Moment of e-lightenment

"If one can really come to that state of saying, "I do not know," it indicates an extraordinary sense of humility; there is no arrogance of knowledge; there is no self-assertive answer to make an impression".

J. Krisnamurti

QUALITY AT A DISTANCE?

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Robert W. Mendenhall, president of Western Governors University, an online, nonprofit institution, will answer questions about the quality of distance education and the idea of awarding degrees based on competency assessments instead of traditional measures of grades and seat time.

Software eases NMC teacher shortage

The cash-strapped Northern Marianas College is getting some help in mitigating the shortage of teachers at the lone community college in the CNMI. That help, though, comes not in the form of a person but through a software called Elluminate Live.

Discomfort Does Not Mean Dysfunctional

I have accepted a new job, which will take me far from family in Ohio. Many emotions have been swirling around my head as of late, one of which is a deep sense of uncertainty. I found myself pushed outside of my comfort zone forced to deal with new realities and challenges. Though uncomfortable, I felt as if I had been catapulted to a greater level of self-reliance and proficiency.

This experience has led me to reflect upon education and academic experiences. Should not learners also be encouraged to transcend current levels of understanding and proficiency within the context of education?

At first, my levels of discomfort I perceived as an annoyance. I have now come to view them as a necessary and desirable part of the growth process. Struggle and uncertainty I have come to view as natural parts of any learning cycle. Discomfort does not necessary mean dysfunctional, these moments often prove be times of great insight.

Futurist: To fix education, think Web 2.0
By Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: December 1, 2006, 1:07 PM PT

A consultant and former chief scientist at Palo Alto Research Center, Seely Brown spoke at a conference on technology and education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The conference was organized to mark the end next year of an eight-year partnership between Microsoft and MIT to explore the use of technology in learning.

Seely Brown argued that education is going through a large-scale transformation toward a more participatory form of learning.

Group wants Blackboard patent nulled


CNET reports that the Software Freedom Law Center has asked the United States Patent Office to re-examine a patent awarded to Blackboard. The open-source group claims that Blackboard's patent is bogus and that it could undermine other education projects that the center represents. Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor could all be adversely affected by the patent.

An Interview with Ronald Ferguson

For more than a decade, economist Ronald Ferguson has studied achievement gaps. In 2002, he created the Tripod Project for School Improvement, a professional development initiative that uses student and teacher surveys to measure classroom conditions and student engagement by race and gender. The findings inform strategies to raise achievement and narrow achievement gaps. A senior research associate at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Ferguson is director and faculty cochair of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. He spoke with the Harvard Education Letter about the most recent findings from the Tripod Project surveys.

The Way I See It ... Positive Attitude Training

Annie Lawler of Breathing Space for Business explains how to instil positivity in the workplace by training the mind.

TrainingZone

The mind is incredibly powerful and our thoughts and beliefs influence our words and actions either positively or negatively. If we’re aware of the influences and conditioning that affect our behaviour, we can take positive action to reverse negative trends.

Naturally, we all have certain periods in our lives which are challenging and provide us with some serious hurdles to overcome. This is the nature of life. And, some people's genetic make-up makes them more susceptible to periods of anxiety than others. It’s also true that a lot of our 'conditioning' or learned behaviour as children and from those in authority throughout our lives can affect how we feel and how we respond to situations.

Add to that the many external influences which affect our moods and create anxious states, such as TV programmes, news reports in papers, periodicals and on TV, films, video games and so on and you can start to see what we have to contend with every day of our lives.

Do these really affect our moods and behaviour? Well the short answer is a resounding ‘yes’ and that’s why marketers, politicians et al spend so much money and time on advertising and PR campaigns. Repetition of messages and images start to infiltrate our subconscious (and sometimes conscious) thoughts and behaviour and there’s lots of research and books which confirm this school of thought.

Learning from Failure

Today has been a relaxing day of watching college football and cheering for my favorite teams. I have especially been impressed by the recent rising of teams that had suffered devastating set backs last year only to make emboldened drives for success this season. I wondered to myself could this success have been possible if these teams would have not suffered the pain of setback I then wondered how this principle could fit into an educational environment.

In an age where we want to protect, shield and hide students from the unpleasantness of temporary set-back, this is doing a great disservice to the student and is detrimental to the learning process.

The discomfort of setback offers us a time of deep and serious reflection; reflection which might not have occurred if the discomfort were absent. In our collective realities that we call life, discomfort and setback are entities which we must contend with. By not allowing learners the opportunity to engage with these entities their capacities to deal with them in the real world would be severely hampered.

Competition offers a controlled environment in which important human capacities can be honed and trained. Yes success and failure are a part of the dynamic of competition. Setbacks humble us in the face of future success, making us good stewards of the gifts we oft receive.

Rising from the ashes of perceived defeat is an essential skill invaluable to human development. Perseverance in the face of perceived failure is the key to a fruitful and successful life. We should not rob learners of the opportunity to discover something truly timeless and invaluable within themselves.

Powerful Forces Draw Academe Into the Fray
Economic fears and the high-school-reform movement have colleges under pressure to help improve the education of children

The Chronicle of Higher Education

By PETER SCHMIDT

After two decades, the revolution in the nation's elementary and secondary schools has finally reached academe's ivory towers. If college administrators listen beyond their institutions' walls, they can hear crowds of students and parents voicing frustration over colleges' high remediation rates and low graduation rates, visionaries urging the creation of entirely new education systems that would closely link schools and colleges, and political leaders issuing an ultimatum: Tend to the education of the masses, or the next thing you will hear will be battering rams.

For years most higher-education leaders thought they could stay above the fray, neither joining nor opposing the forces marching under the banner of education reform. With one public-opinion survey after another showing that people thought favorably of colleges — even as they were calling for the heads of schoolteachers, principals, and superintendents — it had seemed that colleges were safe from the forces of change unleashed by the 1983 publication of "A Nation at Risk," a highly critical federal report on the need for school reform

Large Numbers of Highly Qualified, Low-Income Students Are Not Applying to Harvard and Other Highly Selective Schools

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

An impressive new study finds that there is no shortage of academically strong students from low-income families. As a result, colleges and universities setting plans to enroll more low-income applicants need not relax admissions policies, which may result in lower mean SAT scores and other qualifications of entering students.

Fears are unwarranted that efforts to increase the number of low-income students will produce a lowering of their U.S. News & World Report rankings. Rather than lowering their academic standards, the nation's selective colleges and universities need to do a better job at identifying high-achieving, low-income students and convincing them to apply.


A solid and carefully researched new study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research establishes that there are a sizable number of low-income students in the United States with high academic qualifications who are not applying to the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. The researchers, including Harvard University economist Caroline Hoxby, examined data from The College Board for all students who had grade point averages and standardized test scores that were high enough for Harvard's academic standards. In this pool of potential Harvard students, they found thousands of low-income students who did not consider applying to Harvard.

Harvard to Drop Early Admissions Program
University Says It Disadvantages Minority and Poor Students
By JUSTIN POPE, AP

BOSTON (Sept. 12) - Harvard University will eliminate its early admissions program because it puts poor and minority students at a disadvantage, school officials planned to announce Tuesday. Under the surprise move, the Ivy League school will discontinue its "early action" round of admissions, in which high school seniors can apply by Nov. 1 and receive a decision - accept, reject or defer - by Dec. 15.

The change will take effect for students applying to enter Harvard in the fall of 2008. All applications for that class will be due Jan. 1.

Wisdom's Jewel


"If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them".

-Bruce Lee

Wisdom's Jewel

"I do not know if it is clear to each one of us that we live in a state of contradiction. We talk about peace, and prepare for war. We talk about nonviolence, and are fundamentally violent. We talk about being good, and we are not. We talk about love, and we are full of ambition, competitiveness, ruthless efficiency. So there is contradiction. The action that springs from that contradiction only brings about frustration and further contradiction.…

- J. Krishnamurti

"There Is No Freedom of Thought" - The Book of Life

Daily Insight


On the Role of Relevance and Education

A recent study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that U.S students between the ages of 25-34 year olds are lagging behind the rest of the world in college enrollment and completion rates. This is troubling as the next generation of decision makers within the country will come from this group. What is the cause behind this lack of academic involvement? There are a myriad of possibilities but one stands out to me, and that it is a waning level of personal commitment to education on the part of aspiring students. Exceptional achievement in any endeavor is dependent upon what a person finds to be valuable. Typically we find valuable that which directly impacts our lives.

In my view education should seek to enlighten students, by directly connecting learning to the dynamic world in which they live. This action would offer the student greater clarity and understanding of life. Education, if viewed as a tool in which students can gain an understanding and mastery of themselves and their world around them, can truly be a powerful thing. Education when divorced from the real world is merely a mental exercise and lends no perceived value to lives of students. It is in this environment that we find ourselves, in a situation of declining student enrollment and completion rates. Many students find no practical value in the learning they are asked to endure, so many choose to forgo the experience. Learning must be made real and relevant to students seeking education. It is in an environment of relevance, that a commitment to learning be established.

Report Finds U.S. Students Lagging in Finishing College
New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN

The United States, long the world leader in higher education, has fallen behind other nations in its college enrollment and completion rates, as the affordability of American colleges and universities has declined, according to a new report.

The study, from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, found that although the United States still leads the world in the proportion of 35- to 64-year-olds with college degrees, it ranks seventh among developed nations for 25- to 34-year-olds. On rates of college completion, the United States is in the lower half of developed nations.

“Completion is the Achilles’ heel of American higher education,’’ said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in San Jose, Calif., and Washington.

One particular area of concern, Mr. Callan said, is that younger Americans — the most diverse generation in the nation’s history — are lagging educationally, compared with the baby boom generation.

“The strength of America is in the population that’s closest to retirement, while the strength of many countries against whom we compare ourselves is in their younger population,’’ he said. “Perhaps for the first time in our history, the next generation will be less educated.’’

Making Learning Relevant
Excerpt from: Adisa on Education

The ability to understand the most basic elements of culture is invaluable to an educator. The goal of any curriculum is to elevate the knowledge and understanding of the learners. This goal is the sole determinant for instructional efficiency and success. To understand the natures and proclivities of one’s students is a necessary requirement when designing learning curriculum. Dunn and Marinetti (2004) look at the proposition this way “For learning to be effective, learning activities should be relevant to the learners' interests and background and should occur in settings that mimic authentic ones.

Ignoring cultural factors leads inevitably to frustrating and ultimately ineffective learning experiences”. This process is not much different from that of a coach training a new team. The coach understands that each team is different, possessing varying skill levels and dispositions than previous the coaches previous teams. The coach as a result must adjust his/ her strategy to best fit the character and needs of the team. It is an unrealistic expectation that the same educational strategy will work in all situations. That expectation does not exist in the world of sport, nor should it exist on the educational landscape.


Reference:
Dunn, P; Marinetti, A. (2004). Cultural Adaptation: A necessity for e-learning.
Retrieved January 8, 2006 from http://www.linezine.com/

Wisdom's Jewel

"The intellect can reason, discuss, analyze, come to a conclusion from inferences, and so on, but intellect is limited, for intellect is the result of our conditioning. But sensitivity is not. Sensitivity has no conditioning; it takes you right out of the field of fears and anxieties…".

J. Krishnamurti, "Intellect Will Not Solve Our Problems" - Book of Life (September 5th)

Insight into Facilitation

I was watching a college football game the other day and a historically bad team had just played a phenomenal game. The announcer asked the coach what was to reason for this turn around. The coach humbly replied that the team had started to believe in what they were trying to accomplish and began taking ownership and control of the program. Training activities and weight lifting sessions that were such a choir for the coaches to get the players to engage in with 100% effort were willfully pursued by the players. The players themselves began monitoring compliance of team rules and quality training habits. The coach said that once this change occurred he noticed that performance on the field had improved by leaps and bounds.

Could this principle of ownership and self-monitoring work the same in educational environments? In the realm of adult education allowing learners the freedom to determine the course of the learning experience is a powerful thing to do.

full article

Wiki-style textbooks to aid poorer nations

September 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Tom Simonite


Students in developing countries are to get free textbooks written using "wiki" technology that lets anyone add to or edit an online document.

"The usual business model for textbooks just doesn't work for these countries," says Rick Watson, an expert on the development of opensource software at the University of Georgia, US. "Why not get groups of academics and their students to write them?"