This is a stunning lesson in WWII history, geography, and geopolitics
Enjoy,
Tom
A visualization of WWII like you’ve never seen before
Leave a reply
Category Archives: High School
Closing the education gap – new book – “I Got Schooled”
This summary, borrowed from Amazon: I Got Schooled, offers a look at America’s educational achievement gap that could only have come from an outsider.
Famed director M. Night Shyamalan has long had a serious interest in education. The MNS Foundation he and his wife started once gave college scholarships to promising inner-city students, but Shyamalan realized that these scholarships did nothing to improve education for all the other students in under-performing schools. When he learned that some schools were succeeding with similar student populations, he traveled across the country to find out how they did this and whether these schools had something in common. He eventually learned that there are five keys to closing America’s achievement gap. But just as we must do several things simultaneously to maintain good health— eat the right foods, exercise regularly, get a good night’s sleep—so too must we use all five keys to turn around our lowest-performing schools.
These five keys are used by all the schools that are succeeding, and no schools are succeeding without them. Before he discovered them, Shyamalan investigated some popular reform ideas that proved to be dead ends, such as smaller class size, truculent unions, and merit pay for teachers. He found that the biggest obstacle to school reform is cognitive biases: too many would-be reformers have committed themselves to false solutions (*) .
This is a deeply personal book by an unbiased observer determined to find out what works and why, so that we as a nation can fulfill our obligation to give every student an opportunity for a good education.
(*) Not the answer to closing the education gap:
- small classroom sizes
- master’s programs and Ph.D.’s for the teachers
- paying teachers like doctors
- funding the schools at $20,000 per pupil
Truly a book worth reading … and sharing … widely.
Here is a 58 minute video interview with M. Night Shyamalan that’s worth watching [click here to watch].
For busy people, I am posting a summary at tommilesabq.com of each of the five practices MNS Foundation discovered that “moved the needle” in closing the gap.
Bring 21st Century Into High Schools
Here’s a quick summary of, and link to, a June USNews article about bringing the 21st Century into the High School classroom.
A recent Gallup research program interviewed 1,014 people ages 18-35 with varying levels of education, asking them to recall their last year of school.
They found that about 1 out of 2 or 2 out of 3 individuals were NOT presented with collaboration, real-world problem solving and critical thinking opportunities in their high school experience.
While students were techno-savvy, only 3 percent had used discussion boards, video conferencing, Skype or other collaborative tools in the classroom.
Students tasked with regularly using these 21st century tools were more likely to say they excelled at their jobs, and that these tools were crucial in today’s workplace.
The Common Core State Standards adopted by most states require teachers to incorporate collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking into their lessons.
Cull current events: Look at what is dominating the news cycle and think about how it can apply to lessons. Use severe weather outbreaks and environmental disasters to illustrate everything from climate patterns to the logistics of coordinating relief efforts. Use the never-ending campaign season to teach students about statistics, social studies, finance and big data.
Tap industry experts: Getting a CEO into a classroom can be a logistical nightmare. Getting them on a Skype call – now that’s another story.
Free online tools can open up a wellspring of opportunity for getting experts in front of students. Educators can set up a call or join one hosted by someone else, using resources such as Skype in the Classroom. Teachers can also turn the tables and have students present a project or pitch an idea to industry leaders,
Read the complete article here.
The Real Reasons Children Drop Out of School
A very insightful view of the challenges by Franklin Schargel, a Former Teacher, School Counselor and School Administrator, appeared in a recent Huffing Post. In it Schargel names and discusses 5 main reasons kids drop out of school:
- The students themselves
- The families they come from
- The community they come from
- The school they attend
- The teachers they have
An ‘A’ for Job Readiness?
From Melissa Korn, At Work Blog, WSJ.com:
“Nearly 80% of current college students say they’re “very” or “completely” prepared to put their organization skills to work, while just 54% of hiring managers who’ve interviewed recent grads would agree, according to a survey of 2,000 U.S. college students and 1,000 hiring managers, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of education company Chegg.
Students overestimate their abilities by at least 10 percentage points on each of the 11 criteria measured in the survey, according to the findings.”
From the study:
| Assessment characteristic |
Students view |
Recruiters’ view |
| Making decisions without all the facts |
47% |
37% |
| Ability to communicate with bosses and clients |
70% |
44% |
The study also found that collaboration, managing up (i.e., managing your manager(s)), making persuasive arguments, and critical thinking in general, were unprepared for. The feeling that more hands-on and applied learning would be supportive to both students and employers.
Methinks starting more ‘hands-on and applied learning’ in middle- and high-school would also be supportive.
Back from the polls with interesting article
Whew! Sixteen hour election day poll work took a couple of days recovery time. Definitely not as young as I used to be.
Because this article on reverse engineering in healthcare seemed to have a number of interesting parallels with Education I thought I’d pass it on in the blog. Just substitute “education” for “healthcare” in the article. Here’s a summary:
Reverse innovation works because the different conditions in higher- and lower-income settings change the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that drive innovation.
What happens when you create health care solutions specifically for patients in low-income settings? It turns out that learning from and investing in these settings can be powerful ways to tackle problems at home that require out-of-the-box thinking. These differences include:
- Higher volume for lower price. Radical approaches are often needed to achieve acceptable performance at ultra-low price points.
- Less developed infrastructure allows rapid implementation of new solutions.
- Sustainability is important in resource-limited areas, favoring “green solutions.”
- Fewer regulations quicken the pace of innovation.
- Preferences are different, inspiring creative design.
- Overwhelming need increases the ‘purpose motive,’ fueling innovators who want to make a difference.
These six attributes make lower-income settings appealing places to create, test, and scale new ideas (In ABQ/BERNCO, think ABC Community Schools Partnership for pre-K-12 and Mission Graduate: 60,000 for K-12 and beyond).
So, just how do ideas move through a reverse innovation pipeline?
- Identify a high priority problem shared between lower- and higher-income settings. For example, affordable, user-friendly diagnostics, or a mobile health information technology solution to a pressing health care issue.
- Innovators in lower-income settings must create a solution that spreads to the first 15% of the population, or the “early adopters.” This usually happens only if the idea is better, relevant, simple, easily tested, and visible to others. Endorsement by early adopters pushes an innovation past its tipping point, where it is then likely to spread to the population at large.
- The idea must cross-pollinate from lower- to a higher-income settings. Here the critical link is between lower-income early adopters and higher-income innovators. Whether these parties connect in-person or online, the quality of the interaction must facilitate sufficient trust to allow the idea to cross over. Building relationships over time helps create “spannable social distances,” such that the two parties find each other credible enough to take a risk on the other’s idea.
- The idea has to spread in the higher-income setting. Again the innovation must be better, relevant, simple, easily tested, and visible to others. It must also overcome the resistance of existing infrastructure and other established solutions. If the idea is clearly effective in lower-income settings, this can help lower the barrier to adoption.
The article provides three very interesting real-world examples in Diagnostics, Health IT, and Service Delivery.
In short, reverse innovation has tremendous potential to align incentives and disrupt existing systems and technologies. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg (or, as their African colleagues like to say, the ears of the hippopotamus – I just love that analogy).
Also … beware the resistance inherent in disrupting existing systems.
What can we do to increase the pace of reverse innovation? For starters, we can:
- Identify high-priority problems that could potentially be solved in lower-income settings.
- Empower lower-income innovators and early adopters through seed funding, competitive “innovation awards,” or other mechanisms.
- Bring lower-income early adopters and higher-income innovators together through conferences or learning collaboratives (live or virtual).
- Track reverse innovation activity globally, identifying and removing barriers to spread.
Many intractable problems in health care could be solved if we accelerated the spread of ideas through the reverse innovation pipeline. To do this, we will need to think differently, invest in reverse innovation, and work together to solve common problems.
Again, think of the work being done today by ABC Community Schools Partnership for pre-K-12 and Mission Graduate: 60,000 for K-12 and beyond.
How well does your school meet student expectations? Take this quiz to find out.
The idea is that learning should be student centered. To do that we need to be clear on the expectations students have about their schools. The following diagram outlines the ten expectations which young people want from their schools.
 |
| Read more about these expectations and watch short videos of students discussing them in action here. |
Lisa Nielsen created a ten question quiz based on these student expectations of school. This is a terrific conversation starter for transforming schools.
You can read the complete article here, take the quiz, and see how your school stacks up.