Schools To Get Their Own DARPA 151
Julie188 writes "A decade ago, Lawrence Grossman, former president of both NBC News and PBS, and Newton Minow, former chairman of the FCC, proposed that the government set up a multi-billion dollar trust that would act as a 'venture capital fund' to research educational technologies for schools, libraries and museums. Congress has finally approved the idea, and grants could start rolling by this fall. Dubbed the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, it should be to education what the National Science Foundation is for science, and DARPA is for national defense."
it will if it breaks the monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm a bit dubious... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Invented spelling" is now a failure directly because of technology.
The idea was good. Following a strict step by step procedure and stressing out and getting stuck is the right way to go math (?) but miserably fails for language arts. If you can't figure out one word, get on with life and finish the rest of the task. Its also a great way to learn to read, if you can't figure out one word, don't chuck the book across the room and go play donkey kong, just work around it, you'll figure it out later by osmosis or whatever. Its like solving an equation by successive approximation vs simple plug and chug.
Now, before BBS leet speak, email, SMS, myspace, kids had good osmosis sources. I never learned anything in English classes in school, I learned English solely by osmosis from Clarke, Asimov, and whomever wrote the Tom Swift and Hardy Boys Mysteries.
The bad news, is now kids learn English by osmosis from illiterate morons on myspace, youtube, rap videos, text messages, etc. That directly leads to:
She still misspells many words the same way she misspelled them before she learned to read (she's 22 now).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_spelling [wikipedia.org]
Re:Total waste of money (Score:4, Interesting)
If a parent doesn't care about a kid's education then no, there's no way to get them to care. The trouble is the educators themselves talk up a good "parental involvement" but the fact is the only involvement they want from parents is fund raising.
As a parent who cared about his kids' education this was an immense frustration to me.
Re:Another clever way ... (Score:3, Interesting)
technology can help the classroom. many technologies don't help the classroom. educators/administrators are pressured to fight for and then use technology budgets to show how well they are educating. The big problem is they have to guess at (a) what is available, (b) what is useful, (c) what is effective. (b and c don't always coincide).
For a while technology meant 'get PCs in the schools'. Now it's more than that. I've seen more immediate benefit in a classroom from a $75 digital camcorder (showing the kids a discussion session, reviewing an oral presentation, etc. so that they get a 3rd person view of themselves.) than a $50,000 'learning lab'. "Prometheus Boards" are the new hot item http://www.vimeo.com/367993 [vimeo.com] with some use shown when used right in certain classrooms. But what's the best way to use them, what is and isn't more effective than traditional teaching methods (with a zero dollar comparison cost), etc.
These are all questions it would be nice to have answers to, simply because experiments on real kids are tough to accept when they extend beyond minor things.
Good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not certain how the bureaucracy is going to work, but there are tools being developed right now for education that are really kind of neat. If you ask almost any teacher, they'll tell you the biggest problem with teaching kids is simply keeping them awake in class. Tools that are designed to allow more interaction are important. Not all teachers can be Mr. Smith from Junior High who would dance on his desk while reading a chapter Dante's Inferno to the class or Mrs. Peabody who speaks in Olde English phrases for the entire two months of Shakespeare. So if someone can piece together technology to make your boring teachers fun again, I'm all for it.
There's a tool developed by...I can never remember...I want to say somewhere in Washington State. Basically the teacher gives two students (volunteers) tablet PCs and she has her own. She projects her laptop, and the other two tablets can be viewed (along with her own) through a program on the rest of the students' laptops, phones, etc. She goes about teaching her course. The tablet students take notes through a piece of software, make adjustments to a copy of her slides, etc. The other students use the same software to view all this, including able to do cool things like highlight words and get quick definitions. It's sort of collaborative note-taking. And all of the teacher's original slides as well as all the notes from the tablet users are stored online for later viewing.
How does this help? Because the tablet students may take notes you're not thinking of, right or wrong, and it opens your mind right there and then to alternative thoughts. You're not stuck re-writing what the teacher is doing and trying to think on it later. You're more engaged this way. But most importantly, you're paying attention, either to the teacher or the tablet users' writing. The teacher even said she doesn't really ever look back on the tablet users' notes. She'll occasionally hear giggles from the class but to her, that just means they aren't asleep.
Re:I'm a bit dubious... (Score:3, Interesting)
The lesson is, have your kids read lots of real books before you let them on the internet or a cell phone. Hard to do these days, though.
Re:I'm a bit dubious... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm a bit dubious... (Score:3, Interesting)
I spelled it out rather than using numerals just so somebody wouldn't snarkily mention other number systems. If I'd said 10*10 is always 100 you'd have had a point.