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Schools To Get Their Own DARPA
Julie188 writes "A decade ago, Lawrence Grossman, former president of both NBC News and PBS, and Newton Minow, former chairman of the FCC, proposed that the government set up a multi-billion dollar trust that would act as a 'venture capital fund' to research educational technologies for schools, libraries and museums. Congress has finally approved the idea, and grants could start rolling by this fall. Dubbed the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, it should be to education what the National Science Foundation is for science, and DARPA is for national defense."
Technology has the potential to break the monopoly of school districts and classrooms. Right now kids are taught primarily one way. In groups of 20-30 they sit in classrooms and get education from a teacher. The quality of the teacher in process and as fountain of knowledge gos a long way in determining the success of the student. With proper infrastructure each kid can be taught in the way they learn best from the best instructors with the local teachers being facilitators of finding the knowledge. In addition to no child being left behind, we can get no child held back.
"Invented spelling" is now a failure directly because of technology.
The idea was good. Following a strict step by step procedure and stressing out and getting stuck is the right way to go math (?) but miserably fails for language arts. If you can't figure out one word, get on with life and finish the rest of the task. Its also a great way to learn to read, if you can't figure out one word, don't chuck the book across the room and go play donkey kong, just work around it, you'll figure it out later by osmosis or whatever. Its like solving an equation by successive approximation vs simple plug and chug.
Now, before BBS leet speak, email, SMS, myspace, kids had good osmosis sources. I never learned anything in English classes in school, I learned English solely by osmosis from Clarke, Asimov, and whomever wrote the Tom Swift and Hardy Boys Mysteries.
The bad news, is now kids learn English by osmosis from illiterate morons on myspace, youtube, rap videos, text messages, etc. That directly leads to:
She still misspells many words the same way she misspelled them before she learned to read (she's 22 now).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_spelling
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If a parent doesn't care about a kid's education then no, there's no way to get them to care. The trouble is the educators themselves talk up a good "parental involvement" but the fact is the only involvement they want from parents is fund raising.
As a parent who cared about his kids' education this was an immense frustration to me.
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