Month: March 2008

Reputation and Transparency

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I’ve referred to my blogging as a permanent presence on the Web and have encouraged would-be bloggers to first get a permanent domain name. My site is where anyone can find out most things about me, such as what I think, who I’ve worked for or how to contact me on various platforms. Michele Martin writes that you can’t hide with Web 2.0 and that “managing your online reputation becomes a critical success skill for both individuals and organizations in a global trust economy”.

I just received an invitation to a service, Naymz, that will supposedly let you manage your online reputation. Kind of like a broker for your whuffie. This seems to be a step up from ZoomInfo which aggregates online information about people. I’m sure we’ll see more of these cropping up.

Of course, I can see the downside of these reputation management systems and I’m sure that there are people figuring out how to manipulate them already, just as Google Page Rank is constantly gamed. However, anonymity on the Web seems to bring out the worst in us. I’ve been reading CBC’s French immersion articles with some nasty and bigoted comments by anonymous posters. Viewing anonymously makes sense and in certain cases anonymous posting may be useful, but for the most part, online forums should tacitly encourage the use of real names, perhaps through OpenID or some other user-controlled service.

Overall, transparency is a good thing but I’m going to reserve judgement on whether we need centralized services to manage our reputations.  I’ll stick to having my own little piece of the Web on which to make my own mistakes for the world to see.

End of an era

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The debate on the elimination of early French immersion will continue, but the NB Liberal government has drawn a line in the sand and is moving ahead with its one-size-fits-all approach to fix its industrial school system. Immersion was the grand experiment that began 32 years ago in order to put fact to the policy that this province was officially bilingual. Some embraced this view while others rejected it. Now even the Minister of Education is telling people to get their early language learning outside the school system.

Today our students score low on international literacy tests and have poor numeracy test results as well. The Minister wants to fix the system and fix it quick. However, he is stuck with an industrial school system staffed by an aging unionized workforce using crumbling facilities with students arriving in diesel powered buses from far and wide on a daily basis. There is not much room to manoeuver. Just imagine what fuel price increases will do to the bus contract in the next few years.

In order to get more leverage, the Minister and his staff have decided to consolidate their efforts in a last ditch attempt to make school relevant and hopefully effective. But hope is not a strategy.

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Departure of RMS Titanic

What has kept this industrial school system going is that most parents feel that it is a “good enough” option and the costs of leaving (e.g. home-schooling) are high, especially when many families have both parents working outside the home. Early French immersion kept many of the more involved parents committed to the system. Now it is gone. We’ve run out of money and options, constrained by years of added bulk to the system.

I do not believe that this strategy will work for several reasons:

Just as the newspaper, radio and music publishing industries (all based on a broadcast model) are becoming obsolete, so too is broadcast education – we teach, you learn; perhaps. One system to save us all will not work and I think that this decision will create a sea change in the people’s relationship with their public education system.

See my Public Education bookmarks for more resources.

Just after posting this, I came across Ross Dawson’s post on industrial policy [my emphasis]:

Japan and Singapore are examples of nations that have had highly interventionist industrial policies and industry support through the second half of the twentieth century, with great success. However once economies become developed, the key issues are far less about manufacturing prowess. Today the buzzwords in national economic development are knowledge, creativity, media, content, entertainment, design, and the like. All of these flow easily across boundaries. Moreover, the educational and social structures required to support them are dramatically different to those that support the creation of an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse.

Protesting the Abolition of EFI

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I’m heading off to Fredericton tomorrow to protest against the abolition of early French immersion (EFI) at the Provincial Legislature. I’ll be joining hundreds of other concerned citizens to show our disagreement with this decision. It’s my first protest, as I never had the chance to participate in these political activities while I was in the Army, so I guess it will be a learning experience.

I have many concerns with our education system, and I would have preferred to engage the government on something more substantial, such as the basis for curriculum or the whole notion of one-size-fits-all education, but EFI is the touch-point for many parents. I’m adding my voice to this protest for several reasons:

  1. Gaining a second language is one of the few useful skills that students can develop and keep long after they have memorized and forgotten useless data for most academic subjects.
  2. All of the research shows that learning a second language earlier results in better abilities with that language.
  3. A second language opens mental capabilities and makes it easier to learn other languages later.
  4. Speaking a second language opens one’s mind to the realization that there is more than one way to conceive of something, and can make you more tolerant of others.
  5. Multilingual capabilities are valued by the “creative class”, and we want to attract and retain the creative class.
  6. Abolishing EFI sends the wrong signal and encourages a myopic view of Us versus Them, especially since the Minister of Education has stated that EFI was elitist [but was open to all students].
  7. Pushing second language learning to the fifth grade and making it optional in Grade 6 reduces our other official language in this province to the status of an academic elective.

This is not the end of the world and there are other, more important issues in our society, but the abolition of EFI is sending the wrong message about this province’s vision for its citizens and it is handicapping a generation of learners who are getting little out of the education system already.

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Now it’s off to make my placard …

Update: We had about 500 protesters, of all ages, but our three-hour demonstration fell on deaf (government) ears:

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Costs of open source and proprietary LCMS/LMS

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David Bahn at Metropolitan State University of Minnesota asked me last week if I had any information about implementation and maintenance costs of open source versus proprietary learning systems. I referred him to Edutools and Brandon-Hall for comparative information as well as an older study done in French for the Québec government.

David then send me these other information sites that he had come across in his research:

Blaisdell, M. (2004). Course Management Systems >> It’s the Support, Stupid! Campus Technology, 12/28/2004. Retrieved from http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/38766/ on 3/23/2008.

Cheal, C., Cummings, R., Fernandez, K., & Penney, M. (2006). Choices and Changes: How Four Public Universities Are Coping with the LMS Market Consolidation. Presentation (and podcast) from panel discussion at the EDUCAUSE 2006 conference.  Retrieved from on3/23/2008.

Cheal, C.  (2006). LMS Comparison from ELIS at Oakland University. Retreived from http://www2.oakland.edu/elis/policies.cfm on 3/23/3008.

Heid, S. (2006).  “Course Management Systems: A Tipping Point. Campus Technology, 12/28/2006.  Retrieved from http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/41719/ on 3/23/2008.

Marshall, M. & Mitchell, G. (2007). Benchmarking International E-learning Capability with the E-Learning Maturity Model. In Proceedings of EDUCAUSE in Australasia 2007, April 29 –  May 2, 2007, Melbourne, Australia.

Learning at Work

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Note: This is part of a Working/Learning blog carnival hosted at Dave’s Whiteboard

This post repeats some themes that regular readers have seen over the past few years, but I’m finding that there is still a great need for individuals to take control of their knowledge-creation and sharing and many are overwhelmed by the Web.

I have come to consider that the basic unit of learning is the individual and this person is indivisible. To be successful, all learning activities, products and strategies must be centered around the person. We can then go on to develop environments for many people, but the individual is the building block – not the learning object, the course, the programme, or the institution. All of these are temporary organisations that the individual may use, or be part of.

I would also say that knowledge itself cannot be managed, and neither can knowledge workers; not effectively anyway. However, workers can manage data and information in order to develop their knowledge, and today we have several cheap and ubiquitous Web tools available to help us. It’s what I call Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), with an emphasis on “personal”.

In our day-to-day learning, one often repeated task is making the link from “this is an interesting idea” to “this is what I know”. The Web now provides us with an array of cheap and free tools to collect and collate information. PKM is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help the flow of implicit to explicit knowledge. However, PKM is more about attitude than any particular tool set. It’s taking (or rediscovering) our innately curious nature and tapping into it so that we can continue to expand our horizons.

One analogy of the Web is that it is a stream that we dip our buckets into from time to time. Another analogy is that of a surfer who follows the various streams and channels. It’s quite obvious that we cannot keep track of everything in nicely confined boxes with labels anymore. Even cataloging and indexing (taxonomies & hierarchies) are changing to a more flexible model of tagging or folksonomies on the Web, though the latter have their detractors.

If your work entails a need for current information, analysis, opinions or tapping into the knowledge of others, you probably need some form of PKM. If you have regular access to the Web, here is a suggested sequence:

  1. Start by moving your Bookmarks/Favourites on your browser to the Web. Social bookmarking services like Delicious or Furl let you create an online, searchable and shareable database of what you find interesting. Use tags (AKA categories or labels) to identify your saved pages and be liberal in their application. Here’s my Delicious list.
  2. Now start reading other sources of information in your field or in fields of interest. You can search for Blogs on Technorati or Bloglines. Once you are reading several sources you will need a way to organise these so that you’re not constantly going back to see if there is anything new. Use an aggregator. I would suggest Bloglines or Google Reader. Here is my Bloglines public account.
  3. Add your comments to blog posts of interest and if you make a lot of comments you might consider a comment aggregator, such as CoComment or Commentful. Bloglines Beta offers comment tracking as well.

What you are doing in these three steps is aggregating your information output and input, as well as adding information of importance to you (tags and comments). This process of sense-making is a great start to personal knowledge management. Some people have even more to say, and they usually become bloggers and podcasters, but that’s not for everyone.

Now that they’re all posted:

Here are the other Carnival posts hosted by Dave:

From cottage industry to international certification

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It’s a few years from now and you’re sitting in your office in an old Victorian building in your new position as Dean of Students. You thought that this would be the perfect job in a small university town with an easy walk to work, great colleagues and eager new students each year. However, you are looking at enrolment for this year and it’s down 30%. You have a major problem and you have some explaining to do about last year’s recruiting drive. What’s going on?

Online degrees now compete quite fiercely with “traditional universities”, especially those from reputable institutions that only charge $6,000 versus your current tuition fees of $45,000 for a Bachelor’s degree. However, you cannot decrease your fees as you’re facing rising costs. Just heating the dorms is an ever-increasing part of your budget, with oil at $3.50 a litre. You’ve even discussed shifting the academic calendar to take advantage of the warmer Summer months. On top of that, the university just negotiated a costly settlement with the faculty association, after a prolonged strike.

Robert Cringely explained the situation in 2008, but few schools or universities took action:

This [education] is an unstable system. Homeschooling, charter schools, these things didn’t even exist when I was a kid, but they are everywhere now. There’s only one thing missing to keep the whole system from falling apart – ISO certification.

I’ve written about this for years and nobody ever paid attention, but ISO certification is what destroyed the U.S. manufacturing economy. With ISO 9000 there was suddenly a way to claim with some justification that a factory in Malaysia was precisely comparable to an IBM plant on the Hudson. Prior to then it was all based on reputation, not statistics. And now that IBM plant is gone.

Daniel Lemire likened it to a similar business phenomenon:

Not long ago people bought European electronics because it was supposedly better. Now? These days are long gone.

At a certain point in time (2008?) the cost-benefits of a university education will be put in question. How expensive does it have to be before the majority opt out or look for “good enough” options? Once a certification body gets recognized by enough employers, it could become the de facto as well as the de jure standard.

Ridiculously easy group-forming

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The title of this post comes from a quote by Seb Paquet in the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. This book is situated somewhere between the simplicity of Wikinomics and the complexity of The Wealth of Networks, which makes it a welcome addition to the field of social networks. Shirky’s analysis is excellent and is not just a repeat of the echo-chamber of the blogosphere. For example:

When we change the way we communicate, we change society. (p. 17)

You can think of group undertaking as a kind of ladder of activities, activities that are enabled or improved by social tools. The rungs on the ladder, in order of difficulty, are sharing, cooperation, and collective action. (p. 49)

It’s when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen, and for young people today, our new social tools have passed normal and are heading to ubiquitous, and invisible is coming. (p. 105)

I saw social tools in action this week, when a parent/lawyer in Saint John, NB, was interviewed on the radio concerning the abolition of the early French immersion program in the province. The interviewer asked her what was the best way for other concerned parents to get involved. Her answer, “Facebook”. We now have tools for ridiculously easy group-forming, and these are being used at the local level by non-techies. Indeed, social media are getting close to “normal” even for those who are not so young.

Update:

Two groups on Facebook concerning EFI in NB (what Shirky would describe as “sharing”) have over 2,000 and 3,000 members respectively. The EFI Day of Protest has 104 Facebook members registered at this time (what Shirky would describe as “collective action”). As you go up the ladder, it requires more commitment, and you don’t get as many members. It’s interesting to watch this phenomenon and I’ll update the stats as time goes on, as well as confirm the actual numbers on the day of the protest.

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On curriculum

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Gilbert asked how I defined curriculum in my last post. There are many definitions, but I specifically meant curriculum as the pre-determined set of subjects, objectives, tests and lessons that constitute public education. Of particular note is that the students have no input or choice in the curriculum. I am not referring to university curriculum, where students have choice, or training, which is set by employers or other authorities.

First, do we need curriculum? Our official objective in NewBrunswick is:

To have each student develop the attributes needed to be a lifelong learner, to achieve personal fulfillment and to contribute to a productive, just and democratic society.

Predefined curriculum is not a necessary ingredient to fulfill this mission, and that is my prime concern. Someone far removed from the learner, and even the teacher, decides what is best for everyone. For example, someone decides that children study about the Great War but not the Suffragette Movement.

My issue is first that the public school curriculum, as it is implemented, is based on subjects and not processes (e.g. critical thinking; research methods; logic; etc). Secondly, I know from experience that the NB Department of Education does not have a process by which its subject-based curriculum is developed. Basically, a number of “experts” are put in a room for a week and when it’s over they have developed a curriculum. It is a rather black art. There are no first principles on which a subject’s curriculum is based so one cannot go back and determine if the subject is still relevant, if it ever was.

Curriculum, as currently practised, constrains learners, as there is no room for exploration because the teachers must cover what’s on the curriculum. This is the flaw in being subject-based. If education were process-based, then teachers could facilitate learning using a variety of subject areas. Why should I learn about history when I am more interested in art? Can’t I learn critical thinking in either discipline? Such an approach would mean giving up control, and that of course is the real issue. Once again from Brian Alger:

Challenging the validity of curriculum in any form means to challenge people’s jobs whether they are political officials, school administrators, consultants, teachers, students or parents. Part of the immense control and authority that curriculum has is that it provides careers and therefore sources of income. This, in my own experience, is where I have found the most significant roadblock to change and innovation.

So how can students become “lifelong learners” when they are told what to do, when to do it (in 50 minute increments), and what is important by an authority figure? Luckily, many children learn in spite of schooling.

Are there other options? Here’s just one – The Best Learning Experience Ever.

The bully of curriculum raises its head once again

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As I listen to comments on the Liberal government’s decision to axe early French immersion (EFI) in New Brunswick, I’m reminded once again that we have become so accustomed to the ground of schooling that we no longer see it for the restrictive institution that it has become. I return to Brian Alger’s post on curriculum:

One of the effects of curriculum design of any kind is confinement. And the confinement of human experience is an act of violence. A common example of this confinement via curriculum leading to violence is bullying.

Some of the written comments [spelling unchanged from original comments] on this CBC story are equally bullying:

  • The Government would have been better served years ago if they had said that all Governmet business would be conducted in the language of majority in Canada and that is ENGLISH
  • do away with bilingualism, the french have all the government jobs anway
  • Why don’t we the province of NB have english emmerison in french schools? ANYONE!!! Wouldn’t it make more sence to teach both groups both language then all of our kids would have the same chance in head of the class?
  • Why do you think any body wants their children to learn a base in french, when their are plenty of useful things to learn. When will you get it thru your indoctrinated appeasement thinking,that we want our kids EDUCATED!

When it comes to public education, everyone is an expert but no one knows what will work best for all students, because there is no single answer. Whatever curriculum is chosen will be constraining and bullying on someone and perhaps many. Our education system, based on the Prussian military school model with core subjects copied, and mostly unchanged, from Harvard’s 1890’s example, is seldom questioned.

The Minister of Education is using his powers to change the curriculum and now a different group of parents feels bullied. Others, who have felt bullied by the existence of French culture and language feel empowered to taunt this group. No matter what happens, someone will feel like the victim at the end of this. Curriculum is the confinement of the human experience. It is a blunt tool that winds up bullying someone. It’s time to throw this tool away, but first we have to sincerely ask why we’re using it in the first place.

More on Public Education

Toward minimally cohesive utterances

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The quality of French by anglophones in this province will quickly slide to “minimally cohesive utterances” if the Minister of Education, Kelly Lamrock, has his way and abolishes Early French Immersion (EFI).

About 75 concerned citizens met in Sackville this evening to discuss how we can reverse this decision that was based on the seriously flawed Croll & Lee Report. Prof. Diana Hamilton, who teaches statistics, categorically states that, “Almost all of the math is wrong”, in this report. Obviously, Kelly Lamrock did not major in Mathematics.

The Minister has based his decisions not only on a flawed report, but in the face of tremendous evidence that EFI is more effective, is actually cheaper than the alternative being proposed, and in the words of his own Department; NB School District #2:

Will my child’s English skills suffer because of immersion?

This question has been studied extensively during the past 25 years, both in Canada and abroad. The conclusion is that, far from hindering English development, knowledge of another language is actually beneficial in improving capabilities in the first langauge [sic], and increases the ability to learn a third and fourth language.

There may be certain lags in English Language Arts when a child enrols in an early French immersion program. However, after the introduction of English Language Arts instruction, children quickly catch up to their peers. Students have shown consistently over the years that, by the end of grade 6, children in immersion programs perform as well as or better than their peers in the regular program.

If our children are having academic or other problems in French immersion, should we transfer them to the English program?

Research and experience have shown that children with problems can benefit from a French immersion program. They learn their basic sills [sic] at their individual rate, and still acquire competence in French. There are very few instances where transferring a child out of immersion benefits the child.

Many activities and events are being planned, and the Hamlit2008 blog will be the main site for information on events in our community. There are also several Facebook groups – Save French Immersion in NB, Save Early EFI in Canada’s Bilingual Province, and more. There was some discussion about a protest at the Legislature before the session ends on March 28th, so if any other communities are planning the same, please let us know.

CBC Radio is also organizing The Future of French Second Language Education in New Brunswick at the Capitol Theatre in Moncton on Thursday, March 27th at 6:30 PM. So far, the Minister has declined an invitation to attend. I guess he’s too busy doing remedial math.