CANEUS Europe Creates MNT Training Centers and Summer School Program for Aerospace Professionals
The Hands on training Centres and Summer School will provide professionals
with latest in MNT products and systems
Rome, Italy— Dr. Coumar Oudea, President of CANEUS Europe and Milind Pimprikar, Chairman of CANEUS International today announced the creation of the CANEUS Europe Micro-Nanotechnology Centers for Excellence and Summer Schools focusing on Aeronautics, Space and Defence Applications, that will integrate MNT research, education, and aerospace applications through partnerships with universities, governments and industries from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands and France.
Dr. Francesco Svelto, of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) hosted the CANEUS Europe Strategic Meeting at the ASI headquarters in Rome to plan focused CANEUS activities in Europe during 2010 –till 2020 period.
Key CANEUS colleagues representing the 9 European countries (Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany) met to formulate CANEUS workshops /hands-on training and Summer School programs in their respective countries. The meeting was convened by CANEUS Chairman Milind Pimprikar as part of the CANEUS Europe and CANEUS Asia strategic plan for 2010-2020 periods.
In addition to International MNT for Space Week CANEUS is Co-Hosting with the ESA (European Space Agency), on September 13-17, 2010, the CANEUS activities in Europe will embrace “Focused CANEUS Consortia Workshops”, “CANEUS Hands-on Training Programs”, “CANEUS MNT for Aerospace Summer Schools”, and the CANEUS Biannual Conferences.
Spain
Barcelona – Spain: novel MNT Devices and “System on Chip (SOC) and System in Package (SIP)”
Headed by Dr. Carles Ferrer the hands-on MNT Centre for Excellence for Aerospace Professionals, and Program Managers will focus on creating novel MNT Devices and “System on Chip (SOC) and System in Package (SIP)” that could, for example, cover one week of theory and the second week for hands-on training for aerospace and defence applications. Additionally, it will also build on the European MNT biomedical activities, enable high capacity energy and information storage devices, and produce sensors and components for aircraft and marine, as well as other important applications. The first training sessions are planned for April 2011 and September 2011 period and will be limited to 20 industrial participants. Additionally, Barcelona will also host the MNT for Aerospace and Defence Summer School in 2011/2012 period.
Italy
Capua (Naples) – Italy: Nano-Materials for Thermal Protection
Headed by ASI (Italian Space Agency), the CANEUS hands-on Training Centre for Excellence will focus on Nano-material concepts for hypersonic – space and defence applications. Again, the two weeks theory and hands-on program will be limited to 20 participants with the first session planned for 2011/2012 period.
Frascati (Rome) Italy: Nano-Sensors and Materials for ICT, aerospace, biomedicine
Dr. Stefano Bellucci, of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics will head the CANEUS hands-on training centre on Nanotechnology (Nano-materials and sensors) and Summer School for aerospace and biomedical applications. The training and Summer School program, limited to 20 professionals will build on the EU project CATHERINE on nanointerconnections as well “Innovative Methodologies for the risk assessment from occupational exposure to nanomaterials".
Greece
Greece: CANEUS Workshop on FBW (Fly-By-Wireless):
Headed by Dr. Constantin Papadas, Greece will host CANEUS Workshop on FBW for Aerospace applications planned towards early 2011.
Belgium
UCL- Belgium: CANEUS Workshop on HE (Harsh Environment) Sensors
Headed by Microsystems Chair Prof. Laurent Francis, UCL, Belgium, will host CANEUS Workshop on MNT Harsh Environment Sensors for Aerospace and Defence Applications planned towards 2010 end or early 2011 period. The 2-3 days workshop limited to 100 participants will help advance the concepts presented at the CANEUS-ESA International MNT for Space Week and also formulate funding proposals to EU framework programme.
CANEUS International and International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) agree on Joint Projects and Activities
Spotlight on Europe and Asia
IAA Secretary General Jean-Michel Constant (left) and CANEUS International Chairman Milind Pimprikar (right) met in Vienna, Austria to formalize the details of specific programs the two organizations will undertake in the next two years period.
The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and the CANEUS International has agreed to undertake joint programs focusing on CANEUS Consortia Model based on Open Innovation to provide the space industry with access to the emerging Micro-Nano-Technologies worldwide.
The IAA is an honorary society with an action agenda. The Academy has a strong scientific program this year with about 16 standalone conferences around the world. The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) is an independent organization of distinguished individuals elected by their peers for their outstanding contributions to astronautics and the exploration of space.
The IAA has both its independent studies (35 in preparation and 4 published since January) and conferences and collaborates with others partner societies. Although the IAA has many connections to other similar organizations, it is distinctive as the only international academy of elected members in broad area of astronautics and space.
CANEUS International, a non-profit organization, proposes a rapid and cost-effective method of technology transition via the creation of international collaborative sector consortia. These international public/private partnerships between industry, university, and government stakeholders pool membership's resources to define and execute high-risk, high-cost projects and initiatives. Sector Consortia thus constitute smoothly functioning development “pipelines” for emerging micro-nano-technology concepts.
Each CANEUS Sector Consortium is chartered with facilitating the transition of aerospace relevant technologies such as Advanced Materials, Next Generation Devices and Systems, Reliability & Testing Technologies, Fly-by-Wireless Technologies and Small Satellite Systems.
Joint CANEUS-IAA Workshop in India
The joint CANEUS-IAA Workshops will focus on producing deliverables in the selected Sector Consortia topics. The ultimate deliverables would include key projects to be pursued in order to realize the Consortia vision.
The joint CANEUS-IAA workshop is expected to be the first in series of projects / initiatives the two organizations will pursue together in coming years.
For more information on workshop dates:
http://caneus.org/newsletter/release_031210.html
Texas' influence on textbooks could wane
Budget woes, technology advances make battles over book content less important
By Kate Alexander
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 10:44 p.m. Tuesday, March 9, 2010
As a giant in the textbook market, Texas and its education officials have left fingerprints on the classroom readers used far beyond the Red River.
The long reach of the State Board of Education has attracted outsized national attention for years as board members engaged in pitched battles over textbook content from evolution to the Founding Fathers.
That debate will resume today on the social studies curriculum standards that will serve as the framework for future history, government and economics textbooks and lessons.
But changes in Texas' purchasing practices, a looming budget shortfall and legislators' efforts to wean schools off hardbound textbooks could mean that Texas — and the State Board of Education — will no longer be the arbiter of content it has been in the past.
The textbooks being purchased now for language arts classes will probably mark "the end of the high-level of Texas influence as we knew it in the '70s, '80s and '90s," said David Anderson , a former director of curriculum at the Texas Education Agency and now a lobbyist whose clients include a major textbook publisher.
Textbook publishers who are relying on the upcoming science and social studies purchases do so at their own risk, Anderson said.
"It is really too murky to see what is ahead," Anderson said. "I think there is more change coming."
Bob Cassel, publisher of EMC Publishing Co., whose literature texts have been approved by the board, said publishers have tailored textbooks to Texas in the past because the state has been an enormous customer with a reliable source of textbook funding from the $22 billion Permanent School Fund. more....
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/texas-influence-on-textbooks-could-wane-336909.html
Rice among top 50 for computer game design
Princeton Review, GamePro pick best undergraduate game programs
HOUSTON -- (March 2, 2010) -- Rice University is one of the 50 best undergraduate institutions in the U.S. and Canada at which to study computer game design, according to a new survey released today by The Princeton Review.
The Princeton Review developed the "Top 50 Undergraduate Game Design Programs" list in partnership with GamePro magazine. The list appears at in GamePro’s April issue and at www.princetonreview.com/gamedesign.
"Rice's program is small but growing," said Joe Warren, chair of computer science at Rice, who teaches two game-design courses each year. "We have plans for more course offerings in digital media, and we have strong industry partners. Perhaps the best measure of our success is the fact that several of our graduates are working in the industry, both with local and national companies."
In developing the top 50 list, The Princeton Review and GamePro surveyed roughly 500 programs where students can study game design in the U.S. and Canada. Programs were selected based on a survey of administrators at institutions offering game design coursework and/or degrees. The comprehensive survey, which was conducted in 2009-10, included more than 50 questions and covered areas from academics and faculty credentials to graduates’ employment and career achievements. Criteria included the quality of the curriculum, faculty, facilities and infrastructure. The Princeton Review also looked at data on scholarships, financial aid and career opportunities. The Princeton Review and GamePro ranked the top eight programs and listed the rest of the top 50 alphabetically.
Warren teaches the flagship course in Rice's program, a senior-level design course that teams students from computer science and the visual arts. Teams present and demonstrate their game designs for a jury of industry professionals several times during the yearlong course.
"It's a hands-on experience, and the students walk away with a greater understanding that game design is more than just writing code," Warren said. "You have to think about the business, artistic and technical elements at every step in the process."
For more information on Rice's program in computer game creation, visit http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~comp160/
How Christian Were the Founders?
By RUSSELL SHORTO
Conservative activists on the Texas Board of Education say that the authors of the Constitution intended the United States to be a Christian nation. And they want America’s history textbooks to say so.
Even if you live in another state, your textbooks will be affected by decisions made in Texas. The following paragraph makes the point on why Texas has this influence...it is always about the money. (Editors Note)
"Public education has always been a battleground between cultural forces; one reason that Texas’ school-board members find themselves at the very center of the battlefield is, not surprisingly, money. The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with (which are referred to as TEKS — pronounced ”teaks“ — for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online —are still the backbone of education."
Read the entire article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?th&emc=th
What Do Students Know?
February 12th, 2010
This chart plots the mean score of students (blue dots) and their teachers (black triangles) to sets of questions in the science categories labeled, and grouped by Grade. 1.00 means all correct answers, and 0.00 means all wrong answers. Red circles are the teachers estimate of how their students would do - they are uniformly too optimistic. A score of .8 was defined as signaling "proficiency" - no student groups were found to be proficient in any subject; in a few cases even teachers were not proficient. Credit: P. Sadler, et al, 2010
Black holes, frozen worlds, the "big bang," supernovae -- when it comes to telling strange and compelling stories, astronomy and space science educators can draw upon these and other denizens of a celestial zoo more outlandish than the animals in any earthly zoo. There is more to astronomy, however, than incredible objects and extreme theories. The underlying concepts on which astronomy is based are the traditional elements of physics, chemistry, and earth science. Interest in astronomy can thus provide the motivation for learning these fundamentals.
The National Research Council and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have for years been working to determine what students know about science and how they learn it, and to find better ways to teach them. States have adopted their guidelines and standards to establish their own science education goals. Astronomy education is an important part of the overall picture.
Students have many disturbing misconceptions about the universe, and a team of researchers at SAO have been studying what they are and quantifying their effects. Phil Sadler, Harold Coyle, Jaime Miller, Nancy Cook-Smith, Mary Dussault, and Roy Gould have just published their findings and recommendations in the Astronomical Education Review. They analyzed hundreds of different K-12 tests, multiple choice and otherwise, that were administered to both students and their teachers.
The SAO group has long been expert in the study of popular misconceptions that are hard to shake, and that color a person's basic understanding of the underlying science; thinking that the earth experiences summer when it is closer to the sun is one example.
Here are some other common and disturbing misconceptions reported by the team: for high school students, that telescopes are put into space to get closer to astronomical objects, that the universe is getting hotter, and that astronauts have traveled beyond the moon; for grades 5-8, that there is no gravity in space, that the sun is not a star, and that other stars are closer to us than is Pluto.
There are lots of other examples; occasionally some teachers share the misconceptions. The SAO group has over the years authored textbooks and other tools that are particularly attentive to explaining and preventing science misconceptions.
The SAO researchers studied how these apparently seductive misconceptions could distract students away from choosing the correct answer in multiple-choice tests. They argue that such "distractors" should be included in evaluation tests but note that most often are not, and therefore that results from tests designed to measure student understanding are misleading, and that evaluation of the pedagogy is therefore inadequate. The team also found that teachers across the board overestimate their students' understanding of basic ideas, in part because of emphasizing detailed memorization over basic conceptual understanding as probed by misconceptions.
One result of their work, besides a new appreciation of the importance of identifying and addressing misconceptions, is a set of new assessment tools for K-12 astronomy and space science that can be used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of students, and help schools plan for teachers' professional development.
Provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
White House Pushes Science and Math Education
By KENNETH CHANG
November 23, 2009-To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.
President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say.
The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, will focus mainly on activities outside the classroom. For example, Discovery Communications has promised to use two hours of the afternoon schedule on its Science Channel cable network for commercial-free programming geared toward middle school students.
Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May.
The MacArthur Foundation and technology industry organizations are giving out prizes in a contest to develop video games that teach science and math.
”The different sectors are responding to the president’s call for all hands on deck,“ John P. Holdren, the White House science adviser, said in an interview.
The other parts of the campaign include a two-year focus on science on ”Sesame Street,“ the venerable public television children’s show, and a Web site, connectamillionminds.com, set up by Time Warner Cable, that provides a searchable directory of local science activities. The cable system will contribute television time and advertising to promote the site.
The White House has also recruited Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, and corporate executives like Craig R. Barrett, a former chairman of Intel, and Ursula M. Burns, chief executive of Xerox, to champion the cause of science and math education to corporations and philanthropists.
Dr. Ride said their role would be identifying successful programs and then connecting financing sources to spread the successes nationally. ”The need is funding,“ she said. ”There is a lot of corporate interest and foundation interest in this issue.“
Administration officials say that the breadth of participation in Educate to Innovate is wider than in previous efforts, which have failed to produce a perceptible rise in test scores or in most students’ perceptions of math and science. In international comparison exams, American students have long lagged behind those in much of Asia and Europe.
But some education experts said the initiatives did little to address some core issues: improving the quality of teachers and the curriculum.
”I think a lot of this is good, but it is missing more than half of what needs to be done,“ said Mark S. Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization in Washington. ”It has nothing to do with the day-to-day teaching,“ said Dr. Schneider, who was the commissioner of education statistics at the Department of Education from 2005 to 2008.
Dr. Holdren said the initiatives, which are financed almost entirely by the participating companies and foundations and not the government, complement the Race to the Top program of the Department of Education, which will dispense $4.35 billion in stimulus financing to states for innovative education programs. The Race to the Top rules give extra points to applications that emphasize science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects.
”The president has made it very clear it is a big priority,“ Dr. Holdren said.
In April, Mr. Obama, speaking at the National Academy of Sciences, promised a ”renewed commitment“ that would move the United States ”from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math over the next decade.“
To achieve this goal, Mr. Obama talked of ”forging partnerships.“ Monday’s announcement contains the first wave of such partnerships, officials said.
David M. Zaslav, the president and chief executive of Discovery, said Mr. Obama’s words about science education inspired Discovery to come up with the idea of two hours of programming, a mix of old and new content, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays on the Science Channel. The idea is that students coming home from school will have a ready means to learn more science.
”We took that to the administration,“ Mr. Zaslav said. ”They loved it.“
The lack of commercials is ”a big statement by us that it’s not about the money,“ he said. ”It’s about reinforcing the importance of science to kids and inspiring them.“
The programming is to begin next year; the date has not been set yet.
The foundation of Jack D. Hidary, an entrepreneur who earned his fortune in finance and technology, worked with the National Science Teachers Association, the MacArthur Foundation and the American Chemical Society to create a Web site, nationallabday.org, that matches scientists willing to volunteer their time and teachers describing what projects they hope to incorporate into their classes.
For example, Mr. Hidary said, a project could involve students’ recording of birdsongs and comparing them with others from elsewhere. ”That’s actually scientifically useful,“ he said. ”Kids can actually perform useful science.“
The projects are to culminate in National Lab Day, which schools will hold the first week of May, but the projects will typically spread over several months. Mr. Hidary said students learn better with hands-on inquiries.
”We are not about one-offs,“ he said. ”We’re not looking for bringing in a scientist for a day.“
After the chemical society joined the effort, other scientific organizations also signed on, Mr. Hidary said, adding, ”Each one is coming, upping the ante.“
For the video game challenge, the idea is to piggyback on the interest children already have in playing the games. ”That’s where they are,“ said Michael D. Gallagher, chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group and one of the sponsors. ”This initiative is a recognition of that.“
Sony is expected to donate 1,000 PlayStation 3 game consoles and copies of the game LittleBigPlanet to libraries and community organizations in low-income areas. Part of the competition will consist of children creating new levels in LittleBigPlanet that incorporate science and math. The other part will offer a total of $300,000 in prize money to game designers for science and math games that will be distributed free.
”We’re finding extraordinary engagement with games,“ said Connie Yowell, director of education for MacArthur. If the engagement is combined with a science curriculum, she said, ”then I think we have a very powerful approach.“
Some of the initiatives were already in the works and would have been rolled out regardless of the administration’s campaign. ”Sesame Street“ already planned to incorporate nature into this year’s season, but has now decided to add discussions of the scientific method in next year’s episodes.
”We’ve really never kind of approached it that way before,“ said Gary E. Knell, president and chief executive of the Sesame Workshop.
Time Warner Cable had already decided to devote 80 percent of its philanthropy efforts to science and math education before Mr. Obama’s speech in April. But the company adjusted its project to fit in with the others.
”Being part of a bigger effort,“ said Glenn A. Britt, the chief executive, ”increases the chances that the effort will be successful.“
nanoICT School on Nanophotonics and Modelling Issues for ICT Celebrated in San Sebastian, Spain
Madrid (Spain): November, 18, 2009
In order for the field of emerging nanoelectronics to continue growing exponentially worldwide and therefore lead to new commercial applications and to change the micro and nanoelectronics paradigm, it is necessary to educate new researchers who can work across traditional disciplines. The EU funded nanoICT project establishes a broad array of specialised training activities to provide mainly students with interdisciplinary competences in Nanotechnology and more specifically ”nano-scale ICT devices & systems“ (Emerging Nanoelectronics).
The main training activity within nanoICT was a post-graduate winter school on ”ICT nanoscale devices“ research domains that took place at CIC nanoGUNE Research Center, in San Sebastian (Spain): October 26-30, 2009 - organised by the Phantoms Foundation, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC),Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) and CIC nanoGUNE and in collaboration with the nanoICT Coordination Action.
Two schools of 2 days duration were organized on NanoOptics-NanoPhotonics (35 participants) and NanoModeling (26 participants). Student presented their contribution to this school during the poster sessions.
Such an initiative will generate a new generation of high-skilled interdisciplinary scientists, indispensable to the sustainability of European excellence in the topic considered, but also educate the current working force.
During this school, an open symposium also took place (66 participants). The symposium programme was composed of international representative’s presentations and invited talks on scientific research highlights of NanoICT topics.
Conference material is online available for download:
Lectures: http://www.phantomsnet.net/nanoICT/School09/programme.php?project=4#symposium
Full abstracts book: http://www.phantomsnet.net/nanoICT/files/nanoICTSchool_final_revisedNov2009.pdf
More info:
NanoICT Coordination Action http://www.nanoict.org
NanoICT School 2009: http://www.phantomsnet.net/nanoICT/School09/index.php?project=4
Contact Information:
-Questions regarding the nanoICT project please contact:
Dr. Antonio Correia (Project Coordinator): antonio(at)phantomsnet.net
About Phantoms Foundation: This Non-Profit organisation was established on November 26, 2002 (Madrid, Spain) in order to provide high level Management profile to scientific projects. This association plays an important role in the 7th Framework Programme as a platform for European funded projects (nanoICT, nanomagma, nanoCODE) to spread excellence amongst a wider audience, and to help in forming new networks.
This Association is now a key actor in structuring and fostering European Excellence in ”Nanoscience and Nanotechnology“, having a world leading position in organising conferences, training and dissemination activities in this field.
WEB site: http://www.phantomsnet.net
-Questions regarding the NanoICT EU-FET proactive program please contact:
Dr. David Guedj (Project officer): david.guedj(at)ec.europa.eu
ICT Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) – NanoICT Proactive Initiative
European Commission
DG Information Society and Media, Office BU-25 5/38, B-1049 Brussels
WEB site: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fet-proactive/nanoict_en.html
IES Education News
The Institute of Education Sciences is announcing the latest on research initiatives from John Easton, recently sworn-in as IES director and news from the four centers of IES. Other items in Education Research News include an update on the 2010 research conference, a link to the new financial aid calculator, and new staff introductions.
To read the newsletter, click:
http://ies.ed.gov/whatsnew/newsletters/
By visiting Newsflash you may also sign up to receive information from IES and its four Centers NCES, NCER, NCEE, & NCSER to stay abreast of all activities within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).
To obtain hard copy of many IES products as well as hard copy and electronic versions of hundreds of other U.S. Department of Education products please visit http://www.edpubs.org or call 1-877-433-7827 (877-4-EDPUBS).
Clicks vs. Bricks - NECC 2009
Experts debate the relevancy of brick-and-mortar schools in an internet-connected world at the 2009 National Educational Computing Conference in Washington, D.C. Watch the video:
High school teacher's algebra book aces California test
Book from Rice University's Connexions used in historic K-12 initiative
COSTA MESA, Calif. -- (Aug. 11, 2009) -- As California prepares to become the first state in the nation to offer free, open-source digital textbooks for high school students this fall, state officials today gave an A-plus to a North Carolina high school teacher's algebra II textbook, one of the first open-source texts submitted for the program.
Advanced Algebra II <http://cnx.org/content/m19435/latest/> by Raleigh, N.C., math teacher Kenny Felder was submitted to California officials by Connexions, an open-education initiative at Rice University in Houston that publishes the open-copyright book.
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiative, together with President Obama’s proposal to invest $500 million in open-education over the next decade, are two of the most significant steps forward in open-education to date," said Joel Thierstein, Connexions executive director. "Open education is the biggest advance in education since Horace Mann’s push for mandatory free public education in the U.S."
California Secretary of Education Glen Thomas today unveiled his department's review of the first 16 digital texts submitted by publishers in response to Schwarzenegger's May 6 call for free open-source digital textbooks for high school students. Textbook choices are made at the local level in California, and Thomas' reviews are designed to help local officials choose digital books that best meet their needs. The reviews assessed how well each book complied with California's state textbook standards, and Connexions' algebra text scored a 96, meeting 26 of the 27 standards tested.
Felder, who teaches algebra and calculus at Raleigh Charter High School, said he was delighted to learn that his book scored so well on California's test. He said the book was created from the lessons he created and refined during 10 years of algebra II classes.
"My book presents math as an exploration of ideas -- not a collection of facts and techniques," Felder said. "Students often tell me they are realizing, for the first time, that math makes sense. And that's what I hope they remember from my class; there are reasons for everything in math, and you should ask 'Why?' and keep asking, particularly if someone says, 'That's just the way it is.'"
Thierstein said Felder's story isn't unlike those of many authors who've submitted materials to Connexions.
"One of the beauties of open-education in general, and Connexions in particular, is that anyone who wants to take the time to create content can do it, and anyone who wants to update content and keep it current or improve it can do that too," Thierstein said. "A book is never static in Connexions because everything is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Only copyright license. Any teacher can modify the book to make it culturally relevant for their students."
The reviews of Felder's book and the other submissions for California's K-12 open-source textbook initiative were presented at a symposium in Orange County this morning that was organized by the California Educational Technology Professionals Association. The event attracted hundreds of officials who are tasked with choosing curriculum in a year with extremely tight budgets. Thierstein, an invited panelist, answered questions and explained how open-source texts like Felder's book could both improve classroom instruction and save money.
"Everyone is looking to cut costs over the next couple of years, but the real beauty of open-educational resources like Kenny Felder's book is that they provide the foundation for a step-change in the quality of education in the United States," Thierstein said.
With more than a million visitors a month and one of the world's largest repositories of open-education resources, Connexions is a leading global provider of open-copyright licensed, free educational materials. Connexions is available free for anyone to contribute to or learn from at <http://cnx.org>.
Joint effort by governors and state chiefs groups seeks to define reading and math standards for 44 participating states
By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor, eSchool News
As the idea of common educational standards gains traction across the United States, the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) has released the first draft of its proposed national reading and math standards.
The initiative, created by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), aims to ensure that all students graduate from high school ready for college and the 21st century workforce by creating a common core of standards for all states.
It's been a long-held tradition in American public education that decisions about standards and curriculum are best left to state and local school systems, and that belief has derailed past efforts to push for a national set of standards. But NGA and CCSSO say this effort is different, because it's driven by collective state action and because states will voluntarily adopt the standards based on their own timelines and context.
Every state except Alaska, South Carolina, Missouri, and Texas has signed on to the effort so far. But getting the states to adopt whatever emerges will be politically difficult.
Read full article at:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=59934
Online Learning: Changing the nature of schooling
Read this FREE special report and you'll:
Discover how online learning is cost-effective
Garner information on how it prepares students to survive in the real world
Discover how online learning has gained more respect over that past ten years
Find out what laws states are passing to make online learning more accessible
Hear input from students who are enrolled in virtual schools
Read this special now at:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-articles/index.cfm?i=58076
Ask people ten years ago and they'd say that they considered online learning to be less respectable than traditional learning in brick and mortar buildings. Now, it is a viable option for many students providing them with the flexibility to learn on their own terms. Susan Patrick, president and chief executive of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) says that the acceptance has grown. "More and more parents and students are aware that we live in the internet age, and they want access to educational opportunities, whether they're offered over the internet or not."
Many people think of online learning and they quickly disregard it since their children won't have interaction with their peers. However, they're mistaken. Students interact with teachers and their peers on a daily basis. They participate in group work and collaboration. Advocates of online education say that the biggest benefit is that it prepares students for a world where life is not structured in class periods and adults increasingly communicate electronically, work remotely, and meet virtually.
Once more parents realize that online learning isn't just a fad, more virtual schooling programs will emerge across the U.S. ultimately offering students a different and broader environment to learn in.
Thanks to support from K12 Inc., this special report is available now to all educators at eSchool News Online
Find out more about online learning today. Visit our special report available for FREE now at:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-articles/index.cfm?i=58076
Check out our free online learning resources for K-12 nano science
Online tutorials help elementary school teachers make sense of science
June 18th, 2009
Interactive Web-based science tutorials can be effective tools for helping elementary school teachers construct powerful explanatory models of difficult scientific concepts, and research shows the interactive tutorials are just as effective online as they are in face-to-face settings, says a University of Illinois expert in science education.
David Brown, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education, said that elementary school teachers need high-quality, research-based resources to help them build a meaningful scientific knowledge base.
"Refining one's scientific knowledge base through online interactive resources can help teachers develop a deeper conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena, making them better prepared to engage students in science-based activities," Brown said.
In any curriculum, there is teacher background literature or other forms of digested information that teachers can study to refresh their memories or get the broad stroke outlines of what they're going to teach.
The trouble with those teaching aids, according to Brown, is that the information they contain is "usually fairly terse" and isn't interactive or research-based.
If teachers lack confidence in their scientific knowledge base, they're probably going to avoid situations where they might be caught flat-footed by a student's question, because they don't want to be asked a question they don't know how to answer, Brown said.
So they'll fall back on more traditional lesson plans that emphasize the rote memorization of scientific terms over inquiry-based forms of learning, such as hands-on activities and discussions of those activities.
But an emphasis on routinized learning doesn't help students grasp the foundational science behind what they're learning, Brown said.
"If online tutorials focus on explaining the underlying scientific concepts behind the phenomena rather than on the rote memorization of facts, that can help teachers form a more meaningful conceptual understanding of what they're going to teach," he said. "A teacher who has a firm scientific knowledge base can then help students understand the fundamental scientific ideas and concepts behind what they're learning better."
To test his hypothesis, Brown developed "Making Sense of Science," an online multimedia tutorial that tested subjects' pre- and post-test knowledge of the scientific concept of buoyancy.
In the first 10 interviews, the average post-test score increased by 16 percent; in the second group of 10, by 28 percent; and for a group of 68 online users, by 33 percent. Similarly, Brown discovered that the average post-test confidence scores nearly doubled after the respondents interacted with the tutorials, and the written explanations of their ideas went from "somewhat incoherent" to "coherent explanations that made use of relevant ideas," he said.
"We found that our resources were effective, and they were as effective online as they were face-to-face," Brown said.
The tutorials were also crafted to address the perceived deficiencies that Brown thought other teacher background information and online resources suffered from.
"The resources are designed to help teachers develop their ideas," Brown said. "They're not designed for teachers to use directly with the students, but rather as background information for the teachers to develop their ideas so they'll be in a better position to engage students in activities."
Those positive results make Brown guardedly optimistic that online resources for teachers can be developed that will be helpful in advancing reform in elementary science education.
"The focus in both national and state standards is involving students in inquiry-oriented activities," he said. "This is just trying to provide a resource for teachers for what they're already being asked to do at the national and state levels."
Brown believes having better prepared elementary school science teachers will ultimately lead to more students interested in science.
"There's a world of difference between a drill-and-kill lesson versus an inquiry-oriented one in terms of student engagement and retention," he said. "There's a wealth of potential there that we're not tapping into."
Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (news : web)
eSchool News Online Education Resource Center:
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Online learning is no longer regarded with the skepticism it was a decade ago—and now thousands of K-12 schools nationwide are turning to online-learning providers for help with credit recovery, enrichment opportunities for gifted students, and even for providing core curriculum classes in areas where there isn't enough demand to justify keeping a teacher on staff.
Many people think of online learning and they quickly disregard it since their children won't have interaction with their peers. However, they're mistaken. Students interact with teachers and their peers on a daily basis. They participate in group work and collaboration. Advocates of online education say that the biggest benefit is that it prepares students for a world where life is not structured in class periods and adults increasingly communicate electronically, work remotely, and meet virtually.
Browse our K-12 Nano Science Education Outreach Online Resources at:
http://www.tntg.org/documents/46.html
New standards to facilitate eLearning
'Common Cartridge' reportedly will allow any digital content to work with any standards-based software
By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor
A consortium of educators and technology executives has developed a common set of standards that will allow any kind of digital learning content--such as an electronic text, an online exam, or even a social-networking application--to be used with any type of learning management system (LMS) or student information system (SIS), or web portal.
In theory, implementing this set of free, open standards, called Common Cartridge, would give K-12 and college educators the flexibility to use any combination of materials in a collaborative, content-rich digital learning environment, without worrying about compatibility issues. Read More...
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=57976
Video: $12 Computers?
While it's hard to imagine life without a computer, it's a sad reality for many people in third world countries. A UCSD grad student is hoping to change all that with a $12 computer.
To view this video segment: http://www.kusi.com/news/goodmorning/40447367.html.
For more info on the project, visit http://playpower.org
Tech giants vow to change global assessments
Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco say global, 21st-century assessments
are key to student success and economic prosperity
By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor, eschool news
Companies say they hope these assessments will spur systemic changes
Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco--three technology giants that last year vowed to increase their efforts aimed at global education reform--have banded together to develop the next generation of assessments: tests that measure 21st-century skills and provide a global framework for excellence.
At the Learning and Technology Forum in London earlier this month, the three companies unveiled plans to underwrite a multi-sector research project to develop new approaches, methods, and technologies for measuring the success of 21st-century teaching and learning efforts in classrooms around the world.
Read full story at: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=56819
Texas School Standards: Age of the Universe Erased
Texas school standards next attack: Removing references to the age of the universe.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The fight over the new education and curriculum standards for the public schools in Texas has been long and publicized. Most of the publicity, though, focuses on the school board's focus on "intelligent design" as it relates to the biological question of evolution. Because evolution has long been contested in public schools, it is no real surprise that this has gotten the most play from the media. But one thing that hasn't been mentioned as much is the fact that the Texas school standards also remove mention of the age of the universe. Long-standing ideas of cosmology are being challenged as well.
Originally in the Texas school standards was this phrase: "concept of an expanding universe that originated about 14 billion years ago." However, board member Barbara Cargill thought this wasn't good enough. It was too definite. The standards now read, "current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe." You can bet that the age of the earth is not listed in the Texas curriculum as about 4.5 billion years old -- in spite of the fact that most of the people my age and older have known (or rather, estimated) this for years.
There certainly are many different theories about the formation of the universe. Whether it was a big bang or a big bounce are two of them. Cosmologists and astronomers wonder about the rate of expansion in the early universe, and they debate the effects of gravity (not to mention its nature) as well as consider questions about the composition of the universe and the kinds of particles that exist. However, despite the questions that do exist about the origination of the universe, there is very little debate about its age.
Right now, the latest estimate is that the universe is 13.73 billion years old, plus or minus 120 million years. This information is the latest from results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe (WMAP). While the age of the universe is likely to be fine tuned in coming years, it is extremely likely that it will remain in the neighborhood of 14 billion years. And few scientists see the age of the earth being cast in doubt as well. But it appears that cosmology could now be thrown into the fray of science v. religion.
Until now, matters of space have been very little addressed in terms of religion. After all, couldn't God have created the universe well before putting humans on Earth? But it appears that by working from Earth outward, some are becoming concerned. If God created humans on Earth just a few millennia ago, then Earth can't be 4.5 billion years old. And if Earth isn't as old as all that, surely the universe isn't, either. It's an interesting train of logic. And one that could result in all we know about space science being brought under attack.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
http://www.physorg.com/news158320278.html
Future of school textbooks written in cyberspace
January 14th, 2009
Northwest Missouri State University students started spring semester classes Monday, but many aren't lugging thick textbooks around campus.
Instead, most students are carrying a lightweight electronic device that can fit in a coat pocket and hold the textbook material for all their classes. Some students will download their text information onto their laptops.
At Northwest, textbooks - at least the bound kind - are fast becoming a thing of the past.
Besides taking a load off students' backs, going textbook-free can save them a lot of money.
The pilot electronic textbook program began in the fall with four classes and about 200 students. This spring, roughly 4,000 of the school's 6,500 students will use electronic textbooks.
"I think that it's the way the world is going," said Dean L. Hubbard, Northwest's president, who is retiring in July after 25 years at the Maryville, Mo., university.
Textbook publishers say many colleges are moving toward using some electronic textbooks, but Northwest's plan to eventually eliminate all bound textbooks makes it a leader in the movement.
"Right now, digital products account for a small percent of our higher education business, but it is growing at a rate that is breathtaking," said Jeffrey Ho, a product manager for McGraw-Hill Education.
But Northwest can only move toward a bookless campus as fast as the availability of e-books allows, Hubbard said.
"Publishers don't have all textbooks online yet," he said. "But I would think as a realistic measure we could be totally out of the printed textbook business in three years."
That idea pleases sophomore Mike Jenkins.
"I think the whole concept is pretty cool," said Jenkins, 19, of Lee's Summit, Mo. Jenkins used e-books in his history class during the fall semester.
"I would like it if we didn't have textbooks at all anymore," he said. "You wouldn't have the hassle of messing with books. The e-book is so convenient, and you don't have to carry all those books around."
Plus, unlike printed textbooks, e-books have pop-up interactive quizzes and the ability to search the full text within seconds for key words. New electronic reader technology also will allow students to take notes in on-screen posted notes.
Jenkins found a few "minor" problems with the e-reader gadget that he and his classmates used.
"You can't look at a whole page on one screen, and it doesn't have a backlight to light up the screen, so you have to be somewhere that is well lit," he said.
Not all students were as comfortable with the electronic textbooks.
"I always worried that something would happen, like it would crash on the night I had to study for a test," said Jennifer Martin, a 22-year-old Northwest senior from Liberty, Mo.
"It's a good concept, but I didn't like it that much. I would rather flip pages back and forth in the textbook when I'm studying. Maybe it would be better to start this with freshmen who haven't yet gotten used to studying using a regular textbook."
Students who want a traditional textbook could still get one.
But the cost savings are hard to ignore, even at Northwest, a school that already is unique because of its textbook rental system and its history of giving every student a laptop.
A textbook-free campus would save the university about $400,000 a year. Currently the university spends about $800,000 a year to keep an inventory of about 50,000 to 80,000 textbooks that are rented out to students. Northwest students pay about $80 to $90 a semester on books, a fraction of what students at other schools pay.
Northwest will continue to charge students just a rental fee. But once the e-book program goes campuswide, Hubbard said, Northwest students' book fee will be cut in half.
E-books are less expensive than bound books, which are updated every few years and then have to be repurchased by the school. E-books can be updated at no cost.
Even at schools without a rental system, students would pay far less for texts on e-books than they would for bound books.
Nationally, the cost of textbooks has soared in the last decade. The average college student spends nearly $1,000 a year on textbooks, according to the National Association of College Stores.
Northwest will purchase the electronic readers and then load them with the e-books each student needs. The student would pick up their loaded e-reader at the university bookstore or have their electronic textbooks loaded on their laptop.
The e-book plan is being phased in, with more faculty members signing up each year to teach classes using electronic textbooks.
"We think that students who are coming to Northwest today are more comfortable with learning from electronic text because they are used to reading from a computer screen," said Paul Klute, assistant to the president at Northwest.
"It's nothing for a student to read for two or three hours on a computer screen."
University faculty members are getting used to the idea of Northwest doing away with bound textbooks, but they hope students can choose to read the e-books on laptops, e-readers or iPods.
"We are going to have to have multiple modes of delivery," said Rod Barr, an agriculture instructor who used the e-reader gadget in one of his fall classes. "Not all students are the same and not all classes use textbooks in the same way."
Barr said the e-reader used by his students had limited use for class discussions requiring students to jump around from chapter to chapter.
"It's a good device for straight front-to-back novel reading, though," he said.
He said the more technologically savvy students in his class used the device the most, "but they also had the greatest expectations."
___
© 2009, The Kansas City Star.
Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kansascity.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
http://www.physorg.com/print151174757.html
SSoS Spotlight: Substantial School Improvement in Virginia
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
2:00 — 3:00 p.m. Eastern
How can state departments of education provide meaningful, effective support to school districts that have schools in danger of, or already in, restructuring? How might state departments of education work more efficiently and effectively to help their school districts avoid becoming overwhelmed by increasing numbers of schools in need of improvement? The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) answered this difficult question with an ongoing series of targeted trainings for local education agencies on research-based indicators of substantial school improvement.
Tune in to "Substantial School Improvement," one in a series of webinars sponsored by the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center (ARCC) and the Mid-Atlantic Comprehensive Center (MACC) that explores how states are leveraging their statewide systems of support to encourage district and school improvement.
Guests:
Dr. Kathleen Smith, Director of the Office of School Improvement, VDOE
Dr. Keith Smith, Virginia Liaison, ARCC
This event is facilitated by:
Dr. John Ross, Director of Technology, ARCC
Visit http://www.arcc.edvantia.org to register.
800.624.9120 | www.arcc.edvantia.org | info@arcc.edvantia.org
Post Office Box 1348, Charleston, West Virginia 25325-1348
Governor's Budget Continues Washington's Efforts in STEM Education
Many of Washington's programs aimed at enhancing the skills of educators in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM) fields will continue to receive state support in the coming biennium under Gov. Christine Gregoire's budget proposal - while other TBED initiatives did not fare as well.
The governor's fiscal year 2009-11 budget recommends a total of $17.5 million from the general fund and the Education Legacy Trust Fund to support the state's "foundational math and science effort," which includes school district math and science coaches, math and science standards and curriculum development, after-school math assistance and support for the LASER science program. Specific recommendations include:
$7.5 million to provide grants for instructional coaches in math and science for middle and high schools;
$3.1 million each fiscal year for the LASER program, a statewide program designed to implement an inquiry-based K-8 science education program;
$1.85 million for specialized professional development for one math teacher and one science teacher in each middle and high school;
$1.4 million for three additional professional development days for middle and high school math and science teachers;
$244,000 each fiscal year for conditional stipends for certified teachers to receive training in mathematics or science fields; and
$139,000 each fiscal year for the office of the superintendent of public instruction to coordinate and promote efforts to develop integrated STEM programs across the state.
To help address a projected $5.7 billion shortfall, the governor recommends cutting 13 percent across-the-board for the state's research and regional institutions and 6 percent for community and technical colleges. Budget documents note that the lower rate of reduction to community and technical colleges is in recognition of their mission in job training and skills essential to the development of the state's economic recovery.
Gov. Gregoire's budget requests $2 million each fiscal year for the Washington Technology Center, down from $2.8 million each fiscal year approved last biennium by lawmakers, and $246,000 for the Manufacturing Innovation and Modernization Account to help small- and mid-size manufacturers access innovation and modernization technical assistance. Legislators approved $306,000 in FY09 for the initiative.
The FY09-11 budget includes another installment of $63.3 million transferred to the Life Sciences Discovery Fund from the Tobacco Settlement Account. The $350 million fund was created by the legislature in 2005 to invest in life science companies using tobacco settlement funds and is expected to reach $1 billion over ten years (see the May 16, 2005 issue of the Digest). In December, the fourth round of awards distributed more than $18 million.
The governor's budget for Natural Resources includes $24.8 million across general funds, other funds, transportation funds and the capital budget to support a variety of climate change initiatives. This includes creating green-collar jobs and investments in renewable energy.
Gov. Christine Gregoire's FY 2009-11 budget proposal is available at: http://www.governor.wa.gov/priorities/budget/default.asp.
Virginia Names Physics "Flexbook" Core Team Members
Team members to develop content for VA open-source physics "flexbook"
RICHMOND – Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra and Secretary of Education Tom Morris today announced the selection of thirteen individuals to form a core team to pilot the development and release of an open-source physics "flexbook" for Virginia. This electronic material will focus on high school physics and contain contemporary and emerging 21st century physics and modern laboratory experiments.
The Virginia Physics "Flexbook" project is a collaborative effort of the Secretaries of Education and Technology and the Department of Education that seeks to elevate the quality of physics instruction across the Commonwealth by allowing educators to create and compile supplemental materials relating to 21st century physics in an open-source format that can be used to strengthen physics content. The Commonwealth is partnering with the Palo Alto, California-based non-profit, CK-12 on this initiative as they will provide the free, open-source technology platform to facilitate the publication of the newly developed content as a "flexbook" – defined simply as an adaptive, web-based set of instructional materials.
"We need transformational ideas to ensure all Virginians are educated to compete in an increasingly competitive global economy," said Secretary Chopra. "This pilot initiative is a step in the right direction to introduce our students to contemporary physics topics and lab materials at no additional cost to the taxpayers or students," added Secretary Morris.
The need for this type of material was made clear in recommendations from a panel of practicing physicists that met in the summer of 2007 under the auspices of Virginia's Secretary of Education to review the current Virginia physics content standards of learning (SOL). The panel found that while well-written and clear, the current physics SOL fall short of what our children will need to participate in the 21st century global economy. In particular, the panel recommended that dated material be supplemented by contemporary physics of the most recent 50 years and provide laboratories that engage students with industry state-of-the-practice equipment. Furthermore, the panel recommended that teachers have access to an open-source software capability in order to develop curriculum content in a more timely fashion.
This pilot is also aimed at evaluating the potential cost savings associated with moving to the use of more electronic texts as well as to analyze the value add for teachers when offered the capability to customize a text to their needs for any given year or for any set of students through simple editing.
The core team was selected based on the evaluation of responses to a request for collaboration released on September 9, 2008. The team plans to complete and release the initial content by February 2009. The members of the core team and their affiliations are:
Mike Fetsko, Henrico County Public Schools
David Slykhuis, James Madison University
Mark Mattson, James Madison University
Tom O'Neil, Shenandoah Valley Governor's School
Bruce Davidson, Newport News Public Schools (retired)
Angela Cutshaw, Newport News Public Schools
Mark Clemente, VA Beach Public Schools/National Institute of Aerospace
Andy Jackson, Harrisonburg Public Schools
David Stern, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center (retired)
John Ochab, J. Sargent Reynolds Community College
Tapas Kar, Utah State University
Tony Wayne, Albemarle County Public Schools
Pranav Gokhale, Montgomery County, MD Schools (student)
Jim Batterson will lead this effort for the Commonwealth and Professor David Armstrong of the College of William and Mary physics department will serve as technical advisor.
This announcement also seeks additional affiliate members from throughout the Commonwealth to follow the development of v 1.0 to be released on February 27, 2009 and to participate in subsequent releases.
Office of the Governor Timothy M. Kaine
© Commonwealth of Virginia 2009
E-learning can have positive effect on classroom learning,
scholar says
Traditional classroom teaching in higher education could learn a thing or two from online teaching, otherwise known as e-learning, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies computer-mediated communication, information exchange and the Internet.
Caroline Haythornthwaite, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, says that the value of e-learning has been underrated at the college level, and that some of its methods and techniques can augment traditional classroom learning.
"Compared to the more traditional educational paradigm – the broadcast model, where knowledge is delivered from professor to student from on-high – e-learning turns teaching and learning into a shared endeavor," she said.
E-learning is defined as technology-based learning. Lectures, homework, quizzes and exams are delivered almost entirely or completely online. In some instances, no in-person interaction takes place over the length of the course.
A global economy hungry for customized, portable and on-demand educational platforms coupled with the Internet's rise to dominance as the ubiquitous medium of information delivery means that e-learning is increasingly gaining respect as an innovative and viable pedagogical tool, especially for subjects that require multimedia, collaboration tools (wikis, blogs and course-management systems, for example), and other bandwidth-hungry applications prevalent today.
At Illinois, Haythornthwaite teaches in classrooms real and virtual in the college's 13-year-old LEEP program, a distance-education program that enables graduate students to complete a master of science in library and information science, a certificate of advanced study or a K-12 library and information science certificate online.
For the current crop of more than 700 students seeking a master's degree through GSLIS at Illinois, a little more than half are online students.
Haythornthwaite said she enjoys the robust interaction with her online students.
"With the online classes," she said, "I interact with my students more frequently, dropping into asynchronous discussion daily for a half-hour or an hour. With my traditional classes, I might see them once a week for three hours. If there's a news article I want my online students to read, I can post it and discussion can begin right away. With my classroom students, if I e-mail them an article on Tuesday and we meet for class on Friday, that's one of many things we might discuss. The impact isn't quite as immediate."
Compared with the traditional, face-to-face classroom learning that centers on instructors dictating content and pedagogy, e-learning is a more learner-friendly alternative, also allowing the role of a teacher to be quite different in an e-learning environment, Haythornthwaite said.
"Since there's an emphasis on more learner-centric activities than traditional lecture-based classroom learning, the teacher is more of a facilitator in an online classroom," she said. "Not only does that enhance the collaborative nature of online learning, it also motivates students to be much more engaged and to take more responsibility for what they're learning."
However much e-learning may reshape education, Haythornthwaite noted that it's not necessarily meant to supplant classroom learning, but is more of a supplement to it. She cited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's example of putting all of its classroom materials online for non-commercial use in 2001 as an example of how "blended learning" can be created from a mixture of e-learning and classroom interaction.
"No one stopped going to class when all that material was posted," she said. "It simply changed the delivery method and broadened the scope of knowledge available."
Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Should textbooks or technology be Texas' spending priority?
Some legislators say more education money should go toward digital media.
By Kate Alexander
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
A 19th-century concept of learning is holding back Texas from bringing school technology into the present, some legislators say.
Back in 1854, legislators guaranteed Texas schoolchildren access to free textbooks by establishing an educational endowment known as the Permanent School Fund .
And though textbooks are now in many situations giving way to digital media in the classroom, state spending on school technology, such as computers and Internet connectivity, has been dwarfed by the resources put toward textbooks.
State Rep. Dan Branch , R-Dallas, said he is concerned that the state is wasting its resources on "old vehicles" because some people believe a textbook is necessary for conveying knowledge to students.
"A textbook is a vehicle for content," Branch said. "That vehicle is quickly becoming a horse and buggy."
Since 1992, the state has allocated each year $30 per student for technology, which totals about $134 million in the current budget.
The bill for textbooks in the 2008-2009 budget was $496 million and will reach $913 million in the upcoming budget. Almost all of the $1.15 billion from the Permanent School Fund in the 2010-11 budget will be needed to pay for textbooks.
Branch, a member of the House Public Education Committee , would like to use some money from the textbook fund to pay for technology hardware so that more students can access lessons electronically.
But the Texas attorney general said in a 2006 opinion that textbook funds must be used for "conveying information" and cannot be used for purchasing hardware.
Branch argues that computer hardware is no different than the paper, cardboard and glue that make up a textbook, for which the school fund has always paid.
And the technology will improve the delivery of those lessons because students will see it as more relevant and dynamic, Branch said.
Although online curriculum is commonplace, access to needed technology hardware has been a limiting factor for schools to use that resource, said Anita Givens , acting associate commissioner for standards and programs at the Texas Education Agency.
Fewer than 7 percent of school campuses statewide have reached the target of providing a computer for every student and having all classrooms fully equipped and wired for the Internet, according to a state survey published this fall. On about 57 percent of the campuses, there are four students per computer, and three-quarters of the classrooms and library have Internet connectivity.
State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, offered a recommendation at a recent hearing that money be moved from textbooks to technology in order to speed access to online learning.
The State Board of Education, which has authority over the Permanent School Fund, has long objected to such a move, though the final decision belongs to the Legislature.
Chairman Don McLeroy said the board does not want to see the school fund money wasted on technology that could quickly become obsolete.
But McLeroy is warming to the idea as technology prices come down and more research shows of the value of technology in learning, he said.
kalexander@statesman.com; 445-3618
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/11/29/1129textbook.html
Why some students prefer virtual schooling
At a NACOL symposium, virtual-school students discuss why they left their regular schools in favor of online instruction
By Laura Devaney, Senior Editor
eSchoolNews Friday, December 5, 2008
Virutal-school students say they enjoy the flexibility online classes provide.What motivates a growing number of virtual-school students to forgo the traditional school structure and take their classes entirely online?
At the Virtual School Symposium hosted in mid-October in Phoenix by the North American Council for Online Learning, virtual-school students explained they like being able to progress at their own pace--and some said they appreciate being able to take classes not offered by their traditional, bricks-and-mortar school.
Roger Sanchez said he left his conventional California school because he wanted to study at his own pace while holding a job outside of school and focusing his attention on out-of-school topics that related to his college interests.
"I was looking for something different to fit my schedule, and the traditional system wasn't making the cut," said Sanchez, who is taking multiple Advanced Placement courses and plans to study computer science or graphic design in college.
"You can create your own schedule. ... It's not the same routine I'd have in the traditional system, and I can get more of what I want to do done," he said.
Sanchez said an online school also lets him choose courses that a traditional school might not offer, such as courses that focus more on computer science and graphics.
"I'm really drawn by technology--that's one of the main reasons I joined the school," he said. "In the traditional system, [the] main problem is that classes [move] only as fast as the slowest student ... so it doesn't adapt to your own learning style and learning environment. It really slows you down if you want to get ahead."
Sanchez is a senior at Insight School of California-Los Angeles, one of a national network of full-time, diploma-granting, public online high schools. The network is run by Insight Schools Inc., a subsidiary of Apollo Group Inc., which also operates the all-online University of Phoenix.
Insight Schools is part of a rapidly expanding market for online education that also includes companies such as Connections Academy, K12 Inc., EdisonLearning (formerly Edison Schools Inc.), and others. A study released during the Virtual School Symposium confirms that the total number of full-time virtual-school students in the United States is on the rise, "along with a continued increase in the number of new full-time programs." (See "Report assesses K-12 online learning.")
Education leaders would be wise to listen to what students such as Sanchez had to say, and consider ways they can build opportunities for self-paced learning and more freedom of choice into their own school offerings--or else risk losing a growing number of students to online schools that operate outside their domain.
Enrolling in a virtual school not only frees up time for students to pursue other interests, it also teaches them valuable time-management skills, said Geoffrey Wall, a Tempe, Ariz., senior who has been enrolled in Arizona Connections Academy for five years.
Five years ago, Wall was a competitive figure skater who found himself waking up at 4 a.m. each day to train for his sport and make it to school on time.
"It was becoming something of a problem," he said. Wall's mother looked into home-schooling her son but found few resources to help her. The family's local school district offered no help or advice, either, he said, and finally Wall's mother stumbled across a local newspaper article about Connections Academy.
Wall is no longer involved in competitive figure skating, but he found he enjoyed his classes with Connections Academy and reasoned that switching not only schools, but also learning styles, in the middle of his high school experience would not have been beneficial.
Now, Wall begins his mornings by logging onto Connections Academy and choosing a handful of lessons to complete.
"Depending on the day, I might have more or I might have less, and once I finish them, I'm free to do whatever I want," he said. "If I have to take a day off, I might get on and do an extra day of work or fit in an extra lesson."
Working so independently encourages the same type of time-management skills that college students need to be successful, he said. Managing classes, assignments, and social activities can be daunting, but Wall has a firm grasp on his routine.
"With a normal high school, everything is always scheduled for you," he said. "With [online learning], you have to keep on top of things."
Some people might wonder if Wall feels deprived of the typical social aspects of a bricks-and-mortar high school, but he says he does not.
"I've got friends from when I was attending traditional school, and friends through karate and [who] I meet from other activities, like camps," he said.
Wall has even met his virtual classmates through organized field trips. He is able to collaborate with his classmates virtually through his computer, as well as chat with both teachers and peers on a regular basis.
Connections Academy students have access to guidance counselors to help them navigate the college application process. Adding a high school component to the company's virtual offerings made it necessary to provide a robust guidance-counselor support staff, a company representative said.
Even virtual-school teachers at the symposium said they liked many of the freedoms that come with teaching in an online environment.
Not just students, but teachers, too, can become frustrated in a traditional school setting, because much of their time is devoted to tasks such as asking students for late passes or collecting various assignments, said Mishele Newkirk-Smith, a former classroom teacher in Washington state who is now a science teacher with Insight School of Washington.
"I'm not a disciplinarian now; I'm an educator," she said, adding: "Online, there is more one-on-one education."
"I have always looked for ... alternative ways for students to learn. All students do not learn the same way--they are totally different," said Deloris Brown, a former school principal who is currently principal of Insight School of South Carolina.
In a traditional classroom, educators can "try to think outside of the box, but you're still faced with the one-size-fits-all model," she said. "If we know that all students are different, then we have to do something different. This is going to be one of the major reform efforts that education will see."
Links:
Virtual School Symposium http://www.virtualschoolssymposium.org
Insight Schools http://www.insightschools.net
Connections Academy http://www.connectionsacademy.com
Eighth-grade ISAT standards not aligned with high school demands, college readiness
The study, From High School to the Future: The Pathway to 20, was inspired by a new goal in Chicago Public Schools to have their juniors reach a goal of 20 or above on the ACT. It was based on a longitudinal analysis of more than 40,000 students from three junior classes (2005, 2006 and 2007) in Chicago Public Schools.
Students who just meet Illinois testing standards in eighth grade have virtually no chance of scoring a 20 or above on the ACT, according to a study released Friday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago.
This finding points to a "major misalignment" between the standards set by the state ISAT tests in elementary school and the college-readiness standards expected of all juniors in Illinois high schools as measured by the ACT, which is part of the state's PSAE exams. It takes a score into the Exceeds Standards category on the eighth-grade ISAT to have a relatively good shot at scoring well on the ACT in eleventh grade.
The study, From High School to the Future: The Pathway to 20, was inspired by a new goal in Chicago Public Schools to have their juniors reach a goal of 20 or above on the ACT. It was based on a longitudinal analysis of more than 40,000 students from three junior classes (2005, 2006 and 2007) in Chicago Public Schools. An ACT score of 20 is actually lower than the state average and college-readiness benchmarks set by ACT, but was seen as a realistic goal for Chicago students because graduates with this score or better have a good chance of being accepted into Illinois state universities.
"Having such low academic standards in eighth grade serves no one well, least of all the students who eke through and then are surprised to find themselves unprepared to do well in high school, let alone college," wrote John Easton, executive director at the Consortium and the study's lead author. "Perhaps we are sending students and schools the wrong message about the adequacy of elementary students academic preparation, especially for the vast majority of students who have their eyes on college in the future."
To understand the pathway to 20, researchers also tracked back from the ACT to see students' progress on prior tests. In addition to the ACT, all CPS high school students also take two other tests developed by ACT. These tests, the EXPLORE and PLAN, along with the ACT, make up EPAS—the Education Planning and Assessment System. The EPAS system is now used widely in other Illinois high schools.
The key findings include:
-- An ISAT math score of 267—the median score for Illinois eighth-graders in 2006--results in about a 26 percent chance of reaching a 20 on the ACT three years later, based on this analysis. For those students just barely meeting standards (a math score of 246), only 3 percent scored a 20 or above on the ACT. (The analysis focused on ISAT math scores because math is a slightly stronger predictor of the ACT composite than ISAT reading scores, but the relationship holds equally well with reading scores).
-- For those students who just inch their way into the Exceeds Standards category with a score of 288, the probability of reaching 20 is about 62 percent.
-- The average ACT score for students who "meet standards" is 17.5 (very close to the CPS average), and a very small portion of them reach 20. Only students in the "exceeds" category have an average ACT score above 20 (average is 23.3), and most of them reach 20.
-- Students' ninth-grade EXPLORE composite scores also strongly predict whether they will reach a 20 or better on the ACT. Virtually no students with very low scores (15 and below) on EXPLORE make it to 20 on ACT. About 30 percent of students who scored 16 on ninth grade EXPLORE (the national average) reached 20 on the ACT. Virtually all students with high EXPLORE scores (18 and above) make it to 20 on the ACT.
While previous achievement test scores predict ACT scores, they do not determine them. There are many students who start in the same place but end up different from each other, the study found. It is students' school experiences that play such a strong role in determining academic achievement.
To understand those school experiences, the report also builds on key findings revealed in recent Consortium research that has delved deeply into other factors that influence students' success in high school and their college readiness:
-- In What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools, the authors show how the academic culture of high schools affect freshman attendance rates, freshman failure rates, and freshman grade point averages. Indicators of positive student and teacher relationships have strong positive impacts on all three student outcomes. In schools where there are strong reports from students on student-teacher trust, freshmen have 2.30 fewer days absent per semester, 0.78 fewer failures per semester, and their grade point averages are 0.23 points higher than students with similar background characteristics (including prior test scores) who attend similar schools.
-- Students who attend high schools with a strong academic climate and earn better grades gained more than twice as much on the EPAS test as their peers in the weaker schools and with lower grades. When analyzing all students who started with a 17 on the EXPLORE test, those in the first group improved 3.7 points on their ACT, while the second group only gained 1.4 points. "Strong high schools" are those in which relationships between teachers and students are stronger, there is greater academic press on students, students learn that doing well in high school matters for the future, and their teachers encourage and support their interest in going to college and help them get there.
"Simply raising standards for students in CPS or state-wide is not a solution," Easton writes. "We see very strong students who do not reach even 20 on the ACT. This is a less an indictment of the standards than an indication that there are strong students who are being ill served by their high schools. We should have high expectations for our schools as well as for students. And our expectations for strong performance by all students need to start early in the elementary grades, if not in preschool."
Study: http://news.uchicago.edu/images/pdf/081031.Pathway_to%2020_Report_newfinal.pdf
Provided by University of Chicago
Global
Personalised learning puts students in a class of their own
A new learning platform is giving the traditional classroom a radical makeover. Using innovative ICT technology, iClass is putting pupils at the centre of the learning experience and providing them with more control over what they learn.
Every parent believes their child is unique. And they are right. Every pupil has their own individual strengths and weaknesses, and their own particular way of learning. However, putting this commonsense observation into practice is no mean feat, and our schools have generally not been very successful at personalising the learning experience.
In fact, the image of classrooms as ‘knowledge factories’ has not changed much since the Industrial Revolution, despite the major advances in teaching methods that have occurred. This model holds that teachers input information, pupils process it, and out comes the learning in neat little packages.
”A school is not a factory,“ bemoaned British novelist JL Carr in his acclaimed novel, The Harpole Report, which tells the story of a primary school headmaster. ”Its raison d’être is to provide opportunity for experience.“
In recent decades, learning theories have shifted to a ‘student-centred’ focus, and moved attention away from the teacher, as the imparter of all knowledge and wisdom, towards the pupil or student, while the educator’s role has become more that of a mentor and facilitator. However, the standardisation of demanding school curricula and the often-large sizes of classrooms make the transition to this more personalised form of learning difficult.
ICTs present an opportunity to place the learner at the centre of the learning experience. Traditionally, computers and other information technologies have been treated as subjects in curricula, as word processors or, with the advent of the internet, as powerful research tools for assignments. But ICTs are gradually evolving to become an integral component of the learning experience in general.
Learning gets personal
The EU-funded iClass project has been working to develop an innovative learning platform based on the concept of self-regulated personalised learning (SRPL) which is designed to empower pupils aged 14 to 18 to take more control of the learning process. Led by Siemens IT Solutions and Services, the project brings together 17 partners from the EU, Turkey and Israel to develop an intelligent cognitive-based open learning system and environment.
”We aim to make education more effective, worthwhile and, above all, enjoyable,“ explains Eric Meyvis, the project’s coordinator. ”Pupils are becoming increasingly unmotivated. We are using ICTs, the internet and an attractive interface to make learning more fun.“
SRPL boosts a pupil’s motivation to learn by personalising the learning process, placing an emphasis on self-direction and self-reliance, and trusting the learner to make mindful and meaningful choices. The model follows three distinct stages: planning, learning and reflecting.
In practice, this means that a teacher creates a learning plan based on a goal to be achieved, suggesting some sub-goals and activities, while some activities can be left ‘open’ for the student to shape. Students then click on the ‘Learn’ button to start the assignment. During this process, a system called ‘tips and alerts’ provides the pupil with some optional guidance. A personal journal encourages the learner to reflect on their choices and what they have learnt.
The path to lifelong learning
Teenagers spend 15% of their time in a school setting, while adults spend a meagre 3% in formal education. The upshot of this is the increasing recognition of informal, as well as lifelong, learning as an important aspect of education. The web-based iClass platform is well placed to link seamlessly the formal and informal learning environment.
It has been designed to provide pupils with ubiquitous access to encourage them to exploit formal and informal learning environments to the maximum.
In addition, by promoting greater self-reliance and a passion for inquiry among pupils, iClass helps equip them with crucial attitudes for the emerging knowledge-based economy, which requires people to update and upgrade their skills and knowledge constantly throughout their lives.
Nothing like a real teacher
At first, the iClass project set itself the ambitious and unrealistic aim of creating an electronic substitute for the teacher.
”We were convinced that the platform could replace teachers, but we soon discovered that this was too technology oriented. We refocused the project to strike more of a balance between technology and pedagogy,“ recalls Meyvis.
Instead, the platform has evolved to aid the teacher in empowering his or her charges. It also promotes a more open approach to education. However, this departure places new demands on teachers.
”It is a big challenge for schools to switch from traditional learning to iClass methodology, and that is why we have developed a teacher training package. We piloted the training material and teachers were generally enthusiastic about it and the platform,“ notes Meyvis.
The platform also recognises that the school curriculum in different countries places different demands on teachers, and so has built-in flexibility to allow the system to be customised.
”We have created a versatile infrastructure and it will be up to developers to take the next step and customise the platform for individual countries,“ says Meyvis.
A leading German publisher is already developing content for the German market and opportunities abound for developers in other countries to tailor the system to other national markets.
iClass was funded by the ICT strand of the Union’s Sixth Framework Programme for research.
Provided by ICT Results
Digital Disconnect' divides kids, educators
Most principals think their schools prepare students for 21st-century careers -- but students disagree
By Maya T. Prabhu, Assistant Editor -eschool news
Students say limited use of technology in school leaves them less prepared for 21st century jobs
Students and educators disagree on whether their schools are preparing graduates adequately for the jobs of the 21st century, a speaker at an Oct. 15 webcast said.
Two-thirds of principals in a recent survey said they believe their school is preparing students to be competitive in the global workforce. But most tech-savvy students didn't share that view, said Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow (formerly known as NetDay).
Read article at:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=55665
Lynch, FIRST aim for all high schools
By DAN TUOHY
New Hampshire Union Leader
MANCHESTER – Dean Kamen's celebrated competition of remote-controlled robots could be wheeled and whirled out to every public high school in New Hampshire by 2010.
Gov. John Lynch announced the goal at a news conference yesterday. Members of the state's business community, technology industry and university system accepted the challenge.
Twenty-eight of 87 high schools now participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition.
"It's a smart investment in New Hampshire's future," Lynch said before watching students from Londonderry, Manchester and Merrimack demonstrate robotic vehicles at FIRST headquarters in Manchester.
But Kamen, speaking by video link from a technology conference in Las Vegas, underscored the need to recruit enough professional mentors to preserve the quality of the program he founded in 1989.
"The magic of FIRST is all about the mentors," he said. "If we scale up the number of teams without equally scaling up the mentors, we suffer a huge risk."
The inventor and entrepreneur, whose love of science led him to create live-improving devices and the Segway Human Transporter, said FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) can be a life-changing experience for a lot of young people.
An estimated 53,000 mentors will work with 194,000 students in 41 regional competitions for the 2008-09 season. They rely on another 33,000 event volunteers.
Hundreds of employees at BAE Systems, the sponsor of the Granite State regional, have helped FIRST students in the past. The company's New Hampshire headquarters would step up its support, said Clark Dumont, vice president of communications for the Electronics & Integrated Solutions operating group of Britain-based BAE Systems. The E&amp;IS group is based in Nashua.
"We accept your challenge," Dumont said.
In a statement, the Nashua BAE unit's CEO Walt Havenstein said FIRST would help create future engineers and scientists to keep America competitive in a global environment. "This is the only competition where every participant on every team can turn pro," said Havenstein.
New Hampshire High Technology Council President Fred Kocher and New Hampshire Education Commissioner Lyonel B. Tracy also endorsed the challenge.
Tracy said the state Department of Education is also dedicated to finding a way to give students credit for participation in the FIRST Robotics Competition.
Edward Dupont, chairman of the University System of New Hampshire board of trustees, described it as an economic imperative because companies are desperately seeking engineering and computer science graduates.
"We're going to get in the game and help," Dupont said.
FIRST Robotics competitions challenge teams of high school students and professional mentors to solve a common problem using a standard parts kit and a common set of rules. Teams are rewarded for excellence in design, demonstrated team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and their ability to overcome obstacles.
After a Manchester Central High School team showed Lynch how its robot operated yesterday, sophomores Steven Kroh, Riley Larkins and Michael Lazos said FIRST keeps the competitors on their toes. It involves critical thinking, innovation and teamwork.
The biggest challenge? "Time," said a smiling Lazos. "We only get six weeks."
All three students said FIRST is just the start of their learning and a life in science and technology.
As Kamen said, FIRST is more than nuts and bolts and a remote-controlled vehicle.
"They're not building robots," he said yesterday. "They're building self confidence. They're building an understanding of what the world is like for people that are properly prepared."
http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/News/Science_Teacher_2008_Reprint.pdf
http://www.usfirst.org/who/content.aspx?id=156
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5813773
Free textbook for one of most-taught community college courses
Rice's Connexions publishes introductory statistics book online
HOUSTON -- Aug 13, 2008 -- Rice University's Connexions, one of the most-visited online sites for open-educational resources, today announced it is making a popular textbook available free this fall for one of the country's most-attended transfer-level community college courses -- elementary statistics. The book, "Collaborative Statistics," has been used for more than a decade in California community college courses accepted for transfer credit by one of the nation's premier public university systems, the University of California. The online version of the book has already been chosen as the primary text for fall classes enrolling more than 700 students.
"'Collaborative Statistics' helps reduce the cost of education for students while providing them with the highest-quality educational content," said Connexions' Executive Director Joel Thierstein. "The release of the book in Connexions makes it possible for students all over the world to study this subject for free."
Rice acquired the rights to the book through the generosity of the Maxfield Foundation, which was founded by Rice alumnus and trustee Robert Maxfield to support scientific research and education.
More than 90,000 U.S. students take a statistics course at a community college each year and many pay $100 or more for a traditional statistics textbook. According to the nonprofit MakeTextbooksAffordable.org, the average U.S. college student spends about $900 per year on textbooks, and textbook prices are increasing faster than inflation. The problem has attracted increasing attention from policymakers since the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported on it in 2005, and legislation aimed at curbing textbook costs has been introduced in at least nine states and the U.S. House.
"Collaborative Statistics" is already available online at http://cnx.org/content/col10522. One of the book's co-authors, Barbara Illowsky, professor of mathematics and statistics at De Anza College in Cupertino, Calif., said about a dozen instructors at community college campuses in California have already selected the book for their courses this fall.
Illowsky and her co-author, recently retired De Anza mathematics professor Susan Dean, had noticed that more and more students were struggling to pay for textbooks, and sometimes dropped out because they could not afford books. The two were drawn to the idea of making "Collaborative Statistics" freely available online as an open textbook, both to cut college costs for students and provide more instructional options for teachers.
"Open textbooks reduce the cost of education so students can stay in school," Illowsky said. "They also allow faculty to customize text to address the needs of their students. It's a win-win situation."
Connexions worked closely with the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) in publishing the online version of "Collaborative Statistics." The CCCOER was established by California’s Foothill-De Anza Community College District and is made up of more than 70 community colleges in California, Iowa, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Washington and Ontario, Canada.
"In Connexions, the content is completely adaptable and thus can meet the needs of the particular state or instructor," Thierstein said. "In Connexions, instructors, schools and/or states can rearrange the lessons, reorder the chapters, add their own materials and modify lessons, and thus every instructor at every school in every state can have their own version of this book."
The book is available online for free. Students can print their own PDF versions of all or parts of the book from their own printers. If they prefer to have a bound copy, they can order one online through Connexions and have it shipped to their home or office. Bound copies cost just $31.95. The printed books are produced by Mill Valley, Calif.-based print-on-demand vendor QOOP Inc., which signed a print agreement with Connexions in 2006.
Lesson plans and videotaped lectures that comprise Illowsky’s statistics course, as well as suggested homework, quizzes and exams, will also be available for free online in Connexions in the months to come.
"There is a tremendous need for high-quality open textbooks created specifically for use in community colleges," said Martha Kanter, chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, which is leading a feasibility study of different textbook models through the Community College Open Textbook Project. "The tools to publish free books and courses are available, and obtaining the rights to existing texts, as Rice and Connexions have done, is one way to quickly make more textbooks for high-demand courses available for free."
About Connexions
Founded in 1999 as one of the first online open-educational resources (OER), Connexions has long pioneered digital education. Connexions is a platform and repository for OER that lets people create, share, modify and vet open educational materials that are accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime for free via the Web. Connexions' modular interactive information is in use by universities, community colleges, primary and secondary schools and lifelong learners worldwide. The number of people using Connexions has grown by 40 percent over the past year. With peak traffic of up to 850,000 visitors per month, it is one of the world's most popular OER sites.
GUEST OPINION: Improving schools: Just Do It!
By Anthony Berkley
The Herald News
Posted Aug 08, 2008 @ 02:30 PM
Look at an iPod or the award-winning new running shoe, the Free. Simple, cool, and there’s a lot of science and engineering here.
Innovative corporations like Nike and Apple know how to reach their school-age customers with products and services that expand minds and build bodies. They have a deep understanding of the needs and interests of young people — and a keen eye for design.
The business magazines are figuring out the lesson: Good innovation and design balances scientific analysis with artistic creativity. It’s this combination that leads to success in the global market.Can you imagine a lengthy public shouting match over the next nano or swoosh color? Probably not, because they … Just Do It.
How do these lessons translate into schools and the debates about how to improve education in the United States?
With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, education leaders in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere are discovering new solutions to perennial school challenges by using a method called ”human-centered design.“
Human-centered design starts from the premise that those closest to the problem — parents, teachers and students — may have good ideas for solving it. And since they’ll have to implement any solution, it’s best to involve them early in the process.This is revolutionary for the education field as outside experts rule the day in typical school reform efforts. Parents, teachers and students are rarely even consulted.
Our work took a different approach.
From parents, we learned that schools are intimidating and hard to communicate with. Teachers feel overwhelmed and don’t always reach out like they want to. Students want to be engaged in ways that involve creative right brain activities as much as analytic left brain ones.
The first sets of designs have been published as ”Tangible Steps Toward Tomorrow“ and are freely available at www.wkkf.org. One surprise is how much these potential designs focus on connecting — connecting parents more meaningfully with teachers; students with one another; and classrooms to community resources.
Consider Massachusetts 2020, a Boston-area nonprofit that works with public schools to add an extra few hours to the school day. This simple, concrete innovation — a longer school day — opens up a wealth of new opportunities to connect and enrich. It gives teachers the time they need to really teach core subjects well and explore student interests as well as their own passions. Modern dance, poetry, neighborhood history and other creative subjects round out the school’s curriculum. The result: Students do better on tests and everyone feels more satisfied and engaged.
We know the United States spends more on education than any other country. We also know that our students lag well behind many industrialized countries in terms of academic achievement. Yet, when we discuss education, the focus narrows to the traditional issues: teacher qualifications, state standards and achievement gaps.
It is not hard to imagine how forward-thinking companies like Nike or Apple would react to this situation. Such corporations are well-known for staying on the cutting edge through their commitment to design. Famously, their products balance research and engineering with great look and feel. And from Helsinki to Singapore consumers know what these brands stand for and are willing to pay a premium.
In an increasingly global economy, we need a new vision for public education in America. Our young people may be carrying iPods and walking on Nikes, but what they really need is a well-designed education featuring the most competitive skills — and the coolest brand.
Anthony Berkley is the deputy director of Education and Learning at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
http://www.heraldnews.com/opinions/x2087535752/GUEST-OPINION-Improving-schools-Just-Do-It-08-09-08
Governors Challenge Youth to Solve Real-world Industry Problem
Armed with professional advice from mentors in scientific fields and free access to sophisticated design and engineering software, teachers and students from Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Vermont and Virginia will participate in a national competition to solve a real-world engineering challenge defined by the aviation industry.
The idea behind the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Real World Design Challenge is to create a pipeline of highly qualified workers by preparing high school students for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields based on issues facing high-tech and defense industries.
Ralph Coppola, director of Worldwide Education for Parametric Technology Corporation, said many aerospace and defense companies that work as contractors to national security agencies are concerned the U.S. is not producing enough qualified workers who must be able to work on both the defense and commercial side. A survey conducted with these companies in the Northeast found 54 percent of the workforce is 45 years or older and one-third are eligible for retirement today. At the same time, engineering degrees make up only 5 percent of the total baccalaureate population in the U.S., Coppola said.
U.S. Continues to Trail Behind in STEM Graduates
A coalition of 16 leading business organizations echoed this concern with the release of a report last month assessing three years’ progress in working toward a goal of doubling the number of students earning bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields by 2015. The report by Tapping America’s Potential indicates growing support for the group’s agenda to advance U.S. competitiveness in STEM, but shows little progress toward the goal. In fact, the number of degrees in STEM fields awarded to undergraduate students has only grown by 24,000 since 2005 – a small increase that is not on track to reach the goal of 400,000 over the next seven years, the report finds.
The Real World Design Challenge hopes to reverse this trend by providing high school students with the background and framework for competing more effectively in the global economy. In designing the program, aerospace and defense companies voiced a need for employees having seven to 10 years of experience and the necessary education and skills. Recognizing that this requirement would add another decade to the pipeline, program administrators suggested integrating the real-world experience at the K-12 and undergraduate level.
Engaging Youth in Real-world Situations
Ten states with significant aerospace industry presence were invited to participate in the challenge during the pilot year. So far, six states have confirmed their participation, beginning with an announcement last month from Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas. Next year, the challenge will be open to all U.S. states and territories. Once a school has signed on, the teachers are trained to use software and other tools to apply in teaching design and global engineering. Teachers will then lead teams of 3-7 students who will work on the same design challenge defined by Cessna engineers – an issue currently being addressed in the aviation industry.
Each participating teacher will receive nearly $1 million in engineering software to be used in the challenge. Teachers and students are given access to DOE energy laboratories and may consult with industry experts from the Federal Aviation Administration. Teams will submit their solutions to a review board consisting of experts in government, K-12 education, higher education and industry. The governors of each participating state will announce a winning team within their state in early spring who will then go on to compete in a national challenge in Washington, D.C., which consists of a written submission and oral presentation on a newly defined challenge.
A major goal of the challenge is to teach students to become better innovators, Coppola said. The student teams are built around real industry roles, including a project manager, scientist, engineer, and community relations and marketing specialist. The national presentation will be much like submitting and defending a proposal for a contract or a thesis in which students are challenged and must defend their position, Coppola said.
More information on the Real World Design Challenge, a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy, the Federal Aviation Administration, Parametric Technology Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Corporation and Flometrics Inc., is available at: http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/RWDC/index.html
U.Va.'s John Bean Wins IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award
Professor John C. Bean
July 23, 2008 — John C. Bean, the J.M. Money Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, is the 2009 winner of the IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award from the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology.
Bean was given the award "for providing opportunities to both undergraduate and pre-college students for discovery through both laboratory projects and virtual experiments on the World Wide Web."
A member of the U.Va. faculty since 1997, Bean received his B.S. from the California Institute of Technology in 1972, followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in 1974 and 1976, respectively. His degrees were all in applied physics.
Upon graduation Bean took a position in the Solid State Electronics Research Laboratory of Bell Labs, Murray Hill, N.J. and became Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in 1985 and head of the Materials Science Research Department in 1986.
At Bell Labs he synthesized the first practical silicon-germanium strained layer films and explored their physical properties and device application. That work led to his being named an IEEE fellow in 1991 and to his inclusion on Science Citation Index’s list of "Most Highly Cited Researchers" in Materials Science.
After joining U.Va., Bean developed a particular interest in bringing micro and nano technology to undergraduates and members of the general public. To accomplish this with minimal use of math and jargon, he developed online tutorials based on 3D animations in 1999 under National Science Foundation (NSF) funding. These grew into the "UVA Virtual Lab," a public science education Web site (www.virlab.virginia.edu). (See New Resources)
By the summer of 2008, visitors from more than 2,000 different educational institutions had viewed more than 4 million Web pages of micro and nano technology content on the site. Under a second NSF initiative, Bean has now added full online teaching materials for a prototype "Hands-on Introduction to Nanoscience" class that targets freshmen of all majors.
Bean holds 14 U.S. patents and has published 300 technical papers. These include invited reviews in The Proceedings of the IEEE, Physics Today and Science magazines. In 2004, he received a U.Va. All University Teaching Award
Through its global membership, IEEE is a leading authority on areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics among others. IEEE has more than 375,000 members, including nearly 80,000 student members, in more than 160 countries
Source: UVA
Professor John C. Bean-Biography:
http://www.virlab.virginia.edu/VL/biography.php
Giving learning a personal touch
A learning system that adapts to the abilities and needs of students opens the way to a more personalised approach in delivering education electronically.
The use of the web as a teaching medium has not had the success that many had hoped it would. Universities around the world have placed much of their teaching online, accessible from their websites. Many open and distance learning institutions are relying heavily on the web as a means of distributing teaching material to students working at home.
Yet somehow reading a computer screen and interacting with software is not the same as studying in a classroom or a laboratory and e-learning has had a mixed reception.
”The problem is that such an approach is technology driven,“ says Pierluigi Ritrovato of the Research Centre in Pure and Applied Mathematics (CRMPA) near Salerno, Italy. ”The web is a wonderful tool for delivering content so people imagine that this technology is suitable for e-learning. So all the efforts have been going into producing some content and then finding technological solutions for delivering it.“
A second, subtler problem is that the teaching content itself contains assumptions about the kind of person the student is and what kind of teaching approach is appropriate. The student or distance teacher is not able to adapt easily the contents to the needs of the student.
What e-learning software has overlooked until now is that no two students are the same. They have different backgrounds, different learning styles and different approaches to learning. A technological medium that ‘delivers’ the same material in the same way to every student is bound to fail.
Models of learning
European researchers in the EU-funded project ELeGI (European Learning Grid Infrastructure) decided to take a new approach to e-learning. They designed key network software designed around models of how people learn.
Ritrovato, who is one of the project’s scientific coordinators, cites the example of people who want to learn a programming language.
”I might like to work with experiments while others are more interested in reading and understanding, or doing exercises or perhaps by a ‘learning by doing’ approach,“ he says. ”The learning model is general enough to take all these aspects into account in a comprehensive way.“
The consortium of universities and research centres involved in the project pursued two research lines. On one hand, researchers focused on formal learning such as in educational institutions. On the other, they researched methods of informal learning through collaboration and conversational approaches.
The learning platform developed by the ELeGI team can automatically be tailored to the different needs of students, and can also adapt rapidly in the way it can access teaching resources through a ‘grid’ of networked computers.
If a teacher decides that the students would benefit by collaborative working, the ELeGI platform can find suitable software, perhaps a wiki, locate a machine to run it on, set it up for the group of students and set them to work in an automatic and transparent way.
The ELeGI software can group students who share similar learning styles. It can also recognise when a student is having difficulty and can offer a ‘mini-course’ of remedial work, generated according to the student’s profile and preferences.
Intelligent web teacher
A number of pilot studies and demonstrators have shown how the ELeGI platform could work in practice. The studies include a series of ‘virtual scientific experiments’, mainly in physics. In the studies, students learn from a simulated experiment.
The researchers also designed several demonstrations related to collaborative working and designed a system to automate assessments of students’ work. As part of the programme, the researchers also launched EnCOrE, a net-based encylopaedia of organic chemistry.
”In terms of outcome we have the model for creating adaptive and personalised learning experience, the ELeGI software infrastructure, that is based on grid technology,“ says Ritrovato. ”It can be considered the first example of a service-oriented infrastructure for learning.“
Insights gained through ELeGI, particularly in formal learning, have been incorporated into Intelligent Web Teacher (IWT), a software platform for distance learning that has been developed over many years with support from several other EU-funded projects.
IWT is marketed by MoMA, a spin-off from the Pole of Excellence in Learning and Knowledge, a virtual research organisation based at Salerno University and which includes several ELeGI partners.
The project demonstrated that it is possible to create a highly personalised learning experience in a dynamic way taking into account the user’s reaction, preferences and the pedagogical aspects,“ Ritrovato says
”It is now clear in the community that the existing learning management systems are out of date,“ he adds. ”They have to change their approach to learning and to be much more user-driven instead of content-driven. This is one of the key features that IWT and ELeGI have been developing. The teacher should be a guide, a support for the student in their learning process.“
The project, which lasted for 41 months and received funding from the EU's Sixth Framework Programme for research, came to an end in June 2007.
Provided by ICT Results
IES Research Funding Opportunities Webinars
The Institute of Education Sciences will host a series of webinars related to research funding opportunities at the National Center for Special Education Research and the National Center for Education Research.
For more information regarding webinar topics, dates, and registration process, please browse here. http://ies.ed.gov/funding/
To view slides from previous webinar sessions discussing research funding opportunities at the National Center for Special Education Research and the National Center for Education Research, browse here.
Please register for the IES Newsflash http://ies.ed.gov/newsflash/ for information about future webinars and upcoming funding opportunities.
Submitting Grant Applications to IES via Grants.gov
Beginning in 2007, grant applications to Institute of Education Sciences (IES) competitions must be submitted via the Grants.gov government-wide portal that allows potential applicants to find grant opportunities and apply for grants. Individuals planning to submit an application on behalf of their organization must ensure that (1) their institution/organization is registered with Grants.gov, and (2) they register themselves as Authorized Organizational Representatives (AORs) well before the competition deadline. The Grants.gov registration process can take several weeks. Grants.gov registration information can be found at: http://www.grants.gov/applicants/get_registered.jsp. Please direct your questions about submitting applications through Grants.gov to the Grants.gov Help Desk at 800-518-4726 or by email to support@grants.gov.
Letters of Intent
The receipt deadline for Letters of Intent for the October 2, 2008 application deadline dates has been extended from July 10, 2008 to August 4, 2008. This is applicable to the National Center for Education Research's Research, Training, Research and Development Center, and Evaluation of State and Local Education Programs and Policies competitions (CFDA Numbers 84.305A, 84.305B, 84.305C, 84.305E), and the National Center for Special Education Research's Research and Training competitions (CFDA Numbers 84.324A, 84.324B).
Summit: Save STEM or watch America fail
Two years after a report called "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" warned that the United States is falling behind in math and science education, endangering America's competitiveness in the global economy, education leaders, lawmakers, and cabinet members met for a national summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss what progress--if any--has been made in closing the gap. Their verdict: The U.S. needs to make a greater investment in critical math, science, and research programs for these efforts to succeed. | Read More
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Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills
Environments such as Second Life can both stimulate and educate, experts say
By Laura Devaney, Senior Editor, eSchool News
Virtual worlds and games can help students develop necessary skills.Online gaming can help students develop many of the skills they'll be required to use upon leaving school, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity, agreed educators who spoke during an April 16 webinar on gaming in education.
Sharnell Jackson, the chief eLearning officer for Chicago Public Schools and the webinar's moderator, noted that gaming and simulations are highly interactive, allow for instant feedback, immerse students in collaborative environments, and allow for rapid decision-making. The webinar was sponsored by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). Read full article at:
The new shape of music: Music has its own geometry, researchers find
The figure shows how geometrical music theory represents four-note chord-types -- the collections of notes form a tetrahedron, with the colors indicating the spacing between the individual notes in a sequence. In the blue spheres, the notes are clustered, in the warmer colors, they are farther apart. The red ball at the top of the pyramid is the diminished seventh chord, a popular 19th-century chord. Near it are all the most familiar chords of Western music. Credit: Dmitri Tymoczko, Princeton University
The connection between music and mathematics has fascinated scholars for centuries. More than 200 years ago Pythagoras reportedly discovered that pleasing musical intervals could be described using simple ratios.
And the so-called musica universalis or "music of the spheres" emerged in the Middle Ages as the philosophical idea that the proportions in the movements of the celestial bodies -- the sun, moon and planets -- could be viewed as a form of music, inaudible but perfectly harmonious.
Now, three music professors – Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University -- have devised a new way of analyzing and categorizing music that takes advantage of the deep, complex mathematics they see enmeshed in its very fabric.
Writing in the April 18 issue of Science, the trio has outlined a method called "geometrical music theory" that translates the language of musical theory into that of contemporary geometry. They take sequences of notes, like chords, rhythms and scales, and categorize them so they can be grouped into "families." They have found a way to assign mathematical structure to these families, so they can then be represented by points in complex geometrical spaces, much the way "x" and "y" coordinates, in the simpler system of high school algebra, correspond to points on a two-dimensional plane.
Different types of categorization produce different geometrical spaces, and reflect the different ways in which musicians over the centuries have understood music. This achievement, they expect, will allow researchers to analyze and understand music in much deeper and more satisfying ways.
The work represents a significant departure from other attempts to quantify music, according to Rachel Wells Hall of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. In an accompanying essay, she writes that their effort, "stands out both for the breadth of its musical implications and the depth of its mathematical content."
The method, according to its authors, allows them to analyze and compare many kinds of Western (and perhaps some non-Western) music. (The method focuses on Western-style music because concepts like "chord" are not universal in all styles.) It also incorporates many past schemes by music theorists to render music into mathematical form.
"The music of the spheres isn't really a metaphor -- some musical spaces really are spheres," said Tymoczko, an assistant professor of music at Princeton. "The whole point of making these geometric spaces is that, at the end of the day, it helps you understand music better. Having a powerful set of tools for conceptualizing music allows you to do all sorts of things you hadn't done before."
Like what?
"You could create new kinds of musical instruments or new kinds of toys," he said. "You could create new kinds of visualization tools -- imagine going to a classical music concert where the music was being translated visually. We could change the way we educate musicians. There are lots of practical consequences that could follow from these ideas."
"But to me," Tymoczko added, "the most satisfying aspect of this research is that we can now see that there is a logical structure linking many, many different musical concepts. To some extent, we can represent the history of music as a long process of exploring different symmetries and different geometries."
Understanding music, the authors write, is a process of discarding information. For instance, suppose a musician plays middle "C" on a piano, followed by the note "E" above that and the note "G" above that. Musicians have many different terms to describe this sequence of events, such as "an ascending C major arpeggio," "a C major chord," or "a major chord." The authors provide a unified mathematical framework for relating these different descriptions of the same musical event.
The trio describes five different ways of categorizing collections of notes that are similar, but not identical. They refer to these musical resemblances as the "OPTIC symmetries," with each letter of the word "OPTIC" representing a different way of ignoring musical information -- for instance, what octave the notes are in, their order, or how many times each note is repeated. The authors show that five symmetries can be combined with each other to produce a cornucopia of different musical concepts, some of which are familiar and some of which are novel.
In this way, the musicians are able to reduce musical works to their mathematical essence.
Once notes are translated into numbers and then translated again into the language of geometry the result is a rich menagerie of geometrical spaces, each inhabited by a different species of geometrical object. After all the mathematics is done, three-note chords end up on a triangular donut while chord types perch on the surface of a cone.
The broad effort follows upon earlier work by Tymoczko in which he developed geometric models for selected musical objects.
The method could help answer whether there are new scales and chords that exist but have yet to be discovered.
"Have Western composers already discovered the essential and most important musical objects?" Tymoczko asked. "If so, then Western music is more than just an arbitrary set of conventions. It may be that the basic objects of Western music are fantastically special, in which case it would be quite difficult to find alternatives to broadly traditional methods of musical organization."
The tools for analysis also offer the exciting possibility of investigating the differences between musical styles.
"Our methods are not so great at distinguishing Aerosmith from the Rolling Stones," Tymoczko said. "But they might allow you to visualize some of the differences between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And they certainly help you understand more deeply how classical music relates to rock or is different from atonal music."
Source: Princeton University
Low-cost handheld targets elementary students
Chicago nonprofit calls its $50 'teachermate' an affordable way to give every kid a computer
From eSchool News staff reports
The teachermate features a 2.5-inch screen, 512 MB of memory, and costs only $50.
Elementary schools in at least seven cities are piloting an innovative handheld computer that costs only $50 and can be used to help teach reading and math. The nonprofit organization that developed the device, Chicago-based Innovations for Learning, bills it as ”the world’s most affordable solution“ for giving a computer to every student.
The ”teachermate“ handheld computer, as the device is called, features a 2.5-inch color screen, 512 megabytes of internal memory, an SD slot for expandability, a built-in microphone and speaker, and a battery life of four hours. An innovative case that holds 30 of the devices can charge them all at the same time using one AC outlet and synch all of the student performance data to a teacher’s personal computer using a single USB cable.
The teachermate includes reading and math software programs also developed by Innovations for Learning, which says it created the software first but was looking for an affordable, scalable way to deliver the software to every student.
”Our organization has been stymied over the years by the same roadblock faced by all educational software makers—the inadequacy of personal computers in K-2 classrooms,“ said Seth Weinberger, executive director of the nonprofit. ”There are too few computers in the classroom, too many of them are broken, and too many of them are hand-me-downs. Public schools do not have the funds to provide sufficient computer resources to the young students who need them most.“
The problem inspired the group to develop an inexpensive solution that would be intuitive for young students to use.
The teachermate is lightweight and portable, yet the images on its screen are highly visible. All you have to do is switch on the power button and it’s ready to go. A row of three colored buttons on the top, a circle of arrows to the right, and a big blue ”enter“ button on the left make up all the controls. The software’s learning games are simple and have fun noises and actions for kids to look at. There’s also a dog character named Max who dances and plays instruments for students when they complete a game successfully. The device comes with lightweight earphones and has places for a USB cable and an AC cord.
Innovations for Learning is rolling out its ”teachermate“ handheld computers to all 500 Chicago elementary schools over a two-year period. With the help of funding from JP Morgan Chase, the nonprofit will provide teachermates for every student within one classroom in each of the city’s elementary schools; schools will be able to purchase handhelds for additional classrooms at cost. Software for the handhelds includes a complete K-2 reading and math program that aligns with the Chicago Public Schools’ reading and math initiatives.
”The teachermate handheld computer is one of the most promising new educational tools I have seen. Not only is the cost of each unit low enough to be affordable for every student in a classroom, but the device is easy to use, easy to train, and easy to maintain. This is a big step forward in providing a high-quality education to an increasingly technological generation,“ said Sharnell Jackson, chief eLearning officer for the Chicago Public Schools.
In addition to the rollout in Chicago, schools in New York City, Detroit, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, and the Denver area are piloting the device.
Innovations for Learning’s software has been proven effective by independent research funded by the Spencer Foundation. The Spencer Foundation is currently funding research by the University of Illinois at Chicago on the effectiveness of the teachermate handheld computers.
All of the programs are in Spanish as well as English, and teachers can select how much Spanish support to provide for each student.
”The teachermate system definitely enhances students’ reading skills,“ said Martha Arriaga, a first grade teacher at Jungman Elementary School in Chicago. ”If the students could use these devices all day long, they would. It gets them focused on what they should be learning, but they think they are just playing games.“
”The teachermate is really a bridge from the digital world to a first grader,“ Weinberger concluded. ”Teachers see the kids laugh, learn, and do their own voice recordings when using the reading software. It really gets them going—it energizes them in their teaching.“
Links:
Innovations for Learning www.innovationsforlearning.org
Chicago Public Schools www.cps.k12.il.us
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Visual technology enables brain to learn in new ways
New technology at Tufts University's Center for Scientific Visualization is enabling researchers to translate the most abstract, complex scientific concepts into clearer, more precise 3-dimensional images than conventional visualization systems can create.
Funded by a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Tufts' new 14-foot by 8-foot visualization display offers a combination of advanced features found nowhere else in New England and in only a few other installations in the country. Its application will further Tufts' research and educational programs in diverse disciplines, from mathematics and physics to human factors engineering, and even drama and dance.
Brain's Untapped Capacity for Visuals
"Users will be able to manipulate, simulate, touch and literally immerse themselves in data in a way they never have been able to before," said Amelia Tynan, vice president and chief information officer and co-principal investigator on the grant.
Visualization is built on the age-old premise -- borne out by modern cognitive science -- that pictures say as much as, or even more than, words.
The human brain has a powerful, often underutilized capacity to process visuals, noted Robert Jacob, computer science professor and co-principal investigator on the project. A large portion of the brain processes visuals, and visualization technology puts that ability to work. "The brain absorbs a lot more information when it's presented in pictures rather than in stacks of data from a computer," Jacob said. This, he says, enables researchers and students to recognize things more quickly and also develop insights about what's going on with the data.
Unusual Combination of Technologies
While visualization is widely used in science, Tufts' "VisWall" offers unusually robust capabilities by combining advanced features not typically found together.
Housed at Tufts' School of Engineering but available to the entire university, the seamless wall features a high resolution display system that uses rear projection in order to enhance the amount of detail that is visible. Most visualization systems use several projectors at once or multiple, tiled screens to display images. Tufts' uses just a single screen with close to 9 megapixels resolution (4,096 x 2,169 pixels) and two projectors (with overlapping fields of projection) to create high- resolution images and animation.
By using a single screen and two projectors, Tufts is able to produce ultra-high resolution images -- including 3-D images -- that appear smoother and without seams. Images projected at a higher resolution reveal fine, minute details that would be imperceptible on a screen with fewer pixels or tiled images. The VisWall's projectors are equipped with Infitec filters to minimize ghosting, in which an image appears to include elements of another image. Ghosting is a common drawback with conventional polarized filters.
In addition, the Tufts system can combine the sense of touch with that of sight through haptic devices that convey varying levels of resistance to the user when he or she touches graphical objects on the display wall. This also allows Tufts researchers to create virtual environments, such as the human body for surgical simulations that can be physically manipulated and transformed.
Order in Chaos
Tufts faculty have already discovered applications of the new technology. Mathematics Professor Boris Hasselblatt made a surprising find while viewing a mathematical model of butterfly populations as they fluctuated through successive generations. The model, used for research in dynamical systems theory, is based on a simple formula and is well-known to anyone familiar with chaos theory.
Visualizing the large population dataset with the 14-foot-wide, high-resolution graphical display enabled Hasselblatt to detect anomalies impossible to perceive with conventional displays: subtle traces of curving lines that he said indicated irregularities in variations in the population. The lines extended over different areas of the model and then converged at one distinct point.
Hasselblatt has looked at smaller images of this classic model many times during the last 20 years but had never recognized this convergence. He has not yet determined the implications of this discovery, but he said the pattern reflects order in what mathematicians have always thought to be a progression of chaotic cycles. "The pattern is so subtle that it's imperceptible but in this rendition the resolution is fine enough that I can easily see it," he said.
Bruce Boghosian, chairman of the mathematics department at Tufts and principal investigator on the NSF grant, said that the VisWall will benefit his study of fluid dynamics. Visualization capabilities can help him and his fellow researchers better understand fluid flow.
"You can go right up to streamlines in a fluid or dig into a reservoir and see which way it's flowing," said Boghosian. "That's the direction we would like to move in. You can imagine all kinds of other uses for something like that."
Virtual Surgery
The VisWall will also aid Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Caroline Cao. Her goal is to develop more robust laparoscopic surgical training systems in which 3-D computer simulations enable surgeons in training to feel as well as see.
She and her team, including senior Kyle Maxwell, have already developed software that enables users to remove a "tumor" during a simulated procedure. With the haptic device, these virtual surgeons receive force feedback when touching a hard surface, such as a tumor or bone, and a soft, deformable surface, such as tissue. The reaction is determined by the parameters provided by the model, which is based on real material properties.
Cao, who is director of the human factors program in the School of Engineering, said she wants to develop more anatomical features in the models. She also hopes to develop software that will simulate more complicated virtual procedures like heart surgery and colonoscopy. The VisWall's size, resolution and 3-D capability will greatly help in her work.
"Imagine the difference between simulating a virtual environment on a computer screen and one on a visualization wall -- the difference is tremendous," she said. "That's what large-scale visualization gives us, a capacity to create a richer immersion experience."
From Particle Physics to the "Lord of the Rings"
Similar benefits could be gained by physicist Austin Napier. His work in high energy physics relies on the ability to process huge streams of data from organizations like Switzerland's CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory. Tufts' VisWall will enable him to visualize on a single display what would otherwise require multiple computers.
Tynan said she expects the VisWall to become a resource for the broad range of academic disciplines at Tufts. She envisions scientists and engineers collaborating with faculty from the arts or humanities.
Boghosian brings up the example of the character Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings." Actor Andy Serkis' movements were tracked and translated to the digital rendering of the creature in the film. Similar technology is now available through the VisWall, which goes beyond traditional 3-D rendering to create a true virtual reality environment.
"Imagine taking the ability to do something like that and applying it to drama and dance," Boghosian mused. "Imagine taking the ability to do something like that and trying to use it for facial recognition or occupational therapy or many other fields. We haven't really even begun to explore those kinds of things yet."
Source: Tufts University
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