Ernst Community Classroom located @ 1580 Scott Lake Rd in Waterford, MI 48328

Ernst Community Classroom located @ 1580 Scott Lake Rd in Waterford, MI 48328

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

THAT'S a WRAP! (National Digital Learning Day 2012)


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21st Century Digital Learning Environments
Washington, Michigan 48094
E-mail: digitallearning@gmail.com
Twitter: @digitallearning

February 7, 2012

Dear Jim,

What a day!  Thank you so much for your contributions to Digital Learning Day.  We are thrilled with the enthusiasm that so many educators, districts, and states across the country brought to this first ever Digital Learning Day.  Without the support and input from people like you, we could not have put together a program and resources that showed so much of the potential for digital learning to make a difference for students and teachers.

In addition to the President, Secretary of Education, Chairman of the FCC, and 17 governors joining the celebration, we had nearly 2 million students and 18,000 teachers specifically register for Digital Learning Day; and 39 states and the District of Columbia hosted their own versions of Digital Learning Day.  During the morning and afternoon webcasts, we consistently had 2,000 people involved consistently in the live chat; and thousands tuned in for the National Town Hall meeting.

We look forward to building upon the success of this first annual day and only increasing the resources, outreach, and partners for next year.  Thank you for the work you do every day to maximize the potential of digital learning for students and for dedicating the time and energy to work with us to raise awareness for Digital Learning Day. 

Sincerely,
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Bob Wise
President, Alliance for Excellent Education
Governor of West Virginia, 2001–2005

Sunday, February 5, 2012

"The Web can turn the World upside down!"

OP-ED COLUMNIST

After Recess: Change the World




A BATTLE between a class of fourth graders and a major movie studio would seem an unequal fight.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof

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So it proved to be: the studio buckled. And therein lies a story of how new Internet tools are allowing very ordinary people to defeat some of the most powerful corporate and political interests around — by threatening the titans with the online equivalent of a tarring and feathering.
Take Ted Wells’s fourth-grade class in Brookline, Mass. The kids read the Dr. Seuss story “The Lorax” and admired its emphasis on protecting nature, so they were delighted to hear that Universal Studios would be releasing a movie version in March. But when the kids went to the movie’s Web site, they were crushed that the site seemed to ignore the environmental themes.
So last month they started a petition on Change.org, the go-to site for Web uprisings. They demanded that Universal Studios “let the Lorax speak for the trees.” The petition went viral, quickly gathering more than 57,000 signatures, and the studio updated the movie site with the environmental message that the kids had dictated.
“It was exactly what the kids asked for — the kids were through the roof,” Wells told me, recalling the celebratory party that the children held during their snack break. “These kids are really feeling the glow of making the world a better place. They’re feeling that power.”
The opportunities for Web naming-and-shaming through Change.org caught my eye when I reported recently on sex traffickers who peddle teenage girls on Backpage.com. I learned that a petition on Change.org had gathered 86,000 signatures calling for the company to stop accepting adult ads.
My next column was about journalists being brutalized in Ethiopian prisons. A 19-year-old college freshman in Idaho, Kelsey Crow, read the column and started a petition to free those journalists — and in no time gathered more than 4,000 signatures.
Does that matter? Does Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, care what a band of cyber citizens thinks of him? Skepticism is warranted, but so far Change.org petitions have seen some remarkable successes.
Ecuador, for example, used to run a network of “clinics” where lesbians were sometimes abused in the guise of being made heterosexual. A petition denouncing this practice gathered more than 100,000 signatures, leading Ecuador to close the clinics, announce a national advertising campaign against homophobia, and appoint a gay-rights activist as health minister.
The masterminds of the successful campaigns aren’t usually powerful or well-connected. Mostly, they just brim with audacity and are on a first-name basis with social media.
Take Molly Katchpole. Last fall, as a 22-year-old nanny living in Washington, D.C., she was peeved by a new $5-a-month fee for debit cards announced by Bank of America, with other banks expected to follow. She took an hour to write a petition, her first.
“After a month it had 306,000 signatures,” Katchpole told me. “That’s when the banks backed down.” Bank of America and other financial institutions withdrew plans for the fee.
Soon afterward, she started a second petition, protesting a $2 charge imposed by Verizon for paying certain bills online. In 48 hours it had attracted more than 160,000 signatures — and Verizon withdrew the fee.
Katchpole parlayed her successes into a job with a new advocacy group, Rebuild the Dream, which seeks to improve the economic well-being of middle-class families.
As for Change.org, it is growing explosively. Founded in 2007, it is a B Corporation — a hybrid of a for-profit company and a charity, seeking to make profits for social good — and began to soar a year ago. It is now growing by one million members a month.
“We’re growing more each month than the total we had in the first four years,” said Ben Rattray, 31, the founder. He said that 10,000 petitions are started each month on the site, and that each success leads to countless more copycat campaigns.
Change.org has grown from 20 employees a year ago to 100 now, in offices on four continents. By the end of this year, Rattray plans to have offices in 20 countries and to operate in several more languages, including Arabic and Chinese. He recognizes that the site may be blocked in China, but shrugs.
“If ultimately we’re not getting leaders to ban our site, we’re not doing our job,” he said.
Meanwhile, what about those 14 kids in Wells’s fourth-grade class? I asked them what their next initiative on Change.org would be. They are still discussing options, but one possibility is to reduce waste by calling on companies to stop bombarding the public with telephone books and instead distribute them only to people who request them.
It’s absurd to think that 14 fourth graders could accomplish anything so sensible. But then again, they’ve already shown that the Web can turn the world upside down.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Digital Learning Goes Global!


Digital, Global Learning


Digital Learning Day was an inspiration. It has, for one, inspired me to write about three things I wish to see happen.
The organizers Alliance for Excellent Education defined digital learning as "any instructional practice using technology to strengthen student learning." Educators and policymakers throughout the United States watched and chatted online as experts share best practices and innovative classrooms showcased how they use technology. There was certainly a lot to cover.
The three things touched very lightly upon, but that I'd like to call out as important goals are:
Every student should have experiences working with experts and peers around the world on global issues. Students will be graduating into a global knowledge economy that is largely spurred by digital technologies. It's hard to consider authentic education without being digitally connected with the real world. Connect All Schools has a mission to link every American classroom with one abroad by 2016. It is an important and achievable goal. Steps to get started? See the professional development offered by organizations like iEARN or Taking IT Global.
Districts need to stop blocking websites that connect students to the larger world. Many schools cannot access sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and many more. However well intentioned the policies that block social media are, they are also failing our students by limiting possibilities for learning about—and from—the world. The right way to approach student activity online is through better education. To start, digital and media literacy help students think critically and act responsibly. Authentic, real-world projects compel students to explore and engage in all the right ways.
Digital and global learning should be interwoven in pre-service education, trainings, mentoring, continuing education, and evaluations. We cannot realize excellence in digital learning if teacher professional development is not part of the equation. Chances are, the world will not become less digital nor less global in our lifetimes. Anyone responsible for a young person's education needs to be a digital citizen.
Many of the excellent teachers I meet every day lament these shortcomings. Let's do right by them—and by our rising generation—and meet these goals in a hurry.

Detroit / Wayne County Port Authority (Some more Tinkering Around in Detroit)


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Friday, February 3, 2012

Taking the Public's Pulse (Will make your heart Skip a Beat!)


Even With Educated Workforce, U.S. College, Career Issues Loom

Amid economic anxiety, American policymakers are examining how other nations invest in getting their students ready for life after high school


If there were ever an argument for investing in career- and college-readiness, the impact of the economic crisis in recent years provides one: In 2009, unemployment globally was more than twice as high for those who did not complete high school compared with university graduates. In the United States, it was three times as high—15.8 percent for high school dropouts, compared with 4.9 percent for college graduates.
Those numbers offer an indicator that even though the United States overall has one of the most educated workforces in the world, its lead is slipping.
With 41 percent of the adult population holding a postsecondary degree, the United States ranks among the top five educated countries in theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, a global network of 34 developed countries that identifies and analyzes issues including education.
But among Americans ages 25 to 34, the U.S. ranks 15th in the percentage with a higher education degree compared with other OECD countries. The United States has the distinction of being the only OECD country, in fact, where attainment levels for those just entering the labor market are lower than those about to leave the labor market.
Globally, higher education is widely embraced as vital to economic growth—but countries differ in their approaches. In Asia, there is a commitment to improving education with national policies and focused curriculum to better prepare students for college. European countries have beefed up vocational systems and modernized career training.
"They've all gotten strong, while we've stayed the same," says Nancy Hoffman, the author of Schooling the Workplace and the vice president and senior adviser at Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit organization based in Boston.

Sense of Urgency

As global competition ramps up, a new sense of urgency has emerged in the United States to learn from other systems and invest in getting students ready for college and careers. President Barack Obama has set a goal for the nation to take the world lead in college-graduation rates by 2020, and nonprofit education organizations have set similar targets. An element of the debate over the federal role in public education involves issues of career- and college-readiness, and the new common-core academic standards emphasize that theme as well.
In addressing the issue, the nation faces social, political, and structural challenges that include a diverse population, a long-standing commitment to educating all students, and a decentralized education system.
While there is not a one-size-fits-all solution, many countries that want to improve education face similar challenges, says Jim Hull, the senior policy analyst for the Center for Public Education at the National School Boards Association, in Alexandria, Va. "We can learn from other countries. The U.S. is not as unique as we think we are," he says. "Other countries are also dealing with poverty and diversity—sometimes more effectively. If we think we are so unique, it keeps us from looking to others to improve."
Taking the Public's Pulse
Opinion surveys over the last five years offer an intriguing—and sometimes contradictory—window into American attitudes toward the nation’s public schools and how well they’re educating students in an era of global competition.
Future Readiness
  • 42% of American voters in a 2007 poll said other countries are winning the race to prepare children for 21st-century jobs
  • 13% said the United States does a better job
How the U.S. Stacks Up
  • 17% gave American public schools an A or B in a 2011 poll
  • 30% graded them D or F
  • 51% gave their hometown schools an A or B
Where the U.S. Falls Short
Fewer than half in a 2010 poll said schools do a good job preparing students for:
  • 44% College-level science
  • 45% College-level math
  • 46% College-level English
What’s the Problem
  • 56% said social problems and misbehaving students are high schools’ biggest problems
  • 31% cited low academic standards and outdated curricula
Hope vs. Reality
  • 94% of parents said it’s likely their children will attend college after graduating from high school
  • only 72% of students finished high school in 2008
  • and about 70% of those who graduated from high school in 2009 went on to college
The United States is hardly alone in facing the challenge of assuring its workforce remains globally competitive. At an international higher education forum in Washington late last year, officials from the European Union also voiced concern about the relevance of higher education degrees and better matching skills with workforce needs.
Xavier Prats Monne, the deputy director-general of the European Commission, which takes the lead in implementing E.U. policies, said he was struck by the similarities in the higher education agendas of the European community and the United States. For example, both have set concrete goals to increase postsecondary training by 2020. The main difference, the E.U. official noted, is that the funding for higher education tends to fall more heavily on the individual in America, while Europe makes more of a public investment.
There is a shared sense of urgency about the need for such schooling, however. At that same forum, U.S. Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter said that education beyond high school is essential in today's knowledge society to move society forward. "We feel we are building a pipeline of people, but our challenge as a nation is to get those people across the finish line and into the jobs," she says.

What's Working

Experts say the United States is making some progress on defining what it means to be college and career ready. Adoption of the common core by most states has brought together educators from K-12 and higher education to better articulate the expectations for students progressing from high school to college. The high school standards aim to set a rigorous definition of college- and career-readiness and emphasize math, reading, and writing skills that are required in college and the workplace.
The nation also has been a leader in Advanced Placement and in dual-enrollment and early-college high schools where students can earn college credit while still in high school. Summer bridge programs are another strength of the American system, experts say, providing additional supports to help students transition into college. And states are driving innovation with new approaches to encouraging pathways to postsecondary training.
Some uniquely American values are woven into the process of moving students through high school and into college and work, according to students of the U.S. system.
"College for all" is the American approach, while other countries provide the education and training young people need to prepare for a career or calling, Hoffman writes in her book. If students fail or their interests change, they can try another arena. Students aren't forced to commit early to one career path and tracked accordingly.
"We have a really strong emphasis on preparing for general education," says David Conley, a professor of education policy and leadership in the college of education at the University of Oregon. "Community colleges allow for a second chance. … It's part of the notion that education should be the great equalizer and never be closed off."
Many nations look to the United States as a model for developing creative thinkers in college and careers.
Hamilton Gregg, an educational consultant who works for international schools in Beijing, says that although many high school graduates of Asian school systems are well-versed in math and science, they often don't think analytically. "They really learn, but they can't necessarily think creatively," he says. Many Chinese look to come to America for college to experience that freedom, he says.
The 200-plus early-college high schools in the States are a promising model for propelling low-income and minority students into higher education.
The Dayton Early College Academy compresses high school to give urban students a taste of college, says Judy Hennessey, the superintendent of the 426-student academy, in Ohio. From 98 percent to 100 percent of each graduating class goes on to college, and 87 percent of those students will be the first in their families to go. Once there, 84 percent are on track to graduate in four years.
"Personalization of the school is a big factor," says Hennessey. Teachers become surrogate parents and are accessible outside of school. Also, academics are ratcheted up, and after-school and weekend help sessions are available. "The difference is how hard you will work," she says. "We don't debate if someone is smart enough to go to college."
Another approach to improving the odds for success in higher education is to reach down earlier to help middle school students identify their aspirations for college and career. Students who consider dropping out do so in middle school, not high school, contends Reza Namin, the superintendent of the 1,980-student Spencer-East Brookfield Regional School District in Spencer, Mass. His district helps middle schoolers create personalized road maps for their studies.
Beyond that, Namin says students could benefit from public school support into the first two years of college. His vision for Spencer-East Brookfield is to make it the first district in the country to create a P-14 system to provide a seamless transition into postsecondary education. That would save families money in college tuition and give students the incentive they need to continue toward a degree, he says. "Public schools need to be creative."
Advanced Placement courses have expanded as a college-readiness strategy in recent years, too. About 704,000 students participated in the AP program in nearly 13,000 high schools in 1998-99. By 2009-10, there were 1.8 million students in nearly 17,900 high schools, according to the College Board.
"More schools are beginning to understand a minimum curriculum does not prepare students for success in college," says Jim Miller, a past president of the National Association of College Admission Counseling and the coordinator of enrollment research at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. AP "gives students extra credit and shortens time they need to be in college, but its great value is the rigor, which helps student be more successful in college."

Transition to Work

While the American system has its strengths, experts cite lessons from abroad that can be adapted to enhance college- and career-readiness.
In the past 15 years, states such as California along with the District of Columbia and other urban districts have declared algebra a goal for 8th graders after looking at the example of Japan. Today, more U.S. 8th graders take algebra than any other math course.
"It's not that they were capable and we were not capable. There is no difference in brain capacity," says Hull of the Center for Public Education. "We might go about teaching it differently, but overall, we are mentally capable."
Countries with low unemployment for young people and high educational attainment have youth policies that help young people transition from schooling to work and view it as a societal responsibility, says Hoffman of Jobs for the Future.
Many European systems educate students until age 19 in the upper-secondary schools. Hoffman says there is respect for the vocational system, and in countries with some of the strongest vocational systems—Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland—the majority of students choose that path because it provides work experience along with education.
The Netherlands, in particular, takes strong measures to keep students in postsecondary vocational training, Hoffman notes. A variety of supports, including subsidies for books and transportation, are provided to make sure students complete the program, and an aggressive policy is in force to recapture dropouts and get them into a mix of school and work. The country set a goal in 2002 for 18- to 24-year olds to cut in half the number of students leaving school early. By 2010, the number was down to less than 40,000, from 70,000.
In a number of nations, such as Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Nordic countries, employers are engaged with schools. Students can be hired in apprenticeships, and structures have been put in place to orient students and provide on-site training, says Hoffman. "The business sector feels it has a responsibility to the younger generation, and it's in their best interest to be involved in their education because they are the future labor force," says Hoffman. "We don't seem to have that in this country."
Domenic Giandomenico, the director of education and workforce programs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says there is a steady, increasing awareness that the business community needs to get involved with education. "As businesses continue to find themselves in need of talent that simply is not available, and aware of the cost associated with that, they have become more engaged and active in making sure the talent pipeline that we have improves," he says.
American businesses are looking to partnerships with education, such as ones in Germany, as models for mentoring, apprenticeships, and job-shadowing, Giandomenico says. But while the German system has clearly defined roles for schools, students, and businesses set out by law, attempts in the United States have not always worked because sometimes those expectations are not clear, he says.
"In too many cases here in the States, you wind up with students sitting around wondering what they should be doing, employers not really knowing what they should be doing with the students, and schools not knowing how they should follow up on those kinds of activities," Giandomenico says. While local business groups can help bridge that communication, he says it's labor-intensive, and many smaller chambers don't have the capacity.

Drawing Lessons

The lesson for America is not any one policy or practice that can turn education around, says Anthony Jackson, the vice president of education for the New York City-based Asia Society, in Los Angeles. Policies to provide a focused national curriculum and assessment system provide a common pathway for college access and attainment for all students. While a number of the top-performing Asian education systems are working to reduce dependence on a single college-entrance examination, the current systems do provide a relatively level playing field for students seeking to gain admission to higher education.
"It's a systematic approach from top to bottom," he says. Many initiatives have to work together—teacher recruitment, teacher training, curriculum changes, assessment, technology, and a strong political will for change.
It's also important, as in the case of Singapore, to create multiple pathways to postsecondary education that include updating vocational and technical education systems, and to establish more competency-based degree programs that are suited to the development of specific, marketable skills, says Jackson.
Rather than looking for a silver bullet, the United States has to do the hard work and set up systems to reach its education goals, Jackson says. "It is the ticket to economic viability and growth in an information-driven world."

National Digital Learning Day (Webcast & National Town Hall Videos)

Strawbale Studio (Tinkerer's Visit 1-25-12)


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Solvers: Prepare for Digital Learning Innovation





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1/20/2012 @ 1:33PM |5,548 views

Apple and the Education-Information Chasm

Apple’s digital textbook venture, launched yesterday in New York, is just the latest attempt to bridge a yawning gulf between technology and learning. It’s still the beginning. The gulf is so large, it will take decades and thousands of experiments to cross. But we’ve begun, and things will move fast.
Student loan debt now stands around $1 trillion. Education is often a great investment – but the proposition is more in question every day. Higher education prices increased 440% over the last 25 years – four times the rate of inflation, and twice as bad as health care. Elementary and secondary ed prices have skyrocketed, too, with not even adequate outcomes.
On the other side of the ledger is the Moore’s law ecosystem, the most ruthless force in technology and the world economy. Last quarter Netflixstreamed two billion hours worth of video – or 228,000 years worth in three months. In just the last week of December, smartphone and tablet owners gobbled up 1.2 billion apps – 43% by Americans. Twenty years ago, a terabyte hard drive, if such a thing had existed, might have cost $5 million. Today, you can pick one up for $69.
The price of information plummets. Yet the price of education soars. These two trends cannot both continue. Guess which will crack first.
In the month of December, Salman Khan’s Khan Academy had four million unique visitors. This one-man free online school has now delivered 111,228,761 Internet lessons – brilliantly concise explanations of differential equations, organic chemistry, simple addition, and everything in between.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is expanding its free Open Courseware initiative into a full-blown MITx online program that may soon grant degrees. Enjoy the entire curriculum for free – if you like, pay a modest fee for certification that you’ve mastered the material.
The original university model was based on the geography of information. Knowledge was housed in a physical library. Students needed physical proximity to professors, and professors proximity to each other. The Internet’s chief attribute is shrinking the geography of information, and thus expanding its reach. The less the space, the more the room.
No, college campuses aren’t going away. But not all of them will survive. There’s far too much administrative and facility overhead. Some will adapt. There will be hybrid schools. Some fields require physical proximity more than others. New models will emerge. Including the idea of not going to college. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel is paying high schoolers $100,000 to skip higher ed for real ed – in the entrepreneurial business world.
But the technological forces that lead Thiel to steer youngsters away from college and which allow Bill GatesSteve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg to drop out and succeed don’t necessarily mean game over for educators. The Internet is a general purpose platform on which enterprising professors and teachers can recreate the academic world – both at the broadest global scale and in the tiniest niches of custom learning. The Internet may replace some educators, but for many more it should expand their powers and allow them to specialize, increasing their value. Ebay entrepreneurs, independent iPhone app developers, and Sal Khan have shown the way.
Because the current model is so old and obese, it is difficult to know what the other side of the education-information chasm looks like. We need a huge number of new experiments to find out what value is to students, parents, employers, educators, and society. We need experiments in curricula, delivery media, teaching methods, teacher types, and school organization, all at varying price points – ideally without massive subsidies from government to inflate prices and muck up feedback loops.


The shift will not happen overnight. Our culture has come to believe certain things about PhDs, BAs from particular schools, and high school graduates. 
Culture takes time. As we cross this education-information chasm, many questions will emerge, and, in time, be answered. Do employers merely value skills? Do they still want four-year degrees? How much are we willing to pay for status versus learning? What kinds of credentials matter? Do students and parents want pure academics, or do we want the “college experience”? What can we afford?
And more: Are too many students going to college? What’s up with American boys? Hooray for girls, but what does it say that they are almost 60% of college students? Are modern boys, raised on video games, defective in some way? Are we failing young boys academically and morally? Or is the drop in male college success a leading indicator of a higher ed bubble? After all, even in our egalitarian society, it’s still the case that men must work for a living, where women have more choices. Perhaps the male retreat just demonstrates college is no longer a good deal for many.
Education is not solely information. But the information content of education is high enough that the digital revolution will impart twisting, wrenching, and yes, wonderful change on the sector – and the American economy.