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April 26, 2005 - Vol. 6, No. 16
TechLearning News
- By the end of this school year, the National Governors Association plans to survey more than 10,000 high school students on their expectations and frustrations about America's high schools.
- Michigan's continuing budget crisis and severe cuts to federal technology funding are likely to bring the state's Freedom to Learn program to an abrupt end.
- Remote response devices are being used to bring interaction to classrooms from kindergarten through college.
- FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a multinational non-profit organization that aspires to make science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today.
Going to the Source
Who can better describe the experience of the American high school than high school students themselves? By the end of this school year, the National Governors Association (NGA) plans to survey more than 10,000 high school students on their expectations and frustrations about America's high schools. It's all part of NGA's yearlong Redesigning the American High School initiative, designed to address the urgent need to improve high schools. The survey was launched in February at www.rateyourfuture.org. This month, NGA received preliminary results from the "Rate Your Future" survey's first 1,200 student respondents. Roughly one-third of students don't feel their schools are adequately preparing them to think critically, analyze problems and communicate effectively. Moreover, 43% don't believe they are gaining practical and essential life skills while in high school. Three in 10 students say their high school does a "fair" or "poor" job challenging them academically and nearly 70% say teachers have high expectations for only "certain students." Addressing the issue of senioritis, nearly half want senior year to be significantly more meaningful. Meanwhile, 29% characterized senior year as a "waste of time." A large majority, 59%, would work harder during senior year if their schools offered more demanding and interesting courses. Overall, many teens feel that high schools are lacking the practical programs and skills that could help them better prepare for college or a job. NGA plans to release the survey's final results shortly before the nation's governors gather in Des Moines this summer for the 97th NGA Annual Meeting.
Source: National Governor's Association
Funding Cuts Hit Hard
Michigan's Freedom to Learn program has survived many challenges, surmounting budget problems and skeptics alike. Launched in 2002 as a $9.5 million pilot program, the initiative grew into a genuine effort to equip all Michigan middle schoolers with access to wireless computing technologies and applications. Currently, 20,357 students and 1,200 teachers have wireless computers. When first proposed, the plan would have given 130,000 sixth-graders laptops that they could use throughout middle school. But the state's continuing budget crisis and the potential elimination of all federal Enhancing Education Through Technology funding are likely to bring the program to an abrupt end, despite the best efforts of K-12 educators to explain the importance of the program to the Michigan House appropriations subcommittee. Of the total $21-million cost for the program that is budgeted for the 2005-06 fiscal year that begins in October, only $3.7 million was to come from the state school aid fund. The remaining $17.3 million was to come from federal education funds. But that amount has been slashed by almost $13 million because of the federal government's own budget problems and future federal funding is even more uncertain. If the program is canceled, schools will be able to keep the computers that have already purchased. Meanwhile, a special commission has recommended that the funding currently allocated to Freedom to Learn be shifted to the Michigan Virtual High School to expand Internet courses, and to the Center for Educational Performance and Information to build a system that tracks students from before kindergarten until after high school.
Source: The Detroit Free Press
Click and Point Technology
A relatively simple technology is being used to bring interaction to classrooms from kindergarten through college. Response pads, very similar to TV remotes, allow students to enter answers to quizzes and check-point questions posed by teachers. The responses help teachers gauge student understanding and adjust the pace of instruction, re-teaching when necessary. Students like using the handheld remotes and feel more engaged in the learning. All students can answer simultaneously and teachers can view results by class, student, question, and/or learning objective in a variety of file types — Word, Excel, HTML, and PDF. Data recorded in a spreadsheet can be used to review a student's performance over time or to analyze how many students in a class miss an individual question. Teachers do have to put some effort into devising questions that fit the response format the technology uses. A classroom set of the response devices costs about $2,000. Several textbook publishers are bundling the response systems with their textbooks as part of the adoption process.
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Robots at the Ready
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a multinational non-profit organization that aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today. FIRST was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter. FIRST operates the FIRST Robotics Competition in which teams of high school students, sponsored and assisted by local companies and volunteers, design, assemble, and test a robot capable of performing a specified task in competition with other teams. The key to FIRST's success is the work of over 14,000 volunteer mentors — professional engineers, teachers, and other adults working with youth across the country. In Georgia's Peachtree Regional event, mentors from Lockheed-Martin, Scientific-Atlanta, Georgia Tech, Siemens, Kimberly-Clark, Turner Broadcasting and others worked with local students to design and test their robotic creations. In this year's challenge, robots are required to move and stack tetrahedrons — three-dimensional triangles — while avoiding the competing teams, whose robots are working to sabotage their efforts. All teams start out with the same basic kit of 800+ parts with motors, sensors, gears and gizmos. Winners of the 30 regional competitions held throughout March advanced to the FIRST Championship on April 21-23, 2005 in Atlanta. This year, FIRST offers $4.2 million in college scholarships. Any team member is eligible regardless of winning or losing in a competition.
Source: FIRST
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