Is Obama’s Plan for Ed Reform About to Crash?

Yesterday, Robert Plants, one of our editors, shared Anthony Cody’s “This Is How a Tipping Point Feels” (Teacher Magazine, 8.15.10) with all ETCJ writers and editors. Cody bemoans the Obama administration’s heavy-handed approach to education reform. He sees mounting opposition to top-down decision-making and exclusive reliance on “tough standards and high-stakes tests” and wonders if the pendulum is about ready to swing the other way. He asks, “What do you think? Are we approaching a tipping point? How can we make it so?” Two of our editors, Harry Keller in “Time to Push the Ed Reform Pendulum Sideways” and Bonnie Bracey Sutton in “The Teacher’s Voice Is Missing,” have responded. To see Bonnie’s article, click on “Read more” at the bottom of this article. -js


Time to Push the Ed Reform Pendulum Sideways

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

Anthony Cody writes in Education Week about education reaching a tipping point. He makes an analogy with a pendulum. The “tipping point” for a pendulum is where it changes direction, the point of maximum acceleration and minimum velocity. He points out that we’ve been moving steadily away from the progressive social approach of the ’70s toward test-driven accountability and “pre-digested curriculum.”

Putting aside the fact that all schools and classrooms have not joined equally in either movement, there’s a real problem with the pendulum analogy. It assumes a linear movement, back and forth repeatedly. If you look carefully, you’ll see that we’ve had previous swings with various names such as “Back to Basics” and “Relevancy.” In my own brief time on the planet, I’ve seen a couple of these swings. You don’t have to read very much to discover that these ideas have been around for a while. Continue reading

Is ‘Technology Expert’ an Oxymoron?

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

[Note: The following article was first published by Harry Keller as a comment on John Adsit‘s “Administrators Don’t Have Time to Keep Up with Ed Tech” on 13 August 2010. -js]

John makes several excellent points. The one that resonates with me focuses on technologists, whatever they are. Because I began working with computers when they used vacuum tubes and have been constantly doing so since, I used to be really up on computer technology. But the field has expanded horizontally to the point where no one can know everything anymore. An example: I just discovered that the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader has two screens, one with e-ink and one with color LCD.

Because we have no standards or certificates for technologists, anyone could be one. One school I worked with had an ex-firefighter as one. He took a Cisco course (really an indoctrination) and so was an “expert technologist.” Continue reading

In Learning Design, Pedagogy First, Medium Second

Tom PreskettBy Tom Preskett

It’s common to hear the argument “We need to use social media in learning because that what the kids are doing.” This statement has merit, but there’s a lot that’s packed into it, and this can sometimes cause confusion.

The sentiment is correct in that there is a desire to engage with school age students on their terms. However, often this gets wrapped up in intentions for more learner centred and collaborative pedagogical stances. That’s fine (if that’s what you want), but it’s important to make a distinction between the medium and the pedagogy. However, the affordance of social media clearly leans towards collaborative uses. Continue reading

Administrators Don’t Have Time to Keep Up with Ed Tech

adsit80By John Adsit
Editor, Curriculum & Instruction

[Note: This article was first posted as a comment by John Adsit on “The Bright New Face of Educational Leadership – Eric Sheninger” on 10 August 2010. -js]

I think there is a reason that not many administrators become leaders in the use of technology in education – they don’t have time to keep up with the dizzying changes that are taking place in that area.

When I was first involved with technology while in the instructional services division of my school district, I was often jokingly referred to as “our computer geek.” What a laugh! I was an instructional theory specialist who was forced down a road to the use of technology through a series of accidents in my assignments. I saw the potential of online education and tried to be a leader in having that potential realized, but I was no technology geek, and I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge when put in the presence of those who really knew how this stuff worked. Continue reading

Who’s on First for the Education Reform Pennant?

Bonnie BraceyBy Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Editor, Policy Issues

As I read about solutions for addressing our nation’s educational problems, I am prompted to ask, Who’s on first in the race toward the best answer?

This question echoes Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine. It is worth listening to if you don’t remember it or haven’t heard it.

My dad was a teacher. He used to say that if education were an airplane, it would never get off the ground because everyone aboard would think they knew enough to fly it. His point was that the arguments in the cockpit would ensure that the plane would never leave the runway.

I’m not trying to make fun of anyone, and I’m not picking on the President. But I am talking about the media and about us, educators. The bottom line is that discussions about education aren’t funny, especially when you think about all the nuances of the problems that make them extremely difficult to solve. Continue reading

The Need for Openness in Professional Publications

kimura80By Bert Kimura
Editor, Ed Tech in Japan

[Note: On Aug. 7, 2010, in an ETCJ listerv discussion, and two days later, in a personal email, Bert commented on the subject of requests for permission to republish ETCJ articles. The following article combines both those sources. -js]

With regard to the republishing question, I don’t see any problem with doing so as long as the “republisher” understands ETCJ‘s chosen Creative Commons* policy.

I see this discussion as an opportunity to update the information in ETCJ’s policy statement since CC licenses have been updated. Provide a link to the “License Deed”** rather than the “Legal Code” since it is more understandable and less intimidating. (Click here to go to the CC site.)

I strongly feel that information should be freely accessible and reusable, and in the bigger picture, will be of greater value to society and, in particular, to educators globally. I also feel that attribution is necessary and credit needs to be given to the author or creator, for better or for worse. CC is an excellent vehicle for doing this. Continue reading

Little Things Add Up to Big Things

Green computing is generally thought of as the “study and practice of efficient and eco-friendly computing resources.” Helping the environment by decreasing energy use and at the same time reducing associated costs seems a no-brainer. Want to learn about green computing and what you can do on a personal level to promote it? Would you like customized information about green computing delivered free to your desktop? Two delivery vehicles for the Internet information highway are Google Alerts and Twilert Twitter tweets (say that fast three times). Use them to get daily e-mail messages with gleanings from the Internet. Continue reading

Innovation Requires Subject Area Expertise

adsit80By John Adsit
Editor, Curriculum & Instruction

[Note: This article was first published by John Adsit as a comment to “‘Has the Internet obsoleted formal schools?’” on 5 August 2010. -js]

“This alone tells us that teacher as sole source of info is no longer viable.” –Jim

When I participated in the creation of the teaching standards of performance for our school district, I ran into some interesting research regarding the common teaching styles of teachers with different levels of academic preparation. The results were probably counterintuitive to most people. Teachers with strong academic preparation in their subject areas were most likely to focus their instruction on thinking skills and project-based learning. Teachers with the weakest academic preparation tended to focus instruction on rote fact retention, with themselves as the primary sources of information.

The research did not not attempt to explain why that was true. Because it was a phenomenon I had observed myself over the years, I had a theory of my own. I believed there were two factors at work. Continue reading

The Bright New Face of Educational Leadership – Eric Sheninger

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Eric Sheninger is the principal of New Milford High School (New Jersey). But he’s more than that. Much, much more. He’s a shining example of the new face of leadership. In “Building Momentum” (A Principal’s Reflections, 8.6.10), he shares his thoughts on what it means to be an educational leader in the 21st century.

The one factor that differentiates Sheninger from the vast majority of his colleagues is that he has personally stepped into the virtual world to envision the future of education. He says, “I stress the fact that this phenomenon [social media] is not going away and is a major component in the lives of today’s society.” This perspective from rather than into social networks is unique, and the insights that it provides challenge mainstream thought. Continue reading

USDA Broadband Funds for Rural America – Implications?

Bonnie BraceyBy Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Editor, Policy Issues

A couple days ago, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the USDA’s second round of funding to extend broadband access to America’s underserved rural and distant areas.

I’d like to hear what ETCJ readers, writers, and editors think of this initiative. What are the implications? Is it enough to make a difference in these areas? How will this affect teaching, learning, and the economy now that the residents will be able to raise their “electronic” hand? Will schools benefit? Who benefits most? To post a comment, click on the title of this article and scroll down to the composing window.

Here’s the opening of The White House press release:

WASHINGTON – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the funding of 126 new Recovery Act broadband infrastructure projects that will create jobs and provide rural residents in 38 states and Native American tribal areas access to improved service.  Broadband access plays a critical role in expanding economic, health care, educational and public safety services in underserved rural communities. Today’s announcement is part of the second round of USDA broadband funding through the Recovery Act. Read more >>

IADIS 2010 – The Gateway to the Black Forest Becomes a Window to E-Learning

Stefanie PankeBy Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

IADIS, a professional organization that engages in activities fostering the information society, organizes each year a multitude of conferences worldwide in the field of e-learning, information and computational science, human computer interaction, e-health and e-commerce. It was my pleasure this year to attend IADIS e-learning 2010, held from July 26-29 in Freiburg, Germany. In one of the session breaks, I had the opportunity to talk to the program chairs Prof. Maggie McPherson from the University of Leeds and Prof. José Miguel Baptista Nunes from the University of Sheffield. Both Miguel and Maggie have been involved with IADIS for many years and have been organizing the e-learning conference since 2007. The interview material complements my own eclectic view based on four conference days, 25 sessions, and approximately 100 talks.

Continue reading

‘Has the Internet obsoleted formal schools?’

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Earlier this evening, I googled “post-school era” and all the hits were related to after high school topics. All except one. I clicked on it and found myself at Yahoo! Answers, a website where anyone can post a question and anyone can post an answer.

Based on the vague dating, the question was posted “2 months ago” by someone calling her-/himself “tell the truth on Net”:

Post-School era: Are formal scholling still needed in Internet-age. Free 24/7/365

Note: users can use Free internet at school / library / home 24/7/365 and pay almost nothing.

How can K-12 schools or local communuity college have more information used by a 1-billion people 24/7/365.

Has the Internet obsoleted formal schools?

Continue reading

Sound Bites Aren’t the Answer for Reform

By Franklin Schargel

[Note: This article was first posted as a comment to Bonnie Bracey Sutton‘s “What Should Pres. Obama Do About Educational Reform?” by Franklin Schargel on 3 August 2010.-js]

There isn’t any argument that education in America needs to be improved. Politicians on all sides of the spectrum agree. The discussion is not about whether it should happen but how it should happen. Is the Race for the Top the way to go? I do not think so. It DEMANDS that states raise the cap on how many charter schools they have. There are excellent charter schools and there are terrible charter schools. Just as there are terrible public schools and excellent public schools.

Continue reading

Real Change with 21st Century Learning Communities

By Robert Plants
Editor, Schools for the 21st Century

[Note: This article was first posted as a comment on Bonnie Bracey Sutton‘s “What Should Pres. Obama Do About Educational Reform?” by Robert Plants on 3 August 2010. -js]

This may sound a bit scattered so forgive me in advance. When Obama became President, I was excited to see who he would name to his cabinet post on education. When he named Arne Duncan, I almost immediately closed the book on my hopes for real educational change. I lived in Chicago during the time Obama was a rising star, and I can tell you that the city’s public schools were not that spiffy. I believe it was during this time that a scandal arose over the discovery of hundreds of computers that were stored but never ended up in schools. These were bought using the old E-Rate program. So Mr. Duncan to me is no better than any other big city education bureaucrat — a bad choice. Continue reading

An Educational Reform Story: The Power of Expectations

(Note: I wrote a related article in January 2009. -ja)

In a recent article, I said that education reform begins with people changing their fundamental beliefs about student ability. I said that if you believe students do not have the ability to succeed, then the fair and just path is to help them get through school by bringing school down to their level. If you instead believe, as I do, that these students do have the ability to succeed, then the fair and just path is to use instructional approaches that bring them up to high standards of performance. Here is a true story that may illustrate the problem. Continue reading

Acquisition or Participation – The Pedagogical Divide

Tom PreskettBy Tom Preskett

When you think about the various options for using technology in teaching and learning, there is a stark contrast between those that come from the Web 2.0 movement, which are often free and easy to use, and those that come from the commercial software companies, which are often expensive and cumbersome. Overall, you can also draw a pedagogical dividing line between these two areas — acquisition or participation.

Acquisition is all about preserving what we have, transmitting the knowledge in the way we have done in formal education. I’m talking here about web conferencing systems, Learner Management Systems (I mean the core products, not the added-on interactive stuff), lecture capture systems. They are complex, bandwidth heavy, and usually accompanied by a manual or require expensive training and support. Continue reading

Education Reform – Fighting the Conspiracy for Mediocrity

adsit80By John Adsit
Editor, Curriculum & Instruction

[Note: This article was first posted as a comment on Bonnie Bracey Sutton‘s “What Should Pres. Obama Do About Educational Reform?” by John Adsit on 2 August 2010. -js]

The “Framework” document rightly calls for using proven effective methods of instruction. In recent columns and comments, I have written about this very topic. There have been enough examples of schools that have turned around and made great strides in achievement for us to know what those proven methods are. The mystery is this: Why aren’t those methods used in more than occasional instances?

The reason is that there is a conspiracy toward mediocrity, and using proven methods of excellence shatters that conspiracy, and anyone with the audacity to use these methods faces the wrath of all other members of that conspiracy. Continue reading

What Should Pres. Obama Do About Educational Reform?

Bonnie BraceyBy Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Editor, Policy Issues

[Updated 8.2.10 – links added: “A Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act”; “In the News: More Opposition to Duncan’s Reform Policies: Defending Obama’s Education Agenda”; “Our Communities Left Behind: An Analysis of the Administration’s School Turnaround Policies.” -bbs/js]

The problem that President Obama is having should be addressed. I think he is between a rock and a hard place in his efforts to change the face of education. What do you, our ETCJ readers, writers, and editors, think he should do?

To post your comment, click on the title of this article and scroll down to the comment box. To start the discussion, here are a few documents that you might want to read:

Valerie Strauss, “Obama, Education, Snooki, Civil Rights and Bryan Bass” (The Answer Sheet, Washington Post, 30 July 2010): The president’s “terribly misguided $4.35 billion competitive grant program is, apparently, more important than health care reform, the economic recovery program, improving the student loan program, increasing Pell Grant payouts, and, well, anything else he has accomplished since becoming president.” Continue reading

Thinking Inside the Box

By Steve Eskow
Editor, Hybrid vs. Virtual Issues

In the United States the box is often 20′ by 30′, 600 square feet. It is furnished with 30 tablet arm chairs that encourage the sitting students to write. In front of the box there may be a lectern, which encourages the standing instructor to say things which the students can write.

There are other boxes in the building. One is called the “lecture hall.” The “campus” is a collection of such boxes, boxes of different sizes and configurations which allow and encourage variations in the kind of speaking and writing that goes on within them.

Some of the boxes have the new communication technologies. It is the dream of innovating teachers and administrators and educational agencies that these new tools can “blend” with the old tools of talk and books and thus transform education.

Continue reading

‘Computer Science’ Contains Little or No Science

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

[Note: The following article was originally posted by Harry Keller on 30 July 2010 as a reply to Robert Plants‘s “Computer Science – A Field of Dreams.” -js]

The statement, “Our faculty in the schools of education have the expertise to continue to produce the same teachers for the same curricula, but they lack any expertise to produce teachers for STEM related subjects…” rings true. An insufficient number of science teachers understand science. It’s not really their fault for they haven’t had the opportunities to develop that understanding. Continue reading

Computer Science – A Field of Dreams

By Robert Plants

[Editor’s Note: This article was written in response to Bonnie Bracey Sutton‘s call for submissions from selected writers. Bonnie is ETCJ’s editor of policy issues, and the focus of her call was Erik W. Robelen’s “Schools Fall Behind in Offering Computer Science” (Education Week, 7.14.10); WebCite version. -js]

You can’t build it and expect people to come. We cite statistics on what is and what isn’t but fail to dig into the symptoms. We point out initiatives that may influence supply and demand but don’t go on to look at what influences K-12 education that results in the dearth of interest in computer science. In most states, the emphasis lies in producing enough teachers to staff the education that we have. We have an educational system focused on a standardized curriculum, rote memorization, nationalized testing, curriculum standards. Dig a little deeper and you will find that the structure of schooling is about the little red brick building we have always known, grades, classrooms, curriculum, teaching strategies – one size fits all. In many ways, our system of schooling has not changed in 100 years. Continue reading

For Educational Change — Teachers Are the Key

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

This article is in response to the challenge that prompted John Adsit‘s “What Is Needed for Educational Change“: What is the one most important factor in making change work? John highlighted leadership, and Harry Keller, in “Leaders Must Be Visionary Risk-takers to Change Our Schools,” added qualities that the leader must have.

I’d be inclined to agree with John and Harry if the campus were still the center of the academic world. But it’s not. The center has been shifting to the world’s digital infrastructure, to the internet, where classrooms, schools, and colleges are being reconstructed in virtual bits rather than cement, creating “a world of ubiquitous connectivity” (Hagel, Brown, and Davison, The 2009 Shift Index: Measuring the Forces of Long-term Change, p. 11).

Continue reading

Leaders Must Be Visionary Risk-takers to Change Our Schools

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

[Note: The following article was originally posted by Harry Keller on 26 July 2010 as a reply to John Adsit’s What Is Needed for Educational Change. -js]

Educational change. What is it? Would we really like to have it?

In better times, things were allowed to move along without too much worry about education, except for some of the poor and minority areas.

Now, with headlines screaming at us about changing education, what’s wrong? John Adsit has provided us all with a cogent analysis of what doesn’t work and a suggestion as to why we aren’t doing what does.

Is change necessary? I have personal experience with a large urban school in a poor neighborhood (60% poverty). Despite hiring the best possible science teachers, they still had a 50% failure rate on the Regents science tests. Some of these teachers had PhDs in science. They were all excellent communicators and, as far as I could tell, excellent teachers. The science department was tearing its hair out. So, yes, change is necessary. This story repeats itself too many times across our country. Continue reading

What Is Needed for Educational Change

adsit80By John Adsit
Editor, Curriculum & Instruction

This article springs from an exchange of opinions on what is needed to effect change, and I was challenged to start a new discussion on the most important factors in making change work. In that original exchange, I argued that the most important factor is leadership, and I will start this new discussion with that premise. I believe skilled leadership is the most important factor in making change happen.

A couple of decades ago I spent some very painful years when the opposite was believed to be true. There was a belief, spurred in large part by the Annenberg Institute’s Re:Learning project, that the change leaders in education had to come from within the faculty. Change had to at least appear to be a grassroots effort, and school administrators sought to develop teacher leaders for reform efforts. The theory was that teacher leaders would initiate a reform, it would work, and the idea would slowly progress through the ranks until it had taken over. The administrators would intentionally fade into the background and let this magic work. Continue reading

‘Emerging Technologies in Distance Education’ ed. by George Veletsianos

Claude AlmansiBy Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues

Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, edited by George Veletsianos, has just been published by Athabasca University Press, a Canadian publisher of Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly publications. The book, under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada  Creative Commons License, can be bought in print or downloaded (at no cost) as PDF from aupress.ca/index.php/books/120177.

Cover of Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, ed. by George Veletsianos Continue reading