Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Students 2.0 Bust-Out!
Last week sometime (I don’t keep track of days), I video-Skyped with the Korean Project Global Cooling club. PGC is the brain child of Clay Burell, with the aid of Bill Farren (who made the Did You Ever Wonder video). Their goal, in the words of Christopher Watson (the teacher helping coordinate PGC Hawaii), is to mobilize a global network of students to report on the efforts for sustainability in their communities, and also to connect them for further work together. The idea for the concert is to bring attention to the website and all the work and resources that will be posted there. We’ll be having a Hawaii-based concert for the cause in April. I was amazed at how easy it was to connect with people half-way around the world. True, their time zone maybe be a day and a half ahead of me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come to their Project Global Cooling meetings.
What I really hope this connection between people all over the world evolves into is a place where teachers won’t have to do the connecting for the students. When we talk about a sustainable future, we don’t just mean environmentally. Places like Nervousness.org (an art project forum) are self-sustaining home bases where projects are formed between like-minded artists. There is no third party that sets them up, nor are there painfully difficult organizational problems to deal with. The artists do the art, exchange addresses, send the art, and then one person puts it all together. I see no reason why there can’t be somewhere for students to gather, talk, and create with their contemporaries (sans teacher).
We’ve all talked about how it’s time to stop underestimating kids, how it’s time to give us a voice. Out on the blogosphere front, things are definitely improving. But I look at things like Twitter (where the student population would be considered “endangered” at best), and, like Sean, I wonder why students haven’t all taken to the web. The answer is simple: where would they go? There is no single place for global student collaboration.
That’s why I created two places that I think will help students to self-connect.
The first place is a Twitter account called YouthNet. This Twitter account is a tool for students to find other students on Twitter. They can also use it to introduce themselves to the student network. For example, this would be my tweet: “@YouthNet I’m Lindsea, 16 years old, Hawaii. Interested in art, writing, photography, music, sustainability, film. skype=sonicyouthgurl”. In these 140 characters or less, I’m able to introduce myself, say where I’m from, and mention the areas in which I’m interested in starting projects. YouthNet would follow only students, so actually finding other students on Twitter wouldn’t be difficult. Student Twitterers are then able to advertise their projects (school-related or not) to other students.
The second place is a Wikispace wiki. The wiki is similar to the Twitter account in that it is a tool for starting projects and forming connections with similarly passioned people. There’s a page called World Connection where people list their name, blog address, Skype screen name, Twitter account, e-mail address, and interests. This is the starting point for networking. Then there is the “Talk” page, which basically serves as a place for discussion (obviously), and a very chillaxed forum for either casual or serious conversation. If the students choose, they can use Talk as the starting place for their projects. For brainstorming, collaborating, and swapping ideas, this is the place.
In the video chat I had with PGC in Korea, one of Clay’s students, Soojin, gives the example of a World Geography project. Let’s see how this project would work using YouthNet tools: So person X is assigned a World Geography project of her choosing. She decides to do it on exploring the anthropology of young people in different countries. Using YouthNet, she would first post the thesis of her project on the Talk page. Interested parties would then reply with their own input. She could also look through the World Connection page and contact the students interested in writing. She’d send out a mass email to all students interested, telling them in more detail what the parameters of the project are and the deadline. The students would write about their lives in the various countries all over the world, send her a couple pictures, and then person X would write a summary, and then self-publish the original stories and pictures on lulu.com.
This place that I’m creating is for students, first and foremost. It is platform for self-directed collaboration with fellow students all over the world, and it is the epitome of unschooliness and passion-based learning. The best part about this is that once it’s created and all the details are worked out, the project will be sustainable. That is, once it’s up and running, there will be no central leader. The students would have complete control. My youthful idealism has complete faith in my fellow students’ ability to lead themselves with world consciousness and integrity. I know that we’re capable of utilizing something like this to take the technological emphasis out of Internet collaboration, and use these tools only as a medium to crystallize all of our amazing potential.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Working on the Bust-Out!
Students 2.0 |
Posted: 22 Feb 2008 10:12 PM CST
Public School, Rural America; 12:30 pm
One by one, we file past the teacher-turned-prison-guard. As each of us passed, she engages us in a confirmation ritual. “Work?” “Check.” “Book?” “Check.” That is the last word uttered for one and a half hours. For this period, we must sit silently with heads in books and work, where our mouths are conveniently positioned to be incapable of questioning. We cannot leave—even to seek the help of a teacher. In the only time during the day when most students actually work, we are treated like convicts. We must work (not learn) in the most efficient way possible. We are widgets in the machine of school. We are unwillingly being conscripted into a hostile intervention.
Interventions also happen behind other closed doors—in the justice system:
Intervention: Programs or services that are intended to disrupt the delinquency process and prevent a youth from penetrating further into the juvenile justice system. ~Kentucky Juvenile Justice Advisory Board
For me, this represents the epitome of what it is wrong in public school education—learning is seen as a laborious activity which students must literally be locked into doing. When one intervenes in something, one alters the direction it is heading in. Therefore, the assumption when students are put into intervention is that their learning direction must be altered. This would be fine (many of my peers do need to have intervention in their life/learning direction), except the course is required. No matter the direction of your learning or how well you are doing, you are forced into a silent study period. See where I am going with this? Before I even start school, I am scheduled for an intervention in my learning. The equivalent would be signing up your baby girl for drug rehab 16 years in advance.
Step back and consider the way education is approached in the majority of classrooms: as a dreaded task. Complicated assessment patterns are devised to be carrots for students to do their work.
Meanwhile, sticks of punishment are given to those who do not do their job.
Forced study halls are created in order to ensure we all keep our noses in books, where our voices are conveniently stifled. Of course, this is all done under the principal that students need to be forced to learn.
Wait. There is something wrong with the picture here. Frankly, I think schools are becoming far too business-like. Many of my peers often think of school as unpaid work. Of course, professionalism is continually emphasized as the highest principle for which students must strive. Schools even use the same reward/punishment system as the workplace: good grades = good job = $$$ and failing school = unemployment ≠ $$$. I think this is the core of what is wrong with schools: all students are expected to be professional students. That is, it is expected that we will only learn if we are forced to do so either because we desire the reward (grades) or fear the punishment (failing). In fact, this is setting up students to hate learning.
That might be a dangerous accusation, but I think it is an ultimately true one. After all, students are treated as if they already do hate learning. Grades, forced study times, detentions, and graduation requirements are all safeguards built to force students into learning. My philosophy is that if you treat a problem, there will soon be a problem; this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. By treating students as if we hate and will avoid learning at all costs, we will hate and avoid learning at all costs.
Naturally, the alternative is to encourage amateur learning: learning which is done for the love of it rather than for some distant paycheck. The argument against this is that students will not learn the skills they need to be successful citizens. I vastly disagree for the simple reason that every young child wants to grow up to be a successful citizen. Nobody is born hating learning—they grow to hate it through successively being treated as if they should hate it. No child is born thinking I am bad at math
—they think that after being told it many times (in different words). Think of it like this: there is only so much education which can be packed into 12 years of school. What if instead of trying to build students the perfect toolbox, schools taught students to make their own tools? If students are never taught to hate/fear learning, they will not shy away from learning opportunities. The teachers and resources are available for life-long, anytime learning; students must simply have their original love of learning preserved.
Imagine: Peter is a student in a self-directed learning environment. In the primary grades, he takes a wide mix of classes, primarily due to peer pressure and recommendations from friends/family. In these classes, he learns the basics: reading, mathematics fundamentals, grammar, and how to research. As he moves up in the grades, he narrows his focus upon writing, eventually phasing out mathematics classes. Throughout the process, no class or work is forced upon him: he is given the options and selects the choices for himself. Consequently, since learning is never treated as a hated activity, he never learns to hate learning but instead preserves the innate love of it. Down the line, Peter has written a best-selling novel and is trying to invest the money he earned. As any intelligent person would, he is trying to figure out the best option from the choices banks have presented him with. To be clear, Peter never learned about exponential equations or compound interest in school. However, because he still loves to learn he simply taps into Google and finds the resources necessary for him to evaluate the choices. Due to Peter being an amateur learner, he actively seeks out opportunities to learn, even though nobody is forcing him to.
The rational for not encouraging self directed learning is that simply packing students with as much knowledge possible (no matter the cost) is most efficient. However, the problem arises with the information that students do not get into their memory: since most of them will end up fearing/despising learning they will not add anything to it after school. Meanwhile, students who pursue learning on their own terms may well know less information on their exit from formal schooling. However, that information is not static: they are readily adding to it through additional learning. The traditional model has been to treat students like hard drives: packing them with 12 TB of knowledge before all cables are cut. I’d rather get out of school with only 1 GB of knowledge and a connection to the internet&mdashl;at least then I can continually add to that store. Schools must make a choice: do they want to try to stuff as much learning as possible down students’ throats or do they want to give students a hunger for learning?
I don’t want to be a professional student; I want to be an amateur learner.
- Photo by Still Burning on Flickr
- Photo by smallestbones on Flickr
- Photo by Marcus Vegas on Flickr
T. Boone Pickens on Wind Energy
Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind
Correction Appended
SWEETWATER, Tex. — The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.
“That’s just money you’re hearing,” he said as they hummed in a brisk breeze recently.
Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.
Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy.
“I have the same feelings about wind,” Mr. Pickens said in an interview, “as I had about the best oil field I ever found.” He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city by itself.
Wind turbines were once a marginal form of electrical generation. But amid rising concern about greenhouse gases from coal-burning power plants, wind power is booming. Installed wind capacity in the United States grew 45 percent last year, albeit from a small base, and a comparable increase is expected this year.
At growth rates like that, experts said, wind power could eventually make an important contribution to the nation’s electrical supply. It already supplies about 1 percent of American electricity, powering the equivalent of 4.5 million homes. Environmental advocates contend it could eventually hit 20 percent, as has already happened in Denmark. Energy consultants say that 5 to 7 percent is a more realistic goal in this country.
The United States recently overtook Spain as the world’s second-largest wind power market, after Germany, with $9 billion invested last year. A recent study by Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., projected $65 billion in investment from 2007 to 2015.
Despite the attraction of wind as a nearly pollution-free power source, it does have limitations. Though the gap is closing, electricity from wind remains costlier than that generated from fossil fuels. Moreover, wind power is intermittent and unpredictable, and the hottest days, when electricity is needed most, are usually not windy.
The turbines are getting bigger and their blades can kill birds and bats. Aesthetic and wildlife issues have led to opposition emerging around the country, particularly in coastal areas like Cape Cod. Some opposition in Texas has cropped up as well, including lawsuits to halt wind farms that were thought to be eyesores or harmful to wetlands.
But the opposition has been limited, and has done little to slow the rapid growth of wind power in Texas. Some Texans see the sleek new turbines as a welcome change in the landscape.
“Texas has been looking at oil and gas rigs for 100 years, and frankly, wind turbines look a little nicer,” said Jerry Patterson, the Texas land commissioner, whose responsibilities include leasing state lands for wind energy development. “We’re No. 1 in wind in the United States, and that will never change.”
Texas surpassed California as the top wind farm state in 2006. In January alone, new wind farms representing $700 million of investment went into operation in Texas, supplying power sufficient for 100,000 homes.
Supporters say Texas is ideal for wind-power development, not just because it is windy. It also has sparsely populated land for wind farms, fast-growing cities and a friendly regulatory environment for developers.
“Texas could be a model for the entire nation,” said Patrick Woodson, a senior development executive with E.On, a German utility operating here.
The quaint windmills of old have been replaced by turbines that stand as high as 20-story buildings, with blades longer than a football field and each capable of generating electricity for small communities. Powerful turbines are able to capture power even when the wind is relatively weak, and they help to lower the cost per kilowatt hour.
Much of the boom in the United States is being driven by foreign power companies with experience developing wind projects, including Iberdrola of Spain, Energias de Portugal and Windkraft Nord of Germany. Foreign companies own two-thirds of the wind projects under construction in Texas.
A short-term threat to the growth of wind power is the looming expiration of federal clean-energy tax credits, which Congress has allowed to lapse several times over the years. Advocates have called for extending those credits and eventually enacting a national renewable-power standard that would oblige states to expand their use of clean power sources.
A longer-term problem is potential bottlenecks in getting wind power from the places best equipped to produce it to the populous areas that need electricity. The part of the United States with the highest wind potential is a corridor stretching north from Texas through the middle of the country, including sparsely populated states like Montana and the Dakotas. Power is needed most in the dense cities of the coasts, but building new transmission lines over such long distances is certain to be expensive and controversial.
“We need a national vision for transmission like we have with the national highway system,” said Robert Gramlich, policy director for the American Wind Energy Association. “We have to get over the hump of having a patchwork of electric utility fiefdoms.”
Texas is better equipped to deal with the transmission problems that snarl wind energy in other states because a single agency operates the electrical grid and manages the deregulated utility market in most of the state.
Last July, the Texas Public Utility Commission approved transmission lines across the state capable of delivering as much as 25,000 megawatts of wind energy by 2012, presuming the boom continues. That would be five times the wind power generated in the state today, and it would drive future national growth.
Shell and the TXU Corporation are planning to build a 3,000-megawatt wind farm north of here in the Texas Panhandle, leapfrogging two FPL Energy Texas wind farms to become the biggest in the world.
Not to be outdone, Mr. Pickens is planning his own 150,000-acre Panhandle wind farm of 4,000 megawatts that would be even larger and cost him $10 billion.
“I like wind because it’s renewable and it’s clean and you know you are not going to be dealing with a production decline curve,” Mr. Pickens said. “Decline curves finally wore me out in the oil business.”
At the end of 2007, Texas ranked No. 1 in the nation with installed wind power of 4,356 megawatts (and 1,238 under construction), far outdistancing California’s 2,439 megawatts (and 165 under construction). Minnesota and Iowa came in third and fourth with almost 1,300 megawatts each (and 46 and 116 under construction, respectively).
Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Oregon, states with smaller populations than Texas, all get 5 to 8 percent of their power from wind farms, according to estimates by the American Wind Energy Association.
It has dawned on many Texans in recent years that wind power, whatever its other pros and cons, represents a potent new strategy for rural economic development.
Since the wind boom began a few years ago, the total value of property here in Nolan County has doubled, and the county judge, Tim Fambrough, estimated it would increase an additional 25 percent this year. County property taxes are going down, home values are going up and the county has extra funds to remodel the courthouse and improve road maintenance.
“Wind reminds us of the old oil and gas booms,” Mr. Fambrough said.
Teenagers who used to flee small towns like Sweetwater after high school are sticking around to take technical courses in local junior colleges and then work on wind farms. Marginal ranches and cotton farms are worth more with wind turbines on them.
“I mean, even the worst days for wind don’t compare to the busts in the oil business,” said Bobby Clark, a General Electric wind technician who gave up hauling chemicals in the oil fields southwest of here to live and work in Sweetwater. “I saw my daddy go from rags to riches and back in the oil business, and I sleep better.”
Wind companies are remodeling abandoned buildings, and new stores, hotels and restaurants have opened around this old railroad town.
Dandy’s Western Wear, the local cowboy attire shop, cannot keep enough python skin and cowhide boots in stock because of all the Danes and Germans who have come to town to invest and work in the wind fields, then take home Texas souvenirs.
“Wind has invigorated our business like you wouldn’t believe,” said Marty Foust, Dandy’s owner, who recently put in new carpeting and air-conditioning. “When you watch the news you can get depressed about the economy, but we don’t get depressed. We’re now in our own bubble.”
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Hey, WE know this guy!
Company Offers New Wrinkle In Wind Power
Not all wind turbines look like big pinwheels. Some of them look like spinning sails, or a whirling shaft of light.
A new company in Ortonville is marketing a $3,995 vertical axis wind turbine capable of generating approximately 1,200 watts of power.
Unlike huge commercial wind turbines, the Windspire is only 30 feet tall and takes up only four square feet of ground space.
The Windspire, manufactured by Reno, Nev.-based Mariah Power, is being marketed in the Midwest by Southern Exposure Renewable Energy Co.
Southern Exposure was founded by Jim Bates, a veteran electrician.
Bates said the turbine just got an ETL listing and has been in testing for several years. Mariah is actually looking for a spot to manufacture the units in the Midwest.
The company has offers from Pennsylvania and Ohio and Bates says its CEO has told him he's willing to consider an offer from Michigan.
More about the Windspire at http://mariahpower.com or www.seenergyco.com.
© MMVIII WWJ Radio, All Rights Reserved.
Not all wind turbines look like big pinwheels. Some of them look like spinning sails, or a whirling shaft of light.
A new company in Ortonville is marketing a $3,995 vertical axis wind turbine capable of generating approximately 1,200 watts of power.
Unlike huge commercial wind turbines, the Windspire is only 30 feet tall and takes up only four square feet of ground space.
The Windspire, manufactured by Reno, Nev.-based Mariah Power, is being marketed in the Midwest by Southern Exposure Renewable Energy Co.
Southern Exposure was founded by Jim Bates, a veteran electrician.
Bates said the turbine just got an ETL listing and has been in testing for several years. Mariah is actually looking for a spot to manufacture the units in the Midwest.
The company has offers from Pennsylvania and Ohio and Bates says its CEO has told him he's willing to consider an offer from Michigan.
More about the Windspire at http://mariahpower.com or www.seenergyco.com.
© MMVIII WWJ Radio, All Rights Reserved.
Monday, February 18, 2008
On ALL things Great and Small
It has been my personal observation that the huge campus style of high schools can be overwhelming to a student. One of my Daughters graduated from a high school that had a class of six. The Northern Michigan school is located on an Island and boasts some of the highest test scores compared to the national average.
That doesn't mean that the students are better overall prepared to met the challenges of the world head-on though. Life in any shape or size can be overwhelming to the individual if they are not properly prepared to receive it.
The real work is not in the rearangeement of the school building and what it looks like, the true work is one of immersing the students,their parents and society into an enriched learning environment. One that is both challenging and rewarding.
In Poland for instance the typical life of a students 12 years is that they attend grades 1-8 with the same kids in their class. And then if they graduate middle school and choose to go to high school as opposed to attending a trade school, they then finish the next four years with another group of 20 some classmates. So even though a student may attend a school with a population of thousands of students the learning environment is always kept small and manageable.
This also saves a great deal on resource management. To be able to provide economies of scale for the infrastucture rather than recreating hundreds of smaller and seperate buildings. The intent to create a level of comfort and familiarity for the student is thereby achieved and this provides stability to the childs learning environment and also better equips the teachers ability to understand each student and their family situation better.
It is expected in Poland that the parent will work with the students to comprehend and complete their homework. This is something that is gradually taught to both the student and their parents from grade one right on through graduation. So, you see there is also cutural and societal change that needs to take place. There are very few parents equipped to provide this kind of substantive support to their childrens education.
But it is imperative that their be interim replacements for after school to fill in the gaps so that the students can not only achieve parity on the global scale but excell. So, you can now understand that although we can make some serious inroads into a graduated change in the success of our educational capacities, it is important to understand though that the really stellar successes will have to be expected in 12 years when the first students of these enriched learning environments will have completed their primary K-12 education, free from the virus we presently call public education.
It will take that long to really let the disease run it's course. For although there is a great many people that truly wish the best for the students and all is not a devastating failure, the foundation upon which the educational endeavors were built are gravely flawed.
Moving on and to the core intent, any student attempting public life must have the basic fundamental self-actualization tools in place. The greatest tool is a very natural one and that is the question WHY? Most of the additonal tools that complement "why" are various shaped sharpening-stones that keep a keen edge placed on the "why" tool.
This is the personal motivation to understand and succeed to the next step or level of learning. There is no other way around it. So, this Gestalt of interaction with the world is the foundational element neccesary for the students success in life.
This begins with their own self-esteem and continuing with their public educational experiences and beyond. It is important to note we are creating the capacity for the student to carry on this awareness of "why" beyond the "school" environment.
When they "graduate" to each next level they will also have added a number of tools that they have apprenticed with and they are the other w's, the who, what, where, why, when and how. If properly accomplished (Pedagogy) the groundwork for forming the students educational experience will provide the student with the fundamental understandings that they are in school to experience life and to build upon their insatiable need to comprehend the world they live in physically and imaginatively, thereby all the while nurturing the "why" tool.
This is the kernal to success in education. It needs to exist solely for the support of the individuals "why," not their ego and not to find a hole to place a newly minted peg into (career focus).
People need to see schools for what they generally are in the public educational system, a means of perpetuating the machine (one that thanks to globalization, is evaporating before our eyes) and fullfilling the educational/prison complex's self perpetuation. So, without accomplishing the basic foundational precept of maintaining and encouraging the "why" any rearangment of the present educational system can only be seen as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The new Think Green STEM Centers are designed so that they create flow in the educational systems and are a point of focus by which each step of the K-12 experience can be channeled into a rich and deep river of opportunity for all involved, the student, their family and society in general.
That doesn't mean that the students are better overall prepared to met the challenges of the world head-on though. Life in any shape or size can be overwhelming to the individual if they are not properly prepared to receive it.
The real work is not in the rearangeement of the school building and what it looks like, the true work is one of immersing the students,their parents and society into an enriched learning environment. One that is both challenging and rewarding.
In Poland for instance the typical life of a students 12 years is that they attend grades 1-8 with the same kids in their class. And then if they graduate middle school and choose to go to high school as opposed to attending a trade school, they then finish the next four years with another group of 20 some classmates. So even though a student may attend a school with a population of thousands of students the learning environment is always kept small and manageable.
This also saves a great deal on resource management. To be able to provide economies of scale for the infrastucture rather than recreating hundreds of smaller and seperate buildings. The intent to create a level of comfort and familiarity for the student is thereby achieved and this provides stability to the childs learning environment and also better equips the teachers ability to understand each student and their family situation better.
It is expected in Poland that the parent will work with the students to comprehend and complete their homework. This is something that is gradually taught to both the student and their parents from grade one right on through graduation. So, you see there is also cutural and societal change that needs to take place. There are very few parents equipped to provide this kind of substantive support to their childrens education.
But it is imperative that their be interim replacements for after school to fill in the gaps so that the students can not only achieve parity on the global scale but excell. So, you can now understand that although we can make some serious inroads into a graduated change in the success of our educational capacities, it is important to understand though that the really stellar successes will have to be expected in 12 years when the first students of these enriched learning environments will have completed their primary K-12 education, free from the virus we presently call public education.
It will take that long to really let the disease run it's course. For although there is a great many people that truly wish the best for the students and all is not a devastating failure, the foundation upon which the educational endeavors were built are gravely flawed.
Moving on and to the core intent, any student attempting public life must have the basic fundamental self-actualization tools in place. The greatest tool is a very natural one and that is the question WHY? Most of the additonal tools that complement "why" are various shaped sharpening-stones that keep a keen edge placed on the "why" tool.
This is the personal motivation to understand and succeed to the next step or level of learning. There is no other way around it. So, this Gestalt of interaction with the world is the foundational element neccesary for the students success in life.
This begins with their own self-esteem and continuing with their public educational experiences and beyond. It is important to note we are creating the capacity for the student to carry on this awareness of "why" beyond the "school" environment.
When they "graduate" to each next level they will also have added a number of tools that they have apprenticed with and they are the other w's, the who, what, where, why, when and how. If properly accomplished (Pedagogy) the groundwork for forming the students educational experience will provide the student with the fundamental understandings that they are in school to experience life and to build upon their insatiable need to comprehend the world they live in physically and imaginatively, thereby all the while nurturing the "why" tool.
This is the kernal to success in education. It needs to exist solely for the support of the individuals "why," not their ego and not to find a hole to place a newly minted peg into (career focus).
People need to see schools for what they generally are in the public educational system, a means of perpetuating the machine (one that thanks to globalization, is evaporating before our eyes) and fullfilling the educational/prison complex's self perpetuation. So, without accomplishing the basic foundational precept of maintaining and encouraging the "why" any rearangment of the present educational system can only be seen as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The new Think Green STEM Centers are designed so that they create flow in the educational systems and are a point of focus by which each step of the K-12 experience can be channeled into a rich and deep river of opportunity for all involved, the student, their family and society in general.
TAKE ONE ASPRIN and CALL me in the Morning!
ARE SMALLER SCHOOLS THE ANSWER?
Big high schools hinder learning, some teachers say
Granholm proposal would cut enrollments to 400
February 18, 2008
BY LORI HIGGINS
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Dozens of high schools -- including 43 in metro Detroit -- could be chopped into pieces in coming years as a movement to break their big populations into smaller chunks gains steam in Michigan.
It's a practice already seen from Huron Valley Schools in Oakland County to Chippewa Valley Schools in Macomb County, where school districts are finding ways to turn large, impersonal high schools into smaller communities.
And now Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants the Legislature to endorse a plan she announced last month to create the 21st Century Schools Fund, which would allow schools that enroll more than 800 students and fail to meet goals of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law for two years or more to create small high schools of 400 students.
But are small schools the answer? Research has been mixed on an increasingly popular way to achieve the small-school effect -- by creating schools within schools -- with many findings showing that simply going smaller is not a panacea.
Yet John Telford, a teacher and curriculum leader at Finney High School in Detroit Public Schools, says he believes it can save urban schools.
"Is this the way to go? There's no question. This is the answer," Telford said.
But he doesn't have to look far to find dissent. Dominique Harris, a Finney junior, is unconvinced. Though Finney would be eligible for the money, she doesn't like the idea of breaking up her school's population of nearly 1,000 students.
"I don't think they should do that. It's not going to change anything. It's just going to make a whole bunch of little schools," with the same problems as the big schools, Dominique said.
And just last year, University of Michigan education professor Valerie E. Lee coauthored a book that tells a cautionary tale about the method of breaking large high schools into schools-within-schools.
"People are grasping at straws," said Lee, who also is a faculty associate with U-M's Survey Research Center. "Schools within schools is seen as the new magic bullet that's going to save large urban high schools. Maybe so. But not in the way that most people are going to do it."
Teaching is the focus
Many school districts in metro Detroit already have invested time and money into creating smaller, more personal high school environments.
Advocates say smaller schools allow students to have better relationships with their teachers, staff to have more support, administrators to have autonomy and the focus to be on discipline and teaching that is relevant to what will matter in the real world.
Southfield Public Schools is opening a new small high school next fall that will focus on math, science, technology and engineering. The district already has five academies at its two high schools -- each with separate themes such as arts and communications, medicine and natural sciences, and engineering and manufacturing -- in an effort to not only expose students to careers but to create smaller learning environments.
Southfield High enrolls 1,400 students, but it doesn't feel that way to Malcolm Hayes, a senior. He's enrolled in the engineering academy, and though he takes core classes such as language arts and math with students from across the school, the rest are with his peers in the academy.
"We share a lot in common," said Malcolm, 17, of Southfield. "We're able to connect more than with students I have in my English classes. We share interests."
At Lakeland High School in White Lake Township, the district created ninth-grade teams several years ago, in which students are divided into groups of about 90 students and paired with three teachers who teach core classes such as math, language arts and science within a three-hour block.
Shannon Schwarb, a Lakeland math teacher, likes sharing the same group of students with her colleagues. If she notices a student struggling, she can talk to her teammates to see if they're noticing the same difficulties.
And with high school graduation standards getting tougher, students need to have better relationships with their teachers, she said.
"That's why the teams are important, because it gives them that extra support. It makes them feel more comfortable."
Lakeland also has divided its school into two sections, with freshmen and sophomores occupying one side of the building and the upper-class students occupying the other side, another effort at creating smaller environments for kids.
The efforts seem to be paying off. Lakeland Principal Bob Behnke said the school's ACT composite scores have increased faster than the state and national averages.
Although Lakeland's ninth-grade teams share a building with older students, Chippewa Valley Schools is taking a different approach. Two ninth-grade academies are opening in September, one adjacent to Dakota High School and the other next to Chippewa Valley High.
Both academies are expected to enroll 600 students, reducing the population at Dakota from 2,500 and Chippewa Valley from 2,200, said Ed Skiba, executive director of secondary education.
"We're trying to create a separate culture that tells kids that we're all in this together," Skiba said.
Making school more personal
The small-school method is working for Jules Cooch of Pinckney, an 18-year-old who attends a small school of 330 students.
"It's one-on-one; it's really personalized. Someone is actually saying to you ... that you matter," said Cooch, a senior at the Washtenaw Technical Middle College, where students can graduate with not only a high school diploma, but a technical certificate or an associate's degree, in four years.
Programs like the one Cooch attends were touted by Granholm as examples of small schools that work.
Fifteen high schools in Detroit and about 28 other schools in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties would be eligible for the funds Granholm wants to make available, though the priority would be on the nearly two dozen schools with serious academic troubles.
Those pushing for the small schools say they'll keep kids in school and produce graduates who are prepared for postsecondary education, whether that be a 4-year university, community college or trade program.
"If you can make school more personal and have kids have ongoing relationships with teachers in smaller settings, you really tap into their motivation, their willingness to stay in school," said State Superintendent Mike Flanagan.
Contact LORI HIGGINS at 248-351-3694 or lhiggins@freepress.com.
Big high schools hinder learning, some teachers say
Granholm proposal would cut enrollments to 400
February 18, 2008
BY LORI HIGGINS
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Dozens of high schools -- including 43 in metro Detroit -- could be chopped into pieces in coming years as a movement to break their big populations into smaller chunks gains steam in Michigan.
It's a practice already seen from Huron Valley Schools in Oakland County to Chippewa Valley Schools in Macomb County, where school districts are finding ways to turn large, impersonal high schools into smaller communities.
And now Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants the Legislature to endorse a plan she announced last month to create the 21st Century Schools Fund, which would allow schools that enroll more than 800 students and fail to meet goals of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law for two years or more to create small high schools of 400 students.
But are small schools the answer? Research has been mixed on an increasingly popular way to achieve the small-school effect -- by creating schools within schools -- with many findings showing that simply going smaller is not a panacea.
Yet John Telford, a teacher and curriculum leader at Finney High School in Detroit Public Schools, says he believes it can save urban schools.
"Is this the way to go? There's no question. This is the answer," Telford said.
But he doesn't have to look far to find dissent. Dominique Harris, a Finney junior, is unconvinced. Though Finney would be eligible for the money, she doesn't like the idea of breaking up her school's population of nearly 1,000 students.
"I don't think they should do that. It's not going to change anything. It's just going to make a whole bunch of little schools," with the same problems as the big schools, Dominique said.
And just last year, University of Michigan education professor Valerie E. Lee coauthored a book that tells a cautionary tale about the method of breaking large high schools into schools-within-schools.
"People are grasping at straws," said Lee, who also is a faculty associate with U-M's Survey Research Center. "Schools within schools is seen as the new magic bullet that's going to save large urban high schools. Maybe so. But not in the way that most people are going to do it."
Teaching is the focus
Many school districts in metro Detroit already have invested time and money into creating smaller, more personal high school environments.
Advocates say smaller schools allow students to have better relationships with their teachers, staff to have more support, administrators to have autonomy and the focus to be on discipline and teaching that is relevant to what will matter in the real world.
Southfield Public Schools is opening a new small high school next fall that will focus on math, science, technology and engineering. The district already has five academies at its two high schools -- each with separate themes such as arts and communications, medicine and natural sciences, and engineering and manufacturing -- in an effort to not only expose students to careers but to create smaller learning environments.
Southfield High enrolls 1,400 students, but it doesn't feel that way to Malcolm Hayes, a senior. He's enrolled in the engineering academy, and though he takes core classes such as language arts and math with students from across the school, the rest are with his peers in the academy.
"We share a lot in common," said Malcolm, 17, of Southfield. "We're able to connect more than with students I have in my English classes. We share interests."
At Lakeland High School in White Lake Township, the district created ninth-grade teams several years ago, in which students are divided into groups of about 90 students and paired with three teachers who teach core classes such as math, language arts and science within a three-hour block.
Shannon Schwarb, a Lakeland math teacher, likes sharing the same group of students with her colleagues. If she notices a student struggling, she can talk to her teammates to see if they're noticing the same difficulties.
And with high school graduation standards getting tougher, students need to have better relationships with their teachers, she said.
"That's why the teams are important, because it gives them that extra support. It makes them feel more comfortable."
Lakeland also has divided its school into two sections, with freshmen and sophomores occupying one side of the building and the upper-class students occupying the other side, another effort at creating smaller environments for kids.
The efforts seem to be paying off. Lakeland Principal Bob Behnke said the school's ACT composite scores have increased faster than the state and national averages.
Although Lakeland's ninth-grade teams share a building with older students, Chippewa Valley Schools is taking a different approach. Two ninth-grade academies are opening in September, one adjacent to Dakota High School and the other next to Chippewa Valley High.
Both academies are expected to enroll 600 students, reducing the population at Dakota from 2,500 and Chippewa Valley from 2,200, said Ed Skiba, executive director of secondary education.
"We're trying to create a separate culture that tells kids that we're all in this together," Skiba said.
Making school more personal
The small-school method is working for Jules Cooch of Pinckney, an 18-year-old who attends a small school of 330 students.
"It's one-on-one; it's really personalized. Someone is actually saying to you ... that you matter," said Cooch, a senior at the Washtenaw Technical Middle College, where students can graduate with not only a high school diploma, but a technical certificate or an associate's degree, in four years.
Programs like the one Cooch attends were touted by Granholm as examples of small schools that work.
Fifteen high schools in Detroit and about 28 other schools in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties would be eligible for the funds Granholm wants to make available, though the priority would be on the nearly two dozen schools with serious academic troubles.
Those pushing for the small schools say they'll keep kids in school and produce graduates who are prepared for postsecondary education, whether that be a 4-year university, community college or trade program.
"If you can make school more personal and have kids have ongoing relationships with teachers in smaller settings, you really tap into their motivation, their willingness to stay in school," said State Superintendent Mike Flanagan.
Contact LORI HIGGINS at 248-351-3694 or lhiggins@freepress.com.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
OUR Future is GREEN!
The Promise of Green Energy
By John Bebow - February 15, 2008The green energy economy is real in Michigan -- an it is worth thousands of jobs, argues guest columnist Rob Gramlich.
The Promise of Green Jobs
By Rob Gramlich, Policy Director for the American Wind Energy Association
Many are intrigued by Governor Granholm’s statement that the renewable energy industry has the power to create thousands of jobs in Michigan.[1] Endowed with numerous renewable resources, a developed manufacturing base, and an arsenal of well-trained individuals,
Pre-existing manufacturing facilities are transitioning some or all of their work to accommodate renewable energy industry components. An example of a
The transition is expected to bring at least 60 new people to the company's current base of 150 employees.[4] Dowding Industries, of Eaton Rapids, which specializes in precision run manufacturing of progressive die stampings, metal fabrications, and welded assemblies, is investing $10 million in expanding their facility to accommodate wind industry component production. They plan to hire 50 employees to be involved in their expanded business sector. Creative Foam, a business which currentlydesigns and manufactures foams and plastics for customers in the automotive, medical and composite markets, is investing $1.2 million in its Alloy Business Unit in Fenton, MI, to branch into the wind energy business. Also, K & M Machine Fabricating, located in Cassopolis, is taking on a $20 million expansion project to broaden its machining, fabricating, burning and assembly functions to meet wind industry needs. This company anticipates hiring 100 new employees to take on its broadened specialization.
In addition to the continued manufacturing employment growth that a 10% by 2015 Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) would inevitably bring,
Governor Granholm has already asked for federal funding to support the development of a national center in
Renewable standard legislation provides a guarantee to manufacturers that the renewable energy sector will continue to grow in their state in years to come; giving them sound reason to invest in new facilities, expand production capabilities, and commit to additional hires. The state of
The President and CEO of GE Energy, John Krenicki Jr., has stated to Congress, “We believe wind and solar energy are likely to be among the largest sources of new manufacturing jobs worldwide during the 21st Century.” As a state that lost 68,300 manufacturing jobs between January 2001 and May 2004,
Friday, February 15, 2008
HUMMMMMM!
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.
Joining the circle of curmudgeons this season is Eric G. Wilson, whose “Against Happiness” warns that the “American obsession with happiness” could “well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation.”
Then there is Lee Siegel’s “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” which inveighs against the Internet for encouraging solipsism, debased discourse and arrant commercialization. Mr. Siegel, one might remember, was suspended by The New Republic for using a fake online persona in order to trash critics of his blog (“you couldn’t tie Siegel’s shoelaces”) and to praise himself (“brave, brilliant”).
Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge. She is well aware that some may tag her a crank. “I expect to get bashed,” said Ms. Jacoby, 62, either as an older person who upbraids the young for plummeting standards and values, or as a secularist whose defense of scientific rationalism is a way to disparage religion.
Ms. Jacoby, however, is quick to point out that her indictment is not limited by age or ideology. Yes, she knows that eggheads, nerds, bookworms, longhairs, pointy heads, highbrows and know-it-alls have been mocked and dismissed throughout American history. And liberal and conservative writers, from Richard Hofstadter to Allan Bloom, have regularly analyzed the phenomenon and offered advice.
T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian who edits the quarterly review Raritan, said, “The tendency to this sort of lamentation is perennial in American history,” adding that in periods “when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.”
But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.
Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.
She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.
Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.
Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”
Ms. Jacoby doesn’t expect to revolutionize the nation’s educational system or cause millions of Americans to switch off “American Idol” and pick up Schopenhauer. But she would like to start a conversation about why the United States seems particularly vulnerable to such a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism. After all, “the empire of infotainment doesn’t stop at the American border,” she said, yet students in many other countries consistently outperform American students in science, math and reading on comparative tests.
In part, she lays the blame on a failing educational system. “Although people are going to school more and more years, there’s no evidence that they know more,” she said.
Ms. Jacoby also blames religious fundamentalism’s antipathy toward science, as she grieves over surveys that show that nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism to be taught along with evolution.
Ms. Jacoby doesn’t leave liberals out of her analysis, mentioning the New Left’s attacks on universities in the 1960s, the decision to consign African-American and women’s studies to an “academic ghetto” instead of integrating them into the core curriculum, ponderous musings on rock music and pop culture courses on everything from sitcoms to fat that trivialize college-level learning.
Avoiding the liberal or conservative label in this particular argument, she prefers to call herself a “cultural conservationist.”
For all her scholarly interests, though, Ms. Jacoby said she recognized just how hard it is to tune out the 24/7 entertainment culture. A few years ago she participated in the annual campaign to turn off the television for a week. “I was stunned at how difficult it was for me,” she said.
The surprise at her own dependency on electronic and visual media made her realize just how pervasive the culture of distraction is and how susceptible everyone is — even curmudgeons.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
JOBS, ADVANCED GREEN RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT, EDUCATION!
February 14, 2008
By TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Big Push for alternative energy jobs
LANSING -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whatever one may think of her politics or management skills, is a paragon of public comportment. She's always calm, carefully spoken, fastidious about avoiding showy perks and trappings of power.
That's why I was startled, during an interview in her office this week, to hear Granholm say, "I feel very Machiavellian about this," referring to her desire to bring alternative energy jobs to Michigan. According to definitions of Machiavellianism I consulted, this suggests that she might deceive or manipulate others, or use any means necessary to get those jobs.
"I think this is such a moment for us to capitalize on, creating this whole new sector here," Granholm added, warming to her cause. "And if other states have done it without the resources that we have, then we can certainly explode onto the scene."
Problem is, Michigan is a laggard, not a leader, in wind-power generation and other clean green technologies that could help the environment, reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and, yes, replace at least some of the gazillion manufacturing jobs we've lost.
Michigan is a laggard because other states have beaten us to the punch with policy actions that make them look attractive and welcoming to inventors, entrepreneurs and giant companies that have spied alt-energy as a growth opportunity.
Back in 1991, Iowa became the first state in the nation to adopt a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which mandates a state to generate a specified portion of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal or other alternatives to fossil fuels.
By 1997, Massachusetts, Nevada and Minnesota had renewable standards. Today 24 have an RPS, and four others have nonbinding goals for adoption of renewable energy. Michigan is not among them.
In testimony last week before state Sen. Bruce Patterson's energy policy committee, Seth Dunn, general manager of strategic marketing for Atlanta-based GE Energy, said more than $9 billion was invested last year in wind-energy facilities in the United States. Of that total, 96% went to states with renewable standards.
"We are now at a point in the industry where the presence of RPS is very important to our investment decision," Dunn said. Fred Keller, CEO of Cascade Engineering in Grand Rapids, agreed.
"Michigan has a onetime opportunity to win a leadership role in competition among many states in the renewable energy industry that is growing at over 30% a year. But it takes enlightened policy in addition to our many other assets to do so," Keller said at Patterson's hearing.
Cascade recently launched a new venture to produce small wind turbines for home and commercial use. Keller recommended that Michigan adopt a standard mandating that 10% of electricity come from renewable sources by 2015, citing a national study that estimated 34,000 new Michigan jobs could come from wind and solar energy projects alone.
Granholm is trying to get the Legislature to put RPS on a fast track for approval and expects action by the Michigan House on a bill this month. But she's worried that things could bog down in the Senate, where the Republican majority has expressed concerns about whether electricity costs will rise. Wind power, Granholm insisted, will be as cheap or cheaper than future power from new coal-fired plants.
Sadly, Michigan's pokey progress toward a renewable energy policy initiative hasn't come from ignorance of the fact that alt-energy could be a big job creator for the state.
In 2002, a year before Granholm took office, Republican Gov. John Engler broke ground in Detroit for NextEnergy, the nonprofit formed to accelerate development of an alternative energy industry here. Granholm pushed alt-energy hard in her 2005 State of the State speech.
"RPS is the single most important policy initiative that must pass to demonstrate to the world that we are serious about alternative energy," NextEnergy CEO Jim Croce told me Wednesday. "Without RPS we're an also-ran."
"The issue is urgency. We have to get in the game," Granholm said.
Even if she needs to go Machiavellian to make it happen.
Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com.
By TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Big Push for alternative energy jobs
LANSING -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whatever one may think of her politics or management skills, is a paragon of public comportment. She's always calm, carefully spoken, fastidious about avoiding showy perks and trappings of power.
That's why I was startled, during an interview in her office this week, to hear Granholm say, "I feel very Machiavellian about this," referring to her desire to bring alternative energy jobs to Michigan. According to definitions of Machiavellianism I consulted, this suggests that she might deceive or manipulate others, or use any means necessary to get those jobs.
"I think this is such a moment for us to capitalize on, creating this whole new sector here," Granholm added, warming to her cause. "And if other states have done it without the resources that we have, then we can certainly explode onto the scene."
Problem is, Michigan is a laggard, not a leader, in wind-power generation and other clean green technologies that could help the environment, reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and, yes, replace at least some of the gazillion manufacturing jobs we've lost.
Michigan is a laggard because other states have beaten us to the punch with policy actions that make them look attractive and welcoming to inventors, entrepreneurs and giant companies that have spied alt-energy as a growth opportunity.
Back in 1991, Iowa became the first state in the nation to adopt a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which mandates a state to generate a specified portion of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal or other alternatives to fossil fuels.
By 1997, Massachusetts, Nevada and Minnesota had renewable standards. Today 24 have an RPS, and four others have nonbinding goals for adoption of renewable energy. Michigan is not among them.
In testimony last week before state Sen. Bruce Patterson's energy policy committee, Seth Dunn, general manager of strategic marketing for Atlanta-based GE Energy, said more than $9 billion was invested last year in wind-energy facilities in the United States. Of that total, 96% went to states with renewable standards.
"We are now at a point in the industry where the presence of RPS is very important to our investment decision," Dunn said. Fred Keller, CEO of Cascade Engineering in Grand Rapids, agreed.
"Michigan has a onetime opportunity to win a leadership role in competition among many states in the renewable energy industry that is growing at over 30% a year. But it takes enlightened policy in addition to our many other assets to do so," Keller said at Patterson's hearing.
Cascade recently launched a new venture to produce small wind turbines for home and commercial use. Keller recommended that Michigan adopt a standard mandating that 10% of electricity come from renewable sources by 2015, citing a national study that estimated 34,000 new Michigan jobs could come from wind and solar energy projects alone.
Granholm is trying to get the Legislature to put RPS on a fast track for approval and expects action by the Michigan House on a bill this month. But she's worried that things could bog down in the Senate, where the Republican majority has expressed concerns about whether electricity costs will rise. Wind power, Granholm insisted, will be as cheap or cheaper than future power from new coal-fired plants.
Sadly, Michigan's pokey progress toward a renewable energy policy initiative hasn't come from ignorance of the fact that alt-energy could be a big job creator for the state.
In 2002, a year before Granholm took office, Republican Gov. John Engler broke ground in Detroit for NextEnergy, the nonprofit formed to accelerate development of an alternative energy industry here. Granholm pushed alt-energy hard in her 2005 State of the State speech.
"RPS is the single most important policy initiative that must pass to demonstrate to the world that we are serious about alternative energy," NextEnergy CEO Jim Croce told me Wednesday. "Without RPS we're an also-ran."
"The issue is urgency. We have to get in the game," Granholm said.
Even if she needs to go Machiavellian to make it happen.
Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Summary: WEB 2.0 February 2008
« My Big Twelve: Dreams and Goals for 2008 | Main | Change »
Local, Global, or Glocal?
I've been struggling a lot with the concept of classrooms and schools collaborating and connecting globally. In fact, the question "is networking and collaborating outside of school central or supplementary" was raised at Educon and I was instantly immersed into an internal battle over my position. What I've realized is that I am not really debating whether or not we should immerse our classrooms globally; instead, I'm struggling with the starting point for establishing a global classroom and school.
When in the classroom, my focus was on leveraging the power of a global audience. We opened our wired discussions to other schools. We blogged to the outside world. We leapt at every opportunity to connect and collaborate with the outside world. Sadly, I look back and realize that the primary reason it couldn't sustain itself was the lack of a school climate and culture that was supportive of the systemic acceptance of school as a learning community.
Today, my interest is in creating sustained, systemic changes where every classroom is empowered for the 21st Century, not the proliferation of isolated classrooms and small pockets of change that are based more on the individual teacher than the culture as a whole. While I understand the excitement about collaborating and networking outside of the school as well as the need, I find it just as important if not even more important to discuss what is happening within the culture of the school itself: is it a collaborative environment? is it a learning environment? is networking occurring? is literacy a focus in all classrooms?
Thus, my answer to the question about networking and collaborating outside of school is that we need to "Think Globally, Act Locally". In other words, my focus is on being Glocal: 'starting from within the local community and spreading globally (Hicks).
Leverage Local Connections
At the classroom level, a great starting point is bridging gaps between your own classrooms. If you teach three sections of the same subject such as Chemistry, are your classes collaborating and connecting or are these functioning as isolated sections? By creating an environment where all your sections are collaborating, communicating, and connecting, the collective knowledge is widening and students are beginning to experience a community of practice within the school.
From there, this type of learning environment can expand to others teaching the same subject (or grade level for k-8) so that it is now about a collective approach to American Literature not just each American Literature teacher functioning in isolation. Through discussion forums, wikis, webcasts, and live broadcasts, the framework for collaboration becomes relatively simple yet the importance of creating such an environment is a critical step for learning for students and adults: "educators who are building a professional learning community recognize that they must work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all. Therefore, they create structures to promote a collaborative culture" (Dufour, 2005, p.36).
It doesn't stop there. As the students and teachers become immersed in a learning community, the skills in collaborating, communicating, and connecting continue to grow so that the community, network, and audience can expand its boundaries across departments, sister schools, and onward to a truly global classroom. The key, however, is that the environment is allowed to grow naturally and the foundation of such a learning community that much stronger where students are able to scaffold their skills and teachers are able to best understand how to leverage participatory media and the global audience:
There are those kids -- just like there are those teachers -- who will take to the idea of writing to an unknown audience and seeing what happens. But hoping and wishing for the serendipitous moment makes for bad teacher planning, and over the long haul I think it won't get the vast majority of our students publishing their voices to the world. If we want to see kids embrace the power of communication technologies like blogs and wikis and podcasts, we need to be good teacher-planners. We need to give them reasons to publish. We need to help them see their audience... whether it is using a blogging platform for and art classroom exhibition that other students will critique or bringing in a group of math majors from a college to work with our math students, kids need to understand why they should share their work with the world, and then -- once they do -- we allow for all the serendipitous moments that so many of us in the edu-blog world have benefited from to occur (Lehmann)
An Example Worth Discussing
Blogging is a perfect example of what I'm discussing here. Right now, there are a lot of isolated blogs within schools where students are blogging for a specific course and that is it. When the student leaves that teacher, the blogging essentially ends unless the student chooses to continue writing. In theory, the blog has a global audience but even in cases where this is true, the length of time students have with the blog is too short in most cases. While these educators and students are undoubtedly doing wonderful things, the question of sustainability and systemic change raise questions about the long term impact of such endeavors.
What if students were given a learning space as soon as they entered the school, including a blog space, and this was used
across courses and grade levels? In other words, the student owns their space and grows with them -- a sort of blogging across the curriculum. By creating such a space, the process could be scaffolded where early grades are learning what it means to engage in transformative blogging and beginning the process of creating their network locally while thinking globally. Here is an rough example of what this might look like within a high school:
9th Grade: all students receive their learning space; students begin blogging in a central space with a focus on learning the process with an audience of their peers
10th Grade: students begin to expand their network to the entire school; the concept of connecting and communicating with a wider audience begins to form as students continue to build their skills.
11th Grade: The network continues to expand and reach out to a wider audience in an organic way. Students understand what transformative blogging represents and what it means to write for a local and global audience
12th Grade: The hope is that students have reached a point where blogging is a natural part of their personal and professional learning environment. Students are writing in a natural and fluid environment that will sustain itself long past formal schooling
While very rough and by no means perfect, this is the type of environment I believe allows for the perfect blend of local and global so that 21st Century skills are not only taught but learned and that a learning community is built from within in order "to promote the qualities and dispositions of insatiable, lifelong learning in every member of the school community -- young people and adults alike -- so that when the school experience concludes, learning will not" (Barth).
The Ripple Effect
Many of us are excited about Global possibilities but sometimes at the expense of local. As Christian Long recently stated in his blog, "perhaps whether there is something to be said for NOT going global just because we can, especially if it serves our kids better in the process. Maybe we need to talk about concentric circles of local scale first. And global pitches second." If the belief is that all classrooms should be collaborating and connecting with the outside world, we need to develop learning community within our own walls before moving outside to a global community. Systemic change is difficult when it come from a few exceptional teachers -- pebbles tossed into the lake. It comes from the entire school functioning as a learning community and creating a powerful ripple effect that rocks the whole lake and branches the community out organically.
So, is it global, local, or glocal? I'm thinking Glocal*!
References
Barth, R. (2007). Turning Book Burners into Lifelong Learners. Published in Educational Leadership 2nd Edition. Wiley & Sons.
Boyd, D. (2005). Why Web 2.0 Matters: Preparing for Glocalization.
Dufour, R. (2005). What is a Professional Learning Community? National Educational Services.
Hicks, D. (n/a). Towards a glocal language curriculum: 2000 and beyond. Cambridge University Press.
Lehmann, C. (2007). When to Publish.
Long, C. (2007). The Global vs. Local Connection.
*Glocal has a number of definitions and uses that I'm obviously not employing here. Basically, my point is that we need to think both globally and locally, so the term, in this context, is just the merging of the two terms.
Monday, February 11, 2008
A little something on the VALUE of GENERATIVE THINKING!
Better Than Free
The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying.
Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.
Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire.
We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once it's flowed on the internet.
This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.
Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?
I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:
The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying.
Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.
Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire.
We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once it's flowed on the internet.
This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.
Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?
I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:
- When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
- When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
- When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.
Well, what can't be copied?
There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.
There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user.
We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?
From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.
In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.
Eight Generatives Better Than Free
Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset. Many people go to movie theaters to see films on the opening night, where they will pay a hefty price to see a film that later will be available for free, or almost free, via rental or download. Hardcover books command a premium for their immediacy, disguised as a harder cover. First in line often commands an extra price for the same good. As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative. It has to fit with the product and the audience. A blog has a different sense of time than a movie, or a car. But immediacy can be found in any media.
Personalization -- A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room -- as if it were preformed in your room -- you may be willing to pay a lot. The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background. A free movie you buy may be cut to reflect the rating you desire (no violence, dirty language okay). Aspirin is free, but aspirin tailored to your DNA is very expensive. As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.
Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. I suspect a lot of genetic information will go this route. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it -- the manual for your genes so to speak -- will be expensive.
Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature -- to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes (copies are super-conducting liquids, remember?) but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care.
Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers). Ditto for books and blogs. Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires. We can sip it from our phones, PDAs, laptops, big screens from where-ever. The fact that most of this material will be available free, if we want to tend it, back it up, keep adding to it, and organize it, will be less and less appealing as time goes on.
Embodiment -- At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today -- which may draw ticket holders to a big theater -- may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.
Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.
Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.
The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators.
This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with.
\Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability -- in addition to the other generative qualities.
These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity.
Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.
In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.
Careful readers will note one conspicuous absence so far. I have said nothing about advertising. Ads are widely regarded as the solution, almost the ONLY solution, to the paradox of the free. Most of the suggested solutions I've seen for overcoming the free involve some measure of advertising. I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.
But that's another story.
Beneath the frothy layer of advertising, these eight generatives will supply the value to ubiquitous free copies, and make them worth advertising for. These generatives apply to all digital copies, but also to any kind of copy where the marginal cost of that copy approaches zero. (See my essay on Technology Wants to Be Free.) Even material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don't want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs.
Someday we'll pay for Personalization.
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Ryan, interesting ideas. You caused some writing on my end...
http://tinyurl.com/2r3dr3
Posted by: Miguel Guhlin | February 3, 2008 2:11 PM
Miguel:
Your points are quite interesting and offer some insights into what I'm pondering.
I don't see this as a walled garden issue but as more of helping students grow their network starting from within and giving each student a learning space that isn't confined to a specific course or a specific teacher. This focuses beyond individual classes and moves it towards a systemic use of participatory media and literacy focus.
The last thing I want is a walled garden. However, I think there is a starting point where connecting locally allows us to branch off. Perhaps audience as peers makes it seem as though I'm advocating for this. However, I'm advocating for students to start local and expand.
How many students are blogging right now without a global audience? It is great to speak about the Internet in an authentic state, but there are a number of classrooms blogging and an audience is never established. By the time one begins to form, the course is over and the blog ends because it is course or grade based NOT student based.
I want all students to have the opportunity to engage globally for a sustained period. Right now, I see a few exceptional teachers doing the best they can within a limited scope: grade-level or subject-matter.
Thanks for the thoughts that I'm sure I'll continue to ponder.
Posted by: Ryan Bretag | February 3, 2008 3:44 PM
I too am struggling at the moment. I am wondering if we are shooting ourselves in the foot because we have a great number of educators testing theory without sound research.
I shouldn't even try to relate this because I just picked up the book, but your line of thinking is similar to Neil Postman's Technopoly. I stumbled upon this book through Wes Fryers NCLB post and then, in an odd occurrence, discovered the book at eye level while crossing through Borders to get to the coffee shop.
Postman provides great insight to the all or nothing line of thinking that technophiles support. He cautions that when the new is blindly looked upon as just better we fail to look at it with both eyes.
I am with you. If we just unleash students on this stuff because it is the next big thing are we losing something that will not be revealed for a decade or so?
Postman begins the book with a story from Plato's Phaedrus. There are two thoughts in this story that are eating away at me. 1. The inventor/discoverer is never the best judge of good or harm. 2. (speaking of writing) Pupils will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be considered very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quiet ignorant. (access without understanding)
Are we building knowledge or breeding contempt for it? (Google will make my choices for me using an algorithm)
Sorry I did this here, but I am having one of those moments. Am I a leader or a follower? And for that matter who are leaders and does the fact they blogged first make them the authority of the future of education?
Some teachers are working hard to make sure HOTS are part of the experience, but what about the vast majority?
I need to regroup.
Posted by: Ken Pruitt | February 4, 2008 2:36 PM
Your point is well made and I agree... maybe I am missing somethings as I read your message and Mighuels response.
1. Doesn't everything go back to the school's and teacher's purpose, goals, and objectives. Ask why you want to have your learners collaborate and you will find where you need to start!
2. Can't you list a dozen school activities that lack congruence across grade levels. We ask our k - 12 teachers to meet once or twice a year to align curriculum?
3. Once you can define what the purpose and ultimate goal of our public education system is, than we can finally begin to address your point more fully. Are we trying to get them into college? Are we focused on a basic set of knowledge standards? Are we preparing them for the 21st century? Are we trying to help them become life long learners? Are we trying to get them to be active citizens of our country? Are we focused on behavior? Is it to learn how to pass the test?
Interesting quick reads I found in 2 minute Google Search:
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?storyID=6906
http://nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/Menu/statement.htm
Posted by: Scott Meech | February 4, 2008 6:36 PM
Hey Scott:
Thanks for the comment. Since you've laid out your thoughts by points, I'll respond in a similar fashion :-)
1. Of course, it does come back to and should come back to what we are attempting to accomplish. Obviously, there is extensive research in the area of collaboration, so I'll simplify this a bit that it is considered a best practice.
Because of that, I want collaboration occurring with great breadth and depth allowing for those global connections to foster growth on a local level. As Reich and Solomon say, "you must make sure they are tapped into the world and the local community, so that the changes and differences that result from being connected to people all over the globe are integrated into what you do at local and global levels."
2. I sure can but there is two issues here: 1. cultures of isolation must be removed in schools 2. I see this as more than just an activity. In fact, this is what I want to move away from: today, we are doing a collaborative activity. I don't want collaboration, connecting, and networking to be an anomaly but what we do day in and day out as learners.
With today's tools, this should be easier to accomplish for teachers, departments, and schools. Again, the research is vast in the area of professional learning communities yet many are still not embracing this concept or have embraced it on a surface level.
In some sense, I would say because of your comments I feel it is even more important to build this foundation locally if we want to see all learners experiencing a glocal (boy, I'm butchering this term) learning environment.
3. Not to heavy of a question, eh :-)
Seriously though, since most mission statements around the country encompass pieces of each of your questions, I'm sure we could package it up in a nice, cohesive statement.
But, like intended vs. taught curriculum, I wonder if the intended mission of many schools is truly lived out in each and every decision made within schools.
Posted by: Ryan Bretag | February 5, 2008 2:01 AM
Wow! Thanks for the comment Ken. I must admit that I've never read anything by Postman but you have me intrigued.
Based upon the questions and thoughts in your comment, I know I've missed something well worth reading, so I'll hold a bit on my thoughts until I've read this piece.
Thanks for getting the wheels spinning!!
Posted by: Ryan Bretag | February 5, 2008 2:06 AM
Ryan-
I was just having a conversation with Scott Meech and a few other educators about the value of Ed.Voicethread in comparison to having a teacher use a pro voicethread acct with students using sub-identities.
Ed.Voicethread is a great solution for students to carry a digital suitcase and create a digital learning trail over time. It is a bummer that it doesn't allow authentic comments from people who will never be able to have an Ed.Voicethread account, but I'll take the upside.
We have the same thing with blogs. Some teachers have their kids use blogger for a history blog, some english teachers then have the students use blogger to create a separate english blog. We need one platform in our school so students can blog across different classes and across many years.
Definitely a timely post as I've been thinking about these same challenges, Ryan.
Thanks,
Matt
Posted by: matt montagne | February 11, 2008 4:04 AM
I love your concept: "Golcal"
Yes, I believe it is very important to "Think Globally, and Act Locally". I can see how new technology, such as blogging can help. This new culture has the opportunity to build bridges across the globe and allow communication between cultures like never before. Making connections at the local level with the school community is a start in bringing us all closer at the global level. This is as you said a "collaborative culture" and educators need to help generate more interest in using new technologies to enhance the learning environment.
jmv
Posted by: jmv | February 12, 2008 7:02 AM