A family member – who works in a Texas middle school – forwarded this bit of wit and wisdom to me today.
A teacher dies and goes to Heaven. When she gets there, she meets Peter at the pearly white gates.
Peter says to her, ‘Welcome to Heaven. Let me give you an orientation first.’
An instructional monoculture is a world where all children are expected to learn the same things, the same way, at the same time.
Are we building instructional monocultures in our schools? By we I mean publishers, policy makers, and district level decision makers. The forces of conformity are driving hard against the need for instructional diversity.
More importantly in the Web 2.0 world is it even possible to assert this level of control? Is it an effort doomed to failure as Citizen Marketers invade traditional publishing and turn it on it’s ear.
New York, Texas, California, and Florida have opted out of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and will be abandoning all high stakes testing. It is unclear at this time if other states will follow, although indications from across the political spectrum are clear there is strong interest.
In a joint press conference the Chief State School Officers for the big 4 expressed a commitment to move the money they are currently spending on high stakes testing into Art, Music, and Intramural Sports.
“Frankly we were not seeing real gains. We kept tweaking the tests and measurements to give the illusion that progress was being made – but at the end of the day it was the same old same old” stated one Chief. Another added that it was difficult to measure whether the tests were really making a difference. As he pointed out – “the mortgage crisis was driven by people educated 15-30 years ago, it is hard to see how today’s students could be dumber than that.”
Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look.
While you are there bookmark the blog or better yet drop it into your RSS reader – on a regular basis senior people from the publishing industry will be writing about the business.
Curious about how Web 2.0 is going to affect education? Steve Hargadon has distilled into one blog post an excellent summary of the trends that are leading us there and what teachers can do to help their students thrive in this new environment.
Much of what Steve talks about has been part of a vision for education long before computers were going into schools. There is a clear link from Dewey, Piaget, Vigotsky, and even the constructivist critic Mayer to the ideas Hargadon lays out.
Both the technology and the culture that surrounds it have matured to the point where this vision can transform into the dominant paradigm. Quantitative and anecdotal evidence backs this assertion up.
What is the future of publishing? I moderated a distinguished panel at the IIR Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix last week that tackled this question. The general thrust was that publishers need to adapt to a new environment or they will be left behind.
Nader Dareshori CEO of Aptius Learning and former CEO of Houghton Mifflin addressed the real business of publishing – spreading ideas.
Reid Lyon (bio) the architect of Reading First and CEO of Synergistic Education Solutions tackled the question of context – how materials are used matters more than the materials themselves. Publishers need to think build this into their products and business models.
Hakan Satiroglu CEO of xPlana covered how new tools are changing the structure of what is offered and how traditional publishers are struggling with this new paradigm (see my post on this topic here).
Bobbie Kurshan CEO of Curriki talked about how the Open Source community is going to play in the creation of content and how publishers can benefit for participating in the community. (see my post on Open Source in Education here).
As moderator I discussed how publishers need to move away from trying to recreate the book experience on-line to leveraging experiences only the technology can provide like virtual worlds and video games.
Follow the “keep reading” link to find an extended description of each panelist’s key points and some notes on the Q&A portion of the session. (If you are on an RSS reader you may need to click through to the original article to see this link).
Why don’t textbook publishers use more humor? Humor frequently plays a critical role in revealing truth and puncturing pomposity. Textbooks should be a path to the truth – and they are frequently so pompous they could bore a narcoleptic sloth to death.
As an example the “You Suck at Photoshop” series on YouTube is pure snarky genius. Our guide and teacher is the hapless Donnie Hoyle. During serious lessons on Photoshop we learn about Donnie’s unfaithful wife, his lame World of Warcraft buddies, and his egomaniac boss at Phebco (motto: Innovation, Vision, Waste). He uses the mesh tool to paste a copy of his marriage certificate in the windshield of the boyfriend’s car, compound paths to paste his wedding ring into a barren dessert scene, and pucker and bloat to reveal his bosses inner piggishness.
View episode 1 to get a taste of the series (warning – strong language, adult themes, and snark).
In Japan novels are serialized for cell phone delivery and published as dead tree editions only after they are hits. John Rice has a great post on on this at his Educational Games Research blog.
While this works because of Japan’s rather unique commuting environment the central point that any reading helps build fluency is well taken. Here is the money quote:
“It boils down to literacy events in the life of a child. The exposure to text, in whatever venue, increases the reading and writing skills of children. If children read a book, a comic book, or the story line in a videogame, they are reading. And that makes all the difference.”
This novel approach hits on two interesting themes. First, it takes advantage of the new format rather than trying to shoehorn the old way of doing things into the new platform. Publishers have worked hard to recreate the book experience on-line with very limited success. I would argue that this innovation is the reverse – making an on-line experience into a book, which is why it works.
What do Web 2.0 and Social Networking mean for Education Publishing? On February 7th I was on a panel at the Association of American Publishers (AAP) in Sacramento that tackled this question.
Ann Flynn Director of Education Technology at National School Boards Association (NSBA) reviewed the excellent study they released last fall that explored how these tools are being used in schools.
Sheryl Abshire CTO from Calcasieu Parish School System in Lake Charles, Louisiana talked about they are handling the very real complications that come with introducing these disruptive technologies into schools and classrooms.
What tools do teachers find useful for learning and teaching? The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies out of the UK conducted a survey in 2007 that asked people to submit their top 10 tools – they then came up with a list of the top 100.
If you are an educational software publisher the results may not be what you want to hear. Not 1 of the top 10 is an education specific title and only 5 of the top 50 are (if we include Wikipedia). All the rest are general productivity tools and range from Office apps, search tools, social networking sites, mind mappers, RSS readers to name just a few categories. In an even more interesting twist 37 of the top 50 are free.
This survey is very unscientific, 107 self selected responses. Take it with a large grain of salt. On the other hand the questions it raises are fascinating.
The Education Business Blog