Does technology help education? Economist debate

October 19, 2007

 

The Economist’s on-line site launched a debate feature. First topic up in this Oxford-style debate: “Effectiveness of Technology – Does new technology add to the quality of education?”Discussions are open — you can play, too! — October 15th-23rd, 2007.In his opening statement defending the resolution, Sir John Daniel, president and CEO of The Commonwealth of Learning, provokes thought and discussion from the start:

Technology is replacing scarcity by abundance in other aspects of life: why not in education?It is not for lack of prophets. Ever since the invention of the blackboard each new communications medium has been hailed as an educational revolution. Rosy forecasts about the impact of radio, film, television, programmed learning, computers and the Internet succeeded each other through the 20th century although, revealingly, each prophet compared the revolutionary potential of the newest medium to the printing press, not to the previous technological white hope!Why hasn’t it worked? Why has the continuing introduction of new technologies and new media added little to the quality of most education? What can we learn from those few applications of communications media that are acknowledged successes?Technology is the application of scientific and other organized knowledge to practical tasks by organizations consisting of people and machines. In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith described how applying knowledge to the practical task of making pins led to a factory that produced them with consistent quality in higher volume and at lower cost than artisans making each pin by hand. The technological bases of Adam Smith’s pin factory were the principles of specialisation, division of labour and economies of scale.Most applications of technology in education disappoint because they ignore these principles and so fail to use technology’s intrinsic strengths to tackle real problems.

SRI International’s Robert Kozma bases his case to reject the resolution on research that shows the effectiveness of computers in learning, especially a study by James Kulik at the University of Michigan:

As a group, these studies looked at several types of educational technology applications (such as tutorials, simulations, and word processors), in a variety of subjects (such as mathematics, natural science, social science, reading and writing), and a range of grade levels (from vary young to high school). His findings across studies can be summarized as follows:

• Students who used computer tutorials in mathematics, natural science, or social science scored significantly higher in these subjects compared to traditional approaches, equivalent to an increase from 50th to 72nd percentile in test scores. Students who used simulation software in science also scored higher, equivalent to a jump from 50th to 66th percentile.

• Very young students who used computers to write their own stories scored significantly higher on measures of reading skill, equivalent to a boost from 50th to 80th percentile for kindergarteners and from 50th to 66th percentile for first graders. However, the use of tutorials in reading did not make a difference.

• Students who used word processors or otherwise used the computer for writing scored higher on measures of writing skill, equivalent to a rise from 50th to 62nd percentile.

What do you think, Dear Reader? Technology working or not? Meander over to the Economist site and weigh in with your opinions.

Leave a Comment » | Education quality, Education success, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Robert Scott named to head Texas Education Agency

October 18, 2007

Texas Gov. Rick Perry named Acting Education Commissioner Robert Scott to head the Texas Education Agency yesterday. The Houston Chronicle carried the Associated Press story.

Some Texas educators are disappointed that no one like Mike Moses got the job. Moses is a long-time public school educator who was a very popular and knowledgeable. But disappointment was tempered by relief for what might have happened. Gov. Perry earlier in 2007 named a creationist and hard-back conservative to chair the State Board of Education. Scott is not thought to be that deep into right-wing political ideology.

Scott is a policy wonk, coming out of legislative staff to staff TEA. This is the second time he was acting commissioner. Oddly, he is so little known that it is unclear whether he is the Robert Scott who appears to have acted contrary to ethics and law in an earlier TEA contract problem, or whether it was another TEA employee also named Robert Scott. People who would usually know the difference in such situations, appear not to know in this one.

Were there a stock market in state educational attainment, Texas’s stock would have dropped 8% yesterday, with analysts saying it was better than the expected 12% decrease.

Can teachers alone save Texas’s education system? It’s a risky experiment.

(Text of TEA press release below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Education, State school boards, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sometimes Nobel winners do stupid things . . .

October 18, 2007

. . . and then other people who are expert in the field kick their butts.

No, I’m not talking about Al Gore. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, recently insulted the entire continent of Africa, and a good bunch of North and South America, and western Europe. No, Dr. Watson, race is not a predictor of intelligence.

Greg Laden provides the boot action at his blog, Evolution. Bookmark it. As certain as your heritage is passed to your children by a double-helix structure in the structure of your cells, some fool will repeat Watson’s argument. Veterans of quote-mine wars warn that creationists right now are filing the statement away for use in some future debate, where they will claim falsely that “the science of genetics is evil because it promotes racism.”

So keep that Laden piece handy.

And if all of this is news to you as a social studies teacher? Read the piece thoroughly. Check out Laden’s links, ask questions if you’re unclear on anything he says. Laden takes questions. P. Z. Myers takes questions (and a tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula for point out Laden’s post). Comments are open here.

See, this is how science and free discussion work: People get awards for the good ideas they have, and they pay the price for stupid ideas. Discussion, among the experts, is based on real data, real research. Ideas win when they have the data to back them up, not on the word of some authority, regardless whether the authority is well schooled, of the right or far-right political party, or supernatural.

It’s a model for our students.

__________________________

Update:  Even more from Mr. Laden, as he notes in comments.  You have plenty of bookmarks available, right?

6 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Ethics, Evolution, Learning, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hoax quote collections: Quote mining Hillary Clinton

October 17, 2007

We’re past the political equinox in the political hemisphere (not to be confused with any real equinox anywhere), and we’re coming down to silly season in the presidential race. Soon the hoax quotes will start appearing in full breeding plumage, to be beaten to death by unsuspecting candidates who wish to instill fear in voters, and by partisans who would rather give a tweak to someone they don’t like, rather than get their facts straight.

Remember when the oral faux pas of former Vice President Dan Quayle went around the internet — attributed instead to Al Gore? Yeah, that’s the sort of bird we’ll see. (To be fair, we should note that some of the Quayle quotes are invented, and they were also attributed to George W. Bush, and then to John Kerry; watch for them sometime in 2008.)

How do I know the misquote mocking birds will sing? I’ve already seen one bird, with sightings claimed by dozens of non-thinkers in the blogside. Hillary Clinton’s victory at the 2008 Democratic Convention is so much assumed that people are already staking claims on quote mines, pulling out nuggets of disinformation. In one “quiz,” quotes are listed, and the reader — that would be you or me, Dear Reader — is asked to select who might have said the disgusting thought, Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Nikita Kruschev, the Devil Himself (just kidding), or “None of the above.” Each quote’ s “correct” answer is then revealed to be “none of the above,” because Hillary Clinton said it.

SEn. Clinton at Iowa rally, January 2007 - Reuters photo

For those who may doubt, a date is attached to each “quote.”

  • Photo: Sen. Hillary Clinton at a campaign rally in Iowa, January 2007 – Reuters photo.

You can see this one coming from miles away: Clinton’s quotes are true quote mine nuggets, ripped out of context, disguised with odd dates and no other details, and edited so a discerning reader cannot track them down to expose the fraud by the makers of the quiz (who was identified as Neal Boortz in one piece I saw but I haven’t been able to find his version).

We’ll take a more rational, hoax-debunking view below the fold. You can bet that Hillary Clinton didn’t take the Idi Amin-Stalin-Mao-Hitler view. You can take that to the bank.

Read the rest of this entry »

32 Comments | Bad Quotes, Bogus history, Ethics, Hoaxes, Politics, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Why read the Constitution?

October 17, 2007

Every Member of Congress needs someone to read the Federal Register daily, the Congressional Record each day, and the Constitution regularly.

The Federal Register records agency actions, many of them quite obscure, but all of the agency actions that affect a member’s state or district. Sometimes an agency will try to sneak something past a member, and sometimes they’ll simply fail to notify the member of something that really deserves a lot of attention. The Congressional Record does the same thing for Congress. It’s a difficult read, but someone who knows it well can tell when conditions are ripe to get action on some measure.

Al Kamen at The Washington Post gives an object lesson on why knowledge of the Constitution is important. In this case, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Constitution experts invoked the clause that prevents a president from making recess appointments.

This may be inside baseball to most people. Kamen’s story demonstrates why a party will elect someone like Reid as their leader. He may not be as suave and funny as Jack Kennedy on camera, but he knows where the buttons are that open and close the automatic doors of power.

The detente the two sides reached over the Senate’s August break — which saw the Senate approve dozens of nominees in exchange for a no-recess-appointment pledge — is over.

That deal was reached in part because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) dusted off an old weapon — the pro forma session — which would mean theoretically that the Senate would never be in recess. When both sides negotiate anew, that weapon looms large.

Turns out the pro forma session originally had nothing to do with recess appointments. It comes from Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, which says neither the House nor Senate may be out for more than three days while the other body is in session, without the consent of that other body.

But neither chamber wanted to seek “permission” from the other one for anything. Bad form and all that.

Did you know what was in Article I, Section 5?

Perhaps more important, this was covered by the much-maligned-in-blogdom “Main Stream Media” (MSM). Can you find a blogger who broke this story before Kamen? I’ll wager you can’t.

Leave a Comment » | Government, Law, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

1956 airline disaster at Grand Canyon

October 17, 2007

Another piece of history of the 20th century often overlooked: June 30, 1956, two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon.

The newsletter of the Grand Canyon Association featured a good, concise story with photos this summer. It’s in .pdf format.

6 Comments | Disasters, Technology, Transportation | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A history of environmental disasters (Day After Blog Action Day)

October 16, 2007

Blog Action Day, 2007: We’re writing about environmental issues.

Blog Action Day 2007

Each January 1 I reflect on one of many forgotten environmental disasters, because it’s a focus of television coverage. Oh, the disaster itself isn’t covered — most often it’s not even mentioned — but it’s there if you know anything at all about it.

The Tournament of Roses Parade.

With the Bowl Championship Series game in town, and thousands of tourists out to see the parade, the games, and other festivities, no one really wants to talk about the why of the Rose Bowl, and the Rose Parade.

But once upon a time, under the sunny skies of southern California, Pasadena hosted a flower industry. Cut flowers were the produce. The Los Angeles Basin around Pasadena produced $1 billion in cut flowers annually by the late 1940s. Partly to promote that industry, local civic movers pushed a festival named to celebrate the flowers, to promote them, to feed local industry. The shtick was this: Parade floats had to be decorated exclusively with flowers and flower petals. What better way to showcase the local agricultural miracle?

Nearly 60 years later, I’ll wager less than 0.1% of the flowers used in the parade come from the Los Angeles Basin.

Air pollution forced the flower growers to move. Air pollution mottled the petals of the roses, browned the daisies, and otherwise spoiled blossoms. The greenhouses, the fields, the entire industry left the area. And today, all that is left is the parade and football game. Parade floats are decorated with flowers imported from Venezuela, Israel, Europe, Hawaii, Mexico, South America and Asia.

And so it goes. Significant upheavals in human activities, prompted by environmental goofs by humans, get shuffled out of the history books, out of our collective consciousness — and as Santayana warned, we repeat them, over and over. Los Angeles is not the only city ever to have suffered from air pollution — there were killer fogs in London and Pennsylvania within a decade after World War II. Surely people learned, no?

Consider Mexico City today. Consider Beijing today.

So I just want to list some environmental disasters that we would be better off, if we remembered them and considered how to avoid them in the future, rather than forget them and be doomed to repeat them.

(I reserve the right to post links and edit this list to add to it, as I find additional information, and as readers may add information in comments.)

Environmental disasters you should know

It’s not an exhaustive list by any means — I wager some of these are new to most readers. I wager some of you can provide better information, and other disasters that I, perhaps, have forgotten. Please, inform us.

10 Comments | Conservation, Disasters, Environmental protection, History, Public health, Santayana's ghost, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The curve of binding history

October 16, 2007

From this lead paragraph in a BusinessWeek story could come a heck of a semester of high school economics:

Leonid Hurwicz was born in Moscow in 1917, the year that Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Ninety years later—on Oct. 15, 2007—Hurwicz was awarded a Nobel prize in economics, in part for explaining the fundamental flaw in the central planning that Lenin imposed in the Soviet Union.

1 Comment | Communism, Economics, Free market economics, History, Lesson plans | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Economics Nobels: Three Americans

October 15, 2007

Simple press release:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007 jointly to

Leonid Hurwicz
University of Minnesota, MN, USA,

Eric S. Maskin
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA

and

Roger B. Myerson
University of Chicago, IL, USA

“for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory”.

Say again? “Mechanism design theory?” Sounds like a class for patent lawyers who want to work for watch makers and wind-up toy manufacturers.

Nobel publicists were grand.  They provided an explanation for what the theory does, without describing in any detail what the theory is:

The design of economic institutions

Adam Smith’s classical metaphor of the invisible hand refers to how the market, under ideal conditions, ensures an efficient allocation of scarce resources. But in practice conditions are usually not ideal; for example, competition is not completely free, consumers are not perfectly informed and privately desirable production and consumption may generate social costs and benefits. Furthermore, many transactions do not take place in open markets but within firms, in bargaining between individuals or interest groups and under a host of other institutional arrangements. How well do different such institutions, or allocation mechanisms, perform? What is the optimal mechanism to reach a certain goal, such as social welfare or private profit? Is government regulation called for, and if so, how is it best designed?

These questions are difficult, particularly since information about individual preferences and available production technologies is usually dispersed among many actors who may use their private information to further their own interests. Mechanism design theory, initiated by Leonid Hurwicz and further developed by Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, has greatly enhanced our understanding of the properties of optimal allocation mechanisms in such situations, accounting for individuals’ incentives and private information. The theory allows us to distinguish situations in which markets work well from those in which they do not. It has helped economists identify efficient trading mechanisms, regulation schemes and voting procedures. Today, mechanism design theory plays a central role in many areas of economics and parts of political science.

If you want understanding, you can start at the Nobel site with “Information for the Public,” and if you want to impress the finance department at your business, or scare the heck out of your principal, check out “Scientific Background.”

The important analysis:  Are they products of, and testament to the quality of, U.S. public schools?  Alas, the Economics Prize Committee didn’t provide biographical data.

Leo Hurwicz, now at the University of Minnesota, was born in Moscow, and took an LL.M. from Warsaw University in 1938.  It’s unlikely he ever saw a U.S. public school.

Eric Maskin’s earliest education I can find was his 1972 degree from Harvard, in Mathematics.  He’s now at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.  He was born in New York.  I’m still looking for elementary and high school data.

And the same goes for Roger B. Myerson, now at Chicago.  He was born in Boston.  Public schools?  Don’t know yet.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Education success, History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Waltz across Texas

October 14, 2007

Barry Weber at The First Morning talks about things he loves about Texas, to accompaniment of Gary P. Nunn’s “What I Like About Texas.”

Weber says Nunn’s song can make Texans cry, in a good way. If there were a blog carnival of Texas and Texana, this post ought to lead off a round.*

* The Fiesta de Tejas blog carnival is on hiatus. Something about deadline stress and bang for the post-buck.

Also: Waltz across Texas, and Ernest Tubb

2 Comments | Testing, Texas Music, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Errors page one, corrections page 2: Gore film okay for classroom

October 14, 2007

Al Gore, from Ventura County Star (stock photo?)

Tim Lambert at Deltoid tracked down the facts in the really odd story about a court in Britain ruling that the film Inconvenient Truth contains errors — a case I noted in a post about Al Gore’s winning a Nobel Prize for his work on climate change. Deltoid said:

A UK High Court judge has rejected a lawsuit by political activist Stuart Dimmock to ban the showing of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in British schools. Justice Burton agreed that

“Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate.”

There were nine points where Burton decided that AIT differed from the IPCC and that this should be addressed in the Guidance Notes for teachers to be sent out with the movie.

Unfortunately a gaggle of useless journalists have misreported this decision as one that AIT contained nine scientific errors.

Got that? The British Court said Gore is right.

I’ll bet I’ve seen that case cited a half dozen times today, with claims that Gore’s film is generally wrong.

Tim’s detail on the case, and the nine allegations of “error” (scare quotes from the judge in the original opinion) should be read by anyone following the climate change debates. I doubt that any Gore critics will read, nor, just to be nasty, that many of them can.

This is another political hoax in the making. Bad reporting, caused largely because the news of the case hit as the announcement of Gore’s Nobel Prize win crossed the news wires, makes Gore a target for the denialist and right-wing spin machines. Though their charges are inaccurate, they will make the charges, and repeat them endlessly. Buckle up — it’s going to be a bumpy night.

3 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, Jurisprudence, Law, Natural history, Natural resources, Science, Technology in the classroom, Video and film, War on Science | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

White House refuses anti-war petition from Christians

October 13, 2007

Two Christian leaders were arrested after they held up copies of anti-war petitions they were trying to deliver to the White House.

Earlier in the day they had delivered the petitions to leaders in Congress, in both the House of Representatives and Senate.

In unrelated news, surgery to remove George Bush’s fingers from his ears was unsuccessful.

(Would it hurt Bush to just gracefully accept the petitions and deprive these people of a chance to be arrested?)

[Video of the arrest is posted with the press release.  Thanks to those who wrote to let me know whether my attempt to embed the video here worked (it didn’t).]

2 Comments | Afghanistan, Dissent, History, Iraq, Politics, Religion, War | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bumper sticker science

October 13, 2007

Wes Elsberry at Austringer does a bit of design on the side. Here’s his latest:

ID flunked

Tip of the old scrub brush to P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula. 

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Intelligent Design, Politics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Malaria control: Requires health care system improvements

October 13, 2007

WHO’s former malaria expert, John Litsios, notes that controlling malaria requires integrated programs, especially including overhaul of local health care delivery systems.

Socrates Litsios, from his website

Copyrighted article from Resources for the future. “Chapter 17: Malaria Control and the Future of International Public Health,” in The Contextual Determinants of Malaria (Washington DC: Resources for the Future), Elizabeth Casman and Hadi Dowlatabadi, editors

Leave a Comment » | DDT, Malaria, Public education, Public health | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

They do as you do, not as you say

October 13, 2007

If you were wondering whether it’s still true that kids watch what you do rather than listen to what you say — yes, it’s still true. It’s more important to walk the walk than talk the talk — Gallup Management Journal features an article emphasizing the phenomenon, “The Sixth Element of Great Managing”:

One of the most powerful discoveries about how humans understand the world around them came about by accident. In the early 1990s, a group of researchers led by Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma in Italy, placed small electrodes in the brains of monkeys near the regions of the brain responsible for planning and carrying out movements. If the monkey picked up something, an electronic monitor that was connected to the wires in the animal’s brain would sound — “brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip” — to register the firing of those neurons.

Then something happened — something so unusual that the researchers thought it had to be a mistake. If the monkey saw one of the scientists doing something — eating an ice cream cone, picking up a peanut or raisin, grabbing a banana — the monitor registered the firing of brain cells as if the monkey had done it, when all the animal did was watch.

“It took us several years to believe what we were seeing,” Rizzolatti told The New York Times. The structure behind the phenomenon was discovered to be what they called “mirror neurons,” cells scattered throughout key regions of the brain that mimic everything the monkey sees another do.

Subsequent research found a far more complicated set of mirror neurons in people. This “human see; human do” circuitry is believed to be why a yawn can be contagious, why even a newborn will stick out her tongue if she sees someone else do it, and why American boys sometimes mimic the idiosyncrasies of their favorite baseball players at bat. “It explains much about how we learn to smile, talk, walk, dance, or play tennis,” said a 2006 cover article in Scientific American Mind magazine.

If you want your students to be good at map reading, they need to see you reading maps. If you want your students to read, they need to see you read. The “mirror neurons” phenomenon should affect the strategies we use in the classroom.

File this under the “nothing new under the sun” category, or “oh, yeah, now I remember!”

1 Comment | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Ethics, Learning, Learning styles, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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