Parents ‘n Schools

[GLO — I’ve commented before that if you want a ready source of inspiration or innovation not previously applied to government schooling, just go to the public library and pick out something not filed under “education”. Just as, on an individual and personal basis, you can have little “standing” or “status” in government schooling without a teaching certificate on your resume, there is not much writing or literature guiding or being applied to the schooling “business” that has not been written by schoolers themselves. This is not unique among professions, I suppose. Accountants focus a great deal on the Income Tax Act. Lawyers on the Criminal Code. But you might think that public education, as a profession, might take more interest in the learnings, teachings and applied thinkings of… the public. K-12 schooling is in large measure an exercise by schoolers in measuring how well students “are picking up what they’re putting down”. Perhaps schoolers themselves should be measured by how well they pick up what society is putting down, post-graduation, particularly in how successful organizations evolve and organize themselves. That sort of thing starts with an appetite for such learning, and an aptitude for its creative application. It’s a test of whether schoolers can be as good at learning as at schooling.]

I realize it seems a little silly to repeatedly declare that everything I read is about public education, and I would stop doing it EXCEPT IT’S TOTALLY TRUE!

And it’s starting to scare me a little bit.

It happened again today.

I picked up a book that came highly recommended by a very close personal friend (the National Post), and when I opened the very first page and started reading the very first paragraph… well… you see for yourself:

“Standing on our microscopic fragment of a grain of sand, we attempt to discover the nature and purpose of the universe which surrounds our home in space and time. Our first impression is something akin to terror.”

[GLO — If that’s not parents ‘n schools, what is?]

“We find the universe terrifying because of its vast meaningless distances, terrifying because of its inconceivably long vistas of time which dwarf human history to the twinkling of an eye, terrifying because of our extreme loneliness, and because of the material insignificance of our home in space — a millionth part of a grain of sand out of all the sea-sand in the world.”

[GLO — Are you seeing it?… terrifying because of our extreme loneliness… eh?]

“But above all else, we find the universe terrifying because it appears to be indifferent to life like our own;… Perhaps indeed we ought to say it appears to be actively hostile to life like our own.”

[BINGO!!! ]

Now, of course, he’s not writing about public education, parents or government schools at all. It’s a scientist named James Jeans, it’s 1930 and he’s writing about astronomy and the big universe out there… as included at page one of “The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing”, editted by Richard Dawkins and published this year.

But read it again. And tell me it COULDN’T be about parents ‘n schools.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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P.S. The book was highly recommended in the National Post and I am very much looking forward to reading it — despite its disconcerting beginning — in the same way that I enjoyed reading (and reading again) Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” when it was published. It makes you want to run right out and be a scientist. And the world needs more scientists. Even wanna-be scientists.

P.P.S. My most memorable “joke question” in hypothetical university exams was “Define the universe. Give three examples.” Now I think I could answer it: “Elementary, middle and high…”

P.P.P.S. Here’s another, 12 pages along:

“Organized change, the contriving of some end, such as a pot, a crop, or an opinion, is powered by the same events that stop balls bouncing and melt ice. All change, I shall argue, arises from an underlying collapse into chaos [ie., disorder]. We shall see that what may appear to us to be motive and purpose is in fact ultimately motiveless, purposeless decay. Aspirations, and their achievement, feed on decay.

The deep structure of change is decay.”

[GLO — Now this particular writing is actually about the Second Law of Thermodynamics… but it also, I think, elegantly captures reform and initiative and innovation of all kind.

If nothing decayed… what would motivate change? In life, or in schooling…]

I waded into discussion recently about a new book titled “Liberating Learning”, the discussion being held on the “Grown Up Digital” website (www.grownupdigital.com).

I put out there that in Canada, there are about 6 million K-12 students. About $2,000 per year each is spent teaching them math. That’s $12 billion per year.
Online, math curricula can be delivered to all 6 million for something between $1 million and $10 million, less than one-tenth of one-percent of the operating cost, including assessment and accountability measures (with unlimited review and “repeat” by the student, and endless “patience” by the computer/instructor… two massive advantages from the point of view of the student).

Under the 80-20 rule of life, about 80% of the students can learn 80% of what they need to learn via such online delivery. That’s 64% of $12 billion ($7.7 billion) that is liberated by application of such technology. (What I have come to refer to as the “64% Solution”.) Those liberated dollars can be put to work on the other 36% of the challenge, and freed up to sustain schooling for generations to come. (Multiply the savings by 10 for U.S. numbers.)

The only thing standing in the way of such liberation… to my mind … is the schoolers who would not get paid those monies in wages. They will stand in the way with great determination, like postal delivery workers and railroad conductors. But the economics are too spectacular, and the scarce resources available for schooling too precious for them to stand for very much longer.

These things won’t happen next year. Or likely the year after that. But they will happen. They have already begun to happen. In many ways, “live learning” will go the way of “live television”… for many of the same reasons from the point of view of the viewer/learner. And many of the same reasons from the point of view of those footing the bill.

Those comments were happily disputed by other commentators, who took a closer and more diligent look at the numbers and couldn’t agree with what I was putting out there. I further responded with my appreciation for their discussion, and wrote that if current math “live learning” per child does not cost quite $2,000 across Canada at present, then I suggest give it one or two more rounds of labour negotiations and factoring in of multi-billion-dollar pension liability backfills and it will. And not long after that it will be $3,000. And so on.

And multiply those numbers by millions of schoolchildren and you get Really Big Numbers that society must carry along. Current government school spending sits at about one-quarter of treasury spending, in a daily arm-wrestle with government health spending for perpetually scarce dollars. Sustainability is a serious question.

Whether a system like YES (www.youtheducationservices.ca) costs $6 million to build and operate (which we estimate with defined functionality), or whether it costs $60 million (with further bells and whistles and lesson presentations with a view to “multiple intelligences”), those numbers represent multiple orders of magnitude smaller numbers than current live-learning, 90-95% labour cost expenditures for government schools.

And these systems are not just cost-effective. They are effective. And they get better and better with each machine iteration.

A good deal of schooling is setting up the “buffet”, at which children line up and feed themselves. You introduce the lesson, you assign the work and reading, and with their industry the student crunches and digests the subject matter. There may be questions arise for some. There may be chunks that are harder to swallow. But present the learning in a masterful way, at the hand of a quality “chef”… and children are pretty good eaters on their own, to a large degree. If it were otherwise, schooling of millions of children would be really, really, really expensive.

As to how many educators it takes to develop and operate such a “64% Solution”… and what impact that has on operating costs for such systems… that remains to be seen and is dependent on a variety of choices along the way. They are absolutely necessary, in certain numbers and for a short period of time, in developing the content. And you want the best you can find for that important foundation. You require a few to drop in regularly after that to maintain the quality of that content as the world turns. And if your system is designed to offer “face to face” help (but remember please, that’s what the other 36% of those billions is supposed to be there for, too), then that would increase your labour component and increase your operating costs, certainly.

But how many travel agents does Expedia employ (relative to the number of transactions it performs)? How many booksellers at Amazon? How many newspaper reporters will still be employed in the future? What impact did similar “robotics” have on Detroit? What did superboxes do to the letter carrier profession? How many educators are retained by families to school their children in the complexities of their newest video game (and because parents may get asked by their children for more help with their homework than their video games, is that a function of how complicated the schooling is, or rather how effectively it was presented in the first place or what resources were available to repeat it?)

Online learning systems developed and championed by government schools themselves may maintain as much labour “need” as they can. The Debacle in Detroit has been a pretty good illustration of the impact of labour compromises on technological innovation in the face of competition. Online learning systems developed and championed by independent online universities or schools or independent philanthropic agents such as YES are going to aim toward minimizing labour costs in operations, in order to sustain their existence. Who is doing the building, the engineering and the operating will have a significant impact on what the final product may be, and what purposes and interests it serves. A system like YES is designed, engineered and founded as a vehicle  to help people learn online, not as a vehicle for educators to teach online. There may be limits to its overall utility… but those limits are possibly more than matched by cost-savings and the scale of positive impact on learning of the material presented, and the technology just gets better and better and engineers and educators in all manners of enterprise learn more and more with each application.

Imagine an extreme scarcity of educators (perhaps they were all tempted into higher-paying jobs with less stress, greater resources, fewer annoying customers and shorter hours)… or imagine you are in other places in the world where educators and schools are scarce but children eager to learn are not (there is an excellent talk on www.ted.com of work in this regard in India). Schooling as a “delivery vehicle”, and not as an “employment vehicle”, would be paramount in your design… and technology fundamental to your solution.

I mostly just throw this stuff out there, for discussion and further insights. I don’t know what impact technology will have on K-12 schooling… I just believe it increasingly must have an increasingly profound impact or the ongoing quality will suffer and degrade or costs will rise beyond what those footing the bill can afford (again, see Detroit). I envision the future for education professionals to be less and less chopping up and spooning lessons into learners’ mouths, and more and more advising on menu selection and suitable spices for particular tastes. I envision fewer and fewer needed, but, not unlike Detroit, that may or may not mean fewer and fewer employed. That part will be interesting… and I suspect “Liberating Learning” has more to say about that. I look forward to the read.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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(GLO — June 2009 — Billion-dollar-anythings, quite simply, seldom partner well with anybody. No surprise that a billion-dollar-school-board would struggle with such things. There should be limits on school board size. In Alberta, there are 64 school boards. 62 are about the right size. The other two are off-the-charts big. There is no particular rationale for this, other than it increases your purchasing power and your political power. It doesn’t do anything for your parent power. Well, it may do something… reduce it.

When you’re the parent of three children in a Billion-Dollar-School-System, it’s more than ironic to read a publication titled “School for Everyone”, and not find yourself in it. It’s not infuriating, so much as educational. Like a splash of cold water. Wakes you up to the reality of things.)

Our billion-dollar local school board (”The Biggest School Board West of the Pecos”) has in recent years taken to publishing a multi-page insert in the local newspaper at the start of each school year celebrating its work and aspects of local public schooling. It is titled “School for Everyone”.

Parents are almost never mentioned.

One year, the word “parent” only appeared once… and that was in a quote from somebody who… well… didn’t work there.

School for… everyone? Really?

The insert, and the Board, routinely promote and celebrate the Board’s own fundraising foundation. That foundation raised about three-quarters of a million dollars per year each of its first two years (after 6 years of work to organize it). Which maybe sounds like a lot of money, until you realize a couple things:

1. Calgary is home to the second most corporate head offices in Canada; and

2. Parents, via school councils in some 200 schools in the city, raise about $4 million per year for those schools.

Which suggests to my mind that business cannot be convinced to give money to government schooling (corporate giving is becoming increasingly leery of backfilling government, and its standards of accountability are becoming increasingly hard for government schooling to attain). But parents are reliably easier to… persuade.
Even while school participation is celebrated for everyone except them.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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Bill Gates Sr. (THE Bill Gates’ father) in his new book “Showing Up for Life” makes a strong case for the difference that competition in schooling can make to the quality of schooling. He describes the very competitive environment of post-secondary schooling in North America (competition for grants, competition for support, competition for students, competition for teachers and competition for sustainability). He points out that the North American post-secondary system is considered among the finest in the world.

Then he ponders:

“A question: If our universities are so good, and competition is so paramount to the way they operate, might it follow that competition improves quality? It seems to me it does.

So what about pre-university education? I’ve looked at that, too.

Any analysis of our K-12 system shows virtually no competition whatsoever. No competition among teachers, no competition among schools, and no competition among school districts.”

Mr. Gates Sr., who co-chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which holds public education as one of its pillars of philanthropic support, concludes that “the profession of teaching K-12 must be revitalized.” He is optimistic that will one day happen, but acknowledges the challenges are enormous. It would take “more than mere tinkering”. He advises that the driving force will be “public will for reform”, which will most likely only arise when schooling performance falls to frightening levels.

“Many parents, teachers, administrators, and communities refuse to admit to the basic flaws in their school systems…. Reform will occur as the people insist upon it…. Getting it right will not be easy or comfortable….”

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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Today is my kids’ last day of school for another year, and I am reminded to write a thank-you to the loyal (and no doubt deeply disturbed) readers of good ol’ PnS.

Web stats indicate that current daily readership is QUADRUPLE what it was this time last year. Let’s not be so petty as to discuss actual numbers… I think it’s sufficient to celebrate that for every deeply-disturbed one of you that were here last year, there are now three more,… no doubt equally troubled and confused. That’s comforting for everyone, I think.

As well, those readers are doing some energetic reading. Stats indicate that almost as many pages have been visited already this year as were visited all of last year.

Comment-wise, I have to tell you, you’re a tad weak. Russian spam has you beat about 10 to 1. Perhaps there’s some thoughts and discussion you can share in the weeks and months to come. Just don’t make it read overmuch like Russian spam and it’ll get posted.

I expect I’m going to keep writing (it’s affordable therapy, and with three kids in government middle school the hits just keep on coming). So I appreciate that you keep reading.

Thank you.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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Obama should look to Portugal on how to fix schools

Posted using ShareThis

(GLO — an excellent essay by the author of “Grown Up Digital” on the impact on the classroom and on the learning experience in Portugal upon the determined application of technology.)

(GLO — June 2009 — You know home schoolers are doing this sort of thing all the time. Partnering well with local zoos, museums, rec centres, libraries… tapping available resources and collaborating on curriculum.

Google “Cretaceous Crime Scene” and you will find an online learning module that was built by the Royal Tyrrell Museum using Essentialtalk technology (the same technology that powers www.youtheducationservices.ca… over on that “fellow travellers” button).

I was on the Board of the Museum’s Cooperating Society at the time, and helped influence its funding and development.

That learning module was so effective that it was picked up by Alberta Education for its science curricula province-wide.

(http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/seccs/index.html?launch=true) 

Years later, my children came home from school saying “Dad, you’ve got to see this site.”

That was kind of cool.)

In New York City is a program that works to make zoos and museums an integrated part of school curricula. Not just field trips. Not just kids visiting, but kids-as-researchers with clear expectations.

The civic and school authorities are partnering to take advantage of these out-of-school resources.

“Partnering” is always a red-flag word for me in government schooling. Partnering — genuine partnering to everyone’s mutual advantage — is not what government schooling does best. Particularly large urban school boards. In schooling, as in most things, the bigger they are the more they prefer to do things themselves and their own way.

So I admire New York City’s efforts to bring genuine schooling into zoos and museums and to bring zoos and museums into genuine schooling. They have a lot in common. Right down to the fundraising.

On travels to San Diego I observed the luckiest elementary school in the world. It shares a parking lot with the San Diego Zoo.

Imagine going to a school right next door to the San Diego Zoo. Walking distance to the most intriguing collection of flora and fauna on the continent. What an “out-of-school resource” that must be. What a handy, ready-made “naturalization” feature for the school.

Here in Calgary efforts are underway to build a new Science Centre. It will share a parking lot with the Calgary Zoo. Smack dab in the middle of the city.

What a great place to build a school, I think. For any ages. Share the same parking lot. Walking distance to both places. If I were to build a physical school, that’s where I would build it.

I have volunteered extensively with both government schools and government museums. I have learned neither partners particularly well with “things that are not them”. Not even with each other. Which is unfortunate. Because I have also learned that their purposes are very similar. Kids should be able to readily “go to school” in zoos and museums. It should be a resource akin to the Public Library. It should be tightly integrated into curricula, scheduling and lives.

I think that’s what they’re trying to do in New York City, and I expect that’s part of the experience in that San Diego school. I hope, anyway.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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Go to Lulu.com

Search “school”.

Sample the hundreds of school and class and student yearbooks that have been published there. For download and printing, one order at a time. In flexible formats. As you like it.

Imagine never having to pre-order again.

Imagine the ready archiving.

Imagine the flexibility (a yearbook for Grade 12’s… for Grade 11’s… for athletes… for drama majors…). It could be published in modular fashion, and students could mix and match their own individual yearbook.

Go to Lulu.com, and re-think how your school publishes. It could become a profit-centre, instead of just one more thing to raise money for.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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You sign on and a reminder pops up that you have not completed a math lesson in 48 hours. You registered online last week, after Labour Day. You have until December to complete the material, when you are scheduled to write a proctored exam at the local rec complex. The system tracks your progress against a flexible timeline. You go at your own pace, but that pace can’t proceed too slowly without the system “tickling”… then reminding… then alarming… then emailing your parents… then a live person phones your parents. Few phone calls are needed.

You click on “math”. You try the next Grade 9 module. You don’t get it, and the system invites you to go through it again (what’s another 10 minutes?) You don’t get it a second time, and, a little concerned, you click on the “schedule visit” and book in for tomorrow at the local teaching office (a little place next to the dentist down by the 7-11). The system accepts your booking, and asks if you would like to try it a third time with a different module (its “multiple intelligence” algorithm triggers something more visual for this learner). You do. Your score improves, but not quite “there” yet. The system invites yet a third “angle”.

Heh! Now you see what they’re driving at. You pass the quiz at the end (flying colors), and the system notes your progress (and cancels tomorrow’s appointment).

You’re on the trajectory for completion, but you’ve got an hour to kill before hockey practice and that last presentation kind of whet your appetite for a little more. You click on the next module (presented this time from that third angle right off the bat). You ace that one in 8 minutes. Before the hour is up, you’re two weeks ahead.

After hockey practice, you jump back into it. The system does not ring a bell for you to begin, and it does not ring another bell and tell you to stop. The December exam is just tentative (few, if any, students will actually sit that exam in December… most will schedule a proctored test weeks or even months earlier). Industry creates interest, and you complete that Grade 9 math and write your proctored test the day after Halloween.

You are properly proud of yourself. Especially since, age-wise, you’re notionally in “Grade 7”. (Your phys-ed programming on Tuesday and Thursday mornings down at the rec complex has you placed back with “Grade 6‘ers”… which keeps you humble.)

Total cost to taxpayers for your Grade 9 math instruction: $5.00.
Total savings from “live learning”: $1,995.00.

Some of those savings go to fund your art classes (the ones that aren’t digital), and some go to fund your music training (the part that isn’t Garageband). Most goes toward sustaining and supporting schooling elsewhere.
This tale is fiction, but it is not science fiction. The technology exists and is in use (see, for example, www.youtheducationservices.ca). The savings aren’t being realized yet… but they will be. Schooling will depend upon it.

GLO
gordotto@parentsnschools.com
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P.S.  If you want to “imagine” how technology can be applied to assist with something really hard, like reading, visit www.readingahead.com

I’ve mentioned the book “Grown Up Digital” here at PnS before. The other day on the book’s website (www.grownupdigital.com) the editor posted the following regarding a newly published book. He invited comments. I include mine below. I welcome yours (here or at www.grownupdigital.com).
+++++++++
Liberating Learning is a sure-to-be controversial book that argues that technology will be the key to bringing quality education to students across the U.S., largely by sidestepping restrictions that the authors say teachers unions have put in place to block reform.
In a review in today’s Wall Street Journal, James Glassman says the book by Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb picks up on an issue raised by the two authors in their 1990 book, “Politics, Markets and America’s Schools.” In the first book, the authors argued that the poor showing of American schools compared to other industrialized countries was largely the result of special-interest groups - mainly teachers unions.
But Glassman writes that Messrs. Moe and Chubb believe that technology can be the magic bullet.
Teachers unions, of course, are appalled. They know that “the new computer-based approaches to learning simply require far fewer teachers per student — perhaps half as many, and possibly fewer than that,” Messrs. Moe and Chubb write. Online charter schools employ two or three teachers per 100 students; the average public school employs 6.8 per 100. Technology also disperses teachers geographically (making them elusive for union organizers); lets in private-sector players who aren’t members of the guild; and enables outsourcing to foreign countries. For unions, technology is poison…
The authors also believe that, by allowing the door to be cracked open with online schools, the unions won’t be able to shut it. With the encouragement of students’ parents, millions of children will rush in, overcoming current union-imposed enrollment caps. Since labor costs keep rising, school districts, hard-pressed for funds, will naturally turn to technology as a way to get more for less. Mostly, though, Messrs. Moe and Chubb are determinists who believe that the political problem will be solved because it has to be. They make a good case, but hardly an air-tight one. “Technology,” they write, “is transforming nearly every aspect of American social life, and will keep transforming it in the decades ahead.”
I’m keen to hear readers’ responses to their argument.

Editor — Bill Gillies — www.grownupdigital.com

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GLO Comment:
In Canada, there are about 6 million K-12 students. About $2,000 per year each is spent teaching them math. That’s $12 billion per year.
Online, math curricula can be delivered to all 6 million for something between $1 million and $10 million, less than one-tenth of one-percent of the operating cost, including assessment and accountability measures (with unlimited review and “repeat” by the student, and endless “patience” by the computer/instructor… two massive advantages from the point of view of the student).

Under the 80-20 rule of life, about 80% of the students can learn 80% of what they need to learn via such online delivery. That’s 64% of $12 billion ($7.7 billion) that is liberated by application of such technology. Those liberated dollars can be put to work on the other 36% of the challenge, and freed up to sustain schooling for generations to come.
(Multiply the savings by 10 for U.S. numbers.)

I believe the ONLY thing standing in the way of such liberation… is the schoolers who would not get paid those monies in wages. They will stand in the way with great determination, like postal delivery workers and railroad conductors. But the economics are too spectacular, and the scarce resources available for schooling too precious for them to stand for very much longer.

These things won’t happen next year. Or likely the year after that. But they will happen. They have already begun to happen. In many ways, “live learning” will go the way of “live television”… for many of the same reasons from the point of view of the viewer/learner. And many of the same reasons from the point of view of those footing the bill.

GLO

gordotto@parentsnschools.com

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