Blurts

Eventually, Levin and Feinberg cobble together a college-prep program that boasts longer hours, days, weeks and years — kids stay in school until 5 p.m. most days, attend class every other Saturday and spend weeks in summer school; it demands 24/7 dedication from parents, students and teachers but gets good, replicable results.

Knowledge is Power was mentioned in the Gates yearly letter. Gates did convince me to buy the book. There is a description of KIPP in USA Today (source for quote). Perhaps one of keys may be something we have probably always known but found difficult to implement. Learning simply takes time. Despite all of the discussion regarding tools and tactics, variability in time spent may be the most potent variable. The American Educational Research Association reached a similar conclusion and published a summary of the research in 2007 (from my grad class reading list). I think I read Carroll’s original work (cited in the AERA summary) in the early 1970s. Likelihood of learning is a function of time spent to time required. Sounds simple doesn’t it?

(added later)

Here is the TED talk delivered by Gates (in video and text).

I do a lot of work in Google docs and I like some of your new features. It would be very helpful to me if you would offer a second option to “Insert footnotes”. Many academics do not include footnotes, annotations, references, etc. at the end of each page. If you could allow footnote material to be collected and added at the end of the document it would be helpful. I could then move citations around to alphabetize them and I would be ready to go.

I have been an Apple fan since there was an Apple.

I am beginning to have an issue with their approach which seems limited to great hardware and great software. They are basically “late to the cloud”. Here are a couple of examples:

a) Ownership of music in a physical sense (having the bits on my computer) is no longer necessary or even perhaps the best form of ownership. What I really want is to listen to what I want when I want. Lala offers a great example of an alternative model – rather than purchase music from iTunes to put on my computer for .99, I can access the same song as long as I have Internet access for .10. In addition, I can listen from any computer not just the computer I used to download the song from iTunes.

b) The netbook – an inexpensive computer that is perfect for accessing online services – is another example. If I can save a large amount of money spent on hardware and software by accessing online services why not take this approach? Apple desperately needs a great $500 netbook. I own multiple computers. I can see a model that combines a netbook and a desktop as superior to a model that combines a laptop and a desktop. Money aside – we need to do less on any given machine, but we need access to what we do from as many locations as possible and with as many devices as possible. Why duplicate software across these devices? Why have resources we want confined to different machines? 

I have a new late night hobby. I build inexpensive collections of music around themes. I like the iTunes Essentials collections – music around a theme (e.g., Live Guitar Heroics), but I don’t want to spend the money ($25 in this example) for the collection. More and more I do not buy to own, I buy to access (this should be an advertising slogan). Probably 95% of the music I listen to I am at a computer with an Internet connection. This is perfect for LaLa. 89 cents to own, 10 cents for online listening.

So my hobby – use iTunes to explore interesting collections and LaLa to purchase access. I create a “playlist” for each collection and add songs for 10 cents. I imagine there are some other strategies I might use. I have books on great jazz artists that list their most famous works. 

LaLa has some other interesting capabilities. It identifies music you own and gives you credit for this music – you can listen online. There are some useful applications of this opportunity that may not be readily apparent. I have two large iTunes collections (several thousand songs each) – one collection on my office machine and one on my home machine. One of the problems with this approach is that I cannot listen to music I own if I am in the wrong location. LaLa takes care of this problem. 

This is a pretty cool service.

For many, stimulus package proposals have been tainted by the addition of set asides. I have wondered about this and wondered what those representing my state have attempted to add. I assumed that some watch dog group would publish lists so the public would be informed on such issues.

Converge has released a list of proposed set asides for education. When you see items on a list that you may support, you begin understand the complexity of the issue. What is a convenient way to support important programs according to one group is simply pork to another. 

All in all, I guess I wish it were possible to be more straight forward with what a proposal is about and what it supports. Are the many negative campaign ads related to this complexity – so and so voted against medical care for your dear old grandmother 37 times. 

I enjoy Steven Levy as a writer. Hackers was a favorite in the early days and Insanely Great because I am an Apple Fan.

Here is an amusing post on the “pressure” of Twitter and blogging.