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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."
When I was growing up, all the other kids on my block had a DARPA, but I didn't.
I had to do with some stupid National Science Foundation
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About time someone in government considers education as important as military "defense" and scientific breakthroughs.
No amount of money is going to get parents in failing schools to care about their kid's education.
The reason is two experiences: one me in school, and the other my youngest daughter in school.
When I was a kid they came up with the "new math". Basically, it was a different way to do long division. The theory was that this new way better explained how numbers work, but in reality it did no such thing. All it did was to prevent my parents from helping with my homework, since I couldn't do long dividion like they did and they couldn't do it like I was taught. I was at a disadvantage for years, until I learned how to use a slide rule, which actually did teach me how numbers worked.
When my daughter was in kindergarten they had a new thing called "invented spelling", and it was an unmitigated disaster. She still misspells many words the same way she misspelled them before she learned to read (she's 22 now).
The truble with new teaching technologies is that unlike medical experiments, you can't do them on animals first. Test them on real kids and if the experiment fails, so do the children.
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Sorry, the title of this article is pretty misleading. DARPAis working on missile defense and high energy laser technology. The current lofty plans for this group? Three video games.
I laud this effort. It's something we desperately need to do to stay competitive. But there's no need to oversensationalize.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
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.
I hope they allocate some money for existing projects, personal favorites are LTSP and FOG Project; both of which are used in schools and my own personal computer lab for fun.
I'd hate to see the money dumped into new projects that cost way too much, and don't do half of what already exists out there.
Feel free to add your own, I can always use more bookmarks.
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When I was growing up, all the other kids on my block had a DARPA, but I didn't.
I had to do with some stupid National Science Foundation
When I was growing up, all the other kids in the country had the National Science Foundation, but I didn't.
I had to make do with the Texas Board of Education.
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technology can help the classroom. many technologies don't help the classroom. educators/administrators are pressured to fight for and then use technology budgets to show how well they are educating. The big problem is they have to guess at (a) what is available, (b) what is useful, (c) what is effective. (b and c don't always coincide).
For a while technology meant 'get PCs in the schools'. Now it's more than that. I've seen more immediate benefit in a classroom from a $75 digital camcorder (showing the kids a discussion session, reviewing an oral presentation, etc. so that they get a 3rd person view of themselves.) than a $50,000 'learning lab'. "Prometheus Boards" are the new hot item http://www.vimeo.com/367993 with some use shown when used right in certain classrooms. But what's the best way to use them, what is and isn't more effective than traditional teaching methods (with a zero dollar comparison cost), etc.
These are all questions it would be nice to have answers to, simply because experiments on real kids are tough to accept when they extend beyond minor things.
I'm not certain how the bureaucracy is going to work, but there are tools being developed right now for education that are really kind of neat. If you ask almost any teacher, they'll tell you the biggest problem with teaching kids is simply keeping them awake in class. Tools that are designed to allow more interaction are important. Not all teachers can be Mr. Smith from Junior High who would dance on his desk while reading a chapter Dante's Inferno to the class or Mrs. Peabody who speaks in Olde English phrases for the entire two months of Shakespeare. So if someone can piece together technology to make your boring teachers fun again, I'm all for it.
There's a tool developed by...I can never remember...I want to say somewhere in Washington State. Basically the teacher gives two students (volunteers) tablet PCs and she has her own. She projects her laptop, and the other two tablets can be viewed (along with her own) through a program on the rest of the students' laptops, phones, etc. She goes about teaching her course. The tablet students take notes through a piece of software, make adjustments to a copy of her slides, etc. The other students use the same software to view all this, including able to do cool things like highlight words and get quick definitions. It's sort of collaborative note-taking. And all of the teacher's original slides as well as all the notes from the tablet users are stored online for later viewing.
How does this help? Because the tablet students may take notes you're not thinking of, right or wrong, and it opens your mind right there and then to alternative thoughts. You're not stuck re-writing what the teacher is doing and trying to think on it later. You're more engaged this way. But most importantly, you're paying attention, either to the teacher or the tablet users' writing. The teacher even said she doesn't really ever look back on the tablet users' notes. She'll occasionally hear giggles from the class but to her, that just means they aren't asleep.
It will never last with an acronym like that. Should have called it National Education by Research Department.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
because your going to have to ditch the educator unions too. Its a jobs program, both for those who went to school to teach and those who know the right people. The ratio of employees (teachers, admins, etc) to students has never been higher and education just keeps becoming less and less.
Reference the Vermont State of the Union speech given recently http://www.stateline.org/live/details/speech?contentId=449875 and understand the problem facing education in this country. This "new DARPA for schools" will simply increase the number of non educators in the system further burdening it. We all know we can't get rid of the people we have and as such we just have to get more from any new program. Until we get over it and start ditching people who are not needed in the education budget we will never improve it. Yes it is sad we don't need all of them, but like the milkmen of days gone by, society adjusts to changing needs.
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Since 1997, school staffing levels have increased by 23 percent, while our student population has decreased by 11.5 percent. The number of teacher's aides has gone up 43 percent. The number of support staff has gone up 48 percent. For every four fewer students a new teacher, teacher's aide or staff person was hired. There are 11 students for every teacher - the lowest ratio in the country - and a staggering five students for every adult in our schools. With personnel costs accounting for 80 percent of total school spending, it's no wonder that our K-12 system is among the most expensive in the nation at $14,000 per student per year.
In most organizations, if your customer base is shrinking, you make adjustments to stay within budget and, at a minimum, you stop hiring. Although some will be quick to scold that "education is not a business," neither is Medicaid or public safety or environmental conservation. But in each of these areas, if we ignore the basics of prudent financial management, we imperil the services that we provide. Until labor costs in our schools are brought under control, taxpayers can expect their bills to grow every year and the onus of the property tax will continue to threaten a healthy economy.
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* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So you were doing National Science Foundation Work? I wonder how many people clicked on you by mistake.
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It's not like they're redirecting massive amounts of funding towards this. The total US K-20 education budget is $1T (bigger than Defense, FYI). It's not all controlled by the Feds of course - it's highly distributed. Even so, it seems reasonable to me that spending small amount of money on "big think" projects to develop answers for the future state of education is wise. You can't fix everything with technology but you ought to be able to improve the state of technology in education at the least, and at best improve overall education by developing totally new ways of using technology in education.