Nick's Education Spot

Cha Cha Chalgebra

2009-07-09T11:09:00.003-06:00

One of my students just solved an algebra problem with the help of Cha Cha. You text a question to 242242, and they send you the answer. They apparently include the steps as well, although it makes keeping cell phones out of testing locations that much more important. It just helped me find out that zero is in fact a real number. Once again, knowledge at your fingertips. If you could pass an algebra test in a reasonable amount of time with the help of a smart phone, is that a bad thing? I'm not sure, but it's interesting how our relationship to knowledge keeps changing as access grows easier.

Food For Thought

2009-07-01T06:53:00.002-06:00

Education should be liberated from the control or intervention of the government, and turned over to profit-making private enterprise, not because education is unimportant, but because education is so crucially important.

Anyone care to comment?

Revamping the Tech Team?

2009-04-22T08:30:00.002-06:00

Evey school has it. Most of us remember it as the 'A/V Club' from back in the day: the geeky kids that help wheel out and set up the tech equipment that schools use to put a little extra color into an otherwise bleak day of factory education. Teachers often joked about how 'those kids' knew more about the technology than they did.

Times haven't changed a whole lot. While MNCS might not look like your high school (okay, I guarantee it doesn't) we still have that same group of kids, who still know more about the technology than the staff does. For the few years I've been here, several of these students have been losely organized into what we call the Tech Team. Mainly this small group helps me repair and maintain our supply of PC's, as well as help set up thing like projectors and our audio system for school functions. They are also quite adept at turning the art room into an arcade for school parties.

This system functions OK; specifically it's helped me identify and train the three or four kids who are really into fixing PC's. It's a win/win - I get some much needed assistance, and they learn some valuable career skills. Unfortunately, it has limited what our students can do and share with each other in terms of overall access to and knowledge of all aspects of technology. I have a number of students who are interested in learning new software applications, developing new uses for experimental hardware (have you ever seen a Wii remote used as a DIY smartboard component?), programming, and other interesting aspects of technology. The 'Tech Team' paradigm has not done enough to develop and foster these interests over the past few years, so I'm looking for a new approach.

My idea that I'm putting into place at the end of this year and rolling into next year stems from a meeting I had with the Boy Scouts America about starting a Venturing program at MNCS. Venturing is an offshoot of the scouts, and is open to boys and girls, ages 12-20 (I think). Basically, an organization forms a Venturing club based upon the interests of the members involved. If people want to do extreme sports, they could form a local extreme sports venturing club, and recieve some organizational and logistical assistance from the BSA. While I'm not dead-set on starting an offical Venturing unit, I think this concept would work well for developing a new approach to the Tech Team. Instead of focusing on doing comp repairs and A/V support, the new tech club (working name: super awesome tech club - we need to do some brainstorming there) will organize and meet twice a month to celebrate anything tech related.

Meetings can be a brainstorming session, a bitch session, whatever. I am hoping we can plan a bi-monthly field trip to anyplace the techeis want to go. Hopefully, being organized will also give us some fundraising power, so that we can establish a tech project grant fund that students who want to purchase tech-related items for projects can apply to. Geeky fun will also likely emerge from this organization; I see a future LAN party as an inevitable consequence of a tech club. Not that I mind, I love FPS as much as the teenagers do. Probably more.

It's Testing Season!

2009-04-15T14:55:00.003-06:00

Hooray! Standardized testing is awn!

Someone shared this gem with me today:

'You can't fatten a pig by putting it on a scale.'

Nuff said. Let my students get back to what really matters.

The Cost of Accountability

2009-03-03T12:30:00.003-06:00

After weeks of trying, I finally managed to find a starting figure in my quest to discover how much taxpayer money is being spent on accountability measurements (aka 'standardized testing') in Minnesota. It took a little more digging than I expected, but I'm thinking that my expectations that MN DOE would readily handout such information probably only reveals my political naivety.

Multiple calls to the DOE only put me in touch with a DOE press agent, who politely informed me that MN DOE does not and cannot compile the costs associated with their NCLB accountability programs, due to some intricacies of their financial management systems. A call to the MN Taxpayers association put me in touch with a member of the financial management department at the MN House of Representatives, who quickly assured me that MN DOE does in fact tabulate said figures, and had just recently presented them at a House committee meeting. The gentleman from the House financial office sent me a PowerPoint and a document that breaks down costs for NCLB accountability measurements.

According to the DOE's figures, the state of Minnesota will spend roughly $25,000,000 to administer their standardized testing programs for 2009. That's a lot; it equates to roughly $10 a student, or almost 600 educators hired at a rate of $42,000 a year. That's enough cash to staff an additional 50 Minnesota New Country Schools; or to outright fund another 25 MNCS's. While this number is pretty impressive for it's size, the more impressive feat is MN DOE's shady accounting the covers up the true cost of this testing.

To get an accurate picture of the costs of these assessments, any college freshman taking Microeconomics 101 will tell you that you need to figure in things such as opportunity costs, externalities, etc. To start adding this all up, you need to figure out how much time our students are losing per year to lost time spent testing; a local district high school all but shuts down for three days a year to accomadate these assessments, and spends a significant portion of another two weeks taking tests. I'm not sure what it costs to run a high school for three days, but I bet it easily approaches my annual salary. On top of spending their resources to administer the test on test days, districts must also staff a full or half time position solely dedicated to the purpose of administering standardized tests. I think these costs are considered a negative externality in economic terms; the decisions are made by the state and federal government, and the results of said decisions impose a direct and substantial cost on schools and districts that they did not ask for.

As for opportunity costs, it's hard to value all of the time lost to meeting testing requirements. A recent survey of MN school principals conducted by Minnesota 2020 found that 71% of the schools in MN are spending more time and resources each year to meet NCLB testing requirements. 40% of the schools say they have cut classes and spending on arts and electives in order to avoid the stigma of not meeting Annual Year Progress benchmarks. How do you put a price on what's lost from an education if you remove arts, humanities, and other electives that are not a part of the NCLB framework? I can't say, but I will tell you for sure that testing profficiency in any subject has almost no correlation to any real-world application of the concept 'educated'.

As the hardest to measure or quantify in any meaningful term, it's difficult to grasp what the cost to our society is in lost opportunities for quality education. America is the land of opportunity after all, but the concept of equal opportunity is being replaced by the concept of equality of outcome. Any kid who shows up at just about any school in America and is willing to put in time and effort into earning an education will come out just fine. Children and their families are the true center of accountability in any young person's life. By eroding opportunity for the cause of ensuring an equal outcome of our education system, we're probably lowering the overall quality of our educational system. But I digress...

By combining the $25 million in cold hard cash that the MN DOE spends yearly to put their testing program together with the cold hard costs imposed on local districts, and factoring in the squandered educational opportunities that are being spent by NCLB assessment demands, my fuzzy math figures we're probably spending at least $50 million a year in current funds. Plus, God only knows how much in future GDP we're sacrificing by dumbing our society down through the costs of NCLB assessments, so the main question that needs to be asked (among many other important questions) is, is it all worth it for the $100 million a year the MN pulls in in federal education funding?

Congrats to Young Scientists

2009-02-23T21:18:00.002-06:00

Congratulations to the 10 or so MNCS students who participated in a regional science fair competition in Mankato last weekend. Several of the very creative projects won honors in the fair; a few of them even won some cold hard cash prizes, and Emily's Earthquake Machine that tested the foundations of different types of building construction won a trip to the state meet. For first time project fair goers, they all did very well. Some of their projects are featured under spotlight projects on the MNCS website.

For the record, none of these students have ever been in a traditional science classroom, or have spent hours studying fact after fact from a science textbook. What they do have, or are working on, is a good grasp of the fundamental concepts of science. Content is cheap and easy to acquire in today's age; knowing how to ask questions, hypothesize, design, conduct experiments and reflect on the results are difficult skills that are not so easily grasped.

Big Brother Rides Again

2009-02-19T18:46:00.005-06:00

Once again, the Minnesota Legislature is considering a bill that would raise the state's compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 18. While well-intended (we know what good intentions pave!) this law would be idiotic for at least a couple of reasons.

1. If a parent can't keep a kid in school after age 16, how in the heck am I supposed to keep them there? Oh yeah, taxpayers would have to pay a county bureaucracy to try and track them down. For those who aren't in the know, most of them won't do this for kids under 16 now.

2. If it was in any way effective at keeping kids there, our schools would be increasingly overburdened with students who have no desire to be there.

I would consider lowering the age that people are required to attend school, but increase the age at which they can attend in order to receive a diploma. In MN, you can only be enrolled in a public school until the age of 21. If we allowed older students who have dropped out, had some hard knocks, and then realized that they should in fact get serious about an education, it might improve our situation. Or it might be a disaster, but it's worth thinking about.

Lobby Day at the Capitol, Part 3

2009-02-18T16:11:00.004-06:00

For the third time in as many years, I was recently able to take a small insurgency of MNCS students to St. Paul for the annual Charter School Lobby Day at the Capitol. This is one of my favorite events of the year; as a social studies dude it's a fine way to bring social studies out of the abstract and into the now. Drawing influence from my current concern about the direction our country is heading (I've got my big red hammer and sickle flag on order in case the KGB coming knocking...a little over dramatic, but you get my drift) I believe that it's more imortant than ever to help teach students that they do have a say in what happens in our government, and in fact they need to be willing to make their presence felt at the capitol if anything positive is ever going to happen up there.

The day was a succes, we met with a number of different legislators from our surrounding districts, all of whom seemed to be on board with the message we were sending: Charters need some reform, but are essentially functioning well; and please don't hack our funding in a disproportionate amount from the cuts that are being made to traditional schools. We acknowledge money is tight and we will see cuts, but we're concerned that charters may end up sharing a larger burden due to their unpopularity with a number of key legislators.

Assuming said cuts don't eliminate my job, I look forward to going back next year. Heck, I'll be up there lobbying against something either way.

Photo: Students and I with Senator Kevin Dahl. Senator Dahl is a former educator and has visited MNCS several times; he even volunteered to spend time talking elections with our kids for an hour early last fall.

Research Project Cont. (Again)

2009-01-28T19:49:00.003-06:00

I really need to come up with a better way to title these continuing posts...

Anyway, I recieved a reply from another person in the MN DOE finance department today; she actually left me a voicemail yesterday. She informed me that the DOE financial management system was unable to tell me how much the State of Minnnesota spends on standardized assessments every year, and that nobody compiles or tracks that data. Nice. Because it would be wrong to tell taxpayers how much money the state has blown on questionable exams over the years? I'm a tad bit cheesed off about this; few thinkgs irk my irk worse than unaccountable public officials. I have no problems paying taxes as needed, and am actually occasionally proud to be able to contribute to a government that when run well can improve all of our lots in life, but the reckless waste of my hard-earned contribution to our society really gets my goat. I'd prefer to be the one that gets to flush my own money down my own toilet, thank you very much.

I still find it hard to believe that nobody knows this information, so I will keep digging.

Research Project Cont.

2009-01-27T10:45:00.002-06:00

I followed the message I left with the finance department at the DOE with a phone call today. I spoke with a pleasant lady who was some sort of finance director. She was very nice, although I was a little dumbfounded by her statement that the Minnesota DOE did not compile the costs of their assessment programs per student. Wouldn't that make good sense? If you were running a business or just practicing good financial management, wouldn't you want to be aware of the operating costs? How are Minnesota taxpayers and legislators supposed to make informed decisions about education if basic information like this isn't available? Am I seriously the first person that's ever wondered this? I find that impossible to believe.

Anyway, she's supposed to do some digging and call me back.

Halo 3 Revisited

2009-01-26T14:51:00.002-06:00

So, after an anxious few weeks, the First Annual MNCS Halo 3 Tournament was held on Friday night the 23rd with much fanfare. Well, not much fanfare, but with a wild barrage of teenage smack talk. For the most part the tourney was a success; there was some confusion about the brackets and who actually won the tournament, but the fact that the two hunyucks in charge of organizing it managed to pull it off is impressive.

Throughout the process, the two planners learned about organizational skills, pubilc advocacy, and technical problem solving. To organize the event, the pair had to collect names of participants, organize brackets, create rules, coordinate who was bringing what, and manage a parental consent process for students who are under sixteen. They also had to fight a PR battle with a majority of the staff, who were opposed to the content of the game, first person shooters, charging money for a tournament, and to the idea of the two students working together on a fun project in general. In addition to all that, they had to figure out how to link up three xbox 360s on a small LAN, and hook it all up to three ancient tvs.

All in all, a good learning experience that was fun and rewarding for the two main students involved, and for the other participants as well. Hopefully this can be the first in a long series of these types of events. I think it's going to be Guitar Hero next..

My Latest Research Project...

2009-01-23T17:24:00.003-06:00

I am currently in the processing of taking over District Assesement Coordinator responsibilities at MNCS. For those who aren't in the know, that basically means I have the joy of coordinating and administrating the battery of state tests that our students must take every spring.

While sitting through an amazing conference on state assessments yesterday, I was occupying my mind by pondering the question, 'How many taxpayer dollars are spent per student in Minnesota to administer these tests?' It's not that I am planning some wild crusade to expose and oust the various assessments that frustrate educators everywhere (okay, maybe I am), but I do want some reassurance that somewhere, high upon the DOE mountain, somebody is at least aware of how many of our tax dollars are spent to administer these tests, the benefits of which are suspect at best.

There's a lot about the situation that I don't really know, such as just how many students are in Minnesota, but when I started compiling a list of all the materials, overhead, and opportunity costs involved in the whole operation, I figure the number is probably astounding.

My initial call today to the MN DOE put me in touch with a nice gentleman in the finance department, who immediately appreciated my interest in finding some accountability for the DOE's 'accountability' program. He didn't know the answer I was seeking, but was admittedly curious himself. He gave me the nummber of another lady at the DOE who might hold the answer, and promised he was going to follow up on the question himself out of curiousity.

My latest contact lady has not returned my call at this point, but it's Friday. I'll let you know what I find out.

Experience Friday: Animation Workshop

2009-01-23T11:25:00.003-06:00

Today is another experience Friday: A day for students to try new and interesting things. I was approached by a student a couple of weeks ago about helping him run an animation workshop. So far it's been a success; myself and 12 students have managed to make chicken ride a cow across a field of grass. The program we are using is ALICE, a free 3D animation and modeling program sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University, with some help from EA games. It's pretty fun once you get the hang of it, and it teaches some basic scripting principles. I'll try and upload an animation later if it's possible. For now I'm engrossed in trying to make a samurai chop the head off of my cow; apparently spending the day with teenage boys brings the old habbits of glorifying senseless violence right back to the forefront of the imagination.

Interesting Think Piece

2009-01-21T11:50:00.003-06:00

Because I just can't control my Friedman-loving, Atlas Shrugged-toting libertarian impulses. Here's a link to an interesting article from Reason Magazine on entreprenuerism in education.

Sizer's Seven Questions - Updated

2009-01-14T11:33:00.005-06:00

For the past week I've been engrossed in reading Ted & Nancy Sizer's The Students Are Watching during quiet reading time at school. While Sizer is a giant in school reform principles and philosophy, and his influence is deeply felt at MNCS, this is the first time I've read any of his work.

So far I've been deeply impressed with what I've read from The Students are Watching. The focus of the book is an examination of what schools as institutions are teaching children. Sizer takes a much wider approach to this question than the typical review of standards and content materials, criticizing instead the values that schools are ingraining in students through their daily interaction with the school as an institution. Sizer questions everything from the yearly, daily, and hourly schedule of a typical school, to the attitudes, approaches, and demands that are placed on both the student and the teacher. The institution itself is teaching our students more about life than the actual classroom materials, and the lessons they are learning are largely negative.

An interesting element of this book that Sizer includes early are seven individual questions that a school should ask itself when examining the values that a school institution is impressing upon its students. I would list those seven questions here if it weren't for the fact that my copy of the book is at school, and I am at home due to a school cancellation, graciously provided by our -20 temperatures here in the Twin Cities this week.

Anyway, I feel it would be a useful intellectual exercise to examine my role in the lives of my students, as well as the role that MNCS plays in their lives, by investigating our daily actions through the lens of Sizer's seven questions. Hopefully this will shed some insight on where I am doing things right, where I am doing them wrong, and what things about our institution are functioning well for our students, and vice versa. I will dedicate subsequent postings to this task.

Update:
I made it in to school today, so I figured I will list the seven questions here, so I have them handy:
1. Is more expected of both students and teachers than it is possible for most to do well?
2. Do conditions in the school allow each student to be known well?
3. How does the school pace itself? Is there time to work, time to rest, and time to reflect?
4. Are the expectations for students and teachers clear?
5. Is there time during the school day for relfection and quiet work?
6. Are the incentives and opportunities for clearly demonstrated work clear and pervasive within the school?
7. In its presentation and recommendation of students for college admissions and job placements, does the school absolutely insist on accuracy as well as advocacy?

I will start reflecting on these questions over the next week or so.

Project Foundry for Project Management

2009-01-13T12:48:00.004-06:00

One of the major challenges that PBL produces for all participants is the matter of project management. As any business professional will tell you, any given project that a person engages in produces a large papertrail covering the project proposal, estimates, logs for tracking time and materials, communications regarding the project between personnel and management, etc. This reality of a project applies to PBL schools as well.

For the first ten years of MNCS existence, all aspects of project management were done on paper and in traditional filing systems. While this was before my time at MNCS, one can only imagine the amount of project paperwork that 120 students could produce in a year's worth of project-based education, not to mention the time and resources that each student, advisor, and project manager would spend organizing and tracking all of these materials.

Thanks to the miracle of digital storage and communication, we now use one basic website to manage all aspects of a student's project based learning, from individual and group projects to cumulative academic transcripts. The website we use is called Project Foundry, and was designed by a small firm in Wisconsin with the needs of project based learning in mind. What was once contained in an endless array of binders and file cabinets is now contained on a simple array of hard drives in some IT complex, located just off of the information superhighway at www.projectfoundry.org.

While project foundry has become a central aspect of our school system as a project based school, I could easily see where this tool could benefit more traditional districts that are looking to incorporate more authentic forms of learning and assessment into the curriculum. Managing the projects of 17 students is challenging; for a traditional teacher trying to incorporate projects into their curriculum, trying to manage 150-200 student projects would be a Herculean task. With a management tool like Project Foundry, authentic assessments like projects could be transformed from the side dish of a traditional classroom to the main course, and still be manageable for a single teacher.

Senior Projects 2008-09

2009-01-09T11:39:00.006-06:00

One of the highlights of my job at MNCS is being a member of the senior project development and assessment team. That title is much fancier than whatever the actual title is, but I think it sounds cool so I went with it. Anyway, as a senior team member I get the responsibility of helping MNCS seniors to devise, plan, and execute their senior projeccts, and then help them with the evaluation process in the spring.

I've covered the requirements that an MNCS senior project must fulfill in previous posts, but I will rehash them again briefly. Each project must be mutlidisciplinary, it must incorporate at least 300 hours of work, which equates to approximately 3 MNCS credits. It must incorporate the wisdom of at least one community expert from outside of the school and outside of the student's family. It must be evaluated on a rubric created by the student. It must include a five page research paper. It must be challenging, and drawn upon the student's knowledge, creativity, and resourcefulness. A senior project should reflect a student's passion for a particular topic, but should also challenge them to do and experience things outside of their comfort zone. Lastly, a senior project should give something back to either the MNCs community, or the student's greater outside community.

This year we have a large number of interesting projects proposed. One student, interested in pursuing a career in welding, is exploring the vocational requirements of a welding career, the costs and opportunity of owning their own shop, and is developing welding skills by creating a piece of metallic sculpture to sit outside of the school entrance. Another student is exploring the implications of a family's reading habits on early childhood education and student reading ability, and is using the results from her study to plan a community reading program for the city she lives in.

Another student is passionate about early childhood education, and is exploring career opportunities through volunteering and exploring internships, as well as developing a binder of teaching resources she can use in her career. Another student who lives in a rural community is starting and running a small business doing custom hay bailing in the surrounding farm community. Another student is exploring a future in farming by learning the ins and outs of living and working on various farms throughtout the community.

A couple of more artistic-minded students are exploring and developing careers in the recording arts by creating and promoting their own albums and planning a charity concert to raise money for local non-profit organizations. One student is interested in collectin and restoring vintage tractors, has purchase an old tractor, created a resotration workshop in the family barn, and plans on teaching an experience class on tractor restoration to a group of interested classmates.

One of my personal favorites, another student is really passionate about good meat. He is exploring the art of smoking meat, and is building a custom smoker at home, while refining his smoking skills during Friday sessions at school. He is also learn about butchering and food safety, and is planning to tour a sew local meat markets to interview their butchers. He is also planning a experience-based 'carnivore Friday' to teach classmates about the meat smoking process. Needless to say, one of our resident vegetarians who is doing her project on rescuing abused farm animals is oppsed to this project.

These projects will culminate in a half-hour public presentation where they demonstrate their learning to the community. These projects are the keystone of the MNCS project-process, and for many students represent years of hard working in mastering the skills needed to complete them.

A PBL Dilemma

2009-01-07T18:19:00.003-06:00

Today I faced another instance in an ongoing series of PBL dilemmas: to let students proceed with projects that are probably doomed to implosion, or to head the crisis off at the pass and dash their hopes immediately. This is an issue that PBL educators face regularly, especially when teenage males are involved.

Typically the problem occurs when a student, typically male, proposes a project that is borderline dangerous, yet very awesome. For instance, building something to blow up a desk, building something that fires a high-speed projectile at a car, or attempting to disassemble a microwave oven, then reassemble it in a manner that allows you to radiate things outside of the oven. While these are projects that I would definitely like to see, for obvious liability reasons, I have to file the suggestions into my Retirement Plans folder.

Today I had two students approach me with the suggestion of organizing a Halo 3 tournament. This idea was bad in multiple ways: video game projects fail 90% of the time, group projects fail 50% of the time, and the two students in question have done nothing but create mischief 100% of their time at school this year. All that being said, I decided to go against my better judgement and green-light the project for the following reasons: 1.) These two students waste time and cause problems all day long, so if they waste time and the tournament never happens, I haven't really lost anything. 2.) The tournament might be able to generate some funds for other projects. 3.) If it totally bombs, then I won't have to entertain the idea of holding a video game tourney for another two years at least. 4.) They might let me play Halo 3. 5.) They might actually surprise the entire school community by pulling off a totally kick-ass tournament, which would go a long way towards boosting their self-esteem (egos as well, but I'm not sure those can go any higher), earning them credit, and teaching them some valuable lessons in logistics, organization, and planning.

In this case the risk probably outweighs the reward, and at the least we will all be wiser for our failings if it bombs. I think with the right boundaries and guidance, the two in questions could surprise everyone, including themselves. The tourney is schedule for a student event night on the 23rd of this month; I'll keep posted on what happens.

Health Benefits of Social Networking Programs?

2009-01-06T08:45:00.002-06:00

As a passing thought, I am curious if anyone has any studied the effects of an active electronic social network on a user's health. I was on Facebook for a while way back when it was a college-only application, and just started playing with it again recently. I do feel more in touch with some of my friends and family as a result. Seeing how close family and social ties tend to be beneficial to a persons health, I wonder if anyone has done a study on the impact of a few minutes of daily Facebooking on a person's health.

A New Take on the PDA

2009-01-05T14:48:00.002-06:00

Or maybe it's an old take. Organization is something I constantly struggle with, especially in the high-paced, multi-tasking multi-sensory environment I work in. I've tried all types of different systems for taking notes and trying to organize myself, but usually I give up on said attempts when the battery dies, program crashes, calendar is too big to cart around, etc. Here's a link to an interesting new approach I'm trying: http://www.pocketmod.com/. PocketMod has a program where you can create a small, custom built organizer that you create by using a flash program to design an organizer, print the organizer off on a standard sheet of office paper, then fold it up into a small booklet. Hopefully I can sync this new cheap pocket organizer with a more sturdy desk based system to keep myself on track. I'll let you know how it goes.

In Defense of Standardized Testing

2009-01-05T13:21:00.002-06:00

Just Kidding. But I needed to find an excuse to start writing here again. I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I'll call it a soft goal for the new year or something. I'm trying for three posts a week. By the law of averages, most of the posts will be average, but hopefully I can hit a homer or score a hat trick here and there.

Intersting Think Piece on College Degrees

2008-08-29T18:00:00.002-06:00

Here's a link to an interesting op-ed that recently ran in the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858688764535107.html

In it, writer Charles Murphy argues that the college degree system we have is out-of-touch and over-inflated in value. In place of said B.A. degrees, we should institute certification tests such as C.P.A's and Lawyers face, that tell an employer whether or not an applicant is competent in a way that a simple degree cannot.

I agree with Murphy's views on college degrees, as my old roommate used to say, C's get degrees, and employers are none the wiser. In my experience, a degree counts for little in today's employment world; experience is the only thing that gets you through the door in most occupations today.

I'm not sure the certification testing system is the best approach to solving this problem, but I do think that colleges should be aligned less with in-class lectures and theory, and do more to provide experiential, hands-on learning that truly prepares students for real world work.

The Mojave Experiment

2008-08-22T20:59:00.002-06:00

I just watched an interesting ad for Windows Vista, wherein a group of avowed Vista haters (who somehow hate it without having used it) are given a chance to play around with the next version of Windows, code-named Mojave, which is actually Vista in disguise. Of course, to nobodys surprise, they all love it. I too thought Vista was cool for about 20 minutes, until I repeatedly had issues establishing user credentials after joining it to our school domain.

After three days of fighting with a multitude of Vista issue and annoyances, I 'downgraded' all of the new Vistas laptops to XP. I bet the suckers in the 'Mojave Experiment' did the exact same thing.

Getting Students Together From Far and Wide...From School

2008-08-14T06:58:00.000-06:00

I'm currently working on a project with some educators from the Milwaukee area that will hopefully allow our students to do some interactive research and general interacting and learning via the internet. The focus of our project is to answer the question 'How does where you live affect the quality of your life?" We're looking to incorporate some science and social studies into the project. We are hoping to use Moodle via the Milwaukee public school system, but those details are still up in the air. I will keep things posted as they develop.

Steger Institute

2008-08-13T07:55:00.002-06:00

I've spent the past few days at the Will Steger Foundation's summer institute for educators. It's been a mixed bag, I've taken out some interesting project ideas, but most of the classroom stuff is geared toward the classroom, which doesn't help us out much. We did get to meet Mr. Steger himself, which was cool. The Steger website, globalwarming101.com, does contain some pretty cool resources and information for students studying climate change.