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John Seely Brown Keynote at NITLE Summit 2011

Go to around 18:30 in the video to skip to his talk. I think he’s pretty good at putting his ideas forth and I agree (in general) with his conclusions and queries.

Some interesting points:

  • The nature and use of knowledge and information are changing and, thus, educational needs are changing.
  • We need to get credit (as academics) for social media creation.  How many tenure committees are going to consider even a high-quality blog?  Very few to be sure.
  • Content captured without context makes less sense.  How much of the context do we need to capture?
  • Major challenges require a socio-technical, interdisciplinary approach.  The interdisciplinary part is probably the most difficult.  Getting out of our established groupings to collaborate with others outside is difficult.
  • Need to “cultivate a resilient mindset in our students – an ability to change, adapt, re-conceptualize, and engage in deep listening with humility in an act-reflect, provisional loop.”

South Korean parents told: pre-school English ‘harmful’ (Good goal, bad approach)

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via guardian.co.uk

This is an interesting article. It’s one of those articles that I both agree and disagree with. It is one of those many times in which an organization uses emotional, yet undersupported claims in an attempt to get people to pursue a beneficial change.

The argument that early language learning is harmful is laughable. They are basing this on a couple of studies that run counter to piles of research finding no significant difference or even positive outcomes for early childhood language learning. I’ve seen this many times in my writing classes. I have students take a position on this topic and they do pretty good research papers. Those who write papers opposing this always bring out the same “evidence” that is buried in low-quality journals, or more likely, from blogs and newspapers.

However, with the intention of strengthening public schools and reducing the drive for private institutes (hagwons), I wholeheartedly agree. Children don’t need 12 hours of schooling a day. They probably don’t need half of that in elementary school and I’d say they need much less than that in pre-school. At younger ages they need time to play, socialize, and experiment with the world around them. This forms the foundation for intellectual growth later in life.

This group (WWW) really seems to have this as their mission. I just disagree with the evidence that they are presenting against early childhood language learning. It’s simply weak evidence that has no business of being represented as “fact”.

For-profit colleges are issued new rules by Education Department – OR government is privileging traditional universities

The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday issued long-awaited regulations to increase federal oversight of for-profit colleges, despite an intense, year-long lobbying effort by the colleges to fight the new rules and opposition from Republicans and some Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The regulations aim to rein in for-profit education programs that saddle students with more loan debt than they can reasonably repay. They also try to reform “some of the career college programs [that] do not succeed” and “bad actors” that have misled students, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters on a conference call late Wednesday.

via politico.com

When it comes to the entertainment industry, I am critical of the government stepping in to support their failing models through legislation that will harm the Internet and innovation. I think I would be a hypocrite if I supported the government doing the same for traditional universities.

I’m no fan of for-profit universities in general. I find many of their classes to be low-quality, low-interaction, lowest common denominator. However, that’s not really the point. The point is, this is a marketplace. If their customers find that they are fill a need, then they should be able to compete, with the same benefits that non-profit universities get. Non-profit universities should change to address the needs of “non-traditional” students (though they are far from non-traditional these days).

I know the complains about recruitment into these schools. The recruitment is downright criminal, but no more so than credit cards or even military recruiters in some instances. I once know someone who did that type of recruiting. It was essentially a call center job with great bonuses for getting someone signed up. He made a ton of money, until he couldn’t stand doing it any longer. He felt like a predator, and he was. But all of this still doesn’t justify these controls on for-profit universities.

And, really, cutting funding for programs that don’t pay well after graduation? Try doing that for traditional universities. There are plenty of programs that don’t pay well. Liberal Arts is an umbrella term for those programs.

Universities want protections from the government to protect their failing models, which is completely unacceptable. I hoped that this sort of competition would prod them to change their own programs, but instead, they are trying to hobble the competition.

What does this mean? This means that universities will probably still feel the pressure to change, but they will have much more time to do so. Is that a bad thing? No. Certain not. But it is a bad precedent to set. What it means for for-profit universities is that they will likely be cutting many of the programs that don’t lead directly to jobs that pay well. Maybe this is a good also, but what about the people who really want to study in those areas. The for-profit universities are likely the only places that offer those programs in a manner that is accessible (online, flexible scheduling). It’s sad that some of the diversity will fade based on these policies.

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries – how can I disagree with this?

When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates.

via nytimes.com

I really can’t disagree. I think they are right on. Of course, this is not a plan, it’s a dream. For dreams to come true, one needs a plan and some luck.

I’ve always cringed at hearing that teachers don’t make enough. They do make more than many other college graduates and in some areas they do quite well when considering benefits. The real problem is not that teachers don’t make enough across the board, it’s that they don’t make enough in certain areas. This is a funding issue that is largely cause by the ways that schools are funded across the country. Schools in wealthy areas pay quite well, maybe not enough for the teachers to live in the town, but still quite well.

I am excited about the idea of making teaching more competitive. The recent teacher crunch has done this to the small degree. There are more teachers than there are jobs, which is good for recruiting (not so good for recent graduates). Next step is to increase pay at least 50% and, at the same time, devise assessments that are difficult enough to filter (yes, many good teachers may be filtered out this way, but it is still far better than hoping the best show up). Set conditions in which becoming a teacher is competitive.

I do find it kind of interesting that the author starts out with a call not to blame teachers and then essentially states that we need better teachers. Huh?

Higher education: The latest bubble? | The Economist

Higher education

The latest bubble?

Apr 13th 2011, 11:50 by Schumpeter

via economist.com

The argument made isn’t great, but I agree overall. The coming bubble is going to messily pop. I see a business rush in the next 20 years not only to offer education, but accreditation.

Imagine businesses that can offer degrees. Students would pay the business for them to work and study at the business. The business could then be accredited so their “education” would be acceptable globally.

Exciting and scary

Principal to parents: Get your middle school kids off Facebook – good conversation to have (HT @etalbert)

via mlive.com
I happen to disagree with Orsini’s position, but I think that it is an excellent discussion for us to have.

Cyberbullying is worse than face-to-face bullying. It is 24/7. It goes on when you are paying attention and when you are not paying attention. It is yet another element of modern society that parents have to develop new tools to address.

With that being said, banning children from using social networking sites is short-sighted. It is the easy way out and, like most solutions of the sort, it is unlikely to help. The bullying will go on with or without your child’s participation. That same bullying will continue to occur amongst those online (and face-to-face) and will hit your child in much the same manner when they return to school and are filled in on the happenings of the previous day/weekend. The reality is that we need to prepare our children to operate in the world as it is, not as we wish it was.

An educator should be more pragmatic than Orsini is being. It is a nice sound bite, but it is an incomplete solution to a complex issue and involves the education of both the abusers and the abused. Removal of a child from a situation should be one tool in a parent’s tool chest, but it is not, nor should it be, the only tool used. Taking incidents of bullying and using them as teachable moments can be valuable. After (but ideally prior to) incidents, parents should teach children how to best deal with bullying: engage, ignore, and report.

I fear that Orsini probably understands this as well, but he has given up on parental responsibility. It is relatively easy to say, “take them off social networks,” but it is much more difficult to address underlying causes of and solutions to bullying. His approach, though, is akin to sweeping the problem under the rug. This is an approach that we can ill-afford to resort to any longer. It has been the default for years, never with satisfactory results.

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