Blurts

Warlich’s recent post is focused on the topic of open curriculum. The post contains a complaint (not from Warlich) contending that:

The textbook industry is almost the enemy of education today…

I am thinking the situation is a little more complicated than this. If the issue is cost and educators feel that these companies are asking too much. Say so. Typically, the process of competition has something to do with this, but my impression is that there are fewer and fewer competitors. By the way, typically the decline in the number of competitors is not a sign that there is a lot of easy money to be made.

Perhaps the complaint is that the books do not contain the right content or take the proper approach. I do think book companies WANT to make money. For them, this seems to translate as find out what content and processes are required in a few large states with global adoptions and generate your book around these priorities. If the objection is to the content, I guess I don’t blame the companies unless one wants to suggest that their motive is not to sell books.I would blame the priorities in the states that influence the book companies. Need to name some names?

Will consortia of teachers author their own content? I don’t know. I am guessing that most will not do it for free and most won’t bother to ask the present folks who tell the book companies what they want in a book. What I would predict would be that some educators will submit some things – perhaps some unique things they are proud of. The question then becomes will these be the things that are necessary to meet the same expectations we know have for the book companies.

I say these things having had the experience of searching for specific things I feel would be useful for my college classes. Typically, I try Merlot. My experience to this point is that the repository approach is no where close to meeting my needs as an instructor. I typically have more luck just using Google to see what I can find. The problem is that I am looking for things I don’t already have and those who offer things for free have little incentive to fill voids that need to be filled.

The instructional design folks probably have a plan, a process, or a model for what needs to be done. Does the open source community have the self discipline to develop content and a curriculum using such rigorous approaches or is the assumption that things will just come together. The Warlich article makes reference to a Legos model. I am saying make certain you buy the set with all the pieces necessary to build your rocket ship.

Not saying that a rigorous approach would not be possible. I think the most likely approach would involve a state effort that fronts the money for planning initiatives and then makes certain that all necessary tasks are addressed. Perhaps such states might attempt to defray costs by agreeing to sell materials to other states not willing to take the plunge. But, that sounds like a publishing company and that is where this all started.

While I am an academic, I am not fond of graduations. I do like the speeches. It is the time required to watch hundreds walk across the stage that gets old. Garrison Keilor spoke at my oldest daughter’s graduation. One of the “lost boys” spoke at the undergraduate of my youngest daughter.

Larry Page gave the commencement speech at Michigan. It is only about 16 min. long and tells a personal story. The comments about his father are touching. His comments about his personal achievements are insightful. The personal histories of those who have shaped the world of personal technologies has intrigued me for years. I feel like I have experienced their histories as part of my own.

I am reading the new COSN study concerning web2.0 in education. My first reaction has been why would the organization go to the trouble of collecting these data and then decide to concentrate on administrators rather than classroom teachers. If you wanted the best data on what happens in classrooms and what students know or don’t know why not ask the professionals closest to the students? Administrators might influence the direction schools take, but would seem to be far less knowledgeable concerning the students.

Data show NCLB is not closing racial gap in achievement. I have just finished the G. Glass book “Fertilizer, Pills and Magnetic Strips”. This is exactly the outcome Glass predicts. Now – more of the same or something different?

This OpEd piece from the NY Times has appeared on several sites I view. I think it is a little off-target. The notion that grad/professional programs are mostly preparing clones of the professoriate is likely untrue.

In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.

Such arguments take an extreme view I am guessing is not true for the majority of graduate students. Positions in higher education are difficult to come by and very competitive. This is a reality. Think of the system as similar to professional sports without the high salaries. The notion that many graduates do not get an academic postition is legit – the notions that there are few options or that most graduate students assume they are headed in this direction are ridiculous. In bad economic times, most occupations become more restricted.

This assumption that we are training future academics is certainly not true for the department in which I work. It also is not true for two of my children. Many professionals require advanced training – clinical psychologists (my department), health professions (physical and occupational therapy – my daughters), educational administration and many teachers, etc. These programs may or may not involve research experience. Our clinical program follows what is called a “research/practitioner” model (an American Psychological Association training option). These students have research experience appropriate to their area, but most do not expect to become researchers. The idea is that practitioners should be prepared in a way that engages them with the data-based arguments supporting practice and should be open to future advances based on this same perspective. In other words, APA believes in the development of “domain specific critical thinking” skills and one of the more effective way to do this is through modeling and small group practice (doing it). The approach in the case of my department can be differentiated from programs (psy-doc) programs most of which prepare sizeable groups of practitioners in mass or from programs that place a priority of training future academics. Just what kind of background does the public want health care providers to have?

As far as low pay and a research focus goes. The American public gets a cheap deal on research activity through higher ed institutions. Research that is considered basic research (not tied to product development) would be very sparse without the type of thing that goes on in most research oriented institutions.

BTW – my daughter the physical therapist is a practitioner who also does research. She works on the physical needs of young children who must be involved in long term chemotherapy. This is her practice, but she works with researchers from the university who are interested in her techniques. The work would not go on without this collaboration and I am guessing if your kids were participants you would not be that concerned with whether the university folks involved were making enough money or whether any graduate students involved were able to acquire a position in a year or so. This is how research happens.

So, I think the issue is really how much of this type of experience can our society afford. Is it too costly? I don’t know – make the decision for your own kids.

Cornell researchers are using the geotags and tags from Google to analyze our attention (at least as captured in our photographs). I bet if you have visited Chicago you have a picture of the bean and NYC a picture of the Apple store. London is one of the most photographed cities with the London eye a typical photogragh. I think I have most of the images they mentioned. Does this mean I lack creativity or that we all take a look at the sites developed for us to view? I would think the interesting data would be in nonpromoted attention.