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Views You Can Use Vol. III No. 2 |
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| Successful Practices Network |  |
In this monthly briefing memo, my colleagues at the International Center and I share information on trends and technologies that will have an impact on education. Sincerely, Bill Daggett |
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EDUCATION
TRENDS Measuring School
Success Although schools have used data for years to see how
well their students are doing, government and business leaders have
questioned whether the data is being used to measure student
success. Michigan was the first state to use Standard and Poor’s
School Evaluation Services to look at the results on MEAP, the
Michigan state test. Pennsylvania followed suit, and now President
Bush has signed legislation to have S&P analyze 10 more states’
test results. These analyses raise a concern that the public and
educators as well will be overly focused on test scores as the
bottom line in education. For more on Standard & Poor’s School
Evaluation Services, visit http://www.ses.standardandpoors.com/
. MIT Online — Free and Available to
All The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has
officially launched OpenCourseWare, which will offer the content of
all 2,000 MIT courses online by the end of 2006. Video lectures,
course outlines, class notes, and tests for 500 courses are
available to anyone with Internet access. No degree or college
credit is granted. During the pilot test in 2002-03, the site drew
visitors from 210 countries and territories, with more than three
million hits each from Canada, Germany, Brazil, South Korea, France,
Japan, and the United Kingdom. Source: “MIT Everyware,” by David Diamond,
Wired magazine, September
2003 PDAs in the
Classroom For the past several months, I have been telling
audiences that the expanding capacity of PDAs (personal digital
assistants), which now includes Internet access, will pose difficult
policy questions for schools. Students are using PDAs in class to
chat, play games, and cheat on tests. Some schools have banned the
devices from classrooms along with cell phones; others allow them
with some restrictions. About 7 percent of school districts provide
students with handheld computers, often through corporate grants. To
cut down on cheating, educational software vendors of quiz programs
for PDAs have now begun to build in features that automatically
disable the infrared beaming function, for example. Source: “Schools Rule on Classroom Gadgets,”
Associated Press, www.wired.com, September 21, 2003 Bad Grades for College Information
Technology Programs Academia is not preparing its information technology
(IT) undergraduates or advanced-degree students with the skills they
need for the jobs of today and tomorrow, according to three-quarters
of the IT professionals surveyed by Computerworld magazine. When
asked to identify the skills that colleges should be teaching their
IT students that they aren’t now, the 244 respondents named
communication/people skills, business skills, real-world/hands-on
experience, troubleshooting project management, analytical skills,
and systems integration. Source: “Preparing Generation Z,” by
Thomas Hoffman, http://www.computerworld.com/
, August 25, 2003 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
TRENDS South Koreans Are Well
Connected More than two-thirds of households in South Korea have
high speed (broadband) Internet connections, compared to 15% of
American households. Broadband includes DSL (digital subscriber
line) and cable modems. Koreans are using the Internet, often
through their cell phones, to interact with government, for
socializing, for video-on-demand and other entertainment, and for
shopping. In the presidential election there last fall, one
candidate sent text messages to the cell phones of 800,000 voters,
thus making a personal connection with these people. Koreans spent
about 62 hours a month online, about 14 hours more than users in the
U.S., where dial-up access and lengthy downloads slow things down.
It appears that all this time learning and shopping online saves
Koreans about five hours a month while connecting them to new
friends. Source: “Seoul of a New Machine,” by J. Bradford
DeLong, Wired magazine,
September 2003 Location-based Computing Want to find an inexpensive Chinese restaurant for
lunch in an unfamiliar city or locate your teenager at the amusement
park? Location-finding technology is ready to help through wireless
services provided via cell phones, personal digital assistants, and
even bracelets. Japanese companies have offered this technology
since 2000, and J-Navi now gives directions to 15 million places.
The U.S. lags behind Europe and Asia in using these technologies for
convenience, but by December 2005, cell phones in the country will
be required to have location awareness capability for emergency 911
calls. Outdoor tracking is farther along than indoor tracking,
thanks to GPS (Global Position System) satellites and existing
cellular networks. Walls and other obstructions in buildings can
impede indoor tracking; these obstacles need to be
overcome. Source:
“WhereWare,” by Eric Pfeiffer, Technology Review, September
2003 Teaching Computers to Read
Lips Communicating with computers by voice recognition
saves wear and tear on the fingers but lacks precision, especially
in noisy places. Now scientists are working on boosting the accuracy
of speech recognition software through digital lip-reading systems.
Cameras look at the movements of the jaw, lower cheek, tongue, and
teeth as well as the mouth. In tests, combining visual and audio
input resulted in a 100% improvement in accuracy over voice input
alone. IBM and Intel are among the researchers working to perfect
these camera-based systems. Source: “Beyond Voice Recognition, to a Computer that
Reads Lips,” by Anne Eisenberg, http://www.nytimes.com/,
September 11, 2003 BIOTECH TRENDS Brain Chip Technology May Offer Help for
Dementia Victims Researchers at the University of California,
Riverside, are developing an artificial brain cell network that
might someday replace damaged brain cells in individuals with
dementia. The scientists created the network using electrical
currents to grow neurons (brain cells) in a precise pattern in a
petri dish connected to a silicon chip. Ultimately, the hope is to
provide the ability to bypass functionally impaired regions of the
brain by stimulating communication between more distant but healthy
neurons. Source: “Bypassing Faulty Brain Circuits Holds Promise
for Victims of Dementia,” by K.L. Capozza, UPI, http://www.smalltimes.com/,
April 24, 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Curriculum Matrix is now completed for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Many schools are finding this data helpful in improving student results on state-mandated tests. For information on our five related resource kits and samples of your state Curriculum Matrix charts and , please visit www.daleicle.org/cm.htm . |
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