to school, they're often forced to leave these technologies at the door.
In an international symposium held March 27, the day before the conference officially began, CoSN brought together education leaders from several nations to discuss how computer games and simulations--interactive media that today's students embrace and understand--can be used as serious learning tools.
The symposium included an address from Lord David Puttnam, a widely respected British filmmaker and education official. Puttnam, whose films include The Mission, The Killing Fields, and Chariots of Fire, is the only non-American to lead a major Hollywood studio, having run Columbia Pictures in the 1980s. After retiring from the film industry, he went to work for the United Kingdom's Education Department, where he has sought to spread the message that today's schools must change if they are to reach a new generation of learners.
In an interview with eSchool News, Puttnam said education can learn a lot from the entertainment industry. The primary lesson? "Know your audience," he said.
(Note: For highlights of the interview with Lord Puttnam, see the five-minute video clip titled "Know your audience.")
The exploration of computer gaming as a serious approach to instruction continued on the conference's first day, with a session examining a project in Japan, called the Instructional Activities Game (AIG), that is using games in teacher education, and another session that looked at existing research on the effectiveness of using games to teach core curricular content.
Links:
Consortium for School Networkinghttp://www.cosn.org/
Notschools.nethttp://www.notschools.net/
Fairfax County Public Schoolshttp://www.fcps.k12.va.us/
http://www.eschoolnews.com/ info@eschoolnews.com 7920 Norfolk Ave., Suite 900 Bethesda, MD 20814 (800) 394-0115 - Fax (301) 913-0119 Privacy Policy Manage your FREE eSchool News eMail subscriptions here Contents Copyright 2007 eSchool News. All rights reserved.
Calling technology's greatest potential for education its ability to personalize instruction, Katie Lovett, chair of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), kicked off the group's 12th annual K-12 School Networking Conference in San Francisco March 28.
The conference brought together school district chief information officers and other educational technology leaders from around the globe to discuss key ed-tech challenges and solutions. One of these challenges, Lovett noted in setting the stage for the meeting's opening general session, is the need to break out of the mold of the one-size-fits-all approach to instruction.
Lovett, who is the CIO of Georgia's Fulton County Schools, introduced Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. Dede moderated an opening general session that explored two creative yet very different approaches to personalizing instruction with the help of technology.
One of these approaches is Notschool.net, a United Kingdom-based international virtual learning community. Notschool.net offers an alternative to traditional education for students who, for a variety of reasons, can't cope with school.
"We're the absolute antithesis of what school is," said Jean Johnson, project director.
Johnson explained that Notschool allows students to take ownership of the curriculum and shape their own education. They can choose their areas of study, and because instruction is asynchronous and online, they can choose when they'll participate. "Teenagers don't want to learn at 8 o'clock in the morning," she said--but, given a choice over the direction of their education, they do want to learn.
Operating within the confines of the traditional school system, Virginia's Fairfax County Public Schools--the nation's 12th largest school district--is working to create an Individual Learning Plan for each of its 163,000 students. "It's time to craft our vision for the future, instead of dwelling on the past," Superintendent Jack D. Dale told conference attendees.
After Johnson and Dale described their respective projects, Dede moderated a discussion about the challenges each faces. He concluded the session by noting that, while it's clear technology allows educators to personalize instruction "in ways we never could before," school leaders often must confront significant political and cultural hurdles to make this happen.
(Note: For highlights of this opening general session, see the nine-minute video clip titled "Personalized learning.")
Re-engaging students
A key idea to emerge from this opening general session was the need for schools to re-engage today's youth.
"Why are kids on MySpace?" Johnson asked conference attendees. "They're there because they want to be there." But, too often, the same can't be said about school. Today's students are growing up immersed in a world of video games, cell phones, and instant messaging--but when they get to school, they're often forced to leave these technologies at the door.
In an international symposium held March 27, the day before the conference officially began, CoSN brought together education leaders from several nations to discuss how computer games and simulations--interactive media that today's students embrace and understand--can be used as serious learning tools.
The symposium included an address from Lord David Puttnam, a widely respected British filmmaker and education official. Puttnam, whose films include The Mission, The Killing Fields, and Chariots of Fire, is the only non-American to lead a major Hollywood studio, having run Columbia Pictures in the 1980s. After retiring from the film industry, he went to work for the United Kingdom's Education Department, where he has sought to spread the message that today's schools must change if they are to reach a new generation of learners.
In an interview with eSchool News, Puttnam said education can learn a lot from the entertainment industry. The primary lesson? "Know your audience," he said.
(Note: For highlights of the interview with Lord Puttnam, see the five-minute video clip titled "Know your audience.")
The exploration of computer gaming as a serious approach to instruction continued on the conference's first day, with a session examining a project in Japan, called the Instructional Activities Game (AIG), that is using games in teacher education, and another session that looked at existing research on the effectiveness of using games to teach core curricular content.
Links:
Consortium for School Networkinghttp://www.cosn.org/
Notschools.nethttp://www.notschools.net/
Fairfax County Public Schoolshttp://www.fcps.k12.va.us/
http://www.eschoolnews.com/ info@eschoolnews.com 7920 Norfolk Ave., Suite 900 Bethesda, MD 20814 (800) 394-0115 - Fax (301) 913-0119 Privacy Policy Manage your FREE eSchool News eMail subscriptions here Contents Copyright 2007 eSchool News. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
On INNOVATON STATIONS and "Shade Tree Mechanics"
Video: The Creative Power of JDK | by JDK Design
Oh YEAH!
An Evolutionary Approach to Innovation
by Richard Watson
Can biology teach us anything about innovation? The essence of Darwinism is that progress is created by adaptation to changed conditions. What starts as a random mutation can also spread to become the norm through a process of natural selection.
The same is surely true with innovation. New ideas are mutations created when two or more old ideas combine. For instance, Virgin Atlantic Airways is what happens when you cross an entertainment company with an airline business.
Virgin itself is also a good example of mutation and adaptation. The music retail business was created when a postal strike threatened to shut down the fledgling mail order record company. Virgin Atlantic was the result of an unsolicited approach from outside the company. Virgin Blue (a low-cost airline in Australia) is a similar story.
In my experience, what makes Virgin innovative is a strong sense of self, an ability to experiment, the skill to cross-fertilize ideas, and a willingness to change. The company has largely grown, not through the unfolding of some master plan, but through an accumulation of learning and ideas caused by threats, accidents and luck.
So, if external events and adaptation are the driving forces of biological evolution, is it possible to develop an innovation process that seeks out accidents and mutations?
This is an idea being developed by companies like Brand Genetics in the UK and Dr. Ron Alexander in Australia.
The list of things created by accident is certainly impressive; Aspirin, Band-Aids, Diners Club, DNA finger printing, dynamite, inoculation, Jell-O, Lamborghini, microwave ovens, nylon, penicillin, velcro and Vodafone to name just a few.
However, one of the defining characteristics of business is a preoccupation with orderly process ("If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."). So it's hard to imagine corporate cultures embracing randomness -- or agreeing with John Lennon, who said, "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."
Accidents are born of experimentation, but the automotive and fashion industries are almost the only industries that publicly experiment with radical mutations. What, for example, is the soft drink industry equivalent of a concept car at the Detroit Motor Show?
Zara, the Spanish clothing retailer, is a classic example of experimentation and adaptation. Store managers send customer feedback and observations to in-house design teams via PDAs. This helps the company to spot fashion trends and adapt merchandise to local tastes.
Just-in-time production (an idea transferred from the automotive industry), then gives the company an edge in terms of speed and flexibility. The result is a three-week turnaround time for new products (the industry average is nine months), and 10,000 new designs every year -- none of which stay in store for more than four weeks.
The analogy of biology also leads to an interesting idea about whether companies are best thought of in mechanical or biological terms. Traditionally, we have likened companies to machines. Organisations are mechanical devices (engines if you like) that can be tuned by experts to deliver optimum performance.
For companies that are looking to fine tune what they already do, this is probably correct. A product like the Porsche 911 evolves due to a process of continuous improvement and slowly changing environmental factors. The focus is on repetition. Development is logical and linear.
However, if you're seeking to revolutionize a product or market, the biological model is an interesting thinking tool. In this context, biology reminds us that random events and non-linear thinking cause developmental jumps. Unlike machines, living things have the ability to identify and translate opportunities and threats into strategies for survival. A good example is Mercedes-Benz working with Swatch watches to create the Smart car.
Creative leaps are usually the result of accidental cross-fertilization (variation) or rapid adaptation caused by the threat of change. Hence the importance of identifying an enemy, setting unrealistic deadlines and using diverse teams to create paradigm shifts.
The latter is a route employed by MIT who mix different disciplines together. As Nicholas Negroponte puts it, "New ideas do not necessarily live within the borders of existing intellectual domains. In fact they are most often at the edges and in curious intersections."
This is a thought echoed by Edward de Bono, who talks about the need for provocation and discontinuity. In order to come up with a new solution you must first jump laterally to a different start or end point.
For example, if you want to revolutionise the hotel industry you need to identify the assumptions upon which the industry operates and then create a divergent strategy. This could lead you to invent Formule 1 Hotels (keep prices low by focusing on beds, hygiene, and privacy), or another value innovator, easyHotel (keep rooms cheap by making guests hire their own bed linen and clean their own rooms).
What else can you do to create these jumps? A good place to start is to look at the edge (fringe) of existing markets. Here you'll find the misfits and the rebels. Companies that see things differently. People young enough not to realise that new ideas are impossible, or old enough not to care.
How else can you use a Darwinian approach to innovation? Here are five ideas:
- Look at the big evolutionary picture -- what are the driving forces?
- Create mutations -- unusual combinations of people and ideas.
- Look for new ideas and conditions that could disrupt your market.
- Treat accidents as opportunities for divergence and adaptation.
- Cooperate with other companies (create mutually beneficial eco-systems)
Finally, remember the words of Charles Darwin, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Garage Shop Innovation
by Richard Watson
Too much experience, too much familiarity, or too much money can kill innovation fast. That's why game changing ideas tend to come from a lone inventor or two in a cramped garage.
A while ago I wrote a piece for Fast Company called "An Evolutionary Approach to Innovation." The central idea was that Darwinism teaches us quite a bit about innovation. In particular, random mutations and adaptations caused by a particular local context or by rapidly changing conditions can spread to become the norm through a process of natural selection. Innovations are generally mutations created when one or more old idea is cross-fertilized by another.
The same is true with trends. New trends emerge when someone starts to think or behave differently -- or starts to create or customize something because existing offers do not fit with their needs or circumstances. If conditions are right a trend will become widely accepted, eventually moving from the fringe to the mass-market and from early adopters and trendsetters to laggards. Trends that occur at an intersection of other trends may also turn into megatrends, which are the key disrupters and drivers of innovation and change across all industries.
Creative leaps also tend to emerge when someone with a differing perspective tries something new -- either through bravery or sheer naivety. If that person is young or comes from another place (i.e. a different discipline or perhaps a different country) things sometime start to happen. Put two or move differing people together and the sparks can really fly.
But why is this so? In my experience it's because older people have usually invested too much under the current system and therefore have too much to lose if a new idea displaces an older one. Equally, people that don't move around or come from the same department or discipline sometimes fail to see what is hidden under their own noses, whereas people from ‘somewhere else' often see it.
For these reasons game changing ideas and radical innovations tend to come, not from well-funded industry incumbents (i.e. large organizations), but from lone inventors or a couple of individuals in a cramped garage. In other words, too much experience, too much familiarity or too much money can kill innovation faster than phrases like "I like it but" and "We tried that once."
Perhaps this explains why, for instance, 25% of Silicon Valley startups are created by either Indian or Chinese entrepreneurs. They see things differently. Another example of outsider thinking and mutation is Virgin Atlantic Airways. Richard Branson managed to shake up the airline industry precisely because he did not have an airline industry background. So when other airlines were worrying about legroom, routes and punctuality, Branson was cross-fertilising his experience from the entertainment industry and worrying about why flying wasn't more fun.
Not all new ideas and innovations make it of course. It's a case of survival of the fittest (or luckiest). Eventually, however, the sheer number of new ideas that are hatched means that a few emerge and make it into the mainstream where they do battle with deeply set vested interests. Then it's usually youth and energy versus experience and money. Organizations are like this too in a sense. They start of hungry, agile and curious and end up bloated, lazy and stiff.
So my question is this. If external events and adaptation are the driving forces of innovation, is it possible to develop an innovative culture and process that seeks out change and mutation? Moreover, if evolution is the result of genetic accidents is it possible to replicate such accidents through experimentation? An imminent threat of extinction would certainly explain why it often takes a crisis to spur a lazy and bureaucratic organization to adapt and embrace change.
My answer is that generally speaking it's not. This may be a heretical statement, especially coming from someone that makes a living advising companies how to create innovation systems, but I think it's true. Some large companies are excellent at innovation. It's their reason for being and is imprinted in their DNA.
However, for most large organizations innovation is an inconvenience. Organizational cultures develop a kind of corporate immune system that subconsciously suppresses or rejects any new idea that could threaten the existing business. Quite right too. The primary aim of established organizations is to extract revenue and profit from legacy businesses and not to do anything that would upset the apple cart.
This primarily means executing flawlessly in the present and requires tight control and strict hierarchies. Small companies, in contrast, have less to lose and are not encumbered by their history. Their mental models about 'what works' are less fixed and they are more open to picking up weak signals about change.
So here's my idea. If your organization is the kind that does innovation well, then great. Equally, if you're halfway decent at innovation, keep with the program and perhaps play around with some of these thoughts about using trends as a framework for innovation and scenario planning. If you're lucky you may give birth to a strange mutation. If this happens recognize it as a gift and run with it as far as it goes.
If, however, you are the type of organization that's not very good at innovation then give up. That's right. Throw in the towel and get into hunting instead of agriculture. In other words stop trying to grow your own through research & development and go out hunting with mergers and acquisitions instead. Seek out small innovative companies and buy them.
Big organizations, even ones that are really bad at innovation, are very good at scaling up an idea and dealing with everything from intellectual property and sales to marketing and finance. This is handy because these things are precisely what startups and small companies are often very bad at.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Watkins on DIGITAL! The MESSAGE is in here somewhere
Tom Watkins
Schools must play high-tech catch-up
April 18, 2007
The iPod-in-every-pot plan that state House Democrats appeared to be promoting and then backed away from last week was just plain goofy. The idea of bringing more technology into our schools, however, is not, and it's too bad that the House Democrats have set it back some when they should have been focused on solving the state budget crisis. That's the best thing they can do for kids.
But let's be clear: The students in our schools today will confront a rapidly changing, disruptive, information and technologically driven world that will defy predictability. Will they be ready?
The answer is no, if we continue to think our public schools should resemble what they were when today's adults passed through them in the 20th Century.
A recent report by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an organization that includes the country's top business, education and technology leaders, captures the essence of the dilemma facing our schools: "Today's education system faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn." We need to break down the 2-by-4-by-6 paradigm of today's public education system -- two covers of a textbook, four walls of a classroom and a six-hour school day.
As Michigan attempts to catch up with the 21st Century, this state must realize that our children have to compete with the children of the world, not just those from adjacent school districts or states. It is imperative that policy makers and educators address the fact that in a hyper-competitive, entrepreneurial, information age, the old way of providing education must be altered -- and sooner rather than later. Michigan's students must be the recipients of an agile system of education and public policies that effect substantive change.
IPods and other technological opportunities can and should be part of revolutionizing our schools. Information technology changes the relationship between people and knowledge and is reshaping in profound ways when and how we learn. Does the rapid evolution into a knowledge-based global society driven by information technologies sound like your neighborhood public school? If not, how can we expect our children and our state to be prepared to compete in the future?
In a rapidly changing world, staying even is falling behind.
Michigan cannot lead without casting off the anchors of attitude, archaic laws and public policies and beliefs that bind us to the 20th Century, status-quo education model. The House Democrats had the right idea, but rather than advancing the cause, their bumbling may have tied another anchor to the much needed education revolution.
TOM WATKINS, president and CEO of TDW and Associates, a business and education consulting company, was Michigan's state superintendent of schools from 2001-05. Contact him at tdwatkins@aol.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Monday, April 9, 2007
OUR OSMTech Partners: RUSH ON!
Hi all -
Dennis, Troy and I will be with Team RUSH, in Atlanta for the World Championships this week. Since most of you cannot join us in the fun, we are sending you the following websites to "webcast" our event and follow how we are doing.
We will update OUR website with our match schedule, so you know better when we will be on the fields. Our site is: www.teamrush27.net
Go to our site to see WHEN we will play, then go to the following sites to watch the webcast!
The following are the webcast addresses:
Team RUSH will be at the following fields:
Einstein (for Opening Ceremonies at 8:30 Friday morning - Kyle may be on stage for this one) Archimedes (Friday 9:00 - 6:00pm; Saturday until early afternoon) Einstein (for Finals and closing ceremonies - and awards - supposedly from 3-6pm) The webcasts for these fields are at:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics/
Thank you so much for all the support!
Go Team RUSH!
Kyle
Dennis, Troy and I will be with Team RUSH, in Atlanta for the World Championships this week. Since most of you cannot join us in the fun, we are sending you the following websites to "webcast" our event and follow how we are doing.
We will update OUR website with our match schedule, so you know better when we will be on the fields. Our site is: www.teamrush27.net
Go to our site to see WHEN we will play, then go to the following sites to watch the webcast!
The following are the webcast addresses:
Team RUSH will be at the following fields:
Einstein (for Opening Ceremonies at 8:30 Friday morning - Kyle may be on stage for this one) Archimedes (Friday 9:00 - 6:00pm; Saturday until early afternoon) Einstein (for Finals and closing ceremonies - and awards - supposedly from 3-6pm) The webcasts for these fields are at:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics/
Thank you so much for all the support!
Go Team RUSH!
Kyle
Saturday, April 7, 2007
NSF ITEST Grant 2007: Submission
Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST)
Program Solicitation
NSF 07-514
Replaces Document(s):
NSF 05-621
 | National Science Foundation Directorate for Education & Human Resources |
Preliminary Proposal Due Date(s) (required):
January 05, 2007
January 04, 2008
and the first Friday in January thereafter
Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. proposer's local time):
May 10, 2007
May 08, 2008
and the second Thursday in May thereafter
I wanted to share with you that we are invited to submit a full proposal to NSF-ITEST program. I would appreciate it for your time for a meeting at your convenience. We would definitely happy to have your input in this proposal.
Sincerely,
Mesut Duran
SoE, UM-D
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Moodle Smoodle
 |
The Model of a Modern Technology Classroom By Virginia Richard
from Educators' eZine In 2002, the Polk County School District received the "Enhancing Education through Technology Grant" (EETT) and started the Model Technology Classroom in which an exemplary teacher would integrate technology into his/her teaching strategies and model for other teachers a learning environment based upon the P21 Framework. Each year the program would recruit about 10 to 15 teachers, who would receive technology equipment for their classroom plus training on how to use the equipment and, most importantly, how to integrate technology use into the learning process. The district also provides infrastructure for the program to succeed. This is the fifth year of the program, and we have made tremendous progress on reaching our goal of a model technology classroom in 80 schools out of 156. The 2003-04 school year results are listed below. The program's goals are to:
To accomplish these goals, School Technology Services took the following steps:
We assessed the program by:
A standard Model Technology Classroom includes hardware, software, training and infrastructure � all critical in providing the opportunity for model technology teachers and students to become effective users of technology for teaching and learning. The technology tools consisted of 1 laptop, 1 LCD projector, 3 desktop computers, 1 printer, 1 screen, several headsets, and an AV cart. Administrators and teachers participated in specific technology training and curriculum integration modules that are part of the district technology training certification program before receiving this hardware and software. In 2003-04 we created Best Practices, and required model technology teachers to implement and follow these Best Practices in the classroom. The Best Practices are used as a guide to help teachers increase technology use in the classroom. They are also featured at teacher trainings and parent meetings to make them aware of their children's technology use. Best practices for model technology classrooms are defined as "a set of strategies that can be used to promote the ongoing use of technology in the classroom and increase student technology literacy skills."
Each one of the above Best Practices requires that the model teacher take an action to meet the goal, namely, that all administrators, teachers, and students will be technology literate by 2006. For example, research reveals that ongoing professional development must be there to help teachers utilize technology in the classroom. 2003-04 Project ResultsThe data of the assessment are presented in detail in another formal report; however, the highlights of these results are:
The data clearly shows improvement in the ability of teachers to integrate technology in the classroom and that student technology literacy increased. The implications are that the program was successful in meeting its goals. Teachers received resources which they are actively using and the classroom environment has changed. There are many more classrooms that reflect 21st century learning environments, in which students use technology to learn from one another, collaborate with peers and experts in the fields. RecommendationsSchool Technology Services hopes that they can continue to replicate this program after the end of the EETT grant so as to involve more teachers and therefore more students. We are trying to address the issues of lack of time and scheduling problems for teachers to attend training through another program called Technology Coaching. Some additional recommendations include:
If districts are interested in more information about Polk County's Model Technology Teacher Program, please visit our website, Model Technology Teachers |
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
SOMETHING on DIGITAL RELEVANCE!
Elizabeth Igarza, college and high school instructor
We can join with them in the new genre of writing text messages and instant messages, show them how they are different in structure, content, and form from formal email and letter writing, and tap into their creativity by inspiring them to connect this new way of communicating with formal or classic modes.
Just what might a text messaging poem (see http://books.guardian.co.uk/games/mobilepoems/0,9405,450649,00.html) poem look like?
What kind of concise and compact story might they be inspired to create that does not exceed the maximum number of characters in a Yahoo message or a Twitter.com entry?
How could they incorporate the dialogue of an audible (see http://messenger.yahoo.com/intl/audibles.php (pre-programmed audio quips) into a narrative to help bring it to life and inspire more creativity? We should also be teaching them how to incorporate that resume that every English or Business class requires them to write into their MySpace or FaceBook profiles to impress scholarship committees, college recruiters, and employers.
We could show them how the videos they love to include on their spaces might help them promote their community service projects and attract financial contributors or volunteers.
We could, however, just continue sitting behind blocked content warnings and let the next generation stumble in the middle of the information highway without so much as warning them to look both ways before crossing into a new digital neighborhood. Or we can get logged in, lead the dialogue and the content, and guide them in building social networks that will benefit their lives and our increasingly interconnected world. If we don’t, the headlines are full of terrifying stories of who might.
04/01/2007 8:02PM
When we talk about technology in education, today we are no longer just discussing the best way to use PowerPoint for a classroom discussion or how to convince students to type their papers and conduct online research.
Today the issue of integrating technology into education has taken a much more serious turn. It is no longer just our students’ test scores that are at stake if we do not get ahead of their expertise in the connected world of Web 2.0. Now our students’ safety and social well-being is at stake. As educators we must not only become proficient at integrating technology into our classrooms, we must also become educated about the social networking and other online communities our students are frequenting outside our classrooms. We must then convince local school boards that, instead of shutting down access to these sites that we fear, we have a duty to un-block access at school so that we can get out there to guide and protect our students.
Would any of us let our daughter take a picture of herself with wet tendrils of her hair dangling provocatively across her innocent face made up with smoky black eye shadow, then allow her to submit it to the world’s most circulated newspaper with a caption below welcoming anyone who reads it to stop by her address any hour of the day or night? She’s already doing that electronically with her MySpace profile.
Would we allow our nephew to go to a neighbor’s party of more than 100,000 guests who were all supposed to be teenagers but who included any number of flirtatious 35-year-old women, 50-year-old male executives oddly with nothing better to do than hang out with teenagers, and a 28-year-old ex-con gang recruiter? That’s who could be playing tag with him on Tagged.com.
Would we allow a 14-year-old to bring home unlimited numbers of DVDs featuring porn or solicitations to buy and sell sex? Go out to any of the social networking sites and that’s exactly what is available up until members report the inappropriate content and the overworked site administrators get around to taking them down.
School districts across the globe are scrambling to keep up with blocking the newest social networking sites that pop up online seemingly overnight so as to safeguard our children while at school. Why then, like any other educator who cares about the well-being of our children, would I advocate un-blocking these potentially dangerous sites? Simply put, because when we block our portals, we close our eyes and leave millions of our kids out there alone, vulnerable, and unprotected. We have a duty to un-block access to social networking sites and get in there to help them understand this new connectedness, make informed choices, and lead the transformation toward a greater good.
Imagine if all we did was to not allow students to drink alcohol on campus and we assumed that we’d done enough to keep them safe. Of course, we’ve learned that we need to get out in front and teach them about the physical, emotional, and societal impact of alcohol abuse. We also show them graphic movies about gruesome possibilities of drinking and driving. We form on-campus Students Against Drunk Driving groups as alternatives to the peer pressure and ready availability of alcohol. Likewise, we don’t just create strongly worded rules and consequences for having, using, and selling drugs on campus and sit back believing that we’ve done all that we can to stem drug use among teens. We organize drug awareness programs, teach them about the biology of addiction, and role-play how to handle situations when peers pressure them to join in.
There are federal dollars, state grants, and private funds available for all schools to make sure we do everything we can to help our students understand risks, make good choices, and pick up the pieces if they find themselves in trouble with drugs, alcohol, sex, gangs, harassment, and crime. So why, then, are we not doing more when it comes to the newest life-threatening danger, the dozens of teen and adult online social networks, that our tech-savvy young people whisper about, spend hours on, and don’t ever intend to stop using?
For educators, technology skills are no longer a simple matter of knowing how to pull in interesting videos or images for in-class presentations. Now, at nano-speeds, becoming technologically competent is a matter of competing against compelling negative influences to ensure our children’s safety, well-being, and futures. We’ve got to get out there into cyber space and start showing our young people how to define the nature of this new social interaction instead of letting those who would exploit them for their own agendas determine how the power of the internet will be used.
We need to start podcasting (seewww.epnweb.org/index.php?view_mode=what) lessons and lectures and literature to those MP3 players they’ve got plugged into their ears every moment they can get away with it. We could start text messaging (see http://ferl.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?printable=1&resID=2762) homework reminders to their cell phones we know they are checking every five minutes whether they are allowed to or not.
We ought to allow instant messaging on our classroom computers to encourage absent students to sign in and participate in class from home or from their cell phones. Instant messengers can be left open by teachers on their home computers so students can see that homework help (see www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2002/11/inservice.php) is also available each night when they log in to chat with their friends and whoever else is out there.
Yahoo groups (see http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/Schools___Education/K-12) or class MySpaces can be included out in our students’ cyber neighborhoods where we can post class materials, questions and answers, help with assignments, and reminders that there’s more for them to do online than just surf and chat. Class MySpaces can be used to invite students from around the world to meet with our students and participate in productive projects instead of just strangers who comment on their personal spaces about the latest CD or party or worse.
Parents, teachers from other disciplines, and experts out in the “real world” can join in class blogs created by students or teachers to show them that interaction online can be about legitimate subjects any time and anywhere. As limitless as are the possibilities for negative encounters out in Web 2.0 (see www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/web2edu/) so too are the opportunities for connecting with the world, ideas, information, and creativity in positive ways if only we will un-block our own imaginations and our school portals and get into the game our students play at every day.
Our interests in creating a presence out in cyber space is not just to guide our young charges away from dangerous or negative influences. We have much more than that to learn and to teach.We can join with them in the new genre of writing text messages and instant messages, show them how they are different in structure, content, and form from formal email and letter writing, and tap into their creativity by inspiring them to connect this new way of communicating with formal or classic modes.
Just what might a text messaging poem (see http://books.guardian.co.uk/games/mobilepoems/0,9405,450649,00.html) poem look like?
What kind of concise and compact story might they be inspired to create that does not exceed the maximum number of characters in a Yahoo message or a Twitter.com entry?
How could they incorporate the dialogue of an audible (see http://messenger.yahoo.com/intl/audibles.php (pre-programmed audio quips) into a narrative to help bring it to life and inspire more creativity? We should also be teaching them how to incorporate that resume that every English or Business class requires them to write into their MySpace or FaceBook profiles to impress scholarship committees, college recruiters, and employers.
We could show them how the videos they love to include on their spaces might help them promote their community service projects and attract financial contributors or volunteers.
We could, however, just continue sitting behind blocked content warnings and let the next generation stumble in the middle of the information highway without so much as warning them to look both ways before crossing into a new digital neighborhood. Or we can get logged in, lead the dialogue and the content, and guide them in building social networks that will benefit their lives and our increasingly interconnected world. If we don’t, the headlines are full of terrifying stories of who might.
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