High Schools at the Tipping Point - The Role of Data May 16, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Data, Opinion.add a comment
Nice article from Educational Leadership on the current state of high schools. Some of the background information is very helpful. I appreciate the historical perspective when trying to understand complex issues.
When the “modern” high school system was established in the early 20th century, only 10 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds attended high school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2006). It wasn’t until 1918 that all states required children to attend elementary school; in that era, a high school education was a luxury afforded only to upper-income families.
The article goes on to describe three approaches for reform, (1) align what schools expect of students with the demands of college and the workforce, (2) offer a rigorous, option-rich curriculum; personalize learning; and provide necessary supports, and (3) improve instruction by mining data and using digital technologies. The article isn’t real clear about what digital technologies are, or how they might improve instruction other than the role played by data. However, data is not information.
In order for data to inform our instruction, many factors have to be in place.
First, time is of the essence. Teachers don’t have enough of it, so asking them to do the data mining work without enough training (also a time issue) is asking a lot.
Second, data alone isn’t enough. The link from data to teaching is complex. The data has to be interpreted in order to be informative and prescriptive. Do we really know enough about how the individual child is learning to say that a specific result on an assessment or observed progress indicator should require a specific intervention?
Third, time is still of the essence. The time between the assessment or observation and the intervention needs to be measured in seconds, not minutes or hours or days or weeks, or in the case of standardized tests, in months. The time to help a student learn is at the point where the learning is not taking place, not at a time after the assessment is taken, the scan sheets are turned in, the assessments are scored, the results are returned, the committee meets to review the results, the plan is formed about intervention, and the instruction is delivered.
I’m all for informing the craft of our teaching, but it has to meet the needs of the instructor in the classroom, and more importantly, it has to meet the needs of the learner.
10 Million Fans Can’t All Be Wrong March 28, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Data, Tools.1 comment so far
Tech Crunch and others are reporting that Wikipedia has reached a milestone: 10 million articles. That is quite an achievement for something that is free to everyone. On a side note, only 2.3 million of those are in English.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/28/10-millionth-article-written-on-wikipedia/
Cell Phone Number One March 5, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Data.add a comment
Wired News is reporting that a Pew Internet and American Life Project study shows that people would rather keep a cell phone over keeping a land line.
According to Pew, the cell phone is the technological tool its users would have most difficulty giving up, followed by the Internet and television. Landline phones ranked fourth in the latest survey, just above e-mail.
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/T/TECHBIT_CELL_PHONES?
That’s a Lot of Texts March 3, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data.2 comments
By way of SmartMobs, it looks like texters in 2008 will be averaging about 2 texts per person per day. Add that up (3 billion mobile subscribers) and you get about 2 trillion text messages this year. I’m sure that my own kids are above average in this respect, but still, 2 trillion messages is a lot of reading and writing.
http://www.smartmobs.com/2008/03/03/two-trillion-sms-in-2008/
NCLB Leaves Children Behind February 18, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Data.add a comment
By way of Learning is Messy, a study from Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin shows that the Texas accountability system that served as the model for NCLB “directly contributes to lower graduation rates.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2008/02/11/daily31.html?b=1202706000%5e1592499
Teens and Illegal Downloading - Microsoft Edition February 13, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data, Opinion.add a comment
Joyce Valenza has posted a review of a Microsoft study of teens and their online habits and attitudes toward illegal downloading. Microsoft has launched a new pilot curriculum (Intellectual Property Rights Education) to help teach students about property rights. There are some interesting conclusions:
teens are less likely to illegally download content from the Internet when they know the laws for downloading and sharing content online. About half of those teens, however, said they were not familiar with these laws, and only 11 percent of them clearly understood the current rules for downloading images, literature, music, movies and software. Teens who were familiar with downloading rules credited their parents, TV or stories in magazines and newspapers, and Web sites — more so than their schools — as resources for information about illegal downloading.
The complete study can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/download/press/2008/02-13KRCStudy.pdf
Joyce’s review goes on to include some terrific resources to facilitate learning about copyright alternatives and fair use.
While I’m sure the the study was well intentioned and the results fairly represent the current status for school aged children, I’m concerned about the launching of a new educational initiative aimed at curbing illegal downloads. I think that schools are unfairly being singled out in an effort to get them to fix a problem that the business world can’t. Schools have plenty of important initiatives already in place, such as literacy and mathematics. Trying to convince schools that they should fix a business problem seems disingenuous and would only dilute those educational imperatives. If students aren’t looking to schools as their primary source of information about illegal downloading, as noted in the conclusion quoted above, then focusing that effort on the schools also seems misplaced.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/390021839.html?nid=3714
Kids are so Fickle February 13, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data.add a comment
According to an elearnspace post, kids are getting a little bored with social networking. George Siemens quotes a statistic that says the amount of time users spend on their MySpace-type sites is down 14%. Of course that could mean that kids are getting more efficient. I know I get more efficient with something new the more familiar it becomes. It also might mean that they are finding more interesting things to do. Any ideas what those more interesting things might be? My guess would be that it involves the cell phone.
http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/archives/003257.html
Google Generation January 19, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data, Opinion.add a comment
Ars Technica has posted a review of a study by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee that provides some interesting insights into the habits of kids born since 1993. Here is an excerpt:
So what’s true about the Google generation?
- They like to cut-and-paste. ”There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and plagiarism is a serious issue.”
- They prefer visual information over text. “But text is still important… For library interfaces, there is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal, providing short-term novelty.”
- They multitask all the time. ”It is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills.”
Not surprising to me is the observation that young students are not experts at searching, especially when it comes to choosing good search terms. Vocabulary, and life experience, play a role in knowing what terms to use when searching. Both of those qualities are in short supply for the youngest students. I can remember creating my own chart of words and how they were related to each other at a very young age. I did this for my own information, to help in constructing my own world view. I knew then that words played a big part in how I understood and interacted with the world. I’m not confident that many young people would see any benefit to constructing their own diagram of connections for the concepts or words that comprise their personal cosmology.
The challenge in the classroom hasn’t changed from the time I was a child. We still need to open doors and show our students that they do indeed have a brain, that they can make up their own mind, and apply various tools (rationality, artistry, intuition, spirituality, compassion, passion, etc.) to that end. The sources of information may be changing from printed material to digital, but the challenge remains the same.
Google Skepticism January 17, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Data, Opinion.1 comment so far
TechCrunch is reporting that a study from the University of Southern California Center for the Digital Future shows that only 51% of people trust the information returned by search engines. This is down from 62% a year ago. In addition, Internet users see online sources of information to be more important than other media like TV and newspapers.
I’m not ready to make too much of the numbers, but if these statistics are accurate, I think it is healthy to be skeptical of all information sources, especially ones we use the most. I see this as good news for education as it stresses the point that all facts and media (including text books) should only be trusted to the extent they can be verified.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/17/search-atheism-on-the-rise/
2008 Education Blogosphere Survey January 16, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Data, Edubloggers.add a comment
The title kind of says it all. If you are an edublogger, take a survey.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6StV_2bQlONrIuhBYx3O3cEA_3d_3d
Are You Smarter Than a Teenager? December 20, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data.add a comment
According to the results of the latest Pew Internet survey, teens are actually practicing some measure of safety online. At least when it comes to personal information on social networking sites and posting photos. When they post videos, fewer restrict access. Turns out adults are less likely to protect their information. Looks like teens are better practitioners of safe behavior online than their adult counterparts.
Some 66% of teens with social network profiles restrict access to their profiles in some way and 77% of teens who upload photos restrict access to them at least “some of the time.” In contrast, 58% of adults who post photos restrict access to them in some way. A smaller percentage of teens who upload videos (54%) restrict access to them.
http://www.pewinternet.org/press_release.asp?r=150
Google Me December 16, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Data.add a comment
TechCrunch published an excerpt from a Pew/Internet survey about attitudes toward online information. Seems almost half of the people interviewed said they had googled themselves. If you don’t know what that means, go to Google and type your own name in the search field. Check the results to see if your information is available when others google you!Here’s what you find if you google me:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Matthew+Woolums&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/16/do-you-use-google-for-vanity-searching-youre-not-alone/
Read Be-Tween the Lines December 9, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data, Opinion.1 comment so far
The Nielson Company, yes, that Nielson Company, released a survey of Tweens mobile media and cross media behavior. These are kids aged 8-12. Keep that in mind. 33% have their own cell phones, and 5% of those access the Internet. Who is filtering this access? There are other interesting statistics from the study, especially about the differences between Tweens and Teens.
Nielsen reports that tweens spend less time surfing the Internet than their teen counterparts. In this report, 48% of U.S. tweens said they spend less than one hour per day online. When they are online, 70% of tweens use the Internet for gaming.
http://www.nielsen.com/media/2007/pr_071203.html
Kids Online October 1, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data.add a comment
Two interesting bits of information.
1. eSchool News online today reported that over 93% of parents say
they have taken action to make sure the web sites their children visit meet parental standards.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryRSS.cfm?ArticleID=7391
Good thing too, if the next survey is also accurate.
2. eMarketer is reporting that 43% of kids age 3-11 are online. The report doesn’t break down their other than to say that they are online at least once a month.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005410&src=article1_newsltr
Snapshot of Media Trends September 15, 2007
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data.add a comment
George Siemens has posted an entry on his elearnspace blog with links to two short and very interesting PDF documents that detail some of the current practices of how people interact with different media types. Well worth taking the time to read.
