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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."
Staff at the school were happy with how the opening day went, the pupils were welcomed in by a Brian Eno classic on the tannoy system.
This informed them that the tannoy system was working and it was now safe to enter the building.
However, once the day got underway things quickly went downhill in the English letter writing class.
"Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all,"
Meanwhile the gymnasium had to be rebooted twice after some children overloaded the basketball hoops.
Several pupils were stuck in the changing rooms for a few hours until the scandisk procedure managed to locate all the fragments of the key to unlock the door.
The music class was interrupted because someone brought in an illegal sample of a track in mp3 format and forgot to include a verification document from the parents of the original composer signed in blood.
On top of all these problems, the school is hunting for the person responsible for posting "goatse" on every single whiteboard, this shocking image appeared at 14:21 and remained on screen for 15 minutes whilst technicians located and removed it.
liqbase
Do they offer crash courses? Do all the windows have blue screens? Does every student get a clippy to help with their homework?
Ok, i'm done.
today is spelling optional day.
that open-source is banned in that school?
"Say, that's a nice school we helped build... wouldn't want any open-source in there, that would mean bad things, and we don't want bad things to happen, right?"
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
You forgot Chair Throwing 101.
It replaced their Communications courses.
$63 million
Supporting 170 students
$370,588 per student right now.
That's a lot of resources thrown at very few students.
Seriously. MS is trying to work in the ideas that made one of the largest most successful companies in the history of business. Sounds like there may be some carryover since making a good company is all about maintaining smart, happy employees. What have you done for education lately, besides complained about it? I applaud their effort, in the face of government and other big orgs who see 'business as usual' a fine mantra as our education system goes straight down the crapper.
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
I work in tech. support for schools and certainly our catchment area (171 schools) now successfully has an interactive smart board in every single class room. Also thanks to a goverment initiative, the laptops for teachers scheme means all teachers have a laptop which they can create lesson plans and produce teaching content on and then move around class rooms with to hook up to the smart boards. We also have an average ratio of 1 computer for every 4 students across all our schools too.
:p
Whilst not many schools here have digital lockers (lockers aren't popular here full stop like in the US) we do have things like card systems for pupils to register entry into the toilets with (kinda big brotherish I know, I'm against it but the technology is cool) so there is a paper trail if someone vandalises or smokes in the toilets. The cards double up as well as being able to provide dinner ladies with information on what kids don't need to pay for school meals and such due to their family being poor and on benefits, some schools the few that do have digital lockers - the swipe cards also work for these.
Certainly schools here in the UK have come a long way in the 8 years since I left, they were only just replacing blackboards with those nice whipeable whiteboards when I left!
As for a learning process modelled on Microsoft's management techniques, I've also seen evidence of this in the schools for kids with behavioural problems who are there because they've been expelled multiple times from elsewhere, the main evidence being that they've often threatened to "fucking kill me" and thrown chairs about the room
Read the article. The library does not have books. It's all "digital".
That right there would be enough for me to avoid it.
Microsoft is great at MARKETING their products. They do not write great software.
And there is nothing to indicate that they know ANYTHING about education.
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...
B: Yup.
A: When do you graduate?
B: I was supposed to graduate in 2002. But I got held back. Then it was supposed to be 2003, 2005, then 2006.
A: Yikes! Are you that dumb?
B: No, they just tried to teach me too much unnecessary stuff. They kept cutting classes out of the requirements hoping I'd make it.
A: So, when are you graduating?
B: Right now, they're saying 2007, but many think it'll be 2008 or later.
Unknown host pong.
Because that isn't the answer. The current school systems are already being pumped cash, but still show horrible results. Especially when compared to private schools. What Microsoft is doing is not a bad idea. I just cringe at the idea of applying "Microsoft Management Procedures" as a panacea to all the school's problems. Most likely, all that technology will just mean that the students do just as badly, but in a high tech environment!
Of course, the problem really stems from poor elementry education. Students are rarely taught a solid foundation that they can grasp, and concepts like personal responsibility, individual talent, and academic achievement are wiped away as unimportant. Just so long as nobody feels they're special and nobody feels that they're not normal, then who cares if the academic bar is going lower and lower?
Unfortunately, I find it doubtful that things will change as long as Political Correctness rules our schools and parents see elementary as nothing more than free day care.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So if you try to transfer to another school does the vice-principal throw a chair at you?
[Insert pithy quote here]
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.
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.
Microsoft management practices, eh?
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
I whistled for a segway and when it came near
the sticker said "pwned" and the dude had flakes in his hair
if anything i could tell that he was ready to throw a chair
but i thought nahhhh forget it wait
YO HOLEMS YOU SMELL WAREZ?
I
pulled
up to my laptop around 7 or 8
and yelled to the teacher
yo melinda page ya later
i looked at my kingdom
it was all white and bare
and there it was known as MS High School despair.
Sorry i had to finish the song.. geez
I'm not trying to be a troll but with the way Vista has been handled, hasn't MS shown that their management techniques aren't exactly very good?
Exactly what I was thinking. When I read "[Microsoft] didn't pay the $63 million cost -- that was borne by the Philadelphia School District -- but shared its personnel and management skills" in TFA, my reaction was: it would have been better for them to just donate a big stack of cash and keep their 'skills' to themselves. Money is something Microsoft have more than enough of; 'management skills' - doubtful at best.
And even if they did have 'management skills' - they have no idea of how to teach those skills to children. All their experience is with hiring already-skilled adults.
Had I heard "Microsoft donates $1 billion to the Philadelpha public school system", I would have applauded Microsoft for their generosity (despite everything I have against them). But this project just sounds like a bad idea to me.
The current school systems are already being pumped cash, but still show horrible results. Especially when compared to private schools.
/
That simply isn't true. The report came out a couple of months ago from a government study that privately run charter school students scored lower than public school students. The report didn't get a lot of press for obvious reasons. Here's the first google news link I found:
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/9765/1/338
What you're saying isn't entirely meritless, but
The current school systems are already being pumped cash, but still show horrible results. Especially when compared to private schools.
No, public school children show horrible results compared to private school children. The children of typically wealthy parents that care enough about their child's education to go to the effort of putting them in a private school perform better in school. Public schools could obviously be run better in many cases, but you sure as heck can't do a one-to-one comparison. Although I'm all for a test case, privatizing an existing, poorly-performing public school and forbidding an increase in expulsions (if you're going to do it on a large scale, you can't just send the less-exceptional kds off to public school to pad your "look how great the students that are still here do" numbers) and seeing how well things go. I'd absolutely love to see that data, 'cause I want there to be an easy fix. I just doubt there is one.
Students are rarely taught a solid foundation that they can grasp
Sure they are. They're taught until their teachers are blue in the face. But other than the 10% that are going to grow up to be the important people, the students just generally don't give a damn. You can't teach an interest in learning.
But you're right that Microsoft's stuff won't help much.
And here's a link to the actual study.
...so before they can sit down, the kids will have to search the school to find where their chairs have landed.
And the principal will steal the core information from all of the textbooks to be used, change it so it doesn't crash their custom curriculum, then pay off the original publishers when they threaten to sue.
Students will only receive homework on the first Tuesday of every month, and only if they can prove that they are genuine students by showing the teacher their enrolment certificate.
Nah, I got nothin'.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Do they have deadlines on assignments?
Graduation was expensively assured in two years but it will probably take six or so. The graduates will have minor, mostly cosmetic, improvements and be as reliable and trustworthy as any other Microsoft release. Some students, like Bob, will never make it.
Attempts to dominate gaming will produce a few interesting plays but will ultimately be an expensive distraction.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'd wait for Service Pack 1, myself, before deploying.
Throwing technology at a non-technical problem won't fix it. I like some ideas including more self directed study and the new class times (though I'd worry about traffic if this was done across an entire city). And as much crap as MS will get for this, I don't think they have evil motives at heart.
However, the real problem with schools is the insistence upon including everyone and teaching to the lowest common denominator. The more we can get the high achievers into more advanced programs where they spend time around other high achievers, the better. The entrance requirements for this school shouldn't have been a lottery, but a skills test and teacher recommendations. The best colleges in the country don't use a lottery for admission, and neither should the best schools.
I'm sure there are a long list of other things that could be done. For example, we need ways to find and reward teachers that engage students and truly educate them. I have a hard time remembering the teachers that taught from a book, but the ones that brought in dry ice and had us build model rockets are at the top of my list. The first management technique that MS should have brought to the table was the proper identification of what the problems are and how they can find and implement the best solutions. Sadly, this was more about money and publicity than it was about fixing a problem.
And applying to college does cost money, but virtually every college will waive the fee if you can't afford.
CLIPPY!! He can help coach the team!
BOB!! The yellow face from the BOB OS!
BILLY GOAT!! With a face like Bill Gates who couldn't love him!
DEAD PENGUIN!! Picture a penguin that's been fucking killed by certain CEOs
BLUE SCREEN!! Nothing scares opposing teams like a looming crash!!
THE ARROW!! The cursor can run around "right clicking" on the opponents cheerleaders, if you know what I mean.
Having been in the education business for awhile I take exception to your comment that school systems are already being pumped full of cash. I assure you that they are not. Most schools I have taught in are woefully short on basic supplies; instead most teachers have to buy their own supplies. I am a science teacher and if I want to do cool science labs then most of the time it is up to me to buy those supplies. The $800.00 budget our science department gets (10+ science teachers in the building) just does not go far.
Most schools I have been in are short on textbooks and those textbooks are usually outdated and worn out. If a teacher wants to offer something cool and educational to their students we usually are told there just isn't any money. I run a highly successful robotics club in my middle school which was largely funded in the beginning out of my own pocket. I also run a rocketry club after school which, once again, is largely funded by me. I spent my summer school paycheck on a complete hybrid rocket motor system and ground support equipment to use with the kids.
I can certainly tell you that the massive influx of money is NOT going towards my salary. Everyone I know with a college degree earns generally far more than I do. Am I complaining, yes, but it is the life I chose to live. I knew what I was getting into from the beginning, salary wise.
This brings me to my main point If we want to better the educational system in America we need to raise teachers' salary (among other things). As a teacher I am generally disappointed by the people attracted to education. I am a science geek, I live, eat, and breathe science, however, most science teachers I know (especially at the middle school level) are NOT science oriented people. They are not passionate about science and this disappoints me greatly. However, many of the people I know who are passionate about science and I think would make good teachers do not want to take a massive cut in pay. The argument is that the low pay attracts people who really WANT to be teachers. I do not wholly buy that argument.
In general, I think the educational system that we have in America is a very good system and that most of the problems are not intrinsic to the educational system. For example, I teach in a school that is over 79% economically disadvantaged. My students have very little support at home and I get little to no support from the parents. My students are mal-nourished and under cared for. In general when I have problems with a student I cannot get hold of the parents, much less get support from them.
I can tell you, from my own observations that the single greatest factor that influences whether a student gets a good education or not is the parents. The students that I have that do very well in school, are not behavior problems and are active in the school community have parents that are actively involved in the their life and supportive of them. The students that do not do well in school, are constant behavior problems and have little to no involvement in the school community have parents that simply do not care to be involved in their child's life and general well-being and expect the school to be their baby sitter. It does not their socio-economic or racial background.
Go ahead, flame me.
The children of typically wealthy parents that care enough about their child's education to go to the effort of putting them in a private school perform better in school.
They key phrase there being "parents that care" regardless of what studies show the problem has nothing to do with public vs private schools or teachers not performing the problem is with parents.
All of my cousins (34 or so of them my grandfather couldn't keep his pants zipped) went to big time private schools in NYC, I went to one of the largest and most poorly run public schools in NYS my entire life and I did better than all of my cousins in HS and in college. Why? Because my parents cared about my education just as much as theirs did and my parents desire to see me get the best education possible under the circumstances drove me to succeed as well. In elementary school when other children were watching TV or playing Nintendo during the summers my father handed me an algebra book and had my struggle to teach myself the material with no outside help. In HS when other children were out socializing on weekends my parents drove me to Stonybrook to take college courses (that were free because of some great programs StonyBrook has for underpriviledged kids) and at the time I absolutely hated every single minute of it but thank god my parents cared enough to force me into it. I am not here to boast about what I accomplished despite my past situation I am simply showing you that a parent that shows a high level of commitment to their childrens education will have a child who succeeds regardless of the school they go to.
Which brings me back to the question of why children in private schools perform better than children in public schools, in general? Easy, because the majority of parents who send their children to private schools care about their childrens education. To spend anywhere from 8K to 30K a year on private schools you have to care about your childrens education, despite what a lot of people think many parents of children who go to private schools aren't filthy rich they simply care enough to spend a very large percentage of their salary on their childrens future. Parents are the key to better performance in ALL schools not money, not teachers, not private schools, not microsoft. When there are studies done on children with parents who show equal levels of commitment to their childrens education in private vs pubic schools then I'll start listening.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
Education in this country is broken, and this is a great attempt by a very successful software company to change the tide. It's sad that the bulk of the replies to this article are coming from MS haters who have nothing more to contribute than stale jokes about reboots, BSOD, etc. Why don't you catch up with reality? I haven't had a BSOD since I started using XP, and I only had BSODs under 2k when caused by lame ass drivers from third party hardware vendors. That is reality, whether you like it or not. Personally, I use FreeBSD on all of my personal machines and run Windows XP on the laptop provided by my employer, so keep that in mind when you come at me with the "he's drinking the MS kool-aid" rhetoric.
You LINUX sheep are so typical in your responses. Why can't you just love your distribution of choice and stop hating MS? There is nothing that MS can do that you can see in any other light than negative (at best) or illegal and malevolent (at worst). For all of your bitching about how horrible MS is, you likely haven't spent near as much time helping your local alma mater better their education processes. Typical armchair quarterbacks.
So, maybe this new antiseptic, all-digital approach isn't right, but who are any of us to sit here and say that it is worse than the status quo for education in this country? Do you have a better idea? I hear some say "just give the money to the school system, we don't need your management style", and I think that is about the most ignorant thing they could do. There is no shortage of money in the education system, though it is disproportionately focused on administration and not on the educators. Pumping more cash into the system will not help one iota, just as throwing money at any situation without a focused plan to use that money, and a way to make those in charge of those disbursements _ACCOUNTABLE_FOR_THE_USE_OF_THE_MONEY_, is a terrible way to manage any process, business, or endeavor in general.
I am excited to see some change in the education system in this country, and if it fails then at least they tried, hopefully learned a lot from the experience, and aren't too discouraged to not try again with an improved approach.
Mike O, KT2T
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 $60,000 per year in energy costs. Since the school is likely to be in service for 30+ years, that adds up to a substantial savings. The district also recieved substantial grants from the Feds for building an eco-friendly school.
Oh, and Fossil Ridge has SmartBoards too - but only in a few rooms. The lockers are manual, students aren't given laptops (although there are 180 laptops in "mobile labs" that teachers can bring to classrooms, and nearly 700 desktop PCs), and the rooms don't have plasma TVs. And, of course, students still use textbooks and good old pencil and paper.
In a district that has budget problems (as this PA district apparently does), building a "super-school" that costs 3x as much as a conventional school just doesn't make sense. In the real world, we have a term for that - incredible waste.
The principal holds a lunch meeting, and runs out on stage shouting,
"EDUCATORS! EDUCATORS! EDUCATORS!"
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
>You can't teach an interest in learning.
You don't have to! Watch a kid sometime. No unopened box is safe from them. Their talk is an endless stream of "Why does ___?" and "How does that work?". Ever tried learning a second language? Hard work, right? Kids learn a first language quickly and fluently without anyone coercing them into "language school". They watch every move that adults make and try it out for themselves.
You can stop them from learning, by keeping them so hungry or abused that higher brain functions shut down. You can communicate that some places are not for learning, by turning those places into Lord of the Flies. But fundamentally "interest in learning" is something hardwired into all mammals and especially humans.
I can't believe how many comments there are (and have been modded up too) that think M$ should have given them money and left the teaching to the same old union-backed teachers and administrators. We've been trying to solve this problem with more money for years and there has not been any significant return (i.e., increased learning) on that investment. The following numbers are from the US Dept of Education statistics site (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt0 4_365.asp) (in thousands of current dollars)
1970 4,625,224
1975 7,350,355
1980 13,137,785
1985 16,701,065
1990 23,198,575
1995 31,403,000
2000 34,106,697
2002 46,324,352
2003 57,442,854
2004 62,864,595
Note that this is federal spending. There are billions more collected at the state and local level. For example, the estimate in 2003 was nearly $450 billion nationwide. That's just for K-12. FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS.
Democrats and Republicans alike have both tried to throw money at this problem for a loooong time. Increases in education spending far exceed inflation or personal income. The problem is not money! You can google those facts all day long.
Microsoft may or may not be an answer to the problem, but the fact that they're getting in there and trying to fix the problem should be embraced.
I encourage you to poke around www.schoolmatters.com, which is a free service provided by Standard & Poors. They specifically ask that you don't take numbers out of context, so I won't post anything here. It's better to see then in context anyhow.