Soles and Somes and Learning without Frontiers

I started this morning on Skype with Suneeta Kulkarni of Soles and Somes - http://solesandsomes.wikispaces.com/.   This group sets up Self Organized Learning Centers (Soles) in locations in India and now in Columbia for children.  Soles and Somes originated with Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall experiments where he placed  a computer with internet access in an exterior wall where children would have access to it.  The children were able to teach themselves to use the computer and the internet and to learn what they felt they needed to learn.  The new organization is placing computers with internet access in schools in various locations in India and Columbia.  They also use volunteer mediators to work with the children via Skype.  It is a wonderful way to bring groups together across national boundaries to facilitate learning. Wow!

Suneeta also mentioned the Learning without Frontiers organization.  I wandered over there to check out their blog - http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/blog/.  Today's post is on the iPad, education, and mobile learning.  It fit nicely with the prediction Ellen Wagner has for this year (http://wcetblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/predictions-and-hopes-2011/), only LWF is more positive about mobile solutions being here already.

I am still waiting for iPad 2 bcz I want the front camera so I can Skype.  When oh when will it arrive?????

Lisa

Univ. of Phoenix sees drop in new enrollments

Today's article:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2011/01/10/20110110university-of-phoenix-enrollment-drops.html#ixzz1AjcnKzGm

Student enrollment at University of Phoenix parent Apollo Group nose-dived 42 percent in the three months that ended Dec. 30, and on Monday investors learned that company executives believe it is only the beginning.
The Phoenix-based company expects those figures to fall as much as another 40 percent next quarter, and Apollo could continue to see steep declines for the rest of the year, executives said.
Overall enrollment fell 3.8 percent, compared with a year earlier, to 438,100.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2011/01/10/20110110university-of-phoenix-enrollment-drops.html#ixzz1Am6Yuq6O

The headline is misleading -- the drop is in new student enrollment.  Overall enrollment has dropped also though -- 3.8%.   A drop in new student enrollment was expected.  UoP had promised to change recruiting practices and it looks like they really have.  Unfortunately they needed to combine that with better retention practices and they apparently haven't done that.

Lisa

Innovation and Open Content

The innovation discussion was hot on Twitter yesterday and in to today.  Apparently quite of few innovators believe they have been burned by the status quo.  The good news is that they are all going to leave the system for the world of entrepreneurs - and new businesses typically lead the way out of recessions in this country.

Fascinating article in the Chronicle on how Washington State is attempting to build 80 plus community college level courses using open content.  (http://chronicle.com/article/State-of-Washington-to-Offer/125887/?sid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=en)  Their plan is to charge students $30 for use of the content.  I think that might be a maintenance price - I love the idea of open content, but the open content courses require a lot more maintenance than the publisher provided courses.  Or maybe not, maybe we are just changing who does the maintenance.  The $30 will need to go to whomever is providing that maintenance (faculty I assume) to keep the courses updated, current, and the links live.  They will also need to have an assigned person to handle emergencies -- what happens when a critical source disappears mid-semester?   Unfortunately that happens with some degree of regularity.

MITE/NROC (http://www.montereyinstitute.org/)  was founded a few years ago with a similar goal and discovered that there really wasn't all that much high end, multi-media-based open content available.  They are now creating high-end managed-source content.  I wonder if anyone in Washington State actually tried to build a course or two before coming up with this plan?  Again, not that it isn't a great idea, but someone has to create all of this content, pull it together into flexible courses, and then maintain it.  That's a very large and complex project. I wish them luck and I'd really like to help!

Here is my cynical side thinking out loud though -- colleges and universities are happy to talk about the high cost of textbooks and how continuous revisions that aren't really revisions are costing students much more than they need to pay.  But really, the cost of textbooks pales next to the cost of tuition and even room and board.  If our students paid a few thousand dollars less for tuition they could afford those expensive textbooks with all the nice ancillary materials and interactive technologies.  Tuition is a university issue though and not something that can be easily blamed on the publishers.

Innovation

I thought this was interesting: (Hat tip to Ellen Wagner)

http://innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-innovation-makes-executives.html

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Why innovation makes executives uncomfortable

I've been working in the "innovation field" for over seven years as a consultant, and I did regular "innovation" work for a number of years previously, so it is with a bit of chagrin that I come clean on the fact that it finally occurred to me why innovation makes many executives uncomfortable.  I think if you are constantly reinforcing a belief system (innovation is good!) that it can be very hard to get a different perspective, and even understand why that other perspective exists.  So for years I have labored under the assumption that others saw innovation as a valuable capability and commodity, just as I did.

Lisa

Obsessing about presentation

Am obsessing about a presentation for a second interview.  It's kind of fun to be able to do that and the topic is good (Online Classroom Observation), but I think I am seeing decreasing returns to scale. At this point I probably should write it up for publication.

I prefer QA for online courses in a two part process -- first the course content (pre-release) and then facilitator evaluation.  Re-occurring evals on separate schedules.  Any disagreement?

The Joy of Growing Old

Lead article in The Economist this week.... why life begins after 46, or anyway why we all get happier beginning around age 46.  I'm happy to report that I think I bottomed out before 46, but am definitely happier this year than last year. :^) 

http://www.economist.com/node/17722567?Story_ID=17722567

Lisa

New Year's Advice for Managing Discussions

Actually from Megan McArdle of the Atlantic Monthly and for Bloggers, but I though it was all relevant for classroom discussions, especially this section:

http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/12/a-little-new-years-advice/68535/

Treat stupid questions as if they were serious. Has anyone ever asked you "What are YOU looking at?" in a bar or other public place? That person was, of course, looking to do the Monkey Dance, work his way up to chest-poking or hat-knocking-off, and perhaps eventually a sucker punch. Blogging works much the same way--monkey dancing is the dominant mode of commenting. But on the other hand, if you actually try to answer that drunken idiot's question--act as though you don't detect the challenge, point at something and call the questioner's attention to it--you can get inside his OODA loop (unexplained allusion! Look it up, people!) and diffuse a bad situation. In blogging, treating a stupid question seriously can accomplish one of two goals: it can highlight the stupidity (because the answer is stupid, or obvious), or it might (and sometimes has, for me) elevate the discourse by pulling your interlocutor off of his stupid position and into a real discussion. Either way, you win, because you aren't the one being a jerk.

Lisa