Educational Technological Imperitive!

A Plea for Educational Technology

Four education leaders call on Congress to meet President-elect Obama's request to target classroom technology modernization in economic recovery legislation.

By News Report

Four leading education and business organizations -- the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) -- recently applauded President-elect Barack Obama's call to invest in technology for the classroom as part of the forthcoming economic recovery package and urged targeted action by Congress. The groups endorsed the President-elect's goals to "equip tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms . . . [and] provide new computers, new technology, and new training for teachers" to not only prime the nation's economic pump but also allow "students in Chicago and Boston [to] compete with kids in Beijing for the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future."

CoSN, ISTE, SIIA and SETDA have recommended that Congress agree to disseminate these new classroom technology grant funds through the existing Enhancing Education through Technology (EETT) program in order to ensure that the funds quickly reach the neediest schools and are used for their intended purposes.

"We're very encouraged by the economic stimulus proposal now under consideration," said Don Knezek, CEO of ISTE. "It puts a world-class, future-focused education front and center while also preserving and creating jobs now."

The four groups -- representing more than 100,000 educators and hundreds of high-tech employers -- believe that a major spending infusion on education technology will create jobs within the education, education services and technology sectors, as well as enable innovative instructional practices in America's classrooms to address the needs of today's digital-native students. For example, a federal expenditure of $9.9 billion could ensure that every classroom in economically-disadvantaged Title I schools is technology-rich.

Additionally, the groups noted that further investments in broadband would improve the nation's unemployment picture, citing a recent study by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation that a $10 billion investment in broadband would lead to the creation of nearly one-half million jobs.

For the complete press release, please, click here.

Pontiac Promise / Update!

Pontiac pegged as Promise Zone

Sunday, January 18, 2009 12:22 AM EST

By DIANA DILLABER MURRAY
Of The Oakland Press

PONTIAC — The Pontiac school board has put the school district on the fast track in what is becoming a statewide competition to create a Promise Zone that would guarantee graduates a college education.

The board voted Friday at a brief special meeting to schedule a public hearing at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 5 at the urging of state Rep. Tim Melton, D-Auburn Hills, who said only 10 Promise Zones — similar to the one created in Kalamazoo — will be authorized throughout the state.

Melton sponsored the Promise Zone legislation with Pontiac School District in mind, and it was signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm this week. Melton and Granholm are expecting the Pontiac district to be the first Promise Zone in the state, he said.

Board Vice President Gill Garrett, and trustees Robert Bass and Karen Cain all had questions and concerns about the process and the details of how the Promise Zone will work.

But the board agreed to schedule the public hearing to start the process immediately with the commitment of Melton to provide the answers to all their questions during the 20-day period leading up to the hearing. The process will go no further than the hearing without approval of the board.

“This is an exciting opportunity for the city and the district,” Melton said, explaining that the promise of a college education would bring more families and businesses into the district and increase property values and the tax base the way it did in Kalamazoo.

“As I drafted the bill, Pontiac was number one in my concern. The number one reason kids don’t go to college is money,” Melton said. A district is eligible to be a Promise Zone if the youth poverty rate is above the state average and the district qualifies, he said. The state Department of Treasury accepts or rejects the applications.

Melton said once children know tuition will be paid, they begin planning and expecting to continue with education after high school.

“In the second grade in Kalamazoo, colleges begin recruiting kids. They know they are going to college. The psyche starts changing. Interest in high school goes up.”

Under the legislation, the school board would create a Promise Zone Authority board and appoint nine of the 11 members. The other two would be appointed by the speaker of the House and the leader of the Senate majority. The authority would cover full tuition to any public school in Michigan and a capped amount to any more expensive private Michigan college.

The Promise Zone Authority board would set the criteria — such as the required gradepoint average — for the scholarships and would be responsible for raising money in the private sector to fund them. No school board members would be on the authority.

In the third year, after two years of fund raising, the state would authorize the district to keep a percentage of funds generated by property tax growth to put toward scholarships. Children in all the cities and townships in the district would benefit, not just those who live in Pontiac. And the fund would reap revenue from growth in property taxes from all the entities in the school district.

Bass, Garrett and Cain said they are concerned and disappointed the board would not have any part in decision making, such as setting the criteria that makes a student eligible. That would be entirely the authority’s role.

“I want to make sure our students can take advantage of it,” Bass said.

As far as Melton is concerned, he said, “I think the criteria should be (a free college education) for any student who graduates high school,” which is the criteria set in Kalamazoo.

Melton said the school board will have some influence because they interview and select the members of the authority. School attorney George Pitchfork said trustees will also have the right to remove authority members.

Pitchford also advised the board that they could have a trustee on the authority as a nonvoting member to provide input from the board and to keep trustees up to date on the authority’s activities.

One thing that was worrisome to Bass is the fact that students and their parents would have to show they did their best to obtain other scholarships and grants before the Promise Zone fund would cover the difference.

Contact staff writer Diana Dillaber Murray at (248) 745-4638 or diana.dillaber@oakpress.com.

Informs OUR Understanding

SMART!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Editorial

Focus of New Year must be education

Forrest Gump had it right: Stupid is as stupid does.

Michigan has been doing some awfully stupid things when it comes to educating its citizens. If it doesn't commit in 2009 to smarten up, the state has little chance of joining a national economic recovery, when it finally comes.

For starters, the state has to at last match its policies to its priorities. It has said for all of this decade that improving education is the most essential task of state government, absolutely vital to developing a workforce capable of filling Knowledge Economy jobs.

But instead of diverting resources to schools and colleges, Michigan has cut education funding, particularly for universities, and has no new education initiatives to boast of except for a tougher high school curriculum, which local school districts are busy dismantling.

If it wants 2009 to be the Year of Education, here are some things Michigan must do:

• Direct more dollars to classrooms. This can be done in two ways. First, education should get first claim on state budget dollars. Decide how much money per pupil is needed to provide a first-class education to every student, and then divert dollars from every other program to make it happen. Investing in schools should be considered a cost-cutting measure. Students who are failed by the education system overwhelmingly tend to end up on welfare or in prison, a far costlier place to keep them than in a classroom.

Second, cut administrative and benefit costs. School districts have been to slow to consolidate and share services. Lawmakers should force them to do so. They've also had little progress cutting the cost of teacher benefit packages. Michigan should pass a law this year that caps the cost of health care and retirement benefits.

• Stop protecting failing districts. Detroit has a failure rate for students that reaches 70 percent. And yet Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Legislature continue to protect the Detroit Public Schools from competition. High-quality national charter school operators have said they will come to Detroit if Lansing lifts the cap on charter schools. That must happen this year. Let DPS keep the schools that are making acceptable progress, and force it to contract with private operators to run the schools that are failing. That is the quickest way to save students now trapped in inadequate schools.

• Make educators accountable. Michigan has very little accountability for education performance. One example is the new high school curriculum, which was a major achievement of the Granhom administration. The curriculum is nation-leading, but the state has not taken the necessary steps to make sure districts are teaching it properly. Many districts have worked harder to find ways around the new curriculum than they have to implement it. The course schedule is designed to give every student the best shot at college success. The state must take a hard line to make sure it is being taught to every student.

• Address college affordability. Having world-class universities in the state does little good if state students can't afford to attend them. Incomes have been falling in Michigan and jobs have been disappearing. And yet college tuition costs keep soaring. Blame the state in part for continually cutting budgets. But also blame college and university boards that have found it easier to pass along tuition hikes to hard-pressed families than to cut deeply into operating costs. Schools should focus this year on affordability, rather than on expansion programs often motivated by status and ego.

Do these things this year, and Michigan can look back on 2009 and declare it the year it started thinking seriously about its future.

Informs OUR Understanding (NSF ITEST Grant)

DAVID KILKENNEY/Special to the Free Press

Linda Paramore, acting superintendent of the Pontiac School District, addresses residents last month at one of several forums. The district may be forced to close and combine some schools due to declining enrollment.

Pontiac schools redesign plan nears

Final forum scheduled to get feedback

BY MELANIE D. SCOTT • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • January 4, 2009

Ellen Logan said she was looking forward to sending her youngest child, 13-year-old Tyler, to Pontiac Northern High School in the fall.

But that changed when Logan found out Pontiac School District officials were planning to redesign the district and possibly close one high school, making students from Northern and Pontiac Central attend the same school.

"I'm not sure what to do," Logan said. "I have some safety concerns because the schools are rivals, but I want to hear their plans before I make any decisions."

Declining enrollment and budget constraints have prompted Pontiac School District officials also to consider closing about half of all school buildings, including some middle and elementary schools. The district wants to reconfigure its schools to a save a yet-to-be determined amount of money. The redesign is expected to happen sometime this school year, said Georgette Johnson, the district's director of communications.

School officials expect to host the district's fourth and final public forum about the redesign plan Jan. 13 at the district's Whitmer Human Resource Center to allow parents and community leaders to talk about the plan. Three forums have been held since November.

"If we are going to save this school district, we are going to have to work together," acting Superintendent Linda Paramore said.

The redesign comes as district officials say there will be a projected $10-million deficit during the 2009-10 school year. There were nearly 8,000 students enrolled at the end of the 2007-08 school year. This year, there are 6,700 students in the district, which has space for nearly 20,000 students.

District officials are considering offering kindergarten through eighth grade under one roof. Another plan would change the current elementary school configuration to kindergarten through sixth grade, while middle school would include seventh through ninth grade and the high school would have 10th through 12th grades.

The district created an advisory committee in October to examine the redesign. Two advisory subcommittees were formed to look at proposed changes in the district's instruction as well as facilities and finance.

After hearing the feedback at all of the forums, the advisory committee will make its redesign recommendation to district officials. After hearing the recommendation, district officials will announce a plan.

"This needs to continue to happen," said Denise Morgan, a social studies teacher at Bethune Academy. "I think it's wonderful to get parents, teachers and the district talking. We are all in this together."

Officials say they believe the second forum had the most participants with more than 200 people in attendance.

"We don't think enough parents have been out," said Paramore. "If they don't come, I don't know where they will get the information from. We want to see more people."

Contact MELANIE D. SCOTT at 248-351-3681 or mdscott@freepress.com.

Funding Constraints could become CATALYST for Disruptive Digital Learning

Michigan school districts fear budget cuts

Declines in state revenue could create deficits

BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI • FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER • January 4, 2009

The January revenue conference -- when lawmakers meet to begin deciding how much money the state will have for next year's budget -- has an ominous feel for many Michigan school administrators this year.

They gratefully accepted an early Christmas present from the state, when Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced that midyear budget cuts would not affect schools.

But with 54% of Michigan's districts holding less than the recommended 15% of their budget in savings, and about one third of the districts approaching dangerously low levels of savings, administrators will be nervously watching the conference -- which starts Jan. 9 -- and hoping there will be enough money in next year's budget to keep their programs going.

"The thing that really frightens me for the future is, where do we go next?" said David Houle, business manager for Willow Run Community Schools. "We're going to come to a point where there are no additional cuts you can make that don't impact in the classroom."

In these uncertain economic times, state revenues could be down between $500 million and $1 billion next year, according to Mitch Bean, director of the House Fiscal Agency.

At best, any drop in state revenue could mean school districts have to make cuts in anything from supplies to transportation. At worst, cuts in school revenues would drive some districts into a deficit.

"This is not an environment in which we expect to get anything," said Tom White, executive director of Michigan School Business Officials. "It's really a question of how difficult it's going to be and what we're going to do about it."

"There are so many unknowns, it's like playing with a whole deck of wild cards," White said. His organization is recommending school administrators plan for no increase in school funding next year.

The good news is that there may be more money available for schools because there are fewer students. Michigan lost about 5,000 pupils, saving about $40 million because school money is doled out on a per-pupil basis.

The bad news is that schools don't necessarily lose pupils in cost-saving ways. A district that loses 25 students is unlikely to lose them in the same classroom or even the same building. So expenses such as teachers, heating and transportation remain the same.

What could help? Strong Christmas sales generating more tax revenue, help for the U.S. automakers saving Michigan jobs or a timely federal economic stimulus package that could include a significant savings for Michigan in Medicaid.

"As soon as those sales in the state go down, we're not funding our schools," Houle said.

But even if these situations materialize, no one knows whether they will be enough. Most worried are those whose districts are likely to fall into a deficit if the state cuts any funding.

"It's the equivalent of squeezing blood out of a turnip," said Charles Muncatchy, superintendent of Mt. Clemens Community Schools. He said his district is out of savings, and the likely result of any funding cuts would be a deficit.

East Detroit Public Schools also would be likely to end up in a deficit if state funding is cut. The district is down to a slim $57,000 in savings.

"It's a mess," said Superintendent Bruce Kefgen. "I can't tell you where we'd ultimately cut."

The Willow Run Community Schools district already was in a deficit, and files an annual plan on how it is reducing its deficit with the state.

"We've already made major changes and concessions with our employees and staffing," Houle said. "We don't have anyplace to go for discretionary spending."

Even well-heeled districts can struggle.

Bloomfield Hills Public Schools has a cushion in the form of $20 million in savings, but its officials still feel that it has to close two schools next year.

"Just because we have a fund balance doesn't mean our board wants to tap it," said district spokeswoman Betsy Erikson.

Educators say if money is tight, it's only fair for the state and federal governments to chip in by dropping some of the schools' requirements.

"If you don't have the money for us, you could cut some of those unfunded mandates," said Kefgen. He suggests cutting back on the state testing programs such as the MEAP, which he said costs districts thousands of dollars to administer, or rethinking all the databases that districts are required to keep.

Muncatchy said he would like the federal government to fund some of the requirements under No Child Left Behind.

"I'm all for rigor and that schools should be places of excellence, but other countries in the world spend 30% of their federal funds on education, and America spends less than 3%," Muncatchy said.

Contact PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI at 586-826-7262 or mmwalsh@freepress.com.

Disruptive Digital Learning equals Cheaper, Better, Faster!

Waivers free high school students to study online, off-campus

State steps up role in Web-based high school education

BY LORI HIGGINS • FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER • January 4, 2009

Eleven Michigan school districts and one charter school can now allow students to take more courses -- and in some cases all of their classes -- online and off-campus, moves that could further cement the state's reputation as a leader in online education.

Michigan already broke new ground in 2006 by becoming the first state in the nation to require students take an online class or have an online educational experience in order to graduate.

Just in November, the Center for Digital Education ranked Michigan second, behind Florida, for online education.

Two metro Detroit districts -- Waterford and Avondale -- are among the handful moving farther ahead, winning approval from the Michigan Department of Education to allow larger numbers of students to take online courses wherever they want.

At least two dozen of the state's 552 districts and 230 charter schools have applied for the waivers from rules that require students be in a school building for nearly 1,100 hours each school year. Students also are currently limited by state law to taking only two online courses outside a school building during a semester.

"That would be so much easier," Kayla Jacques, 18, of Waterford said of the chance to take online courses from the comfort of home. She is a senior at Waterford Alternative High School and stays late after school several days a week to take an online class.

The waivers are a result of a challenge issued to districts earlier this year by State Superintendent Mike Flanagan, with the goal of seeing what innovative ideas school districts could come up with if they were allowed to bypass some rules that might be "standing in the way of schools reaching more kids," said MaryAlice Galloway, senior adviser to the chief academic officer at MDE.

Most of the 24 districts that submitted proposals targeted struggling students, particularly those attending alternative high schools. That's not surprising given that a quarter of the state's students fail to graduate on time, including 15% who drop out altogether.

Nearly all of the districts made online education a key component of the plans.

"It gives them a shot at catching up," said George Heitsch, Avondale superintendent.


Virtual enrollment boom

Online education has soared in Michigan in the last decade, illustrated by growth in enrollment at Michigan Virtual University, one of the options students have to take online classes. MVU offers more than 200 high school courses and enrollment has spiraled upward from 100 students in the 1999-2000 school year to an expected 15,000 this school year.

Part of the growth is influenced by students who need to make up credits required to graduate. But there also are students who want to take on larger course loads, those who want to take courses their schools don't offer and those with scheduling conflicts that prevent them from taking classes they want.

Most of those students who enroll at MVU, however, take one course at a time. The seat-time waivers will give students in districts that win approval an opportunity to take most or all of their course work online. And, in most cases, it allows them to take classes anywhere they can find an Internet connection.

That's what has Jacob Carman, 18, intrigued. A student at Waterford Alternative High School, he said being away from school would mean fewer distractions while he's learning. And there would be the convenience of not having to follow a school schedule.

The Avondale district, approved for a seat-time waiver last month, already has 10 students taking all of their classes online. Conor Helmrich, 16, is one of them.

"I'm able to wake up, turn my computer on and get going," Conor said. It's a lifestyle that has made him the envy of his friends. "They wish they could sleep in until whenever, and then do their work."

It may sound unstructured, and for the student who lacks inner motivation, online classes from home may not work. It helps that Conor's parents play an active role in his education. And the school closely monitors online students' progress and how often they log into the system.

"I got my parents all over my back on this," Conor said. "They're calling me like every hour making sure I'm on track."

No one is expecting hordes of students to sign up for a schedule in which they don't have to show up for school every day, if at all.

Jacques and her friend Katie VanOvermeer, 17, say they wouldn't want to take all of their classes online.

"I like coming to school here," Jacques said.

The Waterford district is beginning the program with alternative high students and those who are homebound for medical reasons. It will then expand it to its traditional high schools, said Lynn Kosinski, supervisor of secondary education.

But the district's plan includes limiting participants to 10% of the student body.


Trial program

The state is looking at the seat-time waivers as a pilot program and will closely monitor how well it works.

"What we're going to learn is not only which kids do well, but what kinds of support a district can give them to help them succeed in a virtual learning environment," Galloway said.

One thing they do know is that students taking online classes need support. Districts allowing students to take their course work online will assign a teacher mentor who regularly will meet face-to-face with them and monitor progress between meetings. Some districts also require students to take exams on a school site.

The Avondale district last spring piloted an afternoon program in which 12 students came into a computer lab and took all of their courses online. That program is still going on, but the seat-time waiver has opened it up to allowing up to 80 students to complete their course work outside of school.

Among the 10 students enrolled are four who would just rather not come to school. But there are others who have been expelled and can't come to school, said Chuck Granger, director of community education, adult education and the Avondale Academy, the district's alternative program.

Contact LORI HIGGINS at 248-351-3694 or lhiggins@freepress.com.

Fit for Achievement!

Plan for schools fit for achievement, some say

Obama's program to modernize schools around the country could make big difference, educators say

BY LIBBY QUAID • ASSOCIATED PRESS • January 1, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama probably cannot fix every leaky roof and busted boiler in the nation's schools. But educators say his sweeping school modernization program -- if he spends enough -- could jump-start student achievement.

More students than ever are crammed into aging, run-down schools that need about $255 billion in repairs, renovations or construction. While the president-elect is likely to ask Congress for only a fraction of that, education experts say it still could make a big difference.

"The need is definitely out there," said Robert Canavan, chairman of the Rebuild America's Schools coalition, which includes both teachers unions and large education groups. "A federal investment of that magnitude would really have a significant impact."

Obama is promising to give every student access to the Internet. Outgoing Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pointed out that billions already has been spent through the E-Rate program.

"We should never spend money in the public sector, especially in education, unless we're getting something for it, unless it's to some good end," Spellings said. "I commend him (Obama) for taking that on. That's another very ripe area. But not unless it's moving the needle for kids."

There's widespread agreement, however, that improving classrooms helps student performance.

Studies in Houston, New York City and North Dakota have made a link between classroom conditions and performance; in the New York study, researchers found students in crowded classrooms scored lower in math and reading.

Nearly half the principals in primary and secondary schools said deteriorating conditions are interfering with learning, according to the Education Department.

Judi Caddick, a middle school math teacher in Lansing, Ill., just south of Chicago, said in the older part of her World War II-era school, classrooms had just two power outlets, forcing teachers to string extension cords into the rafters or to unplug a TV power point presentation in order to plug in a computer for a child.

"It looked like a spaghetti bowl," Caddick said.

A new school is almost complete.

"It's a huge difference," Caddick said. "We don't have to have necessarily state-of-the-art and fluffy stuff. But at least when you don't have mold problems, and you don't have things that are broken, and you don't have an inability to use the technology, it's an investment."

GIVE STUDENTS ALTERNATIVE ENERGY EDGE by DESIGN!

Photos by ANNIE O'NEILL/Special to the Free Press

St. Clair County students work on a solar-hydrogen fuel cell car. From left: Jason Hoogerhyde, John Freeman, Cody Benedict and Evan Miller. Rather than learning TV repair, students are getting trained in alternative energy.

Schools to invest in alternative energy, give students edge

BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI • FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER • December 27, 2008

St. Clair County RESA Career Technical Center students will be calculating actual energy outputs from school-owned windmills, solar panels and a hydroelectric plant.

In Warren Consolidated Schools, students will find lessons from a district-owned wind power station integrated into their classes.

Both programs are the result of a trend by a growing number of schools to meld alternative energy into their lesson plans.

"I think kids are interested in this type of thing. And a lot of us see it as the future, to lessen our reliance on nonrenewable sources. And there are going to be jobs there," said Dan DeGrow, superintendent of St. Clair County Regional Educational Service Agency.

St. Clair RESA plans to invest up to $450,000, depending on how much grant money it receives, in three wind turbines -- each about 100 feet tall -- solar panels next to the turbines and a mini-hydro plant. It will be working with local governments on getting site permits.

Gone are the days of students taking high school electronics to become TV repairpeople. The jobs are moving to other categories, such as alternative energy technicians.

"What we decided was we wanted a way to teach traditional electronics but within a more current context," said Pat Yanik, director of career and technical education for RESA.

Beginning next fall, students will monitor the electricity generated by their three alternative energy sources, learn how to convert the power to actual energy and make decisions on how to distribute their self-generated electricity to RESA facilities. The actual energy generated will be small, but the lessons will be huge.

"With the energy crisis and the government push for it at the federal level and the state level, alternative energy seemed to be a pretty going item that students and parents can understand," said electronics teacher Zack Diatchun.

The Warren Consolidated Schools Board of Education has approved up to $9,000 for a wind spire -- a smaller (30-foot high) version of the windmill-style turbine -- to establish a district-wide alternative energy institute, said Superintendent Robert Livernois. Like St. Clair RESA, Warren Consolidated also hopes much of the cost will be offset by grants.

"The sky's the limit for us. That's what's so exciting about it from a K-12 perspective, you can talk to a second-grader and a 12th-grader," Livernois said. "Our belief is you've got to start somewhere, so as we launch this institute, it's really designed to begin cultivating awareness."

Students at St. Clair RESA have been told their program will open in the fall.

"It doesn't seem like something that they put into a high school-type course, but it's a really good idea they're putting it in," said Cody Benedict, 17, a senior from Yale High School who will be going to school for another year and taking the energy program. "It's going to be a larger range of stuff to learn for jobs."

There's no timetable for the Warren Consolidated program yet, but Livernois expects there will be varying components of alternative energy that will be applicable to most grades.

"We're going to use it in a study of just how much energy you can produce in the community," said Mark Supal, a technology teacher at the Macomb Mathematics Science and Technology Center, where the wind spire will be located.

Even students who won't be around for the new programs recognize the possibilities.

"I got accepted to Michigan Tech ... and I'm probably going to take electrical engineering, but I'm probably going to branch into some kind of alternative energy," said Dalton Pelc, 17, a senior from Kimball Township attending Port Huron High School. "That's what we need, and that's because that's what the economy needs."

Contact PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI at 586-826-7262 or mmwalsh@freepress.com.

21st Century Digital Learning Environments (Pedagogy)

21st Century Pedagogy

Even if you have a 21st Century classroom (flexible and adaptable); even if you are a 21st century teacher ; (an adaptor, a communicator, a leader and a learner, a visionary and a model, a collaborator and risk taker) even if your curriculum reflects the new paradigm and you have the facilities and resources that could enable 21st century learning - you will only be a 21st century teacher if how you teach changes as well. Your pedagogy must also change.

So what is 21st Century pedagogy?

Definition:
pedagogy - noun the profession, science, or theory of teaching.
Source: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/pedagogy?view=uk

How we teach must reflect how our students learn. It must also reflect the world our students will move into. This is a world which is rapidly changing, connected, adapting and evolving. Our style and approach to teaching must emphasise the learning in the 21st century.

The key features of 21st Century Pedagogy are:
? building technological, information and media fluencies [Ian Jukes]
? Developing thinking skills
? making use of project based learning
? using problem solving as a teaching tool
? using 21st C assessments with timely, appropriate and detailed feedback and reflection
? It is collaborative in nature and uses enabling and empowering technologies
? It fosters Contextual learning bridging the disciplines and curriculum areas

Knowledge
Knowledge does not specifically appear in the above diagram. Does this mean that we do not teach content or knowledge? Of course not. While a goal we often hear is for our students to create knowledge, we must scaffold and support this constructivist process. The process was aptly describe in a recent presentation by Cisco on Education 3.0 [Michael Stevenson VP Global Education Cisco 2007]

We need to teach knowledge or content in context with the tasks and activities the students are undertaking. Our students respond well to real world problems. Our delivery of knowledge should scaffold the learning process and provide a foundation for activities. As we know from the learning pyramid content delivered without context or other activity has a low retention rate.

Thinking skills
Thinking Skills are a key area. While much of the knowledge we teach may be obsolete within a few years, thinking skills acquired will remain with our students for their entire lives. Industrial age education has had a focus on Lower Order Thinking Skills. In Bloom's taxonomy the lower order thinking skills are the remembering and understanding aspects. 21st Century pedagogy focuses on the moving students from Lower Order Thinking Skills to Higher Order Thinking Skills.

The 21st Century Teacher scaffolds the learning of students, building on a basis of knowledge recall and comprehension to use and apply skills; to analyse and evaluate process, outcomes and concequences, and to make, create and innovate. For each discipline in our secondary schools the process is subtly different.

Collaboration
The 21st century is an age of collaboration as well as the Information Age. 21st Century students, our digital natives, are collaborative. The growth of social networking tools, like bebo and myspace and the like, is fueled by Digital natives and Gen Y. The world, our students are graduating into is a collaborative one.

Collaborative projects such as Julie Lindsay's and Vicki Davis's Flatclassroom project and the Horizon Project, iearns and many others are brilliant examples of collaboration in the classrooms and beyond. These projects, based around tools like ning or wikis, provide students and staff a medium to build and share knowledge and develop understanding.

For example:

My own students are collaborating with students from three other schools, one in Brisbane, another in Qatar and a third in Vienna; on developing resources for a common assessment item. Collaboratively, they are constructing base knowledge on the technologies pertent to the topic. They are examining, evaluating and analysing the social and ethical impacts of the topic. But perhaps even more holistically they are being exposed to different interpretations, cultures and perspectives - Developing an international awareness which will be a key attribute in our global future.

URL: http://casestudy-itgs.wikispaces.com


Don Tapscott in Wikinomics, gives are many of examples of the business world adopting and succeeding by using global collaboration.

In a recent blog post from the Official google Blog, Google identified these as key traits or abilities in 1st Century Employees...

"... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions."
"... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations. "

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/our-googley-advice-to-students-major-in.html

So to prepare our students, our teaching should also model collaboration. A vast array of collaborative tools are available to - wikis, classroom blogs, collaborative document tools,social networks, learning management systems - Many are available at no cost. If you have not yet tried them, look at:
? wikis - wet paint and wiki spaces
? Classroom blogs - edublogs, classroomblogmeister
? Collaborative document tools - Google documents, zoho documents
? Social Networks - ning
? learning managements systems - Moodle etc
These tools are enablers of collaboration, and therefore enablers of 21st century teaching and learning.

Collaboration is not a 21st century skill it is a 21st century essential.

If we look at UNESCO's publication "The four pillars of Education, Learning: The Treasure within" Collaboration is a key element of each of the four pillars.

• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to live together
• Learning to be

(http://www.unesco.org/delors/fourpil.htm)

Collaboration is not limited to the confines of the classroom. Students and teachers collaborate across the planet, and beyond the time constraints of the teaching day. Students work with other students regionally, nationally and globally. Learners seek and work with experts as required. This is 21st Century Collaboration

Real World, Inter-disciplinary & project based learning
21st Century students do not want abstract examples rather they focus on real world problems. They want what they learn in one subject to be relevant and applicable in another curriculum area. As teachers we need to extend our areas of expertise, collaborate with our teaching peers in other subjects and the learning in one discipline to learning in another.
Projects should bring together and reinforce learning across disciplines. The sum of the students learning will be greater than the individual aspects taught in isolation. This is a holistic overview of the education process which builds on and values every aspect of the 21st Century students education.

Assessment
Assessment is still a key part of 21st Century Pedagogy. This generation of students responds well to clear goals and objectives, assessed in a transparent manner.

Students should be involved in all aspects of the assessment process. Students who are involved in setting and developing assessment criteria, marking and moderation will have a clearer understanding of:
? what they are meant to do,
? how they are meant to do it,
? why it is significant
? why it is important.
Such students will undoubtedly do better and use the assessment process as a part of their learning.

Students are often painfully honest about their own performance and that of their peers. They will, in a collaborative project, fairly assess those who contribute and those who don't.

This is their education, their learning and their future - they must be involved in it.

Linked to assessment is the importance of timely, appropriate, detailed and specific feedback. Feedback as a learning tool, is second only to the teaching of thinking skills [Michael Pohl]. As 21st Century teachers, we must provide and facilitate safe and appropriate feedback, developing an environment where students can safely and supportively be provided with and provide feedback. Students are often full of insight and may have as valid a perspective as we teachers do.

Fluency
What is fluency and why is it better than Literacy? Ian Jukes introduced this concept at NECC. He asserts that students need to move beyond literacy to fluency. They need to be
fluent in:
? The use of technology = technological fluency,
? Collecting, processing, manipulating and validating information = information fluency,
? using, selecting, viewing and manipulating media = media fluency,

What is fluency compared to literacy? A person who is fluent in a language does not need to think about speech, or reading rather it is an unconscious process of understanding. A person who is literate in the language must translate the speech or text. This applies to our students and their use of 21st century media. We need them to be unconsciously competent in the use and manipulation of media, technology and information.

The conscious competence model illustrates the difference between Literacy and Fluency. The person or student who is literate is in the conscious competence category. The person or student who is fluent is in the unconscious competence category.

As educators, we must identify, develop and reinforce these skill sets until students become literate and then fluent..

Conclusion and the path forward.

To teach using 21st Century pedagogy, educators must be student centric. Our curricula and assessments must inclusive, interdisciplinary and contextual; based on real world examples.

Students must be key participants in the assessment process, intimate in it from start to finish, from establishing purpose and criteria, to assessing and moderating.
Educators must establish a safe environment for students to collaborate in but also to discuss, reflect and provide and receive feedback in.

We should make use of collaborative and project based learning, using enabling tools and technologies to facilitate this.

We must develop, in students, key fluencies and make use of higher order thinking skills. Our tasks, curricula, assessments and learning activities must be designed to build on the Lower Order Thinking Skills and to develop Higher Order Thinking Skills.

Acknowledgements:
For being a brilliant critical friend, thanks for the advise and especially for the grammar - Marg McLeod.

By Andrew Churches

Arne Duncan Secretary of Education

Reform Starts Now: Obama Picks Arne Duncan

His secretary of education selection shows education is a priority.

by Grace Rubenstein
December 16, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama talked reform while announcing Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan as the next U.S. secretary of education.

"For Arne, school reform isn't just a theory in a book, it's the cause of his life," Obama said at Tuesday's press conference. Obama specifically mentioned pay-for-performance teacher salaries and charter-schools development as strategies with strong potential.

"If charter schools work, let's try that," Obama said. "Let's not be clouded by ideology when it comes to figuring out what helps our kids."

Duncan described his clear-eyed view of education in a June 2007 interview [1] with Edutopia when he said, "Quality public education is the civil rights issue of our generation."

Duncan, known for transforming underperforming schools and experimenting with new models, has a record as a pragmatist with a taste for innovations. His version of reform, judging by his record, centers on boosting teacher quality and supporting students with added services such as after-school programs. In the Chicago Public Schools [2], where 85 percent of the 400,000-plus students live below the poverty line, test scores, attendance, and teacher retention all went up during Duncan's seven-year tenure, while the dropout rate declined.

The Buzz
For weeks, pundits, educators, and education bloggers have speculated on what Obama's pick would show about his true beliefs on education.

"Arne Duncan has a type of personality that Obama seems to prefer, which is a pragmatist who will bring about change, but he'll do it in a way that will minimize confrontation in conflict," says Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy [3]. "He's brought about change in Chicago, but it hasn't been a head-on clash with the teachers' union. He's done it in a way that they all walk away from the table congratulating each other."

Supporters say Duncan has the right constitution for the job. On both substance and style, he has won praise from divergent interest groups, including the American Federation of Teachers [4] and the New York City-based Democrats for Education Reform [5].

Duncan shut down Chicago schools that performed poorly and reopened them with entirely new staffs. He started coaching and mentoring programs for teachers. He also supported a boom in new charter schools with diverse models, from military academies to single-sex schools, and piloted a program to pay teachers bonuses for top performance -- two controversial innovations Obama supports.

An Uncertain Future

Of course, an education secretary can't exactly dictate reform from on high. But he can use the bully pulpit to put a spotlight on certain problems and solutions, says Jennings, and hand out grants to support new innovations. He can also provoke change through regulations -- most notably those that guide implementation of the No Child Left Behind law.

On NCLB, Duncan is a middle-of-the-roader [6]; he supports the law's goals of high expectations and accountability but has challenged Congress to improve it by doubling its funding and amending it "to give schools, districts, and states the maximum amount of flexibility possible."

Not the least of Duncan's hurdles will be the nation's preoccupation with the economic crisis. In a sign of the media's interest in education, the first question at Obama and Duncan's press conference after the announcement of Duncan's nomination was about the Federal Reserve Bank lowering its interest rates.

The financial squeeze hitting schools could hinder Duncan's efforts.

Making money and resources key to success, Duncan and Obama both made the case for education by defining it as the path to prosperity; Obama called it the "single biggest determinant" of the economy's long-term health.

"We're not going to transform every school overnight," Obama said. "What we can expect is that each and every day, we are thinking of new, innovative ways to make the schools better. That is what Arne has done. That's going to be his job. That's going to be his task."

Grace Rubenstein is a staff writer and multimedia producer at Edutopia.

School of the Future World Summit 2008

Evan Arthur - The Australian Digital Education Revolution

Martin Bean - What Technology Makes Possible

Randy Fielding - Design for the Creative Age - Part 1 (slides 1-49)

Randy Fielding - Design for the Creative Age - Part 2 (slides 50-75)

Randy Fielding - Design for the Creative Age - Part 3 (slides 76 - end)

Julio Fontan - Country Spotlight: Colombia

James Grant & Lee Burley - Building Schools for the Future

Bill Hill - The Digital Renaissance Age

Michael Horn - Disrupting Class

Allyson Knox - Career Forward

Victor McNair - Teacher E-Portfolios

Katrina Reynen - Innovation that Drives Transformation Across School Systems

Don Richardson - Innovation Management

Ratnasingam Selvarani & Angeline Fern - Transformational Learning - Part 1

Ratnasingam Selvarani & Angeline Fern - Transformational Learning - Part 2

Yasutaka Shimizu - NEXT Project - Part 1

Yasutaka Shimizu - NEXT Project - Part 2

Jaeshin Song - e-Learning of Korea

Wim Veen - Homo Zappiens: New Learning Strategies in a Digital Age

Tony Wagner - The Global Achievement Gap

Open OUR Minds to NEW Possibilities!

DPS Edison Elementary on the Art Road

WINDSPIRE INSPIRES GOING GREEN! (GREAT LAKES IT REPORT PRESS RELEASE)

An example of a Windspire installation

Posted: Monday, 17 November 2008 9:35PM

Warren Schools To Consider Renewable Energy Curriculum

A unique vertical-axis wind turbine would be installed at the Macomb Math, Science and Technology Center under an agreement to be considered Wednesday night by the board of the Warren Consolidated Schools.

The Windspire wind turbine would be installed by Southern Exposure Renewable Energy Co. of Ortonville. It's manufactured by Nevada-based Mariah Power.

The turbine is part of a larger proposal to create a "renewable energy institute" at the math and science magnet school, with the company and the school district working together to develop a new renewable energy curriculum.

More at www.mariahpower.com or www.seenergyco.com.

Recently Mariah Power partnered with Mastech of Sterling Heights to manufacture its Windspire product at Mastech's plant in Manistee. The first Michigan made wind turbines are scheduled to become available in February.

TRUST: Creativity, Risk, Playful Explorations by DESIGN!

Disruption Seeks/Creates Cracks in the SILO!

Published Online: October 28, 2008

Published in Print: November 5, 2008

Scholars Discuss 'Disruptive Innovation' in K-12 Education

By Andrew Trotter

Washington

A latecomer to a panel discussion this week on “disruptive innovation” in K-12 education and health care may have suspected that he or she had entered the wrong room.

The main speaker, Clayton M. Christensen, was talking about the steel industry, not education or health. Then he discussed the automobile, radio, microchip, and software industries.

To Mr. Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School, those industries offer profound lessons for K-12 schooling. In every case, the introduction of a new technology led to the upending of the established leaders by upstart entrants, he explained at an Oct. 27 panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute.

See Also

What technological innovations have changed the way you teach and the way your students learn? Share your experiences in our forum.

Mr. Christensen, the lead author of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, said similar changes will soon happen to public school districts, as providers of virtual schooling gradually claim more and more students, starting with those who are poorly served by their current schools.

'No Stupidity'

The book, published last spring and co-authored by Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson, predicts that those changes will accelerate until, by 2019, roughly half of all high school courses will be taken online. ("Online Education Cast as 'Disruptive Innovation'," May 7, 2008.)

To the roomful of policy experts and educators at the think tank’s luncheon meeting, Mr. Christensen explained that the leading companies did not lose their primacy through their managers’ incompetence. Instead, it was because they obeyed two hallowed principles of business: First, listen to your best customers and give them what they want; and second, invest where the profit margin is most attractive.

Rather, businesses need to be willing to act in ways that may be opposed to their short-term interests, and that lower their costs and simplify their products or services, making them more attractive to a larger pool of potential customers.

“It’s a story with no villains and no stupidity,” noted Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the AEI and the moderator of the discussion.

Mr. Horn, who runs Innosight Institute, a think tank in Watertown, Mass., devoted to Mr. Christensen’s theories, was on a panel at the event. Outlining the application to education, he cited Harvard education professor Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and said “children’s need for customization collides with schools’ imperative for standardization.”

The billions of dollars that have been invested to put computers into schools have failed to make a difference because “we have crammed them into conventional classrooms,” said Mr. Horn.

Schools and students have not been able to reap the benefits of technology, he said, because of the web of constraints—called “interdependencies”—that schools have not been able to escape, including the organization of the school day, the division of learning in academic disciplines, the architecture of school buildings, and the federal, state, and local mandates that educators must obey.

'Customization'

On hand at the Oct. 27 event as the official “responder and raconteur” was education expert Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington.

Perhaps to the surprise of some in the audience, Mr. Finn generally agreed with Mr. Christensen’s and Mr. Horn’s arguments.

Mr. Finn, who served in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration, had two main points of contention. First, he disliked the authors’ reliance on Mr. Gardner’s theories, which, he asserted, are dismissed by “respectable cognitive psychologists.”

On that point, the authors are “wrong, but it doesn’t matter,” he concluded. “Gardner or no, I’m still in favor of greater individualization and customization of education.”

Second, Mr. Finn said, he thinks the authors have underestimated the power of politics to stymie the change in education, because in most cases it is the schools, not the students, that are the purchasers of the new technology-driven forms of education.

That means virtual schools will face “resistance and pushback and hubris, and a sort of smugness” from public education, Mr. Finn said.

As a result, he said, he did not expect regular public schools to become the “main route” for new technologies to be applied to K-12 education.

Mr. Finn added that a more likely route was for charter schools and families to purchase the technology directly, possibly in the form of supplemental private education, perhaps subsidized by philanthropies.

ONE-D Grant Announcement

INNOVATION CONSTANT: IRRESPECTIVE of Space and Time!

Unboxed

It’s No Time to Forget About Innovation

James Yang

By JANET RAE-DUPREE

Published: November 1, 2008

BY its very nature, innovation is inefficient. While blockbusters do emerge, few of the new products or processes that evolve from innovative thinking ultimately survive the test of time. During periods of economic growth, such inefficiencies are chalked up as part of the price of forging into the future.

But these aren’t such times. Wild market gyrations, frozen credit markets and an overall sour economy herald a new round of corporate belt-tightening. Foremost on the target list is anything inefficient. That’s bad news for corporate innovation, and it could spell trouble for years to come, even after the economy turns around.

“To be honest, we had a problem with innovation even before the economic crisis. That’s the reason I wrote my book,” says Judy Estrin, former chief technology officer at Cisco Systems and author of “Closing the Innovation Gap.” “We’re focusing on the short term and we’re not planting the seeds for the future.”

In tough times, of course, many companies have to scale back. But, she says: “To quote Obama, you don’t use a hatchet. You use a scalpel. Leaders need to pick and choose with great care.”

There are important things managers can do to ensure that creative forward-thinking doesn’t go out the door with each round of layoffs. Fostering a companywide atmosphere of innovation — encouraging everyone to take risks and to think about novel solutions, from receptionists to corner-suite executives — helps ensure that the loss of any particular set of minds needn’t spell trouble for the entire company.

She suggests instilling five core values to entrench innovation in the corporate mind-set: questioning, risk-taking, openness, patience and trust. All five must be used together — risk-taking without questioning leads to recklessness, she says, while patience without trust sets up an every-man-for-himself mentality.

In an era of Six Sigma black belts and brown belts, Ms. Estrin urges setting aside certain efficiency measures in favor of what she calls “green-thumb leadership” — a future-oriented management style that understands, and even encourages, taking risks. Let efficiency measures govern the existing “factory farm,” she says, but create greenhouses and experimental gardens along the sides of the farm to nurture the risky investments that likely will take a number of years to bear fruit.

“I’m not suggesting you only cut from today’s stuff and keep the future part untouched,” she says. “You have to balance it.”

Yet even that approach has its drawbacks. Companies that create silos of innovation by designating one group as the “big thinkers” while making others handle day-to-day concerns risk losing their innovative edge if any of the big thinkers leave the company or ultimately must be laid off.

“Innovation has to be embedded in the daily operation, in the entire work force,” says Jon Fisher, a business professor, serial entrepreneur, and author of “Strategic Entrepreneurism,” which advocates building a start-up’s business from the beginning with an eye toward selling the company. “A large acquirer’s interest in a start-up or smaller company is binary in nature: They either want you or they don’t, based on the innovation you have to offer. The best way to foster innovation is to create something, put it to the test, build a good company and then get it under the umbrella of a world-renowned company to move it forward.”

David Thompson, chief executive and co-founder of Genius.com Inc., based in San Mateo, Calif., says that innovation “has a bad name in down times” but that “bad times focus the mind and the best-focused minds in the down times are looking for the opportunities.”

“You do have to batten down the hatches and reduce expenses, but you can’t do it at the expense of the big picture,” Mr. Thompson adds. “You always have to keep in mind the bigger picture that’s coming down the road in two or three years.

“The last thing you want to do with innovation is just throw money at it. It’s a very tricky balance.”

In fact, hard times can be the source of innovative inspiration, says Chris Shipley, a technology analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences, where new ideas make their debuts. “Some of the best products and services come out of some of the worst times,” she says. In the early 1990s, tens of millions of dollars had gone down the drain in a futile effort to develop “pen computing” — an early phase of mobile computing — and a recession was shriveling the economic outlook.

Yet the tiny Palm Computing managed to revitalize the entire industry in a matter of months by transforming itself overnight from a software maker into a hardware company.

“Our biggest challenge right now is fear,” she says. “The worst thing that a company can do right now is go into hibernation, into duck-and-cover. If you just sit on your backside and wait for things to get better, they’re not going to. They’re going to get better for somebody, but not necessarily for you.”

HOWARD LIEBERMAN, also a serial entrepreneur and founder of the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute, says innovation breeds effectiveness. It’s not about efficiency, he argues. “Efficiency is for bean counters,” he says. “It’s not for C.E.O.’s or inventors or founders.”

The current economic downturn comes as no surprise to him, he says, because it mirrors the downturn at the time of the dot-com bust. Then and now, the companies that survive are those that keep creativity and innovation foremost.

“Creativity doesn’t care about economic downturns,” Mr. Lieberman says. “In the middle of the 1970s, when we were having a big economic downturn, both Apple and Microsoft were founded. Creative people don’t care about the time or the season or the state of the economy; they just go out and do their thing.”

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.

An Organic Detroit Renaisance Opportunity

We visited a prospective installation site for some Windspires yesterday at the River House Co-Operatives ( http://www.riverhouse.coop/) 8900 East Jefferson in Detroit which overlooks Belle Isle adjacent to the Detroit River. Invited there by a Mr. Ted Likert. I believe Ted was given a brochure that was passed to him from someone that attended the Bioneers conference at Marygrove college last weekend. He also had received an inquiry from a colleague in Missouri that had received a copy of the original "Meet The Winspire", compliments of Mr. Matt Roush's GLITR report months ago. The colleague was one of a group in Missouri then trying to get Mariah to move to their state. That information is ancillary to the point of this post, although illuminating as to the power of communication in the digital age.

Mr. Likert being a man of vast experience and success is engaged in creating value everywhere he can. Being a Pragmatic man he really understands the value of energy efficiency and wants to perform an energy audit of the Co-Operative and it's buildings. We discussed the think STEM Initiative and the infinite need and opportunities for students to become engaged in the world they live in and their capacities to affect that world through their choices each one makes. A specific opportunity we discussed would be the potential opportunity to engage a student led team to become involved in what an energy audit and subsequent improvements at the Co-Operative and it's environs might look like.We are going to continue to explore the opportunities afforded their and expand the conversation to adjacent property owners to visit the potential for sharing resources.

To start with though, we will pursue the installation of one unit strategically located as a generative tool, not only of course generative of electricity but more importantly it's generative capacity as an inspirational tool which is limited only by the creative capacities of the viewers.