Summer hiatus

Hi all,

I hope you have enjoyed my rantings, ravings, and job postings, but I will be taking a break from the blog for about a month. I am traveling and have a few projects in the works that need my attention. I'm hoping to be back late July/early August.

If you'd like to get in touch with me, feel free to use the links on the right.

Best,

Robert

6/16/2013 MOOC Update

At the moment I am actively taking the following MOOCs:

• Coursera: Internet History, Technology, and Security - The course is very heavy with videos from the instructor, Dr. Charles Severance, containing interviews, lectures, and the occasional office hours. The quizzes are multiple choice, and are fairly easy once you watch the videos. There is a peer graded assignment that was just posted for extra credit. I was thinking of joining their Signature Track, but thought against it, since this isn't a core part of my career. 
• Udacity: How to Build a Startup - Fairly straightforward entrepreneur course (as 'straight' as it could possibly be) that seems to rely on products the instructor is familiar with, namely his own. While he says they're not necessary the two texts he recommends are The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company (his own), and Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers.

Thinking about the Udacity course, I actually like this model of having a free MOOC that you can take on its own, but suggesting students buy the instructor's/institution's text. It allows people to take these courses for free, provides some kind of income for the instructor and MOOC provider, and if students buy the book they get something 'physical' out of the course.

Online courses: Only for those who can pay for it?

Teaching online courses I've encountered many student issues dealing with technology. From using the right browser, to understanding the LMS. The most persistent problem though was not with specific programs or websites, but basic connectivity. A good number of my students were stealing wifi to take their online course! Those that weren't either had basic internet, or were going to places where it was free.

So I wasn't surprised when reading this article from Mercury News about high-school students taking online courses, that their biggest issue was students having internet access at home. From the article:

It turned out some of the low-income teens didn't have computers and high-speed Internet connections at home that the online course required. Many needed personal attention to make it through. The final results aren't in yet, but the experiment exposed some challenges to the promise of a low-cost online education. And it showed there is still a divide between technology-driven educators and the low-income, first-generation college hopefuls they are trying to reach.

 With the drive to put more courses online, there's always an assumption of connectivity to the Internet. In my experience, a good portion of high needs students don't have this connectivity, and thus won't view these courses as a viable path. The reason for this lack of connectivity? In my view, cost.

There are numerous studies and papers showing that the U.S. pays more for their internet than comparable countries. By keeping these costs up, telecommunications companies won't just slow innovation, reduce our competition, and limit the internet-based products and services we have, but also education. With MOOCs, CCSS testing prep, and more online courses, the demand for faster, stable, and wide reaching internet services will only multiply and grow. Having a low-cost option would enable everyone to take part in the unequivocal revolutions that are happening within education. Hopefully, someone will take up the torch and offer nationwide wifi with new spectrum. Hopefully.

Job lead: Manager of Online Instructional Course Development

I was contacted by a recruiter looking to fill a Manager of Online Instructional Course Development position in the New York area. You should have at least a familiarity with technology enough to know online communities and resources. Math content knowledge is the most important of the position. This position is a kind of project manager and lead to implement the program and build the online library. If you want more details, feel free to contact me at robert.weston.82@gmail.com.

Endorsements on LinkedIn: The New Grade Inflation?

So I've been growing my LinkedIn profile recently to expand my contact list, and to look for freelancers. My home institution is gearing up for a few initiatives that will need instructional designers, writers, copyeditors, and support personnel. I thought if I were to grow my contact list now, we would have an easier time finding qualified people.

In connecting to other people I noticed that a number of them used LinkedIn's Skill & Expertise section, and endorsed me for specific skills. These were people I just added as a connection who I didn't know before. I thought it was a bit strange, not knowing these people how would they know I'm qualified in anything?

After some reflection it seems like Skills & Expertise is a ripe area for inflation, in a similar way that grades are. Greater competition forces greater 'numbers' (grades, number of recommendations) to be highly coveted. A quid pro quo of grades and instructor evaluations/skills & expertise and skills & expertise benefits everyone. There doesn't seem to be many checks on these numbers, and if they line up with reality.

That last point is the focus of a number of recent efforts in L.A. and New York to accurately measure teacher performance. Both use the value-added economic measure to gauge the impact a single teacher has on a student, relative to all other teachers. There is some merit to this measure, but in no way can it be the only criteria teachers should be evaluated on. Teaching is a dynamic endeavor, one that uses the range of human expression and thought, and cannot be reduced to a single value. There has to be some middle ground between the objective and the subjective here, as in everywhere else.

So if we are trying to measure grade inflation (or related phenomenon), shouldn't we try to measure Skills & Expertise inflation? Would LinkedIn open up that information for data analysis junkies on Kaggle? Would they do some of that themselves, and publish it in one of their glossy infographics?

Until there is a bit more clarity on what these numbers are, and what they mean, I'll be politely declining recommendations from people I haven't met. I hope you do too.

Education Week's CCSS Coverage

Education Week has been doing some decent coverage of the CCSS and the recent backlash. Today they posted two articles about the CCS:

• What Do Math Educators Think About the Common Core? - Erik Robelen writes about math teacher's opinions of the CCSS, that he gathered at last week's annual meeting of the NCTM. The opinions are positive and look forward to challenging standards. 
• Poking Fun at the Common-Core Opposition - Benjamin Riley at New Schools Venture Fund writes a fake memo detailing the 'conspiracy' of the Common Core that has been found out by a "...band of truth seeking American patriots would see through our ruse and reveal our true intentions."

CCSS and Local Control

The Education Gadfly blog posted The emperor is mostly naked: Responding to Common Core critics, an insightful response to critics of the Common Core. I agree with most of their points, but this one caught me:

Fabrication #3: The Common Core strips local school boards of their authority over curriculum

Regardless of whether this is a fabrication or not, I've always been annoyed with the assumption that local control of education is the best way of organizing our primary education institutions. We have thousands of school districts doing the same things; creating lesson plans aligned to state standards, developing their own training materials, and training faculty. This system worked great when graduates would compete for jobs locally. Teachers and administrators would be trained in fairly constrained domains, and could develop curricula and materials that target those jobs.

But we are no longer competing with the town down the highway. We are competing with Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, and Sydney. Global competition requires global skills. Skills we must train our teachers and administrators to teach. If we ask local education institutions to develop an ever-increasing amount of materials, in order to compete internationally, can we really trust that the quality of that education will get better?

In essence we are asking local school districts to compete with countries whose curriculum is organized at a national level. For New York, and Los Angeles, that may be fine. But for Birmingham, Tallahassee, and Denver? Wouldn't placing some amount of curriculum development in the hands of the federal government, with their wide range of resources and funding, be a better approach?