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Microsoft's High School Opens in PA
Joopndufus writes to mention a CNN article about a Microsoft-planned high school, newly opened in the Philadelphia area. Funded entirely by that city's school system, Microsoft offered its management skills and personnel to design every aspect of the high-tech setting. From the article: "After three years of planning, the Microsoft Corp.-designed 'School of the Future' opened its doors Thursday, a gleaming white modern facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood. The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building -- students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive 'smart boards' -- but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques."
"but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques"
Does that mean that students only get help on the first Tuesday of each month?
Does anyone else see a problem with modeling a school after a management style better at spin than substance? Or with MS managers telling teachers how to do their jobs? I wonder if the lockers will have DRM built-in? The sheer magnitude of bullsh*t this promises is nearly limitless, based just the amazing lack of common sense found in the idea. Its like modeling a operating room after a CPA office. They may as well model it after circus clowns, for all the similarity the two have.
Why not just give money to the school system? That way if things go south, MS wouldn't bear part of the blame. This way they do. I wonder if that little bit of management wisdom will find its way into the classroom along with heavy-handed DRM.
Seriously, MS really needs to replace Larry, Curly, and Moe.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has famously called high schools "obsolete"
This from the guy who also said nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory.
"-- and mental acuity is especially critical to Microsoft"
From the company that only thinks, if you can call it that, in term of covering up old problems with new problems - fix is a four letter word at MS. They just want the opportunity to shape impressionable minds in their mold. I wonder how free speech will size up at "MS High".
Worst of all, MS conned the PA school system into paying for their little experiment. They could have at least come up with part of the cost, as a show of good faith. I guess they'll kids how to be good con artists.
"The high school will use an "education competency wheel," patterned after a set of desirable traits Microsoft encourages among its employees. Officials, teachers and students are to be trained in dozens of skills, including organizing and planning, negotiating, dealing with ambiguity and managing relationships."
So, they'll graduate a bunch of MS employees. Will the graduation speeched extoll how great it is to work for Microsoft?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Anyone here ever read the book "Jennifer Government". Basically in the near future everything is corporate owned and your last name reflects the company you work for. So like John Nike works for Nike ...
... and reading a story like this makes you wonder just how close we are getting to a world that more closely resembles the one in that novel. All this needs is for the kids to be walking around with the last name Microsoft and there you go.
Anyway in the book they describe how the main female characters daughter attends school owned and run by Mattel
Aaron
"Curiouser and Curiouser...." -Alice
Say what you want about Microsoft and its management techniques (and plenty of jokes are already around) but I think this is a good thing. Whatever about Microsoft, they probably have better management techniques than most American school systems, and Bill Gates was right about schools essentially being obsolete.
There needs to be new ideas and new blood running things in the schools. Most administrators are former teachers, and just like good programmers don't always make good IT managers, so do good teachers have a spotty history at becoming good administrators. If this ushers in an era of trying new things to improve schools, then I'm all for it. Microsoft has the name recognition and technology chops to get its foot in the door, but other companies should give it a go. Imagine a GE-led school using Jack Welch's management techniques...
Meanwhile, students at Drew Elementary, deep in the low-income area of West Philly, don't even have keyboards and mice for the few old iMacs in the library because they can't afford them (I suspect NCLB is to blame for that). I am part of a student organization in Drexel University called Tech Serv and we are preparing to donate around 31 computers to the elementary school, some of them Pentium IIs but it's better than what they had, which was nothing. Most of the machines will be donated with edubuntu, because the school can't afford windows licenses; we're trying hard to find a few machines with windows stickers already on them for the engineering lab, which plans to use Mindstorms to teach kids basic robotics. And meanwhile that school gets $63 million in funding because Microsoft had a nifty idea.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
High school must be reformed almost everywhere, so any change that involves better use of technology or different ways of teching (even for testing them) is IMO a good thing. The problems arise when this comes from only one company, incidentally the one that has good reasons to make people addicted to its products when they're still young. This will ensure choices dictated by corporate reasons, not better teaching.
I'd really love to see what their teachers will answer to the students who happen to have a full working Linux/BSD/Mac/Whatever-non-MS system at home and ask why they cannot see one in their school, or why they will be forced to use DRM plagued systems in their notebooks instead of something else that would read more file formats, has better quality public support and costs less.
The $63 million cost could of been spent on more schools and teachers then just 1 high tech one. The mainly low-income teens are more like to have the laptops sold / stolen then people who are better off and that may even more likely at times of the year when it is dark at 4:19 p.m.
Also using smart boards and digital lockers seem like overkill for school and if there a hardware brake down the kids may have there stuff stuck in there lockers and the teacher may have a hard time teaching with out the smart boards.
Instead of a cafeteria, there's a food court with restaurant-style seating. How long is there lunch? Cafeteria style lets you have more people in there at the same time.
Also in the high school I was at the food cards did not work that well and the kids where getting doubled billed and the system was down from time to time making the cafeteria workers take the id number buy hand.
Students have scheduled appointments with teachers, typed into their online calendars, instead of being limited to structured times for classes. Their laptops carry software that assesses how quickly they're learning the lesson. If they get it, they'll dive deeper into the subject. If not, they get remedial help. I like the idea but how many teachers do you need to make that work and there are a lot of state mandated things that must be learned.
In addition, students at the school must apply to college to get a diploma. Sounds like a good idea but what do you with the people who can't pay for it?
This sounds like a good program but public education funds can be better spend on brining all schools up to a better level then just having one real good one.
You forgot a word... needlessly...
That's a lot of resources nedlessly thrown at very few students.
I wonder what it would be like if that money went towards regular supplies, like paper and pencil for all the other schools in the district, how far that amount of money would go?
I also wonder if before this happened they analyzed Microsoft's Management skills, perhaps with a case study on Vista?
This looks like a fun idea but it sounds like one giant Microsoft Advertisement to me, and that is only going to stifle the kids' innovation.
With all the Microsoft products I saw around me when I was a kid, I seriously thought you had to work for microsoft to become a programmer. I hate to say it, but this is only going to grow our kids' technology addiction, which I for one do not find healthy. As an IT manager, former programmer, and avid Geekon at my church, I want my kids to read books with paper, ink, and binding. (think about the librarians! won't someone please think about the librarians?!)
All in all, it looks cool, and it is nice of Microsoft to offer their management skills and personnell (that does cost them money), but I find it all kind of pointless when I bet the same result could have been achieved at a quarter of the cost if they got MIT or UC Berkley involved instead. (and open source developing universities actually have a more positive track record on quality and punctuality that Microsoft doesn't.)
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
Jesus Christ, there are a lot of sharpshooters in here. Everyone knows the US K-12 system, particularly in big cities, sucks goats through a straw. Philadelphia and MS are trying something new. Maybe it won't work, but at least they're trying to do something to fix the problem.
If I were a kid lucky enough to win that lottery, I'd be happy to have the opportunity to go to a one of a kind, modern school. I'd feel like someone actually gave a damn about my education. Why are so many urban schools so fucked up? Part of the problem is that the facilities are ancient, crumbling edifices left over from the 1800s. I'm not suggesting that every school in the country be razed and rebuilt, but it's no secret that the physical design of schools is a huge factor in the overall learning environment.
Bringing modern technology into schools isn't enough in itself, but I think it's worth trying. As for Microsoft's involvement, if you're badmouthing it, when is the last time you volunteered at a school?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'm surprised I rememberd my password after all this time, anyways since I have been living this first hand for some time now I felt compelled to give some experienced input... long time listener first time caller?
Where I work the concept of interactive whiteboards and overflowing technology in every classroom is not a new thing. Granted there are several differences between this building and what Microsoft is trying to accomplish...
- High school students are limited to Juniors/Seniors and college credit classes are offered to both them and adult students.
- The curriculum wanders outside a normal high school where courses like automotives, engineering and simulation are taught.
- The majority of rooms have classroom computers, and those that have the interactive whiteboards also have your standard whiteboards so you have more than just a 60" screen to write on (the interactive boards are relatively tiny compared to plain old ones)
- Throwing instructors into technology is a learning curve for them as well as the students, and some of them still prefer to do things the old fashioned way despite whats available.
- I imagine the total student computer inventory here is at least 500 stations or so.
However, they (whomever thier IT staff is) need to be well prepared for the ensuing caveats involved with giving all these fun toys to high school students... and if these are all freshmen I cringe at the thought of what those computers will look like in a few months. The computers here take quite a beating on the operating system side and after trying to do all the standard tricks in keeping them in line we just went to where the most heavily used rooms revert back to a preset image on reboot. I cannot begin to describe what kind of spyware/viruses/adware gets on a computer that is set in front of a set of students who would rather play games than do anything constuctive all day. Granted, most students play nice and for the most part physical vandalism to the machines has been extremely minor. Troubled classrooms also get student control software (sold by the same company as the whiteboards, hmmm who could they be?) so the teacher may at thier discresion lock the workstations or observe if they are goofing off. Really this is all that it boils down to that the instructors maintain control over the students despite the technology at hand... even better when the majority of students are actually enthusiastic about what they are doing.
No idea if the Microsoft school has implemented or has any idea of what I just described, but when you dump alot of technology into your average high school and dont maintain control... all the students will learn is how to get really good at Trackmania and a bunch of flash games. I could continue going on elaborating about "well, you should have done this this and this to keep the students in line" but thanks to alot of educational software requiring administrator rights it becomes a hell of alot easier just giving them the keys to the car, except the car resets back to a new state every morning. Oh yeah, does the Philedelphia school district know that they will have to keep spending money on this school every 2-3 years as the technology is no longer up to date?
I don't think it is the lack of money...but, it is management of the schools. The teachers unions are a huge problem...the bureaucracy the entangles every aspect of public schools...and the corruption. (In NOLA pre-Katrina, a janitor made somewhere near $90K one year by filing bogus OT...he happened to be related to someone powerful on the school board).
I almost think we do need to somehow make US schools private run entities...or at least make the schools truely competitive, where people lose jobs and funding for lack of performance. Let the tax dollars follow the kids...lets schools compete for the students and the dollars that follow them. Hell, if school peformance is what drives what schools get the money...they will attract students...from all races I'd think...so, it might also end the dependance we have on busing kids all around.
Let the students decide where they want to go, let the dollars follow them, and possibly the school system can start to heal itself.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In my home town (Fort Collins, CO), the school district got a similarly crazy idea - build a brand-new, $36 million dollar high school. It was expensive, it was controversial, but in the end it had a far better idea: spend more now to spend less later. The new school, Fossil Ridge, was designed to be highly energy efficent - it is expected to save the district almost $60,000 per year in energy costs. Since the school is likely to be in service for 30+ years, that adds up to a substantial savings. The district also recieved substantial grants from the Feds for building an eco-friendly school.
Oh, and Fossil Ridge has SmartBoards too - but only in a few rooms. The lockers are manual, students aren't given laptops (although there are 180 laptops in "mobile labs" that teachers can bring to classrooms, and nearly 700 desktop PCs), and the rooms don't have plasma TVs. And, of course, students still use textbooks and good old pencil and paper.
In a district that has budget problems (as this PA district apparently does), building a "super-school" that costs 3x as much as a conventional school just doesn't make sense. In the real world, we have a term for that - incredible waste.
http://www.countryday.net/
WiFi on campus - check
Laptops for everyone - check
Virtual textbooks - they're being used in the junior high but haven't been adopted by the high school
Smart Boards - My teacher uses on for math class but he's the only one
Admittedly, Cincinnati Country Day is private and this is a public school but this has been done before and it worked reasonably well.
That is so true. I have several friends who work in the Canadian school system, and parents make or break a student's education. Generally, if three students fail a test, one parent won't comment at all, one parent will try to get the teacher fired, and one parent will come to the school and ask how they can help their kid catch up.
Guess which kid actually moves forward in education and in life? The problem isn't primarily teachers. The problem is parents. Of course, eventually teachers get so tired of being stomped on by parents that they stop caring and start letting students slide. It's much easier to stop failing kids than it is to have to have a performance review multiple times every year.
It's interesting to note the difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs here. Gates' solution for education is technology. Jobs' solution is the opposite:
"I absolutely don't believe that. As you've pointed out I've helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world and I absolutely convinced that is by no means the most important thing. The most important thing is a person." (Steve Jobs, 1995, from here)
Well, then that is NOT a case of money following the students. Schools should have to compete for their students. If a school is underperforming, it does not need to be funded better...it needs to be closes, shutdown and replaced with a better one. if students all have the choice to go to the schools they want to, they will flock to the better ones...
And in cases of 'trimming' students. Well, not all kids are born with the same intellectual gifts. But, should you hold back a student that is bright so that a dimmer one can catch up...? Why not have special schools for slower students...their performance should not be rated against schools the may specialize towards the more gifted ones...
I guess performance can't just be based on standardized tests..although I don't see why that can't be part of it...after all, in all these years, I've never see 4 + 4 not equal to 8.
I do like the idea of teachers being more like contractors....high paying salaries...for those who perform. But, like any of us out here in the 'real world' you should be in danger of quickly losing your job if you don't perform.
But, schools that succeed, should win the students to them, and they will thrive. Bad schools should die, and be replaced to become higher performance educational options.
I think however, there does need to be some kind of alternate program to schooling...for students that are so disfunctional in behavior or learning abilities. If it is behavior problems, make them go to some kind of compulsory trade school or public service program till age 18....if mentally challenged...special schools. Throwing every one into one big pot forces you to cater to the lowest common denominator...and give disadvantage to all strata of student.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........