Reflections on Diane Ravitch and the Obama Administration’s Inflexible Reform Stance

I just reviewed Diane Ravitch’s interview from a show called City Talk from CUNY. The message she started with her book The Life and Death of the Great American School System continues unabated. The Obama administration has continued the same destructive policies toward public education that were present under the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind. President Obama has refused to listen to the logic and reasoning of educators, and he has chosen instead to listen to economists  and the “Billionaire Boys Club” who want to privatize public education. He has even placed individuals from the New Schools Venture Fund in key positions in the US Department of Education. These individuals have let it be known that they see charters and education privatization as the way public schools should go.

One analogy during her interview that I thought was interesting was when she referred to the impossible deadline set under NCLB 1.0 of having every child proficient by 2014. She likened that deadline like telling every city it must be crime-free by 2014, and if they weren’t crime-free, then policemen were going to be fired. That amply shows the ridiculous nature of the entire NCLB Act, and the foolishness of Race to the Top.

With the new administration, we now have Race to the Top which is NCLB 2.0. Obama’s threat to veto the recent war budget if funds were shifted to save teacher jobs shows just how inflexible this administration is in its beliefs regarding the salvation that test scores can bring. As Diane Ravitch points out in this interview, “Race to the Top is only NCLB with the screws turned tighter with its misguided emphasis on evaluating teachers by test scores.”

This administration and this current US Department of Education cares more about its ideology and blind faith in economists and the Bill Gates of the world than it does for students and the teachers of our great nation. I only hope our Great American School System can survive two more years of this current administration.

Diane Ravitch’s Interview on City Talk

Technorati Tags: Diane Ravitch,school reform,Obama Administration

21st Century Book Review: Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus

I have started this book review several times, and each time I erased it and started over. Clay Shirky’s latest tome about the Internet world and how it is impacting us is one of those books that does not lend itself to an easy description.

Cognitive Surplus is a complicated book on a complicated topic. It does not read with the ease of his last book Here Comes Everybody but it does provide the reader with the same level of food for thought. In this book, Shirky takes his readers through a close examination of a phenomenon he calls the cognitive surplus. This cognitive surplus is basically defined as “the aggregate of the world’s free time that is now made available due to the hyper connectivity of our world today.” With the advent of the Internet generally, and social media specifically, massive numbers of world citizens can pool their free time and intellects to create things that never before existed. Some examples of these creations in Shirky’s book are Wikipedia, which has grown to become one of the most accessed and referred to sites on the World Wide Web. He also provides the example of Ushahidi, which is an open source platform for gathering data via SMS, email or web. Ushahidi then provides that information for the public in graphical form. Below is an example of an Oil Spill Crisis Map created by Ushahidi to track the oil spill.

Oil Spill Map Using Ushahidi

According to Shirky the combination of the free time, connectivity through social media, and a willingness to donate expertise have made platforms like Ushahidi possible. As in the Oil Spill Map above, individuals volunteer to report data that updates the map. The Ushahidi platform allows for reporting of aggregate information to the public. It is the cognitive surplus that makes projects like this possible. Shirky adequately captures the possibilities of this phenomenon when he says:

“The technology will continue to improve, and the population will continue to grow, but the change in direction of more participation has already happened. What matters most now is our imaginations. The opportunity before us, individually and collectively, is enormous; what we do with it will be determined largely by how well we are able to imagine and reward public creativity, participation, and sharing.”

According to Shirky, the possibilities of “deploying the cognitive surplus” can make a lot of good happen.

Here’s a video where Shirky attempts to explain how cognitive surplus will change the world.

This is a probably a book to engage individuals in the possibilities that connectivity in general and social media in particular bring to our society. An engaging and thoughtful read throughout. It is a book that can’t be read quickly.

Technorati Tags: book reviews,technology,Clay shirky

A Power Chrome User’s Top Five Chrome Extensions

Google’s Chrome Browser is my browser of choice. After Internet Explorer became so ponderous and slow-loading, I was looking for another browser. I used Firefox for a while, as well as Opera, but when Google released Chrome, I was won over immediately. Chrome’s tabbed browsing, its thumbnail view page, and its speed won me over as a user. Now there are extensions. Here are my current favorite top 5 Chrome extensions.

Chromed Bird

Chromed Bird is a Twitter client. It offers users all of the features of a regular twitter client. The ability to follow regular timelines and follow lists along with hashtags allows users to follow tweets the same way it is done in clients like Tweetdeck or Seesmic.

Chromed Bird’s Interface

Gmail Notification Button

Another of my favorite Chrome Extensions is the Gmail Notification button. What this extensions does is periodically check your Gmail account and it notifies you when you have Gmail. It places a small number just below the button to indicate the number of unread messages in the inbox. Gmail is opened by simply clicking on the button.
 

Gmail Button in Chrome Browser

Diigo Extension

The Diigo Extension gives users the ability to highlight, bookmark, sticky note or share annotated portions of web pages. This extension makes it extremely easy to access these tools when stumbling across some interesting web material.

Diigo Toolbar Extension

The Evernote Extension

The Evernote extension gives users who have Evernote accounts the ability to clip web pages, add notes to those pages and then place them in notebooks.

 

Evernote Extension Interface

Awesome Screenshot, Capture, and Annotate Extension

This extension allows users to capture screenshots of the contents of a browser then add annotations to that image. Then users have the option of uploading the final image to a URL or saving it. It is a quick and easy way to take screenshots of browser pages.

Awesome Screenshot with Annotations Added

I have tried a number of other Chrome Extensions, but these are so far the ones I find the most useful for my needs. There are countless other extensions available at: https://chrome.google.com/extensions.

Technorati Tags: technology,Google,Chrome,Web Browsers

Tips and FREE Solutions for Managing the 21st Century To-Do List

In August, I will be conducting a session with teachers and administrators on how to use the free tools available on the Internet to manage their To-Do List electronically. After our conversion from Using MS Outlook web to Google Apps, which has a handy task manager, many of our staff are exploring options. In the following presentation, I will be reviewing with them 4 very good, but also very free, solutions for managing the day-to-day tasks that we face as administrators and teachers.

The first tool that I review is the simple Task List feature that comes with Google Apps. It is the tool that I currently use. It is simple to use and the best bet for a non-power user. It works well for those users who are not tackling a major year long task with lots of multiple subtasks.

The second application I review is Remember the Milk. It is a workhorse To-Do list that offers users a bit more functionality such as sending yourself text message reminders, and for having direct access on a smart phone. It is also a very good To-Do List.

Remember the Milk: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Another equally free and powerful To-Do List solution is Task Coach. Task Coach is an open source solution that offers users quite a few options when it comes to managing tasks. It allows for categories and subcategories. It allows for task tracking, and it has features that allow you to add budgeting. It is not as simple as the other solutions, but it is the most powerful To-Do List solution.

Task Coach Download: http://www.taskcoach.org/

The final solution I review in the presentation is not just a To-Do List. It allows users to place sticky notes on the desktop. It is called Hott Notes. Users can customize their notes, or they can use the To-Do List note on their desktop. You can add alarms to the notes, and it can be ran portably from a thumb drive. Hott Notes is a very simple sticky notes option.

Hott Notes Download: http://www.hottnotes.com/

Below is the presentation for my session. It provides an overview for each of these options.

Managing multiple tasks

View more presentations from John Robinson.

Managing Your Google Calendar

In August, I am conducting a session on how to make the most of the all the features in Google Calendar. Honestly, I have used Google Calendar for about two years, but until recently, I had not explored all it has to offer. One Saturday recently, I spent hours exploring everything I could about this application. It really is an effective tool. As more and more school systems decide to move to Google Apps, there will be even more reason to learn about Google Calendar and all the other applications Google has to offer.

For those who are converting to Google Apps, I gladly share the following slideshow that covers many of the most common features found in Google Calendar. I hope it is helpful.

Managing your calendar

View more presentations from John Robinson.

Technorati Tags: Google Apps,Google Calendar,time management

Call for 21st Century Leadership and Teaching

I am not sure at this point I can say much more about the need for change in education that others have not already said. It seems to me the rhetoric gets louder and more intense with each passing year, and yet there seems to be just more talk, but not a great deal movement. There is movement though. Educators are trying to find ways to get the job of teaching done more effectively. Schools in Kansas City are going to try to use ability-level placement of students rather than age-level grade placement. My own state is going to continue its experiments with the early-college model. Every day, there’s news somewhere of educators trying to find ideas outside the box that will effectively teach our students. I think that is as it should be.

The sense of urgency for reform is recent years has manifested itself repeatedly by the posting of videos that try to illustrate the predicament our education system faces. The video below does an excellent job of illustrating how we are being overwhelmed by the amount of information that flows into our lives daily. And, it is this amount of information that has made much of current teaching and instruction irrelevant with its emphasis on rote memorization and the regurgitation of facts on tests.

As the video illustrates, our vision for 21st century is far from adequate. Our students are going to be found wanting in the global economy because we continue to approach learning as if it were a discreet content area to be taught to students, who then repeat the facts back to us on tests.

Our vision of 21st century learning needs to move beyond testing. Even President Obama’s vision of increasing the number of college graduates will be insufficient if our students just get the same old education they have been getting for a hundred years. Educators have a choice. We can choose to take part in the re-envisioning of public education, or education will be re-envisioned for us. The video below does an excellent job of showing how our students’ learning experiences will be transformed by 21st century technology. Principals, teachers, superintendents, parents, and all other stakeholders can choose to become a part of this transformation, or be left behind. It’s that simple.

 

Technorati Tags: reform,school reform,21st century learning

Day at Linville Falls NC

This afternoon, spent some time hiking the trails at Linville Falls in the mountains of North Carolina. I thought I would share a few images with you.

Linville River Just Before the Falls

Grassy Meadow Along the Linville Falls Trail

Wildflowers Along the Trail to Linville Falls

Upper Linville Falls

Linville Falls

Linville River in Linville Gorge

It was a nice day, but humid. Linville Falls continues to have a beauty that I remember from visits during my childhood on our family trips to the North Carolina Mountains.