Want to know something cool?

One point of view, taking note of sundry "cool" things that affect-- or could affect-- the education business.

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Friday, June 23, 2006

Texas Gears Up for Online Testing

They won't be first, but they could be the biggest, depending on how many district superintendents, or in some cases building principals, decide to take advantage of new policy in Texas. Beginning in the 2006-07 school year, statewide assessments (TAKS, for Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) for grades 7 and up will have the option of online delivery. See the story here on the Dallas Morning News site.

While it's new ground broken for Texas, there are several other states for whom online testing has become the norm. Virginia, for example, gives 90% of their statewide assessments online.

Advantages and potential risks are being debated in the Lone Star State, but most of the minefield for online testing has been mapped already. Assuming the Texans can learn from their early-adopter neighbors, the move could lead to an eventual policy of mandated online testing. At the very least, the online option gives schools or districts (depending on who makes the call) the chance at a level playing field and reap the benefits, including near-real-time results. Proponents praise paperless testing as the eventuality for which it is time. State administrators feel that their servers have the bandwidth, or could obtain it, to serve hundreds of thousands of test-takers in 2007.

Cool, huh?

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Thursday, June 15, 2006

High-Pitched Battle for Cell Phone Use in School

From about 4700 different sites, including but not limited to a story on e-School News, comes word of a new ringtone for cellies. Turns out most adults CAN'T HEAR IT, making it a preferred choice for students in schools where phone use is "banned" (read: driven underground).

Seems most adults lose the ability to hear very high-pitched noises as we age, but the little lambs with their relatively unscathed eardrums can make out this noise just fine. This makes "pinging" their friends in school easy and stealthy. Mrs. Smith and Mr. Jones can't hear the tone, but Johnny and Soshanna can, so they're able to text, IM, or what-have-you without their teachers knowing.

Of course, this doesn't preclude teachers from seeing phones in use, but if the little darlings are sufficiently surreptitous they can now get over on the old timers.

Interestingly, the idea was borne from a UK practice of blasting high-frequency sounds at shopping malls and other popular teen hangouts, making kids move on to quieter (less visible) haunts without disturbing mumsie and daddums while they perused the latest shoe sale. Now teens have turned the tables. Kudos for their ingenuity; guess schools will have to either cave on their cell bans or go with that signal-strangling copper-based paint being shopped to movie theaters.

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More Internets From Which To Choose

NewNet. Internet2. NLR. Plus the tired old workhorse the World Wide Web. Soon, you'll be hopping from one ultra-fast network to another the way you currently jump from website to website.

Internet2, a consortium of primarily academically-rooted interests, has announced that they're dumping plans to build a next-gen interweb with Qwest in favor of a new fiber-optic information highway to be built by Level3 Communications. Current plans call for a launch of some kind in 2008. NewNet will also facilitate the construction of ad-hoc subnetworks leveraging not just fat pipes but also better data protocols that will enable true and virtual networking of a speed and facility not yet seen.

This, of course, is a different bunch of players with a different interweb, and should not be confused with National LambdaRail, which is being built by a consortium of primarily research-driven interests. Talks between the two consortia to explore their collaborative development of one meganet fell apart last Spring. So they're taking their toys and each will build their own. Desolee, dudes. So sorry.

Ah, the halcyon days of the old ARPANET. Remember when "surfing" meant creative use of the asterisk key in a futile attempt to avoid the wrath of the *P Police? We've come a long way, baby! (Soon we'll be able to get the "BEST DEALS ON V1agr4 and 4mb13n" in nanoseconds. Compared to the milliseconds it takes now.)

Cool, huh?

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OLPC Gets Real

The now-infamous OLPC project unvelied a pair of working prototypes this month, demonstrating the operating system and networking capabilities of the machine. Later, OLPC program chief Nicholas Negroponte announced that the project has revised the target price of the meshalicious lappie from the original $100 per unit to as much as $140, though their goal of delivering units in late 2007 seems to be on track.

No word on whether the new price has affected pre-order status in the various target markets, though it's a safe bet that countries will likely stick to their spending target and simply order fewer units. What that means in terms of one-to-one computing remains to be seen.

Pricing issues aside, the working prototypes prove that the concept has legs and the units will actually be capable of basic networking and productivity work. Cool, huh?

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Mississippi Super Wants Self-Paced Alternative

According to a story in e-School News, the Mississippi Superintendent of Education has proposed a $20,000,000 program that would target at-risk and traditional non-finishers and offer a self-paced, workplace-oriented graduation alternative. Students would be able to enroll in the program as an alternative to regular classes, and work at their own speed through a curriculum focused on preparing to enter the working world.

Designed to combat drop-out rates and to engage nontraditional learners or those not planning on a collegiate career, the program would offer online classes statewide (noticing a trend here?) through which students would work at their own pace, taking as many concurrent classes as they see fit. While this could result in an elongated matriculation, it could, conceivably, also result in accelerated study.

According to Hank Bound, the state Superintendent, the plan would combat the high dropout rate-- more than 35% of high school students don't graduate-- and would offer participants the chance to enter the workforce as a more effective worker.

Cool, huh?

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Missouri Close to Statewide Virtual School

The Missouri Legislature approved a bill that will allow a new statewide virtual public school, and sent the bill to Governor Matt Blunt for his sign-off.

According to USA Today, "The 'virtual school' would begin offering courses during the 2007-2008 school year under legislation given final approval by a 136-20 House vote. The Senate passed the bill 31-0 last month, meaning it now goes to Gov. Matt Blunt."

Statewide distance learning programs are gaining popularity, or at least garnering support, as departments of education hither and yon realize that online classes can be, and perhaps should be, "centralized" in that they're offered to students across an entire state. Cool, huh?

What might be cooler is taking the next logical step, which is to troll the brick-and-mortar institutions looking for the best and brightest courses to be offered this way. In other words, don't create new online courses, but find the best traditional courses offered in the state and bring them online. The best current events teacher, the best computer science course ... of course, the catch there is deciding who gets to determine what's best and how "best" is even defined. But still, there are tons of great teachers offering great courses. Adapting those great classes to be webcast would take some tweaking, but that's probably easier and will garner better results than starting from scratch.

Cool, huh?

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Yes, Mother, I'm Doing My Homework

OK, ok, we know it's been, like, almost a month since our last post. Our relentless pursuit of the American Dream, and the associated tedium of Corporateville, have hogged our time.

That said, things look like they're settling down to the point of allowing a bit more blogging these days, so we'll try to catch up. Some of the posts may refer to news items that are a week or three old, but we've been Google Notebooking lots of interesting things, we just haven't posted on them yet. Thanks for hanging in there and checking back; site stats show that traffic to the blog has been steady and even spiked a little in spite of our silent spell.

Enough mea culpae, time to brang da funk.

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