Learning Aloud

Steven Levy, one of my favorite technology writers, has a Newsweek article summarizing the year for Google. The article describes the combination of developments in searching and the business opportunities such services make available.

An article from Edweek comments on young learner search skills and common problems faced in implementing searches (e.g., spelling errors, poor selection of search terms) and identifies alternatives to common search engines that may help.

The K-12 establishment in North Dakota is upset after learning that the plan advanced to establish elementary teachers as highly qualified has been rejected. Part of the frustration is that the 120 day federal review period had long passed (19 months later).

While it is hard to be against providing students access to “qualified teachers”, I was involved in developing the skills of at least some of these teachers and to me the issues are much more complex than NCLB makes it seem. Perhaps the feds have a plan for attracting highly qualified elementary teachers to rural classrooms for 10K less than they can make elsewhere. Perhaps there is a plan for encouraging older teachers in these same settings to spend the time and money necessary to “upgrade” when retirement seems so much easier.

A recent EdWeek article describes the qualification of veteran teachers as a common problem.

It is time for “year in review” comments. The Washington Post offers a piece summarizing the rise of online crime during 2004.

A USA Today article summarizes an International Study of Computer Use and Academic Achievement conducted by the University of Munich. Easy access to computers at home and lots of computer use at school seem to be negatively associated with achievement.

“The mere availability of computers at home seems to distract students from learning.” Computers seem to serve mainly as devices for playing games.

Still, there were a few exceptions: Academic performance rose among those who routinely engaged in writing e-mail or running educational software.

I am looking forward to seeing this study published so that the exact methodology is available for evaluation.

I have become fascinated with the Library of Congress series on the digital future. I strongly encourage you to visit this site and view the presentations.

The presentation from Dec. 13 concerned the potential of digitizing everything. One of the examples concerned keeping a record (over time) of the Internet. The presenter, Brewster Kahle, discussed the “Way Back Machine.” This is a fascinating project. I tried it with my original web site and it has my material back to 1997. Not that anyone but me might care about the origins of my web material, but the idea is fascinating when applied to other content.

Google is “going back to the future” (my apologies the movie writer I stole this from) and working with the Harvard libraries to develop technologies to provide access to library holdings. Harvard has about 15 million volumes so it represents a good test site.

The back to the future comment – my way of saying that students may actually rediscover the library.

See my earlier post regarding a similar project at the Library of Congress