Blended learning has become a popular topic in the education reform sector. Defined loosely as distance learning combined with in-person or in-class instruction, blended learning has long been a staple of the accommodated  high ability student’s diet (see my earlier post on Digital Learning and the High Ability Student).

High end programs offered by Northwestern (Center for Talent Development),  Johns Hopkins (Center for Talented Youth) and Stanford (Education Program for Gifted Youth) have been around for some time – Standford started offering online coursework in 1972! Whenever schools have been unwilling or unable to meet the needs of kids in the classroom there have always been “work arounds” creative parents can corral to meet the needs of students who want to go further and faster than a traditional school model will allow.

Yet education reform advocates do not seem to be dipping into the rich store of information and data on student performance, engagement and success these online blended learning options have accumulated. Anti-reform advocates instead point to poor results from online schools that were implemented to address the needs of students who were failing to thrive in the traditional classroom. Left with few supports these students (no surprises here) continued to fail (or flail).

On the afternoon of May 17th a conversation about digital learning will be hosted in Columbus by The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, The Nord Family Foundation and KnowledgeWorks (my employer). It promises to be a lively, nonpartisan conversation about digital learning with a national focus. Visit EdExcellence to register.

Marketers gone amok

Privacy has been a buzzword in social media circles ever since we first dipped our toes into Twitter and started building profiles on FaceBook. Social media conference sessions have been built around preserving privacy ( a losing battle?) and, quite frankly, the fear of privacy violation has kept more than one business person/professional I know from venturing into the space. Invasive (and somewhat evil) this insidious quest for more and better data rivals the eye of Mordor in its constant and hungry quest. Do you have a YouTube channel? Is it connected to a G-Mail account (well of course it is silly, you can’t have one without the other). And today’s tidbit? According to a recent industry leader in the field of consumer loyalty collection, your grocer has 3 times the data on you than the Library of Congress.

So this year for Lent our family is trying something a little different. We have sworn off our big beautiful grocery store. For the forty days of Lent we are only shopping for fresh produce and dairy (at the local fresh produce store) and meat (corner butcher store) and living out of our pantry.  Sure we’ll miss out on 10 cents off gas – but I drive a hybrid anyway, so really, what’s that worth? What do I hope to accomplish? A clean pantry and freezer. Some creative cooking. And a temporary end to the data mining of my weekly grocery inventory.

What creative ways have you used to maintain privacy on your purchases?

My father told me when I applied for and received my first credit card never to use it to buy groceries. I was already out of college and working full time (back in the 80′s credit cards were not handed out willy-nilly as they seem to have been in later decades). I don’t quite remember the circumstances but his admonishment stayed with me for many years. It’s not that he was against using credit – not at all. But within his words was a cautionary tale – if I had to go into debt for basic necessities of life I needed to rethink my spending habits.

So when Mitt Romney was reported to have said that PBS should have ads I wondered along with @PaulB67 if this was “the end of life as we know it, or a reasonable idea for #PBS funding?” Romney’s litmus test (if I can call it that):

During an appearance in Clinton, Iowa, Romney said “My test is — is a program so critical that it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?”

How simple and elegant a solution. Isn’t that the question we (should) ask ourselves before spending money on extras when money and credit is tight? And I don’t mean to demean the value of PBS – I love PBS. But I have been lately immersed in the notion of sustainability – particularly as it applies to the social enterprise. If PBS could become self-sustaining, shouldn’t it? And could it do so and maintain the quality and diversity of programming we have long enjoyed?

I lost a friend to breast cancer last month – author Linda Sanders. I first met Linda when I went to work for KnowledgeWorks. Linda was the go-to freelance writer I was encouraged to use in my first web development project for the foundation. Every word of content on the site was drafted by her. We didn’t always see eye to eye – I railed against using rhetoric I felt placed greater distance between educators and real world advocates. Linda usually won. In the end I think her language set the right tone and meaning.

I have to admit that it was easy to put myself in her shoes – the audience of freelance writerly-types who are often underpaid or underappreciated – and who take great pride in their craft. I didn’t put up much of a fight. I knew what it was like – working late at night crafting language for a client. Except Linda didn’t have to guess at content particulars – she knew them. I also admired her greatly and loved the autographed copy she gave me for my daughter of her just published book, Maggie’s Monkeys. Tonight we will celebrate her life, appropriately, at Grailville. Although I have always wanted to go there I wish it were for a celebration of her life that she was present for. Isn’t it true with friends that they can come to us when we least expect it – or think we need it – but it is never an intrusion and we always seem to have room for them?

I was shocked to read that “the tag clouds train has left Rock City” in a design blog post from April 2005. The post was referenced in a recently published (October 2011) blog by Jacob Harris, the NYT senior software architect, in a larger piece about journalism and data visualization, which is how I came across it during one of my seemingly random perusals of the internet.

Other than the personal embarrassment in the realization that my last few family holiday cards used a customized version of the word cloud to replace the dreadful “holiday letter” (which I have never been guilty of producing but reserve the right to do so in my dotage), I fully understand the disdain with which any journalist would view this simplistic visualization tool. It is, after all, an automatically generated cloud of words with font emphasis to denote frequency of use. The most common free tool for creating one can be found at Wordle.

Social media rating services routinely use category clouds to describe the users most common tweets or subjects of interest (or authority). Sadly, mine usually consists of the most oft repeated RT (for ReTweet) and the now ubiquitous # (hashtag) – I believe a poor indicator of what I truly focus on in the social media space (a more accurate portrayal would be EDUCATION, politics, CINCINNATI, ohio, etc. but these pale in sheer volume compared to what I would consider proper social media punctuation).

So all this got me thinking about data visualization in the education sector and political arenas. Making all that data available and visually appealing while holding on to accuracy is a challenge – particularly in the digital space where agate type resolution is iffy at best and EVERYTHING is footnoted. Enter politics and the reform candidacy of Ross Perot and his infamous pie charts – such simple and clear data visualization tool quickly embraced by the USA Today’s of the reporting sector. But are they accurate? Do they give us a down and dirty quick take on trend lines – or do they etch themselves onto our retinas and define the essence of what is important? In other words, if “what gets done gets measured” are these simplistic data visualization tools defining for us what we should care about? If we dig a little deeper into what a word cloud says about us, who gets to filter the end result?

This weekend the New York Times began a series on digital learning: Grading the Digital School, The High-Tech Gamble. The series will look at “the intersection of education, technology and business as schools embrace digital learning.”

Digital learning can have many faces: an online course where all learning takes place within an online module, one that may even have a moderator or teacher at the other end to answer questions and help guide students along (I’m thinking here of the CTY or EPGY programs). Another on-line learning option might be something that supplements the classroom, like the Khan Academy, created to support students who might need additional instruction or who perhaps didn’t quite get the concept the way it was taught in class the first time. Digital learning can also be a category for programs like Descartes Cove (offered by JHU) – basically a game-based learning module without an online component but where students advance along by answering math questions correctly.

High ability students, their parents and teachers probably have the most experience with digital learning programs by virtue of having to seek out more advanced levels of materials to meet the needs of the learner in or outside of the classroom. We have had good and bad experiences with digital learning. The most rigorous programs require a good bit of adult monitoring and check-ins along with a highly motivated student. The least rigorous programs are game based and provide only marginal advancement in knowledge (and here I am thinking of programs like SuccessMaker where students can “game the system” by discovering patterns in the program without actually learning the underlying math. Several parents with math degrees (not me) at our school discovered that, although their children were scoring several grade levels above their current grade in math, when asked the same math questions outside of the program they didn’t have clue as to how to begin to solve them. I expect this will also be part of the focus of the NYT series).

What online or digital learning resources have you found to be successful? Engaging? Do your schools encourage or discourage online learning for high ability students?

A post on Twitter this morning from a somewhat left leaning moderate (wow, did I just say that?) – “Wondering when calls to update antiquated power grid will begin, and who will 1st ID # of jobs it would create/how to finance it. #irene.” Great question. The power grid feeding New York is an antiquated one as we all should have learned during the Northeast Blackout of 2003. Small fixes aside we largely have avoided the cost and disruption truly building a stable infrastructure would require. Wouldn’t now be a great time to revisit this as part of a larger jobs creation bill? Isn’t this something big and transformational we should be looking to Congress and the President to deliver? Or do we just keep holding on to the patchwork systems that were developed almost a century ago? In 2003 Bill Richardson (Governor of New Mexico at the time) characterized the U.S. as “a superpower with a third-world electricity grid.” Status update? Nothing has changed.
Now that I think about it – this could be an easy win. For #tcot Republicans still handwringing over claims of reckless federal spending a plan showing exactly what federal spending could and should be used for (things like the military and our national power grid) might help them eek out a pathway for a moderate candidate in the next election. For Democrats, Obama in particular, it can be a powerful focal point to demonstrate leadership by bringing to bear the resources and coalition building so desperately needed to create a “newer deal” for America.

Our favorite shop to visit when we are at Seaside is Sundog Books. I can’t begin to tally the money we, as a family, have spent there — nor the adventures that this small bookstore has granted us to unfold. When I first started to explore Sundog Books – some 20 years ago – it was on the sandy side of 30-A replete with wood slats for floors and stacks and stacks of books – mainly written by Southern authors – perfect beach reads. Now they have moved to more spacious quarters across the road they carry a wider selection of fiction and non-fiction and a delightful selection of children’s books, too. This week I picked up “The Psychopath Test” by Jon Ronson and spent my first full day on the beach reading a compelling exploration of a troubling topic. I always knew there were psychopaths among us – now they will simply be easier for me to spot. And avoid.

I would never admit it to my children but I secretly, silently joined them in the ritual countdown to the end of the school year. The release from the daily routine of homework, permission forms, fees, fears, drama and general noise was so needed by the end of May, and so welcome. I expect teachers and administrators don’t mean for it to be so, but school can be a tyrannical intrusion in an otherwise gentle and calm childhood. The sheer noise, bustle, crowded, overstimulated rumpus room that some children clamor for can be, well, overwhelming to others. For years I found myself making excuses not to go to our elementary school’s annual carnival. I created baskets, garnered donations, baked cakes, brownies and cookies – but I simply could not breathe in that auditorium packed with sweaty children. It wasn’t until after my children left the school that they confided to me they hated the carnival, too.

Over the past year and half I have visited several high schools in urban core and rural areas across the country – focusing on smaller school units within larger schools. These were not private, magnate or charter schools – they were simply themed or tech schools within larger public school environments – and I have to say that, although I know the data say it ain’t so, to this parent there is much to be said for the small school. Principals who know the names and situations of every student. Teachers who have credentials to teach not only typical students, but certification for the G/T and LD kids too, so they could truly differentiate across the broad ability represented in each classroom. Smaller schools. Highly credentialed teachers. Kids focused on learning what matters. Pretty novel approach? Just saying.

Happy summer.

It’s time to convene our 2nd Constitutional Convention.

I’ve long supported radical changes to how “We the People” govern ourselves, such as choosing our representatives by lottery (credit to Harry Reasoner for suggesting it while working with Howard K. Smith at ABC – Harry may have suggested it with tongue in cheek, but I became a strong advocate after I stopped laughing). Although Mr. Jefferson and our founding fathers wisely recognized the need and included the means to change our constitution, they never envisioned the complexity and scope of changes that might be necessary. In this era of political gridlock, effective amendments to our Constitution are no longer practical because 38 states must ratify to change the law of the land and those that do get passed are largely ineffective. When is the last time “We the People” chose a President with 75% of the popular vote? ANSWER: Lyndon Johnson set the record with 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964. Getting 75% of the states to agree on a constitutional amendment is obviously easier than a Presidential Candidate getting 75% of the popular vote, but isn’t It time to reduce or eliminate gridlock and re-take higher moral ground? This is where I introduce my current campaign:

Eliminate the bicameral legislature and shed some burdensome gridlock.

Isn’t it ironic that our 27th (and most recent) amendment concerns compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives? How necessary and effective was the 27th considering most Congressional compensation comes from lobbyists and honorariums. The really smart, insightful ones, such as President Clinton, are able to enrich themselves in the finest traditions of the American culture of greed and self-indulgence. Of the other 5 amendments passed since WWII, 3 pertain to voting rights and 2 clarify the office of the President.
The governing topic du jour today is about the Federal Budget. Why hasn’t congressional compensation been categorized as one of those useless “entitlement programs?” Come on now all you tea partiers, why isn’t eliminating congressional compensation one of your entitlement reduction core values? Representing the people in making laws and passing a Federal Budget should be such an honor to make compensation unnecessary – great volunteer work for any true patriot. How better to serve our nation?

By law, the President is required to submit his annual budget for the next fiscal year to not later than February 7th. The House and Senate then begin committee hearings to develop their own, independent version of a budget resolution. How could we expect them to work together to develop one mutually agreed budget? They can’t even agree within their respective chambers. So they continue to develop their own authorization and appropriations bills (both must eventually be resolved in conference committees to become acts). The final appropriation bill enactment is required by law to be completed by the start of the new fiscal year (October 1st every year). But the trend in recent years has been to more and more frequently pass a continuing resolution to keep the government in operation. In some years impasses (gridlock) have forced certain elements of the government to shut down and/or some government employees and contractors to be furloughed. Most often, once an appropriation bill is enacted, all moneys owed to the impacted workers have been restored, effectively paying them for work not performed because Congress had failed to do their job and deliver a comprehensive appropriation act on time. Congress has only proven ineffective in representing themselves and their successors. So, paying Congressional salaries is tantamount to rewarding them for not doing their job (though they have been very effective in looking out for Congress no matter how poorly they perform).
If they can’t do the job they were elected to do, then throw the scoundrels out and get rid of the bicameral legislative branch of our government. Fewer elected representatives in a single parliamentary assembly would reduce Congressional salaries, Federal Budgets deficits and gridlock. Let the voice of the people be heard and the will of the people be upheld. Dump the Senate and have our legislative branch represented strictly based on population. In case you hadn’t noticed, the case for states’ rights was radically restricted in a nasty little war about a century and a half ago. At least we know that the right to secede is not in inherent right granted to states.
This is a call for a new constitutional convention.