November 2008 Archives

Virginia Tech has launched a "Kids' Tech University" initiative to introduce 8- to 12-year-old kids to science, technology, engineering, and math research at the university level, as described in this AP story.

Beginning in January, up to 250 youngsters will come to the campus for monthly talks from experts in STEM fields who have been selected for their passion and interest in communicating with children, according to a spokesperson for the program.

Lectures will be built around kid-friendly questions, such as:

"Why are there animals with spotted bodies and striped tails, but no animal with a striped body and a spotted tail?"

"Why are some computer programs so frustrating?"

"Why are plastic bottles bad for alligators?"

To take part in the free program, students must live in Blacksburg, Va., or one of several surrounding counties; they must apply and be enrolled by their parents, but brochures will be distributed by local teachers that request them.

A press release from Virginia Tech gives a few more details about the program and lists the topics of upcoming lectures.

I think the program is promising as a way to create a fun and exciting atmosphere around STEM subjects for younger students. I especially like that it is not a formal class, so students can learn about lots of varied topics. In addition to the lectures, they will be able to take part in group discussions and online activities afterward to help them digest what they've learned.

The idea for Kids' Tech University came from a similar program started in Germany. If it is successful, perhaps other universities will follow in Virginia Tech's footsteps.

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The State Educational Technology Directors Association, or SETDA, has recently released an action plan for the class of 2020 that emphasizes increased technology resources and better technology integration to increase the competitiveness of the U.S. in today's global economy.

The plan is a compilation of five publications put out by SETDA about some of the most critical issues facing ed tech today: broadband needs, STEM, technology-based assessment, professional development for teachers, and virtual learning. If you want to learn more about any of those areas, I highly recommend checking out the reports. I know SETDA's broadband paper was a great resource for me while I was researching my story about schools' broadband needs.

SETDA is hopeful that this package of reports, along with white papers, research, and panel discussions, will be a powerful tool in shaping how the new Administration will face the challenges that have arisen in ed tech.

Are there any other areas that you would like to see addressed? Personally, I'd like to see more talk about open-source educational materials. Is there anything else that you think might be important for the new Administration to have on its radar?

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The National Center for Technology Innovation held a two-day education conference in Washington this week about thriving in a global marketplace. A long roster of ed-tech experts gave presentations at the gathering, which is reflected in the extensive coverage on their conference blog.

If you poke around, you'll find lots of interesting highlights and summaries of the topics discussed there, like this panel discussion, moderated by Digital Directions' executive editor Kevin Bushweller, on where U.S. students rank in the global economy and in student achievement. Panelists discussed the current state of American students' global competitiveness and the keys to getting American education back on track, such as a stronger emphasis on innovation; information, media, and technology skills; life and career skills; and creativity.

There's a lot more on the blog, so it's worth spending a little time there, to catch up on some the latest ideas in the ed-tech world.

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Too bad for us, perhaps, but Margaret Spellings did not choose the Digital Education blog to release her new white paper on educational technology. The U.S. secretary of education chose instead eduwonk for her debut as a guest blogger.

On the other hand, maybe it's just as well, because what is probably the Bush administration’s last gasp on the subject of educational technology is an anemic effort.

The 10-page document, available here, basically echoes the administration’s previous positions on ed-tech.

It states support for expansion of online and virtual schools, better data systems, individualization of education (through data and online courses), broadband telecommunications, more research on the effectiveness of classroom technology, and leadership.

There is no indication that Secretary Spellings changed any of her views on education technology from the series of four "roundtable" meetings with various ed-tech stakeholders that were the basis for the report.

My story about the first roundtable, held in New York City on March 23, 2007, is here.

It is also interesting to compare the "five key areas" identified in the white paper with the "seven action steps" in the National Education Technology Plan that the Bush administration issued in 2004.

White Paper Key Areas
1. Online Learning and Virtual Schools
2. Transforming Data Into Knowledge and Action
3. Broadband Connectivity
4. Research Efficacy and Impact
5. School Leadership and Professional Preparation

National Ed-Tech Plan Action Steps:
1. Strengthen Leadership
2. Consider Innovative Budgeting
3. Improve Teacher Training
4. Support E-Learning and Virtual Schools
5. Encourage Broadband Access
6. Move Toward Digital Content
7. Integrate Data Systems

So what happened to digital content? And where is improving teacher training?
Are they not as important as the others?

When I asked the Education Department, I was told that the white paper is the secretary's response to the topics brought up by the participants.

I did not attend any of the roundtables, which were closed to the press. The reason, the department told me in 2007, was so participants could express their views candidly.

But I did interview participants after the first roundtable, and here is some of what I reported:

Business leaders and researchers also had plenty to say at the meeting, stressing the need for teachers’ professional development and describing the potential of technologies, such as handheld assessment devices and video games, to suit specific learning opportunities.

Several educators at the meeting also spoke up:

Mark S. Hannum, a mathematics and physics teacher at Banneker Academic High School in the nation’s capital who presented at the meeting, said, …“Across the board, people decided that the use of technology is more than how many computers are in your classroom, but how you integrate technology into your teaching,” he said.

Mary E. Skipper, the principal of the TechBoston Academy, in Boston, [said] that the school’s use of laptops and data collected from computer-based activities have helped her students overcome learning deficits and contributed to 94 percent of last year’s seniors graduating two- or four-year colleges.

[Mr. Hannum, of Banneker HIgh,] underscored the need for improved professional development of teachers, citing a “big drop-off” in know-how between teachers who are technology stars and those with average skills.

None of these ideas from the first roundtable, at least, are reflected in the new white paper.

The document, however, does suggest that money for technology in classrooms has not always been well spent. It also concludes that more research is needed. Both are points Ms. Spellings has made before.

But that’s as far as she seems willing to go, down the potentially costly and admittedly risky road of robust support for classroom technologies.

Early in Ms. Spellings’ tenure, she held another series of roundtables that led to her creation of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education in 2005. That federal panel released long-range recommendations for the nation’s colleges and universities in August of 2004.

The ed-tech roundtable effort does not appear to have been as productive.

Posted by Andrew Trotter at 4:21 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The Oregon Department of Education is not scoring very well in its 2-year-old dispute with Vantage Learning.

On Friday, an Oregon jury awarded $3.5 million to the online testing company to compensate it for tests that it had administered but that were not paid for by the state.

The jury of the Marion County Circuit Court found that the education department breached its contract with Vantage by failing to negotiate in good faith to settle the payment issue, establish a new pricing structure, and deal fairly with the company.

The jury unanimously rejected the education department’s claim that Vantage Learning breached the contract and dealt in bad faith.

The state in March 2007 sued Vantage, which is registered in Delaware but has its headquarters in Newtown, Pa. Vantage had been the state's partner since 2000 in developing and launching a new Web-based testing system, called Technology Enhanced Student Assessment. For several years, TESA was used to deliver state tests in reading and math in grades 3-8 and grade 10, as well as science in grades 5, 8, and 10.

The dispute arose over issues of system performance and payment. But a significant fact was that, when the state rebid its testing contract, it disqualified Vantage from competition in the fall of 2006. The state later chose the current test provider, the American Institutes of Research, based in Washington.

In the most dramatic incident, Oregon students who logged into the testing system on March 9, 2007 were presented an on-screen message from Vantage, explaining that the test was unavailable because the state had not paid its bills.

You can read my story for Education Week here.

A story this week on the jury verdict in The Oregonian is here.

In 2007, Oregon education officials took an aggressive stance against the company, with Deputy Superintendent Ed Dennis contacting the news media to describe the state's complaints. Vantage, perhaps to minimize negative publicity, kept fairly quiet.

This week, however, it was Vantage that was crowing about its courtroom victory.

President Robert Patrylak said to me, in an interview, that the jury was swayed by "the fact that [the state] never came to sit down with us, even after we gave opportunity after opportunity to have them do that."

Harry N. Barfoot, the company's vice president, said that Oregon's current online testing system is costing the state's taxpayers from three to five times the cost of TESA.

And Barfoot claimed the high ground in the dispute: "The lesson learned here is it does matter to taxpayers, to a company like Vantage, and on both sides, to have a program that works, to have fair contracts that are adhered to, with issues that are worked on, and written on a piece of paper that means something."

Oregon's education officials have not yet decided whether to appeal the verdict.

Dennis issued a short statement, expressing disappointment in the verdict, and reading in part: "... We filed suit because Oregon’s students and teachers suffered as a result of what we still believe to be a breach of contract by Vantage Learning. This breach resulted in districts scrambling to administer paper and pencil assessment tests during the spring of 2007. Fortunately, we have a new contractor delivering our online assessments and have not had any further disruptions for our students. We will meet with our legal counsel from the Department of Justice to explore our options for appealing this decision and continue to press our case.”

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I've heard about students being punished for what they write on social networking sites, but this article is the first I've heard of teachers being held accountable for making inappropriate comments online. Seven teachers in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district were flagged for posting inappropriate content on their Facebook pages, says the article. Four of those teachers have been disciplined for their posts and one is waiting for a ruling on whether she can keep her job.

The teacher facing firing apparently listed one of her activities as "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte" and "drinking" as one of her hobbies, according to the article.

I have mixed feelings about employers holding their employees accountable for what they do in their private lives, but in this case, all the employees in question clearly identified their employer on their Web sites and left them open for public viewing, which means that any student could have stumbled across the derogatory and inappropriate comments. In that case, I tend to agree with the school district that disciplinary action against the teachers should be taken.

I do think, though, that more education about the school district's policies regarding both students' and teachers' behavior on social networking sites is necessary and appropriate at this point in time. While these particular teachers did display poor judgment in what they chose to share about themselves in a public forum, more explicit information about what is and is not appropriate couldn't hurt.

Posted by Katie Ash at 11:58 AM | Permalink | 5 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

It may seem obvious, but it’s worth remembering that improvements to school programs can make a profound difference in young people’s lives.

That thought occurred to me when I met with a group of ambitious students at the Chesapeake High STEM Academy, a public school in Essex, Md.

This is not a fancy suburban school, but one that shares many characteristics of urban schools.

The half-dozen students—most of them seniors at the school—described to me their lofty career goals, such as medicine and biomedical, electrical, robotics, and civil engineering.

They are pursuing those goals by taking a host of courses in AP subjects and following the national Project Lead the Way curriculum, which aims to boost preparation in science, technology, engineering, and math.

It is unlikely that these students would have had much of a shot at those goals, at least not at that school, if they had started there three or four years ago. Back then, Chesapeake High School, as it was known then, was “a school no one wanted,” according to Joe Hairston, the superintendent of the Baltimore County Public Schools.

In an interview, he said several hundred teenagers in the school’s attendance zone were enrolled in other high schools because their parents did not want them at the low-performing Chesapeake.

When the district received $1.3 million from the Maryland government to create a STEM academy, “people thought I was crazy when I chose Chesapeake,” he said.

Hairston brought a new principal, Maria Lowry, to the school and stocked it with AP courses and technology.

Innovations at the school include hands-on approaches, such as using bottle rockets to study trajectory. Some AP teachers record lessons as podcasts, which their students can listen to using the Zen mp3 players that the school has issued them.

Chesapeake has also become a focal point for a partnership Hairston has established with local defense contractors to develop high-tech experiences for students that teach academic content while mimicking the operations of the companies.

Read my story in Digital Directions on this effort. You can also see a video of a portion of my interview with Hairston.

“We can’t continue to look at learning in a vacuum,” Principal Lowry said of the partnership.

The approach of infusing academic learning with its real-world applications shows students why their studies matter, she said. “You can give me a key to a door knob, but until I put the key in the lock and try it, it’s a mystery. I don’t really know that it works.”

One student commented, “We’re coming out of this school with some skills that people who study at college don’t get.”

It will be worth keeping an eye on Chesapeake, to see whether this STEM academy might be cutting a key that works for other schools, too.

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For a while now, there's been a debate brewing in the education community about the impact of Web 2.0 tools and the Internet on students' writing skills. Critics say that the abbreviated and grammatically incorrect nature of Web 2.0 writing makes it harder and more confusing for students who are learning the basics of writing, while others argue that anytime a kid is writing, it's a good thing, and those same tools encourage and motivate kids to write more often.

This story in The Miami Herald takes the latter stance, saying that blogs, social networking sites, text messages, and e-mail have resulted in an "explosion of writing."

One reason for the increase in writing, the article says, is that instead of a student-to-teacher exchange of writing, students who use the Internet are motivated by a wider audience of peers. They know that whatever they write will be read by a variety of people, not just one, and that encourages them to put more effort into their writing.

It should be noted that the professors and experts quoted in this story are mostly talking about higher-ed, not K-12 education, which in my opinion, is somewhat of a different story. It could be that college students have mostly learned proper usage and grammar and can toggle between "web-writing" and "proper English," while students who are still learning those skills might have a harder time distinguishing between the two.

The article reminds me a lot of a couple of stories I wrote for Digital Directions about cell phone novel writing and Twitter. In both of those pieces, the educators I spoke with said that even though student writing on the Internet might not be the most articulate or eloquent prose, just the fact that they were writing was a positive development, and part of the benefit of exercising writing skills in that way was to learn what type of writing is appropriate in what setting.

As someone who has grown up with the Internet and been interested in writing from a young age, I can confidently say that the Internet is an infinitely valuable tool for anyone who likes to write. Still, I can't help but think that all that practice constructing sentences and narratives has impacted my writing skills in a very positive way.

Posted by Katie Ash at 11:30 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

This week, about 250 educators from 64 different countries converged in Hong Kong at the Innovative Teachers Forum, sponsored by Microsoft, to talk about different ways to use technology in classrooms across the globe. Today, some of those teachers were recognized for their exceptional and innovative work in ed tech.

Although our focus here at Digital Directions is mostly on education in the U.S., the more I report on ed tech, the more undeniable it is that we are actually living in a global learning environment that values collaboration between nations. Reading through the winners of this year's Innovative Teachers of the Year, it's clear that those values are at the forefront of the most creative and innovative teachers, and technology is bringing the world into the classroom in a way that has never before been possible.

If you have the time, it's worth reaching back into the archives to read the 2004 Technology Counts report, "Global Links: Lessons from the World," which examined how educational technology was being used in schools around the world. That report was a very ambitious and interesting project.

Posted by Katie Ash at 1:59 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The Washington Post has an interesting story up about the way that technology is making it easier for parents to check their students' grades, without having to wait until the end of the semester.

Some school districts have moved to online grading systems that alert parents every time a new grade is recorded into their child's average. This helps keep both students and parents in the loop about how everything from homework assignments to quizzes and tests affect their overall class average, says the article.

Apparently, many parents really enjoy this new way of keeping up with their child's grades, but as you might imagine, not all students are thrilled. Even though I was a pretty good student in school, the high schooler in me cringes at the thought of my parents being able to see every single assignment, quiz, and test grade as it is recorded. I can remember plenty of times when I bombed a quiz or paper and had to work extra hard throughout the semester to pull my grade up in the class to something I knew would be OK to bring home to my parents—and it doesn't sound like students these days have that option.

On the other hand, I can see how keeping parents in the loop about fluctuations in grades can definitely be a good thing for some students. It can help parents intervene when their child may be struggling and alert them to where their child might need some extra help before it's too late to do anything about it. And it definitely helps open up communication between the parent, student, and the teacher.

What do you think? Does this kind of system help support students academically, or does it take away students' ownership of their grades? Or does it depend on the student?

Posted by Katie Ash at 1:04 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)