Dear Commons Colleagues,

It was a fine day yesterday at the  10^th Annual Sloan-C Conference and Workshop.  I attended a workshop on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), presentations by colleagues at CUNY and LIU, and participated in a focus group discussion sponsored by the American Public University System.  APUS, a major online learning institution  that is considering a move to blended learning.

The keynote address given by  Dr. Alec Couros, an Associate Professor of educational technology and media at the University of Regina, was a resounding presentation on the increasingly important role that social media is playing in our lives and in education.  Couros began by providing media-filled descriptions of the prevalence of software tools, open sources, gift economies, and the shift towards social and networked learning. He concluded by stressing their importance for faculty and instructional designers involved with blended learning.

In the evening, I had dinner at The Rumpus Room, one of Milwaukee’s especially good  restaurants, with a host of colleagues from the University of Wisconsin, the University of Maryland, LIU, SUNY, and the University of Central Florida

In sum, new information, provocative ideas, and great camaraderie!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I arrived yesterday in beautiful Milwaukee for the 10^th Annual Sloan-C Conference and Workshop.  It was a pleasure seeing and having dinner with friends and colleagues from the University of Central Florida, the University of Nebraska, and Umea (Sweden) University.

It is hard to believe that this conference is ten years old.  It seems like yesterday that Mary Niemiec organized the first invitation only workshop in Chicago with a group of thirty of us trying to figure out exactly what was this thing we called “blended learning”.  We never thought it would evolve the way it has.  As Tanya Joosten (this year’s conference organizer) posted on the conference website, it is no longer new but the future for higher education is in blended learning:

“Although the field of blended learning is not new, we are witnessing a revival in interest around blended learning for a greater array of educational institutions working to improve the overall state of education in our society.  Lessons are not only learned from our experiences in practice, but they are also learned from our research over the past decade, and they assist us in making decisions when it comes to strategy, implementation, pedagogy, research, and support.  These lessons guide our institutions.

Our future is blended learning.  There are many paths we can take to meet our goal in ensuring quality for students, and we need to explore the contingencies to make sound decisions in determining our roadmap.  The changing landscape is evident in new terminology (flipped classrooms), new growth in sectors (k-12), and new financial support for blended programs (NGLC).  This transformation reveals new ideas about blended learning.  As a community, we look to research and evidence to assist us in answering these questions and to drive us into the blended learning future.”

Well-stated!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times editorial today examines the education record of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and provides an analysis of what the next mayor might do to improve New York City’s public schools.  It is a balanced analysis from a newspaper that has supported Michael Bloomberg and his policies.  On the positive side:

“Mr. Bloomberg has accomplished a great deal since becoming the first mayor to gain full control of the system. He brought coherence and stability to a troubled organizational structure that saw school chancellors come and go as if through a revolving door. He swept away a byzantine bureaucracy that had defeated his predecessors and created clear lines of authority. He negotiated a union contract that ended a transfer policy allowing senior teachers to move from one school to another, pushing out younger teachers, even if the receiving school did not want them. He improved graduation rates.”

On the downside:

“Mr. Bloomberg’s often highhanded style, however, alienated parents, teachers and lawmakers, some of whom now want a greater check on mayoral power… Mr. Bloomberg’s policy of closing large, failing schools and replacing them with smaller schools is unpopular with teachers, many of whom have to find jobs elsewhere in the system. And some adults have emotional ties to a school, however terrible it has become. The city has sometimes made matters worse by handling closures badly. But replacing dropout factories with specialized schools that provide individual attention is a sound idea. Of the 142 schools the city has either closed or begun phasing out, many had outlived their usefulness… New York City has 159 charter schools, which educate about 5.5 percent of the city’s children…But critics say the city’s charter school effort has a big problem — namely, it allows some charter schools to share precious space with regular public schools. In a few extreme cases, critics say, the regular school students are treated like second-class citizens in a building that once belonged to them.”

The editorial goes on to evaluate possible changes to governance, school closings, and charter school operations.  The next mayor will have many important decisions to make to improve the public schools,  most important of all will be the leader.  Mayor Bloomberg did very poorly in his first two appointments of Joel Klein and Kathy Black.  Dennis Walcott has been a better chancellor than his two predecessors.   We wish the new mayor and new chancellor well!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

With the student debt crisis already hobbling the young, the last thing the country needs is a federal policy that makes college even more costly. But that’s what the country got earlier this week when the US Congress allowed the interest rate on the subsidized federal loans to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.   A New York Times editorial calls for the return to an affordable interest.

“If this increase is allowed to stand, more than seven million mainly low- and middle-income borrowers who begin college in the fall will pay an average of about $1,000 more per loan. That would mean about $4,000 more in debt for students who finish in four years, with the burden falling on people who could least afford it.

Congress could avoid this debacle by passing Democratic provisions pending in both the House and Senate that would extend the lower rate for one year, giving lawmakers a chance to restructure the complex student loan system. But, incredibly, some Republicans are supporting proposals that would cost students and their families even more than the new doubled rate — using the proceeds for deficit reduction.

Those who want to keep the rates affordable understand that college educations benefit the work force and the country as a whole. Those who would increase the burden on borrowers see a college education as an asset that benefits the individual alone. That’s a dangerous idea, at a time when this country is steadily losing ground to its increasingly better prepared competitors abroad.”

The New York Times has it right and the US Congress wrong!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Peshe Kuriloff, an associate professor in the College of Education at Temple University, has an essay in the current online edition of the Teachers College Record.  He uses nature as a metaphor for the current state of teacher education programs:

“In nature, wolves will cull a running herd by isolating the weakest specimens, killing and feeding on them. In contrast, animals that stand their ground survive. In its weakened state, teacher preparation has become a prime target for hungry policy makers chasing their next meal. The correct response is clearly to stand our ground.”

It is an apt comparison for teacher educators.  They must stand up for what they do and not fall victims to the policy-makers searching for someone to blame for low student achievement in urban schools.  As Kuriloff points out, blame was fixed on teachers [I would also add teacher unions] and now on teacher preparation. And to avoid becoming a victim in the education wars, teacher educators need to speak out about what they know and need to ensure that teachers succeed and schoolchildren learn and thrive.

Although he does not have a silver bullet, Kuriloff makes several recommendations including more clinical/school based instruction which is already moving forward in many schools of education.

This essay provides good advice for any individual or group being bullied that is there can be no backing down.  That only encourages the bully.  Faculty in schools of education need to partner with teachers and unions to stand up to the school reform  bullies including policymakers, their corporate and corporate-affiliated funders and foundations, and self-serving profiteers of the anti-teacher movement such as Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein.  The worst thing to do would be to back down.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post and other media are reporting that mogul Rupert Murdoch has been recorded saying wrongdoing by his British newspapers was “next to nothing” and apparently acknowledging that his reporters paid police officers for information.

In a tape published in transcript by the ExaroNews journalism website and broadcast Wednesday on Channel 4 News, Murdoch is heard saying, “it’s the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing.”

“It’s a disgrace. Here we are, two years later, and the cops are totally incompetent,” said Murdoch, who is executive chairman of News Corp.

The tape was recorded during a meeting with journalists at The Sun newspaper in March. Murdoch told them: “We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops: that’s been going on a hundred years.”

He also said it had been “a mistake” on the company’s part to hand over so many of its files to police. He said the company was now insisting police obtained court orders before they could see documents.

Several Sun staff have been charged as part police investigations into phone hacking and bribery spurred by the revelation two years ago that Murdoch’s News of the World routinely eavesdropped on the mobile phone voicemails of celebrities, politicians, royals and crime victims.

Mr. Murdoch has become the buffoon of corporate titans.  He should retire and stop being an embarrassment for his company.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Reddit, Mozilla, WordPress, 4chan and other websites are planning a Fourth of July protest against the National Security Agency over its widespread surveillance of telephone records and Internet traffic through secret programs that came to light last month.

Spearheaded by the Internet Defense League, a 30,000-member group of Internet activists and websites, the Restore The Fourth campaign will have websites promote anti-NSA messages on their homepages along with directing visitors to CallForFreedom.org, where they can donate to help fund television ads against the intelligence programs.

In addition to advising visitors to call members of Congress, Restore The Fourth is coordinating street demonstrations in more than 75 cities, which will include “liberal groups, conservative groups and libertarian groups alike.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Leonard H. Schrank, the chief executive of Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) from 1992 to 2007, and Juan C. Zarate, a former assistant Treasury secretary, have an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, promoting “big data” surveillance as long as there are controls in place to prevent misuse.  They frame the issue well:

“In the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, President Obama has acknowledged the imperative to balance privacy and security. But so far, his administration’s defense of the programs has failed to assure the public that this balance has been achieved — or that basic privacy rights and civil liberties are being protected.

Now that these programs have been leaked, Americans need to decide what this balance should look like. How do we devise a program that can allow the intelligence community to use big data and the latest technology to prevent terrorist attacks while ensuring we have not created a Big Brother state? In other words, how can we trust but verify?”

Their solution is to use something akin to the classified Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (T.F.T.P.), which was developed and overseen by the United States Treasury. T.F.T.P. was, and still is, run by the Treasury Department using information subpoenaed from the Society for Worldwide International Financial Telecommunication. Swift is an industry-owned, global-financial-messaging system based in Brussels. Its transmissions carry financial messages for most of the world’s banks across borders. Swift’s data show who is transferring money, how much, and to whom, and contains specific identifier information. Soon after 9/11, Treasury began to subpoena Swift’s data to allow government analysts to track the movement of terrorist funds.

The Swift system doesn’t contain private bank account information. But if a terrorist financier in one country were sending funds to a terrorist in another, it would be in the data of subpoenaed Swift messages.  The sender’s and receiver’s names and bank account information would also be in the message. From the start, privacy and civil liberties protections were central to the program. Unlike the N.S.A., we assumed it would eventually have to endure public scrutiny — in America and abroad.

Their conclusion:

“To give American citizens confidence that their privacy isn’t being violated today, the government must demonstrate that there is adequate oversight of the programs and that constraints on the use of N.S.A. data are being respected vigilantly. The private companies that are affected should be briefed on how their data is being used and given some say in how the programs are structured, limited and defended in public. It’s possible that the government is already doing some of this — but the people must be told.”

As well intentioned and well-stated are Shrank and Zarate in their position, I cannot agree that the federal government can be trusted with  large amounts of data on its citizens.  Politics in the United States has taken a most nasty turn  at all levels.   The mean-spiritedness of some of our government officials exemplified by the vitriol of their dialogue is indicative of individuals who put ideological goals ahead of the common good.   Big data sooner or later will be used to subvert individual freedoms.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michael Bérubé, professor of literature at Pennsylvania State University and a past president of the Modern Language Association, turns upside down the popular notion that the humanities are in decline, but in fact, are holding their own especially among undergraduates.  In an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, he comments:

“… there was a decline in bachelor’s degrees in English, just as there was a drop-off in humanities enrollments more generally. But it happened almost entirely between 1970 and 1980. It is old news. Students are not “now making the jump” to other fields, and it is not “getting worse.” It is not a “recent shift.” There is no “steady downward spiral.” It is more like the sales of Beatles records—huge in the 60s, then dropping off sharply in the 70s.

And why does that matter? Because many of the accounts of the decline of the humanities are tendentious…

…from the late 1940s to early 1970s, English majors climbed from 17,000 to 64,000, “but by 1985-86,” he concludes, “the number of undergraduate English majors had fallen back to 34,000, despite a hefty increase in total nationwide undergraduate enrollment.” Quite true. But by 2003-4, … that number was almost 54,000. Why was no one writing about how the number of English majors had grown by 20,000 over 20 years—almost a 60-percent increase.”

Bérubé also references Nate Silver to verify his analysis:

“Nate Silver, the statistician who has become famous for the accuracy of his analyses of polling data, has weighed in on the inexorable decline of the humanities, and has found, using “numbers” and “arithmetic,” that “the relative decline of majors like English is modest when accounting for the increased propensity of Americans to go to college.”

“In fact, the number of new degrees in English is fairly similar to what it has been for most of the last 20 years as a share of the college-age population,” Silver said. “In 2011, 1.1 out of every 100 21-year-olds graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English, down only incrementally from 1.2 in 2001 and 1.3 in 1991. And the percentage of English majors as a share of the population is actually higher than it was in 1981, when only 0.7 out of every 100 21-year-olds received a degree in English.”

Bérubé  concludes:

“There is indeed a crisis in the humanities. I have said as much in this very space: It is a crisis in graduate education, in prestige, in funds, and most broadly, in legitimation. But it is not a crisis of undergraduate enrollment. And one of the reasons for the crisis of legitimation, surely, is the constant parade of people, especially among humanists themselves, who continue to talk about enrollment declines in ways that are factually, stubbornly, determinedly wrong.”

Bérubé’s position is well taken especially as we hear calls from public and private funding agencies for colleges to shift funding from the humanities to STEM and other “employable” majors.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The “Fast for Safe Schools” protest in Philadelphia is entering its third week.  The hunger strike, which is in protest of the layoffs of more than 1,200 Philadelphia school safety workers, takes place amid budget negotiations at the Pennsylvania state legislature that protestors hope will restore funding for the laid off workers.  A group of two parents and two school food service workers began the fast on June 17. On Monday, another group of concerned locals, parents and school employees stepped in to continue the fast after the original protestors bowed out for health reasons.   The layoffs come after the city’s school reform commission voted to close 23 schools earlier this month. In addition to the school safety workers, about 2,500 district teachers and school employees are also being laid off.

On Thursday, 15 politicians pledged to fast for 24 hours, an organizer of the fast, Kyle Schafer, told The Huffington Post.

Among the fasting politicians are three council people, six state representatives, four state senators, a district attorney and a United States congressman. According to a press release, the politicians believe the layoffs will lead to higher rates of violence in Philadelphia schools.

“I fully support this effort and I also need to shed some pounds,” Congressman Bob Brady said in a press release. “I am committed to help make sure that when our children go back to school in the fall their schools will be safe.”

“While my participation may be symbolic, the cause for which we are all standing is very real,” said state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams in a statement. “Without adequate funding, the consequences of inaction stand to be devastating to our schools. Safety is the one area where no one should be willing to compromise when it comes to our kids.”

We wish these protesters well!

Tony

A closed school in Philadelphia.