PILOTed

South Africa Part Two

You can view a slide show with photos and videos of the safari here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mweisburgh/sets/72157628810793173/ If you look at the slide show, click on "Show Info" on the top right corner to see the descriptions of the pictures.

We left Cape Town on January 2 on the 6:30 AM flight to Johannesburg, and we were met by Peter Moni at about 9:00. We booked the Safari portion of our trip through Peter, and he’d proved very knowledgeable and helpful. His company is Firelight Tours. Peter drove us the six hours to get to our camp, Bateleur Eco Safaris. It was part of the Timbavarti Preserve, and they have access to about 40 square miles of the African Veld, touching on the Kruger National Park.

We were in tents, each with its own shower and bathroom but no electricity. The food was great; served family style. It was perfect. Our hosts were Gerhard and Natalie, and our spotter/tracker was named Doctor.

We sat down to lunch, and then hopped into the Rover for our first safari. On our first outing, for the next 3 hours, we got within 15 feet of lions, impala, buffalo, zebra, and wildebeest.

Over the next few days, we settled into a routine.

• Wake up at quarter to five
• Into the rover by 5:20, as it was getting light but before sunrise
• Safari for four to five hours, depending on what we say. Generally, we’d ride in the rover for the first hour, and then get out and try to track an animal by foot for the next few hours. While tracking, we’d learn about the African Veld ecology, plants, and birds, as we’d follow the tracks.
• Breakfast back at the lodge at 10:00ish.
• Nap or hang out.
• Lunch at 3:30ish
• Back in the Rover for a safari at around 4:30. Sunset was about 7:00 and we’d be back between 7:30 and 9:00 depending on what we were seeing and where we stopped.

Not every safari camp has the same routine, most do not include walking, most stop before dark, and most do not go off road to get closer to the animals. We specifically asked for one that included walking.

Doctor and Gerhard were incredible. Doctor showed us many of the skills that the bushmen used involving tracking, use of herbs, and tools, while also telling us African stories about the origins of the animals and their habits. Gerhard explained about the wide circle of life, how each animal affects the others, and about the impact of man on the environment. For example, the  placement of a dirt road can dramatically increase erosion, or an elephant scratching on the earth to find water can eventually trigger events that create a pan or water hole deep enough to survive the dry seson.

Here is some of what we saw.

The scenery: this is the African bush, or the Veld; it’s not a treed jungle. While there are some trees, for the most part this is either grassland, bushes, or small trees. In fact, giraffes, which are about 20 feet high, can sometimes be seen from miles away.

Lions: We found out that lions are actually pretty inefficient hunters, and need to sleep for 18 hours a day. In any case, it is a little intimidating when you’re only 7 feet away from one.

Tracking: For one to three hours, we would try to follow the footprints of an animal through the river beds and grasslands. Doctor was our guide, and he'd teach us how to recognize the different animals, tell the front from the back foot, and how to figure out which way the animal was heading. It was relatively easy on dried river beds as you can see from the lion track below, but much harder in the grasses and on the hard ground.

Impalas: these were the most common animal, like deer around us. There can be up to 40 females in a herd, with just one male. But generally, a male can only hold onto his position for a couple of weeks before another male takes over.

Zebra and wildebeest: these were often found together; it seems that the vegetarian animals don’t mind hanging out together.

Birds: I wish I could remember which bird was which, but we saw lots, including ducks, vultures, hawks, eagles, and owl.

Hyena: we only saw these at night, and only for a very short burst.

Buffalos: one day as we were tracking on foot we ran into a herd of 400-500 buffalo. That certainly was a little intimidating.

Giraffe: you don’t realize how tall they are until you’re sitting or standing right next to one.

Leopard: I don’t know how Doctor spotted the leopard, but they are rare, and it was really cool being right underneath one.

Elephants: we saw male elephants and two herds. Elephants live in a matriarchal society; no males are allowed into the herd except during mating season.

Even though we tried tracking a Rhinosaurus for three hours, we would have needed another hour or two to actually see it. But, we did see quite a few from the Rover the next day.

And lots of other plants, animals, and birds. You can catch the rest of the pictures along with some short videos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mweisburgh/sets/72157628810793173/with/6675745707/

At the end of the four days at Bateleur, we decided to take the back roads back to Johannesburg and view what is called the Panorama Route, which includes the Blyde River Canyon, third largest canyon in the world (the largest is the Grand Canyon), waterfalls, the Pinnacle rock formation, and the God’s Window view. This meant that the trip back was nine hours instead of six, but was definitely worth it. Peter was our guide, and he took us to and explained all the highlights.

January 7 was our last day in South Africa, and we spent it in Johannesburg. Peter was our guide again, knowledgeably taking us through Soweto as we learned about the Freedom Charter, the African National Congress, the history of mining in Johannesburg, the beginnings of apartheid, and the revolution against apartheid. Peter is about our age (late 50’s) and lived through the whole revolution. History comes alive when you learn from someone who lived through it.

If you’re considering going to South Africa, we strongly recommend contacting Peter at Firelight Tours as booking agent and guide. We had a blast.

 

Related articles

• South Africa Part One (academicbiz.typepad.com)
• Panorama Route from Safari to Johannesburg - Hazyview, South Africa (travelpod.com)
• Africa - Safari (justkiera.wordpress.com)

South Africa Part One

Our trip to South Africa was divided into two parts:

1. Cape Town and Wine Region
2. Safari and Johannesburg.

This entry is about the first half from December 27, 2011 through January 1, 2012. More pictures are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mweisburgh/sets/72157628779941995/

After a 14 hour flight from NY to Johannesburg and then a two hour flight from Joburg to Cape Town, Karin and I were picked up at the Cape Town airport by Steve Thomas and Lexei of Daytrippers around 1:00 in the afternoon. If you decide you want to see Cape Town and/or wine country and/or Africa by bicycle, Steve probably knows more about routes and places of interest and off road bicycling, than anyone we met.

Because the airport is right between Cape Town and Stellenbosch, we had a 1 hour drive to the Stellenbosch wine district and our inn, The Auberge Rozendal Guesthouse. The inn grows its own organic herbs and vegetables, in addition to being a wine farm and winery. The views were beautiful, and the inn was about 4 miles from town. They also create a sipping vinegar. While you can use the vinegar for salads or cooking, the preferred way of consuming it is to sip a little and mix it around in your mouth for a minute or two before swallowing. It’s worth trying, and we purchased some and brought it home. Joerg Steibing, the hospitable owner with his wife Karin, asserts that mixing the vinegar with the saliva in your mouth creates an alkaline mixture that neutralizes acid indigestion.

Below is the view from the Inn.

On this day we did light bicycling, about 20 miles in total, visiting two vineyards and bicycling around Stellenbosch itself. The Stark Conde winery had a beautiful venue for tasting, a porch in the middle of a small lake surrounded by mountains. The Lanzerac Estate, just down the road from our inn, had an extremely interesting chocolate and wine tasting. Since they make both their own chocolates and wines, they crafted different chocolates to accentuate the tastes of the different wines, finishing with a honey wine that they say is made by only two people in the world.

Herb arrived late that night, and joined us in wine tasting over the next two days, even though he did not bicycle.

Day 2 was about 50 miles of bicycling for me, 65 for Karin. We visited about 5 wineries over the course of the day, and there were four not-to-forget experiences during the day. First, at the first vineyard, the ornaments on their Christmas tree were wine bottles. Second, Steve knew about a dirt unmarked pathway that went up and down the hills through the wine fields. All you could see were grape vines with the mountains in the distance; no cars or people. Fourth, the Ken Forrester winery had some of the best wines we tasted.

The picture below is while we were riding in the dirt path in the wine fields.

Perhaps the most memorable moment, though was the Ernie Els winery, and, yes, it is the same Ernie Els who is the golf pro. At 4:30 in the afternoon, after about 40 miles of bicycling (and no lunch), we started climbing for about 7 miles. Upon stopping, our guide Lexei realized we’d climbed the wrong hill. The ride down was much easier. We found the turnoff, and bicycled another 3 miles to the beginning of the road to the Ernie Els Winery. Unfortunately, this was about three miles up at about 8 degrees. I made about half, and just hit the wall. I walked up the final mile and a half (at 85 degrees temperature), to finally join Karin and Lexei tasting wines, with one of the most spectacular views I’d ever seen. The Ernie Els wines are great, and sitting on the winery’s porch at sunset watching the lengthening shadows of the mountains around Stellenbosch was incredible. Lexei called Steve to come pick me up in the van, and he and Karin took off for the 10 miles back to the inn. Herbie joined me with Steve, and we further enjoyed the views and the wine. This is a must; if you go to Stellenbosch, you have to go to the Ernie Els Winery, and try to get there after 4:00.

Here is the view from the Ernie Els winery:

Our daughter Rosie and her friend Grace, who we’ve known since before she was a teenager, joined us in the afternoon, although they did not bike that day.

Day 3, December 29, was about 55 miles of bicycling. The first highlight was a bike path up the Hellshoogte pass on the way to the Franshoek valley. This was a shady, winding, 15 miles up from the inn. Rose, Grace, and I all experienced a feeling of accomplishment when we reached the top. For Karin, though, this just wasn’t a challenge. Just a mile further was the incredibly beautifully designed Takara Winery. They had very good wines, but the architecture and artwork are not to be missed. Two hundred yards further is an amazing view over the Franshoek valley.

Franshoek, meaning French Corner, is filled with some of the finest restaurants in the Cape Town area, and makes wines that are more similar to French wines than the other wine valleys. Next trip, we intend to spend more time there, but we did have two memorable experiences. The Boschendal Winery has classic Dutch architecture, and we liked their wines enough that we ordered a mixed case to be sent back home. The Chamonix Winery has very good wines and a very nice restaurant with excellent food, even up to Herbie’s standards.

Here is Steve Thomas, Lexei, and Karin at the Boschendal Winery:

From Chamonix, Steve drove us to Cape Town, where we bicycled about 5 miles around the city and ended up at our hotel, The Protea Fire and Ice Hotel. This was a really in hotel. The rooms are a little small, but very interestingly designed (the glass shower is part of your bedroom), the Internet is free, and there is great people watching in the bar.

There is a lot to do in Cape Town, and we didn’t have enough time there to do all we wanted to.

On December 30, Karin and I bicycled down to the Cape of Good Hope along the coast. This is a beautiful trip, and is about 60 miles. There are a few major hills with incredible views of the coastline. Steve Thomas picked us up as the route turned inland, so we actually skipped about 20 miles. But, this allowed us to take a detour within the Cape park, to bicycle along some unmarked dirt paths through the Cape Floristic Kingdom, one of the most diverse biomes in the world. Most people think of the Cape as the spot where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet, but technically, they meet 15 kilometers further east. In any case, while bicycling there, we ran into Ostriches and Baboons and a lot of very interesting plants and flowers.

This is what the Cape Floristic Kingdom looked like:

That same day, Rosie and Grace took a surfing lesson, and then bicycled to view the penguins, both of which they loved.

Dinner that night was at The Africa Café, which is a must if you go to Cape Town. They serve a tasting menu of native African foods, along with dance and music, and very interesting art.

December 31 was a shopping day. Not my thing, but there are a lot of good places to pick up interesting African artifacts in Cape Town. That night we had the finest dinner we had the entire vacation. Aubergine is perhaps the best restaurant in South Africa, and for New Years, they had a special tasting menu paired with wines and including native music and dancers. Grace, Rosie, and I were each invited to dance with the professionals. Aubergine was a perfect place to welcome in the New Year with family, and was probably one of the 10 best meals I’ve ever had.

January 1 was the day we decided to climb Table Mountain. Table Mountain has been declared one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and dominates the Cape Town skyline. We made five mistakes. Karin told us we could get breakfast at the base of the mountain, but, in fact, there was no restaurant so we climbed on the remnants of the previous day from Karin's backpack, a quick meal of old cheese and stale bread. We started about noon, so we were climbing in 85 degree weather, up a steep incline, for just under two and a half hours. We didn’t bring enough water; we had three water bottles for the five of us, and we should have brought six water bottles. We did not bring jackets, and the top is always covered with clouds and windy, so it was quite cool there. And, finally, I didn’t take vista views along the route up, even though they were gorgeous. Once on the top, you are in clouds, so there are no views of Cape Town.

Here is Herbie, Gracie, and Karin about 1/3 of the way up Table Mountain:

When you get to the top, it's still a 20 minute walk to the restaurant and cable car. That was certainly a shock. Here is what it was like at the top:

We all took the cable car down, rested at the hotel, and went out to a less than good dining experience at one of the restaurants at the Waterfront.

The next day, our flight left at 6:30 in the morning for Johannesburg and our safari. If you want to see more of the photos from the first half, they are annotated and here is the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mweisburgh/sets/72157628779941995/

Among the things we really wanted to do but missed in Cape Town because we didn’t have enough time:

• The Waterfront: this is a high end mall and shopping experience.
• The Botanical Gardens: these are supposed to be among the finest in the world.
• Robbens Island: this is where Nelson Mandela and others were imprisoned for trying to end apartheid. You need to purchase your tickets in advance, generally by about two weeks.
• The night clubs: Cape Town is known for its night life.

 The next entry will be on the Safari portion of the trip.

 

Related articles

• Christmas in Cape Town - Cape Town, South Africa (travelpod.com)
• Good Hope for the wine - Stellenbosch, South Africa (travelpod.com)

New Report on the K12 Learning Management System (LMS) market

Tying together data, learning standards, and digital content is becoming one of the next hurdles or opportunities for K12 Education, with Student Information Systems (SIS) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) jockeying for school and district leadership.

Simba Technologies has recently announced their PreK-12 Learning Management Systems: A Market Overview, and here are some observations from their analysis.

Image by cindiann via Flickr

The ideal system would allow teachers and students to sign in to the LMS from anywhere, and get access to all their district resources (intranet, hosting, social networking, storage, applications, content, portfolios, grades, assignments, etc.) with no further logins. This is complicated because of the wide range of resources available, along with diversity of functions that different districts, schools, and teachers deploy.

Despite these obstacles, something like 75% of all districts have implemented some type of learning management system. Some districts are attracted to simple “LMS Lite” alternatives of tools that are really designed for other purposes but can perform some LMS features, while other are looking to deploy more robust systems. Tools in the specialty category include Renaissance Place from Renaissance Learning for K12 content, and PD 360 from School Improvement Network for Professional Development.

The choice for broad powerful systems is primarily driven by a focus on management and organizational functions. Federal and state policies and regulations are key drivers of these comprehensive systems, with the need for the aggregation and disaggregation of data, along with the movement toward digital assessments and personalized instruction which are embedded in the Common Core standards. Over half of districts surveyed by Simba have policies moving their districts in this direction.

Interestingly, the features deemed least important by district personnel were collaborative and presentation tools.

While Blackboard commands more than 50% of the higher education LMS market, Simba’s report indicated that in K12, the big three (Blackboard, Pearson Learning Studio, and Moodle) account for 30% of the market. The total market, though, is not huge yet. Simba projects that sales of LMS’s in K12 will reach about $375 million in two years.

This is just a few of the findings of the report, which “examines the role of Learning Management Systems (LMSs), which already are beginning to reshape the delivery, management, and administration of educational content in the U.S. PreK-12 sector, enabling cost-savings, convenience, new more personalized pedagogical models, and new opportunities for system and content providers.”

You can order the PreK-12 Learning Management Systems: A Market Overview by following the link or calling 240-747-3091.

 

Related articles

• Angel is Going Away? (elearningcentralia.wordpress.com)
• Will Social Media Replace LMSs in Higher Education? (carolhbates.com)
• OpenClass: Google Launches a Free LMS (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
• Acquisition of Wimba and Elluminate by Blackboard (PilotEd)
• The Ed Tech Market (PilotEd)
• Freeing the LMS (downes.ca)

Picturing to Learn Science

Picture this.

There is a group of scientists discussing a concept. One of the scientists has a new idea. What do you think he or she does to explain it to the others?

Most likely, she grabs a pencil and paper and makes a drawing to illustrate the concept. And what happens? The process of drawing clarifies various issues in her mind. Discussing the drawing with the other scientists allows them to question her assumptions and address any misunderstandings.

Imagine if we used this technique to teach science in schools. Imagine that students drew their understandings of complex concepts to explain their insights to each other and to their teachers.

This is actually the Picturing to Learn methodology pioneered by Felice Frankel. Ms. Frankel is a science photographer who teaches at MIT. Ms Frankel elaborates:

This whole notion of visually representing an idea, in order to communicate or teach, makes the students clarify in their own mind the essential pieces of the idea, creating a visual metaphor.

Making a drawing in order to explain is a means of clarifying in your own mind what you want to say, it forces the students to think deeper. In the process, students reveal any misconceptions in scientific understanding, even with very smart students. This is non-threating and double feedback for the teacher: it shows her what the students are misunderstanding, and if the same misunderstandings continually crop up, it shows the teacher that she needs to adjust her teaching.

Kids are unbelievably visual; it’s the world they are growing up in today. This technique not only matches how scientists themselves communicate, it syncs with how students think. Visual thinking is how we understand science, it’s how Einstein was able to first grasp the concept of relativity.

Through NSF grants, Frankel has introduced this technique in universities, high schools, and middle schools. In one example, a college student received an A in chemistry, and was able to answer a question about which liquid would boil at a lower temperature because she had memorized the formulas and knew when to apply them. When asked to draw the process, she (and others in the class) completely missed the actual reason some liquids boil at different temperatures, the effect of molecular bonding. The teachers were astounded that their students could parrot back the right answers on tests, yet have such large gaps in their conceptual understanding.

At a Middle School in Harlem, Frankel conducted a summer boot camp for teachers. The teachers worked in groups to create pictures explaining the water cycle, which is often taught in 7^th and 8^th grade science. This not only provided a non-threatening way for the teachers to address their own knowledge gaps, it also inspired them to use Picturing to Learn with their own students, and Frankel said the teachers have responded that their students have made unbelievable strides in their comprehension and interest. The teachers reported that over ¾ of their students’ drawings show problematic explanations, many of which would never have been caught with standard textbook problem sets or tests.

Ms Frankel is currently developing rubrics to make it easier for teachers to adopt Picturing to Learn in their classrooms, and can work with school, districts, or content providers that want to incorporate these techniques in their science curriculum, and can be reached through her website: http://www.picturingtolearn.org/

 

Ed Tech Business Forum 2011

The SIIA’s 2011 Ed Tech Business Forum, on November 29, 2011 in New York City, reflected the conflicted nature of the education environment, primarily in the US, but also globally.

Michael Moe noted that we are preparing kids to solve problems we don’t even know about usingtechnology that hasn’t been invented while workig in jobs that don’t exist yet. While education is a significant portion of our economy, at almost 9% of GDP, it’s barely noticed by the financial markets, just less than 1% of total Venture Capital investments, and 0.2% of the capital markets.

But this seems to be changing. There were $9 billion of investment and M&A transactions last year in education. Investors are starting to recognize that education demand, coupled with innovation, are starting to create scalable opportunities. The scalable disruptors that are most appealing for ed-tech investors include:

1. Schools that prepare students to participate in the new economy

   Image by Gates Foundation via Flickr

2. Tailored adaptive learning, that gets more useful with every student click
3. Education platforms that provide engagement to students and are mediums for other educational offerings
4. Edu analytics that provide assessment, the currency of the knowledge economy
5. Partnerships, where companies partner with institutions so each can focus on its core competence

These have attracted private equity and venture capital firms, which, if they prove prescient, will eventually lead to an increased presence in the capital markets.

John Richards showed one reason why education has been less than a rounding error on the financial landscape. Reporting on the SIIA survey of ed-tech market trends, he divided ed-tech companies into four groups by annual revenue: under $5 million, $5 million to $20 million, $20 million to $100 million, and over $100 million. At investment conferences, micro cap  companies generally start at $400 million of revenues.

Farimah Schuerman pointed out that a recent SIIA survey of educators found high agreement that educators’ most common concerns were around

1. Aging equipment and funding to replace it; educators wanted access the right equipment and training on how to apply it
2. Alignment of pedagogy and materials to the common core standards and forthcoming assessments
3. Finding appropriate e-content and fitting it into learning activities, and the content needed to be accessible, editable and either cheap or free

She also highlighted the growing interest by educators in tablets, bring your own device, and online classes for students as areas where ed-tech firms could supply needed resources.

Richard Sims dashed water on the rosy investment picture painted by Moe. While federal funds for education may remain steady for the next few years (barring budget deals or changes in administration), state and local funding, which is about 90% of K12 funding, is under siege, and will not recover to pre-recession levels until 2017. With real estate taxes starting to nosedive, we can expect a 10% decrease in total education funding over the next two years. The good news is that there is some job growth, but a) it is slow job growth and not likely to reach the number of 2007 jobs until past 2017, b) half of the job growth is in the lowest paying jobs (while half is in the highest skilled highest paying jobs, and virtually no growth in the middle pay jobs), and c) states are focusing on cutting state income taxes, which is the revenue source quickest to rebound based on job growth.

Of course, not all boats will sink in the lowering tide; companies need to uncover market niches with good growth possibilities in states where employment and tax receipts are rebounding fastest.

Bob Wise pointed out that the issue is not so much the gross amount of education spending, it’s how you can demonstrate that technology can leverage the effectiveness of educators. In other markets, technology reduced costs. In education technology has always been an expense; if you kept the educator/student ratio constant, adding new technology just increased the cost of education. With demands to do more with less, with the role of teachers changing, with increases in blended learning, and with the goal of ensuring that every child has access to technology that allows him or her to progress at his or her own rate, we have a real potential to transform the education landscape. Wise reiterated Clay Christianson’s prediction that by 2020, 50% of courses will be online.

You can view many of the presentations here: http://hosted.mediasite.com/mediasite/Catalog/pages/catalog.aspx?catalogId=47878f99-468d-4989-9941-2977d011e425

Is this the worst time to be in education in recent memory? Are we on the brink of an education rebirth? Do we have an education crisis? Is it an exciting time for innovation in education?

Yes.

 Also, one more note. We've been featured in PhD in Education as one of the top 50 education blogs: http://www.phdineducation.org/50-incredible-sites-to-find-new-and-inventive-teaching-methods.html

 

Related articles

• BMO Back to School 2011 (academicbiz.typepad.com)
• Supporting Technology Entrepreneurs in Georgia (academicvc.com)
• Reasons to Invest in Education (speedofcreativity.org)
• What are the main areas of technology lead disruption of K-12 Education in America? (compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com)

Reducing Student Dropouts

The National Center for Dropout Prevention (NCDP) sponsored the 2011 Educational Strategies and Student Engagement Institute in St. Petersburg Florida this week. In addition to presenting (on the role of data based decision making to make dropout prevention efforts more efficient, effective, and successful) I got to attend a number of sessions.

Boy, did I learn a lot.

If a store announced that it would provide merchandise to 70% of the people who paid for it, would we accept it? If a car company announced that you could buy a car that would get your to 70% of the places you wanted to drive, would they stay in business?

Yet we now live in a society where only 70% of children graduate high school; and of those almost half cannot read or calculate at a 12^th grade level. Is this acceptable? Is this what we want for the US?

Most students do not drop out because of academics. In fact 60% of all dropouts have grades of C or better; 80% have grades of D or better. So efforts at just fixing "school" or "education" are bound to fail.

One of the factors most used to predict the likelihood of dropping out is school attendance. Schools make efforts to contact parents, contact the child, counsel the child, but these rarely work on high school kids. And attendance is really just the symptom, it's not the problem. You often really have to attack the root causes of the problem, which generally are factors outside of school.

For example, if a student goes into Juvenile detention for two weeks, he or she comes back too far behind schoolwork to catch up without individual help. If a student is faced with the choice of working or losing his or her apartment, school is going to take a back seat. If a student has a child and no day care, he or she can't just leave the baby and come to class, and day-care programs for teen moms are one of the earliest victims of government education cutbacks. If a student goes home to a house where the electricity has been turned off for nonpayment, how can he or she complete his homework?

There are no easy answers, and we cannot expect the school alone to solve these problems.

If a kid lives in poverty and attends a school with other kids in poverty, if they are one year behind in reading by 3rd grade, if they have been retained, then in most districts, that child has a zero percent chance of graduating high school.

When poverty is so correlated with low academic achievement, how do some schools achieve success? It's only in the last ten years that we have started to understand the differences between kids growing up in poverty and those who are not.

We heard about Perry County, the poorest county in Alabama and one of the poorest in the country. How have they been able to achieve 98% graduation rates and 75% college admissions for their high school graduates? We heard about success stories from Portchester, NY; Dayton's Bluff Elementary school in Saint Paul, MN, Taft Elementary School in Boise, ID, and Osmond A. Church School in Queens, NY.

Lesson 1: We need to modify our goals. It's not just that we want kids to graduate with a high school degree. We want them prepared to lead productive lives: work, become a functioning member of the community, and contribute to the common good. And when we make the goals low, our lowered expectations permeates their lives. If we don't give those kids higher expectations, they will never gain hope.

We need to rid ourselves of remedial programs that keep expectations low; by watering down the curriculum, we are not helping the students; in fact, we are ensuring that their reading, writing, and math skills will never reach the levels they need to. Successful schools in poverty areas provide needing kids help so that they can succeed in mainstream and advanced classes.

Lesson 2: We need to rethink how we support kids, especially the kids without family support networks, so that they see the relevance of school to that overarching goal, and so that they get the resources they need to navigate system to obtain those resources. Children of poverty need the community, and we need to involve the community not just the schools, to provide the resources that they cannot get at home.

Lesson 3: Most at-risk kids want more than anything else is a relationship with a caring adult. Children of poverty generally do not have the social capital to navigate through school and society to obtain the resources they need. They need that caring adult or group of adults to help them. The most obvious person is a school counselor, but these offices are generally understaffed, so they end up focusing only on the most successful and the most disruptive students. A number of presenters referred to a Community Action Team, mobilized to support each student.

Lesson 4: Get the students interested in college early, as early as elementary school. Make them see the relevance and the possibility of college. Many kids in poverty have never been to a college campus, never interacted with a college student, and have no college models or mentors. By middle school, they need to have the confidence to know that they are "good enough" to go to college, with a plan that they can review with a caring adult periodically. By high school, children of poverty need to start seeing what a strong high school transcript and college application look like, they and their parents need to understand how to fill out a financial aid (FAFSA) application that gives them the best chances of obtaining aid.

Lesson 5: Get the children involved in giving back and helping the community. HS students can help elementary kids with reading or math; there are tons of ways they can help the cognitively challenged, they can help kids whose parents are overseas stay in touch. When students are helping others, they have great self esteem, and they are more motivated to succeed in all facets of life, including academics.

Lesson 6: Schools can do a better job of using the information they already have to focus their resources on the interventions that are known to work. More than just an Early Warning System (EWS), this involves

1. Pulling the data from myriad sources into one system that can analyze it
2. Getting the information in actionable form to the people who are best able to act.
3. Following their actions to know if they are taking place and are effective
4. Recording and modifying procedures and algorithms based on knowing what is working, and what is not.

Today, about 1 in 4 children in the US are growing up in poverty. These tend to be the children who have the most likelihood of dropping out. I'm hoping that as a society we can start implementing these lessons and improve our ability to grow all children into productive, functional, and happy adults.

Related articles

• The Online Dropout Rate (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• New Report Details High School Dropout Prevention Efforts (usnews.com)
• Digital Dashboards to reduce dropouts (PILOTed)

Obama-Singh Initiative for Indo-American Education

By Farimah Schuerman, Managing Partner, Academic Business Advisors

How many of you have heard of the Obama-Singh initiative?

Image of Manohan Singh via Wikipedia

Prior to October 13 I had not, but was fortunate enough to be included in an event in Washington jointly hosted by The US State Department and that of India to further that relationship.

Some background that can set the stage:

The number of Indian students enrolled in higher education including graduate programs is roughly 100,000, second to China's nearly 200,000, but more than Korea's. Almost 1/4 of all international students in the US come from these three countries. Yet, only 3,000 US students are studying in India.

The US post secondary degree continues to be highly prized and valued. India now has 15% of their students gaining post secondary degrees, and has targeted 30% as the threshold by 2020. Typically, students in India pay between $100 and $1,000 per year.

The Obama-Singh 21^st Century Knowledge Initiative, formulated between US President Barak Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manohan Singh, creates a path for higher education partnerships between US and Indian Postsecondary institutions. It provides for exchange of faculty, administrators, and postgraduate students to develop new programs of study, and promote economic development.

So, what is expected from this relationship, and what does this mean to you?

First, it will create a flurry of creativity as institutions and companies strive to create alternative models that will drive the cost of college degrees down, resulting in pressure for existing models to be more financially competitive. Second, it will make our current, traditional models more exclusive, creating greater economic tension between those who can afford those models and those that cannot. As these and newer models evolve, we are likely to see more "shopping around," and mixing and matching to make building degrees from multiple resources possible.

Another outcome is the creation of even greater global competition as the pool of qualified employees and, ultimately, knowledge workers, compete for jobs on the global front. An intended benefit is the creation of consumer populations for American goods, as well as other goods, in India and in other markets that currently offer us limited outlets for goods and services.

If India is to meet its goals, they will need an additional 1,000 universities and 50,000 colleges. That is a lot of growth, and opportunities for US institutions to participate.

American colleges and Universities have been creating remote campuses and bridging alliances with Institutions and that is likely to increase in the years ahead. If we keep the value of our degrees as high as they have been, it will be a very good outcome for our institutions, and we will benefit from the resulting innovations as well. Over the next few weeks the small grants will be announced, identifying the first few projects in the works. We'll be watching to see the results. I came away agreeing that this initiative will be a win-win, and will report to you all what we see happening over the months ahead if you are interested.

If you are interested in pursuing these opportunities, please contact us at ABA.

 

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Summary of Educause 2011

Educause 2011, the huge higher education technology conference took place last week. There was a lot of buzz around online learning and the changing face of IT.

On a broad brush, students are increasingly taking one or more online classes during their higher education tenure and more schools are offering classes and programs of study. The schools are grappling with how to develop and fund these courses, and then how to support the students and faculty. Below are case studies from three sesions: Outsourcing Online Learning at USC, Engaging Learner Across Time and Space at U of Minnesota, and Effective Support for Online Learners at Bay State.

Technology departments have been facing declining budgets for four years, but technology demands have not receded. Additionally, IT is being asked to provide better and more usable data to drive academic and business decisions. These concerns are summarized in Problems Faced by CIOs, CTOs and Technology Departments and Data to Dashboards below.

Outsourcing Online Learning

Joan Falkenberg Getman, Susan E. Metros, Jade Winn, all from USC

Why did USC start online programs?

The goals for establishing new programs were and continue to be:

• Remain current and competitive
• Reach working professionals
• Reach new markets
• Extend global reach
• Build new revenue

USC made the following requirements for all new online programs:

• Only graduate programs; undergraduates should get the full brick and mortar USC experience
• No tuition differentiation; same costs as face to face programs
• Only where there were new revenue opportunities; not in areas that would cannibalize existing students
• There had to be both synchronous and asynchronous content and interactions with the students (and faculty)
• There had to be active learning activities and rich interaction (interaction with content and also with other students and faculty). USC wanted to make the online experience as good as a good face to face classroom experience.

USC used Embanet and 2Tor to help develop and offer the two programs. There are relatively few quality providers to partner with, and they can be very different. It’s important to find a provider that matches weel with the particular program at the institution. Different programs for the same institution may work better with different providers, depending on chemistry, outlook, reach, and financial considerations.

Who was responsible for what?

The partner financed all of the development, there was no upfront cost for USC. Partner paid USC faculty for subject matter expertise and curriculum design, coordination, and approval, and did the graphic and interactive design.

USC Professors develop the content, the partner works with the professors on online instructional design, and the partner does the graphics and develops any videos, animations, or interactive media. USC has final approval on the work product.

The Professor owns the content, but cannot use any media that was developed outside of USC if they teach outside of USC. USC can use the content at no extra charge for their brick and mortar students.

Partner is responsible for obtaining admissions candidates and marketing, including training admissions staff. USC reviews and approves applications and collects fees.

Partner provides the platform, including online social networks and communities that encourage academic and extracurricular student activities.

Partner provides 24x7 technical support for students, faculty, and staff from a service level agreement. Partner reports major issues and solutions back to school.

USC Professors teach the courses.

Engaging Learners Across Time and Space: Models for Distance Learning

Mary Davis, Ron Fitch, and Jude Higdon from University of Minnesota

A 2010 meta-analysis by the Dept of Education on previous studies found “students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” (Personal note, isn’t it interesting that the NY Times interviews one school district and comes to the conclusion that technology doesn’t affect education results, while the Dept of Ed reviews more than 500 studies and concludes that it does? Guess the Dept of Ed missed the one district that matters.)

Defining goals is key step in online instruction design, because it dictates so many other aspects about the pedagogy and technology. The goal of the online program for the U of MN Dept of Pharmacy was to provide specialty classes for schools that offered degrees in pharmacology, but were too small to offer specialized courses.

When developing the curriculum and syllabus, you need to map content and activities to learning goals, accreditation standards, and industry standards (for example OSCE and NAPLEXS in Pharmacy).

Doing the video segments in a studio produced a much higher value video than videoing a lecture, and postproduction to insert key points and graphics into the video made for more engaging and didactic content.

U of Minnesota felt it was important to provide a way for students to audit courses, possibly at a lower cost.

Online tracking of student activities yields a gold mine of data which can be used to improve the course, monitor student engagement, and provide support to reduce dropouts.

Graduate students can provide a high quality, but also relatively inexpensive way, to develop curriculum.

Effective Support for Online Learners

David Demers, Peter Testori, Amber Vaill, Bay Path College

A required orientation course, before a student’s first online course, increases the likelihood of student success. Bay Path College’s course consists of 4 sessions, and covers the LMS, meeting technology requirements, time management strategies, submitting assignments, understanding online communities, netiquette, and how to get assistance. The course is conducted by one of the support coordinators.

Support coordinators for online students can also make a big impact on retention. At Bay Path, each student is assigned to a support coordinators, who

• Monitors the amount of time students are logged in
• Monitors whether students are submitting assignments on time
• Provides technical support
• Is the first point of contact for any question from an online student
• Calls the student when usage is down or assignments are late
• Assists faculty when faculty notice that a student may be having problems

A good amount of support time is helping students with time management, and time prioritization.

Problems Faced by CIOs, CTOs, and Technology Departments

This section is a summary from a variety of sessions, working groups, and interviews during the course of Educause 2011.

IT departments are being asked to measure effectiveness, and schools are afraid that accreditation will depend on measuring effectiveness, but it is truly not possible to determine. You might be able to tell what classes are being attended, what content is being accessed, but you can’t isolate successes or failures to any particular activities.

Many institutions have had compounded IT cuts for each of the last three years. At best, this will be a flat year.

The demand for services does not decrease. Students are demanding more online courses and resources, students and faculty are demanding new technologies, but there is little acknowledgement in institutions about the full cost of complying with those demands.

Even when a technology solution will have a clear payback, there are often no funds available for the startup or transition costs.

A Biology Professor needs to use a microscope, because it’s an integral part of the class; why is it okay for professors not to know that online learning tools that their students are using? When faculty members incorporate technology into their classes that they don’t know how to use, it escalates support costs.

On new projects involving technology, IT has to make sure that

1. The full cost of the technology (including support and maintenance) be factored into the life of the project
2. There is a built-in way to measure the success (or failure) of the project. One of the biggest headaches is pilot projects that are not scalable but meet a faculty member’s needs; ongoing support can be a huge issue.
3. There is an understanding of next steps if the project succeeds or fails.

Some of the biggest success for IT in institutions is when they have given faculty (or administration) something that they didn’t even know they needed (such as an online scheduling system to meet with faculty advisors that made it a lot easier for both faculty and students to schedule).

The concerns of IT have become a lot more fragmented over time. Ten years ago, over 2/3 of Postsecondary CIO’s said that their most pressing issues were instructional and security related. Today, there is no one issue that is of primary concern to more than 15%.

While there is a lot of talk about clouds, the biggest use of clouds on campus is with email systems. Over the next couple of years, it is more likely that LMSs will start moving to the clouds, and after that ERP systems. Currently, over 70% of institutions are not considering clouds for ERP or CRM systems over the next two years.

Data to Dashboards: Creating and Using Analytics

Stephen Grieco, Susan Hauck, Celeste Schwartz, Montgomery County Community College, PA

The purpose of creating a dashboard is not to create nice looking reports and graphs, it is about taking information and changing the way decisions are made to increase efficiency and effectiveness. A dashboard provides a summary, visualization, or filter of data. Dashboards should allow decision makers or service providers to predict, drill down, plan, benchmark, make decisions, get feedback, and become more effective.

What is propelling the need to more effectively utilize data?

• Shrinking resources
• Accountability, being asked to prove that what you do has value
• Assessment driving data driven decision making
• Desire to use the data you have to improve processes or spur actions

Examples:

1. By monitoring the support calls by day of the week and time, the help desk was able to be staffed more efficiently and for better support.
2. By looking at class sizes at different times, and demand for sections on different days, the school was able to increase instructor and class utilization while also making class schedules more convenient for students
3. By analyzing the types of related classes that students were taking, the school was able to determine that there was a need for new degrees

 

 

Improve Education Outcomes via Digital Dashboards

Julie Drewery of the Roanoke City Public Schools and I are proposing to speak at South by Southwest Education on the effective use of data to improve graduation rates. If you think this could be an interesting topic, please vote: http://panelpicker.sxswedu.com/ideas/view/14063

Description:

Members of public school communities utilize data to drive decision and policy making on a daily basis.  The big question is: Do students, teachers, administrators, and/or parents need more data, or is the essential need to understand how to harness data to make better decisions and continuously improve?

We will first establish a model of how actions and attributes become data and how that data becomes information.  Algorithms can transform information that information to propagate decisions and actions. The whole information system then provides a virtuous feedback loop upon which sound decisions are made.

Next, we will examine how Roanoke City Public Schools designed and implemented a digital dashboard system to increase graduation rates.  We will examine how the design process, implementation, and current use have produced both higher academic achievement and higher graduation rates.

Finally, we will present a checklist of how to use education dashboards to affect student achievement and guide policy making in your own school, college, or district.

Questions Answered:

1. How do you take district-wide data, consolidate it, and report it to clearly indicate what actions or decisions need to be taken?
2. How is data being used to reduce dropout rates and increase graduation rates?
3. What is the implementation process and schedule from decision to implantation to results for digital dashboards?
4. What is the process to get all concerned parties aboard a digital dashboard system?
5. What are the differences between an early warning system and a performance enhancement system?

Julie Drewry's Background

Julie A. Drewry, Ph.D., has been a public school educator for the past 19 years. She taught high school mathematics for 12 years, during which she earned National Board Certification. She has also been an assistant principal, a director of a regional school for science and mathematics, and a K-12 mathematics supervisor. Dr. Drewry is currently the Executive Director for 6-12 Instruction for Roanoke City Public Schools and an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.

Dr. Drewry did research at Virginia Tech on the experiences of high school dropouts from a social capital perspective.  This intense research experience and her experiences at the high school level have fueled her passion to identify at-risk behaviors of the students.  In addition, she works with a team of student support specialists, counselors, and administrators to deal with the behaviors in a deliberate manner in order to make it possible for all students to progress towards graduation.

Hope to see you there!

 

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Invisible Learning, Aprendizaje Invisible

This is a summary of Aprendizaje Invisible (Invisible Learning, in English), an ebook by Cristóbal Cobo and John W. Moravec on transforming educational systems around the world.

Why is education important? For one, in today’s competitive international labor marketplace, superior education is the oxygen that all potential employees want to acquire.

Image by IK's World Trip via Flickr

 

Modern technologies, like social networking, texting, and digital storytelling, are viewed as inimical to the tried and true techniques of the formal classroom. Outside of the classroom, it’s a different story. Compared to watching television when it was a young technology, kids today are spending more time on the Internet with less supervision. Whatever they are doing, they are learning, but what and how they are learning is invisible to the formal education system. There is thus a whole new environment of learning outside of formal education, including through social networks, games, and searching, with students playing, discussing, finding, and sharing information. The question is not, “Are they learning on the Internet?” It’s “what are they learning?”

Can educators leverage this time and energy to help students learn? Only if we understand that the most significant potential lies outside of the classroom, where students are now spending so much of their time, and if we start understanding the dynamics of Internet usage.

But we need to consider models different from that of a sage lecturing to students who avidly or passively absorb the materials. There may not be one winning idea, there is probably not one learning theory that is correct in all instances, maybe we will need to follow several different possible paths to arrive at superior means of teaching more to more. The goal of this book is to try to unify different learning theories, teaching practices, change management techniques, and technologies to make education more effective, efficient, informative, and adaptive to the needs of our rapidly changing world.

 

Image by RBerteig via Flickr

While you can’t deny that schools are adopting software tools, many times those tools are primarily reinforcing the traditional ways of teaching and assessing. The software that students are using outside of school, and are informally, non-formally, or serendipitously learning from, are more attuned to what most of us regard as 21^st century skills. Additionally, what is often considered new technology by adult teachers and educators is regarded as the norm (at best) and outdated (at worst) by many students. For example, using PowerPoint slides may or may not be effective, but it certainly would not be considered as technologically savvy by high school or college students.

 

It’s ironic that now, when there are so many people interested in learning and going to school, we don’t know what a good education is. And it’s sad that, with all the resources and effort societies invest in education, and with all the capabilities of teachers and schools, our education systems do not do a better job preparing students for the demands of our interconnected, rapidly changing, 21^st century world.

A lot of what we know, and need to know, is not formally taught or measured. Even though these acquired skills and knowledge are invisible or ignored by traditional measurement vehicles, they are very visible and valued real life. How are they acquired? How can technology help us teach them better?

The book explores the roots of what makes learning invisible:

1. Technology: Because schools are not adapting the technologies that students are using, the technologies that students use to communicate, explore, amuse, and learn are invisible to formal education.
2. Actions: Students are spending a lot more time on the computer in non-school environments, often doing much more advanced tasks, and these activities are invisible to formal education
3. Knowledge: the skills and capacities acquired using informal learning are different from what are demanded in formal education, and so are invisible.
4. Technical skills: besides the rudiments of learning commands and functions, many technical skills are learned while doing other things, for example when you want to create a video and post it to a social network. Because these skills are not being explicitly taught, they often become invisible to formal education.
5. Assessment: many of the competencies learned outside of lectures, textbooks, and repetitive exercises are not tested, especially on high stakes assessments, so are invisible.
6. Momentum: because the different parties in the educational system have so much vested in their existing methods, technologies, and practices, they do not or cannot devote the time or resources to looking at creative ways of change, or eliminating the practices that just do not make sense anymore. Thus, the lack of attention makes the possibility of change invisible.

What is often taught, assessed, and rewarded at schools is memorization and exactitude. But are these the traits that are most valuable in the real world? In fact, by penalizing errors, we are also hampering creativity and experimentation, two of the key skills most demanded in the world outside of school.

Our education system needs to better understand the technologies students are using, what students are doing with that technology, what they are learning, how to better understand how much students are learning and what they are capable of doing. All those interested in education should be doing this with a lens of teaching how to learn, not specifically in teaching specific skills, and with an understanding that learning doesn’t stop at graduation, learning has become a life-long process.

We are preparing students to live, and hopefully thrive, in a world we cannot even imagine today, so we need to redesign our education systems. Rethinking education has three parts, figuring out what we are doing that works, culling out what we are doing that isn’t working, and devising what to add or change.

Ivan Illich proposed, forty years ago, the idea that a good education system lets all who want to learn learn, it provides access to learning content at whatever moment people need it, it provides the means to teach for those who have knowledge and want to share it with others, and it does not dictate any pre-determined plan of studies, titles, or diplomas. How different from the education we offer today, but how close to where we need to end up!

Rethinking education is a job for all of us.

You can access the book (it is in Spanish) here. And you can watch Cristóbal Cobo present these ideas at a TED presentation (also in Spanish) here.

 

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