Virtual High School

Did you catch the Monday edition of the Herald? Their lead article was about the growth in attendance in virtual (0nline) high schools.

Online schools are booming. In Washington, the number of elementary, middle and high school students enrolled full-time in public, online schools has nearly quadrupled in three years to 5,666 last school year.

Nationwide, the number of students enrolled in online schools jumped 60 percent, to 506,950 between 2003 and 2005, the latest year with data, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Of course the paper edition had to feature more prominently the quote "I don't have to listen to teachers tell me what to do. This way I can site in my pajamas and still get it done." by putting it in a sidebar. That should stir some excitement in the if-it-was-good enough-for-me crowd.

It's time that education as a production line comes to an end. Students are not the raw materials of the education system and teachers are not factory workers, bolting facts onto students like an auto worker mounting a tire on a Buick. Is virtual high school part of solution?

Students don't all learn the same. People have different needs for the delivery of education. It's not that we have to do away with the existing format. Some people thrive in it, and it should continue. Many others don't, and we need an alternative for them. We can't afford to let students fail simply because we only want to teach one way. Perhaps you remember the TED Talks video from Ken Robinson titled "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" that I featured in a previous post. Take 20 minutes to listen Robinson's story of Gillian Lynne failing in the traditional school setting.

I know that we who serve on advisory boards are suppose to be thinking about about the needs of specific programs, but it seems to me that we also need to be thinking about the broader educational system. I'm interested in your thoughts. What type of people do you think would benefit from this alternative? Would an online education help prepare students for your job openings? Would you have wanted your high school experience to be all online, all in-class or some sort of hybrid?

Tags: Everett Herald, Online Education, Virtual High School, Ken Robinson

I went to school board with 27 Jennifers

Jennifer at the injenuity blog has been reassessing the way she is presenting social media tools to teachers in her post About Face. The core of her message is that social media tools aren't necessarily right for all instructors. Forcing a set of tools upon an instructor does not mean better education. Unless teaching changes, the introduction of new tools does nothing to further the goal of better education.

Initially I wasn't really buying Jennifer's thought process (also see comments by Geoff Cain and a post from another author titled "Which Technologies Shall We Evangelize"). As I continued to read and re-read her post, I started to get her point about changing teaching. She says that:

Teaching has to change before these tools can be effective for learning. When we promote the tools to instructors who are using inappropriate instructional and assessment strategies, we are doing nothing to further the cause of learner-centered pedagogy and collaborative learning.

Still, if educators have not used social media tools, save a two-hour seminar in the summer, how will they ever participate in changing teaching. It may not be about the tools, but the transformation isn't going to happen without them either (or without teachers understanding of them).

It's no different in the business world. When I try to convince my co-workers on the business side of the house to use a wiki I get blank stares. "What does it do?" they ask me. Their mental model is of a software application designed for a specific task. Responding with "It's a tool to quickly develop and maintain knowledge repositories in a highly collaborative environment" doesn't resonate with them. I won't describe the look of disappointment when I say there isn't a manual. Until someone from the business side embraces the wiki, I'm stuck.

I hope that the instructors who are deterred from using social media tools by Jennifer's frank and honest discussion are only deterred from using them as a cornerstone of their current courses. My experience is that you need to embrace the tools before you can assess their value (or lack thereof). Teachers can adopt the tools as part of their personal life or professional development activities. And so what if you just use these tools to "pave cow paths". We used computers to cut paychecks for decades before we learned to send email alerts notifying you that you're about to reach your credit limit.

Instead of creating a flat classroom right out of the gate, perhaps they could start using a social bookmarking tool like Diigo or del.icio.us with a group of fellow instructors. Everyone needs to save bookmarks in such a way that they are available from any computer. Along the way the instructors will be introduced to tagging and the power of the network to deliver a high-value information resources (see Week 2 of Work Literacy's Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals for a better introduction to social bookmarking).

Tags: Injenuity, Social Media, Web 2.0, Education, Flat Classroom, Social Bookmarking

Links and Resources: October 30th, 2008

“After bread, education is the first need of the people.”
--Georges Danton

• I've been participating the Work Literacy online class covering web 2.0 tools for learning professionals. It has been very informative, although I've been behind. I still can't figure out how I can fall behind in self-pace education! Anyway, if you are new to web 2.0 tools and their use in learning I would recommend you peruse the site, check out the many links and read the discussion boards.
  
• The ACM CareerNews mailing provided two links on the outlook for IT jobs in a slowing economy. "Wall Street's collapse may be computer science's gain" looks at the prospect of students turning away from finance programs for seemingly safer careers in computer science. "Hiring Survey: The IT Skills in Highest Demand" summarizes a Robert Half study on the state of IT skills now and in the future.
• CIOInsight asks "Is the IT Profession Recession Proof". I'm guessing that most IT staffers at WaMu are a little worried, but maybe the rest of us are in pretty good shape.
  
• Jen at the injenuity blog has made a number of her photographs available for use as slide backgrounds under Creative Commons licensing (see them all here). Jen's day job is in workforce development. She has created a Ning network on that topic here, although it doesn't look to be real active at the moment.
  
• If you aren't familiar with Creative Commons licensing I suggest you read their about page to get an overview. In a nutshell, it is a way to attach a "some rights reserved" copyright to your creative works. It also provides a simple way to clear other's content for use on your site, art work, or publication. It's seems like licensing of creative works should be included in all content creation coursework (photography, web design, digital graphics, etc).
  

Tags: Work Literacy, injenuity, Creative Commons, IT Careers, ACM

Get with the program(ming)

Did you get a chance to see the Randy Pausch's Last Lecture on KCTS during the recent pledge drive (it has also been playing on KBTC and can be seen on the web here)? Pausch was a professor of computer science who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006. This lecture, titled Really Achieving your Childhood Dreams, was given at Carnegie Mellon University in September 2007. It's a funny, yet inspiring look at computer science, academia, football, teamwork, user interface design, Star Trek and one man's journey to achieve his childhood dreams. The 48-year old Pausch died July 25th, 2008. If you have 90 minutes someday, watch the video. You won't be disappointed.

In the lecture, Pausch talks about indirect learning several times, something he calls head fakes. An example of a head fake is how kids indirectly learn really important things like teamwork and sportsmanship when all they thought they were learning was to play football.

Pausch's head fake legacy is Alice, the 3D programming environment that allows kids to build animated 3D stories and videos while introducing them to the concepts of object oriented programming. The use of animation allows students to better understand how they control the objects through the language and it gives them an introduction to key programming concepts. It also appears to be a more inviting introduction to programming to traditionally under-represented segments of our society (see their promotional video here).

Similarly, Alan Kay has been working on Squeak, a programming language based on the Smalltalk language. In particular, Squeak eToys is an implementation designed to help younger kids learn about science and math through modeling and experimentation. This video is another from the TED Talks series, features Kay talking about the educational value of the tools and demonstrating eToys on one of the one laptop per child (OLPC) machines.

I don't know if computer programming is being taught in the younger grades but these guys are making a really compelling case for focusing on it at a much younger age. Even if kids aren't becoming computer science majors, and most aren't, it seems like it offers important head fake opportunities to teach critical thinking, experimentation and what-if analysis. These are skills that are important to people who are working in finance or marketing. Heck, it's a pretty useful set of skills for picking the right mortgage (assuming anyone's allowed to have a mortgage anymore).

So what do you think? I'd like to know if any of the local school districts are teaching programming with eToys or Alice in middle or high schools? Is anyone teaching programming with any language in middle schools or are we all too busy studying for the WASL? Is there an opportunity to reach out to segments of our population that are traditionally under-represented in information technology/computer science?

Tags: Programming Education, Alice 3D, Squeak, eToys, Randy Pausch, Alan Kay

Would you like a Certs

In a recent post over at ZDNet, Deb Perelman asks whether IT pro's should have to demonstrate their skills. It appears there is some controversy over at Slashdot (like that's hard to do) as to whether experienced professionals with degrees should have to demonstrate their chops with, oh say, PL/SQL. Deb asks:

Do accountants have to provide the scores from their back-in-the-day CPA exams?

Well no, but they are required to pass a widely recognized, respected, standarized test that demonstrates their base knowledge and must follow-up with documented continuing education credits to maintain that certification throughout their career. We're not just talking doctors, lawyers and accountants here. I think hair stylists have more licensing requirements than the IT profession. In fact, some might argue that without such standards IT doesn't deserved to be called a profession.

Certifications are a subject of frequent discussion here at the AdvisoryBored household. In a recent post Mrs. AdvisoryBored dove into the issue of certifications and education following a Herald column by economist James McCusker. I'm not going to comment further than to suggest that you read her post and the two comments. In addition to teaching, Mrs. AdvisoryBored serves on an independent IT certification body, which gives her far greater insight into assessment, certification and degrees. Having been a hiring IT manager for several years she also understands just how useless the "your check cleared" certifications are to those of in industry.

Tags: IT Certification, Deb Perelman, James McCusker, Eva Smith