You might know Kunnen for his well circulated GRCC blog, his visible involvement is edge uses of Blackboard, and his early and loud adoption of Coursefeed on Facebook (full disclosure, they are theoretically a competitor of ours).  Carnegie Mellon recently pulled off effectively riding an authentic instance of “viral content” – that rare combination of keeping the content ( “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch) authentic, genuine, and “free” while integrating the phenomenon into their overall communications strategy.  CMU’s presentation at the AMA Symposium on Higher Education was, IMHO, the best example of rubber meets the road at the conference.

Equally as important to their passion is that their institutions and the leadership at them actively encourage them to experiment with utilizing new technology.  Brown described Carnegie Mellon as an “Entrepreneurial Atmosphere” that bled into institutional practices.  He had mentioned in his AMA presentation that the best angle in edge marketing is to just put stuff out there – if there’s no kickback, move on and get even more courageous. All campuses that get great attention for their use of technology, like our founding partner ACU, seem to have this sort of culture – a culture that’s shorter on conversation and longer on execution, and by nature experimental in its analysis of all things new.  As Kunnen put it: “We don’t want to sit around and talk about it meeting after meeting.  We just do it.”

This reputation for technological gusto rubs off as a “Je ne sais qua” factor.  However, the method is always the same: the institutions hire good people, give them or embrace an existing sense of mission, and let them do their job.

As someone who thinks about overcoming barriers to innovation in education, I commend Kunnen and Brown and their institutions for living on the edge.

Alumni Associations on Facebook from Inigral Inc. on Vimeo.

I post this because there are still some people in Higher Ed or K-12 that think Facebook is a fad, or that Facebook is for kids, or that students will jump ship as soon as adults get on.  Facebook’s fastest growing segment in the US is those over 35.  Some days they get .5 million new users a day.  Facebook will be bigger than Myspace in about a month or two, and it is infinitely more scalable and usable.  The site has engagement and retention rates that beats the absolute pants off of any other site on the web.  Facebook is not going anywhere.  Hands down.

Namaste.

First off, let me tell you that the metaphor of the Creepy Treehouse is powerful.   There are many different ways you can build a Creepy Treehouse.  Instructors crossing lines by getting into personal or social settings where they are not particularly invited is totally creepy treehouse.

However, this in no way suggests that instructors should not be using innovative, even social technologies to engage students.  Adults and Teachers and Parents are allowed to and should get on the Social Web, but they must do it carefully and obey the general laws of coexisting with teenagers.  There are, in natural settings, places where the two have been known to coexist.  This has been happening since at least, as far as I can calculate, 1992   We can look there for another metaphor: the Functional Mall.

Now, youngsters hang out at the mall.  They consider it a highly social space, and their scene is operated more or less on their terms.  Grown ups, while not prone to hang out at the mall, go to the mall.  There are stores targeted for teenagers that no adult should go to (e.g. Urban Outfitters), stores targeted to adults that no kids would be caught dead in (e.g. the Back Store), and places where both species coexist in their native habitat (say, a movie theater or the Cookie Company).   Adults and young adults know how to behave around each other, seemingly, in this same ecosystem.  There’s a rule, and let me make it transparent: transactional interactions are accepted, social interactions are not.  If a teacher sees their student at the mall, wave hi (or better yet nod slightly).  A security officer opens doors, stops fights, tells directions.  A store owner or employee helps them find things, accepts money, packages items, and send them on their merry way.  Yes, there is a clear line, and that line is socializing rather than transacting.

Would youngsters want adults to leave the mall, never to return? Well, not really.  They understand that the mall can be there for their dates and shopping sprees largely because adults also shop there.  And the mall doesn’t want to limit its customer base to teenagers.  I mean, there’s a business in teenagers: you could have rollerskating rink, or a go-kart shop, maybe put them in the same spot with mini-golf.  But the real business is open access and open wallets.

Facebook, most decidedly, does not want to be just for teenagers.  Most of the country doesn’t realize this but, out in the Silicon Valley, Facebook is hot business.  Microsoft invested in Facebook at a 15 billion dollar valuation; that’s more valuable than Ford Motors.  Their revenues are probably around 200 million a year and climbing dramatically; they have around 550 employees up from some 50 three years ago.  Their engineering and operations team is the magnet for the best talent anywhere.  Zuckerberg just recruited Google’s COO and Head Chef to boot!  This isn’t happening because people think Facebook is going to be a site for college students and teenagers.  Facebook, hands down, is going to get everyone on it and won’t stop until they do.  In the past year in a half its grown from around 35 to 90 million users.  60% of the population of Norway is on the site.

College students aren’t going to just up pick and move to another site.  Facebook is the only web application that’s figured out how to scale and still keep some sort of cohesion as a product and a community.  It’s got privacy settings, and gives users granular control over who can see what.  Grown ups can join without any creepy treehouseness.

What Facebook is lacking is a way for those with careful relationships to have transactional interactions.  But, that’s a good part of the reason that they’ve opened up to applications.  Soon, you’re going to see transactional applications for just about any interaction for any set of careful relationships you can think of.  Yep, you heard me, you’re going to be able to interact with your boss without being friends.

We don’t need to give educators an excuse to not be using these technologies, we need to be getting them to understand how best to use these technologies.  We need to keep in mind the “creepy treehouse” to guide us, but let us not point to everything on Facebook and Myspace, Twitter and Flickr and start accusing.  As long as everyone is using their privacy settings and limits contact with those that might be of a “transcendant” age group or have a “careful” boundary (e.g. teacher/student, parent/child) to transactional interactions.

I suspect – if other investments are not made in creating a more rigorous curriculum, teaching students to study and think independently, and guiding them through becoming fluent in written and mathematical analysis and processes of creativity, collaboration, and research – it will be a dramatic failure at producing students that are prepared for college.

Getting more and more children aware of college does not automatically have the affect or effect of getting them prepared to go to and succeed in college.   That, schools don’t want to recognize, takes innovation and work by everyone at all levels in all subjects.

I also posted this on College Redi

The report, written by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center and sponsored by America’s Promise Alliance and the Gates Foundation, reveals poor graduation rates in the 50 most populous cities US.  The statistics and conclusions were predictably appalling.  Bloggers and those commenting on articles in the press are describing our school system as “failing” and the problem as a “catastrophe.”   Across the country, graduation rates are 15% lower in urban areas compared to suburban schools.  In Baltimore, Maryland and Columbus, Ohio, graduation is lower in urban areas by more than 40%.  Cities in Crisis only brings to light what we all knew, and, as it’s been published by high profile institutions, in stereotypical form it lacks the courage to make any recommendations.  I’ll gladly step in to fill that void in the dialog.

Schools fail at graduating their students for four reasons: 1) A significant minority is alienated by the core, academic subject areas and the concomitant instructional techniques often well before High School, 2) schools fail to offer or support programs that might inspire, train, or at least entertain alienated students, 3) schools fail to identify and provide effective programs for those that need remediation, and 4) surrounding communities are unable to demonstrate real-world examples of education fulfilling its promises through role-models and economic opportunity.

The cycle is simple and can easily be personified: Student A, sometime in early middle school, becomes bored and distracted, falls behind academically, and is often in need of discipline.  He looks around in his family and community and no one seems to be able to help him academically.  Most of them seem to view academics past basic reading, writing, and math as irrelevant.  Most of his heroes are sports stars or entertainers.  He likes his art class and woodshop, but both of those programs are undersupplied and dilapidated.  The principal and all the teachers just keep on emphasizing the importance of the same “irrelevant” stuff.  He gets down on himself in school and starts finding confidence in his blossoming social life outside of school.  No one at this point intervenes.  As he gets out in his neighborhood, most of the adults are not using their education.  The ones who make the most money have a trade or are involved in illegal activities.  The only high school graduates he knows work retail.  At this point, school is all but written off completely.

The school systems reaction to a student with this story is to keep on emphasizing core academics, which he is behind on.  At the high school level, he may be forced to do some remediation, which makes him feel singled out as “dumb.”  More than likely, he probably doesn’t show up after a while.  The school has cut or is starving any program that might get this young person’s attention and allegiance.  The school offers very few technical programs that will help him get a job.  They do not foster relationships with either white collar or blue collar businesses to facilitate internships or apprenticeships which could provide role-models.  The school simply tries to force him down the same path he has decided is not for him.

The value of non-core subject areas and technical programs is not to distract students; it is to keep students engaged and to offer alternative outlets where a student can find confidence in themselves and their work.  If a student remains engaged in a non-core program, they are likely to remain in school.  If a school can then use that time to effectively remediate (tastefully) in the core areas while facilitating real world relationships with community members in both white and blue collar sectors to show demonstrable value of an education, the kid would likely stay on to graduate.

The emphasis on content knowledge IS the problem. Students have always thought content knowledge was irrelevant a la Mark Twain. Why? Because we forget. Because there is no point other than that the teacher makes us. Because, especially nowadays, I can just go look it up when I need it.

We don’t need content emphasis revival. For example, I can’t identify the President of Australia. I just made a request for that information and got it in less than 8 seconds (PM John Howard followed by Kevin Rudd), 7.9 of those seconds were filled with me going to my browser and carelessly misspelling the word Australia. In technology, we worry a lot about how fast our servers respond to requests. There is a more than significant portion of the world’s smartest people trying to get bits of information in front of everyone’s face, upon their request, faster than ever before. Let me make a bold statement that the educational community will not internalize for another 50 years: Content Knowledge is Dead.

Yet, states everywhere are mandating a mind numbing sequence of content standards in what some call the accountability movement. Politicians hear alarms going off, like 80% of 16 year olds believe the War of 1812 was in 1898; their reaction is to demand that teachers teach every bit of content that anyone might think is important for any reason. One problem – teaching all of that is impossible. Another problem – even if you succeeded the students would forget most of it.

So, if content knowledge is irrelevant, why does everyone think education is so important? Because the side effect of schooling is that a minority of students along the way manage to develop an internal schema for information discovery, processing, communication, application and evaluation. A minority of those students manage to pick up some processes and methodologies for taking creations and delivering them to entities that might pay for them. And, who knows, they might pick up some useful tips on filing their taxes and voting.

My point is that if content knowledge is dead, the emphasis should be on teaching those side effects that have come to be called Procedural Knowledge. When students can generate questions and identify problems at point A and make end products using standard (or innovative) procedures that contribute value to others at point B, and they know all the steps in between for the core disciplines, students will be little content knowledge processing machines and all the more inspired while they are doing it. Who knows? They might even remember how long the Hundred Years War lasted.

 I found the No Excuses University Network, which is a set of schools at the K-8 levels determined to help students get ready for college.  That’s right, there are elementary schools that are a part of this.  This stems from the culture that’s been created in the wake of the reports like “College Readiness Begins in Middle School,” by the ACT. 

These policy/professional development movements are based in some reality: students who start thinking about college early as well as have accesses to resources for and encouragement to plan and execute a program of rigorous coursework through late middle and early high school are more likely to get admitted to competitive programs and succeed in them.    

Unfortunately, what’s happened in education has been to turn this into a policy of trumpeting the virtues of college to younger and younger audiences who have no possible way to take on a curriculum that would get them prepared for college.  You can hum college to a fetus all you want, but that’s not going to get them doing full on research projects with multivariate regression.

True college readiness lies not in the planning and the number of AP exams, but in the rigor of the output of the classes they do take, particularly at ages 16 and 17 when the brain has started coping with bodily hormones and the social labyrinth enough to start internalizing process schema for intellectually rigorous work. 

2.1 Understand negative whole-number exponents. Multiply and divide expressions involving exponents with a common base.

Most of the problems in education come from terrible feedback mechanisms. Teachers don’t have the time to give substantial feedback in person, nor do they have time to write intensive analysis on a per student basis. Parents are completely in the dark, even if they try to follow along (and most don’t even try because the information they get isn’t good enough). And students delude themselves into thinking whatever they want to think about their performance. The need is great for better, real-time, actionable reporting to all stakeholders in a kid’s life. The Truth Will Set You Free, or in this case The Truth Will Give You Power Over Your Students.

Standards based reporting is coming. The question is whether or not it can be presented in a fashion that means something and promotes the action necessary to increase student learning and performance.

In particular, Harvard and Stanford have dramatically altered and managed the towns around them.  Owning and managing the surrounding community to promote a safe, clean, and livable environment is only the first step.  The next seems to be to promote the location of research institutes nearby, as well as set up space for and engage the industries of the future.  Stanford has done this and more: it has been the most extreme example of helping to jump start Venture Capital firms, and the firms have a home bias that inevitably has made Silicon Valley one of the wealthiest areas of the planet.

University involvement in urban renewal seems to be the trend, but service programs are temporary and are more of a band-aid than a solution.  If a university really wants to see their community improve, they need to become the spark of economic development through the active management of residential, commercial, and high tech industrial real estate, the creation of research institutes, and the support of Venture Capital.