The eLearn Blog

Hi Lisa-

Before I left for a class yesterday (I’m pursuing a degree while I work), I read your email about your experience at the Transforming Health Care Summit. So, I had 50 miles to think about your question: “what would I first tell President Obama as his Education Secretary?”

I guess I’d give him a story of my day because my activities illustrate where we are (and where we are not) today.

Mr. President, before becoming your Education Secretary, I started my days as I normally do, writing a daily blog about workplace learning. Yesterday’s news was about free textbook chapters offered online, innovative learning offerings, meaningful conversations on Twitter, cloud computing, and what workplace learning will look like in 10 years. I do this from my home office where I am part of a global virtual team working in the field of corporate education. I see my co-workers face-to-face perhaps once per year but video chat with them on Skype throughout the week.

I have three children – 9, 13, and 15. They think my job is pretty cool but they’re not being prepared at school to earn a living the way I do. Sieving, evaluating, validating, synthesizing, and writing commentary from a sea of information online is not a skill they are being trained to do in their formal school education. And they’re certainly not communicating outside the confines of their local school. Perhaps some handwritten pen pal correspondence but certainly not VoIP communications. The latter would certainly make the evening TV news or local paper (although it is not news in many other countries).

Here’s what my children, who attend New York public schools, are doing instead. This week my 9 year-old is practicing and taking the 4th grade state math test. Teachers are under pressure to get kids to pass this test so the district doesn’t get penalized by way of lost aid. I’m your age, Mr. President, so you’d probably recognize the practice test; it is nearly identical to the math tests we saw in the early 1970s. You’d also recognize the format: grainy re-copied photocopies collated and stapled. I’m not sure what my 15 year-old is up to this week. His school has e-boards that I can check but only some of his teacher’s utilize it so, as always, I’ll ask him and hopefully he’ll remember at least some of what he’s working on this week. My 13 year-old is in the abyss known as middle school. The only bright light there is a 3-year distance education grant that allows her to learn Mandarin along with several other local schools. Other than that, she pulls A’s without ever bringing anything home to work on. She’s a low-maintenance student.

Based on several years working in the corporate training department at an insurance company, I can tell you that behind the scenes, the public school is dealing with not-so-low maintenance students and a litigious environment rich with claims about IEPs, abuse, wrongful termination, transportation, taxes, and a sea of other issues. So, education is not always the number one priority.

I realize that even though I have a cool-by-kids-standards job today, that it won’t always be there. My business is struggling with the same kind of pain the newspaper industry is experiencing. So, I’m continuing my education. I sit here with a $3200 tuition bill (one class) and wonder how I will possibly afford tuition for my children. So, my advice:
o Teachers, parents, and school administrators need to learn about 21st century careers and skills.
o Schools need to offer more options for students – online learning should be an integral part. I think this would offer additional challenges for the low-maintenance students.
o Schools need to be less local and more global. This might mean consolidation and sharing of services.
o The formulas behind state testing are not fair for many schools.
o No Child Left Behind is not working as evidenced by our abysmal high school and college graduation rates. We are not preparing our students to succeed.
o Schools need to focus more on actual education.
o College education needs to be made affordable.

I think, Mr. President that it is society’s duty to educate its citizens and I think we’ve lost site of how to do that.

Hi Lisa-

Before I left for a class yesterday (I’m pursuing a degree while I work), I read your email about your experience at the Transforming Health Care Summit. So, I had 50 miles to think about your question: “what would I first tell President Obama as his Education Secretary?”

I guess I’d give him a story of my day because my activities illustrate where we are (and where we are not) today.

Mr. President, before becoming your Education Secretary, I started my days as I normally do, writing a daily blog about workplace learning. Yesterday’s news was about free textbook chapters offered online, innovative learning offerings, meaningful conversations on Twitter, cloud computing, and what workplace learning will look like in 10 years. I do this from my home office where I am part of a global virtual team working in the field of corporate education. I see my co-workers face-to-face perhaps once per year but video chat with them on Skype throughout the week.

I have three children – 9, 13, and 15. They think my job is pretty cool but they’re not being prepared at school to earn a living the way I do. Sieving, evaluating, validating, synthesizing, and writing commentary from a sea of information online is not a skill they are being trained to do in their formal school education. And they’re certainly not communicating outside the confines of their local school. Perhaps some handwritten pen pal correspondence but certainly not VoIP communications. The latter would certainly make the evening TV news or local paper (although it is not news in many other countries).

Here’s what my children, who attend New York public schools, are doing instead. This week my 9 year-old is practicing and taking the 4th grade state math test. Teachers are under pressure to get kids to pass this test so the district doesn’t get penalized by way of lost aid. I’m your age, Mr. President, so you’d probably recognize the practice test; it is nearly identical to the math tests we saw in the early 1970s. You’d also recognize the format: grainy re-copied photocopies collated and stapled. I’m not sure what my 15 year-old is up to this week. His school has e-boards that I can check but only some of his teacher’s utilize it so, as always, I’ll ask him and hopefully he’ll remember at least some of what he’s working on this week. My 13 year-old is in the abyss known as middle school. The only bright light there is a 3-year distance education grant that allows her to learn Mandarin along with several other local schools. Other than that, she pulls A’s without ever bringing anything home to work on. She’s a low-maintenance student.

Based on several years working in the corporate training department at an insurance company, I can tell you that behind the scenes, the public school is dealing with not-so-low maintenance students and a litigious environment rich with claims about IEPs, abuse, wrongful termination, transportation, taxes, and a sea of other issues. So, education is not always the number one priority.

I realize that even though I have a cool-by-kids-standards job today, that it won’t always be there. My business is struggling with the same kind of pain the newspaper industry is experiencing. So, I’m continuing my education. I sit here with a $3200 tuition bill (one class) and wonder how I will possibly afford tuition for my children. So, my advice:
o Teachers, parents, and school administrators need to learn about 21st century careers and skills.
o Schools need to offer more options for students – online learning should be an integral part. I think this would offer additional challenges for the low-maintenance students.
o Schools need to be less local and more global. This might mean consolidation and sharing of services.
o The formulas behind state testing are not fair for many schools.
o No Child Left Behind is not working as evidenced by our abysmal high school and college graduation rates. We are not preparing our students to succeed.
o Schools need to focus more on actual education.
o College education needs to be made affordable.

I think, Mr. President that it is society’s duty to educate its citizens and I think we’ve lost site of how to do that.

Mr. President:

I have not heard back from you on the letter I sent you back on December 1st about the world becoming more open for learning and to see if you wanted to read a preview copy of my book, �The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.� It is ok, I know you are busy with this economic crisis. I can dust off my CPA license if you need help there but I prefer not to.

I actually believe you can skip those boring meetings with economic advisors. Instead, take a look at the educational possibilities of the Web. As you know from your Blackberry days (which I guess you still have), the Web is transforming education in front of our eyes. When I saw you give your speech here in Bloomington last April 30th, I felt a sense that you realized this and so I voted for you instead of Hillary (despite several quite convincing arguments from my extremely insightful friend, Jay Cross). Now that you have won, you need people in the Department of Education who can help you (and me) make sense of this transformation. I think that there are ten trends that are of particular importance. They spell the acronym, WE-ALL-LEARN. I list them for you below.

Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN)
1. Web Searching in the World of e-Books
2. E-Learning and Blended Learning
3. Availability of Open Source and Free Software
4. Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
5. Learning Object Repositories and Portals
6. Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
7. Electronic Collaboration
8. Alternate Reality Learning
9. Real-Time Mobility and Portability
10. Networks of Personalized Learning

If any one of these trends would have happened in the past, it would have been a dramatic change in education. In fact, if just one person had learned online in 1959 (50 years ago), that person would have been Time�s person of the year. And that is just one trend or opener (opener #2)! But all ten openers are happening simultaneously. Instead of the new players, playing fields, and management processes that Thomas Friedman discusses in his World is Flat book, in education we have a different set of �p�s��piping, pages of content, and a participatory learning culture. This is a triple convergence that any of the previous 43 presidents would have loved to see happening in such an economic crisis. Again, I am happy to send you my book if you want to read it.

So instead of more back to the basics and adding still more test scores and assessments, we have to open doors to learning and make that the focus. Active and contributory learning where learners have a voice in their own learning pursuits should underlie all educational reform efforts, not comparisons to other countries, previous test scores, or some other set of silly statistics. In contrast to smaller countries or those with fewer natural resources which are forced to standardize everything, in the United States we need an educational system that fosters learning that you cannot plan for or preprescribe. Simply put, we need to focus on creativity, innovation, ambition, and perpetual learning and human development. We need motivated younger as well as older learners. To attain such goals, we need educational leaders who ignite a passion for learning. And for those in Asia and other countries who are bored with traditional teach and test educational methods all-too-common in such places, we can open our doors. As Thomas Friedman called for two weeks ago in the NY Times, allow millions more smart people from China, Korea, India, and other countries to immigrant to the USA and build the next Google�s, Livemocha�s, and Yahoo!�s. If we can combine more creative people coming into the country with an educational system focused on nurturing creative talent, watch out world, we will be the ones solving the world�s problems! Is no doubt!

The time is ripe for so many things. Education can lead us out of this economic crisis. For the first time in the history of this country, our education leaders are simultaneously our economic leaders, not the other way around. As the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade suggested, �choose wisely .� If you do, then WE-ALL-LEARN. I wish you well. And I also wish that we all do, in fact, learn.

Sincerely,

Curt Bonk

Dear Mr. President,
If you can read this, you did not attend elementary, middle, junior high or high school in Detroit.

While I do not think that schools ought to get a free-pass on everything, I do think that the ACLU has done at least as much harm as it has done good in our schools. It has made it very difficult for schools to eliminate firearms and illicit drugs and to punish students firmly for minor infractions. About the only effective option that remains is expulsion ... and that harpoons the goal of providing an education, does it not?

E-learning is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN until the needs of basic literacy have been met and until the scourge of on-line pornography has been dealt with. To move forward earlier is to ask our children to wade through a cesspool where the only thing they understand are the graphic depictions of sex.

Allow me, please, the favor of a postscript.

I heartily endorse the recommended reading list Jay Cross and Curt Bonk offer.

I have read online excerpts from Mr. Gatto's book and I am trusting that the others are in the same vein. If so, Mr. President, push all the other books off your desk until you have read these.

Our schools ARE broken. They do not need tweaking; they need scrapping.

Like General Sherman, Mr. President, you need to march to the sea, destroying anything in your path that does not clearly work toward the end goal of providing a quality education for every student able to absorb one. America is getting its tail kicked in the world market and the problem starts in our kindergartens.

If people had understood the financial doo-doo those junk mortgages represented, do you think they would have signed them? Even greed is usually tempered by the sense of self-preservation.

At the very least we SHOULD return to the techniques of 100 years ago in the elementary grades. The teaching methodologies we have been using for the past 40 years or so have not been working. Kids arrive in high school still struggling with elementary and junior high topics.

They are told to make an outline -- but never taught how. A square or cube root of a number is only a function on a calculator and has no connection to the reality of long (very long!) division. They know that George Washington crossed the Delaware in the winter but can't find New Jersey on the map, even if they live in Trenton.

Class size is only a problem if the students actually show up. The real issue is parental apathy that doesn't insure that the children are both present and prepared. You need to fix both. Having 40 students assigned to a classroom is absurd; having them actually show up (unprepared) is insanity.

Television, radios, CD-players and cell-phones need to be turned off. Likewise computers, unless they are a necessary tool for preparing an assignment. Good lighting and a clean, quiet environment need to be provided at an assigned time EVERY school night. Parents need to check homework for completeness even if they don't feel qualified to check it for accuracy.

Mr. President, nothing you do in the school will work until you can make these changes in the home. Rich people already do these things. Poor people do not, and that is how they stay poor from one generation to the next.

I tutor a young man in English. Ninth grade English, to be precise. His mother, who carries a Masters Degree in Communications, does not feel qualified to teach him composition.

It's worth repeating that her degree is in communication, but she does not feel qualified to teach him how to compose a paragraph. Too, it's not as if illiteracy is a genetic trait or a learned experience in her family. Her father was a highly successful playwright. DAGS for Ronald Milner.

Literacy, it would seem, came to a screeching halt just about the time new 'teaching modalities' came into common use.

So, while she is just 10 years younger than me, that's two generations lost.

I have a high school diploma (from a suburban school) and a couple of junior college classes. Yet, I can teach him composition and grammar. Are my skills perfect? No. But, they are better, judging from the assignments she has sent home, than those of his English teacher.

I bought my home 8 years ago and paid it off last month.

I wonder what sort of mortgage his English teacher has.

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

While I do not think that schools ought to get a free-pass on everything, I do think that the ACLU has done at least as much harm as it has done good in our schools. It has made it very difficult for schools to eliminate firearms and illicit drugs and to punish students firmly for minor infractions. About the only effective option that remains is expulsion