Drugs on School Campus
Posted by lou in Parent's Opinions on October 13th, 2008
I know, I know, I should just worry about my own kids and not feel frustrated by the amount of drug use and cigarette smoking that happens on K-12 school campuses. As long as my kids don’t do it, it is the school administration’s problem, isn’t it?
Well, I can’t just let it go. Sorry. When I drive up to my local high school to pick up my daughter and there are literally dozens of kids smoking right next to the “This is a smoke free campus” sign, it ticks me off. Aren’t those teachers walking right past the kids? Why didn’t they say something, or at least shake their fingers at the kids? But, they just ignored it.
I asked my daughter and she says the teachers “Don’t care” about it. The teachers actually say that they are not paid to be babysitters. Wow.
And, cigarettes are not the only thing smoked on campus. During rallys when the kids are not really required to be at the rally but almost all of the teachers are at the rally, there are many kids that hang out “behind the buildings” to get high. How do I know this? My daughter told me. I did make the classic parent mistake of saying “Why don’t you report them?”. I got quite the look for that question and I remembered how it was when I was a kid and not being known as a “narc”. Still, this is really a bad thing. Where are the cops?
Well, I asked my daughter that question. She said that lots of kids are busted all the time. She said “Everyone does it. Except me and my friends of course.” There are so many kids on probation that the youth authority has to run extra anti-drug classes to keep pace with demand.
And, our high school is not alone in this. What can be done?
Book Review – Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen
Posted by lou in US Education on August 18th, 2008
The book, “Distrupting Class” by Clayton Christensen lays out a potential future for the education industry in the United States. Written by a Harvard Business School professor who take the approach of looking at the industry as a business in need of innovation vs. as an educator might, the balance is in favor of things that would be of strategic impact. Dr. Christensen is the Rober and Jan Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and wrote “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and “The Innovator’s Solution”.
The author begins by praising the education industry for doing more than any other industry at reinventing itself to meet the requirements placed on it by US society. However, while the industry has been able to improve all the metrics of student success, the improvements have not been enough to satisfy the demands of the public, nor have they kept pace with the successes of other nations.
He talks about how in the early days of public education, the one room schoolhouse days, each child had to have individualized instruction because there were kids from all over the map in terms of what they needed. It was only when the goal became having a literate and informed populace and there was a shift to monolithic content delivery that things became less individual. Now, the author estimates that less than 20% of a teacher’s time is available to help a student individually. This amounts to less than 3 minutes per child in a class of 30.
After reviewing (and praising) the current state of the education industry, the author talks about a disruptive pattern of innovation which is emerging in education – individualized, computer-based, instruction. The deployment of this technology, has up to now been seen as having much impact on main stream public educaiton. But, the point is made that this is the case with all successful distruptions in their early phases. To take hold, a disruption must compete where their is no alternative, so called “non-consumption”. In other words, computer based instruction is taking hold where there are no alternatives. One example is for courses like Arabic language studies where it is just not feasible to offer a class for one or two students.
The book makes a strong case for the benefits of individualized on-line / computer-based instruction. Also called virtual schooling, the author includes a formula for predicting when virtual schools will be the norm for instruction in the US. This starts with an estimate that approximatley 1.5% of all instruction today is delivered via individualized computer based instruction and predicts that by the school year 2019, more than 50% of all instruction will be delivered via computer. This “S-curve” begins to grow in a non-linear manner starting in 2012, or roughly 4 years from now.
As an entrepreneur in this space, the most exciting part of the book starts on pg. 142. “This also points to a road forward for those venture capitalists, foundations, and philanthropies that hope to invest with impact in education.”
We believe that the ideas we have for Connected Information Systems fall squarely in the zone the book identifies.
The book is an easy read and I highly recommend it to anyone working in the education industry as either a vendor serving the market or as a member of the education profession.
What’s so great about an iPhone 3G?
Posted by lou in Technology on July 15th, 2008
My wife and her friends volunteer at our local high school for something called PAWS (Parents Assisting With Security). What they basically do is have a nice leisurely stroll around the high school campus in pairs or groups of three and the students feel less likely to do something against the rules knowing they are there. Now, we are in a nice suburban environment and the parents are not really allowed to do anything except call something in to the campus resource officer (policeman). But, it gives my wife and her friends a bird’s eye view of how kids act in school.
There are probably lots of topics I can post about after hearing her stories, but I asked her a while ago to let me know the popular cell phones in use by the kids. I believe strongly that the cell phone platform is an early form of the next generation computing platform. I never thought that the original iPhone would be seen very much due to its price. Boy, was I wrong! She told me that there are “so many” of the iPhones in use. What parent in their right mind would buy a kid a $500 phone I asked her? She said that most of the kids she spoke with about their iPhones had bought them with their own money. Wow.
So, I tracked down one of these kids, a freshman girl who is a friend of my daughter. I asked her if she liked the phone. Predictably, she answered, “Oh, it is so cool. I love it”. I asked her what she loved about it. She said the main thing was that she could listen to her iPod and text her friends at the same time with the same device. I asked her if she used the Internet on the phone. She said only once in a while – mostly she used it for listening to music. She went on to say that she didn’t even talk on it very much because it was not comfortable to hold while she talked.
I believed her, but I pointed out that it was a really expensive iPod. She agreed, but said she liked the convenience of only one device. I thought more about this comment. For her, it was not a great phone. It was not a great Internet platform. It was a great multi-function device. In this case, the sum of the parts is what makes it great.
The next kid I spoke with who had an iPhone was a young man who plays on a soccer team that practices on the same field with my daughter’s team. I asked him if he liked the phone and he said “Oh yeah”. I asked him what he liked about it and he put it this way “It’s just cool to have”. So, for him, the “Cool Kid” factor was the thing. I have noticed other phones in use by teen-agers and they all oogle over the ones that flip open, turn sideways, change colors (yes, there is one), and generally look different from the standard chicklet Nokia or Motorola flip.
Do these kids think about using any of the multi-function devices as a substitute for a computer? The specific answer is no, they do not “think” about it. They just use it as a substitute. The venerable desktop computer at home, most likely a Windows device, is for playing computer games. If they are serious about their homework, there is likely to be another computer, most likely a laptop, for them to do homework on. Neither of these two devices get the same amount of use that their phones do. As their friends show them all the cool things their phones can do, they want one just like it. And, now that the iPhone is much cheaper than before, it is easier for them to get one.
So, what’s so great about an iPhone 3G? It’s cheaper than the first generation one.
However, the implications for innovators in education are much more subtle. The platform is not yet suitable for significant amounts of input. But, I wonder how long it will be before someone comes up with an adapter to attach the iPhone to a keyboard/mouse and display? Or, will there be a way to do this wirelessly, using Bluetooth for the keyboard/mouse and something else for the display. I can see a time when kids walk into a classroom and insert their iPhones into a docking station on the desk they are sitting at in order to recharge their battery and keep it from draining during class. Using a small bluetooth keyboard and integrated trackball, they take notes; bookmark sites for later research; collaborate with their peers, probably using SMS (text); contribute to a project wiki; and so on.
So, once again, what’s so great about an iPhone 3G? It paves more of the highway to the future.
Two contrasting views of technology in education
Posted by lou in Internet Education on May 19th, 2008
Three hundred miles. That is the distance that separates two school districts I recently had the opportunity to visit. Yes, one is in a blue state and the other in a red state, but they are close enough to each other than I could drive to visit them both. They are also in what we call the Midwest. But, they have such contrasting differences of opinions with respect to technology and the role it plays in education that I was really surprised.
The first technology director I visited, I’ll call him Mr. X, was very much an open communication supporter. Me: Do you provide email accounts to all your students? Mr. X: “Yes, and we are probably going to give them all gmail and google doc access next year”. Me: Do you block access to Instant Messaging? Mr. X: “No. We don’t block anything. But, we monitor the usage of our workstations in terms of time and the network bandwidth utilized. We have the ability to traffic shape to lessen the impact of certain sites like YouTube, etc.”. Me: Are you at all worried about liability for what kids write or publish? Mr X.: “Not really. Kids are going to do bad things at times. We have to deal with it if it happens in a classroom, on a playground, or on an Internet bulletin board”.
The second technology director I visited, I’ll call him Mr. Y, was an old school (pardon the pun) kind of guy. But, he had all the latest and greatest technology available for use in his schools. Me: Do you provide email accounts to all your students? Mr. Y: “No, we currently do not. We are concerned about the liability for the district”. Me: Do you block access to Instant Messaging? Mr. Y: “Yes, we block most all sites like that.”
What is curious to me is that the facts of the matter are exactly the same for both districts. There are no laws in one state that are more or less of an issue than in the other state. Access to the technology is exactly the same. So, this must not be a logical difference of opinion, right? Many people I know would say something to the effect that “This is a political issue. It does not have to make sense.” That is probably true. I wonder what cultural elements are at work that push two seemingly similar districts to take dramatically different views of an issue like this. Politicians, in general, seem to embrace the use of the Internet in schools so it couldn’t be them, could it? I browsed the web sites of a couple of so called red states departments of education.
In South Dakota (not one of the states Mr. X & Y live in), Governor Mike Rounds has published his 2010 State Education Initiative (here). In his plan, The Governor includes among its goals:
Objective 2C: Increase 21st century skills using advanced technology to enhance learning.
Initiatives:
- Create a statewide virtual high school program
- Implement a one-to-one laptop initiative for high school students
- Implement an e-mentoring program
Both a statewide virtual high school program and a one to one laptop initiative will require each and every school in the state to embrace the use of the Internet, and, I might add, social networking (see the article on Social Networking vs. social networking).
In Iowa, Governor Chet Culver issued a press release on March 25th, 2008 that stated among other things:
“(Des Moines, Iowa)- Today, Iowa Governor Culver announced a joint initiative with the
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the nation’s leading advocacy organization focused on infusing
21st century skills into education, to bring globally competitive 21st centurskills to schools, educators and students throughout Iowa.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (here) publishes this as its mission:
MISSION STATEMENT
Serve as a catalyst to position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education by building collaborative partnerships among education, business, community and government leaders
TWENTY FIRST CENTURY CHILDREN
Every child in American needs 21st century knowledge and skills to succeed as effective citizens, workers and leaders in the 21st century.
There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces.
To successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges and a globally competitive workforce, U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills.
This skills set includes:
- Information and communication skills (information and media literacy skills; communication skills)
- Thinking and problem-solving (critical thinking and systems thinking; problem identification, formulation and solution; creativity and intellectual curiosity)
- Interpersonal and self-direction skills (interpersonal and collaborative skills; self-direction; accountability and adaptability; social responsibility)
- Global awareness
- Financial, economic and business literacy, and developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace productivity and career options
- Civic literacy
Go to any state department of education website and the themes are pretty much all the same. My conclusion is that the politicians are in favor of greater access to technology, even in blue states where supporting President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” would be seen as a negative. At the national and state levels then, the message is pretty clear. What can explain the difference in these situations?
I then looked at the make up of the school boards at the two school districts, thinking that maybe the policies were locally based. I looked at age of the members, occupations, gender, and race, which was all I could glean from the web sites. In both cases, there was not an appreciable difference in the makeup of the school boards, at least nothing that could explain it. Then, I looked at the Superintendents of the districts. Mr. X’s superintendent is a young man in his 30’s while Mr. Y’s is an older gentleman in his 60s. This is the only appreciable difference I can find in the two districts.
The conclusion I came to is that this is really a situation which will resolve itself as the “old guard” of education retires or leaves the profession. The new wave of people coming up are much more likely to see these technologies as being important or at the very minimum “just what needs to be done”.
More later…
Social Networking vs. social networking
Posted by lou in Internet Education on May 19th, 2008
What? Is there a difference? I believe there to be.
Social Networking, big S, big N, represents what goes on on MySpace, Facebook, and perhaps LinkedIn. That is, those sites are about “Me”. They represent a place to share my interests, my thoughts, and who I want people to think I am. My purpose may be to stay in touch with my friends, connect to old friends, or to find new friends. But those services provide me a site on the Internet about ME. Now, LinkedIn has a slightly different purpose in that it is about my career, but basically it is still about me.
Contrast that with social networking (little s, little n) which I claim is a collection of features that are used in Social Networking, but have applicability outside of it. These features are used to identify and leverage connections between individuals or groups of individuals. These connections can then be used for multiple purposes. Social search and social bookmarking are a couple of examples of these features.
The reason I was motivated to write this blog entry is that I have been reading some opinions posted on the net about the concern that parents and schools have about the use of Social Networking in school. The articles claim that most school districts block MySpace and Facebook, and do not allow Instant Messaging from school computers. There have been quotes where school officials have said that there needs to be some data that shows that these sites have an educational purpose.
I have quite a few issues with the opinions summarized above. Let me start with the last opinion – Social Networking sites must have an educational purpose. There have been many things written about how K-12 education is behind the times and is not preparing our youth for the realities of our world. The presentation “Did You Know” produced by the people behind the group “Shift Happens” makes a compelling point about the challenges of today (not tomorrow). The presentation can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Social Networking sites are the way that many people will interact in the future with friends and colleagues they perhaps have not or will not ever meet face to face. Collaboration is a proven educational method for improving retention of concepts taught in a learning environment. These sites, while filled with many distractions, are methods for collaboration. So, the ability to use Social Networking sites would be considered at least a valid part of a learning curriculum if not as a baseline set of tools to enable collaborative learning. However, I can see where parents and school officials would be hard pressed to get behind the use of MySpace or Facebook as a learning tool. They were not designed to be educational tools or really collaborative in nature. Thus, my point about social networking in lower case. It is the features that are collaborative and have real educational purpose.
Another logical reason for the lack of parent and school official support is that I wager very few are actual users of either MySpace or Facebook. While MySpace has been adopted by the music and entertainment industry as a way of doing PR, and Facebook seems to have a growing use among professionals as a way to connect and further one’s career, by and large there is nothing to attrack the use of either as a parent or school official. In fact, all their experiences with either have been negative for the most part. Stories of child predetors using these sites as a way to find victims scares parents and leads them to ban the use of these sites for their kids.
I predict that this will change, and perhaps in as little as 2-3 years. Stories in the news about how mothers are adopting text messaging to communicate with their children who are in college or high school are everywhere. I would wager that anyone reading this blog has observed the same thing. We are all learning what lol, gtg, l8r, and other txt words mean. The reason for this phenomenon is the same reason social networking will take off. Kids do not use email. They text or they leave messages on the Social Network sites’ message boards. Parents will create their own accounts and begin to do the same. It helps that these methods are frequently more efficient than email or phone calls.
Blocking MySpace, Facebook, and Instant Messaging:
It has been a commonplace practice for school districts to limit or control their liability by limiting access to the Internet, to email, and to the new generation of web based tools. The risk of legal action against a school district is ALWAYS present. In our current society a school district can be perceived to be liable for almost anything that negatively impacts any student while that student is on school grounds, or in the case of the Internet, using school property. My personal beliefs are that society in general makes much too much about things that used to be just “kids being kids” when I was growing up. But, everyone is entitled to their own opinion where their own kids are concerned.
Have there been instances where the school district has been seen to be legally liable for damages when a student has used their access to the Internet? Or, to threaten someone or to publish something that was hateful? Well, they certainly have been sued – and for a variety of things related to Internet use.
Examples:
1) District sued over eMail policy banning religious messages: (here)
2) School sued over response to MySpace photo (here)
3) Parents sue school district for Wi-Fi use (here)
4) Appeals Court Weighs Teen’s Web Speech (here)
There are many more examples of schools being sued over issues where they are “damned if they do, damned if they don’t”. So, while I may bemoan the fact that my school is not providing things I want for my children, it is just as likely that there is someone whose child attends the same school that is thankful that they are not.
What does this all mean and where is this all going? More to come …
Economic Development – Aligning Education with Regional Economic Needs
Posted by lou in Internet Education, US Education on September 16th, 2007
I was fortunate enough to be invited to a LEED event on Friday, September 7th. LEED is an association (Linking Education and Economic Development) dedicated to encouraging alignment between the needs of industry and education in the greater Sacramento area. The format was breakfast with a keynote speaker, a panel of speakers, and a series of other speakers. The general tone of the meeting was about the strides the local higher ed community has made to produce workers capable of making the region’s economy grow.
Sacramento has, like much of California, three tiers of higher ed – community colleges, a CSU campus (CSU Sacramento) and a UC campus (UC Davis). This is aligned to the overall California Master Education Plan where the community colleges offer open enrollment to anyone who can pay a minimal per unit fee; the CSU system focuses on undergraduate and masters degrees; and, the UC system focuses on research and Phd programs. In Sacramento, over 80,000 students attend the Los Rios Community College district’s programs. This was seen as a net win under the master plan. CSU Sacramento, reported that they have been so successful that they have been allowed to offer a Phd in Education, a relative rarity under the master plan. And, rightly so, the officials from UC Davis bragged about their leadership positions in wine making, bio-engineering, medical research, and their new focus on clean and green energy technology.
It was easy to see how the case can be made that their efforts have been beneficial to the region’s economy. It is clear that companies in the area are appreciative of the efforts of the education institutions. So, was there anything to be concerned about?
Well, I found it a little interesting that the pace of technological advancement would be so strong and so little would be mentioned about the application of technology to the educational process. I sat next to a lady who had the position of being on the governor’s staff to oversee how the educational institutions were using the public’s funds. When I asked her if there was a desire to use technology, particularly in the first two years of college to distribute so called “general ed” classes over the Internet, she said that she felt there was a negative reaction to such a thought by the higher ed institutions. When I pointed out that there were many private companies, Kaplan and the University of Phoenix for example, that were doing this today, she fell back on the old saw about those degrees not being fully accredited.
Her information is out of date, but I did not press her on this point. My colleague was especially chagrined that there is so little being done to challenge the status quo in this respect.
In Issue 14 of the iJournal, Dr. Omid Pourzanjani wrote the article,
Higher Education in the 21st Century:
The Impact of Online Instruction and Services
In the article, he makes a compelling case that the day is coming when general ed classes will be open to anyone on the Internet and it won’t matter to you degree which on-line provider serves up the content. He speaks about the implications of this for the current institutions of higher learning and how they will have to adapt or perish.
For me, the goals of the LEED group must go beyond that of just linking industry and education together. There must be some current of improvement in education that is carried forward within the organization.
Of course, this is just my opinion…
Thoughts on getting information off the NET
Posted by lou in Internet Education on August 27th, 2007
The Sacramento Bee runs a series of articles on Fridays for and by teens called sidetracks (www.myspace.com/sacbeesidetracks). In April, three teens commented on plagiarism and how much easier and more prevalent it has become with the Internet. The focus was on writing assignments where something was due and the student either copied information verbatim from someplace or did not quote or provide a reference that the writing (ideas) were influenced by an external source. I have a couple of reactions to the things said in the article.
A Parent’s Opinion
Posted by lou in Parent's Opinions on August 27th, 2007
Some of us who walk the earth are parents. A large percentage of this group have experienced the ups and downs of having children attend public school in the United States. A lot has changed over the years, but some things that should have changed have not yet done so. This series of postings will present a parent’s view of the state of K-12 education.
Schedule Pickup Day – Can’t there be a better way?
Posted by lou in Parent's Opinions on August 14th, 2007
It is interesting to me as a parent the lengths to which schools are forced to go to “get a parents attention”. For example, consider the carrot and stick approach used to get a parent in to school to pay the back to school fees. The main event for the school is the paying of the fees and the imparting of information on the new school year. For the parent and the student, it is about getting the schedule of classes. The school withholds the schedule in order to get the parent or students in the door to make sure that they get the information that the school wants them to have.
Open Content Education?
Posted by lou in Internet Education on July 15th, 2007
I want to consider the effect of wikipedia on education. Many kids consider wikipedia to be a (or the) definitive source of information for projects. It is interesting that at the Web 2.0 conference they spoke of how wikipedia is now the number one “educational” web site, having surpassed the other on-line encyclopedia sites. Can wikipedia be considered a proper source for information to be used in school? I have heard that many teachers will not allow wikipedia to be used as a source? What other sources are allowed to be cited in a report?