iPads in the classroom are changing the face of education — from maclife.com by Florence Ion
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Also see:
- 5 Mac apps for aspiring authors — from maclife.com
iPads in the classroom are changing the face of education — from maclife.com by Florence Ion
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Also see:
I’ll be in the HoloClass today — from The EvoLLLution (LLL=LifeLongLearning) by Frank Palatnick, UN Advisor of Global Education, International Agency for Economic Development
We can’t wait another year for a new ESEA — from ednetinsight.com by Mary Broderick
Mary Broderick, 2011-2012 President, National School Boards Association (NSBA), and the former chair of Connecticut’s East Lyme Board of Education — Friday, April 13, 2012
Excerpt:
For nearly five years, school leaders around the country have urged Congress to make dramatic changes to the No Child Left Behind law. We’re now reaching a critical point where too many schools are being unfairly penalized, community support is undermined, and we’re forced to sacrifice vital subjects that engage students to focus on state tests.
NCLB—the ten-year-old version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—marked nearly half of all public schools as “failing” last year, and 100% will be “failing” by 2014. This absurd statistic demonstrates that the law isn’t working the way it was intended. However, because Congress hasn’t seized the initiative to make major changes, school districts are operating in limbo between a flawed law and an unsure future in the direction of federal policy. For our public schools to move forward and for our children to be competitive, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is pushing Congress to pass a new law this year. NSBA represents the nation’s 13,800 school boards, but there’re thousands of administrators, teachers, and other school staff members who also see the law’s problems firsthand.
From DSC: First, some articles that caused these reflections
Discounting heads — from insidehighered.com by Kevin Kiley
Excerpt:
Despite spending nearly 43 percent of their gross tuition revenue from first-time, full-time freshmen on institutional aid for those students, many private colleges and universities had a harder time enrolling students last year, with almost half seeing no growth or a decline in enrollment for 2011, according to survey results released today by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
From DSC:
It seems to me that it’s highly-possible that the higher ed bubble has started to pop — at least at private colleges and universities. So why doesn’t change occur? See the next article for several reasons.
Failure to change — from insidehighered.com by Robert J. Sternberg
Excerpts:
Universities teach about the importance of societal and organizational change, but often have trouble changing themselves in any but the most superficial ways. As a psychology professor interested in both individual and organizational modifiability, I have studied organizations, including universities, and why it is so difficult for them to change. Meaningful organizational change requires five elements, and unless all five of them are present, the organization — whether a department, school, college, or university — remains static.
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Change is not always for the better, of course. But a college or university that is static will inevitably fall behind more dynamic, positively changing institutions. And like any institution that fails to compete, it is on the path to stagnation or death. A dynamic institution will change and, if the change proves to be in the wrong direction, will redirect itself until it finds a sustainable path.
From DSC:
As a relevant aside, it’s not just the “younger folk” who are struggling with student loans either:
Student loans saddle both kinds of seniors: graduates and grandparents — from the Washington Post by Michelle Singletary
Excerpt:
Using data from Equifax credit reports, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that people 50 and older are carrying nearly $135 billion in student-loan debt. Those 60 or older have student-loan balances of more than $36 billion.
It’s these types of dynamics and trends that are catalysts for what I call:
“Learning from the Living Room”
Though 2-5 years away, signs point to it coming to fruition (my prediction is that this movement will really gain traction when Apple’s Connected/Smart TV hits the market and as more people get fed up with the current, unresponsive accredidation monopolies within higher ed). Some example/recent articles:
“The Forthcoming Walmart of Education” …which is already happening, but far more significant changes will come in the next 1-5 years as people look for more affordable alternatives. A graphic I created back in 2008 states what I see developing and will be a piece of the higher ed landscape in the future:
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Besides the items mentioned above (i.e. changes in price and delivery mechanisms),
what might some of these innovations look like? Here are some ideas/articles/examples:
Rethinking higher education business models — from americanprogress.org by Robert Sheets, Stephen Crawford, Louis Soares
Excerpt:
The theory of “disruptive innovation“—the notion that certain innovation can improve a product or service in such a way that it creates new markets that displace existing ones—was developed and advanced by Christensen in the 1990s. According to Christensen, who has studied the evolution of many industries, disruptive innovation occurs when sophisticated technologies are used to create more simplified and more accessible solutions to customers’ problems—solutions that are often less high performing than previous technologies but whose price and convenience attract whole new categories of consumers. The first generations of transistor radios, desktop computers, and MP3 players are examples. These new solutions—innovations to existing technologies deployed through new business models—gradually improved to the point where they displaced the previously dominant solutions. Christensen’s key point, however, is that new technologies like these cannot achieve their transformative potential without compatible changes in their industry’s business models and value networks, which in turn may require shifts in the standards and regulatory environment.
From DSC:
Given the current rumblings of massive changes that are about to take place (if they haven’t already) within the higher education landscape, each person within higher education that has key strategic and leadership responsibilities should be required to read the two books mentioned below. I assert this because these world-class researchers and authors have discovered and documented phenomenon that is affecting all of higher education at this point in time. Understanding the concepts in these books will help your college or university not only survive — but thrive — in the future.
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Also:
From DSC:
That article reminds me of a posting on my archived site from 4/11/09:
Let’s reallocate funds towards course development, and then let’s leverage those learning materials throughout the world!
For students: Bring costs waaaayyyyy down and access waaayyy up!
Plus, no more defaulted loans, students could experience richer content, students wouldn’t have to wait as much on financial aid decisions. There would be fewer financial aid headaches; and the resources devoted to figuring out & processing financial aid could be reduced. The issue will be how an institution can differentiate itself in such a new world…but that issue will have to be dealt with in the future anyway.
Education 2.0 isn’t coming. It’s here. And the way you’re educated will be changed forever. — from bostinno.com by Dave Balter
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Sometime in late 2010, I sat down with angel investor Josh Abramowitz in NYC. I asked him to invest in Smarterer, a business whose purpose was to validate people’s digital, social and technical skills. What I encountered for the next hour wasn’t someone merely evaluating my specific business concept – it was an attack on the entire higher education system.
Josh argued that our higher education system was on the verge of crumbling. Not because there weren’t marvelous educators or exceptional institutions, but because colleges and universities were charging exorbitant sums that weren’t equal to the return. Our educators were burying our students with tremendous debt. But increasingly sophisticated learning and credentialing opportunities were emerging online, and they were free or nearly free. And this disparity would lead to a full-fledged education revolution, he predicted.
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What the Universities need to know is that what’s coming for education is something like the shift the music industry failed to see until it was too late. Things will never be the same again. Instead of griping about how hard it will be to tap their endowments to pay for education, they should be thinking about how to take advantage of the changes.
To save their universities, here’s the three-pronged ecosystem that every University Leader should start thinking about…
Also see:
See:
The higher education monopoly is crumbling as we speak — from The New Republic by Kevin Carey
Excerpt:
In the last few months, however, that monopoly has begun to crumble. New organizations are being created to offer new kinds of degrees, in a manner and at a price that could completely disrupt the enduring college business model. The question is: Which colleges and universities will be the G.E. of the twenty-first century, and which will be as forgotten as U.S. Leather?
From DSC:
Arguably, Sal Kahn has become the most famous, influential educator on the planet today — his videos are watched millions of times a day now. The question — which Eric Schmidt answers in the piece — I couldn’t help but ask was, “Why didn’t this type of innovation come from someone who was working in education at the time of their innovation?”
My thanks to Dr. Kate Byerwalter and her colleagues for passing along this resource.
The tags/associated categories for this posting point out the relevant areas covered.
Also see:
From DSC:
A relevant graphic comes to mind with what Sal is trying to achieve with analytics:
i.e. Highly-effective diagnostic tools for the educators and trainers out there!
Checklist: transforming corporate learning — from Internet Time Blog by Jay Cross
Excerpt:
If you don’t get this, it will get you.
Experience has taught us that making over a training department into a business learning function requires these activities:
IBM’s Watson Hired by Citigroup — from pcmag.com by Mark Hachman
Excerpt:
But Citigroup said late Monday that it had agreed to form an exploratory partnership with IBM to use the Watson technology to help advance customer interactions, using the deep “content analysis and evidence based learning capabilities” that the IBM Watson technology uses.
Watson’s strengths, that of parsing a question asked using natural language and then returning relevant results, will presumably be used to facilitate customer interaction with Citi automated banking systems.
IBM Watson heads to Wall Street — from extremetech.com by Sebastian Anthony
Excerpt:
After conquering Jeopardy, battling patent trolls, making inroads into medical insurance claims, and threatening to replace customer service representatives, IBM’s Watson is now looking to take its first foray into Wall Streetesque financial services. Working with Citigroup, IBM has entered into an “exploratory agreement” that will cover everything from streamlining the banking experience for customers, through to “empowering financial professionals to make better business decisions.” In other words, watch out stock traders: Watson’s coming.
The next big UI challenge is making big data human — from gigaom by Stacey Higginbotham
Excerpt:
IBM’s Jeopardy-playing supercomputer Watson is now getting a gig in the retail banking sector as part of an IBM partnership with Citi. This is in addition to its position as a diagnostic assistant for doctors. But the many careers of Watson aren’t just a fun story for the tech press; they illustrate a very big technological and business opportunity for companies like IBM and Microsoft — the rendering of big data into human scale.
College presidents say $10,000 degrees available now — from texastribune.org by Reeve Hamilton
Excerpt:
Called “The Evolving Role of University Systems in Higher Education,” today’s panel mostly focused on efforts to lower the cost of college. It was moderated by Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp and featured Heldenfels, Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, and two pairs of university and community college leaders actively collaborating: Texas A&M-San Antonio President Maria Ferrar and Alamo Colleges Chancellor Bruce Leslie, and Texas A&M-Commerce President Dan Jones and South Texas College’s Chief Academic Officer Juan Mejia.
Leslie said that Perry’s push has led to an increased emphasis on cooperation between community colleges and four-year universities. The result, he said, is a degree that meets Perry’s target — and is even less expensive. At Texas A&M-San Antonio, Ferrar said, a bachelor’s in information technology with an emphasis on cyber security will cost about $9,700.
From DSC:
Reflecting on Survival Factor [from Inside Higher Ed by Kaustuv Basu]:
Let researchers research, and teachers teach — but not both. Teaching is an art as well as a science — and learning is messy. It takes a long time and a great deal of effort to become an effective professor (and more “hats” are being required all the time). On the flip side, there are skills required in research that may not be related to knowing how to be an effective professor.
The problem is — at least in many cases — that students are not served when researchers try to teach as well as do their research. These researchers were most likely recruited because of their ability to research — not due to their ability to teach. I realize that there could be a subset that can do both teaching and researching. But my experience at Northwestern was that the good researchers were not the effective teachers…and I’ll bet that’s still the case today. Why? Because there simply isn’t enough time and energy for most people to perform both roles well.
With the price of an education continuing to increase, is this a system we want to continue? Are these researchers trying to improve their teaching? Are they rewarded for their teaching efforts and growth? If not, are the students being served here? In any other industry, would this type of situation continue to exist?
As we move towards a more team-based approach to creating and delivering education, we may want to seriously consider breaking up the roles of researcher and professor — and doing so for good.
Does The Online Education Revolution Mean The Death Of The Diploma? — from fastcoexist.com by Michael Karnjanaprakor, CEO of Skillshare
As the options for self-education explode, what does a college education mean? And how can we measure what a good education is?
Excerpt:
What we’re witnessing is a bottom-up revolution in education: Learners, not institutions, are leading innovation.
From DSC:
I post this in hopes that those of us working within higher education will strive all the harder to:
Also see: