Month: January 2013

I just read a disturbing post from the Diane Ravitch blog and it seems that Ravitch has a similar reaction to my own. It seemed she did not support the position taken, but found it difficult to argue a different position.

The short version – Ravitch provides a post authored by a public school classroom teacher explaining what the teacher perceives as the reality schools face. The teacher seems an advocate for between-class ability grouping (grouping of students by ability for all classes) and claims that the opposition to this practice places public schools in an impossible position. What happens when schools employ heterogenous grouping (no grouping or the purposeful mixing of learners with different levels of talent) is that the parents of more capable students pull their students from such schools and place them elsewhere if they have the means to do so.

I have one issue with the research as reported in the article. It was my understanding, that between-class grouping had little overall statistical impact. One interpretation has been that more capable students may benefit, but less capable students suffer under such an arrangement. Hence, the overall outcome is neutral. It is not my understanding that between-class grouping benefits less capable students which seems to be the claim of the post author.

The post does not consider regrouping or within-class grouping which I thought had proven benefits. This is the practice of grouping class by class (e.g., elementary students grouped for reading but not other subject areas).

Whether I or the author of the post has the best grasp of the facts is not what I find disturbing. My concern involves the description of parents undermining the general benefit of pubic education by acting in the best interest of their own kids. How do you respond as an advocate if this is an apt description. Shouldn’t you do the best you can for your own kids. This is a situation that reminds me of a “tragedy of the commons” problem. I guess it is a little different. In the problem of the commons, if everyone acts to maximize personal benefit the system breaks down for everyone. Here, the argument that all lose if some are allowed to act in the benefit of self interest is more difficult to make.

I just read an article from TechCrunch indicating that California is experimenting with $150 online survey courses. Aside from the issue of quality which I assume will be carefully evaluated, I think assumptions regarding the economics of such a move are misguided.

Let me explain that I work in a University Psychology department and chaired this department for many years. I am very familiar with the large survey course environment and am still teaching in such a setting. I also worked with budgets and reviewed tuition dollars generated by different departments for many years.

First, the notion that our courses are “only lecture” is inaccurate. I do lecture to 200 students. However, these students also have a weekly small group session (25) allowing discussion and requiring writing tasks.

Second, I would suggest that we teach some large courses so that our department and other departments can teach small courses. Aside from our own graduate programs in Psychology, the tuition revenues generated in Psychology make it financially possible for others to teach courses of the size say students might experience in Education, Art or English. I am picking departments at random here just to point out that the revenue generated from a 25 student class does not pay the salary of the instructor or the cost of the infrastructure and money is moved from elsewhere to cover the difference. Our department also happens to train the clinical psychologists for North Dakota which happens to be a good example of the folly of trying to evaluate efficiency on a course by course basis..  There is no way this program could be operated in what many might consider a cost-effective manner. Accreditation requirements allow us to enroll one clinical graduate student per clinical faculty member per year. So, a state either wants to prepare mental health professionals more likely to stay local or to compete to hire such professionals trained elsewhere.

There are certain economic realities that must be considered before concluding large survey courses generate too much tuition income. University budgets originate from multiple sources – tuition, grants, state allocations, and gifts. State institutions receive a smaller and smaller proportion of their budgets from their states. There is also political pressure against constantly raising tuition. Advanced students of the type we hope to attract into our clinical graduate programs and eventually to a North Dakota practice come at a price – you may have assumed they pay us. Our campus-based graduate programs all operate in this fashion.

Taking money out of the university by reducing the amount generated from large courses will have to be made up in some other ways. This might involve a reduction in staff which would also involve a reduction in the variety of other courses we offer and the diversity of expertise available to advanced students. This would seem the most serious problem in universities of moderate size. Very large institutions simply have more redundancy.

Anyway, I offer these comments just to raise awareness. It is naive to look at one category of courses and assume you have identified a way to contain costs. We could certainly go a model in which the actual cost were charged on a course by course basis. Consider what that might look like.

From our earliest professional content addressing the integration of technology, we have used examples from the field. In this case, we use the word “field” to mean woods, water, and wildlife.

We like these examples because they:

• challenge the notion that technology limits interaction with the “real world” (escaping the classroom once in a while allows the student to explore the real world),
• offer opportunities for “authentic” (meaning practices of the discipline) activities that scale to the experience level of students, and
• take advantage of my original background in biology and science education.

We often use the holidays or summers to explore some new technology more intensively. This holiday we have been using what are commonly called trail cams. I received a Bushnell camera as birthday present in November and then purchased a second (and less expensive) bird cam (designed to take photos as birds come to a bird feeder).

Trail cams are motion triggered meaning they take photos or video when something moves nearby (even a branch close to the camera in our experience). Additional features could include things like night photography capabilities or flash photography. As we approach retirement we have purchased a cabin (more like a home) in the woods of northern Wisconsin and have the opportunity to view deer, bear, wolves, etc. We spend time in a great location for nature photography. I have long enjoyed exploring with a traditional camera, but the trail cam adds a different approach.

You can certainly generate your own ideas for using these tools in learning projects, but there are also sites and services available to make the process a lot easier. A New York startup has created Project Noah as an attempt to offer experiences for the amateur to the professional. A Wall Street Journal article describing this company is where I found the phrase “the smartphone is the butterfly net for the 21st century”.

Project Noah offers a site providing access to content, projects, and ideas for teachers. An app for use directly from your phone is also available. The quality of some of the images available from this site is amazing and obviously involved the use of some high quality camera equipment. However, the cell phone often offers a unique advantaged – most geotag the pictures they take allowing precise positioning on a collective map. It is interesting to build your own collection and search out what else has been submitted by others who have taken photos nearby.

 

If you enjoy photography or are looking for authentic projects for students, I encourage you to take a look by following some of the links provided here.

Doing science