We have spent the past few days with family at a cabin in Wisconsin. Everyone but us has now gone home and we will leave in the morning. It has been a very relaxing time with family.
The most unique event of the day was a virtual chat with Sasha and Marcia from Nizhny (Russia). These are friends Cindy made during her travels and she stays in touch. The coming of the New Year seems a bigger event in Russia. They give presents and welcome Father Frost much as we do on Christmas eve.
We exchanged several vodka toasts each followed by a pickle. There appears to be an order to the toasts. I remember the second round is to remember your parents. They were eating caviar on toast. Hard for us to match that, but the cost in Nizhny is a fraction of the cost in the U.S.
We won’t be able to toast the New Year with all of our friends, but consider this a virtual toast – To you and yours, may the New Year treat you with kindness and engage you with new adventures.
While Learning Aloud is focused on education and technology, I frequently digress. Sometimes the topics are unrelated personal issues. Sometimes the topics focus on important issues I feel a need to identify.
Tom Friedman has received a lot of attention on this blog. For me, he raises issues of tremendous importance and he offers what seem like reasonable solutions. Energy, mutual interdependence despite political boundaries, technology, and education end being woven together in ways that make sense no matter which happens to be the topic of personal interest.
Friedman makes his living as a book and editorial author. However, you do not have to always purchase his books or the NY Times to read or listen to his comments.
Here, Friedman explains the core concepts in his most recent book – Hot, Flat & Crowded.
BTW – the technology used in this presentation is pretty cool. You do need Silverlight to view and listen.
I mentioned a few days ago that Cindy has been in Russia as part of a teacher to teacher exchange program. We had hoped to be able to communicate via Skype and when we finally connected today she had several of the teachers she working with her. I recorded the session to share some of the comments.
The discussion is probably little different than the banter you might hear in any teacher’s lounge, but there are still some subtle differences. The commitment to learning English is something we have encountered in several countries we have visited. I did get a chance to ask the students running the camera about filtering at their school.
Give the movie a few seconds to begin downloading before you press play.
For those interested in the software involved in this interaction, we were connecting using recent versions of Skype. The recording was done with Call Recorder For Skype ($15). I am using a wireless connection and speaking into the screen of my MacBook.
Cindy is now obviously in a location where she has higher bandwidth and she has added pictures to her blog. Her recent entries describe the content and methods of classes she has observed.
I just returned from a long drive to see my mom. I like driving by myself because I can listen to whatever I want. Over 800 miles worth of time to think. I like podcasts and audiobooks. This trip I spent most of my time listening to a recent book by Robyn Meredith – The elephant and the dragon. The book describes and compares the recent paths of India and China to become engines of economic change and the ripple of this development as it impacts us all. As Meredith describes it, these changes have brought us low Walmart prices and the outsourcing of many of the jobs that may have once produced more expensive versions of these same goods.
I have written on this topic many times. Mostly, I have focused on the writing of Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat). In my opinion, content of this type should be required reading for teachers, soon to be teachers, and anyone interested in U.S. education. There are many messages in this material, but here are a few:
Many resources (material goods and certain services) can now efficiently be produced by individuals in other countries at far less cost than is true of the U.S. and other countries who come to depend on the jobs this work requires.
This movement of job is inevitable because movement is easy to accomplish (e.g., Internet) and all buyers benefit from the lower cost of goods and services. Try explaining to folks that they should not shop at Walmart (and similar stores).
High income jobs will increasingly be based on higher level skills. Such skills require improved educational experiences.
Our educational advantage is also slipping. Other countries are investing heavily to develop educational institutions that can create people with these higher level thinking skills.
While the topic is still fresh in my mind, I will again urge educators to read one of these books (I can now offer two recommendations).
A recent Friedman speech at MIT may encourage you to put one of these books on your reading (or listening) list.
I would be remiss if I did not mention Vicki Davis and others’ Flat Classroom Project. This project encourages students from many countries (7 in 2007) to collaborate. Friedman mentions this project in the latest addendum to his book.
Check out this link – TwoMillionMinutes. The site offers information about an upcoming documentary contrasting the K-12 educational experience in China, India, and the USA. Judging from the trailer, the intent is to illustrate through the lives of 6 young people just how far behind US education is in preparing students for the reality of global competition.
The opinion of experts expressed in the trailer are very similar to our own personal observations following our visit to China.
Watch the education blogs for the next day or so and you will likely see comments precipitated by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Evidently, he and Michael Dell (Dell Computers) were discussing the role of technology in schools during a Texas conference on educational reform. Jobs reportedly suggested that technology would have little educational impact until unions stop protecting poor teachers.
What is interesting at present is that the blogs picking up on this story have been focused on whether a business leader should make such statements considering that the company he represents does well in the education market. I guess those concerned about Apple’s bottom line might take this perspective.
There seem to be many business leaders focused on education lately. We all have opinions on matters we understand only through peripheral vision. Often such views lack clarity, but sometimes a different angle brings new insight.
By the way, the conclusions in “Tough Choices or Tough Times” are far more critical of less competent teachers than anything Jobs said. Perhaps this report, which is far more likely to influence government eduation policy, was not read in detail by the same folks now critical of Jobs. So, if you consider criticism of weak teachers grounds for boycotting Apple, check out the list associated with Tough Choices or Tough Times – perhaps you should sell your stock in Viacom, Lucent, and Motorola. Wait – you should also give up your membership in the Toledo Federation of Teachers and the Communication Workers of America. I see a lot of Republicans on this list – wait there are a couple of democrats…
My personal experience with unions has been minimal – I did have a disagreement with a union rep when as a first-year faculty members in financially depressed New York state. I suggested that the last in, first out retrenchment policy did not encourage my union membership and the alternate “bargaining fee” seemed unnecessary because assurance that union policies were followed was not a service I needed. It was not that I felt the policy was unfair. It just seemed unfair I should have to pay to have it implemented. Perhaps I was young and foolish at the time.
There had to be a better way to make this same point. Perhaps – We need to find a way to offer incentives for effective teachers so that a greater number of capable individuals are attracted to teaching as a vocation.
A week or so ago I outlined findings and recommendations from a report entitled tough choices or tough times. This report identified changing economic trends and recommended needed educational adjustments to prevent economic decline in the US.
Some states appear to be making a commitment to a similar combination of improved basic skills, a more focused set of goals, and 21st century skills. West Virginia (Technology and Learning article) has committed to such changes. However, what struck me in reading the description of the West Virginia approach was the way the approach was described. In contrast to Tough Choices or Tough Times there was much less of that “if you can’t do it we will find someone else” mentality. Of course, I am guessing the reimbursement model recommended in Tough Choices or Tough times will also not be in place. On the surface the goals seem very similar, the difference I suppose is assumptions about what are the sources of existing difficulties and what sort of changes must be made (tough choices) to create change.
BTW, the West Virginia specifically incorporates technology in the plan. I did not see that topic specifically addressed in the Skills of the American WorkForce recommendations.
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