Dear Commons Community,

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference Steven Jobs announced yesterday Apple’s new service, iCloud, which will simplify how people manage content across devices.   The major benefit is that people will no longer have to sync multiple devices (PCs, iPads, laptops, mobile phones, etc.)   Mr. Jobs said “Keeping these devices in sync is driving us crazy…We have a great solution for this problem. We are going to demote the PC to just be a device. We are going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud…Everything happens automatically, and there is nothing new to learn.”

I have posted on cloud computing several times.  Technology experts expect they will live mostly in the cloud by 2020 and not on the desktop, and working through cyberspace-based applications accessed through networked devices.

What makes iCloud so attractive is that it will be relatively easy to use and will operate automatically.  The only downside of it for now is that it will only operate in this manner for Apple products.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On the opening of its new headquarters last week in Seattle, the Gates Foundation has stirred a bit more controversy as to its goals and influences on education policy.  National Public Radio (NPR)  ran a brief story on this and it has been pick-up by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, a K-12 professional organization, on whether the Gates Foundation is good or bad for education.   I posted on this issue a couple of weeks ago.  The NPR piece quotes several observers as follows.

“In order to keep its tax-exempt status, the [Gates] foundation has to give away about $3 billion a year. Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, says the foundation’s influence goes far beyond that.

“They’re influencing governments in lots of different ways — and corporations, and really everybody else in society, and it’s not just about writing checks,” she says.

It’s about setting agendas, framing debates, advocating the foundation’s point of view and taking action. Palmer says the foundation has changed the perception of what a private organization can do.

“And that is a good thing,” she says. “Because it’s getting more people involved. But if you don’t like what their agenda is — then it’s an unchecked way of getting things done and that bothers a lot of people.”

Right now, for example, there’s a lot of talk about the foundation’s effort to improve public schools. It’s focusing on better classroom instruction and is using data — including student test scores — to gauge how well teachers are doing.

“I have no doubt that the movement Bill Gates has launched has created enormous hostility toward teachers,” says Diane Ravitch…”

And that is the rub!!!

Tony.

Dear Commons Community,

A memorial tribute to Dr. Frank Bonilla, a leader of the Puerto Rican Community and founder of Hunter College’s  Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro) celebrating the many aspects of the life of this activist and humanitarian. For those of us who had the privilege of working with Frank knew him as a consummate scholar dedicated to his work.  Hunter College President Jennifer Raab will open the program which also will include a video made especially for the event and short eulogies by Dr. Bonilla’s friends, colleagues and family. An exhibit celebrating the many aspects of Dr. Bonilla’s achievements, designed for the tribute, will be accessible from 4:00pm to 8:30pm. The public is invited, but seating is limited in the Kaye Playhouse, please contact Rosalie Roman at rosalie.roman@hunter.cuny.edu or 212-772-5714 for reservations.

Date: June 9, 2011

Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Place:  Hunter College – East 68th Street bet. Park & Lexington Avenues

Building: The Kaye Playhouse @ Hunter College

Phone: 212-772-5714

Admission: Free and Open to the Public

Dear Commons Community,

Manfred Philipp, our colleague at Lehman College and past chair of the University Faculty Senate, has just sent an important message regarding the proposal before the CUNY Board of Trustees to alter the General Education requirements across CUNY (see my earlier post).    Below is Manfred’s post which eloquently presents the position of  the CUNY college governing bodies.

Tony

Dear Colleagues,

As of yesterday, faculty governance groups (that is, college senates and faculty councils) at all but one of CUNY's senior colleges have passed resolutions opposing the vote on the Pathways Resolution at the June Board of Trustees meeting.   

In many cases, these campus votes came after members of the chancellery came to the colleges to advocate for Pathways. There are no college senate resolutions (either in the senior or community colleges) that have favored the Pathways Resolution.

This level of concern on a CUNY board resolution has not been seen in decades, if ever. It is reassuring to see that outside groups, including the New York Association of Scholars, support the efforts of the college senates. In a letter to the New York Times, former Board Chair Herman Badillo recognizes the threat that the Pathways Resolution poses to the quality of education in CUNY.

Please oppose resolution B.1.13, formally entitled a "Resolution on Creating an Efficient Transfer System."

Manfred Philipp

Dear Commons Community,

The NY Times has an op-ed piece today by Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education and history at New York University, on the topic of what teachers can or cannot say in and out of school especially on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.    He cites several examples of cases where disciplinary actions were taken against teachers including:

“In April, a first-grade teacher in Paterson, N.J., was suspended for writing on her Facebook page that she felt like a “warden” overseeing “future criminals.” In February, a high school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia was suspended for a blog entry calling her students “rude, disengaged, lazy whiners”; in another post, she imagined writing “frightfully dim” or “dresses like a streetwalker” on their report cards.”

“Last October, a federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of an Ohio high-school teacher who had asked students to report about books that had been banned from schools and libraries. The exercise wasn’t in the official curriculum, and parents had complained about their children reading some of the banned books.”

In these cases, questions about certain basic rights (freedom of speech and academic freedom) come into play.  However, as professionals, teachers should exercise some restraint in what they say about their students in public.   The cases cited above also indicate that the courts set boundaries about what is taught or not in the classroom.  The op-ed piece concludes that there will be more of these cases especially if legislation that limits collective bargaining rights (i.e., Wisconsin) becomes more prevalent.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Christy M. Glass and Eric N. Reither, associate professors of sociology at Utah State University, and Steven A. Haas, assistant professor of sociology at Arizona State University, have an op-ed piece in today’s  NY Times that reports on a study they have just completed on the affect of obesity on earning power and college success.   Their major conclusion is:

“obesity affects not only health but also economic outcomes: overweight people have less success in the job market and make less money over the course of their careers than slimmer people. The problem is particularly acute for overweight women, because they are significantly less likely to complete college.”

Their study is based on an examination of data from a the Wisconsin Longitudinal  Database that tracks more than 10,000 people who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. From career entry to retirement, overweight men experienced no barriers to getting hired and promoted. But heavier women worked in jobs that had lower earnings and social status and required less education than their thinner female peers.

Besides the well-reported health issues, this is another reason for parents to help and encourage their children to eat healthy and lead active lives.

Tony

Dear Common Community,

Manfred Phillipp, our colleague from Lehman College, passed this piece along to us on the UFS LISTSERV.  The Education Trust, in a report issued yesterday, concluded that five colleges across the country “are doing a good job of serving low-income students”.  Two of the five are CUNY colleges:  Queens and Baruch.  The Chronicle of Higher Education summarized the report and commented that the data is a bit complex and that the researchers had established an “unusually high bar”.  Essentially three criteria were used:

1.  Four-year colleges had to cost no more than $4,600 a year after all grants for students in households earning up to $30,000 a year.

2.  The colleges also had to have at least a 50-percent six-year graduation rate.

3.  At least 30 percent of their enrollments had to be Pell Grant recipients.

We congratulate our  colleagues at Queens and Baruch.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post is reporting that a new study has named New York the most photographed city in the world.   Using a supercomputer to analyze over 35 million Flickr photos by more than 300,000 photographers, researchers at Cornell University not only determined the top 25 most photographed cities, but their top landmarks as well.  In New York City, the top five landmarks are the Empire State Building, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station and surprise – surprise, the Apple Store

Check out the Huffington Post slideshow to see which of the other cities made the list!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Diane Ravitch (Research Professor – NYU) has an op-ed piece in the NY Times that cautions against education reformers seeking silver bullets for turning around failing schools.  She takes aim especially at several schools mentioned by President Obama, Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush and Michael Bloomberg as more smoke than substance.  In most cases, these schools improved on standardized test scores because students were prepped for tests but showed little improvement in other areas of achievement such as college readiness.   We have seen this story play out several times here in New York City where education leaders have praised progress on standardized test scores yet upon graduation, students still need to take double and triple remediation courses upon entering City University.

Dr. Ravitch’s conclusion is that beware the media hype of miraculous school reforms.

“The news media and the public should respond with skepticism to any claims of miraculous transformation. The achievement gap between children from different income levels exists before children enter school.

Families are children’s most important educators. Our society must invest in parental education, prenatal care and preschool. Of course, schools must improve; every one should have a stable, experienced staff, adequate resources and a balanced curriculum including the arts, foreign languages, history and science.”

Well stated!

Tony