Tuttle SVC

Sign Me Up for the WWI Version

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:14:00 +0000

Arma II, via Offworld.com:

They've got until I retire to perfect it.

deborahgist: is reading Dewey.

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:44:00 +0000

Well, if that's what our new Commisioner of Education is doing this evening, I guess I can't complain.

Unity Reborn

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:00:00 +0000

News of Eve:

Even as Aggression is evacuating assets from Immensea, Ushra'khan appears to have immediately begun a push into the I-NGI8 pocket.
Kerth Gersen of Ushra'Khan tells us that the I-NGI8 station was taken to accomplish both educational and strategic purposes as new pilots were included on the assault to "teach" them about station conquest. Although they have seized the I-NGI8 station, Ushra'Khan may not decide to hold space in the region. Kerth explains: "if a station [turns out] to be a military asset, then I'll not simply throw it away... neither would I take on a ridiculous cost for no strategic benefit."

"100 percent disadvantaged and minority students" Might Be Easier

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:34:00 +0000

Valley Breeze:

While Cumberland's mayor was the driving force behind the school, middle-class Cumberland families were the most disappointed Tuesday evening.
Of the 58 from Cumberland who applied, 36 were left on the waiting list.
This school, that will serve Pawtucket, Central Falls, Cumberland and Lincoln, offered 19 seats for each community. Of those, about 52 percent, or 10 each, were reserved for lower income children in order to reflect the demographic of the overall community.
As it happened, just eight families applied from Lincoln and all were admitted. That town's remaining 11 seats were split among the other three communities through a system that gave Cumberland a total of 22 seats. Pawtucket and Central Falls got 23 seats each.
Central Falls had 24 apply, so just one was wait-listed. Pawtucket had 41 apply, so 18 didn't make it.

A tiny school divided between four very different towns (e.g., 3% child poverty in Cumberland, 41% in Central Falls, in 2000), managed by an external organization dependent on funding from an ambivalent state legislature. They'll probably able to pull it off through the medium term, but it'll be an adventure, and it certainly isn't a pattern I'd want to replicate. Essentially, the long-term path of Democracy Prep depends on how well it can be insulated from the demands of local democracy. The political constituency for the school in each town will be tiny and divided, with way more people bitter over losing the lottery than winning it.

In the meantime, the comment section gives you a nice introduction to inter-town, race and class politics in RI:

I am glad to SEE progress on the education front. I am however disappointed in the continual setback for the hardworking middle class in our state and country as a whole. If you are white and live paycheck to paycheck and fulfill your responsibilities you are already at a disadvantage. I just wish my daughter had an EQUAL chance to take part in this great educational effort. Maybe some day.

I wonder how many "illegal" aliens were the lucky few to have their names pulled?

I agree Scott - We are middle class, just above the level that was set to be considered in the "disadvantaged" pool. We got there the other nigh thinking we had a shot at 19 spots, when in reality, we had little shot at all, since 10 spots were already set aside for those in the disadvantaged pool, and then the rest of the applicants were added to those who didn't get chosen from the 10. We're wait-listed, and not holding our breath.

Thanks Mayor McKee for sucking more local and state tax dollars out for a school system that most of us who live in Cumberland will never have a chance of getting into. If you put as much time into bettering our own school system then maybe it would not be so bad. And by the way how does Mr. Michael Magee, who I am sure is being paid good money, qualify for being disadvantaged? Must have been that lucky ball!!

Why does this new school not serve Woonsocket, instead of another charter school serving Pawtucket and Central Falls? I would love the opportunity to put my daughter in a school where the focus is on results but the only 2 elementary charter schools are in Pawtucket and Providence. They save a select few spots for children from other communites across the state. Mayor Menard needs to get on board!

What's New In Google OS?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:05:00 +0000

Well, when I'm using the Chrome browser on Ubuntu, as I do these days, I've got this stack:

Linux kernel
X Windows
GNOME Desktop
Whatever they call the default GNOME window manager now
Chrome Browser

The Google Chrome OS, will be like this:

Linux kernel
"a new windowing system"
Chrome Browser

Whether or not there would be significant performance increases to be had replacing X Windows is an interesting question. I'm going to bet that they keep X. They'll definitely ditch the overhead of a full desktop environment (e.g., GNOME or KDE), and as it stands now, Chrome is practically its own window manager. It should be fast, secure, and a nice clean implementation for netbooks, but overall, this doesn't sound very ambitious. You're taking out a few middle layers most people don't give much thought to.

It does strike me as a more plausible plan than moving Android to netbooks, however. Word processing and spreadsheets are still cornerstones of laptop or desktop computing -- what kind of word processor are you going to use on Android? You're not going to write a native Android/Java app are you? No, you're just going to use Google Docs. So what is Android getting you on a netbook? A bunch of cool little apps that make a lot more sense when you're pulling a little phone out of your pocket, not unfolding a small laptop.

RUSSO: Too Much USDE Micromanaging

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:51:00 +0000

Alexander Russo:

If there is a second stimulus -- odds are there won't be but let's pretend otherwise -- what should it include by way of education funding? Other more reformy types will disagree but my vote would not be for adding to the innovation and incentive funds. There's too much of that distraction already, without any real chance of being big enough money to make a difference. (And way too much USDE micromanaging in the works already.)
Instead, I'd go for more stabilization money to prevent classroom layoffs. Something to help make sure that pensions and benefits don't get destroyed. Some sort of summer school or extended year subsidy to try and make up for all the summer school that's being cut. Boring stuff, I know. I'd love to do more, but I feel like everyone's been putting the cart before the horse these last few months. Trying to do too much with too little. Looking a little bit too far ahead and not looking at the immediate economic problems.

That sounds about right, particularly the "micromanaging" and "cart before the horse" parts.

The Role of a School Student Information System in School Improvement

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:48:00 +0000

Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path

Teachers and administrators can get started with just the data currently available in their schools.
Although, ultimately state and district data systems will enable early warning and intervention systems to realize their full power, all of the key data needed to begin is already available in schools. Grades, daily attendance, and behavior referrals and consequences are recorded routinely and regularly in schools. Thus, it is not necessary to wait for the district or the state to build early warning data systems. Teams of teachers sharing common sets of students can share the key early warning data among themselves, and principles, deans and counselors can organize, model, and support the use of these school-based data.

One does get the feeling that the federal government is going to spend hundreds of millions on data systems which will be primarily useful to bureaucrats.

New SchoolTool Release: 2009.4.17

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Justas Sadzevičius and Alan Elkner did the bulk of the work below, with Alan focusing on the gradebook, and Douglas Cerna's volunteer contributions as noted.

If you install SchoolTool, you'll get the current version, and if you've already got it installed, sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade or just wait for Ubuntu's standard system update to kick in.

SchoolTool 2009.4.17
====================

New features
------------

* New section adding view.

- Multiple-term (linked) sections can now be created.

- "New Section" button replaced with a link in action menu in course view.

- Sections now can also be added from term's "sections" view.

- See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/389283

* You can specify the relationship between a person and a contact from a standard set (parent, guardian, step-parent, etc). See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/381412

* There is a new gradebook view for grading a single student. Please follow ">" next to a student's name in the gradebook.

* Report sheet activities can have comments as their scores now, to allow comments on report cards. See https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/381054

* Administrators can define custom score systems (grading scales) used in the gradebook and report sheets.

* Removed ability to delete calendar events that come from (section) timetables. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/271391

Douglas Cerna:

* Added missing attributes to the course adding form and the csv import. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/384945 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/384957

Tweaks and fixes
----------------

* Active year is no longer highlighted in red. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/317651

* Fixed contact deletion crash. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/382239

* Section and course descriptions are displayed properly now. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/370581

* Fixed a typo in default ethnicity demographics field. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/376116

* Graceful handling of incomplete set up in gradebook report card pdfs. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/379968

* Gradebook: "Update" button renamed to "Save". See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/395272

* Fixed average gradebook score calculation when dealing with invalid scores. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/391310

* Fixed glitches (events not displayed or displayed in wrong day) in weekly calendar views. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/285514 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/389626 Thanks go to Daniel
Höger for the report and part of the fix.

* Cleaned up pre-release ui bugs in "Add a new score system" view. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/394792, https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/394805 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/394778

Fixes by Douglas Cerna:

* Fixed keyboard navigation in gradebook. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/391313

* Improved gradebook XLS export - added First Name, Last Name, ID fields. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/391787

* Tweaked text in gradebook column set up page. See https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/394774

Unicode fixes
-------------

Fixes by Douglas Cerna:

* Contacts views. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/382251

* Gradebook activities. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/383416

* Course CSV import. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/schooltool/+bug/375792

How You Recognize a "Disruptive Innovation"

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:21:00 +0000

People (e.g. Graham Wegner) say things like this:

Netbooks - some say that they are under powered, under sized pieces of stop gap junk and others see them as the opportunity for affordability and the chance to shake off the bloatware that many users never use fully.

My Reply to "Freecomonics in Education"

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:31:00 +0000

There's a bit of a thread going at Tom Vander Ark's "Freecomonics in Education" post, but in case my latest comments don't make it onto the blog, here they are (slightly edited for clarity):

Tom,
No, the alternative is that foundations, government and other actors (like Wireless Generation did) pay people to create, improve and distribute free content, which is then distributed widely over the internet through a variety of channels. There is little subsequent cost.
There are plenty of people willing to host, vet, package and distribute freely licensed content and software. There is an entire industry of Linux distributions that do all that with software (e.g., Red Hat, Ubuntu, Suse, etc). There could (and will!) be a similar industry in education eventually, but the NROC strategy blocks that kind of development. It blocks it! And when that part of the industry does start up, Hippocampus will be excluded by its own design.
Also, Hippocampus/NROC's license does not fit Hewlett’s own definition of an open educational resource:
OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
Doyle,
OpenOffice.org is not run for the greater good. Sun bought a commercial office suite and made it open source to bootstrap some competition against Microsoft more effectively than they could have done with a commercial alternative. They're too small a player in that space otherwise.
Most of the work done on OO.org is corporate (by several major corporations) or (non-US) government funded for strategic reasons.
But here's the thing, to the user, this is all irrelevant. Because OO.org adheres to the standards for free and open source licensing, there is no catch even when the motives are not strictly altruistic. That's why licensing is so important.

Hewlett's attitude about OER seems similar to Gates' approach to, say, malaria prevention. Important, but not relevant in the US -- well, not US K-12. That's fine, I'm not going to diss them for it because they don't really pretend to be involved in OER in US K-12. It isn't like they're going to NECC and getting everyone psyched up about something they're not doing. They're just not doing it, like many, many other people. They are so not doing it that they haven't even managed to explain to a colleague like Tom Vander Ark what an OER is or what the basic outlines of the work in this area taking place around the world look like.

The Limits of Wi-Fi

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:03:00 +0000

I'd just like to point out that in no way was Wi-Fi designed to handle things like convention halls with hundreds or thousands of people trying to connect at the same time. Maybe people get to to work under these situations occasionally, but overall, the problem is not so much that conference organizers don't know how to do (or that people want) Wi-Fi, but that almost everyone's expectations of Wi-Fi are simply too high.

Perhaps knowing this will lower your blood pressure in the future.

Sugar in the Greater Free Software Community

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:12:00 +0000

I'm very pleased with the direction Walter is taking this, it is exactly the right move:

This was the first time that GUADEC and Akademy were combined their summits into one congress. It was clear there is much more in common between the two major GNU/Linux desktop communities than there are differences. While I largely talked about Sugar and the interdependency between FLOSS and learning, I also used my keynote as an opportunity to draw attention to the need for: better SVG support; a unified approach to collaboration on the desktop; a better and unified datastore architecture; and an amplification of our collective efforts in internationalization. I tried to make the distinction between simplifying complex things and using simple tools to reach to complexity and suggested that the current trends of the desktop accomplish neither goal. The latter, “learning-centric” approach should be our goal, since we take pleasure in complex things. I didn’t have time to dwell on “the cloud”, but Richard Stallman (rms) touch on the topic of Internet services in his talk. He saw them as a threat to freedom since the end user essentially cedes total control to the service provider. My issue is more narrow: we tend to be users, not creators of services. Yet there are many services that can amplify our ability to be expressive and engage in a critical dialog about that expression, so they have a role.
As usual, I used Sugar (and Turtle Art) to give my presentation. While most people had heard of Sugar, it seemed that few had actually seen it in action. The overall reaction was positive and we will undoubted get some new contributors as a result of this renewed exposure to the desktop community. (We already have a volunteer to work on the touch-screen interface.)
My keynote was sandwiched between Robert Lefkowitz (r0ml) and rms, who have markedly different positions re Free Software. I was sitting between the two of them at a post-talk press conference, which was—for me—entertaining. In regard to Sugar, rms acknowledged the point that learning can play an important role in appreciating, hence sustaining freedom—it was nice to make that connection. One concern r0ml raised was that there are powerful intermediaries between the developer and the user that are the real power brokers. I argued that Sugar on a Stick was an example of disintermediation in the context of schools—the IT department need not be involved at all.
A related point that r0ml made is that most people cannot program, so Free Software is a limited use to them. In response, rms said that they are still free to use it an redistribute it and even hire someone to make modifications. I went further, saying that they are free to learn to program and that the next generation will learn to program, since computation is our most powerful tool of expression. We owe it to them to help them achieve literacy.

If you want to talk about "disruptive innovations," a computer system for learning that doesn't require an IT staff, that's disruptive.

Happy 1000th, Lithuania!

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:02:00 +0000

Lituanica:

In 1009 Lithuania’s name (Lituae) was first mentioned in the chronicles of ancient German town Kvedlinburg in reference to the death of missionary St. Bruno.
Lithuania on July 6 is marking its millennial Statehood Day. This small nation, sandwiched between great Germanic and Slavic giants managed to survive against all odds in the world. It experienced its glory days for few centuries with it medieval empire which stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Some historian argue that if there was not such an empire there would not have been Belarusian and Ukrainian nations today.

It was carved up, occupied and slaughtered for few centuries to revive again and again. It is a story of a small and great nation which held on to this piece of land next to the Baltic Sea and managed to survive. This is why it is amazing. Lithuania, together with its Baltic sisters managed to survive. Despite of all difficulties at the moment we will rise like phoenix out of ashes. Crisis are coming and going, but such nations are here to stay and prosper.

Gag Me with a Freeconomics

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Vander Ark:

So, who pays for all of this free stuff? Education has the benefit of substantial philanthropic support—both non-profit and for-profit organizations have and will benefit from foundation grants. But the innovations likely to achieve scale and impact will have a business model behind them. In this regard, Wireless Generation is showing the way; they launched FreeReading.net, an open primary reading curriculum supported by fee-based assessment and training.

Here's an alternate vision: philanthropy and government grantmaking shifts it conceptual frame from funding non-profit and for-profit organizations to create proprietary information, to funding the growth and maintenance of an information commons. Why can't I access the planning, training, learning materials developed by KIPP, Big Picture Company, New Teacher Project, TFA, Green Dot, Harlem Success, etc? They're all non-profits, as far as I know none of them are dependent on licensing their IP to fund their operations, and they all get or have gotten a substantial amount of philanthropic and/or government funding. What if sharing their work had been a condition of their funding all along? What if leaders in philanthropy and government chose to switch to this path?

Institutions the size of our major grantmaking foundations, states, and the federal government can and should (and will, eventually) pay people to write freely licensed content for schools.

We don't need people taking a platform approach in the "Hey, I've got a website where you can park your textbooks or lesson plans or learning objects." It's nice to have, but that's not the problem. It isn't hard or expensive to host files.

You don't create sustainability around "free" and "open" resources by significantly limiting their use to eek out a few nickles to keep your webservers running. This is the Internet! You let people make copies, download the source, study it, reuse it, redistruibute it, and build their own businesses around the resources. That's what makes an information commons robust and sustained.

As Oligopolists...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:50:00 +0000

Dana Goldstein talks some sense:

As oligopolists, it makes total sense for the College Board and ACT to be eyeing, together, expansion into the immense K-12 assessment market. But given these testing companies' track records, it is worth asking if this is a wise idea. A number of studies have found SAT scores are far less effective than high school grades in predicting how well students will perform in college, and professors say standardized-test prep does little to teach students the research and critical thinking skills they will need at the college level. Because of these shortcomings, an increasing number of colleges--led by the giant University of California system--have made standardized test scores optional for admission.
There is no reason to assume that the overdue move toward federal standards must lead to national standardized tests administered by the college-admissions giants. In Finland, whose schools are ranked best in the world, there are detailed national curriculum guidelines but no mandated testing regime to go along with them. If past American efforts are any guideline, what we're likely to come up with is the exact opposite: vague standards and high-stakes tests. For example, 35 states participate in the Achieve-led American Diploma Project, in which states agreed to roughly align their education standards. Under that system, high school students are required to write a six- to 10-page research paper. In Finland, though, the national curriculum calls for research papers to be part of every subject course, from the life sciences to history and philosophy.
A major disadvantage of the states and testing giants leading the push toward national standards is that without Washington's involvement, the issue is less likely to register on the mainstream media's radar. But the public ought to be paying close attention. It would be a shame if national education reform further cemented a system in which passing standardized tests is the goal of learning. That would discourage creative teaching and push affluent families looking for more flexibility into the private system. And that simply isn't in the public's common interest.

To me, the subtext of our current debate is this: of which things we've consistently done wrong in the past, do you think we can suddenly, and quickly, get right? I suppose that's what "reform" is always about. But perhaps it is unusual for the Left and the Right to decide that they both want to reform the same thing at the same time, so more than normal it is simply a question of what does your ideology lead you to believe can and should be fixed? Our lousy... standards? tests? teachers? schools of education? contracts? inequality? school boards? technology? etc...

Only in EVE

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Ombey:

I was relaxing in one of the bars in Curse Watchtower station (F4), when I heard laughter and loud exclamations from a group of U’K pilots just entering. I recognised them all, but the source of the amusement appeared to be BHaddow, and a story he was telling by the looks of it. I waited till they got a drink, then waved them over and asked them what was so amusing.
BHaddow took a long swig from his drink, and grinned. He then told me a tale which was quite amazing.
[... snip amazing tale ...]
So, due to Sylph’s inattention, BHaddow’s sneakiness, an -A- Rapier and a bit of luck, three Bombers and a Rapier caused 5 billion isk in damage and almost made off with a carrier. The insurance from the carrier was 337m ISK, which was split between the participating pilots.
I shook my head in amazement when I heard this story, and had to shake him by the hand. For the rest of the night, his drinks were on me and everyone else in U’K who heard the story.

5 billion ISK = almost $300 in real money. Hilarious. Only in EVE does the insurance payment for a stolen ship go to the thief. This is all part of the ongoing payback for Sylph's betrayal of Ushra'Khan in the second battle of Unity Station two years ago.

When You're Serving Less Than 10

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Short-Rib Pastrami.

A regular kettle grill and some wood chips should suffice for smoking. You just need the pink salt.

I need to start some sauerkraut...

USAspending.gov

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Yglesias:

The basic reality of the matter is that we already live in a society where the voters are almost completely ignorant of everything they need to know to be functioning members of a democratic public. People can’t name the elected officials who represent them, and in general seem to have very little interest in politics. The good news, I think, is that thanks to the internet you can at least look this stuff up. If you’re curious, you can use Google and figure out who represents you in the State Senate and find out a thing or two about what he’s up to. Dutifully receiving your daily gigantic bundle of newsprint and then ignoring the stories about state government might make the guy who writes the stories about state government feel better, but it doesn’t actually provide you with information.

Meanwhile, I'm just starting to dig into USAspending.gov. Some tips: search for a company name to get all the federal purchase orders for the company from the past decade or so. Search by place name to get related federal grants, contracts, etc. Or search for a type of item like "screwdriver" or "toilet seat." Unfortunately, you can't link to the results yet (no unique URL). Also this graph is a good argument for more spending on data systems in the Department of Education, simply in comparison to the amount spent in other cabinet level departments.

The Inside of Tom Vander Ark's Head is a Weird Place

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:41:00 +0000

Vander Ark:

David Brooks is, at least for me, the great explainer of our times. Fareed Zakaria helps me understand the world. Brooks helps me understand America.

Wow. Really? That would explain a lot I guess. But Brooks, really? You've been a leading figure in national school reform, particularly urban school reform, for a decade, and you look to an expert on the tastes of yuppies and suburbanites to explain America? OK, dude. Weird.

Meanwhile:

Do the right thing locally. All education is local--at least in America. Perhaps the most important thing each of us can do is to support aggressive gap-closing school improvement efforts in our own neighborhood. Support a charter school or a mentoring program. Get involved in a school board race.

Who is this addressed at exactly? Apparently bobo me, since I actually live in a mixed(mostly low)-income urban neighborhood, but I doubt a very high percentage of HuffPost readers fit that profile. Even so, the charter school in my neighborhood is doing fine, but it isn't really my neighborhood's charter school, and any time spent helping out there is likely to be offset by the bitter taste of my daughters' eventual loss in the great kindergarten lottery. And with Providence's system of mayoral control over the schools, and imported autocratic superintendent and rubber-stamp board, there isn't much to be done for our neighborhood's small public high schools, created with help from Vander Ark's Gates money, now slipping away...

Those Jerks At the Vegan Restaurant Wouldn't Serve Me a Simple Egg Cream!

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:25:00 +0000

Posts like this one, elucidating the inconveniences of the GPL, are like listening to someone gripe about not being able to get eggs at a vegan restaurant, and/or helpfully pointing out that limiting yourself to vegan ingredients is not the best way to make money running a restaurant.

The GPL is a radical political statement, and as radical political statements go, a damned successful one. If you didn't figure that out immediately, you need to work on your reading comprehension. If you want to eat eggs, go eat eggs, griping at the hippies shouldn't impress anyone.

Ask Not What Standards Can Do For You, Ask What You Can Do for Standards

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:43:00 +0000

Mark Guzdial:

I was critiqued at the meeting for not doing enough work in computing education, or maybe, not doing the right work. One of the state officials asked us how computer science classes in high school correlate to national standards in technology education, since such standards exist. What technology skills would one develop in taking a computer science course? I responded with information about ACM’s Education Policy Committee and said that they were looking at those kinds of questions. She asked why I wasn’t doing that. I pointed out that I have other things that I’m doing, that also need to be done. She got really annoyed that I didn’t see this question as critically important, and I overheard her telling others that they have to “make me” develop these matches to technology standards. (What does that mean?) I do understand that establishing a match to standards is very important, and I understand that there are many policy issues that are critically important for the advancement of computing education. It’s also important to figure out how to teaching computing better and to understand what’s going on when someone learns computing. Not everybody has to do everything.

I can so totally picture that scene.

The Native Web Video Stalemate

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:39:00 +0000

Ian Hickson:

Apple refuses to implement Ogg Theora in Quicktime by default (as used by Safari), citing lack of hardware support and an uncertain patent landscape.
Google has implemented H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome, but cannot provide the H.264 codec license to third-party distributors of Chromium, and have indicated a belief that Ogg Theora's quality-per-bit is not yet suitable for the volume handled by YouTube.
Opera refuses to implement H.264, citing the obscene cost of the relevant patent licenses.
Mozilla refuses to implement H.264, as they would not be able to obtain a license that covers their downstream distributors.
Microsoft has not commented on their intent to support <video> at all.

What this is about is making it as easy to embed a video in a web page as it is to add a still image.

Alan Kay on Real Science

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Alan Kay on the IAEP list:

It's possible that the Physics Activity could get students interested in Physics, but the deepest and most important parts of real science cannot be learned from a book or a computer or from just doing mathematics no matter how wonderful.
The notion that they can has been a major misconception for thousands of years, and is shockingly widespread in the US educational system. This is because all representation systems we use, including the ones inside our heads, are ultimately hermetic, and thus in the end are only about themselves.
Science is a kind of negotiation between our representation systems and "what's out there?". And the negotiation is always there. As Richard Feynmann liked to say "Science means you don't have to trust the experts".
This is why books, computers, math, etc., don't work. Because natural languages and math have negation, we can write just anything in a book. Because math depends on premises taken as given (called definitions in modern math) we can make a perfect logical system that has nothing to do with "what's out there?" (and many people have over the ages).
Because we can make detailed maps of places which have never existed (e.g. Middle Earth) and can make perfect deductions from them (Gondor is North of Far Harad, and the Shire is North of Gondor, therefore the Shire is North of Far Harad, etc.) we have no way at all of knowing whether this map represents any thing "out there" or not unless we actually exhaustively look for it.
Telling children to learn what is in a book or computer model is absolutely no different from telling them to learn this catechism or that one. They have to be grounded in learning to deal with the actual world in ways that get around what's wrong with our perceptual systems and the minds attached to them.
Because scientific knowledge is now large, it is not possible to learn all of science from doing personal experiments. The major point here is that the "outlook" (simple name for "epistemological stance") of science has to be internalized before one can understand just how to garner scientific knowledge from writings rather from the real world.
Scientists (not just science teachers) have trouble with this, because our brains/minds are set up to believe not to understand or doubt. For example, in spite of the fact that the Victorian Brits considered Maxwell their best scientist (he was) they could not find it possible to get into Maxwell's Equations, in large part because they were non-Newtonian, and Newton had been made into a god that exemplified the "master race" that all such cultures love to think they are. And they were not going to go against their god. As a result, it was left to several prominent Germans, including Heinrich Hertz, to experiment with the ideas in the equations and to invent and build the first radio transmitter.
The fact that this happens doesn't make it excusable, but it does illustrate how hard real science is to really do -- and how difficult it is to teach and learn.

Disruptive Innovation != The Inevitable March of Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:50:00 +0000

I have been following my friends' tweets from NECC -- it is pretty much the only thing I use Twitter for -- which led me to Scott McLeod's talk on Educational Leadership in an Era of Disruptive Innovation, although I watched the K-12 Online conference version, which is apparently similar.

I'm not very impressed with Scott's presentation. Here's what I think he's doing:

Conflating "disruptive innovation" with progress in general.
Overstating the extent to which disruptive innovation destroys incumbent companies and organizations.
Presenting centuries long differences in educational philosophy as a singular line of progress from traditional to innovative.
Concluding that because progress is inevitable and destructive, and the things he likes are progress, you'd better get on board the train.

Conflating "disruptive innovation" with progress in general.

Listening to Scott's talk, it isn't clear what kind of technological innovation is not "disruptive." He asserts, for example, that the progression of LP -> cassette -> CD -> mp3 is a series of disruptive innovations. The cassette was somewhat disruptive, in that it opened up a new low-end market segment, but it certainly didn't displace the LP, and the CD wasn't disruptive to the market, it was a textbook sustaining innovation of the industry built around the LP. The CD was an improved LP which boosted that economic model (major labels, record stores, radio, etc.) for almost twenty years. The disruptive innovation was mp3 -- a low-quality, low-cost, margin-destroying innovation that wrecked the existing market.

But in Scott's examples, it all just seems like the march of progress: something new is invented, and it isn't very good at first, and then it gets better, and "disrupts" the market and takes over. That's pretty much it in his telling, but that's pretty banal. In Christensen's books, "disruptive" innovations are of a certain type. One excellent contemporary example is netbooks. Just a few years ago, nobody wanted to make a laptop under about $900, because they didn't think there was a market for a laptop with obviously "worse" performance than the then standard $900+ models, and they didn't want to ruin their profit margins. They wanted to make $400 a pop off $900 laptops, not $50 each on $200 netbooks. So finally, Asus, formerly just a motherboard and component vendor said "screw it" and put out a cheap netbook and it took off like a shot. It disrupted the market and forced everyone else to put out cheap netbooks or let Asus eat their lunch. But it is not "better" technology. It is not innovation in the traditional sense. That's the whole idea. That's why they started writing these damn books in the first place. It is innovation that is not "innovative."

Overstating the extent to which disruptive innovation destroys incumbent companies and organizations.

Scott's longest example is the disruption of wired telephony by wireless. Hm... let's see, if I want to get a cell phone who am I likely to call... Verizon? Sprint? Deutch Telekom? AT&FrackingT? Disruptive innovation doesn't necessarily knock out the incumbent players. Linux disrupts Windows, but Microsoft is still doing fine. MySQL disrupts Oracle and Oracle bought MySQL (and Sun). And Christensen cites numerous examples of companies that respond to disruptive innovation by moving successfully upmarket, ceding the low-end and competing on quality. If market disruption was an inevitable force of nature, Apple wouldn't have made it out of the 1980's, and we'd all drive Hyundais by now.

Presenting centuries long differences in educational philosophy as a singular line of progress from traditional to innovative.

It is convenient to present education as a factory model monolith, because it allows you to present individualized, student-focused, or just progressive education as "innovative" but it isn't historically accurate, any more than it would be accurate to present, say, socialism as a new innovation. The US isn't very socialist right now, and while folding in some more socialism would be a good idea, it wouldn't be a new, innovative, "disruptive" idea. It would be a change in philosophy, from one well-established, competing approach toward another well-established, competing approach. Same with standardized, traditional education (writ large) vs. individual, progressive approaches (in general). Argue on the merits, not novelty.

Concluding that because progress is inevitable and destructive, and the things he likes are progress, you'd better get on board the train.

I'm critical of this kind of approach not because I think Scott and I have very different ideas of what good schools look like. I just think he's making a very sloppy argument, and I'd like my side to do better. At the K-12 level, I don't think that most things that are being presented as "disruptive" are actually so (post-secondary is a completely different ballgame). I see no reason to think that, say, online learning is not a sustaining innovation for current institutions, and to the extent it is disruptive, I don't think it will inevitably destroy our current system. It may simply drive it upmarket (online strip-mall holding pens for the plebes, good schools for the 'burbs, etc).

Important Changes I Don't Understand

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Hoffman) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:14:00 +0000

Greater City: Providence:

Though it is vitally important to the city, we haven’t been doing a very good job (or any job really) of following the Libraries story here at GC:PVD. Frankly, I’m utterly confused by the whole thing and every time I try to understand it my brain explodes a little. A private board with public funding, that the government seemingly can’t control, running the system into the ground… I think it is one of those only in Rhode Island things that hurts my head, like navigating by where things used to be.
Well tomorrow is the day that the Providence Community Library takes over the 9 branches of the Providence Public Library (not including the main Library on Washington Street downtown (that is a whole other brain exploding situation)). To mark the occassion, the PCL is having a celebration tomorrow at all branch locations (including the newly re-opened Washington Park branch).