Advisory Bored

Giving them the first degree

2009-08-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

So here is the story, about a year ago a group of 10 Washington State Patrol (WSP) troopers were accused of having received college diplomas from questionable institutions (i.e., a degree mill). Troopers, you see, get 2% pay increase for earning a 2 year associates degree and a 4% increase for earning a 4 year bachelors degree (what a coincidence that the percent pay increase matches the number of years in the degree). An investigation last winter indicated that they had received some basic approval from the human resources staff and would, therefore, not be prosecuted for criminal offenses. In just the last couple of days, however, the WSP has recommend firing the 8 individuals remaining on the force. [go here to find a list of articles in Puget Sound media outlets covering the story.]

How did this all come to light? No doubt it was because of their sub-par performance when compared to troopers with legitimate degrees, right? No, of course not. A degree mill in Eastern Washington was busted and it served government employees, so they worked back through the list of employee degrees (ah, the old employee-degree table) and there are your alleged cheaters.

Does that make you upset at the troopers? Not me. The troopers want to earn more money - who doesn't - and the best way to do it is to get a degree. Their employer doesn't really seem to care if it is a legit degree and since there doesn't appear to be a direct relationship between degree and job performance why kill yourself. That is, unless you like school.

What drives me crazy is that their employer, my government, gives out pay increases for things that should eventually lead to better performance, instead of for the performance improvement itself. I mean, if the degree really makes a difference then it should show up in the individual's performance, right? And, if their performance improves without a degree, shouldn't they get a raise too?

It might be useful to ask ourselves what we really want when we make a college degree a requirement for employment (or for a pay raise). I think what we expect is that the degree certifies that a person has gained a set of skills, knowledge, experiences and personal connections that we feel makes for a "better" person. Great, but what if it doesn't? A degree is normally granted based upon the accumulation of credit hours from a disparate set of general studies and program specific classes. I never had an assessment to determined I was a good critical thinker, did you? I am sure, however, that there are those who think my time on the banks of the Mountlake Cut ensure that I am.

Worse still, by requiring a degree in addition to the skills/knowledge/experiences we specifically exclude individuals who can demonstrate they have gained those skills/knowledge/experiences through means that didn't lead to the granting of a degree. It sends the clear and unmistakable message that acquiring a piece of paper that says we know something is more important than knowing something. Why are we surprised that we end up with degree mills, people buying term papers and lying on resumes?

I fear we are creating a college degree bubble that will, like housing and tech stock bubbles before it, burst leaving us worse off, both individually and as a society. Student loan debt is just the first and most obvious sign of trouble ahead. Post-secondary education is an absolutely vital part of our society, but the ascendancy of the degree to near deity status is making the system weaker, not stronger. The challenge is for employers, public and private, to back away from the edge of this cliff.

Postscript: On August 30th James McCusker, the economics columnist for the Everett Herald, wrote a column titled "Focus on skill, not school, for hiring". In it he takes on the "relentless marketing of academic credentials as a product". He suggests that we need to focus on the real requirements of the job and not add unnecessary educational requirements simply to reduce the pool of applicants. The article is right on the mark and well worth the 5 minutes you'll spend reading it.

Technorati Tags: Washington State Patrol, Post-Secondary Education, Degree Mills

Digital Naiveté

2009-07-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a study from North Carolina Central University, which finds that college student's perception of their own skills with Microsoft Office falls short of their actual performance with the tool. 75% of students indicated they had a high proficiency with MS Word and most were able to complete the basic tasks, but they could complete only half the moderate task and none of the advanced tasks. Excel was worse. 69% of students indicate an average proficiency but the average student could only do two of the basic tasks and none of the moderate or advanced tasks. PowerPoint is the one tool where they seem to correctly assess their own capability.

So let me summarize for my business and IT brethren:

don't get rid of your help desk yet
don't get rid of your Intro to Word and Excel online training classes yet
don't be surprised if you continue to see documents where the space bar is the primary tool for indentation
get ready for more inane PowerPoint presentations (when all you got is a hammer ....)

I'll leave the rigorous peer review to someone with a little more time on their hand, but the numbers sure sound consistent with what I hear from technology teachers on the school advisory boards where I serve. They say that a large percentage of students in high school simply don't have the basic computer and software skills (computer literacy) they need in the work place. Oh, don't worry, they can text and download music no problem. It's things like adding a network printer or changing page orientation to landscape that confuse them.

This is not, however, a rant against those students. I don't expect them to know what they need to know with any great accuracy at this point in their lives. I certainly did not when I was 17, 18, and 19. This is really a rant against parents, administrators and teachers who give these students a free pass simply because they're digital natives - a term I despise. The teachers I talk to say that students are not interested in taking those classes and that their parents fully support that because they use the computer all the time. Add to that the test-crazy education system we have established and if it ain't on test, why bother studying it.

So this is the point in the rant where I suggest how we interject computer literacy into the basic school curriculum, right? Not going to happen this time. I went to school at a time when paper and pencil were the only things available and to college when the electric typewriter was cutting edge. Somehow I figured out how to do justification, hanging indents and table inserts without the help of the Edmonds School District. I'm sure that today's students can do the same.

I would, however, suggest that businesses start adding a basic computer literacy test as a requirement for all positions that require computer work (which is most these days). We spend way too much money on basic computer and software skills and there is no reason that should be required with the coming generation (they are digital natives, after all). Colleges and Universities might want to add it to their admissions requirements for the same reason. If students and their parents are really concerned they can look at programs like the SAM Challenge or ICDL.

Technorati Tags: Computer Literacy, Microsoft Office, IT Skills, North Carolina Central University

All Access Pass

2009-07-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-19T22:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-25T21:48:00.000-08:00

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

Snow Day 2.0

2009-01-19T12:50:00.000-08:00

Aggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh! Please tell me we aren't discussing how to make up snow days, again. Please tell me the anti-teacher crowd isn't using the snow day issue to extract a pound of flesh from instructors, again.

With planning and proper application of technology there is no reason for missed days due to snow. Education should not be dependent on one's presence in the classroom. I mean seriously, home school kids learn at home everyday for decades, why can't your kids do it for 3 days every other year? The answer, of course, is that that they can. Unfortunately, we have codified "days in class" as an absolutely essential deliverable from schools. (Pop Quiz: What other state institution uses "time served" as the primary measure of success?)

As a taxpayer and hiring manager, I am far more concerned with student achievement than I am with student attendance. Days in class reinforces an incorrect notation of education as a place-bound, time-constrained process; the academic equivalent of the auto assembly line. In the modern workplace, at least for technology and information workers, what you get done is far more important than when and where you do that work. (In this context, when refers to your working hours, not whether you deliver on time. That still matters a lot.)

Make-up days are sensible if every moment in class is packed with critical information. But are they really? Let's say you have a daughter at Jackson High and class is canceled 3 times in January. That means she'll have 3 more hours of history class in June. What exactly do you think she is going to learn in that 3 hours that will make a difference in her life, career or education? What, did you think teacher was going to forget to mention that the North won the war?

One of the key underlying themes to this blog is that significant reform to the educational system requires participation from those of us outside the process as well those on the inside. If we want to stop the whole snow day thing, then it is going to be up to those of us outside the process to ask our political leaders and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to change the law first. When the law is changed, then and only then, can local school districts and teachers create plans for Learn From Home days; the educational equivalent of Work From Home.

Tag: Education, Snow Days

Self-funded University - Take 2

2009-01-17T12:13:00.000-08:00

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

Links and Resources: January 1st, 2009

2009-01-01T20:50:00.000-08:00

Over the last year I have occassionally posted a set to links to other web resources without much commentary, which I titled "Links and Resources: xxxx". In the beginning of December I phased out this type of post in favor of using del.icio.us. In that post I introduced social bookmarking, encouraged you to add my bookmarked pages to your RSS feed reader and added a linkroll listing of these links to the left-hand column of this blog.

I had a few extra links laying around so I thought I would give you one last Links and Resources post.

Take the WASL yourself. A sample Washington Assessment of Student Learning test is available from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) web site. Good luck.
Back during the fall round of advisory bored meetings I recommended an article titled "Reprogramming College Preparatory Computer Science" by Joanna Goode. You can find a copy of the article at the Computer Science Teachers Association web site.
On the open courseware front, OnlineUniversities.com has posted a list of 100 awesome Ivy League lectures.
Edublogs.tv hosts two videos of interest to those using Google: Google Search Tips and Google Advanced Search Tips.
Liz Davis hightlights some of the web 2.0 successes at her school during the last school year.

This next group of links comes from the Edmonds Community College Newsvine feed. Newsvine is something of a cross between a blog and social bookmarking. You can add your own content to your column or you can seed it with other content (add links). In addition to their own feed, EdCC appears to contribute to a Newsvine Group titled The Academe. Let me recommend that you give both a look and again, much thanks to EdCC communications for hunting down these next three links

This Puget Sound Business Journal article highlights the problem of manufacturering jobs going unfilled, even as the economy turns sour. Article highlights EdCC challenge in filling some of the specialized vocational-technical programs aimed at this employment gap.
Local post-secondary education faces many challenges. Five college presidents sit down and discuss the challenges on this episode of KUOW's Weekday.
The Enterprise newspapers don't think the right place to start cutting the state budget is at the community colleges in this op-ed piece.

And, as has been the tradition, I end with something fun. Do you find those workplace posters with sayings and pictures of rowing shells inspirational? Me neither. So you'll like this selection of demotivational posters from Despair.com.

Oh, and for Paul at the Last Great Road Trip, when I say this is the last links post, I mean it is the conclusion not the ultimate.

Stimulus Spending

2009-01-01T09:57:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-26T23:29:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-17T21:53:00.000-08:00

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

Santa arrives on a Viking ship

2008-12-17T21:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas came early this year for fans of post-secondary education when Western Washington University announced two new bachelor's degree and one new master's degree to be offered at Everett Community College's (EvCC) University Center. If that weren't enough, the Herald's Editorial Board, in this Sunday's editorial, finally seems to acknowledge the value that University Center can bring to the county. I wished I had thought of that (oh wait, I did).

It's a nice change of pace from the news on post-secondary education we received this summer and into the fall. Our political leaders just embarrassed themselves arguing over the location, demonstrating to all that construction dollars, not education is their primary goal. Then a mediator was assigned to help break the impasse, but without much luck. Then the economy and the State's tax revenue tanked. As a result, expect staff cuts, program elimination, enrollment reduction and cost increases at every single public university and college in the State. The topping on the sundae is Sen. Shin's being replaced on the Higher Ed committee by a member from Gig Harbor. Did you know they want a UW branch campus out on the peninsula? Seems they're like the second biggest county in the State without a university and it would bring technology jobs and yada, yada, yada.

Look, I'm not suggesting that we don't need more educational opportunity in the tri-county region, far from it. I am, however, suggesting that a new university focused on advanced science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees won't help most people, and my quite possibly make the situation worse. Here are the questions I am asking when I read about the proposed university:

Has anyone stated for a fact exactly what type of university this will be? Will it be WWU or UW or MIT? Isn't that a more important decision than where it should be located?
How will it help lower high school and/or college drop out rates?
How will it help lower the cost of education, consistent identified as the biggest barrier to students attaining their goals?
How will it help prepare high school students for, and encourage them to enter, STEM programs in college?
How will it help students who need more learning opportunities, but who do not thrive in an academic environment?
How will it help address the need for continuing education required to advance in a career or switch careers through a person's working life (it isn't called the Information Age for nothing)?

All I know is that no matter what the problem is, a UW branch campus will fix it. It's like educational cod liver oil. So, until the proposal starts answering these questions I am completely opposed to this construction initiative. More thoughts are available on my archived No Sno U blog and I keep a list of Delicious links tagged UWBranch that you can view.

Tags: WWU, UW, EvCC, University Center, UW North Sound, Post-secondary Education

Lights, camera, education

2008-12-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

The Everett Herald's twitter feed carried a post for an article about YouTube as a teaching tool, which appeared in the Money section today. The profiled student, a college junior, was struggling with trigonometry and searched YouTube for videos on the topic. She was able to view and review these videos until she finally understood the topic. The video was from the Khan Academy Channel. The article says that the Khan Academy is the work of Salman Khan, a hedge-fund manager and math geek. The videos grew out his tutoring of his nephew. Other friends and family wanted tutoring, so instead of repeating the lessons over and over again he committed them to video and posted them.

As a teaching tool, the value comes from the fact that the videos are short, simple and on topic. Additionally, the videos are available when the student is ready to learn (what in industry is being referred to as just-in-time training). This brings to mind the wonderful Common Craft Show videos that I have featured here in previous posts.

Well, Mrs. AdvisoryBored just couldn't control her sense of curiosity and was off searching for systems analysis and database design videos. There were plenty of long-winded, talking-head lectures, but some other more interesting ones too. Take for instance the CareerRx channel which features a series of "A Day in the Life" videos that give viewers insight into what different jobs are like (see the computer systems analyst and the computer software engineer).

Are you leveraging YouTube to help educate students? Yeah, yeah, I know you can't get to YouTube at school because if you do then blah, blah, blah. Let's forget that argument for the moment and deal with what you can do. If you are a math teacher can you review the Khan Academy videos and, if you like them, recommend them to students and parents for homework support? How about an IT instructor and Word mail-merge videos? Can you do your own videos as Liz Davis has done (she supports teachers, not students, but same concept)? Can you ask advisory board members to review and/or recommend videos that they think accurately represent the work of their profession?

Tags: Education, YouTube, Khan Academy, Common Craft Show, CareerRX, Liz Davis, Eva Smith

It's del.icio.us

2008-12-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed a new feature in the left-hand navigation column right under the site labels called Recent Bookmarks. I use a social bookmarking tool called del.icio.us to bookmark online resources that I find interesting and want to comment on. Delicious offers a LinkRoll feature that lets me list my 5 most recent bookmarked entries, plus commentary, on my blog.

If you find these links particularly intersting, you can go to my del.icio.us site to see all the links or to browse via tag name. If you would like an updated list of new bookmarks you can subscribe to its RSS feed. Yes, you can use RSS feeds for something other than blogs.

I plan on writing more about social bookmarking in the near future, but for now I would really encourage people to investigate social bookmarking as learning and professional development tool. A couple of quick reasons why I like social bookmarking:

My bookmarks are stored online, so I can get to them for anywhere (any browser on any machine)
I can give bookmarked items tags, keywords that help me organize and categorize the list
I can find other resources tagged by other people on the same topic, allowing me to learn from their knowledge quests (consistent with the connectivism learning theory)
I can create a network of fellow bookmarkers so that I can share bookmarks with them without emailing links all over the place

Let me leave you with another of the fine Common Craft videos, Social Bookmarking in Plain English.

Tags: Social Bookmarking, Delicious

But wait, there's more

2008-12-03T01:10:00.000-08:00

I don't have children so, as a result, I have missed out on the whole joy/terror (circle one) of homework, except tonight. Due to a strange set of circumstances that included a week-long illness and a broken computer, my nephew Sam was over at my house doing research on China. I set him up in the home office with all the essentials: Word, FireFox, Google and iTunes (well not all the essentials, he's too young for beer or coffee). After awhile he tracked me down and asked "how many feet is 5,000 kilometers".

Since starting the Advisory Bored my life has morphed into a series of bloggable events. This is one of those moments. Since he had Google up, he had the answer right in front of him. Yes, Google is a search tool, but wait, there's more.

Google's has a number of search features that allows it to interrupt your input into the search box and return to you the answer as a search result. It will look-up words, convert amounts to different units of measure, give you local info and even do math. Try any of these in a search box:

233 feet in furlongs (unit coversions)
define: connectivism (definitions from online dictionaries)
time stockholm (local time)
weather oslo (local weather)
83 usd in kronor (money conversions)
1000*(1+.05)^10 (math)

If you are more of an "on the go" type person you can use Google SMS to search and perform many of the same features via text messaging. If you text "sea airport" to 466453 (it spells Google on many phones, but not my Blackberry), you'll get a text message back give you status information about SeaTac airport.

One of my personal favorites is Google Alerts. Here's how it works. You put in your search keywords, the type of search, the frequency of the search and the method of providing you the results (either email or RSS feed) and you are set. Google will run the search at the frequency you defined and notify you of any **new** entries to the result set. For example, a student in a current events class might want to add "obama cabinent appointment" into a comprehensive search run once a day and delivered via email so she is prepared with the newest information in time for class.

One of the really big problems of the information age to date is that the tools haven't kept pace with the information. As a result we are overwhelmed with data, so much so that it hides the information. Google search tools, like those mentioned here, can help students, teachers, parents and business people take back control. Let me leave you with this short video clip from Google on how to get the most from your search tools.

This text will be replaced

Tags: Advanced Search Features, Google Alerts, Google SMS

Educating Employees

2008-11-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving day. Mine was very enjoyable, largely due to the fact that the family dinner was not at my house this year (we still had the annual Fryday gathering around the deep fryer - 2 turkeys and 5 chickens). It did throw my schedule off, however, and I missed the full, extended version of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant on the radio. There's always next year.

I did catch an interest radio piece on KUOW, part of a series from the Cunard Cruise Lines called Liner Notes. Episode 6 (Talking Turkey) contained an interview with author Wendell Berry. Around 51 minutes into the podcast the interviewer asks Mr. Berry what advice he, a frequent commencement speaker, gives young people about leading a successful life. He says his comments always go against the grain because:

... I think what they are being taught is how to be good employees, which means to be dependent and obedient and so on, and I encourage them to try for independence.

Argue if you will about whether the goal of school is to create good employees or educated citizens (are the two really mutually exclusive?), but I can assure Mr. Berry that "dependent and obedient" is the very definition of a poor employee, certainly in the modern information technology (IT) organization. The world of routine, process-oriented jobs, where employees follow orders from a boss with superior knowledge is fading fast. Organizations are flat, managerial span of control wide, knowledge fleeting and work project-oriented. I would consider the 3 skills Alan November highlights in this short video clip as more accurate representation of what good employees need to be taught.

My concern, however, is not that Mr. Berry's assessment of hiring standards is accurate (it's not). My fear is that his assessment of education might be accurate. I know teachers and administrators are going to say we don't teach those things and I know that's not their intent. I am confident that there isn't an AP Obedience class anywhere in the country. Still, I wonder if the very organization of school and the behaviors it models doesn't encourage some dependent and obedient behaviors. I'm thinking of the focus on lecturing, the teacher as the expert ("the sage on the stage"), the rigorous structuring of the class day and standardized testing the reinforces the notion of "one right answer".

This gets tricky because, if we are modeling the wrong behaviors, then the discussion can't be between a couple of teachers at Kamiak or Cascade or E-W and their respective technology advisory committees. Those behaviors are woven into the very fabric of the education system. Removing them is the job of the weaver, not the seamstress. That is why, as I have written before, there needs to be a discussion amongst the broader community - taxpayers, citizens, civic leaders, business leaders, teachers and administrators.

Tags: Wendell Berry, Alan November, Education, Employment Skills

Silk Degrees

2008-11-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

From yesterday's (11/24/08) Everett Herald comes an article on the expansion of degree offerings from other universities as the UW branch campus idea dies a quick, painful death as a result of the State's budget shortfall.

As the campaign to bring a University of Washington campus to Snohomish County stalls, the state's other public universities are quietly expanding bachelor's and master's degree programs in the Everett area.

Quietly expanding? Really? Too bad Herald reporters don't read the ads in the Herald 'cause if they did they would know that the schools had been paying a lot of money to make the expansion of the programs broadly known. It's also too bad that Herald reporters don't read Herald letters to the editors 'cause if they did they would have seen a letter from me on 3/14/08 highlighting those same degree programs (you can also find the text of that letter here). I would argue that had the Herald not abandoned all journalistic integrity to become the primary cheerleader for the UW branch campus, the expansion of these programs would have been anything but quiet.

From my perspective as a lowly taxpayer these programs are a bargain because the deliver education to under-served populations, often in under-served areas, with significantly less infrastructure and administrative costs. A UW North Sound, for instance, will take the better part of a billion dollars and years of construction before we graduated anyone. These alternative from existing universities go up much faster (although they are still too slow to respond).

Take the Central Washington University (CWU) information technology and administrative management (ITAM) degree, mentioned in the article. You may recall that I blogged about the local version, a bachelor's of applied science ITAM (BAS-ITAM), last spring. The Herald article doesn't fully describe the value of the program. Yes it offers an IT bachelor's degree locally, but more important, it offers it in multiple locations and to a different student base. The program is taught simultaneously through distance learning technologies at Edmonds CC, Highline CC and now Everett CC. (Below is picture of the lecturer's workstation at Highline. The small screens let the lecturer see the classroom and students at the other locations.)

Lecturer Workstation

In addition, the program is targeted at a different audience than the Ellensburg-based ITAM degree. The BAS-ITAM is a two-year program for students that have completed an IT program at a community college and have at least a year of work experience (hence the "applied" part of the name). I won't cover the same ground covered in the earlier post, but one point bears repeating. Most community college IT programs are Prof/Tech and their credits do not transfer to any bachelor's programs (they are referred to as terminal degrees). Without the BAS-ITAM these students would have to start over again as freshman, spending time and money on areas of study where they already have the requisite knowledge. And, since the tuition is subsidized by the State, the program saves the taxpayers two years of tuition subsidy.

Also worth noting is that June 2008 saw the first set of graduates from the Edmonds and Highline locations. So CWU isn't really "testing the waters in Everett" as the article states.

For more ranting on what's wrong with a UW branch campus see my No Sno U blog.

Tags: Everett Herald, Central Washington University, Bachelor's of Applied Science, Edmonds Community College, Everett Community College, Highline Community College

More tweaks

2008-11-22T22:49:00.000-08:00

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll spend the weekend in a boat drinking beer with his friends." -- anonymous

In this sense, blogging is like fishing. I started to do just one thing, make the body of the post wider, and I am still making little changes. In addition to the new layout, I've:

added Creative Commons (CC) licensing. CC provides content creators a relatively simple way to maintain copyright over their materials while still allowing a range of usage, at their discretion. I, for instance, selected an Attribution, Non-commercial, Share-Alike license for all materials that I create for the Advisory Bored (see the footer of each page). This means that anyone is free to use my works if they: attribute the work to me, don't make money from it and share any derivative work under the same licensing. BTW (by the way ), this topic would be a great addition to any content creation class so that students start to understand the role of licensing in a professional/business setting. More on that later.
changed the position of the subscription details. In addition to moving the subscription box to the top of the left-hand navigation column, I've also simplified the display. I wanted to make it more prominent to encourage people to use some sort of syndication to get notifications of new posts. Syndication eliminates the need for the reader visit a site and look for new content. I use Feedburner for the syndication so that I am able to capture statistics about non-visiting readers.
made it easier to share with AddThis. At the bottom of each post you will now find a little icon that says "BOOKMARK". It's a tool from AddThis that makes it easier for you the reader to bookmark the post for retrieval later or to share it with friends via email or social networking sites. Click the icon and you get a box of common sharing/bookmarking options (see image at right). For instance, click on Email and you can quickly send an email to a friend, with a little message and a link to this post. In return, I get feedback about which posts are most intriguing.

As is often the case, the changes don't take long. It's troubleshooting all the little roadblocks that leaves you weary and sleep-deprived. I spent 90 minutes figuring out why I couldn't sign-in to Google in IE on my laptop - I almost never use IE on that machine. Somehow Google, Amazon and Blogger all were set as "never accept cookies" in the internet options, a requirement for Google/Blogger login. Then I spent another 2 hours trying to figure out why I couldn't add the AddThis icon to my blog template without causing an error. After 2 hours I put down my laptop, walked over to my desktop machine and made the change in 40 seconds. Why? I have no idea. Some days it is better to declare victory and go home early.

Let me know if you find any of these things helpful or merely a visual distraction.

Tags: Creative Commons, Feedburner, AddThis

Links and Resources: November 18th, 2008

2008-11-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. -- Eric Hoffer

Opps, maybe IT isn't as recession-proof as columnist were predicting (that bubble burst quick). Over at ZDNet "Tech workforce pinched by economy, feeling like 2003" gives the bad numbers for layoffs in the tech sector, especially for telecom, electronics and computer industries.
However, there is still hope for other parts of the profession. Michelle Singletary picked "150 Best Recession-Proof Jobs" for her Color of Money Book Club (Everett Herald Nov. 2nd). #1 on their list was computer systems analyst. #5 was post-secondary teacher. Mrs. Advisory Bored, who teaches computer systems analysis at a community college, was rather smug the remainder of the day.
Computerworld's 2008 Salary Survey seems to indicate that "The hottest IT skills survive a cool economy". The survey tells us that businesses need to get the most of the technology they already have. Web developers, network administrators and information security managers stand to do well regardless of the economy.
At the most recent Everett SD technology advisory committee we briefly touched on the issue of the under-representation of certain demographic groups in IT. In the article "Making a Case for Diversity in STEM Fields" the authors argue that the lack of diversity isn't merely an unfortunately civil rights issue, but, given the importance of STEM, has significant implications for our economy and future. The article is hosted at MentorNet, an eMentoring site for science and technology fields (more here).
eSchool News reports that the "Nations first tech-literacy test" will be included in the Nation's Report Card starting in 2012. (I assume they mean information technology, because a stapler is technology and we don't need a test on it.) A contract was awarded to develop the framework for the assessment, but there is plenty left unresolved. They don't even know which grade-level will be tested.
And let us conclude with something fun. Paul over at the Last Great Road Trip sent me a link to Oblong Industries. Oblong makes g-spatial, a spatial operating environment. Watch the video.

Seek and ye shall find

2008-11-17T20:48:00.000-08:00

I was listening to KUOW on the way to work today and I heard a piece on a basic education funding study for the State of Washington. This blog isn't about that study, it's about finding that study.

So when I tossed the search terms into Google I started getting a lot of results from a lot of places. I had a few keywords that helped me refine the search, but there were still a number that were not relevant. Then I remembered that I could build my own custom search engine with Google. A custom search engine allows you define one or many specific web sites or web pages to be searched.

So I created a search called Washington State Education that pointed to a handful of state education sites such as the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (sbctc.ctc.edu) and the Higher Education Coordinating Board (hecb.wa.gov). Now when I enter those same search terms into the custom search box, only results from the specified sites are included. Much more relevant because I'm not interested in Ohio's basic education funding initiatives.

You can also include the search as a widget/gadget in your iGoogle page or in a blog. If you scroll down the left-hand side of the Advisory Bored you will eventually reach a search box. That uses the same exact custom search engine as if you went to the link I specified above. Cool, no.

What can you do with a custom search engine? Well quite a lot I would guess. Google lists some featured sites here. A couple of my favorites are:

Expanding Your Horizons which is an engine for girls, teachers and parents to explore science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This engine includes over 140 different sites.
CS Curriculum Search will help computer science (CS) faculty find teaching resources that other CS faculty has published to the web.
Mrs. Gray's Research Sites for Kids contains a list of kid-safe sites that middle school teacher Lucy Gray can use with her students in Chicago (and now you can use with your students too).

You will notice in the final site that there are contributors listed. What this means is that while Mrs. Gray created the site, she has allow some people to help suggest new sites to add to the custom search engine. So, for instance, history teachers in the Mukilteo SD could band together to build a history search engine even if they are spread out across the district.

My one other custom search site is called Puget Sound News Sources. It includes 12 local media entities, including the Everett Herald. So if you want to know what local media is saying about you, give it a try.

Tags: Google, Custom Search Engine

Virtual High School - continued

2008-11-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

Not long after my Virtual High School post I received a tweet (a Twitter message) from the Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis pointing to this article from Orlando Sentinel on a new Florida law to expand online education in primary and secondary grades:

The law passed by the Legislature last spring is designed to give parents more choice in how their elementary- and middle-school children are educated full time. Online instruction joins home schooling, charter schools and Florida's on-again, off-again experiment with vouchers to private schools as a way of broadening the selection.

"The beauty of this is it is another choice for parents," said Sonia Esposito, director of school choice for Osceola schools.

The state will pay for online instruction, providing districts about $6,000 per student -- what they would get for a student who showed up at a regular school. But savings are expected in bus transportation, school construction and other areas.

Then today I was outside for my last lawn mowing/Teachers's Podcast listening session of the year - I'm done with lawn mowing not the podcast. Virtual schools were again the topic of discussion in episode #28 (for those of you new to podcasting, you can play the episode from your computer, you don't need an iPod).

They discussed the Florida law which apparently requires schools to offer a full online degree program starting next year. They then dove deep into virtual schools and online education. It's a great discussion and they have posted a number of links for you reading enjoyment. A couple of things I found particularly interesting:

Dr. Kathy talked about online education as a continuum that starts with the use of basic online resources, moves to students using it as part of their studies, then to partially online courses and finally to fully online programs. Starting with the simple stuff is alright, but it's just the beginning.
Dr. Kathy also reinforced the notion that the proper application of technology to the classroom is not simply migrating your existing class content to the web or learning management system (LMS). Teachers will need to adapt their teaching to get the most of the new technology, just as they have had to do in the past (anyone remember filmstrips?).
Dr. Kathy and Mark went on to discuss the hybrid or blended model in which coursework is a mixture of online and on-site. They referenced the VOISE program in Chicago as an example (see this summer 2008 Converge article about the program starting on page 21).
Mark talked about a Converge article he did in 2007 about the Distance Learning program in Alabama. He talked about how the program was used to, among other things, deliver coursework that was not offered on-site because of insufficient demand for certain classes (say Latin or AP Programming). We might consider this the Long Tail of education.

Okay, so last time I said we in the broader community - business, taxpayers, parents, advisory board members - needed to be thinking about this too. I am even more convinced of that now. The implications of these changes seems more profound than merely getting teachers to blog.

How will we pay for educators to learn the technology and implement an entirely new way to deliver education? (And don't tell me they can do it as part of their job, that's not how it's done in the business world.)
How will funding be effected if students rush to fully or partially online programs and leave school buildings empty? It might be a great solution for a growing district that doesn't have enough space, but what about a district that is shrinking?
How will we fund schools if a student is on campus for four classes each day and then takes two more online from another school (funding and football are going to be the biggest roadblocks to educational reform).
What changes in teacher education do we need to make in advance of the transition? Are the Colleges of Education in our Universities training new teachers how to build their curriculum around both on-site and online delivery?

Digging up the links for this post I trip over a site, Virtual High School Meanderings, that you might add to your reading list if you are interested in virtual/online education.

Tags: Virtual Education, Online Education, Cool Cat Teacher,
Florida Virtual High School, The Teacher's Podcast, Virtual High School Meanderings