Gathering Data & Wasted Time

Data acquisition is difficult, particularly in education. Data efforts are beginning to align metrics with outcomes, no matter how subjective the outcome may be. It takes creative thinking to measure the human factor but groups like Mission Measurement are bringing a new level of clarity to data in the education space.

Designing an efficient data collection process just became a easier with Google Docs's new Forms function.

Markets, Education, & You

Change is certain. So, it's not too suprising to see articles like this that identify the dichotomy between the static U.S. education system and rapidly changing technologies. It is unlikely a centenarian would recognize much of the modern workplace; however, I might guess that same person would recognize much of the modern learning environment. Perhaps our economies are responding to education's failure to respond to change...

"An educated populace is a key source of economic growth directly, through the improved productivity of workers, and indirectly, by spurring innovation and aiding the diffusion of advanced technologies. Broad access to education was a major factor in US economic ascendancy and in the creation of a broad middle class. The American Dream of upward mobility both within and across generations has been tied to educational access.

Ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, technological change has operated to increase the relative demand for educated and skilled workers. In academic parlance, technological change has been “skill-biased” – smart machines require smart workers. Technological change increases the relative demand for skilled and educated workers, but educational advance increases their relative supply. This “race” between education and technology can produce rising, declining, or stable levels of economic inequality.

US economic inequality has been on a roller coaster ride during the past century. Wage inequality and educational wage differentials decreased from around 1910 to 1950. They remained fairly stable until about 1980, after which economic inequality soared. The contrasting descent and rise of economic inequality in the twentieth century is linked to the history of educational attainment."

Marshmellows & Success

Great New Yorker article on developing behaviors that can lead to the success we all seek for our students. If we continue towards the community education model for modern education, this type of behavioral psychology should drive our programming...

What Do We Need to Know...

From Stephan Baker's Numerati blog....A great lens for approaching curriculum design work.

"Here's a question I've been wondering about for years: What do we need to know? In other words, as we make our way through the vast universe of information, with online encyclopedias and networks of friends at our command, what exactly do we need to store in our heads?

It has to be changing. I remember reading in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi about the amazing river pilots in the 19th century who had to keep in their heads every twist and turn of a 2,000-mile river. As they moved encountered boats traveling in the other direction, they would learn about shifting sandbars south of Vicksburg or felled trees near Cairo. And with this information, they would update the river running through their brains.

What does a Mississippi river pilot need to know today? It has to be a lot different, and the same thing goes for practically every profession. How important is formal knowledge, the kind you get in books or even an established Web page? And how does it stack up against the awareness knowledge that comes from what's happening at this moment on the networks?"

Online Course Content

Mizzou is requiring all journalism majors to have either an ipod touch or iphone to access course content this year.

Medill School of Journalism here at Northwestern did something similar a few years ago. Reportedly, most of the students were upset because they didn't actually change the curriculum to USE the technology.

Like I wrote in the in the post below...mimicking a genre is not sufficient to promote the forms of learning that networked publics are using to make sense of information today.

The peer2peer Instructional Model

Teachers always wonder what impact they really do have on their students...

A group of students from my Digital Video Yearbook course at East Grand Rapids Middle School have taken the skills they learned in the course and produced a adventure/thriller movie. I found out about it here.

The coolest aspect of this is the fact that this course was entirely peer2peer based-- I served as the facilitator, provided some general guidelines, and made sure no one made a poor behavior decision (they are/were 8th graders after all). The learning occurs from exploration and peer2peer observation and informal inquiry.

Too often, in an effort to reflect our students' moden literacy practices, we mimick the genres or sharing and assessment dynamics our students use when they have authority over their own learning. In last year's VYB course, I tried to not simulate or mimmick these practices but actually relie on them.