"Seat time" 2.0,

Reports have been surfacing about different ways students use the daily bus ride to school. One particularly interesting one comes from Arkansas where it's reported that Sheridan Turns School Bus into Classroom. This program is a joint effort and demonstrates some smart thinking. For instance, in combination with the WiFi'd bus in a maths & science curriculum:

The bus project and the Internet lessons are different because, in part, they not included in the regular school program, Hudson said. Instructional time is on the bus and in a satellite location — not at school.

As this begins to break down the criterion of "seat time" as a measure of learning, schools will need to take a look at other dimensions.  Conversely, maybe information overload will become the bus butt of the future?

Apple's hot & frothy,

According to the buzz, Forbes alerts us to a new patent logged by Apple that will allow iPhone users to place their Starbucks order and get a return message when it's ready.  Use your gadget to jump ahead of all those less savvy latte lovers.  One more incremental step in the dawning New WWW - Whatever, Whenever, Wherever.

The "outsourced brain",

David Brooks' Op-Ed piece "The Outsourced Brain" in the New York Times is a must read for educators. Beginning with a GPS goddess that gently steers the author in the right direction, Brooks goes on to invoke his use of calculators for math (a given), iTunes for musical selection, search engines for memory of spot knowledge, smart phones for all the personal details we used to memorize, and finally syncing it all together with the wisdom of crowds that actually makes such "choices" with more validity than most of our own decisions. It's a fresh look with a bit of tongue in cheek, but what I love is that there's plenty of common sense that's obvious for any who live much of life "enhanced" by the New WWW (90% of those between 12 and 25?). What I find interesting is that many teachers object on something like moral grounds: "it's just not natural," "not the way it should be," "isn't what was good enough for us," etc. These comments remind me of two anecdotes related to change. First, we know that Socrates objected to writing as it would diminish the power of the brain and oratory. The fact that what this wisest of men said was true didn't alter the outcome: tablets, papyrus, scribes, Gutenberg, newsprint, paperbacks, Webpages, etc. "Digging in" against change "on principle" is no more valid than excusing ones self due to skill deficits or technophobia. Professionals work within reality to continuously improve what they do. The second anecdote I'm reminded of springs from the complaints made by the parents of many of today's veteran teachers during the last Generation Gap. The complaints could have been about Rock 'n' Roll or cohabitation. Even though parents in the 60s didn't like the, these seismic shifts, they are now mainstream: The Beatles are Muzak and living together commonplace. The point of this minor rant is that many in education have to get over the "liking it" delusion. Not liking the firestorm doesn't dampen the flames, but turning your back on it is likely to get you burned and place our children at risk.  Maybe part of the trick is learning to live in a reality that seems so unreal?

Teachable Doh!-ment,

The Age reports how a Sydney resident recorded The Simpson's Movie on its premiere evening via his mobile phone and had it posted on the net within two hours. It only took that amount of time before representatives of 20th Century Fox alerted Australian Federal Police about the copyright violation. Of course, by then over 3000 people had downloaded the move and it found its way onto a BitTorrent site that served another 110,000 downloads in 72 hours.The 21-year-old man faces up to five years' imprisonment.

d'oh - Expresses frustration or anger, especially at one's own stupidity. (wiktionary)

"Big Mother" as Cognitive Tutor

In my last post, I suggested that education would do well to mine the wealth of information that can be derived from digitally tracking student movements. A lot can be learned through amassed patterns of student use within software virtual environments and actual physical environs. Today Education Week reports about a New Breed of Digital Tutors Yielding Learning Gains. The article focuses on a school district in Everett, Washington where:

all of Everett’s high school students have a choice in signing up for Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and geometry: a traditional class or one that mixes teacher-led lessons with a sizable dose of machine-based tutoring.

Later in the article, the point is made:

Studies suggest that, on average, students who use Cognitive Tutor make learning gains that roughly translate into the equivalent of as much as one letter grade—the difference, in other words, between an A and a B.

So here's one more example of how technology supports the individualization of skill-building in the cognitive domain. With teacher-shortages in many areas and a graying of the force, it's not difficult to see how this trend will continue and become more sophisticated.