My Beauty Best Teacher

Apoorva Shah asks?

The question is not whether there should be more innovators and entrepreneurs in Africa, but how? What concrete steps must be taken in order to develop the business sector?

He believes that part of the answer lies in building managerial expertise:

The importance of governance, financial institutions, and the overall "enabling environment" has already been proven by the widely referenced World Bank Doing Business Reports. By measuring the difficulty of starting and sustaining business, the report allows for governments to know where to direct and manage reforms. However, an assessment of business know-how and expertise is less frequently discussed, and some over-enthused optimists, especially those on the microfinance bandwagon, insinuate that skills like balancing a checkbook or managing organizational structure are inherent in all entrepreneurs, even budding ones in Africa and South Asia.
Yet studies show that many times it is not the availability of funding or even government reforms that hold back business development, but simply business expertise. Management skills are especially important when entrepreneurs look to scale their businesses and employ more workers

via more business schools

The Association of African Business Schools (AABS), organized by the International Finance Corporation's Global Business School Network, is a quiet but crucial voice in a sector where passions thrive on shirtsleeves and megaphones. The AABS member schools collaborate to improve the standards and increase accreditation of business schools in Africa. Right now, only one school, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, ranks within the Top 100 Business Schools on the 2007 Financial Times Global MBA Index.
But more entrepreneurial Africans in the middle and lower-middle classes should also have the opportunity to attend decent business schools close to home, preventing brain drain and catalyzing larger-scale local business development. As the AABS addresses the quality of business schools, private donors can look to increase the quantity of these schools

Della Bradshaw at the FT reports on the aspirations of African Business Schools:

"Economically we are the lost continent," says Juan Elegido, dean of the Lagos Business School in Nigeria. But he and others like him are planning to change that. Like many of his peers in African business schools he sees it as part of his mission to bring economic stability and growth to the country he represents.
Mike Ward, director of the graduate school of management at the University of Pretoria clearly speaks for many of his peers when he says: "There are 800m people on a continent that really needs uplifting and we are being looked to for help."

In an earlier post, I was very critical of the education establishment because of it's anti-business stance. In this post, I leaned toward the idea that the reason for this was the lack of purpose and vision of the educational establishment. But, maybe schools do such a poor job of educating our students on purpose.

Teachers can not effectively educated students and provide the citizens and businessmen of tomorrow because generally speaking, most teachers are anti-business, anti-capitalism, and have no business experience themselves. Our schools are run and staffed by those who have no clue about business and who don’t even respect it, and yet one of the things they are supposed to be training and teaching the business leaders of tomorrow. When teachers are asked about their opinions about business, businessman, business in education, etc, they typically will respond in some of the most leftist drivel you've ever heard. Teachers are anti-business, and that mentality can't be good for the future of our nation.

One of the other school districts that I worked in has a gifted and talented program that I thought would interest some of my readers because it shows how possible and how extensive the liberal agenda can stretch into the government-run schools in our country.

In some schools, gifted and talented programs for students may offer increased enrichment opportunities, ask students to take more leadership on important issues, hold seminars to improve critical thinking skills, or include visits to local museums. But in other schools, just the the program that I observed in a local middle school, the gifted and talented programs instead are serving as laboratories for molding future communist-left-leaning Democrats.

In this government school, gifted and talented students are usually identified in elementary and middle schools and then put into a program apart from other students, where they learn and work on an additional or alternative curriculum. They are told over and over that they are not different from other students, just unique- separate, but equal. Myself, I'd just tell these students the truth- 'hey, you're farther along and advancing more rapidly, so let's put you in a different class or give you additional projects and challenge you.' But the liberals who run the education system instead say to these students 'we're all equal, but we're going to put you in a special class to mold your unique skills.'

And the scary part is what they are trying to mold the best and brightest into. Apparently what this school is trying to mod its most gifted and talented students into is government planners, communists, bureaucrats, and solid liberal Democrats. They do this molding in several ways.

These gifted and talented students have to create and run United Nations type projects. That is, the United Nations projects that are funded with other people's money, unaccountable, full of corruption, and tend to make the situation they are supposed to 'fix' worse. Students work on projects that have to deal with environmentalism (how to force businesses through government power to do certain things, or propose laws to do this, etc.), global appeasement policies (peace on earth, how to stop the war, stop the war in Iraq, how to make friends with France, etc.), tax and spend schemes (pretend money comes from air and isn't stolen from hard working people's pockets, and think up ways to spend it, etc.), wealth-redistribution schemes (collect for charities, can drives, etc.), and focus on human rights abuses (especially caused by the US).

The gifted and talented programs that some government-run school districts are setting up for their impressionable youth steer clear and never mention anything related to individualism, morality, or personal rights. In fact, not a single project touched on those issues. The goal apparently with these programs is to emphasis themes of government control and elitism, but steer clear of morality, individual rights, and individual responsibility.

The students get the time to put together these projects by being pulled out of classes that are deemed 'unimportant' by the liberal elites who run the school- they are pulled out of business or economics classes, they are pulled out of shop, home economics, or auto mechanics classes, and they are pulled out of gym and physical education classes. According to the liberals who run the school, these are 'dumb' classes for the 'dumber students', and the gifted and talented students should instead be learning how to rule us, make decisions for us, and control our behaviors.

Where gifted and talented students could take on more real life examples and challenges, and begin to train to be our future business leaders, and improve their discipline and teamwork skills, and be part of the tradition that made our nation great once- skilled mechanics, dedicated farmers, good shop keepers, smart accountants, and hard-working factory workers- these students instead spend vastly more time talking and learning about government intervention in business and society in the belief that if our country had more lawyers, bureaucrats, and communist leftist pinko's, it would be a better country.

It is a scary thought- in schools all around the nation, our future leaders- our most gifted and talented- are being put into government re-education programs designed to make students into liberal Democrats. Scary indeed.

Today as I was strolling down the hall during my prep hour, I happened to walk by the classroom where business was being taught and overhear some of the lecture from our business teacher. Apparently the students had just finished watching the movie Corporate, which is about how businesses are sick and twisted and try to take advantage of average people by selling them harmful products and making lots of money on them out of pure greed. This passes for an educational film in public schools.

The film was useful in that it sparked some discussion with the students, and I eagerly listened to the discussion that the students and teacher engaged in. When I pose critical thinking questions to students, or ask them for their impressions of movies and videos that we have seen, I try to find out what the students thought, and like Plato, ask question after question of them to refine their ideas, get them to think deeper, and become more learned students. But I'm different than most public education teachers, especially the liberal ones- when they engage in discussion with students, it is a chance for them to bully students into adopting their worldview and positions on issues.

This discussion was like that. Many students felt that the film was too cynical and portrayed corporations in an unfair manner- many of these students worked for corporations or had parents who worked for corporations, and felt that the one-sided portrayal of a big corporation as sick wasn't right. But the business teacher disagreed.

The liberal business teacher in public education said that people in business, especially the successful ones, were sociopaths. Wikipedia defines a sociopath as someone who has antisocial personality disorder:

The essential feature for the diagnosis is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood. Deceit and manipulation are considered essential features of the disorder.

According to our business teacher, every single person in business, especially the successful ones, have a pervasive disregard for the rights of others, and rely on deceit and manipulation of others to sell their products. These impressionable youths are sitting in this classroom listening to a person of authority tell them that without a doubt, every person in business, especially those who are good at getting a product to a consumer that they want at an efficient price, are bad people.

What will these students do someday when they vote? What will these students believe about the marketplace, about capitalism, about supply/demand, and about public policies that deal with these issues? What kind of a pervasive influence will this type of teaching have on the future of our nation?

• Connecting Classrooms with Skype

  How this teacher uses Skype to connect her classrooms with others. I like the preplanning  - something that needs to be done to be ready for this.

  tags: education globaled flatclass

• Flat Classroom Projects: Applications Open Now

  If you want to look into a Flat Classroom project for your school, applications are open. Our goal is to be the best collaborative learning experience where students co-create and collaborate together. We have projects for all ages and we're totally teacher run (most of us are full time and do this on the side or have classrooms in the project.) Find out more or ask me questions if you need to.

  tags: education flatclass globaled

• Template projects | British Council Schools Online

  The British Council Connecting Classrooms program has free projects for global learning on their website. It also has a way to find links with schools. I like that you can download templates.

  tags: education flatclass globaled

• Projects on Skype in the classroom | Skype Education

  Here are projects from Skype in the classroom. Posted by teachers. A lot of teachers are looking for people to Skype with. There should be a better way, but kudos to Skype for doing this.

  tags: education skype flatclass globaled

• Amy's Travels Project:Connecting Children Through Global Awareness Literature | Skype Education

  Skype in the classroom has lists of projects that you can do with Skype. This is very innovative. Here is one using the Amy's Travel's multicultural children's book.

  tags: education flatclass skype

• Partnership for Global Learning Annual Conference

  This is just after ISTE. I hope that many of the ISTE people will be able to go there and vice versa.
  
  Asia Society's Partnership for Global Learning Annual Conference will take place June 29-30 at the Brooklyn Marriott in New York City.
  The two-day event connects educators, business leaders, policymakers and resource providers to share best practices, build partnerships and advance policies to ensure the next generation is ready to lead in an interconnected world.
  This year's theme is "Pathways to Global Competence" and the four conference strands are:
  Innovations in Teacher Practice
  Exploring the Global Issues of Today
  Going Global Through Technology and Media
  Assessing Global Competence Through Student Work

  tags: flatclass globaled events

• Worldwide list of reading/literacy charities 2012 | Playing by the book

  A list of reading and literacy charities worldwide for 2012. This author has spent a lot of time compiling the list and asks for your feedback. Hope you'll help. We should NEVER throw away books, there are a lot of people who need them. In fact, I tend to not want to throw them away now anyway because I'm not replacing them like I used to. It is a bit scary.

  tags: education flatclass literacy

• Neustar Launches Social Media Digital Citizenship Program for  Kentucky Schools | EON: Enhanced Online News

  A program from Neustar to Kentucky schools about Digital Citizenship. Lots of people are jumping on this "bandwagon." I think my biggest concern is that:
  #1 It needs to be "real" and not based on preachy scare-based tactics
  #2 Students should talk with those who share the program - if it is just videos and worksheets, that doesn't cut it. 
  #3 To talk about and learn social media, you should be doing it. (That is what we do on Digiteen.)
  
  a major new initiative to bring social media digital literacy education to students across the state of Kentucky through a program called “My Digital Life.” Neustar will partner with EverFi, Inc., a leading education technology company, to provide this innovative, online student experience to all Kentucky schools interested in teaching and certifying their students in digital literacy skills and responsibility. Most importantly, Neustar’s partnership is making the cutting-edge program available free of cost to the schools and state.

  tags: flatclass globaled digiteen digital citizenship

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The government takeover of healthcare might be beaten back this time, but there is a strong possibility that there will come a time when the progressives win the battle. The reason why I advance this depressing thought is because the progressives have taken over the public schools, and they are educating your children, not you. Here is an example of what goes on in a typical social studies class, time after time, year after year.

A frequent activity that teachers have students engage in is to have students from social studies to elementary school to high school pretend that they are a government entity or official and give them control over the world to do anything that they want, without any consequences at all.

Now, not every student will grow up to be a government dictator, but what they are actually learning from this activity is that it is okay and normal for the government to just do things, without a thought to the consequences. The students are taught that it is good to tell businesses what to do, that it is the role and job of government to control private citizens and dictate what their rights are, and that is it okay for government to decide how other people should live their lives. Students are taught these things- teachers issue directions to students and actively encourage them to pretend to rule the world.

What did you expect would happen in schools run and staffed by liberals? They think that it is okay for the government to control others and legislate rights, and so the liberal teacher teaches students that this is an okay thing to do.

The worst part is when these liberal teachers get a young student who has either learned about conservative values or instinctively recognizes the human yearning for freedom and liberty. These 'trouble-maker' students question the assignment. They question the authority of the teacher, and question the direction these teachers are taking the class, and openly foment insubordination by simply voicing their recognition of the liberal teacher's attempt to pollute the minds of their students with propaganda and dreams of dictatorship.

I've seen it. Once, when I was doing my state-mandated observation, I saw a a fifth grader slapped down (verbally) by a teacher. He was given an assignment to design laws that protect the sea turtle. While other students were busy writing ways to seize private property, stop economic growth, and limit rights and freedoms of people, this student raised his hand and said he really didn't think that sea turtles needed any more help. This was a good point- something that could be debated for the benefit of the whole class- but instead, the liberal teacher simply told the student to toe the line and submit to authority and pretend to be a dictator like the other young students.

A sixth grade class I observed had students design ways to combat “sprawl," and a seventh grade class spent some time designing schemes to combat “global warming.”

I once observed an eight grade class spend several days discussing how government can combat unemployment. The plans which were analyzed and discussed where chosen by the teacher, and students read news stories and articles about the successes of these various plans. The plans which were discusses were either schemes of wealth redistribution or government-provided jobs. A constant theme of the discussion was that businesses were evil, that earning profits was evil, and that attempts to establish efficiency in business by letting go inefficient or unproductive employees was evil. This teacher believed that the purpose of a business was to provide a job, regardless or production or profit entailed from this.

This is what is going on in education. Think about this when you send your children back to school this week.

UPDATE I: Welcome readers of Pundit & Pundette. If you enjoyed this post, you'll also enjoy Opening Day Message: Viciously Attack Conservatives, Bloomfield Hills Schools Sticking with Leftist Curriculum, Breakroom Conversations with Teachers, Obama Administration to Bribe States to Impose Liberal UN Agenda in Schools, or Students Accept Majority Tyranny. Be sure to check back often for more stories from the battleground of education!

You can't visit China without seeing the western influence there. Our tour guide had a Justin Bieber haircut that he had proudly made himself. Chinese who cannot speak English can sing in perfect Bieberese "Baby, Baby, Baby..." Ah, Bieber Fever is Everywhere.

 Government Snow
But, the government is everywhere too. In the sky, on the ground, everywhere.

The government made it snow on Saturday of the Flat Classroom conference. Snow?

Flat Classroom Conference 2011 - February Beijing, China

As I met Julie Lindsay the lead organizer for the conference, I commented how odd it was that it snowed that day. She laughed in her lilting sort of way

"Ah, the government made it snow last night, it is no big deal." 

Others from Beijing verified this.

"I can see the snow cannons, they fire them near my house and seed the clouds," said Julie.

Others said that this is a frequent occurence in Colorado and Utah where they need snow. I'm not sure but something in me gets upset at governments controlling the weather.

But it shouldn't be surprising as filters have a whole lot of influence on the weather inside the computer screens. They can cast government snow upon the seeds of discontent and revolution. The can just cast snow upon any and all collaboration by chilling the pipes upon which such collaboration flows.

Yes, China is blocking Google services
I can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that China is aggressively blocking Google services. When I arrived in China in February, it was during the time when Middle Eastern unrest was spreading and I could not check my gmail for the first two days even behind my well-selected VPN. Google Docs was unstable as well.

She Who Shall Not Be Named
In fact, we had one young lady named Jasmine and because the government was so heavily filtering the word "Jasmine" (the Jasmine revolution) we renamed her on our wiki and in our projects to keep from losing our wiki. Our behind the scenes joke was that Jasmine was "she who shall not be named" as we did not want to speak the word.

The Company Who Shall not Be Named
Now, my friends in China are quietly moving to yahoo accounts just in case they cannot get back into their gmail. Even with VPN's, Western expatriates are cut off from most Google services: docs, calendars, especially gmail. Unstable and unusable.

Keeping it Flat Anyway
Yes, this has put a hitch in things for Flat Classroom - an organization of global collaboration for students that we have kept decidedly apolitical. We are about teaching. Teaching technology, asychronous collaboration, online leadership skills. We believe that you can't have excellence in education without global collaboration. Period. And yet, when things happen like this it can set us back.

This is nothing new. We will press forward. 

The Great Firewall of China
From what I understand, China has 7 firewall centers as part of their "Great Firewall of China" and these firewalls have been locked down tighter and tighter over the past few months.

Filtration Fever
in China
Despite the influence of entertainment, right now, not only can my Chinese friends not read this blog but now, they cannot read my email.

David Truss, Pair a Dimes Blog

But to segue, here are some words from my friend David Truss in China along with a picture he suggests people in schools with Filter Fever hang in their foyer:

"The Students Live website provides a number of different ways to connect and interact with the Olympic reporter student bloggers. However, we live in China which filters a lot of social software websites and so these were the options that my Grade 9 teacher was confronted with:

Facebook: BLOCKED

Twitter: BLOCKED

YouTube: BLOCKED

Blogspot Blogs: BLOCKED

Flickr: (recently) BLOCKED (again)

I had to use my VPN to bypass the Chinese filter in order to cut and paste the blog post, mentioned above, into an email so that my teacher could read it in his class. A potential global ‘conversation’ reduced to a reading, confined to a classroom. Frustrating!

Now here is the thing… I chose to move to a country where a lot of sites get blocked. I can’t imagine what it’s like for teachers in the ‘free world’ that have their own school districts do this to them!"

in the US
We in the US cannot look down our trusty 1Gbps Internet connections at our Chinese friends.

I can tell you from experience, the two toughest places to collaborate IN THE WORLD are: any school in China and US public schools.

Thank God for the progressive US schools, public and private, who collaborate anyway and that we have many of them in our projects. These schools are usually characterized by extraordinary leadership who understand  that:

YOU CANNOT HAVE EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION WITHOUT GLOBAL COLLABORATION.

What do schools block?
Like China, most US public schools won't allow unblocking of even one Ning - even educational ones like Digiteen, Flat Classroom, or NetGen. They put our emails from us to the teachers into their blacklist filters and teachers can't even get started. Joining a Google Group or Google calendar at school is out of the question.

They won't allow kids to wiki because "people write porn on wikis." (Yes, I had a school that said that.) Sad.

Some teachers have to create non-school emails and accounts and do work from home to make global collaboration happen in the classroom. Their filters are that locked down and no method exists for unblocking anything.

I think that we have to look at our practices and our filtering here in the US very closely.

Filter fever is a symptom of fear. We all see clearly what China is afraid of.

But what on earth are US public schools afraid of?

• Are we afraid that our kids might learn to work with someone from another country? That is a business requirement. 
• Are we afraid that we might have to shuffle our work day to work with someone from another time zone? We are surrounded by oceans that soak up the time zones and need to work through this.
• Are we afraid of a future where we can no longer keep prosperity on our shores by the boundary of our country? We already live in a world where money flows through the Internet and can shift the GDP of whole countries in a day due to websites hosted in country.

Personally, I'm afraid of a future built upon a generation that has been cut off from one another. Students are the greatest textbook ever written for each other. Open the book. Make it happen.

Every Student Collaborates
Filter out the smut but please, we should be able to allow meaningful global collaboration with students all over the world for EVERY US public school system. It can be done inexpensively or for free - the only cost is to move outside our comfort zone.

We work so hard measuring if each individual child is learning that we forget to see if they can work together at all.

In this day of budget cuts, this is something we can do to invest in our future that won't cost a lot of money and will pay huge dividends in future generations. Most students are woefully unprepared for this. Don't say "they are already connected now on Facebook." It simply isn't applicable to the professional environment where they are headed.

Collaborate or be unemployed.

We Love Our Walled Window boxes?
I love my country (the US) and it disheartens me to know that our very future lies in collaborating with countries like India and China and all of the world and we continue to "wall our gardens."

The problem is that I'd hardly call the technology ecosystems at most schools a garden - they are probably more like a windowbox if anything. Some would even say windowdressing as their internal networks languish unused with kids forgetting passwords and not logging in for months.

Let me repeat the motto of our Flat Classroom Conference: there is no excellence in education without global collaboration.

The question is NOT: "What are we keeping out?"  The question should be "What are we letting in?"

Remember your noble calling teachers, administrators, ed tech leaders. Few such callings are as noble as this: to promote students working together in the K12 level so when they grow up we have a world that can work together. Promoting collaboration and collaboration from the bottom up.

Last week, as part of our 'professional development', a group of teachers were given a tour of the new Model High School in our district. Model High Schools are a new movement, and are based on the philosophy that each child as a unique learner and thus should create their own educational experiences. These schools develop personalized education programs that focus on being fun and creative. They also try to surround students with nurturing adults who support and enable students in their learning. Students do not focus on learning abstract concepts or knowledge, and instead build a curriculum around whatever they are interested in. And they are assessed on standards they themselves set. Subjects that students focus on are 'Urban Culture,' 'Contemporary Art,' and 'Multicultural Literature.' These schools are supposed to be an alternative school for students who do not do well in traditional schools. Oh yes, Model High School is the vision of liberal education.

So we get to the Model High School, and are walking around the building listening to this new sounding language given by three African-American women who run the school. We were told to ask any questions if we had any, so I raised my hand.

"Why do you teach students those subjects- rather than learning about how to sell drugs, reading rap, and admiring a bunch of trash turned into 'art', wouldn't students benefit more by a deeper student of reading, math, and science?" While I was led to believe that no question was stupid (in fact, that was said with breathy belief at the beginning of the question and answer period, as if every question really is equal), you should have seen the glares that were leveled on me after asking that question. It was almost as if I had said that the emperor was wearing no clothes!

They answered with some sort of mumbo-jumbo about how all knowledge is equal and that there are no real truths in the world, instead students focus on the process of learning and discovery.

Oh yeah, my eyes rolled at this one, and even though the tour continued and we started to look at wonderful 'interpretive' art projects (random colors thrown at the paper) that students spent weeks on (rather than learning geometry or US history), I couldn't let that last answer go. So at the next pause in the tour, I asked "What do you mean when you say that students are assessed by standards that they themselves set? Do you really teach them that wrong answers are right?"

The group I was with went dead still with shock. I guess in schools that teach diversity and equality, there is only one view that is better than others, and you are not to question it. I did, and oh man, was the answer I got frosty indeed- "Good grades should come from good ideas," one of the directors told me.

I replied "even if the ideas lack any basis in science or rationality?"

Another director replied- "It is not really about science or rationality- it is about effort- the only thing that really matters in this world is effort anyways."

"Whoa," I said, "Do you mean to suggest that your school rewards effort more so than actual achievement? Do you really believe that if someone works really hard doing something that has little use, or works really hard doing something that could easily be done another way, or works really hard doing something that does not work, or works really hard doing the wrong thing, we should reward that person with a good grade just because of the effort? What about productivity? Efficiency? Correctness? Rightness? Do those things not matter" Apparently, in the liberal world of the Model High School, they don't.

The tour continued on, now with a certain edge in it, as the believes now sensed they had an unbeliever in their midst. I looked around the school with renewed interest, and was surprised by some of the work that was on the walls of the school. Whereas in my classroom, the walls are functionally decorated and convey a business-like approach to learning, the walls of this school were filled with meaningless and empty slogans. "Change," "Hope," "Togetherness," "Effort," "Equality," "Diversity," and "Save the Environment" the walls shouted to students. This Model High School looked less like a place of 'learning' and more like a 're-education camp.'

Once more, I tried to question the directors. At this point, I should have realized that I was now being watched more so than listened to- but I demonstrated the same stupidity here that I did when I questioned Earth Day last month (Earth Day: A Communist Plot?). Since I was no longer being recognized to speak, I simply voiced my question. "The students in this school are here because they were not disciplined- they failed their classes by not handing in work, they didn't study, they didn't try to understand the concepts, and many were insubordinate and disrespectful for teachers. And now your plan to help these students is to enable them, to give in to their demands, to surround them with 'nurturing' adults who put no discipline on them, and who appease them at every turn?"

"Yes, exactly," the directors replied, happy now that I understood their philosophy, that I finally got what they were doing in this school. Oh, and I did- now I understood that this school was meant to create a permanent underclass of slaves to serve the tyrants who ran it. The Model High School really was a vision of liberal education.

CIPE reports:

Teaching young people vital business skills is one of the key elements of Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Since 2005, CIPE has been conducting a popular entrepreneurship course called Tashabos in select high schools around the country. The program, featured on Sky News, today reaches more than 33,000 students in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade at 44 schools in Kabul, Bamiyan, Nangahar, and Parwan. CIPE Afghanistan staff interviewed several students who have started their own business after completing the Tashabos course to learn how they have benefited from the program. Here is what they told us...[continue reading] watch related video:

Here is a thought- the real reason why our country might be on the decline and we elect legislators who are economic morons is because our school system is run and staffed by those people who have no experience in business, work in an industry severed from economic reality, and frequently have ideologies that oppose capitalism and free markets. The reason why this country elects people who think any sort of spending is a stimulus (Obama) is because the very people who are training and teaching our students about economic principles are the worst sort of people to do so.

This is not just an off-hand comment- I'm a little ticked off today about a conversation that we had in our department meeting about the teaching of economics. The MME test expects students to know basic principles about economics, and yet the students who graduate from our school don't have the foggiest notions of supply and demand, and when I talk about inflation and investment, they get blank looks in their eyes. So in our staff meeting, I tried to bring this up, and got lectured by two 'veteran' teachers about how economics should be taught- these two teachers thought that scientific principles were beyond students comprehension, so instead spent class time debating such things as minimum wage, CEO compensations, buy-American policies, and low pay for teachers.

Yes, that's right, rather than teach students economic principles, we are teaching them how to think and vote like a liberal Democrat (since liberal Democrat's usually also have no idea on how basic economic principles work). I tried to battle back, pointing towards the curriculum, and mentioned how an example like the Great Depression could be a good opportunity to connect economic principles, history, and modern day together, and suddenly most of the department was against me- they were upset that the curriculum attempted to be balanced when dealing with the Great Depression, and they phrase "capitalism caused the Great Depression and there is no arguing it" was thrown around once or twice.

If any of you are in business, if any of you are conservative economists, or even if any of you have read a good book in economics, I suggest you contact your local school and find out if you could come in one day to explain the book or an economic principle to these students. If you can't get in to the schools, at least make sure that you teacher your own students about economic principles, because they sure aren't going to learn about them in public schools.

In response to the WaPo Saturday story "DC Schools Chief Makes Times Magazine Cover" it is interesting to note that most readers do not favor Rhee's education reform strategies and recent appearance on the cover of Time. Twelve on line posters gave Rhee a thumbs down. This seems to be dramatic shift in public opinion against Rhee as evidenced by not only these posts but other on line comments as well. I have posted a number of the noteworthy ones.(Posted by The Washington Teacher).

Sickness is everywhere. In my house. In our schools.

Sitting here at 6:42 am in the morning, I am in my comfy chair for a brief moment at the start of my day about to head a school after another night with a sick child. The worst has past and she should sleep comfortably through the day with her bottle of Gatorade nearby. I know because she is the fourth of the five of us to have this same virus. (I'm the only one left standing but as the nurse, I have to admit I'm completely worn out.)

Last Wednesday afternoon my iphone got sick. It would not update to iOS5. I was getting Error 3200 (like many other hundreds of thousands of people, it seems.) I got on Twitter and eventually got onto some reputable blogs to determine that this error that no one had ever seen before was due to lack of capacity on Apple's servers.

Last Monday and Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Blackberry Messenger (BBM) customers around the world, primarily non US, could not use their messenger service. This was due, we now know, to a major switch failure where the backup switch did not take over.

Measuring and Placing Blame for Failure
As I was facing my own 3200 error on Wednesday, it struck me that in the US, we have a whole different standard of measurement for businesses versus schools.

When we judged Apple for the 3200 error, everyone knew it was a systemic problem and that somewhere there was a technical reason for the error. We also knew that if Apple was an effective company that they would move heaven and earth to take steps quickly because their core mission was at stake. They would spend what they had to, do what they had to, because an inability to scale up in this way would harm their long term growth. They are positioning themselves for the next ten years, not the last.

When we judged BBM for their error, they took quite a bit longer to fix it, but we still knew there was a systemic error somewhere. Many do think that their inability to find the problem more quickly points at bigger problems within the company.

But in neither of these cases did you hear:

• All of the engineers at Apple are sorry wastes of human flesh who are just drawing a paycheck.
• BBM engineers should all be fired for this.
• All technology companies have bad, sorry, engineers and programmers.

If someone said this, a whole industry would be up at arms. And yet, for example in Rhode Island last year, a school literally fired every teacher.

When business fails we blame the system. When education fails we blame the people.

The other struggle is that you can see an Apple or a BMM outage immediately but often it takes a decade to see a failure at a certain grade level. We should be able to "deconstruct" what is happening with the failed classes that are coming out. We have plenty of students and parents (and teachers) to interview. Where did they lose interest? What happened? When did the situation turn for the negative with this class of students? Are we deconstructing today's failure and analyzing what we did 10-13 years a go to cause it? Ships like educational institutions don't turn on a dime.

Find the problem and fix it.
Neither can we say "one thing" has gotten us here. That one thing isn't just teachers that one thing isn't just administrators. Never to shift blame, we must examine ourselves closely for any failure in the system, but let's look at some other things too.


There are a few questions I think we should ask ourselves in every schools. (In my few brief moments I have left in this chair before I go help my fourth grader review his wordly wise words (again) for his big test today.)

• Discipline. One student can disrupt learning for a whole class. Are we so eager to give another chance that we've made teachers impotent? Are the corrective measures we're using actually correcting anything? Does one student have the right to disrupt learning for everyone else? Can't we use video and document what is happening and stop having one persons word against another?
  
  
• Classroom environment. Each classroom should be a place where learning can happen. Are their noise interruptions or basic flaws that are preventing learning from happening? When these happen, are the systems in place to promptly fix the problems? (Leaks, loud/broken Air conditioners, etc.) Do administrators and others respect class time and rarely interrupt on the intercom or impromptu assemblies?
  
  
• Class size. There is definitely a point where it becomes significantly harder to teach a class. My largest class was 26. We had to be in desks because I only have 21 computers (not counting mine at my desk.) One time I had 22 students and had to let a student use the computer at my desk. I have to say that the 26 and the 22 situations were very tough to manage for me. It took everything I had and I know for a fact that I couldn't cover as much as I did when I had 18 or 12. For me, the point where it becomes a bit more challenging is somewhere around 19 or 20. I don't know why it gets tough at that point but I have a computer lab and it is. I have friends with 30 and even more in a class. I've heard of 40. In South Africa, I saw a teacher who had 150 students. She said, "I couldn't help everyone but I helped the ones I could."
• IT Purchasing policies. Why do we buy what we buy? There is no doubt, corruption in the system. Right now in Alabama, their 2009 move to a glitchy  state-wide SIS system without going to bid has raised eyebrows and my inside sources say that it is sparking an investigation. (The Mobile School Board demanded it this summer.) IT is not an afterthought it is as important as the plans for the new school building. We need people who understand the specific needs of education making decisions and the position of IT directors escalated to a level where less temptation for corruption is there. Many IT decisions should really be curricular decisions anyway. We still treat it like a black box in most schools.
  
  
• How we look at research. We talk about research based best practices and in some ways it has become the Achilles heel of education. All a company has to do is go out and fund research proving their product improves learning and we'll buy it and cite the research. Are we blind? Are we so eager to believe there is a quick fix that we'll swallow such nonsense? When I dated guys, I knew not to believe half of what they said about themselves on the first date because they were trying to make themselves look good. Salesmen are trying to SELL. If we're sick we get a second opinion. Take a look at the What Works Clearinghouse but know also that sometimes we should test new things and innovate as well. Can we "BETA" test before we go full scale? WE should.
• Do we listen to contrarian voices? Stephen Downes and Gary Stager, God bless 'em, they are often contrarian voices. I read them for that reason. While I don't always agree with how they disagree with  people sometimes (everyone deserves respect) I do think that we need to listen to all sides of issues and topics. If you only listen to people just like you when people just like you are wrong, you'll be wrong too. Balanced voices make for good decisionmaking. Contrarians are sometimes right and the general viewpoints are sometimes wrong. Get the facts, listen to both sides and make up your mind.
  
• Do we educate parents on their role? One thing that could improve learning by next week for every school would be if parents made sure their children got 8-9 hours of sleep a night. That one thing. Read Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School and other research and you'll find that student learning is negatively impacted by lack of sleep.(One study equated the IQ drop of 1 hour less of sleep to that of lead poisoning.) Yet, parents persist on letting their kids sleep with their constantly buzzing cell phone on their pillow denying them the ability to get a good night's sleep. If we know that a child drops two grade levels in their ability to perform in class after losing an hour of sleep, then do we have systemic problems with our education system because of a nationwide inability to put our children to bed at a decent hour and take cell phones out of their hands?
  
  Don't stop there. How about having a place to do homework? Making sure they have their assignments written down and are bringing homework home. If the kid has "no homework" then are they studying anyway. Studying for a test is homework too. To think you can have a good school system without parental involvement is like thinking you can be a healthy athlete without drinking anything. Parents are a higher indicator of success than teachers.
  
• Are teachers free to teach? (I wrote about this in a Washington Post oped this summer.) Who is the customer? How much time are teachers spending filling out paperwork for administrators?
  
  What is a better measure of a good teacher: good paperwork and detailed lesson plans or what is happening in the classroom with the students? What makes a good bureaucrat doesn't make a good teacher and yet we have a system that consistently rewards teachers who are good paper pushers and hurts teachers who aren't. The customer is our students after they've graduated from high school. Will they thank us for what we taught them?
  
  I had a time during my teaching career where I had to do detailed lesson plans and honestly, sometimes I realized that I had finished my plans but wasn't ready to teach. I hadn't made the copies and done the work to really teach. Flat Classroom was invented the year that my interim headmaster (now my curriculum director) said - stop filling out lesson plans and start teaching - keep a general overview of what you cover in your lesson plan book but I'll be in your classroom 3-4 times a week. Then, I really started teaching. I was a good teacher but focusing on teaching and my students is what made me a great teacher and that was when this blog was born too.
  
• Do we look at what is happening in the classroom? Are administrators in your classroom more than once a week? Do they know what is happening there? A poor teacher becomes a bad teacher without supervision. A great teacher loves showing off and feels valued when their administrator comes by. All teachers appreciate this because we have the chance to point out obstacles that administrators can fix. (i.e. that loud A/c unit.) Why do we make teachers fill out paperwork about what they are doing with students, couldn't we have a recorder of some time document what they are ACTUALLY doing? Paperwork is antiquated and unnecessary in a world of digital recorders. Is anyone looking at it anyway?
  
• Stop looking for quick fixes. Quick fixes don't fix education. If you have a massive failure, you have massive problems. A quick fix is what you do when your child scratches their knee and needs a band aid. Major surgery happens after a horrible car crash. This car has run into the 21st century head on and most in education weren't ready. Certainly, we have some work to do. As I said in Alabama last week - maybe it is time to kill some sacred cows if we can't afford to feed them any more.

My Management professor, Dr. Phil Adler, always said that

"Accountability without Authority is a recipe for disaster" 

and that is what we have in education right now.

We have a lot of accountability on the heads of teachers and administrators.

• But do we give them authority? 
• Can they change a curriculum that is not working? 
• Can they fix things that are broken? 
• Can they handle discipline and be backed up? 
• Can they appeal to have the schedule changed or class sizes altered? 
• Can they  get rid of a computer system that is causing problems for everyone? 
• Can an administrator who identifies a personnel issue actually have the authority to fire the person who deserves it? 
• Can an administrator who is constantly causing classroom problems be reported in a way to reduce the problems or let other administrators know that this person is harming the learning environment.

We've made educators into bureaucrats by this massive move to centralize the education system in America. Bureaucrats are infamously horrible at moving quickly to fix things. BBM and Apple would still be trying to get things fixed today if they had to push paper like many of my public school friends have to do.

I'm quite tired of business people criticizing educators for not running education like "a business." The last 30 years of lawsuits and centralization of education has turned many schools into behemoths where it is very hard to get anything done, even if you are in charge. I can say this because I've worked with public schools for the last 15 years and have many close friends who are administrators.

Let's hold people in education accountable but first, let's give them the authority to do something about the myriad of problems they face.

When you have a system wide problem with low test scores you have systemic problems.

No one can tell me that every teacher in a certain town is a sorry teacher or that every principal is a bad principle. The logic just doesn't add up. We have great teachers and great principals losing their jobs today.

Why Destroy and Start Over Doesn't Make Sense
And to those who say, just destroy it and start over. That would be like me saying that I'm going to solve this stomach virus in my house by killing my children and adopting new ones. Eventually my new children WILL get sick too. Besides, it would be a horrible waste of human life and all of my love for them knows that is a horrific thing to even suggest.

And yet, people ever day call to destroy all the schools and start over. It may solve your problem temporarily but if we keep moving "best practices" that aren't best practices at all to new places then we have problems. My private school friends who say they are having problems say they start when the public school testing environment moves into their walls. It kills learning.

If the chicken is always on the scale being weighed, she's never in the barnyard eating grain.

If we've learned anything in the last ten years is that much of what we've put in place in the last ten years should be called to question. When you have teachers who have thrived for 20-30 years getting out because of the system, its the system.

Let's open our eyes and look at 3200 error in education for what it is: systemic problems that require a fix. Stop blaming ALL the people and start getting practical here. We have a mission and the future of a nation is at stake.

Hart middle school in S.E. Washington is being reconstituted and as many of you know has been in the news throughout this school year with stories about DC teachers being assaulted, teachers teaching outside of their certification area, substitutes covering classes, overcrowded classes, unruly students, possession of handguns, violence and a lack of supports promised by Rhee's office. The Washington Teacher covered what was happening at Hart back in November 2008. Hart is a school which merged with P.R. Harris Educational Center this school year against the advice of parents and community activists. Hart's problems have been complicated by not having adequate funding to run the school. When these complaints surfaced in the news, Hart's principal was fired by Chancellor Rhee instead of being given the supports the school desperately needed. It should also be noted that Hart was not given the financial support that it was entitled and this was revealed after the Levy report documented that approximately 31 schools did not receive the funding they were entitled based on their student enrollment. How does one run a school without adequate funding is beyond me ?

I am posting a copy of an email that I received from a teacher at Hart middle school so that you can see based on this insider's experiences that Chancellor Rhee is following through with her promises to rid our school system of a significant core of our DC teaching force as revealed in her 5 year educational plan. No credible school system seeks to rid a significant majority of its workforce. Who really cares about our students and the chaos Rhee's actions and 5 year plan of mass terminations and buyouts will create? Certainly not Rhee and company.

I also have my doubts that certain elected teacher members of our Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) Executive Board care about what's happening on our educational landscape either. One such board member who ironically happens to teach at Hart middle school along with a group of board members fails to 'adequately represent' the teachers they are elected to serve. In some board meetings, certain board members read cook books and magazines while others consistently nod off to sleep. Some do not attend board meetings regularly and one board member makes it a point to prematurely motion to adjourn most board meetings in the midst of our trying to conduct business because she would rather go home than address hard core issues.

At last week's Thursday's executive board meeting, a core group of board members ignored the pleas of teacher colleagues' complaints from the trenches. Even in the face of allegations of discriminatory practices by the Rhee administration which surfaced, our union members' cries went unheard and this motley crew of disengaged board members refused to take any action on these complaints. This same group of board members failed to insist that our union president hear the questions/comments raised from a teacher visitor about the 90 day plan. They also are usually on the DL (down low) and don't vocalize any concerns to WTU President Parker on most issues of merit. In the matter involving our WTU General Vice President, Nathan A. Saunders' leave of absence - this group of board members were missing in action (MIA) even while community activists, parents, teachers and the media expressed their outrage at Parker for taking his blessed time to resolve this matter expeditiously.

I hope you, like me take these violations of due process more seriously than some of our lackadaisical executive board members, union president and Chancellor Rhee. Here's the email from my teacher colleague working in the trenches. Even though some members of our union, are falling asleep on the job, The Washington Teacher is listening . Keep sending me your emails c/o saveourcounselors@gmail.com The teacher's name has been removed in order to protect confidentiality.

A DC Teacher Speaks Out ....
"Hey Candi, I am a teacher at Hart middle school, and I read your blog. As you know, we were told at Hart that we had to either reapply for our jobs or become excess employees. I was placed on the excess list as well as many of my colleagues who either didn't reapply or opted out. The majority of teachers from the old regime at Hart (with the exception of two) are not coming back.

Anyway, I was just wondering if you had heard the news about all the other teachers being excessed. This week, the teachers at Kramer middle school , Kelly Miller Junior High, and Johnson Junior High were all excessed! These schools were not even on the list to be reconstituted. Then, Rhee allegedly went to Kelly Miller and told the teachers that, if the City Council did not get her 27.5 million back, then all the excessed teachers would be fired! I wonder why more people are not talking about this, because it is absolutely ridiculous!

When we go to these teacher fairs and tell them we are from Hart middle school, they look right past us as if we are invisible. A colleague of mine even told me that a school told him they were primarily only interested in teachers who were from "outside of DCPS". At Hart, the principal is walking around interviewing prospective teachers right in front of us for jobs for next year. The funny thing is, every single person he's interviewed (at least the ones that I know of) are from OUTSIDE of DCPS.

It is almost as if Michelle Rhee is purposely excessing all the teachers from restructured schools, replacing them with teachers from outside of the system, making it next to impossible for them to get jobs within the system, and then trying to use the 27.5 million as an excuse to terminate them. Meanwhile, students from at least 10 schools next year (and probably more that we don't even know about next year) will have to come back next year to buildings where they practically won't know a single adult working there! It will be absolute chaos!

Anyway, you are probably already aware of most of this, but I just wanted to give you a point of view from someone who works in one of the schools that's being reconstituted. I really hope that whatever scheme Rhee is pulling (as well as all of her other schemes) becomes exposed because this is absolute insanity!" (Posted by The Washington Teacher).

In today's Sunday WaPo front page article by reporter Bill Turque, the title suggests that there will be an upcoming showdown between AFT President, Randi Weingarten and Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Well, I certainly hope not. I know headlines sell newspapers but I am sick of the Post's negative posturing. Let's get on with the business of negotiating a contract that supports student achievement and is fair to teachers. I venture to guess that maybe- President Parker didn't meet our end of January deadline since he didn't give a quote to the Post. Wonder what Parker will say tonight on the Sunday robo call ? I hope he hasn't missed another union deadline. Don't you ?

I encourage you to check out today's front page story on page A1

Education Heavyweights Prepare for D.C. Contract Fight
Teachers Union Head, Schools Chancellor Face Off on Tenure Protection, Reforms

"When the District's teachers union unveils its long-awaited contract proposal this month, a head-to-head struggle will be fully joined between two of public education's most prominent and strongest-willed leaders: Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

At stake is not only the fate of Rhee's ambitious attempt to transform the District's failing schools, but also a significant early battle in a nationwide campaign by a new generation of urban school reformers. They want to dramatically elevate the quality of teaching and learning, even if the effort sparks labor tensions with politically influential teachers unions. That could produce ripple effects for the Obama administration, which enjoyed heavy union support in last year's election but has also placed school improvement high on its domestic agenda.

The 14-month struggle between Rhee and the 4,000-member Washington Teachers' Union, AFT's local affiliate, is a potential watershed for Weingarten. She wants to protect her 1.4 million-strong national membership from the spread of what she calls Rhee's "scorched earth" approach and roll back the broad public perception that teachers unions are an impediment to reform because they harbor mediocre or incompetent instructors.

In speeches and commentary, Weingarten has outlined a view of how teachers should be paid, evaluated and, if need be, fired that is fundamentally different from Rhee's. She has denounced Rhee's core objective to weaken tenure protections and link individual pay and job security directly to student achievement. She asserts that such systems breed resentment and discourage the kind of collaboration among instructors that truly improves schools. What she doesn't explicitly say is that individualized rewards for performance could also pose a threat to her union's future.

For the former labor lawyer, elected to the presidency of the nation's second-largest teachers union in July (the National Education Association has 3.2 million members), it will be a high-profile test."Randi is the most important teachers union figure in the country today," said Thomas Toch, co-director of Education Sector, an independent Washington think tank. "She's a pivotal figure in this conversation. The stakes are very high for her in D.C." (Posted by The Washington Teacher). Article courtesy of WaPo.

Read more

• YouTube - Teachers Who Inspire Student Entrepreneurs

  Winners for imagine cup:
  
  Thanks so much!
  
  This afternoon in Redmond, WA, the nation's best and brightest tech students gathered for the ninth annual Imagine Cup 2011 U.S. Finals. Starting with a field of more than 74,000 students, the final 12 teams presented their life-changing projects to a panel of elite judges, tackling diverse issues from eliminating malaria to promoting alternative energy. After an intense weekend of presentations and eliminations, the winners were named:
  
  
  * 1st Place, Software Design: Team Note-Taker, Arizona State University. Project: "Note-Taker" - A portable, assistive technology to help vision-impaired students take notes in class.
  
  * 1st Place, Game Design - Windows/Xbox: Team Bloom, Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy. Project: "Spero" - A game focused on alternative energy solutions and educating people on how to live healthier lives.
  
  * 1st Place, Game Design - Mobile: Team Big Impact Bear, University of Houston. Project: "Forest Gun" - A game that aims to prevent and reverse deforestation in the world.
  
  * 1st Place, People's Choice Award - Software Design: Team BearPaw, Brigham Young University. Project: A mobile and cloud solution for ultrasound images that is cost-effective, widely available and easy to implement.
  
  * 1st Place, People's Choice Award - Game Design: Team Bloom, Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy. Project: "Spero" - A game focused on alternative energy solutions and educating people on how to live healthier lives.

  tags: education learning programming

• Home to Homeroom | Stop Medicine Abuse

  A website about helping teens with medicine abuse. A good specific website from the national association of school nurses.
  
  "Multiple national surveys point to the disturbing abuse of prescription (Rx) and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, like OTC cough medicine, among today's teens. Five percent of high school teens admit to having abused cough medicine containing dextromethorphan, or DXM, to get high in the past year."

  tags: education drug-abuse health_teacher health

• Givology

  From this organization:
  
  "We’re launching a new “60 Second Lecture” campaign in conjunction with the Ford Focus Global Test Drive, and many interesting individuals from the PresidentAmy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania to Dean Thomas Robertson of the Wharton School have already agreed to share their insights."

  tags: education

• MacdonaldTechForTeachers - iPad Apps for Education

  Ann McDonald is building a very nice wiki with so many resources! She is an excellent Flat Classroom teacher.

  tags: education ipad apps

• Hull shows why Gove's Govt can't ban mobile phones in schools - Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Learning

  Excellent article about a struggle to ban cell phones in schools and why it is not working.

  tags: education cellphone

• Social Media Policy Best Practices: Trust Is Cheaper Than Control | Beth’s Blog

  Nice Social Media Policy Best Practices discussion for nonprofits. The social media policy is related to your strategy. Most schools only have a strategy to prevent litigation and certainly, that is a factor as we look at schools and yet - we're not there yet on this discussion. I have to think at some point we're either going to have platforms that do a better job of protecting the privacy of minors or we're going to have to grow up in how we deal with these tools.

  tags: education

• Flat Classroom : The Tornado Tribune

  Helen Harvey's Flat Classroom participation received a write up in her local paper. An important part of each of our projects is to issue press releases to gain media attention for the schools that break down the walls.

  tags: education flatclassroom

• Seth's Blog: Moving beyond teachers and bosses

  So we, as teachers, are characterized like this from Seth Godin:
  
  "We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a 'good student.'"
  
  Are we the kind of teachers who have to move past or someone that kids are moved with.
  
  Do we have a limiting mindset?

  tags: education teaching

• Knight Foundation Webinars - Knight Foundation

  April 20th from 2-3 pm EDT - a connected citizens webinar about their new report "Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril and Potential of Networks"
  
  sign up for this event here.

  tags: education

• Connected Citizens Report: The Power, Peril, and Potential of Networks | Beth’s Blog

  If you have no idea what network-centric grantmaking is and you write grants or work with fundraising - this blog post is an important read for you. (Buy Beth's book - the networked nonprofit - it is great.)
  
  Themes as per Beth:
  
  These themes include:
  
  1. Listening to and consulting the crowds: Actively listening to online conversations and openly asking for advice.
  
  2. Designing for serendipity: Creating environments, in person and online, where helpful connections can form.
  
  3. Bridging differences: Deliberately connecting people with different perspectives.
  
  4. Catalyzing mutual support: Helping people directly help each other.
  
  5. Providing handrails for collective action: Giving enough direction for individuals to take effective and coordinated action.

  tags: education edu_news

• We Want Your Videos

  join the crowdsourced keynote at the BC educational technology users group. Here are instructions:
  
  We Want Your Videos
  April 7, 2011 By grantpotter Leave a Comment
  Share
  PrintFriendly
  
  In June 2011 the BC educational technology users’ group (etug) will be hosting a Spring Workshop in Nelson, BC. The theme? OPEN 4 LEARNING.
  
  In the spirit of openness we would like to invite YOU to participate in a crowd-sourced keynote. Our vision is to create a keynote video that highlights the collective voice on the value of openness.
  
  Here’s what we would LOVE for you to do:
  
  Create a short video/interview/montage answering one or two of the following questions:
  
  1. What is the value of openness?
  
  2. What examples of openness stand out to you as being valuable/worthwhile?
  
  3. WHY do you believe in the value of open education?
  
  If you are interested in participating we would love to have you be a part of this exciting opportunity, to collectively gather voices across the globe in answering the question “what is the value of openness”. Have fun with your video – the more creative the better.
  
  .
  Upload your video to:
  http://www.dropitto.me/etug
  password: open
  .
  Deadline: May 9, 2011

  tags: education opensource

• Online Learning in Australia - Connections, Partnerships and Successes ~ Stephen's Web

  A report on the state of elearning in Australia. Every collection must comprise 40% free content.
  
  
  Again, this article proves that if you're in education and not reading Stephen Downes' feature-rich blog, you're missing out.

  tags: education elearning

• Colleges Spend Far Less on Educating Students Than They Claim, Report Says ~ Stephen's Web

  Colleges actually spend LESS educating students than students are paying. From Stephen Downes as cited from the Chronicle of Higher Education April 8, 2011.

  tags: education college edu_trends

• STUDYBLUE | Make online flashcards & notes. Study anywhere, anytime.

  Study Blue website to let you make flashcards to study and put on your ipod, ipad, cell phone, etc. Over 12,000 have recommended via facebook. Facebook is linking with learning as are mobiles.

  tags: education learning

• 20 Terrific TED Talks for Language Lovers | Bachelor's Degree Online

  Ted Talks for Language Lovers.

  tags: education language_teacher

• The Truth is Out There | November Learning

  Interesting discussion about "blue blood" and the quest for truth in an age where even Googling something may not change minds. By Bob Sprankle

  tags: education learning

• TLC = Tech + Library + Classroom: iPad Apps To Love

  Tara from the TLC (Tech + Library + Classroom) Blog posts her iPad apps she loves.
  
  I think the I write words app is very interesting for handwriting. I wonder if the fact that they are using their finger is a drawback but think that it will help the kids take the strokes the same way.

  tags: education

• Speak Up National Findings 2010

  Important study surveying students about empowered education with emerging technologies.

  tags: education learning

• One Year Later: Assessing the Impact of iPads on Education - iPads in Education

  Assessing the impact of iPads on education one year later by Sam Gliksman on the Ipad educators ning (hat tip to Julie Lindsay for this information.)

  tags: education ipad

• Final US Imagine Cup Teams Announced - 2011 - Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

  Final Teams in US Imagine Cup:
  
  Software Design
  
  TTHV - Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Central Connecticut State University
  Uca Ursus - University of Central Arkansas
  Lifelens - Anderson School of Management, Harvard School of Business, University of California San Diego, University of California Davis, University of Central Florida
  Note-Taker - Arizona State University
  
  Game Design –Windows/XBOX (XNA):
  
  Bloom - Tribeca Flashpoint Academy
  Plump Pixel - California State University Chico
  Righteous Noodle - University of Houston
  XozGaming - Lick-Wilmerding High School
  
  Game Design Mobile (Zune/Phone)
  
  Big Impact Bear - University of Houston
  EDO - Arizona State University
  Team AAMP - University of Houston
  Team Mintrus - Columbia College in Chicago, University of Louisville
  
  
  Read Alfred's blog for more.

  tags: education computerscience

• XozGaming–High School Team in the US Imagine Cup Finals - Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

  Alfred Thompson's ongoing coverage of the Imagine Cup. I love this interview with the kids who invented a program about fighting a global pandemic.

  tags: education gaming computerscience

• Sneak Peak of New Facebook Nonprofit Use Research from Idealware | Beth’s Blog

  Yes, nonprofits are seeing success on Facebook. Beth Kanter, nonprofit social media guru, has a guest post from Kyle Andrei of Idealware on their findings about Facebook and nonprofits. Fundraisers, schools, and facebook fans read up.

  tags: education fundraising nonprofit

• Gesture-Based ‘Gmail Motion’ April Fools’ Day Prank Gets Real - Techland - TIME.com

  I love this! Gmail motion was Google's april fools day prank and many people fell for it. Heck, if I'd had time, I might have played with it but after thinking I realized what day it was! Tee hee.
  
  But a lot of people WANTED this -even though the gestures were designed to be silly (who is going to do a jumping jack for making a star on an email.) so ICT used a kinect camera and actually made Gmail actions work! Watch the video and enjoy.
  
  People actually WANT this just not with the exaggerated motions and definitely not a shot that requires the camera to see your feet.

  tags: education google gmail gesture

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.