The scaffolding of learning

Eva has a great post about teaching without a textbook over at the Education Virtually Anywhere (EVA) blog.  Now I might be be a bit biased (truth in advertising: Eva is Mrs. Advisory Bored), but I find it a really insightful view of learning in the information age.

I hope, however, that technology educators and IT managers will consider this post with more than just passing intellectual curiosity at the changing nature of post-secondary education.  I see in Eva's teaching methodology a model for long-term professional development and organizational transformation for IT professionals and their managers.  Let me explain.

An IT professional, particularly in a smaller, corporate IT shop, can no longer assume that his/her manager can define his/her job responsibilities, career path, training needs or long-term organizational strategy for his/her area of specialization without significant input from the professional him or herself.  This isn't the Dilbertesque dumbing down of IT management until they all resemble the PHB. Both the breadth and pace of technological change make it nearly impossible for a leader to dictate the work environment in a top-down, hierarchical fashion. 21st Century IT is not a 1960's assembly line.

Put simply, there is no longer room for IT workers, all staff must be IT professionals.  Professionals accept responsibility for their own training and development.  They identify and establish standards and practices for their area of responsibility. They remain abreast of the technology in their area of expertise and its impacts on the business, making recommendations to the IT manager. They build and maintain professional networks inside and outside the organization.

As the IT manager, it is my responsibility to create an environment for that to occur.  It seems to me that's what Eva is expressing when she says:

I make them do the work. I provide them with the framework or "scaffolding" of questions and problems to solve. They go looking for the answers and build their own library of resources along the way.

One hopes that along the way, Eva is also sharing with her student the method to her madness. The knowledge her students gain on any given project is fleeting, whereas the method by which the gained it will be valuable for years and decades to come.

Sometimes a hyphen is just a hyphen

I had to smile as I read a recent post by Alfred Thompson on validating character input strings for name. In it, Alfred walks through a number of ways to test for valid alphabetic characters while not limiting it to only the 26 letters of our English alphabet.  Most options did not return the results he had hoped for.

You see, overly aggressive character validation was one of the reasons my wife became a programmer. Early in our marriage, Mrs. Advisory Bored used a hyphenated maiden/married last name. Most computer systems would not accept "maiden-married" as a last name. At some point she figured she couldn't do any worse than those programmers and she changed careers. 

I seriously doubt these businesses had a policy that said we don't want women with hyphenated last names as customers, but that's what they implemented.  It is important that programming students understand they aren't implementing code, they're implementing the business.  The implementation can't (properly) occur without the business context. 

And that's a lesson that is just as important as the return value from the isLetter function.

Tag, you're it

This week I was investigating QR Codes and Microsoft Tags when I came across this article from EDUCAUSE . As a quick background, QR Codes and Tags are types of matrix or 2 dimensional barcodes that contain information that a reader on a smartphone (using the built in camera) can use to route users to a website, add contact information to an address book or make a phone call.

For instance, the image you see here is a Microsoft Tag with the web address of the Advisory Bored blog embedded. If you had a smartphone with the free tag reader you could point your smartphone camera at the image and it would launch the browser and navigate to the Advisory Bored blog. Now imagine if the image were on a business card, placed in a newspaper ad or printed on the side of a bus. (I was researching the idea of printing a Tag on those big white land use signs that go up whenever there is a new building development or a zoning code change.)

It was not, however, the use of QR Codes in particular that most interested me in the EDUCAUSE article; it was the cross-discipline student project highlighted on the first page.  The project has at least four major aspects.  First, there is the biology, compiling the information about the plants.  Second, the team members had to deal with technological issues like information access and user education/training. Third, there was the information management challenge to make sure the content presentation was sensitive to different technologies (phones vs PCs).  Finally, there was a myriad of logistical issues from coordinating with the docents to printing the QR Codes to staffing the guest booth.

More and more, work is characterized by this type of team project in which different people from different areas of the organization (and across organizations) must collaborate to accomplish a goal.  It is my sense, however, that educational assessment, particularly in secondary schools, is still focused on individual performance.  On more than one occasion I have heard from teachers that group projects present significant challenges for student assessment.  That's unfortunate, because those are precisely the skills the workforce of today and tomorrow need.  

An example that's a little closer to home is the Western Washington University V45 project team for the Progressive X Prize competition, a $10 million dollar challenge to build production-capable cars getting 100 MPGe.  Look down that participant list.  You've got business students, materials sciences students and vehicle design students all working toward that prize.  (The V45 was eventually eliminated, but did an outstanding job getting to the finals.)

So what's the take-away?  I'll toss out four, just to get us started:

1. project management and collaboration skills are essential and should be fostered even at the high school level
2. projects that cross areas of study and extend out beyond the campus are far more interesting and potentially more educational
3. teachers will need to develop curriculum that is team-based and be prepared to address all the issues that teams present (such as the ability for teams to "fire" members who aren't participating)
4. advisory boards need to be clear and indicate if they think a program should emphasize "team project work" or "individual project work"

If I had a hammer

Suppose I asked you to join two pieces of wood, two 2 by 4's, three feet long.  I need you to join the boards at each end and in the middle.  I give you a hammer and you walk to the right end of the boards where you find a nail already started.  Somewhat tentatively you take several swings before finally driving the nail in.

You take a step to the left and at the mid-point of the boards you find another nail.  More confidently, you take a couple of really good swings and drive the nail home. Finally, you take another step to the left and at the left end of the board you find ..... a screw.

My question to you is a simple one. Is the hammer broken?

The obvious answer is no and most people would be smart enough to either get a screwdriver or replace the screw with a nail. A few truly creative, out-of-the-box thinkers, such as myself, would simply pound in the screw with the hammer, although I don't recommend it for finish work.  (Oh please, that revelation didn't really surprise you, did it?)

Still, there are those that must bring work to a complete halt so they may blame the task master, the hammer, the screw or the over-reaching federal government seeking to nationalize the construction industry. 

It is this question, is the hammer broken, that I come back to again and again as the battle over educational reform rages on.  For far too many people, the current educational system can't merely be a tool that successfully met the challenges of the past, but is not design to meet our new requirements.  It must be broken and someone must be to blame.  However, as Gerry Weinberg reminds us in his wonderful book The Secrets of Consulting:

The chances of solving a problem decline the closer you get to finding out who was the cause of the problem.  (Spark's Law of Problem Solution)

The challenge then, is for us interested in the education of the IT professionals of the future to wade into the debate with our required outcomes in hand.  We must continue to press for a discussion of the what and why of education, while steadfastly refusing to be drawn into the debate of how and who.  Most of all, we must resist the temptation to play the blame game.

Time for an IT apprenticeship

A recent New York Times (NYT) article, Plan B: Skip College, examines whether a vocational alternative, like apprenticeships, needs to be offered to students for whom college is not a good fit. In it, author Jacques Steinberg says

A small but influential group of economists and educators is pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. It’s time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.

Regular readers of this blog know that I favor having many different paths to the skills, knowledge and competencies required of IT professionals (see 2+2+2 = Bachelor of Applied Science), so I won't bore you with my understanding of the article.  You can read it for yourself, along with some interesting commentary here.

Instead, I want to get a sense from local IT managers if there is a place for something like an apprenticeship for IT staff and if there are openings available to those with less than a bachelors degree.  Specifically, I am focusing on corporate/government IT, not high-tech companies of the Microsoft variety.  These are positions like help desk, email administrator and programmer at banks, retailers and insurance companies.  I ask, because I know a lot of the jobs out there seem to carry educational requirements that leave many capable people out of the running. There's not much value in an apprenticeship if you won't hire the participants after they complete the program.

So I have a few question for all you IT leaders out there:

1.  Do you have or would you be willing to add an entry level IT position in your organization whose educational requirements would be fulfilled by vocational education at the high school or community college level?  What types of position would that be (help desk, email administration, business analyst)?
2. Are there any IT certifications in particular that you would consider as replacing education requirements in your hiring consideration?
3. Would you be willing to be part of an apprenticeship program, some sort of public/private partnership to ensure training and work opportunities?

EvCC adds more 4-year degrees

Did you catch the story about a new 4-year degree in nursing to be offered at the University Center at Everett Community College (EvCC)?  The Herald reports that the Governor signed the law that allocates $158,000 to enroll 25 students to earn a bachelor of science in nursing.  The program is offered in conjunction with the  University of Washington Bothell (UWB), which has a similar program at their campus.

This is the second new B.S. degree in as many months.  In March, Saint Martin's University announced a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering to be offered at the University Center.  That gives the University Center over 20 undergraduate and post-graduate degree programs.

Given the current budget situation in is hard to image that just two years ago we were debating the location for a proposed 4-year university campus here in Snaohomish County.  I was blogging against the idea at NoSnoU, characterizing the effort as a grab for construction dollars with little consideration for education.  In the end, neither of the two competing sites would give up and we ended with nothing - which suits me fine.  These additions to the University Center prove that we can expand the education opportunities in the county without lots of physical infrastructure.

Skeptic 101: The history of current events

Skepticality is the official podcast of Skeptic Magazine, or so they say .......

No, seriously, they really are the official podcast of Skeptic Magazine and one of a just a couple of true podcasts (not a recording of an over-the-air radio show) that I listen to regularly. Recently I've been listened to some episodes I missed last summer and came across an interview of David Cullen author of Columbine, a book that looks at what we know, or think we know, about the 1999 school shooting in Littleton, Colorado.

Co-host Swoopy opened the interview with this:

.... what we were told was a group of students possibly involved with a gang called the Trenchcoat Mafia, in retaliation for bullying and gay-bashing, had started shooting their classmates as punishment for the ridicule they had long endured. The two outsiders, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were cast as the perfect villains who were part of the goth subculture, worshiped Hitler and listened to Marilyn Manson. They were dark, brooding kids typical of the kind who would snap and start killing those they thought deserved their wrath - jocks, African-Americans and Jews. They would reportedly ask their victims if they believed in God and shot those who professed to believe. The problem is almost none of that is true

In the interview Cullen identifies many of the myths that exist to this day, the most notable being that Columbine was a school shooting when the evidence shows their intentions were to blowup the building and kill everyone in it. Cullen also discusses the role of the media in creating the popular myth and their failure to correct it. I haven't read the book yet, but the interview was certainly a good use of an hour.

Leaving aside the specifics of this particular incident for the moment, the theme that the media needs to do a better job of covering these big incidents and correcting errors is a consistent one in the era of media self-flagellation. Granted that needs to happen, but at some point don't we need to acknowledge that this type of news coverage is error prone in the best of situations and we, the media and general public alike, must adapt our understanding or beliefs to match the evolving truth.

The answer to that last question is, of course, yes so I propose a class called Skeptic 101: The History of Current Events. Instead of analyzing the event, the class would analyze the general understanding of the event at different time perspectives. It would be like a history MRI, analyzing little slices of understanding over a sustained time period. This would give the student the opportunity to see how truth emerges (or fades) over time and its effect, if any, on popular understanding of the situation and our reaction to it.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with IT education? You may remember that in earlier post like The Great Debate and The Data Model of Dorian Gray I discussed teaching foundation skills as a preparation for later teaching career-specific skills. In the Great Debate post I said:

As more work becomes analytical in nature we need to have programs that help students develop those capabilities in general even when we aren't training them for a specific job.

A class like the History of Current Events can surface the analytical strengths needed in most IT and business jobs while not necessarily preparing students directly for any one career. For instance, a Business or Systems Analyst is required to think critically, to question what is known in an area of the business and to re-evaluate what is held to be true over and over again. While high school might be a bit early for a requirements gathering class, it isn't too early to learn foundation skills they will need when they do take a requirements gathering class.

So what do you think?

At cross purposes: funding vs. attendance

At the same time that we are cutting education budgets, especially for post-secondary education, we are also encouraging attendance at those very same institutions, whether though worker retraining dollars or exaggerated claims of job marketability.  Our educational funding mechanism is so convoluted and disjointed that perhaps this contradiction really does make sense, but I doubt it.

In particular, I think of those students back at the community college who need or want new skills, but not necessarily a degree.  As we know, or should know, our education system is structured to encourage and reward the granting of degrees.  Education is only a means to that end, not the end in itself. 

These student I refer to, however, work in areas where degrees or certifications aren't important or who already have degrees or certifications at a higher level (community college student with a Bachelors degree).  Is there a more effective, flexible and cost effective way to help them identify and gain the education they need?

You may remember sometime back in a post called Basic Cable I floated the idea of the community college as career health club.  When you sign-up you get a counselor to help you define your goals and then establish an exercise plan to help you reach the goals.  The "club" is always open so you can drop in and use the equipment whenever you need to.  In addition, you may team up with other clubmembers to push each other to be better.  What the fitness counselor doesn't do is prepare the gym for you before each session.  She doesn't stand over you with every lift and tell you how good you're doing.  She does not declare "you are healthy", give you a piece of paper to confirm that and send you on your way, never to be seen from again.

And that, to me, seem to be the problem. We can't run more people through the system because we can't get more instructors or because the existing instructors can't handle the increased load.  Or can they?

Let me change metaphors on you for a moment.  The Theory of Constraints says the organization's ability to achieve a goal is limited by one (or a very few) constraining factors.  The only way to achieve more is to maximize the throughput through the constraint.  In education, the instructor is the constraint.  I don't mean this in a bad way, it's just that there is only so much course creation, class prep, lecturing and grading one instructor can do.  If you wanted to double or triple the students through the class you would need more instructors or more TA's or .... a different mindset. 

What if education, not degrees were the goal?  What if the content was already freely available? What if the class was not time-bound or geographic-bound? What if certification was available from an independent entity or wasn't required?  As we know, those are all true.  Class materials and tutorials on hundreds of subjects are readily available across the web for the instructor to select from.  Both vendors and independent organizations offer certifications. Podcasting and learning management systems allow teachers to break the boundaries of time and place. Freely available wiki's allow cohorts to collaborate and share the learning.  Books 24X7 and other online library resources provide access to many books that don't fair well on the library shelves (in technology where change is frequent and constant). 

Could an instructor who now is limited to teaching 30 students, instead facilitate the education of 90 students with the same effort?  I don't know, but it hard economic times it might be worth some consideration.

 

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Business' case for teaching with social media

We finally got going with social media at work this year. Nothing earth-shattering mind you, but we rolled out our first Twitter feeds to update people on construction delays and city news, as well as our Facebook page. Of course no good deed goes unpunished, so adopting social media created it's own set of problems. The record management types freaked out because a public record might be created. Information technology (IT) people like me get freak out over information security and bandwidth consumption issues. Finally, management in general freaks out 'cause staff maybe watching YouTube videos instead of doing work.

One option is to restrict and monitor staff's access to social media sites. Unfortunately, that requires both time and money from the IT department, resources that could be better spent on other projects. It also keeps people away from useful tools for work, whether for information gathering, training, communicating or collaboration. YouTube, for instance, has a wealth of helpful training videos and presentations. Many companies post their training materials out there instead of on their own servers. So if we restrict access then we will need to have exceptions for business need. That requires even more IT resources. It also turns IT into the bad guy.

If we look deeper, however, we will see that the adoption of social media tools in business is about more than software. We are talking about a fairly significant change to the work environment - the types of work, our roles, our relationships to customers, peers and managers. Work is more collaborative and information intensive, but that information isn't necessarily known in advance. Further, the boss or team leader is no longer responsible for uncovering new information to share with everyone else. In addition, communication across the organization and outside the organization is far less structured and hierarchical.

What this means is that business needs individuals who can use social media tools outside the firewalls of the business without spending two hours watching videos of water skiing squirrels or posting the design specifications of the company's newest product for everyone to see. Now if we just had some sort of societal institution that could prepare young people for this new world in work, academic and civic life.

Oh, right, school.

So there you go school reformers, there's your business mandate for reform. I need employees that can work collaboratively to gather information and share knowledge, that get their job done without me detailing every step and communicate effectively with customers and the CEO. And they need to do it using social media tools all without stopping to check out the newest OK Go video.

I'm going to expand on this topic with your help in the coming months, but I'd like to leave you with a few last thoughts:

1. Don't socialize, collaborate. For most people social media implies "fun" instead of "with people". As a result, social media is a non-starter merely because of the association with playtime. Business tool vendors position their toolsets as collaborative, not social, and school reformers should consider doing the same. Further, our discussion of collaboration shouldn't begin and end with Facebook and Twitter. We should be discussing Wetpaint, Ning, Delicious and Diigo instead.
   
2. Structure is instructive. The structure of school - roles, relationships and rewards - teach us as much as the content of any given class. Ever take a class titled "Make your boss happy and you'll get a raise"? No, but you learned the lesson didn't you? It is not enough to adopt collaborative tools within the current structure. The very structure of schools must be changed. (Did you notice the title of this post was "teaching with social media", not "teaching social media".)
3. Give 'em enough rope. Should classrooms be built without windows since students can look out and daydream instead of their math assignment? Okay, no is the obvious answer. We build classrooms with windows and discipline students with, among other things, bad grades if they don't do their work. Unfortunately, teachers, like many business executives, want to place to the burden of student/staff online misbehavior at the feet of IT. Do the student a favor, if they spend all day on Facebook, flunk them. Just leave the internet turned on for everyone else.
   

All Access Pass

Several weeks ago there was some back and forward between data management (DM) types on Twitter about a vendor who was using Microsoft Access as a back-end database for a demo of their software product. The question was whether to take the vendor serious if they are using Access. For any number of reasons I won't discuss here, most IT professionals don't consider Access on par with "real" database management systems. Without wading into that discussion, educators preparing students for DM roles should be aware of the perception and select the appropriate tools for the class.

• But wait, there's more. Access is a database management system (dbms), but it is also an application development environment and an ad hoc reporting tool. If you are teaching Access as a software application then you should be giving your students a complete overview of all the capabilities. If, however, it is your intention to teach database design, SQL, etc you had better not have a lesson plan on the Forms builder tool. A DM professional will immediately discount a database class that spends a week making and formatting pie charts in Access. They will also discount the students in that class.
  
• Talk the talk. At it's core, Access is an end-user dbms geared toward non-professionals. As a result, you will come across "end-user friendly" terms for things that have industry accepted names. Don't use the friendly terms and don't let your students use them either. Not knowing the right terminology just confuses the conversation and lowers the student's credibility.
  
• Walk the walk. As with terminology, an end-user dbms will deploy tools that make some tasks easier by either hiding or eliminating complexity. Do your students a big favor and make them get their hands dirty with the complexity. Take the example of creating a table. Access offers a nice interface to quickly type names and select data types (it's in SQL Server too), but I would suggest the students review the equivalent data definition language (DDL) and it wouldn't hurt them to code the DDL from scratch. Same goes for creating queries. It's a real a joy to do a seven table join in a graphical, drag-and-drop tool, but the student is much better off learning to write the SQL now and moving to the graphical tool later.
  

Which brings us back to the perception issue. For an introductory course or for students who aren't specializing in data, Access is an acceptable starting point. For those students who want to focus on data, however, you would be doing them a great disservice by limiting their experience to Access. You should put a significant portion of their work on SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL or any of a number of enterprise-class dbms tools.

Now if you are having some issues creating and managing that type of environment at your school I'd suggest a conversation with the folks at your nearest DAMA chapter.

Tags: Database Access DAMA IT Education

Of pirates and mentoring

Sometime ago Brian Lockwood, educator and IT director at an international school in Yokohama Japan, tweeted a link to an absolutely fantastic TED Talk video from Dave Eggers called Once Upon a School.

Dave created 826 Valencia, a combination publishing house, tutoring center and pirate supply shop (it's hard to explain - you kinda gotta watch the video). The program pairs volunteering writers with the students, providing them support and important 1-on-1 attention. 826 Valencia was spawned other similar organization throughout the county that work on the same model, crazy retail outlet in front, tutoring in back. This includes 826 Seattle and the Greenwood Space Travel Supply company.



Truth be told, I am a complete sucker for stories of the small contributions, the selfless little acts that are soon forgotten by all except the contributor and the recipient. The video highlights the huge difference that hundreds of little differences can make for a team, community, city, state or nation.

So what have you done lately? Dave Eggers closed his presentation with a hope that many more of us would volunteer and share that experience. To that end the Once Upon a School web site was created. You can read the stories of others, share your own or look for volunteer opportunities in your area. Check it out.

Technorati Tags: TED, Dave Eggers, 826 Valencia, Once Upon a School

The Data Model of Dorian Gray

Mrs. AdvisoryBored and I spent the week at the Enterprise Data World conference talking data with friends both new and old. It is a joy to get together with others who want to discuss metadata, data quality, data governance and Twitter names beginning with the word data. Yes, the last one did occur in the wee hours of the morning and yes, it is possible that some consumption of alcohol was involved. Did I mention that it was a data management conference?

A more serious topic of discussion was the concern that data management has become a profession (job, role or set of activities) of older people. I tried to point out that young people such as myself were entering the profession. They were quick to point out that 50 didn't count as young. Who knew!

While I share that concern, I think that there are aspects of the profession that will always skew the age of practitioners toward the "experienced" end of the scale. That would include a focus on:

• data, not on the computers and applications
  
• an enterprise view of the organization, not an operational view
  
• semantics, categorizations, meanings and definitions
• specialized jobs (traditionally found only in larger organizations and consulting firms)
• planning and coordination
  

I lost you at semantics didn't I?

Look, experience need not be synonymous with age, so if we want to bring younger practitioners into the field then we have got to do a few things different.

First we must teach the core competencies that serve as the foundation for data management training later. It parallels the effort to teach computational thinking skills like numbering systems or sorting algorithms without using computers at a young age so they are prepared to learn computer programming later, if they wish. These competencies - things like classification, abstract thinking, information literacy, computer literacy and set theory - ensures students are prepared to learn data management at a more appropriate time. Wax on, Wax off.

Second we must build awareness of data management as an area of study, as a set of skills and as a profession. Most of you are probably thinking database administration when I speak of data management. Fair enough, database administration is certainly part of data management, but so are data modeling, data warehousing, data security and any number of other jobs or roles. Our biggest challenge in this area, as Karen pointed out on numerous occasions at the conference, is to be visible to younger professionals by participating in the communication channels they use. This means we need to be talking data management in blogs (or this one), on Twitter, on LinkedIn, in discussion forums and on wikis.

Finally we must develop, or at least help to develop, curriculum to support the needs of new entrants into the field as well as the ongoing professional development of those who have already chosen data management as a career path. DAMA International made a huge leap in this area last week with the release of The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge (DM-BOK). The challenge now is for data management professionals to carry this information to local colleges and universities. Additionally, we need to push beyond the basic database training to teach a broader range of data management activities. As Peter pointed out on several occasions, we teach students how to build new databases, but how often do we really do that in our professional lives.

Let me leave you with one final thought. Data management is both a set of activities and a profession. Many people who do the former don't consider themselves the latter. They are, nevertheless, contributing to the body of knowledge, for better or worse, and we need to connect with them just as much as an up-and-coming metadata analyst. Consider the outcomes that Mrs. AdvisoryBored identified in her original proposal for the Business Information Management class (MGMT 215) at Edmonds Community College (see the end of page two). There is no guarantee that the students, particularly those from the Business department, will embrace those data management principles and/or the profession, but she has at least had the opportunity to introduce the concept of data as a managed enterprise resource.

Tags: Enterprise Data World, DAMA, DM-BOK, Data Management

A little piece of americana

Our friend Tim holds concerts of local and visiting musicians in his home 4 times a year. The musicians usually play the didgeridoo, but occasionally they play other instruments associated with the aboriginal people of this continent. A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to see Tyler Spencer playing with Shireen Amini like they did in this video from the 2008 Seattle World Rhythm festival.

Shireen played a song that was inspired by watching her cousins as they were updating their social networking pages, text messaging and watching MTV all at the same time. She remarked at being both fascinated and horrified. They were consuming snippets of culture instead of participating in a sustained creative process. They lacked an outlet to guide and encourage inherent creativity.

Shireen highlighted a program called the Americana Project at the Sisters (OR) School District. Students learn to play, write, perform and record. To date, they have released 7 CDs of music created, performed and engineered by the students. I have to think that programs like the Americana Project encourage the passion for creativity while keeping students engaged in school.

In the book "First Break All the Rules" the authors tell us that the best managers don't focus on overcoming an employee's weaknesses, but instead maximizing their strengths and talents. We also learn that the best organizations have staff that consistently answers the question "Do I have an opportunity to do what I do best everyday" in the affirmative.

If it works for creating excellence in the workplace, why not the education setting? As we work to address a 30% high school drop out rate, we might want to ask ourselves if these types of programs will help students to get engaged and stay engaged in school? We might still further ask ourselves if we can expand these types of programs beyond just music or athletics? Other specialized programs, like those at the Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center, are seen as a place to go if you're not good at school (it's not true, but is the perspective of some). Why? Why is the desired to be a great gymnast or saxophonist a good thing and a great welder a bad thing? Some one's got to be the Wynton Marsalis of welding, why not your kid?

Tags: Americana Project, Tyler Spencer, Shireen Amini, Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center,

Olympia Talks College Education

Q13 News reported yesterday that three bills to establish a university in Snohomish county, plus a bill to grant bachelor degrees at Bellevue Community College (BCC), were being discussed in front of the State Senate Higher Education and Workforce committee. As reported, the challenge is not merely sorting out the competing bills, but to face the reality of the budget cuts when considering the cost of construction.



For you interested in the details of those hearings, you can view the committee sessions at TVW and the Senator Hobbs video at YouTube. Further details are available here, here and here. In particular, the second of those three articles seems the most damning. It is clear to me that the supporters of the the competing locations care nothing of education, demonstrating a greed for local construction spending that negates any attempt to appear pro-education. Both sides deserve to get nothing.

But I've ranted on that enough, haven't I? The BCC bill is more interesting as it offers a new model for expanding post-secondary education. Other lower/upper division models exist, including Lake Washington Technical College's Applied Bachelor's in Design and CWU BAS-ITAM. (See background on the proposals and the conflict with the UW here, here and here.) The proposed model for BCC isn't without it's concerns. Community colleges serve a huge range of educational needs. The Eastside won't benefit if BCC promotes the 4-year degree at the expense of their Adult ed, Prof/Tech and worker retraining roles.

Tags: Education, UW North Sound, Bellevue Community College, Lake Washington Technical College, Applied Bachelor's Degree, Central Washington University

Another voice for a new university alternative

You cannot begin to imagine my surprise this morning when I read John Koster's guest commentary in the Everett Herald suggesting that there was a better way to meet the educational needs of the tri-county area without building a brand new university facility. Koster, the District 1 Representative on the County Council, acknowledges that there will be no funding available for a new university in the short term and perhaps not for quite some time. He is spot on when he expresses concern that our preoccupation with a new university keeps us from focusing on the more pressing needs of students today.

Koster points out that our existing educational infrastructure with advanced information and communications technology (ICT) can deliver a cost effective solution to place-bound students without saddling the taxpayers with excessive levels of debt. He takes a refreshingly broad view of the "educational system" suggesting that resources of local high schools could be used for proctoring tests or lab work. He goes on to challenge us to think about a new paradigm, saying:

Sometimes we do things the way we do simply because that's the way we've always done them. Instead of burdening our tax-weary citizens with building an incredibly expensive traditional school, let's "experience the power" of online technology and recognize what every young person with an iPod, cell phone or Blackberry already knows: An astonishing new world lies at our fingertips, full of opportunities and efficiencies for those who want to learn at the speed of light via the click of a mouse.

Unfortunately, paradigm shifts don't come easily. It is very unlikely that the leaders fighting for the campus have ever encountered any online learning. Their mental model is likely to be of early distance education from 20 years ago, at best. Perhaps they envision the digital equivalent of correspondence school, where the chief determinant of graduation is your check clearing. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Koster has sufficient political clout to make sure this alternative view get heard throughout the county. Or maybe he'll encounter the same deafening silence that my letters to the editor and blog posts have received.

You may want to read (or reread) my blog post on the Bachelor's of Applied Science in Information Technology and Administrative Management (BAS-ITAM) to see one example of a hybrid program. This program allows students with a two-year Associate's degree in computing and one-year work experience to earn a Bachelor's through Central Washington University at Edmonds Community College by attending both online and onsite classes in Edmonds, Everett and Des Moines.

Tag: John Koster, UW North Sound, Eva Smith, Online Education

Self-funded University - Take 2

Well the reaction to the proposal to pay for our own university and my blog post are pouring in. There are too many to count, assuming you haven't learn to count to 3. But hey, it's just the future of post-secondary education in our community. It's not like there is a barista in Maltby making coffee in her underwear. [Seriously, compare the number of letters to the editor in the Everett Herald discussing barista attaire vs the university. Some days it's easier to believe in the wisdom of crowds than others.]

Two of the three comments are skeptical of the idea of a local entity building a State facility, one from an anonymous commenter in a previous post and one via Facebook from Kevin. Very legitimate questions about the nature of funding. If Snohomish County funds the university construction how would it transfer to the state, or would it? Would the State fund the operations of the school or not? Would the State subsidize the tuition of students as they do at the other universities or would Snohomish county (or would there be no subsidy so that costs were comparable to other private institutions)? Here is what Kevin had to say:

Interesting idea. Not sure it takes into account the notion of distributing state funding (such as there is) to meet needs across the state or why one county should try to shoulder that budget burden on its own when others clearly don't have to. As a trend it would likely lead to more education resources showing up in wealthy counties (those who can afford to, do, those who can't, don't) and fewer in poor counties?

Kevin is intimately familiar with the funding process in post-secondary education and I take his comments seriously. My response brings me back to the same basic concept - the State doesn't need to build a brand new university complex from the ground up to meet the State's education needs. Further, the citizens of Kitsap County, Vancouver and the Tri-Cities would argue that the State's needs could be better met by spending a $1 billion in construction in their jurisdication. The commute from Poulsbo to Bellingham is longer than from Marysville.

If, as is often stated by proponents for the Snohomish county location, a new university will be a significant economic benefit then the citizens receiving that benefit should have some skin in the game. And let's face it, a world-class polytechnic university focused on graduate and post-graduate studies in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) isn't going to meet the educational needs of most of our citizen's. It's meant to encourage new businesses and job growth in high-tech fields and the student population will be largely from out of the area (probably out of the country).

The other comment I saw was a letter to the editor in the Herald by Douglas Russell. His comments went directly to the heart of my "put up or shut up" commnet in the original post. Mr. Russell "put up", suggesting that he is more than willing to pay for the educational and economic benefit we would receive from a university, for his children and for his community.

The idea is that I can have a four-year college in my back yard, with a curriculum decided on by the community, based on the needs of the community, employing hundreds of faculty and staff, enrolling hundreds and hundreds of local students, and all I need to do is go to a store and hand the cashier an extra 10 cents the next time I drop $50 on purchases. I've got a dime right here, sign me up.

I am far more impressed by Mr. Russell's commitment of his limited time and money than anything Haugen, Dunshee and Sells have said in the last two years.

Yet, even in his letter we see the disconnect that our civic and political leaders have cultivated throughout this process. Mr Russell asks our leaders "Educate us. Show us how this will work, how we can bring jobs and families back to our community and how we can make a difference in the lives of our children". The sole focus of our leaders, however, has been on construction sites and construction dollars. They have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would rather have no university than to have it in the "wrong" city. Further, Mr. Russell is excited about a "curriculum decided on by the community" and not sending his kids off to the U District. Unfortunately, this is planned to be a polytechnic university, so unless all his kids will be studying STEM they may well be living in the U District. Mr. Russell deserves an answer from our leaders. We all do.

So good residents of Snohomish county, what do you think? Willing to pay extra for a local university? If not, why should residents of Bremerton, Richland and Vancouver pay for a university in our county? Should it be another broad-curriculum school or a highly-focused technical school? Should it meet the broad educational needs of our county's citizens or should it's primary purpose be to encourage economic growth and development?

Tags: UW North Sound, Education

Stimulus Spending

So what's your "elevator pitch" to President-elect Obama on stimulus spending for education? What do you say when then the President-elect steps into elevator with you, presses the button for the 47th floor and asks "how would you spend $40 billion on education so that it boosts employment immediately and enhances education in the long run"?

The Edmonds Community College (EdCC) newsfeed and twitter feed highlighted an op-ed from USA Today that said don't forget the critically important role that CC's play in the education of our society. Their concern stems from a set of 2-page ads by a group of major universities calling on the incoming administration to spend 5% of the stimulus package on education and "shovel-ready" projects at the universities. USA Today is right to call for that money to be shared more equitably with the CC's.

A quick search of the web turned up an Inside Higher Ed article on the topic including separate statements from the American Council on Education and a coalition of universities, plus some rather strong contrarian views that higher-ed doesn't deserve the money without strings attached (like the car companies). And to round out the spend-fest, this USA Today article discusses the stimulus spending that might go to K-12 education.

So here are the 5 points I'll make on the elevator with Barack:

• Fiber optics are the new concrete. Our fascination with buildings and roads is a decidedly 20th century preoccupation. We need to spend less (not $0, however) on buildings and more on broadband, data centers, learning management systems and business intelligence.
  
• World class K-12 education is the foundation. Money should first be spent on K-12, then community college and finally on 4-year universities. Sorry, but the number of people not getting a great high school education is far more concerning to me than people not getting to go to college right after high school. Bill Gates received a great high school education and part of a great college education - take a lesson.
  
• Create computer-ready jobs too. Why are we preoccupied with creating construction jobs all of a sudden. How about an IT Corp that paid for unemployed IT professionals to work in school IT departments for 2 years? Or perhaps a Online Ed Corp, where unemployed educators would not teach, but focus entirely on the migration of existing in-class curriculum to an effective online format?
  
• Education for the educators. You can't just throw computers at teachers and say "here, do something useful with them". The internet and collaborative tools make the situation even worse. Teachers need to rethink everything to turn a good on-site class into a good online class. We need to spend money revamping teacher education and we need to send existing teachers back through the system (they can become part of the Online Ed Corp mentioned above).
  
• Learning starts when education ends. In a world where continuous personal and professional education will be the norm, we need to stop focusing on degrees and start focusing on learning. We need to pay attention to libraries and librarians (see this ALA statement on stimulus spending). I'd like to see a few tens of million go to turning Suzzallo into the physical hub of Washington's virtual Library of Alexandria.
  

Oh, this is my floor. Nice talking to you.

Technorati Tags: Stimulus Package, Education, Edmonds Community College, Inside Higher Ed, American Council on Education, American LIbrary Association, Carnegie Corporation, Teacher Training, Job Creation

The Sno Poly Fighting Ailerons

Saturday's Everett Herald featured a story by political writer Jerry Cornfield on the possiblity of Snohomish County funding its own University. Sen. Steve Hobbs is introducing legislation to create a higher education investment district to fund the creation of the 4-year Polytechnic university. Funding would come from bonds that would be repaid with the proceeds from a .02% sales tax increase in areas participating in the investment district. Newly elected Rep. Mike Hope is sponsoring a companion bill in the House.

I am no fan of the proposed university - it funnels money from education to construction - but I really like this proposal because it gives the citizens a chance to indicate how important the college is to them. Hobbs is quoted as saying "Now this says to the community 'if you really want it, here is an opportunity and if you don't want it, we'll move on.' " Let me summarize:

Snohomish County, put up or shut up.

Let's face it, up to now we have had no skin in the game. All the benefits come to us and all the costs are paid by someone else. What a deal! But that's not how life should work. When we break the feedback loop, when benefits aren't balanced against costs, we create a situation where really poor decisions are made (like when people who make mortgages are insulated from the negative effects of the loans going bad).

Under the Hobbs proposal residents of Snohomish county can vote to raise their own sales tax and commit the money to paying off $400 million in bonds. That is what I call putting your money where your mouth is. In addition, the proposal seems to put a stake in the ground and definatively state that this will be a polytechnic university. No waffling, no leaving open the possibility of an art history degree. Knowing it will be a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) focused school will also help voters decide if the proposed university will fill their needs for post-secondary education.

If my fellow citizens voted to tax themselves to build a polytechnic university I would get behind the effort. I might even go for a Master's in Computer Science (Mrs. AdvisoryBored's MS is making my BA feel inferior). Still there is plenty in the article to make me doubt the university will ever come to fruition:

• Aaron Reardon heaps blame on the state for not doing it's job to build a college, but it was us that couldn't choose a site. If the three musketeers (stooges?) - Haugen, Sells, Dunshee - couldn't come to some agreement over the course of 18-months and with the help of a mediator, why do you think they will put their bickering aside now?
• Mike Sells doesn't think the idea will get much "traction", but it deserves a hearing. A hearing in front of the committee where he is Vice-Chairman. If it doesn't get much traction it will because Sells doesn't want it to get much traction.
• It is questionable if this school will be able to meet any significant portion of the demand for post-secondary education by our county's citizens. While half of the slots might be allocated to local students, there is a very really possibility that local students won't be interested in or prepared for STEM-focused programs. Backers have consistently described these as "high demand programs", but they refused to acknowledge that students have not been enrolling in these programs for years. Everyone needs to understand up front that this school's population may largely be young men from other parts of this country or world.

In the meantime, let's look towards Central, Western, EdCC and EvCC (including University Center) to keep delivering the goods.

Technorati Tags: UW North Sound, Steve Hobbs, Mike Hope, Education Funding, STEM, Everett Herald, Jerry Cornfield

Attention shoppers

It wasn't the last minute Christmas shopping that reminded me of the old Kmart blue light special, it was a blog post by Frank Kenny on his proposal for a social networking class. Frank is president/CEO of the North Mason County Chamber of Commerce and a big believer in social networking/web 2.0 in business, particularly for the small business sector. I've been following Frank on Twitter and that's where he asked for a little feedback on his proposed class. His idea is to introduce his membership to Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging.

I really like what he is proposing because I agree that social networking offers a lot of value to small business owners if they become familiar with the tools and learn to adapt them to their needs. I kinda went over board and ended up adding a post-length comment (see here and scroll down to the comments). Instead of reprinting my comments here I'll let you switch over to his site. I'll wait -- "someone left the cake out in the rain and we'll never get that recipe .. "-- oh, you're back.

Given that Frank and others like him are pushing the information revolution into small businesses everywhere, perhaps we need to consider a few things in our education environment:

• if web 2.0 is on the radar of small businesses in Belfair then it had better on the radar of your business courses. Integrating web 2.0 into your business classes is at least as valuable as teaching it in stand alone technology classes, and probably more valuable.
• don't shy away from teaching web 2.0 in the classes because younger students "grew up with the technology". As I have discussed before, a student's ability to use the tools in a personal setting is irrelevant. When they start working they will be judged on their ability to accomplish something with them in a business context (increase revenue, cut costs, build brand recognition).
• in a small business and in a slowing economy, the creative application of technology to improve business can come from many places within the organization. Most small businesses aren't going to be looking for a director of internet marketing after completing Frank's class, but they will be more open to the use of the tools when an employee suggests it (perhaps one of your students). The person who recommends Twitter for announcing the blue light special on bananas probably won't be the store owner and maybe not even the produce manager. It's more likely to be stock boy (girl) and it's going to look great on their resume.
  

So what do you think? Does your HR program have students thinking about YouTube as a training vehicle? Do your purchasing classes include LinkedIn as a resource for vendor references?

Tags: Frank Kenny, North Mason County Chamber of Commerce, Web 2.0, Business Education

Connections yes, funding no

Today's Everett Herald had an interesting editorial piece on education. To summarize: there are a lot of good, high-skilled, high-wage jobs out there, but students aren't aware and aren't preparing for them. The solution is a $900 million fund for grants to help draw the connections.

Okay, I'm buying the part about good jobs. I agree that students aren't recognizing the full range of career opportunities. The drop-out rate is way too high, yes I'm with you. So we need a new federal program to make grants. Oppps, you lost me on that last one.

Is it possible that students don't see these as an option because we - parents, teachers, counselors, business leaders, politicians and editorial writers - have spent the last 30 years devaluing these careers? I've done it myself. I've joked about avoiding jobs where your name is sewn on your shirt. Never mind that for the last 20 years I've been sporting a badge that tracks my every moment and features a picture that makes my driver's license photo look like Annie Leibovitz was working the camera at the DMV.

A month ago I walked into the Mariner High counseling center for our first advisory committee of the year. What I saw were big banners with the registration dates for the major public and private 4-year colleges in the area. That's all I remember seeing. There may have been information on community colleges and apprenticeship programs, but I sure don't remember them. If it made that big of an impression on a 50-year old, imagine the message a 15-year old receives.

I have heard on several occassions, from teachers in different districts, that counseling students to options other than a 4-year degree directly following high school is not done. The expectation is that college is the one true way to succeed in life. Society sees it that way, why shouldn't counselors. You've heard administrators proudly claim that "xx% of our graduates are accepted to 4 year colleges"? Okay, again why are students not looking at the full range of career options? Is it possible that students are listening to what we are saying, even if we aren't listening to ourselves?

So yes, we do need to feature these career paths. Yes, we do need to counsel students about their options. Yes, we do need to celebrate the opportunity Sno-Isle Skills center and our community colleges offer. We don't need a federal program and grants to do it. We've put up a wall to block student's view and now we want a federal grant to install a window. It's our wall and we should remove it ourselves.

For related discussions, see my 2+2+2 = Bachelor of Applied Science and Review Rep. Loomis Wrap Newsletter posts.

Tags: Education, Vocational Education, Everett Herald