Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Life On Earth: 101 Examples

I recently read this article on gettingsmart.com and thought it would be great to share the list.

This month I’ve been tracking news headlines to get a sense for how widespread AI applications have become. With a couple news alerts and searches I spotted 101 current applications–no SciFi here, these are tools people are using today. And these aren’t just clever algorithms–they are getting better and smarter the more data they interact with.

Life & Media

  1. Mapping apps and satellite view (Google Earth)
  2. Speech recognition (TechCrunch)
  3. Dating apps (Vancouver Sun)
  4. Language translation (Silicon Valley Business Journal)
  5. Image recognition (Fei-Fei Li on TED)
  6. AI composition and music recommendations (Newsweek)
  7. Make reservations at a restaurant. (Techcrunch)
  8. Filters content and make recommendations (Hubspot podcast)
  9. Write articles (Recode)
  10. Optimize website-building (TechCrunch)
  11. Manages prayer requests (Deseret News)
  12. Track and store the movements of automobiles, trains, planes and mobile phones (IBM)
  13. Track real-time sentiments of billions of people through social media (IBM)
  14. Beat the best humans in chess and Go (CCTV)
  15. Coaching social emotional relationships (Phys)

Safety & security

  1. Security-driven AI systems can easily detect and identify bad behaviors from good behaviors. (Economic Times)
  2. Quickly find security vulnerabilities (Defense One)
  3. Criminal justice system is increasingly using algorithms to predict a defendant’s future criminality (Propublica)
  4. Anomaly detection using machine vision (IBM)
  5. Predictive models for crime (IBM)
  6. Autonomous aerial and undersea warfighting (Nextgov)
  7. Guide cruise missiles (Express)

Industry & Agriculture

  1. Optimize crop yield (Amr Awadallah in Forbes)
  2. LettuceBot reduces chemical use by 90% (Wired)
  3. Driverless tractors (Business Wire)
  4. Manufacturers predict which machines will breakdown (Amr Awadallah in Forbes)
  5. Smart robots for repetitive jobs from apple picking and  sneaker maker, (Techcrunch)
  6. Robots develop and share new skills (MIT)

Transportation

  1. Driverless cars (Nature) coming to Pittsburgh this fall (Wired)
  2. Driverless trucks (TechCrunch)
  3. Managing drone traffic (Yahoo)
  4. Making bus routes smarter (Shanghai Daily)
  5. Improve the efficiency of public transportation systems (IBM)
  6. Oil exploration efficiency (Oil Price)

Environment

  1. Prediction and management of pollutants and carbon footprints. (IBM)
  2. Make data centers, power plants, and energy grids more efficient (Money)

Medicine & Health

  1. Digitized health records and all medical knowledge to improve diagnosis (IBM)
  2. Performing cohort analysis, identifying micro-segments of similar patients, evaluating standard-of-care practices and available treatment options, ranking by relevance, risk and preference, and ultimately recommending the most effective treatments for their patients (IBM)
  3. Power precision medicine (NIH)
  4. Reduction of medical errors (H&HN)
  5. Study the genetics of Autism (SAC)
  6. Analyze genomic sequences to develop therapies (Amr Awadallah in Forbes)
  7. Read x-rays better than a radiologist (nanalyze)
  8. Genomic editing–which may be the most important (and scariest) item on the list (Time)
  9. Use social media to diagnosis depression and mental illness (Tech Times)

Organizational Management

  1. Speeding and improving Identity verification and background checking (PE Hub)
  2. Monitor employee satisfaction and predict staff turnover (HuffPost)
  3. Sorting through stacks of résumés from job seekers. (Propublica)
  4. Replace handcrafted rule-based systems (TechRepublic)
  5. Smart virtual assistants (Slate)
  6. Enterprise tech companies provide deep learning as a service–AI on demand (TweakTown)
  7. Humans and robots will increasingly collaborate on problem solving (Quartz)
  8. Automated floor cleaning (Slate)

Art & Architecture

54. Organic algorithms in architecture (Greg Lynn on TED)

  1. Virtual reality art (Wired)
  2. Synthesized music (Newsweek)

Social services & Infrastructure

  1. Timely and relevant answers to citizens (IBM)
  2. Predict the needs of individuals and population groups, and develop plans for efficient deployment of resources. (IBM)
  3. Prediction of demand, supply, and use of infrastructure (IBM)
  4. Mobile phone network services (RCRwireless)
  5. Analysis of lead contamination in Flint water (Talking Machines)
  6. improve building and city design (Property Report)
  7. Poverty map of Africa to improve services delivery (Yahoo)

Finance and Banking

  1. Fraud detection (Business Insider)
  2. Scan news, spot trends and adjust portfolios (Hubspot podcast)
  3. Determine credit scores and qualify applicants (Propublica)
  4. Find the best insurance coverage at the right cost (IBM)
  5. Deliver personalized service with reduce error rates (Finextra)
  6. Handle 30k banking customer services transaction/month (American Banker)
  7. Answer 100M financial questions involving complex data (Fast Company)
  8. Auto-adjudication of insurance claims (Fast Company)
  9. Tax preparation (CFO)

Marketing & Customer Service

  1. Power chatbot customer service (CB Insights)
  2. Product recommendations (Digital Marketing Blog)
  3. Manage White House comments (Techcrunch)
  4. Chatbot lawyer contests parking tickets (Guardian)
  5. Robot inventory checker (NY Times)
  6. Recognise customer behavior and provide predictive customer service (Brand Equity)
  7. Predict eBay sales (HeatST)
  8. Improve sales funnel conversion (Digital Marketing Blog)

Entertainment

  1. Fantasy football picks (Fake Teams)
  2. Writing screenplays (Entertainment)

Education

  1. Recommend next best learning experience (Forbes)
  2. Personalized learning programs (IBM)
  3. Intelligent tutoring (Forbes)
  4. Provides six trait writing feedback (Hubspot podcast)
  5. Digitized the world’s literature enabling search/analysis (IBM)
  6. Embedded adaptive assessments promotes competency-based learning (Google’s Jonathan Rochelle in Business Insider)
  7. Improve career education (Google’s Jonathan Rochelle in Business Insider)
  8. AI is boosting HigherEd persistence with text nudges (Rose Luckin in Times HigherEd)
  9. Process intelligence tools identify and visualize opportunities (MIT)
  10. Matching teachers and schools (Getting Smart)
  11. Bus scheduling (Getting Smart)

Smart Home

  1. Smart home control systems (Fortune)

Check out these smart home startups. A lot of these use AI behind the scene to get smarter over time.

The Changing Employment Landscape

This has been a weird recovery–sluggish and slow to produce jobs and higher wages. In addition to a bunch of unusual international circumstances, the global economy has been incorporating exponential technology, particularly all the artificial intelligence applications above. While the bots are eating away at some predictable job categories, all this technology has yielded frustratingly slow productivity growth.

The economy remains a head scratcher, but web research yields pretty consistent advice for young people and job seekers in this new age of automation:

  1. Do what AI doesn’t do well: give a hug, solve a mystery, tell a story. (NPR)
  2. Analytical and interpersonal skills will likely become more important. (Brookings)
  3. Focus on adding value in novel situations. (Anthony Goldbloom on TED)
  4. Focus on computational thinking not just coding. (Edsurge)

99. Critical thinking, systems analysis, and inductive reasoning are increasingly important in “mixes and depths” that are currently rare. (Quartz)

100. Social interaction and co-working increasingly important (Business Insider)

  1. Equip graduates to work effectively alongside AI (Rose Luckin in Times HigherEd)

What’s the new hot field? When you pull junior aside at the pool party (like The Graduate), instead of “plastics” you should be recommending “machine learning.”

The first half of the information age was programming computers to do what we want. In the second half of the information age computers are programming themselves. Machine learning is the practical subset of artificial intelligence–the new hub of efforts to add intelligence to every facet of life. And it’s hot.

“It’s huge. It’s really one of the biggest shifts that we have seen in the last few decades. And it’s creating demand, off the charts demand, and this is across all industries,” said Amr Awadallah of Cloudera.

Amr added, “The future need for people with high technical skills when it comes to data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning is going to be off the charts.”

More broadly Google’s Jonathan Rochelle knows it takes a smart application of cutting-edge products to help kids learn. He encourages teachers to help kids use the latest products effectively. Those are the skills that will give them the greatest leg up as citizens, Rochelle says. “Imagine if we could teach kids all the tools that are at their disposal,” he says, “and let them take the next step to stand on the shoulders of giants.”

NCLB is now Every Student Succeeds Act

The newest proposed version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act—is almost over the congressional finish line, with votes in both chambers of Congress imminent.

So how would accountability work under the ESSA, if approved? And how does it compare to No Child Left Behind Act, Classic Edition, and the Obama administration’s waivers?

Your cheat sheet here. Top-line stuff on accountability first, then some early reaction. Scroll down further if you want the nitty-gritty details on accountability.

And scroll down even further if you want more details on other aspects of the deal (an update of past Politics K-12 cheat sheets, including some new information on which programs made it into the agreement and which are on the chopping block, thanks to this helpful fact sheet from the Committee for Education Funding).

The top-line stuff: The ESSA is in many ways a U-turn from the current, much-maligned version of the ESEA law, the No Child Left Behind Act.

•States would still have to test students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, and break out the data for whole schools, plus different “subgroups” of students (English-learners, students in special education, racial minorities, those in poverty.)

But beyond that, states get wide discretion in setting goals, figuring out just what to hold schools and districts accountable for, and deciding how to intervene in low-performing schools. And while tests still have to be a part of state accountability systems, states must incorporate other factors that get at students’ opportunity to learn, like school-climate and teacher engagement, or access to and success in advanced coursework.

And, in a big switch from the waivers, there would be no role for the feds whatsoever in teacher evaluation.

• States and districts will have to use locally-developed, evidence-based interventions though, in the bottom 5 percent of schools and in schools where less than two-thirds of students graduate. States must also flag for districts schools where subgroup students are chronically struggling. The School Improvement Grant program is gone, but there are resources in the bill states can use for turnarounds.

The deal goes further on accountability than either the House- or Senate-passed legislation. And, in a win for civil rights groups, it appears there are no more so-called supersubgroups. That’s a statistical technique in the waivers that allowed states to combine different categories of students for accountability purposes.

There are definitely some “guardrails” as one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., would say. (More on just what those are below.) But the education secretary’s authority is also very limited, especially when it comes to interfering with state decisionmaking on testing, standards, school turnarounds, and more.

So there’s some real ambiguity here. That will be something to watch going forward.

It’s still unclear just how the accountability or “guardrails” provisions of the bill vs. limits on secretarial authority dynamic will play out in regulation and implementation. But it’s possible lawyers and lobbyists may have walked away as big winners here. (Even Democratic and Republican aides see certain aspects of the bill differently.)

Put another way, there are definitely provisions in this deal that state and district leaders and civil rights advocates can cite to show that states and schools will have to continue to ensure equity. But, it will be hard for the U.S. Department of Education to implement those provisions with a very heavy hand, without at least the threat of lawsuits.

So what happens from here will be largely up to states. (More on the potential regulatory fights, and lawsuits, ahead in this story from Friday.)

“What can the secretary do and not do? I think that’s where the lawsuits will be,” said Chad Aldeman, an associate partner at Bellwether Education, who served in the U.S. Department of Education under President Barack Obama.

Early Reaction 

Civil rights groups say they’re waiting for real, live legislative language, not just a framework, before weighing in.

But, already, other accountability hawks are not happy campers.

“States are being given license to create systems that are significantly not based on student learning. That’s a problem,” said Sandy Kress, an original architect of the NCLB law. “This pretty much eliminates any kind of expectation for closing the achievement gap.” (Another take from Chad Aldeman at Bellwether Education Partner’s blog Ahead of the Heard.)

But some state chiefs say there’s no way that’s happening. After all, it didn’t under the NCLB waivers.

“I’m bothered when I hear people say that school chiefs won’t hold schools accountable,” said Brenda Cassellius, Minnesota’s education chief. “That’s not been evident with the waivers. … We’ve supported our schools and we’ve held them accountable. I hope America can see that.”

The nitty-gritty details on accountability, based on an analysis of a late-stage version of the framework:

Plans: States would still have to submit accountability plans to the education department. These new ESSA plans would start in the 2017-18 school year. And a state could get a hearing if the department turned down its plan.

Goals:

  • No more expectation that states get all students to proficiency by the 2013-14 school year, as under NCLB Classic. (That ship has sailed, anyway). And no more menu of goals, largely cooked up by the department, as under the waivers.
  • Instead, states can pick their own goals, both a big long-term goal, and smaller, interim goals. These goals must address: proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, and graduation rates.
  • Goals have to set an expectation that all groups that are furthest behind close gaps in achievement and graduation rates.

What kinds of schools will states have to focus on? 

  • States have to identify and intervene in the bottom 5 percent of performers, an idea borrowed from waivers. These schools have to be identified at least once every three years. (That’s something many states already do under waivers. And some, like Massachusetts, do it every single year.)
  • States have to identify and intervene in high schools where the graduation rate is 67 percent or less.
  • States, with districts, have to identify schools where subgroup students are struggling.

What do these accountability systems have to consider? The list of “indicators” is a little different for elementary and middle schools vs. high schools.

  • Systems for Elementary and Middle Schools:
  • States need to incorporate a jumble of five indicators into their accountability systems.
  • That includes three academic indicators: proficiency on state tests, English-language proficiency, plus some other academic factor that can be broken out by subgroup. (That could be growth on state tests, so that states would have a mix of both in their systems, as many already do under waivers.)
  • States also have to somehow figure in participation rates on state tests (schools with less than 95 percent participation are supposed to have that factored in, somehow.)
  • And, in a big new twist, states must add at least one, fifth indicator of a very different kind into the mix. Possibilities include: student engagement, educator engagement, access to and completion of advanced coursework, post-secondary readiness, school climate/safety, or whatever else the state thinks makes sense. Importantly, though, this indicator has to be disaggregated by subgroup. States are already experimenting with these kinds of indicators under the waivers, especially a cadre of districts in California (the CORE districts). Still, this is new territory when it comes to accountability.
  • Systems for high schools:
  • Basically the same set of indicators, except that graduation rates have to be part of the mix.
  • So to recap, that means for high schools: proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, graduation rates, plus some other indicator that focuses a little more on whether students have the opportunity to learn, or are ready for post-secondary work. And also, test participation has to be incorporated in some way.

How much do each of these indicators have to count? It depends on who you ask. Everyone agrees that those academic indicators (tests, grad rates, English-language proficiency) have to weigh more, as a group, than that non-traditional indicator that gets at a students’ opportunity to learn (school climate, etc.)

From there, Democratic and Republicans aides have different takes.  A Republican aide said the academic stuff just has to be at least 51 percent of the system, and the other factor, or factors, can be up to 49 percent. A Democratic aide said the regulations might turn out differently, when all’s said and done. (In this aide’s view, the department could set a range for each individual indicator, ultimately giving the academic factors as a group significantly greater weight than the other factors.) More here. It’s also unclear whether the test participation indicator, which states can weigh however they want, will throw a monkey wrench into all of this. More here.

How do interventions work? 

  • For the bottom 5 percent of schools and for high schools with really high dropout rates:
  • Districts work with teachers and school staff to come up with an evidence-based plan.
  • States monitor the turnaround effort.
  • If schools continue to founder for years (no more than four) the state is supposed to step in with its own plan. That means states could take over the school if they wanted, or fire the principal, or turn the school into a charter, just like they do under NCLB waivers now. (But, importantly, unlike under waivers, there aren’t any musts—states get to decide what kind of action to take.)
  • Districts could also allow for public school choice out of seriously low-performing schools, but they have to give priority to the students who need it most.
  • For schools where subgroups students are struggling:
  • These schools  have to come up with an evidence-based plan to help the particular group of kids who are falling behind. For example, a school that’s having trouble with students in special education could decide to try out a new curriculum with evidence to back it up and hire a very experienced coach to help train teachers on it.
  • Districts monitor these plans. If the school continues to fall short, the district steps in. The district decides just when that kind of action is necessary, though; there’s no specified timeline in the deal.
  • Importantly, there’s also a provision in the deal calling for a “comprehensive improvement plan.” States and districts to take more-aggressive action in schools where subgroups are chronically underperforming, despite local interventions. Their performance has to look really bad though, as bad as the performance of students in the bottom 5 percent of schools over time.

What kind of resources are there for these interventions? The School Improvement Grant program, which is funded at around $500 million currently, has been consolidated into the bigger Title I pot, which helps districts educate students in poverty. But states would be able to set aside up to 7 percent of all their Title I funds for school turnarounds, up from 4 percent in current law. (That would give states virtually the same amount of resources for school improvement as they get now, through SIG.) However, the bulk of those dollars would be sent out to districts for “innovation”, which could include turnarounds.  It would be up to states whether to send that money out by formula, to everyone, or competitively, as they do now with SIG dollars. (More in this cheat sheet from AASA, the School Administrator’s Association, which has been updated on this issue.) Bottom line: There are resources in the bill for school turnarounds. But some of the money could also be used for other purposes, if that’s what districts and states want. 

What about the tests? The testing schedule would be the same as under NCLB. But in a twist, a handful of states could apply to try out local tests, with the permission of the U.S. Department of Education. And importantly, these local tests aren’t supposed to be used forever—the point is for districts to experiment with new forms of assessment (as New Hampshire is doing with performance tasks) that could eventually go statewide and be used by everyone. That way states don’t get stuck with the same old assessment for years on end.

What’s more, the framework allows for the use of local, nationally-recognized tests at the high school level, with state permission. So a district could, in theory, use the SAT or ACT as its high school test, instead of the traditional state exam.

Also, computer adaptive testing would be easier. More here.

What about that supersubgroup thing mentioned higher up? Supersubgroups are a statistical technique used in the waivers that call for states to combine different groups of students (say, students in special education, English-language learners, and minorities) for accountability purposes. By my reading of the bill, it would seem that’s a no-no. States now have to consider accountability for each subgroup separately. States liked the flexibility of supersubgroups. But former Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and civil rights groups said they masked gaps. The deal appears to eliminate the use of supersubgroups.

What about the rest of the bill?
Scroll down for information on English-Language Learners, students in special education, school choice, teachers, and funding provisions.

English-Language Learners

Where does deal land when it comes to when newly arrived English-language learners must be tested? (Background on this issue here). States would have two choices.

  • Option A) Include English-language learners’ test scores after they have been in the country a year, just like under current law.
  • Option B) During the first year, test scores wouldn’t count towards a school’s rating, but ELLs would need to take both of the assessments, and publicly report the results. (That’s a switch from current law. Right now, they only need to take math in the first year). In the second year, the state would have to incorporate ELLs’ results for both reading and math, using some measure of growth. And in their third year in the country, the proficiency scores of newly arrived ELLs are treated just like any other students’. (Sound familiar? It’s very similar to the waiver Florida received.)

The compromise would shift accountability for English-language learners from Title III (the English-language acquistion section of the ESEA) to Title I (where everyone else’s accountability is). The idea is to make accountability for those students a priority.

Students in Special Education

The legislation mirrors a recent federal regulation when it comes to assessments for students in special education, saying, essentially, that only 1 percent of students overall can be given alternative tests. (That’s about 10 percent of students in special education.)

Opt-Outs

The bill largely sticks with the Senate language, which would allow states to create their own testing opt-out laws (as Oregon has). But it would maintain the federal requirement for 95 percent participation in tests. However, unlike under the NCLB law, in which schools with lower-than-95 percent participation rates were automatically seen as failures, local districts and states would get to decide what should happen in schools that miss targets. States would have to take low testing participation into consideration in their accountability systems. Just how to do that would be up to them.

For a deeper look at this particular topic, check out this blog post on opt-outs in the ESEA reauthorization deal.

On Programs

There’s more consolidation of federal education in the compromise than there was in the Senate bill.

  • The legislation creates a $1.6 billion block grant that consolidates a bunch of programs, including some involving physical education, Advanced Placement, school counseling, and education technology. (Some of these programs haven’t federal funding in years.)
  • Districts that get more than $30,000 will have to spend at least 20 percent of their funding on at least one activity that helps students become well-rounded, and another 20 percent on at least one activity that helps kids be safe and healthy. And part of the money could be spent on technology. (But no more than 15 percent can go to technology infastructure.)
  • Some programs would live on as separate line items, including the 21st Century Community schools program, which pays for after-school programs and has a lot support on both sides of the aisle in Congress.
  • Other survivors: Promise Neighborhoods, and a full-service community schools program. And there’s a standalone program for parent engagement. There are also reservations for Arts Education, gifted education, and Ready to Learn television.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. got the early-childhood investment she wanted—the bill enshrines an existing program “Preschool Development Grants” in law, and focuses it on program coordination, quality, and broadening access to early childhood education. But the program would be housed at the Department of Health and Human Services, not the Education Department as some Democrats had initially hoped. The Education Department would jointly administer the program, however. (The reason: HHS already has some early-education programs, like Head Start. Expanding the education department’s portfolio was a big no-no for conservatives.)

That new research and innovation program that some folks were describing as sort of a next-generation “Investing in Innovation” program made it into the bill. (Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., are big fans, as is the administration.)

On School Choice

No Title I portability: That means that federal funds won’t be able to follow the child to the school of their choice.

But the bill does include a pilot project allowing districts to try out a weighted student funding formula, which would also essentially function as a backpack of funds for kids. The program would allow 50 districts to combine state, local, and federal funds into a single pot that could follow a child to the school of their choice. It is said to be a more workable alternative to Title I portability, which looked more dramatic on paper, but which few states would likely have taken advantage of because of its complexity, experts said. Importantly with this pilot, participation would be entirely up to district officials. And the language would give them a chance to better target funds to individual school needs.

Teachers

The headline here is that states would no longer have to do teacher evaluation through student outcomes, as they did under waivers.And NCLB’s “highly qualified teacher” requirement would be officially a thing of the past.

There’s also language allowing for continued spending on the Teacher Incentive Fund—now called the Teacher and School Leader Innovation Program—which doles out grants to districts that want to try out performance pay and other teacher quality improvement measures. And there are resources for helping train teachers on literacy and STEM. Much more from Teacher Beat.

Funding and Other Issues

No changes to the Title I funding formula along the lines of what the Senate passed that would steer a greater share of the funds to districts with high concentrations of students in poverty. But there were some changes to the Title II formula (which funds teacher quality) that would be a boon to rural states.

The agreement would keep in place maintenance of effort, a wonky issue we wrote about recently, with some new flexibility added for states. (Quick tutorial: Maintenance of effort basically requires states to keep up their own spending at a particular level in order to tap federal funds.)

There was some chatter that the bill would also incorporate changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. That’s not part of the agreement.

The framework would only “authorize” ESEA for four more years, as opposed to the typical five. That gives lawmakers a chance to revisit the policy under the next president, should they choose to do so. And its overall authorization levels are largely consistent with the most recent budget deal. 

 

For a full read of the act…. Every Student Succeeds Act 2015

 

The Key to Successful Expanded Learning Programs Is Mastery

(artvea/istockphoto)

(artvea/istockphoto)

A well-rounded education is defined by a broader set of outcomes than traditionally outlined in academic standards and standardized tests. Educators and other stakeholders alike are increasingly interested in the so-called soft skills related to social and emotional learning, creativity and innovation, and citizenship.

But how do we ensure that all students, especially disadvantaged students, have sufficient time and opportunity to attain all the skills needed for college, career, and the global innovation economy beyond?

“Expanded learning” has become a catchphrase for a variety of different models that aim to expand learning time and experiences for students. Some models provide more time for learning by extending the school day and school year. Other models restructure the school schedule and leverage school-based afterschool and summer programs provided by community partners to expand access to hands-on learning experiences—in core subjects as well as others that have been increasingly cut from the school day, such as arts and music or health and wellness. A variety of models focus on leveraging technology through blended learning, flipped classroom, and “anywhere, anytime” opportunities that extend and expand learning beyond the school classroom and calendar. Still others focus on providing credit for learning that takes place outside the school day and beyond the school building, whether formal course credit, elective credit, or informal credit in the form of a digital badge.

Despite being driven by the need to graduate students who are proficient across a broader set of outcomes than those currently defined in the standards and assessed through standardized tests, few of the emerging expanded learning models are operating in the context of an established mastery-based or competency-based system. And yet, to ensure expanded learning programs are successful, one must be able to to recognize learning reliably and authentically based on students’ demonstrated mastery of a defined set of competencies.

This presents significant opportunities as well as challenges. On the one hand, expanded learning models represent an opportunity to consider education reform from the context of the student, rather than the system. Expanded learning is creating new approaches to organizing education around student needs and interests, regardless of when, where, how, or with whom learning happens. However, expanded learning cannot be successful without an established system for defining what criteria constitute accomplishment of learning, and how those criteria will be measured in a way that is valid and reliable. Otherwise, expanded learning may eventually be seen as a more relevant but ultimately less rigorous way to earn credit.

While policy catches up to the vision for competency-based systems, schools, afterschool providers, and community partners can start supporting shifts in practice. One of the important cornerstones of competency-based education is authenticity. Authentic learning is what afterschool programs do inherently, but many are not yet at the level of rigor required in a competency-based system.

Expanded learning programs need to:

  • Commit to focus learning around specific outcomes shared across the school and community that are “Common Core and more,” addressing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that students will need to succeed in the world beyond school.
  • Provide high-quality project-based learning experiences that are aligned to competencies and engage students in the meaningful work of professionals in the real world.
  • Collaborate with schools and districts to support performance-based assessments that measure to what extent students can actually apply the knowledge and skills contained in the competencies and standards.

While all three of these things are fundamental to a competency-based system, they are also just good practice and can strengthen expanded learning programs, while at the same time preparing them to be strong partners to schools in a competency-based system.

25
Nov 2015
POSTED BY Jeff
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Educational Technology Isn’t Leveling the Playing Field

Library Kids.
Affluent kids receive more guidance in libraries—new computers or not—than poor kids do.

Courtesy of Shutterstock.

The local name for the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington is “the Badlands,” and with good reason. Pockmarked with empty lots and burned-out row houses, the area has an unemployment rate of 29 percent and a poverty rate of 90 percent. Just a few miles to the northwest, the genteel neighborhood of Chestnut Hill seems to belong to a different universe. Here, educated professionals shop the boutiques along Germantown Avenue and return home to gracious stone and brick houses, the average price of which hovers above $400,000.

Within these very different communities, however, are two places remarkably similar in the resources they provide: the local public libraries. Each has been retooled with banks of new computers, the latest software and speedy Internet access. Susan B. Neuman, a professor of early childhood and literacy education at NYU, and Donna C. Celano, an assistant professor of communication at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, spent hundreds of hours in the Chestnut Hill and Badlands libraries, watching how patrons used the books and computers on offer.

The two were especially interested in how the introduction of computers might “level the playing field” for the neighborhoods’ young people, children of “concentrated affluence” and “concentrated poverty.” They undertook their observations in a hopeful frame of mind: “Given the wizardry of these machines and their ability to support children’s self-teaching,” they wondered, “might we begin to see a closing of the opportunity gap?”

Many hours of observation and analysis later, Neuman and Celanano were forced to acknowledge a radically different outcome: “The very tool designed to level the playing field is, in fact, un-leveling it,” they wrote in a 2012 book based on their Philadelphia library study. With the spread of educational technology, they predicted, “the not-so-small disparities in skills for children of affluence and children of poverty are about to get even larger.”

Neuman and Celano are not the only researchers to reach this surprising and distressing conclusion. While technology has often been hailed as the great equalizer of educational opportunity, a growing body of evidence indicates that in many cases, tech is actually having the opposite effect: It is increasing the gap between rich and poor, between whites and minorities, and between the school-ready and the less-prepared.

This is not a story of the familiar “digital divide”—a lack of access to technology for poor and minority children. This has to do, rather, with a phenomenon Neuman and Celano observed again and again in the two libraries: Granted access to technology, affluent kids and poor kids use tech differently. They select different programs and features, engage in different types of mental activity, and come away with different kinds of knowledge and experience.

The unleveling impact of technology also has to do with a phenomenon known as the “Matthew Effect”: the tendency for early advantages to multiply over time. Sociologist Robert Merton coined the term in 1968, making reference to a line in the gospel of Matthew (“for whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath”).

In a paper published in 1986, psychologist Keith Stanovich applied the Matthew Effect to reading. He showed that children who get off to a strong early start with reading acquire more vocabulary words and more background knowledge, which in turn makes reading easier and more enjoyable, leading them to read still more: a virtuous cycle of achievement. Children who struggle early on with reading fail to acquire vocabulary and knowledge, find reading even more difficult as a result, and consequently do it less: a dispiriting downward spiral.

Now researchers are beginning to document a digital Matthew Effect, in which the already advantaged gain more from technology than do the less fortunate. As with books and reading, the most-knowledgeable, most-experienced, and most-supported students are those in the best position to use computers to leap further ahead. For example: In the Technology Immersion Pilot, a $20 million project carried out in Texas public schools beginning in 2003, laptops were randomly assigned to middle school students. The benefit of owning one of these computers, researchers later determined, was significantly greater for those students whose test scores were high to begin with.

Some studies of the introduction of technology have found an overall negative effect on academic achievement—and in these cases, poor students’ performance suffers more than that of their richer peers. In an article to be published next month in the journal Economic Inquiry, for example, Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor and co-authors Helen Ladd and Erika Martinez report their analysis of what happened when high-speed Internet service was rolled out across North Carolina: Math and reading test scores of the state’s public school students went down in each region as broadband was introduced, and this negative impact was greatest among economically disadvantaged students. Dousing the hope that spreading technology will engender growing equality, the authors write: “Reliable evidence points to the conclusion that broadening student access to home computers or home Internet service would widen, not narrow, achievement gaps.”

Why would improved access to the Internet harm the academic performance of poor students in particular? Vigdor and his colleagues speculate that “this may occur because student computer use is more effectively monitored and channeled toward productive ends in more affluent homes.” This is, in fact, exactly the dynamic Susan Neuman and Donna Celano saw playing out in the libraries they monitored. At the Chestnut Hill library, they found, young visitors to the computer area were almost always accompanied by a parent or grandparent. Adults positioned themselves close to the children and close to the screen, offering a stream of questions and suggestions. Kids were steered away from games and toward educational programs emphasizing letters, numbers, and shapes. When the children became confused or frustrated, the grown-ups guided them to a solution.

The Badlands library boasted computers and software identical to Chestnut Hill’s, but here, children manipulated the computers on their own, while accompanying adults watched silently or remained in other areas of the library altogether. Lacking the “scaffolding” provided by the Chestnut Hill parents, the Badlands kids clicked around frenetically, rarely staying with one program for long. Older children figured out how to use the programs as games; younger children became discouraged and banged on the keyboard or wandered away.

These different patterns of use had quantifiable effects on the children’s educational experiences, Neuman and Celano showed. Chestnut Hill preschoolers encountered twice as many written words on computer screens as did Badlands children; the more affluent toddlers received 17 times as much adult attention while using the library’s computers as did their less privileged counterparts. The researchers documented differences among older kids as well: Chestnut Hill “tweens,” or 10- to 13-year-olds, spent five times as long reading informational text on computers as did Badlands tweens, who tended to gravitate toward online games and entertainment. When Badlands tweens did seek out information on the Web, it was related to their homework only 9 percent of the time, while 39 percent of the Chestnut Hill tweens’ information searches were homework-related.

Research is finding other differences in how economically disadvantaged children use technology. Some evidence suggests, for example, that schools in low-income neighborhoods are more apt to employ computers for drill and practice sessions than for creative or innovative projects. Poor children also bring less knowledge to their encounters with computers. Crucially, the comparatively rich background knowledge possessed by high-income students is not only about technology itself, but about everything in the wide world beyond one’s neighborhood. Not only are affluent kids more likely to know how to Google; they’re more likely to know what to Google for.

Slogans like “one laptop per child” and “one-to-one computing” evoke an appealingly egalitarian vision: If every child has a computer, every child is starting off on equal footing. But though the sameness of the hardware may feel satisfyingly fair, it is superficial. A computer in the hands of a disadvantaged child is in an important sense not the same thing as a computer in the hands of a child of privilege.

The focus of educators, politicians, and philanthropists on differences in access to technology has obscured another problem: what some call “the second digital divide,” or differences in the use of technology. Access to adequate equipment and reliable high-speed connections remains a concern, of course. But improving the way that technology is employed in learning is an even bigger and more important issue. Addressing it would require a focus on people: training teachers, librarians, parents and children themselves to use computers effectively. It would require a focus on practices: what one researcher has called the dynamic “social envelope” that surrounds the hunks of plastic and silicon on our desks. And it would require a focus on knowledge: background knowledge that is both broad and deep. (The Common Core standards, with their focus on building broad background knowledge, may be education’s most significant contribution to true computer literacy.)

It would take all this to begin to “level the playing field” for America’s students—far more than a bank of computers in a library, or even one laptop per child.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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Nov 2015
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The Tragedy of Student Loans

 

One of the big scams going around right now is student loans for individuals attending for-profit universities. It goes something like this: Heavy advertising for pain free, at-your leisure online or on-site degrees—encouraging students to take on a large debt load to pay for their studies—and then frequently little (if any) support for students, inadequate classes, and difficulty transferring credits to other institutions. The dropout rate is typically substantial. Personal student debt is growing at a staggering rate.

Here’s the thing though—students at for-profit institutions represent only 9% of all college students, but receive roughly 25% of all federal Pell Grants and loans, and are responsible for 44% of all student loan defaults.

study by The National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggested that students who attend for-profit education institutions are more likely to be unemployed, earn less, have higher debt levels, and are more likely to default on their student loans than similar students at non-profit educational institutions. Although for-profits typically serve students who are poorer or more likely to be minorities, these differences do not explain the differences in employment, income, debt levels, and student loan defaults. The Government Accountability Office has also found that graduates of for-profits are less likely to pass licensing exams, and that poor student performance cannot be explained by different student demographics.

For-profits have higher completion rates for one- and two-year associate’s degree programs, but higher dropout rates for four-year bachelor’s degrees. However, studies have suggested that one- and two-year programs typically do not provide much economic benefit to students because the boost to wages is more than offset by increased debt. By contrast, four-year programs provide a large economic benefit.

An investigation by the New York Times suggested that for-profit higher education institutions typically have much higher student loan default rates than non-profits. Two documentaries by Frontline have focused on alleged abuses in for profit higher education.

The following infographic from Collegestats.org will give you a good visual of what’s going on with student debt. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always thought that the fundamental purpose of an educational institution should be to educate, not to turn a profit.

 

The Tragedy of Student Loans

What Did 2013 Hold for Educational Technology in Schools

Looking back at the article I was astounded to find that basically none of the information in the first chart was relevant and the proposal that “Apps” would be the prevalent part of the year actually was/is true. 
via Smartblogs/Katharine Haber

To connect with those working on the front lines of education technology, SmartBrief on EdTech editor Katharine Haber asked readers about their thoughts on what 2013 will bring for technology in schools.

According to our results, about one-third of respondents see classroom technology as the most significant issue on the horizon, while a slightly smaller group is concerned about online education, followed by computer-based testing and digital citizenship.

When asked how their schools and districts are using technology to enhance student learning, a majority of respondents reported that some teachers are employing tech tools in the classroom, while a significantly smaller proportion said technology is playing a broader role throughout the curriculum or being integrated through blended-learning programs or “bring your own technology” programs.

Readers reported that online applications and games are the most effective tools for engaging students, while digital textbooks and resources, along with mobile devices, are not far behind.

Interestingly, few respondents see social media as an effective tool. Given the ongoing buzz about Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, this response begs the question of whether many schools simply are not using social media as part of classroom instruction.

There are arguably numerous factors to consider when using social media with students, and many schools and districts might be blocking or otherwise prohibiting use of such websites on campus. However, given their popularity, is it possible there is an untapped resource here? What do you think?

What do you see as the most significant issue in education technology for 2013?

Technology in the classroom

33.88%

Online education

25.62%

Computer-based testing

21.49%

Digital citizenship

19.01%

Which statement best describes how your school or district is integrating technology into student learning?

Some teachers use tech tools as part of classroom lessons

63.78%

Technology is integrated throughout the curriculum

19.69%

Our school/district has a bring-your-own-device policy

8.66%

Our school/district employs blended learning

7.87%

Which tech tools most effectively engage students in your classroom, school or district?

Online apps and games

40%

Digital textbooks and resources

28.89%

Mobile devices

27.78%

Social media

3.33%

Katharine Haber is an associate editor for SmartBrief, writing and editing content about a variety of topics in education.

Great Post by David Warlick

via 2¢ Worth

Today’s infographic is simple and to the point. A big part of grade school and even college and onward, is writing papers. Some professions write more papers than others, but it is still an important skill in order to get your point across. This infographic uses venn diagrams to convey the importance of different parts of papers, and to show how they interact with one another. It also shows how much of your paper should include each part.

Of course every paper should begin with an introduction and end with a conclusion. It should also include several point in the middle, that are introduced and concluded in the introduction and conclusion. But how should the middle be laid out? That is up to the author, but it should there is a bit of a formula.

This infographic does a great job of showing that there should be pros and cons. You should always share how your paper may be argued against, and go ahead and prove some of these points wrong. In addition, a good paper should show why the information is important. Why should someone read your paper?

Show this to your students whenever a paper is assigned. Make sure your students are ready to write a good paper, and know what is involved in writing such a paper.

 

write-your-paper-right

http://visual.ly/write-your-paper-right

How to Support Teachers for 21st Century Learning

via eClassroom News

Experts weigh in on how administrators can support teachers in implementing collaboration and creativity

Implementing broad concepts like critical thinking and communication may seem like natural next steps to educators, but unless teachers receive support from school policy and infrastructure, providing students with a true 21st century education may not be so easy.

This was a key topic of discussion during a recent Connected Educator Month webinar, hosted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) and EdLeader21—a national network of school and district leaders focused on integrating the 4Cs into education.

The 4Cs–communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity–are part of P21’s mission to help educators teach students 21st century skills. Webinar panelists said this task can’t be accomplished without support from school administrators in the way of space design, instructional practices, and school policy.

Dana Strother, chief academic officer at Douglas County School District in Colorado, said her district “looked at Bloom’s Taxonomy and vetted our state’s standards through the taxonomy” during an evaluation of instructional practice.

“Areas that were lacking we improved through what we call ‘World Class Outcomes,’ and instructional design that allows for the 4Cs. We also provided CIA curriculum and instruction alignment and wove authentic learning experiences into the curriculum for support,” she said.

The district also made it a priority to provide supporting infrastructure through district policy on risk-opportunities.

“It’s important to let teachers know, in various ways, but also through policy, that we support risk-taking opportunities, or new strategies, projects, or professional development opportunities that may be new or unique,” she said.

For example, Douglas County lets teachers experience inquiry-based professional development opportunities in order for teachers to learn through the same practices they’re expected to teach students.

“We’re asking teachers to incorporate new kinds of teaching that include the 4Cs, so why should teachers in turn be taught in a different manner? Sometimes by thinking outside of the box and going against traditional methods, especially from an administrator standpoint, the results are better,” Strother said.

Randy Fielding, chairman and founding partner of educational facilities planning and architectural design firm Fielding Nair International, said he believes school design also factors heavily into incorporating the 4Cs into a student’s daily life.

Fielding’s design firm tries to incorporate 20 “learning modalities” into school design, which include concepts, such as Independent Study, Peer Tutoring, Team Collaboration, and One-on-One Learning, to support the 4Cs of instruction.

“To have a truly 21st-century school, you have to inspire organic collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication, and focusing on design can help.”

“To have a truly 21st-century school, you have to inspire organic collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication, and focusing on design can help. For example, you could have a ‘watering hole’ space off hallways where students could casually converse; you could have a ‘cave space’ where students could reflect for independent thinking; and you could have a ‘campfire space’ where everyone gathers to collaborate,” Fielding said.

Panelists emphasized that it’s also important for administrators and teachers to understand that instruction focused on the 4Cs doesn’t just work for certain kinds of subjects, students, or teachers.

“The 4Cs work for every kind of student and teacher in classrooms across the country,” said Donna Harris-Aikens, director of Education Policy and Practice at the National Education Association (NEA). “It’s less a series of requirements and more just authentic learning. For example, a math class could use its English and design skills to help draft a proposal to help senior citizens in their community make their homes more accessible. For this kind of project, you need the 4Cs in STEM, English, and community service.”

Fielding said it’s important that school and district leaders support teachers in working together to develop collaborative projects for their students.

One of the schools his firm works with has a student-run lunch program through which students negotiate with local farmers. They serve the week’s menu selections on carts around the school so students can taste-test their creations. Students in the program generate quarterly reports on profit and loss, and send those reports off to the school board.

“Students get credit for working in this program, which essentially teaches them collaboration skills, analytical skills, and even creative skills, thanks to cooking,” he said.

However, panelists said that there are still barriers for teachers who want to pursue the 4Cs, including getting first-world experience on how to actually teach broad concepts like creativity.

“That’s why we introduced the Creative Innovator Network in our district, which allows teachers to collaborate with not only their peers on different projects, but also local businesses to brainstorm ideas on how students can better serve the community,” said Strother. “We also bring students into the teacher professional development sessions to hear their voice and how they enjoy learning, so that teachers can adapt their instruction.”

“The biggest barrier for teachers is time,” said Harris-Aikens. “Finding time to make everything work effectively and collaborate is hard, especially because planning, or collaborating, time needs to be on a consistent and continual basis. Students also need a large amount of time to work on these projects, and to have time flexibility in case they make mistakes, as well. Administrators need to make sure teachers and students can have that time in their day.”

For more on this topic, watch the full webinar.

27 Ways to Reflect Upon Your Teaching Practice

February 23, 2015 Reflection and reflexivity are two meta-cognitive processes that we constantly need to exercise in order to guarantee an effective and healthy professional and also emotional growth. Unless you take a pause and think deeply about what you are doing and how you are doing it, you will never get to learn about your weaknesses and strengths. You won’t be able to stop navel-gazing and…

The 7C’s of Effective Communication

February 24, 2015 Following the post we shared here a few weeks ago featuring some useful resources to help teachers and educators master the art of presenting, somebody sent us this beautiful visual which ties in with the theme of that post. 7 Cs of Effective Communication is a work from Brainy Quote and Evan Carmichael. The visual  outlines some interesting strategies to keep in mind when…