Category — Open Source Software

In the ongoing mold of “you can’t possibly make this stuff up,” we turn to a recent physics excerpt migrating bopping cyberspace. It appears to be traceable to Steve Detweiler at the University of Florida and Accelerated Physics 2060, though it is not clear who is the actual observer.

Fundamental of Physical Science

According to the one site that students are not supposed to turn to for research, Wikipedia offers that gravitation is the “natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another.” Without taking that sentence too much further, it is quite evident that if an object has mass (we will skip the debate that an object by definition must have mass) then it will attract other objects.

In physical science, students learn that in order for this attraction to be noticeable, we need a substantially massive object, like the earth or the sun (or, yes, like the moon). In physics, we might take this a bit further to note that the so-called force of gravity exerted on an object by the earth just so happens to be equal and opposite to the attractive force that the object exerts on the earth.

We further reveal that smaller objects fall to the earth because that force of attraction is able to move the very wimpy smaller object easily but is not large enough to reveal any perceptive movement by the more massive earth.

With that in mind, we turn to Detweiler’s post, where it seems that a teaching assistant in a philosophy class at the University of Wisconsin, Madison was explaining Descartes. According to the tale, the TA was trying to create an example that would back the notion that things don’t always happen the way we think they will.

For his concrete example, the TA chose this beauty:

“…..while a pen always falls when you drop it on Earth, it would just float away if you let go of it on the Moon.”

The storyteller goes on to note his incredulity at the TA’s false assertion, but that his disbelief was not shared by the majority of the other students in the room.

The storyteller goes on to protest.

“But a pen would fall if you dropped it on the Moon, just more slowly.”

To which the TA responds.

“No it wouldn’t, because you’re too far away from the Earth’s gravity,” says the TA who then asks, “You saw the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, didn’t you?”

To which the storyteller responds, “why didn’t they float away?”

“Because they were wearing heavy boots,” asserted the TA.

Is This for Real?

My first thought when I heard the story was, no sir, no way. This guy had to be making this up.

But then he insists that he went back to his dorm room and began randomly selecting names from the campus phone book, calling 30 people and asking a two part question, if they could not in fact answer the first one.

He began:

If you’re standing on the Moon holding a pen, and you let go, will it
a) float away,
b) float where it is,
c) fall to the ground?

According to the storyteller, just 47 percent got the question correct. Of the other 53%, he asked this second follow up:

You’ve seen films of the APOLLO astronauts walking around on the Moon, why didn’t they fall off?

According to the storyteller, about 20 percent of the people decided at that point that they would change their answer. But according to the legendary story, about half of those getting wrong explained:

“Because they were wearing heavy boots.”

Huh?

Story Continues

If you’re like me, you like this clever little piece that demonstrates just how scientifically illiterate our people are but are still wondering, could this be for real?

It is certainly not likely that he could have randomly called eight of the students who had happened to be in the TA’s classroom that day. And it would seem unlikely that Wisconsin had had done that bad of a job teaching science to its citizens.

Yet, later, one begins to think there just might be some merit here as the story continues to the physics classroom one day where two multiple choice questions were placed on a Physics test right after the class had finished the study of elementary mechanics and gravity.

Question one:

If you are standing on the Moon, and holding a rock, and you let it go, it will:
(a) float away
(b) float where it is
(c) move sideways
(d) fall to the ground
(e) none of the above

Question 2:

When the Apollo astronauts were on the Moon, they did not fall off because:
(a) the Earth’s gravity extends to the Moon
(b) the Moon has gravity
(c) they wore heavy boots
(d) they had safety ropes
(e) they had spiked shoes

While the first question was generally considered by the tester as being of average difficulty (especially with the more robust questions that had to have been posed), just 57% of the students got it right. The second proved much easier as 73% went on to get it right.

But guess what? When it comes to the notion of heavy boots, well it still seems to be a tough one for even physics students, at least the weaker ones. Those who scored in the lowest quartile on the entire test actually selected heavy boots as their answer most often.

Then there comes the ultimate sign, the one certifying piece that ensures that the story must be on the up and up.

It seems that after the exam, two students reportedly asked if the professor was going to continue asking “questions about things they had never studied in the class.”

When it comes to intelligence, there has always been one fundamental question:

Is it a function of nature? Is it simply encoded in a child’s genes?

Or is it a function of nurture? Is it more about the environment that a child grows up in?

Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, addresses the topic in fundamental detail in his new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” And thank goodness for teachers, Nisbett insists that nurture is in fact paramount to intellectual development.

In fact, his message matches almost verbatim what we have discussed previously on our site:

• Praise the effort, not the achievement
• Teach the concept of delayed gratification
• Limit reprimands and use praise to stimulate curiosity.

The Nature versus Nurture Question

Nisbett takes exception to the notion that IQ is 75 to 85 percent inherited. Instead, he sees the gene implications at something less than 50 percent.

Nicholas D. Kristoff recently took a look at the nature versus nurture question and came away with enormous support of Nisbett’s book. The NY Times columnist notes the work of Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia who has conducted research that indicates IQ is minimally the result of genetics.

Kristof further cites studies that indicate that “when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their IQ’s rise by 12 points to 18 points.”

As for the importance of school, Kristof also notes that “children’s IQ’s drop or stagnate over the summer months when they are on vacation (particularly for kids whose parents don’t inflict books or summer programs on them).”

In Nisbett’s book, there is a strong push for early childhood education. Here again, Kristof offers support of Professor Nisbett by taking a look at the “Milwaukee Project.”

Assigning African-American children considered at risk for mental retardation randomly to two groups, the project offers enormous support for early childhood education. The mothers of the infants selected all had IQ’s below 80 and in many cases the fathers were absent.

The children were assigned either to a control group that received no additional support or to a group that enjoyed day care and educational programming from 6 months of age until the children were to enter first grade.

By the age of six the children experimental group had an IQ average of 120.7 as compared to the control group’s 87.2

Quality Pre-School for All

We previously noted the enormous educational success of Finland. Kati Tuurala, Microsoft’s education manager in Finland, indicates that the majority of Finland’s educational success can be traced to major reforms implemented in the 1970s.

One of those reforms centered upon an emphasis on primary education for every single child in the country. In Finland, students do not begin formal schooling until at age seven, two years after most American children begin school.

However, prior to entering school, all children have participated in a high-quality government funded preschool program. Interestingly, instead of focusing on getting a jump academically, Finland’s early-childhood program focuses on self-reflection and social behavior.

The early focus on self-reflection is seen as a key component for developing a level of personal responsibility towards learning. It is a focus more in line with the original theory of kindergarten set forth in 1837 by German Educator Friedrich Froebel. His kindergarten, literally meaning a “children’s garden,” was envisioned as a place and time where children could learn through play opportunities.

Ultimately, Finland appears to focus on the nurturing process during the preschool years and that appears to be the first step to eliminating socioeconomic differences within the school setting within the country.

Presidential Support

When it comes to the question of nature versus nurture, the data clearly indicates that the latter is indeed more than 50% of the equation. That is good news for educators, but even better news for society as a whole.

Fortunately, President Obama has come out in strong support of early childhood education, particularly for those children most at risk of school failure. Investing in quality pre-school opportunities clearly helps give children from poverty-stricken areas the chance at a stronger start in school and in life.

If we are serious about helping our children succeed in school, if we are truly interested in “Leaving No Child Behind,” we will take a hard look at this compelling data and begin investing greater sums at the early childhood level.

Without a doubt, visuals are critical for kids when it comes to the learning process.

Thanks to some great “Techy Tips for not so Techy Teachers” we were recently reminded of four tech tools (web sites) that can help teachers create some very interesting visuals for their classroom, with the key being that one need not be a techy to put these sites into action.

Subject Specific Word Clouds

The use of tags and word clouds is becoming a web staple and a great way to introduce the concept to students is a web site that will generate “word clouds” from any text supplied by a teacher. With Wordle, teachers have access to a free web site to generate relevant word clouds for any learning task they are about to undertake.

Because word clouds give greater prominence to the words that appear most often in the supplied text, these clouds create a great learning visual for students by prominently displaying the most used terms. These clouds can be made into posters at the younger levels or used as a cover sheet to a course syllabus for older students.

With Wordle, the user can also modify aspects of the cloud through the use of different fonts, layouts, and color schemes for the letters and the background. Because the site is web-based, a user can save their creation to the Wordle gallery and access it from another internet connection.

And of course, with a little pre-teaching, students can have at it, creating their own word clouds for assignments and projects.

Turning Your Creation into a Poster

Once you have created a document or photo for classroom display, you may want to blow it up so as to make a large size poster for the room. Such a task is extremely easy as there are a couple of different web sites where you can easily rasterbate any creation to make a powerful, large image.

Rasterbating is the phrase used to describe the computer program printing feature called tiled printing. It is a process that enables the user to print extremely large images, those larger than a standard size sheet of paper. The computer program creates tiles, each equal to a standard size sheet of paper, and prints a section of the image on each sheet according to predetermined specifications. The individual pages can then be taped together or stapled to a bulletin board to create a large and powerful image.

At either BlockPosters or Rasterbators, teachers can create such tiled wall posters of any size. Totally free, each site allows you to upload an image where the user can then crop the image and choose how many sheets of traditional-size paper to use in creating the poster.

While the word cloud would make a great option, an even better one, especially at the elementary level, would be the periodic action classroom shot of the students involved in a learning activity. The sheer joy students experience upon seeing themselves in photos could only be enhanced by a large classroom poster of them in action within the classroom.

With older students, the visuals they can create could also greatly enhance an individual project or presentation. Blockposters offers some excellent samples of prior work including student project creations.

If you decide to turn some of this over to students, you may want to use another term other than rasterbate. We are not sure how either age group would do with such a risky-sounding term.

Glogging in the Classroom

Instead of just using the written word to create a blog, teachers can have students create some pretty amazing visual mash ups at Glogster.com (be sure with the younger kids you hit the edu site!).

Glogster again allows for the creation of posters, but in this case, creativity remains supreme. With Glogster you can mix all forms of expression: graphics, photos, videos, music and traditional text.

Not only a fun way to enhance learning and foster creativity, glogging is a perfect tool for visual learners who may struggle with traditional text-oriented classroom setting. Glogging also gets students using the power of technology and collaborating with one another on potential creations.

You will need a few more in the way of tech skills for Glogster than for our other suggestions (especially, if you want to download movies and images) manageable with even a modest effort. But as with our sites featured, Glogster is also a free resource, so you can familiarize yourself with the concept on your own terms.

Photos taken from Wordle.com, BlockPosters.com and Glogster.com.

Most college students would likely concur - fifty minute lectures can be a bit much. With current research indicating that attention spans (measured in minutes) roughly mirror a students age (measured in years), it begs the question as to the rationale behind lectures of such length.

Given that it is tough to justify the traditional lecture timeframes, it is no surprise to see online educational programs seeking to offer presentations that feature shorter podcasts. But in an astonishing switch, David Shieh of the Chronicle of Higher Education recently took a look at a community college program that features a microlecture format, presentations varying from one to three minutes in length.

The Micro-Lecture
While one minute lectures may be beyond the scope of imagination for any veteran teacher, Shieh reports on the piloting of the concept at San Juan College in Farmington, N.M. The concept was introduced as part of a new online degree program in occupational safety last fall. According to Shieh, school administrators were so pleased with the results that they are expanding the micro-lecture concept to courses in reading and veterinary studies.

The designer of the format, David Penrose, insists that in online education “tiny bursts can teach just as well as traditional lectures when paired with assignments and discussions.” The microlecture format begins with a podcast that introduces a few key terms or a critical concept, then immediately turns the learning environment over to the students.

Penrose, a course designer for SunGard Higher Education, offers the following explanation of the process:

“It’s a framework for knowledge excavation,” Penrose tells Shieh. “We’re going to show you where to dig, we’re going to tell you what you need to be looking for, and we’re going to oversee that process.”

More in Line with Current Theory
With educators seeking more active learning environments, the microlecture format seemingly offers great potential. Not only will the process allow students greater ownership of their learning, the more open-ended nature of the follow-up materials should provide greater time variation opportunities for students who may need such time.

But as with all educational developments, the process clearly is not one that can be used for all classes. It clearly will not work for a course that is designed to feature sustained classroom discussions. And while the concept will work well when an instructor wants to introduce smaller chunks of information, it will likely not work very well when the information is more complex.

But just as most writers are taught to say what they need to say but do it in as few words as is necessary to accomplish their goal, the microlecture format similarly requires teachers to get the key elements across in a very short amount of time. Most importantly, it forces educators to think in a new way.

Instead of the framework being defined by seat time, the microlecture format ditches the traditional notion that all students must spend the same amount of time in class to receive credit. The concept focuses on what is to be learned and it allows, in the online environment, students of various skills and abilities as much time as they need to digest the learning objectives related to the microlecture.

Given such positives, one would think the format would soon become a critical component of every online course.

For those interested, here are Penrose’s steps to creating a one minute lecture:

1. List the key concepts you are trying to convey in the 60-minute lecture. That series of phrases will form the core of your microlecture.

2. Write a 15 to 30-second introduction and conclusion. They will provide context for your key concepts.

3. Record these three elements using a microphone and Web camera. (The college information-technology department can provide advice and facilities.) If you want to produce an audio-only lecture, no Webcam is necessary. The finished product should be 60 seconds to three minutes long.

4. Design an assignment to follow the lecture that will direct students to readings or activities that allow them to explore the key concepts. Combined with a written assignment, that should allow students to learn the material.

5. Upload the video and assignment to your course-management software.

Flickr photos courtesy of teddY-riseD, Stephanie Booth, and catspyjamasnz.

It has been a while since we did a simple web walk and pointed readers to some interesting material and helpful resources. Today we offer readers four interesting link options, everything from Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy to a look at why ignorance does appear, in fact, to be bliss.

Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy

Almost a year ago we featured some of the work of Andrew Churches. The teacher and self-professed ICT enthusiast has taken the time to do a modern day mash up of one of education’s long-standing models for analyzing learning.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, developed in the 1950’s, clearly holds a place of reverence within the educational community. Using a hierarchical framework to express thinking and learning, Bloom’s offers a set of concepts that begins with what we call lower order thinking skills (LOTS) and then progressively builds to higher order thinking skills (HOTS).

In education, the best teachers have made it a point to bring their students to the HOTS level of the taxonomy whenever possible. The belief has always been that acquiring knowledge and comprehending information (LOTS) pales in comparison to being able to analyze, evaluate, and apply that knowledge.

Where Churches comes in is that he began examining the traditional theory against a backdrop of the new digital age and the use of technology in the classroom. From his efforts, educators began being able to associate specific digital techniques with the traditional categories set forth in the taxonomy.

While there is clearly still much to be done to clarify these associations and properly place digital technology tasks in each category, teachers at least now have a framework from which to start and dialogue from. In keeping with the open source movement that is defining the future of education, Churches has now published his work in e-book format over at Scribd.

Those wanting to see both the rationale and the depth of assessment Churches has employed will find a free resource, Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (v212), at the site. The 44-page document is filled with information and is available for download, free, in multiple formats.

We highly recommend all teachers take the time to read this important document.

Among the Inept - Ignorance Is Bliss

An article that is now more than nine years old recently started getting tagged on Del.cio.us. As one great example of the challenge of filtering the wealth of material on the Internet, we missed the original article that takes a look at the behaviors demonstrated by people we might call incompetent.

In her article, Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss, Erica Goode cites the research of Dr. David A. Dunning. In true tongue-in-cheek mode, Goode sets the tone for the article with the following intro:

“There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear he might be one of them. Dr. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

“On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities — more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.”

It seems “that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured” because ultimately “the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.”

Given that education is a people-profession, the article is a must read for everyone working in the field, especially those working in administration. With a strong push to ensure that every classroom is staffed with a competent teacher, the research of Dunning offers great insight.

Especially in the case where feedback is absent or ambiguous - in such instances incompetents generally do not realize their level of ineptness.

Open Courseware Toolset

A summary resource that offers a list of links to open courseware materials is available at the web site Best College Rankings. The Ultimate Open Courseware Toolset: 60+ Directories, Search Engines, and Web Tools offers readers an extensive set of links to a wealth of materials now available on the web.

What makes the list so worthy is that it contains some individual tools but many of the links offered are actually to other sites or web pages that then feature more links to more resources. The site lists links in alphabetical order (not weighing in on good, better or best) and breaks the material into three distinct categories.

They begin with a list of directories of various open courseware projects. The list features 22 links (some offering lists of 100s of sites) to “books, video lectures, teaching tools and more, all labeled with the open courseware tag.”

The second category features 16 links to a number of search engines and archives while the third and final category focuses on 23 web tools “that can help teachers, parents and students.”

The sheer volume of material, however, reminds us of how important our own ability to filter Internet materials has become.

A Parental ADD Resource

Finally, in recent days we stumbled across the web site of Brenda Nicholson, ADD Student. The mother of 3 children with Attention Deficit Disorder, Nicholson is a trained ADD Coach who began learning about the disorder over 20 years ago.

Surprised that many educational professionals knew little about ADD, Nicholson found she needed to educate herself. Because of her experiences, she has set up the ADD student resource portal for parents and professionals alike.

One simple aspect that spoke volumes to us was her advice regarding students on medication. Instead of pluses and minuses regarding meds, she notes that the taking of medications at school has become a major issue for everyone involved: students, parents, and educators.

Another is her focus on diet as a method for minimizing issues with ADD children and managing their symptoms. While some of the information is on a cost basis (a 12 week email coaching program for parents), there is also a wealth of general info free for site visitors including subcategory links to specific areas such as ADD and Life Skills, Organization, School and Time Management.

Flickr photo courtesy of debaird.

First during his campaign, then later with his push to make this year’s Martin Luther King holiday a national day of service, President Barack Obama has sought to rekindle one of our fundamental American values, helping thy neighbor. That highly-publicized call for service led to a record number of Americans to honor Dr. King by volunteering for more than 13,000 service projects across the country (more than double the number from the year before).

Significant Action, Less Fanfare

Dave Eggers, the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, established his desire to make a difference in the lives of others when in 2002 he launched 826 Valencia, a San Francisco-based writing and tutoring lab for young people. Under his direction, the nonprofit has branched out with other centers now located in Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and Ann Arbor.

In 2008, he received the TED Prize, given yearly to someone with the desire to change the world. He was awarded a $100,000 donation and a pledge of support from the TED Community. Upon receipt of his prize, he made the following wish:

While accepting his prize, Dave Eggers asked the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools.

“I wish that you - you personally
and every creative individual
and organization you know -
will find a way to directly engage with a public school
in your area and that you’ll then tell the story of how
you got involved, so that within a year
we have 1,000 examples of transformative partnerships.”

To gather those stories in one location, he has created the web site, Once Upon a School. From a family of educators, Eggers understands the current demands facing teachers in inner city schools. And with his site he offers a hope that we might:

“Usher in a new era
of participation in our public schools. ”

A Hope to Inspire Others

Watching the nervous presentation of Eggers leaves a viewer with a strong sense of the man’s sincerity. He, like Obama, is calling on us all for service, but with a direct call to helping our public schools.

Indeed, his site was not created for chest thumping - instead, in documenting the many stories of common folks volunteering, he hopes that the sharing of those stories will inspire others to serve in similar capacities.

While receiving less fanfare, his extraordinary commitment to helping kids and public schools has not gone unnoticed. His work led Time Magazine to state:

“Many writers, having written a first best-seller, might see it as a nice way to start a career. He started a movement instead.”

John Robb, the author of Brave New War, recently speculated on the future of American education at Global Guerillas.

His first noteworthy point centers upon his assessment of the current educational process. Referring to our current form as an admixture of industrial and artisan processes, Robb correctly notes that “the quantities of product (graduates) produced and the facilities resemble industrial processes” even as the “actual production is most closely akin to artisanship (with guilds, no less!).”

Such a reference mirrors one of the age-old questions for educators. Is teaching a science or an art? It also raises one of the ongoing and legitimate criticisms of the current educational structure, one that actually follows the factory assembly line model.

Higher Education
Robb spends little time on that notion, instead shifting immediately to the costs of education and the failure of schools, at all levels, to significantly increase student performances despite enormous funding increases. Here again, Robb is dead on, and his description of the process as “an albatross of cost and stagnating quality” is certainly consistent with those who are concerned with the failure of public schools to significantly improve student performance.  

But Robb saves his strongest criticisms for higher education. Beginning with the costs for collegiate education, expenses that have increased 4.39 times faster than inflation over the last three decades, Robb indicates that higher education is no longer affordable for most households, especially as median family incomes stagnate.

Robb offers the following interesting assertion:

“Worse, there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree.  Since nearly all of the value of an education has been extracted by the producer, to the detriment of the customer, this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble.”

Unlike the Housing Bubble
While the current situation involving higher education has all the makings of matching the recent housing bubble, instead of the downturn facing the housing sector Robb sees the higher education bubble as offering immense opportunity to introduce educational improvements.  

At the heart of those improvements is the greater use of technology and the “ability of collaborative online education to replace much, if not most of in person teaching.” As many others have noted, there are some specific improvements afforded by greater use of technology in education:

• Lectures – Robb notes that video lecture series, along with associated learning materials, for many courses at some of the best universities in the world are now available online. He rightly notes that such an option allows students to get the very best lecture available (“There is no need to recreate the lecture with tens of thousands of less qualified/exceptional teachers”). Why attend another university when the very best lectures are available free.
• Application – Robb adds the push towards just-in-time information processes. Operating online with a JIT focus, we “can train kids to adults in complicated and complex tasks in a fraction of the time other methods require.” Such an approach is the complete antithesis of our current approach, one that features a broad array of subjects and concepts with the idea that students learn certain materials just-in-case there may be a need to know sometime in the future.  
• Collaboration – Robb notes the shifting of the business world from in-person work to a greater emphasis in online collaboration. Instead, at the university level, we continue the age old push to have face-to-face contact, with all students and the professor being present at the same time and in the same place. The idea of moving aspects online still is not “central to the educational world.”

We have discussed many of these notions in our prior work, including a lecture repository, just-in-time learning, and the need for education to begin to embrace the concept of social networking. We have also shared with readers David Wiley’s assessment that higher education as it currently is structured is “Dangerously Close to Becoming Irrelevant.”

Education’s Shift to a Fully Online Environment
While some may see his suggestions as radical, Robb is unequivocal as to the future of education.

“The shift towards online education as the norm and in-person as the exception will arrive,” he writes, “however, the path is unclear.  It is currently blocked by guilds/unions, inertia, credentialism, and romantic notions.” 

As noted, if we are indeed in a higher education bubble, the current economic downturn could well become one of the key catalysts for a radical shift in educational delivery. Robb suggests that the need for local governments to balance their budgets in the face of dwindling revenues will demand extensive cost-cutting measures. Those cost-cutting steps will have to include reduced monies for education, often the single biggest local expense, forcing higher education to pursue more cost-effective delivery methods (online courses).

If we are in the midst of a real higher education bubble, schools will likely see a dwindling student population. Here, Robb speculates on a amazing option. What if MIT or Harvard decided to “offer full credentials to online students at a tiny fraction of the cost of being in attendance.”  He postulates that the result just might be “ten million students enroll in the first year to attend Harvard’s virtual world.”

Of course, yet another option involves an entirely different take, one that features the opensource movement. If in-person education continues to be too expensive but no institution is able to step forward to create a major online brand, the entire world of education shifts. “A massive open source effort develops,” writes Robb, leading to the creation of “virtual worlds and other online courseware that rivals the best universities.”

In the third scenario there would be a need for a new credentialing agency. Of course one quick answer could be a continued move towards standardized testing and students demonstrating, by their performance on such tests, that their education in fact does match what one might have received in the more traditional college setting.  

The Future of Education
At the heart of Robb’s notions is the need for a “productive educational system that produces high quality graduates” but does so “at a small fraction (an order of magnitude less) of the current costs.” In addition, moving to online, just-in-time formats, would perhaps offer the kind of flexibility that is needed if workers, and our educational systems, are “to meet the challenges of a rapidly mutating global economy.”  

Robb even goes so far as to toss around a potential cost of $20.00 a month. While that seems a bit beyond the realm of possibility, the rest offers strong food for thought.

In fact, he might have hit one more proverbial nail on the head. While his ideas as to where education could head have been speculated by others before, his idea that the current higher ed financial crisis could be a catalyst for major change seems dead on.

In fact, in our history, once it has become clear that we can do something as well if not better at far less cost, the entrepreneurial spirit has taken off. Tougher financial times always place a demand on innovation, making us wonder:

Will education continue to be immune?

Or will technology finally intercede and lead one of the last bastions of our society to finally consider new, more cost-effective models?

Flickr photos courtesy of mrplough and metaweb.

Lawrence Lessig is the man most turn to when discussing the open source internet era. Lessig, of course, is the author of “Free Culture” and the founder of the Creative Commons.

The brilliant legal mind spent years pushing the intellectual-property envelope, seeking to break down the barriers that might limit current internet innovations by rethinking copyright laws as they exist today. The lawyer had the audacity to insist that the current concerns surrounding copyright infringements in the new media arena was not one debating artistic freedom and protection. Instead it was about control.

But with brilliance clearly comes the desire for new challenges. And so Lessig has taken on a new focus as he moves from the West Coast where he served as a professor of law at Stanford University to the East and in his new position at Harvard University.

Emphasis on Corruption
Having previously taught at Harvard Law, the move to the Stanford of the East (as Harvard is often dubbed by left-coasters) was not the real surprise. The biggest shock with Lessig has come from his shift in intellectual pursuits, to a new topic based on an age-old problem, corruption.

Lessig has begun a five-year commitment to examine corruption in government and academia. In his role, he will head Harvard University’s Safra Foundation Center for Ethics.

In an interview with Samuel P. Jacobs of the Boston Globe,
Lessig notes that both politics and academics have lost independence. The new emerging field of consulting creates a situation where professors and/or advocates receive funds from corporations for advice.

However, by virtue of taking funds, these individuals, once thought to be independent thinkers, create a situation where the public begins to assume that money is behind all public policy. The result is that those people once-deemed independent are no longer seen in such a light.

The key of course is that public trust disappears when such independence is lost.

Corrupt System vs. Corrupt Individuals

One of the more interesting points Lessig makes in his interview centers upon the fundamental question of responsibility. The legal scholar believes it is time to shift the focus from the notion of corrupt individuals and examine the larger issue of how society creates corruption opportunities.

Lessig explains to Jacobs:

“There are some people who think about the word “corruption” and they are thinking about it as if it is speaking about something evil. . . . Evil brings to mind images like Hitler or Pol Pot. I’m very much of the view that that is not an interesting way to think about this problem. We have enough attention and understanding about why people like Hitler or Pol Pot or the bad guys in the financial crisis are bad guys. I don’t think we’re actually going to make much progress focusing more of our attention on those bad guys.

What we need to do is to recognize the bad guys in all of us. All of us who don’t take small steps that actually would have a significant chance to eliminate problems. In the academic context, when you don’t raise a question about colleagues who are accepting money to do policy research, making policy recommendations that are directly connected to the money that they are receiving, what you are doing is nothing evil in the Hitler sense. You are just being weak. You’re not asserting an ethical position that, if asserted, might actually help keep the integrity of the institution.”

Great Example

As but one example as to why the entire system must be looked at Lessig offers a story of a situation involving former New Hampshire Senator John Sununu.

“I tell this story in one of my talks about Senator Sununu sending me a nasty note, after I was down in D.C. talking about network neutrality, saying that I ought not to be shilling for these companies. It struck me that he couldn’t imagine that while I was down there doing public policy work, I might just be down there not because somebody was paying me to do it, but because I thought it was the right answer.”

In simplest terms, because other intellectual scholars have sold out, there becomes the assumption that all have done so. Of course the need for public trust in certain institutions goes without saying, but currently there seem to be fewer and fewer such institutions that the public can count on as being independent.

Lessig goes on to note the challenges we now face.

He first notes “the domains of public life where trust is a central part of the success of the mission of those domains: medical research or the legal profession or the media . . . or what Congress does” then adds, “trust is at the center of those institutions …

“If you want people to listen to you when you tell them that they should vaccinate their children against malaria, people need to trust that when you say the vaccines are safe, they are safe.”

Building Trust

Clearly, one key component to rebuilding trust will be to examine the current practice of business funding university research. While many schools have come to see funds from the business sector as necessary to their survival as research institutions, under Lessig’s model any school that accepts such funds is likely no longer able to assert its independence.

And if the school cannot assert independence, then all respective faculty members likewise lose their ability to insist they are independent.

Lessig’s ability to get us all to rethink intellectual property has served the Opensource movement well. We truly hope that he can have a similar impact on the political and academic world.

Because restoring public trust in our political and academic institutions is essential to our society meeting the enormous challenges of the 21st century.

Flickr photos courtesy of DSearls, DSearls, and SimSullen.

When it comes to higher education, it appears it might well be time for students to give greater consideration to public colleges and universities. Three recent articles offer support for state schools, each wondering aloud if an education obtained at one of the elite private colleges is really worth the money?

Carol Hymowitz, writing for the Wall Street Journal, insists that when it comes to earning a degree ‘Any College Will Do.‘ Hymowitz notes the words of some of the nation’s top executives who insist that the “path to the corner office usually starts at state university.”

Leadership Ability
In her piece, Hymowitz notes several very successful individuals who did not even obtain a college diploma. She notes the leaders of several high-tech companies who never completed college: Bill Gates who quit Harvard to start Microsoft, Michael Dell who quit the University of Texas-Austin to start Dell Computer and Steve Jobs who quit Reed College in Portland, Ore., to work at Atari before founding Apple Computer. None of these individuals ever returned to college to complete a formal degree.

Though those stories are compelling, the general consensus is that such a path is rare. To get to the top, a degree is clearly critical. In fact, nearly two-thirds of the CEOs of the top 500 companies have either an M.B.A., law, or other advanced degree.

But overall, roughly 90% of the CEOs of the top 500 companies received undergraduate degrees from a university other than one of the Ivy League colleges. In a great plug for the University of Wisconsin, more CEOs received their undergraduate degrees from that state college (10 current CEOs) than from Harvard, the Ivy League’s top contributor (nine current CEOs).

A partial list of CEOs and their respective schools:

• Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway - University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• H. Lee Scott , Wal-Mart Stores CEO - Pittsburg State University in Kansas.
• Paul Otellini, Intel CEO - University of San Francisco.
• James Sinegal, Costco Wholesale CEO - San Diego City College.
• Bill Green, CEO of Accenture - Dean College and Babson.
• Michael Critelli, CEO of Pitney Bowes, University of Wisconsin.

Adding to the notion that any college will do, these executives, in the position to set the tone for hires, insist they don’t favor job candidates with certain degrees. Having demonstrated themselves that leadership talent and a drive for success is far more important, these CEOs are not looking for potential employees based on securing an undergraduate degree from a prestigious university.

One Interesting Story in the Mix
Bill Green, the CEO of Accenture, represents a very interesting tale. First, the son of a plumber had no intentions to go to college; he simply didn’t think he had the ability to pursue further education. He would ultimately change his mind after visiting friends at Dean College, a two-year community school near Boston.

Green cited a very appealing atmosphere at Dean, one that worked for him.

“… he got help from faculty members who devoted themselves to their students, not ‘doing research and writing books like professors at four-year schools,’ he says. Rather than post student-meeting times on their office doors, they posted their class schedules. ‘All the other time, they were available to any student who needed help,’ says Mr. Green, who worked part-time to pay for part of his tuition.”

The school inspired Green to pursue further study in economics. He went on to Babson College where he would earn his bachelor’s and M.B.A. degrees. But Green insists that Dean was the catalyst, teaching “him to think analytically, to gain confidence in his abilities and to learn to work with people.”

Such a response is contrary to the typical public view, one that sees the education provided by community colleges as somehow of lower quality.

Public Colleges Lead the Way in Payback Ratio
In what is likely a restatement of Hymowitz’s work is the recent Smart Money magazine article ranking the “best colleges for making money.” The magazine utilizes a ratio it calls payback.

The simple calculation compares the average salary earned by a graduate to the actual cost of attending a school. The magazine’s top five are not those one normally sees on top of the US News and World Report’s school rankings.

Public colleges led the way with the University of Georgia having an average payback of 338%; Texas A&M (315%); University of Texas, Austin (306%); Georgia Tech (263%); and University of Washington (225%). In contrast, a review of the best Ivies yielded Princeton (132%), Dartmouth (131%), Yale (127%), Harvard (124%), and University of Pennsylvania (124%).

Those numbers led Smart Money to add a real jab at the liberal elite colleges, asking readers:

“Is an Ivy League education worth the money?”

Affordability vs. Quality
Smart Money rightfully acknowledges that its rankings do not address the quality of the education received - only the earning power as compared to investment. Hymowitz likewise does not ever insist that those attending state universities are earning a better education.

But Kiplinger’s offers its list of best buys, the traditional Consumer Reports style rating system that examines quality of educational programming as compared to the costs. In other words, getting what you pay for is an important criteria.

Using this criteria, state universities represent some of the best educational bargains available. Leading the way are the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Florida, the University of Virginia, the University of Georgia and the College of William and Mary. Moving further down the list, the next nine listed schools are state universities, with the University of Wisconsin Madison coming in at number 14.

This gets to the heart of affordability. Private college costs today average $33,000 per school year with several topping $40,000 annually and a few exceeding $50,000 a year. In contrast, the University of Florida costs in-state students less than $12,000 a year.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the school heading the Kiplinger top 100 best buys, has a sticker price of a shade under $14,000. With average after-aid costs totaling less than $5,000 per year, students at UNC can truly attend four years, earn a bachelors and still have the possibility of being able to attend graduate school financially.

Choice of College
With business leaders insisting that by the time someone has worked a few years it is their employment record that counts the most, not where that individual attended school, parents and students should give careful thought to the choice of college. The idea that any school will do is definitely too simplistic - in fact the story of Bill Green speaks to the opposite, the choice is truly important.

If one can truly afford the higher costs, it is hard to argue against the elite private schools. But with college costs rising beyond the means of the average American family, parents and students should take note: there are numerous quality options available at far more affordable costs.

More importantly, these schools are producing many successful graduates.

Flickr photos courtesy of Joi, David Makes , hyku and jnikon.

Eliminating Control - Mark Pesce on the potential of a shared and connected, opensource educational environment.

In the process of web surfing, there are times you stumble on some gems - some material so transcendent you find yourself spellbound.

Such is the case with the work of Mark Pesce at The Human Network. David Parry, assistant professor of Emergent Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, offers his assessment of Pesce’s work on his AcademHack blog:

“I find Pesce to be one of the more provocative thinkers on the internet and matters of cultural transformation. I am not sure I always agree with what he suggests, but this is also one of the reasons I find him worth reading.”

Parry also notes the recent Pesce posts, all of which are connected, are the rarest of internet materials.

“In this series I read each piece at least twice,” states Parry, “some three times. They are that good.”

Fluid Learning
To fully grasp how education can be transformed by technology, we begin by taking a peek at Pesce’s Fluid Learning. But before we do so we turn back to our trilogy from last February, our review of the digital commons.

We noted the Committee on Economic Development’s report, Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness, that touts the success of the “Digital Commons” approach. The report notes the “benefits of openness” and insists that continued openness is critical for further growth.

Most importantly, the report challenges the thinking of those who view the digital world in the same manner as that of the physical world. And if one can begin to think about how we might replace the current physical construct for education amongst this new digital age, we perhaps finally see where a new learning model emerges.

Pesce writes:

“It’s all about control.

“What’s most interesting about the computer is how it puts paid to all of our cherished fantasies of control. The computer – or, most specifically, the global Internet connected to it – is ultimately disruptive, not just to the classroom learning experience, but to the entire rationale of the classroom, the school, the institution of learning. And if you believe this to be hyperbolic, this story will help to convince you.

“Flexibility and fluidity are the hallmark qualities of the 21st century educational institution. An analysis of the atomic features of the educational process shows that the course is a series of readings, assignments and lectures that happen in a given room on a given schedule over a specific duration. In our drive to flexibility how can we reduce the class into essential, indivisible elements? How can we capture those elements? Once captured, how can we get these elements to the students? And how can the students share elements which they’ve found in their own studies?”

Pesce offers four recommendations:

Capture Everything
When it comes to traditional college settings, Pesce notes succinctly: “Lecturers are expensive.” But the process of “recording is cheap.”

Of course, recording everything creates enormous new challenges. It “means you end up with a wealth of media that must be tracked, stored, archived, referenced and so forth.”

In Pesce’s eyes capturing everything means no front-end decisions as to the worthiness of any material. Just capture and let the natural course of events determine its value.

Share Everything
In a move analogous to the recent open courseware available from Stanford and MIT, Pesce also notes, “While education definitely has value – teachers are paid for the work – that does not mean that resources, once captured, should be tightly restricted to authorized users only. In fact, the opposite is the case: the resources you capture should be shared as broadly as can possibly be managed.”

In making this mindset shift, Pesce explains:

“The center of this argument is simple, though subtle: the more something is shared, the more valuable it becomes. You extend your brand with every resource you share. You extend the knowledge of your institution throughout the Internet. Whatever you have – if it’s good enough – will bring people to your front door, first virtually, then physically.”

Open Everything
Next instead of commercializing, Pesce suggests a look at the open-source solutions.

“Rather than buying a solution,” states Pesce, “use Moodle, the open-source, Australian answer to digital courseware. Going open means that as your needs change, the software can change to meet those needs. Given the extraordinary pressures education will be under over the next few years, openness is a necessary component of flexibility.

“Openness is also about achieving a certain level of device-independence. Education happens everywhere, not just with your nose down in a book, or stuck into a computer screen.”

And Pesce means open, fully open - thus filtering must be eliminated.

“The classroom does not exist in isolation, nor can it continue to exist in opposition to the Internet. Filtering, while providing a stopgap, only leaves students painfully aware of how disconnected the classroom is from the real world. Filtering makes the classroom less flexible and less responsive. Filtering is lazy.”

Only Connect
As for the most transformative element, Pesce indicates it might well be the connective elements we now have available. His words mirror those of the recent Digital Youth Project survey, one that insists that social networking is fundamental to students using the computer and the internet as educational tools.

“Mind the maxim of the 21st century: connection is king. Students must be free to connect with instructors, almost at whim. This becomes difficult for instructors to manage, but it is vital. Mentorship has exploded out of the classroom and, through connectivity, entered everyday life.

“Finally, students must be free to (and encouraged to) connect with their peers,” adds Pesce. “Part of the reason we worry about lecturers being overburdened by all this connectivity is because we have yet to realize that this is a multi-lateral, multi-way affair.

“Students can instruct one another, can mentor one another, can teach one another. All of this happens already in every classroom; it’s long past time to provide the tools to accelerate this natural and effective form of education.

The Universal Solvent
As for how it all might work, take a trip down the “what if” of universal connectivity and sharing, of opening and capturing everything.

As one school places materials online, Pesce believes that a natural altruistic nature will prevail causing others to begin to follow.

“It’s outstanding when even one school provides a wealth of material, but as other schools provide their own material, then we get to see some of the virtues of crowdsourcing. First, you have a virtuous cycle: as more material is shared, more material will be made available to share. After the virtuous cycle gets going, it’s all about a flight to quality.”

Then comes a new frontier:

“When you have half a dozen or have a hundred lectures on calculus, which one do you choose? The one featuring the best lecturer with the best presentation skills, the best examples, and the best math jokes – of course.”

Of course, there would be a need to obtain student input to reach that level of information. We also would need a cataloging type site.

“Why not create RateMyLectures.com, a website designed to sit right alongside iTunes University?” asks Pesce. “If Apple can’t or won’t rate their offerings, someone has to create the one-stop-shop for ratings. ”

And the real possibility for transcending education as we currently know it?

“When broken down to its atomic components, the classroom is an agreement between an instructor and a set of students,” writes Pesce. “The instructor agrees to offer expertise and mentorship, while the students offer their attention and dedication.”

But schools as we know them - are they necessary?

“The question now becomes what role, if any, the educational institution plays in coordinating any of these components. Students can share their ratings online – why wouldn’t they also share their educational goals? Once they’ve pooled their goals, what keeps them from recruiting their own instructor, booking their own classroom, indeed, just doing it all themselves?”

Currently, students do not have “the same facilities or coordination tools.” Our structures mean that at this moment “the educational institution has an advantage over the singular student.”

In fact, that is what our current institutions offer for a strength, they exist “to coordinate the various functions of education.” But in the future, when we truly have an open school concept, we could well see a heretofore unheard of paradigm shift.

“In this near future world, students are the administrators,” writes Pesce. “All of the administrative functions have been ‘pushed down’ into a substrate of software. Education has evolved into something like a marketplace, where instructors ‘bid’ to work with students.

All About Control
When it comes to knowledge, the opensource, opencourseware movement is gaining ground. For Pesce, the rationale is clear and the benefits without limit.

Of technology and the internet, “The challenge of connectivity is nowhere near as daunting as the capabilities it delivers,” states Pesce. “Yet we know already that everyone will be looking to maintain control and stability, even as everything everywhere becomes progressively reshaped by all this connectivity.

“We need to let go, we need to trust ourselves enough to recognize that what we have now, though it worked for a while, is no longer fit for the times. If we can do that, we can make this transition seamless and pleasant.

“So we must embrace sharing and openness and connectivity; in these there’s the fluidity we need for the future.”

Some Thought-Provoking Work
We noted earlier that the recent Pesce posts, all of which are connected, represent the rarest of internet materials.

Like David Parry, we have read each piece at least twice. As a suggested order, we turn back to David for his suggestion for those interested in reading further:

“Start with Fluid Learning the first in the series, then check out The Alexandrine Dilemma and Crowdsource Yourself, ending with Inflection Points.”

Flickr photos courtesy of ottonassar, nathanaelb, tujiguoman, and KK+.