Jay Matthews Changes his Mind about 21st Century Skills
November 30, 2008
A few weeks ago, I got in an e-mail discussion with Jay Matthews, the education reporter at the Washington Post. At the time, I felt that Matthews attack on 21st Century Skills was unfair, uninformed, and not constructive.
His response to me included this line: “You are the first email I have received that takes your side.”
Well, a few weeks later, Jay Matthews writes:
Now I am forced to calm down, take a breath and consider the possibility that I was wrong about this, because a scholar whose work I admire has produced the first sensible report on 21st-century skills I have read.
I suppose I wasn’t scholarly enough to change his mind, but it is great to see that he is being open-minded about his views on the topic.
(Thanks for the link DJ!)
Update: Here is a link to the report that Jay Matthews.
Future of Technology
November 30, 2008
My friend wanted me to help him write some multiple-choice questions about the future of technology. This was my initial list of questions:
When will computers be able to pass the turing test (ie “If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.”)?
- 30 years
- 50 years
- 80 years
- never
When will we pass the singulairty (“ie. this would open up all sorts of new possibilities, including abrogation of the laws of Physics, interdimensional travel, and a possible infinite extension of existence (true immortality)”)?
- 30 years
- 50 years
- 80 years
- never
When will we be able to solve an NP-Complete problem (NP-complete is a subset of NP, the set of all decision problems whose solutions can be verified in polynomial time; NP may be equivalently defined as the set of decision problems that can be solved in polynomial time on a nondeterministic Turing machine.)?
- 30 years
- 50 years
- 80 years
- never
What technology is going to drive the next wave of search?
- Semantic Web technology. (ie. structured data)
- Natural language processing. (ie. computers “reading” text)
- Other? _______
But then he wanted me to create a list of questions that an average college student could understand. Therefore, this was my new list:
Will the majority of consumers move to web-based office apps (eg. Google Docs) within 4 years?
- Yes
- No
What % of the world will be using the internet in 4 years?
(Source)
- 20-25%
- 25-30%
- 30-40%
- >40%
Who will be the dominant technology player (bottom line) in 4 years?
- Microsoft
- HP
- Other______
Will IP based household devices in the consumer marketplace grow over 200 million within 4 years?
(Source)
- Yes
- No
What is your list of questions about the future of technology?
Links on Education, Leadership, and Data Warehousing
November 23, 2008
I thought it would be a good idea to post some of my latest delicious links.
Global Education Ning Space
This social network is a place for educators to meet other international partners. One of our districts is currently searching for a strong partner to collaborate with on classes and self. I am familiar with International Baccalaureate, but they may be too expensive for our purposes. This ning space may be a good alternative to finding international school partners.
Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter
(Web site)
This is a directory of eLearning Professionals on twitter. Twitter is a great tool to meet new interesting people. I have browsed through facebook profiles, delicious users, Ning spaces, and other networks – and I have not found anything better than twitter for meeting and discovering interesting individuals. Twitter profiles are concise and descriptive. And you can search through “followers” and their “followers” to find a network of fascinating individuals in any field. Finally, Twitter users are typically early adoptors and thought leaders in the area of technology.
K12 Academic Excellence Solutions
(Web site)
I am not familiar with this company, but I discovered them through Tim Phillips’ profile on OETN. It appears that they build data warehousing solutions for education. As a SAS programmer and Computer Science major, I am a strong believer that database management systems, data warehouses, and business intelligence are the future of education. The only way to make good decisions is to have data to support decision-making. A strong data warehouse enables school districts to summarize and analyze student data and easily present it to decision makers.
On a sidenote, SchoolNet is another company leading the charge in Data Warehousing solutions. I also believe that understanding databases is a core 21st Century Skill.
Great Leadership: Guide to Leadership Assessments
This blog is an excellent resource on leadership. One of the most critical aspects of leadership is self-awareness and leadership assessments are a great way to build self-awareness. I am a particularly strong supporter of 360 Degree Feedback, or having performance reviews from “subordinates, peers, and managers.” Also, as a Psychology major, I have always been interested in personality assessments such as the Myers-Brigg.
If you have any interesting links on education, leadership, psychology, databases, business, or anything else – please do not hesitate to contact me.
What should the Federal Office of Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation focus on? (Part 2)
November 4, 2008
(Please read Part 1)
Frederick Hess identified three assumptions related to problems in educational entrepreneurship – barriers to entry, lack of financial capital, and lack of human capital – which all lead to a lack of innovation. The recommendations in the Rotherham report, Changing the Game: The Federal Role in Supporting 21st Century Educational Innovation, are built on these three assumptions. I do not believe that barriers to entry or lack of financial capital are bottlenecks in educational entrepreneurship. Finally, I believe some of the tremendous innovation happening in the education space – such as Classroom 2.0, Ning, PLP, wikis, blogging in the classroom, Flat Classroom, etc. – is not expensive to scale.
The third assumption – a lack of human capital (with teachers and administrators) – is in fact the most challenging factor to achieving educational success in this country. If we were to establish the Office, I hope it would focus mostly on initiatives that directly tackle the human capital problem in educational entrepreneurship.
The education industry is similar to other service industry players in the sense that people are the biggest bottleneck to scaling success. But there are a few important methodologies to scaling success in the people-intensive services industry.
To begin with, people management needs to be a central goal of educational institutions. The hiring of outstanding individuals, the ability to quickly fire ineffective staff, and financially rewarding excellent teachers are all critical components to ensuring that the best and brightest enter and stay in the education field.
In addition, teachers and administrators should carefully consider ways to maximize their most precious resource – time. I believe principles espoused in Getting Things Done, of 4 Hour Work Week, could be applied to the education sector to dramatically improve efficiency and productivity in the education sector.
Another way to increase human capital within the services industry – or education – is to invest deeply and strategically in developing talent. In the consulting world, each entry-level consultant is usually paired with up to 2-3 senior consultants who are intensely focused on developing entry-level employees. In addition, analysts often need to attend weeks of highly targeted professional development training each year to improve their performance. Teachers and administrators could benefit tremendously from replicating this intense approach to developing internal talent.
Finally, the only other way to scale human capital-intensive services businesses such as education is by strategic outsourcing. With the emergence of new technologies, there is a national and global talent pool of individuals who can perform peripheral and core functions at the school at a much lower cost than the traditional models.
Should we build a Federal Office of Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation? (Part 1)
November 4, 2008
Andy Rotherham, an education guru whom I deeply respect for writing the excellent blog, Eduwonk, recently published a report titled: “Changing the Game: The Federal Role in Supporting 21st Century Educational Innovation.” The report recommends creating a $450m Federal Office of Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation to fund educational entrepreneurs in charter schools, private industry, and non profits. [I am speaking to Andy on the phone this Friday about the report; therefore please comment if you would like me to bring anything up with him.]
Even though Smart Solutions could directly benefit from this office because we could apply for funds to scale up our business, I am a bit scared about the repercussions. Instead of intensely focusing on improving service or lowering costs – I now need to keep an eye on Washington.
The federal office may slow growth in the ed tech sector over the long run because we would be lobbying for pet projects in Washington instead of focusing on client needs.
While some ideas from the report are compelling, such as funding an “Education Innovation Challenge” to invest in long-term R&D efforts in education, other ideas need to be carefully studied to understand their impact on the marketplace.
Here are some other comments from one of my colleagues:
My main question is: how would the Office of Innovation actually impact the policies that support or hamper innovation?
The New Teacher Project helps bring more effective educators into the pipeline, but despite having funding support, they were unable to open in Cleveland because of issues with teacher licensing requirements.
It would be great if the incentives created by this office could help eliminate those barriers. But the Office could end up adding another layer of federal bureaucracy
Defending 21st Century Skills
November 1, 2008
With Andy Rotherham’s approval, Jay Mathews recently wrote a provocative column titled, “Why I Don’t Like 21st-Century Reports.” Long time readers may remember my previous back and forth about standardized testing with the famed Washington Post education beat reporter back in 2006.
Mathews on 21st Century Skills:
The problem I have is that these major pronouncements often seem to have been conceived and written by people who are miles away from real classrooms. Many of the producers and writers, I am sure, have been educators. They know what it is like to work with children for whom the notion of a 21st-century classroom is as inexplicable — and maybe as laughable — as the school janitor coming to work in a spacesuit. But so little of that hard-earned knowledge of the grungy unpredictability of teaching ever finds its way into their big national studies…
Good stuff. I liked all of those suggestions. I had only one question: How in the name of every teacher who has ever contemplated suicide during the unit on fractions are we supposed to make those things happen?
My response:
To make a long story short – you have not done your due diligence on 21st Century Skills. There are countless examples of actual teachers in school districts demonstrating the teaching and learning of 21st Century Skills.
My recommended blog reading:
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach – http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/
Will Richardson – http://weblogg-ed.com/The bottom line is that there is an entire subset of education technologists who believe that technology, and particularly the integration of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, is the best, easiest, most practical, and cost-effective way to teach the range of 21st Century Skills discussed in that report.
The glossy report that you chide has inspired hundreds of schools and teachers across the nation to urgently work towards changing their districts…
My company, Smart Solutions, is committed to building 21st Century Schools and we have used the Partnership for 21st Century Skills as one of our guiding organizations.
The answer to “how do you do it?” is quite complex and we have our own philosophy on the topic.
We believe it requires administrative leadership that is focused on three areas:
Leadership (through strong technology leaders)
IT Management/Infrastructure (through managed services)
Teaching and Learning (through job-embedded professional development)
Jay’s response:
I will remain skeptical until I see it in the classroom, and can see what books and other materials are being used, and what assignments given. I have not seen anything very different in this very large metro area, with 1,200 public schools. I have seen things that say they are 21st century skill teaching, but arent doing anything unique. I know the superintendent in Manassas wants to start something, but hasnt yet. You know of any school in this region that meets your standard, and is doing this with regular kids? Thomas Jefferson can’t be a model for anything. Too selective. Point me to a school and I will check it out. Web site and blogs don’t do it. You are the first email I have received that takes your side. The skeptics, including many educators, are in the majority at least in my emails. They think this is one more fad, a name without a difference. So educate me. I need to see this in action. —jay
Therefore, if you are a teacher or administrator who is demonstrating the teaching of 21st Century Skills (particularly in the Washington area), please comment on this post so that I can send Jay a link!