Posted on 19th January 2010 by Judy Breck in Golden Age of Learning, Mobile & Ubiquitous, Mobile Learning, Open Content, Politics in the swamp and Schools We Have Now
assessment, equality, global, mobile, online, standards
Let any child anywhere use his or her mobile to take the school standards tests. All the time now the corporate training world, people learn, are tested, and are certified using their internet connection. Take a look, for example, at the Adobe Certification center.
The Washington Post reports this morning that the “Race to the Top” competition for federal grants to states for education is to increase to more than $6 billion. The core goal here is to measure how students achieve according to standards set for them. As the article reports: “Also, 48 states and the District have joined in an effort to develop a common core of rigorous educational standards to replace the current system in which states have wildly different benchmarks for what should be taught in school.”
Wow: one envisions layers and layers before the kids somehow learn — and prove their teachers have taught and they have the test answers — for whatever this common core is. Why not just put it all out there and let everybody develop and work on what students learn in the transparency of the open internet?
Why not just spend a few million dollars and put everyone’s idea of standard stuff we want kids to learn online, and test them there? Everything could be online: material that is rigorous, material that meets various benchmarks — Texas history for the kids there, and how to farm cranberries for the kids in Vermont. Very soon, tests that won respect of admissions departments and employers would emerge.
The reason this will work is that the individual mobile internet browser will belong to a single student. This ownership makes the opportunity equal for each kid who has a mobile because the nature (good, bad, or not there at all) of a classroom is taken out of the equation.
Each learner can come to the trough of online knowledge, and each can partake according to his or her own appetite. For sure, there are some youngsters in failing urban schools who could ace math tests at the college level. I have met them, I know this is true. There are struggling students in excellent schools who would benefit from studying, on the privacy of their mobile, subjects they “didn’t get” in earlier grades. Being able to get certified online gives them a way to catch up. There are young people in slums and poverty across the world for whom learning basics and more on a mobile browser is a key to their country’s future development. With a mobile browser in her had, a girl interested in astronomy, whose cultures forbids her to attend school, joins her global generation with access equal to every other student who is, for example, browsing images from the Hubble telescope.
A challenge for educators: Put online centers like the Adobe Certification webpages that teach, test, and certify school standards for math, science, technology, languages, humanities — and be sure to make those pages mobile friendly.
Posted on 12th November 2009 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge, Golden Age of Learning, Mobile Learning, Networks and Politics in the swamp
The gushing spigots of money poured into analog educational materials manufacture a scarcity that belies the reality of 21st century learning resources. Billions alloted into the printed walled gardens of textbooks and digital walled gardens of for-pay school resources deepen economic woes — to say nothing of dumbing down kids because open online resources are long tail instead of bell curve, and are more and better.
Teaching and learning should now, and inevitably* will, use the open internet instead. An individual’s mobile internet browser will become the primary access to knowledge for each student and teacher. We should be working to make this happen soon. “Shame on us” when we do not do so.
I grabbed the “shame on us” phrase from a post today by Carlo Longino at a leading mobile blog called MobHappy.com. As I read the post, I realized the phenomena being described are inevitably going to reshape education. This bit is key:
The idea that “people will be more than willing to pay” is only correct in an environment of scarcity. But we’re past that point in the internet space, either wired or wireless. Any scarcity has to be contrived and manufactured, with things like walled gardens — which, of course, didn’t (and don’t) work.
Because education is “public” (socialism), the decisions about to paying are far removed from the minions spending the money. In this milieu, the scarcity myth endures, muddled up in politics, special interests, and bureaucracy. Billions are spent on educational resources that are or easily could be globally available for free online. Abraham Lincoln observed that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. How long will taxpayers be willing to pay?
*Even if the taxpayers don’t catch on, this change is inevitable because network laws rule. Now that learning resources are emergent online, it is only a matter of time before they break down the garden walls of learning resources. What broke the grip of the music industry and is now going on with main stream media will happen soon to educational materials. It has already begun.
Posted on 4th September 2009 by Judy Breck in Golden Age of Learning, Mobile & Ubiquitous, Mobile Learning, Politics in the swamp and Schools We Have Now
The turmoil about whether President Obama’s speech to school kids next Tuesday should be heard by them is growing, reports the Associated Press today. There is a long list of adults wrangling over the decision: White House spokespeople, Department of Education leaders, governors, mayors, school district heads, school principals, and parents — to name the main ones.
So far, I have read nothing that has mentioned the idea of a student herself or himself deciding whether to watch the speech. Yet any kid at school with a smartphone can browse to the White House website to watch and listen to what the President has to say — that is if students where he or she is are allowed to use their smartphones in school. Undoubtedly a video of the speech will be available essentially forever after it is given, so there is no chance of no option to watch. But should/must classes stop what they are doing and sit in rows watching Obama’s speech to them?
When I was in school in 1940s and 1950s, censorship of electronic media was not much of an issue. Our intercom system at Austin High School in El Paso, Texas was installed in about 1950. I recall April 11, 1951, the day that Douglas MacArthur’s famous parting speech to Congress was piped in and regular teaching and learning was put on hold to listen. I remember I was in the girls’ dressing room next to the gym, standing and listening as he said: “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away… ” You can hear what I heard on YouTube.
Whether you think it is a good idea for schools to pipe in President Obama — or it was a good idea for such an indelible impression to have been made on my young mind as a famous general told Congress what he thought — for us as mobilists this incident highlights a major bend in the road of education just ahead. It was a huge change when I was in school to be able to pipe a president, general, or politician into a classroom live. The fact that kids are rapidly getting individual access to the wide live world is an even bigger change.
The issue that is causing the turmoil about next week’s speech is whether it should be forced on students, and who makes that decision. The big issue just ahead is who has the power or right to tell kids what they must watch individually. I think there is a new civil liberty: the freedom to access the open internet. When a message is piped into a whole class or school, supervisors must decide whether to do it. But when each student can watch individually, can/should the school force them to watch something?
Of course, this issue is far larger than whether to force students to watch a particular politician. What about forcing kids to learn standard curricula using matching textbooks? If a student wants to learn more science, history, literature and the rest online, and get certified for achievement online, can/should schools force her to pass state approved tests? Individual mobiles are about to put learning choice into student hands.
Posted on 11th August 2009 by Judy Breck in Politics in the swamp
protests, swarms, townhalls
Politico is carrying a story today titled: “Arlen Specter faces fury: ‘You work for us!’” The image above is from Politico’s 4:20 minute video coverage of a town hall today in which Senator Specter was confronted with questions, boos, and jeers. The supporters of the Democrats’ health care proposals have called these protesters “Astroturf,” a term meaning they are false grassroots.
As I have described at Howard Rheingold’s SmartMobs.com, where I am on the blogging team, I have a different take on what is happening: the protests are stirred by the golden swamp effect (a pretty standard network effect). The gathering of the protesters is a synergy from the spontaneous networking among citizens who have found a common ground and whose connections are quickly being established by exchanging email addresses and phone numbers. For further discussion and background, both Howard and I have quoted an article by Clay Spinuzzi exploring community organizing, astroturfing, and the newer phenomenon of swarming.
What I find most interesting is that for all the puffing about the Obama machine having used the internet, they are not now in a position to activate a network. What they have instead is more like an electronic mailing list where messages can go back and forth to and from the White House and that is about all. It took the anger of those who do not want more spending and healthcare to activate a multidirectional network that produces swarming. The best I suspect the White House can do is send messages asking people on their list to go to townhalls. In the process, the White House will also endure the blowback of not so friendly responses to a publicized White House email address such as flag@whitehouse.gov.
